Californio testimonios

Abstract

Several 19th-century Californio testimonios are the product of interviews of Californio men and women made by H. H. Bancroft’s agents, looking for historical information that would be incorporated in what became, in time, Bancroft’s History of California. In their narratives, Californio informants discuss the 19th-century political and economic periods, with particular interest in the periods of Spanish, Mexican, and US colonization, which brought the dispossession and exploitation of indigenous people in California. These testimonios offer information on the treatment of the Indians within the mission, and their demise after close contact with missionaries and settlers. The role of missionaries in the colonization is also examined—the secularization of mission lands, the pastoral economy dominant in Alta California, and the subsequent dispossession of the Californios after 1848 by the Land Act of 1851, incoming US settlers and squatters, and land speculators. The testimonios offer a first-person account of numerous events, problems, and conflicts in Alta California during the 19th century.