Los Angeles: A City of Latinos
A descendant of the original 44 settlers explains it all
By
Jennifer Vo and John P. Schmal
Published on LatinoLA:
February 25, 2004
For more than a century, Los Angeles, California has experienced a sustained growth that has made it one of the largest cities in the United States and the world. In the 2000 census, the number of persons living within the city limits of Los Angeles reached 3,694,820. Of this group, 1,719,073 individuals of Latino or Hispanic origin represented 46.5% of the total population of the city.
The 2000 census showed even more impressive statistics for Los Angeles County, which includes many surrounding suburbs and unincorporated districts, as well as the city itself. The statistics indicate that 9,519,338 people inhabited the entire county, and that 4,242,213 individuals of Hispanic or Latino heritage represented 44.6% of this total.
In essence, The City of Angels ? originally named by Spanish-speaking people ? has become a city of Latinos. Although people have come to L.A. from other parts of the country, from Asia, and Europe, many more have come from Mexico and Central America. While the statistics are impressive, it is interesting to note that the Los Angeles of two centuries ago actually had a much larger percentage of Latino inhabitants.
My name is Jennifer Vo and I am one of those 1,719,073 Hispanic inhabitants of the City of Los Angeles. My situation is very unique in that my ancestors were at the founding of the City of Los Angeles. Legend has it that, on the morning of September 4, 1781, 44 persons set out from the San Gabriel Mission with an escort of soldiers and priests. These forty-four individuals were the founders of El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles.
There is little information about those first few years of the Pueblo?s existence, but a census of November 19, 1781 revealed the names of the founding families. These founding families were listed and the first days of the Pueblo were discussed in an earlier Latinola.com article, ?The Founders of Los Angeles,? published on September 3, 2003, located at the following URL: http://latinola.com/story.php?story=1216
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, Luis Quintero and Mar?a Petra Rubio, along with five of their children, were among the founding families. They lived alongside the families of Jos? Fernanco de Lara, Jos? Antonio Navarro, Basilio Rosas, Antonio Mesa, Antonio Clemente Villavicencio, Jos? Vanegas, Alejandro Rosas, Pablo Rodr?guez, Manuel Camero, and Jos? Moreno. It can truly be said that, in 1781, Los Angeles was 100% Hispanic. Although the inhabitants might be labeled as Hispanic, they were in fact a racially-mixed cross-section of Indians, mestizos, mulatos, negros, and Spanish individuals, all from the present-day Mexican states of Sinaloa, Sonora and Jalisco.
Although I am descended from the Mexican founders of Los Angeles, I am also a descendant of the California Indians (the Chumash). For this reason, I believe it is important to mention that the Pueblo was founded close to an Indian village called Yangna. This village and a large part of the present-day City of Los Angeles were inhabited by the Tongva or Gabrielino Indians. When my Mexican ancestors arrived at the Pueblo in 1781, there were about 5,000 Tongva living in the region, scattered through some thirty or forty villages. The fact that the Pueblo was founded without incident or hostile action was, in fact, a gift that the Tongva / Gabrielino tribe bestowed upon the settlers. Although they suffered terribly from the European diseases that killed hundreds of their people, they offered friendship to the strangers from another land and helped them to develop the area?s agricultural potential.
The Pueblo of Los Angeles grew little by little. During its first four decades of existence, the Pueblo represented one of the farthest extensions of the large Spanish Empire, a kingdom was in decline. Los Angeles, in fact, was 1,555 miles (2,502 kilometers) from the important administrative center of Mexico City, and 5,834 miles (9,389 kilometers) from the seat of government, Madrid, Espa?a (Spain).
During its early existence, Los Angeles was located far from the nearest Spanish presidio at Santa Barbara. However, soldiers attached to that presidio were given responsibilities in the pueblo. Corporal Vicente Feliz, a veteran of the Anza Expedition of 1776, led a small soldier escort, which also included three privates: Roque Jacinto de Cota, Antonio Cota, and Francisco Salvador Lugo. All four soldiers would have large families that still inhabit the Los Angeles area today. In 1787, Feliz was actually appointed as the Comisionado of the Pueblo. In effect, he was given the powers of a mayor and a judge over the citizens of the town.
In 1790, a census revealed that the population of Los Angeles had increased to 141 residents. However, the census did not count the indigenous Tongva inhabitants that lived in the area and who frequently worked and labored alongside the Spanish-speaking residents. The vast majority of the Hispanic adults living in Los Angeles at the time of the 1790 census were natives of Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico. Persons with the surnames Alvarez, Silva, Armenta, Camero, Cota, Dom?nguez, Figueroa, Garc?a, Higuera, Lobo, Lugo, Moreno, Navarro, Ontiveros, de la Cruz Pico, Reyes, Rodr?guez, Ruiz, and Boj?rquez all hailed from Sinaloa (primarily from Villa de Sinaloa, Fuerte and Rosario).
From Jalisco came the Reyes, Rodr?guez, Romero, and Vanegas families. A few other inhabitants came from Baja California, Durango, Chihuahua, Mexico City, Puebla, and Nayarit. It is believed that only one person actually came from Spain. And, of course, the children being born to these families were the first Angelinos. Their parents and grandparents may have come from a thousand miles away in Sinaloa, but they were native-born Californians.
The reader may be tempted to ask why all these individuals left their native homes in Sinaloa to travel over a 1,000 miles north to Los Angeles and settle in this town located at the far end of the Spanish Empire, in an area where a serious Indian revolt could result in a massacre of large numbers of person.
There is more than one answer to that question. However, the best response is that these individuals saw an opportunity for themselves. Many of them were mixed-race individuals ? mulatos and mestizos ? and their participation in this endeavor provided them with opportunities that were not available to mixed-race individuals living in the interior of Mexico. Even for the individuals of Spanish descent, there were certain economic incentives.
It is also worth mentioning that many of these individuals had relatives stationed in the California presidios ? San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Monterey. Young men who had volunteered for service in Sinaloa had to go wherever they were sent by their superiors. And, in many cases, their families wished to remain close to their loved ones. In the course of the 1780s, 1790s and 1800s, Los Angeles became their home and their native lands faded into the background as they adjusted to their new lives and professions.
My family?s association with Los Angeles ended for several years when my ancestor, Luis Quintero, was expelled from the town in March 1782. A tailor by trade, Luis had trouble adapting to life in this agricultural town. He was told to leave and given permission to bring his family to the newly established Santa Barbara Presidio. It was here that Luis flourished, serving as the master tailor for the soldiers. Although Luis never returned to Los Angeles, many of his descendants ? including me ? have returned to live there.
As the Eighteenth Century came to a close, many of the soldiers stationed at the Santa Barbara Presidio started to retire from their long military careers. Some were given the opportunity to settle close to the presidio, but others chose to move to Los Angeles, where they were provided with some benefits for their service to Spain.
Former soldiers were provided with generous retirement benefits. The late historian, Father Maynard Geiger, OFM (1901 ? 1977), carefully assembled early census schedules for the city of Los Angeles and has provided researchers with a view of the early inhabitants. One of my ancestors, Juan Matias Olivas, had served for almost two decades at the Santa Barbara Presidio as a soldier. Finally, in 1800, he retired and decided to take up residence in the Pueblo.
By this time, the small pueblo had seventy families, 315 people, and consisted of 30 small adobe houses. In an 1804 census, Juan Matias Olivas was listed in the Los Angeles census as a retired soldier. Living with him were his wife, Juana Ontiveros, and four of their children. As a retired soldier, Juan received a small amount of land, which he cultivated until his death in 1806.
As the Nineteenth Century progressed, Los Angeles continued to see waves of new residents coming from the presidios and from Mexico. The surnames Sepulveda, Higuera, Ortega, Lugo, Dom?nguez, Rodr?guez, Ayala, Arellanes, Romero, Machado, Valenzuela, Ballesteros, Valdes, Figueroa, S?nchez, Pico and Feliz became common names in Los Angeles. During this period, all of the citizens of Los Angeles were Spanish-speaking and were subjects of the King of Spain. Even most of the indigenous Tongva people now carried Spanish surnames and practiced the Christian religion. Nearly everyone spoke Spanish. Los Angeles was, in effect, a city of Latinos, and it can be stated that the City of Angles was ? at this time ? one hundred percent Hispanic.
Many of the well-to-do retired soldiers became landholders. In some cases, they acquired Ranchos in the surrounding areas and became very wealthy. For example, Juan Jose Dom?nguez, a native of Sinaloa, received the Rancho San Pedro grant. This land grant stretched some 75,000 acres through the southern part of present-day Los Angeles County.
Another native of Sinaloa, Jos? Manuel Machado, retired from the Spanish army in 1797 and moved to Los Angeles. It was Machado?s sons who established the 14,000-acre Rancho La Ballona in 1819. This Rancho became the foundation of what we now call Culver City.
The Feliz family was able to receive land close to the Downtown area. Because of Vicente Feliz?s service to the Empire, he was granted 6,677 acres of land in 1794. El Rancho Nuestro Se?ora de Refugio de Los Feliz became the foundation of the area that is now Griffith Park and the Los Feliz District. My ancestor, Anastacio Maria Feliz, was a cousin to Vicente and he retired from the Spanish army to live at Los Feliz until he died around 1810.
By 1836, 2,228 people lived in Los Angeles. 553 of these inhabitants were described as Indians living in adjacent rancher?as. Nearly all the other inhabitants were of Spanish and Mexican extraction. There were, in fact, twenty-nine Americans now living in Los Angeles, while twenty-one other Angelinos had come from Africa, England, Norway, France, Portugal, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Canada, and Curacao. Los Angeles was still, at this time, an overwhelmingly Latino city.
Several of my ancestors were among the early inhabitants of Los Angeles and many of my relatives have lived in the City. But only my Feliz relatives became prosperous and owned their own ranchero. However, several of Luis Quintero?s children and grandchildren returned to the Pueblo to live. One of them was his granddaughter, Mar?a Rita Quiteria Vald?s. Mar?a, as the widow of a soldier, owned the 4,539-acre Rancho de las Aguas (Meeting of the Waters). In 1853, Mar?a Rita sold her Rancho for $4,000 to Major Henry Hancock from New Hampshire and Benjamin Wilson of Nashville, Tennessee. This property eventually became what we now called Beverly Hills.
Copyright ? 2004, by Jennifer Vo and John P. Schmal. All Rights Reserved.
Sources:
J. Gregg Layne, "The First Census of the Los Angeles District. Padr?n de la Ciudad de Los Angeles y su Jurisdicci?n. A?o 1836," Southern California Quarterly 18(1936), 81-99
Maynard Geiger, ?Six Census Records of Los Angeles and Its Immediate Area Between 1804 and 1823,? Southern California Quarterly, Vol. LIV, No. 4, pp. 311-341.
William Marvin Mason, ?The Census of 1790: A Demographic History of Colonial California? (Menlo Park, California: Ballena Press, 1998).
Jennifer Vo and John P. Schmal, ?A Mexican-American Family of California: In the Service of Three Flags? (Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, 2004). Available at
http://heritagebooks.com/ (Code S2448).
About
Jennifer Vo and John P. Schmal :
Jennifer Vo and John Schmal wrote "A Mexican-American Family of California: In the Service of Three Flags," available at http://heritagebooks.com/.
|
RSS
Feeds