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Were Indians who had lived in the area for hundreds of years....They hunted off the land, fished the numerous small streams coming out of the Mountains and had little contact with any other peoples except for the Northern Desert tribes, who often came down the rough and steep trails of the Cajon Pass to trade....It wasn't until the white man arrived in the valley below did Indian attacks on settlements begin....Inner tribal conflict occurred but not that often according to tribal chiefs.....Not until white men in the form of Spanish Combustors coming into the IE, did the local tribes start to attack.....and that was in reaction to what they considered the stealing of there hunting and fishing grounds.
Europeans first began to have an interest in California and the Inland Empire in the mid 1530s, when Cortez's men ventured into Baja California.....In 1542 the Spanish sailed north into Present day Gulf of California and by some accounts as far north as the Yuma area, which would mean that the low hills south of El Centro did not exist then as they do today.....Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's expedition north that year made landings as far north as modern Santa Barbara.....From the LA Basin which was populated by over 320,000 Indians, the Spanish explorers moved out over the area and finally into the inner valley regions that make up the Inland Empire, but no efforts were made to make any sort of contact with the Indians of the area....That would not happen for another two hundred years.
Coastal winds and currents made the voyage north from Mexico and Baja California difficult, and Spanish captains failed to find safe harbors for their crafts losing many to tropical storms in the summer time and cold winter storms which they were not accustomed too. Baja California became the northwest limit of Spanish colonization, and even there, efforts to settle the area and bring native tribes to Christianity and European ways were halfhearted at best. Not until the Seven Years War (1756-1763) realigned European alliances and their colonial empires did Spain seriously attempt to assert control of Alta California (Modern Day Southern California).
This was done through a combination of military forts called presidios, and mission churches overseen by Franciscan fathers led by Junípero Serra. In 1769, the first parties set north from Baja California, and the first Missions marked the procession northward.....the first mission was established at San Diego.....By the end of the Spanish colonial period, Alta California had three more presidios established at Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara, and no fewer than twenty-one missions. Other establishments built in the IE for the protection of the Mexican Families, were the Yucaipa Adobe, and Rancho San Bernardino.....Redlands Assistance was built in the 1820's as an extension of the San Bernardino Assistance.....The first water canals were also built during this time, connecting several small communities with water for drinking and irrigation.....The pueblos tried to attract settlers with land grants and other inducements and were governed by an alcalde (a combination of a judge and a mayor) assisted by a council called the ayuntamiento.
After 1769, the life of the California natives who came in contact with the Spanish was reshaped by the mission fathers, not the townspeople of the pueblos or the soldiers of the presidios. The Franciscans came to California not merely to convert the tribes to Christianity but to train them for life in a European colonial society. Conversion was seldom an entirely voluntary process, many Indians were taken by force from there tribes by Spanish Troops and converts were unable to return to there tribes or see there people, but were required instead to live in the walled mission enclosure or on ranchero's, separate settlements sponsored by missions although located some distance from the mission proper. There they were taught Spanish as well as the tenets of their new religion and trained in skills that would fit them for their new lives: brickmaking and construction, raising cattle and horses, blacksmithing, weaving, tanning hides, etc.
As a side note, the legend of Zorro was born during this era....Several People, most notably banditos and even the story of Robin Hood inspired writters to write of Zorro's exploits, none of which were exactly true....In truth, one Ranch Owner dressed in back led an attack on Mission San Jose, and another bandito, one notorious Juan Baptisita robbed stage coaches, lone travelers and missionaries and did give some of the loot to some of the poor in his area of operations, which was just outside of Bear Creek in Old Cucamonga, about where the Sycamore Inn sits....He went north into the central valley when Spanish Troopers surrounded his camp with the intent of capturing him....A few years later he was caught and hanged....So much for the legend and truth of Zorro.
The Spanish government nor the Franciscans ever judged any of the Indians ready for "secularization" or life outside the mission system, and Christian natives or Mission Indians as they were other wise called and their descendants remained enslaved at the missions until the system was abolished in 1834.
By then, sixty-five years of exposure to Europeans had reduced the number of California's native peoples by half to about 150,000. Although outright warfare cost few lives, the Spanish had introduced not only Christianity but also a few new diseases which the Indians had no resistance, and thousands died in epidemics.....Crowded, harsh living conditions at the missions contributed to the Indians' health problems, and infant mortality and death rates among young children soared.....It was the tribes of the coast and the Inland Empire, the Mission Indians, who were most drastically affected.
Mexican California
In 1808, Spain's American colonies, one by one, began to fight for independence. Even before this spirit spread to Mexico, California felt the effects of the rebellions, for Spain's hard-pressed navy could not spare ships to bring supplies to the missions, presidios, and pueblos north of San Diego. Thus, in the dozen years that followed, local authorities decided to allow trading to start with non-Spanish merchants so that the colonies could survive, and Californians became accustomed to contact with sailors, traders, hunters, and trappers from England, France, Russia, and, of course, the United States.
In 1821, Mexico achieved her independence, and word of this event reached Alta California the following year. The colonial policies of the republic were to be quite different from those of the Spanish monarchy. Not only were Californians allowed to trade with foreigners, but foreigners could also now hold land in the province once they had been naturalized and converted to Catholicism. Under Spain, land grants to individuals were few in number, and title to these lands remained in the hands of the crown. Under Mexican rule, however, governors were encouraged to make more grants for individual ranchos, and these grants were to be outright. Most important, the new Mexican republic was determined to move to do way with the missions, which they considered evil and to remove the natives and the mission property from the control of the Franciscan missionaries.
This process began in California in 1834. In theory, the Franciscans had administered the mission lands in trust for the natives living there when the missionaries arrived, but few Native Americans benefited from the mission system....Most of the missions' lands were disposed of in large grants to white Californians or recently-arrived, well-connected immigrants from Mexico. In the ten years before the missions were dismantled, the Mexican government had issued only 50 grants for large ranchos. In the dozen years after the missions were shackled, 600 new grants were made.
A new culture sprang up now in California: the legendary life of the ranchero and his family in a society where cattle-raising and the marketing of beef and hides became the central factors of economic life. With the end of the missions, The Mexican Californian became more and more dependent on the goods brought by the foreign merchants who came in search of hides. As British, Canadian, and United States settlers moved to Oregon, there was also an inevitable encroachment of non-Mexicans in northern California across that border. And more and more trappers and daring "mountain men" followed their taste for adventure and their search for furs in northern California and across the Sierras further south.
There were a few permanent residents of non-Hispanic birth or descent before 1824, but their numbers increased steadily in the Mexican era.....The first United States citizens to come overland to California were trappers led by Jedediah Smith in 1826....As he as his companions looked out upon the Inland Empire, one of his men was heard to ask the question...."What is all that brown stuff floating above the valleys?" They did not realize it, but they were the first white man to see Smog.
Mexico always had trouble ruling her distant province.....The last governor sent to California from Mexico City was Manuel Micheltorena who came in 1842.....He was a dictator, evil in heat with a reputation that preceded him....His appearance triggered a local revolt, and after being threatened to be tarred and featured by some of the locals and actually attacked by Indians who had come down from the Northern Dessert Valleys, he wisely decided to withdrew in 1845 and headed back to Mexico.....Pío Pico, a local ranchero of part Portuguese and African heritage from Chino, became governor. Unofficially, California had achieved home rule. A year later, Mexico faced a still greater challenge. By then, California was home to a native population now reduced to less than 100,000 and to some 14,000 other permanent residents. Of these, perhaps 2,500 were "foreigners," whites of non-Hispanic descent, and of these, probably 2,000 had immigrated from the United States since 1840.
Soon after the Mexican American War ended, a new era in the IE began and We all know what happened to the IE after that.
Gary Hall the ghostpainter