The numbers from Spanish Colonial California are fascinating:
Approximate number of aboriginal natives: about 300,000
Approximate number of Spanish colonists: about 7000
The colonist number was stable up to the Bear Flag Republic rebellion. By that time, the native population was down to about 150,000 thanks to smallpox and slaughter.
But they were still by far the majority. If you wanted to find Spaniards, you needed to know where they were, since there were so few of them.
But by that time there were upwards of 30,000 Anglo settlers around Sacramento, and moving into the Bay Area slowly.
What happened next is that the Anglos moved to establish their form of popular government and land ownership in place of the system based on the Spanish Crown, and inherited by the revolutionary Mexican government.
At no time were the Californios a majority of human population here, and their claim to political control was certainly no more meritorious then the Anglo-Protestants, based as it was on the Papal decrees of 1495 and 1529.
The American government understood that the remnant Mexican population represented a failed attempt at solidifying the original Papal claim that was ridiculous in its scope. Polk had the same issue going in Texas, and the solution to who would control the land was decided at the end of the war in 1848.
Mexico is trying to reverse that verdict to this day. This time they think they have the people, if not the arms, to do it.
But it was never their land. Just like us, it was someplace they had to win, and hold, which they didn’t.
So we have to decide if we plan to keep it.
” Mexico is trying to reverse that verdict to this day. This time they think they have the people, if not the arms, to do it.
But it was never their land. Just like us, it was someplace they had to win, and hold, which they didn’t.
So we have to decide if we plan to keep it.”
Good points.