Week 4: The Creation of
California and the Impact of
Ramona
Non-binary
 Inflected by shifting relationships between class,
ethnicity, and gender
 Material interests and ideology key factors
 Competition over lands (reflective of wider
national expansion 2.3 million sq miles acquired
between 1803-1853)
 White free labor becomes determining factor
 1790 Naturalization Act defines citizenship for
free white peoples (not changed till 1952)
 Indians, blacks, Chinese, Japanese immigrants
denied citizenship, right to vote and testify in
court.
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 50-66%
all immigration in colonial period
indentured servants
 Shift to slave labor supported by economic
and “scientific” studies
 Black slave labor in gold rush raises
questions about free labor in CA
 In 1848 15,000 Mexican and whites; 100,000
native Americans
 By 1900, 15,000 Mexicans, 45,000 Chinese,
10,000 Japanese, 6,000 African Americans,
and over 1 million whites. Native population
declines to 17,500
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California legislature introduces repeated unsuccessful
bids to forbid black immigration to CA in 1850s.
In California, mestizos, Indians, and Chinese were not
allowed to vote or testify in court. Many Californios (of
Spanish-Mexican-Indian descent) were divested of their
lands due to their alleged Indian blood
Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882, forbids future importation of
Chinese labourers (made permanent in 1902)
Statements against Japanese men in California and other
western states use language of miscegenation and fears of
unions with white women to stir up racial hatred
(borrowed from South). Ban on Japanese immigration in
1924
Were westerners really against slavery? CA, NV, OR all
pass anti-miscegenation laws in 1870s (not repealed in CA
until 1948 and 1959 in NV). Oregon’s law forbidding
settlement of free blacks not repealed until 1926
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Francis Parkman (1823-93; The Oregon Trail, 1849);
George Bancroft (1800-91; History of United States, 185478): Indians portrayed as beasts and devils or at best
pawns in European settlement
Roosevelt: The Winning of the West (1889–1896): frontier as
racial clash, dominated by great men who ‘knew
Indians’
Turner (1893): frontier meeting place ‘between
civilization and savagery’—but Native Americans play
little role in thesis
NB: Helen Hunt Jackson: Century of Dishonor (1880) and
Ramona (1884)
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Poet, publishes anonymously
Attends Luther Standing Bear’s
talk in NY; becomes Indian
activist
A Century of Dishonor (1881)
Bureau of Infian Affairs hires her
as Indian agent to report on
condition of California Mission
Indians; Report published 1883
recommending aid
bill dies in Senate
Ramona (1884)
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1851 Appropriations Act
Moves Natives in California onto
reservations maintained by US govt
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1871Appropriations Act
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Tribes no longer recognized; Native
Americans are individual wards of
government; US govt no longer liable
to sign treaties to annex land
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1885 Indians “allowed” to sell lands in
Indian Territory to white settlers
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Thompson v Doaksum, any Indians
lands left over now in public domain
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1887 Dawes Act forces assimilation
through pvt land owenership; 150
million native-owned acres declines to
78 million in 1900
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Mexican ranchero class tries to
defend land rights against
squatters, but loses money and
lands in court battles
Native Americans politically
disenfranchised; genocidal
pogroms instituted by state
government sanction murder of
8,000+ Native Americans in 1850s
Native population in 1845 150,000.
By 1880, only 16,000 left
1850 CA legislature allows
“vagrant” Indian minors to
become bond servants; 1860 allows
for adults becoming indentured
Trafficking of children
widesperead in both Mexican and
white periods
Native women routinely captured
and sold as slaves to white men
However, in 1872 Natives allowed
to testify against whites in court
and in 1879 allowed to vote in all
California elections
Granted riots under
Guadalupe Hildago
 Citizenship, right to
vote and sue in court
 Some elite families
retain political control
of sections of southern
California through
1880s
 By 1860s rancheros no
longer dominant
economic force
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1851 Federal Land Law
examines all land
grants
 ¾ of claims in Mexican
owners’ favor
 Average time for cases
17 years
 Few class conflicts with
working class due to
small overall Mexican
population till 1900
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New white immigrant population of CA overwhelmingly male
(90?%)
Intermarriage with Mexican American women; facilitation of
land transfer from Mexican families
More widely, pioneer women share same frontier experience as
men; active wage earners and farmers; women buy land
through Homestead Act, 1862
Native American women form unions with trappers, miners,
soldiers from 17th C
Captivity narratives: white women cultural border-crossers;
integration within native culture; white male fear of race
contamination
Native women (Pocahontas) and mixed-race heroines (Ramona,
1884) popular symbols which problematize racial stereotypes
Ramona, a novel, raises awareness of Native American situation
which Jackson’s history, A Century of Dishonor (1881) cannot
Fears of Chinese and Japanese immigration focus on potential
unions with white women—nativist fears borrowed from South
 “Throughout
popular culture and literature,
debates about the nature of mixed-race
identity are mapped out on the body of a
woman because thinking about racial mixture
inevitably leads to questions of sex and
reproduction.” –Suzanne Bost
 Examples: Cora Monro in The Last of the
Mohicans (1826); Clotel (1853); Zoe (1859);
Ramona (1884); Peola in Imitation of Life (1934);
Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937);
Mexican Village (1945); Giant (1952)
 "If
I could write a story that would do for
the Indian a thousandth part of what Uncle
Tom's Cabin did for the Negro, I would be
thankful the rest of my life”.
 Helen Hunt Jackson on the origins of
Ramona (1884)
Followed Jackson’s history of mistreatment of
California Indians
 Sold over 15,000 copies before her death in 1885
 Over 300 printings; second most widely read
novel of the 19th century
 Never out of print
 Opening of Southern Pacific Railway shortly after
publication
 Towns and missions claim to be authentic
Ramona locations
 Branding of Ramona products begins in 19thC
 Ramona pageant in Hemet, est. 1923
 Romanticized
representation of the ranchero
elites? Bondage and peonage of Native
Americans common even after elimination
of slavery by Mexico in 1829
 Class in pre-US California? Majority of lands
concentrated in handful of wealthy families
 Legacy of Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast
travelogue demonizing lazy Mexican
population
 Portrayal of Native Americans as doomed,
passive and without agency?
 Creation of mixed race heroine
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Compare racialization of Chinese immigrants with that
of Native American, Mexican, Japanese experiences.
Discuss the importance of the Japanese-Mexican Labor
Association in 1903? Why were Japanese so successful
at antagonizing the white farming industry?
Why were California native American tribes like the
Costanoes, Pomos, and Ohlones demonized more than
other Native Americans, according to Almaguer?
Why does Almaguer argue that California instituted
pogroms against the Indians
How did the government’s attitude toward Native
Americans change from 1870s?
Did Ramona achieve anything for Native Americans in
California?