The San Diego World's Fairs and Southwestern Memory, 1880-1940

The San Diego World’s Fairs and

Southwestern Memory, 1880–1940

The San Diego World’s Fairs

and

Southwestern Memory,

1880–1940

MATTHEW F. BOKOVOY

ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8263-3644-6

© 2005 by the University of New Mexico Press

All rights reserved. Published 2005

Printed in the United States of America

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Bokovoy, Matthew F., 1969–

The San Diego World’s Fairs and southwestern memory, 1880–1940 /

Matthew F. Bokovoy.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8263-3642-6 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Panama-California Exposition (1915 : San Diego, Calif.)

2. Panama-California International Exposition (1916 : San Diego, Calif.)

3. California Pacific International Exposition (1935-1936 : San Diego, Calif.)

4. San Diego (Calif.)—History—20th century. I. Title.

T872.B1B65 2005

907’.4794’985—dc22

2005012546

All illustrations provided courtesy of the San Diego Historical Society Research Archives (SDHS) and the San Diego Public Library, California Room Research Archives (SDPL).

This book is lovingly dedicated

to my hometown, San Diego

and

Ramón

and

Mike

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

The Spanish Heritage

PROLOGUE

San Diego and the Spanish Colonial Inheritance

PART ONE—HISTORY AS MYTH:

The Panama-California Exposition, 1915–1916

CHAPTER ONE

Southern California Gets the Panama Exposition

CHAPTER TWO

Planning a Southwestern Exposition, 1915

CHAPTER THREE

The Peers of their White Conquerors

CHAPTER FOUR

A Heritage in History, Forever

PART TWO—MYTH AS HISTORY:

The California-Pacific International Exposition, 1935–1936

CHAPTER FIVE

The Legacies of 1915: The San Diego Century-of-Progress Exposition, 1935–1936

CHAPTER SIX

The Answer Is to Be Found in Those Yesteryears and Tomorrows

CHAPTER SEVEN

Popular Amusements and the Fight for Moral Authority in Southern California

EPILOGUE

Spanish Fantasy Heritage, Social Politics

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Presidio Hill, 1874

Figure 2. Mission San Diego de Alcalá in disrepair during the 1880s

Figure 3. Undeveloped canyons of Balboa Park, c. 1912

Figure 4. Publicity poster for the Panama-California Exposition, 1916

Figure 5. Brazil Exhibition, 1915

Figure 6. Tijuana Insurrection, May 29, 1911

Figure 7. Curious onlookers at the San Ysidro border crossing observing the Tijuana Insurrection, May 9, 1911

Figure 8. Police authorities control free-speech demonstration in downtown San Diego, 1912

Figure 9. Queen Ramona and court during the San Diego Pageant, July 19–22, 1911

Figure 10. Industrial Parade, July 21, 1911

Figure 11. Pageant of the Missions, July 22, 1911

Figure 12. Postcard of Ramona’s marriage place, Old Town San Diego

Figure 13. San Diego: A Comprehensive Plan for Its Improvement, 1908

Figure 14. San Diego: A Comprehensive Plan for Its Improvement, detail 1908

Figure 15. San Diego exposition plan 1911

Figure 16. Rendering of the California Quadrangle and Cabrillo Bridge 1914

Figure 17. New Mexico State Building 1915

Figure 18. Painted Desert 1915

Figure 19. Science of Man exhibition, 1915

Figure 20. Panama-California Exposition fairgrounds on the central mesa of Balboa Park, 1915

Figure 21. Rendering of the California Quadrangle 1913

Figure 22. Decorative elements for the Casa de Balboa and Casa del Prado 1915

Figure 23. Man’s Evolution exhibition, 1915

Figure 24. Clay busts of the Teton Sioux, 1915

Figure 25. Races of Man chart, 1915

Figure 26. California Building, 1915

Figure 27. Scientific library inside the California Building, 1936

Figure 28. Façade, California Building, 1915

Figure 29. Farnham historical frieze, 1915

Figure 30. Murals of ancient temple cities, rotunda of the California Building, 1915

Figure 31. Mayan historical frieze, 1915

Figure 32. Painted Desert tourist brochure, 1915

Figure 33. Painted Desert with tipi and hornos, 1915

Figure 34. Navajo Indians at the Painted Desert, 1915

Figure 35. San Ildefonso Pueblo workmen, Painted Desert, 1915

Figure 36. Pueblo Indians in kiva performing the dog dance, Painted Desert, 1915

Figure 37. Pueblo jar, María or Ramoncita Martínez, Indian Arts Building, 1915

Figure 38. Hopi Indians on stage, 1915

Figure 39. Pueblo women on the Painted Desert, 1915

Figure 40. Navajo Indians on the Painted Desert, 1915

Figure 41: Cover of the souvenir guide, California-Pacific International Exposition, 1935–1936

Figure 42. Proposal for San Diego Civic Center, 1926

Figure 43. General Improvement Plan, Balboa Park, 1925

Figure 44. Frank Belcher Jr., Edsel Ford, and Gilbert A. Davidson, 1935

Figure 45. The Federal Building, 1935

Figure 46. Looking down the Palisades at the Ford Pavilion, 1935

Figure 47. Ford Pavilion with Firestone Singing Fountain in foreground, 1935

Figure 48. Federal Housing Administration brochure, Modeltown and Modernization Magic, 1935

Figure 49. Federal Housing Administration exhibit, 1935

Figure 50. Modeltown brochures, modern vernacular designs, 1935

Figure 51. Modeltown brochures, modernist designs, 1935

Figure 52. Richard Neutra poses next to his contribution to Modeltown, 1935

Figure 53. Roads of the Pacific, Balboa Park, 1935

Figure 54. Gold Gulch, located in the canyon behind the House of Hospitality, 1935

Figure 55. Revelers on the Zócalo, 1935

Figure 56. Women of Zorro’s Garden, 1935

Figure 57. Nudists defeat machine civilization, Zorro’s Garden Pageant, 1935

Figure 58. Women of Sensations, Zócalo, 1935

Figure 59. Sally Rand, the fan dancer, 1936

Acknowledgments

THE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK began with a conversation at Gelato Vero Café in San Diego in the winter of 1995. I wanted to write about my hometown of San Diego, especially the world’s fairs that had shaped its modern development. Ramón Gutiérrez, a history mentor of mine since my dishwashing days at the café, suggested, You should write a dissertation on the San Diego Expositions. No one has written about it. There are enough records for many books on the fairs at the San Diego Historical Society. I went to look at the records and nine years of research became this book. I thank Ramón and Lisbeth Haas, my teacher at University of California, Santa Cruz, for their friendship, good advice, and assistance with the history of California and the southwestern borderlands.

During the years I worked on this book there have been mentors, colleagues, and friends who have enriched the project through their sound advice. I thank my graduate advisors Allen F. Davis, Miles Orvell, Robert Schwoebel, William Cutler III, and Margaret Marsh. They encouraged me to continue work on a topic that was thousands of miles away. Allen Davis was always prepared to offer his time, usually over late-afternoon cocktails. His reputation as a fine writer, editor, and urban resident defines the publicly engaged scholar. He is a model for young historians. Carol Lilly, Todd Kerstetter, Thomas Clark, and Dean Michael Schuyler offered their support and assistance while I taught at the University of Nebraska, Kearney, in 1999–2000. Lynn Hollen Lees, Robert Engs, Warren Breckman, Ben Nathans, Barbara Savage, Michael Zuckerman, Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Sheldon Hackney, Walter Licht, and Eric Cheyfitz generously welcomed me to the intellectual life at University of Pennsylvania in 2000–2001. I thank Bob for professional advice and lunch, Ann for inviting me to participate in the ethnohistory seminar, and Warren for his deep knowledge of European social theory and how it applied to my project. Much of the rewriting of this book took place while I taught at Oklahoma State University from 2001 to 2004. Lester George Moses generously offered his time, deep knowledge of southwestern archival collections, and friendship. I thank him for bringing me to Oklahoma. Elizabeth Williams helped me through the difficult field of nineteenth-century European anthropology. Department chair William Bryans lent consistent support and encouragement. Joseph Stout helped with the style and substance of the manuscript. Ron Petrin, Mike Smith, Jason Lavery, and Lesley Rimmel always supplied criticism that deepened my understanding of the historical process. My friend Michael Willard read many drafts of this book and offered numerous suggestions based on his immense knowledge of American Studies scholarship. Oklahoma State History Department graduate students, including Mark Van der Logt, Jim Klein, Todd Leahy, Marcy Gracey, Jeffrey Christensen, Aaron Christensen, Adrian Sadovsky, Deanna Fischer, Kelly Crews, Rodney Jones, and Steven Karr, raised the level of intellectual life in Stillwater.

Many archivists have contributed to this project. Archivists and staff members at the San Diego Public Library and San Diego Historical Society deserve particular mention. I thank Rick Crawford, the former director of archives at SDHS and now at the California Room of the San Diego Public Library, for years of assistance, advice, and encouragement. I thank Eileen Boyle, Derek Moses, Jane Selvar, Sydney Larrime, and Billie Stack at SDPL. At SDHS, Sally West, Tony Arambarri, Rick Crawford, and the curators of the Photographic Department were superlative. I especially appreciate the assistance of archives director John Panter, his assistant Dennis Sharp, and Gregg Hennessey, the editor of the Journal of San Diego History. At the American Philosophical Society, the late director Edward Carter II, archivist Rob Cox, and fellow Lee Baker enriched my time there. Lee Baker went out his way to help me with the history of anthropology. I thank the generosity of the staff at the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution; the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley; the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico; the Southwest Museum; and the Western History Collection at the University of Oklahoma. John Phillips, the director of government documents at the Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University, shared his enthusiasm and knowledge of government publications to make this a better book.

Numerous mentors and colleagues provided me with their own points of view and answered my sometimes sophomoric questions. Thanks are due to Virginia Scharff, Chris Wilson, Paul Hutton, Jane Slaughter, David Farber, Beth Bailey, and Margaret Szasz of the University of New Mexico for their consistent support. Durwood Ball taught me much about writing and editing. David Holtby of UNM Press has been a source of ongoing support. Paul Vanderwood took care and time to guide me through the revisions. I thank Paul for transforming me into a writer. Michael J. González urged me to consider the legacy of Helen Hunt Jackson. George Stocking Jr. graciously encouraged me to reexamine the Czech-Bohemian ethnicity of Aleš Hrdlička and his place in American anthropology. William McClung offered good words of encouragement. For their scholarship and professional endeavors I have been inspired by William Deverell, David Wrobel, Lisa Rubens, Kathy Howard, Julie Berebitsky, Rodney Hessinger, John McNay, Molly Mullin, Dewar and Deirdre MacCleod, Ross Frank, Mark Haller, Eric Avila, Phoebe Kropp, and Erica Bsumek. Finally, I thank Mike Davis and Alessandra Moctezuma, and Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew for opening their homes to me in San Diego. They made the completion of this book much more enjoyable with their warmth and worldliness.

Writing a book in the university setting can be an alienating experience without friends outside the business. Many kept my spirits up when I thought about giving up the history enterprise altogether. They reminded me that life is not simply defined by work. Michael Martin, Dave Lorenz, Paul Dellavigne, Chris Ogilve, Eric LaValle, Jen Streeper, and Rich Alfonse took me to local bars for pool, bourbon and beer, and human conversation about the real world. Dave humored me with his theological rants and gifted bass playing. The local crew at Andy’s Bar, Girard Avenue and Orianna Street, Carlos and Will Sanchez, Doug, Nelson, Steven, Eppy, and Rob, offered a warm atmosphere. They directed me toward community organizations in North Philly. Alan Hewitt and Erin Elstner lured me from Philadelphia to New York City for cultural enrichment when I lost enchantment with life. In the San Francisco Bay Area, my childhood friends Garrett Scott and Kasey Kolassa let me stay on their couches and talked late into the evening with me about the problems of contemporary California. In Stillwater, Luke Dunham, Brad Hayes, Aaron Frisbee, Mike Willard, and George MacPherson helped me loosen up as they enticed me away from writing to tear up the public skateboard parks of Oklahoma.

I appreciate the warmth and support of my family, the Bokovoy and Simon clans, as I completed this book. I am blessed to have another historian in the family, Melissa Bokovoy. She generously gave her time to assist me with revisions, and this book is better for it. Ron Bokovoy and Barbara Simon have been pillars of emotional and economic support. I was fortunate to live at my mother’s home in San Diego while I did research. My father opened his home and heart to believe in my abilities. Phil Bokovoy has always shared with me his good sense and knowledge of business and political economy. His social activism still inspires me after all these years. With much sadness, my grandmother Mary Malerick Ellis passed away after I finished this book. When I left Philadelphia for Nebraska in 1999, I lamented the fact that I would never return to Philadelphia, a city I loved so much. Thanks to my former colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, I met Tabetha Tomaselli, my wife. She exudes a spell of charm and wise counsel. Nala and Murphy, her dog and cat, sat on many drafts of the book. In the words of a famous poet, this one is for All My Friends.

Preface

THE SPANISH HERITAGE

AN INTEREST IN MISSION RUINS AND INDIAN RELICS has been known to lead to an interest in Mexicans and Indians, wrote Carey McWilliams with optimism in North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States, his 1949 book about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Although he despaired it would never be, McWilliams believed a more critical southwestern cultural history could become an agent for national civil rights and cultural pluralism. The war against the spread of fascism had ended, and the cold-war anticommunist crusade was flourishing throughout America. A prominent Los Angeles attorney, social justice activist, and prolific writer, McWilliams lamented the lost possibilities of a domestic, antifascist movement during the Depression and war that could have been led by labor radicals in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), affluent white liberals, and socialists. He had spent the entire decade writing four books about racial and cultural relations in California, the Southwest, and the United States. In Los Angeles, McWilliams assisted the eventual acquittal of seventeen young Mexican American men in the Sleepy Lagoon Case; the men had been wrongly convicted of second-degree murder and lesser offenses in the death of José Díaz in 1942. McWilliams also joined his friend Louis Adamic and other civil-rights activists in the journal Common Ground, pushing his idea of social democracy, citizenship rights, and interracial cooperation during the fight against fascism. The Common Ground writers did not espouse an uncritical nationalism on the home front. Rather, their perspective was one of radical, legal-based pluralism and federal intervention on race problems. McWilliams hoped remnants of colonial southwestern heritage could promote greater intercultural understanding. His pronouncement also expressed mourning for the demise of the Popular Front and its vision of social democracy.¹

In this intriguing statement, McWilliams referred to the public culture in Southern California and the Southwest, a regional tradition he defined as the Spanish fantasy heritage. The fantasy heritage was the invented tradition created by white Californians to interpret the historical legacy of Indians, Spaniards, and Mexicans in the Southwest. Mostly inaccurate, ahistorical, and suffused with excessive sentimentality and romanticism, the fantasy heritage was the cultural gloss for the economic development and promotion of Southern California. The story of the fantasy heritage resembled a harmonious family reunion of benevolent Franciscan Fathers, ignorant but grateful Indians, cruel military governors, deceitful Mexican liberals, and indolent rancheros all united under the thrum of guitars and the click of the castanet at a grandee’s ranch fiesta. Then a productive, enterprising, and confidently superior race of white Protestants turned the milk and honey of the Mexican era into a dynamic capitalist society after 1848. All members of Spanish society lived under a presumed religious egalitarianism. And all citizens lived without disagreement and want. Villainous Mexican liberals and Anglo Americans, with their lust for extravagance and natural resources, had destroyed an ecclesiastical Eden where the scientific revolution and secular individualism swayed few minds. Spanish society was supposedly one of paternal obligation held together by the holy faith.²

Carefully reading between the lines of the fantasy heritage, McWilliams believed the early commercial origins of modern Spanish heritage also had been influenced by the progressive ethos of the early twentieth century and deeper strands of Christian humanism.³ Cultural awareness could be redemptive in a society riddled with racial and social divisions. He hoped California citizens, tourists, seekers of exotica, and curio collectors would move beyond the romantic commercialism of the fantasy heritage into real history with an egalitarian social politics. For McWilliams, the word fantasy in the Spanish heritage perhaps represented deeper longings for the way race relations should have been improved through better intercultural understanding. In his earlier book, Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946), McWilliams argued the very newness of California appeared in fact, to have compelled, to have demanded, the evocation of a mythology which could give people a sense of continuity in a region long characterized by rapid social dislocations. He initially understood how social-reform politics and lyrical romance defined the origins of the modern Spanish heritage. Both sentiments literally flowed from the same wellspring.⁴ By 1949, McWilliams despaired that the Spanish heritage had become something entirely different. Commercial interests had created social distance between Anglos, ethnic Mexicans, and Indians. The sale of Spanish colonial mystery and romance had not inflamed the social compassion of Anglos for their Indian and Mexican contemporaries. With much insight, he felt the people of the borderlands will either face the future ‘one and together’ or they are likely to find themselves siftings on siftings in oblivion. McWilliams believed the power of culture to be ineffective if the Anglo problem, or white entitlement fed by racism, could not be overcome.⁵ His words were the requiem for southwestern cultural history to bring greater interracial understanding and the important civil-rights requisite for social democracy.

I open with McWilliams’s musings to understand better how the dynamics of imagination and power shaped the Southwest’s most enduring invented tradition. In Southern California and the Southwest, no two events shaped the modern Spanish heritage more profoundly than the San Diego Exposition of 1915–16 and of 1935–36. Both San Diego fairs outlined a comprehensive portrait of the American Southwest, its peoples, and cultures for the American public. The Panama-California Exposition of 1915–16 celebrated southwestern pluralism and bound ever more tightly regional and national institutions that gave birth to future promotional events like the Long Beach Pacific Southwest Exposition of 1928, the Santa Fe Fiesta of the 1920s, and John Steven McGroarty’s The Mission Play. The California-Pacific International Exposition of 1935–36 promoted the future industrial might of the Pacific Slope and the consumer-oriented society in the making during the 1930s. These San Diego fairs distributed national images of Southern California and the Southwest unsurpassed in the early twentieth century.⁶ Studies of southwestern memory have developed without serious consideration of the fairs. Much recent scholarship on this phenomenon argues that the modern Spanish heritage was a tradition of false consciousness, nothing more than public imagery used by Anglos to denigrate and erase the contemporary presence of ethnic Mexicans and American Indians.⁷ The historical and critical literature, however, offers some fresh reevaluations of southwestern cultural promoters, who imagined anew the obvious cultural pluralism of the region. And when cultural promoters reenvisioned with sympathy the history and culture of Indians and ethnic Mexicans, an important set of political understandings emerged in southwestern cultural history that contributed to the realization of legal, civil rights. Invented traditions are not categorically forms of false consciousness and can reveal submerged histories previously unconsidered. The grand visions of southwestern cultural promoters and world’s fair organizers rarely resounded in unison.⁸

A highly visible public heritage need not emanate from racial fears and hatreds. The Spanish heritage represented a new way to imagine ethnic Mexicans and Indians as worthy citizens of the Southwest. Democratic ideals that embraced social equality in progressive reform movements influenced the content and meaning of public heritage. Regional identity in Southern California and the Southwest emerged from growing sentiments of nationalism as well, despite the white racial worldview at the foundation of the new American empire. Public symbols and commemoration must radiate a sense of belonging-ness and sentiment of national love to be myths worth believing. Benedict Anderson has noted this phenomenon well. He writes, "It is useful to remind ourselves that nations inspire love, and often profoundly self-sacrificing love. The cultural products of nationalism—poetry, prose fiction, music, plastic arts—show this love very clearly in thousands of different forms and styles. On the other hand, how truly rare it is to find analogous nationalist products expressing fear and loathing."⁹ The modern Spanish heritage enthusiastically portrayed Southern California as a land of worthy American traditions. All the history and memories of Southern California and its Indian, Spanish, and Mexican legacy existed together in the social imagination between 1880 and 1940. The cultural and racial assumptions undergirding the images were often hurtful, insensitive, and untrue for Indians and ethnic Mexicans, since they were rarely invited to participate directly in the elaboration of the myths.¹⁰ However, Anglo Americans held the privilege and power to shape the process of recollection. And from these efforts of Anglos, the modern Spanish heritage came into existence.¹¹

Early twentieth-century efforts to create modern Spanish heritage embraced a wide variety of sentiments and representations of the Southwest and its peoples, from the fuzzy, often racist, romanticism of real-estate and tourist promotion to critical and egalitarian social criticism of historical conquests in the region. Let us not forget that ethnic Mexicans and Indians brought their experiences to shape and offer criticism of the modern Spanish heritage. In public celebration, Anglos hired people from both groups, who sometimes refused to participate, as actors in the fashioning of public history, commemoration, and cultural tourism. Building on the ethnic consciousness of the 1960s civil rights movement, Mexican American and Indian communities throughout the Southwest now control more than ever their public history. These communities also manage the content of their participation in public historical commemoration. Therefore, the modern Spanish heritage shows considerable flexibility with changing political and social trends over time. Spanish and Indian heritage emerged upon many fronts throughout the Southwest, in architecture, cultural institutions, historic preservation, public commemoration, real-estate promotion, tourism, and, of course, world’s fairs. The only cultural thread to connect the institutions of modern Spanish heritage was a willingness to depict the past in a glowing and selective light. From 1880 to 1940 contemporary Indians and ethnic Mexicans, presumed descendants of the past, appeared noble and worthy but hidden from new settlers and tourists to the region. The public heritage of Spanish history and Indian folklore came to symbolize the promise of the present and future through the inevitable progression of past.¹²

Other cities in the American Southwest, such as Santa Fe, Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, created modern Spanish heritage. As the urban Southwest underwent rapid growth, city leaders searched for unique cultural styles to promote their commercial interests.¹³ The story about the San Diego expositions shows this phenomenon in only one city, but it reveals similar patterns with others. The modern Spanish heritage accommodated different interests in all southwestern cities. The white majority in Southern California, unlike in other regions of the Southwest, had no need for modern Spanish heritage to achieve the unity of ethnic and racial groups.¹⁴ From 1880 to 1940, Arizona, Texas, and especially New Mexico maintained larger Indian and ethnic Mexican populations than Southern California. The Spanish-descent population of New Mexico ranged from 40 and 60 percent with a significant population of Indians. The Spanish heritage symbolically unified New Mexico’s Anglos, Hispanos, and Indians with a common history to assuage political and economic competition. In San Diego and Los Angeles, ethnic Mexican populations ranged from 5 to 10 percent during the era with small numbers of Indians. The San Diego expositions portrayal of the Southwest served different local interests.¹⁵

The San Diego expositions belonged to a confident and progressive generation that wholeheartedly believed in the promise of American institutions and life. The social compassion found in Christian ethics and the theory of cultural pluralism from 1880 to 1940 influenced the invention of tradition in Southern California and the United States.¹⁶ Public commemoration often united immigrant and native cultures with social reform. The people who promoted modern Spanish heritage in San Diego supported the Mission Indians of Southern California during land battles, saw trade unionism as important for expanding democracy, and viewed the fair treatment of immigrants in America as an ethical and legal obligation. Public commemoration revealed possible worlds of the imagination but presented real limitations to the practice of democracy in everyday life. Sentiments expressed in public heritage and social reform obviously appear insensitive and misguided from our point of view today. I have presented the worldview of cultural promoters through what was thought, said, and done to capture their inspirations and motives to lead the heritage crusade in Southern California. A reader should have the luxury to consider actions, gestures, and words seriously.

Prologue

SAN DIEGO AND THE SPANISH COLONIAL INHERITANCE

FAGES WOULD NOT GIVE THIS MISSION more than one-half of half a cuartillo of corn for the Indians from the Californias, complained Fray Luís Jayme to Fray Rafael Verger, O.F.M., guardian of the College of San Fernando in Mexico City in October 1772. Jayme was head cleric of the San Diego mission. He experienced difficulty bringing new Indian converts into the mission since the military commander of Alta California, Lieutenant Pedro Fages, drew liberally on its supplies. We cannot make the natives around here work, and often we cannot teach them the doctrine [Catholicism], he explained, because they have to go hunting for food every day.¹ Thus little progress will be made under present conditions, said Jayme, for the example to be set by the soldiers—some are good exemplars—but very many of them deserve to be hanged on account of the continuous outrages which they are committing in seizing and raping the [Indian] women. Father Jayme believed it scandalous that Pedro Fages considered unimportant the sexual transgressions of soldiers. He had become chagrined that the commander had drafted mission livestock and Indians toward the pursuit of his own riches.²

In his letter to Verger, Jayme spoke of incidents at the Kumeyaay village at the end of Mission Valley, which was located along the coastal plain near False Bay on the road to Monterey. The gentiles therein many times have been on the point of coming here to kill us all, said Jayme with great concern, and the reason for this is that some soldiers went there and raped their women, and other soldiers turned their animals into their fields and they ate up their crops. After the incidents, Jayme recommended to Fray Junípero Serra in 1773 that the mission and the gentile village near it be removed from the presidio, following town planning codes from the Laws of the Indies. At the new location east of the presidio (now in Mission Valley), he believed the immoral influences of the lower-caste Spanish soldiers could be minimized for both neophyte and gentile Indians alike.³ Dismayed with the actions of Fages’s soldiers, Serra wrote to Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursua, viceroy of New Spain, and described the terrible incidents. He related how a party of soldiers would visit the Kumeyaay villages, which sent men and women into hiding, and lasso Indian women—who then became prey for their unbridled lust. Several Indian men who tried to defend the women were shot to death.⁴ The incidents most likely lay at the heart of Indian resistance to the Spanish colonization effort in San Diego and all of California. Despite the obvious sense of Christian morality and sympathy in Father Jayme’s intriguing letter, in 1775 he paid for these sexual transgressions at the heart of Spanish-Indian relations with his life.⁵

Thus began the difficult task undertaken by the Spanish Crown to colonize the territory known as Alta California in order to halt English and Russian expansion into sovereign territory. The Bourbon Reforms of 1768 redesigned New Spain as defensive and economic territories that limited the power of the Catholic orders in the colonization endeavor. The reforms were meant to make New Spain’s northern provinces self-sufficient. However, provincial officials often carried out reforms differently on the frontier of empire. Conversion of the Indians, known as the Kumeyaay, or Digueños to the Spanish, in the San Diego region proved trying because the colonial imperative consisted of civil, military, and spiritual conquest. Often divided over policies for the administration of Native Californians, provincial governors, military commanders, and Catholic missionary orders thought only their special care for the Indians would make good Catholics of the indigenous people, transforming them into tax-paying Spanish citizens. Indians themselves participated in church-state controversies, although somewhat indirectly and without clear articulation of intent. Native Californians wielded much influence for a conquered people to shape colonial policy. From the Spanish period (1769–1821) and Mexican Independence (1822–48), authorities pursued a number of policies aimed to address the plight of Native Californians, sometimes with great compassion but mostly through violent coercion.⁶

Therefore, Anglo Americans were not the first group in California and the West to empower the region with sentimental promise. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Dominican, Franciscan, and Jesuit missionaries, with a handful of Spanish military conquerors, defined what they called New Spain as a haven from the corruptions of the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment. The Spanish believed the region was rife with souls to convert and abundant in land and natural resources. They spoke of the native peoples with both praise and disdain. At least in the Catholic missionary mind, New Spain, including Alta California and New Mexico, became a symbolic place where the primitive precepts of the church could be reestablished. The Southwest’s indigenous peoples were the perfect human template, uncorrupted by heretical ideas and secular individualism, for the spiritual designs of Jesuits and Franciscans. Should the aboriginal peoples accept the holy faith, they would enter into the imagined community of the Spanish empire and experience the universal humanism embodied by the Catholic Church.⁷

The landed elite during the Mexican period, known as the Californios, spoke of their homeland with much utopian sentimentality as a distinct regional culture different from Spanish-European traditions. It was a conquest culture forged in the New World from native and Spanish customs and racial mixing. The important leaders of Mexican independence were hijos del país, creole native sons of Spanish-Indian marriages. They displayed Catholic empathy toward Indians but insisted they needed benevolent guidance through paternal authority. Through Enlightenment ideals crystallized in Mexican liberalism, the Californios formed symbolic cultural and racial ties with Indians to legitimate their right to the mission lands. Mexican liberals viewed the church as barring Indians and gente de razón (literally, people of reason, those of Spanish descent) settlers from opportunity and progress, while maintaining the economic, political, and social control of converted and unconverted Indians. The social and cultural dynamics between Indians and Spaniards would become the historical fodder for San Diego promoters in the early twentieth century. Spanish exploration and colonization began in San Diego, and Indian, Spanish, and Mexican society influenced Southern California memory for every Anglo American generation after 1890.⁸