Topic One Exhibit
Mexican Labor in the Almaden Mines
Gaining the expertise of miners from northern Mexico was a boon to the company. Almadén became very successful and in turn provided job security, of a sort, for Mexican workers. Workers often had to compete at Almaden: wages were kept low by workers underbidding each other to continue employment. Working conditions were also extremely hard, and Mexicans were restricted to heavy manual labor, often working in teams of six to eight men in ten-hour shifts. Laborers climbed ladders, carrying heavy sacks of ore (some up to 300 pounds) on their backs “with a strap over their forehead.” The work continued day and night, six days a week. Work and living environments were segregated. Cornish or Irish worker families lived in “Englishtown” located down the hill from the mines, while Mexican miners’ families lived at the desolate top of the hill in “Spanishtown,” near the mine’s smokestacks that spewed mercury fumes. The toxic environment destroyed families’ attempts to raise poultry or vegetables; the company compounded the problem by dumping tailings from the mines next to and between the worker’s homes. Unable to produce their own food, Mexican miners grew more dependent on the mine owners for food, buying expensive groceries from the nearby company store. The closest water was located a mile away at the Hacienda, the offices of company management.
Pitti notes that these harsh working and living conditions drove the Mexican miners “to make new political demands and hone a sense of Latino identity for the first time in U.S. history.”
0 of 18
- Title
- Mexican Labor in the Almaden Mines
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- New Almaden - U.S. National Park Service
- New Almaden Quicksilver County Park Association
- “New Almaden and The Mexican” SJSU thesis (1977)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 017
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Pre-Colonial Native Americans And Spanish Encounters
At the time of Spanish settlement in the 1770s, the native California population was estimated to be approximately 300,000, or 13% of the native population of North America.
1 of 18
- Title
- Pre-Colonial Native Americans And Spanish Encounters
- Additional Online Information
- The First Peoples of California | Library of Congress
- Native Americans: Pre-Columbian California to 18th Century — Calisphere
- Early California Exploration and Settlement — Calisphere
- Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (American Indians)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 001
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Colonial Spanish Exploration, 1542-1768
2 of 18
- Title
- Colonial Spanish Exploration, 1542-1768
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Early Exploration of California (Part 1 of 2)
- 1768-1820s: Exploration and Colonial California — Calisphere
- A History of American Indians in California: Pre-1769
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 002
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Spanish Settlement
The Spanish built four presidios in Alta California–San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara–to protect the missions and pueblos and control the enslaved Native American laborers. Three pueblos–San José de Guadalupe, Los Angeles, and Villa Branciforte–were established as civilian communities, occupied by retiring soldiers from the presidios, soldiers’ families, and settlers.
3 of 18
- Title
- Spanish Settlement
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Spanish California | Library of Congress
- The Missions | Library of Congress
- Early California Exploration and Settlement — Calisphere
- Hispanic Americans: Spanish Colonization and Californios, 1769-1800s — Calisphere
- California Missions — Calisphere
- Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (American Indians)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 003
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Spanish Settlements, 1769-1820, continued
4 of 18
- Title
- Spanish Settlements, 1769-1820, continued
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 004
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848
Each pueblo attracted pobladores (settlers) with small land grants of four square leagues (a league being about 4,228 acres) for housing, crop farming, and cattle grazing. Soldiers or settlers could also receive small lots or solares just outside the pueblo. The nearby presidio commander controlled the state-owned land used for livestock or farming. Each pueblo was governed by an alcalde (a combination of a judge and a mayor) assisted by the ayuntamiento (city council), whose offices were located in the juzgado (jail, town hall and courthouse).
5 of 18
- Title
- El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Founding Families - Los Californianos
- A Year in the Life of a Spanish Colonial Pueblo: San José de Guadalupe in 1809 — Google Arts & Culture
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 005
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848, continued
6 of 18
- Title
- El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848, continued
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 006
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexican Rancho Period, 1821-1848
During the combined Spanish and Mexican rancho periods, 500 land grants were issued, with the majority (450) carved from mission land holdings after secularization. Mexico’s 1824 Law of Colonization specified that the maximum land grant could be 48,400 acres, with the average being 22,000 acres. No longer restricted to trading only with Spanish galleons, Mexicans began engaging in “the hide and tallow trade” internationally. Mexican hides, known as “California dollars,” were used to make shoes, leather belts, and other items, helping propel the United States’ early industrial revolution of the 1820s and 1830s.
7 of 18
- Title
- Mexican Rancho Period, 1821-1848
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Mexican California | Library of Congress
- Land Grants in Alta California
- Battle of Santa Clara - Clio
- Californio Society — Calisphere
- Witness to Empire: The Life of Antonio Maria Sunol
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 007
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Americans During the Mexican Period, 1810s-1840s
Some of the more famous American settlers of El Pueblo de San José were members of the Donner Party, including Eliza Poor Donner, Mary Donner, William McCutchen, and the Reed Family (who purchased a 500-acre ranch between First Street and Coyote Creek). As Irish Catholics, they immigrated to Catholic Mexican Alta California hoping to be spared the anti-Catholic prejudice they had experienced as residents of the United States. The City of San José named several streets after the Donner Party: Reed, Margaret, Virginia, Martha, Carrie, Patterson, Lewis, and Keyes.
8 of 18
- Title
- Americans During the Mexican Period, 1810s-1840s
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Watch The Donner Party | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
- Endless Winter: A Fresh Look at the Donner Party Saga | KQED
- William Hartnell: The Hero and His Colleges, by Sean F. Roney
- The Story of a California Pioneer - The New York Times
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 008
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
The Mexican American War (1846-1848)
The tensions that arose during the war served as an indicator of the future demise of the Mexican Californios under American rule. During the Mexican American War (1846-1848), the only battle fought in Northern California took place in Santa Clara County. “The Battle of Santa Clara” or “The Battle of the Mustard Stalks” took place in a mustard field near today's Triton Museum. American sailors, who came ashore to buy supplies from the Mexicans, were taken hostage. The battle lasted only two hours and resulted in the death of four Mexican soldiers. The battle, ironically, impacted James Reed of the ill-fated Donner party. Reed was in the area trying to recruit a rescue team for his trapped comrades in the Sierras but was unsuccessful during wartime. In 1846, the San José-based Berryessa family fell victim to Anglo-American hostilities. José de los Reyes Beryessa and his twin sons were murdered by the California Battalion, who stole their horses. The Mexican American War ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
9 of 18
- Title
- The Mexican American War (1846-1848)
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- The United States and California| Library of Congress
- Battle of Santa Clara - Clio
- Mexican-American War: Causes & Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - HISTORY
- Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (Mexican Americans)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 009
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexicans and The Gold Rush, 1848-1855
10 of 18
- Title
- Mexicans and The Gold Rush, 1848-1855
- Scholar Talk
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 010
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexicans and the Gold Rush, 1848-1855, continued
Businesses prospered as would-be miners passed through Santa Clara, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and San José, needing supplies on their way to the goldfields. Often, miners waited out the winters in the warmer Santa Clara Valley. Discouraged miners also left the Sierras for good and settled in agricultural valleys like Santa Clara County in search of new livelihoods. This influx of settlers initiated a decline in Mexican culture and political influence, in contrast to Southern California, which retained its Mexican majority through the 1870s.
11 of 18
- Title
- Mexicans and the Gold Rush, 1848-1855, continued
- Scholar Talk
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 011
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexicans and the Gold Rush, 1848-1855, continued
Businesses prospered as would-be miners passed through Santa Clara, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and San José, needing supplies on their way to the goldfields. Often, miners waited out the winters in the warmer Santa Clara Valley. Discouraged miners also left the Sierras for good and settled in agricultural valleys like Santa Clara County in search of new livelihoods. This influx of settlers initiated a decline in Mexican culture and political influence, in contrast to Southern California, which retained its Mexican majority through the 1870s.
12 of 18
- Title
- Mexicans and the Gold Rush, 1848-1855, continued
- Scholar Talk
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 011
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
The Early American Period: The Mexican Colonia and Anglo San José, 1848-1919
St. Joseph became a segregated town as the Anglo ex-miners who settled in the area attempted to subjugate the original Mexican residents, preventing them from participating in American culture, economic opportunities, and politics. Out of the 48 delegates to the 1849 California Constitutional Convention in Monterey, at least eight were prominent Mexican Californio families from San José. Yet Mexican Californio political power in Santa Clara County had declined dramatically by the 1870s. As a result, displaced Mexican landowners began to settle in the downtown colonia, alongside the pueblo’s Mexican tradesmen, craftsmen, shopkeepers, professionals, and their families. Mexican residents, now restricted to living in the footprint of the old Pueblo, were marginalized in the new Anglo community.
13 of 18
- Title
- The Early American Period: The Mexican Colonia and Anglo San José, 1848-1919
- Scholar Talk
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 012
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
- Media
1858 San José
Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880
Race-based laws, enacted by the state legislature in the 1850s and 1860s, institutionalized discrimination and segregation against Mexicans, Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans. Significantly, the informal nature of land grants belonging to Mexicans, with vaguely drawn diseño maps, made it difficult to prove their claims, and many Mexican Californios lost their lands. Even if Mexican Californios won initially, the U.S. Congress created the Board of Land Commissioners (a result of the Land Act of 1851) in San Francisco. Mexicans gradually sold most of their land during the average 17 years it took to go through the legal process of proving their claims, and resulting funds went to English-speaking lawyers or to pay land taxes.
Mexicans also lost their land to Anglo American squatters. In some cases, such as with the Suñol and Berryessa families, Anglo squatters lynched the Mexican landowners and remained on the land, exercising their “squatters’ rights.” The Peralta family of San José and the East Bay lost all but 700 of their 49,000 acres. With the loss of land holdings during the late 1800s, Californio families worked wage labor jobs, such as in agriculture or in the Almaden mines.
14 of 18
- Title
- Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Other Californians | Library of Congress
- Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (Mexican Americans)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 013
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
- Media
1871 Pueblo San José
Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880, continued
“Today I am old and poor. The young men who were my friends who made the papers for me to sign are all very rich. They have hundreds of acres of land and much money while I sit here like an old owl in the dark corner and tell the few who ask that these men have robbed me of all that was mine by their crooked talk and their crooked laws. They smile and tap their heads and say “dreaming.” And maybe it is so that I am dreaming. Maybe old age and sickness and sorrow have climbed into my eyes and brain just as ivy climbed into the broken window of my old Casa Adobe and shut out the light of reason. But this! If this is dreaming, tell me why these men once so poor are now so rich and I am now so poor? Hold my hands Señor, look into my old eyes and tell me, if you can, why it is that out of my vast inheritance I have nothing but poverty.” From Peter Ostroske Family Archive
15 of 18
- Title
- Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880, continued
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 014
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexican Criminalization
Mexican Californios were called “greasers," a term originating from the Mexicans engaged in the hide and tallow trade who, while processing beef fat, became covered with grease. In 1855 the California Greaser Act was passed, an anti-vagrancy law targeting all ethnic Mexicans. Further, the California Act of 1855 ended the State Constitutional requirement that laws be translated into both Spanish and English. These laws institutionalized racism in Santa Clara County, encouraging harsher punishments for non-white residents. Historian Stephen PItti points out that between 1850-1864 “all but one of the accused criminals hung in the county were ethnic Mexicans.” Mexicans could not sit on a county grand jury until the 20th century, and between statehood in 1850 to 1900 Mexicans could not become a sheriff or police officer.
Without legal protection and with limited access to land or jobs, during the 1860s and 1870s a few Californios became bandits or highwaymen to avenge the harassment and racial discrimination Mexicans residents endured. Joaquín Murieta is the most famous of the “social bandits.” Tiburcio Vásquez, grandson of the first mayor of San José and an educated, bilingual member of an upper class Californio family, was another. Some Californios considered Vásquez a “Robin Hood,” fighting against Anglo atrocities and upholding Mexican civil rights. Anglo Americans considered him an outlaw. Accused of crimes committed from 1854 to 1874, he was tried and convicted for one murder and executed by hanging in 1875 in the jail yard behind Santa Clara County Court House across from St. James Park. While he admitted that he was an outlaw, Vásquez came to symbolize resistance due to legitimate grievances against Anglo American domination and Mexican lynchings that had become all too common.
16 of 18
- Title
- Mexican Criminalization
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928
- From the Community | America’s History of Lynching Mexicans
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 015
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
- Media
Tiburcio Vasquez
Mexican Criminalization continued
CHAPTER CLXXV
AN ACT
To Punish Vagrants, Vagabonds, and Dangerous and Suspicious Persons
(Approved April 30, I856)
The People of the State of California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows
Section 1. All persons except Digger Indians, who have no visible means of living, who in ten days do not seek employment, nor labor when employment is offered to them, all healthy beggars, who travel with written statements of their misfortunes, all persons who roam about from place to place without any lawful business, all lewd and dissolute persons who live in and about houses of Ill-Fame; all common prostitutes and common drunkards may be committed to jail and sentenced to hard labor for such time as the Court, before whom they are convicted, shall think proper, not exceeding ninety days.
Section 2. All persons who are commonly known as "Greasers" or the issue of Spanish and Indian blood, who may come within the explained that his aim was to return California to Mexican rule and avenge the loss of the rights of Mexican Americans. An outlaw to some, and a folkhero to others, much like the mythic Zorro, provisions of the first section of this Act, and who go armed and are not known to be peaceable and quiet persons, and who can give no good account of themselves, may be disarmed by any lawful officer, and punished otherwise as provided in the foregoing section.
Section 3. It shall be the duty of any Justice of the Peace, on knowledge or on written complaint from any creditable person of the State, to issue his warrant to apprehend such person or persons, and upon due conviction to send such person or persons to jail, as prescribed in section first of this Act; and on a second conviction for second the same offense any offenders may be sentenced to the County Jail for such additional time as the Court may deem proper, not exceeding one hundred and twenty days…”
17 of 18
- Title
- Mexican Criminalization continued
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 016
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexican Labor in the Almaden Mines
Gaining the expertise of miners from northern Mexico was a boon to the company. Almadén became very successful and in turn provided job security, of a sort, for Mexican workers. Workers often had to compete at Almaden: wages were kept low by workers underbidding each other to continue employment. Working conditions were also extremely hard, and Mexicans were restricted to heavy manual labor, often working in teams of six to eight men in ten-hour shifts. Laborers climbed ladders, carrying heavy sacks of ore (some up to 300 pounds) on their backs “with a strap over their forehead.” The work continued day and night, six days a week. Work and living environments were segregated. Cornish or Irish worker families lived in “Englishtown” located down the hill from the mines, while Mexican miners’ families lived at the desolate top of the hill in “Spanishtown,” near the mine’s smokestacks that spewed mercury fumes. The toxic environment destroyed families’ attempts to raise poultry or vegetables; the company compounded the problem by dumping tailings from the mines next to and between the worker’s homes. Unable to produce their own food, Mexican miners grew more dependent on the mine owners for food, buying expensive groceries from the nearby company store. The closest water was located a mile away at the Hacienda, the offices of company management.
Pitti notes that these harsh working and living conditions drove the Mexican miners “to make new political demands and hone a sense of Latino identity for the first time in U.S. history.”
18 of 18
- Title
- Mexican Labor in the Almaden Mines
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- New Almaden - U.S. National Park Service
- New Almaden Quicksilver County Park Association
- “New Almaden and The Mexican” SJSU thesis (1977)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 017
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Pre-Colonial Native Americans And Spanish Encounters
At the time of Spanish settlement in the 1770s, the native California population was estimated to be approximately 300,000, or 13% of the native population of North America.
19 of 18
- Title
- Pre-Colonial Native Americans And Spanish Encounters
- Additional Online Information
- The First Peoples of California | Library of Congress
- Native Americans: Pre-Columbian California to 18th Century — Calisphere
- Early California Exploration and Settlement — Calisphere
- Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (American Indians)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 001
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Colonial Spanish Exploration, 1542-1768
20 of 18
- Title
- Colonial Spanish Exploration, 1542-1768
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Early Exploration of California (Part 1 of 2)
- 1768-1820s: Exploration and Colonial California — Calisphere
- A History of American Indians in California: Pre-1769
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 002
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Spanish Settlement
The Spanish built four presidios in Alta California–San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara–to protect the missions and pueblos and control the enslaved Native American laborers. Three pueblos–San José de Guadalupe, Los Angeles, and Villa Branciforte–were established as civilian communities, occupied by retiring soldiers from the presidios, soldiers’ families, and settlers.
21 of 18
- Title
- Spanish Settlement
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Spanish California | Library of Congress
- The Missions | Library of Congress
- Early California Exploration and Settlement — Calisphere
- Hispanic Americans: Spanish Colonization and Californios, 1769-1800s — Calisphere
- California Missions — Calisphere
- Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (American Indians)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 003
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Spanish Settlements, 1769-1820, continued
22 of 18
- Title
- Spanish Settlements, 1769-1820, continued
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 004
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848
Each pueblo attracted pobladores (settlers) with small land grants of four square leagues (a league being about 4,228 acres) for housing, crop farming, and cattle grazing. Soldiers or settlers could also receive small lots or solares just outside the pueblo. The nearby presidio commander controlled the state-owned land used for livestock or farming. Each pueblo was governed by an alcalde (a combination of a judge and a mayor) assisted by the ayuntamiento (city council), whose offices were located in the juzgado (jail, town hall and courthouse).
23 of 18
- Title
- El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Founding Families - Los Californianos
- A Year in the Life of a Spanish Colonial Pueblo: San José de Guadalupe in 1809 — Google Arts & Culture
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 005
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848, continued
24 of 18
- Title
- El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848, continued
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 006
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexican Rancho Period, 1821-1848
During the combined Spanish and Mexican rancho periods, 500 land grants were issued, with the majority (450) carved from mission land holdings after secularization. Mexico’s 1824 Law of Colonization specified that the maximum land grant could be 48,400 acres, with the average being 22,000 acres. No longer restricted to trading only with Spanish galleons, Mexicans began engaging in “the hide and tallow trade” internationally. Mexican hides, known as “California dollars,” were used to make shoes, leather belts, and other items, helping propel the United States’ early industrial revolution of the 1820s and 1830s.
25 of 18
- Title
- Mexican Rancho Period, 1821-1848
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Mexican California | Library of Congress
- Land Grants in Alta California
- Battle of Santa Clara - Clio
- Californio Society — Calisphere
- Witness to Empire: The Life of Antonio Maria Sunol
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 007
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Americans During the Mexican Period, 1810s-1840s
Some of the more famous American settlers of El Pueblo de San José were members of the Donner Party, including Eliza Poor Donner, Mary Donner, William McCutchen, and the Reed Family (who purchased a 500-acre ranch between First Street and Coyote Creek). As Irish Catholics, they immigrated to Catholic Mexican Alta California hoping to be spared the anti-Catholic prejudice they had experienced as residents of the United States. The City of San José named several streets after the Donner Party: Reed, Margaret, Virginia, Martha, Carrie, Patterson, Lewis, and Keyes.
26 of 18
- Title
- Americans During the Mexican Period, 1810s-1840s
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Watch The Donner Party | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
- Endless Winter: A Fresh Look at the Donner Party Saga | KQED
- William Hartnell: The Hero and His Colleges, by Sean F. Roney
- The Story of a California Pioneer - The New York Times
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 008
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
The Mexican American War (1846-1848)
The tensions that arose during the war served as an indicator of the future demise of the Mexican Californios under American rule. During the Mexican American War (1846-1848), the only battle fought in Northern California took place in Santa Clara County. “The Battle of Santa Clara” or “The Battle of the Mustard Stalks” took place in a mustard field near today's Triton Museum. American sailors, who came ashore to buy supplies from the Mexicans, were taken hostage. The battle lasted only two hours and resulted in the death of four Mexican soldiers. The battle, ironically, impacted James Reed of the ill-fated Donner party. Reed was in the area trying to recruit a rescue team for his trapped comrades in the Sierras but was unsuccessful during wartime. In 1846, the San José-based Berryessa family fell victim to Anglo-American hostilities. José de los Reyes Beryessa and his twin sons were murdered by the California Battalion, who stole their horses. The Mexican American War ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
27 of 18
- Title
- The Mexican American War (1846-1848)
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- The United States and California| Library of Congress
- Battle of Santa Clara - Clio
- Mexican-American War: Causes & Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - HISTORY
- Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (Mexican Americans)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 009
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexicans and The Gold Rush, 1848-1855
28 of 18
- Title
- Mexicans and The Gold Rush, 1848-1855
- Scholar Talk
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 010
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexicans and the Gold Rush, 1848-1855, continued
Businesses prospered as would-be miners passed through Santa Clara, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and San José, needing supplies on their way to the goldfields. Often, miners waited out the winters in the warmer Santa Clara Valley. Discouraged miners also left the Sierras for good and settled in agricultural valleys like Santa Clara County in search of new livelihoods. This influx of settlers initiated a decline in Mexican culture and political influence, in contrast to Southern California, which retained its Mexican majority through the 1870s.
29 of 18
- Title
- Mexicans and the Gold Rush, 1848-1855, continued
- Scholar Talk
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 011
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexicans and the Gold Rush, 1848-1855, continued
Businesses prospered as would-be miners passed through Santa Clara, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and San José, needing supplies on their way to the goldfields. Often, miners waited out the winters in the warmer Santa Clara Valley. Discouraged miners also left the Sierras for good and settled in agricultural valleys like Santa Clara County in search of new livelihoods. This influx of settlers initiated a decline in Mexican culture and political influence, in contrast to Southern California, which retained its Mexican majority through the 1870s.
30 of 18
- Title
- Mexicans and the Gold Rush, 1848-1855, continued
- Scholar Talk
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 011
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
The Early American Period: The Mexican Colonia and Anglo San José, 1848-1919
St. Joseph became a segregated town as the Anglo ex-miners who settled in the area attempted to subjugate the original Mexican residents, preventing them from participating in American culture, economic opportunities, and politics. Out of the 48 delegates to the 1849 California Constitutional Convention in Monterey, at least eight were prominent Mexican Californio families from San José. Yet Mexican Californio political power in Santa Clara County had declined dramatically by the 1870s. As a result, displaced Mexican landowners began to settle in the downtown colonia, alongside the pueblo’s Mexican tradesmen, craftsmen, shopkeepers, professionals, and their families. Mexican residents, now restricted to living in the footprint of the old Pueblo, were marginalized in the new Anglo community.
31 of 18
- Title
- The Early American Period: The Mexican Colonia and Anglo San José, 1848-1919
- Scholar Talk
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 012
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
- Media
- 1858 San José
Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880
Race-based laws, enacted by the state legislature in the 1850s and 1860s, institutionalized discrimination and segregation against Mexicans, Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans. Significantly, the informal nature of land grants belonging to Mexicans, with vaguely drawn diseño maps, made it difficult to prove their claims, and many Mexican Californios lost their lands. Even if Mexican Californios won initially, the U.S. Congress created the Board of Land Commissioners (a result of the Land Act of 1851) in San Francisco. Mexicans gradually sold most of their land during the average 17 years it took to go through the legal process of proving their claims, and resulting funds went to English-speaking lawyers or to pay land taxes.
Mexicans also lost their land to Anglo American squatters. In some cases, such as with the Suñol and Berryessa families, Anglo squatters lynched the Mexican landowners and remained on the land, exercising their “squatters’ rights.” The Peralta family of San José and the East Bay lost all but 700 of their 49,000 acres. With the loss of land holdings during the late 1800s, Californio families worked wage labor jobs, such as in agriculture or in the Almaden mines.
32 of 18
- Title
- Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- Other Californians | Library of Congress
- Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (Mexican Americans)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 013
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
- Media
- 1871 Pueblo San José
Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880, continued
“Today I am old and poor. The young men who were my friends who made the papers for me to sign are all very rich. They have hundreds of acres of land and much money while I sit here like an old owl in the dark corner and tell the few who ask that these men have robbed me of all that was mine by their crooked talk and their crooked laws. They smile and tap their heads and say “dreaming.” And maybe it is so that I am dreaming. Maybe old age and sickness and sorrow have climbed into my eyes and brain just as ivy climbed into the broken window of my old Casa Adobe and shut out the light of reason. But this! If this is dreaming, tell me why these men once so poor are now so rich and I am now so poor? Hold my hands Señor, look into my old eyes and tell me, if you can, why it is that out of my vast inheritance I have nothing but poverty.” From Peter Ostroske Family Archive
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- Title
- Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880, continued
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 014
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexican Criminalization
Mexican Californios were called “greasers," a term originating from the Mexicans engaged in the hide and tallow trade who, while processing beef fat, became covered with grease. In 1855 the California Greaser Act was passed, an anti-vagrancy law targeting all ethnic Mexicans. Further, the California Act of 1855 ended the State Constitutional requirement that laws be translated into both Spanish and English. These laws institutionalized racism in Santa Clara County, encouraging harsher punishments for non-white residents. Historian Stephen PItti points out that between 1850-1864 “all but one of the accused criminals hung in the county were ethnic Mexicans.” Mexicans could not sit on a county grand jury until the 20th century, and between statehood in 1850 to 1900 Mexicans could not become a sheriff or police officer.
Without legal protection and with limited access to land or jobs, during the 1860s and 1870s a few Californios became bandits or highwaymen to avenge the harassment and racial discrimination Mexicans residents endured. Joaquín Murieta is the most famous of the “social bandits.” Tiburcio Vásquez, grandson of the first mayor of San José and an educated, bilingual member of an upper class Californio family, was another. Some Californios considered Vásquez a “Robin Hood,” fighting against Anglo atrocities and upholding Mexican civil rights. Anglo Americans considered him an outlaw. Accused of crimes committed from 1854 to 1874, he was tried and convicted for one murder and executed by hanging in 1875 in the jail yard behind Santa Clara County Court House across from St. James Park. While he admitted that he was an outlaw, Vásquez came to symbolize resistance due to legitimate grievances against Anglo American domination and Mexican lynchings that had become all too common.
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- Mexican Criminalization
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928
- From the Community | America’s History of Lynching Mexicans
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 015
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
- Media
- Tiburcio Vasquez
Mexican Criminalization continued
CHAPTER CLXXV
AN ACT
To Punish Vagrants, Vagabonds, and Dangerous and Suspicious Persons
(Approved April 30, I856)
The People of the State of California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows
Section 1. All persons except Digger Indians, who have no visible means of living, who in ten days do not seek employment, nor labor when employment is offered to them, all healthy beggars, who travel with written statements of their misfortunes, all persons who roam about from place to place without any lawful business, all lewd and dissolute persons who live in and about houses of Ill-Fame; all common prostitutes and common drunkards may be committed to jail and sentenced to hard labor for such time as the Court, before whom they are convicted, shall think proper, not exceeding ninety days.
Section 2. All persons who are commonly known as "Greasers" or the issue of Spanish and Indian blood, who may come within the explained that his aim was to return California to Mexican rule and avenge the loss of the rights of Mexican Americans. An outlaw to some, and a folkhero to others, much like the mythic Zorro, provisions of the first section of this Act, and who go armed and are not known to be peaceable and quiet persons, and who can give no good account of themselves, may be disarmed by any lawful officer, and punished otherwise as provided in the foregoing section.
Section 3. It shall be the duty of any Justice of the Peace, on knowledge or on written complaint from any creditable person of the State, to issue his warrant to apprehend such person or persons, and upon due conviction to send such person or persons to jail, as prescribed in section first of this Act; and on a second conviction for second the same offense any offenders may be sentenced to the County Jail for such additional time as the Court may deem proper, not exceeding one hundred and twenty days…”
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- Mexican Criminalization continued
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 016
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley
Mexican Labor in the Almaden Mines
Gaining the expertise of miners from northern Mexico was a boon to the company. Almadén became very successful and in turn provided job security, of a sort, for Mexican workers. Workers often had to compete at Almaden: wages were kept low by workers underbidding each other to continue employment. Working conditions were also extremely hard, and Mexicans were restricted to heavy manual labor, often working in teams of six to eight men in ten-hour shifts. Laborers climbed ladders, carrying heavy sacks of ore (some up to 300 pounds) on their backs “with a strap over their forehead.” The work continued day and night, six days a week. Work and living environments were segregated. Cornish or Irish worker families lived in “Englishtown” located down the hill from the mines, while Mexican miners’ families lived at the desolate top of the hill in “Spanishtown,” near the mine’s smokestacks that spewed mercury fumes. The toxic environment destroyed families’ attempts to raise poultry or vegetables; the company compounded the problem by dumping tailings from the mines next to and between the worker’s homes. Unable to produce their own food, Mexican miners grew more dependent on the mine owners for food, buying expensive groceries from the nearby company store. The closest water was located a mile away at the Hacienda, the offices of company management.
Pitti notes that these harsh working and living conditions drove the Mexican miners “to make new political demands and hone a sense of Latino identity for the first time in U.S. history.”
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- Title
- Mexican Labor in the Almaden Mines
- Scholar Talk
- Additional Online Information
- New Almaden - U.S. National Park Service
- New Almaden Quicksilver County Park Association
- “New Almaden and The Mexican” SJSU thesis (1977)
- Identifier
- B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 017
- Item sets
- Before Silicon Valley