Hispanic California and texas
- In California, Spanish settlement began with a string of Christian missions along the Pacific coast.
- The Indians were the main targets but were also a labor force for the flourishing and largely self-sufficient economies the missionaries created
- In its place emerged a secular Mexican aristocracy which controlled a chain of estates
- In the central and northern parts of the state, where the Anglo population growth was greatest, the "californio's'" (Hispanic residents) experienced a series of defeats
- English speaking prospectors organized to exclude them from the mines during the gold rush
- many "californios" also lost their lands either through corrupt bargains or outright seizure
- By the 1860's the Hispanic aristocracy in California had largely ceased to exist
- Mexican Americans became part of the lower end of the state's working class
- As similar patter of dispossession occurred in Texas where many Mexican landowners lost their land after the territory joined the united States.
- this occurred as a result of fraud, coercion, and the inability of even the most substantial Mexican ranchers to compete with the enormous Anglo-Americans ranching kingdom's that were emerging
- On the whole, the great Anglo-American migration was less catastrophic for the Hispanic population of the West that it was for the Indian tribes