A History of California

Our final mission-focused episode, including the environmental effects of unleashing European pack animals onto the environment, the demographic effects of unleashing disease epidemics on native cultures, and how the consequent specter of death also threatened to kill the colonial economy in Alta California.

In the first appendix episode, we detail Lorenzo Asisara's narrative of the death of Andres Quintana at Mission Santa Cruz, question its accuracy, and then wonder whether that accuracy matters at all. Also: death by castration.

What to do when a foreign power sets up colony-outposts in your land with the intent of converting your people to their new God? This episode we look at how various indigenous peoples up and down the California coast answered that question.

This episode we track the early growth of the Franciscan missions under Junípero Serra until his 1784 death, what daily life was like inside for the indigenous people who lived there, and attempt to keep track of all the military governors Serra got into feuds with.

On this episode, we watch the Spaniards get paranoid over the Russians and order the Sacred Expedition to occupy Monterey, which it finally does two years later after finding about half a dozen different ways to almost completely fail. And thus the missions at San Diego and Monterey are born.

On this episode, we discuss the potential ramifications of Spanish contact with indigenous Californians, focusing on exchange on the short-term, ecological shift and the possibilities of disease spread in the mid-term, and the slow creep of Catholic missions northward in the long-term.

This episode we discuss the early years of colonialism as Spanish ship captains attempt to make sense of the California coastline while having to deal with political rivals, English pirates, destructive storms, and indigenous peoples who may or may not have been happy to see the Spanish arrive on their doorstep. Also, if you're a Spanish ship captain, steer clear of Point Reyes.

We continue our tour of indigenous ethno-linguistic groups inside California prior to the arrival of the Spanish, this time covering the eastern desert cultures and the native peoples of Southern California.

This episode we go on a winding tour of the indigenous language groups that existed in northern and central sections of California, and discuss whether those linguistic groupings really meant anything to the Native Californians who spoke those languages.

In this episode we take a look at food resources, land management strategies, and how intentionally setting their lands on fire all contributed to building indigenous Californian cultures.

On this episode we discuss who were the first humans to reach California, blast through 12,000 years of cultural development, and investigate how indigenous Californians dealt with the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. Also possibly involving visitors from Polynesia.

Welcome to the show! This is a basic introduction to California, in which we ask and attempt to answer What Is A California, and then go on a brief and probably insultingly simplifying tour of the Golden State.