PREFACE. XI 



to foreign settlers. Whalers and smugglers, mostly American, had for 

 years been familiar with the coast. Boston merchants, engaged in buy- 

 ing hides and tallow, and selling cheap calico and trinkets, soon made 

 their appearance, and they were followed by others of different occupa- 

 tions. Abel Stearns, Alfred Robinson, Henry Mellus, W. D. M. How- 

 ard, T. O. Larkin, Wm. Dana, D. A. Hill, Henry D. Fitch, David 

 Spence, and "W. E. P. Hartnell, arrived by sea before 1840. In 1825, 

 thirty trappers under Jedediah Smith crossed the Sierra Nevada, about 

 latitude thirty-nine degrees, and were the first white men to reach Cali- 

 fornia overland from the Mississippi Valley. They all went back, but 

 the information which they circulated induced two other parties of 

 trappers to come in 1827, one of which entered the State at Fort Yuma, 

 and thus the middle and southern trans-continental trails were opened. 

 Among those who came with trapper parties were Yount, "Wolf skill, 

 Workman, Sparks, Leese, and Graham. In 1839, Sutter came by sea 

 and established his fort, subsequently an important center for American 

 influence. Workman, after his first trip with the trappers, returned to 

 New Mexico, where he had lived, and induced a considerable party of 

 his friends and neighbors to come to this Coast. The largest migration 

 from the valley of the Rio Grande came in 1841, and included the Vaca 

 and Pena families. In that same year, Joseph Chiles, of Missouri, came 

 to California, and in 1842, went back with information that here people 

 could live without work, and cattle without shelter or cultivated food ; 

 that fertile land could be got by the league for nothing ; that it would 

 be very valuable as soon as it should be covered by the American flag, 

 and that annexation was inevitable and not far distant. His statements 

 had much influence. The next year a party, including Bid well and 

 Reading, came; in 1844, another; in 1845, another, including Hensley 

 and Snyder. Those who came overland, by their numbers and skill 

 with the rifle, got the preponderance north of San Pablo Bay ; the com- 

 mercial immigrants settled on the southern coast, and there obtained a 

 powerful influence by superior education, ability, and marriage into the 

 leading families. Anglo-Saxon husbands were married to five Carrillos 

 of Santa Barbara, three Carrillos of Santa Rosa, four Noriegas, four 

 Bandinis, three Ortegas of Santa Barbara, two Vallejos, and one Sobera- 



