Alta California - Spanish Rule

Spanish Rule

By law mission land and property were to pass to the resident Native Americans of California after a period of about ten years, when the natives would become Spanish subjects. In the interim period, the Franciscans were to act as mission administrators who held the land in trust for the Native residents. The Franciscans, however, prolonged their control over the missions and ran them for more than sixty years. The transfer of property never occurred.

As Spanish settlers grew in Alta California, the boundaries and natural resources of the mission properties became disputed. Conflicts between the Crown and the Church and between Natives and settlers arose. State and ecclesiastical bureaucrats debated over authority of the missions. The Franciscan priests of Mission Santa Clara de Asís sent a petition to the governor in 1782 which stated that the Mission Indians owned both the land and cattle and represented the Ohlone against the Spanish settlers in nearby San José. The priests reported that Indians' crops were being damaged by the pueblo settlers' livestock and that the settlers' livestock was also "getting mixed up with the livestock belonging to the Indians from the mission" causing losses. They advocated that the Natives owned property and had the right to defend it.

Due to the growth of the Hispanic population in the Alta California by 1804, the Province of Las Californias, then a part of the Commandancy General of the Internal Provinces, was divided into two separate territorial administrations following Palóu's division between the Dominican and Franciscan missions. Diego de Borica is credited with defining Alta California and Baja California's official borders. The Baja California peninsula became the territory of Baja California ("Lower California"), also referred to at times as Vieja California ("Old California"). The northern part became Alta California, also alternatively called Nueva California ("New California"). Because the eastern boundaries of the Las Californias Province were not defined, many maps from the period show its borders including parts of today's Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming. The province would have bordered on the east with the Spanish settlements in Arizona and the Nuevo México Province.