Life in Presidial California

Gloria Ricci Lothrop and Michelle Herczog

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
14 (Summer 2000). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 2000, Organization of American Historians
 

The presidio, one of three frontier institutions upon which Spanish colonization relied, was a fortified place--a garrison. Its function was to provide military protection to a district. Soldiers were assigned to scout, eject intruders, and provide escoltas (escorts) for missionaries. The presidio also served as the heart of government and judicial activities and a communication and supply center. Enlisted men were assigned construction duties at the presidio, or to agricultural and ranching tasks on the rancho del rey (presidial farm). During off-duty hours the soldiers worked as skilled artisans or laborers as time allowed (1).

While some of the garrisons were temporary, the substantial construction of others suggests that they were intended as permanent structures. Presidios stretched along the northern frontier of the viceroyalty of New Spain, from St. Augustine and Pensacola, through New Orleans and San Antonio, to the northernmost outpost at San Francisco. Through these outposts Spain controlled a defensive perimeter twice as long as the Rhine-Danube line held by the Roman empire (2).

The strategic location of military settlements was a prime consideration. The presidio at San Diego, established by Captain Gaspar de Portolá during the initial colonization of California in 1769, overlooked San Diego Bay. The presidio of San Carlos Borromeo de Monterey was established on Monterey Bay at the same time the mission was founded in 1770. Juan Bautista de Anza chose to strategically locate the San Francisco Presidio at the entrance to the Golden Gate in 1776. José Francisco Ortega in 1782 established the presidio at Santa Barbara slightly inland, close to fresh water, to a large Chumash Indian settlement, and to the planned site of Mission Santa Barbara Virgen y Mártir (3).

The fortified enclosures included two to four bastions, which housed three or four twenty-four-pound cannons and a variety of eight-to-twelve-pound artillery. Ammunition was stored nearby. Weapons included broadswords, muzzle-loading pistols, and muskets and lances with thirteen-inch blades (4). Presidio supplies sent from New Spain via San Blas included plough shares, sickles, hoes, hammers, pincers, scales, compasses, awls, needles, and more. Requests for supplies for the California settlements included large amounts of chocolate, sugar loaves, barrels of wine, pharmaceuticals, and all manner of textiles and ribbon (5).

Within the stone or adobe garrisons were officers' quarters, barracks for unmarried enlisted men, and dwellings for married personnel and their dependents, who at San Francisco in 1776 numbered 48 military and 150 dependents (6). In addition to the commandant's quarters, the church, and the chaplain's quarters, there were horse corrals and several warehouses stocked with jerky, chile, chick peas, and beans, largely harvested from the presidio's own ranch, which became an essential source of supplies as a result of Spain's increasing neglect after 1810 (7). Food and supplies like blankets, textiles, and metal implements were acquired from the missions.

The average military complement included both unmounted Catalonian volunteers and leather-jacketed mounted lancers, the latter recruited mostly from Spain's northern frontier provinces. In command was a teniente (captain), and subalterns who were appointed by the civil authorities or by the captain with the approval of higher authorities (8). The number of soldiers was never large. In all of California in 1796 there were 370 men in presidial companies, including 12 commissioned officers, 35 noncommissioned officers, 260 privates (mostly mestizos), 160 pensioners, 4 or 5 mechanics, and a surgeon (9).

The following exercises could be included as part of a unit on colonial settlements in America. The lesson plan, focusing on presidial California, requires two class periods. It can be integrated with complementary lessons on the mission and the ranch.

1. To understand the importance of utilizing a variety of historical resources to gain a clear understanding of historic events and situations.

2. To understand the chronological context of events in presidial California in relation to developments in the English colonies and Europe.

3. To develop a degree of visual literacy.

4. To understand how and why many different perspectives can evolve from a shared event or experience.

United States History Standards for Grades 5-12:
Era 2: Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763)
Standard 1: The early arrival of Europeans and Africans in the Americas, and how these people interacted with Native Americans.

In order to provide students with background reading on the presidios in Alta California, distribute copies of the Introduction or appropriate selections from books listed in the endnotes. Use the four handouts included with this article for individual, small group, or general class assignments. Assessment should be made through the culminating activity, the student development of an independent project such as a diary entry, a first-person narrative, or an original letter using information and understandings derived from the preceding exercises. Final extension activities offer students ways to pursue further study of the subject on their own.

I. Placing Presidial California in Chronological Context

Distribute copies of the Introduction or appropriate selections from books listed in the endnotes to provide students with background information. In order to place Alta California's Spanish presidios in chronological context, have the students use classroom reference books to supply the missing information on the timeline that appears on Handout 1.

II. Placing the Presidio in Physical Context

To place the presidio in physical context have small groups jointly examine the plan for the presidio at Santa Barbara reproduced on Handout 2 and answer the questions that follow.

III. Placing the Presidio in Visual Context

As a homework assignment or small group activity, have students examine the view of the presidio at Monterey sketched in 1790 by José Cardero, which appears on Handout 3, and answer the questions that follow.

IV. Examining Life in the Presidios from Different Points of View

To help students understand how common experiences can be viewed from different perspectives and produce contradictory opinions, distribute Handout 4, which contains two accounts of life in presidial California. After students read each passage, have them complete the Multiple Viewpoints of Presidio Life graphic organizer and then enter into a class discussion of the passages, answering the questions that follow the readings.

Ask students to write a diary entry, a narrative account, or a letter using information and understandings drawn from the background reading and the four exercises.

Extension Activity

Ask students the following questions:

1. If you were interested in learning more about the presidios, could you plan a trip to see any of them? What is located there now?

2. Would you like to visit some web sites that will tell you more about Spanish presidios in Alta California? (See list of related web sites below.)

3. Where else would you go to learn more about presidial life?

1. Charles E. Chapman, A History of California: The Spanish Period (New York: MacMillan, 1926), 389-91. For fuller accounts of the function of the presidio along the Spanish frontier, see Herbert E. Bolton, The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921); David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); and John Francis Bannon, The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513-1821 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974).

2. Bolton, Spanish Borderlands, 201-2.

3. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: W. Hebberd, 1963), 289, 335; and Richard S. Whitehead, Alta California's Four Fortresses (Los Angeles: Zamorano Club, 1985).

4. J. Phillip Langellier and Daniel Rosen, El Presidio de San Francisco: A History Under Spain and Mexico, 1776-1846 (Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1996), 80-86. See also Max L. Moorhead, The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975); and Odie B. Faulk, The Leather Jacket Soldier: Spanish Military Equipment and Institutions in the Late 18th Century (Pasadena, CA: Socio-Technical Publications, 1971).

5. Giorgio Perissinotto, ed., Documenting Everyday Life in Early Spanish California: The Santa Barbara Presidio, Memorias y Facturas, 1779-1810 (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, 1998), 27-33.

6. Langellier and Rosen, El Presidio de San Francisco, 194-97.

7. Ibid., 107-47, 251; Perissinotto, Documenting Everyday Life, 20.

8. Langellier and Rosen, El Presidio de San Francisco, 86-90. See also Charles W. Polzer, S. J. and Thomas E. Sheridan, eds., The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain, (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977).

9. Bancroft, History of California, 2:189. See also Joseph P. Sánchez, Spanish Bluecoats: The Catalonian Volunteers in Northwestern New Spain, 1767-1810 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990); and Sidney B. Brinckerhoff and Odie B. Faulk, Lancers for the King: A Study of the Frontier Military System of Northern New Spain (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Foundation, 1965).

Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, Le Presidio de Santa Barbara Historic Park: <http://www.rain.org/~sbthp/presidio.htm>.

Los Soldados: Soldiers of the Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara: <http://www.vitrex.net/~quatroiv/StBarbara/>.

California Mission Studies Association, Missions in the Californias and Northern New Spain: <http://www.ca-missions.org/biblio.html>.

Monterey County Historical Society, Monterey's First Years: The Royal Presidio of San Carlos de Monterey: <http://users.dedot.com/mchs/presidio.html>.

Presidio History: <http://www.nps.gov/prsf/prsfphoto/newmedia.htm>.

The National Park Service, Presidio of San Francisco: <http://www.nps.gov/prsf/index.htm>.

San Francisco Presidio, Overview: A History of the Presidio: From 1776-2000: <http://www.envcleanup.gov/capresid/overview.htm>.

Gloria Ricci Lothrop is the W. P. Whitsett Professor of California History at California State University, Northridge. Since receiving her doctorate from the University of Southern California, she has written extensively on the American West and California. She is a former secondary teacher who has continued to be involved in teacher training.

Michelle Herczog holds a bachelor's degree in history from UCLA and is currently a doctoral candidate. Her professional experience includes work as a teacher, reading specialist, mentor teacher, and Colonial Williamsburg Institute fellow. She currently works at the Los Angeles County Office of Education as the project coordinator for service learning and civic education.