Editing Spanish missions in California (section)

=== California statehood (1850 and beyond) ===

[[File:Hugo Reid at Rancho Santa Anita.png|thumb|[[Hugo Reid]], an outspoken critic of the mission system and its effects on the native populations, at [[Rancho Santa Anita]] ''circa'' 1850.]]

Precise figures relating to the population decline of California indigenes are not available. One writer, [[Gregory Orfalea]], estimates that pre-contact population was reduced by 33 percent during Spanish and Mexican rule, mostly through introduction of European diseases, but much more after the United States takeover in 1848. By 1870, the loss of indigenous lives had become catastrophic. Up to 80 percent died, leaving a population of about 30,000 in 1870. Orfalea claims that nearly half of the native deaths after 1848 were murder.<ref name=orfalea/>

In 1837–38, a major smallpox epidemic devastated native tribes north of San Francisco Bay, in the jurisdiction of Mission San Francisco Solano. General [[Mariano Vallejo]] estimated that 70,000 died from the disease.<ref>Bancroft, H. H. (1886). The works of Hubert Howe Bancroft: History of California : vol. IV, 1840–1845, pp73-74. San Francisco Calif.: A.L. Bancroft</ref> Vallejo's ally, chief [[Sem-Yeto]], was one of the few natives to be vaccinated, and one of the few to survive.

When the mission properties were secularized between 1834 and 1838, the approximately 15,000 resident ''neophytes'' lost whatever protection the mission system afforded them. While under the secularization laws the natives were to receive up to one-half of the mission properties, this never happened. The natives lost whatever stock and movable property they may have accumulated. When California became a U.S. state, California law stripped them of legal title to the land. In the Act of September 30, 1850, [[United States Congress|Congress]] appropriated funds to allow the President to appoint three Commissioners, [[O. M. Wozencraft]], [[Redick McKee]] and [[George W. Barbour]], to study the California situation and "...negotiate treaties with the various Indian tribes of California." Treaty negotiations ensued during the period between March 19, 1851, and January 7, 1852, during which the Commission interacted with 402 Indian chiefs and headmen (representing approximately one-third to one-half of the California tribes) and entered into eighteen treaties.<ref>Robinson, p. 14</ref>

California Senator [[William M. Gwin]]'s Act of March 3, 1851 created the [[Public Land Commission]], whose purpose was to determine the validity of Spanish and Mexican [[land grant]]s in California.<ref>Robinson, p. 100</ref> On February 19, 1853 [[Archbishop]] [[Joseph Sadoc Alemany]] filed petitions for the return of all former mission lands in the state. Ownership of {{convert|1051.44|acre|km2}}  (essentially exact area of land occupied by the original mission buildings, cemeteries, and gardens) was subsequently conveyed to the Church, along with the ''[[Rancho Cañada de los Pinos|Cañada de los Pinos]]'' (or College Rancho) in [[Santa Barbara County]] comprising {{convert|35499.73|acre|km2}}, and ''[[Rancho Laguna (Alemany)|La Laguna]]'' in [[San Luis Obispo County]], consisting of {{convert|4157.02|acre|km2}}.<ref>Robinson, pp. 31–32: The area shown is that stated in the ''Corrected Reports of Spanish and Mexican Grants in California Complete to February 25, 1886'' as a supplement to the Official Report of 1883–1884. Patents for each mission were issued to [[Archbishop]] [[Joseph Sadoc Alemany|J.S. Alemany]] based on his claim filed with the [[Public Land Commission]] on February 19, 1853.</ref> As the result of a [[Federal government of the United States|U.S. government]] investigation in 1873, a number of [[Indian reservation]]s were assigned by executive proclamation in 1875. The commissioner of Indian affairs reported in 1879 that the number of [[Mission Indians]] in the state was down to around 3,000.<ref>Rawls, pp. 112–113</ref>