Vintage Sterling. Charles A. Witschorik
words he chose, “is that this land wasn’t vacant. There were people here before our family arrived, and in fact they are part of our family, too.”
Puzzled, the older Sterling leaned in to hear his grandfather’s words more clearly, smiling knowingly as he noticed his younger self’s eyelids drooping as the story continued.
“When the soldiers, the missionaries, and the other settlers first arrived, of course they didn’t find an empty land. There were people here. There were tribes with their own customs and traditions that had been here for countless generations. And they were truly remarkable. They had learned how to cultivate the land in a way that was sustainable in the long-term. They fished from the rivers, they wove beautiful baskets and other wares with great artistry, they discerned how to care for the forests so that they could prevent devastating forest fires, and they even learned how to supplement their diet with ground acorns! Some of these folks welcomed the people from Mexico, and others resisted, and sadly many died in the process. I’m not proud of what many of the soldiers and the others did to the Indians, but I also know that others carried themselves with honor, and found a way to coexist and try to help the Indians as best they could.”
“What’s amazing about our family’s story,” Alfonso added, “is that we actually come from both the Mexican and the Native American lines. When our ancestor arrived from Mexico, not long afterward he met and fell in love with a girl who was living at the mission and had been separated from her family. They married and started a family, and their children were some of the original californios, the first people, after the Native Americans, to call this land of California home.”
Sterling had heard the family stories many times growing up, and knew quite a lot of the history of his home state from his own studies. Proud to be part of the legacy of those who had first come to California from colonial Mexico, Sterling knew that his ancestors had not led easy lives, either under Spain or Mexico, and certainly not as part of the United States. Originally claiming the territory now encompassed by California and the southwest of the United States as far back as the early 1500s, Spain had come to refer to the territory as “California” by an amusing coincidence of history. As it turned out, many of the early Spanish conquerors had grown up in Spain familiar with a tale, popular at the time, of a mythical island paradise called Califia. Encountering the northwestern regions that stretched beyond central Mexico and that bordered the Pacific ocean, the early explorers christened the place “California,” and the name stuck, though the land lay largely unexplored for centuries. Spain had sent a few initial exploratory expeditions, both by land and by sea, but encountered little in the way of land or resources that it considered worth the time and effort of colonization. In fact, several expeditions sailed right past the incalculably valuable natural harbor of San Francisco Bay without even noticing it, due to its famed fog.
With little reason to invest further, Spain’s claim to the area largely remained one in name only until the 1700s, when word of growing incursions into the area by rival empires, among them even the Russians, reached the seat of colonial power in Mexico City. In order to respond to this threat, the colonial government realized it would need people on the ground to solidify its claim; it would need to settle and populate the region, ideally with many families from Mexico, but certainly with enough settlers, missionaries, and soldiers to convert and pacify the local Indian population, and secure a plausible claim to controlling the territory. It was a necessary task, and yet one that did not prove all that attractive to prospective colonists in Mexico. The journey many thousands of miles north was an arduous one, and the dangers and hardships of life on the margins of civilization as they knew it doubtless seemed unattractive at best to many potential recruits for the northward expeditions.
Sterling knew from the classes he had taken on California history that, without a doubt, the individuals who took on the task of exploring, missionizing, and settling California (or Alta California, as they would have called it) were, out of necessity, people of extraordinary determination. Making their way north in several expeditions, by the last few decades of the 1700s they had founded a series of religious missions, military fortifications, and towns that would form the nucleus of the Spanish presence in the land. Of course, for all their courage and bravado, these were flawed, imperfect people, and as Sterling knew, they had also been responsible for displacing, disrupting, and harming the native local peoples in various ways that led to these groups’ rapid decline and impoverishment.
For that reason, it struck Sterling as incredibly remarkable, now that he was hearing his grandfather’s story once more—and really for the first time—that his own family had lived personally the very tensions he knew had formed part of California’s history. Surely, it must have been unimaginable for both of his ancestors—both the presidio soldier, and the young woman who became his bride—to negotiate the challenges and tensions of language, culture, empire, missions, and identity. And yet, here they all were, all these years later, the product of more than two centuries of cultural blending and change.
“What’s amazing,” Alfonso continued as Sterling processed all that was happening, “is that these ancestors never gave up, despite all that they faced. The soldier—his name was Luis—well, he soon learned after marrying his bride—her name was Tami—that his fellow soldiers were often unsympathetic, and even outrightly hostile, to his decision. They made life miserable for him, to the point that he could no longer serve in his role at the presidio, and he and Tami chose to make a go of it on their own, doing the best they could. With what little money they had, they purchased some land, and in the process, acquired this little silver coin.”
Taking the coin out of his pocket, Alfonso held it in the air for his grandchildren to see, while his glance darted toward little Sterling, offering him a wink of recognition of the connection between the boy and the coin.
“Over time,” Alfonso elaborated, “Luis and Tami worked and expanded their land, adding crops, raising livestock, and selling whatever they could to try to make a living and provide for their children. It was very hard work, and there were many setbacks, but with time, their rancho slowly prospered and they earned the respect of people throughout the pueblo of San Jose.”
“Of course, as the years went by,” Alfonso added, his expression clouding with a tinge of sadness, “new neighbors arrived who were not always as friendly. The anglo settlers came in larger and larger numbers. Many of them were good people, but others were out for land and were willing to do anything to get it. Sadly, that’s how Luis and Tami lost most of their land. Either squatters, who came in and just took what they wanted, or the large landlords who took them to court and refused to accept the Spanish documents that they presented as evidence of their rightful ownership—either way, the end result was that Luis and Tami lost most of their land and all that they had worked so hard for over all those years.
“But . . .” Alfonso’s taciturn expression suddenly shifted, as if a ray of light had shined suddenly into a dark cavern. “Even though Luis and Tami felt like they had lost just about everything, there was one small piece of their original land that no one seemed to be interested in. Off in a distant valley in the hills, the land seemed to be good for little of anything other than growing a few grapevines and fruit trees. And yet the silver coin they carried with them told them clearly that the land was theirs—that they had purchased it and that it was publicly recognized as their own.”
Beaming with pride, Alfonso continued: “And so Luis and Tami built a new life for themselves and their family in the backcountry of the pueblo of San Jose. They built a home and carved out a farm and eventually found they could make a living with the grapes and the fruit that their land provided. And you know what, I’m convinced they’re laughing with us from heaven now, because sure enough it turned out that they were sitting on a gold mine much richer than the ones the forty-niners looked for during the rush for gold in the mid-1800s, that made a very few people very rich in California and a whole lot of other people very, very poor.
“As it turned out,” Alfonso went on, “the miners who came in 1849 and later years needed food and supplies and, when they were flush with cash, they also wanted wine, and so our family had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time to provide them with those very things. Luis and Tami’s children grew the vineyard and the fruit fields and found ways to can the fruit