work, brought devastation through disease and destruction of past ways of life. Native numbers fell by one-third to one-half, especially along the coast. The Mexican era after 1821 brought new trials to people further inland and northward. Mexican rancheros exploited the natives as indentured labor, while building a trade in hides and tallow. Again, thousands of the natives perished. The Mexican–American war in 1844–46 brought California under the sway of the US, which annexed the northern half of Mexico in 1848. Following this, the Gold Rush drew in some 300,000 fortune seekers. Miners overran the last mountain redoubts of the native peoples, and many were enslaved. Nowhere were American Indians treated worse. The first governor, Peter Burnett, called for the extermination of native tribes, a task aided and abetted by state militias. California opposed Indian Reservations and federal agents were notoriously corrupt, leaving most native people landless and scattered. There are over 100 recognized tribes in California, but most bands never reclaimed lands other than tiny rancherias. The population of Native Americans fell to a low of 15,000 by 1900, then started a slow recovery, often through mixing with the conquering people. Estimates depend on the criteria for inclusion, but have increased rapidly since 1950. Before that, many did not want to identify as a disparaged people; but with the rebellions of the 1960s native heritage became a source of pride, swelling the census count. In addition, Native Californians migrated to the cities, where they were joined by tens of thousands of American Indians from around the west, forced from reservations by poverty and the federal decertification of tribes. By 1970 they were outnumbered by new migrants, and numbers were climbing fast. The urbanization and mixing of tribes gave rise to the American Indian Movement, ignited when young militants seized Alcatraz in 1969 and proclaimed it liberated territory. Today, there is a renewed pride in learning native languages, crafts, and culture. The legalization of native-run casinos, over 60 in 2011, has earned more than $7 billion. The income has been used to improve housing, restore tribal lands, and improve education, but has led to disputes over tribal membership. After 200 years of oppression, Native Americans are still struggling to preserve their identities and culture and finding it an uphill task to attain the same level of education, health, and liberties as other minorities do.
California was part of the Spanish Empire, then Mexico, before being annexed to the United States. Native peoples were annihilated by Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans alike, through forced removal, slave labor, disease and massacres, and are still struggling to regain their rightful place in state life.
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LAND & PEOPLE
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Population
California is the most populous state in the United States and for decades was among the fastest growing, due to high immigration and birth rates.
Nearly one-eighth of people in the United States live in California; no other state is close. California has long boasted rapid population growth, drawing in large numbers of migrants from other countries and from elsewhere in the USA, because of its continuous economic expansion and demand for labor. The weakened economy slowed the increase in the 2000s, making it the decade of least growth since the Gold Rush and the first when more people were born in California than moved into it. Immigration was way down from its peak in the 1980s, and there was no net migration from other states. Even so, California’s population rose from 34 million to 37 million between 2000 and 2010, and should exceed 40 million by 2020. Currently, 27 percent of California’s people are foreign-born, compared to 13 percent for the United States as a whole. Hispanics/Latinos made up more than a third of California’s population in 2010 and will soon pass Euro-Americans/Whites, whose share has fallen from over 90 percent in 1960 to 40 percent today. Asians overtook African-Americans as the next largest category in the 1980s. Native Americans make up fewer than 1 percent of the state’s population. Mixed race, at 2.6 percent, is an undercounted but growing category. The age distribution is that of a mature economy, with a large number of baby boomers retiring in the next 20 years. But the age distribution of immigrants is younger than that of the American-born, and they have larger families, on average. This key group provides the bulk of the labor force today and will continue to do so in the near future. Although most people are concentrated in the coastal metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and San Diego, rapid growth is occurring in the Inland Empire of Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Southern California, and the Central Valley from Sacramento to Bakersfield in Northern California. The geographic distribution of people by ethnicity/race and national origin is also uneven: Whites dominate in the mountainous areas, while Hispanics/Latinos are disproportionate in the inland valleys. The coastal cities are the most mixed.
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LAND & PEOPLE
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Yearning for a better life, domestic and foreign migrants have poured into California throughout its history. They have come to search for gold, work as laborers, establish businesses, unify families, and escape poverty and persecution. They have been attracted to California for its jobs, openness, climate, and opportunities to realize one’s dreams. In 1848 the cry of gold drew fortune-seekers from the East Coast, Europe, Latin America, and China. Chinese and Irish came as laborers to build the transcontinental railroad and to work in agriculture and manufacturing. Germans, Scots, and Scandinavians came as skilled workers. By the 1900s, farmers were drawing on new sources from Japan, the Philippines, and India. During this period, California suffered serious outbreaks of anti-immigrant agitation: anti-Chinese in the 1870s, anti-Japanese in the 1900s, and anti-Mexican in the 1920s. These eruptions influenced national policies, such as the ban against Chinese entry in 1882, the restriction of Japanese immigration after 1908, and forced sterilization in the 1920s. Californians helped pass the Quota and Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 that resulted in a dramatic drop in immigration for the next 50 years. The explosive growth of Los Angeles from 1900 to 1930 lured millions of White Americans west, as well as tens of thousands of Mexicans and African-Americans. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s drove thousands of poor Whites, popularly known as “Okies”, to California, who moved to the cities in World War II along with large numbers of new migrants, White and Black, from the south. The postwar boom drew millions more domestic migrants, but when domestic sources ran dry immigrants took their place. From 1942 to1964, the “temporary” Bracero Program brought more than 4 million agricultural workers from Mexico into California. Then, with the lifting of quotas in 1965, millions of Mexicans, Central Americans, and many nationalities from Asia joined the rush to California.
Migration
