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California Environmental Context

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California’s Environmental Context
A traditional definition for the term environment is usually in regards to land, however in this course, Environmental History of California, environment has been defined in regards to population and settlement style. The following paper will make the argument that the four dominant groups of the early west (Indians, Spanish, Mexicans, and Anglo-Americans) livelihood was defined by the context of their environment.
For instances, if you look at the Apache in context compared to the Patwin, Nomlaki, and Wintu in context their livelihood was quite different. According to Richard White, Apaches on the Great Plains lived in near starvation and had to raid other groups because their environment was unforgiving …show more content…
According to Richard White, the Mexican governments encouraged settlement of California by the establishment of large land grants called ranchos. Specifically, in Camarillo’s first chapter he acknowledges the Mexican settlement of the Santa Barbara. “These settlers formed the majority population and were largely responsible for shaping the cultural and pastoral life styles that characterized Mexican Santa Barbra (Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, pg. 7).” However, a shift in climate during the 1860s changed this. According to Camarillo, the droughts and floods that happened within the 1860s were one of the main causes for the decimation of the California’s Mexican cattle industry. “Prior to the floods and drought Santa Barbara County herds contained more than 300,000 head of cattle. By the fall of 1865 only less than 7 000 remained (Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, pg. 34).” As a result, the Mexican community experienced a corresponding shift downward, which brought about the end of the Santa Barbara ranchero period. Resulting in the livelihood of the Mexican being defined by their environmental …show more content…
The Anglo-American migrated into California in the early 1840s in search of personal betterment. According to Richard White, “The federal government's hand rested lightly on Anglo American settlers. As long as they established republican governments, acquired title to their lands legally, and did not flaunt American cultural norms, Anglo Americans remained free to establish their communities with little federal oversight or supervision (White, pg. 182). This allowed the Anglo-Americans to assert their political dominance and racial ideologies in most locations. However, Camarillo describes how the Native Californians were not in agreement with the Anglo-American ideologies and attacked those living in the Santa Barbra region. “During the late 1840s and 1850s Pico and his gang of approximately forty companeros preyed on Anglo cattle drivers and gold-rush travelers (Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, pg. 20).” This was the result of many Anglo-Americans settling on Californians’ Rancheros after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, and Pico and his gang were responding to their community’s anguish. In context, different regions reacted individually to the Anglo-American settlement influencing their

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