Los Angeles Pobladores
The original party of the new townsfolk consisted of eleven families, that is 11 men, 11 women, and 22 children of various Spanish castas (castes).
[3] The earliest Hispanic settlers of all of California, not just Los Angeles, were almost exclusively from New Spain, precisely, from the current Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora.
The author and historian, Dr. Antonio Ríos-Bustamante, has written that "the original settlers of Los Angeles were racially mixed persons of Indian, Spanish, and African descent.
This mixed racial composition was typical of both the settlers of Alta California and of the majority of the population of the northwest coast provinces of Mexico from which they were recruited."
Dr. Ríos-Bustamante relates that in the century preceding the founding expedition of 1781, many Indians in this region of Mexico had been "culturally assimilated and ethnically intermixed into the Spanish-speaking, mestizo society.
The story of California's African heritage began in 1781, when the forty-four settlers founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, and more than half of these original pobladores—Antonio Mesa, Manuel Camero, Luis Quintero, José Moreno, their wives, and the wives of José Antonio Navarro and Basilio Rosas—had African ancestors, as was typical in the northern provinces of New Spain.
"[7] As Magnus Mörner has observed, the seven centuries prior to the discovery of the New World in Spain "witnessed extraordinary acculturation and race mixture."
As colonial soldiers retired, the government granted them vast "ranchos" as partial or full payment, or in gratitude, for their services.
They were instrumental in developing a local economy based on cattle ranching and their owners, later referred to as "rancho dons," became the predominant figures in Southern California's society.
Among those exercising considerable political and economic power were Andrés Pico, and Alcaldes Francisco Reyes and Tiburcio Tapia.
Grandchildren of Luis Quintero included Eugene Biscailuz, who served as sheriff of Los Angeles, and María Rita Valdes Villa, whose 1838 land grant is now Beverly Hills.
Claremont columnist and administrator T. Willard Hunter and the descendants of the original founders of the city began the tradition of the walk in 1981.
[10] Eventually, scholars from the Los Angeles area, including professors from the University of Southern California and California State University at Dominguez Hills, were part of a subcommittee formed during a citywide effort to commemorate the Los Angeles' 200th anniversary and they helped to erect the current plaque in 1981, which accurately depicts the multiracial makeup of the founders.
The group also included David Almada, a Los Angeles Unified School District administrator serving at a time when few Latinos served in such positions, and Leonard Pitt, an emeritus professor of history at California State University, Northridge and author of Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846–1890.
[…] The multiracial ethnicity of Los Pobladores had been rejected as rumors by the scholarly establishment, according to Hata, and never accepted until explicit census information was found in an archive in Seville.
Documents confirmed that 11 families recruited by Felipe de Neve, the first Spanish governor of California, arrived from the Mexican provinces of Sinaloa and Sonora.
The child, Jose Antonio arrived safely along with his brothers and sisters with the Expedition at the San Gabriel Mission on January 4, 1776, but he died nine months later.
He married Juana Maria Verdugo, born about 1740, at the Loreto Mission a small fishing port in Baja, Ca.
