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Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo
Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California
Before Gold: California under Spain and Mexico Series
by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
396 Pages | 6 x 9 | 79 B&W Illus., 6 Maps
$34.95
$45.00
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–90) grew up in Spanish California, became a leading military and political figure in Mexican California, and participated in some of the founding events of U.S. California. In 1874–75, Vallejo, working with historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft, composed a five-volume history of Alta California—a monumental work that would be the most complete eyewitness account of California before the gold rush. But Bancroft shelved the work, and it has lain in the archives until its recent publication as Recuerdos: Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769–1849, translated and edited by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz.
In Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California, Beebe and Senkewicz not only illuminate Vallejo’s life and history but also examine the broader experience of the nineteenth-century Californio community. In eight essays, the authors consider Spanish and Mexican rule in California, mission secularization, the rise of rancho culture, and the conflicts between settlers and Indigenous Californians, especially in the post-mission era. Vallejo was uniquely positioned to provide insight into early California’s foundation, and as a defender of culture and education among Mexican Californians, he also offered a rare perspective on the cultural life of the Mexican American community. In their final chapter, Beebe and Senkewicz include a significant portion of the correspondence between Vallejo and his wife, Francisca Benicia, for what it reveals about the effects of the American conquest on family and gender roles.
A long-overdue in-depth look at one of the preeminent Mexican Americans in nineteenth-century California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo also provides an unprecedented view of the Mexican American experience during that transformative era.
In Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California, Beebe and Senkewicz not only illuminate Vallejo’s life and history but also examine the broader experience of the nineteenth-century Californio community. In eight essays, the authors consider Spanish and Mexican rule in California, mission secularization, the rise of rancho culture, and the conflicts between settlers and Indigenous Californians, especially in the post-mission era. Vallejo was uniquely positioned to provide insight into early California’s foundation, and as a defender of culture and education among Mexican Californians, he also offered a rare perspective on the cultural life of the Mexican American community. In their final chapter, Beebe and Senkewicz include a significant portion of the correspondence between Vallejo and his wife, Francisca Benicia, for what it reveals about the effects of the American conquest on family and gender roles.
A long-overdue in-depth look at one of the preeminent Mexican Americans in nineteenth-century California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo also provides an unprecedented view of the Mexican American experience during that transformative era.
Rose Marie Beebe is Professor Emerita of Spanish Literature at Santa Clara University.
Robert M. Senkewicz is Professor Emeritus of History at Santa Clara University. Beebe and Senkewicz are the coauthors of Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary.
“Part of the richness of these essays derives from the new information that Beebe and Senkewicz have discovered from their thoroughgoing research in diverse archival sources. They have not written a hagiography; they are meticulously careful to present multiple sides of difficult issues. Such a balanced approach will allow readers to consider the larger story of the American conquest.”—James Sandos, author of Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions
“Despite their modest claims to be simply annotating Vallejo’s writings, Beebe and Senkewicz have produced with Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican,and American California one of the fullest and most critically complex accounts of a prominent californio to date.”— Southern California Quarterly