The Other Californians: Prejudice and Discrimination Under Spain, Mexico, and the United States to 1920

The Other Californians really brings to life the discrepancy between the intended purpose of the 21 California missions, and how they ended up functioning in practice. The book portrays the dark side of how the dominating Spanish treated other races, including Native Americans, Mexicans and Asians. The Spanish created the missions to "civilize" and give culture to the local population. Some of the missions were indeed harsh in their teachings. They could be very racist and cruel to the Indians, beating and punishing them regularly. If an Indian complained about how he was treated, the Spanish would send him to a horrible jail that made the missions seem kind and inviting in comparison. The Spanish would often alternate the Indians between the missions and jail until they were ready to renounce their old religion for Christianity. This book portrays these cruelties, and depicts how the Indians and other minority races tried to cope with what was happening. The Other Californians is an important book to read for anyone that really wants to fully understand all sides of our history.

A good measure of a history book, I am beginning to feel, is how much does it upset genealogists. Those who want to paint their ancestors as noble pioneers undoubtably dislike the revelations contained in The Other Californians. This is a book which I feel every Californian should read because it lays down the facts about how Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans were treated by our 19th century forebears. American historians, who are often short-winded on California's racist legacy, could suffer reading it, too.