Alta California

Spanish California--with its diverse mix of Indians, soldiers, settlers, and missionaries--provides a fascinating site for the investigation of individual and collective identity in colonial America. Through innovative methodologies and extensive archival research, the nine essays in this volume reshape our understanding of how people in the northernmost Spanish Borderlands viewed themselves and remade their worlds. Essays examine Franciscan identity and missionary tactics; Spanish and Mexican settlers' identity as revealed in mission records, family relationships, political affiliations, and genetic origins; and Indian identity as shown in mission orchestras and choral guilds as well as in the life of a Luiseño who penned his own remembrance of the Spanish conquest of Alta California.--From publisher description.