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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
The Negro in California Before 1890 (PH 10-1)(1945) (55 pages)
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Page: of 55
and the known facts that will prove an historian as the searcher
and teller of truth.
Of the specialized studies made about the Negro most have been
done on the southern U.S. where the Negro as a slave spent many
generations and where, today, the great bulk of the population is
centered. Recently a study The Negro in New England was made
by Dr. Lorenzo J. Greene.’ Only a little work has been done on
the Negro in California, chief among which is The Negro Trail
Blazers of California by Delilah Beasley.
Because so little has been written concerning the Negro in
California and because the dynamic and romantic sequences in the
development of this country have always interested me, I have
become interested in knowing what part the Negro, free and slave,
played in this panorama of events. Were there Negroes with early
expeditions? To what extent did they migrate to the west when
“gold fever” had become a nation-wide epidemic? Did they find
gold? Where did they settle? What did they do? What difficulty
did they encounter politically, socially, and economically? These
are questions that have filled my mind and to which I shall
endeavor to find the answers.
In 1524 there started from Spain an exploring expedition under
the leadership of Governor Panfilo de Narvaez with the orders to
explore, conquer, and govern the Floridas on the mainland. The
fleet consisted of five ships and six hundred persons of which at
least one was a Negro, Estevanico or Little Steve, an Arab Negro
from Azamore on the Atlantic Coast of Morocco.* The expedition
became involved in all kinds of difficulty with the climate,
topography, and the Indians and we later find Estevanico in the
party of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca with two other Spaniards,
all that was left of the six hundred. ?
In the meantime Hernando Cortez who was searching for a
shorter route than the Strait of Magellan to the Pacific, had sent
out two searching parties to prove his belief in its existence. In
1535 word reached Cortez that Bazarra’s party had made a new
land discovery. Cortez is said to have put a number of Negro slaves
to building ships and when they were ready, went out to inspect
this find and called it California. Actually, the discovery was the
Santa Cruz Islands and Lower California.
By this time Estevanico and the Vaca party were nearing civilization once more and after wandering for eight years and
tramping more than ten thousand miles, they reached Mexico City
in 1536, where they rested and spent some time readjusting themselves to the food and clothing of civilization. ‘
322.