The arrival of Europeans and Americans was a devastating, decades-long invasion suffered by the native California Indians, who had lived peacefully and profitably on the land for thousands of years. They had no wheel, no domesticated animals,
When Franciscan friars Father Crespi and Father Junipero Serra came to colonize California in the late 1760s, they looked upon this undertaking as a “sacred expedition” to bring native heathens into the Church.
Many centuries before European explorers “found” California–isolated at the fringes of their familiar world–native Indians had occupied the land. Authorities differ as to their numbers, estimating from 100,000 to 300,000 individuals