Another Semiquincentennial

On this day 250 years ago, the first wave of colonists settled in what is now San Francisco. Most were the Sonoran families of the Novohispanic frontier garrison deployed to establish the Presidio.

Others arrived here less willingly, including mestizo laborers and enslaved Indigenous “neophytes”¹ from other parts of the Californias and Mexico. The settlers were led by an Arizona-born criollo colonial commander and two Spanish-born priests. They were the first non-Ramaytush Ohlone to make this region their home².

For a city that is a bit infatuated with itself, the lack of a civic acknowledgment³ of its own semiquincentennial is peculiar, despite all it can teach us about past atrocities and its origins. It was the beginning of a terrible struggle for the Ramaytush Ohlone that continues to this day, a colonial model whose roots lay in the conquest and oppression of the Indigenous peoples in Mexico.

San Francisco can officially celebrate the 49ers and even laud our phone area code, but is unable to manage a coherent response to its very own genesis.

Perhaps the silence is tacit recognition of how our city is the spoils of the imperial and controversial war (famously criticized by Henry David Thoreau in Civil Disobedience) that concluded with the Mexican Cession. Or maybe it is due to the Catholic overtones, with the founding coinciding with the mass in an improvised chapel on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, an important and ancient feast. It might also be that it was the start of the cattle-driven ecological devastation in the Bay, set off by the 286 cattle the colonists brought with them. Or it could be discomfort caused by symbolic claims made by some in the Chicano movement that might appear irredentist.

Whatever the reason or reasons, it is clear that there is a complicated hesitation about acknowledging our city’s origins; conquest, colonialism, war, and genocide are never comfortable subjects. But treating 1849 as a clean slate is worse. The events of 250 years ago and what they led to are worth learning about rather than ignoring them. ⸎