The Santa Monica History Museum has partnered with the California Historical Society and Exhibit Envoy to tell the true stories of California’s past, uncovering the firsthand accounts that were nearly wiped from history.
"Telling Stories of Mexican California: Real Life and Myth Making," an exhibit launched on June 23 at the museum, holds various artifacts and tales from California’s indigenous people, including the Tongva people who were integral in the founding of Santa Monica. The stories of these people were often whitewashed to fit narratives of those in control at the time, the museum stated.
"Tremendous change had come rapidly - in the span of eight decades, California had been the territory of Native Americans, Spain, Mexico, and ultimately the United States," the museum stated in its exhibit guide. "People from different backgrounds sought to record and disseminate their accounts of California’s past. Of course, the creators of books, plays, promotional campaigns, family albums, and other media viewed California’s history through the lenses of their own experiences and chose to present narratives that suited their purposes."
The exhibit, which can be seen in a side room separate from the museum’s main exhibit hall (which holds the "Unhoused: A History Of Housing In Santa Monica" exhibit), begins with the story of the Tongva people. Regarded as one of the most influential of California’s native societies, they inhabited many of the Los Angeles County areas we know today, choosing settlement location "based on food supply, reliable water and protection against flooding." The Los Angeles River supported the settlements of the hunter-gatherer society, with the exhibit showcasing such materials as a woven fishnet and basket, as well as arrowheads that were used to hunt animals like rabbits and deer.
European contact with indigenous people is a prime focus of the exhibit, recalling how Spanish missions in the late 1700s would have forced labor by indigenous populations. In the following century, the Gold Rush led to an influx of American settlers to Mexican California, bringing along with it a massacre of natives and laws that "encouraged a slavery-esque structure."
The exhibit then turned to the founding of Santa Monica proper, which began as three ranchos, highly profitable cattle land inhabited by a small number of Californio families, Spanish-speaking descendants of settlers from Spain and Mexico. These ranchos were Rancho Boca De Santa Monica, Rancho San Vicente Y Santa Monica and Rancho La Ballona.
After rancho owners were forced to sell their lands due to losing cattle in severe droughts, entrepreneurs Col. Robert Symington Baker and Senator John Percival Jones were able to take over the Santa Monica lands and sold lots at auction in July of 1875. The first lots sold for between $75 and $500, and within nine months, the city had 1,000 people and 160 houses. The museum houses artifacts from this early Santa Monica era such as metal railroad spikes, metal mule shoes and an old photograph of the famous Arcadia Hotel in 1886.
The lobby of the museum holds stories of Mexican California icons like author María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, who was the first Mexican American to publish a literary work in English, and Hipólita Orendain de Medina who became a chronicler of her time period through a collection of essays and letters she received.
"Telling Stories of Mexican California: Real Life and Myth Making" can be seen for free at the History Museum, located at 1350 7th Street. For more information, visit santamonicahistory.org.
