History of marriage in California History of marriage in California The recorded history of marriage in California is long and encompasses a period as far back as the first Spanish missions and even further back in unrecorded history of Native American Indians and their marriage rituals. California was incorporated into the United States of America in 1850. While the Native Americans of California did not document their culture in the same way western civilization did, we still have a great deal of knowledge from archaeological evidence as well as the earliest records of the Spanish missions. Native communities in southern California of the Chumash Indians,
History of the United States Hine and Faragher, "frontier history tells the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of the land, the development of markets, and the formation of states". They explain, "It is a tale of conquest, but also one of survival, persistence, and the merging of peoples and cultures that gave birth and continuing life to America." The first settlers in the west were the Spanish in New Mexico; they became U.S. citizens in 1848. The Hispanics in California ("Californios") were overwhelmed by over 100,000 gold rush miners. California grew explosively. San Francisco by 1880 had become the economic