DAWN AND THE DONS 96
was, politically,a Spanish colony.
But Spanish control
was remote, and of an exceedingly tenuous nature. It was exercised indirectly through Mexico, and Mexico was itself a distant land, and only mildly concerned with the local affairs of California. Practically the only concern of either Spain or Mexico respecting California during this period was that it should be occupied by their own people, and not by those of some other nation. Chapman characterizes the up governing motives of Spain and Mexico when after referring to the “twelve years of teeming Facsimile Signature activity from 1769 to 1781,” and Carlos the quiet that followed, he says:
“Though they could not have dreamed it, the Alta Californians were filling the role which Bucareli—Mexico’s greatest Viceroy—had cast for them; a role of deep significance, and fraught with moment. Few as they were, imperfect as were their standards of civilized life, they were
on the ground,
and that in itself was
enough to keep Alta California safe from foreign occupation, with the mineral wealth undiscovered. They compelled the Englishman and the Russian to make the center
of their
settlements
farther
north,
within
the
immediate range of the profitable fur trade, instead of
locating in Alta California, as each of them wished to do.
In this way the Alta Californians virtually saved the intervening coast of Oregon and Washington. They were the sine qua non of American occupation. Americans
