History of California Exam

***There are five questions worth twenty points each.

All answers must have 15-20 sentences, with an introductory sentence and concluding sentence.  Make sure to cite your sources like a term paper.  Use lots of facts when you analyze and explain your answers.  No personal pronouns.  Points are based upon content, analysis, clarity and spelling/grammar.

***Book chapters are attached too. 

1. For thousands of years Native Californians, before the Spanish arrived, lived as close to an earthly paradise as possible. Explain. (Ch. 2) 

Read chapter 2, analyze and explain about: Plenty of food sources, little conflict, lots of room, little disease/sickness  

2.  Compare and contrast the lives of the mission Indians with those of the wealthy Californios.  How did secularization of the missions hurt the Natives, but helped the Californios? (Ch. 8) 

Read chapter 8, analyze and explain about: Compare the lives and living circumstances of the mission Indians with the wealthy Californios.   

Rodeos, rancho society, acreage owned.  Explain what secularization did to the Indians and for the Californios.   

3.  Explain what outsiders, such as American sailors and businessmen, might have seen and not seen in Mexican California.  Now analyze Richard Henry Dana’s quote, “In the hands of an enterprising people, what a land this might be.”(Ch. 8-9)

Read chapter 8 and 9 analyze and explain about: “Revolutions,” rodeos, siestas, no education, no real commerce, no industry, etc. Write of  

California’s potential in American eyes and how this helped lead to the US coveting it. 

4. Before declaring war on Mexico, what other attempts did the U.S. use to acquire California?(Ch. 9)  

Read chapter 9, analyze and explain about: Polk-Larkin Plan, Charles Fremont, John Slidell, etc.  

5. Explain the difference between the discovery of gold and of the Gold Rush. Now analyze how the Gold Rush was an economic multiplier for California. (Ch. 11)

Read chapter 11, analyze and explain about: Sam Brannan, Levi Strauss, Wells Fargo, John Marshall, John Sutter