Vineyards & Vaqueros: Indian Labor and the Economic Expansion of Southern California, 1771–1877 by George Harwood Phillips (review)

George Harwood Phillips has executed a much needed intervention on “Indians as workers” that adds to the research about the central role Indigenous peoples played in the development and maintenance of the mission, pueblo, and rancho. But, as he is careful to note, this contribution is neither a history of Los Angeles County nor a labour history of the region. Nor does it claim to be a tribal history of the Gabrielino-Tongva. Rather, Phillips’ ethnohistory attempts a more complex narrative of “neophytes” and “gentiles” as more than either assimilated within or remaining outside of frontier institutions. Phillips argues that they were a vital labour force successfully negotiating the Spanish, Mexican, and American economic systems. Placing the region’s Native American population at the centre of “the first economic revolution of the Los Angeles region” (34), Phillips narrates the region’s earliest inhabitants as more than victims of colonialism in general and extreme forms of labour controls specifically. According to Phillips they were able to maintain “social continuity” and built or expressed “new practices and identities.” (17) In accounting for both pre-contact “authentic work” and post-contact labour, Phillips demonstrates that “labor constituted one of the primary and most influential interpersonal and intercultural relations in a pluralistic society.” (17)

Neither “defenders” nor “denigrators” dominate in Phillips’ examination of the Spanish mission system and its impact in Southern California. He successfully shifts the discussion from a too narrow study of the violence of the system back to “those experiencing the mistreatment.” However, “recognizing adaptation and efficiency,” Phillips explains, “is far different from approving the system which they were achieved.” (19) Phillips underscores the point by reminding us, “the missions radically altered Indian culture, but they did not destroy Indian people.” (21) More importantly, the strategic significance of the world constructed by the mission continued after secularization, as evidenced in the critical role Indian labour played in the profitable ranchos and vineyards of later periods.

Similarly, Phillips paints a more nuanced canvas of rancheros and Indians, documenting how they cooperated on newly formed, successful working ranches. But, it was Indians that made the idyllic lifestyle of the Dons possible. Although both “realists” and “romantics” have celebrated the ranchero and the idyll of Californio life it is Indian labour that proves to be essential to all aspects of the period, including the slow market integration of the region with New Mexican traders and later Americans. “Only through a system of social and economic reciprocity,” Phillips insists, “were the most successful rancheros able to secure and maintain Indian labor.” (334) The “economic interdependence” of the rancho era and the “mutual benefits” shared between ranchero and Indian worker shift debates about the rancho system as either a feudal or plantation system and the Indians as little more than peons or slaves.

Not surprisingly, Native Americans of the region were not a homogeneous group. The diversity of Indian workers transcended easy dichotomies of gentile and neophyte and between those tied to or outside of colonial institutions. Indians were skilled horsemen and pastoralists, and were vital to the agricultural development of the region. More importantly, Indians were fundamental to the defence of settlements against, in large part, other Native Americans. Although this is a critical intervention in examinations of mission brutality, the idyll of the ranchero world, and the avariciousness of the Americans, an examination of labour needs to be done with regard to the complexity of Indigenous rebellion and resistance. Especially important is the role of Indians who maintained communities outside of corrupting colonial institutions. Indians negotiating the imposition of the labour management systems of successive colonial powers constructed complex communities both within and beyond dominant institutions. Phillips’ recuperation of the Indian worker as more than victim introduces Indian cultural strategies associated with village life and its relation to Los Angeles and the surrounding area. In each instance, Native Americans maintained their own vibrant communities, all the while...