Publisher description: A striking addition to the literature of ethnic minorities, this book deals with the early struggles of the Spanish-speaking people of California. It focuses on the circumstances that caused the native-born Californians, or Californios, to lose numerical supremacy, land, political influence, and cultural dominance, and become a disadvantaged social group. It is the story of the decline but no less of the valiant perserverance of a subgroup which in the twentieth century was transformed into the largest minority in the Far West - the Mexican-Americans.