Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820-1880

Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820-1880. By Maria Raquél Casas. (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2007. xiv, 261 pp. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-87417-697-1.)

This first monograph by María Raquél Casas, a daughter of California herself, offers a detailed portrait of nineteenth-century Californianas. In this engrossing work, the author deliberates the merits and weaknesses of other historical accounts of her subject. Using the same sources as those works, Casas composes as complete a picture as possible of the Spanish-Mexican daughters of California. She examines in narrative detail the marriages of those women to "foreigners," that is, nonIberian European and American men. Earlier generations of historians, particularly Hubert Howe Bancroft, viewed such marriages as evidence of a "peaceful and beneficial conquest by Euro-Americans" (p. 10). Questioning that thesis, Casas elucidates the personal and marital strategies of Californianas prior to and following the U.S.-Mexican War. Contrary...