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Article Draft

List of Edits

I believe it would be for the best if there was a more extensive coverage of the Native American groups who inhabited the area before the mission was established. For instance, I was thinking that we could start by changing the line "Danville was first populated by Native Americans who lived near creeks and camped on Mount Diablo in the summer." to "Danville was first inhabited by the Tactan, Saclan, and Volvon tribes, who lived near the creeks and camped on Mount Diablo in the summer." It's a small change, so it shouldn't interrupt the flow of the article too much while still providing a little extra detail and insight into the Native Americans who lived there. (Changes implemented 2/24/2022)

Add citation for the Bay Miwok group and the Tactan, Saclan, and Volvon tribes. (Changes implemented 2/24/2022)

Add more information on the Bay Miwok group and their customs. Add specific dates as well.

Add more about the Saclan, Tactac, and Volvon tribes and how they became part of the missions that were established in their area. Also add more information about the missions themselves, how they were established, and the contact incidents that led up to their establishment. Go into detail about the reactions of the tribes to missions and their interactions with each other and with the missionaries themselves. Talk about the zone of capture of each mission, how it overlapped with tribal territory, and how the activities of the missions influenced the native groups in ways relating to their way of life and their culture.

Published on the official page on 5/27/2022

Altered version of the section I am working on, with my own edits incorporated in it

Danville, California

Introduction:

The Town of Danville is located in the San Ramon Valley in Contra Costa County, California. It is one of the incorporated municipalities in California that use "town" in their names instead of "city". The population was 43,582 at the 2020 census. Since 2018, for four years in a row, Danville was named "the safest town in California".

The Iron Horse Regional Trail runs through Danville. It was first a railroad that has been converted to an 80-foot (24 m) wide^{[citation needed]} corridor of bike and hike trails as well as controlled intersections. Extending from Livermore to Concord, the trail passes through Danville.

Danville is also home to the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site, Village Theatre and Art Gallery, and the Museum of the San Ramon Valley.

History

Pre-Contact

Known today as the "Heart of the San Ramon Valley," the area encompassing Danville was first inhabited by the Tactan, Saclan, and Volvon tribes of the Bay Miwok language group, and the Souyen and Seusen tribes of the Ohlone / Costanoan language group.^[1]

You might consider that some of this detail could be discussed or is discussed in reference to the WIKI Ohlone page (Dan)

(One paragraph for all three tribes, one paragraph for the missions, one for secularization, one for ranchos, one for the American era, etc)

The Tribes and their territories

The five tribes inhabited territories overlapping the area now encompassed by the modern boundaries of Danville. They mostly occupied the watersheds of the region, with territorial boundaries clearly marked by mountain ridges and streams.^[2] They built their villages near the creeks of the region, with an average distance of 3 to 5 miles between settlements. Each tribe represented 200 to 500 people, and their population was often spread out across 3 to 5 villages.^[3]

Mission records indicate that the Tactan made their homes along the San Ramon Creek in the western and southern areas of Mount Diablo. According to early ethnohistoric records, Mount Diablo was also the site of an annual intertribal gathering that provided an opportunity for the members of the different tribes to interact with one another through trade, socialization, and ceremonial dances.^[4]

The Saclan occupied the inland valleys on the east side of the East Bay Hills, but they had regular contact with their neighbors to the south, the Tactans.^[4] Their territory included much of Lamorinda, extending from California State Route 24 in the north down to the Alameda County line in the south.^[5]

The Volvon inhabited the Black Hills and the Marsh Creek watershed to the east of Mount Diablo, and they similarly came into regular contact with their neighbors, the Tactans. They held the peak of Mount Diablo to be their ancestral and spiritual point of origin, and in 1811 the Spanish began referring to the mountain as "Cerro Alto de los Bolbones" (High Point of the Volvons).^{[4][6][7][8][9]}

The Souyen inhabited areas that contain parts of modern day Dougherty and Tassajara Valley, and the Seunen’s territory included parts of San Ramon and Dublin. A vast marshland once covered the area now occupied by the I580/I680 interchange, and the abundance of natural resources that it contained provided the Souyen and Seunen with a steady source of food and materials.^[2][10]

Contact and Resistance

Tribes first encountered Spanish explorers in 1772 when the Fages-Crespi expedition conducted an overland exploration directly through the San Ramon Valley and modern day Danville. Juan Crespi was searching for a place to establish a Missions, with the goal of converting the indigenous people already living in the area to Christianity.^[11][12] In the end he chose to build Mission San Jose near Santa Clara County, since the Native Americans living in San Ramon Valley were hostile towards outsiders encroaching on their territory.^[8][12]

The Missions

Mission San Jose

Mission San Jose was founded on June 11, 1797, and it's catchment area encompassed the entirety of San Ramon Valley from the Sacramento River in the north to modern day Alameda County in the south.^[12]

Mission San Francisco

According to mission records, about 161 Tactans, 143 Saclans, and 108 Volvons were baptized at the San Francisco Mission over the course of its operation.^[4]

Resistance

Spanish settlers that encroached on the traditional lands and ways of life of the Bay Miwok and other indigenous peoples of California were met with fierce resistance. Some methods of resisting Spanish influence were more passive, such as refusing to give up traditional spiritual beliefs despite the immense pressure from the Missions to convert to Christianity. Other, more active methods of resistance included destruction of property and armed confrontations with Spanish military personnel and religious officials.^[9]

One of the first major altercations to occur in the resistance was an incident in 1795 when a group of Bay Miwok left the San Francisco Mission as a result of the poor living conditions, lack of food, and the harsh physical labor that was being demanded of them. Converts were not allowed to leave the mission grounds without permission, but these rules were ignored, and hundreds of Bay Miwok people returned to their homelands. In response to this, the San Francisco Mission sent a group of Christianized Indians to track down the escapees and bring them back. However, when they arrived at one of the Saclan villages and attempted to retrieve the runaway converts, they were met with violent resistance, and this confrontation resulted in the deaths of at least 7 of those Christianized Indians. This incident sparked a wave of retaliation from Spanish forces, and for the next decade, Contra Costa county was the site of ongoing conflicts between the Bay Miwok resistance and the Spanish along with their Christianized Indian allies.^[9]

Secularization of the Mission System and the beginning of the Rancho Era

Main articles: Mexican secularization act of 1833 and Ranchos of California

In 1833, the congress of the First Mexican Republic passed the Decree for the Secularization of the Missions of California, nationalizing the missions and transferring administrative power over them to the Mexican government. After gaining ownership over missionary lands, the Mexican government divided them up and sold them off as land grants.^[13]

Despite the fact that the government was required to set aside some of that land for the Christianized Indians who lived and worked at the missions, most of these land grants ended up in the hands of Californios and other non-Indian land owners thanks to the efforts of the officials in charge of the process of land allocation.^[13] Suddenly finding themselves without a place to live or a means of employment, many of the Christianized Indians who formerly lived at the missions ended up turning to the newly created ranchos for work, and quickly found themselves essentially enslaved on the very land that was supposed to be theirs.^[8]

At the same time, land grants were also being carved out of the traditional lands of the Bay Miwok, which resulted in open hostility between the Native American groups that inhabited the area and the newly established ranchos.^[9] The local Native Americans in the area were adept horseback riders and they used this skill to their advantage during the raids they launched; stealing livestock, damaging property, and in some cases even killing the inhabitants who lived there.^[9]

Because of the high rates of Indian hostility in the area, some land grant owners preferred to live away from their grants and manage the development of their Ranchos from an off-site location–most often San Jose.^[8][9] Despite these initial difficulties however, eventually seven Mexican ranchos ended up being claimed on Bay Miwok homelands.^[9] Among the first of these were a pair of land grants known as Rancho San Ramon.

Rancho San Ramon (Amador)

Main article: Rancho San Ramon (Amador)

In 1833–1834, two land grants known as Rancho San Ramon were created from land formerly under the jurisdiction of Mission San Jose and Mission San Francisco, which were both in the process of being prepared for secularization.^[7][8] In 1834, one of these two land grants was given to José María Amador by the Mexican governor of Alta California, José Figueroa.^[12] José María had worked as the administrator for Mission San José from 1827 to 1834, so naturally he was one of the people who received a land grant carved out of the mission’s territory. The land grant was 20,968-acre (84.85 km2) and it stretched from the area that would eventually become the southern end of Danville all the way down to Dublin, where the main headquarters of the Rancho were located.^[12][14]

In 1836, Mission San Jose finished the secularization process and was designated as a parish church. This left upwards of 2,000 baptize Indians that had been residing at the mission without a home. Some of them turned to the newly created Ranchos and the Pueblos of San Jose for work, while others returned to their homelands instead and formed a multi-tribal community around the base of Mount Diablo.^[7][8][9] (<---Section needs to be moved to the top)

Jose Maria was known to employ both Indians and Mexicans as laborers and cowboys on Rancho San Ramon, and the place eventually developed into an industrial center that produced various goods such as leather, harnesses, wagons, and furniture. Jose Maria also had several adobes built at his headquarters near Alamilla Springs.^[8][12]

Jose Maria’s experience with his land grant is a stark contrast to the experiences of the owners of the other land grant known as Rancho San Ramon; Castro and Pacheco.

Rancho San Ramon (Pacheco-Castro)

Main article: Rancho San Ramon (Pacheco-Castro)

In 1833 Governor Jose Figueroa granted 8,917-acre (36.09 km2) of land to Mariano Castro and Bartolome Pacheco.^[15] The land grant rested at the southern end of the San Ramon Valley, adjacent to Jose Maria’s land grant which was at the northern end of the valley. The area was the traditional homeland of the Tactan tribe and contained parts of present-day Alamo, Danville, and San Ramon.^[16] Like many of the other landowners who had purchased grants carved out of Native American territory, Castro and Pacheco did not live on the land grant itself and instead managed the Rancho remotely in order to avoid placing themselves at risk of being killed in a raid.^[7][8][9] Mariano Castro lived in the Pueblo of San Jose with his family, while Bartolome Pacheco chose to live in the San Mateo area. In 1839, Bartolome died and his son Lorenzo Pacheco became the owner of Rancho San Ramon. When Lorenzo died in 1846, his widow Rafaela Soto de Pacheco and their four children inherited his land grant.^[15]

The beginning of the American Era and the fate of the Ranchos

Following the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), California was ceded to the United States as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and in 1850 California was officially admitted to the US as a state.^[17][18] Shortly afterwards, the California Land Act of 1851 was passed in order to ensure that the terms of the treaty concerning land grants which were originally distributed by the Mexican government would continue to be upheld and honored. The treaty claimed that those who had received land grants from the Mexican government would continue to be recognized as the owners of the land, so long as they filed a claim on it with the Public Land Commission.

In compliance with these terms, Jose Maria filed a claim for Rancho San Ramon (Amador) with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and in 1865 an area of 16,517 acres (66.8 km2) within the land grant was patented to him.^[19][20]

Around the time that Jose Maria filed a claim for Rancho San Ramon (Amador), James Witt Dougherty purchased around 10,000 acres (40 km2) of the land as well in 1852.^[21] In the 1860's, Dougherty moved into one of the two-story adobe buildings that Jose Maria had built on the property and as a result of this, the area around that adobe house would eventually come to be known as Dougherty in his honor.^[22]

Over the course of his life Jose Maria gradually sold sections of the land off to others until none of it was left in his possession at his death in 1883.^[12]

In 1852, Rafaela Pacheco filed a claim for Rancho San Ramon (Pacheco-Castro) with the Public Land Commission.^[19] She hired the American land attorney Horace Carpentier to help her deal with title challenges during the process, and somehow this resulted in Carpentier coming to own the entire Pacheco-Castro land grant, which was patented to him in 1866.^[20][15]

(Create a section for the transition into the American era)

(End of my editions, unedited content below).

Initially a farming community, the Town of Danville switched from wheat to fruits and nuts after the Southern Pacific Railroad built a spur line through the area in 1891. It developed as a residential suburb in 1947 when the first sizable housing tracts were constructed and its population boomed in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Danville Post Office opened in 1860 with hotel owner Henry W. Harris as the first postmaster.

Churches, schools, farmers unions and fraternal lodges began as the community grew. The Union Academy, a private high school begun by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, served the county from 1859 to 1868, until it burned down. Danville Presbyterian Church was dedicated in 1875.

Many early Danville buildings remain standing today. The original 1874 Grange Hall exists as well, and the original Danville Hotel remains downtown which was last renovated in 2016. Many of the early pioneer names appear on the streets and schools, including Baldwin, Harlan, Wood, Love, Hemme, Boone, Bettencourt and Meese.

When the Southern Pacific Railroad came to the Valley in 1891, Danville continued to grow. Farmers built warehouses and shipped crops by rail, and residents were able to travel to and from Danville.

John Hartz sold 8.65 acres (3.50 ha) of his land for the Danville Depot and granted land access to the station. He then subdivided and sold lots east of the station, shifting the town's focus from Front Street to Hartz Avenue. Eventually, a bank, drug store, saloon, doctor's office and Chinese laundry joined the houses lining the street. The Danville Hotel originally sat across from the station and was moved to face Hartz avenue in 1927.

The twentieth century found Danville affected by the wars, the Spanish flu, the depression, and new immigrants.

In 1910, a public high school district was organized and San Ramon Valley Union High School was built. A library opened in 1913 with 104 books. St. Isidore's Catholic Church was first established in 1910. An Improvement League funded the first streetlights and paved roads in 1915.

Danville continued as farm country into the 1940s. The Valley had a population of 2,120 people in 1940, growing to 4,630 by 1950. Developments such as Montair and Cameo Acres were built, the water and sewer districts extended their boundaries, and the new I-680 freeway which cut through Danville in the mid-1960.

In 1982, Danville citizens voted to incorporate their community.

In 2000, Danville's population reached 40,484.

Danville was ranked as the safest city in California for a fourth year in a row, most recently in 2021.

I like how there is a variety of information, but one change I would make is to create a different section for these, maybe an "interesting facts" or "trivia" section. (Nida)

References