The ranchos of Mexican California depended upon the
labor of Native Americans. A typical California rancho might employ
as few as twenty or as many as several hundred Indian workers. The
Native work force totaled perhaps four thousand in all, including
both former mission Indians and new recruits gathered by the rancheros.
The Native workers tended the fields and herds of the
ranchos. Some became highly skilled cowhands or vaqueros. In return
for their labor
the Indians usually received nothing more than shelter, food, and
clothing. The rancheros used various means of coercion--persuasion,
economic pressure, violent force--to recruit and maintain their
labor supply.
The Indian workers were nominally free, but in practice
they were bound to the service of the ranchero as long as he cared
to hold
them. Thus rancho society of Mexican California was essentially
a feudal society. The rancheros ruled as lords on their great
landed estates; the Indian workers who tended the fields and herds
were
their serfs.
