Masters: American history is often told looking from the east, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a triumphant march westward from Plymouth Rock and Independence Hall, but by 1776, the roots of California history already ran deep.

Who was here before America's borders reached the Pacific?

Who laid the foundation for the Los Angeles to come?

Let's explore our city's history from a new perspective, not as the end of America's journey west, but as the center of global exchange for hundreds of years.

I'm Nathan Masters, and this is "Lost L.A." Many people see L.A. as a city of the future, a place without a past, a freeway metropolis that sprang up fully formed in the 20th century, but the roots of Southern California history run deep.

People have called this land home for thousands of years, and their stories give us a richer understanding of where we are now and where we're headed in the decades to come, so let's look back and uncover some of these forgotten stories in the archives.

"Lost L.A." explores Southern California history by bringing archival materials to life.

Jessica Kim: If we're really going to understand the southwestern part of the United States, we have to understand multiple empires and borderlands, this term that came about in the early 20th century, coined by Herbert Bolton.

It was a way of shifting the narratives that were being told about American history from being really focused on the East Coast, on the history and legacy of British colonies, and then on western migration into places like California and Los Angeles.

And what Bolton did is he sort of turned that on its head, and he said, "No, what we really need to do is think about what are the histories"--histories--"of empires in North America."

Steven Hackel: When we think about our national narrative, about what defines the United States and the history of North America, most people will think of 13 colonies on the East Coast that struck as one in 1776 and formed a new nation called the United States of America.

And this is the narrative that we teach our children, it's really embedded in our curriculum across the country.

The problem with that narrative, even though it's true, is that it doesn't leave much room for the history of probably 80% or 90% of North America that becomes the United States.

[Kelly Caballero speaking Tongva] Caballero: I'm happy you were here.

L. Frank Manriquez: Moon, [Speaks Tongva] Man: [Speaks Tongva], bear.

Virginia Carmelo: [Speaks Tongva], to emit light.

Craig Torres: [Speaks Tongva], breath of the ocean.

Carmelo: [Speaks Tongva], listen to me.

Manriquez: Over there, [Speaks Tongva] Craig: [Speaks Tongva], downtown Los Angeles.

Hackel: California Indian languages, like California Indian people, did not go extinct during the colonial period.

Their languages survived through the descendants of people who came to the missions, and the languages also were preserved in a written form by the missionaries themselves and by some California Indians who became literate in a writing way, so we do have elements of the language that survived from the colonial period, and today, we have a very strong attempt by Gabrielino and other Indians to resuscitate and recover their languages in full.

Manriquez: The reason we don't speak it is because language is the first thing that people take in order to conquer you.

They came in, and the first language that they learned was the Lord's Prayer.

They learned the words for that and then taught us the Lord's Prayer, so immediately work against us having our own language began.

And it might seem like, "Well, they put it in your language," but that's not really what happened.

They were just easing us on down the road, and then language became a form of--they considered it a rebellion and became afraid of it.

Viola Torres: Well, I was born in Monrovia, and I was raised in San Gabriel, and I was baptized at the mission, but I barely remember my great grandmother.

You know, we used to call her Nanita, and she's the one they used to--we used to ask her, you know, what she was and say, "Are you Indian, Nanita?"

"No, I don't know what I am."

Caballero: My dad always said, you know, "We're Gabrielino Indians," and I was the first person to tell him, like, "No, Dad.

We go by Tongva now.

That's the original name of the people."

Viola: I love my mission.

I love my mission, and every time I get close to San Gabriel, my heart just pumps.

You know, I just--I feel like I'm home.

Craig: And because that's a-- I'm sorry, but--and that's a different reality for her.

Viola: Yeah.

Craig: You know, the mission represents something else to me.

It represents oppression.

It represents colonization.

It represents a loss.

So there's that generational thing, too, where some people, if that's all they had, then, you know, that's what they attach to.

Caballero: It feels heavy.

It's thick.

It's a thick air that I breathe when I'm there, but you can't deny history, and you just have to accept it and educate people on the reality of what the missions did.

Man: Maybe in your schooling, the missions were a little bit of a source of controversy.

Did you get into some of that when you were studying that, those of you who are from California?

So those people were here before, right, and the Spanish arrived and they founded this mission as a place to bring the Christian faith to the Indians.

They didn't always have a high opinion of the culture of the Tongva people.

People lived within the boundaries, and they had to stay here, and the price for staying here was baptism.

Manriquez: It says, "Visitors!

The spirit of 1771 welcomes you.

Behind this arch, the beginning of California's modern civilization"--all right--"is written in massive walls and rudi--rudimentary through genial factories."

Genial factories?

"You will breathe an atmosphere of many years, fragrant and comforting with virtue and heroism of the friars and the missionaries who brought the blessing of"--oh-- "Christianity to pagan Indians and to us."

What if the pagan Indians didn't want it?

Man: Went up to the hills.

Manriquez: Yeah.

That's why we're not registered.

John Macias: This mission itself will have different meaning to different people.

For the Tongva community, or at least for the indigenous community itself, this mission itself is gonna be viewed upon as a place to where their ancestors suffered or sacrificed, for that matter, because of the whole issue of Spanish colonization.

So they don't necessarily look at it in a very--again, in a very romantic or very, I should say, even peaceful setting, and again, this is something that one really has to acknowledge.

When you walk through the gardens, we always kind of get these comments when we have visitors coming over here, and they say, "Oh, this place is very peaceful.

It must have been really nice during the mission period."

It's a bit of a misconception.

Don't look at it necessarily as a tranquil setting, but there were lives that of course were impacted here.

Hackel: There were rebellions at every mission in California.

There had been rebellions at every Indian mission in New Spain, so what happens at Mission San Gabriel in 1785 is essentially not new.

It's highly predictable.

In 1785, there were Indians at the mission who had been baptized, who were very much implicated in the daily organization of the mission.

One of those was Nicolas Jose.

He would have been the first alcalde, the first sort of elected official, who worked alongside the missionaries to run the mission.

We know that before the rebellion he was one of the Indians who was punished for trying to hold Native ceremonies, dances, and songs at the mission.

He, along with other Indians at the mission, call upon village leaders surrounding the mission, and one of the people who Nicolas Jose calls upon was a Gabrielino woman, Toypurina.

Carmelo: I was able to name my granddaughter after her--Toypurina.

We call her Toy.

Heh heh heh.

And we know that she was a medicine woman, and her name describes it.

It's Toypur, you know, the medicine woman.

Salomon: I think it was pretty widespread amongst the indigenous people that this plan was going to take place.

First night of the full moon at midnight, they were gonna sneak into the mission, and they were gonna first start by killing the priests, and hopefully, this would have started some sort of movement in the area where other indigenous people would join in numbers and in force against the Spaniards and drive them out.

Jose Maria Pico was a guard at the mission.

I imagine these people would never have expected this man, Jose Maria Pico, to understand their language.

Jose Maria Pico is the one who uncovers the plot, and so they remove the priests, and they put soldiers in priests' robes, and then, on the night of the full moon, they came and they were able to apprehend the indigenous people.

Hackel: They arrested those who they thought were involved, and they put them on trial, and the trial record exists today.

In the 1950s, a historian, Thomas Workman Temple, looked at the transcript, and that was the inspiration for an article that he wrote.

He essentially fictionalized the account and recast it, placing Toypurina at the center of this rebellion, when, in fact, Nicolas Jose had probably been the prime instigator.

The problem is he took great liberties with the past and invented a certain Toypurina figure, who in reality didn't exist.

The Spaniards understood her as spreading false information, and Temple takes that notion of her being deceitful or deceptive, and transforms it into something else, that somehow she's working in league with the devil, is a witch casting spells, and, yes, it's in some ways a much more exciting, dramatic story, but it doesn't do justice to who she was as a person.

Toypurina was not a witch.

She was influential in her community.

She didn't cast spells.

She tried to rally her family and her friends against the mission.

Manriquez: People need heroes throughout history no matter the civilization.

People need heroes, and she's our hero.

We love her.

I don't even care if I never find out the truth.

I know enough.

She was a young doctor, respected, tried, and paid the price.

She gives me strength, and I know she does to other people.

We don't have many heroes.

Hackel: Two year after the rebellion, she was baptized at Mission San Gabriel.

Toypurina is sent to Monterey, where she ultimately marries a Spanish soldier and has kids and seems to have blended into the colonial population.

Thomas Temple sees this as a great triumph of Catholicism over Native belief and of sort of the ultimate triumph of the missionaries over Native populations.

We don't really know if that's the case.

What mostly likely occurred is that she somehow tried to survive.

She lived a life between the Native world and the Spanish world, and she, like her husband, were essentially transitional figures who were mestizos negotiating the very complicated world.

Kim: So when the Spanish arrived in Southern California, they brought with them over 250 years of practice at implementing colonial designs, and one of the things that they brought with them was a very complex system of racial and ethnic categories.

They were looking at what are the different combinations of races and ethnicities in our society, from indigenous to pure-blooded Spanish to people of African descent, who had been brought as slaves to the New World, and then all of the mixtures that came from that.

That's unusual for an American audience to try to wrap their heads around, is that actually, the system of racial categorization was flexible, particularly if you had economic or political power.

Salomon: Spain is such a tiny nation compared to this vast continent.

How did they gain control over such vast amounts of land without having the population to do so?

The way they did it is they turned everybody else into Spanish.

Kim: So there was space in this new town of Los Angeles for those who'd been born at a lower racial or ethnic caste, mulatto, to actually apply to the Spanish government and provide evidence of political and economic success and request that they be re-categorized as Español.

Salomon: In 1790, Spain did a census, and they did it from all the way in South America up to California, and they listed Jose Maria Pico, his caste, as Español.

Kim: So Jose Maria Pico, who was the father of Pio Pico, did change castes.

Pio Pico had African blood.

His father was originally classified as mulatto, but because of his key role in uncovering this plot, the next census reveals that his racial category had been changed to Spanish.

Salomon: Pio Pico was born in 1801 in Mission San Gabriel.

He dictates his memoir to a historian, and he says he was born in a shack made out of branches.

It was fascinating that Pio Pico was able to, in 10 years, go from being completely broke to being one of the most powerful politicians.

He was typical of the people who came to California, who were born here.

Kim: Historians argue that much of Californio identity was based on separating yourself from Native peoples, and that came in many forms.

It came in the form of dress, it came in the form of even recreation and leisure.

Salomon: The Californios saw themselves as being very distinct from the people from Mexico City.

They called the people from outside of California Mexicanos de la otra banda, so people from a different branch of the Mexican nation, and they called themselves los hijos del pais.

Kim: The Californio identity really becomes important around the time of the wars of independence in Mexico because there were questions circulating during this period about revolution, about sovereignty, about who one owes loyalty to.

Is it the king?

Is it to the self?

Is it to the nation?

Mexican independence from Spain finally occurs in 1821.

This revolt against the Spanish crown and Spanish colonization occurs at multiple levels of Mexican society.

There's no agreement about what the Mexican nation is going to look like.

What emerges is a group of Californios who are quite liberal in their perspective.

They do believe in individual citizenship rights, they believe in secularization.

They believe that the emergence of a modern republic should not be controlled by the Catholic church.

Salomon: In their proclamations that were leading to secularization, they never said it was because they wanted to benefit from taking the land from the missions.

The way that they phrased it was that they were "emancipating" indigenous people from slavery.

Very little of the land was given back to the indigenous people.

Most of the missions were sold off to prominent Mexicans.

In fact, Pio Pico's brother Andres Pico received Mission San Fernando, which was about 120,000 acres.

Pio Pico really engaged himself in this new society, and he saw opportunity.

By about 1826, 1827, he entered politics, and just a couple years later, he was elected to the statewide territorial legislation.

The governors had the ability to grant land, so naturally, it was in the interest of the Californios to become the governors of their own territory so that they could grant their friends and families and each other this land.

Kim: Pio Pico's appointed sort of the overseer.

He's supposed to oversee the process of secularization at a mission, and there are actually a lot of complaints from Native peoples that he was not treating them with full respect.

Salomon: Pio Pico was by no means a Spaniard, but he assumed that role, and this is the tragedy of Spanish colonialism.

After generations, you forget all aspects of your ancestry, and so that relationship was really a bitter one.

They saw the indigenous people as savage, even though, if they looked in the mirror, they would often see an indigenous person.

[Woman singing in Spanish] So the first immigrants coming from the United States, a lot of them became Mexican citizens, and they respected Mexican culture.

By the late 1830s, Texas had already been wrestled from Mexico, and so the Californios were well aware of that, and when they started seeing a lot of people show up from the United States into California, they automatically feared that this is what's gonna happen to them.

Avila: Initially, Californios saw no reason to block the arrival of Anglo-American migrants to their land, but after decades, they began to realize that this was part of a systemic conquest.

But I think by the time they finally realized what was at stake and what they were about to lose, it was too late.

Salomon: The war starts as a result of the fact that the United States government annexes Texas without the permission of Mexico.

The war started right in the middle of Pio Pico's first or second year as governor.

He knows very well that California is not prepared.

He actually receives a letter from Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, and he says, "I congratulate you Californios on your battle, on your victory against our enemy.

You guys are very courageous, but we simply can't spare the reinforcements.

The capital of Mexico is under attack.

Please keep on fighting, but unfortunately, we can't send help."

And he has some success in the battles.

The United States, they sent two forces by land, and they also occupied the main ports of California with war battleships.

The war in California actually ended a year before the overall war ended.

It ended in 1847.

Andres Pico signs papers capitulating to the United States.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was the first treaty where non-whites were actually given citizenship in the United States.

Mexicans were seen as very suspect, and this is really where Pio Pico had that feeling that "Man, we're quickly becoming foreigners in our native land.

These people are seeing us as the immigrants, as the outsiders, when, in fact, this is our culture.

The names of the towns reflect the names that we gave those places."

William Devarell: Well, Southern California and Los Angeles in its American period is born out of violence.

The sheer per capita numbers of people killed and wounded by one another and the racial inflexion of that, particularly on the bodies of indigenous native Californians, but also Mexican and Mexican-American peoples and also white people, it's another little war.

Avila: Such violence, such vigilante violence or outlaw justice was a way of enforcing white supremacy in Southern California that was compatible with the introduction of new legal systems, new penal systems, and a new economic order as well.

Salomon: They brought a lot of laws into California that were very antagonistic towards indigenous people, towards people of African ancestry.

Blacks had no rights in California, and so they saw Pio Pico, and they discussed him, and they said, "Here's this black man.

He's obviously black.

You can see by his facial features, yet he's so wealthy," but Pio Pico didn't let any of it really bother him.

He didn't feel sorry for himself.

He became so wealthy by selling hides and candles and tallow to the gold mines that he was one of the top wealthiest individuals in California in the 1850s.

So he opened the Pico House in 1870, and this is a result of selling the Mission San Fernando, which he gained from his brother.

The Pico House was a luxurious hotel in downtown Los Angeles, in the Plaza area, the founding area that the Californios had built this town from.

And so, at that time, it was being pushed aside, but to Pio Pico, he saw it as a symbol of what the Californios were all about.

The adobes were disappearing.

Victorian houses were moving in.

Spanish was only spoken in Mexican barrios.

The Californios were no longer a threat politically, and so they were able to the romanticized.

Pio Pico in the end, after years of litigation, he basically lost all of his property.

The World Fair in Chicago wanted him as a representative of the old California.

Pio Pico rejected this, and he wrote a scathing response that was published in the "Los Angeles Times" basically saying, "If those gringos think that they're gonna show me like some freak in a tent, they have another think coming."

Kim: Mention the name Pico to most Angelinos, they'll say, "Oh, the street?"

or maybe "The house," which he did build the hotel at La Plaza.

I think, if you say Toypurina to most Angelinos, they probably have no idea who you're talking about... but why I think they're important is because they really represent, from the moment that Los Angeles is born as a city, its incredible racial and ethnic diversity.

Devarell: There is a cultural reflex that tends to, if not erase, at least isolate and challenge the recent Mexican past as something that existed then.

There's a continuity in our present to our past.

California's Spanishness is woven deeply into the cultural DNA of this place demographically, genetically, historically, by way of population.

[Man singing in Spanish] Angelinos of today may not appreciate the sheer velocity of it.

It happens over the course of a couple of lifetimes, where Los Angeles goes through its violent ordeal of American birth...a rough-and-tumble adolescence... [Singing continues] and now a maturity of mixed blessings.

And part of Southern California's difficulty is how much of the complexity of this place do we allow ourselves to see, and how much do we do this?

[Singing continues]