Historically, the areas of present day Los Angeles was home to the Chumash and Tongva Native American tribes. On September 4, 1781 a group of settlers consisting of 14 families numbering 44 individuals of Native American, African and European heritage journeyed more than one-thousand miles across the desert from present-day northern Mexico and established a farming community in the area naming it “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula” which in English translated to “The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula”.
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Since that time, Los Angeles has been under the flags of Spain, Mexico, and the United States and has grown into one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas. Over time this community would grow under the flags of Spain, Mexico and eventually the United States to become one of the largest metropolitan cities in the world, the City of Los Angeles.
Today, the original pueblo is commemorated as a Los Angeles Historical Monument. The El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument is a living museum that continues to fulfill its unique role as the historic and symbolic heart of the City, reflecting the Native American, African American, Spanish, Anglo, Mexican, Chinese, Italian and French cultures that contributed to its early history. Of the monument’s twenty-seven historic buildings, eleven are open to the public as businesses or have been restored as museums. Visit http://elpueblo.lacity.org for more information on the area and how to plan a visit.
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Today Los Angeles is a sprawling metropolis covering more than 500 square miles and home to nearly four million people. But when the city was first founded back on September 4, 1781, it only had 44 residents (known as Los Pobladores) and covered just four square leagues.
The 23 adults and 21 children in this group were a representative cross-section of the laboring class majority population of the northwestern Mexican frontier provinces in the eighteenth century…the group reflected the ethnic composition of Sonora and Sinaloa from which most came. Eight of the twenty-three adults were Indians, ten were of African descent…Records also show that one of the black settlers, Luis Quinero, was the son of a black slave and an Indian woman of Álamos.
El Pueblo de la Reyna de Los Angeles—or the city of Los Angeles as we know it today—was founded by 44 settlers from Mexico known as Los Pobladores. The area, long home to the Tongva people, had been described by Father Juan Crespi, a missionary and explorer, as a perfect settlement site.
The original settlers were members of 11 families, the majority of which came to the area from the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora. According to records, 26 of the 44 settlers were of African or mixed Spanish and African heritage. Los Angeles remained a small ranch town until the early 1800s, when the population surpassed 500. It was officially recognized as a municipality in 1850, a few months after California became a state.
SOURCE: https://lacity.gov/; KCET; L.A. Magazine
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