Jerry Schaefer - Society for California Archaeology

Figure 1. Lithograph of Old Town San Diego, based on the original 1850 sketch by H. M. T. Powell. View
south from Presidio Hill. The arrow points to the Bandini Adobe (Pourade 1963:131).
Other prominent families also likely brought household servants with them when they arrived in
Old Town. Indians, however, were always a small segment of the pueblo population. Farris (2006)
suggests that some Indians formerly at the missions likely sought employment by necessity or choice at
the pueblo after the missions were secularized in 1834-1835, although a much larger number either found
work on the ranchos, joined one of the Indian pueblos libres or took up residence in a rancheria. Farris
found 26 servants and their families in 13 different households listed in the April 17, 1836 census of Old
Town. In most cases, they are described as attached to the woman who was head of the household. Three
Indian servants of Don Juan Bandini are listed: Juan Miguel; his wife, Juana; and a single man also
named Miguel. Married couples were often listed as servants, sometimes with their children who also
likely worked for the family. Farris mentions that the cook was sometimes a male because of his previous
mission experience. Other jobs included housemaids, nannies, and gardeners. The types of manual labor
performed by household staff included cooking, grinding corn and grains, slaughtering animals, and
collecting firewood.
Indian servants continued as household members in Old Town well into the American era. They
can be identified in the 1860 San Diego County Census (San Diego Genealogical Society n.d.) as
“domestic servants” or “servant” born in California and listed with only a first name, as are most of the
people living in the Indian rancherias as enumerated in the census (Figure 2). Approximately 28 Indian
servants can be identified in Old Town, about the same number as counted in the 1836 census. Quite a
number of them were children and teenagers. By this time, Juan Bandini had died and the adobe was
unoccupied. Indian alienation and poverty were getting worse by then, but the Indians continued to live in
small camps in Mission Valley and elsewhere. The 1860 census lists 59 individuals distributed among 11
households at “San Diego Indian Village,” a location at Florida Canyon and Pershing Drive (S. Carrico
1986).
SCA Proceedings, Volume 26 (2012) Schaefer, p. 138