子欲居九夷。或曰陋如之何。子曰君子居之何陋之有。
The Master wished to live among the nine barbarian tribes. Someone said: “They are rude. How can you do such a thing?” The Master said: “If a superior man dwelt among them, what rudeness would there be?”
With food in their bellies and roofs over their heads, the thoughts of the colonists turned to another human need almost as pressing as sustenance and shelter. Several studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of the first wave of settlers – in excess of eighty percent, in fact – were men, who not unnaturally felt a strong desire for female companionship. While the newcomers were generally considered to be desirable mates due to the wealth of knowledge and resources they had access to, the arrival of so many of them in such a short time strained created what economists would term a supply-side problem; there simply were not enough women to go around. During 1682 and continuing into the following year, wife-stealing raids became increasingly common in the Fuming Bay area, straining the heretofore amicable relations between the Chinese settlers and the local Native Americans. The wife-stealing raids came at a delicate juncture for Shu, which was attempting to persuade the local tribes of the wisdom of submitting to the enlightened and benevolent rule of the Guangde Emperor (1). They experienced mixed success in this endeavor. Some native chiefs did indeed submit, taking Chinese titles of nobility and having their tribes incorporated into the growing Shu state (2). Other chiefs chose to maintain friendly relations with the Shu, trading and exchanging knowledge, but did not go so far as to formally submit to the Sunrise Throne. Still other tribes took a neutral or even hostile approach in dealing with the newcomers. The Guangde Emperor and his still small bureaucracy attempted to direct the wife-stealing raids towards the neutral or hostile tribes, though they were not always successful. Meanwhile, some men wound up sharing wives, as a single native woman would rotate between two or three men for a defined period and perform wifely duties. The relatively fluid and open conception of matrimony as it had previously existed among the native tribes enabled this practice to find a degree of social acceptance, though it was generally confined to relatively poor soldier-farmers who lived and worked in the nascent military colonies.
As contact between Chinese and Native American increased, so too did cultural cross-pollination. The Chinese broadly attempted to Sinicize the local populace, giving them Chinese names and teaching them the rudiments of Chinese culture and language. Small groups of Ohlone men were assigned a mentor of sorts – a gu-ge 古哥, or “Venerable Brother,” who helped them to choose a Chinese name and advised them on matters of culture and ritual. Acolytes relied on their gu-ge for advice, often asking questions that had nothing to do with Chinese culture and were simply the product of the young asking advice from the more sage and experienced. The custom eventually spread beyond its initial colonialist roots and became more generally implanted in Shu society. Indeed, it is from this tradition of mentorship by a gu-ge that the modern English verb google, meaning “to ask for information,” is derived, doubtless from when contact was first made between the Shu and English-speaking settlers of North America. Of course, not all cultural transmission during this period was from Chinese to Native American. Indeed, given the population of the two groups, at least as much native tradition became a part of the new society as the other way around. We will discuss the ritualized consumption of jimson weed in a future chapter of this narrative. For now, we turn to agriculture, a field in which the arriving Chinese colonists were, at first, very much at sea.
The learning curve involved in transitioning from a Chinese agricultural environment to a Californian one proved to be steep and challenging for the colonists. Many of the crops they were used to growing and had taken for granted were a poor fit for the soil and climactic conditions of their new home. Meanwhile, the local natives were largely hunter-gatherers, who could offer relatively little guidance when it came to the mechanics of large-scale farming. The Ohlone instructed the new residents how to live their ancient way of life – what seeds, greens and roots were appropriate to eat, where they could be found, and the season in which they ripened and were available for harvest. Acorns, as well, were a vital part of the Ohlone diet, and could be turned into a base for various kinds of porridges and gruels that provided the settlers with much of their sustenance during the early days of the Fuming Bay Colony's existence. Meanwhile, the settlers had brought some samples of crops they were more familiar with across the Pacific via the medium of shipboard gardens. It was thus that rice was introduced to California. The settlers also capitalized on the abundance of game to be found in California. The New World was, it seemed, a land of almost unimaginable abundance, and the earth and seas teemed with animals ranging from clams to bears that were unafraid of humans and were almost begging to be eaten.
As the colony's territory gradually expanded, the Guangde Emperor ordered exploration missions to be sent forth, both by land and by sea, so as to gain some idea of exactly how large the New World was, and what kind of territory it encompassed. Of the ships that had made the great trans-pacific crossing, several were fit only for scrap after the long voyage. Yet there were still more than enough great junks remaining to launch coastal exploration missions both north and southward in 1683. These voyages would put much of the West Coast of North America on the map, going as far north as what in our timeline would be known as Kodiak Bay and as far south as Baja California. They found no other settlers save the various Native American tribes that populated the area; the Jesuit mission of San Bruno, which had been founded in the same year the ships left Ningjing, was on the east side of the Baja peninsula and thus was unnoticed by the Shu explorers. Meanwhile, other exploration parties set out into the hinterlands of California, hoping to find fertile land and wealth for the Empire of the Dawn. The former was present almost beyond measure. Several parties traversed the Central Valley, surveying the area and noting its agricultural potential. The latter was in shorter supply, though one exploration party came closer than they would ever know to finding unimaginable wealth when they camped in an area that in another timeline would have been known as Sutter's Mill. As it so happened, they noticed nothing of interest in the area, and moved on the next day without incident. But even as the Shu were sending out exploration parties of their own, they were themselves soon to be the recipient of a voyage of discovery . . . (3)
NOTES
1- Terminology reminder: Fuming Bay is San Francisco Bay, Shu is the name of the colonists' state/dynasty, meaning “dawn,” the Guangde Emperor is Zheng Kezang's recently chosen regnal name.
2- I'll get more into detail on the mechanics of how this works and hopefully even include a rough map in a future post.
3- The Qing hear, “The Zhengs went to the New World,” and say, “Eh, whatever, at least they're not here.” The Spanish hear, “The Zhengs went to the New World,” and say, “Hey, dude, not cool. We own that place!”
NEXT – back across the Pacific again to Asia, where we'll take a look at the beginnings of the Scramble for Taiwan. English and Dutch and Spaniards, oh my! Note that updates will be more irregular from here on out due to real life interference, though the next one should hopefully be ready before too long. As always, thanks for reading.
