Changes.

Fireman, Janet

David Bowie wrote and recorded the song "Changes" in 1971. Perhaps he meant the mysterious lyrics to reflect his chameleon-like persona or technological changes in the music industry. Whatever the inspiration, countless listeners have found tender value in Bowie's admonition to "Turn and face the strange changes ... but I can't trace time."

Neither could Californians trace or control the changes time brought over the centuries. For Native Americans when Spaniards established missions, presidios, and towns, and for Californios of Spanish and Mexican descent when Americans conquered Alta California, achieved statehood, and built a burgeoning state, time did anything but stand still.

Change, of course, is what history is about, and in this issue, three essays encapsulate much of the chronology and many effects of sweeping social, political, economic, cultural, and personal changes that people--and time--brought about.

In his essay, "'With the God of Battles I Can Destroy Ali Such Villains': War, Religion, and the Impact of Islam on Spanish and Mexican California, 1769-1846," Michael Gonzalez asks how much, and in what form, the Muslim idea of sacred violence influenced the Franciscan priests and Spanish-speaking settlers who lived in California.

In "Courtship and Conquest: Alfred Sully's Intimate Intrusion at Monterey," Stephen G. Hyslop brings perspective to the complexities of personal relationships between conquered peoples and their conquerors, relating U.S. Army Lieutenant Sully's intimate social interactions with Californios, Native Americans, and Southerners during his long military career.

Phoebe Cutler, in "Joaquin Miller and the Social Circle at the Hights," provides a colorful sketch of the controversial and magnetic "Poet of the Sierras." Once a gold miner, Indian fighter, Pony Express rider, backwoods judge, and journalist, Miller envisioned his Oakland Hills outpost "the Hights"--built in the mid-1880s--as an artists' retreat. His vision became reality as California's literafi, artists, and political figures flocked to him and his eccentric ranch at the turn of the last century.

As if to demonstrate the incontroverfible permanence of change with the passage of time, this issue--vol. 90, no. I--is the last print edition of the journal, as decided by the Board of Trustees of the California Historical Society. An electronic issue, vol. 90, no. 2, will be published in April 2013 as the last appearance of California History, terminating its ninety-year existence.