Chapter 3: Foundations of Human Activity

There were people living in California who spoke Hokan as early as 3000 B.C. Sometime later, although unknown exactly how, they were replaced by people who spoke a language called Tongva. Those people named the Los Angeles region Yaa.

When the Spaniards first arrived, there were already about 5,000 native people living around in the Los Angeles Basin.The Spaniards decided to colonize locations around California. Because the natives had already chosen the best sites to live on, the Spaniards had a lot of communication and trading going on when they were building their new settlements with the natives.The official date for the founding of Los Angeles being in September 4, 1781, with 44 settlers, known today as the Los Angeles Pobladores. As the city grew, it became a mix of Spaniards and Indians, many of the indians from a village named Yaanga.

California Indians

The 1846 Mexican American War led to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo  in 1847, which officially ceded California to the U.S. The available land, with the American belief of manifest destiny, plus the California  gold rush one year later in 1848 led to the quick American settlements of Los Angeles. It was then  where new minorities emerged in Los Angeles, including Chinese, Italian, French and Russians.

http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/historic/crespi.html