Wilson, Benjamin Davis (1811–1878)

Benjamin D. Wilson was an early rancher in California, the mayor of Los Angeles, and an Indian agent working with the California Indians. Wilson originally hailed from Tennessee. He came to California with the Rowland-Workman Expedition, the first large group of emigrants to enter California using an eastern land route. They came to California on the Old Spanish Trail.

In California, Wilson married into a rich and prominent family, which allowed him to acquire vast acreage of land. His ranch covered the entire area of what is present-day Riverside, California. In 1851, Wilson was elected as the mayor of Los Angeles, a post that he held for two years through 1852. After relinquishing that position, Wilson was named as an Indian Affairs agent dealing with the California Indian situation.

Although it is not common knowledge, the territory that falls within the current borders of California contained more Indians and Indian tribes than any state in the Union before California was acquired from Mexico. However, by the 1850s, the California Indian population had dwindled. Benjamin Wilson acted as an advocate for the Indians' rights, and his Report on California Indians, 1852, was written to “secure peace and justice to the Indians.” He saw the problems that the Spanish mission system had created, and he was well versed in the problems facing both the whites and the Indians as they tried to interrelate. He argued that land should be set aside for the Indians, and he wanted a reservation system set up for the California Indians. To preserve Indian rights and livelihood, 18 treaties were negotiated between the government and the Indians in California. If the U.S. Congress had ratified these treaties, more than 8 million acres of land would have been reserved for the Indian tribes.

[Page 687]Unfortunately, despite the efforts of their ally, Wilson, Congress never ratified the treaties, and by the time that a real effort was made to accommodate the Indians, all of the good land was gone. Around 1905, concern grew over the landless California Natives. The Indians were placed on the poorest of the poor land available, and they were isolated from mainstream society.

Benjamin Wilson died in 1871, and he was buried in the Church of Our Savior Cemetery in San Gabriel, California, but his report on the California Indians was later turned into a book. Editor John Walton Caughey put out The Indians of Southern California in 1852: The BD Wilson Report and a Selection of Contemporary Comment in 1995. It displays, through Wilson's report, the earliest encounters between white Americans and their Indian neighbors in California. It further gives good accounts about the nature of life in southern California during the mid-19th century.