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The native peoples who inhabited the San Diego region influenced another group of migrants who came here in 1769, the Spanish speaking settlers. The natives provided the labor force that built the Spanish and Mexican missions, presidios and ranchos. The native Indians contributed elements of their language to the newcomer's description of the topography and intermixed with the Mexican Spanish to form regional dialects. Their violent resistance to enslavement by Spanish and Mexican officials changed the Spanish crown's expansionist plans. The minority of native peoples who were forced by circumstance to be subjects were required to help raise the food and the children of the Spanish and Mexican settlers. Because of class prejudices farming and domestic service was seen by the Spanish as Indian work. The native knowledge of medicinal plants and uses of herbs added to the folklore of the new settlers. Some natives intermarried and others were raped by the Spanish and Mexican settlers. Their children, mestizos of the frontier, had a mixed cultural legacy. Indeed because most of the Spanish and Mexican settlers were mestizos or mulatos from southern Mexico, and because Spanish surnames and language became common among many of the local Indians, it was hard to tell them apart. By the nineteenth century the native peoples of San Diego had become part of the visible and invisible Hispano-Indio culture.

The native peoples of San Diego have their own historical and cultural identity, separate from that of Chicanos. The prolonged history of Indian people's conflict and coexistence with the Spanish speaking settlers requires that we start with the history of indigenous peoples.