Hugo Reid

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Hugo Reid was a resident of Los Angeles, California in 1852 who wrote a series of newspaper letters that described the culture, language, and modern circumstances of the local Gabrieliño Indians and criticized their treatment under the Franciscan mission system.

Born in 1809 or 1810^{[citation needed]} in Cardross, Scotland, Reid came to the United States as a sailor and jumped ship at Los Angeles in 1832. He married a Gabrieliño woman named Victoria and adopted her children, Maria and Felipe. His home, known as the Hugo Reid Adobe, is located on the former estate of Lucky Baldwin at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in what is now the town of Arcadia. He published a series of 22 letters in the Los Angeles Star during 1852 which provide an important ethnographic picture of the little–known Gabrieliño and were republished in book form several times. Reid died in Los Angeles on December 12 of that year.

Arcadia's Hugo Reid Elementary School is named after Reid.

Hugo Reid is also a part of the history of Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California. The geography of the area was reminescient of Scotland, so he named the reservoir Ivanhoe after the 1819 novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Many of the streets in the area are named after characters in that novel, such as Rowena and Herkimer. Other streets merely have Scottish names, like St. George.

[edit] References

Dakin, Susanna Bryant. 1939. A Scotch Paisano: Hugo Reid's Life in California, 1832-1851, Derived from His Correspondence. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Reid, Hugo. 1968. The Indians of Los Angeles County: Hugo Reid's Letters of 1852. Edited and annotated by Robert F. Heizer. Southwest Museum Papers No. 21. Los Angeles.