The Californios were the original Spanish-speaking settlers of Alta California. By the 1870s they had become a conquered and dominated population as a result of the westward expansion of the United States. In that same decade the Californios were approached by agents of Hubert Howe Bancroft, a wealthy San Francisco book dealer and publisher, asking them to narrate recollections of their past in Alta California as part of a research project seeking to assemble all available information and documentation on California history. These dictated recollections are known today as testimonios.