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Gc 979.402 L882W 1271364
M. L
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01095 6982
THE HERALD'S
HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES CITY
Calif.
1 ()
1
BY
Charles Dwight Willard,
DECEMBER, 1901. KINGSLEY-BARNES & NEUNER CO., PUBLISHERS, LOS ANGELES, CAL.
,
Copyrighted By CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD, December, 1901.
1271064
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO FLORENCE WILLARD BY HER FATHER.
-
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
PAGE
I
Sons of the Soil 9
II
The Edge of the Spanish Empire 18
III Via Crucis 28
IV V
How Governor Portola came to Los Angeles 38
The Banner of the Virgin 48
VI
The Pueblo Plan. 57
VII How Governor De Neve came to Los Angeles 66
VIII
The Roster of 1781 76
IX
The Mission System 87
x
Eighteenth Century Los Angeles 97 In the Spanish Province
106
XI XII XIII
Exit Spain 116
The Pueblo Begins to Grow 126
XIV
The Epoch of Revolutions 136
XV The Ruin of the Missions. 146
XVI XVII
The Foreigner Arrives 157
Local Events of Mexican Rule 168
XVIII The Pastoral Age in California 179
XIX
The Stars and Stripes 190
XX
The Americans Enter Los Angeles. 201
XXI The Last Revolution in Los Angeles 212
XXII Los Angeles Regained. 223
XXIII The Pueblo is made American 235
XXIV California Enters the Union 246
XXV The City Takes Shape. 257
XXVI The Beginning of Things 268
Contents.
XXVII Los Angeles at its Worst
279
XXVIII Between Old and New
289
XXIX In War Times 299
XXX
The Coming of the Railway
310
XXXI
The Epoch of the Boom.
322
XXXII
The Reorganization
333
XXXIII The Modern City 344
Index
355
PREFACE.
The career of a city contains as much good mate- rial, out of which an entertaining history may be con- structed, as does the life of an individual, or the de- velopment of a nation ; but, for some reason, it has come to pass in America that the preparation of city, or "local", history has usually fallen into the hands of schemers who exploit the "prominent" citizen for his biography, and throw in something of a narrative, merely as an apology for the book's existence. The volume thus produced is a huge unwieldy affair, that circulates only among the hundred or two victims, and is not read even by them, except as to the pages where each one finds the story of his life set forth in a flam- boyant and patronizing style. It not infrequently happens that in the history portion of these monstros- ities there will be found evidence of careful, conscien- tious work on the part of the (usually anonymous) writer, but it is buried under such a mass of rubbish, and the volume itself enjoys such a limited circula- tion, that the judicious reader grieves to see such good labor wasted.
The experience of Los Angeles in the matter of local history has been no different from that of other American municipalities. Of these biographical albums there has been no lack; they have come in cycles of every seven years. Two of these have been -as far as the history portion is concerned-consider- ably above the average standard. That of Thompson & West, written by J. Albert Wilson, and appearing in 1880, gave subsequent students cause of gratitude for the amount of valuable material gathered together and preserved. One published by the Chapman Com- pany in 1900 contains a history written by that con- scientious and devoted searcher in the local field, J. M. Guinn, Secretary of the Los Angeles Historical Society. Mr. Guinn's portion of the volume is an
Preface.
admirable piece of work, but the 780 pages of biog- raphy that accompany it contribute to the document a weight of ten pounds-and very little else.
The present book is an attempt to supply in conven- ient and portable shape the material facts in the history of Los Angeles city. It contains nothing in the form of paid or biographical matter (strange that such a statement should be needed !), and it is offered for sale at the bookshops on its merits as a book. The writer lays no claim to any great amount of original research, his work being chiefly that of collecting, arranging and presenting in logical order the estab- lished facts. As the volume employs only 80,000 words to cover a period of nearly a century and a half, there is not much opportunity for detail work. It is, however, carefully indexed.
The work was undertaken by the writer partly on the suggestion of Mr. R. H. Chapman of the Los Angeles Herald, and it was published during the months from July to December (1901) in the Sunday magazine of that excellent journal. It is for that reason called the Herald's History of Los Angeles.
The writer desires to express his thanks to the fol- lowing : Miss Anna B. Picher of Pasadena, who read the manuscript, and assisted in collecting the pictures, and whose advice and suggestions were of great value; Homer P. Earle of the Stanford Faculty, who also read the manuscript ; Mrs. J. D. Hooker, whose beauti- ful collection of Mission photographs (never before published) were placed at the author's service ; Miss Jones, librarian, and Miss Beckley, her assistant ; Harry E. Brook, W. S. Hogaboom, Miss Bertha H. Smith, J. M. Guinn, D. O. Anderson, G. G. Johnson, C. C. Pierce, and Putnam & Valentine.
Photo by Maude
ROCKS ON CATALINA FROM WHICH INDIAN STONE UTENSILS HAVE BEEN CUT
CHAPTER I.
SONS OF THE SOIL.
HE original name of Los Angeles was Yang-na, and its population consisted of about 300 human creatures barely above the animal plane. They were called Indians, a general term bestowed by the discoverers of this continent upon all aborigines, although those in Los An- geles bore no more resemblance to the brave and intellectual Iroquois and Tuscaroras than the Turk does to his fellow-European in Lon-
don. They were undersized and squat in stat- ure, of a dingy brown color, with small eyes, flat noses, high cheek bones and large mouths. The general cast of their features was Asiatic rather than Indian, and although the trivial character of their institutions, and the meager- ness of their language makes it quite impos- sible to classify them ethnologically, it is evi- dent that they are more nearly related to the Alaskan and Aleutian tribes that crossed from Asia when the northern rim of the continent was yet unbroken by the sea, than to the dis- tinctively American Indian of the eastern coast and the interior valleys.
The center of Yang-na was somewhere about the corner of Commercial and Alameda streets and it straggled south as far as First
10
History of Los Angeles.
street, and north to some point near Aliso. California Indian villages had a habit of creep- ing about, due to a peculiar, but, on the whole, commendable practice of their residents. The huts were small, insubstantial affairs, con structed of light poles, bound together and in- terlaced with twigs and tules. The dwellings of the more fastidious were sometimes rough- ly plastered with mud. Now when one of these habitations was completely overrun with parasitical insects of all sorts the house- holder would order his wife to fill the place with dry leaves and branches, and, having himself secured a torch from the vanquech, or temple, where the embers smouldered contin- ually, but where women were not admitted, he would then set fire to the house and cre- mate its many-legged inhabitants. A new dwelling was presently erected in the vicin- ity of the old one; sometimes it was built on the same spot, as soon as the ashes were cooled.
There were from 25 to 30 of these Indian villages scattered about Los Angeles county, the largest being at San Pedro or Wilmington, which was said to contain 500 people. Prob- ably 4000 of the aborigines were to be found in the district bounded by the mountains, the sea, and the San Gabriel river, this being one of the most thickly settled portions of the state. Each village was a tribe in itself, pos- sessing its own chief, its specific manners and
11
Sons of the Soil.
customs, and, in many cases, its own individ- ual language. There were not many of the missionaries that took pains to study the In- dian tongue, but one who did so declared that there were seventeen absolutely distinct lan- guages in Alta California, besides several hun- dred different dialects, some of the latter be- ing, in effect, separate languages. A few hun- dred words comprised the whole of their vo- cabulary, and their talk seemed to the Span- iards to be made up of gruntings and slob- berings.
The people of Yang-na were probably on friendly terms with the people of the neigh- boring villages-at Pasadena, San Gabriel, Cahuenga and Clearwater. They were too timid and too indolent to fight unless the occa- sion was urgent. When some foreign tribe or combination of tribes undertook to enter and seize their lands, they would fight like rats in a trap, for to leave their homes meant death. They had bows and arrows that were well made, and their marksmanship seemed to the Spaniards extraordinary, but it was probably no better than that of most savages. There were sometimes bitter feuds between adjoin- ing tribes that lasted for many generations, but actual conflict seems to have been rare, a peculiar ceremonial of cursing and extrava- gant threats being substituted, as less danger- ous and perhaps quite as gratifying. Captured enemies after a real battle were put to death with dreadful tortures.
12
History of Los Angeles.
Chieftainship was hereditary, and carried with it the power to practice polygamy, which, considering the extremely fragile nature of the marriage vow, must have been of little ad- vantage, even from the savage point of view, except that it gave the chief more household drudges, and allowed him to maintain a higher degree of dignity. The older men of the vil- lage were the chief's counselors, and met with him in the temple to discuss questions of state, which latter consisted, for the most part, in setting the date for the next general rabbit hunt, and arranging for the initiation of some newly grown-up youth into the tribe. Decis- ion on many of these matters was likely to be left to the sorcerers, who formed a distinct aristocratic class, quite as powerful as the chief himself, and passed down their crude and disgusting rites from one generation to an- other. These were the spiritual guides and physical guardians of the tribe, and it is diffi- cult to say which was the worse, their religion or their therapeutics. The primeval curse of the savage lies not so much in his poverty as in his superstition-in the unfortunate perver- sions of his vacant mind.
The head of their scheme of religious be- lief was a demi-god named Chinigchinich, from whom the order of priests or sorcerers was descended. Most of the legends connect- ed with this being have been transmitted to us through the memoranda left by Padre Ger-
9
INDIAN BASKET WEAVER
Copyrighted by Maude
13
Sons of the Soil.
onimo Boscana, who lived at San Juan Capis- trano during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, but the later historic criticism has de- cided that either the good father drew some- what on his imagination, or else he was im- posed upon by the Indians from whom he se- cured his alleged facts. The close resemblance of the cosmogony which he outlines to that of the ancient Greeks does not occur in any other savage religion, and the delicate strain of transcendentalism that runs through the leg- ends, as the padre presents them, is entirely out of keeping with the known limitations on the Indians' intellect. The practical worship of this divinity consisted of dances and slow rhythmical jumpings about the sacred place or vanquech. The sick were treated with lugu- brious incantations, to which were added some simple remedies. Rheumatism was treated with blisters made by nettles. Inflammation was met by blood-letting and the fever patient received a huge bolus of wild tobacco. The sweathouse was applied for lumbago, and also as a general tonic, and to get rid of vermin.
The male inhabitants of Yang-na went en- tirely naked, when the weather was warm, and even on the coldest days of the year the only garment likely to be worn was a cloak of badly-tanned rabbit skins. The women were partially covered, and were not without some sense of modesty. Paint was liberally used on the bodies of both sexes. As the houses were
14
History of Los Angeles.
not built to withstand the wind and rain, these people must have suffered to some extent from inclement weather, although not as severely as the savages in less favored climates. Mor- tality among them bore a close approximation to the birth rate, and the population of Yang- na varied little in number from year to year, or, for that matter, from century to century. The check on increase lay, however, not so much in death from disease as in prospective famine, which always operates as a natural de- terrent on births among savage peoples. It
must be remembered that this region is by no means luxuriant in its natural state. It does not teem with animal and vegetable life as the tropics do. Its rainfall is uncertain, and its soil not extraordinarily rich. The California Indian sowed nothing and cultivated nothing. If, through the graciousness of nature, he was nevertheless permitted to reap, he had not even the judgment carefully to bestow what he gathered, but after gorging himself to re- pletion, he allowed the remainder to go to waste. He found various edible seeds, among them wild barley. He soaked and baked the roots of the flag. Acorns he dried and ground to powder, and filtered out the bitter by allow- ing water to trickle through. This served him as a kind of flour, but when the Spaniards tried it, in some of their starving times, it made them very ill. The Indians killed deer, coy- otes, squirrels and snakes for food, and they
15
Sons of the Soil.
caught fish. The flesh was eaten raw, or near- ly so. Grasshoppers and even grubworms were devoured in dry years.
The Indian man looked upon himself as a hunter and warrior; any other occupation than these-unless he was a sorcerer and prac- ticed medicine-he regarded as beneath his dignity. At rare intervals he would go with the tribe on a short expedition in search of seeds and acorns, but that was rather in the nature of a civic function, and was preliminary to a special feast. The daily round of food was supposed to be provided by the women, who went on long marches over the fields and through the woods, laboriously hunting where others had already gleaned before them. She ground the acorns in a stone mortar, and rolled the seeds on a metate. She built the fire, cooked the cakes, and then went to summon her husband, who was drowsing in the warm sunshine, or playing "takersia" in the level plain near the village.
The games and amusements were restrict. ed to the men, although women participated in some of the semi-religious dances. The favor- ite pastime, which is named above, was played in a space about 30 feet square. One man rolled a ring about three inches in diameter across the course, and another, his opponent in the sport, undertook to throw a wand five feet long through it, as it rolled. If he succeeded in doing so, without stopping the ring, he was given one point. Three points constituted the
16
History of Los Angeles.
game. Another favorite pursuit was to knock a small, hard, wooden ball several hundred yards with a stick that had a knob at the end, which would seem to provide the modern game of golf with an ancient though none too credit- able origin. It is said the players grew so ex- cited at times over this pursuit that they would even stake their wives on the achieve- ment of a good score, which, considering the special utility of the creatures, would indicate a remarkable degree of enthusiasm for the game.
The people of Yang-na had no form of writing nor hieroglyphics. Their artifects are of limited variety and simple construction, and are all of the stone age. One of the finest col- lections of these ever gathered may be seen in the west gallery of the Chamber of Com- merce in Los Angeles. It is the work of Dr. F. M. Palmer, and was obtained, for the most part, in the Channel islands, where the natives were more energetic and ingenious than on the mainland. A careful examination of these six large cases of artifects, which were gath- ered and arranged with the trained judgment of the ethnologist, while it recalls the extreme simplicity of the life led by our predecessors, at the same time impresses us with astonish- ment at their patience and skill in working so difficult a substance as stone.
Dirty, ignorant and degraded as the Cali- fornia Indian was, there are still some things to be said in his favor. His first behavior to-
17
Sons of the Soil.
ward his white visitor was that of the kindly host, offering him such food and shelter as he had at his command. This seems to have been done not through fear, but in good humor and admiration. Christianized Indians testi- fied afterwards that when they first saw the Spaniards they believed them to be gods. A rude shock to this idea came when they be- held the strangers wantonly killing the birds, for these poor savages argued that no power which could create life would wish thus to de- stroy it. Only when driven to extremity by re- peated outrage did the Indian attack the sol- diery, and the padres traveled about among them without fear.
It is interesting to consider to what extent the condition of these people-degraded even below the average of their kind-was due to climatic environment. The California Indian did not build a warm wigwam, because few days in the year were inclement; and he did not cultivate the soil, nor store away grain, be- cause there was no season, like the eastern winter, when nature entirely deserted him. His immediate successor, the Spaniard, fol- lowed the same easy and dreamful life, not- withstanding the many centuries of civiliza- tion that had been placed to his credit; and it yet remains to be seen what effect the eternal spring softness of this climate will have on the life and character of the Anglo-Saxon, when it comes to the test of successive genera- tions.
CHAPTER II.
THE EDGE OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE.
HEN the fact for which Columbus had contended-that the earth was a globe-became finally established in men's minds, and navigators from all the leading European nations were out on the ocean, discovering and claim- ing strange lands, his holiness the pope, the senior power of Christendom and the represen- tative of Peace on Earth, endeavored to settle all disputes over the titles to new territory by dividing the world with a great meridian circle drawn one hundred leagues west of the Azores. All the globe west of the line was to belong to Spain, and all the globe east of it was to go to Portugal. This arrangement, which had at least the advantage of extreme simplicity, was somewhat disturbed by the English, Dutch and French, who took possession of the Eastern portion of the North American continent, and of a few islands here and there; but the pious and adventurous Spaniards certainly did their best toward carrying out the pope's program. During the sixteenth century they overran nearly all of South America, and the islands of the Mexican gulf; and on the northern conti- nent they set up a stable government in Mex- ico, and by exploration and to some extent by
19
The Edge of the Spanish Empire.
actual occupation they secured control of about two-thirds of the present area of the United States. Whatever may have been the mistakes and the misfortunes of that country since those days, Spain is entitled to rank in history as the discoverer and the conqueror of the new west- ern world.
The history of California begins in the his- tory of Mexico, for, of all the explorers that visited the state prior to its colonization, only one, Sir Francis Drake, came from European waters; the others came up from Mexico. And the settlement of the country, which was finally undertaken with the authority of Spain, was ac- complished through Mexico, of which country California, upper and lower together, consti- tuted a province.
Hernando Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, landed at Vera Cruz in 1519, and within a few years had established a government that was felt from the isthmus to the Rio Grande. In 1524 he describes California in a report to the king of Spain, as an island of great wealth, abounding in pearls and precious gems. It is inhabited, he says, by women only. The origin of this strange idea undoubtedly lay in the ro- mance, "Las Sergas de Esplandian," which was published in Spain about 1510, and which seems to have enjoyed a run of popular favor, much as a successful novel might in these days. It is purely a work of fiction, and the writer de- scribes his imaginary island which is called California, as located somewhere to the right of
20
History of Los Angeles.
India. This island, the story says, is entirely peopled with black women, having a queen named Califia. They use no metal but gold. Copies of this work undoubtedly found their way across the Atlantic, and formed, at last, the basis of one of those persistent rumors of wealth that floated about the ears of the Span- iards, and led them on into the wilderness. In the case of California, the story of gold hap- pened to be true, but it was not for the Span- iards to profit by it.
Up to the year 1862, the origin of the name California was the basis of a great deal of learned discussion. Many explanations were offered and imaginary etymologies were sup- plied for the word. It remained for Edward Everett Hale, the author of "The Man Without a Country," to set all doubts at rest, and trace the name to its veritable source in the romance, "Las Sergas."
In 1534 Cortes sent an expedition in search of the gold of this wonderful island. The ves- sels were skirting the mainland, along the gulf of Lower California, when a mutiny broke out. A part of the company seized one of the ships, and, crossing to the peninsula, landed at a point about ninety miles north of Cape San Lucas, where afterwards a Spanish settlement was lo- cated and named La Paz. The leader in this affair was Fortuno Ximenes, who is entitled to be recorded as the discoverer of Lower Cali- fornia. A year later Cortes came up the gulf himself, and, landing at La Paz, formally took
CORTES RESTRAINING HIS SOLDIERS
From the Coronel Collection
21
The Edge of the Spanish Empire.
possession of the country. Four years later, in 1539, he sent Ulloa with orders to sail around the island, as it was supposed to be, and to dis- cover, if possible, the passage, back to Atlantic waters. Just as the English, French and Dutch navigators, working along our eastern coast, were constantly on the lookout for the fabled "Northwest Passage," which would give them a shorter way across to India, so the Spaniards on the Pacific coast made their way into every bay and river mouth, hoping always to discover the "Straits of Anian," which were recorded on all the charts of the time as crossing this con- tinent somewhere to the north of the limit of exploration.
Ulloa did not find the desired passage, but he came to the head of the gulf, and explored the pearl fisheries, which, for over two hundred years afterwards, enriched the Spanish court favorites to whom they were granted as mo- nopolies. He came back to Cape San Lucas, and worked north on the western coast to the middle of the peninsula.
In the year that Cortes returned to Spain, 1540, the viceroy, Mendoza, sent two vessels under Alarcon to the head of the gulf, and they managed to sail some distance up the Colorado river. It is not improbable that Alarcon came near enough to California to catch a glimpse of the country, and he is regarded by some writ- ers as the discoverer of the state.
A great expedition had been planned by Mendoza and Alvarado to go up the Colorado
22
History of Los Angeles.
in search of the treasure which was supposed to exist somewhere in the interior, but the re- turn of some of the people who had explored this region dissipated the viceroy's hopes in that direction. He had the fleet that had been prepared for this scheme still on his hands, and more to keep it busy than for any definite pur- pose, he sent Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a navi- gator whose bravery had been tested in many shipwrecks and battles on the Spanish Main, with instructions to sail up the California coast as far north as practicable, keeping always a sharp lookout for the "Straits of Anian." He had two boats, the San Salvador and the Vic- toria, short, top-heavy affairs, on which no modern sailor would risk his life. With these he set sail from Navidad, on the western coast of Mexico, June 27, 1542, just fifty years after the discovery of America.
Cabrillo is the Christopher Columbus of California. When he passed Cedros island, which is about the middle of the peninsula, he entered upon a stretch of waters as full of strange and terrible possibilities as those that lay before the intrepid Genoese when he went forth into the broad Atlantic with his three little boats. For all that Cabrillo knew the sea on which he sailed might presently terminate in a huge sink or maelstrom, and the shores where he was expected to land and make ex-' plorations might be peopled with hideous mon- sters. The utter commonplaceness of the events of his voyage makes it seem a small achieve-
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