A history of California and an extended history of its southern coast counties, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I, Part 19

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1184

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The ayuntamiento was spoken of as Muy Ilustre (Most Illustrious), in the same sense that we speak of the honorable city council, but it was a much more dignified body than a city council. The members were required to attend their public functions "attired in black apparel. so as to add solemnity to the meetings." They served without pay, but if a member was absent from a meeting without a good excuse he was liable to a fine. As there was no pay in the office and its duties were numerous and onerous, there was not a large crop of aspirants for council- men in those days, and the office usually sought the man. It might be added that when it caught the right man it was loath to let go of him.

The misfortunes that beset Francisco Pantoja aptly illustrate the difficulty of resigning in the days when office sought the man, not man the office. Pantoja was elected fourth regidor of the ayuntamiento of Los Angeles in 1837. In those days wild horses were very numerous. When the pasture in the foothills was exhausted

they came down into the valleys and ate up the feed needed for the cattle. On this account, and because most of these wild horses were worthless, the rancheros slaughtered them. A corral was built with wings extending out on the right and left from the main entrance. When the corral was completed a day was set for a wild horse drive. The bands were rounded up and driven into the corral. The pick of the caballados were lassoed and taken out to be broken to the saddle and the refuse of the drive killed. The Vejars had obtained permission from the ayuntamiento to build a corral between the Cerritos and the Salinas for the purpose of corralling wild horses. Pantoja, being some- thing of a sport, petitioned his fellow regidores for a twenty days' leave of absence to join in the wild horse chase. A wild horse chase was wild sport and dangerous, too. Somebody was sure to get hurt, and Pantoja in this one was one of the unfortunates. When his twenty days' leave of absence was up he did not return to his duties of regidor, but instead sent his res- ignation on plea of illness. His resignation was not accepted and the president of the ayunta- miento appointed a committee to investigate his physical condition. There were no physi- cians in Los Angeles in those days, so the com- mittee took along Santiago Mckinley, a canny Scotch merchant, who was reputed to have some knowledge of surgery. The committee and the improvised surgeon held an ante-mortem in- quest on what remained of Pantoja. The com- mittee reported to the council that he was a physical wreck; that he could not mount a horse nor ride one when mounted. A native Californian who had reached such a state of physical dilapidation that he could not mount a horse might well be excused from official du- ties. To excuse him might establish a danger- ous precedent. The ayuntamiento heard the report, pondered over it and then sent it and the resignation to the governor. The governor took them under advisement. In the meantime a revolution broke out and before peace was re- stored and the governor had time to pass upon the case Pantoja's term had expired by limita- tion.

That modern fad of reform legislation, the

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referendum, was in full force and effect in Cali- fornia three-quarters of a century ago. When some question of great importance to the com- munity was before the ayuntamiento and the regidores were divided in opinion, the alarma publica or public alarm was sounded by the beating of the long roll on the drum and all the citizens were summoned to the hall of sessions. Any one hearing the alarm and not heed- ing it was fined $3. When the citizens were con- vened the president of the ayuntamiento, speak- ing in a loud voice, stated the question and the people were given "public speech." The ques- tion was debated by all who wished to speak. When all had had their say it was decided by a show of hands.

The ayuntamientos regulated the social func- tions of the pueblos as well as the civic. Ordi- nance 5, ayuntamiento proceedings of Los Angeles, reads: "All individuals serenading pro- miscuously around the street of the city at night without first having obtained permission from the alcalde will be fined $1.50 for the first of- fense, $3 for the second offense, and for the third punished according to law." Ordinance 4, adopted by the ayuntamiento of Los Angeles, January 28, 1838, reads: "Every person not having any apparent occupation in this city or its jurisdiction is hereby ordered to look for work within three days, counting from the day this ordinance is published; if not complied with, he will be fined $2 for the first offense, $4 for the second offense, and will be given com- pulsory work for the third." From the reading of the ordinance it would seem if the tramp kept looking for work, but was careful not to find it, there could be no offense and conse- quently no fines or compulsory work.

Some of the enactments of the old regidores would fade the azure out of the blue laws of Connecticut in severity. In the plan of gov- ernment adopted by the sureños in the rebellion of 1837 appears this article: "Article 3. The Roman Catholic Apostolic religion shall pre- vail throughout this jurisdiction; and any per- son professing publicly any other religion shall be prosecuted."

Here is a blue law of Monterey, enacted March 23, 1816: "All persons must attend mass

and respond in a loud voice, and if any persons should fail to do so without good cause they will be put in the stocks for three hours."

The architecture of the Spanish and Mexican eras of California was homely almost to ugliness. There was no external ornamentation to the dwellings and no internal conveniences. There was but little attempt at variety and the houses were mostly of one style, square walled, tile cov- ered, or flat roofed with pitch, and usually but one story high. Some of the mission churches were massive, grand and ornamental, while others were devoid of beauty and travesties on the rules of architecture. Every man was his own architect and master builder. He had no choice of material, or, rather, with his ease- loving disposition, he chose to use that which was most convenient, and that was adobe clay. made into sun-dried brick. The Indian was the brickmaker, and he toiled for his taskmasters, like the Hebrew of old for the Egyptian, making bricks without straw and without pay. There were no labor strikes in the building trades then. The Indian was the builder, and he did not know how to strike for higher wages, because lie received no wages, high or low. The adobe bricks were moulded into form and set up to dry. Through the long summer days they baked in the hot sun, first on one side, then on the other; and when dried through they were laid in the wall with mud mortar. Then the walls had to dry and dry perhaps through an- other summer before the house was habitable. Time was the essense of building contracts then.

There was but little wood used in house con- struction then. It was only the aristocrats who could indulge in the luxury of wooden floors. Most of the houses had floors of the beaten earth. Such floors were cheap and durable. Gilroy says, when he came to Monterey in 1814, only the governor's house had a wooden floor. A door of rawhide shut out intruders and wooden-barred windows admitted sunshine and air.

The legendry of the hearthstone and the fire- side which fills so large a place in the home life and literature of the Anglo-Saxon had no part in the domestic system of the old-time Califor- nian. He had no hearthstone and no fireside,

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

nor could that pleasing fiction of Santa Claus coming down the chimney with toys on Christ- mas eve that so delights the children of to-day have been understood by the youthful Califor- nian of long ago. There were no chimneys in California. The only means of warming the houses by artificial heat was a pan (or brasero) of coals set on the floor. The people lived out of doors in the open air and invigorating sun- shine; and they were healthy and long-lived. Their houses were places to sleep in or shelters from rain.

The furniture was meager and mostly home- made. A few benches or rawhide-bottomed chairs to sit on; a rough table; a chest or two to keep the family finery in; a few cheap prints of saints on the walls-these formed the furnish- ings and the decorations of the living rooms of the common people. The bed was the pride and the ambition of the housewife. Even in humble dwellings, sometimes, a snowy counterpane and lace-trimmed pillows decorated a couch whose base was a dried bullock's hide stretched on a rough frame of wood. A shrine dedicated to the patron saint of the household was a very essen- tial part of a well-regulated home.

Fashions in dress did not change with the sea- sons. A man could wear his grandfather's hat and his coat, too, and not be out of the fashion. Robinson, writing of California in 1829, says: "The people were still adhering to the costumes of the past century." It was not until after 1834, when the Hijar colonists brought the latest faslı- ions from the City of Mexico, that the style of dress for men and women began to change. The next change took place after the American con- quest. Only two changes in half a century, a garment had to be very durable to become un- fashionable.

The few wealthy people in the territory dressed well, even extravagantly. Robinson de- scribes the dress of Tomas Yorba, a wealthy ranchero of the Upper Santa Ana, as he saw him in 1829: "Upon his head he wore a black silk handkerchief, the four corners of which hung down his neck behind. An embroidered shirt; a cravat of white jaconet, tastefully tied; a blue damask vest; short clothes of crimson velvet; a bright green cloth jacket, with large

silver buttons, and shoes of embroidered 'deer- skin composed his dress. I was afterwards in- formed by Don Manuel (Dominguez) that on some occasions, such as some particular feast day or festival, his entire display often exceeded in value a thousand dollars."

"The dress worn by the middle class of fe- males is a chemise, with short embroidered sleeves, richly trimmed with lace; a muslin pet- ticoat, flounced with scarlet and secured at the waist by a silk band of the same color; shoes of velvet or blue satin; a cotton reboso or scarf; pearl necklace and earrings; with hair falling in broad plaits down the back." After 1834 the men generally adopted calzoneras instead of the knee breeches or short clothes of the last cen- tury.

"The calzoneras were pantaloons with the ex- terior seam open throughout its length. On the upper edge was a strip of cloth, red, blue or black, in which were buttonholes. On the other edge were eyelet holes for buttons. In some cases the calzonera was sewn from hip to the middle of the thigh; in others, buttoned. From the middle of the thigh downward the leg was covered by the bota or leggins, used by every one, whatever his dress." The short jacket, with silver or bronze buttons, and the silken sash that served as a connecting link between the calzoneras and the jacket, and also supplied the place of what the Californians did not wear, suspenders, this constituted a picturesque cos- tume, that continued in vogue until the con- quest, and with many of the natives for years after. "After 1834 the fashionable women of Cal- ifornia exchanged their narrow for more flowing garments and abandoned the braided hair for the coil and the large combs till then in use for smaller combs."t

For outer wraps the serapa for men and the rebosa for women were universally worn. The texture of these marked the social standing of the wearer. It ranged from cheap cotton and coarse serge to the costliest silk and the finest French broadcloth. The costume of the neo- phyte changed but ouce in centuries, and that

*Robinson, Life in California.

tBancroft's Pastoral California.

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was when he divested himself of his coat of mud and smear of paint and put on the mission shirt and breech clout. Shoes he did not wear and in time his feet became as hard as the hoofs of an animal. The dress of the mission women consisted of a chemise and a skirt; the dress of the children was a shirt and sometimes even this was dispensed.

Filial obedience and respect for parental au- thority were early impressed upon the minds of the children. The commandment, "Honor thy father and mother," was observed with an ori- ental devotion. A child was never too old or too large to be exempt from punishment. Stephen C. Foster used to relate an amusing story of a case of parental disciplining he once saw at Los Angeles. An old lady, a grandmother, was be- laboring, with a barrel stave, her son, a man thirty years of age. The son had done some- thing of which the mother did not approve. She sent for him to come over to the maternal home to receive his punishment. He came. She took him out to the metaphorical woodshed, which, in this case, was the portico of her house, where she stood him up and proceeded to administer corporal punishment. With the resounding thwacks of the stave, she would exclaim, "I'll teach you to behave yourself." "I'll mend your manners, sir." "Now you'll be good, won't you?" The big man took his punishment with- out a thought of resisting or rebelling. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it. It brought back feel- ingly and forcibly a memory of his boyhood days.

In the earlier years of the republic, before revolutionary ideas had perverted the usages of the Californians, great respect was shown to those in authority, and the authorities were strict in requiring deference from their constit- uents. In the Los Angeles archives of 1828 are the records of an impeachment trial of Don Antonio Maria Lugo, held to depose him from the office of judge of the plains. The principal duty of such a judge was to decide cases of dis- puted ownership of horses and cattle. Lugo seems to have had an exalted idea of the dignity of his office. Among the complaints presented at the trial was one from young Pedro Sanchez, in which he testified that Lugo had tried to ride

his horse over him in the street because he, Sanchez, would not take off his hat to the juez del campo and remain standing uncovered while the judge rode past. Another complainant at the same trial related low at a rodeo Lugo ad- judged a neighbor's boy guilty of contempt of court because the boy gave him an impertinent answer, and then he proceeded to give the boy an unmerciful whipping. So heinous was the offense in the estimation of the judge that the complainant said, "had not Lugo fallen over a chair he would have been beating the boy yet."

Under Mexican domination in California there was no tax levied on land and improve -- ments. The municipal funds of the pueblos were obtained from revenue on wine and brandy; from the licenses of saloons and other business houses; from the tariff on imports; from per- mits to give balls or dances; from the fines of transgressors, and from the tax on bull rings and cock pits. Then men's pleasures and vices paid the cost of governing. In the early '40s the city of Los Angeles claimed a population of two thousand, yet the municipal revenues rarely exceeded $1,000 a year. With this small amount the authorities ran a city government and kept out of debt. It did not cost much to run a city government then. There was no army of high- salaried officials with a horde of political heelers quartered on the municipality and fed from the public crib at the expense of the taxpayer. Poli- ticians may have been no more honest then than now, but where there was nothing to steal there was no stealing. The alcaldes and regi- dores put no temptation in the way of the poli- ticians, and thus they kept them reasonably honest, or at least they kept them from plunder- ing the taxpayers by the simple expedient of having no taxpayers.

The functions of the various departments of the municipal governments were economically administered. Street cleaning and lighting were performed at individual expense instead of pub- lic. There was an ordinance in force in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara and probably in otlier municipalities that required each owner of a house every Saturday to sweep and clean in front of his premises to the middle of the street. His neighbor on the opposite side met him half

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way, and the street was swept without expense to the pueblo. There was another ordinance that required each owner of a house of more that two rooms on a main street to hang a lighted lantern in front of his door from twilight to eight o'clock in winter and to nine in sum- mer. There were fines for neglect of these duties.

There was no fire department in the pueblos. The adobe houses with their clay walls, earthen floors, tiled roofs and rawhide doors were as nearly fireproof as any human habitation could be made. The cooking was done in detached

kitchens and in beehive-shaped ovens without flues. The houses were without chimneys, so the danger from fire was reduced to a minimum. A general conflagration was something un- known in the old pueblo days of California.

There was no paid police department. Every able-bodied young man was subject to military duty. A volunteer guard or patrol was kept on duty at the cuartels or guard houses. The guards policed the pueblos, but they were not paid. Each young man had to take his turn at guard duty.

CHAPTER XVI.

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION BY CONQUEST.

T HE Mexican war marked the beginning by the United States of territorial ex- pansion by conquest. "It was," says General Grant, "an instance of a republic fol- lowing the bad example of European mon- archies in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory." The "additional territory" was needed for the creation of slave states. The southern politicians of the extreme pro-slavery school saw in the rapid settlement of the northwestern states the downfall of their domination and the doom of their beloved insti- tution, slavery. Their peculiar institution could not expand northward and on the south it had reached the Mexican boundary. The only way of acquiring new territory for the extension of slavery on the south was to take it by force from the weak Republic of Mexico. The annexation of Texas brought with it a disputed boundary line. The claim to a strip of country between the Rio Nueces and the Rio Grande furnished a convenient pretext to force Mexico to hostili- ties. Texas as an independent state had never exercised jurisdiction over the disputed terri- tory. As a state of the Union after annexation she could not rightfully lay claim to what she never possessed, but the army of occupation took possession of it as United States property, and the war was on. In the end we acquired a large slice of Mexican territory, but the irony

of fate decreed that not an acre of its soil should be tilled by slave labor.

The causes that led to the acquisition of Cali- fornia antedated the annexation of Texas and the invasion of Mexico. After the adoption of liberal colonization laws by the Mexican gov- ernment in 1824, there set in a steady drift of Americans to California. At first they came by sea, but after the opening of the overland route in 1841 they came in great numbers by land. It was a settled conviction in the minds of these adventurous nomads that the manifest destiny of California was to become a part of the United States, and they were only too willing to aid destiny when an opportunity offered. The opportunity came and it found them ready for it.

Capt. John C. Fremont, an engineer and ex- plorer in the services of the United States, ap- peared at Monterey in January, 1846, and ap- plied to General Castro, the military comandante. for permission to buy supplies for his party of sixty-two men who were encamped in the San Joaquin valley, in what is now Kern county. Permission was given him. There seems to have been a tacit agreement between Castro and Fremont that the exploring party should not enter the settlements, but early in March the whole force was encamped in the Salinas val- ley. Castro regarded the marching of a body of armed men through the country as an act of

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hostility, and ordered them out of the country. Instead of leaving, Fremont intrenched himself on an eminence known as Gabilian Peak (about thirty miles from Monterey), raised the stars and stripes over his barricade, and defied Castro. Castro maneuvered his troops on the plain below, but did not attack Fremont. After two days' waiting Fremont abandoned his position and began his march northward. On May 9, when near the Oregon line, he was overtaken by Lieutenant Gillespie, of the United States navy, with a dispatch from the president. Gil- lespie had left the United States in November, 1845, and, disguised, had crossed Mexico from Vera Cruz to Mazatlan, and from there had reached Monterey. The exact nature of the dispatches to Fremont is not known, but pre- sumably they related to the impending war be- tween Mexico and the United States, and the necessity for a prompt seizure of the country to prevent it from falling into the hands of Eng- land. Fremont returned to the Sacramento, where he encamped.

On the 14th of June, 1846, a body of Amer- ican settlers from the Napa and Sacramento valleys, thirty-three in number, of which Ide, Semple, Grigsby and Merritt seem to have been the leaders, after a night's march, took posses- sion of the old castillo or fort at Sonoma, with its rusty muskets and unused cannon, and made Gen. M. G. Vallejo, Lieut .- Col. Prudon, Capt. Salvador Vallejo and Jacob P. Leese, a brother- in-law of the Vallejos, prisoners. There seems to have been no privates at the castillo, all offi- cers. Exactly what was the object of the Amer- ican settlers in taking General Vallejo prisoner is not evident. General Vallejo was one of the few eminent Californians who favored the an- nexation of California to the United States. He is said to have made a speech favoring such a movement in the junta at Monterey a few months before. Castro regarded him with sus- picion. The prisoners were sent under an armed escort to Fremont's camp. William B. Ide was elected captain of the revolutionists who remained at Sonoma, to "hold the fort." He issued a pronunciamiento in which he de- clared California a free and independent gov- ernment, under the name of the California Re-

public. A nation must have a flag of its own, so one was improvised. It was made of a piece of cotton cloth, or manta, a yard wide and five feet long. Strips of red flannel torn from the shirt of one of the men were stitched on the bottom of the flag for stripes. With a blacking brush, or, as another authority says, the end of a chewed stick for a brush, and red paint, William L. Todd painted the figure of a grizzly bear passant on the field of the flag. The na- tives called Todd's bear "cochino," a pig; it resembled that animal more than a bear. A five-pointed star in the left upper corner, painted with the same coloring matter, and the words "California republic" printed on it in ink, completed the famous bear flag.

The California republic was ushered into ex- istence June 14, 1846, attained the acme of its power July 4, when Ide and his fellow patriots burnt a quantity of powder in salutes, and fired off oratorical pyrotechnics in honor of the new republic. It utterly collapsed on the 9th of July, after an existence of twenty-five days, when news reached Sonoma that Commodore Sloat had raised the stars and stripes at Monterey and taken possession of California in the name of the United States. Lieutenant Revere arrived at Sonoma on the 9th and he it was who low- ered the bear flag from the Mexican flagstaff, where it had floated through the brief existence of the California republic, and raised in its place the banner of the United States.

Commodore Sloat, who had anchored in Monterey Bay July 2, 1846, was for a time un- decided whether to take possession of the coun- try. He had no official information that war had been declared between the United States and Mexico; but, acting on the supposition that Captain Fremont had received definite in- structions, on the 7th of July he raised the flag and took possession of the custom-house and government buildings at Monterey. Captain Montgomery, on the 9th, raised it at San Fran- cisco, and on the same day the bear flag gave place to the stars and stripes at Sonoma.

General Castro was holding Santa Clara and San José when he received Commodore Sloat's proclamation informing him that the commo- dore had taken possession of Monterey. Cas-

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tro, after reading the proclamation, which was written in Spanish, formed his men in line, and addressing them, said: "Monterey is taken by the Americans. What can I do with a handful of men against the United States? I am going to Mexico. All of you who wish to follow me, 'About face!' All that wish to remain can go to their homes."* A very small part of his force followed him.

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A history of California and an extended history of its southern coast counties, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I, Part 19

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company Number of Pages: 1184

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1184