USA > California > A history of California: the American period > Part 17
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While this episode undoubtedly left some bitter memories, and created an uneasy fear among the foreign residents of California, it was not at all in keeping with the general attitude of California officials toward American settlers. Some measures, it is true, were tentatively proposed to restrict the overland immigration, but these nearly all originated in Mexico, and found expression only in high sounding proclamations, or in decrees that the Californians would not, or could not enforce.
In fact the only proposals of any consequence that might have exerted serious influence upon the status of foreigners were a recommendation by Vallejo and Castro to purchase New Helvetia from Sutter, and a plan of the Mexican govern- ment to send an expedition into California to keep the activities of foreigners confined to proper bounds. The
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possession of Sutter's Fort, because of its strategic location, would have given the Californians an important check on overland immigration and an effective control of the foreign settlers in the Sacramento Valley. Similarly, a well- equipped, properly disciplined force of Mexican troops (if such a thing existed) might easily have dampened revolu- tionary ardor among the Americans, or at least kept it from blazing forth into action.
Neither of these measures, however, brought forth any practical results. The proposal to purchase New Helvetia was buried somewhere in the vast graveyard of the Mexican archives. And though an expedition was actually gotten under way by the central government to save California, it broke down before leaving Mexico under endless charges of corruption and mismanagement. And the vagabond troops of which it was composed (who would have been an aggravation instead of a help had they reached their destination) found ready employment under the standard of revolt which Paredes was just then raising against Herrera.
The Californians themselves, like the home government, made no practical efforts to check the growth of foreign domination. Juntas were held and wordy proclamations issued without number. But the frontiers remained un- guarded; and the settlers, after the Graham episode, did almost as they pleased. Naturally, however, the assumption of superiority on the part of foreigners, was resented by the California aristocracy. Thus, Guerrero evidently voiced a common sentiment, when he wrote Castro early in 1846 that the Americans apparently held the idea that because God made the world and them also, that what there was in the world belonged to them as sons of God. And Castro, probably in some heat, declared before an assembly at Monterey,
" these Americans are so contriving that some day they will build ladders to touch the sky, and once in the heavens they will change the whole face of the universe and even the color of the stars."
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Yet neither Guerrero nor Castro nor any one else put forth a definite effort to prevent the Americans from changing the destiny of California.
As has been said, the sovereignty of Mexico over California, as every one but the Mexicans saw, was at an end by 1846. She could no longer command the loyalty of her subjects there by force, nor hold it by affection. At the same time, Polk's second plan of acquiring California, through the initiative of native uprising or of peaceful separation from Mexico, had before it every prospect of success. At this juncture occurred the Bear Flag Revolt. This movement, though sometimes spoken of as a turning point in California destiny, was actually shorn of much of its importance by the outbreak of the Mexican War. Tradition, however, has given it a significance which cannot be ignored. To the popular mind, at least, it will probably always stand as the very embodiment of pioneer spirit and the decisive stroke by which California was saved to the United States.
The first participants in the revolt consisted of a handful of landholders in the Sacramento Valley, and a somewhat larger number of hunters and trappers from the same region. Less than thirty-five men took part in the initial phase of the movement; but back of these, lending them something more than moral support, stood John C. Frémont and the members of his well armed exploring expedition.
Even at this late date, however, it is impossible to say just what relations Frémont and his command sustained to the actual revolt. The question is probably the most hotly debated point in California history, nor is anything like unanimous agreement upon it ever likely to be attained. The facts, as nearly as can be determined, are these.
In the spring of 1845, Fremont, with a party of sixty-two men, six of whom were Delaware Indians, started from St. Louis on a third exploring expedition beyond the Rocky Mountains. The ostensible object of this undertaking was to discover the most feasible route from the Mississippi to the Pacific. But coupled with this purpose was an ever growing desire on Frémont's part to revisit California
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and to examine in more detail a country over which he had already become an ardent enthusiast.
The party reached Walker's Lake when winter was al- ready at hand. Food was none too plentiful, and the danger of becoming snow-bound in the Sierras led to a division of the company. Fifteen men under Frémont set out to cross the mountains to Sutter's; the main body of the expedition, under command of Joseph Walker, skirted the mountains southward, intending to cross from Owen's Valley into the San Joaquin through Walker Pass. It was understood that the two parties should come together again as soon as Frémont could procure supplies from Sutter's establishment and make his way to the southern end of the San Joaquin. The rendezvous was fixed at a stream known to the explorers as the "River of the Lake."
Crossing the Sierras without noteworthy incident, Fré- mont secured the needed supplies from the obliging Sutter and then hurried on to the appointed meeting place with the company under Walker. Reaching the banks of the King's River, which he took to be the stream agreed upon as the meeting place, and finding no signs of the other party, Frémont waited several days, vainly hoping for Walker's appearance, and then retraced his way to Sutter's. Leav- ing his men here with instructions to proceed later to Yerba Buena, Frémont accompanied Leidesdorff, the United States Vice-Consul, to Yerba Buena and Monterey. At Monterey he was entertained by Larkin, from whom he learned much concerning conditions in California.
On the 29th of January, while Frémont was still at Mon- terey, Prefect Manuel Castro pointedly inquired of Larkin what American soldiers were doing in the province without permission from the California officials.1 Frémont replied to Castro's communication in a frank, conciliatory man- ner, explaining that his expedition was purely scientific in its character and that most of his men had been left in
1 In his note Castro referred only to the members of Frémont's com- pany, which by this time was en- camped at Yerba Buena, and made
no reference to the larger party under Walker, whose presence in the prov- ince was as yet unknown to the Cal- ifornians.
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the unsettled interior of the province, while he and a few companions had come to Monterey merely to purchase badly needed supplies for a continuation of their explora- tions to Oregon. These assurances, which were afterwards reiterated to Alvarado, quieted, temporarily at least, the uneasiness of the Californians, and they accordingly gave Frémont permission to winter in the province, provided he kept his men away from the coast settlements.
While Frémont was thus occupying his time at Monterey, Walker and his command were encamped on the Kern river, many miles south of the King's, wondering what had be- come of their lost commander and the provisions he had gone in search of, when the two companies separated east of the Sierras. After three weeks of fruitless waiting, Walker then moved northward, expecting to find Frémont at Sutter's Fort.
Upon reaching the Calaveras River, however, Walker learned from a chance hunter that Frémont was in the Santa Clara Valley (whither he had gone from Monterey intending to return to the San Joaquin on another search for Walker); and here the two companies came together about the middle of February, 1846. The combined force then temporarily encamped on the Laguna rancho, south of San José. After only a short stay in this locality, the party began to move leisurely toward the coast; and after crossing the Santa Cruz Mountains by way of Los Gatos, went into camp in the Salinas Valley, some twenty or twenty-five miles from Monterey.
It is not certain what course Frémont intended to pursue from this point onward. There is some reason to believe that he planned to travel down the coast to Santa Barbara; or perhaps to spend a few weeks (until the Oregon route should be clear of snow) in the little valley of the Coast Range near Salinas, which had seemed so like paradise to the half starved immigrants of the Chiles-Walker party a few years before. But whatever his purpose, he seems to have had no thought that the presence of the company near Monterey would be construed as a violation of his under- standing with the California officials.
itiven dose Castro duet Col. of the mayleur army and commander in Chief of the department of Cal.
Fellow citizens & band of robbed com. manded by a laft of the Me! assim. ? Fremont, have , without respect to the buwe '& authorities of the Department daringly introduced hemmelig. with the country auto disobeyed the orders both of your Commander in Chief of of the Prefect of the district, bi which he may required to march, forth with out of of the unity of our
horton; + without answering chind litter i remain encamped at the farm "Natividad" from which he salling forth, wennmeting decredations, and making scandalous Okien misky. In the name of our matin counts. invite you to place youreally under my Immediate order it head quarting where we will prepare to lance the kleur which ( should it not be done) would destroy our tibusting + independence for which you nught always to ha eriface yourseliny, as will your friend a fellow citizen itand quantity at San Juan"
fr March 1246 Synes Jose Castro
CASTRO'S PROCLAMATION AGAINST FRÉMONT (From the Original Ms. in the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.)
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The Americans were surprised and considerably angered, therefore, when peremptory orders came from the authorities at Monterey to leave the province immediately, or take the consequences. Frémont, though perhaps technically in the wrong, refused to obey this blunt demand; and moving his camp to the top of a nearby hill, known as Hawk's Peak, pre- pared to resist whatever force the Californians might bring against him.
The expected attack, however, did not develop. There was a good deal of bluster and the mustering of a considerable force by the Californians. But inasmuch as the demonstra- tion was probably gotten up chiefly to satisfy the Mexican government, or to quiet the protests of the British Vice- Consul against the presence of the Americans in California, no actual hostilities took place. Frémont, after waiting some three or four days, withdrew under cover of darkness from his fortified position and started for Oregon by way of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento.2
While the Hawk's Peak affair in itself amounted to little, its results were most unfortunate. The distrust and antip- athy of Frémont's company toward the Californians were greatly increased; and the feelings of the latter were corre- spondingly ruffled and outraged. Among the American settlers in the Sacramento, also, the incident created much excitement, and it was persistently rumored that the govern- ment had planned to expel or seize all foreign residents in the province. In this sense, at least, the episode was one of the most direct causes of the Bear Flag Revolt.
Not long after the Hawk's Peak episode, a messenger from Washington reached Monterey. This was Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie of the United States Marine Corps, to whom reference has already been made as the bearer of a copy of Buchanan's dispatch to Larkin, and as a confidential agent of the American government. Though Gillespie had destroyed Buchanan's letter, he had brought most of his
2 On the opposite page appears a photographic reproduction of a trans- lation of Castro's proclamation
against Frémont. Neither the orig- inal nor a translation of the proclama- tion has before been published.
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other papers through unharmed. Among these was a packet of letters for Frémont from Senator Thomas H. Benton, Frémont's influential father-in-law.
After a stay of only two days at Monterey, Gillespie hastened on to Yerba Buena where he remained a short time with the American Vice-Consul, W. A. Leidesdorff, and then set out to overtake John C. Frémont. The latter, after reaching the San Joaquin, had moved northward at a leisurely pace, reaching the Klamath Lake region about the middle of May. Here Gillespie overtook the party, and besides delivering to Frémont the Benton letters, acquainted him with the nature of Larkin's confidential appointment and the purposes of the Polk administration, so far as Gillespie himself understood them.
It is not at all strange that the information and despatches brought by Gillespie caused a radical change in Frémont's plans. Instead of continuing his route to the Columbia, he resolved on an immediate return to California. This course was dictated by common sense and lay plainly in the line of duty. Incidentally, it coincided with Frémont's own desires; but had it been otherwise, he could scarcely have gone serenely on his way to Oregon, knowing that events, in which his government was vitally concerned, were rapidly coming to a crisis in California, and that his presence there might change the destiny of the province.
Frémont has been pretty severely handled by his critics for this abrupt return from Oregon. He himself testified that he was led to believe, through certain "enigmatic and obscure" passages in the letters from Benton-passages written, as he says, in a pre-arranged code-that California was in imminent danger of slipping into British hands and that the administration expected him to act on his own initiative to forestall such an eventuality.
Whether Frémont was right or wrong in this interpreta- tion of the situation is really immaterial. The true justifica- tion for his return to California lay not in what he read between the lines of Benton's letters; but in the simple fact that a trusted agent of the United States government, the
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confidential representative of the State Department and of the President himself, had travelled post-haste more than five hundred miles, from San Francisco to Oregon, through a dangerous and almost unbroken wilderness, to overtake the exploring party and urge its return to the Mexican province. Unless Gillespie made this journey for his health, or out of mere whim, or for some other ridiculous purpose, Frémont had no option in the matter. It was his unmistakable duty to turn back to California.
When Gillespie and Frémont reached the Sacramento, after a serious brush with the Klamath Indians, they encamped at the Marysville Buttes, above the junction of the Feather and Sacramento Rivers. Here rumors came to them of intended hostilities by the Californians against the American residents in the valley. There may or may not have been truth in these reports; but even if the intentions of the native leaders had been unfriendly, it is doubtful, owing to the confusion in the provincial government, if they could have made any serious move against the foreign settlers. Naturally, however, the Americans viewed the situation with a good deal of concern, especially as the hostile demonstration against Frémont in the Hawk's Peak affair was still vividly before them.
This uneasiness gave place to actual alarm when informa- rion, apparently authentic, spread through the valley that a company of two hundred and fifty Californians was advancing toward the Sacramento, burning houses, driving off cattle, and destroying the grain. In the face of this sup- posed danger, the scattered settlers in the valley hastily came together to effect a military organization. The natural rendezvous was Frémont's camp, where sixty or more well disciplined men already furnished the nucleus for an effect- ive resistance against any force the Californians might have at their command.
The position of Frémont in this emergency was sur- rounded by some embarrassment. Having learned probably as much as Gillespie himself knew of the plans of the admin- istration, and believing that California must be secured as
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quickly as possible to prevent its seizure by Great Britain (for in spite of much argument to the contrary Frémont was evidently sincere in this conviction), the American commander faced a difficult problem. If he took an active part in organizing a settler's revolt, he would not only lend the uprising the official sanction of the United States govern- ment; but would also lay himself open to severe censure, and perhaps punishment, in case the administration later dis- avowed the movement.
The other horn of the dilemma was equally serious. If the revolt collapsed because Frémont failed to support it, and the American settlers should be killed or driven out of the province-a fate Frémont evidently feared for them -not only would the blame for this rest upon his shoulders, but also the greater reproach, as he saw it, of standing irresolutely by while California passed out of the reach of the United States into the waiting hands of England.
Frémont's course in the emergency has been the object both of unreasonable criticism and of exaggerated praise. He did not save California by his presence in the Sacramento, nor did he take an active part in the first stages of the Bear Flag movement; but he did make the latter possible by giving it his moral support and by secret promises of aid if his assistance should be required. How far he was actually responsible for fomenting the revolt is one of those disputed points upon which there is no possibility of agreement. Putting all partisanship aside, and acknowledging that personal ambition probably played its part, the fair minded historian must still acknowledge that Frémont, viewing the situation in the light of what he knew of California condi- tions and believing that President Polk had determined upon the acquisition of California, pursued a perfectly natural and not altogether blameworthy course. Unfortu- nately, claims later made on his behalf were far beyond his actual performances, and his reputation suffered much in consequence.
The first hostile act of the Bear Flag uprising was the seizure of a band of horses which were being driven from
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Sonoma to the Santa Clara Valley for the use of General Castro. Rumor reached the Americans at Frémont's camp that these animals were to be employed in the threatened expedition against the settlers of the Sacramento. Encour- aged doubtless by Frémont, about a dozen men under the leadership of Ezekiel Merritt started out to intercept the drove. They succeeded, without the slightest difficulty, in surprising the small guard under Francisco Arce and took from them the greater part of the horses. These they brought back to Frémont's headquarters, which in the meantime had been moved farther down the Sacramento. No blood was shed in this encounter, nor were the Califor- nians aware that anything more serious than a robbery had taken place.
The next step was of more significance. Encouraged by their success against Arce and realizing that they had already gone too far for halfway measures, Merritt's com- pany turned their attention to the capture of Sonoma. Orig- inally established to check the Russian advance, this settle- ment, with the exception of New Helvetia which was only nominally under California control, had become the leading political and military center of the province north of Mont- erey. Sonoma's chief claim to importance arose from the fact that it was the home of Mariano G. Vallejo, in many respects the most dominant figure among the Californians. Toward Americans Vallejo had always shown the kindliest feeling, and was already pretty thoroughly committed to Larkin's plan of independence.
Under these circumstances, Vallejo and his fellow towns- men were naturally not anticipating any trouble with their American neighbors in the Sacramento. It was with the utmost surprise, therefore, that the General and his family awoke about dawn on the quiet Sunday of June 14th to find themselves surrounded by a band of thirty-three armed men, dressed for the most part in trapper's garb, and evi- dently come on hostile business. At first Vallejo had consid- erable difficulty in finding out what the Americans wanted; but through an interpreter he soon learned that they had
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come to make him prisoner and take possession of the town.
The leaders of the attacking force-Merritt, Semple, and William Knight-undertook to explain to Vallejo the pur- pose of the uprising and to arrange the terms of his capitula- tion. The conference, held in the prisoner's house, made such slow progress that the rank and file of the company outside grew impatient and deposed Merritt from command, electing John Grigsby in his stead. The new leader made no faster headway than the old, and William B. Ide was accordingly sent in to speed up the negotiations. When the latter entered the room, he says, he found most of the conferees too far gone for business. Vallejo's wine and aquardiente, taken on empty stomachs, had proved almost too much for the American commissioners. At last, however, the articles of capitulation were completed and signed. General Vallejo, his brother, Captain Salvador Vallejo, and Colonel Victor Prudon were sent as prisoners of war to Frémont's camp, under positive assurance that no harm should come to them or to their property.
In the meanwhile Ide was elected captain of the company in the place of Grigsby, who seems to have become some- what alarmed at the progress the movement was taking under his leadership; and the Republic of California was soon brought into being. As a first step in the creation of the new government, William Todd, an enthusiastic mem- ber of the revolution, designed the flag. This was made from a piece of unbleached cotton cloth, five feet long and three feet wide. In the upper left hand corner a five pointed star was roughly painted with red ink, while facing this stood the crude figure of a grizzly bear, which gave both the flag and the republic its familiar name. A strip of red flannel on the lower edge of the cotton and the words CALI- FORNIA REPUBLIC, done in red, completed the design.
When the flag had been completed, Ide prepared a proc- lamation in which he set forth the justification and pur- poses of the revolution. The next move was to organize a government. Nothing much could be done as yet in this
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direction, but a general statement of the principles of the movement was drawn up, which Ide evidently thought might serve as the basis for a more elaborate constitution later on.
So far the uprising had proceeded without bloodshed; but a few days after the taking of Sonoma, two Americans, Cowie and Fowler, were captured by a band of Californians and unceremoniously put to death. Whether this was the act of an individual or the result of official orders cannot be determined with certainty.3 It led, however, to unfor- tunate reprisals in which a few of Frémont's men, under Carson's command, ambushed and shot three rather in- offensive Californians.
As the movement progressed, the force under Ide re- ceived considerable reenforcement from settlers in the Sacramento and around San Francisco Bay. Frémont, having resigned his commission in the United States army, also openly joined the uprising, thus lending to it the effective support of his highly skilled company and strengthening the idea, already nearly universal, that the United States government was behind the whole affair. The Californians in turn were doing their utmost to subdue the revolt. It had been necessary first for Castro and Pico to compose their differences, which in fact had already reached the stage of civil war; and then, after issuing the appropriate proclamations, without which no Californian could com- mence a serious undertaking, to muster the inadequate provincial forces against the American revolutionists.
Castro, whose headquarters were fixed at Santa Clara, succeeded in putting an army of a hundred and sixty men into the field. These were divided into three divisions, only one of which-that lead by Joaquin De la Torre-ever made contact with the Americans. This was in the nature of a surprise skirmish which occurred between Petaluma and San Rafael. In it one of the Californians was killed by the American fire.
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