USA > California > A picture of pioneer times in California, illustrated with anecdotes and stores taken from real life > Part 5
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once out of town and hang him to the first tree that came in their way, but others urged to wait until they should hear that the remains of Foster and his vaquero were found, thus making sure of Mariana's guilt. Mariana protested innocence, and he had many friends in San Jose who besought moderation in his behalf. He was finally lodged in jail and safely guarded that night by the men who had arrested him. The next day he was taken out for examination before some judge or justice of the peace, and duly committed for trial; but, after his examination, on his way back to the jail, he made his escape from the officers, and was never recaptured. When my friend Riddle told me this story, he insisted that Mariana's escape was connived at by some of the San Jose officials, for which he said they were well paid. I have since been told that this charge was unjust; but what the truth is I cannot pretend to say. When the people of San Joaquin heard of Mariana's escape they were furious, and denounced the San Jose sheriff and his officials in no measured terms. In the excitement that ensued, they rushed to the jail and, taking out the vaquero, hanged him forthwith, in violation of the promises made him.
Mr. Patrick Breen, a pioneer of 1846 or '47 from the State of Missouri, and who lived for many years in San Juan, Monterey county, where he has left a well raised and prosperous fam- ily to perpetuate his good name, related to me another circum- stance that will further illustrate the character of those days. It is now over sixteen years since Mr. Breen told me the story, so I do not pretend to use his language, but in substance it was as follows :
MR. BREEN'S STORY.
Very early one morning in the Summer of 1851, I was walking along the corridor in front of the old Mission building that joins the Mission Church, in San Juan. As I came to the west end of the building, I heard deep groans in one of the old dark rooms that opened on the corridor. The door was partly open, so I en- tered to ascertain the cause of the moans, or groans, I heard so plainly. In the back room I found a man, lying on a miserable bed, apparently in great pain. On a seat near the bed sat a very old woman, looking more like an Indian than a Californian. She was dark and shriveled, yet her eyes were bright and had not a bad expression. I addressed the old woman politely in the lan-
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guage of the country, asking what was the matter with the sick man, and if he was some friend or relative of hers. She answered, politely, that he was no relation of hers, but be was a sick coun- tryman, and she came to see if she could help him in any way. The man now turned his eyes towards me for a moment, and I thought there was almost a fierce light in them. He then beck- oned the woman to draw near. She did so, and leaned over him with her ear close to his lips. In a husky whispering, which I heard plainly, however, he said : " Tell that man to go away ; he is a cursed American." I did not pretend to hear, but waited for the old woman to speak. She turned to me and said that the sick man requested to be left alone. There was something about the appearance of the man that struck me strangely. He had evidently once been a fine looking man, but now his flesh had wasted from his frame; his eyes were large, bright and fierce, but death shone plainly in them. My curiosity was aroused to know something more about him ; so, as I turned to go, without speaking, I beckoned the woman to follow me to the corridor. She did so, and when there I asked her who the man was. She said : " It is no use now for any one to know, for he is dying ; but even now I dare not tell you until he is dead. He has been a terri- ble, bad man ; but now it is all over. In a day or two more he will no longer be of this world. He once helped me when I was in sore need of help. So I am bound to do all I can for him in return." "Has Padre Anzer been to see him?" said I. " No. When I spoke to him of calling the Padre, he grew perfectly wild, so that I could hardly hold him in bed. He said such ter- rible things that frightened me, so that I have given up all hope. Oh !" said the old woman, clasping her hands in horror, " the devil surely owns him already, and will not let the Padre near him." I asked her if she had anything for him to eat, or money to get it with. She said he had not a dollar, and that he had asked her for some baker's bread, but that she had no money to get it, so she got him some of her home-made cakes, and fed them to him with a little milk she got from my wife. I then gave her a little money, and told her to tell the man that I would like to see lıim, as I was a sort of a doctor, and might do him good, and would charge him nothing. The woman shook her head, and said : " Oh ! he hates all Americans ; I do not think there is any use in asking him." I told her to try, anyway, and tell him that I was an Irishman. "Ah !" said she, " he hates
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them, too ; but I will try." That afternoon the woman came and told me that the sick man would see me. I went two or three times to see him, but did not try to enter into any conversation. I contented myself with doing a few things for his comfort, and my wife gave him a couple of new flannel shirts, clean sheets and a blanket for his bed. He seemed to be sinking away in a low fever. I gave the old woman some lemons to make the necessa- ry cooling drink. On the second day, just as I was leaving his room, he told the woman to call me back. When I returned, he pointed to a chair near the bed, and then motioned to the woman to leave the room. When we were alone he asked me abruptly why I took any interest in him, and why I did not let him die like a dog. I said he was a human being, like myself, and I thought it was only right to relieve his sufferings, if I could do so ; and that that was the only reason I took any inter- est in him. " Have you any idea who I am?" "None in the least," said I, "nor do I care." " Well," said he, with a grim half smile on his face, "if you knew that you would not stay in the same room with me for one moment." As he spoke, there was a fearful, almost devilish expression in his eyes. I involun- tarily shrank away from him ; but, recovering myself, I said in a careless tone : "No matter what you have been, your day is now closing, and I have no right to be your judge, and I would like to help you in any way I could to die a penitent death." " A penitent death ! a penitent death !" he repeated, over and over, with a sort of a chuckling laugh. "There is no repentance for me now ; it is too late. It is all over. Hell is ready to receive me. Every night I see the fiends, who are to plunge me in, waiting for me. Oh, yes ; my hell has commenced, and your
talk of repentance is humbug." I now thought I would assume a bolder tone, and see what effect it would have, so I said : " When you were a child you were baptized a Catholic Christian; why don't you send for Padre Anzer, and confess your sins to him, and ask him to pray for you that God would forgive you, and drive away those fiends you see near you now; and, perhaps, you would escape liell, after all ?" The Mexican rose up, in a half sitting posture, leaning on one elbow, while he stared wildly at me for two or three minutes. Then he said, " Why do you talk in that way ? You have the American reli- gion, and you do not believe in priests, and yet you tell me to send for Padre Anzer. I see you are amusing yourself with my
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misery, and you think I am too big a fool to see it." "You are mistaken, hombre. I believe, as all Christians do, no matter what their denomination, that when we know ourselves guilty of great sins, we should ask good, pious persons to pray for us, so that God would be moved by their prayers to give us the grace to repent and sue for his forgiveness. Padre Anzer is a priest of the Church you, as well as myself, were baptized in; and, if I were in your place, I would send for him, and beg him to pray for me." As I finished speaking, he dropped his head on the pillow, but so that his face was downward, and covered from sight, while his hands were clasped on his ears. He groaned, as if enduring intense pains and torments of body or mind-or, most likely, both. After a few moments, he raised his head, and again fixed his terrible, wild, bright eyes on my face, and said, in a wild, excited tone, " What a fool I was to listen to you talk- ing of God and His forgiving me. It only made the fiends mad, and they all showed themselves to me, and I heard an unborn child we murdered cry again. I tried to stop my ears, but it was no use ; and the fiend laughed, while I was obliged to listen. Yes ; and I saw young Cary's bloody hand just as he always ap- pears to me. No, no; do not speak to me of God. Speak to me of hell. It is there I am going. I am almost there now." I was filled with horror at this allusion to terrible, inhuman crimes ; but somehow I hated to go off and have the wretch die in despair. So I sat perfectly still, undecided what to do, while he lay back on his pillow, with his eyes closed, breathing hard and fast. I watched him, and began to fear that his hour was come, and that his soul was passing away. But it was only one of his spasms. He suddenly opened his eyes, turned, and looked at me with a sort of vacant stare, as if he had just awoke from sleep. " Shall I call the woman ?" said I. He did not answer for half a minute, then said : " Well, I see you want to leave me ; you are right, you are right, you are right. Fly from me. I am a child of hell. You dare not listen to my history. If you did, you would see that no place but hell is fit for me." " I do not want to leave you; and I would do anything to help you, if you would listen to me, and do as I advise you. I tell you that you can save yourself from hell even now." He again arose to a half-
sitting posture, and said, as he stretched out his head towards me : " The Americans are a great people-a wise people. Tell me, do you believe what you have just said ? Do not deceive a miserable, dying wretch. Do you, in truth, believe what you
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have just said ?" " Of course, I believe it ; just as firmly as I be- lieve the sun rose this morning. If I did not, what would be the use of my giving you any advice on the subject ?" " Will you listen to my history ?" ."I would rather not, except there is some object to be gained by my doing so." " Well, I want just to tell you the worst part of it; and then, if you think there is any possible chance-which I do not-of escaping hell, I will take your advice, and do just as you direct me." " Well, on that condition, I will listen ; but now it is late, and getting dark. I will be here in the morning at 10 o'clock. Will that do ?" " Good ; I am satisfied, and you shall judge for yourself." At the ap- pointed hour, next morning, I was seated by the Mexican's bed. He told the woman to leave, as he had done the previous evening. Then he reached out, and took from the table a bot- tle of California wine, and, placing it to his lips, drank more than half its contents, at one draught. Laying it down, he com- menced the terrible tale of his life, in which it appeared that his name was Nicholas Morano ; that he was born in Mazatlan, Mex- ico, of respectable parents, and was well educated ; that he came to California before his majority, and lived as a mercantile clerk in Los Angeles up to the war with the United States. He then joined the California forces, and remained with the army-if army it could be called-until after Stockton and Kearny had taken possession of Los Angeles, the second and last time. He then returned to his old employer, and soon after became de- votedly attached to a beautiful young California girl ; that, after the wedding day had been appointed his affianced proved faithless to him, flying from her father's house with a young American military officer, who degraded, but did not marry her. Then he detailed how, burning with hate and jealousy, he watched for a chance to revenge himself on the American. At length his op- portunity came. He discovered the hiding place of the faithless girl-a little adobe house hid away in an orange grove on the outskirts of the town. Here, with a friend, he lay in wait until, just at night, the unsuspecting American approached. The two men sprang upon him. The American fought like a tiger. The girl rushed, screaming, to his aid, and joined in the fight with the fury of a wildcat. The struggle lasted but two or three minutes. Then Nicholas arose, covered with blood and without a wound worth naming. At his feet lay dead the American, his own friend and the unfortunate girl. He stooped over the form of his affianced, dropped on his knees beside her, raised her head,
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but all sign of life had fled. Blood was yet flowing from a knife wound in her bosom. He drew from his pocket a white Chinese silk handerchief, saturated it in the flowing blood, and then, while yet on his knees, he raised it up over her lifeless form, and swore a solemn oath never to make peace with the Americans. Stooping as he spoke the last words of the fearful oath, he kissed the cold white lips of the dead girl. Then he fled from approach- ing footsteps. He was suspected, and left Los Angeles. In Santa Barbara he found two congenial spirits, who joined him in the oath of war on the Americans, and of fidelity to each other. Nicholas was to be captain of this band, and to him they swore obedience. Soon afterwards, in San Jose, they took two more desperadoes into their confidence. The dying robber now re- lated a series of terrible, treacherous murders and robberies, in which he had had a hand-sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly. Above all seemed to stand out in the vision of this dying wretch the murder of two brothers of the name of Cary, and of a man and his wife on the Salinas plains. The Cary brothers were decoyed on the pretence of selling them cattle, to a place south of San Juan-about where the town of Hollister now stands-and there murdered under circumstances of peculiar brutality. Mr. Breen well recollected having seen those two young men in San Juan, as they passed on south, and of advis- ing them to be cautious and look out for treachery. The mys- tery of their never returning and strange disappearance was re- vealed to him now, for the first time. The man and wife were murdered on the Salinas plains, near the little lagoons where now stands the thriving town of Salinas. From the robber's ac- count, they were evidently educated people, and of good social position. The wife was young, beautiful, and very near her con- finement. There is a general belief among Californians that if a woman so situated is met by the fiercest grizzly bear, he will turn away and leave her unharmed. Be this as it may, her situ- ation made her murder, and her dying agony, inexpressibly hor- rible. He told how, in San Francisco, he became acquainted with the captain of a band of Sydney robbers, with whom his own band co-operated in many villainous schemes, until they were broken up by the Vigilance Committee. Then he related how his own band were all killed, one after the other, in fights and frays, until finally but one beside himself was left. Then how they two quarreled over money they had robbed from an American, and how, in this affray he had run his knife through his friend on
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the steps of the "Bella Union," in San Francisco. How his friend, while dying, screened him from arrest for the act by telling the police who gathered around him that it was an American who struck him the fatal blow; then how his friend whispered in his ear, as he gasped out his last breath: "Thank God, I die by the hand of a countryman." How, from that hour, ill luck followed him, until disease and sickness bore him down to this horrid death-bed, " where," he continued, " all the murdered Americans haunt my sight, asleep or awake. I see them all waiting for me; and, above all, one of the Cary boys holding up a cross in his shattered, bloody hand, asking for mercy, just as he was when I struck him the last blow, and then the fearful, mournful cry of the dying mother is always ringing in my ears. It was not I who struck her. I was in a struggle with the husband, and she was striking at me with a hatchet, when my partner stabbed her in the breast. She fell on her face, dead, as we believed; but, just as we were turning away, she stretched out her hand and, partly raising herself up almost to a kneeling position, she gave the loudest, longest and most fearful cry I ever heard. Oh! it was the cry of the child and mother both. After she had again dropped on the ground, the cry seemed to float away over the valley, and we thought we could hear it echo and re-echo up in the Gabalan mountains. A hundred coyotes, it seemed to me, started into sight from their hiding places, and answered the cry with fearful howling. I have been only twice through the Salinas plains since then; but both times I plainly heard that fearful cry yet re-echoing along the hills." Then he told how they dragged the bodies of the husband and wife, threw them into an old well near the little lagoon, and filled the well with rubbish to conceal them, and then burned their effects, reserving only their gold and the woman's jewelry. During the recital the wretched man would stop for ten minutes at a time, groaning and apparently in terri- ble agony, but he always motioned me to remain until he could again command his voice. As he finished he looked at me with a grim smile and said: " Well, you give it up, now; for you see that neither Protestant nor Catholic priest, nor bishop, could save such as me?" As I replied, I tried not to betray the sick- ening, horrible disgust I could not help feeling towards him. I said: "Both Protestants and Catholics believe that God can send even such as you grace to repent, and that, if you do re- pent, He will forgive you." "You say all Christians believe
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that?" "Yes; most surely they do." "Then," said he, in a voice hardly audible, " send me Padre Anzer, and I will get him to take from me that bloody handkerchief, although I know all the fiends will try to prevent him; for it was the sight of that handkerchief that prompted me to my worst deeds." Glad to escape to the open air, out of the sight of this terrible man, I left, in almost a run; sought out Padre Anzer, who at once responded to the call. I was glad to be rid of the necessity of again seeing the unfortunate wretch. My wife saw to all his personal wants, and for the following three days I observed Padre Anzer passing in and out of the robber's dark room. Then, on the third day, I saw a few Californians bringing out a coffin. I knew it contained the remains of Nicholas, the mur- derer. I walked to the grave with them but asked no questions, for I already knew too much. As I turned away, I found myself saying: "God's mercies are surely above all his works, so we must not doubt, and if it were not so, who among us all could hope to enter heaven ?"
We can hardly realize, in these days of peace and safety for travelers in California, how different it was in the early days of American rule. There is not twenty miles of the traveled road from Monterey to San Francisco that, in some spot, has not been the scene of a foul murder in those eventful times. I could point out the location where at least six murdered men were found at different times, between San Juan and San Jose; and more yet between San Jose and San Francisco. There are four murdered men buried under a tree a little north of the bridge that crossed the San Francisquita creek, or arroyo, near the Menlo Park railroad station. The first buried there was a man of the name of Nightingale, who was in charge of the toll-gate kept on the bridge, which was built for the two counties by Isaac N. Thorn. Nightingale was murdered in a little house he resided in, near the bridge, for his money. Some months later, the bodies of three murdered men were found near the same place, and, unrecognized by any one, were buried under the same tree. Nearly every road in the State has its similar terrible record of murders. For the present, I will leave this disagree- able subject, though there are frightfully thrilling scenes con- nected with my recollections of those dangerous days to lonely travelers in California, some of which you may find described in another place, should my space permit giving you more of the history of that period.
CHAPTER V.
DISCOVERY OF GOLD BY MARSHALL-UNSUCCESSFUL ENDEAVOR TO KEEP THE MATTER SECRET-LIFE IN CALIFORNIA -- INCORRECT ACCOUNT OF IT IN THE "ANNALS" -ALLEGED DISSIPATION OF ALL CLASSES - GENERAL INDUL- GENCE IN GAMBLING-AMUSEMENTS, ETC.
The next subject treated of in the " Annals " that calls for a notice is the discovery of gold in California, and the consequences of that discovery. The history of the discovery, as given in the " Annals," is accepted by nearly every one as, in the main, cor- rect. It is as follows. I quote from page 130 of the " Annals ": "Many strange and improbable stories have been told as to the earliest discoveries; but we believe that the only reliable account is that given by Captain Sutter, upon whose ground the precious metal was first found, and which we shall therefore adopt, without noticing the various fabulous state- ments alluded to.
"It appears that Captain Sutter, during the winter of 1847-8, was erecting a saw-mill for producing lumber, on the south fork of the American River, a feeder of the Sacramento. Mr. James W. Marshall contracted with Sutter for the building of this mill; and, in the course of his operations, had occa- sion to admit the river water into the tail-race, for the purpose of widening and deepening it by the strength of the current. In doing this, a consider- able quantity of mud, sand and gravel was carried along with the stream, and deposited in a heap at the foot of the tail-race. Marshall, when one day examining the state of his works, noticed a few glittering particles lying near the edge of the heap. His curiosity being aroused, he gathered some of the sparkling objects, and at once became satisfied of their nature, and the value of his discovery. All trembling with excitement, he hurried to his employer, and told his story. Captain Sutter at first thought it was fiction, and the teller only a fool. Indeed, he confesses that he kept a sharp eye upon his loaded rifle, when he, whom he was tempted to consider a maniac, was cag- erly disclosing the miraculous tale. However, his doubts were all at once dispelled when Marshall turned on the table before him an ounce or so of this shining dust. The two agreed to keep the matter secret, and quietly share the golden harvest between them. But, as they afterwards searched more narrowly together, and gloated upon the rich deposits, their eager gestures and looks and muttered broken words happened to be closely watched by a Mormon laborer employed about the neighborhood. He speedily became as
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wise as themselves. As secrecy was of little importance to him, he forthwith divulged the extraordinary intelligence, and, in confirmation of the story, ex- hibited some scales of gold he had himself gathered. Immediately, every- body in the neighborhood left his regular employment and began to search for the precious metal."
Now, while the authors of the "Annals " seek to tell us of the result, or consequence, of the discovery of gold, and of the sort of people it brought to our State, and of the sort of society these peo- ple when assembled together produced in San Francisco, they grow perfectly wild, reckless and extravagant, and in many instances wholly misrepresent the facts. This is an interesting subject to our young readers, for it is of their fathers and mothers this part of the "Annals" treats. I think, before I get through, I will satisfy every one of them that the picture drawn of us '49ers in the "Annals," is a base caricature, and a vile slander on the pioneers. From the picture, as given in the "Annals," you gather-
First. That it was the wild, worthless, reckless and smart, clever rascals, as they call us, of all nations that rushed to Cali- fornia on the discovery of gold.
Second. That scarce one virtuous woman came with that rush.
Third. That it was unsafe for a virtuous woman to live in San Francisco.
Fourth. That there was no such thing as a family circle in California in the years '49, '50 or '51, and hardly any worth the mentioning in '52 or '53.
Fifth. That every one, Americans and all, on arriving here, threw off all restraint of religion, of education and of home, American training, and rushed headlong into all manner of vices and excesses.
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