USA > California > California; an intimate history > Part 6
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Argüello shrugged his shoulders. "I am not a bishop nor an archbishop," he answered, "and have no juris- diction over dancing. But if I knew how and felt like it I should waltz as much as I pleased."
The group about the governor cried "Brava!" The word flew round the room. In another moment the musicians were fiddling, and every young couple in the sala was whirling. The missionaries gave it up. Even
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in those remote and unenlightened days public opinion and determined insubordination had their effect. They made no report to the Bishop of Sonora.
During his brief administration Luis did what he could to improve the lot of the mission Indians, who, as he wrote in his report to Mexico, were "poor and dis- eased, without medical attendance, and in a state of slavery." As Borica so often had done, he wrote warmly also on the subject of California's wasted fertilities, her vast valleys, her splendid forests, her "capacities of all kinds for becoming one of the richest and happiest coun- tries in the world." But Mexico, although she finally sent money and supplies for the troops, took no heed of Argü- ello's prayer for commercial expansion and settlers.
Great Britain and the United States recognized the independence of Mexico. José Maria de Echeandia was appointed Gobernador propietario of the Californias (once more united), but did not arrive in San Diego until October, 1825, and meanwhile the Mazatlan troops, mainly composed of convicts and other bad characters, with which California had been inflicted during Mexico's period of unrest-to protect the coast-were withdrawn. These men had so misbehaved, taking night or day whatever they were sober enough to fancy, that Argüello had been driven to drastic measures. He had issued a proclamation to the effect that, owing to the leniency of his predecessors, crime had increased in the Department of California to a frightful extent, and that the usual punishments had no effect; he therefore ordered that every person guilty of stealing property of the value of two hundred reales or upward, or of burglary and house- breaking, should suffer death. Minor offenses would be
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punished with imprisonment and public flogging. Ar- güello was the kindest of men, but he was a strict dis- ciplinarian and a keen student of his little world. This proclamation was conspicuously posted all over the de- partment, and crime immediately lost its charms.
When Echeandia arrived Luis returned to the presidio of San Francisco as comandante. He died there March 27, 1830, aged forty-six. He lies under the tall pointed monument of the little church of the Mission Dolores, whose thousands of fertile acres have shrunken to a churchyard. After the earthquake of 1906 I went out to see what had happened to the "mission" and the monument of my friend Luis. Even the fire had spared Dolores, but the upper part of the monument had snapped off and the point flown into the wall. It was soon re- placed, however, and the old cemetery, with its Spanish names, its periwinkles smothering the graves and crosses, and its Castilian roses, is once more a peaceful little oasis of the past. It looks singularly out of place.
Echeandia gave a cheerful attention to his duties; but, although the description has come down to us of a tall gaunt man constantly shivering with cold (for which reason he preferred San Diego to Monterey), and although he was the first to suggest that the missions be converted into pueblos and the Indians given ranchos of their own, and although he put down an Indian uprising with a firm hand, we see him as a man of little personality and no popularity.
Although secularization did not come in his time, his administration witnessed the curbing of clerical power; immense grants of land were made to distinguished sub- jects; Don José de la Guerra, of Santa Barbara, received
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grants from time to time until his acres numbered three hundred thousand. This really marked the downfall of the priests, who heretofore had claimed all the fertile valleys near the missions as their own, granting small ranchos to their favorites, and even these under protest. During this administration, also, foreigners received their first formal permission to marry and settle in the country provided they complied with the laws of the department. Other men of various nationalities, recognizing the pos- sibilities of the country, were not long following Hartnell's example. California women seem to have married for- eign men, and Americans in particular, whenever the op- portunity was offered them; frugal, sensible, and virtu- ous, they no doubt recognized the inferiority of their own men as soon as they had a new standard of comparison.
With Echeandia had come from Mexico a young en- sign of engineers, brave, handsome, and intelligent. His name was Romualdo Pacheco; and, although his life was brief, he was destined to found a family whose name lin- gered longest in the new California after the Americans had obliterated Arcadia. His son of the same name was prominent in the politics of the state, representing it in Congress, and successful in business; owing, no doubt, to the lady selected by his gallant young father.
Almost immediately upon his arrival in San Diego Pacheco met Doña Ramona Carillo, a woman of character and energy, although at that time little more than a handsome and clever girl, famous for a brilliant smile and uncommon vivacity. After her young husband's death she married a Scotchman, Capt. John Wilson, who brought up the little Romualdo without indulgence and gave his mind a practical instruction enjoyed by few
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Californians. For some years after the American occu- pation, however, he continued to practise the reckless hospitality of his race. A visitor brought a letter to the Wilsons and was invited to their great rancho, Cañada de los Osos, near San Luis Obispo. Romualdo took him to his room and, as he was about to leave the guest alone, wheeled and kicked aside a pile of saddle-bags in the corner, revealing a large sack. The neck was open; the sack was filled with "slugs" of gold, valued at about twenty dollars each. "Help yourself," said young Pacheco. "The house is yours. Burn it if you will." He had almost forgotten the sack was there.
But to return to 1825. Pacheco's comrade, Augustin Zamorano, became enamoured at the same time of Luisa, daughter of Santiago Argüello. Both the weddings took place simultaneously at San Diego, with all the gaiety and pomp of the time, and the two bridal trains, consisting of hundreds of relatives and friends of the brides, attired in their most brilliant plumage, mounted on splendid horses, accompanied the governor to Monterey. The long jour- ney was enlivened with meriendas and dances and barbe- cues and feats of horsemanship, and every other festive antic which enabled the light - hearted Californians to forget that they were a stranded people on the edge of the world.
Don José de la Guerra had been commandante of Santa Barbara for many years, but he went, about this time, as a delegate to the Mexican congress, and Pacheco was ap- pointed to fill the vacant post. He and his bride lived in the old military square of Santa Barbara (of which the adobe house built by Don José in 1826 is the only building of note remaining) until 1831. The superb valley is shut
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in by a big and barren range of mountains which throw into bold relief the long white mission with its double towers and red tiles on the rising ground at its feet. There was also a white aqueduct in those days built by the padres, and the whole scene was full of color: the sky and sea, as always, of a deep hot blue, the green expanse between the mission and the presidio (also white, with red tiles on the low roofs) strewn with boulders, and here and there a tree; in the vicinity of the mission and presidio there were olive-groves shining like polished sil- ver, and fruit of every color ripening under that golden relentless sun.
Echeandia was governor from 1825 until 1831. His successor, Manuel Victoria, remained in office ten months and nine days. No high official was ever more cordially hated or more quickly disposed of. Half Indian, cruel, ignorant, prejudiced, he was, altogether, a type of gov- ernor California never had been inflicted with during the authority of Spain. He gratified his hatred of aristocracy by exiling eminent citizens without reason, refused to call the territorial deputation which assisted the chief official in governing, and he gratified his lust of blood by enacting to the letter Luis Argüello's drastic law against criminals. In short, he threw the department into a ferment which quickly developed into a revolution. He was finally cornered with thirty soldiers under Pacheco, who believed it his duty to stand by his chief. Pacheco was shot through the heart. The soldiers, deprived of their cap- tain, ran away. Victoria fled to the Mission of San Gabriel and delivered over the government to Echeandia, who had lingered in San Diego.
But Pio Pico, one of the most influential Californians
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of his day and the most eminent citizen of Los Angeles, high in politics and rich in acres, claimed the governorship ad interim, and Captain Zamorano started a counter revo- lution. In fact, from that time on the history of Cali- fornia until American occupation is concerned mainly with internal revolutions. As long as the kind but firm hand of Spain directed the destinies of its province it remained monarchical and submissive; but whether it was that the Californian had no respect for the governments set up in Mexico, or whether the spirit of revolution had entered his own blood, certain it was that pastoral lethargy was frequently enlivened by a restless desire to put almost any one in authority but the official who claimed the right. California also suddenly awakened to the fact that she had been oppressed by the missionaries, and began to demand secularization. This not only would be an act of poetic justice, but would divide tens of thousands of acres of the best lands for grazing and farming, between loyal subjects who would become rich and prosperous, and treat the miserable Indian with kindness.
Pio Pico, having wrested Alta California from the fuming Echeandia, expressed, as Gobernador interino, the public sentiment regarding the missionaries in a report to the City of Mexico:
Such governors as have hitherto been sent to this country have been absolutely subject to the influence of the Spanish missionaries. These missionaries, unfortunately, owing to prepossessions in their favor and general fanaticism, acquired and enjoy a certain amount of acceptance among the larger portion of the population. This they have managed greatly to augment by means of the wealth of their territory, which they have administered to the prejudice of the wretched neophytes, who have been compelled to labor incessantly and without deriving any advantages whatever either to themselves or their children for their labor. Up to date, consequently, these un-
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fortunates have remained in the same unhappy circumstances as at the beginning of the conquest, with the exception of a very few who have acquired some knowledge of their natural rights. But in gen- eral they have languished in oppression. They have been ground down with stripes inflicted with the purpose of suppressing in their minds the inborn tendency to seek relief from tyranny, in the liberty which manifests itself in republican ideas. During the entire history of the country the missionaries have never lost an opportunity of seducing the hearts of the governors and eradicating from their bosoms every sentiment of philanthropy in favor of the Indians.
The missionaries had obeyed that ancient instinct of the human heart to oppress the weak. Spain had invested them with great power, and it had gone to their heads. They had read history and seen something of the world: the strong ever waxed arrogant and ruthless, and the weak were born to submit. Now, alas, it was their turn!
From the moment the ball was set rolling toward secu- larization it never halted until the padres were first de- spoiled and then in many cases driven out. And never had the missions been so flourishing as when the ecclesi- astics realized that their day was over. At the begin- ning of 1834 they reigned over thirty thousand neophytes, who tilled their fields (some of which yielded two crops a year), herded their flocks and cattle, and increased the value of those vast properties year by year. They owned, when the shadow of secularization rose, more than four hundred and twenty thousand cattle, sixty thousand horses, three hundred and twenty thousand sheep, goats, and hogs, and they realized annually thousands of bushels of maize, wheat, beans, and the like. In 1834 they slaughtered over a hundred thousand cattle for the sake of the hides, in such demand by the traders; and these, with the tallow, brought them for that year an income of over a million dollars. Every mission had its great orchard,
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vineyard, and beautiful gardens, although those of Dolores as well as San Francisco Solano (Sonoma) and San Rafael (two missions north of the bay which had been established in 1823 as barriers against the Russians) were less prolific than those farther south. Many were set in orange-groves, and few that were not shaded with the immense fig-trees that flourished in all the warmer valleys of California. It was not unlike the "terrestrial paradise" of Montalvo.
As soon as it became certain that secularization was inevitable the missionaries began a systematic work of destruction. Some sold what property they could dis- pose of favorably, and others uprooted their vineyards and ordered the slaughter of thousands of cattle, not only for the sake of the hides, but to leave as little to their despoilers as possible. At the Mission San Gabriel all were slaugh- tered. This mission was then the richest in the Depart- ment of California. It possessed over a hundred thou- sand cattle. They were struck down wherever they happened to be, the hides taken off, and the carcasses- strewn all over the beautiful valley and hillsides-left to rot. For years this region was white with skulls and skeletons; the new rancheros found them useful in the building of fences!
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AN avowed object of secularization was to convert the missions into Indian pueblos surrounded by farms; in other words, to give the Indians the lands to which they were entitled by natural law. But it did not work. In the first place, the Indians had neither the intelligence nor the energy to cultivate even a small estate and make a living out of it; and in the second, they were still the weaker race. Numbers never have counted and never will count against superior brains and ruthless energies. The activities, mental and physical, of the Californians may have amused the Americans when they devoured them later, but they were infinitely superior to those of a race spawned by Nature while she was still an amateur in the game of life.
The conversion into pueblos proceeded slowly; these were ruled by white officials, and the Indian was toler- ated according to the value of his services. San Juan Capistrano was the only exception; possibly as an ex- periment, or as a salve to the departmental conscience, the beautiful sculptured ruins of the mission-wrecked by the earthquake of 1812 and only partly rebuilt-was made into an Indian pueblo according to the original edict. Its career may be imagined.
Governor Figueroa, who arrived in California in time
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to save it from another civil war, was half Aztec, and consequently in sympathy with the Indian; but his ad- ministration, owing to ill health, was brief. The impulse he gave to Yerba Buena will be described elsewhere. Barely had secularization been accomplished when he retired, and once more there was trouble.
He handed over the reins to José Castro, the first member of the territorial deputation, and a young officer of brilliant gifts, who was destined to play a part in California history. Castro, however, held the position of Gobernador interino for four months only. The cen- tral government ordered him to turn it over to Nicolas Gutierrez, who enjoyed the office for about the same length of time. In December, 1835, the Mexican govern- ment sent Col. Mariano Chico as Gobernador propietario, and the outsider proved himself to be as petty, tyrannical, and futile, as unjust and quarrelsome as Victoria had been. After three agitated months he was glad to es- cape fron the country with his life. The Californians had found themselves.
Gutierrez again assumed command, and a month later he also was taking passage for Mazatlan. A new sort of revolution had been accomplished under Juan Bautista Alvarado, the ablest man Old California produced. Cali- fornia pronounced itself a free and sovereign state. Alvarado was appointed governor, and he in turn ap- pointed his uncle, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, that lord of the northern valleys whose home was in the mission pueblo, Sonoma, comandante of all the forces. The congressional deputation which heretofore had been called at the pleasure of the Mexican governor was turned into a constitutional congress, to meet at regular in-
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tervals; and, although the Roman Catholic religion was the only one recognized by the state, no man was to be molested on account of his religious opinions. This beneficent law was passed, no doubt, on behalf of the considerable number of foreigners now settled in the country, and who had become merchants or ranchers of importance.
Mexico, busy with irritations nearer home, ignored California; and the new state, barring the usual jealous explosion from Los Angeles (stronghold of the Picos, Carrillos, and Bandinis) went her way in peace and pros- perity for several months.
The revolution had not been instigated by Alvarado, but, as the man whose abilities were now most con- spicuous, he was pushed immediately to the front, forced to undertake its leadership, and upon its rapid and suc- cessful conclusion, as naturally made governor. But knowing that California was too weak to stand alone, he deftly wheeled it back to its old position under the Mexican flag, after having given the central government to under- stand that hereafter the department would choose its own governors and administer its own affairs. Mean- while, he devoted himself assiduously to the reform of abuses and to bringing order out of the chaos caused by the rapid succession of governors. He rose with the dawn and worked far into the night with his secretary. His dream was to make California a model state; and if Cali- fornia had been wholly composed of Alvarados, Castros, Argüellos, De la Guerras, and Pachecos, and that pest- hole, Los Angeles, had not existed, no doubt he would have succeeded.
But, although he had suppressed Los Angeles, which,
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DON JOSÉ DE LA GUERRA
DON PABLO DE LA GUERRA
GEN. DON JOSE CASTRO
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since it emerged from pueblo swaddling - clothes, had longed to be the capital of California, it was for the moment only. He was suddenly dumfounded with the news that Carlos Antonio Carrillo had been appointed by the Mexican government to supplant him. Although he was the choice of all California, saving only Los Angeles, and the department now longed for peace and order, José Antonio Carrillo, late delegate to Mexico, had ob- tained the governmental ear, defamed Alvarado, exalted his brother, and claimed to speak for California.
Once more the north flew to arms. Alvarado, being above all things a patriot, high - minded and unselfish, would have yielded; but not so his compatriots. Not only were they determined that the wisest among them should rule, but no longer would they submit to the dictation of Mexico. Vallejo remained neutral until the issue should be plain. The army marched toward Los Angeles under José Castro. The south also flew to arms. Its general was Juan de Castañada.
Those internal "wars" were more to let off steam than anything else. Hot-headed as the Californians were, they were mortally afraid of hurting their opponents, possibly because they were all so closely knit by the marriage-tie. Generally it was the army that made the greatest display of force and noise that won, and so it was in this case. José Castro surprised Castañada at San Buenaventura and surrounded his army, demanding an unconditional surrender. When this was haughtily refused, Castro's men fired somewhere, certainly not into the enemy's ranks, whereupon the southern army ran away and Castro captured the leaders, including José Antonio Carrillo. When the northern general marched
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proudly into Monterey with his quarry, Alvarado sent the prisoners to Sonoma. Vallejo had a reputation for extreme cruelty against the Indians, whom he had been sent out at various times to subdue. This may or may not be true, for General Vallejo had many enemies, like other rich men; but Alvarado is reported to have said, when he despatched the prisoners of war north to the stronghold at Sonoma, that if he sent these men to the devil they would not get their deserts, but they would if he sent them to Vallejo.
Vallejo was a man of many conflicting qualities; able, intellectual, the only man in the department besides Alvarado who in his youth had defied the priests and read extensively; reputed brave and cruel, but never backing Alvarado in his revolutions until convinced that success was assured; an admirable man of business until the gold-rush brought thousands of abler men to the country; haughty, arrogant, proud of his untainted Spanish blood, but withal a very fine gentleman and gallant soldier; if not one of the few great men of Old California, he was one of its pre-eminent figures. His treatment of the southern prisoners was all that Alvarado could wish, and that firm but amiable governor soon par- doned them and told them to go home and behave them- selves.
Meanwhile, he sent an ambassador to the City of Mexico, Andres Castillero, the discoverer of the New Almaden quicksilver-mines near San José. This able man soon convinced the President of the Republic that it would be wiser to permit the ever-loyal Californians to choose their own governors. Simultaneously, Alta and Baja California, which had been separated once more,
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were reunited; and Alvarado became, without further op- position, Gobernador propietario of the Department of the Californias. Vallejo was comandante militar. Alvarado issued a proclamation ordering an electoral college to meet at Monterey in May, 1839, and returned to the work of governing wisely and peacefully and to the satisfaction of all concerned but Los Angeles. But, although his admin- istration was comparatively serene, it was notable for many events of far more importance than bloodless revolutions.
When Alvarado became governor there were one hun- dred and forty-seven foreigners resident in Alta Cali- fornia, either naturalized or licensed, besides a number of vagabond hunters and trappers north of the Bay of San Francisco. The most distinguished of the new-comers were William E. P. Hartnell, merchant, trader, school- teacher, rancher, Visitador-general of Missions in 1839, linguist, translator, and interpreter; Thomas O. Larkin, United States Consul and resident of Monterey; Alfred Robinson, merchant, whose marriage to Doña Anita de la Guerra is so brilliantly described by Richard Henry Dana in Two Years Before the Mast; James Alexander Forbes, a Scotchman; Don Timeteo Murphy; David Spence; Capt. John Wilson, who married Doña Ramona Pacheco; Abel Sterns; Jacob P. Leese, a German-American, mar- ried to a sister of General Vallejo; and William A. Richard- son, the first American resident of Yerba Buena.
During Alvarado's term of office there was a great influx of foreigners, the most notable of the Americans being W. D. M. Howard, who became a few years later one of the great merchants of San Francisco; and the most notable of all, John Augustus Sutter, born in the Grand Duchy of Baden (1803), a seeker of fortune in the United
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States and the "Sandwich Islands " (H. I.) until 1839, when he made up his mind to try his luck in California. He arrived in the Bay of San Francisco in June, 1839, with a company of colonists, twelve men and two women. As he had no license, the authorities would not permit him to land; he therefore proceeded down the coast to Monterey and informed Alvarado that he wished to settle in Cali- fornia and found a colony.
Alvarado was fully alive to the dangers of too many foreigners in his isolated and ill-defended province, es- pecially when they were of a low type. But he recog- nized in Sutter a man of uncommon ability and serious purpose, who intended to become a citizen of California and improve the conditions of that portion of the country where he should settle. Long conversations between the two men convinced Alvarado that Sutter was not only willing but able to keep the prowling vagabonds and restless Indians of the north in order; he gave him the license to enter and to settle on a fork of the Sacramento and American rivers, naturalization papers in the follow- ing year, a large grant of land, and appointed him a representative of the government on the "Sacramento River Frontier." This part of the country was infested with men of the lowest type, outlaws in their own coun- try, that had wandered over the Sierras from the United States and Mexico, and by the more savage tribes of Indians; as there was now a considerable number of ranchers, both Californian and foreign, north of the Bay of San Francisco, it was necessary that these despera- does should be turned back or reduced to submission by a strong hand in the north. Vallejo, it would seem, had not proved equal to this task.
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