Historical and biographical record of southern California; containing a history of southern California from its earliest settlement to the opening year of the twentieth century, Part 14

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: Chicago, Chapman pub. co.
Number of Pages: 1366

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At the meeting of the ayuntamiento two weeks later, March 20, 1837, the record reads : "Second alcalde, José Sepulveda, thanked the members for acquiescing in his decision to shoot the pris- oners, Juliano and Timoteo, but after sending his decision to the governor, he was ordered to send the prisoners to the general government to be tried according to law by a council of war, and he had complied with the order." The bluff old alcalde could see no necessity for trying pris- oners who had confessed to a deliberate murder : therefore he proposed to execute them withont a trial.

The prisoners, I infer, were Indians. While the Indians of the pueblo were virtually slaves to the rancheros and vineyardists, they were al- lowed certain rights and privileges by the ayun- tamiento, and white men were compelled to re-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

spect them. The Indians had been granted a portion of the pueblo lands near the river for a rancheria. They presented a petition at one time to the ayuntamiento, stating that the foreigner, Juan Domingo (John Sunday), had fenced in part of their land. The members of the council examined into the case. They found that John Sunday was guilty as charged, so they fined Juan $12 and compelled him to set back his fence to the line. The Indians were a source of trouble to the regidores, and there was always a number of them under sentence for petty mis- demeanors. They formed the chain gang of the pueblo. Each regidor had to take his weekly turn as captain of the chain gang and superin- tend the work of the prisoners.

The Indian village, down by the river be- tween what are now First street and Aliso, was the plague spot of the body politic. 'Petition after petition came to the council for the removal of the Indians. Finally, in 1846, the ayunta- miento ordered their removal across the river to the Aguage de Los Avilas (the Spring of the Avilas) and the site of their former village was sold to their old-time enemy and persecutor, John Sunday, the foreigner, for $200, which was to be expended for the benefit of the Indians. Gov. Pio Pico borrowed the $200 from the coun- cil to pay the expenses of raising troops to sup- press Castro, who, from his headquarters at Monterey, was supposed to be fomenting an- other revolution, with the design of making him- self governor. If Castro had such designs the Americans frustrated them by promptly taking possession of the country. Pico and his army returned to Los Angeles, but the Indians' money never came back any more.

The last recorded meeting of the ayuntamiento of Los Angeles under Mexican rule was held July 4, 1846, and the last recorded act was to give Juan Domingo a title to the pueblito-the lands on which the Indian village stood. Could the irony of fate have a sharper sting? The Mexican, on the birthday of American liberty, robbed the Indian of the last acre of his ancestral lands, and the American robbed the Mexican that robbed the Indian.

The ayuntamiento was revived in 1847, after the conquest, but it was not the "Most Illustri- ous" of former days. The heel of the conqueror was on the neck of the native, and it is not strange that the old-time motto, Dios y Libertad (God and liberty), was sometimes abbreviated in the later records to "God and etc." The sec- retary was sure of Dios, but uncertain about libertad.

The revenues of Los Angeles were small dur- ing the Mexican era. There was no tax on land, and the municipal funds were derived principally

from taxes on wine and brandy, from fines and from licenses of saloons and business houses. The pueblo lands were sold at the rate of 25 cents per front vara, or about eight cents per front foot, for house lots. The city treasury was usu- ally in a state of financial collapse. Various cx- pedients for inflating were agitated, but the peo- ple were opposed to taxation and the plans never matured.

In 1837, the financial stringency was so press- ing that the alcalde reported to the ayuntamiento that he was compelled to take country produce for fines. He had already received eight colts, six fanegas (about nine bushels) of corn and 35 hides. The syndic immediately laid claim to the colts on his back salary. The alcalde put in a preferred claim of his own for money ad- vanced to pay the salary of the secretary, and besides, he said, he had "boarded the colts." After considerable discussion the alcalde was ordered to turn over the colts to the city treas- urer to be appraised and paid out on claims against the city. In the meantime it was found that two of the colts had run away and the re- maining six had demonetized the corn by eating it up-a contraction of the currency that ex- ceeded in heinousness the "crime of '73."

The municipal revenue between 1835 and 1845 never exceeded $1,000 in any one year, and some years it fell as low as $500 a year. There were but few salaried offices, and the pay of the officials was small. The secretary of the ayuntamiento received from $30 to $40 a month; the school- master was paid $15 a month while school kept, but as the vacations greatly exceeded in length the school terms, his compensation was not munificent. The alcaldes, regidores and jueces del campos (judges of the plains) took their pay in honors, and honors, it might be said, were not always easy. The church expenses were paid out of the municipal funds, and these usually ex- ceeded the amount paid out for schools. The people were more spiritually inclined than intel- lectually.

The form of electing city officers was similar to our plan of electing a president and vice- president. A primary election was held to choose electors ; these electors met and elected the city officials. No elector could vote for himself. As but few of the voters could read or write, the voting at the primary election was by viva voce, and at the secondary election by ballot. The district was divided into blocks or precincts, and a commissioner or judge of election appointed for cach block. The polls were usually held under the portico or porch of some centrally located house. Judge of the election was not a coveted office, and those eligible to the office (persons who could read and write) often tried

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

to be excused from serving ; but, as in Pantoja's case, the office usually refused to let go of the man.

Don Manuel Requena was appointed judge of a certain district. He sent in his resignation on the plea of sickness. The ayuntamiento was about to accept it when some one reported that Don Manuel was engaged in pruning his vine- yard, whereupon a committee of investigation was appointed, with Juan Temple, merchant, as medical expert. The committee and the inpro- vised doctor examined Don Manuel, and re- ported that his indisposition did not prevent him from pruning, but would incapacitate him from serving as judge of the election. The mental strain of a primary was more debilitating than the physical strain of pruning. The right of elec- tive franchise was not very highly prized by the common people. In December, 1844, the pri- mary election went by default because no one voted.

The office of jueces del campos, or judges of the plains, outlived the Mexican era and was

continued for a dozen ycars at least after the American conquest, and was abolished, or rather fell into decadence, when cattle-raising ceased to be the prevailing industry. The duties of the judges were to hold rodeos (cattle gatherings) and recojedas (horse gatherings) throughout the district; to settle all disputes and see that justice was done between owners of stock.

From 1839 to 1846 the office of prefect exist- ed. There were two in the territory, one for northern California and one for the southern district. The prefect was a sort of sub or assist- ant governor. He was appointed by the gov- ernor with the approbation of the departmental assembly. All petitions for land and all appeals from the decisions of the alcaldes were passed upon by him before they were submitted to the governor for final decisions. He had no author- ity to make a final decision, but his opinions had weight with the governor in determining the disposal of a question. The residence of the pre- fect for the southern district was Los Angeles.

CHAPTER XV.

THE HOMES AND HOME LIFE OF CALIFORNIANS IN THE ADOBE AGE.

C ITIES in their growth and development pass through distinctive ages in the kind of material of which they are built. Most of the cities of the United States began their existence in the wooden age, and have pro- gressed successively through the brick and stone age, the iron age and are now entering upon the steel age. The cities of the extreme south- west-those of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Southern California-like ancient Babylon and imperial Rome-began their existence in the clay or adobe age. It took California three- quarters of a century to emerge from the adobe age. At the time of its final conquest by the United States troops (January 10, 1847) there was not within its limits (if I am rightly in- formed) a building built of any other material than adobe, or sun dried brick.

In the adobe age every man was his own arch- itect and master builder. He had no choice of material, or, rather, with his ease-loving disposi- tion, he chose that which was most easily ob- tained, and that was the tough black clay out of which the sun dried bricks called "adobes" were made.

The Indian was the brick-maker and he toiled for his task-masters 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 as well as the brick-maker and he did not know how to strike for higher wages, for the very good reason that he received no wages. He took his pittance in food and aguardiente, the latter of which often brought him to enforced service in the chain gang. The adobe bricks were molded 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 another summer before the house was habitable.

When a new house was needed-and a house was not built in the adobe age until there was urgent need for it-the builder selected a site and applied to the ayuntamiento, if a resident of a town, for a grant of a piece of the pueblo lands. If no one had a prior claim to the lot he asked for, he was granted it. If he did not build a house on it within a given time-usually a year from the time the grant was made-any citizen could denounce or file on the property and with permission of the ayuntamiento take possession of it ; but the council was lenient and almost any excuse secured an extension.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

In the adobe age every man owned his own house. No houses were built for rent nor for sale on speculation. The real estate agent was unknown. There were no hotels nor lodging houses. When travelers or strangers paid a visit to one of the old pueblos they were entertained at private houses, or if no one opened his doors to them they camped out or moved on to the nearest mission, where they were sure of a night's lodging.

The architecture of the adobe age had no freaks or fads in it. Like the laws of the Medes and Persians it altered not. There was, with but very few exceptions, but one style of house-the square walled, flat roofed, one story structure-looking, as a writer of early times says : "Like so many brick kilns ready for the burning." Although there were picturesque homes in California under the Mexican régime, and the quaint mission buildings of the Spanish era were massive and imposing, yet the average town house of the native Californian, with its clay-colored adobe walls, its flat asphaltum-cov- ered roof, its ground floor, its rawhide door and its wooden or iron barred windows, was as de- void of beauty without as it was of comfort and convenience within.

The adobe age was not an æsthetic age. The old pueblos were homely almost to ugliness. The clay-colored houses that marked the lines of the crooked and irregular streets were, with- out, gloomy and uninviting. There was no glass in the windows. There were no lawns in front, no sidewalks, and no shade trees. The streets were ungraded and unsprinkled and when the dashing caballéros used them for race courses, dense clouds of yellow dust enveloped the houses.

There were no slaughter houses, and each family had its own matanza in close proximity to the kitchen, and in time the ghastly skulls of the slaughtered bovines formed veritable gol- gothas in back yards. The crows acted as scav- engers and, when not employed in the street department removing garbage, sat on the roofs of the houses and cawed dismally. They in- creased and multiplied until the "Plague of the Crows" compelled the ayuntamiento of Los An- geles to offer a bounty for their destruction.

But even amid these homely surroundings there were æsthetic souls that dreamed dreams of beauty and saw visions of better and brighter things for at least one of the old pueblos. The famous speech of Regidor Leonardo Cota, delivered before the ayuntamiento of Los An- geles nearly sixty years ago, has been preserved to us in the old pueblo archives. It stamps the author as a man in advance of the age in which he lived. It has in it the hopefulness of boom

literature, although somewhat saddened by the gloom of uncongenial surroundings. "The time has arrived," said he, "when the city of Los Angeles begins to figure in the political world, as it now finds itself the capital of the de- partment. Now, to complete the necessary work that, although it is but a small town, it should proceed to show its beauty, its splendor and its magnificence in such a manner that when the traveler visits us he may say, 'I have seen the City of the Angels; I have seen the work of its street commission, and all these demonstrate that it is a Mexican paradise.' It is not so under the present conditions, for the majority of its buildings present a gloomy, a melancholy aspect, a dark and forbidding aspect that resembles the catacombs of Ancient Rome more than the liabi- tations of a free people. I present these propo- sitions :

"First, that the government be requested to enact measures so that within four months all house fronts shall be plastered and whitewashed.

"Second, that all owners be requested to re- pair the same or open the door for the denun- ciator. If you adopt and enforce these meas- ures, I shall feel that I have done something for my city and my country."

Don Leonardo's eloquent appeal moved the departmental assembly to enact a law requiring the plastering and whitewashing of the house fronts under a penalty of fines, ranging from $5 to $25, if the work was not done within a given time. For awhile there was a plastering of cracked walls, a whitening of house fronts and a brightening of interiors. The sindico's account book, in the old archives, contains a charge of twelve reals for a fanega (one and one-half bush- els) of lime, "to whitewash the court."*

Don Leonardo's dream of transforming the "City of the Angels" into a Mexican paradise was never realized. The fines were never col- lected. The cracks in the walls widened and were not filled. The whitewash faded from the house fronts and was not renewed. The old pueblo again took on the gloom of the cata- combs.

The manners and customs of the people in the adobe age were in keeping with its architecture. There were no freaks and fads in their social life. The fashions in dress and living did not change suddenly. The few wealthy people in the town and country dressed well, even extravagantly, while the many poor people dressed sparingly- if indeed some were dressed at all. 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

*The court room.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

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 deerskin composed his dress. I was afterwards informed by Don Manuel (Dominguez) that on some oc- casions, such as some particular feast day or fes- tival, his entire display often exceeded in value a thousand dollars."

The same authority (Robinson) says of the women's dress at that time (1829): "The dress worn by the middle class of females is a chemise, with short embroidered sleeves, richly trimmed with lace ; a muslin petticoat, flounced with scar- let and secured at the waist by a silk band of the same color ; shoes of velvet or blue satin ; a cot- ton reboso or scarf ; pearl necklace and earrings, with hair falling in broad plaits down the back."

Of the dress of the men in 1829, Robinson says : "Very few of the men have adopted our mode of dress, the greater part adhering to the ancient costume of the past century. Short clothes and a jacket trimmed with scarlet ; a silk sash about the waist ; botas of ornamented deer- skin and embroidered shoes; the hair long, braided and fastened behind with ribbons; a black silk handkerchief around the head, sur- mounted by an oval and broad brimmed hat is the dress usually worn by the men of Califor- nia."

After the coming of the Hijar colony, in 1834, there was a change in the fashions. The colo- nists brought with them the latest fashions from the city of Mexico. The men generally adopt- cd calzoneras instead of the knee breeches or short clothes of the last century. "The calzo- neras were pantaloons with the exterior seam open throughout its length. On the upper edge was a strip of cloth, red, blue or black, in which were the button-holes. On the other edge were eyelet holes for the buttons. In some cases the calzonera was sewn from the hip to the middle of the thigh ; in others, buttoned. From the mid- dle of the thigh downward the leg was covered by the bota or leggings, used by every one, whatever his dress." The short jacket, with sil- ver or bronze buttons, and the silken sash that served as a connecting link between the calzo- neras and the jacket, and also supplied the place of what the Californians did not wear-suspen- ders, this constituted a picturesque costume, that continued in vogue until the conquest, and with many of the natives for several years after it. After 1834 the fashionable women of California "exchanged their narrow skirts for more flowing garments and abandoned the braided hair for the coil, and the large combs till then

in use, for smaller combs."* For outer wraps the serapa for men and the reboza 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 of French broad- cloth.

The legendary of the hearthstone and the fire- side, which fills so large a place in the home life of the Anglo Saxon, had no part in the domestic system of the Californian, he had no hearthstone and no fireside ; nor could that pleasing fiction of Santa Claus' descent through the chimney on Christmas eve, that so delights the young chil- dren of to-day, have had any meaning to the youthful Californian of the old pueblo days. There were no chimneys in the old pueblos. The only means of warming the houses by artificial heat was a pan of coals set on the floor. The people lived out of doors in the open air and invigorating sunshine. The houses were places to sleep in or shelters from the rain. The kitcli- ens were detached from the living rooms. The better class of dwellings usually had out of doors or in an open shed, a beehive shaped earthen oven, in which the family baking was done. The poorer class of the pueblanos cooked over a campfire, with a flat stone (on which the tortillas were baked) and a few pieces of pottery. The culinary outfit was not extensive, even in the best appointed kitchens.

Before the mission mill was built near San Gabriel, the first mill constructed in Southern California, the hand mill and the metete, or grinding stone, were the only means of grinding wheat or corn. To obtain a supply of flour or meal for a family by such a process was slow and laborious, so the family very often dispensed with bread in the bill of farc. Bread was not the staff of life in the old pueblo days. Beef was the staple article of diet.

As lumber was scarce and hard to procure most of the houses had carthen floors. The fur- niture was meager, a few benches, a rawhide bottomed chair to sit on, a rough table, a chest or two to keep the family fincry in, a few cheap prints of saints on the walls formed the decora- tions and furnishings of the living rooms of the common people. The bed was the pride and ambition of the housewife and, even in humble dwellings, sometimes a snowy counterpanc and lace trimmed pillows decorated a couch, whose base was a bullock's hide stretched on a rough frame of wood. A shrine dedicated to the patron saint of the household was a very essential part of a well-ordered home.

Filial obedience and respect for parental au-

*Bancroft's Pastoral California.

IHISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

thority were early impressed upon the minds of the children. A child was never too old or too large to be exempt from punishment. Stephen C. Foster used to relate an amusing case of par- ental disciplining he once saw : An old lady of 60, a grandmother, was belaboring with a barrel stave, her son, a man of 30 years of age. The boy had done something that his mother did not approve of. She sent for him to come over to the maternal home, to receive his punishment. He came. She took him out to the metaphorical wood shed, which in this case was the portico of her house, where she stood him up and pro- ceeded to administer corporal punishment. With the resounding thwacks of the barrel-stave she would exclaim, "I'll teach you to behave your- self ! I'll mend your manners, sir! Now, you will be good, won't you?" The big man took his punishment without a thought of resenting or rebelling; in fact, he rather seemed to enjoy it. It was, no doubt, a feeling and forcible reminder of his boyhood days.

In the earlier days of California, before revo- lutionary ideas had perverted the usages of the people, great respect was shown to those in au- thority and the authorities were strict in requir- ing deference from their constituents. In the Los Angeles archives of 1828 are the records of an impeachment trial of Don Antonio M. 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 disputed ownership of stray cattle and horses. Lugo seems to have had a very exalted idea of the dignity of his office. Among the complaints was one from young Pedro Sanchez, who 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 judge and, remain standing uncovered while Lugo rode past.

Under Mexican domination there was no tax levied on land and improvements. The municipal funds of the pueblos were obtained from the 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. Although in the early '4os the city of Los Angeles had a pop- ulation of 2,000 the revenues did not exceed $1,000 a year; yet with this small amount the municipal authorities ran a city government and kept out of debt. It did not cost much then to run a city government. There was no army of high salaried officials then, with a horde of political heelers, quartered on the municipality and fed from the public crib at the expense of

the taxpayer. Politicians may have been 10 more honest then than now, but where there was nothing to steal there was no stealing. The old alcaldes and regidores were wise enough not to put temptation in the way of the politicians, and thus they kept them reasonably honest, or at least they kept them from plundering the tax- payers, by the simple expedient of having no taxpayers. The only salaried officers in the days when the Most Illustrious Ayuntamiento was the ruling power in the city, were the secretary of that body, the sindico or revenue collector and the schoolmaster (that is when there was one). The highest monthly salary paid the secretary, who was also ex-officio clerk of the alcalde's court, was $40; the sindico received a commis- sion on collections and the schoolmaster was paid $15 per month. If like Oliver Twist he cried for more he was dismissed for evident un- fitness for his duties; his unfitness appearing in his inability to live on his meager salary.

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Historical and biographical record of southern California; containing a history of southern California from its earliest settlement to the opening year of the twentieth century, Part 14

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918 Publication date: 1902 Publisher: Chicago, Chapman pub. co. Number of Pages: 1366

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: Chicago, Chapman pub. co.
Number of Pages: 1366