USA > California > Amador County > History of Amador County, California, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 5
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While modern sentimentalists may lament that these poor people were thus deprived of their nat- ural liberty and kept in a condition of servitude, it must be admitted that their moral and physical situation was even better than the average poor in the European States at that time. Their yoke was easy, and their burdens were light; and if, in the
Christian view of things, their spiritual welfare be taken into account, the Fathers, instead of being regarded as despots and task-masters, must be viewed as the substantial benefactors of the swarthy race.
The wealth created by some of the missions was enormous. At its era of greatest prosperity, the Mission of San Gabriel, founded in 1771, numbered three thousand Indians, one hundred and five thou- sand cattle, twenty thousand horses, forty thousand sheep; produced, annually, twenty thousand bushels of grain, and five hundred barrels of wine and brandy. Attached to this mission were seventeen extensive ranehes, farmed by the Indians, and pos- sessing two hundred yoke of oxen. Some of the old fig and olive trees are still bearing fruit, and one old Indian woman still survives, who is said to have reached the incredible age of one hundred and forty years. In 1836, the number of Indians at the Mission of Upper California was upwards of thirty thousand. The number of live-stoek was nearly a million, including four hundred thousand cattle, sixty thousand horses, and three hundred thousand sheep, goats, and swine. One hundred thousand cattle were slaughtered annually, their hides and tallow produeing a revenue of nearly a million of dollars, a revenue of equal magnitude being derived from other artieles of export. There were rich and extensive gardens and orehards attached to the missions, ornamented and enriched with a variety of European and tropical fruit trees, includ- ing bananas, oranges, olives, and figs, to which were added produetive and highly eultivated vineyards, rivaling the richest grape-fields of Europe. When the missions were secularized and ruined by the Mexiean Government, there were above a hundred thousand piasters in the treasury of San Gabriel.
But, evil times were eoming. In 1826, the Mexi- ean Congress passed an Aet for the liberation of the mission Indians, and the demoralization and dis- persion of the people soon ensued. Eight years thereafter, the number of Christian Indians had diminished from thirty thousand six hundred and fifty, to four thousand four hundred. Of the eight hundred thousand head of live-stoek, only sixty- three thousand remained. Everything went to raek and ruin, and what had been a land of abounding life and generous plenty, reverted to silenee and desolation. At the Mission of St. John Capistrano, of the two thousand Christian population, only one hundred remained; of the seventy thousand eattle, but five hundred were left; of the two thousand horses, only one hundred survived, and of the ten thousand sheep, not one remained.
And then, after sixty years of cheerful and sne- eessful labor, and from happy abundance in which they had hoped to die at last, went forth the down- cast Fathers, one after another; some in sorrow to the grave, some to other and rougher fields of mis- sionary labor, and others to be dispersed among the
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DOWNFALL OF THE OLD MISSIONS.
widespread retreats of the Brothers of St. Francis. And the swarthy neophytes-the dark-eyed maidens of San Gabriel, whither went they? Back to the savage defiles of the mountains, down to the depths of barbarism, to wander in the lonely desert, to shiver in the pitiless storm, and to perish at last under the ponderous march of a careless and unfeel- ing civilization.
CHAPTER V.
DOWNFALL OF THE OLD MISSIONS.
Results of Mexican Rule-Confiscation of the Pious Fund- Revolution Begun-Events of the Colonial Rebellion-The Americans Appear and Settle Things-Annexation at Last.
IN 1822, Mexico declared independence of Spain, and immediately the old missions began to decline. Four years afterwards the Christian Indians were removed from under the control of the Fathers, their manumission having been ordered by the Mexican Government. They were to receive cer- tain portions of land, and to be entirely independent of the friars. The annual salaries of the Fathers, which had been derived from interest on the Pious Fund, were withheld and appropriated by the Gov- ernment, and soon after the fund itself was confis- cated by the Mexican Congress, and used for the purposes of state. The Pious Fund was the aggre- gated donations of the Catholic world for the main- tenance of missions in Lower and Upper California, the interest being about fifty thousand dollars annu- ally, which went for the support of the Fathers. This large sum, principal and interest, amounting in 1817 to one million two hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars, the beggarly Mexican Government meant to steal. Professor Gleeson, writing in defense of the Fathers, makes out a fearful bill of damages against the perfidious Government, amount- ing to no less than twelve millions two hundred thousand dollars, which will probably never be paid by that rather shaky republic. The missions were thus practically ruined. Following the rapacious example set by Government, the white settlers laid violent hands on the stock and lands belonging to the missions, and, having returned to their mountain fastnesses, the Indians instituted a predatory war- farc against the settlers, carrying off their goods, cattle, and sometimes their wives and children. The whites retaliating in kind, villages were de- stroyed, and the whole country, highlands and low- lands, was kept in a state of apprehension, rapine, and spoliation, resembling the condition of Scotland in the times of the Jacobites.
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In the meantime in 1836, a revolt against the Mex- ican Government was projected by the white settlers who seized upon Monterey, the capital, and declared the country independent. Thirty American rific- men, under Isaac Graham from Tennessee, and sixty mounted Californians, under General Castro, com - posed the entire insurgent army, Alvarado being the
generalissimo. They advanced on and took the territorial capital in November, Governor Gutierrez and his seventy men having valiantly shut them- selves up in the fort, where they ignominiously sur- rendered at the very first gun. . Gutierrez with his officials was deported to Lower California, and Alva- rado had himself appointed Governor in his stead. Don M. G. Vallejo was appointed military Command- ant-General, and Don Jose Castro was created Pre- fect of Police. The country was then formally de- clared a free and independent State, providing that in the case the then existing Central Government of Mexico should be overthrown and a federal constitu- tion adopted in its stead, California should enter the federation with the other States. The people of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara refused to acknowledge the new territorial administration, but Alvarado marched upon Los Angeles, where he was met by. Castello, and instead of a bloody battle, it was agreed that Alvarado should recognize the existing Central Government of Mexico, and be proclaimed political chief of California, pro tem., while Castello was to proceed to Mexico as deputy to Congress, with a sal- ary of three thousand piasters a year. The Govern- ment of Mexico declined to confirm the arrangement, and appointed Don Carlos Carillo Governor of the Territory. Alvarado again went to war, and with a small company of Americans, and Californians, marched against Carillo, the new Governor at Santa Barbara. The valiant Carillo, having a wholesome dread of the American sharp-shooters, retired from the field without a battle, leaving Alvarado master of the situation. The pusillanimous character of the then existing Mexican Government is illustrated by the fact that Alvarado was confirmed as Constitu- tional Governor of California, notwithstanding he had been the leader of the rebellion.
Then ensued a succession of spoliations which destroyed the laborious enterprise of sixty years, and left the old missions in melancholy ruins.
Alvarado bestowed upon his English and Ameri- can followers large grants of land, money and stock confiscated from the missions. Graham, the captain of the band, obtained a great landed estate and two hundred mules. To the commandant, General Val- lejo, fell the goods and chattels of the missions of San Rafael and Solano; Castro, the Prefect of Mont- erey, received the property of the San Juan Bau- tista, while Governor Alvarado himself appropriated the rich spoil of the missions of Carmelo and Soledad .*
In the meantime a conspiracy against Alvarado
* Authorities differ on this matter. Some well-informed per- sons say that Alvarado had promised Bates, and others, large tracts of land, if they would assist him in establishing himself as ruler; that after succeeding in his ambitions desires, he turned traitor to his friends, and undertook to destroy them on the pre- tence of a contemplated insurrection. There was no fair fight. Alvarado captured the men, over a hundred in number, by send- ing armed parties to their homes in the night, or by luring them to Montercy on pretence of important business, and put- ting chains on them as fast as they came into his presence, otherwise they would have made short work of deposing him .- [EDITOR.
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HISTORY OF AMADOR COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
was set on foot by certain of his English and Amer- ican compatriots, the object being the admission of California to the American Union. The conspirators were forty-six in number, twenty-five English and twenty-one Americans, under command of Graham. Alvarado soon heard of the desigu, and sent a party of soldiers, under Castro, to Monterey, surprised the revolutionists in their hut, and poured in a volley of. musketry disabling many of them; the balance were taken prisoners, and afterwards deported to San Blas and thence to Tepic, where they were treated as con- victs. The Americans and English in California ap- pealed to the Mexican Government, and President Bustamente became alarmed at the danger of war with England and the United States, and or dered the exiled prisoners to be sent back to California, and that they should be indemnified for their loss of time at the rate of three piasters a day. The re- turned prisoners, immediately on their arrival, re- sumed their design with greater energy than before, having determined to be revenged on Castro and Alvarado for the outrages they had inflicted.
In 1841 other Americans arrived, and the revolu- tionary party was considerably increased. Alvarado demanded reinforcements from Mexico, but the only assistance he received was that of three hundred convicts from the Mexican prisons. At this juncture, Santa Ana, the new President, removed Governor Alvarado from office, appointing Micheltorena in his stead, and when the latter arrived, Monterey, the capital, had previously fallen into the hands of the American Commodore Jones, although then in the possession of the Mexicans. Commodore Catesby Jones, having heard that war had been declared be- tween the United States and Mexico, hastened to Monterey, took possession of the city, and hoisted the American colors; but learning his serious mistake on the following day, he lowered his flag and made a becoming apology. This extraordinary incident occurred on the 20th of October, 1842, and it was then obvious that the distracted country must soon fall into the hands of the United States, or some other foreign nation.
One of the first acts of the new Governor, Mich- eltorena, was the restoration of the missions to the friars, after a turbulent interregnum of six years. But this act of policy and justice came too late; the missions were ruined beyond the possibility of resus- citation. The Indians had been dispersed, many of them living by brigandage, and others had become wandering vagabonds. After two years' exertion by the Fathers things began to improve; some of the Indians had returned, and the lands were being re- cultivated, when the Government again interfered, and ordered Governor Pio Pico, in 1845, to dispose of the missions either by sale or rental, to the white settlers. Thus, at length, the last of the property which the Fathers had created by sixty years of patient labor, passed into the possession of private individuals; many of the Fathers were reduced to
extreme poverty, humiliation, and distress, and the missions went down, nover to rise again. The de- struction of the missions was almost immediately succeeded by the war between the United States and Mexico, and the long vexed territory passed to the American Union.
CHAPTER VI.
PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE.
Extent of the Mission Lands-Varieties of Product-Agricul- tural Implements and means of Working-A Primitive Mill -Immense Herds and Value of Cattle-The First Native Shop.
Up to the time of the American conquest the pro- ductive lands of California were chiefly in the hands of the missionaries. Each of the missions included about fifteen miles squarc, and the boundaries were generally equi-distant. As the science of agriculture was then in a very primitive condition in Spain, the monks of California could not be expected to know much about scientific farming. They knew nothing about the utility of fallows, or the alternation of crops, and their only mode of renovating exhausted soil, was to let it lie idle and under the dominion of native weeds, until it was thought capable of bear- ing crops again. Land being so abundant, there was no occasion for laborious or expensive processes of recuperation.
The grains mostly cultivated were Indian corn, wheat, barley, and a small bean called frijol, which was in general use throughout Spanish America. The beans, when ripe, were fried in lard, and much esteemed by all ranks of people. Indian corn was the bread-staple, and was cultivated in rows or drills. The plow used was a very primitive affair. It was composed of two pieces of wood; the main piece, formed from a crooked limb of a tree of the proper shape, constituting both sole and handle. It had no mould-board, or other means for turning a furrow, and was only capable of scratching the sur- face of the ground. A small share, fitted to the point of the sole, was the only iron about the im- plement. The other piece was a long beam, like the tongue of a wagon, reaching to the yoke of the cattle by which the plow was drawn. It consisted of a rough sapling, with the bark taken off, fixed into the main piece, and connected by a small up- right on which it was to slide up or down, and was fixed in position by two wedges. When the plow- man desired to plow deep, the forward end of the tongue was lowered, and in this manner the depth of the furrow was regulated. This beam passed between the two oxen, a pin was put through the end projecting from the yoke, and then the agri- cultural machine was ready to run. The plowman walked on one side, holding the one handle, or stilt, with his right hand, and managing the oxen with the other. The yoke was placed on the top of the cattle's heads close behind the horns, tied firmly to
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NATIONAL HOTEL AND STAGE OFFICE. EVANS AND ASKEY, PROPRS JACKSON, AMADOR CO CAL.
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PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE.
the roots and to the forehead by thongs, so that, instead of drawing by the shoulders and neck, the oxen dragged the plow by their horns and fore- heads. When so harnessed the poor beasts were in a very deplorable condition; they could not move their heads up, down, or sidewise, went with their noses turned up, and every jolt of the plow knocked them about, and seemed to give them great pain. Only an ancient Spaniard could devise such a contrivance for animal torture. When Alexander Forbes suggested to an old Spaniard that perhaps it might be better to yoke the oxen by the neck and shoulders, " What!" said the old man, "can you sup- pose that Spain, which has always been known as the mother of the sciences, can be mistaken on that point ?"
The oxen were yoked to the carts in the same manner, having to bear the weight of the load on the top of their heads, the most disadvantageous mechanical point of the whole body. The ox-cart was composed of a bottom frame of clumsy con- struction, with a few upright bars connected by smaller ones at the top. When used for carry- ing grain, it was lined with canes or bulrushes. The pole was large, and ticd to the yoke in the same manner as with the plow, so that every jerk of the cart was torture to the oxen. The wheels had no spokes, and were composed of three pieces of timber, the middle piece hewn out of a log, of sufficient size to form the nave and middle of the wheel, all in one; the middle piece was of a length equal to the diameter of the wheel, and rounded at the ends to arcs of the circumference. The other two pieces were of timber naturally bent, and joined to the sides of the middle piece by keys of wood grooved into the ends of the pieces which formed the wheel. The whole was then made circular, and did not contain a particle of iron, not even so much as a nail.
From the rude construction of the plow, which was incapable of turning a furrow, the ground was imperfectly broken by scratching over, crossing, and re-crossing several times; and although four or five crossings were sometimes given to a field, it was found impossible to eradicate the weeds. "It was no uncommon thing," says Forbes in 1835, "to see, on some of the large maize estates in Mexico, as many as two hundred plows at work together. As the plows are equal on both sides, the plowmen have only to begin at one side of the field and follow one another up and down, as many as can be em- ployed together without interfering in turning round at the end, which they do in succession, like ships tacking in a line of battle, and so proceed down the same side as they come up."
Harrows were unknown, the wheat and barley being brushed in by a branch of a tree. Sometimes a heavy log was drawn over the field, on the plan of a roller, save that it did not roll, but was dragged so as to carry a part of the soil over the seeds. Indian corn was planted in furrows or ruts drawn 4
about five feet apart, the seed being deposited by hand, from three to five grains in a place, which were slightly covered by the foot, no hoes being used. The sowing of maize, as well as all other grains in Upper California, commenced in Novem- ber, as ncar as possible to the beginning of the rainy season. The harvest was in July and August. Wheat was sown broadcast, and in 1835 it was considered equal in quality to that produced at the Cape of Good Hope, and had begun to attract at- tention in Europe. All kinds of grain were threshed at harvest time, without stacking. In 1831, the whole amount of grain raised in Upper California, according to the mission records, was 46,202 fanegas -the fanega being equal to 2} English bushels.' Wheat and barley were then worth two dollars the fanega; maize, a dollar and a half; the crop of that year at the several missions being worth some eighty- six thousand dollars.
The mills for grinding grain consisted of an up- right axle, to the lower end of which was fixed a horizontal water-wheel under the building, and to the upper end a millstone. As there was no inter- mediate machinery to increase the velocity of the stone it could make only the same number of revo- lutions as the water-wheel, so that the work of grinding a grist was necessarily a process of time. The water-wheel was fearfully and wonderfully made. Forbes described it as a set of cucharas, or gigantic spoons, set around its periphery in place of floats. They were made of strong pieces of timber, in the shape of spoons, with the handles inserted in mortises in the outer surface of the wheel, the bowl of the spoons toward the water, which impinged upon them with nearly its whole velocity. Rude as the contrivance was, it was exceedingly powerful- a sort of primitive turbine. There were only three of these improved mills in the country in 1835, and the possession of such a rare piece of machinery was no small boast for the simple-hearted Fathers, so far away from the progressive mechanical world. It was not a primitive California invention, how- ever, as Sir Walter Scott, in his romance of "The Pirate," describes a similar apparatus formerly in use in the Shetland Islands .*
Before the advent of foreigners, neither potatoes nor green vegetables were cultivated as articles of food. Hemp was raised to some extent, and flax grew well, but its culture was discontinued for want of machinery for manufacture. Pasturage was the principal pursuit in all Spanish colonies in America. The immense tracts of wild land afforded unlimited ranges, but few men and little labor were required, and the pastoral state was the most congenial to the people. The herds were very large; in the four jurisdictions of San Francisco, Monterey, Santa
"This form of water-wheel was common in the Eastern States during the earlier part of this century, and was known as the tub or spur wheel. Even the mounting of the mill-stones was in the manner described. - [EDITOR.
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HISTORY OF AMADOR COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
Barbara, and San Diego, there were in 1836 three hundred thousand black cattle, thirty-two thousand horses, twenty-eight thousand mules, and one hin- dred and fifty-three thousand sheep. Great num- bers of horses ran wild, and these were hunted and killed to prevent their eating the grass. There was hardly such a thing as butter or cheese in use, but- ter being, in general, an abomination to a Spaniard.
In the earlier times immense droves of young bulls were sent to Mexico for beef. The cattle being half- wild, it was necessary to eatch them with the lasso, a process which need not be here described. The process of milking the cows was peculiar. They first let the ealf suck for a while, when the dairyman 'stole up on the other side, and, while the calf was still sueking, procured a little of the milk. They had an idea that the cow would not " give down " milk if the calf was taken away from her. The sheep were of a bad breed, with eoarse wool; and swine received little attention. The amount of the annual exports in the first few years after the open- ing of the ports to foreign vessels, was estimated at thirty thousand hides and seven thousand quintals of tallow; with small eargoes of wheat, wine, raisins, olives, ete., sent to the Russian settlements and San Blas. Hides were worth two dollars each, and tallow eight dollars per quintal. Afterwards the exporta- tion of hides and tallow was greatly increased, and it is said that after the Fathers had beeome con- vineed that they would have to give up the mission lands to the Government, they caused the slaughter of one hundred thousand eattle in a single year, for their hides and tallow alone. And who could blame them? The eattle were theirs. Notwithstanding all this immense revenue these enthusiasts gave it all to the ehureh, and themselves went away in penury, and, as has been related heretofore, one of them actually starved to death.
In 1836 the value of a fat ox or bull in Upper Cali- fornia was five dollars; a cow, five; a saddle-horse, ten; a mare, five; a sheep, two ; and a mule ten dollars.
The first ship ever eonstrueted on the eastern shores of the Pacific was built by the Jesuit Father, Ugarte, at Loreto, in 1719. Being in want of a vessel to sur- vey the coast of the peninsula, and there being nonc available nearer than New Spain or the Philippine Islands, the enterprising friar determined to build one. After traveling two hundred miles through the mountains suitable timber was at last found, in a marshy country; but how to get it to the eoast was the great question; this was considered impossible by all but the stubborn old friar. When the 'party returned to Loreto, Father Ugarte's ship in the mountains beeame a ghostly joke among his brother friars. But, not to be beaten and laughed down, Ugarte made the necessary preparations, returned to the mountains, felled the timber, dragged it two hundred miles to the coast, and built a handsome ship, which he appropriately named, The Triumph of
the Cross. The first voyage of this historic ves- seł was to La Paz, two hundred miles south of Loreto, where a mission was to be founded.
CHAPTER VII.
Sir Francis Drake's Discoveries-The Fabulous Straits of Anian-Arctic Weather in June-Russian Invasion- Native Animals-Various facts and Events.
FOR many years it was supposed and maintained in England that Sir Francis Drake was the original discoverer of San Francisco bay; but it is now con- sidered certain that he never found the entrance to that inland sea. Drake was a buccaneer, and, in 1579, was in the South Seas looking for Spanish ships to plunder, under the pretext of existing war between England and Spain. He had two other pur- poses to subserve in behalf of the English Govern- ment; to diseover a new route from Europe to the Indies, and to find a new territory northward that would rival the Spanish-American possessions in natural wealth. A rich trade had sprung up between the Philippine Islands and Spain; every year a Spanish galleon from the Malayan Archipel- ago crossed the Pacifie to Acapulco, freighted with the richest merchandise, and this, Captain Drake was on the watch for, and did eventually eapture.
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