USA > California > History of California, Volume V > Part 8
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The mean annual temperature of the lower end of the valley is 14℃, 58ºF. The coldest month is January, with a mean temperature of 9°℃, 48ºF, and the warmest month, July, mean temperature 67º. The highest temperature recorded is 40℃, 104ºF, and the lowest temperature -8℃, 18ºF.
CALIFORNIA SOUTH OF THE TEHACHAPI
This division embraces Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Imperial, and San Bernardino counties. The section is bounded on the north by the Sierra Madre, on the east by the Colorado river, on the south by Mexico and the Pacific, and on the west by the Pacific. The most important section is the San Gabriel valley. The principal city is Los Angeles, situated in a valley of the same name. The center of the city was originally eighteen miles from the ocean; but recent extension of the city's boundaries to include San Pedro makes the city a seaport. Within a distance of sixty miles there are many smaller cities and towns, of which may be men-
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tioned Pasadena, Riverside, Redlands, and San Ber- nardino. The mountains to the north rise abruptly and form a wall varying from 1,500 to 3,000 meters 5,000 to 10,000 feet in elevation. Some of the best known peaks are Mount Lowe, elevation 1,042 meters, 3,420 feet, Mount Wilson, 1,770 meters, 5,800 feet, and San Antonio, commonly known as "Old Baldy," 3,070 meters, 10,080 feet. These can be seen from elevated places in the valley. On the eastern side lie the San Bernardino mountains, with an average eleva- tion exceeding 1,800 meters, 6,000 feet. Some of the best known peaks in the range are San Bernardino, 3,075 meters, 10,360 feet and San Gorgonio, 3,196 meters, 11,485 feet, locally known as "Old Grayback," the highest peak in southern California.
The southern half of the whole district is drained by the Santa Ana river, which has its source in the San Bernardino mountains, traversing San Bernardino valley and breaking through the Santa Ana mountains between Rincon and Yorba, after which it is diverted for irrigation in the comparatively level lowlands around Orange, Santa Ana, Anaheim and Fullerton. The northern portion is drained by the San Gabriel river, which rises near the backbone of the Sierra Madre and flows westerly through various canyons, reaching lower levels near Azusa. It then flows southerly through the San Gabriel valley and the Los Angeles valley, emptying into the Pacific Ocean in a delta east of Long Beach. A third stream is the Los Angeles river, formed by a number of small creeks uniting east of Los Angeles and entering the Pacific west of Long Beach.
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THE CLIMATE OF CALIFORNIA
The topography favors a drainage of the air from the mountains seaward at certain hours and a return flood, or movement of the surface air from the sea inland at certain other hours. In other words, the conditions are extremely favorable for the development of air streams which reverse their direction at least twice in each 24-hour period.
In general the lower air flows to the southwest during the night and early morning hours and to the northeast during the afternoon hours. During the winter months when areas of high pressure pass over the Great Basin, the surface air apparently moves south, crossing the northern flank of the Sierra Madre and descending with some momentum into the great valley. The wind movement is particularly marked in the vicinity of the mountain passes, a good illustration being near Cajon Pass, 1,165 meters, 3,823 feet. During these so-called "northers," also locally known as Santa Anas, the temperature rises and the humidity falls. The existence of a low pressure area south of the valley of the Colorado seems to intensify the condition. Heavy frosts occur as a rule after a period of boisterous north wind; and are undoubtedly traceable to the displacement of the warm air of the valley by air that is not quite so warm, but remarkably dry and com- paratively free from dust. During the stillness of the morning hours and before the return flow of air from the sea can be effective, the soil, which in places consists principally of river wash, coarse sand, and gravel, or else a light sandy loam, loses heat rapidly by radiation through the dust-free dry air; and it is not unusual on January mornings to have tempera-
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tures of about -3℃, 26ºF in the orange orchards. At many points, especially in the lower lands, care must be taken to protect oranges and lemons from both the fall in temperature and the rather rapid rise which occurs about eight o'clock in the morning.
SAN DIEGO
In the extreme southwestern portion of the general division lies San Diego, located on the bay of the same name. The city is the oldest one on our Pacific coast. Weather records have been maintained for a period of sixty-two years. The climate of the city is described in detail elsewhere .* In general the rain- fall is light, seldom exceeding 250 millimeters, 10 inches; and over eighty per cent of the amount falls between October and March. There is, however, a much heavier rainfall in the mountains to the northeast, and the annual rainfall at an elevation of 1,000 meters, 3,280 feet amounts to 1,500 millimeters, 60 inches. On the eastern slopes of the mountains the precipitation dimin- ishes rapidly. In the Colorado desert, particularly that portion known as the Salton desert, the annual rainfall does not exceed 75 millimeters, 3 inches. There is, therefore, a marked variation in rainfall within com- paratively short distances. It is worth noting that the heaviest rainfall for a short period, in the United States occurred in the form of a cloud burst in this section. On August 12, 1891, according to Archibald Campbell, cooperative observer, there fell at Campo, 409 milli- meters, 16.10 inches during a storm of the "Sonora"
*Carpenter, Ford L., The Climate and Weather of San Diego, California, published by the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, 1913.
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type. In the Monthly Weather Review for October, 1906, a description of this particular storm and other "Sonoras" is given by Campbell. The date, however, is incorrectly given as August, 1890, and the rainfall did not all occur within twenty-four hours. The twenty-four-hour rainfall was 292 millimeters, 11.50 inches. In a period of about eighty minutes 292 milli- meters, 11.50 inches fell, so far as can be ascertained.
IMPERIAL VALLEY
The Salton Sink is a portion of an ancient lake, and it has been proposed by William P. Blake, who dis- covered the Salton Sink, that the original lake be named Cahuilla, as distinguished from the Salton Sea or pres- ent body of water, which does not rise to the ancient lake level, just as Salt Lake, for example, is known to be the remnant of the greater lake Bonneville. The area of the Salton Sea during its most recent period of expansion, 1907-8, was about four hundred square miles. The surface is approximately sixty meters, two hundred feet below mean sea level. Previous to the flooding the lowest point of the sink was 91.4 meters, 273.5 feet below mean sea level.
The valley lies to the south of the sea, extending to the Mexican line, and contains approximately half a million acres of highly fertile land, sloping gently from the south. The Colorado river about sixty miles east is tapped at several points, and a supply of water for irrigation purposes thus provided. The valley has now substantial agricultural interests. Cotton is one of the chief products of this section. Brawley, Imperial, El Centro, Holtville, and Calexico are incorporated towns.
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The climate is one of high afternoon temperature and extreme dryness during the summer months. Dur- ing 1911 the highest temperature recorded at Brawley was 45.5℃, 114ºF on July 30th, and the lowest 20ºF on December 24th. The annual mean temperature was 21.2°C, 70.2ºF, the monthly mean for January, 54ºF, and for July, 32.2℃, 90ºF.
The rainfall at Calexico during 1911 amounted to 34.3 millimeters, 2.35 inches, distributed as follows: January, 11.9 millimeters, 0.47 inch; February, 22.I millimeters, 0.97 inch; March, 3.3 millimeters, 0.13 inch; July, 8.4 millimeters, 0.33 inch; and October, 11.4 milli- meters, 0.45 of an inch. As a rule little rain falls from the storms of the north Pacific. During the period from July to October occasional heavy rains occur in connection with the Sonora type of storm. The winds are mostly northwesterly in winter and easterly in summer.
During the overflow of 1907, when the Colorado river broke through an improperly built headgate and reached the Alamo and New rivers, thence flowing north into the Salton Sea, there was much discussion as to the effect which the newly formed or rather increased area of water would have upon the climate of the section, particularly in the matter of rainfall. Many held that there was an increase in rainfall, cloudi- ness and relative humidity. In the Monthly Weather Review for December, 1906, Professor A. J. Henry discusses the problem and comes to a decision in the negative.
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THE CLIMATE OF CALIFORNIA
OWENS VALLEY
There is a section of California lying east of the Sierra Nevada and north of the Sierra Madre to which the general name of Owens valley has been given, because of the lake and the river of the same name. The valley is about a hundred miles long, with an average width of twenty-five miles. The northern end has an elevation exceeding 1,200 meters, 4,000 feet, and the slope is to the south. The Owens river, from which the city of Los Angeles obtains its supply of water, is fed by a number of mountain streams, due to the snows of the high sierra. While the water of the river is fresh, the water of Owens lake into which it empties is too saline for potable purposes. The river channel lies close to the base of the Inyo mountains, which bound the valley on the east. Detailed descrip- tion of the character of the valley floor, the run-off of the various streams, and the amount of water in the soil can be found in various papers published by the engineer corps of the Los Angeles Aqueduct .* Reference may also be made to papers in the Monthly Weather Review for January, 1910, by Charles H. Lee and A. B. Wollaber.
The best-known town in the section is Independence where weather records have been kept, but not contin- uously, since 1865. This section of the Great Basin has been known for many years as "the land of little rain."
*See annual reports of the Bureau of the Aqueduct L-a Branch of Public Works. Lee, C. H., Water Resources of Part of Owens Valley, California, U. S. Geol. Survey Water Supply paper 294, 1912.
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At Independence, elevation 2,098 meters, 3,907 feet, the mean seasonal rainfall is 88.4 millimeters, 4.48 inches; at Bishop, 1,361 millimeters, 5.36 inches.
DEATH VALLEY
This valley lies partly in California (southeastern por- tion of Inyo county) and partly in Nevada (southern portion of Nye county).
A few years ago this portion of the old Great American Desert was accessible only by teams from Goldfield, Nevada. Now, however, the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad traverses the section formerly dreaded, and in 1912 a cooperative station was established at Greenland Ranch, a few miles southwest of Ryan, which in turn is four miles southwest of Death Valley Junction on the Tonapah and Tidewater Railroad. Self-recording instruments for obtaining records of temperature and humidity are being installed and continuous records are now available.
The name Death Valley is given to this section because of the loss of a party of emigrants in 1849 and subsequent numerous deaths of prospectors. During the summer months afternoon temperatures frequently reach 49°℃, 120°F. As in other portions of the desert, however, the nights are generally cool. The valley is below sea level, the lowest point thus far determined being 177 meters, 280 feet below.
Alexander A Adie
THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA
T HERE are few types of mankind lower and more degraded in their native condition than the California Indians, and yet few that have exercised so profound an influence on the history of a civilized state as this aboriginal race. So tamely and completely have they given way to the superior white, that their survivors drag out an ob- scure, hardly known, and insignificant existence today on the fringes of the industry and prosperity to which they barely contribute. Yet all the earliest history of California revolved about them, and its entire pre- American period was shaped by Indian relations. Had the California natives been warlike raiders, or shrewd aggressive traders like so many others, the Spanish occupation of the state would have been first delayed and then run a far different course; the discovery of gold might have been postponed for years; and the rush of the Argonauts, the filling up of the land, its Americanization and development, with the attainment of its present status, would have been achieved under widely different conditions from those which the actual history reveals.
When Cabrillo in 1542 first sailed up the coast of California, almost simultaneously with the entry on the lower Colorado river of Alarcon, he found the Indians simple, poor, friendly, and approachable. Forty years later that remarkable mixture of buccaneer and gentle- man, free-booter and patriot, Sir Francis Drake, added to his feat of being the first Englishman to circle the globe, the glory of being the earliest member of that nationality to explore the Pacific coast, and of leaving a record of the first English church service read on soil
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of what is now the United States-as commemorated by the impressive Prayer Book Cross surmounting a height in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
Drake spent a month and a half repairing his ship the Golden Hind in a harbor long believed to have been San Francisco bay, but now almost certainly identified as the inlet near Point Reyes known as Drake's bay. Like a prudent general, he built a fort for his little company; but his subsequent experiences proved this precaution needless, for the neighboring Indians, who came in great numbers, were so far from being hostile or even suspicious, that they regarded the English as gods, and offered them food and presents in sheer reverence and good faith.
The British hero has left a most interesting and exact account of his aboriginal worshipers. His descrip- tions of their feathered pendant-decorated baskets, strings of wampum, net-work bags, feather crowns, method of greeting, and devotions, accord exactly with the implements and customs of the tribes of today. Even the one or two words that he mentions from their language can be identified in idioms that still survive, and we know now that his native friends belonged to the coast division of the great Miwok family-a group of Indians that even in recent decades roamed over the slopes of Mount Tamalpais and dug shell fish along the estuaries of the Marin coast.
For nearly two centuries after Drake, California and its Indians remained almost unknown. Now and then the coast was touched, as by Vizcaino early in the following century; but little contact was achieved, and of that there remains slight record. With the
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suppression of the Jesuit missions in Baja California, and the handing over of their establishments to the Dominicans, while Alta California was allotted as a virgin field to the Franciscans, the real history of our California, and the first chapter in the story of the relations of its Indians with the race that was there- after to dominate them, opens. In 1769 Junípero Serra blessed the site of San Diego, to be followed in two generations by the foundation of twenty other missions extending north to beyond San Francisco.
These church establishments, founded solely on account of the Indians, and in their behalf, determined the location for all time of San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Rafael, and other cities. They contained for many years the principal wealth of the territory; and their activities, more than anything else, shaped the course even of civil developments until the secularization in 1834. At first, indeed, the governmental administration was intended as little more than an arm of support for the propaganda. Only gradually, as the period of American annexation was approached, did political and economic considera- tions of the laity begin to overshadow the interest of the church in her dusky, simple-minded converts.
It is remarkable, and a tribute to the peace-loving nature of the Indians, how small a military force the vice-regal government of New Spain found it necessary to maintain in protection of the missions and their tempting wealth. Fifteen men not infrequently con- stituted the garrison of a presidio whose mission enclosed from a thousand to two thousand Indians, without counting their wild relatives who roamed at
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large. Such ease in maintaining order and rule has not been encountered by Europeans in their settlement of any other part of America, and reveals the sluggish, tractable character of the original Californians in its best aspect. Ninety thousand Indians were baptized, from first to last, at the twenty-one missions. More than a third of this number were to be found at any given moment, for a long duration of years, in their establishments.
For two centuries, including the whole of the Cali- fornia mission period, the Apache kept the Spaniard out of Arizona and parts of New Mexico, and terrorized time and again extensive tracts in Chihuahua and Sonora; yet the collective numbers of the various Apache tribes, in the heyday of their renown, probably never reached ten thousand. The retardation of the civilization and development of California, if this state had been afflicted with desperate raiders of the calibre of the terrors of the Southwest, is obvious; the events of '49, and of subsequent years, would have spelled a far different chapter of history from that which we now read.
On the whole, the Indian converts of the Franciscans in California seem to have been fairly satisfied with their new life. Regular and abundant meals, the possession of clothing, the excitement of occasional fiestas, a secure and even life, unquestionably compen- sated for a loss of personal liberty and the moderate amount of labor required of all. The prohibition of their native religious practices must indeed have seriously pained some of the older men, whose only recourse lay in a secret and stinted performance of their
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rites. It is known too that now and then stirrings of the natural human desire for untrammeled freedom agitated them; occasional escapes of bands are re- corded. But a deputation of loyal Indians, armed with ropes, and led by a few soldiers, was always sufficient, if inaccessible mountain tracts were not too near, to bring back the recalcitrants in short order. True revolts hardly occurred, except for an attack on San Diego Mission in its early days, and an abortive uprising of the neophytes of the missions in what is now Santa Barbara county in 1824. One father exchanged his life for the blood and crown of martyrdom on the former of these occasions; and four white men, including, however, neither missionaries nor soldiers, were killed in the latter episode; but there is no record that even half a dozen soldiers suffered death in the occasional little campaigns and bloodless operations of more than fifty years.
The missionaries have at times been charged with the employment of compulsion toward their converts. Corporal punishment was in use. Discipline, while not severe, was unrelaxing, and obedience enforced, where moral superiority failed, by recourse to strength of arm. These are undoubted facts. But it is unfair to judge the eighteenth century by the standards of the twentieth, or to expect to find in the relations of a few civilized people with a fifty-fold more numerous native population, the social and legal equalities of a long settled community all of one race. Above all, the Franciscans were clearly actuated in the main only by motives of the Indians' welfare. They were saving their souls; and if in so doing, they held the
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Indians strictly to duties that would both support them in comfort and decency and would maintain the estab- lishments, they acted with economic wisdom and advanced the cause of civilization as well as the interests of their faith. Despots on a small scale Junípero Serra or his followers may well have been; but they surely were benevolent despots, and, what is more yet, disinterested. They gathered no profits themselves from their converts' labors. The mission lands and improvements were merely held in trust for the Indians, as they might be for children or wards. Such a course has been and is impossible under the democratic institutions of our federal government; but there is no doubt that had it been feasible, and applied, the Indian problem of the United States would have been handled with greater satisfaction, disposed of more quickly, and met on the whole with more fairness, than has actually been the case.
The Mexican government, too, although moved by animosity against the missions as religious establish- ments, planned decently for the Indians when its act of secularization was enforced in 1834. The mission lands were to be divided and allotted in severalty to the Indians, or sold for their benefit. This scheme unfortunately was entirely theoretical. In its execu- tion, frauds were sometimes perpetrated upon the Indians, at the instance and for the benefit of the resident Spanish Californians. Where the Indians actually did receive their due in land, it was soon neglected and entirely abandoned, or passed in one way or another out of their possession into that of their more thrifty Caucasian neighbors. The pre-
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diction of the Franciscans was soon verified. The Indians were as yet incapable of proper independence or self-support in a civilized community, and a few years found them homeless, in abject poverty, scat- tered, and rapidly dying out, except where more fortunate bands had returned entirely to the old wild life.
Although low in the scale of advancement, ignorant of the art of agriculture, and for the most part of that of pottery making, without knowledge of construction in stone, and lacking in the picturesque totemism as well as the aggressive fighting spirit of more easterly and northerly tribes, the California Indians as a body displayed several notable peculiarities.
Their considerable numbers contrast with the scanti- ness of population in most other regions of North America. The earlier guesses of three quarters of a million are obviously wild. The more recent estimate of two hundred and sixty thousand made by a careful student, must also be regarded as too high. But even the most conservative figures place the number of the aboriginal Californians at from one hundred thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand. This is a light population compared with that which the state enjoys today, but it bulks heavily in view of the fact that according to the closest computations the total number of Indians in all America north of Mexico at the time of discovery was less than half the number of human souls at present in California. With a twentieth of the area of the United States, California, for all the deserts along its eastern border, held one-eighth the native population of the entire country. This superior
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density not only reflects the easier climatic conditions and geographical advantages; it also proves a social condition of comparative peace and quiet for many centuries before the coming of the white man.
Even more exceptional than the numbers of the Golden State Indians, was the diversity of their languages. One hundred and thirty-five dialects were spoken between the Oregon and Mexican boundaries. About a third of these idioms have become extinct, through the dying away of the tribes that knew them; the remainder survive in the mouths of from one to eight hundred souls each. Nor were these dialects all mere minor variations of one common mother tongue. Twenty-one or twenty-two groups or families were long ago made out, among which the totality of idioms could be properly distributed; and so dif- ferent were these groups that their number remained undiminished, and they stood unimpaired before comparisons, for thirty years. It is only in immediate recency that prolonged analysis has finally succeeded in demonstrating the underlying similarities of several of these twenty-one families, and thus proving them akin. Even at that there remain six or eight groups, each composed of from one to fifty dialects, which are so dissimilar to one another that a separate origin, thousands of years ago, must be ascribed to each class.
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