USA > California > Contra Costa County > History of Contra Costa County, California; with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 3
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Then the following nineteen missions were established in order of dates as here given :
San Antonio de Padua, San Luis Obispo County, June 14, 1771.
San Gabriel d' Arcangel, San Luis Obispo County, September 8, 1771.
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San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, San Luis Obispo County, September 1, 1772.
Dolores, or San Francisco de Assis, San Francisco, October 9, 1776.
San Juan Capistrano, Los Angeles County (now Orange County ), November 10, 1776.
Santa Clara, Santa Clara County, January 12, 1777.
San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara County, March 31, 1782.
Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, December 14, 1786.
La Purisima Concepcion (Immaculate Conception), Santa Barbara County, December 8, 1787.
Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County, September 25, 1790.
La Soledad (Our Lady of Solitude), Monterey County, September 29, 1791.
San Jose, Alameda County, June 11, 1797.
San Juan Bautista (St. John the Baptist), Monterey County, June 24, 1797.
San Miguel Arcangel, San Luis Obispo County, July 25, 1797.
San Fernando Rey de Espana (Ferdinand, King of Spain), Los Ange- les County, September 8, 1797.
San Luis Rey de Francia (Louis King of France ), San Diego County, July 13, 1798.
Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara County, September 17, 1804.
San Rafael Arcangel, San Rafael, Marin County, December 14, 1817.
San Francisco de Solano, Sonoma County, August 25, 1823.
ABORGINES OF CALIFORNIA
Whether the primitive California Indian was the low and degraded being that some modern writers represent him to have been, admits of doubt. A mission training continued through three generations did not, perhaps, greatly elevate him in morals. When freed from mission restraint and brought in contact with the white race, he lapsed into a condition more degraded and more debased than that in which the missionaries found him. Whether it was the inherent fault of the Indian or the fault of his train- ing is a question that is useless to discuss now. If we are to believe the accounts of the California Indian given by Viscaino and Constanso, who saw him before he had come in contact with civilization, he was not infe- rior in intelligence to the normal aborgines of the country east of the Rocky Mountains.
Sebastian Viscaino thus describes the Indians he found on the shores of Monterey Bay three hundred years ago :
"The Indians are of good stature and fair complexion, the women being somewhat less in size than the men and of pleasing countenance. The clothing of the people of the coast lands consists of the skins of the sea-wolves (otter) abounding there, which they tan and dress better than is done in Castile; they possess also, in great quantity, flax like that of Cas- tile, hemp and cotton, from which they make fishing-lines and nets for rab-
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bits and hares. They have vessels of pine wood very well made, in which they go to sea with fourteen paddle-men on a side with great dexterity, even in stormy weather."
Indians who could construct boats of pine boards that took twenty- eight paddle-men to row were certainly superior in maritime craft to the birch-bark-canoe savages of the East. We might accuse Viscaino, who was trying to induce King Philip III to found a colony on Monterey Bay, of exaggeration in regard to the Indian boats, were not his statements con- firmed by the engineer, Miguel Constanso, who accompanied Portola's ex- pedition 167 years after Viscaino visited the coast.
The Indians of the interior valleys and those of the coast belonged to the same general family. There were no great tribal divisions like those that existed among the Indians east of the Rocky Mountains. Each rancheria was to a certain extent independent of all others, although at times they were known to combine for war or plunder. Although not war- like, they sometimes resisted the whites in battle with great bravery. Each village had its own territory in which to hunt and fish and its own section in which to gather nuts, seeds and herbs. While their mode of living was somewhat nomadic, they seem to have had a fixed location for their rancherias.
The early Spanish settlers of California and the mission padres have left but very meager accounts of the manners, customs, traditions, govern- ment and religion of the aborigines. The padres were too intent upon driving out the old religious beliefs of the Indian and instilling new ones to care much what the aborgine had formerly believed or what traditions or myths he had inherited from his ancestors. They ruthlessly destroyed his fetiches and his altars wherever they found them, regarding them as inven- tions of the devil.
From the descriptions given by Viscaino and Constanso of the coast Indians, they do not appear to have been the degraded creatures that some modern writers have pictured them. In mechanical ingenuity they were superior to the Indians of the Atlantic seaboard or those of the Mississippi Valley. Much of the credit that has been given to the mission padres for the patient training they gave the Indians in mechanical arts should be given to the Indian himself. He was no mean mechanic when the padres took him in hand.
Bancroft says "the Northern California Indians were in every way superior to the central and southern tribes." The difference was more in climate than in race. Those of Northern California, living in an invigorat- ing climate, were more active and more warlike than their sluggish brethren of the south. They gained their living by hunting larger game than those of the south, whose subsistence was derived mostly from acorns, seeds, small game and fish. Those of the interior valleys of the north were of lighter complexion and had better forms and features than their southern kinsmen. They were divided into numerous small tribes or clans.
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The Spaniards never penetrated very far into the Indian country of the north, and consequently knew little or nothing about the habits and customs of the aborigines there. After the discovery of gold, the miners invaded their country in search of the precious metal. The Indians at first were not hostile, but ill treatment soon made them so. When they re- taliated on the whites a war of extermination was waged against them. Like the mission Indians of the south, they are almost extinct.
THE PASSING OF SPAIN'S DOMINATION
The Spaniards were not a commercial people. Their great desire was to be let alone in their American possessions. Philip II once promulgated a decree pronouncing death upon any foreigner who entered the Gulf of Mexico. It was easy to promulgate a decree or to pass restrictive laws against foreign trade, but quite another thing to enforce them.
After the first settlement of California, seventeen years passed before a foreign vessel entered any of its ports. The first to arrive were the two vessels of the French explorer, La Perouse, who anchored in the harbor of Monterey, September 15, 1786. Being of the same faith, and France having been an ally of Spain in former times, he was well received. During his brief stay he made a study of the mission system and his observations on it are plainly given. He found a similarity in it to the slave plantations of Santo Domingo.
November 14, 1792, the English navigator, Capt. George Vancouver, in the ship Discovery, entered the Bay of San Francisco. He was cor- dially received by the comandante of the port, Hermanagildo Sal, and the friars of the mission.
Through the English, the Spaniards became acquainted with the im- portance and value of the fur trade. The bays and lagoons of California abounded in sea otter. Their skins were worth in China all the way from $30 to $100 each. The trade was made a government monopoly. The skins were to be collected from the natives, soldiers and others by the mis- sionaries, at prices ranging from $2.50 to $10 each, and turned over to the government officials appointed to receive them. All trade by private persons was prohibited. The government was sole trader. But the gov- ernment failed to make the trade profitable. In the closing years of the century the American smugglers began to haunt the coast. The restrictions against trade with foreigners were proscriptive and the penalties for eva- sion severe, but men will trade under the most adverse circumstances. Spain was a long way off, and smuggling was not a very venal sin in the eyes of layman or churchman. Fast sailing vessels were fitted out in Bos- ton for illicit trade on the California coast. Watching their opportunities, these vessels slipped into the bays and inlets along the coast. There was a rapid exchange of Yankee notions for sea otter skins, the most valued peltry of California, and the vessels were out to sea before the revenue officers could intercept them. If successful in escaping capture, the profits . of a smuggling voyage were enormous, ranging from 500 to 1000 per cent
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above cost on the goods exchanged; but the risks were great. The smug- gler had no protection; he was an outlaw. He was the legitimate prey of the padres, the people and the revenue officers. The Yankee smuggler usually came out ahead. His vessel was heavily armed, and when speed or stratagem failed he was ready to fight his way out of a scrape.
Each year two ships were sent from San Blas with the memorias- mission and presidio supplies. These took back a small cargo of the prod- ucts of the territory, wheat being the principal. This was all the legitimate commerce allowed California.
The fear of Russian aggression had been one of the causes that had forced Spain to attempt the colonization of California. Bering, in 1741, had discovered the strait that bears his name and had taken possession, for the Russian government, of the northwestern coast of America. Four years later, the first permanent Russian settlement, Sitka, had been made on one of the coast islands. Rumors of the Russian explorations and set- tlements had reached Madrid, and in 1774 Captain Perez, in the San Antonio, was sent up the coast to find out what the Russians were doing.
Had Russian America contained arable land where grain and vege- tables could have been grown, it is probable that the Russians and Span- iards in America would not have come in contact; for another nation, the United States, had taken possession of the intervening country, bordering the Columbia River.
The supplies of breadstuffs for the Sitka colonists had to be sent over- land across Siberia or shipped around Cape Horn. Failure of supplies sometimes reduced the colonists to sore straits.
On the 5th of April, 1806, Count Rezanoff anchored safely in the Bay of San Francisco. He had brought with him a cargo of goods for ex- change but the restrictive commercial regulations of Spain made it difficult for him to trade with the natives, although the friars and the people needed the goods Rezanoff brought to exchange. After Rezanoff's visit the Rus- sians came frequently to California, partly to trade, but more often to hunt otter. While on these fur-hunting expeditions they examined the coast north of San Francisco with the design of planting an agricultural colony where they could raise grain to supply the settlements in the far north. In 1812 they founded a town and built a fort on the coast north of Bodega Bay, which they named Ross. The fort mounted ten guns. They main- tained a fort at Bodega Bay and also a small settlement on Russian River. The Spaniards protested against this aggression and threatened to drive the Russians out of the territory, but nothing came of their protests and they were powerless to enforce their demands. The Russian ships came to California for supplies and were welcomed by the people and the friars if not by the government officials.
The Russian colony at Ross was not a success, however. After the decline of fur-hunting the settlement became unprofitable. In 1841 the buildings and the stock were sold by the Russian governor to Capt. John A. Sutter for $30,000, and the settlement was abandoned.
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Notwithstanding the many changes of rulers that political revolutions and Napoleonic wars gave the mother country, the people of California remained loyal to the Spanish crown, although at times they must have been in doubt who wore the crown.
On the 15th of September, 1810, the patriot priest, Miguel Hidalgo, struck the first blow for Mexican independence.
Arrillaga was governor of California when the war for Mexican inde- pendence began. Although born in Mexico he was of pure Spanish par- entage and was thoroughly in sympathy with Spain in the contest. He died in 1814 and was succeeded by Pablo Vicente de Sola. Sola was Spanish-born and was bitterly opposed to the revolution, even going so far as to threaten death to any one who should speak in favor of it.
As the revolution in Mexico progressed times grew harder in Califor- nia. The mission memorias ceased to come. No tallow ships from Callao arrived. The soldiers' pay was years in arrears and their uniforms in rags. What little wealth there was in the country was in the hands of the padres. They were supreme. "The friars," says Gilroy, who arrived in California in 1814, "had everything their own way. The governor and the military were expected to do whatever the friars requested. The missions contained all the wealth of the country." The friars supported the government and supplied the troops with food from the products of the neophytes' labor. The crude manufacturers of the missions supplied the people with cloth for clothing and some other necessities. The needs of the common people were easily satisfied. Gilroy states that at the time of his arrival "there was not a sawmill, whip saw or spoked wheel in California. Such lumber as was used was cut with an axe. Chairs, tables and wood floors were not to be found except in the governor's house. Plates were rare, unless that name could be applied to the tiles used instead. Money was a rarity. There were no stores and no merchandise to sell. There was no employment for a laborer. The neophytes did all the work and all the business of the coun- try was in the hands of the friars."
The year 1812 was the Año de los Temblores. The seismic disturbance that for forty years or more had shaken California seemed to concentrate in power that year and expend its force on the mission churches. The mas- sive church of San Juan Capistrano, the pride of mission architecture, was thrown down and forty persons killed. The walls of San Gabriel Mission were cracked and some of the saints shaken out of their niches. At San Buenaventura there were three heavy shocks which injured the church so that the tower and much of the facade had to be rebuilt. The whole mis- sion site seemed to settle and the inhabitants, fearful that they might be engulfed by the sea, moved up the valley about two miles, where they re- mained three months. At Santa Barbara both church and the presidio were damaged and at Santa Ynez the church was shaken down. The quakes con- tinued for several months and the people were so terrified that they aban- doned their houses and lived in the open air.
.
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The other important epoch of the decade was El Año de los Insur- gentes, the year of the insurgents. In November, 1818, Bouchard, a Frenchman in the service of Buenos Ayres and provided with letters of marque by San Martain, the president of that republic, to prey upon Span- ish commerce, appeared in the port of Monterey with two ships carrying sixty-six guns and 350 men. He attacked Monterey, and after an obstinate resistance by the Californians it was taken by the insurgents and burned. Bouchard next pillaged Ortega's rancho and burned the buildings. Then, sailing down the coast, he scared the Santa Barbaranos; then, keeping on down, he looked into San Pedro, but finding nothing there to tempt him he kept on to San Juan Capistrano. There he landed, robbed the mission of a few articles and drank the padres' wine. Then he sailed away and dis- appeared. He left six of his men in California, among them Joseph Chap- man of Boston, the first American resident of California.
THE FREE AND SOVEREIGN STATE OF ALTA CALIFORNIA
Governor Figueroa on his deathbed turned over the civil command of the territory to José Castro, who thereby became "gefe politico ad in- terim." The military command was given to Lieut .- Colonel Nicolas Gutierrez, with the rank of comandante general. The separation of the two commands was in accordance with the national law of May 6, 1822.
Castro executed the civil functions of gefe politico four months; and then, in accordance with orders from the supreme government, he turned over his part of the governorship to Comandante General Gutierrez and again the two commands were united in one person. Gutierrez filled the office of "gobernador interno" from January 2, 1836, to the arrival of his successor, Mariano Chico. Chico had been appointed governor by Presi- dent Barragan, December 16, 1835, but did not arrive in California until April, 1836. Thus California had four governors within nine months. They changed so rapidly there was not time to foment a revolution.
Chico ,began his administration by a series of petty tyrannies. Exas- perated beyond endurance by his scandalous conduct and unseemly exhibi- tions of temper, the people of Monterey rose en masse against him, and so terrified him that he took passage on board a brig that was lying in the harbor and sailed for Mexico with the threat that he would return with an armed force to punish the rebellious Californians ; but it was only a threat ; he never came back again.
With the enforced departure of Chico, the civil command of the terri- tory devolved upon Nicolas Gutierrez, who still held the military command. Although a mild-mannered man, he seemed to be impressed with the idea that he must carry out the arbitrary measures of his predecessor.
He quarreled with Juan Bautista Alvarado, the ablest of the native Californians. Alvarado and José Castro raised the standard of revolt. They gathered together a small army of rancheros and an auxiliary force of twenty-five American hunters and trappers under Graham, a backwoods- man from Tennessee. By a strategic movement they captured the castillo
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or fort which commanded the presidio, where Gutierrez and the Mexican army officials were stationed. The patriots demanded the surrender of the presidio and the arms. The governor refused. The revolutionists had been able to find but a single cannon ball in the castillo, but this was suffi- cient to do the business. A well-directed shot tore through the roof of the governor's house, covering him and his staff with the debris of broken tiles ; that and the desertion of most of his soldiers to the patriots brought him to terms. On the 5th of November, 1836, he surrendered the presidio and resigned his authority as governor. He and about seventy of his adherents were sent aboard a vessel lying in the harbor and shipped out of the country.
With the Mexican governor and his officers out of the country, the next move of Castro and Alvarado was to call a meeting of the diputacion or territorial congress. A plan for the independence of California was adopted.
Castro issued a pronunciamiento, ending with "Viva La Federacion ! Viva La Libertad ! Viva el Estado Libre y Soberano de Alta California !" Thus amid vivas and proclamations, with the beating of drums and the booming of cannon, El Estado Libre de Alta California (The Free State of Alta California ) was launched on the political sea.
Notwithstanding this apparent burying of the hatchet, over the diffi- culties arising because of the insistence of claimants in the south for the capital at Los Angeles, rather than at Monterey, and notwithstanding con- siderable trouble that had arisen and several battles fought and won by Alvarado's forces, there were rumors of plots and intrigues in Los Angeles and San Diego against Alvarado. At length, aggravated beyond endur- ance, the governor sent word to the surenos that if they did not behave themselves he would shoot ten of the leading men of the south. As he had about that number locked up in the castillo at Sonoma, his was no idle threat. One by one Alvarado's prisoners of state were released from Vallejo's bastile at Sonoma and returned to Los Angeles, sadder if not wiser men. At the session of the ayuntamiento on October 20, 1838, the president announced that Señor Regidor José Palomares had returned from Sonoma, where he had been compelled to go by reason of "political differ- ences," and that he should be allowed his seat in the council. The request was granted unanimously.
The surenos of Los Angeles and San Diego, finding that in Alvarado they had a man of courage and determination to deal with, ceased from troubling him and submitted to the inevitable. At the meeting of the ayuntamiento, October 5, 1839, a notification was received, stating that the supreme government of Mexico had appointed Juan Bautista Alvarado governor of the department. There was no grumbling nor dissent. On the contrary, the records say, "This illustrious body acknowledges receipt of the communication and congratulates His Excellency. It will announce the same to the citizens tomorrow (Sunday), will raise the national colors, salute the same with the required number of volleys, and will invite the people to illuminate their houses for a better display in rejoicing at such a
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happy appointment." With his appointment by the supreme government the "Free and Sovereign State of Alta California" became no more than a dream of the past.
DECLINE AND FALL OF MEXICAN DOMINATION
While the revolution begun by Alvarado and Castro had not established California's independence, it had effectually rid the territory of Mexican dictators. A native son was governor of the department of the Californias (by the constitution of 1836 Upper and Lower California had been united into a department) ; another native son was comandante of its military forces. The membership of the departmental junta, which had taken the place of the diputacion, was largely made up of sons of the soil, and natives filled the minor offices. In their zeal to rid themselves of Mexican office- holders, they had invoked the assistance of another element that was ulti- mately to be their undoing.
During the revolutionary era just passed the foreign population had largely increased. Not only had the foreigners come by sea, but they had come by land. Capt. Jedediah S. Smith, a New England-born trapper and hunter, was the first man to enter California by the overland route. A number of trappers and hunters came in the early thirties from New Mex- ico by way of the old Spanish trail. This immigration was largely Ameri- can, and was made up of a bold, adventurous class of men, some of them not the most desirable immigrants. Of this latter class were some of Graham's followers.
By invoking Graham's aid to put him in power, Alvarado had fastened upon his shoulders an old Man of the Sea. It was easy enough to enlist the services of Graham's riflemen, but altogether another matter to get rid of them when no longer needed.
There were rumors of another revolution, and it was not difficult to per- suade Alvarado that the foreigners were plotting to revolutionize Califor- nia. Mexico had recently lost Texas, and the same class of "malditos extranjeros" (wicked strangers) were invading California, and would ulti- mately possess themselves of the country. Accordingly, secret orders were sent throughout the department to arrest and imprison all foreigners. Over 100 men of different nationalities were arrested, principally Americans and English. Of these forty-seven were shipped to San Blas, and from there marched overland to Tepic, where they were imprisoned for several months. Through the efforts of the British consul, Barron, they were re- leased. Castro, who had accompanied the prisoners to Mexico to prefer charges against them, was placed under arrest and afterwards tried by court-martial, but was acquitted. He had been acting under orders from his superiors. After an absence of over a year twenty of the exiles landed at Monterey on their return from Mexico. Robinson, who saw them land, says: "They returned neatly dressed, armed with rifles and swords, and looking in much better condition than when they were sent away, or prob-
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ably than they had ever looked in their lives before." The Mexican gov- ernment had been compelled to pay them damages for their arrest and im- prisonment and to return them to California.
The only other event of importance during Alvarado's term as gov- ernor was the capture of Monterey by Commodore Ap Catesby Jones, of the United States navy. This event happened after Alvarado's successor, Micheltorena, had landed in California, but before the government had been formally turned over to him.
The following extract from the diary of a pioneer, who was an eye- witness of the affair, gives a good description of the capture :
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