USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Los Angeles county, Volume I > Part 19
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In 1851, Rev. Henry Weeks and his wife taught school in the city of Los Angeles at $150 per month, and they found their own school room. The first school ordinance here was passed by the Council July 9, 1851. It provided that all the rudiments of the English and Spanish languages should be taught therein. In August, 1852, an ordinance was passed providing that should pupils receive instruction in any higher branches the parents must make an agreement with the "owner or owners of the school." At the same date, it was ordered that a levy of ten cents on the hundred dollars of the municipal taxes for the support of the schools, be set apart.
In May, 1854, Hon. Stephen C. Foster, on assuming the office of mayor, urged the necessity of increased school facilities. He said: "Our last census shows more than 500 children within the corporate limits, of the age to attend public school, three-fourths of whom have no means of education save that afforded by the public schools. Our city now has a fund of $3,000 for schools." He urged the building of two school houses, the appointment of a school superintendent and a Board of Education. These requests were carried out to the letter and very soon, too. In less than a year there arose a good brick school house costing $6,000, located on the corner of Spring and Second streets. It was two stories high. The first teachers there were William A. Wallace, for the boys, and Miss
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Louisa Hayes, for the girls. Schoolhouse No. 2 was located on Bath Street, now North Main Street; it was built in 1856 and torn down when the street was widened. A high school was established in 1873, and it was the first in Southern California. At that date there were but six high schools in the state. Ten years ago there were twenty-five in Los Angeles County alone .* The first teachers Institute in the county was opened in October, 1870, in the old Bath Street schoolhouse. The officers of the Institute were: W. M. McFadden, county superintendent and president ; J. M. Guinn and T. H. Rose, vice presidents, and P. C. Tonner, secretary.
During the Civil war days, on account of sectional feeling, the public schools in Los Angeles were unpopular. Coming down to the years 1865- 66, the total number of school children between five and fifteen years of age was 1,009. Of these 331 were enrolled in the private schools of the county ; 369 were not enrolled in any school. The total daily attendance in the six schools in Los Angeles was sixty-one; in the three private schools, 103. There were twenty-one negro children in a separate school, for the public opinion (a majority of the people) was against colored pupils attending the same schools with the whites, believing that it was nothing less than a disgraceful menace. It should be stated here that probably no other city in the Union has met with a greater change in regard to the rights of the races, and especially in regard to public schools, than Los Angeles, excepting, of course, the cities in the former slave-holding states. In 1905, forty years after the above opinion prevailed among this people, the enrollment of the public school exceeded eighty-five per cent of the number of census children, while the enrollment in private schools had fallen below seven per cent. It was about 1880 that the former plan of having separate schools for black and white pupils was abolished in the county.
While reports and statistics are usually considered dry reading, these figures are of more or less interest to those who take an interest in school matters, and will doubtless bc referred to as the years come and go. The first regular school report made by a county school superintendent in the county was that compiled by Superintendent J. F. Burns for the school year ending October 31, 1885, and contains the following items: Total number of schools in Los Angeles County, in 1855, 6; number of teachers, 9; number of children attending school, 399; average daily attendance, 134; number of census children between four and eighteen, 1,522; amount paid teachers by trustees, $1,276; amount paid teachers by patrons, $766; total teachers' wages, $2,042; amount spent for buildings, $8,240; total amount expended in entire county for schools, $10,272.
In 1860 there were seven schools in the county; six male and five female teachers ; pupils enrolled, 460; total census children, 2,343 ; paid for teachers' salaries, $4,827. The value of schoolhouses built, $7,000; total amount expended for schools during the entire school year, $11,827.
The official reports made for the fiscal year 1920-21, by the County Board of Supervisors, gives these figures : Number of kindergarten schools, 37 ; number of teachers, 399; number of elementary schools, 151; number of teachers (elementary), 3,673; number of high schools, 64; number of
*See Chapter XXIV for (The Glory of the Schools) Education in Los Angeles.
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teachers (high schools), 3,411. The cost per pupil for maintenance in the Los Angeles city schools (elementary department) is $88.21. In the kindergarten department the cost per pupil is $80.00. The cost in the high school of Los Angeles City is $239.41. The above figures are the cost per pupil in the respective departments for the school year.
It will be observed from these figures that Los Angeles County today is employing 7,483 school teachers, 3,672 of which are employed in the city schools of Los Angeles City. This is five times as many teachers as were required in 1906, or sixteen years ago.
The following is a list of High Schools within the county at this date : Alhambra, Antelope Valley Union, Bonita Union, Burbank, Citrus Union, Claremont, Compton Union, Covina Union, Downey Union, El Monte Union, Excelsior Union, Inglewood Union, Glendale Union, Huntington Union, Long Beach City, Los Angeles City, Monrovia City, Montebello, Pasadena, Pomona, Puenta Union, Redondo Union, Santa Monica City, South Pasadena, Venice, Whittier.
THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL
This institution, located in the city of Los Angeles, has a building valued at $1,000,000, and in 1913 had a student body of over 1,900 pupils and a teaching faculty of 80 teachers. In all that is known to be good in the way of Normal instruction the State School affords the best.
CHAPTER XII
AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
It would seem that Los Angeles has been a habitation of man as long as any other place on the earth has been a dwelling place for human beings. After the envelope of water in which the earth was originally enclosed had evaporated and dry land appeared, and the animal kingdom came into existence, it seems as likely as not that man appeared in the place where Los Angeles is now quite as early as he appeared anywhere else.
This, of course, is mere theory, but as far as that is concerned, all the rest of it is nothing more than theory.
Remains of prehistoric beasts like the saber-toothed tiger have been found in the asphaltum beds of Los Angeles showing conclusively the existence of life here at a time that must have been contempo- raneous with life in other parts of the world at the dawn of the world.
We have, however, no record of human existence here until the first white men came to California and that was a long time ago, too, as far as history is reckoned in America. It was only fifty years after the discovery of America by Columbus that California was discovered. This was in the year 1542, when Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese sailor, voyaging in Spanish ships and under the flag of Spain, sailed up from Natividad in Old Mexico and steered the prows of his daring little fleet of galleons into the harbor of San Diego.
And since now Los Angeles has come to be in many ways the first city of California-being certainly the first city as far as popula- tion is concerned-and since California, although one of the states of the Union only, is at the same time a distinct and separate country of itself, made so by the fact that it has a distinct entity geographically, climatically and in a thousand other ways, it is essential in telling the story of Los Angeles to begin by telling briefly the greater story of California itself. For it helps to make a story not only easier to under- stand, but vastly more interesting, if we shall begin at the beginning as every good story must do.
Now, when Cabrillo and the first white men found California, nearly 500 years ago-and that's a long, long time-they found the country inhabited by a native race of Indians who had villages of their own up and down the coast and far back in the mountains, and where they lived in separate clans and families. The Spaniards called these villages "rancherias."
The whole race may be regarded as having been like one tribe because they were exactly alike everywhere in appearance and in their mode of living. But there was one very strange thing about them, and this was that when separated at distances of sometimes not more than
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twenty miles apart, they spoke an entirely different language, the one from the other. For instance, the natives at San Diego were not able to converse in words with the Indians at San Juan Capistrano, nor were the Indians at San Juan Capistrano able to converse with the Indians of San Gabriel. And so it went throughout all California from one end of it to the other. There were Indians on Santa Catalina and other islands off the coast, but when brought to the mainland they did not understand one word that other Indians spoke. It has been stated on authority that more than two-thirds of all the Indian languages spoken within the present borders of the United States were found in California.
The 'California Indian differed in many other ways from the other Indians of America. The admiration universally accorded the great Algonquin family on the Atlantic seaboard and to the great war-like tribes of the western plains, does not seem to have had serious appli- cation here. The California Indian was not much of a man to admire. He was lazy, stupid and exceedingly careless of his morals. He did not take trouble to build for himself any kind of shelter worthy of the name of a house, and, consequently, he was a man who had no con- ception of the meaning of home. He toiled not, neither did he spin. He was without modesty, he had no traditions; neither knowing nor caring from whence he had come nor whither he might drift.
But perhaps we can consistently make excuses for him. Why should he go to the wholly unnecessary trouble to work when every- thing that he needed had been furnished to his hand by Nature's bounty? His country teemed with wild game and with wild fruits and honey. If he were hungry he had but to reach out his hand for endless food of almost every description that was everywhere around him. And why should he take also the unnecessary trouble to clothe himself when there were always places where the sun shone warm and he could be comfortable without clothing? In other words, California was an Indian paradise as it is now a paradise on earth for the white man.
Cabrillo, the Discoverer, was the first white man to visit Los Angeles. After he had spent a happy six days in San Diego and was loath to leave it as everybody is, even to this day, he felt, evidently, that he must be on his way to do the work that was cut out for him, and so he sailed into the harbor of San Pedro, which is now a part of the City of Los Angeles. This was on the 28th day of September in the year of our Lord 1542, almost exactly 377 years before the day that these words were written for this book.
It is fascinating to know what impression the harbor of Los Angeles made on the first white man who ever saw it, if we are to depend on the historic records, and in order to know what that im- pression was, we can do nothing better than to turn back to the Log Book of old Juan Rodriguez and read what was there written at the time. This is what it says :
"The Thursday following they proceeded about six leagues. [This was after they had left San Diego] by a cost running northwest and discovered a port enclosed and very good, to which they gave the name of San Miguel.
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[This was the Bay of San Pedro.] It is in 34 1-3 degrees, and after anchor- ing in it they went on shore. It had people, three of whom remained and all others fled. To these they gave some presents, and they said by signs that in the interior had passed people like the Spaniards. They manifested much fear.
"This same day at night they went on shore from the ships to fish with a net ; and it appears that there were here some Indians, and they began to discharge arrows and wounded three men.
"The next day in the morning they entered further within the port, which is large, with a boat and brought out two boys who understood nothing but signs ; and they gave them both shirts and immediately sent them away.
"And in the following day in the morning there came to the ship three large Indians ; and by signs they said that there were traveling in the interior, men like us, with beards, and clothed and armed like those of the ships, and they made signs that they carried cross bows and swords, and made gestures with the right arm as if they were throwing lances, and went running in a posture as if riding on horseback, and made signs that they killed many of the native Indians and that for this they were afraid. This people are well-disposed and advanced; they go covered with the skins of animals. Being in this boat there passed a very great tempest ; but on account of the port's being good they suffered nothing. It was a violent storm from the southwest. This is the first storm which they have experi- enced. They were in this port until the following Tuesday.
"The following Tuesday on the third day of the month of October, they departed from this port of San Miguel ; and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, they proceeded on their course about eighteen leagues, fifty- four miles along the coast, on which they saw many valleys, and level ground and many large smokes, and, in the interior, Sierras. They were at dusk near some islands which are about seven leagues from the main land; and because the wind was becalmed they could not reach them this night.
"Saturday, the seventh day of the month of October, they arrived at the island at day break which they named San Salvador [San Clemente], La Vittoria [Santa Catalina] ; and they anchored off one of them and they went with the boat on shore to see if there were people there; and as the boat came near, there issued a great quantity of Indians from among the bushes and grass, yelling and dancing and making signs that they should come ashore. And they saw that the women were running away ; and from the boats they made signs that they should have no fear; and immediately they assumed confidence and laid on the ground their bows and arrows, and they launched a canoe in the water which held eight or ten Indians and they came to the ships. They gave them beads and little presents, with which they were delighted and they presently went away. The Spaniards after- wards went ashore and were very secure, they and the Indian women and all, where an old Indian made signs to them that on the main land men were journeying clothed and with beards like the Spaniards. They were in this island only until noon.
"The following Sunday on the eighth of the said month, they came near the main land in a great bay which they named La Bahia de Los Fumos
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[Santa Monica Bay] on account of the numerous smokes which they saw upon it, where they held intercourse with some Indians whom they took in a canoe, who made signs that toward the north there were Spaniards like them. This bay is in 35 degrees ; and it is a good port ; and the country is good with many valleys and plains and trees."
There is one thing more than another, perhaps, that will strike the reader of Cabrillo's Log in these centuries so long after it was written, and that is to wonder who these white men could have been that were here before Cabrillo. The most popular theory is that the Indians in the interior of the country, probably as far inland as Arizona and New Mexico, and who saw Coronado and his expedition in that part of the world two years before Cabrillo's discovery of California, passed the word along across the Colo- rado and over the mountains and the deserts to the Indians here on the coast, that they had seen white men.
There isn't the slightest probability, however, that the Indians here ever themselves saw white men until they saw the people of Cabrillo's daring enterprise. And following the theory up, it is easy to suppose that word would have come over vast distances among the Indian tribes concern- ing the appearance of Coronado and his men in the interior. It is true that there were no newspapers in those days and no telegraph lines, not to speak of the wireless telegraph, there were no aeroplanes or telephones or any other modern vehicle for the swift and even instantaneous conveyance of news, but it is astonishing how rapidly news traveled in those times, just the same, among the Indian peoples.
The same is true among them to this day. Let a man appear for any special reason among the Indians of Soboba, and the next day, or in two or three days at most, his presence will become known in some magic way among all the Indian peoples of the reservations of Southern California. Even will it be known among the lonely huts of Laguna in the far silences of the Cuyamacas.
And certainly this wonderful old swash-buckling explorer Francisco Vasquez Coronado must have made a vivid impression on the primitive mind of the territory that he covered. When he set out from Old Mexico in 1540, he had with him 200 mounted lancers in armor and 1,000 mounted horsemen in all, which was a very respectable force to be assembled under similar circumstances in any age of the world. The commander himself and his officers and their mounts were gorgeous with gay trappings. They had golden swords and silken banners; their advance was heralded with a blare of trumpets.
It was to find the famous fabled seven golden cities of Cibola that Coronado and his men had set out from Mexico. It seems assured that they traveled as far north as the center of our present State of Kansas, and that they came over into New Mexico, where they found that the much-vaunted seven cities of gold were nothing more than the pueblos of the Zunis, and after all they found their quest to be a failure. There is no doubt that the country was considerably stirred up by this wonderful pageant that passed through it, and was not long until every aborigine within a radius of 1,000 miles and more had been told the news of it.
All this record of history and recital of tradition is here recalled only for what it may be worth, and mainly for the reason to fix in the reader's
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mind the established fact that the real discoverer of California was Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, and that to him and to him alone the credit belongs.
Another thing that impresses one in reading Cabrillo's Log, is that he mentions the fact that here were many trees in this part of the world in early times. Southern California is so invariably referred to by writers as a "treeless land" that the impression has gone abroad that it was always a treeless land. But we see from the absolutely reliable report of Cabrillo that it was a land of many trees, indeed, when the white men first saw it. It is difficult to imagine that the country around San Pedro and Point Loma at San Diego was once covered with dense forests, but such is undoubtedly the fact, and the task before the people of Southern California now is to restore these forests, especially on the mountain slopes. For, if they should fail to do this, all that they have builded through a century past-their cities and towns, their farms, their orchards-are at the mercy of flood and storm that may some day bury them as deep under the mud and sands of oblivion as Babylon was buried.
The one last thing concerning Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo that fascinates the mind now is that it seems to have been ordained by Providence that he should never leave the bright new land which he was the first of all the civilized men of the earth to see. When doubling back from Cape Mendo- cino to which he had sailed, in order that he might seek again the shelter of the Santa Barbara channel, the great admiral fell sick with a fever and died. His sailors buried him on the sunny little isle of San Miguel, where still he sleeps reckless of wind and wave and tide-the immortal Portuguese who was first to find the land of heart's desire.
Cabrillo's expedition continued north again after his death, probably sailing as far as the present southern line of Oregon. But it then returned to Old Mexico without having achieved anything more than to have pro- claimed to the world the actual existence of the long-dreamed of and storied land of endless summers. But this was surely achievement enough. Sixty years passed before white men came again to California, and again they came merely to explore the coast and to return, and it was not until 227 years after the discovery had passed that any attempt was made to settle and to colonize the country.
And it was 239 years after the discovery of California that Los Angeles, now one of the wonder cities of the world, was founded.
This brings us to another story-one of the greatest of all the stories ever told-the story of how the white man's religion and civilization were brought to a heathen land and there rooted never to wither or die. It is a story which enfolds in its wondrous glamour Los Angeles and all the country that lies on either side of it between the mountains and the sea.
The fateful year of 1769 must remain forever immortal in the annals of California. It was the year in which California began, when civilization was planted upon its shores, when the cross of Christianity, symbol of the Religion of Redemption, was reared in its sunny valleys and upon its shining mountain tops. And it is also then that we first hear of the renowned and venerable Fray Junipero Serra, the great Franciscan who laid the corner stones of our commonwealth and by whose hands was erected the fabric of our Empire of the Sun. There can never be anything written or anything said that has to do with California and its glamorous
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history without the inclusion of the name of this most remarkable and wonderful man.
Spain waited a long time indeed-more than two centuries and a quarter-to take full advantage of its wonderful possessions on the western shores of North America. But it is plain, for all that, that Spain never held lightly in its estimation California's worth. It is perhaps only because the throne of Castile and Leon was so tremendously engaged with the stupendous task of exploiting the new half of the earth that had fallen into its hands that it waited so long to colonize California, which, as we now know, was the brightest jewel in its crown. But, however it may be, the fact remains that it was not until full 227 years had passed that the
TYPICAL OLD SPANISH MISSION
Spanish king decided to add California to the civilized possessions of the world.
It is a long story if we were to tell all that led up to the expedition of 1769 which brought Fray Junipero Serra and his brown-robed Franciscan companions to the shores of the Bay of San Diego, where they arrived on the first day of July of that forever memorable year. Suffice it to say that the intent and purpose of this expedition was to accomplish at one stroke the Christianization of the native Indians and to colonize California as a Spanish province.
The plan that Spain had in mind was a three-fold plan, namely, that missions should be established in which the natives were to be instructed and trained in the Christian religion and taught to do a white man's work; second, that presidios or garrisons were to be established throughout the length of California in order not only that the missions might be under military protection but also that the country itself might be in a condition to repel probable foreign invasion, and third, that pueblos were to be founded in favorable places so that an urban population might be estab- lished to co-operate with the vast agricultural interests planned.
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It was a wise and far-sighted plan in every way, and it was carried out to a great extent, especially as regarded the missions. The agricultural scheme also made wide progress. The only feature of the three-fold plan that materialized unimportantly was the scheme of the pueblos. All told, only three of these pueblos were ever founded, as follows: one at Branciforte, which was founded where the present City of Santa Cruz stands. Not a trace of Branciforte remains. Another pueblo was founded and named San Jose in honor of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of Cali- fornia. It still exists and flourishes as the present beautiful and important city of San Jose in the white-blossomed valley of Santa Clara. The third and last of the pueblos-the one that at first was the least hopeful and that remained the longest the most squalid, the least promising of all- was our present great City of Los Angeles.
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