USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Los Angeles county, Volume I > Part 22
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At last, on the fifteenth day of August, the feast of the Assumption, in the year 1814, the cornerstone of the Plaza Church, still standing as the first house of divine worship in Los Angeles, was laid. But for four years more that was all that was done-the laying of the cornerstone. The people appealed again to the authorities to give them a church. Many of the king's veterans were spending their declining years in the pueblo, and they protested that it was unjust to them that they should be deprived of the consolation of religion. Then the citizens of the town showed their good will by subscribing 500 head of cattle, the proceeds of the sale of which they offered to devote to a fund to help build the church. The padres at San Gabriel gave seven barrels of brandy worth $575 to the fund, which fact may cause some surprise in these times. But we are to learn that things were different in the days of which we speak. There was no prejudice against brandy in this part of the world 100 years ago. Anyway, in 1821, seven years after the cornerstone of the Plaza Church was laid, its walls had been builded as high as its window arches, and in one way and another the church was finally completed. The architect was Jose Antonio Ramirez, and the church was builded by Indians from San Gabriel and San Luis Rey, who received twenty-five cents each per day for their labor. The
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pueblo also had a village school then and the people paid the schoolmaster $140 a year salary.
Still following the first uncertain steps of the Pueblo of Los Angeles, we are a little surprised to find that fifty years after it was founded it still had a population of only one thousand souls, and that fully three hundred and fifty of these were Indians. There were also some Portuguese who were always regarded as foreigners. And besides-more interesting to us than other items-there were in this neighborhood in that time, of the Anglo Saxon race the following named persons: Joseph Chapman, W. A. Richardson, Joseph V. Lawrence, Isaac Galbraith, William Welch, J. Bow- man, J. B. Leandry, John Temple, George Rice, William Fisher, Jesse Ferguson, John Haley, John Davis, Richard Laughlin, Fred Roland, and Louis Bauchet, every name of which has a familiar ring in the life of the Los Angeles of today.
And yet the town had not acquired a very good name, for we find Father Payeres saying then that "if the citizens of Los Angeles would give their attention to other productions of industry than wine and brandy, it would be better for both the province and the pueblo." Also we learn from the dusty old records of the time that the citizens of the town publicly declared they would not recognize any military authority ; that Jose Antonio Carrillo was holding the office of mayor illegally; that a certain citizen was prosecuted for "habitual rape ;" that the secretary of the town council, Francisco Morales, was removed from office for incompetency. Permit us also to quote from the police regulations of Los Angeles for the year 1827, the following :
"All offenders against the Roman Apostolic religion will be punished with the utmost severity. Failing to enter church, entering disrespectfully, lounging at the church door, standing at the corners or remaining on horse- back when processions were out, will be punished, first with fines, and then with imprisonment. Purchasing articles of servants, idleness and vagrancy, swindling, gambling, prostitution, scandalous assemblages, obscenity, and blasphemy, also riding at speed in the street at unusual hours or without lawful cause, will be dealt with according to law."
Mayor Carrillo added to the excitement of the time by accusing the president of the town council with smuggling.
The total city revenues, as shown by the record of municipal receipts for the year 1827, were $859, and the expenditures $763, thus leaving a small but important balance in favor of the city.
One might not think it, but it is a fact that there was considerable mari- time activity in these parts 100 years ago. The harbor of San Pedro is regarded today as a new harbor which the enterprise of recent peoples caused to be made into a port. But the truth is that San Pedro was always more or less of a harbor, and there were many worse. We have related in this book the fact that one Juan Rodriguez Carrillo, the discoverer of Cali- fornia, sailed his ships into San Pedro in 1542, and on the map he made put it down as a real harbor.
Now it was about the year 1828 that Mexico, of which California was then a province, was obsessed with the fear that foreign powers were bent upon an invasion of our territory with a view to seizing it for themselves. Consequently, the Mexican government issued orders, closing the "embar-
LARGEST LUMBER RECEIVING PORT IN THE WORLD, LOS ANGELES
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caderos," as the coast ports were called, against foreign vessels, of which there appeared to be quite a number plying in this neighborhood at that time. The order included San Pedro, and it was declared that the coast trade could be carried on only by Mexican shippers. It is interesting to note that among the foreign shippers that were affected by this order there were Russian, English, American and Hawaiian vessels. Don Jose Maria de Echeandia, then the Mexican Governor of California, was the man on whom it devolved to keep foreigners out of the province, and it must be said for him that he made a very determined effort indeed to fulfill his task. Looking back at it all in the light of the knowledge of today, this course of exclusion of foreign trade by the Mexican government was extremely stupid and ill advised. But that is neither here nor there as far as Governor Echeandia was concerned. His business was to see that the laws of his government were executed, and this he did do to the utmost extent of his ability. We must give him credit for that. A man who does his duty as he sees it must always be regarded as a good man.
From all we can learn, however, the law aimed at the exclusion of the foreign trade, like many another law enacted before it and since, not only by Mexico but by all other governments, was possible of evasion. The traders that came with silks and satins and jewels to trade them for the hides and tallow of the ranchos and the missions found it quite easy to make connections. The governor could not be at every point of the Califor- nia coast, 1,000 miles long, at the same time. And with the exception of the governor there was no one here who had the slightest desire or intention of obeying the law. It was a foolish law, anyway, and perhaps the people displayed good sense in ignoring it.
Nevertheless, the foreign vessels that came to this coast then to trade, did so illegally and in reality put themselves in the class of smugglers, and this is what they were, of course. But they seemed to enjoy it and managed to extract a great deal of profit from it. We suppose that poor old Don Jose Maria, the governor, was very much distraught by it all and constantly at his wit's ends to know what to do, but that is something that cannot be helped now.
By the time that the year 1835 had rolled around and Los Angeles had been a pueblo, or town, for a space of fifty-four years, it was able to boast of a population of about 2,000. There are a number of persons who were living in Los Angeles then who are living in it still, at the time this book is being written, and when Los Angeles has a population of considerably more than a half million and ranks as the tenth city of the United States.
But in the year 1835 a California town with a population of 2,000 had as much right to boast as one of our towns now has to boast of a population of hundreds of thousands, and it seems that when Los Angeles awoke one morning from its dreams-or maybe it was one'evening that it awoke, for it had a habit of sleeping a good deal in the day time, too-and possibly fearing the effect of the presence of forty resident Americans who did not sleep so much and had a way of stirring around, the pueblo became suddenly ambitious and determined to make a spurt. In a population of 2,000 there were about 600 Indians, leaving only about 1,400 white people and near white people. But we must not overlook the forty Americans. They were
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the ginger in the cake. Then as now, forty live Americans are sufficient to bring any dead town to life.
I somehow find myself believing that it was at the instigation of the Americans, although their movements may have been insidious, that Don Jose Maria Carrillo was induced to run for Congress-for member of the Mexican Congress, bear in mind, because California was destined to wait still another fifteen years or more before it could send men to the Congress at Washington.'
This Don Jose Maria Carrillo was a very prominent man in Los Angeles at that time, and a very influential man. He also had a restless spirit. He was what is usually called a "plotter." Doubtless he had good reason for his plots, since they were always directed against the territorial government, and there was nothing that any territorial government in California in those days needed so much as to be kicked out and another territorial government put in its place.
When Governor Echeandia was summarily deposed from office by who- ever it was that was running things down in old Mexico, and the old fire- eating swashbuckles, Emanuel Victoria, sent up to take the governor's chair from Echeandia and sit in it himself, which he certainly did, Jose Maria Carrillo formed a combination with two other prominent persons hereabout, namely, Don Pio Pico and Don Juan Bandini, and fomented a revolution to prevent Victoria from exercising the functions of the office of governor of California.
There was a lot of trouble about it and a fight which is called the "Battle of San Fernando," or something like that, and in which two men were killed and probably fifty „others, who composed the membership of the armies on both sides, were badly scared. Victoria himself was wounded severely, and if it had not been for the presence of an English doctor at San Gabriel Mission, where the governor was taken after the fight was over, old Emanuel Victoria might have died from his wounds. Victoria didn't want any more of California after that. So he abdicated and got back to Mexico as fast as he could.
Thus the revolution may be said to have been successful, and Carrillo, Pico and Bandini, who were already prominent, now became famous. · Carrillo, as above stated, ran for Congress and was elected. He had an elegant adobe house near the old Plaza on ground where the celebrated hotel called the Pico House was afterward erected, and we have no doubt that just before he departed for Mexico to take his seat in Congress, his American neighbors pointed out to him that he could do a great deal down there to boost Los Angeles. And it turns out that Carrillo did that very thing. I regard Jose Maria Carrillo as the original Los Angeles booster, the progenitor and the father of all the various, innumerable, immortal boosters who have followed him through the changing years down to this day.
What Carrillo did to help Los Angeles when he got to Mexico as a member of Congress, and, what he did to put all the other towns of Cali- fornia in the shade, so to speak, was what might be called "plenty ;" for the first thing that California knew there came an order from the Govern- ment of Mexico declaring Los Angeles to be no longer a pueblo, but a first-class city. And, furthermore, it was ordered and directed that Los
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Angeles become henceforth the capital of California, instead of Monterey. It is not recorded that the other little sleepy pueblos of the province paid the slightest attention to the matter. San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and the mission settlements appear to have never awakened from their slumbers to pay the slightest attention to the matter. But Monterey broke out into a fury. And no wonder. From the very beginning it had been the capital. The king himself had so designated it, and from the time that Don Gaspar de Portola and Fray Junipero Serra first set foot in it, in 1769, it had been from that moment until Jose Antonio Maria Carrillo exploded this bomb, the focus and the center of all authority, civil, military and religious, as well as the shrine of fashion, art and culture in California.
Monterey made a tremendous protest against the change, and it put its protest into eloquent words which were forwarded to the government in Mexico, the language being as follows :
"Monterey has been the capital for more than seventy years; Cali- fornians and foreigners have learned to regard it as the capital; interests have been developed which should not be ignored; and a change would engender dangerous rivalries. The capital of a maritime country should be a port, and not an inland place. Monterey has a secure, well-known, and frequented port, well provided with wood, water, and provisions ; where a navy yard and dock may be constructed. Monterey has a larger popula- tion than Los Angeles ; the people are more moral and cultured; and the prospects for advancement are superior. Monterey has decent buildings for government uses, to build which at Los Angeles will cost $30,000; and besides, some documents may be lost in moving the archives. Monterey has center position, mild climate, fertile soil, developed agriculture; here, women, plants, and useful animals are very productive! Monterey is nearer the northern frontier, and therefore better fitted for defense. It would be unjust to compel the majority to go so far on government business. It would be impossible to assemble a quorum of the Legislature at Los Angeles. The sensible people, even of the South, acknowledge the advant- ages of Monterey. Monterey has done no wrong to be deprived of its honor, although unrepresented in Congress; while the last three deputies have had personal and selfish interests in favor of the South."
We commend a careful reading of this Monterey protest to our leaders. It is one of those vivid flashes of the past which provides us with the ability to see things as they were. To the mind of the writer it furnishes a picture invaluable for the things that it makes clear and which would otherwise be very dim or impossible entirely to the vision.
Now there was a funny thing about this first attempt to take the capital away from Monterey and bring it to Los Angeles, where it never came except for one little space of time under Pio Pico, which was altogether illegal. They finally managed to take the capital away from Monterey, and it was a very wrong thing to do, but it didn't do Los Angeles any good.
The funny thing about it was that when the Honorable Don Jose Maria Carrillo returned to his home town, the City of the Angels, after having filled his seat in the Mexican Congress, he was surprised to find that Los Angeles wasn't any more the capital of California than it had ever been. The fact was that Monterey simply declined to cease to be the capital, and served notice on Don Jose Maria Carrillo and Don Pio Pico and Don
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Juan Bandini and the forty Americans, the 1,400 white people and near white people, the 600 Indians and all concerned, including jack rabbits and coyotes, that if Los Angeles thought it was the capital of California it had "another think coming.'
So that's all there was to it for a long time afterwards. Los Angeles regularly demanded that Monterey cease its function as the capital and Monterey as regularly, but politely and firmly, refused to do so. It seems that in due time the matter was forgotten. Maybe everybody felt them- selves to be more or less weary by the exertion, and decided it was time to take a long rest.
It was in these ways of slow growth and mild seasons, with here and there a flare in the night, and now and then a shot or two and a clank of rusty sabres, living out its sorrows and its joys, christening its new-born and burying its dead, playing as best it could at the game of Empire, and never without some kind of feast and the dance and the song and the music that went with it-it was so that Los Angeles took its first uncertain steps on the great high-road of destiny where now it towers like a young giant in shining armor.
OLD LOS ANGELES CONTRASTED WITH NEW : PERSHING SQUARE
CHAPTER XVI
LIFE IN OLD LOS ANGELES
The golden age of California was not truly "the days of old, the days of gold, the days of '49." It was long before that time, and it was like the golden age of Greece. In those old days when the land was inhabited by the people of the Spanish race, and the rulers of the land were the patri- archal owners of the great ranchos, California was the happiest country in all the world.
In those days a man could travel from San Diego to Sonoma without a penny in his pocket and never lack for food or shelter. Not only were the great open doors of the missions-which were the hospices of the land- swung ever inward with welcome, but there was the same welcome also at every other door. To the stranger who sought shelter or food the answer at the door was always the same: "Enter, friend, it is your own house."
In the diary of an American who wandered into California in the old times when Americans here were few and far between, we find the follow- ing entry, which is both eloquent and illuminating.
"Receiving so much kindness from the native Californians, I arrived at the conclusion that there was no place in the world where I could enjoy more true happiness and true friendship than among them. There were no courts, no juries, no lawyers nor any need of them. The people were honest and hospitable, and their word was as good as their bond; indeed, bonds and notes of hand were entirely unknown among the natives."
Hospitality was a religion with the people of the old Los Angeles, as it was with all the people of California before it was invaded by strangers and railroads.
As a type of the men of Los Angeles of the old times, let us take the Don Antino Maria Lugo, whose great rancho once extended from the Mountain of the Arrowhead at San Bernardino to the Bay of Santa Monica. It is upon this great Lugo rancho that the present City of Los Angeles stands. And it is likewise upon lands that were granted to Don Antonio by the Spanish king that all the bright and vibrant cities between the moun- tains and the sea are standing today.
Don Antonio had been a soldier of the king. And he must have been well beloved, for the king richly rewarded him. Of course the King of Spain had plenty of land to give away; the Pope had given him one-half the earth to give away; but the fact remains that the king did not give either lands or anything else to those who did not in some way earn them. Don Antonio Maria Lugo earned his land by loyal service.
He was the most famous horseman of his day in California, and in
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his day California was famous for its horsemen and its horses. Every- body that was anybody had a horse. Indeed, everybody had many horses. It might be said, to put the situation clearly, that anybody that wanted a horse had nothing to do but go out and lasso one wherever he might find it. The California horse of those days was a cross between the wild native horse and the Arabian. It was indeed a most wonderful creature, and the favorite horse of a man in those times was more wonderful still.
If Los Angeles be famous now for its automobiles-and it surely is, because there are more automobiles per capita here than in any other city in the world-it was once upon a time, in the old days, equally famous for its horses.
Gen. Andres Pico, the famous brother of the illustrous Don Pio Pico, last of the Mexican governors of California, commanding a band of Cali- fornia horsemen, armed only with lances, defeated Gen. Steven Watts Kearney and a body of American troops at the battle of San Pasqual wholly through expert horsemanship, although the American troops were armed with firearms and supported by cannon.
So, when it is said that Don Antonio Maria Lugo was the most famous horseman of his day in California, it is saying a great deal. But it appears to be the truth. It is related of him that he once rode from Los Angeles to Monterey to visit his sister who lived there. His sister was a very old woman and was seated upon the piazza of her house dreaming of old conquests no doubt, when a horseman was spied way in the distance cantering through the dust of the king's highway. The old lady on the piazza exclaimed, "Yonder rides my brother Don Antonio." Her sharp- eyed grandchildren who were seated with her protested that it was impos- sible for anyone, and particularly for an old lady whose sight was failing, to detect the identity of a horseman at that distance. But the old lady replied : "I am sure it is my brother, Don Antonio, because there is no other man in California who rides like that." And she was right. It was Don Antonio.
Well, let us get back to the subject of hospitality as it was in the Los Angeles of the old days. And let us take Don Antonio Maria Lugo as an example, as we promised to do at the beginning of this chapter. Let us suppose that Don Antonio sent word by one of his Indian servants to a friend to come and dine with him at his great ranch house a little ways beyond the boundaries of the city. The friend, of course, would gladly accept. He would not decline the invitation on any excuse, real or con- cocted. He had plenty of time to go, and he took the time. "Time was made for slaves," was a saying they had in those days.
On the appointed day that Don Antonio's friend was to dine, he would saddle and accouter his favorite horse, groomed to glossy silkiness by its Indian care-taker. And the saddle and the bridle, exquisitely wrought upon with silver and gold, would be worth a king's ransom. And the man him- self would be splendidly arrayed. He would have a sombrero with a gold band around it and the rim of it lined with silk ; a bolero jacket of green or blue or purple, gorgeously embroidered with gold or silver, his trousers of velveteen or broadcloth and slashed below the knees ; beautifully ornamented shoes of deer skin; and a scarlet sash around his waist to mark his rank as a gentleman.
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Faring forth to the appointed place, the honored guest would be sure to meet another horseman before he was a mile upon the road. "It seems to me," said Richard Henry Dana, who wrote the first famous modern book on California, "that everybody I see in this country is riding a horse."
Now, these two horsemen would halt for a word of greeting at least, and when it would evolve that the first man was on his way to dine with Don Antonio, the second man, to whom this information had been conveyed, would without hesitation wheel his horse about and this is what he would say :
"So? Then I shall join you and dine also with Don Antonio."
And as they journeyed along they would meet another horseman, and another, and another, and many more, all of whom would suddenly deter- mine to "also dine with Don Antonio."
After a pleasant journey across the ford of streams and up and down dale, the cavalcade would come at length to the great house of Don Antonio's rancho. Indian servants would flock to take the horses in charge and then the guests-the one invited and all the others uninvited-would step with much pleasant clamour upon the wide piazza. Don Antonio himself, garbed much in the fashion of his callers, would then appear in his sunny doorway, pretending to be much surprised by the presence of the gathering. And then he would throw his great brown arms around the one guest who had been specifically invited, and he would say to him: "O, friend of mine. I know you now love me well indeed, because you have not only come yourself to dine with me, but you have brought all these other dear friends with you also.'
The dinner would be waiting, the board groaning with its savory weight, and it would be a feast for heroes. Everything that the palate of the epicure could desire would be upon that table. And, since eating has been a subject of interest to all peoples in all times, as it is now and doubtless will continue to be, it will interest us to know in what manner they dined who lived and had their being in the old Los Angeles.
First, there would be broth cooked in the Spanish way with rice, vermi- celli, tallarines, macaroni punteta, which was a small dumpling of wheatened flour. And with this broth, bread or tortillas made of corn would be served. The next course would be the puchero, which is to say the meat and vegetables. There would be asauce of green peppers and tomatoes, onions, and parsley or garlic. There would be a sweet dessert called "dulce" and sweetmeats.
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