History of Pasadena, comprising an account of the native Indian, the early Spanish, the Mexican, the American, the colony, and the incorporated city, occupancies of the Rancho San Pasqual, and its adjacent mountains, canyons, waterfalls and other objects of interest: being a complete and comprehensive histo-cyclopedia of all matters pertaining to this region, Part 5

Author: Reid, Hiram Alvin, 1834-; McClatchie, Alfred James, comp
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Pasadena, Cal., Pasadena History Co.
Number of Pages: 714

USA > California > Los Angeles County > Pasadena > History of Pasadena, comprising an account of the native Indian, the early Spanish, the Mexican, the American, the colony, and the incorporated city, occupancies of the Rancho San Pasqual, and its adjacent mountains, canyons, waterfalls and other objects of interest: being a complete and comprehensive histo-cyclopedia of all matters pertaining to this region > Part 5

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DIVISION ONE - PRE-PASADENIAN.

with the scene laid in California, and it is properly a California novel. It is a poem in prose, and is of universal interest, as it deals with the true and simple feelings of humanity. Every incident in this book is founded on fact. From the ejectment at Temecula to the killing of the husband and acquittal of his murderer, the basis of every statement is susceptible of proof."

WHY NO INDIAN GRAVES AT PASADENA ?

In a letter to me July 11, 1894, Prof. C. F. Holder raised this question, and I quote his remarks :

" One question has interested me greatly - where did the San Gabriel Indians bury their dead ? I have never found a skeleton, nor heard of one being found. Graves are common at Catalina and Santa Barbara; but a Pasadena place of Indian burial has not been found."

The answer is that cremation was practised by our Indians. Taylor's Indianology, cited in the California Farmer of June 8, 1860, says : “From north to south in the present California up to the Columbia river, they burnt the dead in some tribes and in others buried them."

In Schoolcraft's Archaeology, Vol. 3, page 112, Gibbs reports from the Pacific coast Indians : "The body is consumed upon a scaffold built over a hole, into which the ashes are thrown and covered."

Father Geronimo Boscana, who served as a missionary among the Indians of Southern California nearly 30 years, and died at San Gabriel July 5, 1831, left a MSS. account of these Indians in Spanish, which was translated by Alfred Robinson, a Boston man, who was in California as a trade manager and traveler from February, 1829, until 1845; and it was published by Wiley & Putnam, New York, in 1846, as an appendix to Rob- inson's own work, entitled "Life in California." On the matter in question Father Boscana, at page 239, says : " The bodies of their dead were imme-

diately burnt." Again, page 268 : " The parents of the deceased were permitted afterwards to take possession of the body and perform the accus- tomed ceremony of burning it." And yet again, page 314, he says : "Pre- parations were made for his sepulture or the burning of his body ; * * *

they bore the corpse to the place of sacrifice, where it was laid upon the faggots. Then the friends of the deceased retired, and the " burner " set fire to the pile, and remained near the spot until all was consumed to ashes."

Hugo Reid gives a somewhat different account. He says :

" When a person died all the kin collected to lament his or her loss. * * This was continued until the body showed signs of decay, when it was wrapped up in its covering with the hands across the breast and tied from head to foot. A grave having been dug in their burial place, the body was interred according to the means of the family, etc. If deceased was the head of a family or a favorite son, the hut was set fire to, in which he died, and all of his goods and chattels burned with it."

HISTORY OF PASADENA.

Father Boscana was a pioneer missionary among these Indians, while Reid wrote from hearsay long after they had become partly Christianized.

Governor Fages [1771] and various other writers, give varying accounts of burial practice. But taking all the testimony in the case, and the cir- cumstantial evidence besides, I am safe in stating that our Pasadena abo- rigines burned their dead ; and so that is why no graves or skeletons have ever been found, nor any general place of sepulture. The fact is, when the "hut" was burned the body was burned with it. And in other cases the body was laid on a hurdle of sticks and brush over a hole in the ground, as Gibbs reports, and as the body and brushwood consumed together they dropped into the hole, and things belonging to the deceased were then thrown in also, and the cavity filled up. This was the grave, and this is how it happens that a metate or some other stone relic is occasionally found " three or four feet down," as Prof. Holder says in his letter given in another chap- ter, while ordinarily these things are covered so shallow with vegetable mould, or drifted sand and dust, that they are turned up by the farmer's plow, which usually cuts only from six to ten inches deep.

"Old Francesca," who was born at Los Nietos in 1794, and is still living as a resident of Pasadena, told me on September 23rd, 1894, that she had always understood that "the Indians here burned their dead, before they became Christians ;" but she had never seen it done herself.

Senora Lopez also related an incident of an Indian coming to life again in the San Gabriel church while they were preparing to bury him, some time during Father Sanchez's administration. He was an old man, a wood- chopper ; his body had been prepared for burial and left in the church over night. The next day at the hour set for the funeral his relatives and the people and priest went in to complete the burial service and lay him away in the graveyard north of the church. But now to their astonishment and fright he raised up, and said faintly in the Indian language, "Mamma, I want some water." He recovered and lived several years afterward. Senora Lopez and old Francesca, then young women together at San Gabriel, once asked him what he saw while he was dead, and he replied, " Lights, lights -up high -and a pretty road ! - high, too high ! - I was so tired - I couldn't go up, - so I had to come back ! - so tired !"

DIVISION ONE -- PRE-PASADENIAN.

CHAPTER II.

THE SAN GABRIEL MISSION .- Its successive padres .- Its trades and industries .- Claudio Lopez, and other secular officers .- The story of the Mills .- Joseph Chapman, the Yankee prisoner, in the Mount Lowe "Grand Canyon "-1818 .- Secularization of the Mission .- Don Juan Bandini as administrator .- Earthquake in 1812 .- Ship built there in 1831; etc., etc.

THE SAN GABRIEL MISSION.

The old Mission church at San Gabriel has so much historic interest to Pasadena people and our tourist visitors, and is so closely connected with the old Rancho San Pasqual, that I must give a few points of its history here in consecutive order :

AND OF SUNSHINE

Photo for "Land of Sunshine," Sept., 1894.

OLD STONE CHURCH, SAN GABRIEL,

Which was in process of erection from 1790 to 1808.

On September 8th, 1771, the San Gabriel Mission was first established, by padres Angel Somera and Pedro Cambon, on the west bank of the river which had been up to this time called Rio San Miguel, but from that date was called Rio San Gabriel .* The site was what is still called "Old Mis- sion ", and an Indian village called in their language Isanthcog-na, stood close by.

In 1772 Somera and Cambon retired and Padres Paterna and Antonio Cruzado took charge, the latter remaining until October 12, 1804.

*J. Albert Wilson in his " History of Los Angeles Co." published in 1880 by Thompson & West, says this river was first called " Rio de los Temblores", and many other writers have followed him. But it is an entire mistake, for that name was applied only to the Santa Ana river, unless by mistake.

HISTORY OF PASADENA.

In September, 1775, padre Francisco Miguel Sanchez took Paterna's place, and remained until July 27, 1803, when he died. Padre Calzada was also here until 1792.

1792-93 : Padre Cristobal Oramas.

1794-96 : Padre Juan Martin.

1798-99 : Padre Juan Lope Cortes.

July, 1797 to October, 1802: Padre Pedro de San Jose Esteban.

In 1775-76 the Mission was removed to its present location, the Indian village of Sibag-na being near this site. An adobe structure was built here for a church at first, but its walls cracked and became unsafe, and the pro- ject of building a stone church was commenced. The records are strangely and stupidly meager ; but it appears that in 1794 the stone church was about half completed : and in 1800 it was still unfinished. (Hist. Cal., Vol. I, p. 664.) Of the present location J. Albert Wilson writes :

"The site now occupied by the San Gabriel Mission buildings and the adjacent village, was a complete forest of oaks, with considerable under- wood. The water composing the lagoon of the mill (one and a half miles distant) then lodged in a hollow near the Mission on the Los Angeles road. This hollow was a complete thicket of sycamores, cottonwood, larch, ash, and willow; and was almost impassable from the dense undergrowth of brambles, nettles, palmacristi, wild rose and wild vines. Cleared of these encumbrances, this land (which then possessed a rich black soil, though now a sandy waste) served to grow the first crops ever produced in Los An- geles county. [NOTE .- This is a mistake, for some corn, beans, barley, and garden stuff had been raised at Old Mission, before the removal-ED.] Near by stood the Indian village Sibag-na. Bears innumerable [?] prowled about the dwellings, and deer sported in the neighborhood."-Thompson &' West Hist. Los A. Co., p. 20.

1802 to 1804 : Padre Isidoro Barcenilla.

In 1803-04, and again from 1806 to January 14, 1811, when he died, padre Francisco Dumetz was here. He had been forty years a missionary, and was the last survivor in California of the original band that came here 1 with Father Junipero Serra.

1803 to 1813: Padre Jose de Miguel. Then he went to San Fernando Mission, and died there June 2, 1814.

From August, 1804, to September, 1806: Padre Jose Antonio Urresti.

In 1806 Padre Jose Maria Zalvidea was placed in charge of this Mis- sion ; and for twenty years he pushed its development and managed its af- fairs with vigor and rigor and masterful ability. He was a severe and rigid disciplinarian ; he worked hard himself and made everybody else work hard ; some of his regulations, both religious and secular, were diabolically harsh, cruel and torturous ; the Indians both male and female were reduced to a con- dition of virtual slavery, under taskmasters armed with bullwhips made from strips of rawhide. Any show of resistance was punished with ruthless

DIVISION ONE - PRE-PASADENIAN.

severity, until all Indians who had pluck and grit enough to rebel were either killed, or escaped to the mountains or broken in spirit-for it must be remembered that the Indians had only clubs, wooden spears, bows and ar- rows, or stones for weapons, while the Spanish soldiers on guard duty at the Missions had muskets ; and this is why so few could overcome and hold in servitude so many. In fact the Indians at the Mission were not allowed to keep in possession weapons of any sort. Nevertheless, Zalvidea's iron- handed harshness of rule here was no worse than had been carried on by Spanish ecclesiastics against heretics or heathens in Europe and Mexico and South America, or by Americans in the slave-holding portions of the United States prior to 1860. Hence it is not for us to throw stones at this austere padre. His policy resulted in a most brilliant and famous commercial suc- cess for this particular Mission; the blood and sweat of his enslaved "neophytes " (the "converted " Indians were always thus called) was ver- itably coined into money. He finished the stone church ; built the great dam, saw mill and stone grist mill at Wilson lake ; brought water in ditches from the San Gabriel river beyond Monrovia to irrigate field crops, orchards and vineyards ; established numerous distinct mechanical trades to manu- facture or prepare for market the products of flocks, herds, fields, and the chase, and assigned Indians to each kind of work, with a taskmaster over them ; carried on a large trade with ships at San Pedro from Mexico, South America, Spain, United States and other countries, selling them hides, tal- low, soap, candles, wines, grain, peltries, shoes, etc. But the settlers at Los Angeles, and the ranch people of the region round about, and the people of other Missions, were also large purchasers from the San Gabriel work- shops .* To give an idea of the extent of the business carried on by Zal- videa (with the very efficient aid of his famous major domo, Claudio Lopez), I have compiled a schedule of the different trades : 1952887

Butchers-Slaughter men, who killed, skinned and dressed beeves, sheep, etc., separating the hides, tallow and nieat to the different workers in each article. Theodore Lopez pointed out to me the place on the banks of the Arroyo west of the village where one hundred cattle were slaughtered every Saturday as rations for the 3,000 to 4,000 Indians during the ensuing week, when his grandfather was major domo there.

Hide-dressers-who prepared hides, sheepskins, deerskins, etc., for sale or shipment.

Tallow-workers-who operated vast iron cauldrons procured from whal- ing ships, for trying out tallow by the ton and running it into underground brick vaults, some of which would hold a shipload of it in one solid mass, keeping it there safe from becoming rancid or being stolen until some ship

* " The town of Los Angeles was formally founded September 4, 1781-just ten years (less four days) after the establishment of San Gabriel Mission. * * For many years afterward Los Angeles was but a country outpost of San Gabriel Mission : and its few people were always glad enough to visit the Mis- sion, there to purchase its weekly supplies, and witness the Sunday festivities."-7,~ W. Hist Los A. Co., p. 23.

HISTORY OF PASADENA.

was ready to take a cargo of it; then it was cut out in great blocks and hauled on carts to San Pedro .* This work was carried on for many years a few rods south of the present old Mission church just below the S. P. R. R. track. In August, 1894, I found some remaining ruins of these ancient tallow vaults still visible in the Bishop's orange orchard which is enclosed by a high picket fence below the railroad.

Meatdriers-who prepared jerked beef, sun-dried, for local use and to sell or trade.+ The Indians preserved their meat in this way before the Spaniards came.

Candlemakers-who made tallow dips for selling to ships and in the general market. These were the staple articles for household or ship-light- ing purposes at that time.

Soapmakers-Hogs were raised chiefly to furnish soap fat, as the In- dians refused to eat hog meat, though the padres ate it,¿ and the same caul- drons and furnaces were used alternately for tallow rendering and soap boil- ing. The ashes from these furnaces and from the brick and tile works, and bake ovens, were used to leech lye for the soapmakers.

Tanners-who made dressed leather, and also tanned skins and peltries with hair or fur on.

Saddlers-The ranches furnished an immense market for these products and it became an important industry ; for horse-back riding was then the chief method of travel or movement in California.

Shoemakers -Shoes were made for the Mission people, although the Indians mostly went barefooted; and some were sold to the ranches and town settlements, and to ships at San Pedro.

Sawmill Men-Prior to about 1810 or 1812, such lumber as was ab- solutely necessary was provided either by hewing or splitting with axe, or sawing by hand, with two men above and two in a pit below the log to work the saw up and down ; § but now Zalvidea had the great dam built at Wilson lake and a water-power sawmill erected below the dam, to provide lumber for buildings, fences, carts, wine vats, candle and soap boxes, coop- erage, etc., etc. And the labor of cutting and fetching logs, operating the mill and delivering the lumber employed many men.

Grist Mill Men-Following or in connection with the building of the

*" The tallow he had laid down in large, arched stone vaults, of sufficient capacity to contain several cargoes."-Robinson's " Life in California " p. 35. This was at San Fernando Old Mission, in April, 1829 ; and it had to be quarried out and hauled to San Pedro, the same as the San Gabriel stock. Davis in his book, "Sixty Years in California," says the tallow was sometimes run into bags made of hides that would hold front 500 to 1000 pounds each.

1" The best part of the bullock was preserved by drying, for future consumption."-Sixty Years in California p. 36. Auother writer of date November 23, 1818, says : "My good mother was in a wagou [cart] which had two hides for a floor and two more for a roof, where after supping ou half-roasted strips of dried meat without salt, she gathered around her her whole family," etc.

"The Indians, with few exceptions, refuse to eat pork, alleging tlie whole hog family to be transformed Spaniards. I find this belief current through every nation of Indians in Mexico."- -Hugo Reid.

?" Old men rejoicing in the fame of witchcraft, he made sawyers of them all, keeping them like houuds in couples [chained], and so they worked, two above and two below in the pit."-Hugo Reid.

Santa Anita Canyon derived its old nickname of " Saw-pit canyon," from this early practice.

DIVISION ONE - PRE-PASADENIAN.

dam and sawmill at the lake, the stone grist mill was erected. Prior to this, the Spanish people of the Mission had depended for their breadstuff on In- dians who still used their old primitive metate and mealing-stone imple- ments to supply meal for the entire Mission populace. But now, with a water-power grist mill of their own, the first one ever built in California,* they would be independent of the uncertain ship supplies from Lower Cali- fornia or Mexico, and would make breadstuff for their own use and some to sell. So hauling and handling the grain, operating the mill and delivering the flour employed a distinct lot of both men and women. The mill pro- duced only coarse unbolted meal, whether of wheat, corn, or barley, and this was carried to store-rooms where Indian women put it through a rude pro- cess of sifting, and so furnished some "sifted flour" for the Mission bakers. [See article entitled "The Story of the Mills," farther on.] General John Bidwell, a California pioneer of 1841, writing in the Century Magazine of December, 1890, describes an Indian harvesting scene thus :

" Imagine three or four hundred wild Indians in a grain field, armed, some with sickles, some with butcher knives, some with pieces of hoop iron roughly fashioned into shapes like sickles, but many having only their hands with which to gather by small handfuls the dry, brittle grain, and as their hands would soon become sore, they resorted to dry willow sticks, which were split to afford a sharper edge with which to sever the straw. But the wildest part was the threshing. The harvest of weeks, sometimes of a month, was piled up in the straw in the form of a mound in the middle of a high, strong, round corral ; then three or four hundred wild horses were turned in to thresh it by treading, the Indians whooping to make them run faster. Suddenly they would dash in before the band at full speed, when the motion became reversed, with the effect of plowing up the trampled

straw to the very bottom. In an hour the straw would be thoroughly threshed and the dry straw broken almost into chaff. In this manner I have seen two thousand bushels of wheat threshed in a single hour. Next came the winnowing, which would often take another month. It could only be done when the wind was blowing, by throwing high into the air shovelfuls of the grain, straw and chaff, the lighter materials being wafted to one side while the grain, comparatively clean, would descend and form a heap by it- self. In this manner all the grain in California was cleaned. At that day no such thing as a fanning mill had ever been brought to this coast."

Such scenes as the above were yearly enacted in the grain fields of San Gabriel Mission, under padres Zalvidea and Sanchez.

Carpenters-This trade comprised wheelwrights, cartmakers, boxmakers and fence builders, as well as those who did such woodwork as was necessary about their buildings-laying floors, joists and rafters, putting in doors and windows, making bench seats, and the like. Their "carretas" were great clumsy ox carts with wheels made of blocks sawed or chopped off from the end of a large round log, then a big hole bored, chiseled and burned through

*Davis, " Sixty Years in California," tells of a grist mill built at Yerba Buena [San Francisco] in 1839, and calls it the first one in California. Big mistake, by twenty-five years at least.

HISTORY OF PASADENA.

its center, enabling it to turn on a rude wooden axle, soap or tallow being sometimes used for lubricants .* The making and repairing of these carts for themselves and ranchers made work for many men, besides the wheel- wright work for the mills.

Blacksmiths-California native horses were tough hoofed, and horse- shoeing was scarcely known at the Mission; but carts and mill gears, and plows, harrows, hoes, picks, shovels, etc., made business enough for this trade. The blacksmiths had to provide their own coal, and hence this trade included charcoal burners.

Brickyard Men-Making bricks and tiles was an important trade. I found four arched chambers in the old stone mill, besides other parts, where large square bricks were used of their own manufacture; and also in the ruins of the tallow vaults in the Bishop's orange orchard. The church was originally roofed with thatch; then with tiles, -but these proved too heavy, broke down the rafters, and had to be changed for shingles ; and the stone mill had a tile roof until Col. Kewen changed it in 1859.1 In 1831 there were in Los Angeles four houses roofed with tiles made by the Indians at San Gabriel.

Masons-This included both brick and stone masons, and cement or artificial stone artisans. Much of their artificial stone or cement work stands yet, as hard as bed rock ; and there is a tradition that the old cement ditch south of the church was made by mixing it with beeves' blood, which is said to account for its extraordinary hardness as found by the railroad graders when they had to cut through it. The Spanish, Irish and Chinese workmen on the railroad grade all believed this bloody fable.

Limeburners - This trade was carried on quite extensively at the cement quarry where the Lincoln Park reservoir in South Pasadena is now built, right in the ancient lime pit of Father Zalvidea's "converted " Indian limeburners. The cement for the Mission church, and for the stone dams at Wilson lake and on Rose's ranch, and for the stone mill, the later cement ditch and mill-pit ruins south of the church, and for other works, was all obtained at this Lincoln Park quarry.

Spinners and Weavers-The women were almost entirely assigned to this trade, taking the raw wool and carrying it by hand methods through all the stages of carding, spinning, dyeing, weaving, until it came out as cloth or shawls from the looms.

Tailors and Dressmakers- This was also a trade for women. They

*" The wheels of these carts were a foot wide, made of sections of oak logs, never quite round or of uniform thickness, running on equally clumsy axles which were never in the center of the wheel, nor at right angles with the sides. Age and wear added to these imperfections, and the wheels when in motion made a tortuous track. As for some reason, or perhaps for no reason at all, these wheels were never lubricated, they made a wonderfully plaintive noise as they rolled along. This was the only wheeled conveyance seen on the coast as late as 1840."-()verland Monthly, March, 1894, p. 266.

tSome portion of the old roof was asphalt. The early Spaniards had some knowledge of the uses of this material ; and its existence here is mentioned in the reports of Gov. Portola's first visit, 1769-70.

DIVISION ONE -PRE-PASADENIAN.

made all the garments for men, women and children of the work people ;* for it must be borne in mind all the time that all these Indian people, num- bering at one period as high as 4,000, were dependent on Father Zalvidea or Father Sanchez, for all their clothing and food, and could only have what he allowed them. This Mission was at this time a perfect ecclesiastical monarchy, or padrearchy.

Vintners-This included vinedressers and winemakers.

Coopers-This trade alone was kept in the hands of white men (just why, I do not know), while all the others were carried on by Indians under taskmasters.

Woodsmen-These were wood-choppers, and those who made shakes [split shingles], rived out the undressed staves for wine casks and barrels, hewed building timbers, worked in the sawpits, and all such work as was done in the mountains or canyons where the timber grew.

In addition to the foregoing, there were task classes of cattle herders, horse herders, sheep herders, agriculturists, orchardists, teamsters, besides bakers, cooks, pages, poulterers and other domestic trades. And thus it will be seen that the man who could systematically develop and supervise all these works, govern the entire Mission territory, acquire the Indian language so as to write and preach in it, and at the same time attend to his daily and weekly duties as a priest, was a man of real genius and extraordinary execu- tive talent. And such was Father Zalvidea, who ruled at San Gabriel from 1806 to 1826 ; then he was sent to San Juan Capistrano where he remained until 1842, when he was sent to San Luis Rey Mission, and died there early in 1846-probably in February.

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Author: Reid, Hiram Alvin, 1834-; McClatchie, Alfred James, comp Publication date: 1895 Publisher: Pasadena, Cal., Pasadena History Co. Number of Pages: 714

Author: Reid, Hiram Alvin, 1834-; McClatchie, Alfred James, comp
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Pasadena, Cal., Pasadena History Co.
Number of Pages: 714