USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Pomona Valley, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the valley who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 4
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On the way from the rancho to San Bernardino were a number of the camps, or rancherias, of these Indians. There was one on what is now Orange Grove Avenue, north of Pomona and west of Towne Avenue, at a spot called the Huaje (oo-àh-hay) ; another was located by the southeast corner of the mesa, known as Indian Hill, north of Claremont ; and still another by the Cucamonga hills. In- stead of picturesque groups or rows of wigwams, of special form or construction, they had the crudest shelters of nondescript shape made of branches and boughs of willows, using small trees or poles for uprights and thatching them with tule and mnd.
Before the coming of white people their dress was meager enough. A breech- clout for the men and an apron of grasses for the women was all that climate or fashion required. Children were innocent of even these claims of fashion. Lazi- ness was perhaps the fundamental, all controlling, and prevalent racial character-
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istic of these natives of the Valley. All the attendant and consequent traits and vices also persisted. Unwashed and unkempt, they sat or slept on the ground all day long, save as the need of food required a minimum of exertion. Ordinarily all their activities centered in this ultimate necessity. Squirrels, rabbits, skunks and birds provided their meats, and the skins served for warmer wraps for the infirm or sick in the cooler months. They ground acorns in metates for meal, using for this purpose any flat rock, hollowed out by use, and a small round stone that would fit the hand. Roots and small fruits were sought in their season- cactus pear, elderberries, gooseberries-and they went to the mountains for piñones, of which they were fond. Rarely an antelope or coyote was caught and roasted in barbecue style, buried in the ground with stones that had first been heated through. But for the most part they did very little cooking, and that over an open fire. They understood something of pottery, and made crude vessels of various sorts, but basketry, and rug weaving, those arts which other tribes have practiced and by which the tribes are often known, seem to have been neglected or unknown by these non-tribal natives. The anthropologist, studying the effects of climate and natural surroundings upon the human animal, finds here the logical result of conditions in which favoring Nature gives much and requires little (yet giving lavishly in return for more). Those people who live in the semi-tropical zones, they say, have become adapted in habit and physical state to the heat of a more vertical sun. Dark of skin and slow in movement, easy-going and indolent they all are; and if, as along the Mediterranean shores, civilization has developed nations of refinement and power, it is always in conflict with the degenerating influence of the climate. Teutonic and Slavic peoples and individuals, with their inherent energy and ambition, only survive for a little-two or three generations at most-when removed to these climes.
Mañana (tomorrow) was the spirit of the people who occupied the South- west, till the restless Saxon came, excepting of course an occasional leader like Junipero Serra. But for the Indians of this region, unmoved by any stimulus of civilization, even mañana was a philosophy unconceived.
People so degenerate were of course an easy prey to disease and to the attacks of other more aggressive tribes. With no tribal chiefs they were led by heads of families, and the medicine men had much power. At several spots in the valley, as at Cucamonga and at Temescal, were sweat houses, closed huts made of brush and adobe mud, in which those who were sick were confined, until the disease turned one way or the other. It is said that at Cucamonga this process of sweating was also administered to Indian maidens before they were married. Concerning this, as of other marriage rites, we may not be sure. Certain historians testify that the Indians of the Southwest were more religious and as a rule more chaste than those of other parts of the State; that they were usually monogamous, only the chiefs having more than one wife; while other writers have described them as without regard for any such obligations. Probably there was great difference in the practice of different communities and different families, a higher tone of morality prevailing generally among the mountain tribes than among the Indians of the Valley.
Although not naturally a warlike people they were obliged at times to defend themselves against the attacks of the mountain and desert tribes. In these battles they were usually worsted by their more hardy enemies. Under these conditions it is not strange that when the Mexicans came to the Valley comparatively few of the natives remained. By this time, too, the Indians of the Valley showed in
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various ways the effect of their contact, more or less direct, during a half century or more, with the white race. The effect of this contact, so far as it was the direct influence of the Missions, was universally good. Almost universally bad was the influence of the presidio and pueblo. From the one they had adopted sonie of the better clothing and habits of civilized people, had learned to cook and to make many things unknown before. From the others they had acquired the habits of smoking and drinking and had been encouraged in their natural inclination to theft.
Such were the Indians whom the Palomares and Vejar families found in the Valley when they came, and for many years after ; and whatever else we may say about them, at any rate they solved the labor problem for the settlers. However inefficient and lazy they may have been, they could learn or had already learned to ride, to help in herding, corralling and branding cattle, and in killing and skinning them ; and the Indian women and children could wash and cook and do the simple work of servants in the house. Still at times the tribes of the mountains and those of the desert, the San Bernardino, San Gorgonio, Coahuilla Indians, would swoop down from their fastnesses and attack both the Indians and the settlers of the Valley. More fearful now of the guns of the settlers, they usually avoided direct battle, but the prizes were richer in captured booty, in horses and in cattle. We have already referred to the troubles of the branch Mission at San Bernardino, and of course they were more subject to attack because of their proximity to the mountains. But even here they were not exempt. Señor Ramon Vejar tells of one time when, dashing into the rancheria unexpectedly, the mountain Indians, led by an old chief known as El Toro, captured the priest, Padre Sanchez, who had come out from the Mission to mansar* the natives, and tied him to a tree. Stirred to savage anger by this capture of their padre, the Valley Indians, led by Juan Antonio, gathered in force and fiercely drove off his captors, rescuing him from a cruel fate. The occasional attacks and thieving depredations of the Indians persisted throughout the forties. Even as late as 1849 the Vejar family moved on this account, to the place in what is now Walnut, where they built a large adobe house, surrounding the place with a high wall, or trascorral. This hacienda re- mained the family home until after the death of both Ricardo Vejar and his wife.
There is a story of hidden treasure which comes from this period-one story probably in its origin though told now in many versions. One of these versions is of a Mexican known as Old Prieto, who was traveling between San Gabriel and San Bernardino and who stopped at the Rancho to eat a watermelon. Con- tinuing on his way he soon became violently ill. Whether the melon was poisoned, or from some other cause, he died and the Indian who had journeyed with him reported that he had buried a box for Prieto under a sycamore tree with an elbow- shaped limb. Later it was reported that the box contained much treasure, and so, as the story has passed down from generation to generation, many have sought for this treasure, and all over the Valley you may find under the sycamores and oaks, especially if gnarled and unshapely, old holes and mounds of earth where those who have heard the story, perhaps from some old settler or Indian, have dug and dug, often secretly and at night, but always in vain-so far as the world knows. But Ramon Vejar says that "Old Prieto" was merely a poor old fellow who did eat a watermelon and died from eating it, but he had no money or anything else to hide. And the true story of the buried treasure as told by Don Ramon is this :
* To gentle, that is to civilize them.
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There was a man by the name of Tiburcio Tapia, who was cultivating some land at Cucamonga, having also land on the Malibu ranch, and a store in Los Angeles. Thus he was obliged to make the journey sometimes between the pueblo and his ranches, traveling usually en una carreta de bueyes -- in an ox-cart. It was at a time when Micheltorena, Governor of California from 1842 to 1845, was raising money to pay his soldiers, who were fighting "contra los Californios." Being a man who was known to have some means, Tapia feared that he would be requisitioned to help Micheltorena carry on his campaign, so he made one of these journeys from Los Angeles to San Bernardino, taking with him a lot of gold doubloons, jewels and other treasure. As usual on these trips an Indian, only one, went with him. On reaching the line of the San José Rancho, (probably the eastern line) he sent the Indian on to San Bernardino with a special message to the mayor of the town, asking him to come and meet him. The Indian noticed upon his return that the boxes they had brought with them were gone. Being attacked suddenly by fever, Tapia upon his death bed narrated how he had buried the treasure under a sycamore tree, just under a great limb, bending sharply upward like an elbow. But his story must have been cut short, for no one could find the treasure, and years afterward when the building was torn down in which he had had his store, they found quantities of silks all spoiled, which he had hidden between the rafters.
GRANTS ADJOINING THE RANCHO SAN JOSÉ
When Palomares and Vejar received their grant to the Rancho San José, all the land adjoining it belonged to the Mexican government. The rancho and all about it was land which had been used for grazing by the San Gabriel Mission. But the fields of the Valley on either side were soon occupied. First came Luis Arenas who, as we have said, not only shared with Palomares and Vejar in the new grant of the rancho and its addition, but also secured for himself a grant to the west, known first as "The Addition to the Addition to the San José Rancho," but later simply as the San José Addition.
All these holdings of Arenas were bought in the early forties by Henry Dalton, an English sea captain, the Arenas family, after this, living on the old Arenas place called the Huaje, deeded to them later.
The first deed of sale from Arenas to Dalton seems not to have been recorded, but the sale was confirmed judicially December 24, 1844, and includes besides "the rancho known by name of Azusa with horses, corrals, improvements, stock (and so on) according to inventory," but also Arenas' third interest in the San José Rancho granted by decree of April 15, 1837, and "one league of Ganado Mayor in addition."
Henry Dalton, who secured the Arenas interests, was a short, energetic man, ambitious to gain large possessions in the new land, and well known in Southern California for many years. He had been for a time a merchant in Peru. His roving, restless disposition was satisfied at last to find scope for his activities in California. Marrying a Mexican wife he made himself a home, and his brother George followed him to California from England. With headquarters in Los Angeles, where he secured some property and built a number of buildings, he made payments on large tracts of land in the country. In addition to the San José interests he secured a grant for the Azusa Ranch of about 4,000 acres, and another for the San Francisquito Ranch of 8,000 acres, lying south of Santa Anita and
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southeast of Azusa. Thus a considerable part of the "Lucky Baldwin" ranch and some of the lands of El Monte were a part of his holdings. It was this Henry Dalton who, according to Newmark, put up "the first fireproof buildings in Los Angeles, a couple of corrugated iron buildings at the corner of Spring and Court Street, and later a two-story brick building on Main Street near Second." Of the sequel to his earlier deals in real estate we shall read later.
To the east of the Rancho San José, beyond the arroyo of the San Antonio and stretching from the slopes of Cucamonga far to the south, lay a broad, un- broken plain whose fields, especially in the lower reaches, offered fine pasturage for cattle. For these lands to the east and south of the San José, Don Antonio Maria Lugo petitioned the Mexican government, about the time of the first grant to Palomares and Vejar, and received in 1841 a grant to the great Santa Ana del Chino Rancho of some 22,000 acres. One of the most conspicuous figures among the early rancheros, he already possessed valuable property in Los Angeles and thousands of cattle and flocks on other ranches. The San Antonio Rancho south of Los Angeles had been granted to him and given his name, and here he had lived until he built his adobe home in Los Angeles in 1879.
Characterizing Don Antonio Maria Lugo as "a type of the great overlords of the Mexican era," McGroarty * gives the following description of his personality, which because of its vividness and interest we venture to quote in full :
"A fine figure of a man was Don Antonio, six feet tall in his stockings, spare and sinewy, lithe and strong as a mountain lion, his hair black as the raven's wing, his jaw square cut and firm, his eyes dark as night, piercing yet gentle and easily moved to tenderness. He was a pure type of the noblest Spaniard.
"In all the Californias, Lugo was the best and most noted horseman, and that was saying a great deal in a land of horsemen. It is related that in 1846, when he had become an old man, he rode from Los Angeles to Monterey to pay a visit to his sister, the Doña Maria Antonio Lugo de Vallejo. They had been long absent the one from the other. As he rode into Monterey with his two companions, Doña Maria was seated on the porch of her house, a considerable distance away on an eminence which overlooked the city and the beautiful bay. As the horsemen came into view at a turn in the road, Doña Maria shaded her eyes, gazed long, and exclaimed, "There comes my brother!' A young girl who sat beside the old lady answered her, saying, 'O grandmother, yonder come three horsemen, it is true, but no one can tell who they are at that distance.' Doña Maria replied quickly, 'But, girl, my old eyes are sharper than yours. That tall man in the middle is my brother whom I have not seen for twenty years. I know him by his seat in the saddle. No man in California rides like him. Hurry off, girl, call your mother and aunts, your brothers, sisters and cousins, and let us go fortlı to welcome him.'
"Notwithstanding that it was a part of Don Antonio's duties to assist in keep- ing the coast free of pirates, and that his sword and carbine were frequently called in play, he lived a long life. He had relations with all the Spanish governors of California, except the first three, and he saw California pass under the rule of three flags. His descendants were and are still numerous, and wherever they are found today in either a high or a low estate, it is their proudest boast that his blood flows through their veins."
It is not unlikely that Lugo would have been content with his many leagues of land near Los Angeles were it not for his family, for whom he wished to make
* McGroarty-California, pp. 156, 160.
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provision. For at the time of the Chino grant he was about sixty years of age. It was chiefly on account of his daughter, who became the wife of Colonel Wil- . liams, that this grant of the Rancho del Chino was secured. Both the manage- ment and the title to the great rancho soon passed into the hands of Colonel Williams, although Don Antonio still lived for twenty-five years, dying at a ripe old age in his Los Angeles home. And during this time he rode much over the ranch, as indeed over the whole Valley in his capacity as Judge of the Plains, presiding at rodeos and meting out justice among the people, much as do the Kaids in Mohammedan territories today, and with something of their influence and power. Doubtless he was much at home with his daughter in the old Chino ranch house.
In his time Colonel Julian Isaac Williams was probably the best known of all the rancheros in the Valley. A native of Pennsylvania, he had come West as a young man and lived the life of a cowboy on the plains of New Mexico and Arizona. Coming to California as early as 1832, he had been in Los Angeles and vicinity for ten years, keeping a store for a time on the spot made famous later by the Bella Union Hotel. In 1842 he moved to the Chino Ranch, and in 1843 was given a grant to the 10,000 or 12,000 acres north and east of the Chino comprising the Cucamonga Ranch, and making with the Rancho del Chino, under which designation it was often included, a total of some 35,000 acres.
The "hacienda del Chino," or Chino Ranch House, built by Colonel Williams, was destined to become a historic place, and one of the most celebrated in the Southwest. The trail from Los Angeles to Yuma and Old Mexico led by this place, and much of the travel to San Bernardino also went this way. Everywhere the Chino Ranch House was known for its hospitality and good cheer. Travelers in need found not only an open door, but they found also in Colonel Williams a host always ready to assist them with food or clothing or horses, given or loaned till such time as they could repay. Later in this chapter we shall see how soon this hacienda became the scene of events of more than local importance.
Southwest of the Rancho San José, and adjoining it along the border, from the Tinaja Oak on the west to the corner of the Black Walnut at the southwest, there remained for a time unoccupied by private claimants, thousands of acres of the finest grazing lands, hills and valleys green with verdure in spring and covered with much feed the year around, the upper waters of the San Gabriel flowing through the western edge. On July 22, 1845, a large tract of this land called La Puente Rancho and containing nearly fifty thousand acres, was granted to William Workman and John Rowland. The story of the early days of La Puente Rancho is largely the story of these two men during the latter part of their lives. They had been partners, real "pards," as young men in New Mexico in various enterprises and at various places. John Rowland was born in Mary- land, William Workman in England, coming as a boy to St. Louis. Both were endowed with the spirit of the pioneer, impelling them westward to the frontier. At Taos, N. M., they acquired vast tracts of land, and built a large milling estab- lishment, and in connection with it, a distillery. Then, in 1841, they came together to the California coast and to Los Angeles. Together they rode out into the country and over the fields and hills of La Puente, where they realized the rich possibilities in cattle and grain and other native products. Here, too, they came, not as adventurers, but as substantial builders, ready to cast in their lot witlı others and become a vital part of the life into which they came. Both had mar- ried young women of Spanish blood, from fine families of Mexico or Spain,
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the wife of John Rowland being Doña Incarnacion Martinez, and Workman's wife Doña Nicolarsa Uriarte, whose family had come to Old Mexico from Spain.
In 1842, the following year, Rowland and Workman brought their families from New Mexico to Los Angeles, and with them a number of friends, some of ' whom were to be, like Rowland and Workman, prominent figures in the early history of the country. Notable among these were John Reed, who had married Rowland's older daughter, Nieves, and Benjamin D., or Benito, Wilson. Although they established themselves in Los Angeles and built homes there which they retained, Rowland and Reed and Workman built ranch houses at La Puente, and spent much of their time with their families on the ranch. The Puente homestead of William Workman was the first brick house in the region and was a landmark widely known for its beauty, its commanding site and its appointments. Here also John Reed built up the place which later became the homestead of William R. Rowland, familiarly known throughout the valley as Billy Rowland. a son and heir of John Rowland, the pioneer.
Securing seed from the east and cuttings from the Mission, they sowed some acres to grain and planted a vineyard, but for the most part they bought sheep and cattle and were soon engaged in stock raising on a large scale.
The ten years from 1836 to 1846 had thus wrought a marked change in this Valley. If Richard H. Dana, when he landed at San Pedro and visited Los Angeles, on his celebrated voyage, of which every one has read in his "Two Years Before the Mast," had ridden eastward through the valley following the old trail, "El Camino Real de San Bernardino," he would have found in 1835 no settlers between San Gabriel and San Bernardino, only scattered Indian camps, and a few corrales built for the Mission cattle that roamed over the plains. But in 1846, the year of California's great travail, when for a short time Colonel Fremont was stationed at Los Angeles, if the great "Patlıfinder" rode over the same trail, as he may have done in the course of his expeditions, he found his journey broken into various stages as he rode from rancho to rancho, each stage marked by the hacienda of a grandee, with his following of Mexicans and Indians. Leaving San Gabriel, he would come first to the little camp of El Monte, and then to the rancho La Puente, where Workman and Rowland and Reed had built their ranch houses. Riding to the northeast he would pass over the Arenas fields now owned by the English Captain Henry Dalton, and so come to the hacienda of Palomares by the San José Hills. From this point his path led either by the Cucamonga Addition to the north, or by the more frequented trail to the Chino Ranch House, where Colonel Williams and his retinne held the great Lugo estate -- The Rancho Santa Ana del Chino. Beyond the Chino, on the way to Yuma and Sonora, Mexico, one came to Warner's Ranch, another historic spot, where Gen- eral Kearney camped on his arrival in California and before his junction with Stockton.
During the troublous year of 1846 the interminable problem of the division of the San José Rancho among its owners first took definite shape. Between the original owners there had been no trouble, no thought of separation, no question of boundaries. The San José de Ariba was Palomares'; the San José de Abajo was Vejar's, the "Addition" was Arenas'; there were no fences and the cattle were separated from time to time, as they must also be from those of other herds, at the rodeos, by their brands. But after Arenas had sold out his interest to Henry Dalton, the question of division arose. Dalton, with numerous other . interests, and with various schemes for subdivision and sale of land, persuaded
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Ricardo Vejar to join with him in a petition for the partition of the entire Rancho among the three owners, Ygnacio Palomares, Ricardo Vejar and Henry Dalton. Palomares objected to the partition and protested against the division proposed. Nevertheless the petition was presented to Juan Gallardo, alcalde of the pueblo of Los Angeles, who by virtue of his office was judge of the first instance in the district and empowered to make such decisions; and he ordered the partition as requested, on the twelfth of February, 1846. It is interesting to observe here that while the original grants were recognized later by the United States Land Com- mission, and confirmed by the United States District Court in 1875, and while the United States Government issued a patent to Dalton, Palomares and Vejar for the Rancho, yet as late as 1884, the Supreme Court of California, in a case brought by the Mound City Land and Water Company against Phillips and others, to quiet title, set aside the decree of partition made by Juan Gallardo, and ordered a new partition. This new partition, however, has never been made, and the old partition has been valid to all intents and purposes to the present time. It may also be stated in this connection that this negation of the partition of Gallardo, which may seem at first to the layman to jeopardize all titles to the lands involved during fifty years of growth of valley and town, with the thousands of transac- tions involved, does not affect at all the validity of title to any lots in the townsite or tract of Pomona, this having been specifically stipulated by the parties to the suit. In fact the title to all these lands is said to be "the best of all the present townsites in Los Angeles County."
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