USA > California > San Luis Obispo County > History of San Luis Obispo County, California, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 54
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HE missionaries who, in 1769, brought to California the semi-civilization of patriarchal, or medieval times, came dependent on the soil for their subsistence, and, through three-quarters of a century of Spanish occupancy undisturbed by foreign intrusion, prospered with their flocks and herds, rudely tilled the ground in favored lo- calities, planted the grape, the orange, and the olive, and thus to a limited extent, proved the capacity of the coun- try to support mankind. The first Americans came as farmers, but were absorbed in the Spanish settlements and adopted the Spanish customs. A few timidly scat- tered over the country, selecting the most lovely sites where springs and streams maintained a more lasting verdure, and there ventured the planting of small areas of wheat, barley, corn, and beans. The great valley of the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Tulare, and the bor- dering foot-hills were deemed arid wastes, or fitted only for the grazing of cattle, and the high Sierra was totally unexplored. The coast region only was settled, and pasturage was the great resource-commerce, manufact- ures, and mining being an advance to which their en- lightenment was not prepared.
Following the discovery of gold in 1848 a new ele- ment came upon the scene, and a change in the order of things was made. Then mining was the chief occupation of the people. Many of the new-comers were farmers familiar with the system of cultivation in the Atlantic States and Mississippi Valley where the rains of summer brought to harvest the annual plants, and these looked upon the broad plains, seared and sun-cracked by the long summer droughts, as inhospitable, irreclaimable deserts. They had read reports of the great crops of wheat harvested by Captain Sutter, but his fields were on the low bottom-lands of the Sacramento River which were deemed exceptional, and the country in general was condemned as desert. "Crossing the desert" was the common term for the journey from the river to the mountains, or along the coast from one rancho, or station where water was found, to another. Although wild oats and other grasses grew luxuriantly, and cattle ranged and
fatted over the wide area, still the country was regarded as incapable of successful tillage. Some were so bold as to declare that where the native grasses would grow so thriftily cultivated grain would also grow, but were generally ridiculed for their opinion, and years passed before the experiment was tried. The coast survey in 1852 reported wild oats growing at Cayucos and near San Simeon, six feet in height, "not in small patches, but over a country of many miles in extent."
Little by little the advance in agriculture was made. Some favored spot of sandy loam by a river's bank, or some well-watered ravine was sought, and a farm was planted. Barley was in great demand for the feed for draught animals, and the high price it brought aroused the enterprising farmer in northern counties to attempt its cultivation. It grew and yielded as they had never seen before, and its cultivation extended. Thus barley became the pioneer cereal of California cultivation under American farming. Gradually other plants were tried, and all found to grow and mature. The small patches where grains and vegetables were produced were looked upon as the specially favored localities, and while the great bulk of the barley, potatoes, melons, and all the wheat and fruit were imported from Chili, Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and other distant countries, all the available land in California was said to be taken up, and men must seek some other country if they wished to farm. Years passed in this slow progress to cultivation. Men most anxious to win the fortune for which they had abandoned their homes in the East for the distant Pa- cific Coast, saw about them as a free gift, ready to their hands, the most fertile of soils, in the most genial and healthful of climates, yet had not the sagacity, the pa- tience, or the foresight to appreciate the fact, to take hold and plant and reap the certain reward. Those who ventured in agriculture were truly enterprising, but they were comparatively few in the first half dozen or more years following the gold discovery. Watermelons selling in the cities and in the many regions at from one to five dollars each, apples, from Oregon, at one and two dol- lars each, potatoes and onions at fifty cents to one dollar a pound, barley at ten to twenty-five cents a pound, hay at one hundred dollars a ton, eggs at two dollars a dozen, milk at one dollar a quart, and other articles possible to obtain at proportionate rates would seem to have tempted a rush of farmers to the field, but with all the sun-cracked plains were shunned, and the mountain vales and gentle hills were despised as unworthy of the notice of the hus- bandman. The slow progress of agriculture and horti- culture made in California, where the inducements were so great, now seems unaccountable. Even as late as 1868, the newspapers of San Luis Obispo were advocating the experiment of cultivating wheat, expressing the belief that it could be grown successfully. The cultivation was, in reality, no experiment, as the missionaries had raised the grain many years before, but there was lack of enterprise in the people, and the "fashion" of wheat growing had not come into vogue.
As a sample of the style of advocacy, and as indica- tive of the condition of agriculture, the following extract
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is given from an article in the San Luis Obispo Pioneer, of April 25, 1868 :-
WHEAT IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
The tide has now set this way after long years of trial elsewhere; and it is found that for 400 miles above San Diego there is not only an abundance of cultivable land for all kinds of fruit, grains, vegetables, and inter-tropical products, but millions of acres of soil on the very bor- ders of the maritime coast well adapted to the growth of the superior qualities of the hard or flint wheats of Sy- ria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Sonora, and South Africa, which have ever commanded the highest prices in the . market of the world. These are the true Candial wheats which only flourish on volcanic and not alluvial soil, and so abundant in the southern coasts of Califor- nia, probably surpassing-because virgin and unworked -the lands of the Mediterranean.
A COUNTRY ALL SEA-PORT.
What is the reason this long stretch of country, with safe anchorages, roadsteads, and harbors every twenty or thirty miles by the deep sea has been so long given up to hoofs, horns, and fleeces; when, if it were plowed and sown in wheat and other grains, it could command fleets of ships to take them from the cultivators' doors or at the farthest-twenty miles from salt waters.
CALIFORNIA WHEAT FROM 1770 TO 1825.
But to come to the actual production of wheat, etc., in the maritime portions of southern California. The following facts are taken from the original manuscript of Friar Arroyo, for the year 1823, which states minutely the agricultural status of each of the old missions. The account is in every way more satisfactory than those in the books of Duhaut Cilley, Forbes, Wilkes, and others, often quoted, with which it is entirely accordant. In this extract we have called the old Spanish fanega a cental or cwt., which makes returns of crops in precisely the same proportion of percentage of yield, and is easier for present comparison. The inside missions are left out, as not being necessary in this case to the exhibition of the general facts. It is proper to say, also, that wheat, barley, and corn were introduced from Baja Cali- fornia, in 1770, and were cultivated in the same milpas, or fields, up to the year 1833, and many of them to this, 1868.
CROPS IN FIFTEEN MISSION MILPAS.
San Diego-Wheat, 320 centals sowed, for which 1,320 centals were returned; barley, 230 were sowed and 364 returned.
San Luis Rey-Wheat, 300 centals were sowed and 116 returned.
San Juan Capistrano-Wheat, 3 centals were sowed and 234 returned; barley, none.
San Gabriel-Wheat, 330 centals were sowed and 3,000 returned; maize, or corn, 7 centals were sowed and 1,500 returned! This mission was for 63 years the best for corn and equal to any for wheat.
San Buenaventura-Fields said to be near Saticoy; wheat, 259 centals were sowed and 2,500 returned; bar- ley, 30 sowed and 150 returned; corn, 714 sowed and 500 returned.
Santa Barbara-Wheat, 315 centals were sowed and 250 returned; barley and corn, only a little, as 1823 was a bad season for this mission, for the neophytes and the presidio soldiers were much taken up with the revolt of the Indians. The years from 1814 to 1828 were, accord- ing to the old people, extraordinary years, and the sowing of wheat, corn, and barley of Santa Barbara, made on
the flat lands near the town, and those on the Goleta farm pertaining to it, nine miles up the coast, equal to the best of the southern missions.
Santa Inez-On the lands near the river, of wheat, 80 centals were sowed and 1,000 returned; corn, 6 centals sowed and I, coo returned.
Purissima-Wheat, 150 centals were sowed and 1,500 returned.
San Luis Obispo-Wheat, 160 centals were sowed and 3,000 returned.
Soledad-Wheat, 110 centals were sowed and 1,500 returned.
Carmelo de Monterey-Wheat, So centals were sowed and 500 returned; barley, 30 sowed and 600 returned. In some years this mission cultivated its small grains on the Salinas Plains, at the Rancho del Rey, or National, where the San Juan stage road daily crosses, and which were often equal to those of San Gabriel or San José.
Santa Cruz-sometimes on the Pajaro-Wheat, 56 centals sowed and 150 returned; barley, 19 gave 378, and corn, 4 centals gave 700.
Santa Clara-Wheat, 108 centals were sowed and 1,800 returned; barley, 20 gave 460; and corn, 7 gave 650. This mission was frequently troubled with much water on its rich, black tasky soils, or atascaderas, and the plowed lands too quickly baked by hot suns or northwest wind.
San José-Wheat, 288 centals sowed and 3,383 re- turned: barley, 20 gave 242; corn, 5 gave 300. The lands here cultivated and so famous for their present fertility were those adjoining fields which extended in some years as far as San Leandro, as after 1820 cargoes of wheat were sold to the Russians of Ross and Sitka.
San Francisco Dolores-Fields said to be on the Pulgas Rancho; wheat, 150 centals were sowed and 1, 372 returned; barley, 10 gave 116; and of corn, 5 gave 200.
San Rafael-Wheat, 145 centals sowed and 1,340 returned; barley, 56 gave 757.
Sonoma was just founded and no cultivation made till 1825.
The northern missions, and as far as San Luis Obispo, were often troubled with summer winds and fogs, which the old padres did not understand how to manage, from the quality of the ancient wheat seed; but this difficulty has been mostly overcome since 1854, by the Americans introducing new methods and new seeds. Barley was only used for tame horses late in the fall or during the rains before February, and never in those times stacked for hay.
GROWTH OF CALIFORNIA WHEAT INTEREST.
Much ink has been wasted to show that the develop- ment is a mere spurt-an accident and contingency; but we opine that these people never fell into a greater error, as there is every prospect that it will not only last, and under all circumstances at that, but extend indefinitely in the future with the progress of civilization, on the shores of the Pacific and Indian Seas, where 700,000,000 of people reside. The consumption of wheaten flour in the Oriental countries has existed from remotest ages, and has assumed grand proportions since 1833, when the monopoly of trade to India and China was effectually broken up.
Besides this, our wheat can successfully compete with that of the world in the markets of Europe and the West Indies, West Mexico, and Central America, these last three being very extensive, and requiring the very quality of compact flour our flint wheat produces. To show what great changes occur from the effect of high prices and the progress of California settlement, the Bulletin lately stated that Monterey County had 3,283 acres in wheat in 1865, and 5,700 in 1867-i. e., in twenty-four months the cultivation was nearly doubled; and we well
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recollect in 1860, when not 200 acres of wheat were under actual labor in that county, whereas in 1867 it raised 185,000 bushels, worth at least, on the spot, $200,- ooo, of which ninety per cent. came from the Salinas Valley .. This rapid augmentation of acreage in Monterey was only excelled for the same two years by Mendocino, Solano, Tehama, and Yolo, and like changes are now gradually occurring in the country below Point Concep- tion, as all say that much more wheat is under cultivation in these districts than in 1867, and that it is highly proba- ble that more than one ship will make full cargoes for outside countries in our harbors and roadsteads in the ensuing autumn. In the foregoing accounts for 1823 it will be seen that south of Conception the missions gave equal to those of the bay country, and they will still do so when properly tilled. But there is another point to remember, that these far southern districts have more sun and less wind and fog than the northern ones, and can always surpass them in the productions of the first class of flint wheats for the tropical markets, as the pecul- iar volcanic soils and atmospheres of the lower coast assimilate precisely to the conditions of such requisites as obtained in Greece, Syria, and Turkey, the native soil of the Candial grains. Hence, from the extent of this agricultural enterprise, doubling throughout the State between 1865 and 1867, it is likely by 1877, by its devel- opment in the south, to be 16,000,000 centals, against 8,000,000 in 1867, and who can say it will not be 32,- 000,000, if the same machinery, cultivation, and labor is invested in it as in the country around the bay of San Francisco?
ANCIENT CULTIVATION.
The first settlers being the missionaries, who had acquired their knowledge of agriculture in their native land, and who looked upon the Bible as the perfection and end of wisdom, made no progress further than their early lessons and the divine book taught. As the sci- ence of agriculture was then in a very primitive condition in Spain, the monks of California could not be expected to know much about scientific farming. They knew nothing about the utility of fallows, or the alternation of crops, and their only mode of renovating the exhausted soil was to let it lie idle and under the dominion of native weeds, until it was thought capable of bearing crops again. Land being so abundant, there was no occasion for laborious or expensive processes of recu- peration.
THE ARADA.
The grains mostly cultivated were Indian corn, wheat, barley, and a small bean called frijol, which was in gen- eral use throughout Spanish America. The beans, when ripe, were fried in lard, and much esteemed by all ranks of people. Indian corn was the bread staple, and was cultivated in rows or drills. The arada, or plow, used was a very primitive affair. It was composed of two pieces of wood; the main piece, formed from the crooked limb of a tree of the proper shape, constituted both sole and handle. It had no mould-board, or other means for turning a furrow, and was only capable of scratching the surface of the ground. A small share, fitted to the point of the sole, was the only iron about the implement. The other piece was a long beam, like the tongue of a wagon, reaching to the yoke of the cattle by which the plow was drawn. It consisted of a rough
sapling, with the bark taken off, fixed into the main piece, and connected by a small upright on which it was to slide up or down, and was fixed in position by two wedges. When the plowman desired to plow deep, the forward end of the tongue was lowered, and in this manner the depth of the furrow was regulated. This beam passed between the two oxen, a pin was put through the end projecting from the yoke, and then the agricultural machine was ready to run. The plowman walked on one side, holding the one handle or stilt with his right hand, and managing the oxen with the other.
YOKING THE OXEN.
The yoke was placed on the top of the cattle's head close behind the horns, tied firmly to the roots and to the forehead by thongs, so that, instead of drawing by the shoulders and neck, the oxen dragged the plow by their horns and foreheads. When so harnessed the poor beasts were in a very deplorable condition; they could not move their heads up, down, or sideways; went with their noses turned up, and every jolt of the plow knocked them about, and seemed to give them great pain. Only an ancient Spaniard could devise such a contrivance for animal torture. When Alexander Forbes suggested to an old Spaniard that perhaps it might be better to yoke the oxen by the neck and shoulders, "What!" said the old man, " can you suppose that Spain, which has always been known as the mother of the sciences, can be mis- taken on that point?"
THE CARRETA.
The oxen were yoked to the carts in the same man- ner, having to bear the weight of the load on the top of their heads, the most disadvantageous mechanical point of the whole body. The ox-cart was composed of a bot- tom frame of clumsy construction, with a few upright bars connected by smaller ones at the top. When used for carrying grain, it was lined with canes or bulrushes. The pole was large, and tied to the yoke in the same manner as with the plow, so that every jerk of the cart was torture to the oxen. The wheels had no spokes, and were composed of three pieces of timber, the middle piece hewn out of a log, of sufficient size to form the nave and middle of the wheel, all in one; the middle piece was of a length equal to the diameter of the wheel, and rounded at the ends to arcs of the circumference. The other two pieces were of timber naturally bent, and joined to the sides of the middle piece by keys of wood grooved into the ends of the pieces which formed the wheel. The whole was then made circular and did not contain a particle of iron, not even so much as a nail.
From the rude construction of the plow, which was in- capable of turning a furrow, the ground was imperfectly broken by scratching over, crossing and recrossing several times; and although four or five crossings were sometimes given to a field, it was found impossible to eradicate the weeds. "It was no uncommon thing," says Forbes, in 1835," "to see, on some of the large maize estates in Mexico, as many as 200 plows at work together. As the plows are equal on both sides, the
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plowmen have only to begin at one side of the field and follow one another up and down, as many as can be employed together without interfering in turning round at the end, which they do in succession, like ships tack- ing in a line of battle, and so proceed down the same side as they come up."
Harrows were unknown, the wheat and barley being brushed in by the branch of a tree. Sometimes a heavy log was drawn over the field on the plan of a roller, save that it did not roll, but was dragged so as to carry a part of the soil over the seeds. Indian corn was planted in furrows or ruts drawn about five feet apart, the seed being deposited by hand, from three to five grains in a place, which were slightly covered with the foot, no hoes being used. The sowing of maize, as well as all other grains, in Upper California, commenced in November, as near as possible to the beginning of the rainy season. The harvest was in July and August. Wheat was sown broadcast, and in 1835 it was considered equal in quality to that produced at the Cape of Good Hope, and had begun to attract attention in Europe. All kinds of grain were threshed at harvest time, without stacking. In 1831, the whole amount of grain raised in Upper Cali- fornia, according to the mission records, was 46,202 fanegas-the fanega being equal to 212 English bushels. Wheat and barley were then worth two dollars the fanega; maize, a dollar and a half; the crop of that year at the several missions being worth some $86,000.
THE MOLINO.
The mills for grinding grain consisted of an upright axle, to the lower end of which was fixed a horizontal water-wheel under the building, and to the upper end a mill-stone. As there was no intermediate machinery to increase the velocity of the stone, it could make only the same number of revolutions as the water-wheel, so that the work of grinding a grist was necessarily a process of time. The water-wheel was fearfully and wonderfully made. Forbes described it as a set of cucharas, or gigantic spoons, set around its periphery in place of floats. They were made of strong pieces of timber, in the shape of spoons, with the handles inserted in mortises in the outer surface of the wheel, the bowl of the spoons toward the water, which impinged upon them with nearly its whole velocity. Rude as the contrivance was it was exceedingly powerful-a sort of primitive turbine or hurdy-gurdy. There were only three of these improved mills in the country in 1835, and the possession of such a rare piece of machinery was no small boast for the simple-hearted fathers, so far away from the progressive mechanical world. It was not a primitive California invention, however, as Sir Walter Scott, in his romance of "The Pirate," describes a similar apparatus formerly in use in the Shetland Islands.
Before the advent of foreigners, neither potatoes nor green vegetables were cultivated as articles of food. Hemp was raised to some extent, and flax grew well, but its culture was discontinued for want of machinery for manufacture.
GANADA MAYOR.
Pasturage was the principal pursuit in all Spanish colonies in America. The immense tracts of wild land afforded unlimited ranges. But few men and little labor were required, and the pastoral state was the most con- genial to the people. The herds were very large; in the four jurisdictions of San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and San Diego, there were, in 1836, 300,000 neat cattle, 32,000 horses, 28,000 mules, and 153,000 sheep. Great numbers of horses ran wild, and these were hunted and killed to prevent their eating the grass. There was hardly such a thing as butter or cheese in use, butter being, in general, an abomination to a Spaniard.
In the earlier times immense droves of cattle were sent to Mexico for beef. The cattle being half wild it was necessary to catch them with a lasso, a process which need not here be described. The process of milking the cows was peculiar. They first let the calf suck for awhile, when the dairyman stole up on the other side, and while the calf was still sucking procured a little of the milk. They had an idea that the cow would not "give down " milk if the calf was taken away from her. The sheep were of a bad breed, with coarse wool; and swine received little attention. The amount of the annual exports in the first few years after the opening of the ports to for- eign vessels, was estimated at 30,000 hides and 7,000 quintals of tallow, with small cargoes of wheat, wine, raisins, olives, etc., sent to the Russian settlements and San Blas. Hides were worth $2.00 each and tallow $8.00 per quintal. Afterwards the exportation of hides and tallow was greatly increased, and it is said that after the fathers had become convinced that they would have to give up the mission lands to the Government, they caused the slaughter of 100,000 cattle in a single year for their hides and tallow alone. And who could blame them? The cattle were theirs. Notwithstanding all this immense revenue, these enthusiasts gave it all to the church and themselves went away in penury, and, as has been related heretofore, one of them actually starved to death.
In 1836 the value of a fat ox or bull in Upper Cali- fornia was $5.00; a cow, $5.00; a saddle-horse, $10.00: a mare, $5.00; a sheep, $2.00; and a mule, $10.00.
THE RANCHERO PERIOD.
Some grants of land were made to individuals before the secularization of the missions, and after that event grants were made to all applicants who were able to stock the land with cattle, or who were entitled to favors from the Government. In this manner the greater part of the most choice grazing lands of the coast region were given away previous to the American occupation, and in other sections of California, grants were subsequently found to exist covering land vaguely known and proba- bly never seen by the grantee. Under the treaty with Mexico the owners of land were guaranteed their title, and a commission was appointed to hear evidence and pass upon the rightful ownership, with its decision sub- ject to appeal to the United States District and Su-
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preme Courts. This course led to long and expensive litigation, ruinons to many of the grantees, and opening the way for extensive frauds. This system of adjustment, proposed with good intent, was most unfortunate.
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