USA > California > History of the State of California and biographical record of Coast Counties, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 9
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"On reaching a point nine leagues from San Buenaventura, the governor called a halt and in company with Father Serra at once proceeded to select a site for the presidio. The choice re- sulted in the adoption of the square now formed by city blocks 139, 140, 155 and 156, and bounded in common by the following streets: Figueroa, Cañon Perdido, Garden and Anacapa. A large community of Indians were residing there but orders were given to leave them undisturbed. The soldiers were at once
*Bancroft's "History of California." Vol. I.
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directed to' hew unibers and gather brush to crect temporary barracks which, when com- pleted, were also used as a chapel. A large wooden cross was made that it might be planted in the center of the square and possession of the country was taken in the name of the cross. the emblem of Christianity.
April 21, 1782, the soldiers formed a square and with edifying solemnity raised the cross and secured it in the earth. Father Serra blessed and consecrated the district and preaclied a ser- mon. The royal standard of Spain was un- furled."
An inclosure, sixty varas square, was made of palisades. The Indians were friendly, and through their chief yanoalit, who controlled thir- teen rancherias, details of them were secured to assist the soldiers in the work of building. The natives were paid in food and clothing for their labor.
Irrigation works were constructed, consisting of a large reservoir made of stone and cement, with a zanja for conducting water to the pre- sidio. The soldiers, who had families, cultivated small gardens which aided in their support. Lieutenant Ortega was in command of the pre- sidio for two years after its founding. He was succeeded by Lieutenant Felipe de Goycoechea. After the founding of the mission in 1786, a bitter fetid broke out between the padres and the comandante of the presidio. Goycoecliea claimed the right to employ the Indians in the building of the presidio as he had done before the coming of the friars. This they denied. After an acrimonious controversy the dispute was finally compromised by dividing the Indians into two bands, a mission band and a presidio band.
Gradually the palisades were replaced by an adobe wall twelve feet high. It had a stone foundation and was strongly built. The plaza or inclosed square was three hundred and thirty feet on each side. On two sides of this inclos- ure were ranged the family houses of the sol- diers, averaging in size 15x25 feet. On one side stood the officers' quarters and the church. On
the remaining side were the main entrance four varas wide, the store rooms, soldiers' quarters and a guard room; and adjoining these outside the walls were the corrals for cattle and horses. A force of from fifty to sixty soldiers was kept at the post. There were bastions at two of the corners for cannon.
The presidio was completed about 1790, with the exception of the chapel, which was not fin- ished until 1797. Many of the soldiers when they had served out their time desired to re- main in the country. These were given permis- sion to build houses outside the walls of the presidio and in course of time a village grew up around it.
At the close of the century the population of the gente de razon of the district numbered three hundred and seventy. The presidio when completed was the best in California. Van- couver, the English navigator, who visited it in November, 1793, says of it: "The buildings ap- peared to be regular and well constructed; the walls clean and white and the roofs of the houses were covered with a bright red tile. The pre- sidio excels all the others in neatness, cleanli- ness and other smaller though essential com- forts; it is placed on an elevated part of the plain and is raised some feet from the ground by a basement story which adds much to its pleasantness."
During the Spanish régime the settlement at the presidio grew in the leisurely way that all Spanish towns grew in California. There was but little immigration from Mexico and about the only source of increase was from invalid soldiers and the children of the soldiers grow- ing up to manhood and womanhood. It was a dreary and monotonous existence that the sol- diers led at the presidios. A few of them had their families with them. These when the coun- try became more settled had their own houses adjoining the presidio and formed the nuclei of the towns that grew up around the different forts. There was but little fighting to do and the soldiers' service consisted mainly of a round of guard duty at the forts and missions. Oc- casionally there were conquistas into the In- dian country to secure new material for con- verts from the gentiles. The soldiers were oc-
*Father Cabelleria's History of Santa Barbara.
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casionally employed in hunting hindas or run- aways from the missions. These when brought back were thoroughly flogged and compelled to wear clogs attached to their legs. Once a month the soldier couriers brought up from Loreta a budget of mail made up of official bandos and a
few letters. These contained about all the news that reached them from their old homes in Mexico. But few of the soldiers returned to Mexico when their term of enlistment expired. In course of time these and their descendants formed the bulk of California's population.
CHAPTER VII. PUEBLOS.
T HE pueblo plan of colonization so com- mon in Hispano-American countries did not originate with the Spanish-Amer- ican colonists. It was older even than Spain herself. In early European colonization, the pueblo plan, the common square in the center of the town, the house lots grouped round it, the arable fields and the common pasture lands beyond, appears in the Aryan village, in the an- cient German mark and in the old Roman praesidium. The Puritans adopted this form in their first settlements in New England. Around the public square or common where stood the meeting house and the town house, they laid off their home lots and beyond these were their cultivated fields and their common pasture lands. This form of colonization was a combination of communal interests and individual ownership. Primarily, no doubt, it was adopted for protec- tion against the hostile aborigines of the coun- try, and secondly for social advantage. It re- versed the order of our own western coloniza- tion. The town came first, it was the initial point from which the settlement radiated; while with our western pioneers the town was an after- thought, a center point for the convenience of trade.
When it had been decided to send colonists to colonize California the settlements naturally took the pueblo form. The difficulty of obtain- ing regular supplies for the presidios from Mex- ico, added to the great expense of shipping such a long distance, was the principal cause that in- fluenced the government to establish pueblos de gente de razon. The presidios received their shipments of grain for breadstuff from San Blas
by sailing vessels. The arrival of these was un- .certain. Once when the vessels were unusually long in coming, the padres and the soldiers at the presidios and missions were reduced to liv- ing on milk, bear meat and what provisions they could obtain from the Indians. When Felipe de Neve was made governor of Alta or Nueva California in 1776 he was instructed by the vice- roy to make observations on the agricultural possibilities of the country and the feasibility of founding pueblos where grain could be produced to supply the military establishments.
On his journey from San Diego to San Fran- cisco in 1777 he carefully examined the coun- try; and as a result of his observations recon- mended the founding of two pueblos; one on the Rio de Porciuncula in the south, and the other on the Rio de Guadalupe in the north. On the 29th of November, 1777, the Pueblo of San José de Guadelupe was founded. The colonists were nine of the presidio soldiers from San Francisco and Monterey, who had. some know]- edge of farming and five of Anza's pobladores who had come with his expedition the previous years to found the presidio of San Francisco, making with their families sixty-one persons in ail. The pueblo was named for the patron saint of California, San José (St. Joseph), husband of Santa Maria, Queen of the Angeles.
The site selected for the town was about a mile and a quarter north of the center of the present city. The first houses were built of pal- isades and the interstices plastered with intid. These huts were roofed with earth and the floor was the hard beaten ground. Fach head of a family was given a suerte or sowing lot of two
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hundred varas square, a house lot, "ten dollars a month and a soldier's rations." Each, also, received a yoke of oxen, two cows, a mule, two sheep and two goats, together with the neces- sary implements and seed, all of which were to be repaid in products of the soil delivered at the royal warehouse. The first communal work done by the pobladores (colonists) was to dam the river, and construct a ditch to irrigate their sowing fields. The dam was not a success and the first sowing of grain was lost. The site se- lected for the houses was low and subject to overflow.
During wet winters the inhabitants were con- pelled to take a circuitous route of three leagues to attend church service at the mission of Santa Clara. After enduring this state of affairs through seven winters they petitioned the governor for permission to remove the pu- eblo further south on higher ground. The gov- ernor did not have power to grant the request. The petition was referred to the comandante- general of the Intendencia in Mexico in 1785. He seems to have studied over the matter two years and having advised with the asesor-general "finally issued a decree, June 21, 1787, to Gov- ernor Fages, authorizing the settlers to remove to the "adjacent loma (hill) selected by them as more useful and advantageous without chang- ing or altering, for this reason, the limits and boundaries of the territory or district assigned to said settlement and to the neighboring Mis- sion of Santa Clara, as there is no just cause why the latter should attempt to appropriate to herself that land."
Having frequently suffered from floods, it would naturally be supposed that the inhabi- tants, permission being granted, moved right away. They did nothing of the kind. Ten years passed and they were still located on the old marshy site, still discussing the advantages of the new site on the other side of the river. Whether the padres of the Mission of Santa Clara opposed the moving does not appear in the records, but from the last clause of the com- andante-general's decree in which he says "there is not just cause why the latter (the Mission of Santa Clara) should attempt to appropriate to herself the land," it would seem that the mission
padres were endeavoring to secure the new site or at least prevent its occupancy. There was a dispute between the padres and the pobladores over the boundary line between the pueblo and mission that outlived the century. After hav- ing been referred to the titled officials, civil and ecclesiastical, a boundary line was finally estab- lished, July 24, 1801, that was satisfactory to both. "According to the best evidence I have discovered," says Hall in his History of San José, "the removal of the pueblo took place in 1797," just twenty years after the founding. In 1798 the juzgado or town hall was built. It was located on Market street near El Dorado street.
The area of a pueblo was four square leagues (Spanish) or about twenty-seven square miles. This was sometimes granted in a square and sometimes in a rectangular form. The pueblo lands were divided into classes: Solares, house lots; suertes (chance), sowing fields, so named because they were distributed by lot; propios, municipal lands or lands the rent of which went to defray municipal expenses; ejidas, vacant suburbs or commons; dehesas, pasture where the large herds of the pueblo grazed; realenges, royal lands also used for raising revenue; these were unappropriated lands.
From various causes the founding of the sec- ond pueblo had been delayed. In the latter part of 1779, active preparations were begun for car- rying out the plan of founding a presidio and three missions on the Santa Barbara Channel and a pueblo on the Rio Porciuncula to be named "Reyna de Los Angeles." The comand- ante-general of the Four Interior Provinces of the West (which embraced the Californias, So- nora, New Mexico and Viscaya), Don Teodoro de Croix or "El Cavallero de Croix," "The Knight of the Cross," as he usually styled him- self, gave instructions to Don Fernando de Ri- vera y Moncada to recruit soldiers and settlers for the proposed presidio and pueblo in Nueva California. He, Rivera, crossed the gulf and be- gan recruiting in Sonora and Sinaloa. His in- structions were to secure twenty-four settlers, who were heads of families. They must be ro- bust and well behaved, so that they might set a good example to the natives. Their families
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must accompany them and unmarried female relatives must be encouraged to go, with the view to marrying them to bachelor sol- diers.
According to the regulations drafted by Gov- ernor Felipe de Neve, June 1, 1779, for the gov- ernment of the province of California and ap- proved by the king, in a royal order of the 24th of October, 1781, settlers in California from the older provinces were each to be granted a house lot and a tract of land for cultivation. Each poblador in addition was to receive $116.50 a year for the first two years, "the rations to be understood as comprehended in this amount, and in lieu of rations for the next three years they will receive $60 yearly."
Section 3 of Title 14 of the Reglamento pro- vided that "To each poblador and to the com- munity of the pueblo there shall be given under condition of repayment in horses and mules fit to be given and received, and in the payment of the other large and small cattle at the just prices, which are to be fixed by tariff, and of the tools and implements at cost, as it is ordained, two mares, two cows, and one calf, two sheep and two goats, all breeding animals, and one yoke of oxen or steers, one plow point, one hoe, one spade, one axe, one sickle, one wood knife, one musket and one leather shield, two horses and one cargo mule. To the community there shall likewise be given the males corresponding to the total number of cattle of different kinds dis- tributed amongst all the inhabitants, one forge and anvil, six crowbars, six iron spades or shov- els and the necessary tools for carpenter and cast work." For the government's assistance to the pobladores in starting their colony the set- tlers were required to sell to the presidios the surplus products of their lands and herds at fair prices, which were to be fixed by the govern- ment.
The terms offered to the settlers were cer- tainly liberal, and by our own hardy pioneers, who in the closing years of the last century were making their way over the Alleghany mountains into Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, they would have been considered munificent; but to the in- dolent and energyless mixed breeds of Sonora and Sinaloa they were no inducement. After
spending nearly nine months in recruiting, Ri- vera was able to obtain only fourteen pobladores, but little over half the number required, and two of these deserted before reaching California. The soldiers that Rivera had recruited for Cal- ifornia, forty-two in number, with their families, were ordered to proceed overland from Alamos, in Sonora, by way of Tucson and the Colorado river to San Gabriel Mission. These were com- manded by Rivera in person.
Leaving Alamos in April, 1781, they arrived in the latter part of June at the junction of the Gila and Colorado rivers. After a short delay to rest, the main company was sent on to San Gabriel Mission. Rivera, with ten or twelve soldiers, remained to recruit his live stock before crossing the desert. Two missions had been es- tablished on the California side of the Colorado the previous year. Before the arrival of Rivera the Indians had been behaving badly. Rivera's large herd of cattle and horses destroyed the mesquite trees and intruded upon the Indians' melon patches. This, with their previous quar- rel with the padres, provoked the savages to an uprising. They, on July 17, attacked the two missions, massacred the padres and the Spanish settlers attached to the missions and killed Ri- vera and his soldiers, forty-six persons in all. The Indians burned the mission buildings. These were never rebuilt nor was there any at- tempt made to convert the Yumas. The hos- tility of the Yumas practically closed the Colo- rado route to California for many years.
The pobladores who had been recruited for the founding of the new pueblo, with their fami- lies and a military escort, all under the command of Lieut. José Zuniga, crossed the gulf from Guaymas to Loreto, in Lower California, and by the 16th of May were ready for their long jour- ney northward. In the meantime two of the re- cruits had deserted and one was left behind at Loreto. On the 18th of August the cleven who had remained faithful to their contract. with their families, arrived at San Gabriel. On ac- count of smallpox among some of the children the company was placed in quarantine about a league from the mission.
On the 26th of August. 1781. from San Ga- briel, Governor de Neve issued his instructions
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for the founding of Los Angeles, which gave some additional rules in regard to the distribu- tion of lots not found in the royal reglamento previously mentioned.
On the 4th of September, 1781, the colonists, with a military escort headed by Governor Fe- lip de Neve, took up their line of march from the Mission San Gabriel to the site selected for their pueblo on the Rio de Porciuncula. There, with religious ceremonies, the Pueblo de Nues- tra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles was for- mally founded. A mass was said by a priest from the Mission San Gabriel, assisted by the choristers and musicians of that mission. There were salvos of musketry and a procession with a cross, candlestick, etc. At the head of the procession the soldiers bore the standard of Spain and the women followed bearing a ban- ner with the image of our Lady the Queen of the Angels. This procession made a circuit of the plaza, the priest blessing it and the building lots. At the close of the services Governor de Veve made an address full of good advice to the colonists. Then the governor, his military es- cort and the priests returned to San Gabriel and the colonists were left to work out their destiny.
Few of the great cities of the land have had such humble founders as Los Angeles. Of the eleven pobladores who built their huts of poles and tule thatch around the plaza vieja one hun- dred and twenty-two years ago, not one could read or write. Not one could boast of an un- mixed ancestry. They were mongrels in race, Caucasian, Indian and Negro mixed. Poor in purse, poor in blood, poor in all the sterner qual- ities of character that our own hardy pioneers of the west possessed, they left no impress on the city they founded; and the conquering race that possesses the land that they colonized has forgotten them. No street or landmark in the city bears the name of any one of them. No monument or tablet marks the spot where they planted the germ of their settlement. No Fore- fathers' day preserves the memory of their serv- ices and sacrifices. Their names, race and the number of persons in each family have been preserved in the archives of California. They are as follows:
1. José de Lara, a Spaniard (or reputed to be one, although it is doubtful whether he was of pure blood) had an Indian wife and three chil- dren.
2. José Antonio Navarro, a Mestizo, forty- two years old; wife a mulattress; three children.
3. Basilio Rosas, an Indian, sixty-eight years old, had a mulatto wife and two children.
4. Antonio Mesa, a negro, thirty-eight years old; had a mulatto wife and two children.
5. Antonio Felix Villavicencio, a Spaniard, thirty years old; had an Indian wife and one child.
6. José Vanegas, an Indian, twenty-eight years old; had an Indian wife and one child.
7. Alejandro Rosas, an Indian, nineteen years old, and had an Indian wife. (In the records, "wife, Coyote-Indian.")
8. Pablo Rodriguez, an Indian, twenty-five years old: had an Indian wife and one child.
9. Manuel Camero, a mulatto, thirty years old; had a mulatto wife.
10. Luis Quintero, a negro, fifty-five years old, and had a mulatto wife and five children.
II. José Morena, a mulatto, twenty-two years old, and had a mulatto wife.
Antonio Miranda, the twelfth person described in the padron (list) as a Chino, fifty years old and having one child, was left at Loreto when the expedition marched northward. It would have been impossible for him to have rejoined the colonists before the founding. Presumably his child remained with him, consequently there were but forty-four instead of "forty-six persons in all." Col. J. J. Warner, in his "Historical Sketch of Los Angeles," originated the fiction that one of the founders (Miranda, the Chino,) was born in China. Chino, while it does mean a Chinaman, is also applied in Spanish-American countries to persons or animals having curly hair. Miranda was probably of mixed Spanish and Negro blood, and curly haired. There is no record to show that Miranda ever came to .Alta California.
When José de Galvez was fitting out the ex- pedition for occupying San Diego and Monte- rey, he issued a proclamation naming St. Jo- sephi as the patron saint of his California colon- ization scheme. Bearing this fact in mind, no
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doubt, Governor de Neve, when he founded San José, named St. Joseph its patron saint. Hav- ing named one of the two pueblos for San José it naturally followed that the other should be named for Santa Maria, the Queen of the An- gels, wife of San José.
On the Ist of August, 1769, Portola's expedi- tion, on its journey northward in search of Mon- terey Bay, had halted in the San Gabriel valley near where the Mission Vieja was afterwards lo- cated, to reconnoiter the country and "above all," as Father Crespi observes, "for the purpose of celebrating the jubilee of Our Lady of the Angels of Porciuncula." Next day, August 2, after traveling about three leagues (nine miles), Father Crespi, in his diary, says: "We came to a rather wide canada having a great many cot- tonwood and alder trees. Through it ran a beautiful river toward the north-northeast and curving around the point of a cliff it takes a di- rection to the south. Toward the north-north- east we saw another river bed which must have been a great overflow, but we found it dry. This arm unites with the river and its great floods during the rainy season are clearly demon- strated by the many uprooted trees scattered along the banks." (This dry river is the Arroyo Seco.) "We stopped not very far from the river, to which we gave the name of Porciuncula." Porciuncula is the name of a hamlet in Italy near which was located the little church of Our Lady of the Angels, in which St. Francis of As- sisi was praying when the jubilee was granted him. Father Crespi, speaking of the plain through which the river flows, says: "This is the best locality of all those we have yet seen for a mission, besides having all the resources required for a large town." Padre Crespi was evidently somewhat of a prophet.
The fact that this locality had for a number of years borne the name of "Our Lady of the Angels of Porciuncula" may have influenced Governor de Neve to locate his pueblo here. The full name of the town, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reyna de Los Angeles, was seldom used. It was too long for everyday use. In the earlier years of the town's history it seems to have had a variety of names. It appears in the records as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los
Angeles, as El Pueblo de La Reyna de Los An- geles and as El Pueblo de Santa Maria de Los Angeles. Sometimes it was abbreviated to Santa Maria, but it was most commonly spoken of as El Pueblo, the town. At what time the name of Rio Porciuncula was changed to Rio Los Angeles is uncertain. The change no doubt was gradual.
The site selected for the pueblo of Los An- geles was picturesque and romantic. From where Alameda street now is to the eastern bank of the river the land was covered with a dense growth of willows, cottonwoods and al- ders; while here and there, rising above the swampy copse, towered a giant aliso (sycamore). Wild grapevines festooned the branches of the trees and wild roses bloomed in profusion. Be- hind the narrow shelf of mesa land where the pueblo was located rose the brown hills, and in the distance towered the lofty Sierra Madre mountains.
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