USA > California > Land in California, the story of mission land, ranches, squatters, mining claims, railroad grants, land scrip, homesteads > Part 3
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1 Charles Anthony (Zephyrin) Engelhardt, San Fernando Rey (Chicago, 1922).
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Missionary Empire
and Topanga Malibu Sequit. Old records abound in dis- putes between priests and the holders of rancho conces- sions sometimes over boundaries, sometimes upon the right of individuals to take land over which missions claimed supervision for the Indians.
Mission San Gabriel objected strenuously to the pres- ence of ranchero Manuel Nieto at Los Coyotes, where he had permission to place stock. In 1796 Nieto wrote to the governor for relief, saying: "I find myself harassed in such a way on the part of the mission that being no longer able to endure it, I appeal to your Worship's powerful pro- tection ... that the Reverend Father Missionaries of said mission ... are continually warning me to abandon the place because it belongs to the Indians, and that they do not want me to stay under any title." A few years later missionaries at Carmel were calling for the expulsion of settlers from the rancho of Buena Vista. The padres of San Juan Bautista were successful in forcing Mariano Castro to abandon a settlement project at near-by La Brea, though he had a viceregal license, and to establish himself elsewhere. Boundary disputes between José María Verdugo, grantee of Rancho San Rafael (later site of Glendale and part of Burbank), and the priests of the adjoining missions of San Gabriel and San Fernando, in the years 1814 to 1817, were settled by government action and the establishment of definite ownership lines. We hear of the Church in 1819 protesting, but without avail, a cattle-grazing permit given to members of the Machado and Talamantes families for land (Los Quintos, presum- ably what was later called La Ballona) in the Culver City area. Consider the several years' dispute between Mission Dolores and ranchero Luís María Peralta over a section of Rancho San Antonio, on which rancho now stand part
1
.
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Land in California
of San Leandro, Alameda, Oakland, Piedmont, Emery- ville, Berkeley, and Albany. The missionaries had used this east shore property as a sheep ranch before it was ceded to Peralta by Governor Solá in 1820.
As California's population grew and as the demand for ranch land increased, the position of the land-monop- olizing missions became increasingly anachronistic. The attempts of the missions to stem the tide of private acqui- sition of property were doomed to the same failure that met King Canute's fabled trials at stopping the rising tides of the sea.
William Carey Jones in his pioneering report made for Congress in 1850 clearly explained the temporary na- ture of mission titles. Later, for the benefit of the Board of Land Commissioners hearing mission claims, Judge Felch made a simple and concise statement of the whole Spanish theory of missionary colonization:
The Missions were intended, from the beginning, to be tem- porary in their character. It was contemplated that in ten years from their first foundation they should cease. It was supposed that within that period of time the Indians would be sufficiently instructed in Christianity and the arts of civil- ized life, to assume the position and character of citizens; that these Mission settlements would then become PUEBLOS, and that the Mission churches would become parish churches, organized like the other establishments of an ecclesiastical character, in other portions of the nation where no Missions had ever existed. The whole Missionary establishment was widely different from the ordinary ecclesiastical organization of the nation. In it the superintendence and charge was com- mitted to priests who were devoted to the special work of Missions, and not to the ordinary clergy. The monks of the College of San Fernando and Zacatecas, in whose charge they were, were to be succeeded by the secular clergy of the Na- tional Church, the Missionary field was to become a DIOCESE,
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Missionary Empire
the President of the Missions to give place to a BISHOP, the Mission churches to become CURACIES, and the faithful in the vicinity of each parish to become the parish worshippers.
Although actual secularization of the California mis- sions did not begin until 1834, the demand for it had long been growing. As early as 1813 the cortes or legislature of Spain had shown impatience at the long-drawn-out existence of the missions in America and had passed a decree providing for at least partial secularization for those missions that had been established for ten years. This decree was not enforced in California. The agitation for independence from Spain stimulated the move to take over the enormously wealthy mission holdings, turn mis- sions into parishes, and substitute secular clergy for mis- sionary priests. Commentator Don José Martín, early-day "booster" for California, in the year 1822 was attacking the priests for enslaving Indians and for opposing estab- lishment of haciendas by settlers. Steps toward seculariza- tion in California were taken by Governor Echeandía in 1826 and 1831 by decrees which weakened Indian de- pendence on the missions. Obviously California Indians were not ready for secularization and the management of their own affairs. The increasing white population, how- ever, hungry for land and jealous of the organization that held the most and the best land, made secularization a hot and inevitable issue. Tremendous pressure was brought on the government. An ambitious Mexican attempt to colonize Alta California-long in the making-led by José María Híjar and José María Padrés and aided by Juan Bandini, California representative, spurred the Mexican congress to take decisive action.
On August 17, 1833, during Governor José Figueroa's regime, secularization, abrupt, all-inclusive and harsh,
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Land in California
became the law in California. The following year the first regulations were issued for putting it into effect. The management of temporal affairs of the missions was to be turned over to civil administrators. Padres were to keep to their spiritual labors. Lands, other than those to be distributed to heads of Indian families and adults, were to remain at the disposal of the government. Seculariza- tion, beginning in 1834, with ten missions secularized, was completed by 1836. At many mission centers demoral- ization quickly set in, with the Indians-unprepared to take care of themselves-scurrying away to the towns or to the ranchos, perhaps helping themselves first to horses and other personal property, and with mission land hold- ings being rented, sold, or neglected by the government.
Without avail was the attempt made in 1843 by Gov- ernor Micheltorena to restore twelve of the missions, to reanimate "the skeleton of a giant," as he phrased the system. In 1845 Governor Pío Pico signed at Los Angeles detailed regulations for the sale of specific missions and the renting of certain others." Thus, with secularization accomplished, with the missions destroyed, with the neo- phytes dispersed, one of the most idealistic adventures in colonization ever attempted came to an end.
Secularization in 1834 was the signal for a land rush in California and a shifting of population. Settlers who had been doubling up with relatives or living in presidios and pueblos flooded the governor's office with their petitions for this valley and that valley. Ricardo Vejar, for example, who had been living on Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas (now Beverly Hills) on sufferance of the owner, joined with Ygnacio Palomares and received permission to settle on and take title to Rancho San José (Pomona Valley). In-
2 For further information on this step, see below, chap. vi.
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Missionary Empire
fluential citizens were given preference, of course, for land was the gift of government. All the pueblos declined in population. It was in this same year of 1834 that 200 colonists, members of the Híjar and Padrés group, came to California to add to the land demand, some of them becoming prominent as citizens-for example, Ignacio Coronel and family, Agustín Olvera, Victor Prudon, and José María Covarrubias. Between 1834 and 1842 more than 300 ranchos were granted to Mexican citizens, and largely carved out of mission-held land.
The claims of the Catholic Church to acreage at each of the twenty-one missions were presented in 1853 by Archbishop Joseph Sodoc Alemany to the Board of United States Land Commissioners. This Board was cre- ated under the Act of 1851 to segregate privately owned land from that which was public domain. Confirmation was limited practically to the exact area of land covered by the church buildings, cemeteries, and gardens, ranging from 6.48 acres allowed Mission San Rafael in Marin County to 283.13 acres allowed Mission Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara County. Patents from the United States followed official survey of these small allotments-all that was salvaged from the pastoral-age land empire that had been founded by tireless and heroic Fray Junípero Serra.3
3 The following list of California missions, in the order of founding, gives the quantity of land the title to which was confirmed by the United States, the acreage being that shown in the Corrected Report of Spanish and Mexican Grants in California Complete to February 25, 1886, pre- pared by the State Surveyor General and published in Sacramento in 1886 as a supplement to the Official Report of 1883-84:
San Diego de Alcalá, 1769, 22.21 acres San Carlos Borroméo, or Carmelo, 1770, 9 acres
San Antonio de Padua, 1771, 33.19 acres San Gabriel Arcángel, 1771, 190.69 acres San Luís Obispo, 1772, 52.72 acres San Francisco de Asís, or Dolores, 1776, 8.54 acres San Juan Capistrano, 1776, 44.40 acres
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Land in California
The California visitor today, who has completed his pleasant tour of the twenty-one missions or mission sites, will probably not go deeply into their history. Nor will he concern himself with missionary theories of land- ownership or of trusteeship for Indians. He will be inter- ested, probably and properly, in their preservation and further restoration-symbols of an idealistic adventure. He will feel sure, too, that more of them will become parish churches and training schools, performing useful functions year by year as well as preserving indefinitely the story of one phase of the Spanish colonization of California.
Santa Clara de Asís, 1777, 19.95 acres San Buenaventura, 1782, 36.27 acres Santa Barbara, 1786, 283.13 acres La Purísima Concepción, 1787, 14.04 acres Santa Cruz, 1791, 16.94 acres La Soledad, 1791, 34.47 acres San José, 1797, 28.33 acres
San Juan Bautista, 1797, 55.23 acres San Miguel Arcángel, 1797, 33.97 acres San Fernando Rey, 1797, 76.94 acres San Luís Rey, 1798, 53.39 acres Santa Inés, 1804, 17.35 acres San Rafael Arcángel, 1817, 6.48 acres San Francisco Solano, 1823, 14.20 acres
Archbishop Alemany filed the claim of the Church with the Land Commission on February 19, 1853 (Case No. 609). Confirmation by the Commission took place December 18, 1855. The appeal to the District Court was dismissed March 16, 1857, Northern District, and March 15, 1858, Southern District (Case Nos. 425, N.D. and 388, S.D.). Patents for each mission area were issued to Archbishop J. S. Alemany. Also con- firmed to the Church were Cañada de los Pinos or College Rancho in Santa Barbara County, comprising 35,499.37 acres, and La Laguna in San Luis Obispo County, comprising 4,157.02 acres. Patents for these areas were also issued to Archbishop J. S. Alemany.
CHAPTER IV
Four Square Leagues
PROBABLY NO ONE, unless he were a missionary priest, wanted to go to California in the year 1769, when Spain was beginning its occupation of that far-flung, far-distant land.
But Spain's plans for colonization of Alta California were part of the expansionist program of José de Gálvez, adviser to King Charles III, working through the oblig- ing viceroy of New Spain. That program called not only for missionaries to establish missions and civilize the In- dians, but also for soldiers to found frontier outposts and settlers to start farming communities. Soldiers led the way and, carrying out royal orders, built and maintained along the coast the presidios of San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara that permitted the building and insured the protection of missions and pueblos in the interior.
The story of the presidios and the story of the pueblos, however, is really one-so far as the account of men own-
[33]
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Land in California
ing land is concerned-for presidios become pueblos. Within and around the presidios grew small settlements which came to be called presidial pueblos. These, like the deliberately planned pueblos of San José and Los Angeles; were recognized by Spain and the United States as pueblos and, as such, also entitled to four square leagues of land.1 This area was to be measured "in a square or prolonged form according to the character of the land." The leagues were, of course, Spanish leagues. A Spanish league was about two and three-fifths miles.
The sites selected for California's four presidios com- manded the sea or the bay. Visitors today to Presidio Hill Park overlooking "Old Town" and the bay of San Diego are shown a few mounds and bits of adobe wall marking the ground plan of California's first presidio, founded in 1769, under conditions of difficulty, illness, and priva- tion, and used for garrison purposes until 1835. The building of the presidio of Monterey, situated "a gunshot from the beach," was begun in the following year-at first with only a few huts surrounded by a palisade. San Fran- cisco, most northerly of the presidios, was established in 1776 near a high and perpendicular cliff, on a site chosen by Juan Bautista de Anza. Diarist Father Font described it not only as a place from which one could watch the spouting of whales and the play of dolphins, sea otters, and sea lions but from which one could spit into the sea. Fourth and last of the presidios to be founded was that
1 The Spanish law which assigned four square leagues of land to each organized pueblo is found in Book 4 of the Laws of the Indies (Recopil- acion de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias), Title 5, Laws 6 and 10. Official construction of the law is found in an opinion given on October 27, 1785, by Galindo Navarro, attorney of the Commandancy, and transmitted to California's governor, Don Pedro Fages. Translations are available in John W. Dwinelle's The Colonial History of San Francisco (San Francisco, 1863), see his Addenda, Nos. I, II, VI. Also see Hart v. Burnett, 15 Cal. 530.
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Four Square Leagues
of Santa Barbara, in 1782, near the shore of a bay and close by springs of good water and a large native village.
Soldiers, sailors, priests, and settlers participated in the ceremonies that attended the beginnings of the presidios that were to become pueblos. The actual construction of presidios followed an established pattern. The features of a presidio, as described by the French visitor Duflot de Mofras, were an outer, surrounding ditch, the enclo- sure forming a quadrilateral; a rampart twelve to fifteen feet high and three feet thick; small bastions; an arma- ment of bronze cannon, eight-, twelve-, and sixteeen- pounders; within the enclosure a church, barracks, houses for colonists, storehouses, workshops, stables, wells, and cisterns; outside were some houses and, at greater dis- tance, the "King's Farm" (el rancho del rey) which fur- nished pasturage to horses and cattle.
The account of the beginning of the presidio of San Francisco is well detailed. Soldiers, colonists, and cattle went by land from Monterey, and equipment was shipped from the same port on the San Carlos. A temporary chapel and tule huts were put up, then a square measuring 92 varas each way was marked out for the presidio, which was to include divisions for church, royal offices, ware- houses, guardhouse, and houses for soldier settlers. Sailors and carpenters built a warehouse for supplies, a house for the commanding officer, and a chapel. The soldiers were free to erect their own dwellings. By September, 1776, the presidio had become a little village of flat-roofed log houses and buildings-perhaps resembling, we are re- minded by historian Herbert E. Bolton, some of its con- temporaries in the Ohio Valley.
California's presidios were first of all military outposts. But they were also recognized as pueblos, the captains of
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Land in California
the presidios being authorized to grant and distribute to soldiers and citizens house lots and lands within the four- square-league area measured from the center of the pre- sidio square.
The presidio of San Francisco, for example, was founded by considerably more married men than that required for the founding of a pueblo. By 1825 it had 120 houses and perhaps 500 people, according to visiting Cap- tain Benjamin Morrell. By 1834 an ayuntamiento or common council was functioning and the presidio had been officially recognized as a pueblo. By 1835 the popu- lation was shifting from the table land above the sea to the sheltered cove adjacent to Telegraph Hill where the village of Yerba Buena was being born. This village was within the four square leagues of land measured from the center of the plaza at the presidio. Until 1846 alcaldes and justices of the peace in Yerba Buena granted town lots to its inhabitants, the first conveyance being to Wil- liam A. Richardson on June 2, 1836, of a 100-vara lot in the vicinity of the northwest corner of Grant Avenue and Washington Street. Early in 1847 Yerba Buena-"the good herb"-changed its name to San Francisco, the orig- inal designation given the presidio, the pueblo, and the bay. When California became a part of the United States, the new government recognized San Francisco as a pueblo-as did the legislature of California which raised its rank to that of a city. The United States Circuit Court in 1865 confirmed San Francisco's pueblo title to four square leagues of land-following the city's appeal from an earlier partial rejection by the Board of Land Com- missioners-and in the following year Congress relin- quished to the city the land confirmed.
But to go back to Spain's eighteenth-century plans for
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Four Square Leagues
the colonization of California. It was not enough to estab- lish presidios at strategic points along the coast and to foster a string of missions in the interior. Farming com- munities-outright pueblos-fitted into the plan also and, under royal approval, were to be established in fertile valleys so that soldier garrisons need not be dependent on shipborne importations of grain from San Blas, Mexico.
Following an exchange of ideas in 1776 between Gov- ernor Neve, whose headquarters were then in Loreto, Lower California, and Viceroy Bucareli, Neve started north to establish his seat at Monterey. On the way to Monterey he looked for areas in Upper California which had good soil and abundant water for irrigation and chose a pueblo site along the Porciuncula River in the south and another along the Guadalupe in the north.
One November day Lieutenant Don José Moraga, com- mander of the presidio of San Francisco, started south from San Francisco under orders from the governor with sixty-six men, women, and children-soldiers and settlers with their families. The party made their last camp in a valley watered by the Guadalupe. Here they built huts of plastered palisades, earth-roofed, constructed a dam and a water ditch, prepared the fields for sowing, and so became the founders of California's first pueblo of San José, founded November 29, 1777.
It probably had not been hard to enlist these settlers, who already knew something of farming, for the site along the Guadalupe was a comparatively short distance from San Francisco and only three quarters of a league from Mission Santa Clara. Here was a pleasant valley of which the San Franciscans had some knowledge, and they came under a colonization plan (presently to be announced) that was most attractive.
1
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Land in California
To draw settlers to the Los Angeles area, however, called for extended effort and experience in the arts of persuasion on the part of the governing officials, for the recruiting grounds were a thousand miles away. Men had to be induced to leave the settled areas of Sonora and Sinaloa in Mexico and travel northward through un- known country to an unknown destination. The job of recruiting was entrusted to experienced Captain Don Fernando Javier Rivera y Moncada.
Twenty-four settlers and fifty-nine soldiers were needed. Captain Rivera was ordered to canvass a large area, to advertise the advantages of "joining up" but not to overadvertise. Do not deceive "with offers of more than can be fulfilled," he was told by his superior. He could offer settlers ten pesos a month and daily rations for three years from enlistment. He could promise to each settler "two cows, two oxen, two mares, two horses, one mule, two ewes, two goats, and the tools and utensils necessary for the labors of the field." It was give and take, however, for the government expected ultimately to be reimbursed out of crops and herds for the stock and other supplies. Soldier recruits would receive pay that would more than cover their expenses. Captain Rivera was asked to dispel some of the false interpretations already being placed by people on the regulations issued by Governor Neve for the colonization of the province of California. There were rumors, it seems, about discounts and surcharges to come out of pay, and many people were failing to take advan- tage of the opportunity of "gaining an honorable and happy berth and of performing a loyal service to the King."
The zeal of the government in winning men's minds is best exhibited in the governor's regulations-the Regla-
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Four Square Leagues
mento-issued in 1779 and receiving royal approval in 1781. Detailed instructions for setting up and maintain- ing the pueblo of Los Angeles were given, apparently applicable also to the established pueblo of San José and to pueblos not yet planned for. These instructions cov- ered generous pay and rations to settlers, free distribution of house lots and farming land, allotment of farm animals and tools, rules for the disposal of property, and the com- mon privileges of water, pasturage, firewood, and timber. Settlers were to be tax free for five years but they had to build houses, plant fruit trees, and in other ways improve their land and opportunities. They could not mortgage their property. They were to be armed and to maintain the defense of their district.
In the face of difficulties Rivera did a good recruiting job. The first Los Angeles man was signed up at La Villa de Sinaloa. He was Felix Villavicencio, a native of Chi- huahua and he was outfitted-as were those who followed him-with everything from shoes to hair ribbons. The merchants of Los Alamos and Rosario were asked to co- operate and to keep their shelves well stocked.
Soldiers and settlers, a hardy lot, made the difficult journey through wild country, and the tule hut pueblo of Los Angeles was founded, September 4, 1781, the sec- ond pueblo in California. It was destined in ten years to be a successful farming community of 139 persons, with 29 dwellings of adobe, as well as public town hall, bar- racks, guardhouse, and granaries-all enclosed by an adobe wall. This community was then producing more grain than any of the missions in California, except neigh- boring San Gabriel.
The third pueblo, Branciforte at Santa Cruz, across the river from the mission, was established in 1797 by a party
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Land in California
of destitute colonists from Guadalajara who had arrived by ship at Monterey in May of that year. Though am- bitiously planned, the pueblo or villa, as it was sometimes called, was not long lived. Even the name itself, which honored the viceroy, was swallowed up in that of the near-by mission.
Each fully organized pueblo was entitled-without spe- cial grant-to four square leagues of land, the law pro- viding that this area was to be measured, as already stated, in a square or prolonged form/according to the character of the land. These four leagues could be divided into house lots (solares), farm lots (suertes), lands to be rented for municipal revenue (propios), vacant suburbs or com- mons (ejidos), and big cattle pastures (dehesas). The gov- ernment of a pueblo, as soon as it met population requirements, was by a common council called the ayun- tamiento. The mayor was the alcalde.
When the pueblos of San José and Los Angeles were five years old their people were put formally in possession of their individual house and farm lots. Late in 1782 Governor Fages appointed Lieutenant Moraga of the presidio of San Francisco as commissioner to go to San José for this official purpose. In the name of the king and in the presence of two assisting witnesses he was to give possession and good title to the nine founders of the pueblo, together with iron brands to mark their cattle. Lieutenant Moraga gave formal possession the following May, the first grant going to Ygnacio Archuleta for a house lot adjoining that on which stood the council's house and for four farm lots which were duly measured off. So, too, at the pueblo of Los Angeles, where on September 4, 1786-exactly five years after the founding-formal pos- session was given to the colonists by Don José Argüello
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