USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Los Angeles from the mountains to the sea : with selected biography of actors and witnesses to the period of growth and achievement, Volume I > Part 4
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Wallace, Albert J., II, 246
Wallace, Ernest L., II, 337
Walton, Charles S., 1, 379
War Industries Board, Chamber of Commerce, I, 396 Warde, Frederick, I, 384 Warde, Marion, III, 637 Warner, Charles D., 1, 135
Warner, J. J., 1, 62, 65
Washburn, Bryant, III, 870
Washburn, Franklin B., III, 870 Washburn, W. J., I, 245
Water supply: Irrigating and domes- tic (1854), 1, 97; first distributing "system" in Los Angeles (1865), 107; first iron pipes laid and eity "water works" leased (1868), 108; irrigation system reconstructed by American alealde, 165; first water- way in Mission Valley, 226; predica- ment of Los Angeles in 1905, 228; Fred Eaton suggests Owens River as source of, 229 Waterman, J. M., II, 243 Waters, Arthur J., 11, 25 Waters, Frank A., III, 714 Waters, Russell J., II, 22 Watson, Harry W., III, 551
xxviii
INDEX
Watson, James A., I, 362; sketch of, 363
Watson, Joseph E., III, 725
Watson, Mabel, III, 902
Watson, Samuel H., III, 549
Weaver, Sylvester L., III, 573
Weber, Lois, III, 883
Weeks, Henry, I, 242
Weik, Fred G., III, 635
Weil, Julius B., III, 565
Welch, William, I, 37
Weller, Dana R., II, 417
Wells, Arthur G., II, 259
Wells, A. J., I, 320
Wells, Fargo & Company, I, 97
West Sixth Street highway of trade (1868), I, 109
Westlake Military School, II, 344
Westlake Park, I, 107, 373
Westlake School for Girls, The, II, 198
Wetherby, F. Bruce, III, 621
Wharton, L. R., II, 418
Wheeler, Alfred, I, 366
Wheeler, Fred C., II, 387
Wheeler, J. O., I, 284
Wheeler & Johnson, I, 199, 200
Wheeler & Morgan, I, 185
Whitaker, Melville T., II, 105
White, A. F., I, 320
White, Charles H., III, 736
White, F. A., I, 310
White, Stephen M., sketch of, I, 116, 358
White, T. J., I, 281, 311
White, Thomas P., II, 268
Whitley, H. J., III, 814
Wickersham, Frederick A., II, 237-
Widney, Erwin W., II, 65
Widney, J. P., I, 62, 268
Widney, R. M., 1, 90, 364
Wiggin, Kate Douglas, I, 246
Wiggins, Frank, Secretary Chamber of Commerce, I, 391; II, 71
Wilbur, Elizabeth A., III, 467
Wildey, Otto G., III, 620
Wilhart, Louis, I, 190 Willard, Charles, I, 407
Willard, Raymond H., III, 458
Willebrandt, Mabel W., II, 78 Williams, Blanche, III, 804
Williams, Camillus J., II, 303
Williams, Charles N., III, 599
Williams, G. Edwin, II, 407
Williams, Isaac, I, 65, 74 Williams, Philip, II, 133
Williams, Warren L., II, 281
Williams-Dimond Line, I, 212 Wills, J. T., I, 320
Wilmington (New San Pedro), I, 101; as whalers' fitting-out post, 106, 111,
112, 208; Federal and railroad im- provements at, 209
Wilson, Benjamin D., I, 64, 89, 154, 183, 185, 310, 319, 360, 364; II, 389 Wilson, Emmett H., I, 245
Wilson, George J., II, 222
Wilson, Grace, III, 778
Wilson, John K., III, 707
Wilson and Packard, I, 184
Wine of the country "delicious," I, 175
Wiunett, P. G., III, 603
Winsel, Charles F. J., III, 651
Winston, James B., I, 281
Winston home, 1, 89
Wireless telegraph communication es- tablished (1911), I, 143
Witherby, Oliver S., I, 364
Wolfelt, C. H., II, 247
Wolfskill, John, I, 74
Wolfskill, John R., III, 851
Wolfskill, William, I, 63, 70, 71, 74, 189, 193; III, 849
Wood, Carolyne, III, 838
Woode, Piche, III, 852
Woodford, Asa W., III, 638
Woodford, Gregory S., III, 640
Woodley, Frank E., II, 298
Woods, D. W., II, 339
Woods, James, I, 310, 318 Woodward, Agnes, III, 539
Wool boom of 1871-72, I, 112 Woollacott, A. H., II, 329
Woolwine, Clare, III, 790
Woolwine, Thomas L., III, 708
Workman, Boyle, II, 8
Workman, William, I, 64, 154, 189; III, 921 Workman, William H., I, 83, 135, 372, 400; II, 3 Workman, William H., Jr., II, 137
Works, Lewis R., II, 335
World War, publie school work in, I, 255-258 Wright, Gilbert S., II, 40 Wyatt, W. T., I, 386
Yarnall, George S., II, 199
Yarnell, B. F., III, 696
Yarnell, Esther, II, 409
Yarnell, Jesse, II, 408
Yarnell, Lanra A. G., III, 696
Yarrow (old "Cuarto Ojos" or Four Eyes), I, 197 Yorba, Bernardo, I, 74, 189
Yorba, Jose Antonio, I, 165 Yorba, Teodosio, I, 189
York, M. Jessie, III, 739
York, Waldo M., III, 740
Youle, William E., II, 47
Young, Clara Kimball, III, 830
INDEX xxix
Young, Edward R., III, 443 Young, Ewing, I, 63, 65 Young, John D., I, 365 Yonngworth, Leo V., II, 288 Yutahs, uprisings of, I, 71
Zanja Madre (mother ditch), I, 97 Zanjas (open ditches), I, 97 Zoellner, Helena S., III, 829 Zoellner Quartet, III, 828
Los Angeles From the Mountains to the Sea
CHAPTER I
AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
It would seem that Los Angeles has been a habitation of man as long as any other place on the earth has been a dwell- ing place for human beings. After the envelope of water in which the earth was originally enclosed had evaporated and dry land appeared, and the animal kingdom came into exist- ence, it seems as likely as not that man appeared in the place where Los Angeles is now quite as early as he appeared any- where else.
This, of course, is mere theory, but as far as that is con- cerned, all the rest of it is nothing more than theory.
Remains of prehistoric beasts like the saber-toothed tiger have been found in the asphaltum beds of Los Angeles show- ing inclusively the existence of life here at a time that must have been contemporaneous with life in other parts of the world at the dawn of the world.
We have, however, no record of human existence here until the first white men came to California and that was a long time ago, too, as far as history is reckoned in America. It was only fifty years after the discovery of America by Columbus that California was discovered. This was in the year 1542, when Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese sailor, voyag- ing in Spanish ships and under the flag of Spain, sailed up from Natividad in Old Mexico and steered the prows of his daring little fleet of galleons into the harbor of San Diego.
And since now Los Angeles has come to be in many ways
Vol. 1-1
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LOS ANGELES
the first city of California-being certainly the first city as far as population is concerned-and since California, although one of the states of the Union only, is at the same time a distinct and separate country of itself, made so by the fact that it has a distinct entity geographically, climatically and in a thousand other ways, it is essential in telling the story of Los Angeles to begin by telling briefly the greater story of California itself. For it helps to make a story not only easier to understand, but vastly more interesting, if we shall begin at the beginning as every good story must do.
Now, when Cabrillo and the first white men found Califor- nia, nearly 500 years ago-and that's a long, long time-they found the country inhabited by a native race of Indians who had villages of their own up and down the coast and far back in the mountains, and where they lived in separate clans and families. The Spaniards called these villages "rancherias."
The whole race may be regarded as having been like one tribe because they were exactly alike everywhere in appear- ance and in their mode of living. But there was one very strange thing about them, and this was that when separated at distances of sometimes not more than twenty miles apart, they spoke an entirely different language, the one from the other. For instance, the natives at San Diego were not able to converse in words with the Indians at San Juan Capistrano, nor were the Indians at San Juan Capistrano able to converse with the Indians of San Gabriel. And so it went throughout all California from one end of it to the other. There were Indians on Santa Catalina and other islands off the coast, but when brought to the mainland they did not understand one word that other Indians spoke. It has been stated on authority that more than two-thirds of all the Indian lan- guages spoken within the present borders of the United States were found in California.
.
The California Indian differed in many other ways from the other Indians of America. The admiration universally accorded the great Algonquin family on the Atlantic seaboard and to the great war-like tribes of the western plains, does not seem to have had serious application here. The California Indian was not much of a man to admire. He was lazy, stu-
NATURE NEAR SAN GABRIEL BEFORE MAN APPEARED
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pid and exceedingly careless of his morals. He did not take trouble to build for himself any kind of shelter worthy of the name of a house, and, consequently, he was a man who had no conception of the meaning of home. He toiled not, neither did he spin. He was without modesty, he had no traditions; neither knowing nor caring from whence he had come nor whither he might drift.
But perhaps we can consistently make excuses for him. Why should he go to the wholly unnecessary trouble to work when everything that he needed had been furnished to his hand by Nature's bounty? His country teemed with wild game and with wild fruits and honey. If he were hungry he had but to reach out his hand for endless food of almost every description that was everywhere around him. And why should he take also the unnecessary trouble to clothe himself when there were always places where the sun shone warm and he could be comfortable without clothing? In other words, California was an Indian paradise as it is now a paradise on carth for the white man.
Cabrillo, the Discoverer, was the first white man to visit Los Angeles. After he had spent a happy six days in San Diego and was loath to leave it as everybody is, even to this day, he felt, evidently, that he must be on his way to do the work that was ent out for him, and so he sailed into the harbor of San Pedro, which is now a part of the City of Los Angeles. This was on the 28th day of September in the year of our Lord 1542. almost exactly 377 years before the day that these words were written for this book.
It is fascinating to know what impression the harbor of Los Angeles made on the first white man who ever saw it, if we are to depend on the historic records, and in order to know what that impression was, we can do nothing better than to turn back to the Log Book of old Juan Rodriguez and read what was there written at the time. This is what it says :
"The Thursday following they proceeded about six leagues, [This was after they had left San Diego] by a coast running northwest and discovered a port enclosed and very good, to which they gave the name of San Miguel. [This was the Bay of San Pedro.] It is in 34 1/3 degrees, and after an-
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choring in it they went on shore. It had people, three of whom remained and all others fled. To these they gave some pres- ents, and they said by signs that in the interior had passed people like the Spaniards. They manifested much fear.
"This same day at night they went on shore from the ships to fish with a net; and it appears that there were here some Indians, and they began to discharge arrows and wounded three men.
"The next day in the morning they entered further within the port, which is large, with a boat and brought out two boys who understood nothing but signs; and they gave them both shirts and immediately sent them away.
"And in the following day in the morning there came to the ship three large Indians; and by signs they said that there were travelling in the interior, men like us, with beards, and elothed and armed like those of the ships, and they made signs that they carried cross bows and swords, and made gestures with the right arm as if they were throwing lances, and went running in a posture as if riding on horseback, and made signs that they killed many of the native Indians and that for this they were afraid. This people are well-disposed and advanced; they go covered with the skins of animals. Be- ing in this boat there passed a very great tempest; but on account of the port's being good they suffered nothing. It was a violent storm from the southwest. This is the first storm which they have experienced. They were in this port until the following Tuesday.
"The following Tuesday on the third day of the month of October, they departed from this port of San Miguel; and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, they proceeded on their course about eighteen leagues, fifty-four miles along the coast, on which they saw many valleys, and level ground and many large smokes, and, in the interior, Sierras. They were at dusk near some islands which are about seven leagues from the main land; and because the wind was becalmed they could not reach them this night.
"Saturday, the seventh day of the month of October, they arrived at the island at day break which they named San Sal- vador [San Clemente], La Vittoria [Santa Catalina]; and
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they anchored off one of them and they went with the boat on shore to see if there were people there; and as the boat came near, there issned a great quantity of Indians from among the bushes and grass, yelling and dancing and making signs that they should come ashore. And they saw that the women were running away; and from the boats they made signs that they should have no fear; and immediately they assumed confidence and laid on the ground their bows and arrows, and they launched a canoe in the water which held eight or ten Indians and they came to the ships. They gave them beads and little presents, with which they were delighted and they presently went away. The Spaniards afterwards went ashore and were very secure, they and the Indian women and all, where an old Indian made signs to them that on the main land, men were journeying clothed and with beards like the Span- iards. They were in this island only until noon.
"The following Sunday on the eighth of the said month, they came near the main land in a great bay which they named La Bahia de Los Fumos [Santa Monica Bay] on ac- count of the numerous smokes which they saw upon it, where they held intercourse with some Indians whom they took in a canoe, who made signs that towards the north there were Spaniards like them. This bay is in 35 degrees; and it is a good port; and the country is good with many valleys and plains and trees."
There is one thing more than another, perhaps, that will strike the reader of Cabrillo's Log in these centuries so long after it was written, and that is to wonder who these white men could have been that were here before Cabrillo. The most popular theory is that the Indians in the interior of the country, probably as far inland as Arizona and New Mexico, and who saw Coronado and his expedition in that part of the world two years before Cabrillo's discovery of California, passed the word along across the Colorado and over the mountains and the deserts to the Indians here on the coast, that they had seen white men.
There isn't the slightest probability, however, that the In- dians here ever themselves saw white men until they saw the people of Cabrillo's daring enterprise. And following the
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theory up, it is easy to suppose that word would have come over vast distances among the Indian tribes concerning the appearance of Coronado and his men in the interior. It is true that there were no newspapers in those days and no tel- egraph lines, not to speak of the wireless telegraph, there were no aeroplanes or telephones or any other modern vehicle for the swift and even instantaneous conveyance of news, but it is astonishing how rapidly news traveled in those times, just the same, among the Indian peoples.
The same is true among them to this day. Let a man ap- pear for any special reason among the Indians of Soboba, and the next day, or in two or three days at most, his presence will become known in some magic way among all the Indian peoples of the reservations of Southern California. Even will it be known among the lonely huts of Laguna in the far silences of the Cuyamacas.
And certainly this wonderful old swash-buckling explorer Francisco Vasquez Coronado must have made a vivid impres- sion on the primitive mind of the territory that he covered. When he set out from Old Mexico in 1540, he had with him 200 mounted lancers in armor and 1,000 mounted horse- men in all, which was a very respectable force to be assem- bled under similar circumstances in any age of the world. The commander himself and his officers and their mounts were gorgeous with gay trappings. They had golden swords and silken banners; their advance was heralded with a blare of trumpets.
It was to find the famous fabled seven golden cities of Cibola that Coronado and his men had set out from Mexico. It seems assured that they traveled as far north as the center of our present State of Kansas, and that they came over into New Mexico, where they found that the much-vaunted seven cities of gold were nothing more than the pueblos of the Zuñis, and after all they found their quest to be a failure. There is no doubt that the country was considerably stirred up by this wonderful pageant that passed through it, and was not long until every aborigine within a radius of 1,000 miles and more had been told the news of it.
All this record of history and recital of tradition is here
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recalled only for what it may be worth, and mainly for the reason to fix in the reader's mind the established fact that the real discoverer of California was Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, and that to him and to him alone the credit belongs.
Another thing that impresses one in reading Cabrillo's Log, is that he mentions the fact that here were many trees in this part of the world in the early times. Southern Cali- fornia is so invariably referred to by writers as a "treeless land" that the impression has gone abroad that it was always a treeless land. But we see from the absolutely reliable re- port of Cabrillo that it was a land of many trees, indeed, when the white men first saw it. It is difficult to imagine that the country around San Pedro and Point Loma at San Diego were once covered with dense forests, but such is undoubt- edly the fact, and the task before the people of Southern Cal- ifornia now is to restore these forests, especially on the moun- tain slopes. For, if they shall fail to do this, all that they have builded through a century past-their cities and towns, their farms, their orchards-are at the mercy of flood and storm that may some day bury them as deep under the mud and sands of oblivion as Babylon was buried.
The one last thing concerning Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo that fascinates the mind now is that it seems to have been ordained by Providence that he should never leave the bright new land which he was the first of all the civilized men of the earth to see. When doubling back from Cape Mendocino to which he had sailed, in order that he might seek again the shelter of the Santa Barbara channel, the great admiral fell sick of a fever and died. His sailors buried him on the sunny little isle of San Miguel, where still he sleeps reckless of wind and wave and tide-the immortal Portuguese who was first to find the land of heart's desire.
Cabrillo's expedition continued north again after his death, probably sailing as far as the present southern line of Oregon. But it then returned to Old Mexico without having achieved anything more than to have proclaimed to the world the actual existence of the long-dreamed of and storied land of endless summers. But this was surely achievement enough. Sixty years passed before white men came again to California,
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FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA
and again they came merely to explore the coast and to return, and it was not until 227 years after the discovery had passed that any attempt was made to settle and to colonize the country.
And it was 239 years after the discovery of California that Los Angeles, now one of the wonder cities of the world, was founded.
This brings us to another story-one of the greatest of all the stories ever told-the story of how the white man's religion and civilization were brought to a heathen land and there rooted never to wither or die. It is a story which enfolds in its wondrous glamour Los Angeles and all the country that lies on either side of it between the mountains and the sea.
The fateful year of 1769 must remain forever immortal in the annals of California. It was the year in which Califor- nia began, when civilization was planted upon its shores, when the cross of Christianity, symbol of the Religion of Re- demption, was reared in its sunny valleys and upon its shining mountain tops. And it is also then that we first hear of the renowned and venerable Fray Junipero Serra, the great Fran- ciscan who laid the corner stones of our commonwealth and by whose hands was erected the fabric of our Empire of the Sun. There can never be anything written or anything said that has to do with California and it glamorous history with- out the inclusion of the name of this most remarkable and wonderful man.
Spain waited a long time indeed-more than two centuries and a quarter-to take full advantage of its wonderful pos- sessions on the western shores of Northern America. But it is plain, for all that, that Spain never held lightly in its esti- mation California's worth. It is perhaps only because the throne of Castile and Leon was so tremendously engaged with the stupendous task of exploiting the new half of the earth that had fallen into its hands that it waited so long to col- onize California, which, as we now know, was the brightest jewel in its crown. But, however it may be, the fact remains that it was not until full 227 years had passed that the Spanish king decided to add California to the civilized possessions of the world.
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It is a long story if we were to tell all that led up to the expedition of 1769 which brought Fray Junipero Serra and his brown-robed Franciscan companions to the shores of the Bay of San Diego, where they arrived on the first day of July of that forever memorable year. Suffice it to say that the intent and purpose of this expedition was to accomplish at one stroke the Christianization of the native Indians and to colonize California as a Spanish province.
The plan that Spain had in mind was a three-fold plan, namely, that missions should be established in which the na- tives were to be instructed and trained in the Christian re-
TYPICAL OLD SPANISH MISSION
ligion and taught to do a white man's work; second, that presidios or garrisons were to be established throughout the length of California in order not only that the missions might be under military protection but also that the country itself might be in a condition to repel probable foreign invasion, and third, that pueblos were to be founded in favorable places so that an urban population might be established to co-operate with the vast agricultural interests planned.
It was a wise and far-sighted plan in every way, and it was carried out to a great extent, especially as regarded the missions. The agricultural scheme also made wide progress.
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FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA
The only feature of the three-fold plan that materialized un- importantly was the scheme of the pueblos. All told, only three of these pueblos were ever founded, as follows: one at Branciforte, which was founded where the present City of Santa Cruz stands. Not a trace of Branciforte remains. Another pueblo was founded and named San Jose in honor of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of California. It still exists and flourishes as the present beautiful and important city of San Jose in the white-blossomed valley of Santa Clara. The third and last of the pueblos-the one that at first was the least hopeful and that remained the longest the most squalid, the least promising of all-was our present great City of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles was therefore a pre-ordained city. It is not a city that just happened. It was founded by order of the king with both military and religious pomp with the swing- ing of censors and the burning of incense and the stately music of the Te Deum.
And they named it in the music of Castilian speech "EI Pueblo La Senora de la Reina Los Angeles." It means the "City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels."
CHAPTER II
THE MOTHER OF LOS ANGELES
It is to be reasonably supposed that in the same way and from the same desire that a man would like to know every- thing possible concerning his own mother, a city that had a mother would also wish to be informed concerning her. Well, the mother of Los Angeles was San Gabriel. And now, at the outset of the story of Los Angeles, let us see what there is to know about that romantic and ancient habitation from which Los Angeles sprang and came into being.
It is not improbable that before many years have passed Los Angeles will come to mean all the territory lying between the mountains and the sea on either side of the center of the city for many miles of distances. And this, of course, will bring old San Gabriel into the fold. So, in telling the story of San Gabriel, we are really telling a part-the first and in many ways the most important part-of the story of Los Angeles itself. And we are further justified by the fact that it is a tale that reads like fiction and is stranger than fiction, as the truth often is.
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