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 8
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But there would be frijoles then, just the same. There were always frijoles.
If you were to have searched the pockets of Don Antonio's guests at dinner that night, it is doubtful that you would find money in their pockets sufficient to throw at a beggar upon the roadside. In the old Los Angeles, as life was then lived, the people had little money and often none. But it was a thing they did not need. They had everything that money could buy, and when a man is situated like that he has no need for money. It might be fortunate if such were the case again, and that the condition would remain and never change, for it is true always that "the love of money is the root of all evil."
At length the hour would grow late; and the chief guest- the only guest, indeed, who had been specifically invited, but who was for all that no more welcome than any of the others -would rise and say that the time had come for himself and his companions to depart and make their ways homeward.
Then it was that Don Antonio would open the door of the great room and look out into the night, closing it again sol- emnly and facing his guests to say :
"Friends, the night is very dark, and worse than that, I have been hearing lately disquieting rumors of the presence of pirates landed at the harbour of San Pedro who are in- festing the high-roads of the country in banditry. I could not think of permitting you, my friends, to invite the danger that lurks without upon such a night as this. You must remain. where you are and do my poor house the great honor of ac- cepting its humble shelter."
There would be no murmur against this. The guests did not fear for themselves, for they were brave men and able to give good accounts of themselves under any and all circum- stances. But they were gentlemen in a gentleman's house, and it was out of the question to decline the hospitality he offered, no matter how far-reaching it might be.
So, they would remain all night in Don Antonio's house. And the next morning and all that day he would have many things of interest to show them on his vast rancho. There would be new herds of blooded cattle to inspect, new flocks of sheep, new granaries and, last but not least, a dozen or
.
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more of new grandchildren that had come to bless the world with their grace and beauty since the last visit of Don An- tonio's friends.
The day would wear away happily, as only days can be in a happy land in its golden age, and the glory of the sunset would paint the skies; and the long twilight, which in Cali- fornia is not twilight, but the after-glow of day, would follow, and then it would be time to dine again. And they would dine again, as sumptuously and perhaps more so than on the night before, and the night would be darker than ever, and the pirates worse than ever, and so they would stay that night and the next day and the next night and day, until the upshot of that whole business would be this: That one man who had been invited to spend a couple of hours at dinner as the guest of a friend, brought a dozen others with him and they all stayed two weeks.
"Time was made for slaves," they said. And it was made for slaves. And it is only the man who can flout time and make it serve him as it may please him, and who does not permit it to bid him come and go, to eat or drink, to sleep or wake, only as he shall himself decide-it is only this man who is not the slave of time.
Thus we are informed as to the history of dinner parties in the old Los Angeles. But we shall also desire to know how the people lived at home in their ordinary course of life. It is unnecessary to concern ourselves as to the manner in which the poor lived. The poor always lived in the same way, not only in the old Los Angeles, but in old Babylon and old Rome, and the whole world over. If a man be poor he must live as best he can. And may God help him to do so.
It is, therefore, the manner of life which the well-to-do and wealthy people of the old Los Angeles lived that it is our business to record. To begin with, there was one high thing that characterized the life of the people in the old Los An- geles. That high thing was courtesy. And it is a thing of which we are having always less and less, the more's the pity. In the old Los Angeles there was always time to be polite ; there was always time to be well-mannered.
More than seventy years ago a Philadelphia Protestant
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clergyman, Rev. Walter Colton, who was a chaplain in the United States Navy, visited California. He spent three years here among the people and went away with the kindest memo- ries of them all. He kept a diary which he later published in a book, and in that book he says this :
"The courtesies characteristic of the Spanish linger in California, and seem, as you encounter them amid the least observant habits of the emigrant, like golden-tinted leaves of autumn still trembling on their stems in the rushing verdure of spring. They exhibit themselves in every phase of society and every walk of life. You encounter them in the church, at the fandango, at the bridal altar, and the hearse. They adorn youth and take from age its chilling severity. They are trifles in themselves, but they refine social intercourse and soften its alienations. They may seem to verge upon extremes, but even then they carry some sentiment with them, some sign of deference to humanity."
Here is unimpeachable testimony concerning the people of the old Los Angeles on a most important phase of character. Mr. Colton was a stranger among the people, and his view- point was exactly the same as ours must be now who look back upon life in the old Los Angeles in these after-times, with that life long since passed away forever.
But for fear that we might get the impression that life as it was lived in the old Los Angeles displayed its courtesy out- wardly only and to the stranger only, there is much written evidence to prove that within the privacy of the home the same high social virtue was maintained.
An English traveler named Simpson has written of the great respect and even reverence that children maintain toward their parents. "A son," says he, "though himself the head of a family, never presumes to sit, or smoke or re- main uncovered in presence of his father; nor does the daugh- ter, whether married or unmarried, enter into too great famil- iarity with the mother."
I have myself heard from the lips of very old people of these things, and they corroborate all that I had read. These old people told me that when bedtime came the children invariably knelt before the father and the mother and asked
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their blessing before going to sleep. It was a beautiful cus- tom, and its practice resulted in the growth of noble men and virtuous women. Don Pio Pico, the last of the Mexican Gov- ernors of California, and who was still a familiar figure in the street of Los Angeles forty years ago, is quoted as stating that until he was twenty-six years of age he was in complete subjection to his mother, his father being dead.
"When younger," said Don Pio, "I could repeat the whole catechism from beginning to end, and my mother would often send for me to do so for the edification of strangers."
The reference made by Don Pio to his mother brings us to the subject of women in the old Los Angeles, and women who read this book will want to know how their sisters, now long dead and gone, managed to make the best of life in the old Los Angeles. Fortunately, I have before me the testimony of one of them-a woman who was a girl in California ninety years ago.
When she was a girl, she says, "Ladies were rarely seen in the street, except very early in the morning on their way to church. We used to go there attended by our servants, who carried small mats for us to kneel upon, as there were no seats. A tasteful little rug was considered an indispensable part of our belongings and every young lady embroidered her own. The church floors were cold, hard, and damp, and even the poorer classes managed to use mats of some kind, usually of tule woven by the Indians.
"The dress worn in the mornings at church was not very becoming; the rebozo and the petticoat being black, always of cheap stuff and made up in much the same way. All classes wore the same; the padres told us that we must never forget that all ranks of men and women were eqnal in the presence of the Creator, and so at the morning service, it was the cus- tom to wear no finery whatever. One mass was celebrated before sunrise for those whose duties compelled them to be at work early; later masses took place every hour of the morning. Every woman went daily to church, but the men were content to go once a week.
"For home wear and for company we had many expensive dresses, some of silk, or of velvet, others of laces, often of
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our own making, which were much liked. In some families were imported laces that were very old and valuable. The rivalry between beauties of high rank was as great as it could be in any country. And much of it turned upon attire, so that those who had small means often underwent many priva- tions in order to equal the splendor of the rich.
"Owing to the unsettled state of affairs for a generation in Mexico and in all the province, and the great difficulty of obtaining teachers, most of the girls of the time had scanty educations. Some of my playmates could speak English well, and quite a number knew something of French. One of the gallants of the time said that, 'Dancing, music, religion, and amiability were the orthodox occupations of the ladies of Cali- fornia.' Visitors from other countries have said many charming things about the manners, good health and comeli- ness of these ladies, but it is hardly right for any of us to praise ourselves. The ladies of the province are born and educated here ; here they lived and died in complete ignorance of the outside world. We were in many ways like grown up children.
"Our servants were faithful, agreeable, and easy to man- age. They often slept on mats on the earthen floor, or, in the summer time, in the court-yards. When they waited on us at meals we often let them hold conversation with us, and laugh without restraint. As we used to say, a good servant knew when to be silent and when to put in his cuchara (or spoon)."
When a woman married and became the mother of chil- dren she stepped into the most sacred niche in all the walls of her well-loved house. She managed her household with care and dignity. The servants came and went at her beck and call. The wool of the sheep was woven under her eyes. The reverence of her children and her children's children never failed her until at last her eyes were closed and they laid her away to sleep with the countless dead.
The stranger in the old Los Angeles never failed to marvel at the finery worn by both women and men, and which the lady whom we have just quoted made reference to. And the people of today may find it a source of wonderment as to how these
AVALON, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND
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silks and satins and brocades were acquired by the people in a country where such things were not manufactured.
The explanation is that the Californians traded hides and tallow, grain, brandy and wine, and other native products, to the ships that touched on this coast on their way from the Orient to New England and other parts of the world. One time when the laws of Mexico prohibited foreign ships from entering the ports of California, Yankee traders used to anchor at Santa Catalina Island and from that point surrep- titiously carry on an exchange with the mainland.
Speaking at one time of the people of the old days here, a member of the well-known Sepulveda family of Los Angeles said: "Settled in a remote part from the center of govern- ment, isolated from and almost unaided by the rest of the Mexican states, and with very rare chance of communication with the rest of the world, they in time formed a society whose habits, customs, and manners differed in many essential par- ticulars from the other people of Mexico. The character of the new settlers assumed, I think, a milder form, more inde- pendence, and less of the restless spirit which their brothers in Old Mexico possesed. To this the virtuous, intelligent missionaries doubtless contributed greatly."
Even Hubert Howe Bancroft, the great historian of Cali- fornia, and who would rank among great historians anywhere were it not for the fact that he habitually befouled his own work by crude and inexcusable innuendo, and who made it a habit to qualify almost every good thing he said of Califor- nians with a personal sneer of his own, has this to say of the people of the old Los Angeles :
"Living surrounded by scenes of natural beauty, amidst olive orchards and vineyards, ever looking forth from sunny slopes on the bright waters of bay and sea, living so much in the open air with high exhilaration and healthful exercise, many a young woman glowed in her lustrous beauty and many a young man unfolded perfect as Apollo. Even the old were cheerful, strong, and young in spirit."
Charles Howard Shinn, writing of the old days, states that there was then not a hotel in California. He did not, of course, consider the missions as hotels, although they were
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for many a year really such as far as any stranger was con- cerned, except that there was no bill to pay, no charge made, and this fact forces them out of the hotel class hopelessly. The stranger in the land offered an indignity to a house-any house-if he passed it without stopping. And when he found it necessary to leave, there was a fresh horse awaiting him instead of his own. In the room where he slept there was a sum of money uncounted, and unless he were totally ignorant of the custom of the country, he understood that if he were in need of funds he was to help himself freely to what he found. And if it appeared that some of the money were taken by the stranger-guest to meet his needs, the people of the house never under any circumstances counted what remained after the stranger had departed. They not only never per- mitted any one of themselves in the community to suffer, but extended the same charity and boundless generosity to the stranger as well.
We have said that there was not much money among the people of the old Los Angeles, which is true. But what there was it was gladly shared.
But it seems that if the people at large were not of ple- thoric purse, the missions, at least at one time in their history, were well-stocked with silver and gold as a result of the tire- less industry of their establishments, and it is related that a man came down from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles once to borrow money, but without success. He was an American and had married into the Ortega family. By the time he had returned to his home, a priest of one of the missions heard of the man's trouble, and so, without the slightest hesitation or without asking the scratch of a pen in acknowledgment, he sent the man a tule basket of the capacity of four gallons filled with gold.
"You ought to come to your priest when you need help," said the padre in the message that he sent with the basket of gold.
Life in the old Los Angeles centered around the Plaza, where Don Felipe de Neve drove the first stakes of the pueblo and laid out its four corners. The growth of Los Angeles has been so sensationally rapid during the recent years that it is
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easy to form the impression that it must have been in very ancient times indeed that the old Plaza was the center of everything, social, religious and commercial. But there are many men, not yet so very old, who can remember when this was the case.
I am indebted to an old friend, the late Harris Newmark, for reliable recollections of the old Plaza as it was sixty-five years or more ago. Mr. Newmark was a young man here at that time, a merchant and a factor in the life of the town. Before he died he published a book of his memoirs which con- stitutes a valuable contribution to Los Angeles history. Mr. Newmark states that the homes of many of those who were uppermost in the social scale, clustered about the old Plaza, and that Jose Andras Sepulveda has a beautiful old adobe house in that vicinity. Don Ignacio del Valle lived there prior to his residence at Camulos. The Coronels, Aguilars, Carrillos, the Sanchez family, Vicente Lugo, the Abileas and Don Agustin Olivera also.
"Don Vicente Lugo," says Mr. Newmark, "was the Beau Brummel of Los Angeles in the early days. His wardrobe was made exclusively of the fanciest patterns of Mexican type; his home one of the few two-story houses in the pueblo. He was the owner of twenty-five hundred head of cattle. His mother-in-law, Maria Ballestero, lived near him."
Not only was the Plaza the center of everything because of these great people who lived there in the old days, but it was the municipal headquarters and everybody of note in any part of California who came to Los Angeles for any reason has been seen where the old Plaza stands.
Also it is not to be forgotten that the Picos lived there, and that it was the home of both Don Pio and Don Andres, each of them renowned in California's annals.
It seems that nothing can be written concerning Los An- geles without reference to the name of Pico. Don Pio was the last big man of California under the flag of Mexico. Mr. Newmark, in his memoirs, recalls Don Pio and says that "As long as he lived, or at least until the tide of his fortune turned and he was forced to sell his most treasured personal effects, he invariably adorned himself with massive jewelry of much
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valne; and as a further conceit, he frequently wore on his bosom Mexican decorations that had been bestowed upon him for past official service."
We shall have more to say of Pio Pico in another chapter, but since it has been mentioned that his fortunes turned, I remember hearing a man of unimpeachable character stating that it got to be so bad with Don Pio at last that a constable took his sombrero from his head and seized it for debt one day on the streets of Los Angeles.
CHAPTER VI
OLD TIMERS AND OLD TIMES
About fifty years ago the folks in Los Angeles came to the conclusion that a book ought to be printed about their city and the people who had been and still were at that time a part of it. So it appears that a "Literary Committee" was organized for the purpose of getting out a publication of this character, and we find that the work of compilation and his- torical research was entrusted to Messrs. J. J. Warner, Ben- jamin Hayes and J. P. Widney, with the result that, in due course of time, a most interesting and valuable booklet was printed and bound and published by a now long-forgotten firm of the name of Louis Lewin and Company, the booklet bearing the imprint of the "Mirror Printing, Ruling and Binding House."
Copies of this booklet are now extremely rare. From it we are able to gather much valuable information concerning the old timers of Los Angeles and the old times. And in this chapter of this book we are using with a free hand the data we find in the old publication referred to.
Among other things we find the following:
After the independence of Mexico, and the opening of its ports to foreign trade, the port of San Pedro was one of the chief points on the coast of California for the shipping of the products of the country, and for the landing of goods, wares and merchandise from abroad. The three missions in what was then Los Angeles County, and the owners of stock-farms, and the inhabitants of Los Angeles, disposed of their products and manufactures in payment.
Between the people of Sonora, or of New Mexico, and those of California, there was comparatively no intercourse until about 1830. The intercourse between those places and California, which commenced about that time, was mainly
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brought about through the enterprise of American trappers or beaver hunters.
Jedediah S. Smith, of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and a leader of trapping parties, came into California with a party of trappers from the Yellowstone River in 1825, and again in 1826. Through him and his men, others engaged in trapping beaver in the Rocky Mountains learned something of California.
In 1828-29 Ewing Young, of Tennessee, who had for some seasons been engaged in trapping beaver in and north of New Mexico, made a hunt in the Tulare Valley and on the waters of the San Joaquin. He had in his party some natives of New Mexico. He passed through Los Angeles on his way back from his hunting fields to New Mexico. His men on their return to New Mexico, in the summer of 1830, spread their reports of California over the northern part of that territory.
In 1830 William Wolfskill, a native of Kentucky but from Missouri, fitted ont, in conjunction with Mr. Young, a trapping party at Taos, New Mexico, to hunt the waters of the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys. Failing, in the winter of 1830-31, to get over the mountains between Virgin River and those rivers discharging into the Bay of San Francisco, and his men becoming demoralized and impatient from their suf- ferings of cold, he changed his line of travel and came with his party into Los Angeles in February, 1831.
With Mr. Wolfskill's party there were a number of New Mexicans, some of whom had taken serapes and fresadas (woolen blankets) with them for the purpose of trading them to the Indians in exchange for beaver skins. On their arrival in California they advantageously disposed of their blankets to the rancheros in exchange for mules. These New Mexicans mostly returned to Santa Fe in the summer of 1831, with the mules they had obtained in California. The appearance of these mules in New Mexico, owing to their large size com- pared with those at that time used in the Missouri and Santa Fe trade, and their very fine form, as well as the price at which they had been bought in barter for blankets, caused quite a sensation in New Mexico, out of which sprang up a
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trade, carried on by means of caravans or pack animals, between the two sections of the same country which flourished for some ten or twelve years. These caravans reached Cali- fornia yearly during the before mentioned time. They brought the woolen fabries of New Mexico, and carried back mules, and silk and other Chinese goods.
Los Angeles was the central point in California of this New Mexican trade. Coming by the northern or Green and Virgin River routes, the caravans came through the Cajon Pass and reached Los Angeles. From thence they scattered themselves over the country from San Diego to San Jose, and across the bay to Sonoma and San Rafael. Having bar- tered and disposed of the goods brought and procured such as they wished to carry back, and what mules they could drive, they concentrated at Los Angeles for their yearly return.
Between 1831 and 1844 a considerable number of native New Mexicans and some foreign residents of that territory came through with the trading caravans in search of homes in this country. Some of them became permanent citizens, or residents of this county. Julian Chaves of this city, and who has served many terms as county supervisor or common coun- cilman of the city, was among the first immigrants. The Martinezes, of San Jose, and the Trujillos, and others, were also among these immigrants. Of foreigners, who were resi- dents of New Mexico, and came during this period and located in this county, were John Rowland, William Workman, John Reed, all of whom are dead, and the Hon. B. D. Wilson, and David W. Alexander, heretofore the sheriff of this county. Dr. John Marsh also came to California in company with these traders, and after residing in Los Angeles some years, he located near Mount Diablo, where he continued to live until he was murdered.
Other parties of Americans found their way from New Mexico to California at different times in the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century, numbers of whom became permanent residents of Los Angeles.
Richard Laughlin and Nathaniel Pryor, both of whom died in Los Angeles, and Jesse Ferguson, who lived here many
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years, came from New Mexico, by the way of the Gila River, in 1828. In 1831, a Mr. Jackson, who had been one of the firm of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and a partner of Jedediah S. Smith, came to Los Angeles from Santa Fe for the purpose of buying mules for the Louisiana market. He returned to New Mexico with the mules he purchased. With him came J. J. Warner, who remained in this place. A Mr. Bowman, known here as Joaquin Bowman, was one of J. S. Smith's men. He died at San Gabriel, after having been the miller at the Mission Mill for many years.
In the winter of 1832-33 a small party of Americans from New Mexico came over the Gila River route into Los Angeles. In this small party came Joseph Paulding, who, in 1833 and 1834, made the first two billiard tables of mahogany wood made in California. The first was made for George Rice, and the second for John Rhea, both Americans. Mr. Rice came to California about 1827, from the Sandwich Islands. Mr. Rhea was from North Carolina, and came with Mr. Wolfskill.
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