USA > California > San Diego County > San Diego county, California; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 9
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An idea of the character of the refreshments dispensed at such entertain- ments may be gathered from an official report of the expenses of a proposed public ball at Los Angeles in August, 1845. Jose Maria Covarrubias, as presi- dent of the various committees charged with making arrangements, reported that the necessary costs, which in consideration of the scarcity of funds were reduced to the lowest figures, would amount to one hundred and ninety-two dollars. Of this sum, thirty dollars were to be expended in preparing a floor, fifteen in purchasing ten pounds of spermaceti for lights, twenty-four for four musicians, four for servants, and the remaining one hundred and nineteen for refreshments, including thirty dollars for a barrel of aguardiente, sixteen for a barrel of wine, ten for a half barrel of angelica, ten for olives, thirty for cakes and crackers, five for cheese, ten for fruit and three for sugar. Another estimate of expenses for the same or a similar entertainment at Los Angeles allowed twenty-five dollars for a dozen bottles of champagne, twelve for a dozen bottles
PATIO, RAMONA'S MARRIAGE PLACE, OLD TOWN, SAN DIEGO
MARRIAGE PLACE OF RAMONA AT OLD SAN DIEGO
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of muscatel, ten for five gallons of white wine, five for five gallons of red wine, five for two gallons of aguardiente, eight for six bottles of liqueur, six for two turkeys, four for eight chickens, two for two pigs, fifteen for thirty pounds of sugar, twelve for six bottles of preserves, and other small amounts for bread, flour, butter, cheese, sardines, milk, rice, cinnamon, olives, apples, pears, peaches and grapes. In this case, as well as in the other, it will be observed how great a preponderance of the expense was for liquors, thus forcibly reminding one of Prince Hal's comments on Falstaff's bill of items: "Oh monstrous! But one half-penny worth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!" The immoderate use of stimulants, and especially of the vile distillation called aguardiente, by the men, constituted the chief objectionable feature of the fandangos. While Falstaff's sack was supposed to provoke only wit and mirth, the aguardiente was almost invariably a breeder of noise, disorder and quarrel, nor was it therefore infrequent when the normal amount was supplied, for a dance to end in a brawl and sometimes in a homicide.
With the people such as the Californians, there was little prospect of any development of the resources of the country. When Vancouver was at Santa Barbara in 1793, he had occasion to replenish his water casks and proceeded to the usual watering place on the beach. He found there a couple of wells, which had always been used by the Spanish sailors. Though great pains had been taken to keep them clean, they were very dirty and the water was not only scanty in supply but brackish, unpleasant and unwholesome in character. He looked around for something better and at a distance of only a few yards dis- covered an excellent spring of fine water amongst a clump of bushes in a sort of morass. Upon inquiry he found that the existence of the spring was totally unknown to the residents and equally so to those employed in furnishing the shipping. The careless negligence thus exhibited was typical of the people. In fact up to the time when the Americans came, comparatively nothing was known among the inhabitants of the immense capabilities of the country, or if known, no advantage was taken of them. Foreigners, who visited the coast, recognized them, and here and there native intellect brighter than the common sort saw them also, but the people as a people were entirely unenterprising, un- appreciative, apathetic.
They made no excursions, investigations or explorations beyond their im- mediate neighborhood and therefore knew little about the back country. Their settlements were confined to the slope between the ocean and the coast range of mountains, and they were almost entirely ignorant of the territory more than thirty or forty miles inland or that far north of Sonoma. A few expeditions after stolen stock or runaway Indians penetrated into the San Joaquin valley or what was generally known as the Tulare country, but they brought back no information of value. Except what they picked up from the accounts of foreign travelers and explorers, they knew nothing of the Sacramento valley or the Sierra Nevada slope. Everything that involved labor, and especially disagree- able labor, they abhorred. When Dana and his sailor comrades on one occasion were at work carrying hides from the shore to their boat by wading through the surf, two or three Californians who stood on the beach witnessing the opera- tion, wrapped their cloaks about them, shook their heads and muttered their disgust with a half smothered "Caramba!" They had no taste for such doings. Vol. 1-5
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Dana added that their disgust for water was a national malady and showed itself in their persons as well as in their actions.
Robinson described several dinners on board American ships to which Cali- fornian rancheros had been invited as guests. On one occasion pudding was served and it was looked upon by them with astonishment. When the sauce was handed round, some of those present, with the assistance of a grater, added a little nutmeg to the composition. A ranchero, who had carefully watched the opera- tion, in his turn seized the grater and commenced rubbing it with his thumb nail, but not succeeding in producing the desired effect, he paused and looked around. Observing the general smile of those who witnessed his perplexity and beginning at length to think there was something wrong, he turned to the gentlemen next him and asked, "Como es que yo no saco nada ?- How is it that I cannot get anything?" At another dinner party given in honor of the Fourth of July, there was a numerous company present. A large bowl was used for holding the pudding sauce, and as soon as the pudding itself had been served around, the bowl was handed to one of the Californian guests to help himself. Liking its appearance, he took the bowl from the steward and with his spoon soon finished it. Then smacking his lips, he remarked "Que caldo tan bueno! Que lastima ! que no lo trageron antes la carne !- What good soup! What a pity they did not bring it before the meat !"
The Californian gentleman, however, was a cultured being. Dana gave a graphic description of one in the person of young Juan Bandini, who at the time of their meeting was a passenger in the ship on which Dana was employed. Bandini was one of the aristocracy of the country. His ancestry was of pure Spanish blood. His father had been a governor in one of the Mexican provinces and, having amassed a considerable property, had settled with his family at San Diego, where he built a large house, kept a retinue of Indian servants and set up for a grandee. The son had been sent to Mexico, where he received an education and went into the first society of the capital. But misfortune and the want of any means of obtaining interest or income out of his property soon ate up the available estate, and the young man returned to California poor, proud, without office or occupation, extravagant while the means were at hand, am- bitious at heart but unable to find a career, often pinched for bread, and keep- ing up an appearance of style but in dread of every small trader and shopkeeper in the place. He had a slight and elegant figure, moved gracefully, danced and waltzed to perfection, spoke pure Castilian with a pleasant voice and refined ac- cent and had, throughout, the bearing of a man of birth and consideration. Yet there he was, with his passage given him because he had no means of paying for it, and living upon the generosity of the agent of the vessel. He was polite to every one, spoke graciously to the sailors and gave a half dollar, probably the only coin he possessed, to the steward who had waited upon him. Dana could not help feeling sympathy and especially upon comparing him with a fellow passenger-a fat, coarse, vulgar and pretentious Yankee trader, who was gradually eating up the fortune of the Bandini family, grinding them in their poverty, accumulating mortgages upon their lands, forestalling the profits upon their cattle and making inroads upon their jewels, which were their last resource.
From the descriptions and particulars thus given, a tolerably correct idea may be formed of the kind of people the Californians were. Their chief faults they
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had brought with them in their blood from Mexico, but these faults had been more or less mellowed and softened by the equable sun and tempered breezes of the country. They were not an industrious or energetic people, they were incapable of heroic action either in public or private life, they were idle, negli- gent, ignorant, extravagant, improvident and given to drinking and gambling. But they were at heart peaceful, friendly, hospitable and generous. There was nothing bloodthirsty in their natural composition. Though not a people to be admired, they had many amiable qualities. If a life of careless idleness or of what the Italians call "dolce far niente-sweet doing nothing" be happiness, they were happy. They were, as has already been said, of all people on the conti- nent, best entitled to the name of the Arcadians of the western world.
CHAPTER X
HABITS AND CUSTOMS OF THE CALIFORNIAN
The old California houses were built of adobes or sun dried bricks with clay floors and tile roofs. As the adobes were large, the walls were two or three feet thick. The outside as well as inside was often smoothed over with a coating of clay and whitewashed. There were doors and window shutters of wood but window glass was not common. A large house was divided off by partitions similar to the outside walls. It was rare for a building to exceed one story in height, but here and there a second story or loft was added. The rafters and the joists where more than one story was built, were made of the bodies of long, straight young trees denuded of their bark, and the roofs, which were sometimes pent roofs and sometimes gable roofs, had a very slight slope. The tiles were large half-cylinders of burnt clay, so laid, by alternating rows with their con- vex sides down and rows with their convex sides up, and overlapping the former with the latter that they constituted a good protection against rain. The rows were held in place by long poles placed horizontally on top and fastened at the ends. Where tiles were not procurable, thatch of tule or straw was used. There were no such things as barns or stables and seldom outhouses, except porches and sheds connected with the main house, nor were there yards except corrals. But notwithstanding the bareness and want of accessories, many of the houses and particularly the ranch houses were picturesque in appear- ance and formed pleasant features in the landscape.
In some instances the houses were kept as clean as circumstances would admit, but as a rule they were untidy and sometimes filthy. Robinson in 1830 said it was a rare thing to find a house that was not absolutely overrun with fleas, which, he added, were so common and the natives had become so ac- customed to their bites as to think nothing of them. An idea of the condition of some of the houses may be gathered from a municipal law of Los Angeles, passed in 1838, which provided among other things, that every inhabitant having pigs in his house should prevent them from straying at the risk of forfeiture. There was very little furniture, and that of the rudest kind, except such as could be procured from vessels visiting the coast.
But there was one thing almost invariably found in the houses of the Cali- fornians, which more than compensated for the want of furniture, occasional uncleanliness and frequency of fleas, and this was genuine hospitality. There were no inns or taverns but a decent person might arrive at any hour of the day or night at a mission or a ranch house and, though entirely unknown, he was sure of being well received and entertained without recompense. The first care of the Californian upon meeting a stranger, recognized to be a gentleman, was
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to offer his hand, present a drink of aguardiente, ask the newcomer's name and occupation and inquire the object of his travel. At the same time he an- swered in advance all the questions of the same general character that were likely to be asked and invited the stranger to accompany him, if, as was likely to be the case. he was going to a rodeo, a wedding or a dance. If the invita- tion was accepted, a welcome reception was certain, but the stranger was often astonished to find that the rodeo or the wedding or the dance, to which he had thus been invited, was many leagues from the place where the invitation was given. As almost all the Californians of any standing were connected by rela- tionship and the families were widely scattered over the country, these long excursions were frequent, and on all great occasions, as such amusements were always considered to be, the relatives and friends were expected from far as well as near.
The staple food was fresh beef, frijoles and tortillas. The beef was usually roasted upon the coals, but sometimes boiled with vegetables. The frijoles or beans were almost invariably first boiled and then fried with plenty of lard. The tortillas were thin cakes of meal, sometimes of wheat but usually of maize ground on the metate, patted between the hands and baked before the fire or on heated sheets of iron. The vegetables were few and simple, such as cabbages, turnips and potatoes, but onions and red peppers were used in great profusion and in nearly all their dishes. Chocolate and sugar came from Mexico, and as com- merce became better established, small quantities of rice and tea were intro- duced. There was sometimes a little variation of the diet, but in general it remained much the same year in and year out. Though the country abounded in game, the Californians were neither hunters nor fishermen, and it was seldom that they availed themselves of the elks, deer and antelopes covering the plains, the salmon and trout swarming in the rivers and brooks or the myriads of wild fowl blackening the fields or darkening the air. They had some domestic fowls but these were not plentiful and chiefly for the reason that it required too much trouble to raise and protect them.
The Californians paid much more attention to their attire and the trappings of their horses than to houses, furniture, table or domestic comforts. The dress of the gentlemen consisted of a short jacket of silk or figured calico, white linen shirt open at the neck, black silk kerchief loosely tied about the neck by way of cravat, occasionally a rich waistcoat or vest, and pantaloons of velveteen or broadcloth, open on the outsides below the knee and ornamented along the seams with buttons and gold braid. Sometimes, instead of the pantaloons, short breeches and white stockings were worn. Around the waist, suspending the pantaloons or breeches, was a silken sash, usually bright crimson or scarlet. The shoes were of buckskin or buff-colored leather and ornamented. The hat a broad, stiff, horizontal brim. with a comparatively low crown in the shape of an oval cone truncated. Its color was sometimes black but more usually the light red- dish-brown of vicuna wool, of which almost all the hats in the country, being importations from South America, were made. The crown was surrounded with a broad band and sometimes decorated with silver eagles. The hair was generally long, sometimes braided and fastened behind with ribbons, while around the up- per part of the head and under the hat, when one was worn, was usually a black silk handkerchief.
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Over the other clothing was the serape. This was usually finer or coarser according to the rank or wealth of the wearer. The richer classes had them of black or dark blue broadcloth, with as much velvet trimming and em- broidery as they could carry, and from this finer kind there were gradations down to the poncho and coarse home-made Indian blanket. In general cut the serape resembled the poncho, which was a large, square woolen cloth or blanket, with a hole or slit in the middle for the head to go through. Some of the serapes were beautifully woven with various colors and very showy. When the caravans began coming to California from New Mexico, they brought with them from that and neighboring regions many very fine and serviceable ones, which they bartered for California mules. Sometimes instead of the serape, the manga was worn, which resembled the serape but was of doubled cloth and had around the slit in the middle a collar, usually ornamented with a wide band of silk or gold or silver braid. These costumes were often very expensive. A fine pair of pantaloons, called calzonera, with buttons and gold lace, cost from fifty to sixty dollars, a fine serape or manga from sixty to a hundred dollars, and other articles of dress in proportion. When the gentleman mounted upon horse- back, he bound on his legs below the knees, with colored ribbons or garters, a kind of leggins called botas. These leggins, in the folds of one of which was placed the long knife which was always carried, were of thick but soft leather and often scalloped and ornamented. He also put on a pair of enormous spurs, the rowels of which were about four inches in diameter and composed of five rays, resembling the ends of thin quills, which were intended not so much to prick the horse as to produce a pressure upon his flanks and force him to lift his hind parts if the bridle was slackened, and to rise upon his haunches if reined in. Sometimes the spurs were silver mounted and expensive, but they were usually of plain iron. When not in full dress the ordinary clothing of the ranchero was of cotton stuffs, coarse wool and leather, but as commerce in- creased American clothing was introduced and became common.
Robinson described with considerable minuteness the dress of Tomas Yorba, the proprietor of the Rancho de Santa Ana near Los Angeles. He was tall and lean in person but attired in all the extravagance of the country. Upon his head he wore a black silk handkerchief, the four corners of which hung down upon his neck behind. He had on an embroidered shirt, a cravat of white jaconet tastefully tied, a blue damask vest, short clothes of crimson velvet, a bright green cloth jacket with large silver buttons, and shoes of embroidered buckskin. This seems to have been his ordinary attire, but on extraordinary occasions his entire display included still richer and greater variety of materials, and in some in- stances it exceeded a thousand dollars in value.
The saddle, in which the Californian took almost as much pride as in his attire, was often highly ornamented. In construction it was high before and behind, thus affording a steady and secure seat, and was built strong. In front it had a prominent and very stout pommel, capable of resisting the strain of the lasso, which was wound around it. The skirts or flaps were large and often elaborately embellished. The stirrups were of wood and attached to them in front and to the straps supporting them were leathern aprons, intended to protect the foot and leg in riding through brush-wood or chaparral. At the back of the seat and on the sides were a number of rawhide or buckskin thongs for tying
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on blankets or parcels. On each side was a strong iron ring, to which the stir- rups as well as the cinch-straps were attached. The cinch or girth consisted of a broad band of small ropes usually plaited together, three or four feet long, with a large iron ring on each end. On the right side the cinch was securely fastened to the saddle ring by the strap on that side; on the other side the cinch-strap, which was very long and pointed at the end, hung free until the saddle was placed on the horse; it was then passed through the ring on the free end of the cinch, then through the saddle ring and so several times through each ring and drawn tight and fastened by a double fold, which prevented it from slipping. By a little practice with this strap and the leverage gained by passing several times through the rings, a person could in a few seconds fasten a saddle as tightly as he wished. The great compressive power afforded by the arrange- ment gave rise to the significant slang verb "to cinch," metaphorically applied to squeezing money out of individuals or corporations, which seems destined in time, like various other Californianisms, by widely extending usage, to become good English.
The bridle was usually of plaited rawhide. The bit was of iron, with a long, flat spur, or sometimes a fold of iron, running back into the horse's mouth and so arranged that, by pulling the reins, the spur was pressed upward upon the palate. A very slight movement of the rein was sufficient to turn a horse in any desired direction or stop him at full speed. The lasso or reata was a long rope, made out of rawhide, with a loop formed by a running slip knot at the end. All the Californians were expert in the use of it. They could throw it with such precision as to catch a running bull by the horns or any of the legs and trip him up, and the horses were so trained that the moment an animal was caught they braced themselves against the strain of its pull or fall. Strangers were astonished at the apparently almost impossible skill exhibited on a chase at full speed in so throwing the lasso that the loop would catch a particular leg the instant it was lifted from the ground; but Forbes explains it by the early and constant practice of the Californians, commencing when mere children by lassoing pigs and chickens with twine, making a toy reata their plaything in boyhood, and so advancing from ensnaring tame animals up to wild bulls and ferocious bears.
The dress of the lady was usually a bodice of silk or calico, with short em- broidered sleeves, loose about the waist where it was secured with a bright silk belt or sash, and a skirt sometimes of the same and sometimes of a different or differently colored material, elaborately flounced. Both bodice and skirt were profusely trimmed with lace. The stockings were silk and the shoes or slippers of satin or velvet. Over the shoulders or arms was worn the reboso, a kind of long scarf of silk or cotton, dark in color, and usually with fringed ends. In the adjustment and management of the reboso great skill and grace were dis- played. Sometimes, instead of a reboso, a Chinese crape shawl was worn and in rare instances a Spanish mantilla. The hair was usually plaited into two long queues, which hung down the back, tied at the ends with bright ribbons, but sometimes it was left flowing and sometimes done up with a comb. A band usually surrounded the head with a cross, star or other ornament in front, and necklaces and earrings of pearls were not uncommon. Bonnets or hats were not used, except sometimes in riding on horseback. Those used for that purpose were
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of straw with enormous brims. When it was desirable to cover the head, it was done with the reboso or shawl, but the sun was not feared by Californian brunettes as it is by American blondes.
Dana pronounced the fondness for dress among the women excessive. He said that nothing was more common than to see them living in houses of only two rooms with the ground for a floor, dressed in spangled satin shoes, silk gowns, high combs, earrings and necklaces, and he concluded that they would pay any price rather than not to be dressed in the best. There was, doubtless, in the lower class an undue fondness for personal adornment, as there is among unre- fined women all over the world, but there was no justification for the generality of his conclusion. Though himself a gentleman of refinement, he came to the coast as a sailor before the mast and did not have an opportunity of becoming intimately acquainted with the better classes in their domestic relations. Robin- son, who was equally a gentleman of refinement, who lived in California many years, who married a daughter of the country and who had ample opportunities of observation, spoke in very different language. He said there were few places in the world where, in proportion to the number of the inhabitants, there were to be found more chastity, industrious habits and correct deportment than among the women of California. It was natural, perhaps, and certainly proper for any gentleman who married a California lady to defend the honor of his wife's coun- trywomen, but in this case the defense appears to have been more than mere gallantry. There was truth in it.
In speaking further of the domestic relations of the Californians, Dana said that while the women had a great deal of beauty and none too much morality, the men were extremely jealous, and that thus one vice was set off against another. Revenge was deadly and almost certain. Not only wives but young women were carefully watched. The sharp eyes of a duena and the ready weapon of a husband, father or brother were a protection which was needed, for the reason that the very men who would lay down their lives to avenge the dishonor of their own family, would risk the same lives to complete the dishonor of another. It was therefore, according to Dana, rather to danger and fear than to virtue that the infrequency of infidelity was to be attributed. But this remark, while it was to some extent contradictory of what he had said before, was, like the former remark, entirely too general. Duflot de Mofras spoke of the women as being not only active, industrious and, in intellectual and moral qualities, superior to the men, but also as being prudent and calculating. While they were large and strong, having preserved the type of beauty of their Spanish countrywomen, and consequently full of warmth and fire, they preferred for husbands, not finely dressed, courtly, serenading cavaliers, but the colder blooded plainer dressed foreigners, who were more industrious, treated them better as wives and took more care of their children. On the other hand the foreigner husbands, with very few exceptions, found in them wives quite as affectionate and quite as devoted as they would have been likely to find elsewhere.
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