University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

"So we only took 120 acres": Land, labor and white supremacy in the settlement of southern California, 1800-1925

(USC Thesis Other)

"So we only took 120 acres": Land, labor and white supremacy in the settlement of southern California, 1800-1925

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type o f computer printer. The quality o f this reproduction is dependent upon the quality o f the copy subm itted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back o f the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "SO WE ONLY TOOK 120 ACRES": LAND, LABOR AND WHITE SUPREMACY IN THE SETTLEMENT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 1800-1925, continued by Emily L. Rader A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (History) December 1998 Copyright 1998 Emily L. Rader Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9931884 UMI Microform 9931884 Copyright 1999, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFO RNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PaRK LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90007 This dissertation, written by ................. under the direction of h&T7..... Dissertation Committee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by Tne Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re quirements for the degree of DO CTO R O F PHILOSOPH'T Dean o f Graduate Studies Date S e p te m b e r, 25 1 9 9 8 DISSERTATION COMMITTEE 9 9 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Two people have made the greatest contributions to this project: J. Sakai and David Stock. From J. I first learned about settler ism. If that concept had not been planted in my mind, I would not have produced this dissertation, nor, probably, have returned to college to study history. J.'s book, Settlers, changed my life. It also changed Dave's life. When he enthusiastically encouraged me to return to college, neither of us guessed how long the endeavor would take and what a great impact it would have on our lives. Many marriages and partnerings have crumbled under the strain of one person undertaking graduate study. It is a testament to his support and love that ours has survived. But Dave's contribution goes beyond the personal and emotional, to the intellectual. Without his clear, disciplined thinking, my understanding of settlerism and its connections to the history of southern California would have been much more shallow. The History Department at the University of Southern California lived up to its reputation as a supportive environment for its developing scholars. In some way, every professor and staff member played a role in creating a friendly, yet challenging, atmosphere. My greatest appreciation goes to the chair of my dissertation Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. committee, Steven Ross, who epitomizes scholarly openness, diligence, and intelligence. As an editor, he has no equal. Even more important to me, he helped me shape the dissertation to express my own ideas; he never imposed his own views if he differed with mine. All of the professors I worked with were, like Steve, willing to help me pursue my own project, at the same time that they lent their special expertise and insights. Phil Ethington's comments on historiography and analysis helped me fill in many of the gaping holes. Walter Williams* warmth and encourage ment were as important to me as his teachings about Indian history and culture. And while not officially part of my dissertation committee, Terry Seip provided a great deal of emotional and intellectual support; in addition, I treasure the conversations we had about teaching methods. Scholars outside of USC have also helped and supported me. I could not have hoped for them to be more gracious, kind and friendly. Alex Saxton read and discussed with me various drafts of the prospectus and introduction, as well as ideas about white republicanism and settlerism. John Shurts guided me through the legal labyrinth of the Winters doctrine and Indian water rights; I am sure I would have remained lost if not for him. I also would not have found the courage to write to Donald Pisani on my own. I only did so due to John's insistence Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iv and am deeply grateful for that. Dr. Pisani's critique of the "water" chapter not only helped me clarify some of the information and analysis, but also gave me confidence in tackling such a complicated subject. Also, I greatly appreciate the time cartographer Patty Neuman spent in working with me to create two maps to my specifications. She had to combine and extrapolate information, some of it difficult to see, from several maps; the end result looks so simple and clear due to her great skill. Finally, I would like to thank Lisbeth Haas for sharing information about the Luisenos of the nineteenth century with me, and especially for introducing me to Pablo Tac. My debts to individuals do not end here. In the course of conducting research, I was aided by numerous librarians and archivists, some of whom took me, as a new and untutored researcher, under their wings. The first of these was Suzanne Dewberry, at NARA Laguna Niguel. In my forays into the holdings of the Escondido Historical Society, the San Diego Historical Society, the San Diego Public Library— California Room, NARA Seattle, and The Huntington Library, I experienced the friendly, often enthusiastic, aid of the women and men working there. I am happy to acknowledge the financial support of a number of institutions. First, the University of Southern California's All-University Predoctoral Merit Fellowship, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. V afforded me the luxury of being paid to study for three years. This was, quite literally, a dream come true. I am grateful for additional support, through the History Department, for tuition funds paid by the McVickers Dissertation fellowships. The Huntington Library provided me with a month-long fellowship in 1993 for research in the Cave Johnson Couts Papers and other collections. Not only did the material I found add significantly to this study, but I was able to join in the community of scholars that makes the Huntington such an enjoyable and stimulat ing place. I was also fortunate to be awarded the American Fellowship (1995-199 6) from the American Association of University Women, which provided me with a full year to work on writing the dissertation. Finally, I would like to thank the American Historical Association, whose 1996 Littleton-Griswold award provided the funds for the two maps made by Patricia Neumann. I cannot here list all the friends, family and colleagues who have sustained and encouraged me during the nine years since I decided to study history. I doubt if many of them know how important their support has been in keeping me going to the point of finishing this disserta tion. Some of them were important in the early stages of my work; some have seen me through from beginning to end; and some have helped me in recent months and years to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reach my goal. My appreciation and many thanks go to them all, with special mentions of the following: My parents demonstrated great patience with my numerous periods of isolation. X am sure that they never expected that, having moved three thousand miles to live near me, they would sometimes hardly hear from or see me. I have benefitted from and been inspired by the wisdom, insight and warmth of many women scholars, especially those in the Southern California U.S. Women's History Reading Group and the Western Association of Women Historians. Colleagues have sustained me in the ups and downs of dissertation writing and teaching at El Camino College in the English, E.S.L., and Foreign Languages Departments; and at CSU Dominguez Hills, in History, IDS/PACE, and Humanities. I wish to thank the deans and chairpersons who have encouraged me and who have been so understanding of the struggle to teach and complete the dissertation at the same time: Gloria Miranda, Tom Lew, David Heifetz, Howard Holter, and Frank Strieker. My colleagues at the Marcus Garvey and U.N.I.A. Papers Project at UCLA, and its director, Robert Hill, helped me weather a sometimes trying period, and were flexible in allowing me to take time off to work on the dissertation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vii CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii List of Tables and List of Maps viii List of Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 Chapter One. Indigenous Lifeways and the Impact of the Spanish Missions 39 Chapter Two. White Supremacy in Ranchero Society, 1840-1870 87 Chapter Three. The Rising Settler Tide, 1845-1875 143 Chapter Four. "Every American is a Squatter at Heart" 192 Chapter Five. The Embattled Rancheros, 1850-1905 254 Chapter Six. Escondido: Creating a White American Town, 1886-1920 302 Chapter Seven. "The Pleasing Indian Picture at Pala," 1875-1920 351 Chapter Eight. Dominance at a Distance: Indigenous and Settler Water Rights, 1886-1924 417 Epilogue 483 Conclusion 492 Bibliography 500 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. viii LIST OF TABLES Table One. Mortality Rates per 1000 at Five Southern California Missions, 1774-1833 Table Two. Mean Death Rates Table Three. Luiseno Population, 1859 to circa 1900 LIST OF MAPS Native California Surveys of Rancho Buena Vista, 1858 to 19 04 Ranchos and Streams of Northwestern San Diego County, circa 1912 The San Luis Rey River Watershed and the Escondido Ditch, circa 19 24 66 66 151 43 273 281 418 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS In citing works in the notes, the names of the archives and collections have been abbreviated, as follows: CT: The Cave Johnson Couts Collection, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California EHS: Escondido Historical Society, Escondido, California HM: Miscellaneous Huntington Manuscripts, The Huntington Library NARA Laguna Hills: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, RG 75, Records of the Mission Indian Agency, the Mission Super intendency, and the Pala Indian School, National Archives and Records Administration, Laguna Niguel, California NARA Seattle: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, RG 75, Records of the Indian Irrigation Service, Portland Area Office, National Archives and Records Administration, Seattle, Washington RU: The Horatio N. Rust Papers, The Huntington Library SDHS: San Diego Historical Society, San Diego, California SM: The Abel Stearns Papers, The Huntington Library Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 INTRODUCTION When Lieutenant Cave Johnson Couts rode into southern California as part of the United States1 army of occupation in 1849, he soon found himself invited into a society of gregarious, prosperous Anglo American and Californio rancheros.1 Couts made the region his lifelong home, marrying Ysidora Bandini, one of several daughters of the well-known San Diegan, Juan Bandini. Together, Cave and Ysidora owned a number of ranchos in the coastal region north of San Diego, surrounded by numerous villages and settlements of the local indigenes, Luisenos and Kumeyaays. As new rancheros, Cave and Ysidora quickly became masters over and employers of dozens of Luiseno and Kumeyaay indentured servants and seasonal or permanent wage laborers, augmented by small numbers of American, African American, Mexican and Chinese workers.2 I do not capitalize the "s" in southern California, which is the typical practice of California historians. My intent is to separate the smaller part of the state I am usually referring to, the area that now encompasses San Diego and Riverside Counties, from the typical meaning, which is all of Southern California, from the Mexican border to the Tehachapi Mountains. "Ranchos" are ranches; owners of ranchos are "rancheros”; and "vaqueros" are cowboys. 2 In the dissertation I integrate regionally common Spanish- language terms with English ones without using italics. Terminology for the peoples of European descent is sometimes problematic. The general terms I use are "white,” "European American" and "American." For the time period covered in the dissertation, these terms usually refer to people whose ancestry was northwestern European. But in the rancho period, "white" meant both those people and the Californios (Californianas in the feminine form), who were people of Spanish descent; similiarly, "European American" refers to both of these groups. I sometimes use the term "Anglo American" to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 A generation later, in 1875, another newly married couple, Liz and Perry Bevington, settled in the region, in the Kumeyaay village of San Pasqual. The Bevingtons were not incipient rancheros, but family farmers, homesteaders. They picked out 160 acres of good farming land and set about perfecting their claim. A group of Kumeyaay men tried several times to dissuade the Bevingtons from settling on this land, but the Bevingtons stood firm, aided by state and federal land laws, the local sheriff, and neighboring settlers. Twelve years later the Bevingtons sold their homestead for $5,000, a sizeable profit that allowed them to buy plots of land for a home and a livery business in the newly established town of Escondido.3 describe the group of men, some British but most American of British ancestry, who moved to southern California in the 1830s and 1840s. The term "settler" always means a white person, unless another racial or national category is indicated. Native Californians is a term that encompasses all of the one hundred or so aboriginal or indigenous peoples of California. The groups specific to the locale this dissertation focuses on were mainly Luiseno and Kumeyaay, although Cupeho, Cahuilla and Juaneno also appear. I describe these groups in more detail in the body of the dissertation. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, after the American overthrow of rancho society, two terms became popular for people of Spanish descent. One was "Spanish," applied to individuals and families who owned property and had lived in the region as long or longer than American settlers, who treated the "Spanish" as exotics, but white nonetheless. The other term was "Sonoran," used by both white settlers and Sonorans (Mexicans from the northern state of Sonora) themselves. Sonorans were generally transient and landless, and mainly men. White Americans tended to exclude them from the category "white." 3 Sources for information about Couts, the Bandinis, and the Bevingtons are cited in the chapters of the dissertation where these people appear; see especially Chapters 2, 4, 5. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 The Couts and Bevingtons exemplify two types of European Americans featured in this dissertation: the intermarried Anglo American-Californio ranchero families that lived in the period of transition from Mexican to American society in southern California (1840 to 1870); and the American homesteading families that, flowing into the region in the 1870s and 1880s, swept away the preceding ranchero and indigenous societies. The similarities between these two generations of settlers are revealing. Both families prospered through ownership of southern California land. Both benefitted from their status in the upper levels of a racial hierarchy— a hierarchy they helped reproduce through their actions in taking land from people already living on it. Significantly, in both cases, this hierarchy had at its base not African Americans, as in the eastern United States, but Indians. For the Couts and Bevingtons white supremacy was not the long-distance product of black-white relations in the plantation South or the labor markets of the urban Northeast. Rather, it was an expression of centuries of American theft of Native American land applied to the specific interests of the settlers in their own region and in their own times. White dominance in the United States did not originally arise only from the slave plantations of the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 South, to be carried westward and applied to non-African American populations. Rather it was— and in many ways still is— a practice and an ideology that also grew out of land hunger and land expropriation.4 In the United States the expropriation of Native American land and later, Mexican land, and the exploitation of African (and to a lesser extent, Native American) slave labor formed the twin pillars of white supremacy. Further, white dominance based on labor exploitation and land expropriation did not develop only at one time; white Americans had to reassert and reproduce their dominance as they moved west into 4 While white ownership of land and struggles over land ownership and control among whites, Native Americans, Chicanos, African Americans and others may not be in the forefront as much in the present as they were in the nineteenth century and before, they still are an important factor in white supremacy. Property ownership provides a basis for individual or family wealth much more for whites than for the other three groups. For instance, African Americans have not generally had the opportunity to acquire and pass to their children the wealth that property ownership could have provided. From the unfulfilled promise of land redistribution during Reconstruction to the racially exclusive housing covenants of the post-World War IX period, African Americans have had little opportunity to own land or homes. This, combined with lower income than whites, has been partially responsible for a poorer financial basis for family and community advancement among African Americans. See Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New york: Routledge, 1995) for their development of this argument. Residential segregation is another form of land control. This has been practiced in urban areas since at least the nineteenth century, with people of color forced to live in areas separate from whites. A recent work that discusses methods of residential segregation in cities is Robert D. Bullard, J. Eugene Grigsby III and Charles Lee, eds., Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy (Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, 1994) . Segregation has also been put into practice with Indian reservations, which combined land expropriation, forced changes in land-use methods (e.g., from hunting to farming), and removal of Native Americans from areas of white settlement. In addition, in many areas of the country, Native Americans have been struggling in recent years to gain greater power to control the uses of reservation lands and resources. See note 25, below, for studies of Native Americans' experiences. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 territory occupied by non-whites— Indians and Mexicans. Because there were few people of African descent in rural southern California when waves of white Americans settled in the region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, studying the region helps show how racial categorization and white dominance in the United States developed out of and was reproduced in repeated conquests of Native Americans as well as the enslavement of Africans, out of repeated expropriations of land as well as the exploitation of unfree labor. "White dominance," "white supremacy," and "European American dominance" are terms used interchangeably in the dissertation to refer to a set of ideas and actions that are broader than racism alone. Unlike "racism," by which I mean ideas and attitudes about ancestral, genetic or cultural distinctions among groups of people based on physical or cultural differences, my use of the terms "white supremacy" and the two others focuses on the practices and institutions that have maintained white people as the dominant group in society.5 5 See George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study In American and South African History (Oxford: Oxford University, 1981), xii, for his discussion of the problems with using the term "racism" too broadly. Sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists in the United States and England have been among the most productive in analyzing race and racism in historical and theoretical contexts during the past hundred years. Useful summaries and critiques of scholarly work on race appear in the introductions or opening chapters of a number of recent works (which then go on to analyze race and/or racism in various ways), including the following: Steven Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 In addition, by using both "white" and "European American," I mean to suggest that race has not been the only category on which dominance has been built; nationality, class and social status have also been involved. For instance, I write in the dissertation of the creation of a "racialized class hierarchy" in southern California, in which European American land owners were at the top of the local class structure— which also had a racial component. Equally complicated is analyzing the extent to which nationality has been an important factor in the evolution of white supremacy. One example of this is that Americans, due to their nationality more than Gregory and Roger Sanjek, eds., Race (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 1996); Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994); Carter A. Wilson, Racism: From Slavery to Advanced Capitalism (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996); John Solomos and Les Back, Racism and Society (New York: St. Martin's, 1996); Robert Miles, Racism after "Race Relations" (London: Routledge, 1993). Some works offer perspectives on recent debates about analyzing race, racism and white supremacy. Listed here are a very small sample: Vernon J. Williams, Jr., reexamines ideas about race and racism among scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and His Contemporaries (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996); Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis are among the scholars who investigate interactions among several social categories in Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle (London: Routledge, 1992); and Raymond S. Franklin participates in the debate over the relationship between race and class in Shadows of Race and Class (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1991). More recently, Omi and Winant's influential analysis of "racial formation” (cited above) ushered in examinations by historians, sociologists, and others of "whiteness." David Roediger analyzes the construction of "whiteness” by white male workers in the nineteenth century in The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991), while Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993), examines the extent to which a variety of white women are conscious of being white. These, among other works, gave rise to a three-day conference in Berkeley, California, in May 1997, on constructions of whiteness. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 their race, had the advantage over Californios in the application of American land law in the 18 60s and later. This seems to have been a typical case of the rewards of national conquest. However, it was white Americans who so benefitted, not, for the most part, black Americans. This is an example of the interaction of race and nationality in the maintenance of European American dominance. The dissertation’s discussion of the Couts and Bevingtons arises out of viewing the United States as a settler society that developed jointly out of the racialized dynamics of the enslavement of Africans and the expropriation of land from Native Americans. The perspective that informs this study is one that has been developed mainly outside of the United States: the idea of the existence of ”settler societies.1 1 The concept of settlerism, which has been employed by few American scholars, explains a great deal about the dynamics of white supremacy outside of or alongside of slavery. Settler societies, such as the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa, were European colonies to which Europeans migrated in order to make a new home; that is, not primarily to acquire wealth and prestige through armed conquest or colonial administration, but rather, to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8 settle there permanently.6 In order to do so, Europeans often removed and excluded indigenous populations; sometimes they took advantage of the opportunity resulting from land expropriation to exploit native people's labor. At the same time, white settlers created a new culture and social order. In the process of conquering indigenous peoples, moving onto their land, and gaining independence from the mother country (usually Great Britain, but sometimes other western European countries), settlers remade themselves into white nations or "white republics," as Alexander Saxton calls the United States of the nineteenth century, with relatively broad democracy, equality, and freedoms for white settlers.7 Few scholars of settler societies include the countries of Central and South America within their definition of such; however, Donald Denoon, in Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere (London: Oxford University, 1983) convincingly argues that the settlement patterns of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay corresponded with those of other settler countries. 7 Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London: Verso, 1990). Scholars of settlerism use such terms as "settler colonialism," "settler capitalism," and "settler state" or "settler society," but there does not seem to be a single, agreed-upon definition for any of these terms. For instance, Paul Mosley defines "settler colonialism" narrowly, in the context of his particular study of Africa: "Colonization of underdeveloped areas by European producers who became economically dependent on the indigenous population." Paul Mosley, The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia 1900-1963 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1983), 1. Denoon takes a much broader approach to settler colonialism, describing it as European settlement "in ’new' or 'empty' lands," where settlers had to develop new forms of production, different from those in Europe or in the trade colonies, and they had to do it with little or no indigenous labor. Denoon, Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development (London: Oxford University, 1983), 18. While Denoon briefly discusses settler colonialism to set the stage for the rest of his book, his main focus Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9 Settler societies share several features: First, the near-extermination of indigenous societies; second, widespread smallholdings by people of European descent; third, an ideology of classlessness and white racial unity among the population of European descendants, typically expressed as racial/national unity among whites; fourth, a strict "color line" and strong discouragement of intermarriage among European peoples and non-whites; and fifth, multiracial, multinational and multiethnic populations. Land expropriation and racial categorization have been practiced and institutionalized through the combined efforts of European-descended elites and "ordinary" whites. While the elites have gained the greatest benefits from this arrangement, white settlers is on "settler capitalism" in six colonies/countries in the Southern Hemisphere in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Denoon, 3, 8, marries a broad definition of settlerism with a broad definition of capitalism ("the mode of production in which the means of production are privately owned, and labor is performed by workers who sell their labor for wages"). J. Sakai describes the conquest of North America as one secured by thousands of settlers against resisting indigenous and enslaved African populations; settlers came to the British colonies with the expectation that they would be rewarded with land. J. Sakai, Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat, 3d ed. (Chicago: Morningstar, 1989), 9, 22. Sakai is one of the few scholars who analyzes the whole of U.S. history in terms of the dynamics of settlerism. A recent collection of essays illustrates the international attention to "settler societies," from which American scholars are mostly missing. Among thirteen contributors to Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis, eds., Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class (London: Sage, 1995), only one person researches U.S. history, and she teaches in New Zealand; the other contributors research and/or teach in Canada, England, New Zealand, Australia, parts of Africa and India. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10 have benefitted too, through "pioneering" the acquisition and settlement of new land.8 Scholars of settlerism have focused on different parts of the world and have their own purposes and emphases in writing about settler societies, but their analyses share certain features: First, Great Britain was the main source of settlerism or settler capitalism. While the Dutch in Cape Town and the Spanish and Portuguese in South America provided the early settlers and colonial administration, Britain eventually provided the capital and military power that transformed the colonies into settler-capitalist ones. Second, the issue of labor always existed alongside the issue of land. For instance, in the African settler states, indigenous people survived 8 My definition of settler societies is derived from various scholars' descriptions of settler societies, herrenvolk democracy and white repulicanism, including the following: Denoon, Settler Capitalism, 26-28; Pierre van den Berghe, Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective, 2d ed. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978), 116; and Stasiulis and Davis, Unsettling Settler Societies, 7, discuss the near-extermination of many indigenous societies as one characteristic. Denoon, 35, 222, describes the proliferation of small land holdings among Europeans and their descendants. George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study In American and South African History (Oxford: Oxford University, 1981), 69-70, 142- 150, 154—155, 166-168, 178-179; Pierre L. van den Berghe, South Africa: A Study in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California, 1970), 62-64; Saxton, Rise and Fall, 142-145, 183, 186, 195; Denoon, 208-209, 225-226; and Stasiulis and Davis, 7, 10, show in various ways the development of a flexible class structure among whites, along with ideologies of classness and white racial unity. Finally, while the separation of the races, including prohibitions against cross-racial marriage, did not exist to the same extent in all settler societies at all times, or between whites and all non-whites, this feature was increasingly common in the United States and South Africa in the late nineteenth and well into the twentieth centuries, as Fredrickson, 86-87, 94, 99-124, 131-135; van den Berghe, South Africa, 53-59; and van den Berghe, Race and Racism, 119, demonstrate. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 European conquest and settlement in sufficient numbers to provide most of the labor force, while in the Western Hemisphere and Australia, indigenous populations were decimated, requiring the importation of labor. Therefore, slavery could, and has, existed within many settler societies. Third, settler societies have been characterized by whites1 land ownership and their use of non-white labor, in many cases to such an extent that whites were almost completely dependent on such labor.9 The United States is somewhat unusual among settler societies due to a number of factors: slavery existed within the American settler state to a greater extent and for a longer time than in other settler societies; industrial capitalism developed earlier than in other settler societies; the United States conquered a neighboring country (Mexico) with its own, different history of racial hierarchy; and millions of immigrants from countries outside of northwestern Europe created a more racially and ethnically diverse population than in other settler societies. For these reasons the racial dynamics of the United States are perhaps more complicated than those of many other settler countries (although a 9 Denoon, Settler Capitalism, 38-39; Donald Denoon, South Africa Since 1800 (New York: Praeger, 1973), 129; Fredrickson, White Supremacy, 22, 57; van den Berghe, Race and Racism, 122; Stasiulis and Davis, Unsettling Settler Societies, 11. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12 diverse population is one of the characteristics of settler societies). A small study such as this one cannot establish a theory of settlerism in the United States. Nor is it my aim to come up with a new theory of American race relations. Instead, in promoting the application of the settler-society perspective to the study of U.S. history, this dissertation examines the process of land expropria tion in the nineteenth century in a setting with few African Americans, in order to illustrate the connection between taking land and the reproduction of white supremacy in a new location. Like the efforts of social and labor historians of the 1960s through the 1980s, who sought to contribute to an understanding of class relations in the United States by building up a body of community studies, this dissertation can contribute to a larger, future analysis of white dominance through the examination of settlerism in specific locales and time periods.10 Some of the classic works in this genre include Oscar Handlin's pioneering study of Irish immigrants' socioeconomic aspirations and mobility in Boston's Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1941); Stephan Thernstrom's Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth- Century City (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1964), which built on Handlin's methods and analysis; Herbert Gutman's essays examining working-class communities, workplaces and unions, such as "Class, Status and Community Power in Nineteenth Century American Industrial Cities— Paterson, New Jersey: A Case Study," originally published in 1968 and collected with other essays in Gutman, Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America (New York: Random House, 1976); and Mary P. Ryan’s pathbreaking study of the rise of the middle class in Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Because of the analytic perspective of settlerism that motivates this study, this dissertation argues against the tendency to restrict discussion of racism and white supremacy to white-black relations. Today, many popular discussions of racism and white supremacy, while rightfully decrying the poisonous heritage of African slavery, obscure the full scope of racial stratification • and white dominance in this country. In recent years popular culture and history written for general audiences has increasingly taught Americans about the European and European American conquest of Native America and the unfair and often murderous treat ment of indigenous people by whites. But this recognition is still partial and is generally not integrated into discussions of racism and the problem of white supremacy. Any well-stocked bookstore displays many titles on racism, but almost all of them focus exclusively on black-white relations.1 1 Joe R. Hicks, executive director of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission, noted this recently, declaring, 111 am struck by how the dialogue is confined to black and white people. Are the nation's growing Asian and Latino populations to be viewed as just 1790-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1981). 11 In one trip to the UCLA bookstore in spring 1997, I counted 27 titles on race, with all but 4 focusing exclusively or almost so on black-white relations. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14 side dishes to the main course of black and white? To see our problems clearly, we must approach race relations in all its complexities.1,12 Additionally, if it is important to pay attention to the increasing populations of the present and future, is it not also important to pay attention to the populations of Native Americans that were decimated in the past, but that have survived and, in growing numbers, still live among us? Integrating an analysis of the role of land expropriation with that of slavery challenges the still- dominant historical understanding of the creation and maintenance of racial hierarchy and white dominance. Many important academic historians continue to emphasize slavery, often to the point of disregarding the lasting impact of conquest and land expropriation.13 This problem Hicks, "The Great Divide: America and the Race Dialogue," L.A. Weekly Supplement Fall 1997: 8. Hicks was director of the Multicultural Collaborative at the time of this statement. 13 One measure of the focus on slavery and black-white relations in examining the category of race in U.S. history is the number of articles appearing in the Journal of American History. Looking, for instance, at the period from March 1994 through September 1997, there are 22 essays on issues of race or racism. Almost all focus entirely or mainly on African American history or black-white relations. In only one of these essays, Peggy Pascoe's discussion of miscegenation laws ("Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America [June 1996]), are other racial groups mentioned. But even here, all of the legal cases she discusses involve couples who were categorized as black and white marriages. Only one item, Gary Nash's presidential address, "Hidden History of Mestizo America" (December 1995 issue), contains material about Native Americans; it is, further, an excellent example of discussing the full range of racial groups in the United States. While the mainstream of history exhibits this tendency, scholars in other fields, especially American Studies, have presented a more multiracial perspective on American race relation. In comparison to the essays presented in JAH, those in American Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. within the mainstream of United States history continues despite the efforts of respected historians, such as Nash, as well as Richard White and Patricia Limerick, to place Native Americans, along with African Americans and European Americans, in the center of this country's history of white supremacy, although they have had some success in bringing the history of conquest to bear on U.S. history overall.14 The focus on African slavery alone does not explain how or why Native Americans (who were also sometimes enslaved) or Mexicans were subjected to European American dominance, especially in areas where Quarterly during the same time period (March 1994 through September 1997) certainly show a larger percentage dealing with multiracial issues or the dynamics of more than one racial group. Out of 25 essays dealing in some substantive way with race, 8 demonstrated this broader approach; however, the majority, 12, dealt with race only in terms of black-white relations or the experiences of African Americans. Surprising to me were the small number of works on Native Americans (2) and Asians or Asian Americans (2). 14 Limerick and White have had an impact on U.S. history mainly through their studies of Western U.S. history. Too often, unfortunately, their work is considered part of regional, rather than national, history, which diminishes the extent to which it becomes part of U.S. history overall. Among their many well-known works, Limerick's The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: Norton, 1987), most fully presents her case of the existence and impact of conquest in U.S. history; while White’s "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A Mew History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1991), is his synthesis of much of the newer, revisionist history of the U.S. West, including conquest and the multiracial populations of the region. Together, these two historians also put together a new look at The Frontier in American Culture, ed. James R. Grossman (Chicago: The Newberry Library, and Berkeley: University of California, 1994), the purpose of which, in part, is to take the new perspectives on the West and integrate them into American history overall. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16 few or no African Americans lived, as was true in much of the U.S. West during the nineteenth century.15 While some scholars have employed a variety of concepts that overlap with the settler society analysis, they do not use it as a fundamental explanation of the rise of racism and white supremacy in the United States. Settler state theory can provide a synthesis of the best history produced in this country on conquest, white supremacy, racial divisions, class and nation formation. Several scholars have applied a concept originally developed by Pierre van den Berghe, of "Herrenvolk democracy1 1 — the politics of relative equality among whites and lack of democratic rights for non-whites— to an examination of American slavery and black-white relations in the United States and South Africa. This concept has some applicability in examining the politics of white supremacy in settler states. In explaining the difference in political rights for European Americans and African Americans, van den Berghe offered new insights into the Alexander Saxton offers an analysis of one aspect of this issue when he argues that white opposition to Chinese people living and working in northern California in the nineteenth century happened because of white working-class fears of being relegated to the status of African American slaves, a concern of white workers throughout the United States during that century. Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California, 1971). His argument is a strong one for white-Chinese relations, but it cannot be transferred directly to white Americans' relations with Native Americans or Mexicans in the same period, since the conquest and land loss of the latter two groups were more salient than their role as laborers. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. widespread, popular support among white Americans for excluding African Americans from many democratic rights. However, van den Berghe did not carry his analysis over to European American-Native American relations— he only very occasionally and very briefly mentions the dispossession of American Indians and does not refer to European settlers or settler societies. He does, though, discuss European conquest of indigenous peoples in the context of societies where herrenvolk democracy does not exist, Brazil and Mexico. George Frederickson, in his comparison of the development of American and South African race relations, recognizes the similarities in Europeans' treatment of indigenous peoples, but ends his discussion of American Indians in 1840. Like van den Berghe, Fredrickson applies the concept of herrenvolk democracy to the political sphere, and only to black-white relations. These two scholars seem to imply that the development of political inequality is only marginally connected to conquest and land expropriation. Alexander Saxton, on the other hand, includes the dispossession of Native Americans in his explanation of the development of white egalitarian politics, culture and ideology in the United States.16 16 van den Berghe, Race and Racism, 14, 79 are the only places where American Indians appear in his text; 18, 29, 11—IQ are where the author discusses herrenvolk democracy. Fredrickson, in White Supremacy, ends his discussion of European-Native American encounters well before his first mention (aside from in the introduction) of herrenvolk democracy, or ideology, on pages 154-155, 166-167, 178- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18 In connecting conquest, land hunger, European and European American settlement, and the theft of indigenous and Mexican lands to the development of white supremacy, Saxton's work is closest to this dissertation. However, Saxton does not have an explicit settler-society perspective. His emphasis on the development over time and in different regions, of the ideological, political and cultural manifestations of white supremcy, though, is congruent with such a perspective. The one-sided focus on slavery has led some historians to argue that slavery is the sole foundation of white supremacy in the United States. For instance, Barbara Jeanne Fields states, 1 1 [Race] . . . became the ideological medium through which Americans confronted questions of sovereignty and power because the enslavement of Africans and their descendents constituted a massive exception to the rules of sovereignty and power that were increasingly taken for granted." The same could easily be stated— but is not by most historians who study slavery— for the conquest of and expropriation of land from Native 179. In addition, all of Fredrickson's presentation of land expropriation in America appears only in the first chapter. Saxton, on the other hand, discusses the dispossession of Native Americans in a number of places in Rise and Fall, for instance, 53-59; he specifically analyzes the relationship between this practice and the creation of "white republicanism" (Saxton's modification of van den Berghe's herrenvolk democracy) on pages 105, 153, 195. On page 149 Saxton states that van den Berghe discusses one form of herrenvolk democracy in "settler societies such as South Africa." This is true, but Saxton, not van den Berghe, applies the term to South Africa. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 19 Americans.17 George Fredrickson implies this same relationship between slavery and white supremacy in his essay, "Social Origins of American Racism," when he asks, "To what extent was America really born racist as a result of pre-existing attitudes and to what extent did it become so as a result of social, economic, and political developments that took place well after the colonists' initial contacts with Africans?"18 In answering this question, the remainder of the essay omits any reference to Native Americans and their encounters with British settlers during the period when white supremacy was first being forged in British North America. Fredrickson's focus is perplexing when one considers his comparative study of white supremacy in the United States and South Africa, in which he analyzes the role of the conquest of indigenous peoples and the expropriation of their land during the period of "frontier expansion" in the two colonies/countries, along with their use as laborers by white settlers. Fredrickson is not alone among U.S. historians who discuss the rise of white supremacy within the context of both Indian-white and African-white 17 Fields, "Ideology and Race in American History," 168, in J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, eds., Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward (New York: Oxford University, 1982), 143-177. 18 Fredrickson, "Social Origins of American Racism," 191, in Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1988), 189-205. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 20 relations. But these studies are often limited to short lived colonial or frontier situations, periods well in the past. Edmund Morgan, for one, highlighted the role of English land hunger in the development of indigenous- European relations in colonial Virginia, alongside of the rise of the enslavement of Africans. Gary Nash has been among the most steadfast of historians in expanding discussion of race relations beyond the black-white dynamic, but his studies have also focused mainly on the colonial period. Winthrop Jordan extends the development of racial divisions, racial hierarchies, and racism beyond the colonial period, and in doing so, analyzes the ways in which race relations changed over time. However, unlike Fredrickson, Morgan or Nash, Jordan focuses exclusively on slavery and black-white relations.19 These studies, while excellent examples of the dual underpinning of American white supremacy, do not take the reader into the extended period of westward expansion, which was a period of repeated conguests of Native Americans and Mexicans. These studies end within the early decades of the formation of the United States as a nation, 19 Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975); Gary B. Nash, in several works, including Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982) and "The Social Development of Colonial America," in Nash, Race, Class, and Politics: Essays on American Colonial and Revolutionary Society (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1986), 3-34. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21 and so exclude the role of settlerism in the further development of American history. This is not a critique of Morgan' s, Nash' s, and other historians1 important and influential works. The problem is that there have not been enough similar studies of the crucial roles of repeated conquest and land expropriation in later periods, when the emphasis needs to shift from the beginning of racial distinctions and white dominance to their maintenance and extension, both for the legacy of slavery and for the legacy of land expropriation. One admirable exception to this is Saxton' s The Rise and Fall of the White Republic, which argues that small landowners and those who desired land— in other words, settlers— were among the groups of whites who helped create "white republicanism." An instance of the ease with which some historians dismiss the relevance of settlerism is David Roediger's characterization of the conquest of indigenous peoples and the expropriation of their land as part of the "'prehistory* of the white worker." With this, Roediger indicates that he believes that land expropriation was finished before the rise of a white American working class. But this was not the case. As one of Roediger's inspirations, W.E.B. Du Bois, states in Black Reconstruc tion, "Now [the 1840s] the labor question moved West, and became a part of the land question." While DuBois does not Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 22 concern himself with Native Americans' land claims, he very much recognized that land and labor were not separate in the development of the white working class.20 Morgan's and Fredrickson's works have influenced this dissertation. Their works, in different ways, describe some of the crucial processes in the origins of white supremacy. However, from a settler-state perspective, they analyze features or symptoms of settlerism without integrating it into the basic dynamics of American nation- building that continued well past the colonial and early national periods, into the present. Morgan argues strongly for the material and particular basis for colonial Virginians' development of slavery and the attendant rise of racial categorization and hierarchy; similarly, this study focuses on a material factor, control and ownership of land, in a particular place and location. More importantly, Morgan places his analysis of race in the context of studying "the American paradox, the marriage of slavery and freedom"21; I argue that settlerism must be added to this conjunction if we are to understand this "American paradox," which, from the settler-society perspective, was not a purely American phenomenon. In this 20 Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 21; Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860—1880, August Meier, ed. (New York: Atheneum, 1979), 19. 21 Morgan, American Slavery, 6. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sense, this study is closer to Fredrickson's White Supremacy, in that both understand that the development of white dominance occurred in some similar ways in comparable, that is, settler, countries, as well as within the contexts of property-ownership and labor relations. Further, Fredrickson's use of Pierre van den Berghe's concept of "herrenvolk democracy," which he was greatly responsible for introducing to American historians, describes one of the important symptoms or outcomes of settlerism, namely, the cross-class, white racial alliance that characterizes countries such as the United States and South Africa. Despite the important work of these historians, historical neglect of the role of European and European American land hunger in the rise of slavery itself continues: For one, no land would have meant no slavery. This neglect also obscures the status of land ownership for European and white American workers as a significant differential between them and African Americans. In the seventeenth century, not only did Africans become perma nent slaves while English indentured workers eventually gained their freedom, but English workers could look forward to attaining the goal of their servitude— self- sufficiency through land ownership (even if many did not survive their period of servitude to become landowners). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Later, during Reconstruction, the promise of land ownership for freed slaves was quickly withdrawn, since it would have meant taking land from white property owners while releasing African Americans from having to work for their former masters. At the same time as the freed slaves lost the chance to own the land they had worked on, homestead laws proliferated, offering white Americans opportunities to own (Indian) land that they worked on. In addition, the Ku Klux Klan arose not only as a means for planters to control their labor supply, but also as a means to protect the property of poorer white farmers, and thereby represented the interests not only of white elites but of "ordinary1 1 whites, as well.22 The issue of the participation of "ordinary" white Americans in maintaining white supremacy is an important one. While many whites have opposed racism and some of its institutions such as slavery, this does not negate the fact that many have not. Certainly, Herbert Aptheker is correct in stating that a sometimes significant portion of the European American population has been anti-racist, but I believe that the majority of white Americans have been 22 Michael W. Fitzgerald makes this argument in "The Ku Klux Klan: Property Crime and the Plantation System in Reconstruction Alabama," Agricultural History 71 (Spring 1997), 186-206. He states that black sharecroppers resorted to stealing livestock from whites in order to avoid starvation. While this was an annoyance to wealthy planters, it had a much more serious impact on white farmers with ■ little land, whose livestock comprised much of their limited wealth. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25 at least complicit in the creation and maintenance of white supremacy. And where Aptheker sees the need to demonstrate the role of average white Americans in countering racial oppression in his book, Anti-Racism in United States History,23 I think the more important task- -because it is more rarely done, especially by whites— is to confront white Americans with their contributions to white supremacy. A few recent works provide examples of the kind of understanding we need of the complicity or active participation of the majority of white Americans in racial oppression. One of several by U.S. historians is David R. Roediger's The Wages of Whiteness. Two are by scholars of the Nazi extermination of the Jews, Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. What these books have in common is their willingness to take on questions avoided by many other historians about the role of average people in the oppression or killing of large numbers of "other" people. For the most part, until recently Holocaust historians and U.S. labor historians had been happy to blame the elites, the ruling class, or the government in 23 Aptheker, Anti-Racism in United States History: The First 200 Years (New York: Greenwood, 1992), xiii-xiv. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 26 forcing genocide and oppression on a cowed or at worst, an apathetic majority.24 While social historians have contributed greatly to our understanding of slavery and of the rise and impact of racism on African Americans, they have generally not paid the same kind of attention to the multiple roots of racism and white supremacy as have scholars outside of the mainstream of history, or outside of history itself. With the rise of multiculturalism, scholars have been integrating the experiences of Native Americans; Mexicans, Chicanos and other Latinos; and Asian Americans into the discussion of American white supremacy, but much remains p/ Roediger, Images of Whiteness; Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992); Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Random House, 1996). See Noel Ignatiev’s critique of the New Labor Historians, especially Gutman, Montgomery and Wilentz, in How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995), 180-84. Goldhagen's book has been controversial, with some historians and other writers attacking his research and interpretation. For instance, Christopher Hitchens, citing a review by Norman Finkelstein in the New Left Review, criticizes Goldhagen for appearing to ignore that the majority of Germans did not vote to put the Nazis in power in the early 1930s. Hitchens and Finkelstein, though, are themselves ignoring Goldhagen's point, which is that by looking only at the majority numbers, we fail to account for the actions and influence of the (large) minority— millions of people, in this case. Hitchens, "History for Fools," The Nation, June 9, 1997; Norman Finkelstein, New Left Review, July/August 1997. Additional critiques have followed. Just published are Norman G. Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth (New York: Holt, 1998); and Robert R. Shandley, ed., and Jeremiah Riemer, trans., Unwilling Germans: The Goldhagen Debate (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1998). In addition, some scholars in other fields have been actively investigating this issue. For example, Ruth Frankenberg interviewed a number of white women of various class backgrounds and ages about their racial attitudes, practices and observations; while David Wellman investigated both working-class and college-educated whites. Frankenberg, White Women; Wellman, David T., Portraits of White Racism, 2d ed. (New York: Cambridge University, 1993). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 27 to be done. Works by scholars of Native American and Chicano history and culture are the most relevant to this project, as well as to the more limited focus of this dissertation. Many of these works integrate the expro priation of land and the exploitation of non-white labor (or, in the case of Native Americans, their frequent exclusion from the labor market) with the spread of white supremacy.25 ^ Works on Native American history that make the connection between conquest, land expropriation, and white supremacy (although many scholars do not use these terms) include the following, which is just a partial list. Many of these works focus to one extent or another on the betrayals of the U.S. federal government in the course of negotiating, imposing, and reneging on treaties with various Indian tribes. Key elements of these treaties concerned tribal independence or autonomy and land ownership. Vine Deloria, Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence (New York: Dell, 1974); Rupert Costo and Jeannette Henry Costo, Natives of the Golden State: The California Indians (San Francisco: Indian Historian, 1995); Ward Churchill, Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expropriation in Contemporary North America (Monroe, ME.: Common Courage, 1993); Richard L. Carrico, Strangers in a Stolen Land: American Indians in San Diego, 1850-1880 (Sacramento: Sierra Oaks, 1987); Jack Forbes, Native Americans of California and Nevada, rev. ed. (Happy Camp, CA: Naturegraph, 1982); Wilbur R. Jacobs, Dispossessing the American Indian: Indians and Whites on the Colonial Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1935); several essays in M. Annette Jaimes, ed., The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance (Boston: South End, 1992), including Rebecca L. Robbins, "Self-Determination and Subordination: The Past, Present and Future of American Indian Governance"; and Ward Churchill and Winona LaDuke, "Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism"; Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., Now That the Buffalo's Gone: A Study of Today's American Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1982); Martha C. Knack and Omer C. Stuart, As Long as the River Shall Run: An Ethnohistory of Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation (Berkeley: University of California, 1984); Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887—1934 (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1991); James J. Rawls, Indians of California: The Changing Image (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1984); Florence Connolly Shipek, Pushed into the Rocks: Southern California Land Tenure, 1769—1986 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1987); Wilcomb E. Washburn, Red Nan's Land, White Man's Law: The Past and Present Status of the American Indian, 2d ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1994). While many works on Chicano history focus on Chicanos as workers, many others focus on the American conquest of northern Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 28 Several recent studies in the multinational history of nineteenth-century Southern California have integrated the knowledge and perspectives of Native American and Chicano history into a regional study. Three historians in particular, Tomas Almaguer, Lisbeth Haas, and Douglas Monroy, have examined geographic areas, population groups and various ways that white Americans asserted their dominance in the region that overlap with the one in this study. All three, to varying extents, focus on the material aspects of race and class power relations. However, they do not approach the study of Southern California from a settler-society perspective. The questions they pose and their answers certainly overlap with ones in this dissertation, but their focuses are significantly different. Almaguer's analysis of material factors emphasizes labor relations. Although he discusses the dispossession of the Californio rancheros, Almaguer barely mentions Spanish, Mexican and American expropriation of indigenous Mexico or combine the two focuses. Works which discuss white supremacy and land expropriation or issues of land and labor include the following: Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (Berkeley: University of California, 1966); Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1990); David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas, 1987); Rudolfo Acuna, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 3d ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1988); Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1979); Mario Barrera, Race and Class in the Southwest: A Theory of Racial Inequality (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1979). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. lands. Further, Almaguer inaccurately bases a good deal of his analysis of Native Californians' experiences in the southern portion of the state on the experiences of their neighbors farther north. Monroy argues, rightfully, that Chicano history in California requires understanding the interaction of Indians, Europeans, Mexicans and Americans, but in doing so, he subsumes Native Californian history into the Mexican/Chicano history of California, a reading of the region's history that does not coincide with the research presented in this dissertation. Also, like Almaguer, Monroy mainly examines labor relations and their relationship to shifting power relations, rather than focusing on the role of land ownership. Haas, on the other hand, looks at control of land and land expropriation. But her purpose in doing so is to connect it to the "problem of identity" and the shaping of "historical consciousness" for Californios and indigenous Californians. (In this respect, her study bears some comparison with Saxton's.) Further, in examining "the dynamics of power that shaped land policy," Haas reverses the process I examine, which is how land expropriation maintained whites' power.26 In 26 Tomas Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California, 1994); Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936 (Berkeley: University of California, 1995), 2, 4; Douglas Monroy, Thrown among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California, 1990). Unlike Almaguer and Monroy, Haas did as careful research into Native Californians as she did into Californios and Mexicans, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30 one additional way, this dissertation differs from these historians' studies: I present the activities of "ordinary" Americans in taking land from Native Californians and Californios and using this as an important basis for creating and maintaining their own local dominance. There is a small but significant historiographical tendency to examine the role of the oppression of Native Americans, Asians, and Mexicans, in combination with that of African Americans, in the historical development of white American dominance. Some historians have presented an all-encompassing analysis of the country as a whole, while others have provided an inclusive analysis for a small region, as Almaguer's Racial Fault Lines and this dissertation do.27 In addition, some works, such as Fredrickson1s White Supremacy and Saxton1s The Indispensable Enemy, involve discussion of racial dynamics in which the relationship between whites and blacks is providing a corrective to Almaguer's and Monroy's presentations. 27 The three most important historical works presenting a national overview are Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1981); Saxton, Rise and Fall} and Ronald Takaki, Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University, 1990). Additionally, Richard Slotkin's three-volume examination of the frontier, violence and race in U.S. history and culture, while emphasizing Indian-white relations, incorporates African Americans and the conquest of Mexico into his analysis; see especially the second volume, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1985). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31 still the fundamental one, but in which other groups (indigenous peoples in Fredrickson's book and Chinese in Saxton's) are important participants. Overview of the Dissertation The dissertation focuses on a rural area of southern California in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in order to illustrate how white Americans, especially settlers, imposed their dominance over other groups. This process was the reproduction of white supremacy in a new setting, since American dominance was already well established in other parts of the United States. The dissertation could have focused on many areas of the country to illustrate this process; the expropriation of Native American land would still have been a key component in the establishment of white supremacy, but exactly how this occurred, and what other circumstances might have existed, would have been different. In this sense, the dissertation is a regional history that explores particular events in a particular area; it also refers to a more general history of a process whose basic patterns were repeated in many other areas throughout American history. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32 The dissertation analyzes change over time in forms of conquest, land expropriation, and the relationship between land and labor. Its chapters follow a combined chronological and thematic organization. The first three chapters discuss land and labor prior to the establishment of American dominance in the region, starting before the arrival of Europeans, and continuing through the Spanish mission period (1798 to 1834) and the Californio rancho period (1830s until about 1875). This first part of the dissertation presents forms of racial/class dominance markedly different from the form that came later, with the expansion of American settler society into southern California. Chapters One and Two discuss the dynamics of establishing white supremacy in societies different from the American settler one that would later be created. These two chapters examine first the impact of the Spanish mission system and then the impact of Californio rancho society on the indigenous population. The dissertation begins before the establishment of an American settler society in southern California in order to introduce a few points: First, that indigenous peoples, such as the people who became known as Luisenos, occupied the land in large numbers before the arrival of Europeans, surviving and flourishing by combining plant cultivation, village life, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. trade, and hunting and gathering; Second, that the Spanish mission system, during its dominance in southern California, was a colonial system of conquest, not one of settlement, and that the need for indigenous labor, more than the need for exclusive possession of the land, was the basis for the mission's race/class structure; and Third, that the succeeding rancho society was a transitional society, one in which indigenous labor was still key, but in which ownership of the land was growing in importance. What these three points illustrate is that southern California land was already occupied and well used before Europeans arrived, and limited white settlement, as existed during the mission and rancho periods, did not require wholesale expropriation of land from Native Californians. Nonetheless, a class hierarchy with an underlying racial basis was established, on the basis of labor. The dispossession of Native Californians occurred in different ways depending on the time period, the type of dominating American society, and the types of settlers moving into the area. The dissertation explores a number of instances of dispossession. Chapters One and Two describe the actions of the Spanish missionaries and early Californio rancheros. With Chapter Three the dissertation moves into the early stages of American-dominated society. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34 It examines the processes of dispossession and resistance in the transitional period of 1850 through 1875, culmi nating in the mass eviction of the Luiseno from one of their key villages, Temecula. A new section of the dissertation starts with Chapter Four. A significant change in land ownership and labor relations occurred with an influx of American settlers in the 1870s. In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, indigenous people in the region lost almost all of their land to American farming families, much more land than they had lost under the previous social orders. The expropriation of land by settlers interested in small- scale farming was greatly aided by a number of federal and state laws governing land acquisition through preemption and homesteading. Settlers granted themselves the moral right to take land occupied by Native Californians by invoking their legal right to do so. As they lost land, Native Californians were increasingly forced to take up wage labor on the new farms and in the new towns springing up on land that was formerly theirs. But even wage labor was limited as an option, as white farming and entrepre neurial families did much of the work themselves. In Chapter Four these processes of land expropriation and new labor relations are illustrated by the dispossession of a band of Kumeyaay living in the San Pasqual Valley. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35 At the same time that Native Californians were being turned off of their land by new settlers, including squatters, rancheros were experiencing similar pressures. Beginning in the 1860s rancheros had a difficult time holding onto the extensive land grants they had obtained while California was under Mexican rule. As Americans consolidated their power in the state, a formidable complex of economic, environmental, legal, political, and social factors contributed to the decline in Californios1 elite status, which are discussed in Chapter Five. While flood and drought affected all farmers and ranchers in California in the early 1860s, Anglo Americans pushed for the expropriation of land from land grantees. This was the main demand of a movement, originating in Northern California, to break up the ranchos. In addition, the federal government, after initially recognizing many rancheros* legal right of possession, gave into pressure to help dismantle the ranchos, and reversed itself in the 1860s, making it harder for land grantees— including some Native Californians— to prove legal claim to their land. Squatters, too, taking advantage of the decades-long process of proving title to land grants, moved onto rancho lands, and often won ownership of the land. Nonetheless, rancheros in southern California did not all lose their Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 land; intermarried families, such as the Couts, were quite successful in retaining much of their land. The shift to a modern, urbanizing, business-oriented society followed quickly upon the establishment of small family farms. Only ten years after mass evictions of Luisenos from Temecula and Kumeyaay from San Pasqual in 1875, southern California's land boom brought thousands of new settlers to the region. Land investors founded towns, such as Escondido, whose new inhabitants were, for the most part, divorced from direct interaction with Native Californians and other peoples of color, which had characterized interracial relations of the past. Farmers and town dwellers, in plays and stories of the early settlement years, painted sorrowful images of the "disappearing" Indians or reminisced about the power they had had over Native Californian and other non-white workers. New towns (as well as some old ones, such as San Diego), benefitted greatly from laws and financial arrangements that encouraged investment, especially in irrigation projects. Such investment allowed Escondido to grow from an inconsequential town to the commercial center of northern San Diego County, outstripping neighboring towns in growth of population and farms. With the influx of new settlers, whites' earlier opposition to the establishment of reservations (because Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. they might encompass potential farming land) declined. In the 1890s, with almost all indigenous groups shoved off their lands and after their populations had precipitously declined, settlers finally gave their support to the creation of a few tiny reservations; most had little arable land or water, thus perpetuating Indians' impoverishment and dependence on whites. Ironically, even as the Jeffersonian ideal of family farming was dying out as a possibility for most European Americans, federal Indian policy promoted turning Native Americans into family farmers— but without adequate land or material aid. The chapter explores the application of this policy on some of the reservations in San Diego County. The creation of towns and the creation of reservations are explored in Chapters Six and Seven, respectively. Chapter Eight expands two of the themes of Chapter Six: first, that modern settlerism became increasingly characterized by indirect, more distant relations between European Americans and Native Californians; and second, that farmers and town dwellers had to control water in order to benefit from land ownership. In San Diego County, this meant that land expropriation acquired a different form, in the diversion of water from several Indian reservations to Escondido. This water diversion allowed farmers in and around Escondido to prosper at the same Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 time that it contributed greatly to the failure of farming on the reservations, and to reservation residents' ongoing need to work for wages in the surrounding area. Struggles for control over land and water have continued to the present. The Epilogue briefly reviews the most important of them: In the 1950s Indians on the San Luis Rey River reservations began a series of law suits to gain equitable distribution of river water. An agreement among the tribal governments, the cities of Escondido and Vista, and the federal government was finally reached in 1989. But current conflicts between the state government and tribal governments in the San Luis Rey River watershed and elsewhere, demonstrate that even if the major expropriations of land are in the past, white supremacy still exists and is still rooted, at least in part, in control of land and natural resources. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39 CHAPTER ONE INDIGENOUS LIFEWAYS AND THE IMPACT OF THE SPANISH MISSIONS Introduction North America was never the unpopulated expanse so often depicted in European and European American literature, art, and thought— California among the least so of all the regions that became the United States. Contained within the modern boundaries of the state, before the arrival of Europeans, were over 300,000 Native Californians of more than 100 different linguistic and cultural groups.1 When Spanish soldiers and missionaries arrived in the mid-1700s— the first Europeans to make a claim to southern California— they may not have found mineral riches, but they did find a wealth of human material whom the Catholic priests could exploit, 1 Anthropologists' estimates of the pre-contact indigenous population in the Western Hemisphere have varied greatly. Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1987), 32, estimates 7 million, for all of the continent north of present-day Mexico. Thornton estimates the population of the continental United States at 5+ million. See also Henry F. Dobyns, "More Methodological Perspectives on Historical Demography," Ethnohistory 36 (Summer 1989): 285-304, followed by "On the Current Devaluation of the Notion of Evidence: A Rejoinder to Dobyns," by David Henige. Sherburne F. Cook, "Historical Demography," in ed. Robert F. Heizer, California, vol. 8 of North American Indians (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 91; R.F. Heizer and M.A. Whipple, eds., The California Indians: A Source Book, 2d ed. (Berkeley: University of California, 1971),. map after Kroeber, endpaper. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40 converting Native Californians1 non-Christian souls and using their labor to support a chain of twenty-one missions. In pursuing their dual goals of securing and expanding their conquest of North American, and the conversion of the indigenous populations to Christianity, the Spanish government and missionaries transformed Native Californians' societies. The establishment of Mission San Diego de Alcala in 1769 and Mission San Luis Rey in 1798 set in motion not only the Christianization of indigenous peoples, but also the modification of their systems of land use and of their social relations. As such, the Spanish missions, while not settleristic themselves, laid the foundation for the settler society to come in California. Focusing on the people who became known as Luisenos, who may have called themselves Quechnajuichom (meaning, living in a territory called Quechla),2 this chapter 2 Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936 (Berkeley: University of California, 1995), 2- 3, 14, 17, 19, states that Quechla and Quechnajuichom were terms used for the entire territory of the people and for themselves as a distinct group. However, Raymond White, "Luiseno Social Organization," 48:2 University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology (1962), 107, writing before Haas, uses Quechla to refer only to the rancheria site where San Luis Rey Mission was built. Lowell John Bean and Florence C. Shipek, "Luiseno," in Heizer, ed., California, 550, state, "Like most California groups, the Luiseno probably had no name for their own nationality, although they may sometimes coin names to satisfy outside investigators." Bean and Shipek suggest that this may be the case with Quechnajuichom. Most references to Quechla and Quechnajuichom are to Pablo Tac's manuscript, Indian Life and Customs at Mission San Louis Rey, ed. and trans. Minna Hewes and Gordon Hewes Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 describes Luiseno lifeways, focusing on land use, to set the stage for the rest of the dissertation. If, as I argue, European settlers* practice of expropriating Native American land formed one of the two bases for the development of white supremacy, then it is necessary to establish pre-European indigenous land-use practices and concepts of land ownership. Because there is a great deal of superficial generalization about such practices and ideas, and because the particular ones of the Luisenos had an impact on later indigenous-European relations in the area examined in this dissertation, this chapter goes into some detail on these topics. The chapter also explains the ways in which Luisenos* lives changed significantly during the Spanish period (1769-1822), including the great decline in Luiseno population, brought on in part by Luisenos* experience as coerced laborers for the missions. (Mission San Luis Rey, n.d.). Tac states, for instance, "These [Franciscan] Fathers came to Alta California, and one of them came to our country which we call Quechla, and because of this we called ourselves Quechnajuichom, that is to say, inhabitants of Quechla" [emphasis added], 7. As I explain in the chapter, Luiseno rancherias (indigenous villages) were autonomous, so Tac's use of the term "country” (pays in Spanish) may be only an approximate translation. There is one section in Tac's manuscript (12) that supports Haas' interpretation: Tac writes that San Luis Rey Mission had large "gardens" at the mission and in three "districts" corresponding to the rancherias Pala, Temeco, and Usva; Pala and Temeco were about ten miles distant from the mission, and Tac places them all in the territory called Quechla. In addition, Tac estimates the pre-Spanish population for Quechla at about 5,000, a reasonable number for all Luisenos and far too large for one rancherla. However, since there is no agreement that Quechla and Quechnajuichom are synonomous with Luiseno territory and people, and since I am not aware that Luisenos currently use these terms, I will use "Luiseno” throughout this dissertation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42 Also, Luisenos' adaptation of European methods of farming and animal husbandry was disruptive, but this was moderated by Luisenos' high regard for new knowledge and their skill at putting it to use within their existing social structure. And while Luisenos adapted to life under Spanish dominance, it is probable that they also resisted it, as their neighbors to the north (Kumi.vit, also called Gabrielinos) and the south (Kumeyaay) did. Spain's use of the missions to secure new territory for the Crown and the Church not only had a lasting impact on Luiseno and other Native Californian lifeways, but also established a rigid social hierarchy that greatly influenced the Mexican and Anglo American societies that followed in California. This chapter summarizes relevant scholarship in order to provide a basis for understanding how the modern racial hierarchy developed out of the struggles between indigenous Californians and Europeans for survival and dominance in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century southern California. Pre-Conquest Luiseno Land Use and Property Ownership In the region of southern California discussed in this dissertation, encompassing what is now northwestern San Diego County and southwestern Riverside County, the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43 Native California Coast M i wok. Chilula W hilkuc Chtmirfko W incu Sinkyone WaiUki^ K a to Yt ai a -i \ i W d a k il Xt JsA i i d u ' ( I 'Rtrwfn \ Waaho ■Nfsenan ] 1 la k e . M iw o k W appo \ \ , . \ i Mono M iw o k . \ ^ \ ' <2, \ "Northern. ' 9* \ Y okut* ^lOweris V alley Southern Yfe I ja V aliev IC iJ o rf> . \ Villey 4 ' Yokut* Tcmgva (Gabridino • 4 7 Ajachroea CJuaneno} (V JLui aeno Mohave V / Cahuilla Halchidhoma Cupeflo J J Q ubcH an K um eyaay \ CYuma} Reprinted, with permission, from Malcolm Margolin and Yolanda Montijo, eds., Native Ways: California Indian Stories and Memories (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1995), 8. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 44 indigenous groups were the Luiseno, Kumeyaay (also known as Diegueno) , and Cupeno, with their neighbors to the north, the Juaneno and Cahuilla, living at the borders of the region. Because Luisenos comprised the majority population, their land-use and property-ownership practices are key to understanding transformations in indigenous land tenure and means of survival after the establishment of missions in the region. Anthropological and historical research into the pre conquest lifeways of the Luiseno, like research into most other Native Californians, reveals more of what we do not know than of what we know of their aboriginal ways of life. Therefore, definitive statements about many aspects of Luiseno history before the mid- or late-nineteenth century are difficult to sustain.3 One area of insuffi cient knowledge and differing interpretations is of the Luisenos' basic means of survival. Were they hunter- gatherers who only learned agricultural methods from the Spanish missionaries and other Europeans? Did they have 3 White, "Luiseno," iii, states that his essay is a "reconstruction," that "there can be no pretensions of being complete, conclusive, or final . . . [and] some features of the reconstruction must stand as mere hypotheses." Writing fifteen years later, Florence Connolly Shipek, the foremost researcher into Luiseno and Diegueno life and history during the past twenty years, echoes White's sentiment with her call for additional investigations into the ecological and archaeological evidence of Luiseno plant cultivation techniques. Shipek, "A Strategy for Change: The Luiseno of Southern California," (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii, 1977), 136-37. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. established villages and a sedentary way of life before the Spanish arrived, or did they move with the seasons? These questions are significant for a number of reasons. First, Europeans and European Americans, until recently, portrayed Native Californians as very primitive. Only the Chumash in Southern California4 were accorded some grudging respect by early visitors and settlers because they already had some of the material trappings of "civilization,*1 for instance, substantial houses and pottery. The other indigenous Southern Californians, including the Luiseno, made their shelters and most of their household equipment from impermanent plant materials. Second, most nineteenth-century Europeans and European Americans who saw Luiseno villages with their adobe homes, orchards, grain fields, and herds of cattle and sheep assumed that these signs of "civilization" came directly and only from the tutelage of the mission fathers. This perspective further dichotomizes indigenous history into a "primitive" period distinct from a "civilized" period, with agriculture and housebuilding coming only from Europeans. Third, it is easier to ignore or reduce indigenous claims to territory if settlers 4 Please note that I use the capital "S" in "Southern California" this instance to indicate the region from Santa Barbara south to the (post-1848) border with Mexico, in contrast to "southern California," which refers to the area this dissertation examines. Please refer to my discussion of terminology in the Introduction. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46 describe native people as nomadic, with a sedentary way of life coming only with the arrival of European and European American settlers. Finally, European American settlers rewrote indigenous history, often unknowingly. For instance, when one local historian of Escondido wrote, "400 oaks grew in rows as if they had been planted by human hands," she ascribed this arrangement to mysterious natural forces, rather than to the activities of humans (in this case, Kumeyaay) living there before the town was founded.5 Twentieth-century research into Luiseno life before the arrival of Europeans indicates that complex lifeways sustained relatively dense, sedentary populations in a fluctuating environment. (I use the term "relatively dense") to indicate Luiseno population density in comparison to that of most other indigenous Californians, not in relationship to current perceptions of population density.) Luisenos had strong ideas and practices of property ownership and provided food, medicine, and other necessary goods for themselves through a combination of hunting, gathering, and plant husbandry. They supplemented what they raised, caught or harvested themselves with goods traded from neighbors and groups as distant as those of the Pueblos east of the Colorado River, and with goods 5 Frances and Lewis Ryan, Early Days in Escondido (Escondido: self-published, 1970), 3; emphasis added. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47 obtained through raids on other Luiseno villages or sometimes on non-Luisenos. Luisenos1 social organization and spiritual beliefs supported their material existence. Luiseno population before the arrival of Spanish missionaries and explorers numbered as many as ten thousand, clustered into approximately fifty rancherias. With about two hundred people per rancherla, their population was among the highest and densest of all Native Californians. This relatively high population and density resulted from the advantageous mixture of ecological zones within Luiseno territory, which encompassed a long coastal region, many valleys, low hills, streams and springs, and one mountainous region. While affording many locations for the development of separate rancherias, or clan-based sub territories, these diverse ecological zones also allowed most Luisenos relatively easy access to a variety of plant and animal life. Each rancherla, then, was mainly self- supporting and could exploit a range of possible life- sustaining materials.6 Luiseno territory, like that of their neighbors, can be broken down into three basic units: the entire ethnic or national territory, which aboriginally encompassed about 1500 square miles; the rancherla, which typically included 20 to 40 square miles of land; and the central 6 White, "Luiseno," 110, 119-20. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. village area, where the majority of daily activities took place. The rancherla was a "block of territory" encompass ing territory for hunting and gathering, and a smaller, central village area, where the families slept, prepared meals, and might have had individual garden plots (although individual plots could exist anywhere in the rancherla). Many Luiseno rancherias survived through the Spanish, Mexican, and early American periods and provided a window into aboriginal life; as anthropologist Raymond White argues, "The local geographical-population unit named 1rancheria1 by the Spanish is crucial to reconstruc tion of social organization."7 Each rancherla was the territory of "a clan tribelet— a group of people patrilin- eally related who owned an area in common and who were politically and economically autonomous from neighboring groups," according to research by anthropologists.8 A description of one rancherla, Pauma, illustrates many of the qualities listed above. Pauma contained a central village area surrounded by a larger territory— the rancherla— whose boundaries could be reached in about a half-day's walk from the village. The rancherla covered approximately thirty square miles and included a spring- 7 Ibid., 116. Note that White omits the accent over the "i" in "rancheria," while I include it when I am not quoting White, in accordance with standard Spanish usage. 8 Bean and Shipek, "Luiseno, 555. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49 fed stream, microclimates ranging from a stream bed to hill summits supporting a variety of seeds, greens and fruits, oak groves supplying acorns, and numerous birds and animals. In addition, the Pauma Luisenos claimed a small area outside their rancherla borders where they had a quarry for a type of stone prized for making good arrowheads.9 Raymond White, extrapolating from his research at Pauma rancherla, describes a typical seasonal and ecological-niche progression for Luiseno food gathering: Acorns . . . were gathered in late autumn just before the onset of cold weather and the typical southern California rainy sea son. This food was stored in the village, near permanent water supplies, and in the warmest and most sheltered part of the rancheria. As the seasons progressed, vari ous foods appeared first in the swampy or moist parts of the stream bottomlands close to the village. During the summer and early autumn, various foods became available in the chaparral on the steep hillsides above the village, and at no great distance from it. . . .In relation to the topography, the calendar and climate regulated the geographical and economic arrangements of the rancher ia.10 Using all these factors in analyzing the question of whether the Luiseno were sedentary or not, White concludes that they were. He reasons that each rancherla had a "vertical" ecological scheme, supplying all the basic 9 White, "Luiseno," 116, 117, 120, 123. 10 Ibid., 121. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50 needs for each Luiseno clan; each rancherla was small enough to allow a person walking from the central village to reach any point and return within a day's time; and perhaps most important, each rancherla village had a fairly dependable source of water, usually a spring, which provided water for drinking, cooking, and bathing, and for leaching acorns, the single most important food source for the Luisenos. Water also helped create various micro climates, thereby increasing the variety of plant foods. For instance, at Pauma in the springtime, edible bulbs and tubers, berries and greens grew along the banks of the stream running near the village. When the Luisenos traveled to distant sources of plant or animal life, these journeys were short and, except for acorn-harvesting, did not require everyone's participation.1 1 11 Ibid., 116, 120. White's analysis built on the work of earlier anthropologists, and together, they have continued to wield much influence in depictions of Luiseno life in the past. For instance, the last definitive statement of Luiseno pre-conquest lifeways, the article by Bean and Shipek in California., vol. 8 of the Smithsonian Institution's North American Indians, published in 1978, retains much of White's description of Luiseno methods of getting plants and animals for sustenance. White, "Luiseno," 111, states, "None of the so-called Mission Indian Tribes [which included the Luiseno] were agriculturalists," and Bean and Shipek do not include any discussion of this in their article. They also retain White's reference to Luiseno "gardens," including his use of quotation marks, to indicate the word's use is metaphoric. Shipek counters the prevailing view that "Luisenos, like other California Indians, were hunters-gatherers with no knowledge of agriculture," in "Strategy," 86. As Shipek's research for her dissertation was completed by 1977, it appears that her strong assertions regarding Luiseno agricultural activities might have been viewed as too controversial for inclusion in the Smithsonian tome. Since Shipek's dissertation, other anthropologists and scholars of Native California have argued for a new understanding of indigenous plant and animal management. See, for instance, several essays in the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51 The spring at Pauma and fresh-water sources in other Native Californians * territory later were the most attractive features to European and European American settlers. For this reason, as later chapters show, Native Californian rancherias were highly contested sites of land ownership between indigenous people and squatters in the 1850s through 1870s, and after that, became the locations of new American farming communities and towns. While the work of White and other anthropologists has been crucial in recovering knowledge about indigenous life and the natural environment, more recent work has replaced these scholars’ often passive and unchanging picture with a more active one. Florence Shipek agrees in many regards with White’s analysis, but her work extends that of White and other, earlier anthropologists. Shipek and several Native Californian scholars and activists argue today that indigenous people used several methods to manipulate the special issue of California History, "Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush," 75 (Summer and Fall 1997), including M. Kat Anderson, Michael G. Barbour, and Valerie Whitworth, "A World of Balance and Plenty: Land, Plants, Animals, and Humans in a Pre- European California," 12-47. This new analysis has also been presented in articles in many issues of the periodical, News from Native California, as well as in Thomas C. Blackburn and Kat Anderson, eds., Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians (Menlo Park, CA: Ballena, 1993). See also note 15, below. I would like to note here that News from Native California is the best current source for information about the culture, history, and current activities of Native Californians. An overview of indigenous agriculture in the area that became the United States is given in A. Douglas Hurt, Indian Agriculture in America, Prehistory to the Present (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52 plant environment to their advantage.12 This analysis, in addition to revealing Luisenos1 (and other Native Californians she has studied, such as the Kumeyaays1) active agency in their interactions with the natural environment, also establishes a basis for evaluating Native Californians1 transition to European-style farming and ranching. Plant "specialists" among the Luiseno and their neighbors, the Kumeyaay and Cahuilla, "managed chaparral slopes by use of fire swidden," or the deliberate and controlled burning of an area to clear dead or unwanted vegetation and encourage the growth of plants providing desired seeds, leaves, and so on. The plant specialists "increased the numbers and sizes of stands of oaks, wild plums, palms, mesquite, and other food trees and shrubs by planting seeds and they managed the groves using fire to reduce underbrush, parasites, and other pests which would reduce yields." Fire was also an important method for controlling grass growth. Nutritious native grasses were consumed by humans, grazing wildlife, and later, by cattle, horses and sheep, and were used for making baskets and other supplies; burning approximately every three years maintained seed production and soil fertility.13 12 Shipek, "Strategy," 86-89. 13 Ibid., 92, 118. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Some of the botanical evidence for these practices includes the existence of grassy parkland areas with oak trees studding the area or growing in straight rows (as in the previous description of the landscape before Escondido's growth obliterated the pattern of the trees). This not completely natural arrrangement signals human intervention because the grasses would typically give way to brushy growth, and tree seeds tend to encircle the parent trees, not extend themselves in straight lines; in addition, the high degree of hybridization of oaks and chaparral plants in areas known as locations for food gathering indicates human planting activity. Since at least six different types of acorns were used by indigenous southern Californians, and since some types were more desirable than others, it is probable that acorn-eaters planted and otherwise encouraged the growth of the more desirable species. When Native Californians planted a desired type of oak tree among other kinds, new varieties of oak (hybrids) would eventually grow out of the biological union of the two (or more) varieties.14 While some twentieth-century anthropologists have recognized the aboriginal use of fire by Native Californians to foster certain types of plant growth while discouraging others, until recently, few have acknowledged 14 Ibid., 122-23. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. deliberate crop cultivation through plantings. It is quite possible that Luisenos and others broadcasted grass seed after areas were burned, and they might have planted corn when the grass-seed harvest threatened to be poor. Grass was a winter crop, with the seeds harvested in May or June. Following a very dry winter with insufficient grass- seed production, there was enough time to plant corn, normally planted between March and June. Thus, corn could substitute for grass seed if the latter were underproduc tive. Evidence for this practice includes the existence in southern California of seed corn from the region of the Pueblos (i.e., present-day Arizona and New Mexico) and instances of plantings in deliberate patterns, such as cactus forts. Luiseno and their neighbors traded for seed corn with the people of the Colorado River (Yuman and Cocopa) and farther east (Pueblos). Luisenos also took cuttings of plants and replanted them in desired locations. For instance, cactus cuttings were planted as boundaries between land owned by different families within a rancherla, or as "fortresses" that provided areas of protection during battles. Other plant cuttings, such as those used for medicine or those providing favored foods, were cultivated in family or individual gardens.1 5 15 Ibid., 87, 93, 119-21, 126-32. Burning for the purpose of encouraging growth of desired plants, or fire swidden, was one of the most important methods of plant cultivation for Native Californians. In addition, indigenous Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55 Viewing the Luisenos as agriculturalists (and traders, too) does not contradict their activity as hunters and gatherers. Rather, all these methods of survival indicate the adaptability of the Luisenos— both to their natural environment and to new knowledge. Like most Native Californian societies, the Luisenos found effective ways to survive well in a region of undependable rainfall and within social and geographic boundaries that limited territorial expansion. Their high population density was one sign of their ability to survive. Directly related to the methods Luisenos used to obtain plant and animal materials for all aspects of life were their concepts and practices concerning property peoples understood that many plants required periodic burning in order to thrive, which European American environmental managers (for instance, the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service) have only recently begun to understand. Among European American scholars, Stephen Pyne has been the most important in researching and writing about the environmental and social importance of fire worldwide. See, for example, his Fire in America.: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Princeton: Princeton University, 1982). For information about the role of natural and human-set fires, see several essays in Blackburn and Anderson, Before the Wilderness, including Henry T. Lewis, "Patterns of Indian Burning in California: Ecology and Ethnohistory," Jan Timbrook et al., "Vegetation Burning by the Chumash," and Helen McCarthy, "Managing Oaks and the Acorn Crop." In Southern California, indigenous basketweavers are among the most active in trying to restore knowledge about fire swidden. Some have been working with the U.S. Forest Service to reintroduce the practice of setting fires in "wilderness" areas in order to restore the natural balance of plants. Bev Ortiz, ed., "California Basketweavers Gathering June 28-30, 1991," News from Native California 6 (Winter 1991/92): 24, 26; Kat Anderson, "From Burns to Baskets," News from Native California 6 (Spring 1992): 22-23; "Progress Reports from the 1993 Gathering,” California Indian Basketweavers Association (September 1993): 10; Sonia Tamez, "Putting Promise into Practice: California Indians and the Forest Service" (presentation at the 9th California Indian Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, October 1993). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56 ownership and land use. In contradiction to the prevalent view that most aboriginal societies were communal and eschewed property ownership in the form of land, plants, and animals, the Luiseno had a highly developed sense of ownership that encompassed individual, family, and clan rights to land. (Their ownership practices extended to many other things, both tangible and intangible.) The Luiseno concept of land ownership before contact with Europeans was more like the latters1 than was that of many other Native Americans. However, it was not unique among indigenous groups within current U.S. boundaries. For instance, the Wampanoag of Massachusetts practiced inheritance of cleared parcels of land, used for growing corn and other vegetables, through the female line of descent. Among less agricultural peoples, such as the Algonkians, territory for trapping fur-bearing animals was also inherited.16 In general, the Luiseno principle of property ownership included an individual's, family's or clan's exclusive right to traverse and make use of the land and its products, which right could be extended to others only by explicitly giving permission. Thus, one family could 16 Peter Nabokov with Dean Snow, "Farmers of the Woodlands," 119- 45, in Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., ed., America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus (New York: Knopf, 1992), 127; Alice B. Kehoe, North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992), 238. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57 request permission to pick a type of plant from any area owned by another family. If the owners did not extend permission, and the first family harvested the plant from that area anyway, residents of the rancherla could choose from a number of serious punishments. In the case of members of one rancherla trespassing on the territory of another, a declaration of war was the typical response.17 In light of Luisenos1 land-use practices, the divergence in Spanish and Luiseno reports of the early interactions between the two groups becomes more understandable and revealing. According to Pablo Tac, a Luiseno neophyte (the missionaries1 term for indigenous people who adopted Catholicism) , Luisenos were prepared to attack the first party of missionaries and soldiers looking for a new mission site, for trespassing without permission. But the Luisenos were initially dissuaded by the threat of a company of soldiers following the advance party; later, after the Spaniards were allowed to rest at the site, they gave the Luiseno leader some gifts, persuading him to allow them to remain and view them as allies. This Luiseno leader ensured that the other people of his rancherla would remain at peace with the Spaniards. The missionaries never recognized their good fortune in 17 Shipek, "Strategy," 99-104, summarizes basic Luiseno concepts and practices of land ownership. White, "Luiseno," 122-30, discusses this topic in more detail, including the story of a war between Pauma and Pechanga Luisenos triggered by an incident of mistaken trespass. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58 befriending the Luisenos, whose neighbors viewed them as "dangerous and warlike." Tac remarks, "It was a great mercy that the [Luiseno] Indians did not kill the Spanish when they arrived, and very admirable, because they never wanted another people to live with them." In Tac's rendition, the Luisenos effected a truce with the Spaniards. The missionaries, though, believed that peace in the territory was due to the Luisenos1 "mildness, submissiveness, and humility, the effects of their pusillanimity and timidity."18 Not only land, but also knowledge was a form of property. Luisenos held learning and the perfection of knowledge in high regard; this helps explain their great curiosity and attraction to new kinds of information and methods of doing things. Knowledge was also power, and White translates the Luiseno term, ayelkvri, as "knowledge- power." Knowledge-power was as important to Luiseno survival and social organization as was land ownership because it prescribed how every activity in life would be done. Luisenos who had the most knowledge-power were also the leaders.19 18 Tac, Indian Life, 8; Bean and Shipek, "Luiseno," 550; Fr. Zephyrin Engelhardt, San Luis Rey Mission (San Francisco: James H. Barry, 1921), 24. 19 Shipek, "Strategy," 42-44. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ayelkvri helps explain why the Luiseno quickly appropriated new forms of knowledge from the Spanish (and later, from other Europeans and European Americans), In contrast to explanations that emphasize the role of the Spanish missionaries in teaching Luisenos and other Native Californians how to raise fruits and grains, construct buildings, and make various European-style tools and implements, ayelkwi explains how this transfer of knowledge might have occurred from the indigenous perspective. Luisenos planted and tended orchards, vines, grains and vegetables, and tended livestock for the San Luis Rey missionaries, and they continued doing so even after the mission system was dismantled in the 1830s. Luisenos expanded their land ownership, plant cultivation, and knowledge-power concepts and practices by including European methods. This incorporation of European knowledge came with a price, however. The Impact of the Missions on Luiseno Population and Land Tenure When Spanish missionaries and soldiers moved into Alta California beginning in 1769, they set in motion struggles for survival and power with the indigenous populations. At each Spanish mission, presidio, and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 pueblo, in each indigenous rancherla and territory, these struggles took somewhat different forms. At the missions of San Juan Capistrano and San Luis Rey, and in Luiseno territory, changes in Luiseno lifeways and land tenure resulted from Spanish imperial policies, the goals and methods of the Spanish missionaries, the spread of European diseases, the distribution of Luiseno population, and Luiseno lifeways and adaptations of Spanish ones. There are no records of outright resistance or rebellion by Luisenos, but revolts and passive forms of resistance by neighboring groups suggest that Luisenos, too, might not have acquiesced easily to Spanish domination. Since these factors have been presented in the writings of other historians and anthropologists, I will summarize them only briefly.20 The most salient point is The historiography of Spanish dominance over indigenous people in California is long and varied. In general, contemporary accounts written by European and American travelers and settlers in the early and mid-nineteenth century decry the slavery-like conditions under which indigenous people lived and worked at the missions but rarely report on relations between the mission padres and native people in villages away from the mission. Later nineteenth-century accounts by Americans, for instance, those by H.H. Bancroft, written after the secularization of the missions in 1831-1834, reflect the biases of the writers but also tend to be critical of the priests' treatment of native people. At the same time, though, a trend developed that completely exonerated the mission priests. Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel, Ramona., published in 1884, initiated this revision of mission history beginning in the late nineteenth century. The missions became the site of education, civilization, and support of the indigenous people. One of the great defenders of the missions was Father Zephyrin Engelhardt, who, in the early twentieth century, wrote a series of books on all of the California missions. One excellent and concise overview of these changing historiographical (and popular opinion) trends is the concluding chapter in David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier In North America (New Haven: Yale University, 1992). While this chapter covers historians of the entire Spanish frontier region (i.e., Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and California), Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61 that Luiseno life and social structure were greatly damaged by Spanish conquest; nonetheless, Luisenos a sizeable portion focuses on California historians since the state produced many historical interpretations of the mission and because the American originator of the influential "Borderlands school," Henry Eugene Bolton, was teaching and writing at the University of California at Berkeley from 1911 to 1953; see pages 353-356. Among scholars, anthropologists in the early twentieth century continued to criticize the impact of the mission system on indigenous people. But much of this work focused on the native peoples of northern California. Alfred L. Kroeber, the foremost anthropologist of Californians in the early twentieth century, dealt with the native people of far southern California only to a limited degree. Several other anthropologists published important works examining southern California during the same period, but only some of it analyzed the impact of the mission system. In the mid-twentieth century, the journalist Carey McWilliams and others initiated something of a backlash against the idyllic mission myth, still popular since Ramona.' s publication, but there was no groundswell of revision until the past twenty to thirty years. Now, the majority of historians are quite critical of mission fathers' treatment of indigenous people, and there is greater attention to the many ways that indigenous life was affected by the mission system. Some of the main sources of information about Native Californian life after the establishment of the missions, especially in the area governed by the San Luis Rey Mission from 1798 until about 1835, appears in various anthropological works published in the first half of the twentieth century. They include the following works: Much of Alfred L. Kroeber's work was summarized in his Handbook of the Indians of California, Bulletin 78 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1925). Raymond White was similarly important for his work on the Luisenos; in addition to the paper cited in note 2, above, see his earlier paper, "The Luiseno Theory of Knowledge," American Anthropologist 59 (1957): 1-19. Two versions of writings by Father Geronimo Boscana in the 1830s have been published, providing important first-hand reports of Luisenos: John P. Harrington, "A New Original Version of Boscana's Historical Account of the San Juan Capistrano Indians of Southern California," Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 92:4 (1934): 1-62; and P.T. Hanna, ed., Chinigchinich, a Revised and Annotated Version of Alfred Robinson's Translation of Father Geronimo Boscana's Historical Account of the Beliefs, Usages, Customs and Extravagancies of the Indians of the Mission of San Juan Capistrano Called the Acagchemen Tribe (Santa Ana, CA: Fine Arts, 1933). Early twentieth century scholarship published by the University of California, which influenced Raymond White and later researchers, includes Philip Stedman Sparkman, "The Culture of the Luiseno Indians," University of California Publications in American Archaelogy and Ethnology 8:4 (1908): 187-234; Constance DuBois, "The Religion of the Luiseno Indians of Southern California," 8:3 (1908): 69-186; Edward W. Gifford, "Clans and Moieties in Southern California," 14 (1918): 155-219. Also from the UC series is William Duncan Strong, Aboriginal Society in Southern California (Banning, CA: Malki Museum, 1972; reprint from UC Publications 26 [1929]). Additional important sources appear in other footnotes in this chapter. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62 survived in greater numbers than most other Native Californians who came under Spanish and Mexican control. The issue of Luiseno survival into the Mexican and American periods is an important one in later chapters of this dissertation, as Luiseno land rights, their work on ranches and farms, and their retention of some traditional cultural practices had a great impact on white settlement and the institution of white supremacy in the area. There are several possible explanations for the extent of Luiseno survival, including the following two: Luiseno society’s ability to absorb many foreign cultural and economic elements, and the policies of the leader of Mission San Luis Rey, Father Antonio Peyri. Beginning with the Royal Orders for New Discoveries in 1573, the Spanish monarchy, in concert with the Catholic Church's leadership, instituted a form of conquest of the people and territory they called New Spain (much of modern Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest and California) that relied more on missionaries and conversion to Christianity than on military means. While the Spanish Crown reinstituted the use of military force in 1772 in response to the "aggressions" of indigenous peoples in northern New Spain (Apaches, Comanches, and others) , missionaries predominated as the advance guard of Spanish rule in Alta California. When Russian designs on Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63 California became evident, the Spanish king decided to secure his hold on the territory. He ordered the Franciscans, already in Baja California, to move into Alta California, which they did beginning in 1769. Because of the close relationship between Spanish imperialism and Catholic expansionism, it is appropriate to call the creation of the missions in California a process of both secular and spiritual conquest.21 Spain recognized a number of factors necessary to secure its hold on new territories. First, Spain needed people to live there. The government relied on the conversion of indigenous peoples to Christianity and to Spanish "civilization" to accomplish this, especially in distant parts of its empire unattractive to Spanish settlers, such as northern New Spain. To make indigenous people into Spanish subjects, the missionaries worked to turn them into town-dwelling, agricultural people who adhered to Catholic beliefs and practices. (Of course, sometimes missionaries only had to worry about religious and cultural conversion since many indigenous peoples were already sedentary and agricultural.)22 21 Weber, Spanish Frontier, 95, 112, 215-20, 242-43; Douglas Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California, 1990), 20- 22. 22 Hubert Howe Bancroft, California Pastoral, 1769-1848, vol. 34 of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft (San Francisco: The History Company 1888), 66; Monroy, Thrown, 25-28. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64 Spanish conquest of indigenous peoples and territory took specific forms in Quechla, and even differed at the two missions there, San Juan Capistrano and San Luis Rey. The priests at Mission San Juan Capistrano followed the typical practice in California of moving many indigenes to the mission itself, while Father Antonio Peyri at San Luis Rey (who was the only chief administrator of that mission from its founding in 1798 until its secularization in 1832) , pursued an unusual policy of leaving most Luisenos living on their rancherias.23 Peyri's purpose in allowing many Luisenos to live outside the mission was to have a handy labor force without having to worry about feeding and controlling Luisenos at the mission. Peyri established an asistencia at Pala by 1810 and a few other mission outposts in San Luis Rey territory.24 He stationed cattle herds at various rancherias and made sure Luisenos knew how to grow important crops such as wheat and orchard fruits on their own land. Luiseno food production outside of the mission's immediate grounds was crucial in enriching Mission San 23 Shipek, "Strategy," 139; Engelhardt, San Luis Rey, 73. Mission San Diego, whose territory bordered Mission San Luis Rey's, followed an intermediate policy, dislocating a significant number of Kumeyaay and other indigenous people, but leaving some to live in their traditional rancherias. An asistencia was an outpost of a mission, typically consisting of a chapel surrounded by farming and grazing lands. Priests periodically traveled to asistencias and conducted religious services, including baptisms and marriages. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 65 Luis Rey. Periodically, Luisenos were brought to the mission for religious instruction, and important social and religious occasions, such as baptisms and marriages, occurred there.25 Peyri's policy resulted in the continued existence of many Luiseno villages; contributed to a smaller decline in the numbers of Luisenos, in comparison with other Native Californians living in mission-dominated territories; and also contributed to the dissemination of farming and livestock-raising techniques throughout Luiseno territory. Studies of Native Californian population decline under the mission system have noted lower death rates in the far southern missions than for those farther north, as Tables One and Two indicate. Mission San Luis Rey's indigenous death rate for adults and children was by far the lowest among all Native Californians living at missions. Only Mission San Fernando approached San Luis Rey's relatively low figures for both adult and child mortality, but all of the Southern California missions had lower mortality rates than those at the more northerly missions. 25 Engelhardt, San Luis Rey, 20, 22, 35, 41, 45, 51; Florence Connolly Shipek, Pushed Into the Rocks: Southern California Indian Land Tenure, 1769—1986 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1987), 20, 23-25. Mission San Luis Rey’s wealth was listed in the last report of the mission before it was secularized. One measure of its wealth was livestock, which numbered 26,000 head of cattle, 25,500 of sheep, 2150 horses, and 1750 goats, pigs and mules in 1831. Engelhardt, San Luis Rey, 80. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66 Table One Mortality Rates per 1000 at Five Southern California Missions, 1774-183 3 Selected Missions Adult Death Rate Child Death Rate San Diego 53 . 6 94. 0 San Luis Rey 26.9 57.5 San Juan Capistrano 41.5 145.5 San Fernando 44.7 78.8 San Gabriel 56. 3 121. 0 Source: Cook, The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization, Table 5, p. 442. Note: "Child" means 10 years of age or younger. Table Two Mean Death Rates Adults Children All Missions 61. 6 180.1 Five Southern Missions 44.6 103.2 Fourteen Central and Northern Missions 67.7 207.7 Sourcez Cook, Conflict, Table 5, p. 442. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Sherburne Cook notes that overall, death rates were lower at the missions in the southern part of California, with the mortality rate increasing as one travels north. Among the fourteen missions north of San Fernando studied by Cook (his study of mortality rates covered nineteen of the twenty-one Alta California missions), only two had adult death rates as low as those shown in the chart above, and only three had child mortality rates close to Mission San Juan Capistrano's, the worst among the southern missions. The difference in mortality between more northerly and the southern missions is most striking when the missions at the geographical extremes are compared. Mission San Diego's relatively high death rate for the southern region does not come close to Mission San Francisco Asis' horrifying rates of 128.4 per thousand for adults and 3 53.3 per thousand for children under ten years of age.26 Anthropologists have sought to explain San Luis Rey's figures and the pattern of lower death rates in the southern part of California. One possibility could be the late date of San Luis Rey's founding, twenty-four years 26 Sherburne Cook, The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization (Berkeley: University of California, 1976), 441, 443. The adult mortality rates at Missions San Miguel and San Antonio were 46.8 and 42.6 respectively. Outside of Southern California, the lowest child death rates were at Missions Santa Barbara (144.0), Santa Ynez (136.8), and San Miguel (143.4). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. into the period examined by Cook, but Cook1s study does not bear this out. While Mission San Fernando, with its relatively low death rate, was also founded in the middle of this period, and only a year before San Luis Rey, other missions with higher death rates were also founded late. These include Santa Ines (or Ynez), founded 1804; San Miguel Arcangel, 1797, and San Jose de Guadalupe, 1797. San Jose1 s death rate was second from the highest among the 19 missions Cook studied, with an adult death rate of 84.7 and a child death rate of 2 09.8. Cook ascribes the lower population declines in the south to environmental and genetic factors, but Shipek's more believable explanation is that survival rates were due to a combina tion of indigenous lifeways and mission fathers1 practices.27 Emphasizing the relatively low Luiseno population decline does not mean the death rate was objectively low, or that population decline had little impact on Luiseno life. White notes that Pablo Tac's estimate of about 5,000 Luisenos in 1798 indicates a serious loss of population since 1769, when there were probably as many as 10,000 Luisenos (plus an additional 3,000 Juanenos, whom White believed were a separate but closely related group to the 27 Cook, Conflict., 440-46; Bancroft, California. Pastoral, 198, 213; John. W. Caughey, California, A Remarkable State's Life History, 3d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 86; Shipek, "Strategy," 67-70, 76, 79, 112-13. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 69 Luisenos). By 1828, the combined number of Luisenos in the territories controlled by Missions San Luis Rey and San Juan Capistrano had declined to about 4,000.28 Studies show that the biggest indigenous population decline occurred before 1804, due to the greater impact of European diseases in the first decades after contact. With the creation of the main north-south overland route in California, the Camino Real in 1769-1770, travelers brought diseases into Luiseno territory. This dissemina tion of European pathogens continued when Luisenos traveled back and forth between rancherias and missions.29 But finally, after thirty-five years of contact, the Luisenos must have developed resistance to the most prevalent European diseases.30 Indigenous resistance to Spanish occupation took more active forms than increasing physiological immunity to diseases. Like African slaves in other parts of the Western Hemisphere, Native Californians resisted forced labor in several ways: by surreptitious resistance, by running away from missions; and by attacking mission 28Shipek, "Strategy," 271; Bean and Shipek, "Luiseno," 557-58. 29 White, "Luiseno," 98-99, 119; Shipek, "Strategy," 70. 30 There was, however, an outbreak of smallpox in Southern California that affected mainly indigenous people in 1862-1863. Richard L. Carrico, Strangers in a Stolen Land: American Indians in San Diego 1850-1880 (Sacramento, CA: Sierra Oaks, 1987), 57; Marjorie Tisdale Wolcott, ed., Pioneer Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes (Los Angeles: privately printed, 1929), 281—284. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 70 property and personnel. Surreptitious resistance included refusing to learn Spanish or appearing not to learn it, performing work poorly or slowly, and drawing traditional symbols on floors and other surfaces of mission buildings and property; it also included more aggressive forms of resistance, such as abortion and infanticide. Some Native Californians refused to participate in mission activities until they were forced to. For at least a year after Mission San Diego was founded (in 1769), for instance, no Kumeyaay was enrolled there.31 Violent opposition to the Spaniards occurred throughout California. In southern California, a few incidents stand out. In 1769 Kumeyaay attacked the band of missionaries and soldiers whose task it was to establish the first mission in Alta California, at San Diego. Kumeyaay resistance at Mission San Diego continued after they were forced into the mission: in 1775 a thousand Kumeyaay launched the first indigenous revolt in Alta California, burning the mission and killing the priest. 31 Duane Champagne, Native America: Portrait of the Peoples (Detroit: Invisible Ink, 1994), 307; Rupert Costo and Jeannette Henry Costo, Natives of the Golden State: The California Indians (San Francisco: Indian Historian, 1995), 173. Champagne uses the term "passive resistance" where I use "surreptitious resistance." I think his choice of "passive" is misleading. Neophytes who did their work too slowly or seemed to be refusing to learn, let alone killing a new-born infant or aborting a fetus, are hardly "passive" activities. Yet Champagne's classifying these activities together does reveal an underlying similarity: indigenous laborers at the missions had to accomplish these actions in great secrecy, often while under direct observation of mission priests or other personnel, and they created a difficulty for the Spaniards in determining what was really occurring. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 71 Other indigenous groups in Southern California also rebelled against Catholic Spanish rule shortly after missions were established. In 1781 Quechans along the Colorado River destroyed two settlements and missions established just a year earlier, and killed fifty-five Spaniards. As a result, Spaniards abandoned, for over forty years, what had been their only overland route from New Spain proper to California. At Mission San Gabriel, Toypurina, a female Kumi.vit shaman, led an uprising in 1785, but the Spaniards learned of the plan and thwarted it.32 None of the recorded incidents of violent revolt involved Luisenos. There are several possible explanations for this. First, just as the administration of Mission San Luis Rey seems to have resulted in the lowest mortality rates among all the Alta California missions, so too Father Peyri1s rule might have resulted in the Luisenos feeling less inclined to destroy the mission or kill the missionaries. If this was true, it might have been the outcome of Peyri's policy of moving relatively few Luisenos from their home territories and onto the mission 32 Champagne, Native America, 308; Costo and Costo, Natives of the Golden State, 173-74; Robert H. Jackson and Edward Castillo, Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1995), 74-80. Among these sources, Jackson and Castillo provide the most details about the revolts mentioned above, as well as others in California. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 72 grounds. Not only would such a policy have allowed the Luisenos much greater control over their lives, it also would have diluted the Spaniards' oppressive presence. A second reason for the Luisenos' apparently peaceful relations with the Spanish missionaries might have been the initial contact between the two groups. The Luisenos1 first encounter with the Spaniards, reported by Pablo Tac and summarized earlier in this chapter, indicates that the Luiseno leader's initial inclination to fight was transformed into an alliance. The priest gave the leader some gifts, "and in this manner [the priest] made him his friend.I|33 Finally, it is possible that rivalries among Native Californians might have influenced Luisenos1 relationship with the Spaniards. Tac stated that the Kumeyaay were the Luisenos' enemies.34 Perhaps the Luisenos believed that the enemies of their enemies could be their friends. Notwithstanding the lack of records of any Luiseno uprisings against Mission San Luis Rey, it is certain that Luisenos living at the mission were not entirely happy there. Tac reported that some neophytes at the mission were so hungry that they disobeyed orders not to enter the orchard or pick any fruits, an offense for which they 33 Tac, Indian Life, 8. 34 Ibid., 7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73 would, be punished. He also stated that Luisenos who did not finish their work each day would be punished.35 It difficult, though, to measure the Luisenos* dissatisfaction. There are, for instance, conflicting accounts of Luisenos' feelings when the mission was secularized, or removed from church control. One account, told by those sympathetic to the Catholic missions, describes the scene when Father Peyri left the mission and boarded a ship to return to Spain in 1832. Peyri left the mission secretly. When the neophytes "began to suspect the truth, five hundred on horseback hurried to San Diego in order to intercept and bring him back; but they arrived only in time to receive his blessing, which he imparted to them from the rear of the ship as it sailed out of the harbor." Other accounts, told by Californios who supported dismantling the missions, claimed that Peyri took large sums of money belonging to the mission when he left, and that the Luisenos who followed him knew that he had stolen from them.36 Whatever the Luisenos1 reactions to mission rule, it is clear that their social structure was greatly disrupted due to population decline and incorporation into the economic, social and spiritual organization of life under 35 Ibid., 11, 13. 36 Englehardt, San Luis Rey, 80-82; Wolcott, Notes, 141. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 74 Mission San Luis Rey. One serious disruption was the partial collapse of the Luiseno territorial system based on rancherias. Spanish explorers and missionaries in the late 1700s and early 1800s noted the existence of many villages, some "very large," some "large," and some small.37 But after the missions were closed and the neophyte populations disbursed in the 1830s, many ancestral rancherias had lost so many residents that some amalgamated together, and others simply ceased to exist. Returning clan members might have had to move to the rancher la of a neighboring clan, and so might not have had any land. The disappearance of some rancherias and the impoverishment of landless Luisenos within "foreign" rancherias led European and European American travelers and settlers later in the nineteenth century to question the accuracy of the earlier Spanish reports about the prevalence of indigenous villages, especially because of the "landless but seemingly important families" the settlers noticed. In addition, there seemed to be "loose relationships among wandering groups," which "suggested Tac, Indian Life, 8-10; Engelhardt, San Luis Rey, 3-8, excerpts some of the accounts by Fr. Mariner and Ensign Grijalva, who explored the region between Missions San Diego and San Juan Capistrano in order to choose a good location for a mission midway between the two places. They list the names of dozens of rancherias, several of which were in the area that later constituted the grounds of Mision San Luis Rey and Rancho Guajome. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that the population had always been quite small." The result of these observations was to obscure "the old fundamental rancherias, based upon well-defined territories with autonomous . . . populations,"38 as well as to reinforce European American ideas about the primitiveness and poverty of Native Californians. Labor, Knowledge and Land Use under Mission San Luis Rey A number of factors other than population decline disrupted the Luiseno social structure and affected land use and the organization of work. These changes prepared Luisenos not only to work for the missionaries, but also for work they would do later, after the missions were dismantled. The missionaries taught the Luisenos new ways of doing some things the Luisenos had always done, as well as completely new skills and "cultural complexes" that went along with a Spanish way of life. At its most basic, the Luiseno way of life changed from one that relied on a mixture of hunting, gathering, and plant cultivation, with the first two dominating, to a way of life with plant cultivation and animal husbandry dominating, and hunting 38 White, "Luiseno," 101-02. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76 and gathering decreasing in importance over time.39 These changes in methods of survival generated changes in other aspects of life. For example, sheep-raising was surrounded by a whole cultural complex, involving caring for the sheep, eating mutton, clipping the sheeps' wool, spinning it into yarn, and weaving and knitting it into clothes and blankets.40 Other new agricultural practices included "plowing, making alcoholic beverages, processing olives, pruning fruit trees by cutting as opposed to fire pruning, and constructing raised flumes and mechanisms such as pulleys to draw water from wells." These new practices required much more time and labor than had aboriginal agricultural and plant gathering methods, and so changes occurred in the schedule of daily labor. Similar changes occurred with the introduction of domesticated animals, and their care and the transformation of animal products into useful objects and foods for the Luisenos and Spaniards. In addition, through the production of beef hides and tallow, the Luisenos became linked into the world market system. In adopting these practices, the Luisenos incorporated into their lives "a complement of eighteenth-century, Spanish-Mexican working-class culture," including the 39 Ibid., 99. 40 Shipek, "Strategy," 140. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77 rhythms of a regulated work day.41 Later settlers in the region depended on and enriched themselves through such skills and cultural adaptations of the Luisenos and other Native Californians. The priests also created a labor hierarchy, with indigenous Californians at the bottom. As Tac describes it, the Father is like a king. He has his pages, alcaldes, majordomos, musicians, soldiers, gardens, ranchos, livestock, horses by the thousand, cows, bulls by the thousand, oxen, mules, asses, 12,000 lambs, 200 goats, etc. The pages are for him and for the Spanish and Mexican, English and Anglo- American travelers. The alcaldes to help him govern all the people of the Mission of San Luis Rey de Francia. . . . Soldiers so that nobody does injury to Spaniard or to Indian . . . .42 While the missionaries always stated that they had taken oaths of poverty, and that all the wealth of the missions belonged to the neophytes and the King of Spain, Tac cut through this rhetoric to state, simply, who really owned and controlled the wealth and labor at the mission. Assisting the mission priest, who was Spanish, might be another Spanish priest and a Spanish majordomo, or overseer. Far below these educated Spaniards were poor Spanish and Mexican soldiers, who provided the military force, and the Native Californian alcaldes and laborers. 41 Ibid., 143-45. 42 Tac, Indian Irife, 14. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 78 The alcaldes at Mission San Luis Rey were all Luiseno men and had a number of responsibilities: They traveled to the rancherias to tell the residents of special work needing to be done at the mission or at the rancherias; they worked alongside the overseers to make sure the Luiseno laborers did the work properly, and "to hurry them if they are lazy, . . . and to punish the guilty or lazy one who leaves his plow and quits the field keeping on with his laziness." The alcaldes were generally chosen from the ranks of Luiseno leaders or leading families.43 Just as some Luiseno leaders modified their roles to become alcaldes, the role of knowledge in Luiseno society also took on a dual aspect. Luisenos lost a great amount of knowledge, while also gaining a great amount. Ayelkwi was so important to Luisenos, that some voluntarily came to the missions to learn about new things. In this way, new agricultural practices spread quickly throughout Luiseno territory, even to rancherias distant from the missions and asistencias. But Luisenos lost much knowledge about aboriginal plant cultivation and harvesting tech niques because their territory was "used more intensively than that of neighboring tribes" by Spaniards and Mexicans; in contrast, the Cahuilla and Kumeyaay, whose contact with Spaniards and Mexicans was much more limited, 43 Ibid., 13, 14. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79 retained many more aboriginal land-use practices into the early twentieth century.44 The Luisenos1 gains and losses were neither •'good1 1 nor "bad." The one sure result was that, as waves of settlement occurred in the region, Luisenos would succeed as farmers, livestock owners, cowboys and farmhands. At the same time, though, when the Luisenos were later pushed off their land, the decline in their knowledge of the natural environment, combined with substantial changes in that environment, must have made it more difficult for them to survive. Due to Luiseno population decline, ecological change, and the compulsion to maintain secrecy about all specialized knowledge except with individuals chosen to learn about it, some ayelkwi was modified or lost. If a specialist died before teaching his/her knowledge to someone else, or if the educational process was unfinished, the community lost that set of information. Or a student might try to practice what he/she had only partially learned before a specialist's death; if the attempt was unsuccessful, he/she would probably abandon any further use of the knowledge, but if the attempt was successful, the student would repeat the practice, "even if it were not his[/her] teacher's full sequence," thereby modifying the ayelkwi. Ecological change also affected the 44 Shipek, "Strategy," 93-95. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 80 preservation of knowledge: as introduced crops and livestock replaced native species, the knowledge that went along with human exploitation of that plant or animal decreased in importance, leading the specialist to practice that ayelkwi less, and to be less probable to teach it to someone else. In this way, changing agricultural practices caused ecological changes, which then affected Luisenos1 knowledge about native plants and animals. This process, along with the Luisenos1 cultural predilection to learn about new things, hastened and deepened their incorporation of European modes of survival and their decreasing reliance on aboriginal modes.45 Transition from Mission Society to Rancho Society When the missions were established in California, one goal of the priests was to "civilize" the native peoples sufficiently so that in ten years, there would no longer be a need for the missions. Once "civilized," the people were supposed to become the owners of the mission lands and of a share of the materials and artifacts they had produced. 45 Ibid., 42-42. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 81 After the Mexican war for independence ended in 1821, the new government gave formal recognition to the ideas that the land of Alta California belonged mainly to the native peoples, and that native peoples had been virtually enslaved by missionaries. At the same time, the new government wanted to limit the political and economic power of the Catholic Church. The Mexican government sought to accomplish both of these goals by the twin policies of secularization and emancipation. As a new nation, Mexico quickly implemented laws that increased individual rights while decreasing the rights and power of the Catholic Church. A law ordering the secularization of the missions was already in effect when Mexico won its independence from Spain, and the new government retained it. Secularization was a form of separation of church and state: it would make missions into voluntary organizations, supported by their members and would return mission lands and other property to the indigenous people who had labored on them. In addition, between 1822 and 1829, social status based on racial or national background and slavery were both abolished, and indigenous people were granted citizenship.A6 David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier 1821-1846: The American Southwest under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1982), 45-47; Haas, Conquests, 3-4, 32-42. See Haas's discussion of historians' lack of attention to emancipation and the important connections between it and secularization. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82 The Catholic Church’s representatives in California blocked the implementation of Mexican secularization and emancipation decrees until the 1830s; they were able to accomplish this because California was so distant from the government bureaucracy in Mexico City. Alta California during the Mexican period (1821-1846) was virtually self- governing, and the Catholic Church retained great power in the region despite the Mexican government's efforts to limit its power throughout the new republic.47 While secularization eventually succeeded in breaking the power of the Catholic Church in California, it did not return land and property to Native Californians. The Mexican governors of Alta California during the 183 0s and 1840s granted little land to neophytes or other Native Californians. Instead, most of the land that could be used for livestock grazing and agriculture throughout California, including that of Mission San Luis Rey, was granted to Californios and Anglos who were Mexican citizens.48 Following secularization, most Luisenos living at San Luis Rey left the immediate mission area to return to their villages, such as Pala and Pauma. 47 Bancroft, California Pastoral, 623. 48 The literature on the secularization of the missions in Alta California and the issue of land grants to Native Californians is voluminous. Among the most important works are Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, 7 vols. (San Francisco: History Co., 1884) and Bancroft, California Pastoral; Sherburne F. Cook, The Conflict Between; David J. Weber, Mexican Frontier. Douglas Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 123-26, briefly summarizes the important points. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 83 Secularization law decreed that these villages be recognized as entities separate from rancho land grants, and the rancheros generally respected this. The new divisions of land in Mexican Alta California, resulting in the beginnings of a settler society, and Native Californians1 reactions, are described in subsequent chapters. Conclusion Luisenos and other Native Californians lost some land to the Spanish missions in the early stages of European conquest and settlement, but Luisenos retained the right of occupancy and use of much of their territory. Despite their taking formal ownership of Luiseno land, Spanish missionaries rarely pushed Luisenos off of their land because they needed a steady, close supply of labor. In addition, the missions relied heavily on livestock, which left open and relatively unused vast areas of mission- claimed lands. Even though livestock raising greatly altered the ecology of the region, it did not lead to the wholesale dispossession of indigenous peoples in southern California. The missions, and especially Mission San Luis Rey, were the first stage of European conquest of Native California, but they were not the initiators of white Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 84 settlerism. Nonetheless, the missions laid the basis for the settler societies, Californio and Anglo American, that came in subsequent decades. The Spanish conquest of southern California and the establishment of the missions in the region had devastating effects on the indigenous populations. Deaths from diseases and other causes led to severe population decline, which in turn caused serious dislocations of the entire social structure of Luiseno and other Native Californian societies. As this was happening, mission priests imposed new forms of work, new daily rhythms of life, and new systems of knowledge. Most important, indigenous Californians lost much of their independence as peoples and became the new labor force for the missions. For the Luisenos, these disruptions were moderated by several factors. One was Father Peyri's policy of leaving many Luisenos to live in their ancestral territories, bringing only a limited number into the mission itself. Another was Luisenos1 predilection to acquire and incorporate new knowledge. While little is known about Luiseno resistance to Spaniards, indigenous peoples in Southern California opposed in various ways the Spanish invasion, occupation, and imposition of forced labor. It is very possible that the Luisenos resisted in ways that were not as dramatic as Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 85 the Kumeyaay, Quechan or Kumi.vit did, and so Luisenos1 resistance might not have been recorded. Missions in Alta California acted as the advance guard of Spanish colonial society. The missions helped Spain hold California against the incursions of the Russians and other European powers. But Alta California was too far and too isolated from the centers of Spanish population in Mexico to attract much interest from Spanish or Mexican settlers or adventurers. Because of this, settlement in California by Europeans or Mexicans was slow to occur, and this was even more true in far southern California than in portions farther north, such as around the capital at Monterey. The missions, then, occupied portions of indigenous land but affected indigenous life more by using Native Californians as laborers than by taking their land. While the Spanish Crown gave to itself the ultimate legal ownership of all land it gained through conquest, in southern California this meant that the mission priests and their small garrisons of soldiers used Native Californian land but did not, for the most part, take it from indigenous people. And while the priests never adhered to Spanish law and Church doctrine to return land and property to Native Californians once they were Christianized and "civilized,1 1 neither did they practice Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 86 wholesale dispossession of indigenous peoples in order to get their land. The missions were not primarily "settlements,1 1 created to attract new Spanish populations, but rather, were created to transform the indigenous populations. What the Spanish priests needed most from Native Californians, and what they took by force when necessary, was their labor. In training Native Californians to perform all the manual labor necessary to sustain life in Spanish fashion, the Spanish mission system laid the basis for the soon-to-be-realized racial labor hierarchy of the rancho period. Neither Spanish nor Mexican dominance produced the wholesale expropriation of indigenous land that characterized later, American settlement of the region. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 87 CHAPTER TWO WHITE SUPREMACY IN RANCHERO SOCIETY 1840-1870 Introduction When Cave Johnson Couts married Ysidora Bandini in 1851, he was one of the last in a series of Anglo and Anglo American men who eagerly assimilated into Californio society. These men accepted the existing racialized class hierarchy in southern California: "indios" (Indians) comprised the working class, and "blancos" (whites— whether Anglo Americans, Spaniards or European Mexicans) were the "gente de razon" ("people of reason," or Christians) who were also almost always the land-owning elite. For a brief period, from the 183 0s until the 1870s, this white racial alliance along class and national lines prevailed, perpetuating the dominance of whites over Indians that had begun in the mission period. In contrast to men like Couts, contemporary Anglo American visitors to the region were equally prejudiced against Californios, Mexicans and Native Californians.1 1 As I explain in the Introduction to the dissertation, ethnic and racial terminology can be confusing, especially when it has to cover a transitional period like the one described in this chapter. To review, "Californio" refers to people of Mexican or Spanish background living in California during the Spanish, Mexican and early United States periods. "Californiana" is the feminine form. When writing in general about Mexican citizens or migrants, I use the term Mexican. I use the term "Anglo American" to distinguish people from the United States from those of Spanish descent, since both groups Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 88 In the context of United States history during the mid-nineteenth century, Californio and American rancheros exhibited a rare racial unity, in contrast to widespread white American racism against Mexicans. Many white Americans at that time viewed Mexicans as non-whites and inferior to whites. Beginning in the 1830s, as Americans moved into the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas and then created the Texas Republic, the belief that white Americans were "Anglo-Saxons1 1 gained in popularity. White Americans put forth an Anglo Saxon racial identity, in contrast to the Mexican mixed-blood identity, which white Americans deemed inferior because of the mixture of Indian and sometimes African blood with the Spanish. An important sign of Mexican inferiority was the nation's supposedly inefficient use of its land.2 In the United States in the 1840s public opinion grew in favor of fighting Mexico in order to gain all or some of its territory. The prize of more land urged Americans could correctly be called "European Americans" and "whites" (which are the terms I use in most of the dissertation) . "Anglo" refers to people (virtually all men) who came to California from Great Britain. "Native Californian" refers to the indigenous people. I have chosen generally not to italicize or underline Spanish words. 2 Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1981), 208-210, 237-38; David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas, 1987), 24. See David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier 1821-1846: The American Southwest under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1982), 383, for additional works on anti-Mexican sentiment among Anglo Americans in the early and mid-nineteenth century. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 89 on, and the example of American Indians' two-century decline due to European and American warfare, dislocation and disease assured some whites that they need not worry much about Mexican survival. As Sam Houston, the father of the Texas Republic, said in 1848, "'The Mexicans are not better than Indians, and I see no reason why we should not go in the course now, and take their land.'"3 In Southern California, though, in the 1820s through 1840s, while Anglo Americans moved to the region to gain land and wealth, they accomplished this more by marrying into landowning Californio families and assimilating into ranchero society than by establishing a separate and antagonistic white society, as happened in Texas. The period of the Couts-Bandini marriage, from 1851 until Cave's death in 1874, saw the transition from Mexican to Anglo American dominance. This shift maintained but modified the hierarchy of white supremacy in certain ways. Even though California was part of the United States, and Anglo Americans quickly achieved dominance in northern California, social and economic change progressed slowly in the "cow counties" of the south. During the 1850s local political power remained in the hands of Californios and assimilated Anglo Americans while the ranching economy and society continued almost unchanged, 3 Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 238-43; Houston quoted in Horsman, 243. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 90 as did the social class hierarchy established originally by Spanish missionaries and then adopted by rancheros in the 1830s and 1840s. The familial and business relationships of the previous decades bolstered the Californios of rural southern California against impending changes, until Anglo American dominance was fully established in the 1870s and 1880s.4 Land ownership was the primary basis of privilege and power during the Mexican period (1822-1848) and the early Anglo American period (1848-1870) . Californios, Anglo Americans and Anglos acquired land, mainly through land grants, but also through purchase and trade. Because of the large size of their land grants and the work of maintaining herds of livestock and raising much of their own food, rancheros required a large labor force. Workers on southern California ranchos were almost all Native Californians during the Mexican and early Anglo American periods. At the same time land was the basis of rancheros* economic, social and political power, which propelled them to maintain and deepen the racialized class hierarchy begun under the missions. 4 Albert Camarillo, in Chlcanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University,1979), 3, 51-52, comes to a similar conclusion about this transitional period. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 91 Native Californians' land ownership was rarely formalized as land grants, but in northern San Diego County, continuing the tradition estabished under Mission San Luis Rey, indigenous groups were generally allowed to remain living in their traditional villages and territories. These locales were often contained within or bordered land grants. This was a beneficial arrangement for the rancheros since it ensured them a local labor supply and relative peace in the region. What these patterns of land ownership and labor relations indicate is that the dominant class of rural southern California— Anglo American and Californio rancheros— jointly established white supremacy by applying general principles to local, material conditions. Spanish and Mexican traditions of class and racial divisions provided the general principles. Even though Anglo Americans played important social and economic roles in the region, they set aside, for the most part, the dominant black-white racial hierarchy of the eastern United States and adopted the Californio system. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 92 Class, Nationality and Early Constructions of "Whiteness" After Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, migrants from numerous national and ethnic backgrounds settled in Alta California and adopted Mexican citizen ship. Men such as Juan Bandini and Abel Stearns were Mexican in their chosen national affiliation, but identified themselves as Californios, rather than as Mexicans. While they shared an identification with the region, their national backgrounds were different: Stearns was from Massachusetts, born of English parents, and Bandini was from the Spanish colony of Peru, born to parents who had recently emigrated from Spain and were descended from Italians. Bandini became a Mexican citizen after arriving in California sometime in the 1820s from Peru. Stearns became a Mexican citizen in 1828 while sojourning in Mexico City; he moved permanently to California in 1829.5 What bound Stearns and Bandini together and benefitted them both, more than their regional or cultural 5 The actual date that Juan Bandini arrived and remained permanently in California is not known. He may have arrived as early as 1819, but probably did not arrive, and certainly did not remain, in California until the 1820s. He first appeared in public life in 1827. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft, 1885), 3: 36; Hubert Howe Bancroft, Register of Pioneer Inhabitants of California 1542-1848, comp, and ed. Glen Dawson and Muir Dawson from vols. 2-5, History of California (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1964), "Bandini, Juan"; "Stearns, Abel." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. affiliation, was their class. Stearns had a close working relationship with Juan Bandini, which doubtlessly led to his marriage to Arcadia, one of Bandini's daughters. Stearns became a wealthy man by going into business with Bandini; a result of this business relationship was Stearns1 acquisition of his large ranchos and Californiana wife (with her attendant familial and social connections).6 Bandini, for his part, built on his family's wealth and became a successful ranchero with several beautiful daughters; his economic success led to his business and family alliances with Stearns. Later, as Anglo Americans began to dominate economically, socially and politically in the region after California became part of the United States, many of Bandini's descendants would have fallen on even harder times than they did if they had not also been descendants of the Anglo American Stearns. Anglo American settlers in Mexican California, along with many of the Californios themselves, emphasized the Spanish background of the elite Californios; this, by extension, made them Europeans, rather than Mexicans. For American rancheros, this categorization went against the 6 Stearns' life as a Californio is summarized in Douglas Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture In Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California, 1990), 156-175. While Monroy, 161, describes Stearns and Bandini's relationship as being warm and close— an analysis with which I agree— Leonard Pitt emphasizes Stearns' domination of Bandini. Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (Berkeley: University of California, 1966), 115. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 94 popular trend in much of the United States of viewing Mexicans as inferior and racially "Other." In racial terms, the Californios constructed themselves as white rather than mestizos, and elite Americans adopted the terminology and social relations of the Californios. Men like Stearns, Douglas Monroy concludes, "ignored their own culture1s proscriptions about such racial mixing and entered into Californio society through kinship ties."7 Stearns and other Anglo Americans, in fact, did more than "ignore" the dominant racial thinking in the United States— they participated in constructing and maintaining racial categories in California that followed Mexican patterns rather than North American ones, with class background being the defining factor: wealthy, politically and socially well connected Californios were white. While most blancos in southern California were of European descent with little if any admixture of indigenous or African ancestry, there is evidence that elite mixed-blood Mexicans were also considered "white." For instance, Pio Pico, a prominent southern Californian and the last governor of Alta California, was of mixed race.8 In addition, whiteness in Mexico was a much more 7 Monroy, Thrown, 160. 8 Weber, Mexican Frontier, 214; Richard B. Rice, William A. Bullough, and Richard J. Orsi, The Elusive Eden: A New History of California, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 512; see photograph of Pico in Monroy, Thrown, 137, among other works. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 95 relative category than in the United States: wealthy Mexicans could buy "whiteness." In Mexico non-elite men could acquire wealth and property through land owning and mining; one result was that mixed-race men and women, who were a large portion of the population, and who were also "gente de razon," could be accepted as the racial equals of the criollos (Mexicans of Spanish-only ancestry). In the United States, in contrast, wealthy non-whites could not buy whiteness (unless they physically appeared to be white). In southern California, where the elite had only recently come into existence through their land grants, the race and class divisions were especially fluid. That is, the new elite of southern California, the rancheros, often came from non-elite backgrounds; if they were originally Mexican, they were sometimes from a racially mixed background.9 Racism towards Native Californians, while based in part on long-standing American views of non-whites— Native David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University, 1992), 326-328, 330; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 214; Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850- 1890: A Social History (Berkeley: University of California, 1979), 10; Monroy, Thrown, 135-136; Antonio Maria Osio, The History of Alta California: A Memoir of Mexican California, trans. and ed. Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1996), 5; James Lockhart, "Social Organization and Social Change in Colonial Spanish America," in Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, 2: 271, 278, 286, 288 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1984). Ramon Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went A way: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1991), 193-206, 285-292, has a detailed discussion of mestizaje in New Mexico. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 96 Americans and African Americans— in other parts of the country, was also strongly influenced by Spanish and Mexican attitudes and practices. In most of the rest of the United States and its territories in the mid nineteenth century, white Americans generally viewed indigenous peoples as obstacles to westward expansion, land acquisition and settlement; in Mexico, on the other hand, they were seen mainly as a source of labor power. In many ways the distinction between American and Mexican views of indigenous peoples is based on a combination of popular prejudice and the much greater use of European and African labor in the United States. Indigenous labor has, in fact, been an important but relatively unstudied component of production throughout North America. But in few regions in the nineteenth century did European Americans make as much use of indigenous labor for as long a time as in Southern California.10 In southern 10 For discussions of Native American labor, see Alice Littlefield and Martha C. Knack, eds., Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996). Littlefield and Knack make their argument in the first essay, pages 3-44; eight of the remaining ten essays study specific indigenous groups or regions. For discussions of Native Californians as laborers after the mission period, see Richard L. Carrico and Florence C. Shipek, "Indian Labor in San Diego County, California, 1850-1900," 198-217, in Littlefield and Knack; Jack D. Forbe3, Native Americans of California and Nevada, rev. ed. (Happy Camp, California: Naturegraph, 1982), 51, 53, 55, 62, 70, 73, 78-79, 84, 86; Richard L. Carrico, Strangers in a Stolen Land: American Indians in San Diego, 1850-1880 (Sacramento, CA: Sierra Oaks, 1987), especially Chapters III and IV; Albert L. Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier (New Haven: Yale University, 1988), especially Chapters 3, 6, 8; James J. Rawls, Indians of California: The Changing Image (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1984), Part II; John Walton Caughey, ed., The Indians of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. California rancheros needed indigenous labor and had plenty of surplus land, so they made sure that the local Native Californian population lived close to the ranchos, often in their ancestral territory, rather than forcibly removing them, as had been and was still being done throughout most of the United States and its territories. In the countryside, elite Americans and Californios seldom came into contact with poor, non-landowning Californios because few lived outside of towns before the mid-1860s. The working class of the area was indigenous. In contrast, in the urban areas, where the greater number of working-class Californios lived, Americans strongly reinforced the social division between elite and poor Mexicans. Equality in social status characterized Anglos and Mexican Californios in rural areas, especially in San Diego County, which had fewer working-class Mexicans than other parts of California, at the same time that the native population was larger and more assertive than in many other parts of the state.1 1 These social relations lasted until the influx of American settlers beginning in Southern California In 1852, by B. D. Wilson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1995), 16, 20-23, 60; Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936 (Berkeley: University of California, 1995), 35-36, 43, 62-63; Monroy, Thrown, 101-02, 151- 52, 184-88, 192-94; Robert F. Heizer, ed., The Destruction of California Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1974), Chapters 5 and 6. 11 Camarillo, Chicanos, 105; George Harwood Phillips, Chiefs and Challengers: Indian Resistance and Cooperation in Southern California (Berkeley: University of California, 1975), 5, 23-28. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 98 the 1870s, who lacked the earlier, egalitarian relations with landowning Californios, and solidified a new racial distinction between people of Mexican descent and white Americans.12 From today's perspective, it is interesting to see how integrated class and race were. While visitors like Richard Henry Dana, who traveled to California in the 1830s, made patronizing and derogatory comments about Californios,13 Anglos and Anglo Americans who moved to southern California in this period, in contrast, chose to assimilate into Californio society. These men almost always married into elite Californio families, became business partners with their fathers-in-law or other friends or family members, learned Spanish, and relished the ranchero lifestyle. Many of these Anglos and Anglo Americans arrived in California, a sparsely settled frontier outpost in the The small number of whites in San Diego County through 1S70 is demonstrated by United States census figures. For instance, in 1860, ten years after statehood, there were only 1249 whites in the county, compared to 9221 in Los Angeles County, and out of a statewide white population of over 300,000. By 1870 the white population of San Diego County had quadrupled, to 4838 persons. Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1860, Vol. 1, Population (Washington, D.C., GPO: 1864), 22-23; Bureau of the Census, Ninth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1870, Vol. 1, Population (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1872) 15. 13 Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast (New York: Airmont, 1965); David J. Weber, "'Scarce More than Apes': Historical Rights of Anglo-American Stereotypes of Mexicans in the Border Region," in Myth and the History of the Hispanic Southwest (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1988), 153-154; Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 233-234. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1830s through early 1850s, via other, more economically vital parts of Mexico proper. They were seeking their fortunes outside of the United States and were willing to convert their citizenship and lifestyles in order to prosper. Their appreciation of the rancheros1 culture stood in opposition to the reactions of visitors like Dana who had no interest in establishing himself in a non-Anglo society. The men who did make this change, Abel Stearns being one of the first and Cave Couts one of the last, adapted their cultural and racial attitudes to their local, material interests, differing sharply from those Americans who derided the mestizo and Catholic Californio society. Men of Anglo descent were not the only ones to criticize the Californios. Jose Bandini, Juan's father, wrote a description of southern California in 1828, expressing some of the same impatience with Californios as visitors like Dana did. He criticized the Californios— Mexicans— for failing to develop the potential of the region, a potential that he, as a European, could clearly see. Jose Bandini remarked critically on the scarcity of money, a sign of the lack of enterprise in the region, which he blamed on the missions1 monopoly on land and trade. The mission fathers could develop the local economy by producing "flax, wine, olive oil and other crops" in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 100 larger quantities for export, but they were content to "cultivate only for their own bare needs and nothing for export." The general population of whites were also content to just raise cattle and a few crops for their own use; Bandini knew of no Californian "who follows a trade." Like a series of European and American visitors, Bandini complained that the men were lazy and burdened women with most of the work to sustain the households.14 Jose Bandini pitied the indigenous people for their treatment under the mission system but thought they, too, had no positive qualities: "the Indians are naturally dirty and lazy, their heritage is misery, ignorance and stupidity."15 Juan Bandini held more enlightened views of Native Californians than his father's. Rather than ascribe negative qualities to them as his father had, Juan blamed political and church leaders: "'The neglect of the supreme government, the indifference of local governors, and the contempt and sinister views of the padres have prevented the advance of the Indians, and reduced them to vice and servility. • "16 14 "The First Complete Description of California Written by a Layman, made in 1827 by Capt. Don Jose Bandini,” TMS [translated], letter to Senor Enstaguio [Eustace] Barron, 28 December 1828, SG 4 (21) . 15 "First Complete Description." 16 Quoted in Hubert Howe Bancroft, California. Pastoral, 1769- 1848, vol. 34 of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft (San Francisco: The History Company, 1888), 438. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 101 To some extent, Cave Couts brought the racial attitudes of the U.S. South with him to San Diego County. Couts was comfortable with slavery, having grown up in a plantation household in Tennessee. He had no trouble adapting the Southern plantation labor model to southern California, in large part because the mission priests and rancheros had already established an economic model similar to plantation slavery. While the labor system of the missions was based on the labor of indigenous people rather than African Americans, it was similar to U.S. plantation society in having a white owning class and a non-white class of unfree laborers. Couts1 elite family background did not ensure him a position of wealth and prestige in Tennessee; however, unlike some other Americans, he also had no intention of seeking his fortune in California. As a younger son of a small planter, he would not have inherited much of his father's property.17 His entry into West Point Military Academy might have been a means for him to acquire a career, or he may simply have been following in the military-service footsteps of his father and uncle, Cave 17 Couts' father and his plantation fell into the "small planter" category: the plantation covered 268 acres, and the Couts family owned about fifteen slaves. After the deaths of Couts' father and mother, Couts' brothers still living in Tennessee sold off most of the slaves, and two brothers bought the plantation. Gary B. Nash, et al., The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, 2d ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), 387; J. F. Couts to Cave Johnson Couts, 23 November 1855 and 10 September 1855, CT 406. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 102 Johnson, after whom he was named. (Johnson went on to a political career, serving a total of seven terms in the U.S. Congress, among other political positions.) There is little evidence that Couts aspired to a military career: he harshly criticized his superior officers, even though he had graduated from West Point ranked thirty-seven out of thirty-nine in his class, certainly not a record to be proud of. Couts resigned his army commission soon after marrying Ysidora Bandini. Couts also did not want to go to California; he would have preferred to have remained in the Mexican city of Monterrey, in Nuevo Leon, where he was stationed from 1847 until mid-1848 (as part of the U.S. army of occupation following the end of the U.S.-Mexico war) . But Couts and the company he commanded were ordered to march to California, "to strengthen the slender U.S. garrison in the newly conquered province of Upper California.1118 Couts described with great pleasure much of his stay in northern Mexico, especially in the cities of Monterrey and Chihuahua. He admired some aspects of Mexican society and economy, at the same time approving of American inroads into the country and believing that Mexico would be better off under United States rule. 18 Henry F. Dobyns, ed., Hepah, California.I The Journal of Cave Johnson Couts from Monterey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico to Los Angeles, California during the Years 1848—1849 (Tucson: Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society, 1961), 1-2, 9, 12, 98. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 103 Couts' descriptions of his encounters with Mexicans of different classes and his comments about the soldiers and officers in the army companies he traveled with show his views on the interconnection of race and class position, as well as on gender relations. His journal entries indicate that he did not judge other people strictly by racial and national categories. It is possible that his many encounters with different types of Mexicans during his stay in Mexico and the long journey to California could have made him more willing than other travelers to the state to accept and admire Californio society. Couts remarked neutrally or favorably on many of the wealthy landowners who provided campgrounds, entertain ment, and food for the army. The U.S. Army officers, ♦ including Couts, were often quartered and entertained separately from the soldiers, affording Couts ample opportunity to observe the elite of various communities. The governor of Chihuahua, General Trias, for instance, was "a perfect gentleman, good and sociable companion, loves a frolic and always ready for one."19 But Couts did not give his approval to all upper- class Mexicans, particularly in matters relating to sexual conduct and gender relations. In reaction to what Couts 19 Ibid., 29. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 104 perceived as the sexual license of Mexicans, he remarked, "The degradation and demoralization in Chihuahua, in all classes., is beyond description.1 1 He claimed that even the parents of the upper class "consider it a great compliment and feel highly flattered for an American officer to ask for [their daughters] . The bargain is made with one of the old people, precisely as if in a mule trade." Couts made these comments in the course of a general tirade against prostitution and the sale of girls to soldiers, practices that might have been widespread among poor Mexicans and ones newly impoverished because of the war, and within families whose young and middle-aged men— the economic providers— might have been killed in the war. Where Couts saw amoral behavior, one can instead see economic desperation: "How very often an old father or mother, with a daughter 12 or 13 years old, will be found seeking a purchaserI Who will give 25 or 30 dollars! The old women are all pimps and our camp was full of them.1,20 But Couts was also intolerant of Americans he saw as ineffectual or morally bankrupt. Throughout the journal Couts harshly criticized his commanding officer, Major Lawrence P. Graham. According to Couts, Graham was a drunk and a libertine who completely mismanaged the journey and 20 Ibid., 31-32; emphasis in the original. Ironically, Couts himself became such a purchaser— of indentured Native Californian children— as I describe later in the dissertation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 105 placed his own pleasures above the needs of his army division, resulting in the loss of most of their horses, mules and wagons, and misery for the soldiers under him.21 Couts was also not blind to the moral weaknesses of the American soldiers, who, like their working-class Mexican counterparts, were capable of thievery, drunken ness, and indulging their sexual urges, but he accepted their behavior more easily because of their lower class.22 Couts1 journal reveals a man who may have held stereotyped views of Mexicans— and contempt for many Americans— that he was willing to modify according to his experiences and observations. There are intimations of this kind of flexibility elsewhere in the journal. Couts described Tubac (in the territory of New Mexico, now the state of Arizona) as "an Indian village for there are two or more Apaches to one Mexican," but he then remarked that the Mexicans did not distinguish between themselves and the Apaches— all were "Mexicans."23 Perhaps Couts found this idea of a multiracial national identity new and worthy of note, and perhaps this was a prelude to Couts' 21 Ibid., 5, 72-85. 22 Ibid., 14, 18, 31-33, 35. 23 Ibid., 59. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 106 acceptance of the multiracial Californio society he later joined. When Couts arrived in California, he encountered members of the San Diego area elite as well as the poor. His journal reveals the same mixture of attitudes towards them as towards the Mexicans Couts had encountered on the journey to California. Some he disdained, whether they were poor or members of the local elite. He described San Felipe, a Cupeno village, as "a miserable dirty little Indian ranche." Couts also thought poorly of John Warner, the well established Anglo ranchero whose land grant included San Felipe: "famed for his ability in telling lies, but not surpassed in this by his notoriety as a rascal. He . . . stole my stallion as the horses passed." In contrast, Couts admired other members of the local elite, including a Cupeno leader, "a fine old Indian, Captain Antonio."24 Couts1 apparent open-mindedness towards Mexicans and Mexico were probably based on the economic potential Couts saw in them and could imagine himself partaking in— if they became part of the United States. Chihuahua exemplified to Couts what Mexico could become: "the beautiful ideal of the Yankee trader, and quite a city it is, very American .... The city far surpasses our 24 Ibid., 90-91. Phillips, Chiefs and Challengers, 63-64, identifies Antonio as a Cupeno leader. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 107 expectations.1 1 The attractiveness of the city came from the existence of "so many wealthy traders, all of whom are Americans." When leaving the city, Couts declared that he and all the men would like to remain there, and "Chihuahua must belong to the U.S. in a few years more."25 Ranchero Entrepreneurs Couts had never wanted to make the journey to California and complained about it during the entire trip. But after traveling with his army company for months through desert and other inhospitable environments, Couts was pleased by the coastal California countryside. Not since leaving Chihuahua had he had such positive things to say about a region, and just as with Chihuahua, what pleased Couts most in San Diego County was the economic potential of the region. For instance, Couts admired the rancho of Isaac Williams, as well as the rancher himself. "The valleys, mountains, ridges, mill &c owned by the old man Isaac Williams . . . is grand and magnificent." Williams' land "is far superior [to] any my travels have yet brought me upon," and Williams "is a very interesting man in conversation, highly accommodating to all 25 Dobyns, Hepah, 22, 29, 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108 Americans, loves money, knows how to charge &c."26 If Couts was happy to be again in a friendly, entertaining society after more than half a year of difficult travel through open country and small villages, he was also relieved to be back in a "Yankee" stronghold, among men with a head for American-style business. Perhaps here Couts began to think that the journey to California might not have been a waste of time, and that since Chihuahua was not a U.S. city, he might find a home for himself instead in southern California. Not just Williams' rancho, but all the land from Agua Caliente (near Warner's Ranch) to Los Angeles, in Couts' opinion, "is truly magnificent," its fertility equal to that of land anywhere. On the hills and in the valleys, "millions of stock get their fine grazing," eating their fill of the varied grasses and oats growing out of the loose and fertile soil.27 In southern California, Couts might be able to become a landowner on par with his family's holdings in Tennessee. When Couts decided to remain in San Diego and attach himself to the Bandini household late in 1849, he was one of the last Anglo Americans to marry into a wealthy Californio family while ranchero society was still in its heyday. 26 Ibid., 91. 27 Ibid., 91, 14. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 109 In Abel Stearns and Cave Couts, Juan Bandini found compatible sons-in-law and business associates. Bandini's views were similar to those of Couts, at least in terms of California's economic and political development. Bandini saw himself as a Californian, not a Mexican, supported the United States' takeover of the territory, and advocated the region's economic development along lines not too different from Americans' aspirations in the 1840s and 1850s. In addition, Bandini and Couts shared some tempermental qualities that might explain their affinity for each other. When Jose and Juan Bandini, father and son, came to California in 1819, they were part of a wave of Peruvians who traded with Californians from 1815 through 1822, during the period of the Mexican war for independence. If not for the Peruvians from the south and Russian traders from the north, California would have been almost totally isolated from the outside world during this period, and its non-indigenous residents deprived of many goods, for what they produced locally met only their most basic needs.28 Spaniards from Peru who remained in southern California constituted a group without great loyalty to Mexico. Many were entrepreneurs who supported the economic 28 Bancroft, California. Pastoral, 464-5, 775. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 110 development they believed an English or American conquest of California could usher in. For instance, Antonio Jose Cot, like Jose Bandini, was a Spanish trader from Peru who moved permanently to California in 1822. Like Juan Bandini, he was not especially loyal to Mexico. Because of his anti-Mexico sentiments, he was expelled from California in 1828 but returned in 1835 or 1836. He then established himself successfully in business in Los Angeles, profiting enough to purchase Plo Pico's San Luis Rey land grant. Some of his profits came from supplying arms to the U.S. Army.29 Juan Bandini participated actively in the political affairs of San Diego and California, was a merchant and ranchero, and contributed to the economic development of San Diego. Like his father, Bandini desired land for himself and for other Californios, but the younger Bandini's hopes were blocked in the 182 0s and early 183 0s by the missions1 refusal to abide by Mexico1s secularization decrees of the 182 0s, which would have ended the missions' legal control of vast territories. Alta California Governor Manuel Victoria's actions in 1831 angered land-hungry and democracy-minded Californios. He blocked the implementation of a new secularization decree, refused to convene the elected state assembly, and 29 Bancroft, Register, "Cot, Jose Antonio." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ill attempted to expel Abel Stearns and Jose Antonio Carrillo; in response, Bandini, Carrillo and Pio Pico in 1831 organized a revolt in San Diego, which soon spread throughout southern California. Victoria and his allies were defeated in 1832, and Bandini and other opposition leaders gained appointed government posts. Bandini, Pico, and other southern Californians acquired extensive land grants after the missions were secularized between 1832 and 1834. Bandini held various appointed posts, including inspector of the California custom-houses and administra tor of ex-Mission San Gabriel. He was vice-president of the failed Hijar and Padres settlement and commercial scheme. In 183 6 and 1837 Bandini was involved in another revolt, against a plan formulated by northern Californians to gain independence from Mexico— which Bandini and others supported— but which would have left southern Californians without a voice in the proposed new government.30 30 Bancroft, History of California, 3: 199-201, 210, 274, 370-72, 623, 647; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 28-29, 243. In 1833 the Mexican government voted to fund a colonization project in Alta California, in order to protect the territory against incursions by Russians, break the missions' hold on land, foster Mexican and foreign settlement, and further the incorporation of Native Californians into Mexican society. Jose Maria Padres and Jose Maria Hijar, the leaders of the project, recruited 300 people in Mexico City, with promises of land and supplies at their new home. Many Californios, however, helped to block the project, seeing it as an effort by the Mexican government to exert greater control over its distant territory. While most of the colonists remained in California, the project overall was seen as a failure because it did not result in the establishment of a new and vibrant colony helping to achieve the Mexican government's aims. John W. Caughey, California: A Remarkable State's Life History, 3d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 110-11; Bancroft, History of California, 3: 259-69; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 185-86. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 112 Once he gained his land grants, Bandini retreated from political involvement but kept his hand in various business ventures, such as the inn that came to be called Casa de Bandini. He was a partner with Abel Stearns in Stearns' trading business in Los Angeles, and later, when Couts arrived, the two invested in livestock together.31 Bandini epitomized the Californio who was not a loyal Mexican citizen and who supported Alta California's becom ing part of the United States. While such Californios might not have been in the majority in the state, their perspective was influential. During the U.S.-Mexico war, Bandini actively aided the United States' side. The rest of the family also reportedly shared his partisanship towards the United States. A story often told in American newspaper and magazine articles recounts that the three Bandini daughters sewed the first United States flag flown in Los Angeles at the end of the war with Mexico. Finally, like some other Californios, Bandini predicted that the United States would soon control California.32 To see Bandini as a politically involved, entrepreneurial settler in San Diego goes against some 31 Dobyns, Hepah, 98; Monroy, Thrown, 160; Richard F. Pourade, The Silver Dons . . . and the Pioneers Who Overwhelmed California (San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1963), 171, 191. 32 Biographical sketch of Couts, The Lewis Publishing Company, envelope postmarked 25 April 1899 [?], CT Box 89 (1); and Stearns Papers, Summary Report, SG 4 (21); Marjorie T. Wolcott, "The House Near Frog Pond," Westways (December 1928): 53; Pitt, Decline, 23, 111, 115; Monroy, Thrown, 176; Camarillo, Chicanos, 112. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113 portrayals of him as a Californio overwhelmed by ambitious early Anglo and American settlers, including his sons-in- law, Stearns and Couts; it also counters the earlier portraits of him as simply another fun-loving, free- spending ranchero.33 Couts and Bandini, in actuality, shared a number of views and interests. Both wanted to own land, preferably a large amount; opposed Mexican rule of California and supported the U.S. conquest; supported the economic development of the region; and participated actively in the political affairs of San Diego and California. The Racial Divide: Land and Labor If Americans and Californios sometimes eagerly united to promote their business and political interests, they were equally unified in their views of the racial divisions in rural southern California. Blancos were the 33 The first argument appears in works such as Monroy, Thrown, and Tomas Almaguer, Racial Fault. Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California, 1994) . Leonard Pitt, Decline, 17, argues against the earlier view of the fun-loving but debt-ridden rancheros when he cites Richard Henry Dana's description of Bandini, whom Dana meets on the ship he is working on: "'the best representation of a decayed gentleman I have ever seen,'" "'without any office or occupation,'" "'ambitious at heart and impotent in act,'" and giving away the last of his money as a tip to one of the stewards on the ship. Pitt's argument in support of Bandini is correct except for one small mistake. He states that Bandini was a ranchero, but in the early 1830s when Dana worked on the ship where he met Bandini, the latter was not yet a ranchero. Perhaps Pitt's error comes from the original publication date of Dana's book, Two Years Before the Mast, in 1840. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 114 land owners and men of social, political and economic stature. Indios retained the use of much of their traditional lands, whether incorporated into ranchos or not, but they rarely received formal recognition of their landownership, nor did they tend to keep their few land grants for long before they ended up in rancheros1 hands. Rancheros required a large laboring class to maintain the ranchos, and Native Californians living near the ranchos filled this role, much more so than any other group of people. Non-natives living in California sought to enrich themselves through land ownership, even if this meant violating religious and political decrees. By disposses sing Native Californians, both Californios and Americans benefitted: the land and products of Native Californians' labor became the capital that allowed both groups of white settlers to become prosperous. During the Spanish and especially Mexican periods in Alta California, over 800 land grants, totalling some 8 million acres, were awarded to Californios, Anglos, and Anglo Americans as well as a few Native Californians. As Leonard Pitt argues, this distribution of land to a large number of non-Native Californians created a social class and economic base different from those of othe parts of the Mexican north that became part of the United States. (Notably, in New Mexico, many fewer people received land Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 115 grants.) Upward socioeconomic mobility, combined with the availability of Native Californian laborers— especially in southern California— "prevented the creation of a peon class among the gente de razon of California."34 This egalitarianism among Californios, similar to that attained by Americans who settled in other "frontier" areas of North America in southern California, was a basis for the American-Californio alliance during the period 1840 through 1870. Indigenous Californians lost land after the secularization of the missions because the governors of Alta California granted very little land to them. Only about forty of the over eight hundred land claims in California filed with the federal government after the creation of the California Land Claims Commission in 1851 were by Native Californians.35 Significantly, about fifty percent (a total of twenty) of all Native Californian land claims were in Southern California, with ten percent (four claims, all by Luisehos) the area encompassing the 34 Pitt, Decline, 10—11. 35 The California Land Act of 1851 was a federal law that made federal courts responsible for deciding on the legality of the over eight hundred land grant claims resulting from Spanish and Mexican distribution of land before California became part of the United States. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 116 approximate territory of Mission San Luis Rey.36 This was one outgrowth of Father Peyri1s policy towards Luiseno residency at and away from the mission. Nonetheless, aside from the Indian villages of Pala, Pauma, and Potrero, almost all the rest of Luiseno land was acquired by rancheros and remained in their hands into the 1870s and 1880s, before their division into small farms and incipient towns for Americans. Besides losing land through the land grant process in the Mexican period, two San Luis Rey land grants given to Luisenos illustrate another way in which Native Californians lost land: through selling it to rancheros. In 1845, Governor Plo Pico granted a portion of ex-Mission San Luis Rey, renamed Rancho Guajome, to Andres and Jose Manuel, Native Californians who had been living at the mission; the govenor gave another portion, which became Rancho Buena Vista, to another Native Californian, Felipe 36 Rose H. Avina, "Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in California (Master's Thesis, University of California, 1932; reprint ed., San Francisco: Research Associates, 1973), 59-88; Robert G. Cowan, Ranchos of California: A List, of Spanish Concessions 1775-1822 and Mexican Grants 1822-1846 (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1956); Verne Dyson, "California's Romantic Ranchos: The History, Stories and Legends of the Old Estates and Haciendas, with a Roll of the Rancheros, a Complete List of Land Grants, the Biographies of the Families' Men and Women— Spanish, Mexican and American," unpublished MS in three parts, 1913-1962, 1: 139, HM 4; Florence Connolly Shipek, Pushed into the Rocks: Southern California Indian Land Tenure, 1769- 1986 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1987), 27. The grants that fell within the approximate boundaries of Luiseno territory were Agua Hedionda, Buena Vista, Camajal y el Palomar, Cuca (or El Potrero), Las Flores, Guajome, Guejito y Canada de Palomla, Laguna, Monserrate, Valle de Pamo y Santa Isabel (or Santa Maria), Pauba, Pauma, San Luis Rey y Pala, Vallecitos de San Marcos, Santa Margarita, Santa Rosa, Temecula, Temescal, Trabuco. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 117 Tubna. The Guajome grant was confirmed to the two men and their heirs early in the years following the passage of the 1851 Land Act; soon after, in December 1852, the owners sold the land to Abel Stearns for $550. Similarly, during or before 1854, Tubna sold Buena Vista to Jesus Machado.37 Thus, almost as soon as these Native Californians received title to their land, they sold it to Americans or Californios. Both of these land grants eventually came to be owned by Cave Couts and Ysidora Bandini de Couts. Why would these Luisenos sell their land? While the historical record provides no definitive answer, historians know that many Native Californians (as well as Californio rancheros) fell heavily into debt after the passage of property tax legislation in 1850. With Northern California mining interests in control of the state legislature, minerals were exempted from the property tax, thereby placing the burden of taxation on the other major landholders, ranchers and farmers, who lived mainly in the southern part of the state. Native Californians and many Californios produced food mainly for their own consumption and had little or no cash to pay taxes. The Manuels and 37 Wolcott, "House," 40; Grant of land to Felipe by Governor Pio Pico [copy], 8 July 1845, CT Box 75 (5) and (9); Certificate of record of deed to San Luis Rey Mission, 8 September 1855, CT 1770, Box 29; Abel Stearns to Cave Couts, 18 December 1854, CT 2150, Box 36. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 118 Tubna might have sold their land to pay for taxes they owed. If this was the case, they would have lost the land whether they had sold it or not, for the state would have taken title and sold the land to pay off the property taxes.38 Another possibility is that the Manuels and Tubna were a sort of front for wealthy rancheros eager to acquire more land. Stearns might have reached an agreement with the Manuels, or they might have owed Stearns money. It is even possible that influential rancheros like Stearns might have conspired with Governor Pico to find local Indians to serve as land grantees who would quickly sell the land to Stearns. In this way rancheros like Stearns could legally circumvent Mexico's law against any indivdual gaining over eleven leagues (roughly 48,000 acres) in land grants. Interestingly, Stearns owned the most land in southern California but acquired none of it through land grants: he was a master at acquiring land through purchase, in payment for debts, and as "gifts" from impoverished Californio relatives.39 38 Pitt, Decline, 126; Charles Hughes, "The Decline of the Californios: The Case of San Diego: 1846—1856," Journal of San Diego History 21 (Summer 1975): 18; Phillips, Chiefs, 141; Carrico, Strangers, 46. 39 Wolcott, "House," 40; R. W. Brackett, A History of the Ranchos of San Diego County, California (San Diego: Union Title Insurance and Trust, 1939), 15, 66; Pitt, Decline, 10, 109; Monroy, Thrown, 156; Hughes, "Decline,” 18; William Carey Jones, "Report on the Subject of Land Titles in California," in Mexican California, ed. Carlos E. Cortes (1850; reprint, New York: Arno, 1976), 3; Paul W. Gates, ed., Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 119 Luisenos never regained, ownership of the Mission San Luis Rey grounds and buildings. Indeed, mission priests and Californio administrators appointed after secularization looted most of the valuable property and jockeyed to be granted the land. Some contemporary writers accused Father Peyri of taking mission money with him when he fled California in 1832, but even if he had, he left the mission in sound financial condition. Soon after his departure, though, administrators began selling off mission assets, starting with the livestock, and pocketing the proceeds. Finally, in the years 1858 through 1862, the parish priest arranged to sell the roof tiles— the only remaining transportable property with financial value— to local landowners, keeping the money for the California. Ranchos and Farms 1846-1862. Including the Letters of John Quincy Adams Warren of 1861, Being Largely Devoted to Livestock., Wheat Farming, Fruit Raising, and the Wine Industry (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1967), 129-130n50; Paul W. Gates, "The Land Business of Thomas O. Larkin," in Gates, Land and Law in California: Essays on Land Policies (Ames: Iowa State University, 1991), 95. The question of why individual Indians might have sold their land (before the policy of allotment was applied, 1887-1934) has rarely been addressed. Haas, whose work among historians of Southern California deals in most detail with the issue of ownership and control over land, mentions some specific, local factors that might have influenced Juanenos' (and so, by extension, other Native Californians') decisions, but even she does not question why some would sell their land for small sums of money. Haas, Conquests, 40- 41, 60. Some historians and public officials, have believed that Indians were innocent of Mexican or American ways, including the notion of private property, and so were easily cheated out of their land. While B.D. Wilson, an Indian subagent in the 1850s, would probably not have known enough about the history and lifeways of the Luiseno and other Native Californians to go beyond this stereotype, it is unfortunate that even a recently published work, by Monroy, would perpetuate the same ideas. Caughey, Indians of Southern California, 24, 32, 76; Monroy, Thrown, 124-125. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 120 mission, rather than turning it over to ex-neophytes, as required under Church law.40 There are few records of Native Californians' reactions to the Mexican land grant or U.S. title confirmation processes. Sometimes Native Californians participated in the land grant process. For instance, Christian Luisenos of Cuca and Pauma in 1843 submitted a request to the California governor for a legal grant of the land that they and their neighbors lived on, grazed their livestock on, and farmed. Rancho Cuca was granted to one of the requestors, Maria Juana de los Angeles, in 1845. The land grant was confirmed by the United States government some years later.41 In another case, Kumeyaay Indians thought that their claim to San Pasqual was secure because the village had been established as a mission asistencia by the Spanish priests of Mission San Diego. Additionally, following the Battle of San Pasqual in December 1846, General Stephen Watts Kearny promised the Kumeyaay that Americans would protect their land rights, in appreciation of their aid in the battle. The federal 40 Bancroft, History of California 3: 621-623; Fr. Zephyrin Engelhardt, San Luis Rey Mission (San Francisco: James H. Barry, 1921), 80—82, 91—92, 97-100; Bishop Thaddeus Amat to Cave Couts, 14 October 1857, CT Box 1. 41 Avina, "Spanish and Mexican Land Grants," 371; Shipek, Pushed, 43. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 121 government, however, did not confirm the Kumeyaay claim to San Pasqual.42 Even without formal title to land, Luisenos, Kumeyaay and their neighbors in rural southern California did not actually lose most of their land during the Mexican and early American periods. Mexican law required that indigenous villages be exempted from land grants; in addition, rancheros needed indigenous people living on or close to the ranchos, in order to work on them. Since agriculture in southern California focused almost entirely on livestock raising, there was also much open land. All in all, there was little reason for rancheros to dispossess Native Californians. Indigenous workers were the backbone of the rancho economy and of daily survival on the San Diego ranchos in the early American period (1850 through 1875), continuing the reliance on indigenous workers from the mission and early rancho periods. The prevalence of Indian laborers throughout rural southern California in this period was noted by many visitors and writers, and it was one of the selling points used to encourage American migration to the state. For instance, in the early 1870s Charles Nordhoff observed, "The common farm laborers are Indians" in San Bernardino (north of San Diego County). "They are docile, 42 Shipek, Pushed, 28, 91, 195-96n9. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 122 know how to handle horses, and are used for every kind of labor,1 1 which included trimming grape vines, plowing, household work, and sheep herding.43 When Cave Couts declared in 1865 that he employed "some dozen or more" servants, most of them Native Californians, he was probably referring only to his permanent workers, and even then, probably undercounting them. In 1874, Henry Oak, a visitor to Rancho Guajome, saw Indian and Mexican vaqueros and noted, "The cook and all the many servants . . . are Indians." Couts also employed temporary and permanent vaqueros, gardeners, cooks, and other types of skilled workers whom he might not have categorized as servants. In Couts1 servants accounts books for 1854, twenty-four workers are listed; some were vaqueros, some gardeners, and one, named Con, an Anglo American, was certainly not a "servant." Some of these workers were employed by Couts for only a few months, but that still leaves about twenty workers at various jobs who worked more or less permanently at Guajome. In addition, during rodeos (round-ups of livestock) and sheep-shearing time, teams of seasonal laborers worked at Guajome. Couts was not the only ranchero to hire mainly indigenous workers, along with a small number of Mexican or 43 Charles Nordhoff, California: For Health, Pleasure, and Residence. A Book, for Travellers and Settlers (i873; reprint, Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1974), 145, 155. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 123 Californio workers. John Kelly's uncle, Robert Kelly, part owner of Rancho Agua Hedionda (neighboring Rancho Guajome), also employed mainly Native Californian workers as late as 18 8 3.44 One sign of class distinctions and white supremacy was rancheros' names for rancho laborers. The use of first names, as well as diminutives, for both indigenous people and European Americans was common throughout Californio and ranchero society. Most adult Californios were often known by their first names, but with an honorific title attached, for example, Don Cuevas (Cave) and Doha Ysidora. Adult Native Californians were usually not honored by such titles. Younger Californios' names were often abbreviated or had an attached diminutive, as with Ysidora's youngest brother, who was commonly called Juanito; and Cave and Ysidora's oldest daughter, Maria Antonia, who was usually called Tonia. But these names were reserved for use by family and friends, while Native Californians' diminished Servant's accounts February-June 1854, Guajome, CT 2543 (16); Henry L. Oak, A Visit to the Missions of Southern California in February and March 1874, ed. Ruth Frey Axe, et al. (Los Angeles: Southwest Museum, 1981), 34; Kelly, "Life on a San Diego County Ranch," unpublished MS, ca. 1925, 55-56, HM 16782. Among the seasonal workers listed in Couts' accounts books were the following: during May 1854 two teams of Luisenos worked at the rancho for about two weeks, one organized by Manuel Cota and including seventeen workers, the other team consisting of eight workers. In 1867, the Couts family employed at least twenty-two sheep shearers plus their "capitan" (captain, or leader) and cook, for one week. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 124 names, as with Manuelito (Manuel Cota), a Luiseno leader, came into popular, general usage by European Americans. Most Native Californians used Spanish first names, making it difficult to separate the indigenous from the Mexican or Californio workers. This distinction is important in determining who comprised the working class in rural southern California. Distinguishing Native Californian from Californio or Mexican workers is often possible using a number of indicators. Aside from the tendency to use first names only, Native Californian workers may also be identified when rancheros listed them under the name of their capitan or their village. In Couts1 accounts books, there is only one worker in 1854 who was probably not indigenous, as indicated by the presence of his last name: Miguel Ybarra. The 1867 sheep shearers, cook, and capitan were probably all Luisenos, even though some men's names include what appear to be family names. In many cases, though, these "last names" seem to have been descriptive words used to separate men with the same first names, or to indicate men who were related to each other. For example, four "Jose's" appear on the list, and each has another name: Jose Leon, Jose Cuervo,45 Jose Chino, and Jose Albanes. "Leon" means 45 It was difficult to decipher the handwriting for this name. It is possible that, instead of Cuervo, this Jose's last name might have been Guerro or Cuerro. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 125 lion, puma, or cougar; "Cuervo" means raven; "Chino" means not only Chinese, but also is a type of mestizo; and "Albanes" may be an alternate spelling of "albanes," or dice-player. Similarly, two "Francisco's" are assigned conveniently opposite "last names," Flaco (thin) and Serdo ("cerdo," or pig). Three men with different first names, Juan, Jacobo, and Luis, have the same "last name," Tule, which might stand in for their tribal origin, the Tulares, from farther north in California, or it might be a more local regional or village designation. (There are many areas known as "las tules" or similar names, describing the marshy environment and the prevalence of a type of bulrush.) Assigning the same last name might serve as a reminder that the men were not local Luisenos, who provided most of the labor at Guajome and throughout the surrounding region; it might also indicate that the three men were from the same family.46 One man whose last name stands out in the list is Juan Kalloch's. The Calac (as it is now usually spelled) family is still one of the leading Luiseno families, and members of the family have been important participants in the region for at least as far back as they have appeared in written records. That Juan's true family name appears on the list, rather than a descriptive label, may indicate 46 Cattle book, Guajome 1853-1871, CT 2543 (14). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 126 his family's social stature in the area.47 On the other hand, Manuel Cota, one of the Luiseno leaders most faithful to the rancheros, was frequently referred to with the Spanish diminutive, as "Manuelito,1 1 and without his last name. This derogation of Cota's authority and social standing fits with European Americans' use of first names for most native people. Family Relations among Californios and Americans A final issue is important in analyzing land ownership, power relations and white unity in rural southern California: the issue of marriage partners for Californianas from ranchero families. When they married Anglos and Americans, Californianas lost their fathers' patronyms and adopted their husbands1, in accordance with English and American custom. Ysidora Bandini thus became Ysidora Couts. This custom ran counter to the Spanish and Mexican tradition of women retaining their own family's name along with that of their husband: Ysidora Bandini would have been Ysidora Bandini de Couts, as I refer to her in much of the dissertation, to remind us of the familial connection. The apparent disappearance of the 47 Ibid. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 127 Californio identity of those women who married Americans has, I believe, led many historians to overemphasize the transfer of land from Californios to Americans after the U.S. conquest of northern Mexico. San Diego County in the mid-nineteenth century was an area sparsely populated by whites.48 The elite families— all the landowners— had a limited pool of potential spouses for their sons and daughters. Certainly, Native Californians, who were the working class and mostly without property, were not attractive marriage partners for people who aimed to maintain their newly gained social and economic status. So local Californianas married local Californios. The only exceptions were the Calif ornianas who wed Anglos or Americans— but only those who already had succeeded financially, like Abel Stearns, or had good prospects, like Cave Couts.49 Marriage among ranchero families and between Californianas and Americans created complicated webs of relationships that served to strengthn Californio political alliances and economic ties. They also helped 48 See note 11 above. Bancroft estimated San Diego County's overall population in 1852 at 2900, with only about one-quarter, or 700, being white, and the remainder being Native Californian. Bancroft, History of California 6:500. 49 Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 75, analyzes the rarity of Californio marriage to Anglo American women. Additional brief discussions of this appear in Pitt, Decline, 124-25; and Haas, Conquests, 73-75. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 128 Californio families weather the difficult transition to Anglo American dominance in California. Juan Bandini had strong political ties with a number of Californios, and these were reflected by and strengthened through marriage. Men such as Bandini, Pico, Arguello and Estudillo had constituted an important political force in Southern California in opposition to many of the centralizing initiatives of the Mexican government in the 1820s and 1830s. These political alliances and friendships were deepened by marriage, for instance, Maria Dolores Estudillo's to Juan Bandini and Bandini1s later marriage to Refugia Arguello after Marla Dolores1 death. Bandini*s first wife was the daughter and niece of two politically involved Estudillos who were allies of Bandini; similarly, Refugia Arguello was the daughter and granddaughter of two men who sided with Bandini1s anti-centralization activities against the Mexican government and with his support of a U.S. takeover of Alta California.50 Bandini1s family linkage through marriage to two Californio families was not the only such tripartite alliance. The oldest Bandini daughter, Josefa, married 50 Bancroft, Register, "Bandini, Juan"; "Estudillo, Jose Antonio"; and "Arguello, Santiago"; Winifred Davidson, San Diego Historical Society, to Cave Couts, 7 December 1937 (includes copy of Juan Bandini-Maria Dolores Estudillo marriage record, 20 November 1866); and Mrs. Wagner, Genealogy of Couts-Bandini descendants, ca. 1960; both items in CT Box 89 (3). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129 into the Carrillo family in 1841. Her husband, Pedro Catarino Carrillo, was the nephew of one of Bandini*s oldest friends and political allies, Jose Antonio Carrillo. Jose Antonio married Estefana Pico, one of Pio and Andres Pico's sisters, thereby creating an extended Carrillo—Pico-Bandini family. (Carrillo later married Jacinta, another Pico sibling, after the latter*s death.) As the last Mexican governor of Alta California, Pico made numerous last-minute (and some after-the-last-minute) land grants to his relatives, friends and allies, before he was forced out of office.51 The marriage of a Californiana from an elite family to a wealthy Anglo or American (or to one who promised to become wealthy) secured the new family's socioeconomic status; this was epitomized in Arcadia Bandini*s marriage to Abel Stearns in 1841. Stearns, born in 1799, traveled extensively before settling for a few years in Mexico City, where he became a Mexican citizen. He came to California in 1829 to claim land awarded to him by the Mexican government. But he angered Governor Victoria who, instead of approving the land grant, exiled Stearns to Baja California in 1829 or 1830, although Stearns appears to have gone only as far as San Diego. Between 1831 and 51 Bancroft, Register, "Carrillo, Jose Antonio"; "Pico, Pio"; Paul W. Gates, "Adjudication of Spanish-Mexican Land Claims in California," and Gates, "The California Land Act of 1851," in Gates, Land and Law, 14 and 25, respectively. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 130 1845, Stearns was active in several plots to overthrown California governors, established himself as a trader, smuggler and moneylender, and began acquiring property. Without receiving a single land grant directly from the Mexican government, Stearns became "the largest owner of land and cattle in southern California"; by 1858 he was the wealthiest man in Los Angeles County, and when he died in 1871, he left a huge estate to Arcadia. (They had had no children.)52 In cash-poor southern California, Stearns' money was a boon to the family. But Stearns was merely the most successful of American rancheros. "Before 1851, 42 percent of the [Mexican land grant] claims were in the hands of non- Mexicans,"53 most of whom were Anglos and Anglo Americans who had married into the land-grant-holding Californio families. Stearns' land and cash saw many members of the extended Bandini family through difficult financial periods and enriched some of them. At the same time, Stearns learned how to play the role of the ranchero, 52 Bancroft, Register, "Stearns, Abel"; Bancroft, History of California 3:193-94; Summary Report, SG Collection II. 53 Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, 8; Paul W. Gates, "Public Land Disposal in California," in Gates, Land and Law, 251. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 13L becoming completely assimilated into Californio culture.54 Arcadia was only about fourteen years old when she married Stearns— who, at forty-two years, was a a year older than her father. For the Bandini parents, the match was an excellent one, as Stearns was already a business partner of Juan Bandini's of many years standing, and Stearns was already wealthy. Stearns had also adopted many aspects of Californio life: he was fluent in Spanish and was already a Mexican citizen. If he was not Arcadia's youngest and handsomest suitor— his Spanish nickname was "cara de caballo" ("horse face")— his financial success and ties to the Bandini family more than compensated.55 Arcadia's potential Anglo or American suitors were limited in number since in 1841 there were only a few such men in southern California. But during the 1840s, many more 54 Monroy, Thrown, 156-57, 160, 227; Haas, Conquests, 56; Pourade, Silver Dons, 64, 65, 166, 245, 260; Gates, "Adjudication," 6. Among other intermarried Californiana-Anglo couples in southern California were the following: Maria Antonia Alvarado married first Joseph Snook, then Henry Clayton. The couple obtained Rancho San Bernardo from Juan B. Alvarado, Maria's father. Similarly, a daughter of Jose Joaquin Ortega married Edward Stokes; Stokes and Ortega shared ownership of Rancho Valle de Pamo. One of Pio Pico's sisters, Isadora, married John Forster, who, through various means, came to own several significant land parcels. For instance, through his marriage into the Pico family, Forster became a partner, with Pio and Andres Pico, in the largest San Diego County land grant (and also the largest California land grant confirmed by the U.S. government), Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores. He also bought the Santa Ysabel grant from Ortega and Stokes, as well as the land surrounding the ex- Mission San Juan Capistrano. See above sources, as well as Bancroft, Register, "Snook, Joseph" and "Stokes, Edward"; "Forster, John." 55 Summary Report, SG Collection II; Monroy, Thrown, 160, claims that Stearns requested Arcadia as his wife. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 132 arrived, including John Forster, John Warner, and Cave Couts. Ysidora Bandini married Cave Couts in 1851. While not yet established in business in California, Couts1 prospects seemed promising. He was the son of a well-to-do plantation owner, well educated, and held a newly attained military rank of colonel. If the Bandinis were gambling on him as a son-in-law, Couts had no reason to doubt the positive result of his marriage to Ysidora Bandini. Couts1 rise to wealthy and influential ranchero was greatly boosted by his connection to the Bandini family and its web of political and familial relationships. Abel Stearns, Ysidora*s brother-in-law, and fast becoming one of the wealthiest rancheros in southern California, saw Ysidora and her husband off to an auspicious beginning when he gave her half of Rancho Guajome as a wedding present. Two years later, Stearns presented Couts, too, with a kind of gift, in the form of a contract: Several thousand of Stearns' cattle would graze on the other half of the rancho; in return, Couts would pay the property taxes and have control over the land. With this arrangement, Stearns introduced Couts to cattle ranching, the main business in southern California at the time, and eventually, Couts became owner of the land the cattle grazed on. In a system that depended on Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 133 family connections, the Couts-Bandinis secured a place in the upper levels of southern California's economic hierarchy. The Couts-Bandinis went on to acquire several more ranchos and other property and were ultimately at the center of San Diego County's economic, social and political life. After Cave died in 1874, Ysidora successfully administered Rancho Guajome and the other properties she and Cave had acquired, until her death in 1897. Her management included negotiating the torturous paths necessary to defend her family's land claims against other rancheros and squatters.56 When Anglos and Anglo Americans settled in southern California in the mid-nineteenth century, most adopted the elite Californio lifestyle, including the typical path to wealth: land ownership and cattle raising. Anglo Americans who settled in Alta California during the Mexican period benefited from the socioeconomic system already esta blished by the Californios. Livestock raising, first by the missions, and then by Californio rancheros, was the basis of southern California's economy. In the 1850s, gold mining in northern California was responsible for a boom in the economic development of the south. Since beef fed 56 See, for instance, contents of CT Boxes 12, 34, 75 (6)-(7), 76 (l)-(3), 84 (1); Feliciano Williams to Mrs. Cabe [sic] Couts, 11 May 1886, CT 2402, Box 40; "The Late Mrs. Couts," unidentified newspaper clipping, 25 May 1897, CT Box 89 (4); Ysidora Bandini de Couts to Cave Couts, 10 August 1891, CT 377, Box 7; Clarence King to Isadora Coutts, 29 April 1887, CT 1496, Box 24. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 134 the miners, ranching provided food for miners' survival and prosperity for ranchers all over the state. (Before the gold mines provided a ready market for beef, exports of hides and tallow integrated California into the world market.) Ranching also helped develop the mainly Anglo and American merchant class in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Marriage was not the only method of cementing social, political and economic ties among families. Unlike the Couts-Banidinis1 blood tie to the Stearns-Bandinis, their familial bonds to the Forster-Pico family were created through the Spanish tradition of compadrazgo. John Forster and Ysidora Pico de Forster were the compadres of Ysidora Bandini de Couts and Cave Couts1 children.57 A sign of the compadrazgo relationship is the names of two of the 57 Bancroft, Register, Forster, John; History of California, 3:389, 4:553. Ysidora Pico was Pio Pico's sister. In 1837 she married Forster, an Englishman who migrated first to Guaymas, Mexico, in 1831, then came to California. Pio Pico and Juan Bandini were on close terms, politically and socially. Forster settled permanently in Southern California in 1836. By 1845 he was wealthy enough to purchase the ex-mission San Juan Capistrano; he also received through various means other land grants over the next twenty years, including Pico's Rancho Santa Margarita. More important than the large extended families that often lived together or nearby were compadres, godparents who were usually respected family friends. Compadrazgo was a parallel family system that created additional, integral ties between a family and the surrounding community, above and beyond those of blood relations. For a brief, excellent discussion of compadrazgo, see Griswold del Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 97-98; Monroy, Thrown, mentions the importance of compadrazgo among rancheros in southern California. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 135 Couts-Bandini children: John Forster Couts and Carolina Forster Couts.58 Intermarriage and compadrazgo relationships among the largest landowning families of Southern California in the middle and late nineteenth centuries reinforced business and political ties. Forster had a direct business relationship with Stearns, having worked as the manager of Stearns1 commercial operations.59 Forster and Bandini had much in common besides being rancheros. They both lived in California a long time, both served as adminstrators of San Juan Capistrano mission (Bandini in 1841, Forster in 1846) , both owned land there, and both supplied arms to U.S. Navy Commodore Robert Field Stockton in 1847.60 At the height of their landholdings, from the 1840s through 1870s, the interrelated Pico, Bandini, Forster, Stearns, and Couts families owned land extending in a virtually unbroken piece along the Pacific Coast from Baja California (part of Mexico) to Los Angeles County. Acquisition of land and access to indigenous labor were political spoils for many rancheros. For instance, when 88 Letters from John Forster to Cave Couts frequently used the salutation "Dear Compadre.” See letters, Forster to Couts, 1867—1873, CT Boxes 14 and 15. Note: One of the Couts-Bandini sons was named Cave Couts. The father and son did not use the designations "senior” and "junior." I do not either, except occasionally to avoid confusion. In the footnotes and the text, "Couts" refers to the father before 1874, to the son afterwards. 59 Monroy, Thrown, 157. 60 Bancroft, Register, "Bandini, Juan"; "Forster, John." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 136 men like Pico and John Forster served as administrators of ex-mission lands, as at San Juan Capistrano, they were in a position to command a village-full of Native Californians as laborers.61 Where many historians have seen land-grabbing on the part of Anglo and American sons-in-law, it is also possible to see rancheros doing what they could to keep land within their extended families. For example, during his term as the last governor of Mexican California in 1845 and 1846, Pio Pico granted land to Forster and Bandini; later, in 1864, he sold Rancho Santa Margarita to Forster. Pico's sale of land to sons-in-law paralleled that of Bandini's, for instance, of Rancho Jurupa to Stearns in 1859. Not too different was Stearns' gift to Ysidora Bandini de Couts and transfer to Cave Couts of Rancho Guajome in 1851 and 1853. The marriage of Californianas to Anglos thus may be seen as smart 61 Haas, Conquests, 40-41; Pitt, Decline, 111-115; Monroy, Thrown, 127, 160, 169; Avina, "Spanish and Mexican Land Grants," 59; Brackett, History of the Ranchos, 43-46, 60, 66-68, 70, 73; Cowan, Ranchos of California. Cowan lists the ranchos in alphabetical order; the ones Cowan lists belonging to the five families mentioned above include Flores [added to Santa Margarita], Laguna, San Luis Rey de Francia Mission, San Luis Rey y Pala, and Trabuco. See also the following newspaper articles in CT Box 89 (4): "Mrs. De Baker, Pioneer, 85, Dies; Estate is $20,000,000," Los Angeles Examiner, 16 September 1912; Brinistool, E.A., "Historic Building is Razed," Los Angeles Times, 15 May 1927, Features section: 1-2; "Casa de Bandini: Social Center of Old California, Restored to Former Brilliance," San Diego Union, 28 April 1935; "Bandini Lands Change Hands," Los Angeles Times, 27 September 1929. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 137 financial moves on the part of elite Californio parents.62 Newspaper and magazine articles exaggerated the financial losses and successes of the rancheros. This was certainly the case with Abel Stearns. Newspaper articles in the 1860s announced that he was bankrupt due to floods and drought; articles noted Stearns' loss of tens of thousands of head of cattle, and declared that he was forced to sell all his ranchos except for one. In fact, though forced to sell land to clear his debts, Stearns was still able to wait for good prices on his ranchos. He gained an immediate $50,000, with the prospect of up to $200,000 more, through the sales, enough to retire comfortably at Rancho Laguna and ensure his widow an inheritance. At his death, only a few years later in 1871, "his wealth was rated as twice as great as any land-holder of Los Angeles County," with money in bank accounts amounting to over $150,000. Similarly, the Couts-Bandini estate, at the time of Ysidora's death in 1897, was worth Pico’s land grant to Bandini was Guadalupe, in Baja California (1846) . Pico granted Rancho de la Nacion and ex-mission San Juan Capistrano to Forster in 1846 and 1845. Bancroft, Register, "Forster, John"; "Pico, Pio"; Bancroft, History of California, 4: 621. For Stearns' purchase of Bandini's rancho, see Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 68. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 138 between $50,000 and $100,000, despite her having to part with some of the family's land.63 When the first and second generations of intermarried Californio-Anglo Americans died, Californio identity became more and more subsumed into the American one. Since the children of Californianas and Anglo Americans inherited only the fathers' names, the children no longer carried an obvious, public sign of their Californio heritage. The Couts-Bandini children and grandchildren, along with other Bandini descendants, eventually inherited the proceeds of significant landholdings in Southern California, but the family name of Bandini was almost obliterated through two generations of marriages to Anglo and American men. While Arcadia Bandini de Stearns de Baker and Ysidora Bandini de Couts were often known by their combined Spanish and Anglo names throughout their lives, Ysidora's children retained only the Anglo names.64 In these cases, Californio identity ended up becoming subsumed into American identity. Even when land stayed within ranchero families, as was the case with the descendants of Juan Bandini, by the 1880s or 1890s or 1900s, it was no longer identified as Mexican land. 63 Monroy, Thrown, 228; Robert Glass Cleland, The Cattle on a Thousand Hills: Southern California, 1850-1870 (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1941), Chapter 10, especially 268-69; "Mrs. De Baker." Even information in the Summary Report in the Stearns Papers collection at The Huntington Library replicates the myth of Stearns' bankruptcy at his death. 64 See various documents in CT Box 89 (3). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 139 Bandini's grandchildren were known as "Couts," "Scott," and other Anglo surnames. It is inaccurate to see the intermarriage of Anglo men and Californianas as resulting in the dispossession of Californios' land. Californianas' power was substantial in determining issues relating to land ownership and family financial affairs, even if they had little impact on the politics of the state.65 Arcadia and Ysidora both survived their husbands by many years. Ysidora lived for twenty-three years after Cave died, a period of time equal to the length of their marriage. Ysidora's administration of the family's estate thus extended over a longer reign than had her husband's.66 Arcadia, meanwhile, survived her two husbands. When she died, childless, in 1912, her $15 million estate was divided among her siblings' descendants. In this way, too, descendants of Juan Bandini, such as Cave and Ysidora's children, ended up 65 Most historians ascribe agency to the Californio fathers in "marrying off" their daughters to successful Anglo ranchers and businessmen. The activities of the women themselves are rarely discussed. See, for instance, Griswold del Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 74—77; Monroy, Thrown, 159-60. 66 There should be no doubt that Ysidora shared in the management of their properties. For instance, in 1864 she entered into a cattle-grazing agreement with her brother, Jose Maria Bandini. Until her death in 1897, Ysidora Bandini de Couts played an active role in administering the Couts-Bandini estate. "Articles of agreement made and entered into at Guajome rancho, between Ysidora B. Couts, of said rancho, and Jose Ma. Bandini, resident of Tiajuana, S. Calf'a.,” 10 May 1864, CT 378, Box 7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 140 with property valued at about $110,000 each.67 It appears, then, that historians have viewed the family's identity as an American one in large part due to the (male, Anglo) family name. This has overshadowed the significant role of women— Californianas— in land ownership during the volatile period of 1850 through 1890.68 Conclusion Land ownership and social status went hand in hand in rural southern California during the Mexican and early Anglo periods, which encompassed the period when the rancho economic and social systems dominated in the region. Californios, Anglos, and Anglo Americans of middling status became wealthy and influential through the acquisition of large chunks of land. Anglo American men commonly assimilated into Californio ranchero society, marrying Californianas from land-owning families and 67 "Mrs. De Baker"; Referee's report, Ysidora. Couts Fuller v Cave J. Couts et al., CT Box 74 (2); "Cave Johnson Couts Given Check for $700,000 As Share in Purchase of Baker Estate," unidentified newspaper article, n.d., CT Box 89 (4); "Three Objectives Set for Autoists," San Diego Union 26 April 1925. 68 This gendered construction of property ownership is in the process of being corrected, at least in terms of the role of elite Californianas. Scholars such as Haas, Sanchez and Clay have been revealing the extent of female property ownership in Southern California in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Haas, Conquests, 77-85; Rosaura Sanchez, Telling Identities: The Californio Testlmonios (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1995), 188-227. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 141 becoming business associates of Californios. Native Californians retained the right to live on much of their ancestral land, but few held legal rights to land that the blancos felt they had to recognize. As a result, Native Californians continued to fill the role of the laboring class throughout rural Southern California. Men and women from different national/racial backgrounds united as an elite class and defined them selves as white, in distinction to their categorization of Native Californians, who were the non-white working class. These class/race signs were different from those in the rest of the United States, where "one drop" of African blood made a person non-white, and where Mexicans were viewed as non-white because of their mixed indigenous, European, and African ancestry. Anglo American rancheros, thus, helped create and sustain a white-dominated society based on land ownership and labor relations that, by the 1840s (after the expulsion of the tribes of the Southeast and Old Midwest to Indian Territory), hardly existed in the eastern United States. This brief period of class unity between Americans and Mexicans crossed a racial line recognized in other parts of the United States but lasted only as long as the rancho society did. As later chapters describe, once American settlers began to dominate in the local population, starting in the 1870s, the Californio-Anglo Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 142 American alliance died. The new settlers wanted land, and this required both the removal of Native Californians and the dismantling of the ranchos. American settlers had no reason to continue the alliance with Californios, just as they had no reason to continue allowing Native Californians to live in their ancestral territories. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 143 CHAPTER THREE THE RISING SETTLER TIDE, 1845-1875 Introduction September 1875 marked the final step in the dispossession of the Temecula Luiseno: mass eviction from their village. Three investors in San Francisco had succeeded in gaining court-approved title to Temecula Valley. Helen Hunt Jackson memorialized the expulsion in her popular novel, Ramona, published in 1884.1 Alessandro, the novel's hero and a Temecula Luiseno, described the scene to his love, Ramona: 1 1 . . . it was such a dreadful time; nobody could do much; the sheriff's men were in a great hurry; they gave no time. They said the people must all be off in two days. Everybody was running hither and thither. Everything out of the houses in piles on the ground. . . . Oh Senorita, don't ask me to tell you any more! It is like death. I can' t! "2 Jackson certainly caught the urgency of the situation, and in the surrounding pages, the great injustice of the expulsion. But to heighten the tragedy, she made the Luiseno helpless, pitiable. She ignored the active opposition of the Luiseno, which, while The novel was serialized earlier in the year in the Christian Onion. Valerie Sherer Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 81. 2 Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona (New York: Avon Books, 1970), 173. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 144 unsuccessful, gave the Luiseno more influence over the situation than in Jackson's depiction. What really happened was as follows: Sheriff Nicholas Hunsaker served the eviction papers to Olegario Calac, the leader of all the Luiseno, giving the Temecula Luiseno ten days to move. On September 20, they requested an extension while Calac was in Los Angeles getting legal advice. Hunsaker refused the request, but Murietta, one of the investors, agreed to allow them another forty days, enough time for them to harvest their crops.3 From his many years of experience in negotiating with government officials in Southern California, Calac recognized that the Luiseno would get no relief locally. So he traveled to Washington, D.C., in November 1875 to meet with President Grant. Following Calac's visit, Grant issued an executive order in late December 1875, setting aside 52,400 acres in several reservations. (This reservation of land was smaller than the 69,000 acres he had set aside in an 1870 executive order that he quickly rescinded due to pressure from settlers.) However, it was 3 Richard L. Carrico, Strangers in a Stolen Land: American Indians in San Diego 1850-1890 (Sacramento: Sierra Oaks, 1987), 78. Jackson and Abbott Kinney, Report on the Conditions and Needs of the Mission Indians, 1883, printed in Reports of Committees of the Senate, 48th Cong., 2d sess. and special sess., 1885; reprinted in Federal Concern about Conditions of California Indians 1853-1913: Eight Documents, ed. Robert F. Heizer (Socorro, New Mexico: Ballena Press, 1979). Jackson and Kinney state that the eviction happened in 1873, but this appears to be a typographical error. See Exhibit M in the report. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 145 too late for the Luiseno of Temecula, as well as the Kumeyaay of San Pasqual— they had already lost their lands. Meanwhile, settlers in San Diego County circulated rumors that Calac was preparing an uprising.4 Settlers in northern San Diego County had good reason to worry about indigenous revolts. For twenty years squatters, preemptors and investors had been encroaching on the Temecula Valley, the region surrounding Pala, and other indigenous territories. While relations among the 4 Carrico, Strangers, 78, 80-4. Reservations set up by this executive order, according to Carrico, were Santa Ysabel, Pala, Agua Caliente (at Warner's Ranch), Sequan, Inaja, Cosmit, Potrero, Cahuilla, Capitan Grande. Of these, only Pala and Potrero were at the sites of Luiseno villages. According to Florence Shipek, "A Strategy for Change: The Luiseno of Southern California" (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii, 1977), 196- 97, Luiseno villages included in the Potrero reservation were Rincon, La Jolla, Ya Peche and Potrero. Expropriation of Kumeyaay land in San Pasqual is discussed in Chapter Four. Calac's visit to speak with the president was not unusual for Native American leaders of his time. President Grant encouraged such visits, especially those of the Northern Plains tribes, in an effort to establish and maintain peaceful relations between the federal government and the more militant tribes. Indian delegations to Washington, D.C., were common throughout the nineteenth century, with some leaders visiting more than once. Herman J. Viola, Diplomats in Buckskin: A History of Indian Delegations in Washington City (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1981), 11, 110. Calac's visit was unusual, though, for Native Californian leaders. Only a few other leaders traveled to Washington, and only in one other instance, at their own instigation: Sarah Winnemucca, who visited with her father, leader of the Pyramid Lake band of Northern Paiute. They went to the capitol in 1879 to protest treatment of the Northern Paiute by Indian Service agents. In two other cases— a Modoc Indian, Winema, and a Mojave Indian, Irateba— Native Californians were invited to Washington and other Eastern cities, to thank them for their efforts in promoting peace between their people and the United States. Duane Champagne, Native America: Portrait of the Peoples (Detroit: Visible Ink, 1994), 49; Alice B. Kehoe, North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992), 378; Frederick J. Dockstader, Great North American Indians: Profiles in Life and Leadership (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977), 338-339; Carl Waldman, Who Was Who in Native American History: Indians and Non-Indians from Early Contacts through 1900 (New York: Facts on File, 1990), 161, 387, 388-389. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 146 indigenous residents and newcomers were fairly peaceful when the American population was low, tensions increased as settlement increased.5 Americans at times lived as friendly neighbors to the Temecula Luiseno and other indigenous groups, but some of the white settlers also took advantage of their "right" to steadily acquire indigenous land. With the mass eviction, the Temecula Luiseno experienced one of the most dramatic instances of dispossession in the area. But before this happened, indigenous people throughout southern California weathered numerous pressures on their ways of life, as well as incremental losses of land to rancheros, squatters, and land investors. Luiseno, Cahuilla, Kumeyaay and Cupeno communities were able to retain some autonomy while the rancheros 5 Census figures and other population estimates for southern California for the 1850s through 1890s may not have been accurate for a number of reasons, such as the high mobility of many residents. However, such figures provide at least some idea of the size of various populations. According to the federal census of 1870, the population of Los Angeles and San Diego Counties, excluding most Native Californians, was about 20,000, of whom about 4800 were white. (Only "civilized" Indians were included in this part of the census, amounting to a ridiculously low 28 for San Diego County.) In 1880, the population of San Diego County alone was about 8600. Looking more closely at the rural population of San Diego County, the small number of white residents is apparent. Outside of the city of San Diego, the white population of the county was about 1700 in 1870, and about 6000 in 1880. The Indian population of San Diego County, almost all of whom lived outside of the city of San Diego, was about 2000 in 1880, down from about 2500 in 1875. Jackson and Kinney, Report, 3; "Report of Charles A. Wetmore, Special U.S. Commissioner of Mission Indians of Southern California," Washington, D.C., 9 January 1875, p. 6; Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Ninth Census (June 1, 1870), 1:15 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1872); Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880), 1: 51, 109, 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 147 dominated in the region, but increasing numbers of whites migrating through the region, squatters and other settlers, and eventually, land investors, chipped away at indigenous control over their land and communities. After the secularization of Mission San Luis Rey in 1834, Californios sought land in the Temecula Valley and power to control the indigenous labor force. These practices continued in the early American period. But it was not until the 1870s that white settlement led to widespread land expropriation, including legally sanctioned expulsions of entire indigenous villages, as happened in Temecula and in the Kumeyaay village of San Pasqual, both in 1875. The story of the Luiseno loss of Temecula is a key example of the process of dispossession occurring over several decades in the middle of the nineteenth century in northern San Diego County. In and near Temecula, Native Californians withstood a relatively slow decline in autonomy and land tenure, through a succession of methods used by rancheros, American and Sonoran (Mexican) migrants and squatters, and American land investors. Events in and around Temecula serve to illustrate a transitional phase of the establishment and maintenance of white supremacy. The period from the 1840s through the 188 0s was transitional for all of southern California: the white Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 148 population shifted from one dominated by Californios to one dominated by Americans; the economy shifted from one dominated by ranching to one dominated by small farms; and Native Californians experienced a shift in their oppression, from being an exploited labor force still holding on to much of their land, to being pushed off of their lands and becoming less necessary as laborers. During the same period, Indian warfare as one response to increasing white dominance gave way to mainly legal forms of protest and opposition. Analysis of this process continues in Chapter Four, with the expulsion of the San Pasqual Kumeyaay. Temecula's Role in the Region Temeku, in the Temecula Valley, was the birthplace of the Luisenos, according to their history. It was an important village before and during the Spanish occupation of the region. Under the name Temecula, it continued as an important village and crossroads through the Mexican and early American periods, until the expulsion of Luisenos in 1875.6 6 B.E. McCown, "Temeku: A Page from the History of the Luiseno Indians," Papers of the Archaelogical Survey Association of Southern California, 3 (1955), 52. Perhaps in divine retribution, Temecula's growth as an American town foundered when floods twice destroyed railroad tracks that connected the town to larger towns in the 1880s. After the second Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 149 The Temecula Valley, well watered by the Santa Margarita River, contributed to the sustenance of the residents of the Mission San Luis Rey and supported a population of two to three hundred people (a typical village size for Native Californians in the San Diego region) until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Under U.S. rule, Indian agents sometimes chose the village as the meeting place for important conferences, including multi-tribal ones. Mexicans, Americans, and Luisenos living in the village and surrounding valley played leading roles in the story of land expropriation in northern San Diego County. As with San Pasqual, there is no doubt that the dispossession of the Temecula Luiseno was consciously land expropriation, as no one, not even the settlers seeking to take their land, disputed that Luisenos occupied and used the land in and around Temecula.7 flooding in 1891, Temecula languished in semi-isolation until the valley's revival as a wine-producing region and tourist attraction in the 1980s. Richard F. Pourade, The Glory Years: The Booms and Busts in the Land of the Sundown Sea (San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1964), 158-64, 224. The names of the village indicate its passage through different historical periods: from Temeku, the Luiseno name, to Temecula, the Spanish orthography, to its present, Anglicized spelling and pronunciation, Temecula. 7 The existence of villages in the Temecula valley— Temecula and Pechanga— has been well documented since the mission period. (See Chapter One.) The valley was within the boundary of lands claimed by the Mission San Luis Rey. For a discussion of the existence of Teme cula and Pechanga, and his calculations of village population size, see Raymond C. White, "Luiseno Social Organization," University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 48:2 (Berkeley: University of California, 1963), 110, 118-19, 129—31, 133. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 150 Temecula's population of 200 to 300 people during the mission period was stable, and even growing, in the first decades of the American period. A significant increase in population— from under 3 00 in 1859 to over 380 in 1864 and 1865— occurred in the mid-1860s, perhaps due to migrants from other villages whose lands were being taken over by new settlers. The population dropped in the 1870s and 1880s, reflecting myriad pressures on the population.8 Fluctuations in Luiseno population are shown in Table 3. Great stresses on the Luiseno population occurred, not only in Temecula, but throughout the region. Environ mental factors, such as floods in the late 1860s followed by drought in 1870 and 1871, made life difficult for Native Californians and Americans alike. But Luiseno knowledge of native plant life and how to take advantage of groundwater during drought years certainly helped sustain them. Thus, significant changes in population indicate additional stresses on the Luiseno. As Helen Hunt Jackson reported to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1883, referring to all the indigenous people of southern California, "Suffering, hunger, disease, and vice have cut down more than half of their numbers in the last thirty 8 Conclusions based on these population figures must remain tentative, as methods for counting residents were not standardized, and sometimes the number of residents was estimated. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 151 Table Three Luiseno Population, 1859 to circa 1900 Year Temecula Luisenos All Luisenos 1859 250-300 1860 323 1000-1269 1862 300 1334 1864 382 1686 1865 388 1049 1869 150 600 1870 252 1299 1872 237 1873 200 972-1324 1880 1120 1889 130 901 1895 948 1900* 189 * The exact year for this population estimate was not given. Note: After 1873, "Temecula Luisenos” actually means those living at Pechanga. Sources: Carrico, Strangers, 34-5; Lowell John Bean and Florence C. Shipek, "Luiseno," in ed. Robert F. Heizer, California, vol. 8 of Handbook, of North American Indians (Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian, 1978), 558. The 1869 figure for Temecula population is an estimate, by Lieut. Green, U.S. Army, and is probably unreliable; quoted in Shipek, "Strategy," 278. Variations in figures are due to different people using different methods; many figures were estimates only. These figures illuminate the importance of Temecula as a population site, with 20% to 25% of all Luisenos living there during the second half of the nineteenth century, and probably before. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 152 years,1 1 problems she attributed to the influx of white settlers during the past decade.9 Temecula played an important role in the economy of the region. It was one of many indigenous villages incor porated into the mission system in southern California in the years following the establishment of Mission San Luis Rey in 1798. The village was one of the main agricultural supply areas, especially for grain, for the mission. Additionally, in the 183 0s Temecula served as a cattle- raising area, while other villages, such as Pala, provided fruits (wine grapes, olives, peaches) to the mission.10 In the 1850s the Temecula Luiseno began to trade with migrants through the area. They were 111 in a flourishing condition, cultivating an extensive tract of land, and raising a surplus of wheat, corn, and beans which they disposed of to emigrants, thereby in many cases rendering great service to the suffering,1" according to a U.S. Indian agent.1 1 Also, like the Cupeno territory around Warner's ranch, Temecula was located on the main southern 9 Shipek, "Strategy,” 84-85, 195; Jackson and Kinney, Report, 79. 10 Fr. Zephyrin Engelhardt, San Luis Rey Mission (San Francisco; James H. Barry, 1921), 121, 123; Marjorie Tisdale Wolcott, ed. , Pioneer Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes 1849-1875 (Los Angeles: privately published, 1929), 141-2. 11 J.Q.A. Stanley, letter, May 19, 1865, quoted in Shipek, "Strategy," 278. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 153 route of entry into California, both for travelers from the United. States and its territories and from Mexico.12 Temecula was akin to a regional capitol for the Luiseno. This was acknowledged, for instance, in the selection of the village for the historic 1852 intertribal meeting convened by representatives of the federal government. In 1851 and 1852 three U.S. Special Indian Commissioners traveled through much of California, meeting with many of the bands and tribes of Native Californians. Eighteen treaties were drawn up and signed by representa tives of the native peoples. One such treaty came out of a meeting of Luiseno, Cupeno, Cahuilla and Serrano tribes with O.M. Wozencraft at Temecula. Pablo Apis, as Temecula's leader, hosted the meeting, but he was one of the few leaders who did not sign the treaty, probably because the commissioners would not guarantee that they would retain Temecula. The treaty set aside "Rancho Temecula," only a small portion of Luiseno territory in the valley, and only if the government purchased the full Mexican land grant of 6 leagues, or about 26,000 acres. In addition, the government promised herds of horses and cattle to the indigenous residents. The treaty was not 12 Richard F. Pourade, The Silver Dons . . . and the Pioneers Who Overwhelmed California (San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1963), 224-30, 246. The Butterfield Stage, for instance, brought goods and travelers from Missouri to Los Angeles and San Francisco via Warner' s Ranch and Temecula from 1858-1861. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 154 ratified by the U.S. Senate, the reservation was not created, and the herds were not delivered.13 Settlers and rancheros were attracted to Temecula Valley because of its open spaces, the availability of water in streams, creeks and springs, and the resident workforce of Luisenos. Like the native peoples at Pala, Pauma, and San Pasqual, the Luiseno of the Temecula Valley endured a sustained period of land squatting and take overs, by Californios, Mexicans, and Americans. Land Grants and the Attraction of Temecula In Temecula land expropriation took many forms, including land grants to non-indigenous people, squatting and preemption, land sales by Luisenos to Americans, and the acquisition of land by distant investors. Americans' acquisition of Temecula Valley land helped empower the 13 George Harwood Phillips, Chief and Challengers: Indian Resistance and Cooperation in Southern California (Berkeley: University of California, 1975), 120, 123. McCown, "Temeku," 50; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: History Company, 1886), 4:621. The original land grant of 6 leagues was awarded in 1844 to Felix Valdes; Apis' grant was 1/2 league, awarded in 1845. McCown appends a copy of the treaty, "A Treaty of Peace and Friendship, made and concluded at the village of Temecula California between the United States Indian Agent O.M. Wozencraft of the one part and the Captains and Head Men of the following Nations, viz.: The nation of San Luis Rey Indians, the Kah-we-as [Cahuillas], and the Tribe of Cocomocah-ras." Signing for Temecula instead of Apis was Lauriano Cah-par-ah-pish (as the secretary accompanying Wozencraft spelled it). Apis’ home was the site of a meeting between two participants in the treaty-making, Juan Antonio, leader of the majority of Cahuilla, and Indian Agent Oliver M. Wozencraft. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 155 rancheros and settlers, as the land itself provided their "base of operations" and source of wealth and political influence. During the Mexican period, Californios became overseers of Indian laborers and land, positions which served as stepping stones to higher office and land grants, political influence and wealth. Such was the case with two of the mayordomos of Temecula in the 1830s, Manuel German and Bias Aguilar. German was simply a soldier in Santa Barbara before he was elevated to landed status by his appointment to Temecula. Aguilar served as mayordomo both at the San Diego Mission and at Temecula, and in 1841 he received a land grant at San Juan Capistrano, where he served as alcalde for several years. Plo Pico, who would become the last Mexican governor of Alta California, used his position as mayordomo (of Mission San Luis Rey, 1834 to 1840) to lobby for a Temecula land grant. Pico worked "'to put an end to the mission system at all hazards, in order that the land could be acquired by private individuals.111 But Pico was frustrated in his efforts to gain a land grant in Temecula.14 14 Quoted in Engelhardt, San Luis Rey, 102; Hubert Howe Bancroft, Register of Pioneer Inhabitants of California 1542 to 1848, ed. and comp., Glen Dawson and Muir Dawson, from Vols. 2-5, History of California (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1964), "German, Manuel"; "Aguilar, Bias." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 156 In the 1830s Temecula Luisenos vociferously protested against awarding their land to Californios, threatening to kidnap Governor Figueroa if he did so. In particular, the Luisenos disliked and distrusted Pico because of his conduct toward them at the mission. For instance, Pico was responsible for punishing one of the village captains, Pablo Apis, who "was arrested for protesting too violently against the alledged [sic] wrongs suffered by his followers," ex-neophytes (indigenous Christian converts previously living at or under the control of the mission) of Mission San Luis Rey. Apis, along with several other ex-neophytes, sent a petition to Governor Figueroa in 1837, stating their allegiance to the mission's dismissed priest and requesting that the governor reappoint him. Figueroa could not have granted this request, but he did turn down Pico's request for the Temecula grant, instead giving 26,608 acres in Temecula Valley to Jose Antonio Estudillo, who had the support of some of the Luisenos.15 Pico, however, did not give up in his efforts to gain Bancroft, Register, "Pico, Pro”; "Estudillo, Jose Antonio"; Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft, 1885), 3:624; Verne Dyson, "California's Romantic Ranchos: the History, Stories and Legends of the Old Estates and Haciendas, with a Roll of the Rancheros, a Complete List of the Land Grants, the Biographies of the Famous Men and Women— Spanish, Mexican and American," unpublished MS in three parts, 1913-1962, 1:141, HM 26404, Box 1; Engelhardt, San Luis Rey, 102-3; Phillips, Chiefs, 38. Estudillo was an influential, politically active Californio in the region from San Juan Capistrano to San Diego. Born in Monterey in 1805, at the age of twenty-two, he gained a small plot of land in the pueblo of San Diego. This was followed in two years with the grant of Rancho Otay, and later, in 1842, of Rancho San Jacinto, both in what is now San Diego County. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 157 land in Temecula. Francisco Gonzalez de Ibarra, friar at San Luis Rey, wrote in 1840 that Pico "has solicited the place called Temecula," and that Pico attempted to frighten the Luisenos into leaving their village, so that Pico could have full ownership of the surrounding lands. When this failed, a few months later, he told the Temecula Luisenos that the government had given Temecula to him; this was untrue. Instead, Pico and his brother, Andres, had been relieved of their position as mayordomos, and Estudillo, in 1840, had been appointed in their place, but the Pico brothers at first refused to give up their administratorship.16 Finally, though, when Estudillo was installed at San Luis Rey, Pico seems to have ended his efforts to gain land in Temecula, perhaps because he no longer had such pressing need for it. By this time, Pico had acquired large land holdings at other locations.17 16 Engelhardt, San Luis Rey, 109, 112, 117, 119, 121-23. 17 Pico's other land grants included Santa Margarita y Las Flores, the largest grant in southern California. The rancho actually consisted of two grants, totaling 133,440 acres, and was made to Pico and his brother Andres in 1841. The land stretched 35 miles along the Pacific Coast. The Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton now occupies about 94% of the former land grant. Bancroft, Register, "Pico, Pio"; Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft, 1886), 4:621? Richard F. Pourade, ed., and Cecil C. Moyer, Historic Ranchos of San Diego (San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1969), 25. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 158 Choosing Sides: Indigenous Resistance in the Period of Transition from Mexican to American California While Apis may have led protests against Pico in 1835, he made his peace with the Californios, as well as with the American settlers, during the next two decades. Significantly, in 1846 and again in 1851, Apis opposed the use of violence against Californios and Americans and counseled the Luisenos he led to remain 111 obedient to the laws of the government.1"18 In at least one instance it appears that U.S. Indian agents, in the historic 1852 treaty meeting at Temecula, chose Apis' village in part to lessen the influence of the more powerful and independent- minded Cahuilla, under the leadership of Juan Antonio.19 Indian attacks and uprisings occurred in northern San Diego County during the period of transition from Mexican to American rule in California. One, which whites have called the "Pauma Massacre" of 1846, seems on the surface to have been an unmotivated attack on a number of Californios.20 Following the Battle of San Pasqual in December 1846— the only military encounter in the United 18 Quoted in Phillips, Chiefs, 80, from San Diego Herald, 5 December 1851. 19 Ibid., 120. 20 Phillips, Chiefs, 49; Wolcott, Pioneer Notes, 285. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 159 States' war with Mexico to occur in Southern California, and one that the Americans lost— a number of Californio soldiers retreated to Rancho Pauma to rest and hide their cattle from pillaging Americans. (Rancho Pauma enclosed the Luiseno village of Pauma, and Luisenos' land rights to their village had been mandated in the 1844 land grant to Jose Antonio Serrano.) A few days after the Californios arrived at the rancho, a small force of Luisenos under the leadership of Manuel Cota and Pablo Apis (stepson of the older Apis, leader of Temecula) captured and killed the Californio soldiers and took the cattle. One explanation for the attack was that it was in retaliation for the murders of several Luisenos by some Californios. The motivation for the attack is mysterious, as Cota had led a force of Luisenos to assist the Californios at the San Pasqual battle.21 It seems doubtful that Cota would turn around and murder some of his allies a few days later for no reason. Native Californian displeasure with rancheros often took the form of cattle raids or more extensive pillaging during the 1830s and 1840s. Luiseno unrest in the late 1840s is evident in the attack on Rancho Pauma, as well as in a raid on Mission San Luis Rey in 1847. About fifty 2 Phillips, Chiefs, 48-49; Wolcott, Pioneer Notes, 285? Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: The History Company, 1886), 5:341-351, 617. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 160 Luisenos destroyed or stole much of the furniture, drove off the cattle, and threatened the life of an Indian working at the mission.22 While these two Luiseno attacks targetted Californios, Americans also experienced indigenous anger. Though the Cahuilla under Juan Antonio's leadership supported and protected Americans, Antonio Garra, leader of the neighboring Cupeno, sided with the Californios. This had led the two groups into some battles with each other. Nonetheless, some Cahuilla agreed with Garra. When Garra began plotting a multitribal assault on American settlers, he at first had commitments from most indigenous groups in Southern California, including the Mohave and Quechan, some Cahuilla and Luiseno, and others. Many of Garra's allies backed out, but Garra continued with his plans, leading a smaller but still substantial number of Indians in attacking Camp Independence on the Colorado River in November 185i and Warner's Ranch in December. For weeks after the initial assault, about two hundred Quechan and Cocopa attacked the fort and surrounding areas, forcing the relocation of Camp Independence. The attack on Warner's Ranch resulted in the killing of four Americans and the destruction of much of Warner's property.23 22 Phillips, Chiefs, 66. 23 Phillips, Chiefs, 76-80; see all of Chapter 4, "The Uprising," for complete details on the rebellion. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1S1 Significantly, the most influential of the Luiseno and Cahuilla leaders, Manuel Cota, Pablo Apis and Juan Antonio, refused to support Garra. Antonio, in fact, captured Garra and his followers and turned them over to American authorities. They were executed in January 1852. Apis and Antonio shared an approach to the growing white incursions in Southern California: appeasement of the whites and containment of their own people1s anger and frustration. Even Cota, who had led the attack on the Californios at Rancho Pauma, had, by the time of Garra1s revolt, laid aside his opposition to whites. The Cahuilla under Antonio's leadership saw an immediate benefit to his aiding the Americans: a peace treaty was signed on December 20, 1851 (only about two weeks after Garra1s capture), between the state of California and the Cahuilla, and General Bean distributed gifts among them.24 Apis' refusal to join with either Garra or with Cota in the attack on Rancho Pauma similarly helped to maintain peace, to the benefit of both Californios and Americans. 24 Ibid., 81-91, 110. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 162 Pablo Apis: Luiseno Leader and Land Owner Apis1 efforts to maintain peace between the Luiseno and whites (both Californios and Americans), and especially his willingness to work within the conquerors1 systems, not only helped maintain an uneasy peace between the Luiseno and whites, it also benefitted him and his family. Apis' relationship with local influential rancheros garnered him wealth and status, and it also helped make Temecula, during the 1850s, "'one of the principle Indian villages in the southern portion of the State,'" according to an Indian agent in 1865.25 In 1845 Pico, then newly appointed governor, gave Apis, his old opponent, the Little Temecula land grant of 2,233 acres, perhaps as recompense for Apis' arrest ten years earlier, and to secure his loyalty. Apis also developed a close relationship with one of the wealthy rancheros of the area, Isaac Williams, owner of the Rancho Santa Ana de Chino, along with Williams' son-in-law, John Rains.26 The 1850 San Diego County census proclaimed Apis' assimilation into American society by listing him as a "farmer," and a visitor to Temecula in the 1850s noted 25 Ibid., 120; Indian agent quoted in Shipek, "Strategy," 277. 26 Dyson, "California’s Romantic Ranchos," 141, 143; Bancroft, Register, "Pico, Pro"; "Apis, Pablo”; Esther Boulton Black, Rancho Cucamonga and Dona Merced (Redlands, CA: San Bernardino County Museum, 1975), 18; Wolcott, Pioneer Notes, 146. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 163 that Apis was "a man of wealth and good education, with about 3 00 cattle and 100 horses and a good house.1 '27 He served, too, as the model for the Temecula Indian patriarch, Pablo Assis, in Jackson's Ramona, who doubtlessly chose him because he embodied the educated, farm-tending, partially assimilated Indian with which she filled her novel and government reports, in an effort to convince whites of Native Californians' attainment of "civilization.1,28 Pablo Apis, like the heads of intermarried Californio-Anglo American ranchero families of the region, attempted to pass his property to his descendants, especially his daughter Marla Antonia Apis de Holman and her brother, Nepomuceno. They inherited the title to their father's grant, the Little Temecula rancho after Apis died in 1855. Maria Antonia also received 100 sheep and 100 cattle, along with an unspecified number of horses belonging to Pablo. Marla Antonia married a white settler, named Holman, in 1856.29 Since Apis had been a wealthy 27 Black, Rancho Cucamonga, 249, citing source George and Helen Beattie, Heritage of the Valley, 111, quoting Rich Papers, Salt Lake City; Black, 256n8. Black states that the information is from the 1850 census of San Diego County, which further noted that Apis was then 41 years old and living with his daughter, Maria, 17 years old, and several younger children. 28 Jackson, Ramona, 49, 51-53. 29 Williams, who died in 1856, apparently controlled Apis' property after his death, as Maria Antonia and Nepomuceno's inheritance came only through Williams' will. The land grant was confirmed by the federal government in 1857, but Maria Antonia did Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 164 and politically influential capitan, his daughter, especially now with a significant inheritance, was a good "catch" for Holman.30 Holman might have arrived in southern California too late to become a ranchero, or his economic and social prospects might not have made him a good match for any of the prosperous rancheros1 daughters. If so, Holman's options for economic advancement were more limited than those of Anglo Americans, such as Abel Stearns and Cave Couts, who had arrived before 1850. In marrying Marla Antonia Apis, though, Holman could share in her moderate not gain full legal ownership until 1858, when the will was settled in court, and did not receive a patented land title from the federal government until 1873. Black, Rancho Cucamonga, 24-27, 33, 249; Notes on letterhead of William M. Pierson, Law Office, San Francisco, n.d., CT Box 78 (3). 30 This marriage exemplified that of the entrepreneurial Anglo American man and the "Indian princess," in contrast to the lower class pairing of "mountain men" or miners and Indian "squaws" or drudges." Most historical discussions of Americans' perceptions of Indian "princesses" and "drudges" do not analyze the socioeconomic standing of the indigenous women. Instead, they describe the literary and popular growth of such perceptions and how they interfered with Americans' ability to see native women as real people. Some examples of such discussions are Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (Middletown, CN. : Wesleyan University, 1985), 101; Glenda Riley, Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1825- 1915 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1984), 21, 23, 32-34, 69, 71-72, 78-81; Sherry L. Smith, "Beyond Princess and Squaw: Army Officers' Perceptions of Indian Women," in Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson, eds., The Women's West (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1987), 63-75. One of the few works that analyzes the socioeconomic relations of marriage between European American men and indigenous women is Sylvia Van Kirk's Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670- 1870 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1980); a short version of her book is the article, "The Role of Native Women in the Creation of Fur Trade Society in Western Canada, 1670-1830," in Armitage and Jameson, Women's West, 53-62. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 165 prosperity and her social connections to the Williams family. The Little Temecula Land Grant and Indigenous-White Relations An Indian agent, surveying the events of the previous ten years, noted in 1865: 11'Upon the death of Pablo Apis and his patron, Colonel Williams, of Chino Ranch, the Indians were thrown under the influence of a set of unprincipled white men, whose only object was to degrade and rob them. 111 He was describing the beginning of the dispossession of the Temecula Luiseho. Before the expulsion from Temecula in 1875, Luisenos there experi enced a slow expropriation of their land. For instance, in 1865 Holman and his partner, Seaman, initiated a survey of the land they claimed in Temecula Valley in preparation for gaining legal ownership of it. (It is unclear whether this land is the same as Apis' Little Temecula, which Holman would have gained a right to through his marriage to Maria Antonia, but it is probable that it is the same.) A subsequent legal challenge by the Temecula Luiseno ended with their loss, and Americans' retention of, the land.31 31 Anthropologist Florence Shipek argues that the legal struggle over the Temecula grant was a rational and fair approach to resolving a land dispute between native people and settlers. Further, Shipek believes it indicates that the settlers or the legal officials sought Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 166 Holman and Seaman, in keeping with the 1850 California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, arranged for a survey to mark off their lands, and mark and set aside Luiseno lands, sufficient for their needs.32 After the survey the Luiseno were dissatisfied with the division of land, claiming that one field, the "planting ground,1 1 covering seven or eight acres, was unfairly included in Holman and Seaman's land. It appears that this plot was part of the the Apis family's claim. Traditional Luiseno land use practices included recognition of both communal land and private land, the latter applying to fields cultivated by an individual or family. It is possible that Apis and other Luisehos disagreed over the status of this acreage. After an investigation by George A. Pendleton, county clerk and to act upon the law as they understood it, rather than ignoring the law, as so many settlers and officials did. For these reasons, Shipek believes the case represents one of the fairest and most open-minded legal determinations for indigenous land rights in southern California during the century or so following the beginning of U.S. rule. However, the events can be interpreted differently, as I argue above. The details of the court case appear in Florence C. Shipek, "Documents of San Diego History: A Unique Case: Temecula Indians vs. Holman and Seaman," Journal of San Diego History, 50:2 (Spring 1969): 26-32; additional information is in Florence Connolly Shipek, Pushed into the Rocks: Southern California Indian Land Tenure, 1769-1986 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1987), 15-17. 32 Paragraph 2 of the act states that white owners of land on which Indians are living must allow them to remain there, except that the landowners may ask the local justice of the peace "to set off to such Indians a certain amount of land . . . for the necessary wants of such Indians, including the site of their village or residence." The act is reprinted in Robert F. Heizer and Alan J. Almquist, eds., The Other Californians: Prejudice and Discrimination under Spain, Mexico, and the United States to 1920 (Berkeley: University of California, 1971), 212-215. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 167 specially appointed commissioner for this project, the court decided that the field should remain with the two settlers, but that the Luiseno would be guaranteed improved access to water for irrigation.33 The decision seems to have been in violation of the 1850 law, under which, Native Californians living on land owned by Americans were supposed to be protected in their residency on and use of the land, but Pendleton decided to take land away from the Luisenos who had already been cultivating it. Also, the decision illustrates the differential in the legal weights of American and Native Californian land claims, exemplified in the right of prior appropriation and preemption for the former. By the time of this decision, preemption law for over fifty years had recognized that past occupancy and use of land determined ownership for European Americans.34 At the same time, Native American claims, based on the same definition, were ignored or legally disallowed. In this case, Pendleton learned that the Luisenos had been planting crops on the 33 Shipek, "Documents," 27, 29-30. 34 As I discuss in more detail in the next chapter, preemption was a method of "public" land distribution to settlers that preceded the 1862 Homestead Act. Under preemption law, first codified in 1841, settlers who were already living on and had improved land that could be classified as public land were given ownership of the land in exchange for payment of $1.25 an acre to the federal government. For brief descriptions of preemption, see Paul W. Gates, "California's Embattled Settlers," 157, in Gates, Land and Law in California: Essays on Land Policies (Ames: Iowa State University, 1991), 156-184; John Opie, The Law of the Land: Two Hundred Years of American Farmland Policy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1994), 53-55. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 168 acreage in question, yet he allowed Holman and Seaman to keep the land. It is likely that Pendleton rejected the Luiseno claim because it was based on communal land-use, versus the Americans1 and Apis family's claim of private land ownership. This is substantiated by Pendleton's decision to allow a fenced-in plot of land claimed by three Luisenos, consisting of an orchard and a house— in other words, a land-use configuration recognized by Americans— to remain in the three Luisenos' possession. Communal versus individual land ownership as the basis of legal claims to ownership had divided Native Americans and Americans for generations. American law's sanctioning of private property, not communal property, was reiterated throughout U.S. history, from the Articles of Confederation in 1781 through the Dawes Act of 1887. The Articles of Confederation referred to "the private right of soil." Under Jefferson and subsequent presidents, federal policy encouraged or forced Native Americans to abandon their land-tenure traditions (which usually included both collective stewardship and private use of land) and adopt private land ownership, thereby accomplishing two American goals: the transforma tion of Indians into American-style family farmers and the freeing up of much "surplus" indigenous territory for Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 169 white settlement. The greatest institutionalization of this policy occurred with the Dawes, or General Allotment, Act, which mandated the elimination of collective land-use practices, along with the dissolution of tribal bonds.35 Disputes over and transfers of title to different portions of the Little Temecula grant continued for many years, but always the process shifted more land to Ameri can ownership. By the time of the eviction from Temecula, the Apis family's land was all owned by Americans.36 35 Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, Article 9; Opie, Law of the Land, 25; R. Douglas Hurt, Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to the Present (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987), 86, and see Chapter 6 generally; Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, vols. 1 and 2 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1984), 139, 140, 327, 659-671; Ward Churchill, Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expropriation in Contemporary North America (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1993), 48-49. Opie argues that Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution implies that the federal government's policy includes disposal of the public lands to private individuals. This is apparent only if one takes into account the laws and practices of the time, as Opie does. 36 Black, Rancho Cucamonga, 33; Rancho Temecula, before 1876, List of Deeds, CT Box 78 (8); Shipek, "Strategy," 277-8. Soon after the settlement of Williams' will in 1858, and the resolution of the court case in April 1859, in September 1859, John Rains, Williams' son-in-law, loaned Apis de Holman $1200, "paying in money and livestock, and taking a note and mortgage on Little Temecula." Also, in May 1859, Rains purchased for $200 the small plot within the grant known as the "planting grounds" from Maria Jesus Apis and Juan Apis, probably siblings of Pablo, who had received this plot in Williams' will. Apparently this land was still in dispute between John Rains and Temecula Luisenos, as noted in a report by the Indian agent in May 1865. When Holman died in or around 1859, Apis de Holman remarried; this husband "squandered much of her property," and she divorced him. In the 1870s, a woman listed as being Pablo Apis' widow, Cazilda Coyote de Apis, and another heir of Apis, apparently Nepomuceno, deeded their land, recorded as "Rancho Temecula," to Louis Wolf, another Anglo settler in Temecula. Interestingly, the last two deeds are dated in 1876, several months after the mass eviction from Temecula discussed below. From 1859 to 1876, Apis' heirs deeded all their Temecula property to Anglos. Shipek, "Documents," 30; Wolcott, Pioneer Notes, 218; List of Deeds, CT Box 78 (8). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 170 Squatters While many settlers chose legal means to acquire indigenous land (means which, despite their legality, were not fair to Native Californians), a large number used a method that was illegal— squatting. Although there have been no comprehensive studies of the number of squatters, their backgrounds, or their impact on Native Californians in rural southern California, it is clear that squatters had a significant impact on indigenous life and land rights. Squatters' destructiveness to Native Californian life is well-known to readers of the state's history, but most historical accounts focus on northern California, the Gold Rush and the early statehood period, when the white population of the northern part of the state was far higher than in the southern part.37 However, squatters and settlers, both Mexican and American, posed a serious threat to Native Californians in the southern portion of the state; nowhere was this more true than in San Diego County.38 Because a larger proportion of the native 37 In 1850 Callfornias' s white population, according to the federal census, was 91,635; San Diego County's was only 700 (and Los Angeles County's total population was 3530). Ninth Census (1870), 1:3-4, 14-15. (1850 and 1860 figures are summarized in several tables in the 1870 census report.) 38 Charles' Hughes, "The Decline of the Californios: The Case of San Diego, 1846-1856," The Journal of San Diego History 21 (Summer 1975), 13. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 171 population survived the Spanish mission system, and because fewer indigenous settlements under Mission San Luis Rey were disturbed than in other parts of the state, American settlers encountered a larger and more sedentary native population in San Diego County in contrast to other parts of the state. Whereas miners and ranchers had evicted and massacred Native Californians in Northern California, in southern California, the process of pushing indigenous Californians off their land was more controlled by law and gradual population growth.39 The Californio and American elite of rural southern California in the 1850s and 1860s turned a blind eye toward rancheros1 expropriation of Native Californian land, while at the same time defending indigenous lands against squatting by poor Mexicans and Americans. Rancheros wanted to maintain their way of life, which included control over a large, local work force, and so 39 Sherburne Cook, The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization (Berkeley: University of California, 1976), 257, 260-267, 282-284, 286, 351-352, 357-361; Robert F. Heizer, ed., The Destruction of the California Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1974), 93-99, 205-208, 213-215, 268-269; Albert L. Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier (New Haven: Yale University, 1988), 100-101, 106-108, 118-120, 126-127, 132-135; James J. Rawls, Indians of California: The Changing Image (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1984), 171-186; Heizer and Almquist, Other Californians, 26-39. In all of the books cited, instances of violence against Native Californians and the inundation of whites into areas where they lived are reported almost exclusively in the northern half of California. While violence against Native Californians existed in the southern part of the state, it did not take the form of the organized attacks and massacres, sometimes backed by the U.S. Army, that were reported for the north. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 172 they often attempted to protect Native Californians' land rights against squatters. It is not surprising, then, that in 1852, John Warner, during his only term as a state senator, supported establishing reservations for Native Californians. Warner opposed the state senate's proposal not to establish Indian reservations in California and to send Native Californians out of the state to Indian Territory. For Warner and other rancheros, this would have meant the removal of their labor supply. Warner proposed, That sufficient portions of land, in dif ferent parts of the State, should be appro priated for the cultivation and residence of all such Indians as might need a home . . . . From them, the farmer, the grazier and owner of vineyards, might derive their accustomed and needed laborers.40 Warner used the terms ''accustomed" and "needed" to describe Indian laborers in their work and class relationships with the still-dominant rancheros. The federal government acquiesced to the majority view in not reserving land for Native Californians, but it did not agree to send them to Indian Territory. In southern California, for a time, indigenous people were able to remain living in their traditional villages and regions, 40 J.J. Warner, "Minority Report of the Special Committee of the California Senate," Senate Journal, 3d sess., 1852, 502-04; reprinted in George E. Anderson, W. H. Ellison, and Robert F. Heizer, eds., Treaty Making and Treaty Rejection by the Federal Government In California, 1850-1852 (Socorro, NM: Ballena, 1978), 42-44. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 173 and Warner and other rancheros continued to have a steady labor supply. From today's perspective it might seem strange that the rancheros did not utilize the labor of Sonoran migrants, many of whom were poor (if the frequency of their squatting on Native Californian land is an accurate indication of lack of wealth). One simple and important reason for the continued reliance on Native Californian labor in the 1850 and 1860s was the greater number of Indians versus whites, whether American or Mexican. In 1860, for instance, there were 3067 of the former and only 1249 of the latter in San Diego County.41 Other reasons rested on the continuation of labor relations and class structure already in place. Native Californians were already working on the ranchos, and rancheros would have little incentive to find and train new workers. Even more, a whole way of life had developed out of the relationship between rancheros and Native Californians in rural southern California. For instance, Manuel Cota, the Luiseno chief, functioned not only as the Luisenos1 political leader, but also as a labor recruiter and 41 Bureau of the Census, Preliminary Report on the Eighth Census. 1860. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1862), 247. In the two towns in the northern part of the county with a large enough population to be enumerated in the census, Native Californians outnumbered whites: In Temecula, there were 752 Luisenos versus 85 whites, and in San Luis Rey, there were 172 of the former and 142 of the latter. Bureau of the Census, Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1864), 31. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 174 foreman for rancheros when they needed temporary workers.42 Second, Native Californians were sedentary, tied by history, family, community and knowledge to the region. Sonoran migrants, though, were new to the area, probably transient in their search for free land, mine sites, and other opportunities to make money. Rancheros used many permanent workers, as well as temporary ones who returned to work on ranchos more than once a year. Third, many rancheros had adopted a paternalistic relationship with Native Californians who worked for them and felt it to be their responsibility to protect them as well as control them and their communities. In the 1850s squatting became a common problem for Luisenos living in the San Luis Rey River watershed, a prime farming area just south of Temecula. The year 1859 seems to have been a particularly tense year, with native people taking various actions to stop settlers' incursions on their land. In March 1859 a delegation of native people traveled to San Diego to meet with officials about settler incursions in the area. Later that year, in December, Indian subagent J.J. Kendrick wrote to Cave Couts, explaining that Francisco, a Luiseno leader in the Pauma 42 Cave Johnson Couts to Manuel Cota, 1 September 1853, CT 297, Box 6; B. C. Whiting to Couts, 16 August 1871, CT 2389, Box 40; John Forster to Couts, 4 August 1871, CT 900, Box 14; Carrico, Strangers, 29, 52, 53. Whiting was Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 175 area, had complained that "one of the Alvarados is about to settle . . . below Pala and interfere with the Indians Lands." Kendrick requested that Couts "attend to it."43 Three years later, in 1862, Luisenos again took legal action against squatters. Luiseno leaders Francisco, Manuel Cota and Pacifico filed suit against a number of men who had been occupying lands all along the San Luis Rey River, "from the rancho of Mt. Serat to Paumo." These occupations had been going on "for several years." The squatters, as they were described in the three men's statement, were all "gente de razon," and probably Mexican (based on their names) . The complaint asserted that the squatters had "located themselves in Pala and vicinity, and deprived the Indians of . . . their planting grounds— particularly water in time of irrigation." The Pala Indians requested that their lands "be set apart" and the squatters "removed from their midst."44 The three Indian leaders clearly understood that squatters had a fair degree of freedom to settle on "public" land that was not formally reserved for other uses— and even reservation proved insufficient to discourage squatters, as later examples will show. 43 J.J. Kendrick to Cave Johnson Couts, 18 December 1859, CT 1483, Box 24. 44 Complaint of Indians, San Luis Rey Township, 11 February 1862, and statement by Francisco, Pacifico, and Manuelito [Manuel], 28 February 1862, CT 193, Box 4. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 176 In response to the Luiseno complaint, Justice Couts issued an order "reserving" the lands for the Indians of Pala, which the squatters ignored. The squatters had no reason to respect Couts1 declaration since he had no legal power to reserve lands. But Francisco, who along with Manuel Cota had delivered the eviction order to the squatters in March 1862, did not let the matter drop there. In May he visited the Indian agent in San Diego, Don A. Hollister, and described the ongoing depredations of the squatters: They planted crops and "built fences so as to cut them [the Luisenos] off from their fields." Hollister asked Couts to pursue the matter and evict the squatters.45 While the American officials who had jurisdiction over the case— Justice of the Peace Couts, Indian subagent Kendricks, Indian agent Hollister, and lawyer Ensworth— all expressed concern and sometimes outrage over the squatters' actions, their opinions and actions resulted in little or no change in the situation. None of the officials had sufficient power to enforce their decisions if the guilty parties refused to cooperate. In May 1863, more than two years after Francisco, Manuel, and Pacifico lodged their formal complaint against the squatters, the matter was still unresolved, with the Indians attempting 45 Don A. Hollister to Couts, 7 May 1862, CT 1073, Box 18. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 177 to bring the dispute to court in San Diego. In addition, tensions between the Luiseno at Pala and the Mexican squatters appear to have resulted in one of the defendants, Ramon Castro, violently and "without one mitigating or extenuating circumstance,1 1 attacking one of the Indians.46 In addition to their attempts at legal resolutions to the problem of squatters, Luisenos also sometimes took the law into their own hands. In December 1859, the Californio owners of Rancho Pauma, Jose Antonio Serrano, Juan Abila (or Avila) , and Bias Aguilar, petitioned Couts, as Justice of the Peace, to evict a number of Luiseno whom they claimed had invaded and occupied the rancho. According to the three men, the Luisenos living on the rancho, while claiming to be the rightful residents, had come from other villages— Pala, Las Flores, and Temecula. Couts found in favor of the three Californios, but they reported in 1861 that the alleged interlopers had still not moved.47 I can find no records that help discern the validity of Serrano, Abila, and Aguilar's complaint. However, there are many events and circumstances that help explain why Luisenos might have moved onto land that might not have 46 A[ugustus] S. Ensworth to Couts, 18 May 1863, CT 629, Box 11. 47 See petitions, declarations, letters, and the local court decision concerning this affair, 28 December 1859 - 18 March 1861, CT 199, Box 4. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 178 legally been theirs. Having endured years of problems with squatters, Luisenos might have been grabbing back some of their own land. In addition, the main Luiseno leader at the time, Manuel Cota, had resigned as chief in 1858, and some Luisenos might have decided that the time had come to try tactics different from Cota's conciliatory ones. Finally, the mention of Indians from Las Flores is a little surprising since the village had supposedly been abandoned several years earlier. It may be, though, that the homeless people of Las Flores had been looking for an appropriate place to settle and chose (or were invited by other Luiseno to settle in) Pauma. It seems reasonable that Luiseno in the area were frustrated and angry and decided to take a little land of their own, as everyone else seemed to be doing to their land. They may also have wanted to prevent more squatters from taking rancho land. Rancho Pauma, site of the Luiseno attack in 1845, and perhaps the site of ongoing tensions between the rancheros and the native residents of Pauma, seems like a natural choice for the Luisenos to assert themselves.48 48 Carrico, Strangers, 53; Phillips, Chiefs, 49, 148-49; Wolcott, Pioneer Notes, 117, 146. In a note to Couts from the San Diego County Clerk, there is mention of "Mr. Poole’s party” squatting on land "formerly occupied by Serrano." This may refer to Pauma since at times the grantees leased out some or all of the rancho land to local rancheros, who grazed their cattle there. Philip Crosthwaite to Couts, 2 January 1854, CT 501, Box 9. Cota resigned as Luiseno chief for several reasons, although he later agreed to be reinstated. He complained that his authority was undercut by the constant change in Indian agents and sub-agents assigned to the area, and by some of these agents reversing his Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 179 Temecula Valley attracted squatters beginning in the early 1850s. They set up shop in Temecula because of the village's location on the trails between Los Angeles and places farther south and east. Daniel Cline (also spelled Kline) and William Moody settled in the valley in 1853, set up a hay farm and opened a trading store. The two men enclosed 200 acres and were doing well selling hay and operating their store, stating they were worth $20,000. Cline stated that he and Moody had settled in Temecula because they thought "it would turn out to be government land"; if this proved true, they would have a valid preemptory claim.49 As I discuss in the next chapter, squatting was often an attempt by American settlers to predict where the state or federal government would open public land to settlement. Before the Homestead Act of 1862, settlers acquired cheap land through the Preemption Act of 1841. This act, like earlier ones, legalized squatters' occupancy of land claimed by private owners or Native Americans, or not otherwise yet officially classified or surveyed as public land. Because land ownership in much of California was in a legal limbo in the 1850s and 1860s, decisions. Cota had also been complaining for several years that the more warlike Indians farther north in the state received far more attention and economic aid than did the peaceful and cooperative Luisenos. 49 Wolcott, Pioneer Notes, 146, 220; Hughes, "Decline," 13. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 180 squatters took to occupying almost any land that appealed to them. In southern California this land was often already occupied by Native Californians. Settlers, whether legal or illegal, affected indigenous village life negatively. Violence against native people and the spread of disease increased. In one instance in 1857 in Temecula, David Jordan "shot an Indian of this place and killed him without cause or provoca tion, " according to a report from Louis Rouen, who described Jordan as "troublesome,1 1 and further, "It is not the [first] time that he has abused them."50 One of the most shocking events for everyone living in southern California was the smallpox outbreak of 1862 to 1863. A few American and Mexican settlers died during the epidemic, but the greatest loss was among the indigenous population. Benjamin Hayes, then District Judge, reported on the "recent alarming spread" of the disease in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino counties "espe cially among the Indian population," regardless of whether they lived on ranchos, in American towns or at indigenous rancher las. San Juan Capistrano was hard hit, with about 13 0 indigenous people dead within a three-month period. Hayes stated that the smallpox was, in January 1863, only beginning "to affect Temecula, Pala, and San Ysabel and 50 Louis A. Rouen to Cave J. Couts, 18 August 1857, CT 1956, Box 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 181 the other principal rancherias of the mountains." In mid- January twenty-three cases of smallpox were reported in San Diego County, all in the northwestern region (the most heavily populated part of the county, outside of San Diego city). One of the most significant victims was Juan Antonio, the Cahuilla leader.5 1 Settlers, always quick to occupy land that Native Californians were already farming, took advantage of the epidemic, as well as indigenous seasonal movements, by taking over "abandoned" indigenous villages. When the Cahuilla of San Timoteo (about forty miles north of Temecula, near San Bernardino) returned to their village after temporarily fleeing the epidemic, they found that settlers had moved into their houses and taken over their land. Similarly, a group of settlers led by Breeze and Wolfe moved into Pejamo, a Luiseno seasonal village near Temecula, while the inhabitants were on their summer foraging rounds in 1862 or 1863. The settlers burned down the houses and took possession of the land and water sources. Even though the Indian agent, Lovett, recommended that the settlers be punished and removed from both Pejamo 51 Carrico, Strangers, 57; Wolcott, Pioneer Notes, 281; Alexis Godey to Cave Johnson Couts 2 January 1863, CT 936, Box 16; Los Angeles Star, 28 February, 1863. See Phillips, Chiefs, for a detailed account of Juan Antonio's activities. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 182 and San Timofceo, neither the state nor federal government did anything.52 The government's inaction in restraining settlers and in providing a secure land base for native people con tinued in the face of increasing reports of dispossession and desperation. In 1869, Lieutenant Green remarked that the Temecula Luiseno "’would do well were it not for the whites and Mexicans who degrade them .... From what I could learn, the owners of the land are desirous for the removal of the Indians, and are doing all they can to get them off the ranch.1"53 After the end of the Civil War, American settlers had an increasingly negative impact on indigenous life in southern California.54 By the early 1870s the results of decades of land expropriation and American settlement were becoming obvious. In 1871 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs contrasted the changes in the lives of southern California indigenous people since 1850. In 1850, "they had numerous herds of cattle, and raised abundance of Carrico, Strangers, 58. It is not clear whether the "Wolfe" here is the same as the Louis Wolf involved in the Apis family land transfers. 53 Quoted in Shipek, "Strategy," 278. 54 Carrico, Strangers, 75; "Report of Charles A. Wetmore,” 5. See also Shipek, "Strategy," 185-6. Newly appointed U.S. Commissioner of Mission Indians, Charles A. Wetmore, reached the conclusion about the increased impact on Indian life after the Civil War after interviewing "several native leaders and white settlers" in San Diego County in 1874. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 183 grain, and to spare, for sale to emigrants." In contrast, in 1871, "they pick up a precarious subsistence, and many of them are on the verge of starvation. . . . There is great difficulty between the grant owners and the Indians concerning the land."55 Two years later, in describing all the Luiseno, Special Agent John G. Ames wrote: "They have the reputation of being indus trious, and for the most part peaceable, and but for the difficulties they labor under, in consequence of the unsettled con dition of land matters and the disregard of their rights by the settlers, would be self sustaining and make reliable citizens. . . . "They complained that they were subjected to many indignities from white neighbors who covet the lands occupied by them; they [say] the water they had long depended upon for irrigation had been turned out of its course, rendering their lands useless."56 Pechanga After their eviction, the people of Temecula moved to the site of another village in the valley, Pechanga. The Luiseno reestablished themselves as farmers in this new location. Upon their move to Pechanga in 1875, the canyon was "a barren, dry spot; but the Indians sunk a well, built new houses, and went to work again." At the time of Jackson and Kinney's visit in spring, 1882, "there was a 55 Quoted in Shipek, "Strategy," 278-9. 56 Quoted in ibid., 279. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 184 considerable amount of land in wheat and barley," and by that summer, "the valley was one continuous field of grain" and was "altogether the best wheat and barley [Jackson and Kinney] had seen in the county." There were also new trees planted in orchards. It seemed, then, that the Temecula Luiseno had successfully resettled in Pechanga, part of their own territory. But they could not feel secure in the new village. Jackson and Kinney reported that whites in the area "looked with envy and chagrin on the crops the Indian exiles have wrested from land nobody thought worth taking up."57 The Luiseno experience at Pechanga during subsequent years was repeated many times in the region among neighboring groups of Native Californians. In certain ways, the Temecula Luiseno were more fortunate than others. In a rare and rapid response to the problem, the president a few months later established the Pechanga Reservation at the site by executive order. However, Pechanga's water supply was historically precarious, and the water supply continued to be a serious problem for the reservation.58 Pechanga Luisenos thus ended up on their own land, reserved for them by the federal government, but 57 Jackson and Kinney, Report., 31. 58 Shipek, "Strategy," 280-281; O.W. Bauer, "History of Irrigation, Pechanga Indian Reservation, California," August 1918, Box 772, Vol. 126, NARA Seattle. The lack of water during dry seasons, even for drinking, was again noted, for instance, in 1897. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 185 with very limited, water resources and no opportunity to expand onto surrounding land. In 1883, the Indian Commissioner noted that many reservation residents were earning at least part of their livelihood by working "as laborers among whites in adjoining settlements." By 1885, their work as wage laborers gained special mention. The reason for Luisenos' growing reliance on paid labor is evident from the 1894 Indian Commissioner's report on Pechanga: with insufficient land and water, they could not support themselves without resorting to working for others. Finally, in 1891, the federal government passed An Act for the Relief of the Mission Indians in the State of California, which attempted to provide Native Californians in the southern part of the state with some relief from land dispossession by establishing a number of small reservations.59 These were, however, completely inadequate, as will be discussed in later chapters. Native Californian Resistance to White Domination in Southern California Indigenous leaders in southern California turned increasingly to legal means to fend off American 59 Shipek, "Strategy," 280. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 186 encroachment on their way of life and their land beginning in the 1850s. In the 1870s a Luiseno man rose to local leadership who had, perhaps, the clearest understanding of how American laws and society functioned. Olegario Calac exemplified Native Californians' willingness to make the laws and public opinion work in their favor. Calac's assent to Luiseno leadership indicated that the majority of Luiseno wanted a more active and oppositional leader than they had had for a number of years. Most of the previous generation of leaders, including Apis, Antonio and Garra, was dead, and armed uprisings, such as the attack on Rancho Pauma in 1846 and the Garra revolt in 1851 were tactics of the past— despite rumors, there is no indication that Calac or other indigenous leaders in the 1860s and 1870s were planning any revolts. But organizing American support, petitioning the government, and using the legal system were tactics the Luiseno and others were beginning to use. Calac was the first indigenous leader of the region to use them systematically. Calac rose to leadership despite the efforts of local rancheros to block him, and despite the entrenched, ranchero-supported leadership of Manuel Cota. Cota had served as Luiseno leader in the 1850s, following Apis' death. He resigned in 1859 in disgust over poor admini stration of Indian Services in the area but accepted Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 187 reappointment (by the U.S. Indian Service) in 1865. Many Luiseno were unhappy over this American imposition of leadership, and in 1870, village leaders voted to remove Cota and replace him with Calac. Calac spoke English and Spanish and had worked for many years amongst Americans. He understood the workings of the U.S. political and legal systems, and he was able to use this to help the Luiseno people.60 One of Calac1 s first attempts to make the system work for Native Californians was when he, along with his Luiseno supporters, lobbied influential Americans in Los Angeles and San Diego in 1870, in an effort to preserve the newly created San Pasqual Reservation. Local settlers opposed the creation of the reservation. Calac and the others failed in this effort, but Calac stayed in contact with the network of Indian Service agents, lawyers, and concerned individuals. They helped him with other problems facing the Luiseno and their neighbors. In 1873 Calac and village leaders from the Pala area visited Special Indian Agent John G. Ames and presented him with a list of grievances over squatters' incursions on their lands and water sources and threats of violence; they also demanded Phillips, Chiefs, 138-40, 145-49; Carrico, Strangers, 66-73; Richard L. Carrico, "Wolf Kalisher: Immigrant, Pioneer Merchant and Indian Advocate," Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 15 (January 1983), 100-106. In "Wolf Kalisher" Calac’s name is given as Manuel Olegario. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 188 to elect their own leaders without interference from the Indian Service. Ames wrote to his superiors in support of the demands. Indian Commissioner Edward P. Smith was impressed with Ames' report and recommended the creation of reservations in California, along with a $50,000 payment; these were voted down by Congress, whose California delegation strongly opposed any concessions to Native Californians.61 Calac and many of his supporters, however, opposed the creation of reservations because they had seen how reserved land could be revoked if settlers protested, and they feared that the required surveys and mappings of their lands would only serve to open land to settlers. The Luiseno were correct in their reasoning. Calac demanded, instead, that the actual villages and lands occupied and used by Luisenos be guaranteed to them. Calac extended his expertise in negotiating with local Americans when he traveled to Washington, D.C., in November 1875 to ask President Grant to stay the eviction of the Temecula Luisenos. Only a month after Calac1s visit, Grant issued an executive order reserving land in several parts of indigenous territory in San Diego County, although he did not stop the expropriation of Temecula.62 61 Carrico, Strangers, 78. 62 Ibid., 83-84. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 189 Calac continued protesting land loss in northern San Diego County, traveling frequently to Los Angeles and San Diego to meet with supporters. He resorted to force one time, when Luisenos in Potrero, at Rancho Cuca, were faced with eviction. Calac gathered fifty men and removed the evictor, Antonio Varela, from the ranch. Calac*s supporters prevented him from being arrested by refusing to allow the sheriff to take him from the rancho. But before the Rancho Cuca matter could be finally resolved, Calac was found dead, in July 1877. While the coroner found no evidence of murder, Luisenos continue to believe that Calac was poisoned. With Calac*s death, the Luiseno lost their most dynamic and effective leader, and found no similar person to replace him.63 Conclusion The key event for the Temecula Luiseno was the wholesale expropriation of their village by American settlers and investors in 1875. However, the Luiseno in Temecula, like many of their neighbors, endured two or three decades of smaller instances of land expropriation in and around Temecula, altering the economic system and politics of the Luiseno. 63 Ibid., 84-86. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 190 Temecula Luiseno and their neighbors did not submit quietly to the changes brought by Americans. But even with the sophisticated leadership of men like Olegario Calac, they were not able to stem a tide of settlement and white dominance. Nonetheless, their eventual lack of success does not mean that the image of passive, childlike Indians, promoted by reformers like Helen Hunt Jackson, should continue to color the historical record. Luiseno land loss was the direct result of decades of pressure by settlers and businesspeople, whether Californio, Mexican, or American, although it was the Americans who finally dominated. Land grantees, squatters, preemptors, and land investors formed a tide of settlers who desired land in Temecula Valley and worked unceasingly to obtain it. Rancheros like Cave Couts and John Warner tried to protect Native Californians against some of these incursions, in order to keep their labor force, but were largely ineffective. In a society shifting to an economy based on private ownership of small amounts of land by whites, there were few options for the Temecula Luiseno to retain their land base, and only limited options for them to become laborers on the farms and in the towns that were increasingly appearing in rural San Diego County. The dispossession of the Temecula Luiseno in 1875 happened in a year that can be said to represent the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 191 turning point from the period of transition from Mexican to American dominance in southern California, to the period in which Americans gained full dominance. While the shift did not occur in a single year, the expulsion from Temecula signalled that the old system of precarious balance between the land needs of rancheros and Native Californians was over. In its place came an influx of white families looking to own small farms, leaving almost no indigenous territory to its ancestral inhabitants. The next chapter examines land expropriation and the creation of a local economy requiring only temporary indigenous labor, in the context of the domination of white Americans in the region. The expansion of family farming was the most significant factor in changing the character of land ownership, labor relations, and white dominance in rural southern California. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 192 CHAPTER FOUR "EVERY AMERICAN IS A SQUATTER AT HEART" Introduction The eviction of the Temecula Luiseno by San Francisco investors was an uncommon event in rural southern California in the 1870s. Not until more than a decade after the 1875 expulsion would land investment, by local and distant entrepreneurs, become popular in the region. Instead, land use and ownership were most often contested by local settlers and residents.1 Rural southern California in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was, indeed, a region of small farmers. Their experiences illustrate the emergence of new relationships between Native Californians and typical white settlers. By "typical1 1 I do not mean some statistical classification based on wealth, occupation, The title of this chapter comes from W.W. Robinson, Land in California: The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads (Berkeley: University of California, 1948), 111. This book was the first in the series, Chronicles of California, edited by Herbert E. Bolton and John W. Caughey. Robinson made this statement in reference to "the tide of adventurous men that began to move west at the close of the Revolutionary War, men impatient of governmental authority and as contemptuous of the rights of Indians as of wild animals, men who believed land should be free as air.” By the end of the chapter (Chapter IX), though, Robinson was writing about family farmers and town dwellers in California, whom he must have believed were as much "squatters at heart" as the "adventurous men" of over a century before. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 193 family structure, or other social scientific measurements. The bulk of the families who moved into San Diego County in the 1870s and later were average in that they did not acquire great wealth or enormous amounts of property, nor did they become part of the local power structure as elected or appointed officials or by virtue of running large businesses. They were farmers, small business owners, teachers. These white settlers played a significant role in the reproduction of white supremacy locally, actively participating in land expropriation while building a local white American culture. In much of California the accumulation of immense landholdings by relatively few individuals was the norm. It would seem, then, that much of the land taken from Native Californians (and rancheros) must have been done by capitalists. Many historians have noted that when Californios lost ownership of their land grants in the northern half of the state, this did not result in a significant shift to small-farm ownership, which American settlers had demanded in the break-up of the ranchos. By the mid-1870s, after much litigation over the Spanish and Mexican land grants, over 600 farms and ranches still covered "an average of 22,000 acres or 60 percent of the total farm acreage in the state." Over 30 "private [land] preserves covering 500,000 acres in the Central Valley Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 194 were legally protected from intrusion from the earliest days of statehood.1 , 2 The situation in rural southern California, though, was different, closer to the settler ideal: in San Diego County, family farms and ranches were the most common form that land ownership took as rancheros and Native Californians lost their land. In 1882, for instance, small farms, up to 160 acres (the size of a single homestead) , numbered 2150, and 1213 farms were between 160 and 640 acres. It is true that farms of greater acreage, 400 to 640 acres, predominated (954) , but smaller ones of 100 to 160 acres were almost as numerous (875) .3 Most signifi cantly, even the larger farms were tiny compared to the old ranchos and the newer farms and ranches of the northern half of the state. William G. Robbins, Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 81; Paul W. Gates, "The Suscol Principle, Preemption, and California Latifundia, " in Land and Law in California: Essays on Land Policies (Ames: Iowa State University, 1991), 224; John Opie, The Law of the Land: Two Hundred Years of American Farmland Policy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1994), 136. 3 Wallace W. Elliott, History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties with Illustrations (1883), repro. and intro. Harry W. Lawton (Riverside, CA: Riverside Museum, 1965), 151. The exact break-down of farm sizes in Elliott is as follows: acres under 10 10- 40 40- 60 60- 100 100- 160 160- 240 240- 320 320- 400 400- 640 # of farms 311 567 80 317 875 74 110 75 954 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 195 This chapter examines the role of white Americans in the expropriation of land from Native Californians in the 1860s and 1870s and how this set the stage for the imposition of a white-supremacist culture. The examination has two main parts. The first summarizes federal (and to a lesser extent, California) land policy that sanctioned illegal occupation.of land and turned it into the legal means for individuals to acquire small landholdings. The second part uses the experiences of settlers and Kumeyaay in one locale, San Pasqual Valley, to illustrate how settlers used land laws to their benefit and to the detriment of indigenous people, and how, once established as land owners, settlers created a culture of denial and dominance, even as some of them expressed regret for the dispossession of the Kumeyaay. Native Californians (and rancheros, too, as discussed in the next chapter) lost land to white settlers in many ways in the 1860s through 1880s. Squatters nibbled away at their land and sources of water but only sometimes, as happened at San Timoteo during the smallpox epidemic in 1862, did they take over whole villages. Because squatters1 land rights were open to legal challenge by people who could prove their ownership of the land (a challenge that often turned against the owners), squatting was not the most secure route to land ownership. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 196 Homesteading, when it could be successfully accomplished, was a better, more secure method, as was preemption of Native Californian land.4 But potential homesteaders in southern California faced a problem— most of the land was not classified as public land, and only public land could be homesteaded. Preemptors also took the chance that the land they chose to occupy would become public land, but it might not. Most arable land was either owned by Mexican land grantees, by their descendants, or by Americans who had bought or otherwise acquired the ranchos (for instance, in payment for debts); much of the remaining land that was attractive to farmers was claimed by Native Californians. This problem, in fact, is what drove most squatters to occupy land claimed by earlier inhabitants.5 It would be a mistake, though, to draw too sharp a distinction between settlers who used legal and illegal means to acquire land. Squatters, preemptors and 4 Opie, Law of the Land, 59, 136; Gates, "The Land Business of Thomas O. Larkin," in Land and Law, 112. 5 The historical literature on squatting and land expropriation in California has rarely looked at the commonalities in the experiences of Native Californians and Californios (or American rancheros) whose lands were occupied by squatters. Among Chicano historians, the emphasis has been on squatters on rancho lands; among Native Californian historians, on squatters on native peoples' lands. Two recent works have brought together these two strands to some extent: Douglas Monroy's Thrown among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California, 1990), and Tomas Almaguer's Racial Faultlines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California, 1994). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 197 homesteaders were part of a single, historically developed process of land expropriation. White settlers1 expropriation of land from the Kumeyaay of San Pasqual, a small valley and village of the same name, some twenty miles south of Pauma and some forty miles south of Temecula, in the period from 1870 to 1875, illustrates the legal and historical connections between squatting and homesteading. Further, a memoir by one of the settlers, Tamar Elizabeth Marshall Bevington, reveals the very conscious actions of individual settlers in taking land from Native Californians. Squatters and homesteaders were similar, in that they interacted directly with the people they were dispossessing, while land investors usually did not have this direct interac tion. White settlers made use of federal and state land laws in order to acquire land, and land provided the basis for their rise to dominance in the region. The government provided the legal means for average Americans to acquire land, and the settlement of American family farmers helped secure American control of the region by pushing Native Californians and Californios to the margins. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 198 Historical Background: Federal Legislation It can be said that squatting, as a general activity, characterized almost all European and American land acquisition in North America. Since all the land was originally home to indigenous peoples, all European settlers had to take land away from them. From the early colonial period, European rulers and legislatures devised religious and legal reasonings to support settlers' theft of native lands. Under the Spanish Law of the Indies, pueblo and mission lands incorporated indigenous villages while the native people of the area were supposed to still retain usufructory rights to (that is, the use of) their land; the Crown, though, was the "owner1 1 of all the land it claimed.6 Before the American Revolution, speculation and squatting on colonial lands were common. These practices, along with granting land to war veterans and failing to survey lands before allowing settlement, became the foundation for U.S. public land policy from the early national period onward. In addition, squatters have opposed legal owners of large parcels of land since the 6 Robinson, Land in California, 11; Francisco de Vitoria, Francisci de Victoria de Indis et De Jure Belli Relectiones, trans. John Pawley Bate, ed. Ernest Nyes (1917; reprint, Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana, 1964), 139; Felix Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1942), 46-7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 199 beginning of this country's history. As W.W. Robinson notes, "George Washington in 1784 was making entries in his diary about his experiences with squatters on lands he owned west of the Alleghenies."7 After California became part of the United States, squatters grew increasingly influential in opposing Californio rancheros1 land claims. During the 1820s and 183 0s U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall applied and updated Spanish colonial law to the United States1 rights over native lands. One instance of this appears in the 1823 decision in Johnson v McIntosh. In discussing why indigenous peoples did not have the right to cede or sell lands to others, Marshall set the issue in its historical context of European contention over colonies in the Western Hemisphere and the European conquest of native peoples.8 7 George Cameron Coggins and Charles F. Wilkinson, Federal Public Land and Resources Law (Mineola, NY: Foundation, 1981), 43; Robinson, Land in California, 111. Land bounties in exchange for military service were first awarded in Virginia in 1646, and this practice continued through the war with Mexico, 1846 to 1848. Robinson, Land in California, 181. 8 Johnson and Graham's Lessee v McIntosh, 8 Wheaton 543. Felix Cohen shows the connection between Marshall’s reasoning in Johnson v McIntosh and Spanish law in his Handbook of Federal Indian Law, 46- 47. Charles F. Wilkinson, in American Indians, Time, and the Law (New Haven: Yale University, 1987), 55-56, discusses the "Marshall Trilogy.” The two other decisions were Cherokee Nation v Georgia, 1831, which held that Indians did not comprise independent nations; Marshall conceived of a new term and political entity that he called "domestic dependent nations"; and in Worcester v Georgia, 1832, Marshall argued that Indian nations were once sovereign entities (before European and American conquest), but after conquest, the conquering nation could— in the past, present, or future— limit the rights of any native group. The importance of Marshall's Trilogy can not by overstated. The core of Marshall's arguments, while often ignored or manipulated by judges in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, became the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 200 Marshall's decision echoed and reinforced already existing American attitudes about their right to acquire land. Marshall noted that "the character and religion of its [North America's] inhabitants afforded an apology for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendancy." He set forth the rule whereby the federal government could rightfully claim and dispose of indigenous land: "[Djiscovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession. The exclusion of all other Europeans, necessarily gave to the nation making the discovery the sole right of acquiring the soil from the natives, and establishing settlements upon it." Marshall hastened to add that "the rights of the original inhabitants were, in no instance, entirely disregarded; but were, necessarily, to a considerable extent, impaired. They were admitted to be the rightful occupants of the basis of Felix Cohen's explication of native sovereignty, and from the 1940s to the present, Cohen's interpretation has prevailed. See Wilkinson, American Indians 58. Also, as Wilkinson notes, Worcester v Georgia has been one of the most frequently cited of "all pre-Civil War Supreme Court opinions" by modern courts. Wilkinson, "Indian Tribes and the American Constitution," in Frederick E. Hoxie, ed., Indians in American History (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1988), 118. For concise discussions of the Spanish and other European background to indigenous sovereignty and land rights, and to the impact of the "Marshall Trilogy," see Ward Churchill, Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expro priation in Contemporary North America (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1993), 33-83, especially 34-45. Churchill also mentions an earlier decision by Marshall, Fletcher v Peck, 1810, in which Marshall first sought to weaken indigenous peoples’ legal claim to land. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 201 soil, with a legal as well as just claim to retain possession.1 , 9 However, as Marshall well knew, indigenous people had to prove their right to land they claimed. Even if courts accepted their evidence, pressure from settlers overturned whatever legal recognition a tribe might have gained. American settlers, no less than the federal government, could take comfort and guidance from Marshall's argument, adding it to the already common idea that indigenous peoples were uncivilized victims of conquest whose ways of life would surely die out; as they did so, settlers need not hesitate to take ownership of their lands. (Settlers and the government took no responsibility for causing the decline of native populations; they just waited for it to happen.) Federal public land policy developed as a means to transfer the public lands to private ownership.10 One problem for the federal government was that settlers moved onto land before it could be registered as public or private land. While early legislation, in the form of the Act of March 3, 1807, "Prohibition Against Settling on Lands Ceded to the United States," outlawed settlement on newly acquired lands "until authorized by law," settlers 9 Marshall quoted in Coggins and Wilkinson, Federal Public Land, 39-41. 10 Opie, Law of the Land, 44-49, 57. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 202 ignored this provision. Settlers' influence was powerful enough that Congress made concessions to them in this 1807 law, as well as in later legislation, virtually legalizing squatting. Thus, the 1807 law allowed "settlers in possession prior to this Act [to] hold limited acreage as tenants at will."11 This mild concession was one of many made by the federal government in the first two decades of the nineteenth century: another twenty-four acts went further when they gave preemption rights to specific groups or settlers within prescribed territories and states.12 In this way, in the early nineteenth century, the federal government, acting under pressure from squatters, transformed illegal squatters into legal preemptors. The trend of legalizing squatting as preemption continued in the 1830s and 1840s. Preemption laws during this period resulted in the patenting of several million acres for $1.25 per acre, with retroactive recognition of occupancy. The Act of 1841 signaled a shift in policy by recognizing prospective preemption, although settlement on unsurveyed land that was officially recognized as public land was still legally excluded (but still almost 11 Shepard's Citations, Digest of Public Lend Laws (Washington, D.C.: Public Land Law Review Commission, 1968), 4. 12 Coggins and Wilkinson, Federal Public Land, 67: "Preemption was the preferential right of a settler-squatter to buy his claim at a modest price without competitive bidding." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 203 universally done) . As in the earlier preemption acts, $1.25 per acre was the going price, and as in the later Homestead Act, the maximum claim was 160 acres.13 The 1841 act was a bridge between the early preemption laws and the new form of land ownership for the masses— homesteading. The passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, which allowed settlers to claim land without paying a per-acre price, was an outgrowth of "preemption concessions and of earlier leniency toward squatters."14 In addition, claims to lands other than farmland were retroactively legalized, as in the Mining Act of 1866, which was "called the 'miners' Magna Carta1 because it legalized existing trespass." The Mining Act applied the principle of the preemption acts, which were concerned with the occupation and use of land for agriculture, to a new purpose, mineral extraction. Finally, the Homestead Act (in one of its later amendments in 1880) continued to blur the line between squatting and homesteading by allowing claims on "unsurveyed lands where Indian title was extinguished.1,15 Squatting and its legal form, preemption, did not end 13 Ibid., 67-68; Richard White, "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own" : A New History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1991), 139. 14 Robinson, Land in California, 167-68. 15 Coggins and Wilkinson, Federal Public Land, 70, 86; White, "It's Your Misfortune," 143. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 204 in 1862 with the Homestead Act.16 Settlers often illegally occupied land because they were unwilling to wait for government surveys, or, as in Oklahoma's notorious land rush, for the official date when land would be opened to homesteaders. A prevalent idea among settlers was that occupancy gave the right to ownership. Certainly the federal government's legislation— and its ongoing tolerance of illegal squatters— throughout the nineteenth century helped sustain this idea. While preemption laws were repealed in 1891 due to "abuses and fraudulent entries," as late as 1906, a settler could readily declare about the site of a new Danish settlement in Montana: "The land was not surveyed but could be claimed by anyone over 21 years of age under Squatter's right."17 Thus, fifteen years after the legal end of preemption, the notion that squatters could gain title to land they occupied and 16 This is obvious when looking at settlement records, both formal and informal, in San Diego County. Paul W. Gates, in History of Public Land Law Development (Washington, D.C.: Public Land Law Review Commission, 1968), Chap. 15, discusses the mingling of preemption and homesteading in different parts of the United States, sometimes by the same individuals. White, "It's Your Misfortune,” 144-47, describes the multiplicity of laws, treaties, and other legal and extralegal instruments that coexisted and facilitated settlers' acquisition of land. The Homestead Acts, 1862-1890, transferred millions of acres to family farms, but so did the Land Commission acts, the Morrill Act, land gained through preemption acts and railroad grants. In fact, much land was closed to homesteading, and settlers had to acquire it through other means, such as these laws. 17 Robinson, Land in California, 166; White, "It's Your Misfortune," 144; "Jorgen and Otto Jorgenson Remember the Decision to Homestead in Montana, 1906," in Clyde A. Milner II, ed., Major Problems in the History of the American West (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1989), 405. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 205 worked on simply because they did so was still current. Rather than demonstrating ignorance or wishful thinking, the belief instead reflected the long history of squatters' influence on land policy. One of the arguments most commonly used by settlers throughout U.S. history was that indigenous peoples did not make the best use of land because they did not farm it. They were uncivilized people who needed to be educated in American lifeways, including private land ownership, living in sedentary agricultural communities, and wage labor. The shallowness of these views was amply demonstrated in the struggles over Cherokee land in Georgia in the 1820s and 183 0s (in which Chief Justice John Marshall's decisions played important roles). The Cherokee, especially, and the other "civilized tribes," the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, were sedentary, farming peoples who had adopted many aspects of American life, yet they were thrown off their lands.18 Similarly, white settlers in rural San Diego County encountered native peoples who had adopted many aspects of European life, most especially, agriculture, sedentary village life, and partial incorporation into a money economy. Nonetheless, some settlers emphasized the still "uncivilized" aspects 18 Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, Vols. I and II (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1984), 185. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 206 of indigenous life, such as the use of hunting and forag ing to gather food and other necessary supplies, which existed alongside European and American ways. Legal decisions, such as Marshall's, provided the ideological rationale, and legislation provided the legal mechanisms, for land expropriation. Preemptors and Homesteaders With the problem of transportation to southern California being solved by the building of railroad lines into the state in 18 69 and slowly extending southward in the 1870s, the next obstacle to the region's mass settlement was the lack of public land. Much arable land in San Diego County was part of Mexican land grants— resolution of which was long in coming— or indigenous territory. If southern California were to experience large-scale settlement by Americans, it would have to make cheap farming and ranching land available to them. In the decades preceding and following the Civil War, too, white settlement throughout the western territories and states was being promoted by the federal and state governments, helping to fulfill settlers' ideas that they had a right to free or cheap land. In striking contrast to the legal treatment accorded Indian and Mexican landholders in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 207 California, the federal government accommodated squatters and homesteaders who did not fulfill their land patent obligations. And while settlers invoked their rights to land they occupied, they often simultaneously ignored the rights of occupants they displaced.19 In the 1850s California settlers looked to the experiences of settlers in other parts of the Far West, especially Oregon. In 1850, with the Oregon Donation Land Law, indigenous titles to lands were ignored. Married settlers already occupying land by December 1, 1850 (even if it was claimed by Indians), could claim 640 acres— another instance of legislation sanctioning preemption of native land. Between December 1850 and 1855, new settlers in Oregon could claim 320 acres. A similar law applied to New Mexico in 1854. But California settlers received no such largesse from the federal government. This was due mainly to the Mexican (and Spanish) land grants which, by virtue of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Land Act 19 Charles Hughes, "The Decline of the Californios: The Case of San Diego, 1846-1856," in Mexicans in California after the Conquest, intro. Carlos Cortes (1976, reprint from The Journal of San Diego History 21 [Summer 1975]), 13. Hughes notes that land loss by- Californios in San Diego County is traceable more to various financial problems than to squatterism. For instance, taxes on land and property were onerous in southern California (because the mining lands of central and northern California were excluded from such taxation in the 1850s). But tax assessments were not always equitable; for one, squatters often were not assessed on the land they occupied, as was the case with Moses Manasse, Daniel Cline, and William Moody in Temecula, yet the squatter Lorenzo Soto, in the San Pasqual Valley, "was assessed three hundred dollars for improvements he made” on land he occupied, in 1856. Hughes, 19. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 208 of 1851, could not be ignored as easily as the land rights of native people.20 When Congress passed a new preemption law in 1853, it specifically excluded "the unsurveyed, unlocated, and poorly bounded claims" of the Mexican land grants.21 This law went into effect in the midst of great squatter discontent and influence on the state government in California. (Most squatters were then living in the northern part of the state.) In recognition of that influence and in order to court the settlers' votes, Governor John Bigler in 1854 referred to squatters as "'bona fide settlers'" and, in defiance of federal law and the treaty with Mexico, called for state legislation to open land for settlement. The state passed legislation in 1856 declaring that all land was public land until legal title could be proven. Foreseeing, correctly, that land litigation would occupy many years of time, the legislators included several stipulations: First, land could be preempted whether it was surveyed or not; second, squatters or tenants making improvements on land claimed by someone else were entitled to recompense if the claims 20 Clyde A. Milner, "National Initiatives," in Milner, Carol A. O'Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds. The Oxford History of the American West (New York: Oxford University, 1994), 175; Paul W. Gates, "Adjudication of Spanish-Mexican Land Claims in California," in Land and Law, 4, 20n3. 21 Gates, "California's Embattled Settlers," in Land and Law, 173. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 209 were eventually confirmed and the settlers evicted; and third, confirmed landowners had to offer reasonable rental terms to squatters on their land or offer to sell it to them at the appraised value. This law was intended to circumvent the long legal process that the land grants had to negotiate, which kept many land titles up in the air and thereby prevented settlers and the government from declaring land to be public land. The U.S. Supreme Court found the state law unconstitutional. Finally in 1857 the federal government responded in a limited fashion to American settlers' desire for land in California by finding some public land— not very much and not very desirable— to open for settlement.22 After the federal Homestead Act of 1862 went into effect, California had a dual system of settler land acquisition. The Homestead Act, though, had little effect in its early years on settlers in California because most land in the state continued in its earlier, non-public status. Squatting and preemption, instead, continued to be 22 Robinson, Land in California, 116; Opie, Law of the Land, 135; John W. Caughey, California: A Remarkable State's Life History, 3d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 247; Gates, "California's Embattled Settlers," 167-171. By September 1855 "only three claims had been finally decided." (The Land Act of 1851 established the Land Commission as of January 1, 1852). But after ten years, all 813 claims had been presented, 264 settled by the Board of Commissioners, 450 by district courts, 99 by the state supreme court, according to Bancroft, although he then admits in a footnote that of the cases settled in courts, many were not actually settled until the 1870s or 1880s. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: The History Company, 1888), 6:542, 570-571nl3. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 210 popular means of land acquisition, backed by state law. In the 1870s, when American settlement in the southern part of the state began to become significant, family farmers used all three methods— as well as purchase from private owners— to become landowners, and these methods continued to overlap and blend into each other for decades. Not only is it difficult for an historian to separate these categories, but contemporary settlers and writers only sometimes bothered to make clear distinctions. In San Diego County much of the desirable land was occupied by Native Californians. Unlike some parts of the state where rancheros and land speculators owned most of the arable land, in San Diego County only about ten percent of the land (leaving aside the 2,500,000 acres of the Colorado Desert) , was contained in land grants.23 Thus, settlers often looked to Indian-claimed lands for land to preempt or homestead. Luiseno and Kumeyaay land was attractive to settlers not only because of its potential as productive agricultural land, but also because of its actual productivity. The 1860 federal Agricultural Census reports 4143 acres of improved land in 23 Elliott, History of San Bernardino and San Diego, 151; he provides the following figures: The total area of San Diego County was 9,580,000 acres. Of this, 2,500,000 was desert, leaving 7,080,000 acres. Spanish and Mexican land grants covered 784,783 acres, although by the early 1880s, some land grants had been subdivided, leaving 551,842 in rancho lands. The government listed 8,795,217 acres as public lands, but Elliott, without explanation, classifies only 6,428,158 acres as public land. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 211 San Diego County, with 1080 of those acres worked by Native Californian landowners. White settlers took farmland first worked by indigenous people. Florence Shipek describes this process: "A major portion of the American-owned production, it must be kept in mind, was on land which Indians had improved and had owned until within the last year or two. Thus Indian owners had cleared this land, leveled it, prepared ditches, and fenced it," only to have their work appropriated by new settlers.24 This is exactly what happened in San Pasqual. San Pasqual If not for the Battle of San Pasqual in 1846 and occasional reports of squatter depredations against the Kumeyaay of San Pasqual in the 1860s, the village would be absent from the written historical record until permanent white settlers made the valley their home beginning around 1870. Never part of a land grant, San Pasqual escaped most whites' attention in the mid-nineteenth century. Unlike Temecula, it was not an important indigenous village, nor was it situated on any emigrants' trails. Even after white settlement, it remained a backwater. There are reasons, though, for using it as a key example of land expropria 24 Florence C. Shipek, "A Strategy for Change: The Luiseno of Southern California," (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii, 1977), 191. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 212 tion and the reproduction of white supremacy. First, the Kumeyaay attracted presidential concern regarding their loss of land fairly early, in 1870, and government and reformers' attention returned often to the small valley for several decades. Second, because San Pasqual played little role in ranchero society, the American expropriation of indigenous land represents an almost "pure" case of the imposition of American white supremacy through the process of land expropriation. Finally, and perhaps most illuminating, Bevington's memoir illustrates very clearly the process by which average settlers took land away from Indians. The memoir is further supplemented by several others, so that together, a multifaceted protrayal of the imposition of white supremacy appears. It may be that the smallness and isolation of the valley, while making San Pasqual an unimportant locale in the political and economic development of southern California, played a role in the self-consciousness of San Pasqual1s white "pioneers" of land expropriation. They were used to taking action on their own initiative, and this seems to have carried over in their efforts to tell their own history. There is little hard information about San Pasqual's first several decades, from the early 183 0s through about 1870. It is generally reported that the village was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 213 founded in or around 1834 as a result of the seculariza tion of the missions. (Three other Indian pueblos [towns or villages] were founded around the same time— Las Flores, Pala and San Dieguito.) There were 34 founding families of ex-neophytes from Mission San Diego, totaling 113 people, who were chosen, according to Bancroft, "for their intelligence, good behavior, industry, and fitness in all respects for earning their own living and managing their own affairs."25 While the story of establishing the new villages may be true, it is also possible that the villages already existed, but that their populations had been largely decimated by being moved to the missions. Early white settlement in the valley is similarly cloudy. One report of a crime committed by a white man, J. 25 Florence Shipek, Pushed Into the Rocks: Southern California Indian Land Tenure, 1769-1986 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1987), 26-27; Helen Jackson and Abbot Kinney, Report on the Condition and Needs of the Mission Indians, 1883, printed in Reports of Committees of the Senate, 48th Cong., 2d sess. and special sess., 1885, p. 4; Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1885), 3:353; Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: The History Company, 1886), 4:628. There are discrepancies in various versions of San Pasqual's beginning. Bancroft states in History of California, Vol. 3, that the village was founded in 1833; then in Vol. 4, its founding was in 1835. Jackson and Kinney describe the ex-neophytes as Luiseno, instead of Diegueno (Kumeyaay). As evidence, they mention mission records in San Francisco; however, these records are unavailable to current historians because, as Shipek notes, "Most records for Indian pueblos established within San Luis Rey and San Diego mission lands were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906." Shipek, "Strategy," 177; Fr. Zephyrin Engelhardt, San Luis Rey Mission (San Francisco: James H. Barry, 1921), 244, first mentions the existence of San Pasqual in a report from 1842. Population figures for San Pasqual indicate that about 200 Kumeyaay were living there in the early 1870s. Richard L. Carrico, Strangers in a Stolen Land: American Indians in San Diego 1850—1880 (Sacramento: Sierra Oaks, 1987), 35. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 214 Anderson, against a Kumeyaay woman appeared in 1861; he was accused of killing her. In addition, a newspaper report in the same year states that 111 In and around this village (San Pasqual) are now living some twenty white vagabonds, selling liquor to and preying upon these Indians.11' 26 Nowhere, though, are there reports of extensive white settlement in the 1860s. Not until 1870 were there enough white residents of San Pasqual for them to be enumerated separately from the rest of San Diego County in the federal census, at which time almost 400 were counted. This, however, poses a problem in relation to settlers' memoirs and other accounts. While there was clearly a population of whites in the valley in the 1860s, American settlers date the start of permanent white settlement from 1869 (in the form of San Diego County assessment records). The first white American family to settle in San Pasqual, the Clevengers, arrived in 1872, with the second, the Judsons, arriving in 1875. It seems that the American settlers of the 1870s simply erased the earlier white occupants from their accounts. This may well be because a large number of the 265 "native-born" whites listed in the census were of Mexican descent, rather than Anglo American, as the 1883 local history of San 26 Both newspaper reports, from the Los Angeles Star of 21 September and 12 October 1861, respectively, appear in Marjorie Tisdale Wolcott, ed., Pioneer Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes 1849-1875 (Los Angeles: privately printed, 1929), 260. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 215 Bernardino and San Diego Counties reports: "Up to the year 1875, the valley was principally settled by Mexicans and Indians." Elizabeth Judson Roberts, however, states in her memoir that most of the valley residents were Indians, with only some "Spaniards."27 While it may be hard to pinpoint when white American settlers dominated the population in San Pasqual, it is clear that by the mid-1870s they were well into the process of dispossessing the Kumeyaay. Roberts states that the Indians and Mexicans co-existed peacefully in the valley, and Kumeyaay land ownership was threatened only when "Yankees cast covetous eyes on the fertile soil of San Pasqual." Within a few years of the Judson1s arrival in 1875, the Indians had been "driven out." This sentiment is echoed by John Kelly, who grew up on a ranch near San Pasqual in the 1860s and 1870s. He states that settlers took over Kumeyaay land with "no consideration for the prior rights of the poor Indians."28 27 Bureau of the Census, The Statistics of the Population of the United States, Taken in the Year 1870, Vol. 1, Population (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1872), 91; Mary Rockwood Peet, San Pasqual: A Crack in the Hills (Ramona, CA: Ballena, 1973), 58, 65-66; Elizabeth Judson Roberts, "Indian History," in Peet, San Pasqual, 17; Elliott, History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, 181. 28 Roberts, "Indian History," 17-18; John Kelly, "Life on a San Diego County Ranch," unpublished MS, n.d., 175, HM 16782. Kelly was born in 1867 in Northern California; his family moved to San Diego County in 1868. Kelly's father bought property adjoining his brother's Agua Hedionda Ranch, about ten miles south of the Couts' family's Rancho Guaj ome. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 216 The stage was set for settler expropriation of indigenous land in San Pasqual Valley, ironically, by an 1870 executive order of President Grant that was meant to protect a small part of Native Californian territory. In January 1870, Grant established two reservations in southern California, one in the Pala area and one in San Pasqual Valley. Augustus P. Greene opened the new Indian agency in San Pasqual and posted warnings in the valley: "'Therefore all persons are forbidden to make any improvements, and warned to make immediate preparations for removing from these lands, and all persons are forbidden to settle in the respective Townships, indicated as reserved for Indian purpose.1"29 Almost twenty years earlier, in 1852, California representatives to Congress had angrily denounced the treaties that would have reserved about 7,500,000 acres of land for Native Californians (in exchange for their ceding the rest of the state, which covers about 100,000,000 acres) . At that time, most of the white population lived in the northern half of the state, and they had the most influence with California's senators. There was opposition in the southern half of the state, too, expressed, for instance, in a Los Angeles Star editorial supporting the opinion of the California delegation. However, in San 29 Greene quoted in Carrico, Strangers, 65-66. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 217 Diego County, it is probable that rancheros supported the effort to establish local reservations, as evidenced by state Representative John J. Warner's statement. In 1853 a different plan, to create one large reservation for all Native Californians in the southern third of the state, in an area with little white settlement, won widespread support in the region.30 These early reactions to the reservation of land for indigenous Californians formed part of a pattern of responses for four decades: settlers who were preempting small parcels of land refused to give up land they already occupied or thought they might want to occupy. Settlers in San Pasqual and throughout San Diego County in 1870 responded in the same way but on a smaller scale when President Grant sought to reserve land at San Pasqual and Pala for two indigenous groups very hard hit by squatters. Settlers in the valley and the county responded swiftly and angrily to the idea that farming land would be made into an Indian reservation. The settlers hired a lawyer, Charles P. Taggart, who had been a part owner of the San Diego Union, the main newspaper in the county, 30 Carrico, Strangers, 48; George E. Anderson, W. H. Ellison, and Robert F. Heizer, eds., Treaty Making and Treaty Rejection by the Federal Government In California, 1850—1852 (Socorro, NM: Ballena, 1978), 26, 53-54, and J. J. Warner, "Minority Report," 42-44; John Walton Caughey, ed., The Indians of Southern California In 1852, by B. D. Wilson; intro. Albert L. Hurtado (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1995), xxxiii-xxxv, xxxviii—xxxix. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 218 until just a few months before. Taggart made sure that the newspaper editorialized against the creation of the reservations, and that it published hostile articles about it. This organized settler opposition to reserving land for Native Californians set the tone for land policy in southern California for the next twenty years.31 Many of the Kumeyaay of San Pasqual and Luisenos to the north and west of them also opposed the reservation plan, for two main reasons. First, the reservations would be for all the native people of southern California and some even from the north. The people of San Pasqual and Pala did not want Native Californians from outside of their area moved onto their land, as the amount of arable land and sources of water were insufficient for any numbers beyond the people already living there. Second, many native people no longer trusted the pronouncements of the government; without a document stating exactly what lands would be theirs, the Kumeyaay and Luiseno believed the government would not (or could not) defend the reserved land against settlers. Even a year after Grant's executive order, no such documentary evidence had been supplied to Indian Agent Greene or any of the native leaders. 31 Carrico, ibid., 63-69, and Florence Connolly Shipek, Pushed Into the Rocks, 35-36, 120nl0. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 219 Soon after Grant's executive order was announced, Olegario Calac succeeded Manuel Cota as head chief of the Luisenos. He led the opposition to the reservation plan, demanding that the government provide them with written documents and clear assertions of their intentions. This caution was seized upon by local rancheros and settlers, by the San Diego Union, and by state government officials to generate great opposition to the executive order. With all of this, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely S. Parker recommended the revocation of the order; four days later, Grant himself revoked it. The doubts of Indian leaders like Calac were fulfilled with this revocation when Grant "returned" over 69,000 acres to the public domain without making any provisions for present or future indigenous occupation or ownership.32 The Luisenos also learned how easily an executive order could be overturned. As a final insult, Native Californians at Pala and San Pasqual officially "disappeared." Whereas the census taker for the 1860 federal census had traveled to native villages throughout the county and recorded the residents there, in 1870, it appears that they did not count most Native Californians. The census taker listed all residents at Pala and San Pasqual as Mexican or from Europe or the eastern part of the United States. But some of the people 32 Carrico, Strangers, 66, 68—69. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 220 with "Mexican" names were the same Indians enumerated in the previous census. One newspaper, possibly the Union, added this census information to one of its reports opposing the creation of the two reservations, stating that "'only peaceful Christian citizens,'" and "'no Indians'" lived in the two valleys, so there was no need to set aside land. This disappearance of native people from Pala and San Pasqual is especially surprising considering that the census lists both villages separately from the Pala and the very short-lived San Pasqual reservations. That is, in the census report, Pala village and Pala Reservation, San Pasqual village and San Pasqual Valley Reservation all appear, with different populations, but with no Indians. How could there be reservations with no indigenous people?33 Reports by government agents and memoirs by settlers in San Pasqual demonstrate the inaccuracy of the 1870 census and newspaper reports. Indian Agent Greene, assigned to San Pasqual in 1870, saw Kumeyaay living there, and he reported a population of 195. Elizabeth Judson came to the valley with her parents in 1875. She stated that most of the people then living there were Indians, with some Mexicans.34 33 Shipek, Pushed, 35-36, 196nl0; 1870 Census, 91. 34 Peet, Sen Pasqual, 60; Roberts, "Indian History,” 17, 19. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 221 In 1875, after Calac's visit to him, President Grant established a number of small reservations, despite the objection of most European Americans in San Diego County, aside from the rancheros. These incorporated land from native villages and, for the most part, were set aside only for those village residents. Among those established in northern San Diego County were La Jolla, Pala, and Rincon, along the San Luis Rey River, and Mesa Grande and Santa Ysabel, to the east and south.35 No land at San Pasqual was set aside, in large part because European American settlement in the valley had already taken over much of the land and had pushed the local Kumeyaay out of the valley. The memoir of one settler shows how American settlers took native land, a process much different from that used by the Spanish missionaries or the Californio and American rancheros. Tamar Elizabeth Marshall Bevington's memoir describes the specific steps she and her husband, Perry, took after moving to the San Pasqual Valley in 1875 in order to establish a homestead there. The land they chose was in the still-occupied Kumeyaay village. The Bevingtons1 story illustrates how American land law benefitted settlers like the Bevingtons at the expense of Native Californians. It also demonstrates that the 35 Shipek, Pushed, Appendix G, 186-91. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 222 settlers could not sit back and expect the law to work for them; they had to actively apply the laws to their situation. The actions of settlers like the Bevingtons demonstrates that they were conscious and active participants in taking land from Native Californians, even while acknowledging that the Indians had some right to the land. The San Pasqual Valley was unsurveyed, but because of the repeal of the 1870 executive order, it could be classified as public land. By law, then, white settlers would have the right to occupy the Kumeyaay land. But they first had to ensure that the government classified the land as public land, remove the Kumeyaay living there, and register the land with the federal government as homesteads. The Bevingtons were conscious of their incursion on Kumeyaay land, that it was not empty land. As Bevington wrote, "The oldest Indian in the valley could not remember living anywhere else and all considered it a reservation," and "Not only the Indians, but the white people thought the land was a reservation."36 In other words, the Bevingtons and their white neighbors in San Pasqual 36 Tamar Elizabeth Marshall Bevington, "As I Remember," unpublished MS, n.d., 2, 4, San Diego Public Library, California Room, San Diego, California. While there is no date on the manuscript, the notation, "Written when near 80 years old," appears on it. Bevington was born in 1846, so the approximate year she wrote (or dictated) this memoir was 1926. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 223 believed the government had set aside land for the Kumeyaay, or they recognized that the Kumeyaay had a valid ancestral or occupancy claim to the land. Nonetheless, the settlers took advantage of the various land laws that had . been made to benefit Americans and pushed aside any legal or moral right the Kumeyaay had. Bevington relates how Perry and a neighbor and old friend, Eugene J. Rhodes, took advantage of land laws to gain legal ownership of land in San Pasqual, but they had to take the initiative to do so. Many people in San Pasqual believed the land had been reserved for the Kumeyaay, despite President Grant's recision of his 1870 executive order, but at the same time, settlers knew that something had happened with the land, even if they were not sure what that was. This doubtlessly made settlers like the Bevingtons believe that squatting on Kumeyaay land would eventually lead to their acquiring homesteads.37 One settler who doubted the land was an Indian reservation was Allen Harrison Carm, the local constable. He was joined by Rhodes, who had just moved to San Pasqual, and who had previously worked in a federal Land Office in Arkansas. Rhodes told Perry Bevington that they should go to the Land Office in Los Angeles "and see Bevington, "As I Remember," 1—2; in telling about her and Perry's decision to move to the valley, Bevington states, "Perry found a place in San Pasqual where he could take a homestead." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 224 what ailed the land in San Pasqual." They learned that the valley was "State Selection Land."38 Apparently, after the revocation of the 1870 reservation order, the land again became part of the public domain. It either already had been or at that point became part of the 8,852,140 acres that the federal gave to the state between 1851 and 1862. The land was to be sold off to raise money for public works or was to be used for public schools and universities and public buildings. The land, however, was unsurveyed, and this is probably why settlers in the valley were not sure of its status. Rhodes alerted the state government in Sacramento about "the condition in the valley and asked to have the land thrown open to settlement." The government agreed, and Rhodes and the Bevingtons "filed" on the land they had been occupying. Once they did this, other settlers were emboldened to move to the valley.39 In order to advance their legal hold on their homestead and destroy that of the Kumeyaay, the Bevingtons had to do more than inform the government about the land and file their claim— they had to overcome Kumeyaay resistance. The Bevingtons had already built their house, a victory for the Bevingtons over the objections of the 38 Ibid., 4. 39 Paul W. Gates, "Public Land Disposal in California," in Land and Law, 253; Caughey, California, 132, 224-225. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 225 Kumeyaay. Two years later, Perry advanced their occupation of the land by plowing and planting it. Next, Perry turned to the law again, this time to evict the Kumeyaay living on the Bevingtons1 homestead. The writ of ejectment, served by a sheriff, gave the Kumeyaay four months to leave. At the end of the allotted time, the Kumeyaay had not moved. The sheriff gave them one and a half hours to depart, telling them "they couldn't take a thing that belonged to them unless Perry said they could." According to the Settlers Act of 1856, land owners were required to reimburse squatters and tenants for any improvements they had made on the land if they were evicted. But Native Americans were not considered squatters or tenants, and so received no compensation for any property they had to leave behind, nor for their orchards, plowed fields, and crops.40 Perry, though, permitted the San Pasqual Kumeyaay to haul off whatever they could in that time because "all he wanted was the land." The final sign of the American dispossession of the San Pasqual Kumeyaay came when the valley was surveyed. Perry Bevington helped the surveyor do his work. Bevington describes an "old squaw" who attempted to thwart this process by pulling up the surveyor's stakes as he planted them. The stakes were a clear, physical sign of American 40 Gates, "Land Business of Thomas O. Larkin," 112-13. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 226 ownership of the land; they also marked the Kumeyaay woman's land, placing a foreign boundary on it. This Kumeyaay woman's understanding of the significance of the surveyor's stakes echoes an incident in July 1875, when Calac, the Luiseno leader, obstructed the surveying of land in northern San Diego County to mark the boundaries of the Indian reservations created by President Grant's executive order.41 Bevington's memoir shows an underlying discomfort with her and Perry's actions. She strives to demonstrate that they were "good" people. Almost every time Bevington relates a conflict between the Bevingtons and any group of Kumeyaay, she follows it with an assertion that the Kumeyaay were friendly with them once they adjusted to their dispossession. Thus, after a group of Kumeyaay men unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the Bevingtons from building their house, Liz Bevington states, ''They never came back to bother us in building, and when we took our cows into the valley, they wanted to buy milk and always brought money for it.'1 Even more important, "as they became acquainted with Perry they liked him." At a later date, after Perry and the sheriff had evicted the Kumeyaay from the homestead, Bevington makes 41 Bevington, "As I Remember," 6; Carrico, Strangers, 78. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 227 them apologetic, as if the Bevingtons' and the Kumeyaays' positions were reversed: Isidrio Nejo and Isidore Duisquis came to us one night . . . and told us they were sorry they made us so much trouble. . . . The Indians were better friends after that for they found Perry did not lie. They often came to him with their troubles and the women brought their letters to me to be read.42 Note, too, that the Kumeyaay who worked for them— the two men just mentioned, and Delores Washburn— are presented by name by Bevington.This is a small acknowledgement of their humanity— now that she owned the land and they worked for her— in contrast to her derogation of the stubborn "old squaw." As part of her project of redeeming herself and Perry, Bevington carefully establishes the legality of their land expropriation. I have already mentioned how Perry helped to convince the government to open the land for homesteading, and how Perry turned to the sheriff to evict the Kumeyaay. The legal right to throw people off their land and out of their dwellings superseded indige nous people's moral or social right to live in their homes. And yet, Bevington struggled with this. She recounts her and Perry's decision to take less than the 160 acres that they had a legal right to: "A mission 42 Bevington, "As I Remember," 3, 5. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 228 church and burying ground was in the valley and would have made our claim a square, but I told Perry not to disturb them in their church affairs, so we only took 120 acres."43 Bevington1s consciousness of their action is clear here: while respecting the Kumeyaay's sacred ground, she and Perry took away the rest of their land. The contradictions of California law and American society are smoothed over by Bevington, but Kumeyaays1 right to their land was supposedly guaranteed in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and in California's 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. Bevington's story demonstrates how American settlers shaped and justified the application of shifting government policy. Financial Rewards of Homesteading One significant difference between homesteading and squatting was the ability to sell homesteaded land easily, often for a profit. For squatters, if their occupancy was disputed by a landowner, or if the land was not declared public land and therefore legally open to settlement, the lack of a clear title to the land often obstructed their ability to sell it or profit from such a sale. 43 Ibid., 2. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 229 The Bevingtons sold their homestead for $5,000 after living on the land for twelve years. The money allowed them to purchase four town lots in the newly established town of Escondido. Perry established a business there, a livery stable. The exact extent of their profit is not clear, as Bevington does not mention how much or if she and Perry had to pay for their land (aside from $200 in lawyer's fees that they paid to evict the Kumeyaay from their land). If they gained legal title by purchasing state land, the price could have been as high as $2 and acre. This was the case, for instance, with the federal grant of 500,000 acres that the state intended to sell in 160- and 320-acre blocks or use for building schools. The land the state used for this was specified as unsurveyed land, so land in San Pasqual might have been included. But other federal land grants to the state were put on the market for only $1 an acre, and with depreciation, dropped as low as 75 cents an acre. Land, claimed under the federal homestead acts was free. Because the state was extremely lax in keeping track of its public lands and in collecting the monies owed in payment for the lands, the Bevingtons might have gained title under any number of land act provisions, and for a range of prices, including for nothing.44 44 Ibid., 3, 17; Gates, "Public Land Disposal," 253-254. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 230 The Bevingtons1 profit from the sale of their homestead was probably average, compared to other San Pasqual settlers. Most settlers in the valley in the last quarter of the nineteenth century did not become wealthy, but their families lived with a measure of prosperity. Mary Rockwood Peet, who grew up in the valley, memorial ized "the pioneers of San Pasqual" as a "thrifty, indus trious, peace-loving people, content to farm, dairy, build comfortable homes and rear their children."45 The settlers were able to send their children to school in the valley and to save some money to invest in expanding their farm production, buying more land as real estate invest ments, or opening non-farming businesses. The general prosperity of white settlers in San Pasqual was noted by a neighboring settler, John Kelly, and four families are memorialized in the 1883 local history of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties that included the region's most prosperous families. Consider ing the small size and population of the valley and the large area covered in the book, this indicates the high level of prosperity of the valley's residents and San Pasqual's potential for further economic development. The Judsons receive special mention in the local history, as well as in other histories and memoirs. John B. Judson's 45 Peet, San Pasqual, 13-14. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 231 farm prospered from alfalfa and livestock production, with fruits playing a lesser role, and Judson "was interested in . . . water development."46 Water development, too, was a sign of the valley's prosperity, as were the law suits that arose over the division of water rights in the late 1890s and again in 1919.47 The construction of irrigation systems, their continual use over the course of decades, the interest of water development companies from outside of the valley, and discord over sharing water all indicate the success of agriculture in the valley. Clearly, all the families had to work hard to prosper. Some families, like the Bevingtons and Judsons, succeeded within a decade or less, but other families had to wait longer for prosperity, for several reasons. The Fentons, as one example, did not earn much in the way of excess money. Part of the reason for this may have been their reliance on low-earning agricultural products like alfalfa and dairy. In this, the Fentons were typical 6 Kelly, "Life on a San Diego County Ranch," 176; Elliott, History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, 181, and illustration, following page 59, "Alfalfa and Stock Ranch of John B. Judson”; Peet, San Pasqual, 67. In Mary Keiser, The Spirit of San Pasqual: A Guide to Scenic San Pasqual Valley (self-published, 1987), 10, the author describes the Judsons as the main family in the valley. 47 Peet, San Pasqual, 192-95; Elliott, History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, illustrations of the farms of A.E. Maxcy, John B. Judson, O. Darling, and William F. Thomson, n.p., mention of "John Judson's Place,” 166, and short description of San Pasqual Valley, 181. Elliott, 181, states that at the time he was writing, there were about twenty American families living in the valley. This seems too low a figure, if the 1870 census count of almost four hundred whites was accurate. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 232 farmers in the valley. Most San Pasqual farmers did not exploit fully the agricultural potential of the valley.48 But if the San Pasqual farmers were "content to farm [and] dairy" and not aspire to great wealth, they were also hampered by the lack of good transportation options. The first paved road between San Pasqual and the closest major town, Escondido, was not completed until 1932. The first bridges across the San Dieguito River in the valley, constructed in 1906 and 1916, were destroyed by floods in 1916 and 1927. No railway came near the valley.49 Nonetheless, the San Pasqual settlers all could rely on the value of their land to help them through hard times or provide a tidy profit for new investment. Henry Fenton complained that "good land as well as poor land depreciated in value" in the valley from the mid-1880s through the mid-1910s, yet his mother's homestead still provided the financial basis for a $600 loan to pay tuition for his sister's education at the state normal school (teacher's college) in Los Angeles. Fenton's Uncle Bill was able to raise a $25,000 mortgage on his property in the valley, in order to subdivide it to create San Pasqual City, a failed attempt to take advantage of the 1886-1887 land boom in southern California. In 1916, Henry 48 Elliott, History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, 166. 49 Fenton, "Boyhood Days," 164; Peet, San Pasqual, 184-190. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 233 was able to buy back the land his uncle had subdivided, and within a few years, he also bought his mother's old homestead.50 If the Fentons had to work hard for many years, the financial security of the original homesteads still provided the economic basis for the children's eventual prosperity. Just as the San Pasqual settlers' prosperity was based on the land, so too was it tied to the nationaland racial composition of the valley's residents. In the early 1880s, little more than a decade after the arrival of American settlers, the majority of valley residents were American families "of good class," with only two Mexican families, and no native people. This information comes from History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, which, like almost all local histories of the time, was published to attract investment and settlement. It does not seem an accident then, that after showing that almost all non-whites had been expulsed from the valley, the author declares, "The future of San Pasqual Valley is bright."51 The future of the Kumeyaay, however, was not bright. Driven from their land, surrounded by family farmers who had limited use for their labor, and poorly served by the 50 Fenton, "Boyhood Days," 164-166. 51 Elliott, 181. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 234 meager efforts of the federal government to reserve land for Native Californians in the southern counties of the state, the Kumeyaay struggled to survive. By the time Jackson and Kinney came through the valley in 1882, there was one Native Californian farming in the valley— but he was a Luiseno, not a Kumeyaay. With the Kumeyaay seemingly gone, there was no need to reserve land for them. But they still lived, scattered throughout the region, and finally in 1910, the federal government established the San Pasqual Reservation.52 The Culture of Dispossession As a girl growing up in San Pasqual in the 1870s and 1880s, Elizabeth Judson was curious about the Kumeyaay still living in the valley. She frequently visited the Indian village, looking at the adobe houses with tule (reed) roofs and watching the women "ground corn and wash clothes in the laguna [pond] and cook over their open fires." She remembers the women exclaiming over her blond hair, unbraiding and smoothing it with their hands. Some times Judson went up into the hills where the Kumeyaay had their seasonal houses— and where more and more of them 52 Valerie Sherer Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 46; Shipek, Pushed, 92-93, 190. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 235 fled to as white settlers took over their land in the valley. Judson found these brush huts "more interesting" than the adobe houses. Later, as an adult, Elizabeth Judson Roberts— for she was married now— decided to learn the Kumeyaays1 old stories and write them down, "to preserve them, as only the older Indians seem to know them." Because they had known her for so long, and because she had sometimes helped them with problems, some of the Kumeyaay were willing to tell her the stories, and in 1917, Roberts published "Indian Stories of the Southwest. "53 Among settlers in San Pasqual and in surrounding towns, Roberts was one of the main advocates for the Native Californians of the area— not just the San Pasqual Kumeyaay, but others throughout the county. She interceded on their behalf when Indian agents mistreated them and helped to educate local Americans about their history. In her writings she deplored the treatment that many had received at the hands of her fellow "Yankees."54 Yet Roberts, like many of the Indian reformers of her time, believed that the decline and even disappearance of indigenous people were inevitable, although she, unlike 53 Roberts, "Indian History," 19; Roberts, "Days of Yore," unpublished MS, 1948, 42, 44, San Diego Historical Society, San Diego, California. 54 Roberts, "Days,” 43. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 236 most reformers, did not argue that this happened because native people were less "civilized" than Americans.55 Roberts' actions and views as an individual, taken in sum, illustrate Americans' collective ambivalence towards Indians. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in rural San Diego County no less than in other parts of the United States, a significant segment of the white population desired simultaneously to be "friends" of Native Americans and their superiors; felt guilty about American destruction of native life but denied their participation in it. Americans' expressions of guilt and denial served to support their own and their predecessors' acts of dispossession, labor exploitation, and discrimination. The writings discussed here demonstrate some of the ways that white supremacy was reproduced through the stories settlers told. In this section I am not so concerned with what happened as in what Americans thought about events, themselves, and other people. One difficulty of analyzing what people thought based on their writings (or inter 55 Prucha, Great Father, 334-338, 342,343, 451-457, 488-512, 643- 652, discusses the ideology of Indian primitiveness in federal Indian policy, which was increasingly formulated by Indian reformers in the period 1850 through 1890. As Prucha's discussion makes clear, it is almost impossible to examine Indian reform in the second half of the nineteenth century (and continuing into the early twentieth century) without noting the influence of the idea that Native Americans needed to become "civilized." Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson, 1-17 concisely summarizes the activities of white, Christian Indian reformers in this endeavor. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 237 views) is that memoirs and reminiscences are often recorded many years after the events in them took place. Perceptions might have changed over the years. In the case of racial attitudes, the attitudes at the time the memories were recorded might substitute for feelings at the time of the events. Because of this, I used as many writings as possible from close to the time of events in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, although I do use some later writings and interviews. Two sets of perceptions, regarding the land and the people living on it, are manifest in the memoirs. One focuses on settlers1 relationship to the land and their new communities. In general, land was important to the settlers as a means to a prosperous or at least adequate life for their families. The land itself held little interest or emotional content for them; instead, it was their neighbors and communities that provided the emotional ties to the area they settled in. The other set of perceptions involves settlers1 roles in the disposses sion of Native Californians. This has three components, all of which required Americans to take some responsibil ity for the destruction of indigenous communities and lives: settlers saw themselves as advisors to individual Native Californians, as givers of charity to them, and as destroyers of their lives. The first two components also Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 238 share the quality of maintaining white American superior ity. But simultaneously, these settlers denied personal responsibility; any wrongdoings had been done by disreputable whites, mainly in the past. Their sense of superiority, then, was not marred by personal guilt, and they could foster their superiority by claiming they were better than Americans had been previously. Historians and commentators have remarked on the strange paradox of white guilt over the treatment of Native Californians, seeing "an element of masochism, with the Americans . . . taking upon themselves full responsibility for the criminal mistreatment of the Indian"56; however, this can also be seen as an evasion of responsibility under the cover of other white people's guilt. White Americans had little if any attachment to a particular territory. Roberts and especially Mary Rockwood Peet, both of whom grew up in the San Pasqual Valley in the 1870s and 188 0s, wrote movingly of life in the valley, but their recollections are mainly of the adventures they had when young there, of what their lives were like as they matured and married, of who their friends were, and so on. There is little about the valley itself, about the land, the plant life, the rocky hills. Their nostalgia for a way of life that was passing when they wrote their 56 Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (1946; reprint, Sait Lake City: Gibbs-Smith, 1973), 70. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 239 memoirs centered mainly on the people, and only incidentally on the place. When they did write about the place itself, it was to tell about dramatic events, such as floods, surprise snow storms, and the like. Liz Bevington also reported on dramatic weather events in San Pasqual, but otherwise wrote almost nothing about the land she and Perry farmed or about the valley. They moved from San Pasqual after living there twelve years, with no apparent regret. Not the land, then, but a sense of community is what many settlers treasured about their early years in southern California. They yearned for the camaraderie and aid in times of trouble that they had experienced fleetingly, before they picked up and moved somewhere else, or before the small settlements grew into larger, impersonal towns. Bevington wrote, "In all new communities I believe there is more human charity for one another than in the old settled communities." Peet was less effusive, but she wrote of many instances of neighbors helping each other and stated, "[A]mong my cherished memories are the recollections of many kindly acts."57 Highlighted among the neighborly acts were those performed by women, especially help with childbirth and family illnesses. 57 Bevington, "As I Remember," 14; Peet, San Pasqual, 72. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 240 Another key aspect of community was shared "whiteness." Many settlers remarked on being one of the first whites to settle in an area, about the relief they felt when another white family moved nearby, and their discomfort with having to learn Spanish to communicate with Native Californians and Mexicans already living there. Peet and Bevington both list the order of settle ment of the early white families in San Pasqual. Bevington notes that she and a neighbor friend "were weeks at a time we never saw the face of a white woman and it would have been longer if we hadn't gone out of the valley." Kelly notes that for the first year, the only people living nearby were Spanish-speakers. When the first English- speaking family moved within a few miles of the Kelly family's ranch, life became "a little better."58 American settlers noted, though, the important role the land played in the life of Native Californians before the coming of American "civilization." Roberts wrote that San Pasqual Valley "was a paradise for Indians living there" because of the abundance of wildlife and the ease with which the Kumeyaay could, grow their "corn and grain."59 This nostalgic and romantic view corresponds to the idea of the biblical fall from grace: the Kumeyaay, 58 Peet, San Pasqual, 66-71; Bevington, "As I Remember,” 3, 16; Kelly, "Life,” 1, 5. 59 Roberts, "Indian History," 23. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 241 like Adam and Eve, were evicted from their paradise. After they were forced to leave their land, their particular place in the world, the Kumeyaay (in the eyes of the settlers) could not survive. In contrast, American sett lers freely moved from one "home" to another, in search of more or better land, of greater economic opportunity. A common theme in memoirs and local histories was the "disappearance" of Native Californians, often by dying off, but with no causal agents given. After the Kumeyaay were evicted from their homes in the valley, Roberts describes their harsh life in the surrounding hills, followed eventually by "the older Indians pass[ing] on to 'the happy hunting grounds' and the younger generation, learning more of the ways of the white man, mov[ing] to other locations." Similarly, Ben Ward's poem, "Felicita," announces that all the Kumeyaay have died, gone to (where else?) "the hunting grounds that the Redmen know./ All her tribesmen have gone there, one by one."60 Most settlers enjoyed being in the role of advising indigenous people, especially liking the gratitude they thought Native Californians felt for them. At the same time, settlers felt guilty about the dispossession of native people. They sometimes expressed it explicitly, but most often not. Guilt was often a subtext in their 60 Roberts, "Indian History," 61; Peet, San Pasqual, 92. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 242 writings and their actions, most especially in extending charity to individual Indians. In contrast, stories about Americans' advising Native Californians rarely had guilt as a basis. Reminscences of this type commonly featured a male settler father-figure offering stern but friendly advice when a male Indian comes with a problem. Invariably, the Indian appears childlike in his confusion and ignorance. John Kelly recalls with pride his uncle's role as "patron" to the native people living in the area around his ranch. Robert Kelly, who owned the Agua Hedionda Ranch, employed many local native men (probably Luisenos and Kumeyaay) as seasonal vaqueros, and "he was well acquainted with almost all the Indians throughout the entire back country." The indigenous men "always called him 'Patron.'" (The Spanish term "patron" is closest to "master" in English, in the sense of a land owner or an employer who is also a "protector.") Kelly felt his uncle was fair, honest, and strict, dispensing advice and aid to Indians whom he felt deserved it. Kelly relates a typical interview Robert Kelly would hold with the "old Indians, who had worked on his ranch in times past": When one came to Robert Kelly's ranch, he and Uncle would sit down and have a long talk. And if the Indian thought, at the be ginning, that he was going to conceal part of the truth . . . he would find himself Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 243 very much mistaken. . . . [After Kelly] had gotten all the facts of the case, he would give them some good, sound advice. At those times he would talk to one of those simple fellows just as a Father would talk to a child. And if he thought their case deserv ing, he would loan them money, even to quite an amount.61 In typical father-figure fashion, Robert Kelly combined the qualities of protector and punisher. According to John, the men knew Kelly "would give them a severe lecture if they did something he thought they should not do." Nevertheless, "they looked up to him as their friend. And it was really pathetic the way they would come to him for advice when they were in any trouble." Liz Bevington also felt it was only fitting that some of the San Pasqual Kumeyaay would come to her and her husband, Perry, for help: "They often came to him with their troubles and the women brought their letters to me to be read."62 John Kelly characterized Native Californians as good workers, but they were otherwise in need of aid: "They are not what we would call good managers of their own affairs, yet when working out for others, as hired hands, they are so good as the average white man who works for wages." Henry G. Fenton took advantage of some Kumeyaay whom Kelly would have characterized as poor "managers of their own 61 Kelly, "Life,” 83. 62 Ibid., 81-82; Bevington, "As I Remember," 5. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 244 affairs." Beginning at the age of nine, Fenton built up a herd of horses "because the Indians were always broke. I could always loan them money on a horse or colt and they were seldom able to redeem it."63 Dispensing charity was another way that Americans could reproduce their dominance over Native Californians. At the same time, Americans who were particularly diligent in dispensing charity usually tied their actions to a strong sense of guilt for what their fellows (not themselves) had done to Native Californians. Roberts organized her neighbors in and around San Pasqual Valley to help a destitute, elderly Kumeyaay couple, and she connected the couple's problems to the more general ones of all the Kumeyaay and other Native Californians. Roberts often criticized settlers' actions towards native people. "I am of Yankee origin myself, but I am not proud of everything the Yankees have done." She noted that "the Indian population began to disappear soon after we came to the valley." The government was also responsible: the Kumeyaay "had lived in the valley for centuries, but this did not seem to count with the government, strange to say, and as white men came in and preempted land, the Indians were pushed out." More specifically, after the settlers had preempted the land, they "induced the sheriff 63 Kelly, "Life," 191; Fenton, "Boyhood Days," 158-159. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 245 to oust the Indians from the homes where they had lived so many years." The San Pasqual Kumeyaay, as a result, were impoverished: "Moving into the hills and canyons north of the Valley, they continued to eke out an existence growing some garden and raising a little hay for their ponies. The men worked on the ranches earning enough to buy flour, coffee, and a few clothes."64 Around 1906 a Kumeyaay woman who worked for Roberts took her to an elderly couple, Felicita La Chappa and her husband, Morales, living in the hills above the San Pasqual Valley. "They were in this tiny hut with no furniture and no food to speak of, and Felicita was sick. So I got busy." Roberts and her husband renovated a chicken house on their property; "the white people in the Valley generously gave furniture"; and then she and Fred brought Felicita and Morales to their new home: "And were they happy!" The settlers continued to contribute to the old couple: they "gave fruit, or bread or vegetables or sugar and coffee, so the old couple lived in peace and plenty for several years, and were deeply grateful to their white friends." Roberts ascribed the settlers' generosity to "a tardy sense of justice." But even with their charity, Roberts wondered, "Did we pay so much as 64 Roberts, "Indian History," 18; Roberts, "Days of Yore," 19; Peet, San Pasqual, 61. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 246 the interest on the value of the lands taken from them?1 *65 While denouncing settlers' expropriation of indigenous land and the destructive influence of American "civilization,1 1 Roberts did not advocate setting aside land for Native Californians. Among local settlers, only Kelly wrote in favor of this, arguing that the native people of San Diego County had been treated very badly "by the white people, and the US Government," with San Pasqual and Temecula as the worst examples of this. He thought it would be a good idea to bring the Secretary of the Interior to see the prosperous settlers in the valley and then the Kumeyaay's "wretched huts" in the hills, but he doubted it would do any good; the government would say the damage was already done. He believed that Helen Hunt Jackson's efforts to alert the government and the public to such injustices and her lack of success demonstrated this. To make amends, the federal government should buy some "grood land . . . and divide it among" the few remaining Indians.66 However angry some settlers were about the injustices done to Native Californians, they felt guilty because of the acts of fellow settlers, not their own. When Roberts, 65 Roberts, "Days of Yore,” 44; "Simple Services Mark Funeral of Old Squaw,” San Diego Union, 30 October 1916; Peet, San Pasqual, 91. 66 Kelly, "Life," 175, 177. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 247 for instance, declares that her father carefully chose land in a part of San Pasqual Valley where supposedly no Kumeyaay were living, she neglects that the ranch he bought was owned by an Kumeyaay widow. In addition, Roberts suspected that the man who made the purchase for Judson, her father, "doubtless kept most of the money."67 If this were so, Judson contributed to cheating a Kumeyaay woman out of her land, but Roberts, in her eagerness to exonerate her father (and so her whole family, including herself) did not pursue this point. So when Roberts asks whether the present settlers of San Pasqual— herself and her neighbors— had paid even "the interest on the value of the lands" that once belonged to the Kumeyaay, she believed that her generation should try to ameliorate the injustices committed by past settlers. Kelly, on the other hand, gives no details about his family's acquisition of their ranch, but after blaming settlers in San Pasqual for mistreating Native Californians, he stated that he did not blame the "present settlers" of San Pasqual because they just bought out the "original Squatters." Similarly, Bevington blamed "renegade white men," not herself and Perry nor their 67 Roberts, "Days of Yore," 17. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 248 American neighbors for the "trouble between white settlers and Indians.1 1 6 8 Such assignments of blame sometimes extended even to booster literature, which decried the destruction of indigenous life while encouraging additional American settlement. For instance, Elliott's history of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties states, "[A]s fast as the white cares he encroaches upon their [Native Californians'] domain. . . . The new era of fruit-farming has thrown many of them out of employment, and these haunt the villages and towns, living a life of vagrancy and starvation." The author solves the inherent contradiction between the content of his book and his purpose by assuring readers that the wandering Native Californians are truly harmless, and that the fault for the condition, in the end, "does not lie with the white settlers of the county, but is the fault of the Government in not providing reservations for them"— ignoring the long years of vociferous settler opposition to reserving land for Native Californians.69 68 Kelly, "Life," 175; Bevington, "As I Remember," 5-6. 69 Elliott, History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, 88. The editor of this volume notes Elliott's contradictory views here and elsewhere: "The sections covering the California Indians reveal a growing awareness of injustice in the American treatment of the Indian— yet an ambiguous attitude toward the Indian is also apparent. The Indian is described as a hard worker at one point and as lazy at another. He is unclean— yet indolently spends his time bathing in sweathouses. He leads a life of vagrancy— and keeps 'well- fenced and cultivated farms'— in San Timoteo Canyon." Lawton, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 249 " 1 The First White Man on This Mountain1" The "whiteness1 1 of land acquisition is illustrated by one final story. It takes place, not in San Pasqual, but on Palomar Mountain, above the Luiseho village of Pala, not far south of Temecula. It concerns the first African American land owner in northern San Diego County, Nathan Harrison, who arrived in the region sometime after 1848 and settled on the mountain. He had to work for many years as a farm laborer in the area while he squatted on the parcel of land, until he was able to file for a homestead in the late 1870s. His homestead afforded a shady resting spot and spring water for people traversing the mountain. The area's residents' (both white and Indian) fondness for Harrison was shown when, after he died in 1920, they erected a plaque in his honor next to the spring.70 White settlers further memorialized Harrison by naming the dirt road that passed by his property, "Nigger Nate Grade." "Nigger Nate," in fact, was the name local settlers generally knew him by. Harrison was the object of such attention in large part because he was one of only a "Introduction to the 1965 Edition," n.p. 70 Robert L. Carlton, "Blacks in San Diego County: A Social Profile, 1850-1880,” Journal of San Diego History 21 (Fall 1978), 8, 13; "Black History and the U.S. Census in Northern San Diego County," TS, prepared for the Fall Brook Historical Society, Fallbrook, California; Tom Hudson, Three Paths along a River: The Heritage of the Land of the San Luis Rey (Palm Desert, CA: Desert-Southwest Publishers, 1964), 228-229. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 250 very few African Americans who settled in San Diego County in the entire second half of the nineteenth century, and this was especially true of the early years of the American period.71 It is doubtful that he or the road would have earned such a name if there had been a large African American population, as there would then have been nothing outstanding about his blackness. There is not much surprising about white settlers' condescension towards Harrison, considering the time period. What is surprising is how he characterized himself: "'the first white man on this mountain.'" I can only guess at what he might have meant, but I do not think it would be too much of a stretch to state that Harrison recognized that land ownership was a "white" right, defined in contrast to Indians, not African Americans.72 71 Carlton notes that the black population of San Diego County from 1850 through 1880 "was lower than in California as a whole." In the state they were about one percent of the population, but in San Diego, they were only about two-tenths of a percent. When African Americans did move to the county, they generally avoided the city of San Diego, instead moving to rural areas. In the 1870 census, the county's black population was listed as 15, with only 1 living in the city; in 1880, the county-wide African American population had risen to 55, but only 3 lived in the city of San Diego. The largest number of African Americans in this time period, 31, lived in the gold- mining town of Julian, in south-central San Diego County. A small gold rush occurred there, starting in 1869 when an African American, Fred Coleman, discovered gold. The black population of the town remained sizeable through the 1890s but virtually disappeared by 1920. The other concentrations of African Americans were in locations populated by Native Californians, especially Temecula and Warner's Ranch. Carlton, "Blacks," 8, 15, 16-17. 72 Two different reasons are given for why Harrison had to wait to file for a homestead. Carlton, "Blacks," 13, claims that California had "anti-black provisions" in its homestead laws, while Hudson, Three Paths, 229, states that it was only in the 1870s that the area where he was squatting was opened for homesteading. I have Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Conclusion 251 The squatters, preemptors and homesteaders who moved onto indigenous land in the 1860s and 1870s in rural southern California ushered in a new stage of white supremacy. This stage was built on the expropriation of Native Californians1 land and their transformation into impoverished farmers and temporary laborers for the very farmers who had taken their land. This was a different form of white dominance than had existed under the mission priests and rancheros, for in those societies, many indigenous people retained their land and some autonomy in their communities. These positive aspects of their lives were contradicted by the disruption of many communities, especially during the mission-dominated years, and their being forced to labor for the priests and rancheros. But the coming of small-scale farmers created a major new disequilibrium in Native Californians 1 lives— they were found no California homestead law with "anti-black provisions," and Carlton does not cite one in his article. In addition, the 1862 Homestead Act was a federal law that specifically stated that there was to be no discrimination on account of race or color. There might well have been discrimination in practice, but that is a different matter. Taking all of this into account, along with the history of delay in categorizing land as "public" land in California, I believe that Hudson's reason is probably correct. Hudson’s version of Harrison's story, page 228, states that he "could have been the first man other than Indians to live on the mountain. The old Negro probably believed that he was first at any rate, for he has been quoted many times as saying that he was 'the first white man on this mountain.'" Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 252 increasingly forced entirely off their land and were transformed into disposable, temporary laborers. For the new white settlers, as with the rancheros they were displacing, the land was the basis of their economic prosperity and their dominance over Native Californians. In effecting their dominance, settlers felt the need to legitimize their dispossession of indigenous people. As Bevington's memoir indicates, settlers believed that their legal right to land overcame any moral or ancestral right of indigenous people to their land. At the same time, settlers like Bevington convinced themselves that the dispossessed Native Californians did not hate them; other settlers, such as Roberts, tried to ameliorate the worst effects of dispossession. But in so doing, they more deeply implanted white supremacy, in the guise of charity and sentimentality. W.W. Robinson’s phrase, "Every American is a squatter at heart," is a fitting description of the attitude and actions of many American settlers in northern San Diego County in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. The phrase illuminates the centrality of land hunger in American history. White Americans' efforts to obtain land drove the process of racial stratification. White settlers in southern California made use of the means open to them to obtain land— the triad of squatting, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 253 preemption and. homesteading. In this they followed in the footsteps of their predecessors in Northern California and across the country. They established themselves on land the government had not yet opened to legal settlement, and relying on historical precedents, knew that in time and by their own initiative, they would often gain legal owner ship. That they did so while denying Native Californians the same right to legal recognition of land ownership on the basis of occupancy and use, demonstrates that white settlers felt that land ownership was a "white" right. The next chapter turns to settlers' efforts to dismantle the ranchos. However, unlike Native Californians, ranchero families, especially if they were intermarried Californio-American ones, managed to retain much of their land. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 254 CHAPTER FIVE THE EMBATTLED RANCHEROS 1850-1905 Introduction Guajome Park in northern San Diego County features an old ranchhouse, "one of our best examples of Anglo-Hispa- nic architecture,1 1 according to a county park brochure.1 The personal union and social milieu of Rancho Guajome's early owners, Ysidora Bandini de Couts and Cave Johnson Couts, married in 1851, reflect the merger of the two cultures, like the adobe ranch buildings they once owned. Thanks to their American economic and legal connections, they acquired several ranchos and managed to retain much of their property, while rancheros around them were losing theirs. In addition, Guajome Park symbolizes the ongoing presence of Californio culture, far beyond the end of California's Mexican period. The memory of Rancho Guajome has been filtered through the American romanticization of the region's "Spanish" past, a "Fantasy Heritage" elevation of the mission priests and rancheros to the level of a local, 1 "Guajome Park," brochure, San Diego County Department of Parks and Recreation, n.d. (but produced after October 1991). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 255 almost extinct aristocracy.2 There are curious reverbera tions of this cultural phenomenon, this willingness of American settlers and entrepreneurs to set aside anti- Mexican prejudice by transforming the Californios into "Spanish," and thereby white, predecessors: First, at the same time that some white settlers were trying to take rancheros1 land, others were glorifying them. Second, how could this glorification occur when anti-Mexican prejudice was prevalent in the United States? During the transitional period of 1850 through the 1870s leading to the "decline of the Californios,"3 several specific events had particular impact on land ownership and use in rural southern California. With the increase in the American population of the northern portion of the state in the 1850s and 1860s, American settlers and land speculators were able to steer the state legislature to institute laws meant to break up the expansive Spanish and Mexican land grants. The California Land Commission Act (a federal law) and other legislation concerning Mexican land grants, property taxation 2 Carey McWilliams coined this phrase in 1949 to describe the explosion of popular interest in the missions and ranchos that began after the publication of Helen Hunt Jackson's novel, Ramona, in 1884. Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1973), 70-73. 3 This is the title of Leonard Pitt's book, one of the first to sympathetically examine the pressures Anglo American conquest and settlement exerted on Californios. Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (Berkeley: University of California, 1966). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 256 beginning in 1850, the drought of 1862 through 1864, the government-supported incursions of squatters, and the "No Fence Law" of 1872 each moved Californio rancheros a step closer to losing their land. During this period, American sons-in-law profitted by acquiring land as the Californio rancheros went bankrupt, but they also helped retain ranchero families' land grants.4 The period between 1850, when California became a state, and about 1880 saw a decisive shift in southern California, from dominance by rancheros within a Californio society, to an American-dominated society in which some ranchero families retained their land, but where small family farms began to comprise the majority of land holdings. The old American-Californio racial and class unity that had existed in the Mexican and early American periods was now over, except in one surviving form, the intermarried ranchero families. Ranchero families that retained much of their land were generally intermarried ones whose identities became American as the younger generation matured and made their way under their Anglo names, such as Couts. These families had the financial resources, legal knowledge, and American social contacts to withstand the onslaught of decades of 4 A good overview of these topics and others relevant to the rancheros' problems is in Robert Glass Cleland, The Cattle on a Thousand Hills: Southern California, 1850-1870 (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1941), Chaps. 6 and 7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 257 challenges to their land ownership. The success of intermarried Californio-American families stands in contrast to the failure of most Native Californians to deflect land expropriation during the same period. The focus here is on the ways that a white, American identity helped intermarried ranchero families retain much of their land. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, ranchero families and the new settlers had directly opposed interests, resulting in the rupture of the old racial and class unity that had been created when Americans like Couts and Stearns moved to Mexican California. Nevertheless, the descendants of the original families merged with and disappeared into American society in the twentieth century. This occurred even as the ranchero patriarchs and matriachs achieved posthumous elevation into a mythical class of "Spanish" dons and donas when American settlers created a romanticized, regional history of the missions and ranchos. In a way, this cultural recycling of the old race and class unity of the ranchero period made the old white elite into the forerunners of the new one. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 258 Treaties, Laws and Land Grants In San Diego County there had been twenty-nine Mexican land grants, many of which were confirmed by the Land Commission during the 1850s. A large number of grants changed hands between the time they were granted and the time they were patented, but many of them remained in the hands of Californios. In the 1870s, when the greatest number of patents were issued for land grants in San Diego County, fifteen or more— at least half— were patented to the original Californio grantees or their heirs; the recipients of another seven are unclear, but at least some appear to have remained in the hands of Californios. By 189 0 the number of grants, in whole or in part, patented to the original owners or their heirs had dropped to between ten and thirteen. Some of the grants that changed ownership were acquired by mixed Californio-American families, most notably the Couts-Bandinis and Forster- Picos, but the majority that passed out of Californio hands were bought by American land investors.5 5 R. W. Brackett, A History of the Ranchos of San Diego County, California (San Diego: Union Title and Trust, 1939), 20-80; Robert G. Cowan, Ranchos of California, a List of Spanish Concessions 1775—1822 and Mexican Grants 1822-1846 (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1956); Richard F. Pourade, ed., and Cecil C. Moyer, Historic Ranchos of San Diego (San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1969). Paul W. Gates, "The California Land Act of 1851," in Land and Lav in California: Essays on Land Policies (Ames: Iowa State University, 1991), 58-59n28, notes that of the 813 Spanish and Mexican, land grants in California, 133 went to "non-Mexicans and 213 originally granted to Mexicans had been conveyed to non-Mexicans." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 259 Many historians have argued that Americans greedily and dishonestly maneuvered to get Californio land, propelled by racism and Manifest Destiny. For instance, a number of historians argue that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the United States-Mexico War, and the California Land Commission Act of 1850, which set out the legal means by which claimants of Spanish and Mexican land grants could achieve American validation of those claims, were influenced by Americans1 land hunger and so treated Californios unfairly. At the same time, though, these historians often acknowledge that the treaty and the land commission did not, in the majority of cases, directly cause Californios to lose their land; a wider confluence of settler pressure and laws and their application were responsible.6 A complicating factor in looking at the racial or national aspect of struggles over land ownership between rancheros and new American settlers is the fact that many 6 Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1990), Chaps. 4-6; Pitt, Decline, 195, 206-207; Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850-1890: A Social History (Berkeley: University of California, 1979), 30-31; Rodolfo Acuna, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 3rd ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), 19-20, 115-116, 119-121, 129-130; Tomas Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California, 1994), 45-46, 51, 54, 70. Of the historians listed here, Acuna generalized the most about white Americans' theft of Mexican land. Griswold, Pitt and Almaguer present more complex analyses of the interaction of race, nationality and class. Almaguer especially discusses the white alliance between some Americans and Californios during the rancho period. His perspective, like mine, is that "race relations are historically contingent and regionally specific." Racial Fault Lines, 205. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 260 Americans did not fare very well under the land laws instituted after California became part of the United States. The Couts-Bandini descendants, for instance, had to work hard to retain their land, and they lost some of it. At the same time, American settlers in northern California were trying to buy, preempt or homestead small land parcels but were often pushed aside by American speculators who acquired huge expanses of land through decisions by the land commission or other legal bodies.7 The process that contributed to Californios' land loss, thus, also sometimes blocked Americans from gaining land. Chapter Two of this study begins to discuss the alliance between two mutually acknowledged groups of whites, the Californios and the Americans who married into their families; here that discussion continues, as it relates to the retention of land within intermarried ranchero families and what this meant for the maintenance of white supremacy. I wrote in the earlier chapter that intermarriage was a means of advancement for both Anglo Americans and Californios. One result of the intermarriages was the retention of property within ranchero families, even as the Californio family names 7 The problems of settlers trying to get land in northern California and the successes of several investors are discussed in many of the essays in Gates, Land and Law. See, e.g., "The Fremont- Jones Scramble for California Land Claims," 64-93; "California's Embattled Settlers," 156-184; and "Pre-Henry George Land Warfare," 185-208. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 261 were buried under the Anglo American ones of the families1 descendants. In the case of these families, their white identities were able to change with the times— from white Californios to white Americans— allowing them to keep an important source of wealth, their land, and so remain part of the dominant, but changing, white society. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and several pieces of legislation bear directly on the Couts-Bandinis' and other rancheros1 travails in retaining ownership of their land claims. The treaty stipulated that grantees who fulfilled the Mexican requirements for land grants would have their claims recognized by the United States. In practice, though, the federal government wavered in its commitment to protect Mexican land rights. The United States unilaterally replaced some articles of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in order to remove explicit guarantees of property ownership for Mexicans. In its application, the vagueness of the treaty's language served as an instrument of national conquest and land expropriation long after the treaty was signed. After an initial round of confirmations through the Land Commission, established in 1851 to adjudicate land claims based on Spanish and Mexican grants in California, the federal government decided to apply American instead of Mexican land ownership requirements, causing a new Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 262 round of litigation for rancheros whose claims had already been confirmed. Many difficult technical issues regarding land use were never resolved. For instance, in the United States, homesteaders had to improve their land by culti vating it, while Mexican land law recognized stocking the land as an "improvement." In the United States, fencing was another form of "improvement," but until the passage of the 1872 "No Fence Law," rancho lands were not usually fenced in (except sometimes by farmers squatting on the land). In general, the U.S. District Court judges required a higher level of evidence than the land commissioners had, resulting in ninety more claims being rejected. This new round of disputation, whether it resulted in claimants' loss or retention of grants, used more of the grantees' time and money to defend their claims.8 8 Griswold, Treaty, Chapters 4 and 5, especially pp. 44, 48, 77, as well as pp. 89-91; Pitt, Decline, 86, 105-106, 118-119; John W. Caughey, California: A Remarkable State's Life History, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 196-198, 213. According to The Protocol of Queretaro [United States' ratifications of the original Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, agreed to by Mexico], "legitimate titles" to property were described as "those which were legitimate title under the Mexican law in California and New Mexico up to the 13th of May 1846," quoted in Griswold, Treaty, 182. Griswold claims that the creators of the Land Commission hoped to speed up the grant confirmation-and rejection-process in order to open land more quickly for Anglo settlers, yet the figures he presents indicate that this did not result in the rejection of most of the land claims. The majority of the claims were confirmed: 604 of 813 that were filed, totaling about nine million acres. Yet Griswold's conclusion is basically correct if one looks at the actions of the federal government in subsequent years. By the 1890s the number of confirmed land grants had dropped to 514. Gates, "California Land Act," 57n22. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 263 In 1866 the federal government acquiesced to long standing demands from California land grantees to provide some relief from differing interpretations of the land grant descriptions, but only those claimants with money could take advantage of the new policy. The Couts—Bandini family, for example, found that their Buena Vista grant, containing land already confirmed by the Land Commission, was shrunk by the federal government's review of grant boundaries. The 1866 Act allowed grantees to purchase land excluded from confirmed grants if the grantees could prove that they believed they had legally purchased or been granted more. This law thus required purchasers of land grants to pay twice for portions of the land. In the case of grantees with little access to cash or credit— especially those already in debt— this act offered no relief. But wealthy Californio-American families like the Couts-Bandinis could afford to preserve their holdings in this manner.9 9 J. W. Strickler et al. v Cave Johnson Couts, Administrator of the Estate of Cave Johnson Couts deceased, decision of the U.S. Land Office, Los Angeles, 7 March 1902 [copy], CT Box 76 (4); A. St. C. Denver to Couts, n.d., CT Box 75 (5); Couts to Chalmers Scott, 25 July 1879, CT 340; Harry I. Willey to Couts, 3 March 1890, CT Box 75 (7); Elinor D. Pratt to Couts, 21 March 1893, CT Box 75 (8); Application for Reconsideration and Revocation of the Department Decisions of July 24 1891 and May 17 1892, Ordering a New Survey, submitted by A. St. C. Denver 26 June 1893, and Denver to Couts 4 April 1893, and 12 October 1893, CT Box 75 (8); Transcript on Appeal to Supreme Court of California, Ysidora Bandini de Couts, plaintiff, v James Lafkin et al., 9 July 1894, CT Box 75 (9); J.B. Treadwell to Gen. W.S. Green, 11 May 1895, CT Box 75 (9); William J. Hunsaker to Couts, 16 November 1897, CT Box 76 (1); Robert H[ouston] Noble to Couts, 1 June 1897; Paul W. Gates, "The Suscol Principle, Preemption, and California Latifundia," in Land and Law, 221-223. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 264 The resolution of land claims through the California Land Commission and federal appeals of commission decisions took many years. Because of this, rancheros in southern California first felt the direct impact of American rule not in the need to defend their land ownership, but when the state started taxing property in 1850. With the new tax law, California began its process of developing laws that unfairly targetted the rancheros. In many ways, such laws, joined with changes in the process of confirming land claims that would be instituted in later years, were far more harmful to rancheros than were the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of the original act establishing the California Land Claims Commission. Californios quickly felt that the new taxes were part of a conscious plan by Americans to dismantle the large ranchos. Southern California rancheros, who raised more cattle than did northerners, were affected greatly by the new property taxes because livestock and grazing land were the most valuable forms of property in the state— aside from gold, which was not taxed, due to miners' political influence at the time.10 In 1850 grazing lands were taxed at the rate of fifty cents an acre, although this fell to twenty-five cents an acre by 1852. The San Diego County 10 Charles Hughes, "The Decline of the Californios: The Case of San Diego, 1846-56," The Journal of San Diego History 21:3 (Summer 1975), 18. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 265 Taxpayers Roll of 1850 lists hefty assessments of the property of several Californios, including Juan Bandini, $23,301; Jose Antonio Estudillo, $21,686; Jose Marla Estudillo, $30,385; and Santiago E. Argiiello, $13,742. Southern rancheros rightfully feared that northern Californians would use land taxes as a means to break up the ranchos. This was the sentiment expressed, for instance, by Governor Peter H. Burnett in 1851.1 1 The great drought of 1862 through 1864 exacerbated the rancheros' financial problems. It caused tens of thousands of head of cattle to die or be driven to market in northern California at a great loss.12 But the final straw did not come until ten years later. American rancheros who survived taxation and drought— along with those American ranchers who enriched themselves by acquiring land grants through mortgage and purchase— were greatly affected by the No Fence Law of 1872. Only rancheros with money and access to a large labor pool could manage to fence in their grazing lands, as the law now required them to do. Previously, range land had not been fenced, and farmers in ranching areas had had to 11 Mario T. Garcia, "Merchants and Dons: San Diego's Attempt at Modernization, 1850-1860," The Journal of San Diego History 21:3 (Summer 1975), 56; Cleland, Cattle, 117, 123. 12 Cleland, Cattle, 173-175; Pitt, Decline, 246-247. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 266 fence in their fields if they wanted to ensure that livestock would not trample their produce.13 The passage of the law signalled a shift in the economics and demographics of southern Califoria in the 1860s and 1870s. The ranching economy, retained from the Mexican period, was changing to an agricultural economy, a shift experienced in northern California before it affected the southern region.14 As early as 1862, rancheros in San Diego County knew that farmers were exerting pressure on ranchers in the north to fence in their range lands: I see that the up country papers are reco mending [sic] a change in the "Fence Law1 1 after the European mode, that is, to fence in cattle and stock, instead of as now fen cing in cultivated lands and stock out. They say the floods have destroyed farmers . . . fences and no grain will be raised this year unless such a law is passed. . . . I think they may pass it to apply to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley Coun ties, where there is but little stock.15 Statewide, the idea did not become law for another ten years; when it did, it had an immediate and often devastating effect on rancheros. The expense of fencing in 13 Cleland, Cattle, 60-61. 14 Pitt, Decline, 250. 15 Ephraim W. Morse to Couts, 2 February [1862], CT 1697, Box 28. The Trespass or "No-Fence" Act of 1850 was one expression among many of the dominance of ranchers, both American and Californio, in California land politics. But this had shifted, especially in the north, by the time of the No Fence Law of 1872, which reversed the fencing policy. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 267 thousands of square acres was more than most rancheros could bear. For example, the owners of Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores needed 75 miles of fencing to enclose the land. The cost, in 1873, of just the wire and nails, was $40,000. Coming as it did only a decade after the disastrous drought of 1862 through 1864, the law resulted in additional losses of rancheros' land.16 Some rancheros, mainly American ones, survived the passage of the No Fence Law. John Forster, for instance, won an exemption of his lands from the provisions of the law because influential friends in Sacramento interceded for him. One assemblyman, G.M. Dannals, suggested that Cave Couts try to pursue the same route.17 William Wolfskill, administrator of the nearby Rancho Rincon del Diablo, took another approach: he diversified the economic activities of that ranch. Wolfskill, an early experimenter with citrus cultivation in Southern California, was only one of many Americans and Europeans who experimented with various crops in the region. Grape-growing and wine making, begun under the Franciscan priests during the 16 Charles R. Johnson to Couts, 27 January 1872, CT 1399, Box 23; John Kelly, Life on a San Diego County Ranch, unpublished MS, n.d. [early 1900s?], 52-55, HM 15782; Steve Emmons, "O'Neill Ranch Empire: Heirs Hang On, Cash In," Los Angeles Times, Orange County ed. , 13 January 1974, XI: 1+, included with the Summary Report for the Cave Johnson Couts Collection. 17 G. M. Dannals to Couts, 5 January 1872 and 27 January 1872, CT 516, Box 10; Pitt, Decline, 12-13, 254; Douglas Monroy, Thrown among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California, (Berkeley: University of California, 1990), 181, 231-1, 235-5. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 268 mission period, grew slowly under the rancheros and mushroomed during the 1860s, to 28 million vines in the state in 1870, most of them in Southern California. Silk- raising had a brief boom in northern San Diego County (in the portion that later became Riverside County) during the 1860s. Citrus cultivation began in the 1860s and surged to become the dominant agricultural product in Southern California in the 1870s and 1880s.18 Instead of following Forster's route to preserving his land and income, Couts joined those pursuing varied horticultural, agricultural and business pursuits, with cattle and sheep raising becoming only minor sources of income (although they continued to be important sources of food). Couts1 cattle holdings had increased from 269 in 1854, at the beginning of his livestock raising endeavor, to over 3600 head at its height in 1862. From April 1856 until December 1861, Couts sold almost 16,000 head of cattle. In 1871, the year before the No Fence Law passed the state legislature, Couts was down to less than 700 Caughey, California, 200-202, 354; Paul W. Gates, ed. , California Ranchos and Farms 1846-1862. Including the Letters of John Quincy Adams Warren of 1861, Being Largely Devoted to Livestock, Wheat Farming, Fruit Raising, and the Wine Industry (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1967), 65-67; Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream 1850-1915 (New York: Oxford University, 1973), 9, 27; Monroy, Thrown, 231; Ronald Tobey and Charles Wetherell, "The Citrus Industry and the Revolution of Corporate Capitalism in Southern California, 1887-1944," California History 74 (Spring 1995), 8, 11; Wallace W. Elliott, History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, California, with Illustrations (1883), repro. ed. (Riverside, CA: Riverside Museum Press, 1965), 31; Glenn S. Dumke, The Boom of the Eighties in Southern California (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1944), 12-15. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 269 head of cattle, and in later years the Couts-Bandini family maintained only 3 00 to 400 head of cattle. Couts clearly decided in 1873 to end his reliance on cattle raising, replacing most of the herd with sheep and with orange and lemon groves.19 Rancheros who did not diversify or did not have influential friends in the state legislature sold off their livestock soon after the passage of the No Fence Law. However, since many ranchers throughout the state were trying to sell their cattle at the same time, they were at a disadvantage when they brought their herds to San Francisco. Couts learned in 1873 that butchers in that city were killing livestock "on commission,1 1 rather than purchasing the animals. Thus, the slaughterhouse owners did not have to pay the ranchers for meat or animals they did not sell.20 The rancheros who were willing and able to diversify avoided losing most of their land when the main source of income, cattle, had lost much of its economic value. 19 Couts to Billy and Cave Couts, 30 October 1873 and 28 December 1873, CT 301, Box 6; Cattle book, Guajome 1853-71, CT 2543 (14), Box 95. 20 F[rancis] Sanjurjo to Couts, 15 March 1874, CT 1976, Box 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Rancho Buena Vista and Rancho Guajome 270 The Couts-Bandinis owned numerous properties in San Diego County. The two most important ones were Rancho Buena Vista, their largest land holding, and Rancho Guajome, the family home for about fifty years. The family's experiences in gaining legal recognition of their land claims and keeping ownership of them differed greatly between the two grants. Because the Couts-Bandini family's ownership of Rancho Buena Vista was the most contested of the family's landholdings, it serves to illustrate the multiple difficulties many rancheros faced in retaining their land. The three main problems stemmed, first, from the federal government's rejection of the original boundary survey; second, from squatters; and third, from financial losses incurred in the family's attempts to resolve these disputes, mainly through the courts and governmental commissions. The Couts-Bandinis' experiences with Rancho Guajome illustrate, in contrast, the whittling away of a land grant by debt— but well after the transi tion to American dominance in the region had already occurred. During the first two decades of its existence, Rancho Buena Vista passed through several owners. The original grantee, in 1845, was the Native Californian, Felipe Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 271 Tubna. By the time the Couts-Bandinis came to own it in 1866, the rancho had already had two more owners. The Couts-Bandinis probably acquired the land when the previous owners, the Alvarados, failed to pay off an indenture note. (In the mid-1880s, the Alvarados contested the Couts-Bandini family's ownership of the rancho, but by 1890, the families were reconciled. The Couts-Bandinis, in fact, turned to the Alvarados for help in establishing the boundaries of the land grant.)21 Aside from the legal complications arising from disputes over ownership of the rancho, the Couts-Bandini family was involved in other costly and time-consuming legal proceedings related to their land. If they had lacked familiarity with American legal procedure and money to keep pursuing their land claim, the family would have lost most of Rancho Buena Vista. The state and federal governments, responding to demands by settlers in California, especially in the northern region, passed laws in the 1860s requiring the resurvey of land grants 21 Abel Stearns to Couts, 20 November 1854, CT 2149, Box 36; Stearns to Couts 18 December 1854, CT 2150, Box 36; Indenture document, between Thomas Alvarado, Maria Ignacia Moreno de Alvarado, and C. J. Coutts, for Buenavista and Vallecitos de San Marcos, November 1866, unsigned copy, CT Box 75 (5); Field Notes of The Final Survey of the Rancho Buena Vista, 7 September 1868, CT Box 75 (5); Chalmers Scott to Couts 28 June 1884 and 23 September 1885, CT 2018 and 2019, Box 34; Scott to [Ysidora Bandini de] Couts, 21 June 1890, CT 2026, Box 34; Transcript on Appeal to Supreme Court of California, Couts v Lafkln, 9 July 1894, containing a copy of the Mexican land grant of Buena Vista to Felipe Tubna, CT Box 75 (9); J . V. Strlckler et al. v Couts, Decision by U.S. Land Office, Los Angeles, 7 March 1902, CT Box 76 (4). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 272 whenever squatters or neighboring owners questioned the original boundaries. This held up final confirmation of land grants, as squatters pecked away at the legal foundations of the land claims. In addition, many land claimants found it beneficial to have lawyers working for them in Washington, D.C., where they could personally represent the claimants1 interests to lawmakers and other government officials. Beginning in 188 7, the Couts- Bandinis conducted many of their legal proceedings in the capitol, rather than in southern California, where the Land Commission and District Courts operated.22 This added great cost and time to the land-confirmation process. From the 1880s until the early 19 00s, questions concerning the boundaries and acreage of the rancho occupied the Couts-Bandini family and their lawyers. Already, several surveys had been conducted. The first, the Hays survey of September 1858, was used by the Land Commission as the basis of its confirmation of the grant in October 1858. This survey placed half a square league within the rancho's boundaries. The surveyor based his lines and map on the language in the original grant and whatever landmarks still existed. In 1884 this survey was 22 Clarence King to Isidora Coutts [Ysidora Bandini de Couts], 29 April 1887, CT 1496, Box 24; Paul W. Gates, "Pre-Henry George Land Warfare," 196-198; and "The California Land Act of 1851," 42-51; both in Gates, Land and Law. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 273 /P<7/?c//o Jfs/& 7Z//SuT.J.ry. 5 gg| This plat shows the five surveys of Rancho Buena Vista, 1858-1904, with the results of the 1893 survey indicated by the shaded area. The map has been adapted from the plat in "Final Survey of the Rancho Buena Vista," CT Box 75 (8), by permission of The Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 274 rejected and a new survey was ordered by the U.S. General Land Office. In 1887 another survey was ordered, this time paid for by the federal government as part of its process of demarcating public lands from privately held lands, but the survey was not done until 1889. Each survey showed different boundaries. The 1889 survey was rejected the next year, and again a new one was ordered.23 The 1884 and 1890 decisions were based upon the government's new reading of the Spanish description of the size of the grant. In 1858, the Land Commission interpreted the wording to mean half a square league; in later years, the Department.of the Interior's interpreta tion changed to half a league squared (or, in other words, a quarter of a square league) — a change that took half the rancho's area away. The wording in the original grant was brief and vague, as the Mexican grants often were: "El terreno de que se le hace donacion es de la extension de media legua en cuadro y el mismo que actualmente ocupa."24 Interestingly, the 1858 confirmation used the same principle as the Mexican land grant had— actual and 23 Field Notes of The Final Survey of the Rancho Buena Vista, 7 September 1868, CT Box 75 (5); Strlckler v Couts, Decision of U.S. Land Office, 7 March 1902, CT Box 76 (4). 24 My emphasis; Transcript on Appeal to Supreme Court of California, Couts v Lafkln, 9 July 1894, containing a copy of the Mexican grant of Buena Vista, Couts Box 75 (9), pp. 18-19. My translation: The land that is granted to him [Felipe Tubna] is of the extent of half a league squared/half a squared league and the same that he now occupies. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 275 recognized occupation of the land. In 1884, the United States government implicitly rejected this principle, just as it was already doing with Native Californian land tenancy.25 The Couts-Bandini family kept appealing the surveys that cut the rancho in half. In 1893 another survey was done, and this one also set the rancho size at one-quarter of a square league; in 1894 the government accepted this survey. The family appealed this decision, but lost in 1896. On May 6, 1897, a patent for Rancho Buena Vista, based on the 1893 survey, was issued to Ysidora, less than three weeks before she died. This patent proved to be a temporary one. Cave Couts, who administered the property for the family, seemed reconciled to the 1893 survey, but he and his mother and siblings still wanted the full extent of the land that he believed the family had purchased in 1866.26 25 Rancho Buena Vista was not the only property affected by shifts in government policy regarding interpretation of Spanish land measurement. The original Spanish grant creating the pueblo of San Diego also came under scrutiny. It took over a century of litigation among the city, the state and land investors to reach a final resolution to the size and exact boundaries of Old San Diego. Richard F. Pourade, The Glory Years: The Booms and Busts In the Land of the Sundown Sea (San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1964), 85-90. 26 Application for Reconsideration and Revocation of the Department Decisions of July 24 1891 and May 17 1892, Ordering a New Survey, submitted 26 June 1893 by A. St. C. Denver, and Denver to Couts, 4 April 1893 and 12 October 1893, CT Box 75 (8); Denver to Couts, 13 October 1894 CT Box 76 (1); W. J. Hunsaker to Couts, 16 November 1897, CT Box 76 (1); Hunsaker to Couts, 16 November 1897, and enclosure, E. G. Best, Assistant Commissioner, General Land Office, to U.S. Surveyor General, San Francisco, 5 November 1897, CT Box 76 (1). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 276 In 1897 the Couts-Bandini heirs began proceedings to have the U.S. Land Office decide whether they had the right to purchase the excluded portion of the rancho (under the terms of the 1866 law) . The Land Office decided in their favor in 1902. This required another survey, to set the boundaries of the excluded land, which was accomplished in 1904 and approved the following year, and a new patent was issued in 1905. The seemingly never- ending surveys did finally end at this point, and the Couts-Bandini family retained ownership of the entire Rancho Buena Vista.27 The substantial financial resources of the Couts- Bandini family were the most important factor that allowed them to pursue the appeals and repurchase of half of the rancho. The entire process, from their original purchase in 1866 until the final patent in 19 05 took almost forty years; the family had sufficient money and credit to see them through forty years of appeals (of which about twenty years' worth took place not in California, but in Strlckler v Couts, 7 March 1902, CT Box 76 (4); W. S. Graham to Hunsaker and Britt (attorneys for Couts-Bandini family), 29 March 1904, CT Box 76 (4) ; Graham to Couts, 11 April 1905, and <1. W. Sickler [StrlcklerJ et al. v Couts, application to dismiss Sickler survey of 25 March 1904, 5 June 1905, and Couts to Secretary of the Interior, 3 July 1905, and Thomas Ryan, Acting Secretary of the Interior to Commission of the General Land Office, 10 August 1905, and Decision of E. A. Hitchcok, Secretary of the Interior re: Strlckler v Couts, 25 October 1905, CT Box 76 (5); Abstract of Title to Rancho Buena Vista, 7 April 1906, CT Box 76 (6) . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 277 Washington, D.C.), several surveys that they had to pay for, and their repurchase of some of the land.28 Another factor helping the Couts-Bandinis to retain their land was the extensive network of contacts the family maintained among lawyers, real estate agents, and simply friends and family members, all of whom could be turned to for advice, support, and money when necessary. The family was aided by the knowledge and influence of the younger Cave Couts, whose experience working as a surveyor helped him interpret the government1 s surveys and keep appealing the Interior Department's boundary decisions. In addition, Chalmers Scott, who married one of the Couts- Bandini daughters, Maria Antonia, was an attorney who sometimes worked on the case. A long-time friend of the family, William Hunsaker, was one of the attorneys representing them in Washington. His father, Nicholas Hunsaker, had been an associate of the elder Cave 28 George Fuller to Mrs. [Dora] Gray, 2 May 1901, CT 708, Box 12. In 1901 when the inheritors were discussing buying the excluded portion, the cost was $1.25 per acre, and the amount of land was about 2,000 acres. A sense of the legal expenses incurred by a single family member, Ysidora, is provided by a statement of her account that was maintained by Cave from late 1884 through 1886. Payments to lawyers, to friends and family members for loans, and for expenses related to filing legal cases (including for another land grant, Los Vallecitos de San Marcos), added up to almost $2,000 for this two-year period alone. Mrs. Y. B. de Couts in account with Cave J. Couts, Nov. 1884- Jan. 1887, CT Box 84 (1). Since Ysidora owned only a share of the land grants— she and her children were co-owners— these expenses may represent only a small portion of the overall expenses. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 278 Couts.29 The lawyers and agents, friends and family were mainly American, an extended network, without which, the Couts-Bandini land claims would have been in jeopardy. Later, when the family felt confident that they would obtain ownership of the full half-square-league rancho, they began to work on converting the land to town and farm plots. The Vista Land Company, formed by the family and other investors for this purpose, received title in 1912.30 It is possible that the family subdivided the land in order to pay off the debts incurred, in part, by the legal battles over Buena Vista.31 Throughout southern California, during the same period that rancheros were fighting to save their land, squatters were occupying land whose ownership was still contested. In the first two decades after statehood, in northern San Diego County, squatters trespassed on Native Californians' land more than on ranchos. But beginning in 29 The two men worked together when Couts was Justice of the Peace and Hunsaker was a county sheriff. Interestingly, Sheriff Hunsaker was the model for Sheriff Rothsaker, the law official involved in expelling the Temecula Luisenos, in Helen Hunt Jackson's novel, Ramona. See Richard L. Carrico, Strangers in a Stolen Land: American Indians in San Diego, 1850-1880 (Sacramento, CA: Sierra Oaks, 1987), 76, 78. 30 "Decision in the Buena Vista Case," San Diego Union, 28 June 1903, CT Box 89 (4); Title guarantee to Vista Land Company, San Diego County Book of Deeds, p. 93 [copy], recorded 9 August 1912, CT Box 80 (7). 31 Deed of trust, agreement among Couts, Richard O'Neill, William Hunsaker, Carl Kurtz, and Hunsaker and Britt, attorneys, for debt incurred by Couts, including money he owed on La Ranchita Mine to co signers, recorded 29 September 1903, CT Box 76 (6). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 279 the 1870s, rancheros in this same area also experienced problems with settlers looking to acquire small farmsteads. In the 1850s a few squatters were occupying rancheros1 land grants. In northern San Diego County their presence at first was merely an annoyance. In 1854 Abel Stearns viewed the squatters at Guajome calmly, commenting to Couts, "It appears you are surrounded by squatters but I believe by a very good class and presume they will not intrude on you.1 1 A few years later Couts was involved, as the "agent" of Volney E. Howard and other joint owners of the Rancho of Mission San Luis Rey, in a law suit against Ramon Rodriguez, filed in April 1858. The grantees stated that Rodriguez "unlawfully entered into the possession of 160 acres of land," when he claimed the land, about a mile "below the Mission buildings," and built a house there.32 In the 1860s and 1870s, though, squatters became a more serious threat to rancheros1 land claims. In 1871 Juan Bautista Bandini, a half-brother of Ysidora Bandini de Couts, complained to his uncle, Stearns, "The Squatters here [Guajome] are bothering us greatly and I am writing to you to come as soon as possible. I fear that one of Abel Stearns to Couts, 26 March 1854, CT 2144, Box 36; Complaint and Summons, Volny [sic] E. Howard and others vs. Ramon Rodriguez, 14 and 17 April 1858, CT 197, Box 4. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 280 these days something will happen with these shameless Squatters. They don't respect anything or anyone."33 Suits by squatters added to the pressures rancheros faced in claiming legal title to and retaining their land. Squatters instigated legal suits to free up rancho land; if they won, it was converted to public land, and thus open to homesteading. Or squatters' improvements and residency on the contested land helped justify their claim of ownership. This argument was sometimes successful in the courts, since rancheros generally did not "improve" most of their land— they used it for cattle or sheep raising, so they did not plow and plant it, nor did they build on it apart from, perhaps, a house and farm build ings. If rancheros fought the squatters in courts, their titles were sometimes rejected, in whole or in part; in other cases, rancheros ran out of money and credit to keep their cases going through appeal after appeal; and final ly, even if rancheros retained their grants through court decisions, they sometimes lost them due to bankruptcy. At Rancho Buena Vista, squatters did not become a significant problem until 1886, during the land boom in Southern California. American settlers' interest in the 33 Juan B. Bandini to Abel Stearns, 4 February 1871, SG Box 9 (40). My translation from the Spanish original: "Los Escuates aqui nos estan molestando mucho y le escrivo para que benga lo mas pronto posible. "temo que un dia de estos susida alguna cosa con estos cinberguensa de Escuates. no resptan nada ni a nadien.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 281 Map by Patricia H. Neumann Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rancho blossomed when real estate developers convinced the Santa Fe Railway to build a spur from Oceanside to the newly established town of Escondido. The new railroad line ran through a portion of Buena Vista. In 1887, the federal government's decision to resurvey the rancho, in order to "segregate the lines from the public lands," was spurred by the demands of increasing numbers of American settlers wanting to homestead in the area. Also in 1887, squatters "entered" the southern portion of the rancho and "ejected" Ysidora Bandini de Couts from it— that is, their occupancy prevented her and her family from using the land. In turn, Ysidora filed an ejectment suit, which was defeated. In 1891 Ysidora expressed doubts about pursuing another legal ejectment: "I do not feel at present that I am able, nor willing, to put out a few more thousands on the ranch and have no better results." She changed her mind, as indicated in records of another suit with an unfavorable decision in 1892, followed by an appeal in 1894. The 1894 appeal was successful: the previous decision was reversed, based on the family's ongoing appeals of the government's decisions on the rancho's size and boundaries. But squatters did not relent in their attempts to gain some of the Buena Vista land. When the 1902 hearing before the U.S. Land Office was held to determine whether the Couts- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 283 Bandini heirs could purchase the excluded quarter acre, fourteen settlers protested.34 Unlike their eventual success in retaining ownership of Buena Vista, the Couts-Bandinis ended up losing Rancho Guajome, selling off portions of it to pay off individual debts. While they were annoyed by squatters, by tenant farmers who diverted too much water, and by occasional government interference, the Couts-Bandinis mainly had to worry about paying for the rancho and agreeing among themselves about how to divide the land, the improvements, and the furnishings upon Ysidora*s death. In the 1890s non-family members began to gain ownership of parcels of the rancho as individual family members began to be unable to pay for their share of the rancho. For instance, Billy Couts, one of the older sons, deeded his 100-acre share to Augustus McWhirter in 1894, in exchange for the latter1s payment of back taxes. From other siblings, McWhirter eventually acquired an Chalmers Scott to Mrs. [Ysidora Bandini de] Couts, 21 June 1890, CT 2026; California. Gazeteer (1985); Marjorie L. Whetstone, "The Escondido Story,” San Diego Historical Society Quarterly 4:3 (July 1963), 30; A.St.C. Denver to Couts, n.d., and S.H. Stockslager [?], Commissioner of the General Land Office to Rep. William Vandever, 31 January 1889, CT Box 75 (5); Ysidora Bandini de Couts to Couts, 10 August 1891, CT 377; Motion for Rehearing and Review of Commissioner's decision to re-survey Rancho Buena Vista [copy], 24 July 1891, and Denver to Couts 23, 23 June 1892, CT Box 75 (7); Couts v Lafkln, 9 July 1894, and Appellant's Brief for this case, CT Box 75 (9); Strlckler v Couts, 7 March 1902, CT Box 76 (4). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 284 additional 220 acres by 18 9 6 . 35 Cave and his wife, Lillie, sometimes bought up his siblings' portions, but he himself also lost land to people who loaned him money. Ysidora's death heightened the precarious financial hold the siblings had on Guajome. Beginning in 1897, soon after Ysidora's death, the family began renting acreage to farmers and ranchers as a way of earning income from the land, but they had trouble collecting rent from some of their tenants. In 1899 Dora, one of Cave's sisters, was in favor of trying to sell the rancho, and she notified Cave that she wanted to rent out her portion because she needed the money. Soon after, Dora sold her share of Guajome (along with her share of several San Diego city lots) to Cave's wife for $2500. At the same time, one of the youngest of the Couts-Bandini siblings, Carolina, did not want to sell her share of Guajome because the price was too low; she wanted "to hold the land as long as we can do so. "36 35 Chalmers Scott to Couts, 1 July 1890, CT 2021, Box 34; Abstract of Title to Guajome Rancho and lands adjoining, 15 October 1895, CT Box 77 (4). 36 J[ohn] B[andini] Winston to Couts, 4 June 1897, CT 2425, Box 40; lease agreement between Couts and Peter Cassou [Casson?], 16 February 1898, CT Box 77 (4); agreement between Couts and A. Levi, for Levi to graze cattle in exchange for Couts receiving half of profits from later sale of cattle, 1 November 1899, CT Box 84 (4); series of letters from Isidora Forster (Couts) Gray Fuller to Cave Couts and another, unnamed brother, CT 710, Box 12; Recorder's Form of Grant Deed, sale by Ysidora Couts Gray and William D. Gray to Lily B. Couts of their one-eighth share of Guajome and San Diego city lots, n.d., probably 1899, CT Box 75 (2); J. B. Winston to Couts, 11 September 1899, CT 2427, Box 40; List of property belonging to C. J. and Lily B. Couts, 1888-1895, CT Box 84 (3). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 285 After a series of mortgages and law suits over portions of Rancho Guajome, from 1895 through about 1920, Cave Couts and his siblings made concerted efforts to keep the land in the family.37 But by 1926, only a small portion of Cave's land remained; the rest of the land was owned by non-family members, such as McWhirter. In 1912 the state of California had acquired Ysidora1s homestead (100.9 acres), for nonpayment of taxes totaling $331. Some time later, San Diego County acquired the homestead and surrounding acreage, totaling 569 acres, and created Guajome County Park.38 Couts' ex-wife's name is spelled both "Lily" and "Lillie" on legal documents and in letters; I have used the latter spelling in the text of this chapter. 37 Document transferring title to most of Rancho Guajome from Cave Couts and Lillie B. Couts, to Augustus McWhirter and Richard O'Neill, 17 October 1896, CT Box 77 (4); Steve Emmons, "O'Neill Ranch Empire: Heirs Hang On, Cash In," Los Angeles Times, Orange County ed., 13 January 1974, XI: 1+, included in Couts Collection Summary Report. 38 George D. Easton to Couts, 9 June 1908, and Couts v Richard O'Neill [copy], n.d., and Couts to A. Nelson, 2 August 1912 [copy], CT Box 77 (5); Answer to Complaint, Couts v O'Neill, 15 August 1917, and Typescript, In re Cave J. Couts v Richard O'Neill, Jr., 20/11/11, CT Box 7 7 (6); Additional documents re: suit between Couts and O'Neill, grant deeds of portions of Guajome, 1918-1926, in CT Box 78 (1) and (2); Certificate of Redemption of Real Estate Purchased by the State, concerning 100.9 acres of Ysidora B. Couts' estate, the remaining portion of Guajome held by the Couts-Bandini family, 1898- 1908, CT Box 84 (2); "Guajome Park," brochure. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Romanticization of the Rancheros 286 The preservation of the Guajome ranchhouse in the form of a park was one small act in a preservationist movement, concentrated, in Southern California, that began in the last decade of the nineteenth century. This movement was part of a cultural tide that gave a romanticized "Spanish" past to the new, American, Southern California society. While the movement began in the 1880s, it grew and flourished well into the twentieth century, even as anti-Mexican prejudice also flourished. The movement created and maintained a glorified white past for the region at the same time as white Americans were denigrating Mexicans, whom Americans classified as non white . Settlers, family members, local historians, and journalists all contributed to the elevation of "Spanish Californians." Helen Baranov, for instance, born near Mission San Luis Rey in 1895, did so by repeating some of the common myths about families like the Bandinis. She described "Dona Ysidora Couts" as "Castillian Spanish, in fact she was like a queen. She was the most beautiful queenly woman that you ever want to meet." Lillie, Couts1 divorced wife (with whom Couts maintained a friendly correspondence) , wrote to him that she was "very proud" Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 287 that he was "really the last of the Dons— and not only that— but the fact that he has lived up to the traditions of his aristocratic ancestors!1 1 Winifred Davis, a writer who contributed to the San Diego Union, the Los Angeles Times, and to the collection of the San Diego Historical Society, wrote that the younger Cave Couts "traces his lineage . . . on his mother's side to Spanish ancestors of purest blood." In 19 35 after Cave Couts restored Casa de Bandini in San Diego, an article in the Union struck a familiar cord in describing the reopening celebration: "In all California, there is no more romantic building than the Casa de Bandini, . . . where once the dashing Dons and lovely senoritas recreated the social grace of aristo cratic Castille, in this one-time province of Spain." The truth is that the Bandini family was originally Italian and settled in Andalucia, not Castille, sometime before Jose Bandini emigrated to Chile.39 Evidently, pure Italian blood did not fit in with Southern California's 39 Helen Goldbaum Baranov, interview by Bob Wright, TS, 9 April 1972, San Diego Historical Society, San Diego, California; Lily B. Couts to Cave Couts, n.d, ca. 1922, CT 1991, Box 33; Winifred Davidson to Cave Couts, n.d., note attached to TS, CT Box 89 (1); "Casa de Bandini: Social Center of Old California, Restored to Former Brilliance," San Diego Union, 28 April 1935; Hubert Howe Bancroft, Register of Pioneer Inhabitants of California, 1542-1848, comp, and ed. Glen Dawson and Muir Dawson, from vols. 2-5, History of Califor nia (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1964), "Bandini, Jose" (A-E). Since Baranov was born only two years before Bandini de Couts died, she could not have been describing the latter from her own memory. From other information in the interview, it seems that Baranov was commenting based on statements by her mother, who had met Bandini de Couts. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 288 "Spanish" heritage, and no region of Spain was as highly regarded by Americans as Castille. When Ysidora's sister, Arcadia, died in 1912, it was in the midst of this "Fantasy Heritage" craze.40 Writers of newspaper and magazine articles asserted the "romantic" lifestyle and almost royal family backgrounds of the Californianas, such as Arcadia. The Arcadia Block in Los Angeles, named by Stearns for his wife, but known popularly, according to a newspaper article, as "El Palacio de Don Abel," was where "gay and beautiful receptions and dances of those early days were held in Los Angeles." The same reporter gushed over Arcadia as though describing a young queen: "[S]uch was the beauty of Dona Arcadia and so great the love and esteem in which she was generally held that the cattle men of the ranges sang ballads praising her beauty."41 It was the publication of Ramona, touching off "a Ramona promotion," merged with a mission-restoration movement galvanized by Charles Lummis a few years later, that precipitated the "Fantasy Heritage" movement.42 There were three components of these popular trends in the 40 Richard Griswold del Castillo, "The del Valle Family and the Fantasy Heritage," California History 59 (Spring 1980), 3. 41 "Mrs. De Baker, Pioneer, 85, Dies; Estate is $20,000,000," Los Angeles Examiner, 16 September 1912. 42 McWilliams, Southern California, 73, 77. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 289 romanticization of California culture: Ramona and the decline of the Native Californians, the missions, and the ranchos and rancheros. The last of these is the focus of the rest of this chapter. Ramona's popularity is well known, so here I will just quickly review a few of its highlights. The book has never been out of print, has been translated into almost every language, and has sold millions of copies. Even 3 0 years after its publication, the Los Angeles Public Library owned 105 copies of the book, and there was "a constant waiting list" for eager readers. From 1900 to 1914, 4 books and innumerable articles and pamphlets were published purporting to reveal the true people, places and events behind the ones in the novel. In the years after its publication, a Ramona baby-naming craze occurred, and to this day, towns, bakeries and other businesses carry the name Ramona. At least two towns in southern California battled over which one had the right to the name; the town in the Santa Maria Valley, southeast of Escondido, eventually won. Four movies were inspired by or based on the novel, from the 1910 production directed by D.W. Griffith to the last one in 1936. More than 50 dramatic productions have been staged, including the Ramona pageant in Hemet, performed just about every year since it began in 1921. Railroads and travel agencies organized trips to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 290 southern California that lured visitors with promised stops at various Ramona locations, and a rivalry that lasted decades sprang up between San Diego and Ventura Counties, each claiming the site of the Moreno rancho as its own. The interest in Ramona continues. For instance, a new, annotated version of the novel was published in 1989.43 Ramona was wildly popular all over the country, although it did not meet with such favor among the people living in the rural areas of Southern California, at least not at first. But as tourists began arriving at the locations they heard were models for the scenes in the novel, their interest and money began to convince residents to cash in on the Ramona fantasy. It is clear that Jackson used actual events and people to create the scenes and characters in Ramona. Local businesspeople and land investors who wanted to bring tourists and land buyers to the area used, and altered this factual basis to entice visitors to their ^McWilliams, Southern California., 73-75; Griswold, "The del Valle Family," 9; Carlyle Channing Davis and William A. Alderson, The True Story of "Ramona": Its Facts and Fictions, Inspirations and Purpose (New York: Dodge Publishing, 1914), 256; Ron Maggiano, "Verlaque's Two Acres: Theophile Verlaque and the Founding of Ramona" (master's thesis, University of San Diego, 1990), 70, 79—80; Lulu R. O'Neal, The History of Ramona, California and Environs (Ramona, CA: Ballena Press, 1975), 25; "Three Objectives Set for Autoists," San Diego Union 26 April 1925; Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona, introduced and annotated by Antoinette May (San Carlos, CA: Wide World Publish- ing/Tetra, 1989). May's annotations are quite accurate and historically revealing. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 291 particular town or location. After the novel's publication in 1884, and especially in the early twentieth century, people all over southern California were publishing guides to "Ramona Country," leading tours of the locations where scenes supposedly occurred, and introducing tourists to the "real" Ramona, Alessandro, Senora Moreno, Felipe. Ranchero families and their descendants also helped maintain the romanticism of California's Spanish heritage. The first major initiative of this type was the del Valle family's Rancho Camulos, in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles.44 Jackson had visited the rancho, and many people believe it served as the basis for her description of the Moreno rancho. The popularity of Camulos did not grow simply by word of mouth or because of the rancho's inclusion in a guide book. The railroads played a big role in turning Southern California into a tourist destination, and one of the most successful tactics was their popularization of Ramona Country. In 1887, Reginaldo del Valle, one of the sons of the family, appealed to the Southern Pacific Railroad to build a station house at Camulos to accomodate all the visitors. Soon after the publication of the novel, visitors began coming to Rancho Camulos; even as the number of tourists increased, Josefa del Valle, the mother of the family, welcomed them all to 44 McWilliams, Southern California, 73. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 292 the rancho, gave away food and souvenirs, and even invited many to stay overnight. In one year she provided food and lodging for about 2500 people. In 1888 their fiestas and the rancho were prominently described in a guidebook for tourists.45 In the early 1890s, Camulos began to have competition from other locations purporting to be the basis of Ramona Country. The main rivalry came from San Diego County. The Santa Fe Railroad, the Southern Pacific's competitor, advertised Rancho Guajome as the rancho depicted in the novel. Certainly the businesslike Ysidora Bandini de Couts, known for her harsh treatment of the Indians, was a better fit for Senora Moreno than was Senora del Valle. But then, historical accuracy was not the railroad's main concern. With the support of the Santa Fe, McWhirter, now owner of most of the land once part of Rancho Guajome, conducted tours of San Diego County's Ramona Country. Father Ubach of Mission San Diego publicly announced that he had known the real Ramona, and this attracted tourists to San Diego. A Cahuilla Indian claimed his mother was Ramona, and the woman attended the San Bernardino Orange Show in the 1890s so people could meet her.46 45 Griswold, "The del Valle Family," 8-9. 46 Ibid., 4, 9. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 293 Cave Couts participated in the interest in the "old days." He, too, asserted that he had known the real Ramona. Perhaps in order to take advantage of the interest in Ramona, Couts managed to restore the ranch house in the mid-1910s, with the money he inherited from Arcadia Bandini de Stearns de Baker's estate. In the 1920s Cave Couts allowed visitors to drop into the Guajome Rancho to see "a glimpse of the old regime."47 Ramona., and Jackson's articles for Century magazine, collected into Glimpses of California and the Missions, published just a year before the novel, awakened public interest in restoring the decaying mission buildings of California. This led to both the physical reconstruction of many of the missions and historical reconstruction of the activities of the missionaries. Whereas before, the mainly Protestant settlers in southern California reviled Catholicism and accused the missionaries of cruelly enslaving and killing the native peoples, the region's new Spanish "Fantasy Heritage"— created mainly, although not exclusively, by Protestants— promoted the missions as humane, civilized institutions that helped Native 47 Griswold, "The del Valle Family," 9; Proposed Planting List for Patio— Residence of Cave J. Couts, Esq., 19 April 1917, CT Box 77 (6); "Three Objectives Set for Autoists," San Diego Union, 26 April 1925; Laurence Burdick to Couts, 23 March 1921, CT Box 3. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 294 Californians advance beyond their purportedly primitive level.48 Local residents, like the del Valles, along with a newcomer, Charles Lummis, worked to promote the developing Ramona mythology and were responsible for forging California's "Fantasy Heritage." Lummis had arrived in Los Angeles in 1885. He immediately began working for the Los Angeles Times, met and befriended the del Valles, and fell in love with California's Spanish and Mexican past. When he learned that Mission San Fernando, north of Los Angeles and not too far from Rancho Camulos, was being used as a hog farm, he asked the del Valles to head a committee to restore it. This was the Ramona Parlor of the Native Sons of the Golden West, a fraternal organization whose goal was "the perpetuation of the romantic and patriotic past." The del Valles and other Californios financially supported performances of John McGroarty's Mission Play, staged yearly at Mission San Gabriel, and Lucretia, Reginaldo del Valle's daughter, played Ramona for many years. The play was performed for over 20 years. Reginaldo del Valle and Lummis also created the Landmarks Club in 1895, to McWilliams, Southern California, 72, 77; In The Annotated Ramona, May, xii, states that the mission essays were collected together in book form twenty years after their original publication. The introductory note to the book states that the essays were first published in 1883, but it is not clear whether this was only as a series of articles, or in book form. Helen Hunt Jackson, Glimpses of California and the Missions (Boston: Little, Brown, 1923). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 295 preserve old Californio places. Over the next several decades, the Club restored several missions and chapels, including the church at Pala. Lummis was also the editor of the regional magazine, Land of Sunshine, later Out finest, beginning in 1893, which contributed greatly to popularizing California and its history throughout the country.49 Ramona has served historians and other writers as a handy starting point for California's "Fantasy Heritage," but some mistakenly blame Jackson for its myths.50 McWilliams' chapter on Ramona and Jackson in his still popular book, Southern.California— An Island on the Land, was the first to criticize the novel. It is more accurate to recognize that newcomers to California seemed to need a 9 Griswold, "The del Valle Family," 8, 10; McWilliams, Southern California, 77-78; Davis and Alderson, "The True Story," 105; Edwin R. Bingham, Charles F. Lummis: Editor of the Southwest (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1955), 19-20, 105, 107; Robert E. Fleming, Charles F. Lummis (Boise, ID: Boise State University, 1981), 42; Turbese Lummis Fiske and Keith Lummis, Charles F. Lummis: The Man and His West (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1975), 103-110. 50 McWilliams is certainly not the only writer to blame Jackson for launching California's mythical past. Walton Bean, for instance, states that Ramona's "most enduring effect was merely to create a collection of regional myths that stimulated the tourist trade." Bean, California: An Interpretive History, second ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 509. I find it interesting that McWilliams argued that Jackson's knowledge of southern California was so shallow, and that he criticized her writing style, yet he found one of her observations about the region so apt that he borrowed it for the title of his book. In Glimpses of California and the Missions, Jackson described the climate and geography of California, stating that the mountain ranges seal it off from the rest of the continent, making the state "a sort of island on land." [214] McWilliams changed the phrasing a little to produce his title, Southern California: An Island on the Land. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 296 "usable past,1,51 and if they could imbue it with romance and its residents with high social standing, so much the better. Ramona provided a very popular platform from which to launch myths about California's past, but it was certainly not alone in doing this. Hubert Howe Bancroft's volumes on California history began to appear in 1884, and visitors to the region had been publishing paeans to its wonderful climate and easy lifestyle since the 1870s. The stream of hyperbole was already flowing when Jackson wrote Ramona. The timing of the novel was crucial, too, coming as it did just before Southern California's land boom began in 188 6, with the completion of Santa Fe's transcontinental railway to Los Angeles.52 Whatever their intentions, Lummis1 and Jackson's work resulted in much more interest in the California Fantasy Heritage of the kindly mission priests and the noble and fun-loving Californio rancheros than in the real, still- living but struggling cultures of the Native Californians. Lummis and Jackson did help galvanize support for Indian reforms, but popular enthusiasm was focused much more on 51 This phrase was coined by Kevin Starr in Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University, 1985), 316. 52 Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, 7 vols. (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft and The History Company, 1884 to 1888); Bancroft, California Pastoral (San Francisco: The History Co., 1888); Charles Nordhoff, California: For Health, Pleasure, and Residence. A Book, for Travellers and Settlers (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1974, first published 1873); McWilliams, Southern California, 118. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 297 the supposed Spanish past of California. It is, in fact, ironic, maybe even tragic, that Jackson's attempt to write an Uncle Tom's Cabin of Indian oppression, was transformed by popular culture and local boosterism into the basis for a "Spanish" fantasy.53 In a region where the majority of residents, by 19 00, were born somewhere else, moved one, two, or three times before finally settling down, and where their new home in California was usually drastically different in climate, place names, and cultural influences than where they came from, settlers had a strong psychological and social need to create a past for themselves. The romanticized past they embraced was attractive because it featured so many elements that were different from American culture. The ranchero culture was made to seem even more foreign than it was, through costumes and customs put on show for tourists. It revived the idea that the rancheros1 life was one of play rather than work. It was different from the typical American heroic historical imaging of pioneers and frontiersmen, and so set California apart from the rest of the West. It was a more "civilized" West than the West of popular culture, where Indians were slaughtered. There were, finally, actual ruins with distinct architectural features— the rancho houses and mission churches— that 53 Valerie Sherer Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), xiv, 77, 83. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 298 conveniently served as destinations for train, buggy and auto trips into the countryside.54 The mythological romance and splendor of the "Spanish" settlers stands in contrast with Americans' perceptions of "Mexicans." I have previously mentioned that many Americans and Europeans who travelled in California but did not settle there during the Mexican period viewed Californios and all Mexicans with disdain, while Americans who settled in the region in the Mexican and early American periods generally did not. There was, though, a class component even to local to Americans' views: rancheros were white, but poor Mexicans often were not, especially in the cities. Certainly, the racist vigilante activity in nearby Los Angeles in the 1850s and 1860s often targetted poor Mexicans. Two shifts in rural southern California's population changed white Americans' views of Mexicans. First, the arrival of increasing numbers of family farmers who had little relationship with the old Californio elite gave anti-Mexican prejudice a larger base. Second, the large influxes of poor Mexicans 54 "Three Objectives." This article features Guajome and Mission San Luis Rey as two of its three destinations. It states that Guajome was where Jackson wrote some of Ramona, that "Mrs. Couts . . . was the Senora of the novel, and Ramona . . . lived for a time there." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 299 in the early decades of the twentieth century forever changed white Californians' image of Mexicans.55 In rural southern California, white Americans' denigration of Mexicans coexisted with Americans1 elevated view of the rancheros. For instance, Baranov, the woman who grew up in San Luis Rey and whose comment about Ysidora Bandini de Couts' queenliness was already mentioned, used the term "Mexican" in reference to working-class people. Similarly, John Kelly, who grew up on Rancho Agua Hedionda, differentiated between the rancheros and the "rabble" who were the working-class soldiers in the Mexican army.56 In the early twentieth century the split in these depictions continued, often appearing in magazines and 55 Almaguer, Racial Fault. Lines, 72-73; Pitt, Decline, 69, 154- 159, 164-166, 291, 293. 56 Helen Goldbaum Baranov, interviewed by Bob Wright, TS, 9 April 1972, San Diego Historical Society, San Diego, California; John Kelly, "Life on a San Diego County Ranch” [n.d., ca. 1925], MS, 140— 141, HM 16782. Supporters of the causes of Native Californians sometimes described them in noble terms and contrasted poor Mexicans to them. For instance, J. C. Carr, in an 1892 article, describes the physical beauty and power of the Cahuilla, while calling the Mexican soldiers who had accompanied the Spanish missionaries, "dissolute" and "the scum of civilization." Carr, "Among the Basket Makers," California Illustrated Magazine, October 1892, 10. Without making direct comparisons, some local Indian reformers conveyed their derogation of poor Mexicans, whom they sometimes blamed for preying on Native Californians. Lizzie Cleland complained in 1892 to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that some squatters, "a Mexican and his gang of Cattle thieves," were occupying land that rightfully belonged to the Kumeyaay of the area. Horatio N. Rust to U.S. Indian Commissioners, 28 April 1891, RU 486. A few years later, Horatio Rust informed the Indian Service that measures should be taken to prevent "the criminal element coming in from Mexico and securing Indian [land] rights here." Rust to Merrill Gates, 24 October 1902, RU 481. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 300 newspapers. In 1928 an article in the Automobile Club of Southern California's magazine, Westways blamed "Mexican squatters, the bates noires," of the rancheros, for the passage of the 1872 No Fence Law. Not only did the author choose the wrong people to blame for the law, but her choice of phrase, "black beasts," is racially charged. In contrast, during the 1935 celebration of Cave Couts' restoration of Casa de Bandini, Mexicans of San Diego "in their native garb" sold craft items, while Couts, repre senting the elite Californios, sat on a "throne."57 In this representation, Mexicans were below the Californio rancheros in social status, comparable to other "natives," the California Indians. Conclusion Rancheros1 efforts to retain ownership of the lands they claimed had mixed results. An important element of success was the ability to maneuver through the thicket of laws and lawsuits that the federal and state governments, settlers and rancheros generated. Intermarried ranchero families like the Couts-Bandinis were fairly successful at doing this because they had money, knowledge of the legal 57 Marjorie T. Wolcott, "The House Near Frog Pond," Westways, December 1928, 41; "Casa de Bandini: Social Center of Old California, Restored to Former Brilliance," San Diego Onion, 28 April 1935. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 301 system, and extended networks of friends and family. Sometimes, though, their initial success was dissipated by division of the property among heirs and individuals* debts. Their success in keeping ownership of their land grants, even if partial, allowed some of them, such as Cave Couts (the son) , to remain part of the local white elite and allowed them to participate in new cultural forms of white supremacy. If the struggle over land ownership between American settlers and rancheros was not clearly one over race, the Ramona craze and the creation of a "Fantasy Heritage" for the region, certainly had race and white racial dominance as key elements. Americans created a white— "Spanish," not "Mexican"— past for Southern California, and reinforced the region's supposedly elite origins by promoting the rancheros to the status of royalty. In contrast to the great popular attention that the ranchos and missions garnered, the Native Californians' ongoing, disastrous loss of land and community received much less attention. Native Californians were seen by white Americans very clearly as racial "others." The lives and cultures of the "Spanish" Californios would be celebrated and eagerly recreated, but Native Californians would be celebrated only in their disappearance. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 302 CHAPTER SIX ESCONDIDO: CREATING A WHITE AMERICAN TOWN 1886-1920 Introduction Unlike towns planted on indigenous settlements that were sites of direct contestations over land, such as San Pasqual and Temecula, Escondido and other 1880s land boom towns were predominantly white and middle class, their inhabitants removed from the experience of direct contact with Native Californians or Californios. Such land-boom towns prospered because of the infusion of non-local capital and economic connections to national markets and transportation. They also relied on natural resources, especially water, from outside of their boundaries. In doing so, they took advantage of laws that encouraged "development,*1 such as irrigation projects. In short, Escondido and similar towns were American enclaves characterized by more indirect social and economic relationships with other inhabitants of the region and by more intensive capital investment than had been the older towns. In this sense, while Escondidans liked to picture themselves as "pioneers,1 1 invoking the nineteenth-century experience of frontier hardship and adventure, their town developed much more along the lines of a prosperous, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 303 twentieth-century city than of the nineteenth-century farming-village towns like Temecula and San Pasqual. Escondidans also celebrated their prosperity and romanticized the past through various public festivals and entertainments. All told, the settlers of Escondido reproduced white supremacy through a number of interlocking legal, economic, social and cultural means of establishing white American society in a new location. "The Finest Prospect": Creating a White Town In many respects Escondido1s antecedents were the same as those of surrounding towns. It is located in indigenous— Kumeyaay— territory, about halfway between San Diego and Temecula. While the Kumeyaay were no longer living there when Escondido was established in 1886, evidence of their existence was everywhere. In 1889, Albert Beven and Albert Dixon, two of Escondido's leading, early residents, unearthed the remains of a village while cutting down and removing trees from a neighbor1s farm land. As other settlers built houses, dug wells, cut down trees, and plowed fields, they found mortars, clay pots, and other artifacts of past indigenous life. Also like other towns, Escondido's land had once been part of a land grant. Rancho Rincon del Diablo (Devils' Corner), had been Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 304 granted to Juan Bautista Alvarado by the Mexican governor in 1843. It was one of the smaller ranchos in southern California, comprising 12,633 acres, fitting Alvarado's status as one of San Diego's less prominent public officials and land owners during the Mexican period and into the early American period.1 But Escondido's beginnings diverged from that of surrounding American settlements. Unlike San Pasqual and Temecula, native people were not living on the land that became Escondido when American developers and town dwellers arrived. Similarly, Americans were far removed from contact with rancheros. By 1886 when Escondido was created, local land grant disputes were resolved or in the final stages of resolution. Most of the land grants had been sold one or more times and divided up among heirs, money lenders, squatters, and land developers. While Rancho Rincon del Diablo had survived in its original Escondido Land and Town Company, Escondido, San Diego County, California. A Descriptive Pamphlet of Climate, Resources, Topography and Inducements to Settlers. Also a Description of San Marcos (San Diego: n.d.), 8, 35-36 (hereinafter referred to as EL&TCo pamphlet); Frances Beven Ryan, Early Days in Escondido (Escondido: self published, 1970), 3; Ryan, Yesterdays in Escondido (Escondido: self published, 1973), 15; Margie L. Whetstone, "The Escondido Story,” San Diego Historical Society Quarterly 4 (July 1963), 29-30; Hubert Howe Bancroft, Register of Pioneer Inhabitants of California, 1542-1848, comp, and ed. Glen Dawson and Muir Dawson, from vols. 2-5, History of California (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1964), "Alvarado, Juan Bautista." I have found no explanation for the disappearance of the Kumeyaay from the land that became Escondido, beyond the general and superficial one that they were moved off the land and to Mission San Diego. Considering the area's distance from the mission, along with much Kumeyaay's resistance against the mission priests, this explanation is unsatisfactory. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 305 size, it had passed through many hands on its way to becoming Escondido. By the early American period, Kumeyaay land and Rancho Rincon del Diablo had become investment property. Alvarado died in 1847, and his heirs sold the ranch in the 1850s to Judge Oliver S. Witherby of San Diego; Witherby sold it to three Wolfskill brothers in 1868 for $8000; the brothers sold it in 1883 for $10 per acre, or almost $13,000, to a group of investors who planted grapes; when the flood of 1884 destroyed the young vines, the investors sold it to another group, from Los Angeles and San Diego, for half the price they had paid. This group of investors, the Escondido Land and Town Company (EL&TCo), had scrambled to raise the money for the purchase in order to get in on the accelerating land boom.2 Southern California's land boom in the mid-1880s occurred through the confluence of two processes. One was competition between two railroad companies, which drove down transcontinental fares; the other was the winding down of the long economic and legal disputes over ownership of the Spanish and Mexican land grants.3 2 J. Paul Hatch, "Agriculture, Horticulture, of the Good Old Horse and Buggy Days of Years Ago in Escondido, California," unpublished MS, EHS, ca. 1959, 1; Whetstone, "Escondido Story,” 30; Ryan, Early Days, 24. 3 Glenn S. Dumke, The Boom of -the Eighties In Southern California (San Marino, CA.: The Huntington Library, 1944), 8-9; Robert Glass Cleland, The Cattle on a Thousand Hills: Southern California, 1850— 1870 (San Marino, CA.: The Huntington Library, 1941), 212; William Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 0 6 By the time Escondido's developers platted and advertised town and farm lots for sale, EL&TCo could offer prospective buyers a town that was almost ready-made, and without the inconvenience of indigenous residents or court clashes over land titles. The company reassured buyers that the title to the land was completely clear, although they may have been expressing some irony when they added, "as perfect as any government patent can be."4 In other ways, too, Escondidans were shielded from many of the inconveniences and hardships of squatting and homesteading, due to the basic infrastructure the developers were busily installing during the town's early Deverell, Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad 1850-1910 (Berkeley, University of California, 1994), 62. The first transcontinental railroad to link California— the northern, not the southern part of the state— with the U.S. East and Midwest was the Central Pacific Railroad, which was completed in 1869. A route along the length of California, from San Francisco south, and then east to New Orleans, was completed in 1883, although the California portion was finished in 1876. But the decisive event for southern California was the completion of the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway (hereinafter referred to as Santa Fe Railway) line from Kansas City to Los Angeles in 1885. Santa Fe Railway owners wanted to break the Southern Pacific Railroad's (the successor to the Central Pacific) growing network of railways in California, so as soon as its transcontinental line was complete, the Santa Fe began to do battle. Whereas a typical cross-country fare in 1885 was $100, when the Santa Fe line was complete, on November 9, 1885, the company initiated a $95 fare. By the following March 5, fares from Chicago to Los Angeles had dropped to $25, and from New York, to $40. On March 6, 1886, an intensive fare war flared, with the Southern Pacific going as low as $1 and the Santa Fe, $8, on transcontinental fares. Fares soon rebounded, but for the next year or so did not rise above $25 for trips between the Missouri River and Los Angeles. In 1886, Santa Fe Railway began "excursions" to southern California, running as many as three to five trips per day for prospective investors and settlers. In the year 1888, about 140,000 people traveled to southern California. Dumke, Boom, Chapter III, "Railroad Competition," pp. 17- 27. 4 EL&TCo pamphlet, 8. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 307 years: the lots were laid out and marked, a railroad line was completed in the summer of 1888, some streets were graded, and several wells and a small storage system for water were provided. There was, too, the requisite hotel, a grand building of 100 rooms, to house prospective buyers.5 Perhaps most important for some people, EL&TCo advertised their intention to donate a town lot to any church that chose to locate in the town, and the property deeds prohibited liquor in Escondido. All in all, EL&TCo's advertisement that Escondido was "near railroad connection, schools, churches, hotels, stores, and good society," was an accurate description of the town's motion towards prosperity and a statement of who the town's founders hoped to attract— white Americans with enough money to buy a "share" of Escondido, in the form of land. By 1892 there were five churches representing four Protestant denominations and a Catholic church; by 1895, one more denomination had come to Escondido, and one had expanded to two churches. Many of the new residents came from the Bible Belt. One recent writer described the early townspeople as "a rather conservative cross-section of farmers, merchants and socialites," an assessment 5 Whetstone, "Escondido Story," 30-31; Alan B. McGrew, Hidden Valley Heritage: Escondido's First 100 Years, 1888-1988 (Escondido: Blue-Ribbon Centennial History Commission, 1988), 16; "Heritage Walk, Escondido," pamphlet (Escondido, CA: EHS, 1989). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 308 supported not just by the number of churches but also by the town's vote for prohibition. In 1914 when a state-wide vote occurred on prohibition, Escondido voted more than three to one to remain "dry," while the state overall voted two to one to be "wet."6 The "good society" EL&TCo referred to were the white, solidly middle class and upper class, mainly Protestants who comprised almost the whole population. Here, too, Escondido differed from surrounding towns that had developed around earlier American settlers. Squatters and homesteaders might or might not have had much money and education. Because land they acquired was free or cheap, almost anyone could get some and make a go of farming or ranching. But in Escondido, land was for sale: $3 5 to $65 per acre for farm lots, and at least $8 per front foot for town lots (for a house or business) . Thus, only people with some money or access to credit could buy property in the town. As one local historian later described 6 EL&TCo pamphlet; brochure of Atkinson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company, December 1888, verticle file # 191— Escondido #1, SDHS; county directories, 1892-93 and 1895, SDHS; "State Goes Wet 2 to 1— Kettner Re-elected," Escondido Times-Advocate 3 November 1914; Heinz Schleuss, "The Making of Modern Escondido," Escondido Times- Advocate 9 March 1986. According to Schleuss, Escondido's liquor prohibition ended only with the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933. In 1911 an advertisement for Escondido boasted, "Ten churches are here, and no saloons" (emphasis in original). "Reliable Facts and Figures," Box 875, San Luis Rey Investigations, Rincon— Water Measurement, NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 309 Escondido's early residents, they were "well educated and in comfortable financial circumstances."7 Escondido's Dependency on Outside Investment Despite the general prosperity of Escondido's early residents, the town's survival and growth during the economically and ecologically turbulent decades of the 1880s through 1910s was in large part a matter of luck in finding financial backers. Doubtlessly, the qualities of the soil and climate and the availability of water made Escondido's growth possible. But without infusions of money at crucial times, the town's farmers and businessmen would not have been able to take advantage of the area' s natural resources, and would not have been able to participate in the town's economic expansion, which produced a repeating cycle of population growth and economic growth. The availability of capital to sustain Escondido thus differentiates it in yet another way from towns like San Pasqual and Temecula, as well as from the previous residents of the area and their descendants— Californios and Mexican Americans, Kumeyaay and the neighboring Luiseno and Cupeno. 7 Ryan, Early Days, 24, 26; EL&TCo pamphlet; Whetstone, "Escondido Story," 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 310 The height of the land boom in southern California was 1887, but it collapsed in the city of San Diego and many other towns as early as 1888. San Diego County's population in 1887 almost tripled. Escondido was born right in the midst of the boom and weathered the collapse better than many area towns. Like most towns that survived, though, Escondido suffered through several economic disasters and rebirths until around 19 05. The town's survival was due in part to the fertility of the land and the mild climate (that is, when there was not drought or flood) , and to the enterprise and hard work of its settlers. But these qualities describe many of the land-boom era towns that did not survive the collapse. Linda Rosa, a few miles north of Temecula, was just one of many examples. With land and a climate suited to fruit growing, a location on the National City- (near San Diego) to-Colton railroad line, and an already established fruit- packing enterprise, Linda Rosa in 1888 appeared ready to become the "future manufacturing center and metropolis of San Diego's back country." Yet this town venture failed.8 The older towns like San Pasqual and Temecula received infusions of human energy and small amounts of 8 W. W. Robinson, Land In California; The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads (Berkeley: University of California, 1948), 209; Dumke, Boom, 139-41, 195-96. Land in California was the first in the series, Chronicles of California, edited by Herbert E. Bolton and John W. Caughey. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 311 money, which resulted in the creation of small farms, ranches, and businesses from about 1850 through 1880. The capital brought to and developed in these towns was of an individual variety, lacking a significant commercial or financial base. These towns had neither the money to lure a railroad to build a line through them, nor to fund the construction and paving of roads leading to larger towns around them. The settlers of San Pasqual, for instance, after ridding the valley of almost all of the indigenous and Mexican populations, after building up prosperous farms and ranches, after creating school districts for their children, and even after finding people willing to invest in small water-development projects for irrigation, could go no farther. When Henry Fenton's uncle decided to subdivide his ranch and create a new town of San Pasqual City, he ended up losing all his money. Only steep, unpaved roads led to the nearby town of Ramona until around the turn of the century; the road to Escondido, where the closest railroad line was, was not graded and paved during the years the railroad maintained this spur line. San Pasqual languished farther and farther behind neighboring towns in population, although its farms Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 312 remained productive and continued to bring a measure of rural prosperity to its owners.9 Temecula, which benefitted from being a station on the Santa Fe Railway's National City-to-Colton railroad line, held out great promise to its residents and investors for economic expansion and prosperity. But when the 1884 flood destroyed the rail line, the railroad company chose to repair all of it except the portion connecting Temecula to its southern neighbors. This left Temecula connected to the northern half of the route, but the town became the dead-end terminus of the line, effectively ending its economic development for many years.10 Escondido1s survival rested on its great luck in finding investors willing to rescue the town from bankruptcy.11 The town survived not just the collapse of 9 Henry G. Fenton, "Boyhood Days," in Mary Rockwood Peet, San Pasqual: A Crack In the Hills (Culver City, CA: Highland Press, 1949), 165; Peet, San Pasqual, 83. San Pasqual was largely written by Peet but also contains a number of chapters written by other San Pasqual settlers, such as Fenton. 10 Dumke, Boom, 22, 153; [Elizabeth Yamaguchi], "Pico Avenue," unpublished MS, 2-3, Museum of Fallbrook History, Fallbrook, California. 11 David Hamer believes that the success of new towns depended less on "existing features of the location than on the promotional and entrepreneurial skills of the people who came to set up business there," and Escondido's experience seems to support this. David Hamer, New Towns in the New World: Images and Perceptions of the Nineteenth Century Urban Frontier (New York: Columbia University, 1990), 11. Hamer's book is unique in offering an overall analysis of townbuilding. While local and state histories often discuss town development, almost no regional texts do so, except superficially, in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 313 the land boom but other serious economic, as well as ecological, problems. One ingredient of its success was EL&TCo's ability to bribe the Santa Fe Railway to build a spur off of the San Diego-to-Los Angeles coastal rail line still under construction (which, when finished, would overtake the San Diego to Colton line in importance) . But the $50,000 inducement that EL&TCo promised Santa Fe if construction were completed by July 4, 1888 was also Escondido's first economic disaster. EL&TCo did not expect Santa Fe to finish in time, and when it did, the payment emptied EL&TCo's funds from the bank it had established, just when town development seemed to be going smoothly— and just when the land boom began its collapse. EL&TCo advertised throughout the United States for an investor to bail it out, and luckily, one responded. Alvin W. Wohlford, a Nebraska capitalist, bought the Bank of an examination of the growth of or lack of "community" in new settlements in the U.S. West. Urbanization, on the other hand, is a popular topic, but the focus is on nineteenth-century cities or on the boom of urbanization in the post-World War Two period. See such recent texts as Clyde A. Milner II, ed., Major Problems In the History of the American West (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1989); Milner et al., eds., The Oxford History of the American West (New York: Oxford University, 1994); and Richard White, "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A Mew History of the American West (Norman: Univeristy of Oklahoma, 1991). Older histories also neglect towns, whether they present a traditional analysis of western U.S. history, such as Ray Allen Billington, The Far Western Frontier 1830- 1860 (New York: Harper and Row, 1956, 1962), or a revisionist one, such as Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1965). I have found one recently published book that specifically includes towns as part of rural settlement, Paula M. Nelson's After the West Was Won: Homesteaders and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900—1917 (Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1986) . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 314 Escondido at a discounted rate of twenty cents on the dollar, and "held the city . . . together."12 Escondido's Dependency on Outside Water, as Well as Money EL&TCo's advertisements placed Escondido in "a rain- belt where the winter rains were sufficient without being too heavy, and where water in wells is but twenty or thirty feet below the surface, instead of a hundred or a hundred and fifty!" The developers were not exaggerating as much as expressing a somewhat optimistic prediction of future water availability. Certainly, Kumeyaay and Californios had lived off the land there in the past. Escondido was situated on the edge of the "wet belt which ran through the higher country," making the region the most successful farming area in San Diego County in the 1870s and 1880s. With Escondido's "soft, porous granite" soil, which "holds water like a sponge and gives it up so freely under thorough and constant cultivation," and supplementary irrigation water from Escondido Creek and private wells, precipitation in the area could be 12 J. Paul Hatch, "Escondido, California, 'Why', the Hub of Northern San Diego County?" 1; Hatch, "Agriculture, Horticulture," 2; both unpublished MSS, EHS; Whetstone, "Escondido Story," 31; Ryan, Early Days, 136. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 315 sufficient for many crops.13 But the increases in agricultural production and population in subsequent years were too much for the limited water supply. Escondido would quickly come to need outside water, and bringing it to the city would require more money. Nothing illustrates better Escondido's dependency on infusions of capital than its water system. Only three years after the town's creation, a year after EL&TCo's bankruptcy, and in the midst of declining land speculation in southern California, Escondido ran out of water— or so the story told by local historians goes. In 1889, with a population of several hundred people, water might have been running low. But a more important factor leading to the construction of a new water system was probably the passage of the Wright Act in 1887. This California law provided a new mechanism for funding irrigation projects through the creation of irrigation districts. It spread the financial burden among more people than earlier methods of funding had, thereby encouraging more water development. As Donald Worster argues, "Irrigation was a 13 EL&TCo pamphlet, 8, 10, 12-13; Richard F. Pourade, The Glory Years: The Booms and Busts in the Land of the Sundown Sea (San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1964), 149-50. Historians have often criticized land investors and boosters who falsely advertised in order to lure prospective settlers to buy worthless land. While this was often the case, it was not always. Land developers shared with most Americans the desire to see similarities between Southern California's climate and that of the wetter East. They did not understand the unpredictability of the region's precipitation, nor the need to count "average" rainfall in terms of centuries rather than years or even decades. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 316 cause that transcended the workaday world of need and calculation"; in Escondido's case, the cause was local economic development and profits for EL&TCo and the town's farmers, businesspeople and investors.14 With more water, EL&TCo could sell more land; Santa Fe Railway could transport more people, building supplies, and produce; farmers could grow and thus sell more; and commerce would expand in Escondido and the surrounding region. Under California's Wright Act, irrigation districts could raise money by issuing bonds secured by the agricultural lands of all of the people of the district, whether they planned to use irrigation water or not. The bond money would allow Escondidans to replace the primitive system erected by EL&TCo. In that system, water from Escondido Creek seeped into several brick-lined cisterns sunk into the sandy banks of the creek; the water was pumped up a hill and into a small reservoir, then flowed downhill to town dwellers' lots. The new system would divert water from the San Luis Rey River, some 30 miles north of Escondido, and it would flow via ditches and flumes to a new reservoir just outside of town. In order to fund this project, Escondidans needed $350,000, and they got it by creating the Escondido Irrigation 14 Ryan, Early Days, 124; Donald Worster, "Irrigation and Democracy in California: The Early Promise," The Pacific Historian 27 (Spring 1983), 31; see Chapter 8 of this dissertation regarding the impact of the Wright Act. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 317 District (EID), under the rules established under th Wright Act.15 What is most important here is that the state government and investors— the public and private sectors together— rode to the "rescue" of Escondido by providing the legal means and financial source of new capital. Considering that Escondido in 1889 had at most about 500 people, it is astonishing that they could raise $350,000— a debt of about $700 for every person in the district— at a time when land values were dropping and further economic development was uncertain. This type of financial backing was available only to settlers who were trusted by banks or investors who projected prosperity in future years (since the bonds were a form of a loan, which would have to be repaid) . Native Californians living on reservations or in small villages did not have this type of financial support. As discussed in Chapter 8, the San Luis Rey River reservations received merely a few ten-thousand dollars1 worth of investment from the federal government spread out over decades, for a population that was similar to Escondido1s. 15 Donald J. Pisani, To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy 1848-1902 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1S92), 101-02; Ryan Early Days, 123-125; Whetstone, "Escondido Story," 32. For more details on EID, the new water system, and subsequent water development by Escondido, see Chapter 8. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 318 The failure of Escondido's water supply was directly connected to EL&TCo1s success in luring buyers and investors to the town. The impact of increased population, the desire to continue expanding the town's economy, and the incentive of the Wright Act was the exhaustion of water supplies during the drought year of 1893 to 1894, when barely six inches of rain fell in Escondido. But by then, the flumes to carry San Luis Rey River water to Escondido were already approaching the town. And just two years later, in 1895 to 1896, Escondido citrus growers recorded a banner year of production, shipping twelve boxcars of oranges and lemons to markets around the United States, a testament to the power of bringing distant water and capital to be a boon to agricultural production.16 So in 1889 the farmers in and around Escondido incurred a $350,000 debt to bring water to them, with the water actually arriving in 1895. In less than ten years, though, Escondidans would have to find outside investors to rescue them again. The dirt ditches and elevated wooden flumes were little better than sieves for transporting water long distances, and they needed to be vigilantly maintained (which they were not) even to inefficiently 16 J. Paul Hatch, "Escondido Citrus Industry from Pioneer Days to the Present," unpublished MS, 1-2, EHS. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 319 carry water.17 In 1904 after a fire destroyed part of the system, EID went broke as district residents refused to approve the sale of new bonds to repair the system; that is, they refused to take on additional debt. But once again, investors were found to pay off EID's debt, at the reduced rate of 43 cents on the dollar, and to finance new water development with the creation of the Escondido Mutual Water Company. Like Wohlford's rescue of EL&TCo in 1888, the new investors paid off the debt at a discounted rate. The rescue of the local residents occasioned a grand celebration, the Admission Day bond-burning ceremony on September 9, 1905.18 In the following period of water development, from 19 05 through the late 1920s, Escondidans invested a great amount of money in an entirely new diversion and storage system. The funds came from local farmers and business people, who were prospering enough to invest in the system, from out-of-town investors, and from Escondido and San Diego banks. The investment was made possible by state laws governing mutual water companies (which raised funding through a different mechanism than irrigation 17 The entire system consisted of 2 miles of wooden flume, 16 miles of steel or concrete pipe, and 13.5 miles of open ditch, totaling 31.5 miles. C. R. Olberg, "Report on Water Rights, Escondido Mutual Water Company," January 1912, Box 772, Vol. 127. NARA Seattle. 18 Ryan, Early Days, 124, 132, 133, 139, 153; McGrew, Hidden Valley Heritage, 32ff; Whetstone, "Escondido Story," 32. September 9 is the anniversary of California's admission as a state. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 320 districts) , by banks’ willingness to accept a discounted rate on the town's debt, by the willingness of investors to trust that Escondidans would produce enough to pay off the bonds in the future, and lastly, by the cyclical interaction of increased water supply resulting in increased economic growth resulting in increased population resulting in an increased financial base to expand water use and economic growth. Bond issues occurred in 1910, 1914, 1922, and 1928, totaling $825,000. During this time, Escondido grew to a population of 1,3 34 in 1910 (almost double the 1900 population of 755), 1,789 in 1920, and 3,421 by 1930.19 Economic Diversification Even while experiencing water problems and financial instability, Escondido generally prospered, and population grew steadily, although slowly. Land developers continued to advertise Escondido as a town for fruit growers, and despite some setbacks, the promise was fulfilled. From 1890 through the first decades of the twentieth century, 19 Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken In the Year 1900 vol. 1, Population, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1901); Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1913); Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920, vol. 3, Population 1920 (Washington, D. C. : GPO, 1922); Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1930 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1933); McGrew, Hidden Valley Heritage, 34-38; Ryan, Yesterdays, 66, 67, 80. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 321 Escondidans made the town both a center of farm production for local and national consumption and a place that attracted and kept many entrepreneurs and professional people. Early farmers in Escondido planted grapes, stone fruits, and figs, since these fruits grew well in the region, and demand for them in dried form was high. But undeveloped drying and packing facilities and transportation technology generally limited Escondido farmers' sales to their local area, just as they did for other towns. The result was overproduction. Beginning in the mid-1890s many farmers ripped out their fruit orchards and replanted with citrus (although grape production expanded). At the same time, at least two Escondido growers set up packing sheds for their own and neighbors1 citrus fruits. Elery Loveless1 packing house, established in 1895, lasted for several years and demonstrated Escondido's potential as a packing and transport center for the area's citrus fruits production.20 Escondido grew as an agricultural center in the early 1900s. Several creameries and chicken hatcheries were established, and in 1908 the town's first fruit growers' association, with a new, modern packing house, were 20 Ryan, Early Days, 84, 88; J. Paul Hatch, "The Grape Industry of Escondido," unpublished MS, 1959, EHS; Hatch, "Escondido City Hall, Volunteer Fire Brigade Realized in 1890," Escondido Times- Advocate, 18 August 1961. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 322 founded. The Escondido Fruit Growers Association was part of the Southern California trend of citrus producers organizing together into a larger commercial entity. Improved railroad car refrigeration was the most significant factor in boosting southern California's citrus industry.21 Meanwhile, new land development continued. W. E. Alexander bought EL&TCo's unsold lands in 1909, planted about 1000 acres of grapes, and sold farm lots by the dozens.22 Alexander's investment demonstrated the continuing importance of grape production in Escondido. While Escondido was developing agriculturally, it was also diversifying its commercial base. In its first year of existence, Escondido had a bank, a 100-room hotel, a newspaper, and numerous stores selling groceries, meats, drugs, shoes, dry goods, general merchandise, and more. Skilled tradespeople offered their services, from harness makers to carpenters to jewelers to a milliner. By 1895 21 "Reliable Facts and Figures"; Ryan, Yesterdays, 5, 85-91; Elmer Field, "Escondido Memories," interview by Emily Wilt and Jeanean Young, 20 September 1984, edited transcript of tape by Ruth Collings, June 1987, EHS, 54-56, 63-64; Hatch, "Escondido Citrus Industry." See the special issue of California History, "Citriculture and Southern California," Spring 1995, for several worthwhile articles on economic, social and environmental aspects of citrus production, 1887-1940. 22 W. E. Alexander, "The Escondido Land and Town Company," Escondido Times-Advocate, 7 October 1938; J. Paul Hatch, "The Grape Industry of Escondido," n.p. [p. 3], unpublished MS, 1959, San Diego Public Library, California Collection. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 323 there were 2 newspapers (shortly to merge into one) , 3 druggists, 7 doctors, 23 carpenters, 8 blacksmiths, 4 attorneys, 4 insurance agents, 4 tailors and dressmakers, and a full complement of railroad employees (station, baggage, and ticket agents, along with the workers who drove the train) , to give just a small number of services and occupations represented in the town.23 Escondido's Racial and Class Character Escondido's class structure was decidedly middle class, dominated by small property and business owners and self-employed people. There was also a small but significant upper class, composed of larger property and business owners and investors. The lower class, consisting of unskilled or semi-skilled manual laborers and white- collar workers, was tiny in relation to the large middle class and the small but influential upper class. Along with being a middle-class town, Escondido was also a white town. These two qualities were inseparable, as Escondido's class composition was predicated on property ownership. I define classes in Escondido based on property ownership, possession of capital and occupation. I place 23 Ryan, Early Days, 43; Whetstone, "Escondido Story," 30-31; J. Paul Hatch, "Local Eagles Hall History Reported," Escondido Times- Advocate, 11 March, 1961; Maxwell's Directory of San Diego City and County, 1887-1888, 426-427; San Diego County Directory, 1895, 50—55. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 324 all land owners and people who owned businesses in the middle class, except for the "capitalists," the upper class— the men who owned the largest farms, who employed more than a few people, and who invested money in profit- making ventures. Also included in the middle class are the many practitioners of skilled trades, most of whom were self-employed. The lower class consisted of unskilled or semi-skilled manual or white-collar workers and a few people who might have been self-employed but were probably transient and poor (a peddler) or who worked mainly for others on a for-hire basis (for example, teamsters).24 Unlike the middle class in urban areas in the second half of the nineteenth century, engagement in nonmanual work was not a key criterion for inclusion in the rural or small-town middle class. The prime example of this, of course, were farmers, who in addition to farming, also had to be mechanics, carpenters and accountants. Escondido, as a rural town, was filled with middle-class people who performed manual labor. This characteristic, in fact, separated the "old" and the "new" middle classes, as 24 The three class categories are loosely defined, for various reasons. First, the exact status of many occupations, such as teamsters versus liverymen, or skilled tradespeople who might have been self-employed or might have worked for someone else, is hard to document. Second, while the county directories for most years available list occupations for most people, the 1905 directory does not for almost 30% of the people appearing in it. Finally, a comparison of the 1905 directory with the 1900 manuscript census revealed only about 70 people, or about 10% of the 1905 directory listing, matching the people in the 1900 census. Escondido City Directory, 1905, 494-508; Twelfth Census. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 325 described by some scholars. For instance, Vanneman and Cannon describe the old, rural-based middle class as consisting mainly of farmers and storekeepers; the new, mostly managers and professionals. The transition from the old to the new middle class took place at different times in different parts of the United States, based on local settlement patterns and economic development. In northern San Diego County in the late nineteenth century, Escondido quickly exhibited this transition. In 1895, farmers and storekeepers predominated, but as farming became more mechanized, concentrated, and tied to national markets, and as the town attracted more residents, the ranks of managers and professionals increased. In contrast, neighboring San Pasqual retained its character as a farming community, rather than becoming a commercial town; its population thus embodied the old middle-class type, well into the twentieth century.25 Complicating the definition of the middle class in nineteenth-century America has been a lag in historical analysis of the rural and small-town middle classes, 25 Reeve Vanneman and Lynn Weber Cannon, The American Perception of Class (Philadelphia: Temple University, 1987); Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1981), 10-11, 14. Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1989), Chapter 3, "Toward White Collar: Nonmanual Work in Jacksonian America," examines the development of nonmanual labor (often transformed from manual work) in the development of the middle class in industrializing urban areas. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 326 compared to the study of these classes in urban areas. In addition, historians and sociologists are not unified in defining the characteristics of the middle classes, in categorizing the composition of the class at any particular time, and in agreeing whether the middle class existed as a class at all. Keeping these problems in mind, I have used simple criteria as the basis for defining Escondido's middle class: property ownership and/or professional or managerial status. "Property” refers mainly to land, as even storekeepers and skilled tradespeople owned the lots they lived and worked on.26 Within a few years of its establishment, in 1895, Escondido had a population characterized by land and property ownership and self-employment. Over 50% were farmers or related land users (mostly ranchers and 26 Blumin provides an excellent summary of different views on the existence and nature of the American middle class in the introduction to Emergence. In addition, Blumin discusses, in his epilogue, some of the differences in middle-class development in small town and rural areas versus in cities, but the distinctions he cites (focusing as he does on the northeastern United States) are for older settlements rather than for new ones, and so are not particularly relevant to new towns like Escondido. Rural historians who study the middle class demonstrate differences in the characteristics of that class depending on time and location. For example, Catherine E. Kelly, "'The Consummation of Rural Prosperity and Happiness': New England Agricultural Fairs and the Construction of Class and Gender, 1810-1860," American Quarterly 49 (September 1997), 585, defines the middle class of rural Massachusetts in the nineteenth century almost the same as I do Escondido's. The main difference is her inclusion of "artisans-cum- manufacturers, " a category missing in Escondido and most of Southern California, since manufacturing had not taken hold there. The equivalent group in Escondido were the self-employed skilled tradespeople ("artisans") on one hand, and the few owners of the first, family-operated citrus packing houses on the other. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 327 nurserymen). Skilled tradespeople were almost 2 0% of the population, and professionals, public officials (including teachers) and business owners were another 20%. Only about 10% were unskilled or semiskilled workers, and even within this group, one-quarter were white-collar employees; of the remaining number, over half were laborers.27 It is probable that laborers and other unskilled workers did not appear in sources such as the San Diego County direc tories, but since there was almost no place for people without land to live, and since most farm and business owners employed their own and their families' labor, the listing is probably not grossly unrepresentative. Memoirs, census information, and other sources indicate that most of the lowest segment of the workers were either transient or lived outside of the town limits. Between 1886 and 1910, not only was Escondido a solidly middle-class town, it was also one in which few non-whites lived. Non-whites, whether they lived in the town or close to it, were mostly part of the lower class. While some whites were working class, most American men experienced upward economic and social mobility in Escondido by being able to start off as an employee and rising to be land or business owners in their own right. 27 San Diego County Directory, 1895. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 328 Many Escondidans were proud to count themselves among the town's first residents, but Chinese workers were truly the first. EL&TCo hired 25 Chinese men to make bricks and build Hotel Escondido. After finishing this job, most of the men left to seek work elsewhere, but a few remained for a number of years. Charley Ong bought land along Escondido Creek and grew vegetables that he sold from his horse-drawn wagon in town and at times in other towns. Another man, possibly Sam Kee (or Kee Sam), operated a laundry in the same district, known to Escondidans as Little China. Sam Wing became a chef at the hotel; he left Escondido in 1913. Ong and the laundryman found their land and businesses destroyed by the 1916 flood, and they might have left town after this. Chinese workers lived in the Escondido area in the early 1900s while digging the ditches from the San Luis Rey River to Lake Wohlford during one of the expansions of Escondido's water supply. As many as 100 labored on the ditch line and also made bricks and erected several new buildings in the town.28 28Escondido City Directory, 1904, 567; and 1905, 507; Hatch, "Agriculture, Horticulture," 5; Ryan, Yesterdays, 42, 110, 111; McGrew, Hidden Valley Heritage, 23. Chinese construction laborers were common throughout southern California in the 1880s and 1890s. For instance, in 1881 and 1882, hundreds of Chinese men worked in the Temecula area laying the railroad tracks for the California Southern Railroad line from San Diego to Colton. When portions of this rail line were destroyed in the 1884 flood, Ah Quin, of San Diego, a "labor contractor" for the railroad company, hunted throughout southern California to find enough workers to quickly repair the tracks; most Chinese workers were farther north, working on farms. During approximately 4 months of work, as many as 840 men worked, most of them Chinese, some Native Californian and French. [Elizabeth Yamaguchi], "Floods, Fall Brook Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 329 Native Californians provided labor to area farmers, as they had been doing throughout the region for decades, but now they were only part of the manual labor force and restricted mainly to picking crops. A newspaper article in 1891 reported that Major E.A. Merriam, a grape grower, hired fifteen to twenty Native Californians to do the heaviest physical labor in his vineyard. At harvest time, which lasted about one month, the men cut grape bunches, loaded them in boxes, and then carried the boxes to the road where wagon drivers picked them up. This was heavy, sweaty, dusty work, out in the full glare of the sun. Other workers sorted the grapes in a shaded area, repacking them in boxes for shipping. An Escondidan remembered his father hiring "a lot of the Indians on [his] ranch," and that they worked seasonally on many of the area ranches.29 Two other groups helped fill area farmers' need for agricultural workers: Mexicans and Japanese, although and Fallbrook," unpublished MS, Museum of Fallbrook History. 29 "Fresh Fruit,” Daily San Diegan 2 October 1891; Jim Dixon, "Rebuilding of Water System," Escondido Times-Advocate, 4 May 1975; Hatch, "Escondido Citrus Industry," 1; interview with B[ryant] Howard Daley, 10 July 1959, p. 17, Escondido File #1, SDHS. Daley was born in Escondido 12 July 1885 and grew up there. Of the 20 Native Californians listed by the 1910 census as living in the township surrounding Escondido (not in Escondido itself), 19 were laborers, 17 doing farm labor, one working in a household, and one in fruit packing. Thirteenth Census. Census figures for Native Californian population are unreliable, in part because they generally omit those living on reservations. Nonetheless, the increase in other non-"whites" in the county dramatically changed the composition in the labor force. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 330 their numbers were small (at least officially). People with Spanish surnames appear in larger numbers in the Escondido listings of the county directories beginning in 1904 than other non-European American groups, but they were still a small part of the entire population of the town. In 1905 and 1910, 15 to 20 people of apparently Mexican background lived in Escondido, most of them either farmers or laborers. (The 1910 census lists 12 Mexicans in the town, out of 1334 residents.) A small number more lived in the area surrounding Escondido.30 A 1916 news paper article stated that Mexicans worked as miners in one of the silver mines in Escondido (which operated in the 1890s through 1910s) , but I have found no other evidence of this. Mexicans and Mexican Americans were probably undercounted in the federal census and underrepresented in the county directories. But their absence in memoirs and newspaper articles written by white Americans seems to indicate very few lived in and around Escondido.31 Japanese people were certainly in the Escondido area- -but not, for the most part, in the town itself— in the 30 In 1900 there were 14 Mexicans, all farm laborers, and in 1910, there were 22, fifteen of whom were farm laborers, 5 were railroad section hands, one was a general laborer, and 1 was a household worker. Twelfth Census. 31 Escondido City Directory, 1904, 1905, 1910; Twelfth Census; Thirteenth Census; "Escondido's Landmark Sold; Taken to Julian," San Diego Onion 16 December 1916. The Thirteenth Census (1910) reports that there were 2,224 people of Mexican birth in the entire county; none were listed for 1900. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 331 early twentieth century, although there is little documentary evidence of their presence. While the 1910 census reported 16 Japanese farm laborers living outside of Escondido, Escondidans reported as many as 40 to 60 working on the Eureka Ranch, the largest farm in the area surrounding Escondido. I believe these numbers represent the same group of farm workers, and that the census figures might have been an under count. The Eureka Ranch operated from 1906 through 1918 and was the largest citrus farm in the area. Since some oranges and lemons, the main citrus fruits grown in the Escondido area, produce two crops a year, and since different varieties ripen at different times, large citrus ranches are year-round operations. The Eureka Ranch, like other such large farms, had its own housing for workers, so workers were permanent, rather than migratory.32 While Escondido did not exclude non-whites from living in the town, the town was still overwhelmingly white. Among the few non-white Escondido residents, aside from the three Chinese men mentioned above, was one Japanese land owner, Pierre Hagata, a winemaker. He was joined by a relative, Thomas Hagata, a laborer, around 32 Thirteenth Census; Ryan, Yesterdays, 112; Elmer Field, interview, 57. The 1910 census shows 520 Japanese people living in San Diego County in 1910, a large increase from only 25 in 1900. The Japanese population overtook the Chinese in the county, who numbered 430 in 1910, almost the same as in 1900. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 332 1910. A few Native Californians lived in Escondido; some were laborers, some ranchers. Juan Quisquis (a Kumeyaay, judging by his surname) owned land in Escondido from at least 1900 through 1910, and seems to have been joined by other family members sometime before 1910, two of whom were also listed as ranchers, and one as a laborer. In the years 1905 and 1910 two Cotas (a Luiseno family name) appeared in the directories, both listed as ranchers. But few Kumeyaay or Luisenos lived on their own land off of the reservations, and those that lived off-reservation were more often laborers than farmers. And few lived within the town limits of Escondido. In 1910, for instance, with a population over 1000, only 5 Native Californians lived in Escondido, according to the federal census.33 Escondido, then, was a town that was, for the most part, segregated by race, in that few non-whites lived in the town. This segregation was achieved mainly by the nature of the town from the beginning: Residents bought property, on which they lived and conducted their businesses (including farms) . Since most non-whites did 33 Escondido Classified Business Directory, 1903, 406-407; Escondido City Directory, 1904, 1905, 1910; Twelfth Census; Thirteenth Census. Pierre Hagata in the 1904 county directory, then Pete and Peter in later ones (still a winemaker). Because non-Anglo names were often anglicized, I am assuming these three first names represent the same man. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 333 not have the money to purchase land in the town, they we re excluded from living in Escondido. A few non-whites did buy land, and they were not excluded from the town. In this sense, it might be argued that class was the decisive factor in deciding who lived in Escondido, and this would be partially correct. The larger truth, though, was that race and class, by the time of Escondido's establishment, were conjoined characteristics, which determined and were determined by access to land ownership.34 . The Romance of Grapes in a Citrus World On September 9, 19 05, joyous Escondidans gathered at the Lime Street School, cheering as the cancelled EID bonds went up in flames. Organizers of the celebration timed the bond-burning to coincide with another occasion, California's admission to the union as a state in 1850. The event drew celebrants from outside of Escondido, bringing the number of participants up into the thousands. This small town even made "front page news" in the Los 34 Most of the literature on the historical development of the middle class in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries does not probe into the whiteness of the middle class arising out of the racialized character of property ownership. However, in a different but related context, Cheryl Harris discusses "whiteness as property." While her analysis of land ownership is a secondary aspect of her argument of whiteness itself as a form of property in the legal sense, shfe acknowledges the race and class connection that I refer to. Cheryl I. Harris, "Whiteness as Property," Harvard Law Review 106 (June 1993), 1709-1791. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 334 Angeles Times. In 1906 and 19 07 a number of Escondido families rekindled the 19 05 celebration with picnics on the school grounds on September 9. Seeing the continuing interest in the celebration and the possibility of enhancing Escondido's economy, in 1908 a number of the town1s active citizens inaugurated Grape Day. The day-long event attracted tens of thousands of visitors with give-aways of "tons of free grapes," a parade, and other special events, such as an airplane in 1916, flying overhead trailing a banner announcing "GREETINGS 1" from the city of San Diego; or an "Egyptian galley on a truck [that] rowed the 192 6 Queen down Grand Avenue." Every year Grape Day grew in popularity, until its heyday in the 1920s when its crowds were second in size only to Pasadena's Rose Parade. In 1912 the Chamber of Commerce bought the old school grounds where the celebration had continued to occur (the school building was rendered unusable by a flood— another one— in 1909), creating Grape Day Park, still at the center of Escondido.35 Grape Day served a number of important functions. First, it promoted the image of Escondido's prosperity, also helping maintain that prosperity. As one local historian notes, "Grapes boosted the sagging Escondido 35 Ryan, Yesterdays, 148, 149; Whetstone, "Escondido Story," 32; "Heritage Walk, Escondido." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 335 economy. Long after citrus came into bearing grapes were lauded."36 Grape Day also served a nostalgic purpose. It recalled for Escondidans the community spirit involved in the grape harvest in the 1890s when fresh grapes was one of Escondido's most important products: The fall grape harvest was a hectic rush. Men and women picked in the fields. Boys and girls packed. . . . In iced cars fresh grapes were speeded to eastern markets via the Grape Vine Flyer, Escondido's pet name for the grape laden train. In nostalgia old timers say, "Muscats don't grow big, plump, sweet and juicy as they used to."37 And after 1893, when John C. Dickson, an Escondido farmer, won the top award for raisins at the Chicago Exposition, grape drying season became a crucial time for many residents in the town, a time that inspired nostalgic recollections years later. Grapes dried in wooden trays right out in the fields, so if rain threatened, the vineyardists "shot an anvil." Black gunpowder between two blacksmith anvils, one on top of another, ignited by a lighted, rolled fuse produced an explo sion which shot the top anvil into the air. The giant BOOM! and zinging, heard o'er the valley, signalled adolescent boys to come on the run. In a human stampede they got the trays under cover. The boys were paid 10 cents an hour.38 36 Ryan, Early Days, 88. 37 Ibid., 84. Emphasis in original. 38 Ibid. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 336 Grape Day and Escondidans1 nostalgic remembrances countered the increasingly industrial character of agriculture in Escondido, a trend that had already or was at the time occurring throughout California and the United States.39 These accounts omit, for instance, the hard, poorly paid labor of Native Californians in the vineyards. They allowed Escondidans to look back, through such "white"-washed, romanticized stories, to a time when the town worked together. In comparison to these remembrances of the grape harvest, citrus production was much less of a community experience, and much more of an industrial process. While many citrus ranches were still small in the 1900s and 1910s, the Eureka Ranch, with its dozens of Japanese workers, was the harbinger of the future. Similar to the early citrus ranches were the early packing sheds, which were basically family businesses: Elery and Robert Loveless, joint owners of Loveless Fruit Company, employed Nellie Loveless as a packer. But with the California Fruit Growers' Association packing house opening in 1908, and a 39 In a different historical context, Michael Kazin and Steven J. Ross examine the ways in which parades and festivals developed, in part, as reactions to industrializing society in the 1890s and later. They also functioned as a means of celebrating or creating community solidarity. "America's Labor Day: The Dilemma of a Workers' Celebra tion,” Journal of American History 78 (March 1992), 1296, 1309. In the context of Escondido, I would say that Grape Day and other public festivities celebrated a still existing community solidarity, but possibly one that residents came to feel was threatened by population growth and the mechanization of agricultural production. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 337 total of three packing houses by 1910, mechanization and employment of growing numbers of wage laborers (although still only 20 packers in 1910) was turning packing into just another unglamorous job. The indoor, mechanized, year-round, specialized-task work environment of a citrus packing plant was a far cry from the outdoor harvests with women and men, girls and boys working side by side; or the excitement of grape-drying season, when the threat of rain brought boys running from all of Escondido at a moment's notice to carry the grapes to shelter.40 To be sure, Escondidans, like Americans throughout the country, were fascinated with new technology. A 1911 magazine article in West Coast Magazine, "How Oranges Are Prepared for Market," goes into great detail in describing the packing process, and emphasizes the use of new technology. Similarly, Grape Day celebrations featured new thrills, for instance, airplane stunts and rides. When Escondidans were not reminiscing nostalgically about the "good old days" of horse-drawn wagons and unmechanized labor, they were celebrating the arrival of electricity, telephones and new machines. In sum, they romanticized the future as well as the past, mourning the demise of the old 40 1905 directory; "Reliable Facts and Figures"; 1910 manuscript census. "How Oranges are Prepared for Market," West Coast Magazine 10 (June 1911), 292-97. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 338 at the same time that they celebrated the progress of the present into the future. The Pageantry of White Supremacy The Grape Day celebrations were more than a successful form of publicity for Escondido and its farmers. They were more than festivals of prosperity. They were more than opportunities for nostalgic stories of an idealized, pastoral Escondido. They, along with other public celebrations and entertainments, were one of the important ways that white Americans deployed popular and public culture to reproduce white supremacy. The celebrations did this in several ways. First, they attracted money and people to the town, helping thereby to maintain and expand the white population. Second, they presented triumphal images of white American progress. Third, they sentimentalized and romanticized the past, especially of Native Californians. In doing this, Escondidans recreated another aspect of history to their specifications, a history not their own, and one that made indigenous peoples into powerless victims, fated to disappear.41 41 David Waldstreicher has noted historians’ recent interest in parades and festivals: They have "become a subject of analysis, a place we look for the articulation of ethnicity, class, gender, and nationality. . . . [P]olitics— and group formation— were consciously Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 339 American settlers in northern San Diego County eagerly joined in on the popularity of local pageants and events. Escondido, as the largest town in the area from about 1900 on, was a center of such public cultural production. In addition to the annual Grape Days, which lasted until the 1950s, the Felicita Pageant (obviously inspired by the Ramona Pageant), was performed in 1927 through 1931. Smaller performances or other public or private events also occurred in and near Escondido during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Large public celebrations were common in Southern California. During the land boom of 1886-1888, train and buggy excursions to new townsites commonly had a party like atmosphere, both during the trip and at the towns. They were efforts to reinvigorate the local economy with tourist dollars and new investment. In the 1880s and again in the early decades of the twentieth century, celebration organizers focused on the idealized present and future of Escondido. In the 1910s and 1920s, though, a new mood hit Escondido and surrounding towns, and Southern California and effectively practiced in these richly symbolic activities." "Rites of Rebellion, Rites of Assent: Celebrations, Print Culture, and the Origins of American Nationalism," Journal of American History 82 (June 1995), 37. Mary Ryan, generally acknowledged as opening up to historians the significance of parades, argues that parades "tell us something of the historical process whereby cultural meaning is created," and that they were "ceremonial forms specific to their own times, needs, and possibilities." "The American Parade: Representa tions of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order," in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California, 1989), 133. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 340 in general. With the towns now well established and the early "pioneers" reaching middle age, nostalgia for and interest in the pre-American past grew.42 This was the age of the revitalization of the mission buildings and mission history, as discussed in the previous chapter. But for settlers in Escondido and San Pasqual, the romance of the indigenous past was stronger. Escondido's earliest pageant was entitled "Kitshi Manido" ("Indian" for "Great Spirit"), but was more popularly called the "Moosa Peace-pipe Pageant." It was written and staged by the Frazee family in 1915 and 1916. The family settled in Moosa Canyon, probably around 1910, and Elizabeth Frazee was a teacher at Escondido Public School. The Frazee family played the nine main characters, and Escondido's all-girl Morning Star Chorus sang. Among the highlights of the play were the opening scene: "a ghostly Indian procession . . . which included a group of men carrying one of the original beams of Mission San Luis Rey . . . , and a tableau of the last of the Pamoosas, the Indians who lived in the area before the coming of the white man." The hero of the play, Ab, was portrayed "at four stages of his life," and his wife, Wahwonia, "saves 42 Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915 (New York: Oxford University, 1973), 402-405; Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University, 1985), 54-55; Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1973), 77-83, 113- 137. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 341 his life and turns his footsteps into a path of peace." At the end of the play, Majella, "the priestess of Kitshi Manido," leads the couple, now at the end of their lives, "down the Way of Shadows into eternal peace, as the echoes of the Peace Hymn died away in the distance." Reportedly, three thousand people watched the three performances of the pageant— one performance in 1915 and two in 1916.43 There are a number of significant elements in this play. One is the portrayal of the death of native people as individuals and as social groups: the "ghostly Indian procession," the tableau of the "Pamoosas," a group that no longer existed (and, to my knowledge, never existed), and the death of Ab and Wahwonia at the end. This portrayal is one example of the popular notion among white Americans that Native Americans were fated to disappear. In addition, the point of the story seems to have been for an indigenous man to renounce violence and live in peace; for a native person to be "good" according to Americans, he must be peaceful. There is also the "borrowing" of the name Majella from Ramona. In the novel, Alessandro, 43 Escondido City Directory, 1911; Eloise Perkins, "Peace-pipe Pageant Was Area's First Outdoor Play," Escondido Times-Advocate, 30 August 1970. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 342 Ramona’s husband, gives her a new, supposedly Indian, name, Majella, to mark her return to her Indian roots.44 Perhaps spurred by the popularity of the Peace-pipe Pageant, the San Pasqual Women's Club in 1917 presented a less formal evening of "Indian" entertainments, planned by Elizabeth J. Roberts with the help of Mary R. Peet and other long-time San Pasqual residents. Years later, in her 1948 memoir, Roberts recalled the performance as "one of the highlights of [the Club's] existence." "All the resi dents of San Pasqual," plus many from Escondido and San Diego, attended. The decorations, entertainment and food were an amalgamation of the American women's knowledge of and imagination about indigenous and cultural life. The Club members decorated the adjoining living and dining rooms of the Roberts house with "colorful Navajo blankets" covering the seating, and they hung evergreen boughs in the shape of arches on the walls. In "the open space of each arch was placed some type of Indian ornament— an Indian blanket, a bow and arrow, or something 'Indian.'" Here, the tools and necessities of everyday life became "ornaments," with no regard for placing items from totally different cultures next to each other. Refreshments included an authentic drink, made from dried, Jackson, Annotated Ramona, 126. The "Indian" name is actually "Majel," or "dove," but Ramona asks Alessandro if she can change it to "Majella" because she likes the sound of it better. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 343 crushed grain, and a food introduced during the Mexican California period and not indigenous to the region, tortillas spread with mashed beans then rolled up and "tied with a strip of cornhusk." The program began with Mrs. Harris reading "a paper telling of Indian life in Arizona." Then the "orchestra"— Mr. Webb and his two sons on violin, guitar and drum— played a "weird rhythmic sort of march," with "the drum predominating." Six San Pasqual girls, "dressed in Indian costumes made of burlap trimmed with red fringe," wearing red headbands "in which was stuck one long feather," entered the room, carrying a long evergreen branch in each hand. "As they marched in," Roberts recalled, "the girls swayed the branches and also their bodies from right to left .... It was really unusual and beautiful, and the crowd was delighted. When they reached their places, they sang a number of 'Indian* songs." After this, Nellie Padgham, Roberts' cousin, "played Indian music for us, classical and full of charm" on the piano. It is clear from Roberts' writing that the "Indian songs" and "Indian music" were composed by Americans, not by Native Americans, and that Roberts recognized the masquerade she had organized. She contrast it with the last entertainment of the evening, "the real climax of the program," the appearance of one of the last Kumeyaay Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 344 living in San Pasqual Valley, Old Morales (as Roberts called him) . He shook "his Indian gourd rattle and sang real Indian songs . . . ; he also danced keeping time with his rattle."45 These two entertainments illustrate American settlers' strong fascination with a Native American past before the arrival of "the white man," a past created more by American imagination than one having any resemblance to actuality. Like other examples of "imperialist nostalgia" that infected Americans in the early twentieth century, it both mourned the demise of native culture while removing Americans from any responsibility for its decline.46 Imperialist nostalgia differs from the nostalgia for one's own romanticized past, such as exhibited in Escondidans1 reminiscences about the grape harvest. The former transforms another people's culture and history, while the latter transforms one's own. There is not always a clear division between these two forms of recreating the past, as seen in the elevation of the rancheros to a local but extinct aristocracy, and of the missions to a grand style of local architecture. In these elements of the 45 Roberts, "Days of Yore," 45-46; Peet, San Pasqual, 141-43; "The Spirit of Indian Days of Yore If Felt Again," Escondido Times- Advocate 16 March 1917. 46 Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston: Beacon, 1993), Chapter 3, "Imperialist Nostalgia." Of particular relevance to the scenes described above, is Rosaldo's comment, "[A] mood of nostalgia makes racial domination appear innocent and pure," 68. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 345 "Fantasy Heritage," Southern Californians remade what was foreign into their own history. Imperialist nostalgia was not a local phenomenon limited to the area surrounding Escondido. The Ramona Pageant, first performed in 1923 (although earlier Ramona plays existed) , quickly developed into a famous, and still performed, Southern California tradition. Performed in Hemet, close to the location of the final, tragic scenes of the novel, the Pageant is faithful to Jackson's story, and faithful, too, to the imperialist nostalgia mode. It encourages the audience to cry for Alessandro and Ramona instead of demanding land and justice for them— a problem in the novel as much as in the play. The pageant and newspaper coverage of it promote the sense that the tragedy was all in the past. The connection of the story to historical events— all safely in the past— was often discussed as much in articles as is the pageant itself. For example, a San Diego Union article of 193 0 describes the natural bowl where the pageant is performed as a place where "the voices of the original Ramona and . . . Alessandro" "still echo." The pageant is an opportunity to "relive" "the romance of the Ramona period."47 Within two years of the first Ramona Pageant, Escondido developed a pageant of its own, the Felicita 47 "Will Hold Big Pageant Near Hemet," 20 April 1930. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 346 Pageant, which ran from 1927 through 1931. Probably inspired by the success of the Ramona Pageant, the Felicita Pageant had a single focus, the love affair between an American soldier, wounded during the 1846 Battle of San Pasqual, and Felicita, then a young woman.48 The Felicita Pageant had an advantage that the Ramona story did not: the Battle of San Pasqual, the only military encounter in California during the United States1 war with Mexico, which, incidentally, ended in defeat for the American forces. What better combination than a war story and a love story? Most important, the Felicita Pageant ignored the greater tragedy of Felicita's life— the loss of her people' s territory and the destruction of their community. Ramona did not ignore this, even if it cloaked the loss in romance and tragedy. The Ramona and Felicita stories have some elements in common. Both elevate the women: Ramona is an incredibly pure, kind woman, whose actions evoke saintliness; and in the end, she marries a member of the Californio elite, another source of elevation for her. Felicita is an "Indian princess" by virtue of her father's status as Felicita died in 1911, many years before the idea for the pageant arose. Benjamin Sherman, a San Diego optometrist, wrote the musical play, based on Roberts' account, sometime in the 1920s. Robin Maydeck, "Felicita Pageant to Return after 39-Year Fadeout," San Diego Evening Tribune, 4 January 1970; Roberts, "Felicita," in Peet, San Pasqual, 88—92, originally written 28 October 1911. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 347 "chief." Both women also lose the men they love: Alessandro, Ramona's husband, is killed, and Dick, the soldier, leaves Felicita after she nurses him to health. The loss of love, not the loss of a people's homeland and community, is thus the main tragedy in each story. Not quite the same as the pageants, but qualifying as a public "show," was the 1929 erection of an "Indian teepee" on a hillside overlooking southern Escondido. A. L. Houghtelin built the teepee to make "a unique showplace for treasured Indian relics," although it is unclear whether he meant it to house items uncovered in the region or from elsewhere. Houghtelin's project, though, was not finished, as the Great Depression struck soon after he finished the teepee.49 Periodic upsurges of nostalgia have swept through southern California. Until the 197 0s, though, most public commemoration of California's past emphasized the "Spanish," not the indigenous, part. In keeping with the "Fantasy Heritage" recreations of the past, some of these celebrations merged the Spanish presence with the American. In 1948, "as part of the Centennial observances" of the American conquest of California, a group of people reenacted Spain's invasion of the region— Gaspar de Portola's journey up the coast in 1769. The men in 1948 49 Ryan, Yesterdays, 15. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 348 rode horses from San Diego to San Francisco, stopping at the missions along the way. In 1950, San Diego County celebrated the birth of "the first white child in California"— a Spaniard born in 1775.50 Conclusion Escondidans prospered because they owned the land and had the support of state and federal lawmakers, and local and distant capitalists. Financial investment in the town— and some luck— led to increased population and prosperity, which in turn led to additional investment. As a white, middle-class town, Escondido did not have enough capital among its early residents to see it through numerous financial crises, but it did have the support of the government and outside investors. Escondidans, unlike their neighbors in older towns such as San Pasqual and Temecula, had little direct contact with Native Californians, Mexicans, or Chinese. Even though these groups of people still comprised much of the local working class, they rarely worked, and even more rarely lived, within the town itself. Escondidans also did 50 "Portola Rides Again,” Westways, October 1948, p. 3; "Dedication Honoring First White Child is Scheduled Saturday," Escondido Tlmes-Advocate 6 May 1950, p. 2. The latter article notes that the appropriately named "Roads of Romance association" provided the base for the marker placed at the location of the child's birth. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 349 not participate directly in the expropriation of indigenous or Californio land. Nonetheless, they were settlers, whose presence deprived people already living in the area from using the land that had once been theirs. Despite being one step removed from the direct experiences of land expropriation that American settlers before them had created, Escondidans joined San Pasqual settlers in romanticizing the Native Californian past. In the celebrations and entertainments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Escondidans mingled nostalgia for their own past with nostalgia for indigenous Californians1 . Planned towns like Escondido helped to segregate white Americans from non-whites. Indian reservations also helped to isolate Native Californians from other populations. At the same time that Escondido was expanding, Luiseno, Kumeyaay and Cupeho groups were losing the last of their lands through the actions of both distant investors and local settlers. They were eventually given small reservations to live on. Just as Escondido had been advertised to prospective residents as a farming community, so too did the Office of Indian Affairs and Indian reformers promote farming as a means of economic salvation for Native Californians on the newly created reservations— ignoring the fact that most Kumeyaay, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 350 Luiseno and Cupeno still living on the land were already farmers. Unlike Escondidans, though, Native Californians did not receive massive infusions of capital to help them succeed in farming, seriously undercutting their ability to survive by farming on the reservations. The next chapter turns to an examination of the reservations. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 351 CHAPTER SEVEN "THE PLEASING INDIAN PICTURE AT PALA" 1875-1920 Introduction Escondido succeeded, more than many boom-era towns, in becoming an ideal southern California town, fulfilling many of the promises in its developers' advertisements. Similarly, Pala appeared for a number of years to be the ideal Indian reservation, a place Americans could point to with pride, where they could find affirmation that they had finally done something right for some indigenous people. Unlike many reservations in the United States, the reservations along the San Luis Rey River— Pala, Pauma, Rincon, and La Jolla— provided at least some good land and water sources that their residents could use for farming. But its residents still suffered from deplorable living conditions and lacked the means for a decent standard of living. If Pala could not supply this— and it did not— Native Californians on other reservations had even less chance. The history of Pala and neighboring reservations illustrates how American society, especially through the Office of Indian Affairs and the federal government, continued and deepened its dominance of native people. It also shows that local settlers and Native Californians, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 352 who once had directly interacted, became increasingly distanced from each other. This distancing contributed to settlers' ability to avoid their responsibility in the ongoing process of land expropriation.1 Earlier chapters in this dissertation focused mainly on interactions between local settlers and native people. Here the relationships between native people on the reservations and Indian Service officials is key. This reflects the most significant change in white-Indian relations during the period 1890 to 1930: the creation of reservations and the resulting interactions between native people and an often disembodied federal agency. This does not mean that Native Californians did not interact any longer with white settlers. Native Californians still formed part of the rural labor force, and some lived in American towns and farming districts. But in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the creation of reservations and the federal government's increasingly bureaucratic control of life on them were vitally 1 The title of this chapter is taken from "California Indian Good Farmer if Given Hal[f a Chance],'' unidentified Los Angeles newspaper, [5 April 1925], in Box 873, File "Pala Reservation O & M 1919 to 1924,” NARA Seattle. Much information in this chapter comes from BIA files in two locations, Seattle, and Laguna Niguel, California. The Seattle location houses the files of the Indian Irrigation Service, Portland Area Office, which included southern California. The Laguna Niguel location houses files from the Office of Indian Affairs’ local agencies (also called superintendencies), which during the period covered in this chapter were located either at Pala or (beginning in the 1930s) Riverside. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 353 important in the process of land expropriation and the reproduction of white supremacy. Native Californians living on reservations came to have two, instead of one, direct sources of white dominance: Indian Service personnel and American settlers. San Diego County Reservations in National Context In the 1870s settlers and many local leaders in San Diego County opposed setting aside land for Native Californians. In this they were no different from settlers in many parts of the United States. But events leading to and resulting from the reservation of land for native people in southern California differed from Native Americans' experiences in most other regions. Typically, when settlers, miners, and railroad companies perceived indigenous peoples standing in the way of their "progress," they demanded that the government "remove" them to locations far from American settlement. The experience of, for instance, the Lakota (Western Sioux) epitomized the federal government's betrayal of treaties and the ultimately unsuccessful resistance of Native Americans to the theft of their land and removal to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 354 distant reservations.2 In the case of the Lakota, the federal government kept forcing them onto smaller and smaller reservations in advance of American miners and settlers. The government, in effect, cleared the Lakota from lands that miners and settlers then moved onto. But in southern California, almost the opposite series of events occurred. Settlers and investors took indigenous land, forced Native Californians off, and refused to allow the government to reserve any for them. Only when almost all their land had been taken did Native Californians in San Diego County receive any significant aid from the federal government. Most settlers in San Diego County until the 189 0s opposed the creation of reservations because it would decrease the land open for white settlement. In 1871 San Pasqual Valley settlers, for instance, won the retraction of the 1870 executive order establishing a Kumeyaay reservation in the valley. The San Diego Union editorialized against setting aside land for native people in 1873.3 2 While it is common now to refer to the Sioux as one group, historically there were three main divisions, each characterized by residence in a distinct region and using distinct methods of survi val. Alice Beck Kehoe, North American IndicLns: A Comprehensive Ac count, 2d. ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992), 302-303. 3 Richard L. Carrico, Strangers in a Stolen Land: American Indians in San Diego, 1850-1880 (Sacramento: Sierra Oaks Publishing, 1987), 75. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 355 In 1874 Special U.S. Commissioner of Mission Indians Charles A. Wetmore tried to gain local support for his proposals to safeguard some Indian land, including establishing reservations. Wetmore called a meeting of influential San Diegans, political officials, lawyers, judges, land developers and newspapermen attended. Wetmore explained why they should support his three-part proposal: surveying public lands so settlers' and indigenous people's land claims could be finally established; setting aside unclaimed lands for indigenous people to replace (in part) what they had already lost; and establishing schools and churches to speed Indians on the road to assimilation. Wetmore won over the local leaders. From then on, the San Diego Union wrote in favor of creating reservations— even though it continued to criticize oppositional indigenous initiatives and leadership (such as Olegario Calac's activities). Nonetheless, opposition to reservations remained strong among many rural settlers.4 About a year after Wetmore forwarded his plans to the Office of Indian Affairs, the Indian Service hired James Pascoe to survey some parts of Luiseno, Kumeyaay and Cahuilla territory, prior to setting aside land for the tribes. The Luiseno leader, Olegario Calac, blocked Pascoe's work at Rincon. Then in September, Sheriff 4 Ibid., 75-76. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Nicholas Hunsaker served eviction papers to the Temecula Luisehos. (Hunsaker had long been sympathetic to the injustices Native Californians of San Diego County endured, but he did his job, nonetheless, when the San Francisco investors won their court battle over Temecula.) With the Los Angeles Express calling for justice for Native Californians (more loudly than the Union), with whites in southern California growing more uncomfortable both with Native Californians being forced off their land and rumors of a native revolt, and with Calac's visit to President Grant in late 1875, the president issued new executive orders creating a few small reservations in southern California. In northern San Diego County these included three reservations of a few hundred acres each of land surrounding the Luiseno villages of Pala, Rincon, La Jolla, Potrero, and Ya Piche. No American settlements existed at these locations, so there was no settler outcry against these reservations. In 1876, 1877, and the period from 1881 to 1883, a few more executive order reservations were made, scattered throughout San Diego County, including at Pechanga, for the displaced Temecula Luiseno in 1883. But not until 1891 did the federal government Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 357 adopt a real plan for saving some land for the indigenous people of the region.5 The 1891 Act for the Relief of the Mission Indians created a commission to determine which lands were actually occupied and used by the Luisenos, Kumeyaay, Cupenos, Cahuilla, Chumash and Serrano peoples of southern California. Not included in the Act were the Gabrielinos (Los Angeles region) and Juanenos (native people closely related to the Luisenos, but who came under the influence of Mission San Juan Capistrano) , whom many Americans believed had died off. The identified lands were to be surveyed, withdrawn from the public lands, and made ineligible for American settlement. If an indigenous group's territory was already occupied by non-Indians, the federal government would set aside or purchase alternate lands. Reserved land would be trust patented to the group, and allotment of land to individuals would occur as soon as possible.6 5 Florence Connolly Shipek, Pushed into the Rocks: Southern California Indian Land Tenure, 1769-1986 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1987), 188-91; Francis Paul Prucha, ed., Documents of United States Indian Policy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1975), 147-151, "Extract from the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs" (John Q. Smith) , 30 October 1876. The creation of these small reservations was in opposition to federal policy at the time, which promoted the concentration of native peoples from a wide region on large reservations, the better to facilitate American.supervision and control. 6 Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, vols. I and II, unabridged ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1984), 643; Shipek, Pushed, 39. Copies of the 1891 act exist in many places, including Shipek, Appendix C, 165-69. A copy of the act and a list of reserved lands is Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 358 In contrast to earlier settler reaction to the creation of reservations, this time there was little opposition to implementing the 1891 act, as long as reservations were small and composed of land that settlers did not already live on or want to live on. This small but significant change in attitude doubtlessly resulted from a number of factors. The period of squatting and home steading on land in San Diego County had mostly ended, and most land claim disputes had been resolved. The tide of public opinion had shifted as town and city populations grew, and new settlers had less direct contact with Native Californians. Also, local settlers might have been happy to hand over the "Indian problem" to the government. This would remove settlers from responsibility for Native Californians' survival. Some white Americans felt remorse for the actions of their predecessors, and believed some measure of justice should be extended to indigenous people. As the discussion in "Executive Orders Relating to Indian Affairs," TS, n.d. (but the latest date on material in this file is 1912), Box 786, Vol. 215, NARA Seattle. A trust patent meant that the federal government retained ultimate responsibility for the land, so the indigenous owner could not sell or lease it without government approval. Indian trust patented land was not subject to property taxes. The period of trust patents was usually 25 years, as it was in the 1891 act. Prucha, Great. Father, 668. The term "Mission Indian, ” still in use today, groups all the native people together into one undifferentiated mass on the basis of their contact and subjugation at the Spanish missions in southern California. However, the Cahuilla and Serrano were hardly "missionized," most of them not having been under the dominance of the missions, and the Cupeno and many Kumeyaay had a distant relationship with the missions. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 359 of settlers' memoirs in Chapter Four indicated, some settlers— typically, the children of settlers who came to the region in the 1870s and 1880s— separated themselves from the actions of their elders and expressed sympathy for Native Californians who had been run off their land. At the same time, national opinion increasingly supported Indian reform. Reformers' efforts included calling for the creation of reservations where a small area of land would be set aside for Native Americans, most of whom had been pushed off their land during the preceding decades.7 Helen Hunt Jackson and Abbot Kinney's 1883 report on the condition of the Mission Indians, followed by the publication of Ramona, in 1884, and then Jackson's death in 1885, drew the attention of the still-young Indian reform movement. The Women's National Indian Association, the Indian Rights Association (IRA), and the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of Indians, the three main Indian reform organizations in the 1880s and 189 0s, all approved of and drew inspiration from Jackson's work. Charles C. Painter, the IRA's Washington agent, visited Jackson during the last months of her life and promised that the IRA would pursue her work for the Mission Indians. Between 1885 and 1887 Painter visited southern California three times and led the IRA's and Lake Mohonk Conference's 7 Prucha, Great Father, 611—12, 615-616. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 360 pressure on the federal government to pass a bill implementing Jackson and Kinney’s recommendations. The Senate was willing, but the House, where local opinion registered more strongly than in the Senate, defeated the bills several years running, until 1891, when opposition in the House finally weakened. The three-member Smiley Commission, created by the Act for the Relief of the Mission Indians, consisted of Indian reform activists: Painter, Judge Joseph B. Moore from Michigan, and the chairperson, Albert K. Smiley, a past member of the Board of Indian Commissioners (1879-1883) and founder of the Lake Mohonk Conference in 1883.8 Indian reformers' involvement in the problems of native people in southern California was second only to its involvement in the subjugation of the Lakota in the 1880s. The Indian reform movement a century ago placed great importance on the situation of the Mission Indians; it is surprising that now few scholars outside of California pay much attention to Native Californians. There is a striking contrast between current public knowledge of the peoples of the two regions: the virtual invisibility of southern California's native population versus the virtual hegemony of popularized Lakota history. 8 Ibid., 616-17, 641-43. The Board of Indian Commissioners was an advisory committee to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 361 But this was not the case in the 1880s and early 1890s because of Ramona, and Indian reformers1 activities. There is also an interesting contrast between the implementation of the reformers' ideas about land ownership in the two regions. In both locations, the goal of the majority of Indian reformers and the government was to turn native people into individual or family farmers by dividing reservation land into allotments. The passage of the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act, in 1887, was, to the reformers, the apex of their success in influencing federal policy, and the reformers observed the Lakota and Mission Indian reservations closely to see the affects of allotment.9 But the outcome of reserving and allotting land was very different for the Lakota and the native people of southern California. The former ended up losing almost all of their already greatly reduced territory: allotment was the final step in the expro priation of most of Lakota lands. In contrast, the involvement of Indian reformers in creating reservations put an end to the long process of land expropriation that 9 Ibid., 631-43. Allotment was the division of tribally-owned reservation lands into parcels for individual tribal members. Usually, receipt of an allotment occurred only when an individual agreed to sever his or her tribal ties. Allotment was the cornerstone of neo-Jeffersonian Indian policy. It was instituted beginning with the relocation of the "Five Civilized Tribes" in the 1830s and 1840s, but it did not become a general policy covering all native peoples on reservations until the passage of the General Allotment Act in 1887. Ibid., 217-222, 664-671. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 362 had already occurred in southern California, and allotment did not result in further land loss.10 In southern California there are currently 31 Indian reservations, with 18 in present-day San Diego County.11 Despite their varied histories of land use and ownership, a few meaningful generalizations can be made. First, by the time most reservations were created, white American settlement had already pushed most Native Californians off their land, leading to the scattering of many populations. Americans settled on the best lands, generally valleys with streams or springs, leaving mainly hilly or mountainous, rocky, dry, often "inaccessible" (to whites) land for indigenous people to live on. Second, once the federal government decided to step in and ameliorate land expropriation, it usually tried to find land for relocation of Native Californians within or close to an indigenous group's territory. It was less concerned with giving each group its own reservation, but occasional efforts to create one or a few large reservations for all 10 My review of records showing reservation lands, both allotted and unallotted, confirms this, but I am not the first person to reach this conclusion. Imre Sutton, a geographer who - has studied land tenure among the native people of southern California, came to this same conclusion. His findings are presented most fully in "Land Tenure and Changing Occupance on Indian Reservations in Southern California," (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1964), especially 133-34, and in condensed form in "Private Property in Land among Reservation Indians in Southern California," in Association of Pacific Coast Geographers Yearbook, ed. John F. Gaines (Corvallis: Oregon State University, 1967), 69-89. 11 Shipek, Poshed, 188-191. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 363 southern California native people failed because settlers opposed setting aside large tracts of land. Third, the government was reluctant to oust settlers, even if their land claims were not completely legal or were not yet patented. Similarly, the government was unwilling to spend large amounts of money to buy lands legally belonging to Americans or to pay for their improvements on land that Native Californians claimed. Fourth, the government sometimes tried to find land that could actually support indigenous people, but in other cases, because of settler opposition or other reasons, the government ended up reserving worthless land. Lastly, most reservations were small, "postage-stamp11-sized; even if they had some arable land, there was not enough of it. Nonetheless, the creation of reservations by Congressional legislation in 1891 and 1892 (and in later years) did manage to save a small amount of land for Native Californians. The result, though, was the replacement of existing oppressive relationships with new ones. Six Reservations The generalizations listed above are borne out by the four reservations along the San Luis Rey River (Potrero, later known as La Jolla, Rincon, Pauma and Pala) and two Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 364 others, Pechanga and San Pasqual. For instance, the Temecula Luisenos gained title to Pechanga in 1883 mainly because the land was not desirable to American settlers. The land had very little water— only enough during the dry months for some limited irrigation, and barely enough for domestic purposes. In 1907, since water was so scarce, the government purchased an adjacent small parcel to add to the reservation because it had a spring on it that could supply water for household use. For a population of over two hundred people, the Pechanga Luisenos ended up with a little over four thousand acres of dry land.12 Events leading to the reservation of land for the San Pasgual Kumeyaay were different from those occurring in Temecula. Unlike the Luisenos of Temecula, the San Pasqual Kumeyaay fled their valley over the course of several years and ended up dispersed among various southern California locales. Also unlike the Temecula/Pechanga Luisenos, whose territory was in a broad and long valley that was not fully occupied by settlers, the San Pasqual Kumeyaay's territory was a narrow valley that filled up with farmers and ranchers by the 1880s. Settler opposition to reserving any land in the valley for the Kumeyaay was fierce, and so not until the Smiley Commission was there a lasting attempt to reserve land for 12 O. W. Bauer, "History of Irrigation, Pechanga," August 1918, pp. 1-3, Box 772, Vol. 126, NARA Seattle; Shipek, Pushed, 54, 62. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 365 them. The commission "found some of the San Pasqual Indians squatted upon the barren hills north of San Pasqual Valley," and reserved two thousand acres for them there, outside of the valley that had been their home, but at least at the location where the main group of Kumeyaay was then living. But "due to some error," the township location of the area was misrecorded.13 Instead of getting land in the valley, the Kumeyaay band learned that the government had decided that their new home would be some five or ten miles farther north, in a different valley. This area was already settled by Americans, who were farming "all of the lands of any value, some 840 acres in all." The Kumeyaay refused to move there and hoped a way would be found for them to return to the San Pasqual Valley. About twenty years later, though, tribal members, now even more dispersed in southern California, decided to claim ownership of the incorrectly reserved land (minus, of course, the acres already claimed by settlers) since it seemed to be their only hope to gain some land of their own. In 1910 the land was trust patented to them.14 13 Shipek, Pushed, 91-92; O. W. Bauer, "History of Irrigation, San Pasqual," January 1918, p. 1, Box 772, Vol. 126, NARA Seattle. 14 Shipek, Pushed, 47-48, 92-93; Bauer, "History of Irrigation, San Pasqual," 1,4. Some people, including Shipek, suspect that the younger Cave Couts (son of Cave Couts and Ysidora Bandini de Couts), then surveyor for the U.S. government and assigned to survey Indian lands in San Diego County, might have been careless or even dishonest and might have caused this transcription error. My research in Couts' Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 366 The Luisenos living at Pala, Rincon, and Pauma in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were among the most fortunate in southern California in having lands they were actually living on reserved for them. Lands at Pala and Rincon were set aside by executive order in 1875, and Pauma1s land was set aside first in the 1844 Mexican land grant for Rancho Pauma, and then trust patented following the Smiley Commission investigation in 1892. But labeling the residents of these reservations "fortunate" is only in relation to Indians living on the infertile and drier reservations in other parts of the region. None of these reservations contained enough good land for farming for the numbers of people living on them. Pauma and Pala, the two smaller reservations, had sufficient acreage to give each person five to ten acres of land. The two larger reservations, Potrero (later, La Jolla) and Rincon, had much more land, but almost all of it consisted of steep hillsides and rocky terrain. Further, Potrero lacked an adequate supply of water for farming, as the San Luis Rey papers indicates that in 1911 he discovered the error of the surveyor preceding him and reported it to his superiors, but the government refused to take any action to correct it. He was appointed surveyor in February 1894 and served in this position at least through 1895, possibly longer. It appears that he stopped working for the Indian Service for a number of years and then was reappointed as surveyor in 1908. William H. Pratt (U.S. Surveyor General for California) to Couts, 6 February 1894 and 19 February 1894, Cave Johnson Couts Papers CT Box 86 (1); letters in CT Box 86 (3) and Box 86 (6), grouped together as "Survey Correspondence, 1894, April-September,” and "Survey Correspondence, 1896-1898," respectively; Philip T. Lonergan to Couts, 13 December 1908, CT Box 86 (6); Couts to [J. M.] Gleaves (U.S. Surveyor-General), 11 February 1911, CT Box 86 (8). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 367 River plunges through a deep canyon where it traverses the reservation.15 The creation of reservations in southern California did not end with the spate of creation initiated by the Smiley Commission. In 1902 and 1903 a dramatic event in Native California history, rivalling the Temecula and San Pasqual evictions, occurred: the expulsion of the Cupenos from the land Americans called Warner's Ranch or Warner's Hot Springs. Because it took place in a different social climate from the Temecula and San Pasqual evictions some thirty years earlier, the plight of the Cupenos evoked a much different response from local settlers and from the federal government. It tapped into the feelings of anger and sympathy that the Indian reform movement had been able to arouse and provided a concrete opportunity for southern Californians to make some remedy for past injustices to Native Californians. The Cupenos also had the benefit (although they might not have seen it that way) of having an ardent student of Indian culture and an emotional and influential writer present during the whole process of eviction. Charles Fletcher Lummis, editor of Out West, made a personal crusade of the Cupenos' attempts to keep 15 O. W. Bauer, "History of Irrigation, Pauma," January 1918, pp. 1-4; and H. K. Palmer and I. F. White, "History of Irrigation, Pala," 1922, pp. 1-3, both in Box 772, Vol. 126; O. W. Bauer, "History of Irrigation, Rincon," August 1918, pp. 2-6, Box 772, Vol. 127; 0. W. Bauer, "History of Irrigation, La Jolla," 1918, pp. 1-2, Box 772, Vol. 125, all at NARA Seattle; Shipek, Pushed, 100-101. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 368 their land and published frequent articles about it as events were unfolding. The Luisenos and Kumeyaay at Temecula and San Pasqual, in contrast, saw their stories publicized by Helen Hunt Jackson a decade after the events.16 Eviction from Cupa and Relocation to Pala The Cupeno people (named by the Spanish or Mexicans after their main village, Cupa, also spelled Kupa) were an indigenous group distinct from the surrounding Luiseno, Cahuilla and Kumeyaay. Their territory was very small, but had the advantage of consisting mainly of low, grass- covered, rolling hills (instead of rocky, steep mountains) and having several hot springs. The springs provided water for numerous uses, including bathing and softening yucca fibers used for making baskets. The Cupeno lived on the fringes of mission territory, but many were baptized at Mission San Diego and later, at Mission San Luis Rey. 16 The story of the eviction from Cupa, the purchase of land at Pala, and the Cupenos' move to Pala appears in many places. The sources used here include Charles F. Lummis, "Warners Ranch Indian Commission, Preliminary and Final Reports, Two Volumes in One; with Papers," MS at Braun Research Library, Southwest Museum, Los Angeles; "Extract Copy from the Report of the Lummis Commission, 23 July 1902," Box 873, File "Pala Resn. O & M 1911-14"; Shipek, Pushed, 43- 45; Edwin R. Bingham, Charles F. Lummis, Editor of the Southwest (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1955), 117-120; "Pala Indian Reservation," pamphlet printed by Cupa Cultural Center, Pala Indian Reservation. The story of Cupa and Pala has continued to be popular, with newspaper and magazine articles appearing from 1903 to at least 1993; for example, Chet Barfield, "Tribe's Trek Honors Uprooted Ancestors," The San Diego Onlon-Tribune, 7 May 1993. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 369 When John Warner was given a land grant of over 44,000 acres in 1844, covering most of the Cupeno's territory, he turned it into an important stop on the travelers1 road to San Diego and Los Angeles. Some Americans visited the hot springs, and the Cupeno were able to earn a small amount of money by charging for bathing in them. The Cupeno, like the Temecula Luiseno, thus had a long history of contact with Americans. But unlike the Luiseno and northern Kumeyaay, whose territories were in the midst of areas being settled by Americans, Cupa and the other villages, and Warner1s Ranch itself, did not attract much settler attention.17 Ownership of the land (as recognized by Spanish, Mexican or American law) changed hands several times between 183 6 and 1880. Warner retained ownership of his rancho even after the Garra revolt in 1851, but in 1855 he 17 Diana Meyers Bahr, From Mission to Metropolis: Cupeno Women in Los Angeles (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1993), 40-41; "Turning over a New Leaf," Out West, 18 (April 1903), 447; Charles F. Lummis, "The Exiles of Cupa," Out West 16 (May 1902), 478; Gordon Smith, "The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall of Warner Hot Springs," San Diego Reader, 15 April 1982, 12; Marjorie Tisdale Wolcott, ed., Pioneer Motes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes, 1849-1875 (Los Angeles: privately printed, 1929), 48-53; Richard F. Pourade, ed., and Cecil C. Moyer, Historic Ranchos of San Diego (San Diego: Union- Tribune Publishing, 1969), 11-12. The history of Warner's land grant is more complicated than indicated above. Originally, the grant of San Jose del Valle was given to Silvestre de la Portilla in 1836, and a grant called Agua Caliente (the more common Spanish and Mexican name for Cupa) was given to Jose Antonio Pico in 1840. Both of these men abandoned their grants due to "Indian troubles." Warner asked Governor Plo Pico to award him the land, and Pico did so, in 1844 and 1845. Smith, "Rise and Fall"; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, Vol. 20 of History of California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1885), 3:612. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 370 moved to Los Angeles, and by 1861, he had sold it off in pieces in debt payments. In 1875, the former California governor, John G. Downey and an investment partner, Louis Phillips, purchased the pieces of the rancho and reas sembled it within its original boundaries. Helen Hunt Jackson and Abbot Kinney reported in 1883 that the Cupeno had a paper stating that 1,120 acres of Cupeno territory had been set aside by executive order in 1875; however, the two investigators noted that the order had been rescinded in 1880, 1 1 immediately after the patenting of the . . . ranch.1 1 Downey, like Warner, allowed the Cupenos to remain on their territory. Both men used the land mainly for grazing cattle, so the few hundred Cupenos living there were no inconvenience, and at least in the case of Warner, were a valuable source of labor power.18 By the turn of the century, with tourism increasing in southern California, Downey thought about making the hot springs the center of a health resort and decided in 1893 to evict the Cupeno. Because they had a record of the 18 Helen Hunt Jackson and Abbot Kinney, Report on the Conditions and Needs of the Mission Indians, 1883, in Reports of Committees of the Senate, 48th Cong, 2d sess. and special sess., 20-21; reprinted in Robert F. Heizer, ed., Federal Concern about Conditions of California Indians, 1853-1913: Eight Documents (Socorro, NM: Ballena, 1979), 75-94. Bahr, From Mission, 42-43; "The Old Warner Ranch," The Southern California Rancher, November 1941, 16; Pourade, Historic Ranchos, 13, 15. The author of "The Old Warner Ranch" states that Downey became the sole owner of the.ranch in 1880. This might explain Jackson and Kinney * s report that the land was patented in that year. Downey was governor 1860-1862. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 371 1875 executive order reserving some of their land, along with other papers— signs of ownership that Americans might acknowledge— the Cupeno believed they had enough evidence to convince the courts that their legal claim to the land should be recognized. After years of litigation trying to establish their claim to the land, and despite support from Lummis and the Sequoyah League, the Cupenos lost the final round in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1901. When the federal government inquired into purchasing some of the land for a Cupeno reservation, Downey's heirs (Downey had died in 1894) refused to break up the large ranch; they wanted $245,000 for its 30,000 acres, far more than the government was willing to spend. They gave the federal government time to find a new home for the Cupenos, and Charles Lummis volunteered to head a commission to find one for them.19 Lummis met many times with Cupenos while helping them in their legal battle. After they lost their case in the 19 Bingham, Charles F. Lummis, 119-120; "Turning," 446; Jackson and Kinney, "Report," 21. At least one of the documents Jackson and Kinney refer to was reportedly destroyed by the Cupeno holding it for safekeeping, apparently in anger that no one from among his people would travel to San Diego to file it with the proper authorities, and thereby provide a legal record of their land ownership. Myron V. Depew, "Valle de San Jose: Cupeno History Tells of Aid Given General," San Diego Sun, ca. 6 June 1933. Jackson and Kinney called these papers "worthless." In addition to the copy of the executive order, they consisted of "a certificate from a San Diego judge that the Indians are entitled to their lands; [and] a memorandum of a promise from General Kearney, who assured them that in consideration of their friendliness and assistance to him they should retain their homes without molestation, ’although the whole State should fill with white men.’" Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 372 Supreme Court, and it became clear to Lummis that the federal government would not buy Warner's Ranch, he asked the Cupenos where they wanted to go. A spokeswoman, Celsa Apapas, responded: "You see that graveyard out there? There are our fathers and our grandfathers. You see that Eagle-nest mountain and that Rabbit-hole mountain? When God made them, He gave us this place. We have always been here. We do not care for any other place. It may be good, but it is not ours. We have always lived here. We would rather die here. Our fathers did. We cannot leave them. Our children born here— how can we go away? If you give us the best place in the world, it is not so good for us as this."20 The Cupeno had no legal recourse and would have to leave. The commission advertised throughout southern California for land for sale and received hundreds of offers. Commission members traveled to about one hundred sites. At first the government considered Rancho Monserrate, recommended by an Indian Service official, consisting of 2370 acres and selling for $70,000. Located 20 Lummis, "Exiles," 472-475. Lummis stated that he recorded "literally" Apapas' words. He also briefly described the discussion among the Cupenos before Apapas spoke. Lummis and the other commissioners presented the situation in Spanish, advising the Cupenos, "They would better think over the outside country and decide what they would like best after their old home." The Cupenos spoke in their indigenous language, which the commissioners did not understand. Finally, Apapas, "a fine-looking young woman," stepped forward and told the commissioners "in perfectly lucid English" what the others (or perhaps only the Cupeno captain, or chief) had been saying. Apapas' speech, which I have abridged above, is frequently printed in writings about the Cupeno eviction, but sometimes it is incorrectly introduced. For instance, Smith in "Rise and Fall," states that Cecilio Blacktooth, the Cupeno chief, made the speech. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 373 along the San Luis Rey River, with wooded hills, it offered grazing land, a source of water, and was large enough in the government's estimation, for the 154 Cupenos who would be resettled there. But the commission found a spot they considered much better, and Lummis pushed strongly for it. The land surrounding Pala reservation was for sale, over 3400 acres for $46,33 0, a much better deal than Monserrate. The amount of land was not the only reason for the commis sion1 s recommendation. There was more farming land at Pala because the valley floor was broader there than at Monserrate. Equally important, the river was a more dependable source of water at Pala than farther downstream at Monserrate because the water level fell so much in the dry season, that it ran underground at many points in the river, but more often downstream than at Pala. The commission also recommended that the government use some of the $24,000 it saved on the Pala purchase to build a good irrigation system at Pala, so the Indians would have a true chance to succeed at farming there. The federal government agreed with these recommendations.21 In 1903 the United States Army came with wagons to take the Cupeno to Pala. The people were desolate, crying 21 Bingham, Charles F. Lummis, 118-122; "Turning," 442-443, 446, 449, 454; "Turning over a New Leaf," Out West, 18 (May 1903), 593- 602. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 374 and praying in their chapel. Some Cupenos, mainly elderly people, remained behind, vowing to hide in the hills and die at their home. Rosinda Nolasquez recounted her family1s experience: 1 1 They went to the cemetery, they wept. Then it was time to move out. Still they did not move. They could not move outside, they still stayed there by the gate. And my great-grandmother went running away into the mountains and she said, 'Here I will stay, even if I die, even if the coyotes eat me, 1 she said, it is said. She kept on going, climbing away. And then from there the people moved out from the ceme tery, they were weeping. . . . They kept going on westward. They did not look back." Only about 100 people made the trip to Pala. As Malcolm Margolin, a leading advocate of the preservation of California Indian culture, states, the Cupeno expulsion was, in Lummis1 words, a "'humble tragedy,'" a short journey of forty miles, to fertile land sufficient for their needs. "But it was not 'home,'" and in the tears of the exiled Cupeno, "we can see, in miniature, the tears of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans who have been forced to move from land that was clearly theirs."22 When they arrived, the Cupeno, who had built and lived in adobe houses at Cupa, found no houses waiting for them, only tents and tarpaper shacks. Instead of having the Cupeno build new adobe houses for themselves, an 22 Malcolm Margolin, "The Cupeno Expulsion of 1903," News from Native California 5 (May/June/July 1991), 26-27; Barfield, "Tribe's Trek." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 375 effort that the Indian Service claimed would take too long, the government ordered about fifty wooden portable houses to be shipped from New York. They arrived six months later, cost four times what the adobe houses would have cost, and had no insulation against the chill of the winters or the heat of the summers. One request of the Cupeno was granted: to have their homes in a village setting since that was what they were used to, instead of living in a dispersed pattern on their farming allotments, as was the case on other reservations.23 The housing situation was a harbinger of what was to come, although this was not apparent at the time. The Indian Service quickly began work on improving the domestic and irrigation water systems. Land was allotted to the newcomers starting in 1908. (The Luiseno of Old Pala already had their allotments.) The Cupeno joined the Pala Luiseno in farming and grazing livestock.24 But within a short time problems began to arise. 23 Barfield, "Tribe’s Trek"; Bahr, From Mission, 48-49; Shipek, Pushed, 44-45. 24 Bahr, From Mission, 49-51; Shipek, Pushed, 53-54; 1911 Annual Report (Narrative), Section VII, Pala Indian School, Box 384, NARA Laguna Niguel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Failure of the Indian Service1s Neo-Jeffersonian Vision In the U.S. West, at the same time that urban life, industrial jobs, and commercialized agriculture were pulling rural Americans off of their farms, the federal government was pursuing a neo-Jeffersonian vision of making Native Americans into family farmers. Indian Affairs officials, Indian reformers, and politicians promoted the idea that individual (as opposed to tribal) ownership of land, the responsibility of working one's own land, and the supposed financial independence that work would bring would transform Native Americans into "Americans." At the same time, white Americans would benefit because as Indians took up farming, they would need less land for their survival; the "surplus" land could then be opened to settlement or for commercial development. The policy of turning Indians into American farmers failed on most reservations. On the reservations of the Great Plains (and elsewhere), soil, water and climate, the traditional ways of life of the native people, and the stinginess of the government in supplying equipment and irrigation systems made failure almost Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 377 inevitable, even if Native Americans had wanted to change their ways of life.25 But on the reservations in the San Luis Rey River valley, geographical conditions and the agricultural backgrounds of the Luiseno, Kumeyaay, and Cupeno held out the promise of success of the government's vision, and this was especially true at Pala. Nonetheless, farming declined at Pala and the other reservations, and in the end, disappeared almost completely. Policies of the federal government, which on one hand espoused farming and private ownership of land for Native Californians, and on the other hand created conditions making farming almost sure to fail, were the main reasons why farming declined in the first quarter of the twentieth century. 25 Discussions of Jeffersonian ideas about Indian Land use and making them "civilized" and "American" appear in many works on Native American history. See, e.g., Prucha, Great Father, 138-140. Among many examples of the application of this ideology, Prucha discusses the federal government's attempt to turn Navajo sheep herders into farmers at Bosque Redondo from 1865 to 1867, and the dismemberment of the Great Sioux Reserve, beginning in 1875; see pages 452-257 and 631-640, respectively. Another important work exploring the application of Jeffersonian ideology to Native Americans in the United States' early national period is Reginald Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783-1812 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1992, reprint of 1967 ed.), vii-x, 172-173, and Chapter VII. George Harwood Phillips, Indians and Indian Agents: The Origins of the Reservation System in California, 1849-1852 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1997), examines the ideology's application to the beginning of reservations in California. Several Commissioners of Indian Affairs explicitly advocated Jeffersonian ideology. The foremost among these was George W. Manypenny, who served in that office from 1853 through 1857. Ely Samuel Parker, a full-blooded Seneca who was Commissioner from 1869 through 1871, also was also a strong supporter. Brief summaries of the careers of all the commissioners through 1977 appear in Robert M. Kvasnicka and Herman J. Viola, eds., The Commissioners of Indian Affairs, 1824-1977 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1979); Manypenny's and Parker's views on this topic appear on pages 58-64 and 129, respectively. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 378 As late as 1925 a newspaper article could enthuse that people at Pala were "farming good land with an ample supply of water." But this assessment served more to make Americans feel good about the results of the campaign to aid the Cupeno than to present an accurate picture of farming on the reservation: the article lauded President T. Roosevelt's role in giving land to the Cupeno when he had had little responsibility for it.26 In contrast, some fifty years later, Ted Couro, a Kumeyaay born in 1890, raised at Mesa Grande reservation (about twenty miles east of Escondido) , and who had lived almost his whole life in the area, stated, "So many times I've been asked if Indians were farmers. I'd like to say this, I may be right and I may be wrong, but from my observations of Indian work, I found that very few of the Indians are farmers."27 The difference between the assessments of the newspaper article and Couro arises out of distinct ideas of what it meant to be a farmer. At Pala and the other southern California reservations, most people had only 5 or 10 acres to farm; a few people had 20 acres or more. Allotments were typically divided between irrigated and non-irrigated land. What family could survive on the crops of so few 26 "California Indian Good Parmer." 27 Ted Couro, San Diego County Indians as Farmers and Wage Earners (Ramona: Ramona Pioneer Historical Society, 1975), 1. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 379 acres? Homesteaders, after all, were entitled to 160 acres, and the legislation that divided up reservation land among the residents was meant to extend a similar opportunity to Native Californians for land ownership as the 1862 Homestead Act had done for Americans. Couro recognized the absurdity of calling someone who cultivated 5 or 10 acres a farmer, without saying so directly. He ridiculed the Indian Service and a Native Californian farmer whom the Indian Service presented as a model for other reservation residents: They used to have a paper, a little book let that Coonradt [an agency farmer] or someone like him used to publish concerning the various Indian farms. I saw a piece of this paper that talked about a certain man . . . how he was improving his farm, that he had lots of corn growing, they were praising his farm. Later on we found out that this man had only four rows of corn, a few rows of beans, and about a half acre of wheat; that's all he had, and they called that farming. A lot of people laughed about that great big farm that they'd made so much of in print.28 What Couro implied, geographer Imre Sutton states outright: Indians on reservations in southern California could not be considered farmers, nor their land, farms, because of the small number of acres each person or family had.29 28 ibid., 4. 29 Sutton, "Land Tenure," 181. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 380 From the start, all the reservations in southern California were too small to allow for profitable fanning. At Pala in the 1910s, about 1200 acres of the reservation were considered arable, and these would have to be divided among a population of about 200. In 1912, for instance, the average size of farms on allotted land was just under 20 acres, and the largest (so-called) farm was 22 acres. In 1917, the average dropped to about 15 acres, and the 5 largest farms ranged in size from 11 to 24 acres.30 The number of people growing crops also declined over time. In the 1910s the majority of people on the reservation cultivated some land, even if they did not do it full-time; while in 1924, among a population of 2 01 people, only 28 were farming a total of 298 acres, or a little over 10 acres each on average. By 193 0 the number of farmers had dropped even more, to only 14, although the number of acres they cultivated had grown to almost 3 0 per person.31 The drop in the number of people raising crops is an indication that this kind of work was not adequate or acceptable to the native people. 30 Annual Statistical and Narrative Reports, Pala, 1911, 1912, 1916-1918, Boxes 384-386, NARA Laguna Niguel. 31 "Report of Collections, District No. 4, F.Y. 1924," Box 777, Vol. 142, Seattle; George Robertson, report on Pala Reservation, n.d. [ca. June 1930], Box 466, File "Annual Statistical Report— 1931 and Prior," NARA Laguna Niguel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Irrigation Plans and Allotment 381 Following the implementation of the Smiley Commission recommendations of 1891, the federal government instituted a program of allotting lands on the San Luis Rey River reservations. Luisenos on the reservations generally welcomed allotment because it partially replicated traditional landowning practices. At Rincon (and possibly La Jolla) the local allotting agent, Kate Foote, in 1892 suggested to the Indian Service that the allotments be irregular in shape, because of the hilly terrain and to take into account already existing land divisions. The Indian Service agreed, and Foote supervised the surveying and division of the land in 1893, using the metes-and- bounds method of the Mexican and early Anglo periods. However, the General Land Office refused to accept this survey, and so the allotments were never approved. The Rincon Luisenos, meanwhile, continued to work on and claim ownership to land according to this survey.32 Just as the U.S. government had insisted that the Mexican land grant claims be supported by documentation, including surveys and maps drawn according to American rectilinear mapping technique, so too did it demand such 32 Shipek, Pushed, 47-48; 1912 Annual Report (Narrative), Section VXI, Box 384, File "Annual Report 1912 Narrative And Statistical Pala Indian School and Agency," NARA Laguna Niguel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 382 surveys and maps for the allotments on Indian reservations. While at Pala the division of allotments into rectangles was not too difficult because arable land was concentrated in the flat lands bordering the San Luis Rey River, at Rincon and La Jolla there was almost no flat land. Farming plots were all or partially located on hilly terrain. By insisting on rectilinear allotments at Rincon, for instance, the Indian Service disrupted already established allotments, delayed the completion of the irrigation works, discouraged farming, and helped created divisions among Luisenos on the reservation. More generally, this insistence was another example of American dominance over the Luisenos (as well as the natural environment) .33 33 Surveys and maps were but one more expression of a central distinction between American and Native Californian life: money and the expansion of a market economy, in which land was either a commodity or the base for production, were replacing a way of life that was based on individual and community stability and survival. Land that is divided into regular, rectilinear shapes that are recorded on paper is much easier to measure, and so assign a monetary value to. That value then becomes the basis for taxation by county, state and federal governments, and for the creation of profit by land investors. While these economic processes did not have a direct impact on the San Luis Rey River reservations, the people and the land, nevertheless, had to be brought into the American way of quantifying land and its value. For discussions of the historical development of cadastral measurement (the marking of land for purposes of taxation, valuation, and ownership), see Edward T. Price, Dividing the Land: Early American Beginnings of Our Private Property Mosaic (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992); and Roger J. P. Kain and Elizabeth Baigen, The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992). Price discusses methods of land surveying and mapping in the eastern half of the United States in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while Kain and Baigen explore the European origins of cadastral maps and argue for their importance in "exerting political and economic control over land,” xviii. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 383 By 1909 the Rincon Luiseno were tired of waiting for the federal government to grant them individual title to the allotments they had been farming. They petitioned the government to finalize the allotments. In response, the Indian Service stated that Indians would have to wait until the agency had confirmed that adequate water to irrigate the allotments existed. After this happened, the agency would "permit the Indians, so far as possible, to retain the particular tracts now in their possession.1,34 In 1912 the Pala Indian School superintendent, who was the administrator for the reservations in the San Luis Rey River region, pushed aside the Luisenos' demand and argued in favor of re-surveying the Rincon allotments. He claimed that "many of the original recipients" of the 1893 allotments had died, and heirs had taken over their land, implying that ownership of the allotments was now an open question. Further, "the old lines and allotment corners are not clear and are difficult to locate," implicitly suggesting that another survey should be done to make the Indian Service's job easier. Finally, the planned irrigation project would lead to inequalities in land use, as some areas would get more water than others; the implication here was that a new land division should be 34 Petition to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs from Gregorio Ornish et al., 30 November 1909; C. F. Hauke [?] to Omist [sic] et al. [ca. 18 December 1909], both reprinted in Shipek, "Strategy,” 229- 230. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. done to fit the irrigation project, rather than the other way around. The superintendent's argument prevailed as the dominant perspective within the Indian Service during the 1910s and 1920s. It ignored long-standing land use patterns, extending back to 189 3 and earlier.35 Construction of the irrigation project at Rincon begain in 1913 but took much more time than the Indian Irrigation Service engineers had originally planned. The division of reservation land and the expansion and completion of the irrigation works became intertwined processes, with delay in one causing delay in the other. For instance, in 1922, Herbert Clotts, the Irrigation Service's supervising engineer for the San Luis Rey River reservations, recommended holding "further development [of the irrigation project] ... in abeyance until the land is allotted as the interior [water] distributing lines should be located to conform to the individual allotments." 35 1912 Annual Report, (Narrative), Section VII, Pala Indian School, Box 384, NARA Laguna Niguel; Levi W. Green to Olberg, 16 June 1913; List showing classification of lands at Rincon by Special Allotting Agent [H. E. Wadsworth], 26 May 1923; Lonergan to Clotts, 16 January 1922; Clotts to Lonergan, 18 January 1922; Palmer to Wadsworth, 2 May 1923; Clotts and Palmer to Wadsworth, 2 June 1923; Wadsworth to Clotts, 4 June 1923; Clotts and Palmer to Wadsworth, 5 June 1923; Clotts and Palmer to Wadsworth 25 June 1923; Clotts to [Charles H. Burke,] Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 25 June 1923; all in Box 873, Rincon Res'n 1922-1931, NARA Laguna Niguel; Sutton, "Private Property in Land," 72. 36 Levi W. Green to C. R. Olberg, Superintendent of Irrigation, 16 June 1913; Herbert O. Clotts, Supervising Engineer, to P. T. Lonergan, Superintendent, Southern Mission [Indian] Agency, 18 January 1922; both in Box 873, File "Rincon Resn. 1922-1931," NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 385 The acutal re-survey did not begin until 1923, one and a half years after Clotts' report, and fourteen years after the Luiseno petition. Clotts supervised the work, and his report demonstrates the lack of importance he placed on the Rincon Luisenos1 existing system of land use, and the priority he gave to fitting the allotments into the "improvements'' already made and still to come on the reservation. Clotts acknowledged that the terrain "is such, that it cannot be subdivided strictly according to section lines, and be irrigated to advantage at the same time." Because of this he was willing to be slightly flexible about laying out the boundaries of the allotments. He insisted, though, on adhering as much as possible to making the boundaries "parallel to the points of the compass" and "made to fit the existing main roads." Clotts reported that there was no longer evidence of the 1893 survey (which he mistakenly dated 1897) , and so, even though "some of the Indians claim to have some form of trust, deed, or other allotment paper whereby they claim certain lands, . . . without a map it would be almost impossible to identify these tracts." Clotts wrote about but otherwise ignored the material and social evidence of the earlier allotments: the Luiseno farmers "have built fences either on the old lines or what they have mutually agreed on," doubtlessly based on the 1893 survey, which Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 386 they had approved. While Clotts claimed that the new survey would "conform to the present fence lines as nearly as can be done," his priority was to "give some regularity to the system, and also to equate the areas." One result of this redistribution would be to reduce allotments from between ten and twenty acres to only five. Additionally, some allotments would have to be made up of two non-adja- cent lots. Luiseno dissatisfaction with this new survey delayed and eventually stalled the expansion of Rincon's irrigation system, resulted in disputes among allottees and contributed to a drop in farming activity.37 At the same time that fewer people were farming on the San Luis Rey River reservations, the allotments themselves were often growing smaller. As time went on and allotment holders died, their heirs inherited the land, frequently dividing it into ever-smaller parcels. By 1930, the average size of allotments was 2 acres of irrigable land and 6 of non-irrigated land. By 1962, about half of the approximately 325 allotments were only about l acre or less in size, and about half of the 325 allotments had 4 or more heirs sharing ownership.38 37 Clotts to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 25 June 1923, Box 873, File "Rincon Resn. 1922-1931," NARA Seattle. 38 John H. Hubbell, "Economic Survey: Report on the Pala Reservation, California," 1931, p. 1, Box 773, Vol. 135, NARA Seattle; Sutton, "Land Tenure," 136, 269; Shipek, Pushed, 54. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 387 One response to the small allotments on the reservations was that some indigenous people chose off- reservation public domain allotments (the equivalent of homesteads) or even took out homestead claims because they could get much more land in this way. This practice was supported and facilitated by Indian Affairs Commissioner Sells during his 1913 through 1921 tenure in the position. Access to ownership of public lands was made possible through federal laws of 187 5, 1884 (the Indian Homestead Act) , and 1910, through Section 4 of the 1887 Dawes Act, and through Sells’ 1918 regulations. The purpose of these laws was to open new avenues (before the passage of the Dawes Act) or additional means (after the Dawes Act) for Native Americans to become private property owners and sever tribal ties.39 In contrast to the tiny allotments of land on the reservations, Luisenos and Cupenos at Pala and Rincon were able to receive public domain allotments approaching or equaling in acreage Americans' homesteads, although these were not without their negative aspects. Between 1893 and 1911, fifteen Native Californians in the San Luis Rey River area received trust patents to public domain 39 Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 13-14. These pages give a clear and brief review of the major features of the laws covering Indian allotments and homesteads on public land. See also Prucha, Great Father, 659-662, 866; Shipek, Pushed, 37-39, 106-107. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 388 allotments ranging in size from 47 to 173 acres, with most having 80 to 160 acres. Meanwhile, at Pala an allotment plan for the relocated Cupeno was put into effect in 1915. To distribute equitably the limited arable acres, allot tees were to receive three separate parcels of land, one each for irrigated farming (averaging 1.8 acres), for dry farming (averaging 6 acres), and a town lot (.15 acre), an average total of 8 acres. Some who were unhappy with this plan chose public domain allotments, many of them adjacent to the reservation.40 Despite the optimism of the 1925 newspaper article and the relative success of farming at Pala, crop cultivation did not provide a living for most Pala residents. There were four main factors contributing to this limited success, besides the small size of farm plots: lack of an extensive and efficient irrigation system, interference from Indian Service personnel, distance from markets, and the lure of paid employment. Because of southern California's climate, in which almost all the precipitation falls in the winter and spring, followed by a dry season in the summer and fall, most crops require irrigation. The technique of dry- farming crops such as hay was often successful, but with 40 "Executive Orders Relating to Indian Affairs, California," n.d., Box 786, Vol. 215, p. 44, NARA Seattle; Sutton, "Land Tenure," 136. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 389 hay grown abundantly throughout the region, few farmers could make a living from just this crop. And in very dry years, dry-farming usually failed. In order to raise crops both for family consumption and for profitable sale, irrigation was necessary. The Office of Indian Affairs, through the Indian Irrigation Service, followed through on Lummis1 recommendation to spend money to improve and extend Old Pala's primitive irrigation system, and the Indian Service continued to invest money in Pala's system for years to come, but irrigation was never as extensive and efficient as it could have been. The Indian Service set aside $13,000 for irrigation at Pala in 1903, and work on the "South Side" ditch was completed in 1904, bringing water to 375 acres of farmland. But this was only a little more than half the 600 to 700 estimated irrigable acres on the reservation. In 1913 work to expand the "North Side" water distribution system was completed, bringing a total of 500 acres under ditch on the reservation. But as late as 1922, the superintendent complained that only about one-third of the allotments classified as irrigated actually received water because of the placement of the pipes. Not until some time in the 1920s did the irrigation system reach almost all of the irrigable acres; in addition, even though much of the system was upgraded over the years, it Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 390 still relied too much on inefficient, unlined ditches. Without concrete lining, water seeped into the sandy soil before it could reach the allotments farthest from the river.41 The people of Pala (and other reservations) probably resented the constant intervention of Office of Indian Affairs superintendents and agency farmers in their farming methods and choice of crops, and this created another impediment to the success of farming on the reservations. While there is no direct evidence of this at Pala, indirect evidence suggests this conclusion. Ted Couro, the Mesa Grande resident, recalled that the agency farmer, Henri Coonradt, would tell the people how to farm, where to farm, and when to farm. This made it difficult for some of the Indians because the Indians knew better about their land what they could put in and what they couldn't put in. Some of them wouldn't do a thing, they'd just leave it alone.42 41 Charles E. Shell, Superintendent Pala Indian School, to William A. Jones, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 6 October 1903, Box 367, File "Letters Received from U.S. Indian Service, October 1903"; 1911 Annual Report (Statistical), p. 22, Box 384, File "Annual Report 1911 Narrative and Statistical, Pala Indian School"; 1915 Annual Report (Statistical), pp. 16, 27, 42, Box 385, File "Annual Report Pala 1915 Statistical"; "History of Irrigation, Pala,” 4-9, 14, 16; all at NARA Laguna Niguel. "Report on Power and Reservoir Investigations," March 1912, Box 775, Vol. 134; "Economic Survey: Report on the Pala Reservation, California," 1931, Box 775, Vol. 135, p. 1, 4; P. T. Lonergan, Pala Superintendent, to Herbert Clotts, USIS Supervising Engineer, 16 January 1922, Box 873, File "Rincon Resn. 1922-1931"; all at NARA Seattle. 42 Couro, San Diego County Indians, 3. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 391 Based on farm agent and Pala superintendent reports, Couro's description of Coonradt would fit any agency farmer. Despite evidence that people at Pala and elsewhere were doing well raising their crops— if one takes into account the small size of their allotments and insufficient water— Indian Service employees always thought they could come up with better methods or better crops. Couro also stated one typical response of native people to such interference: to do nothing. Passive resistance was probably a common form of expressing disagreement or anger with Indian Service policies or personnel, as well as reflecting a deep feeling of demoralization and powerlessness. The Native American historian and anthropologist, Jack Forbes, argues that during the period 1880 to 1920 in California and Nevada, "the conquered native population was constantly brought under more and more bureaucratic control." Indigenous people were treated as wards of the government and subject to changing federal policy and the ideas and whimsies of Indian Service officials. One response was passivity, "not at all surprising in view of the enormity of the shock of the preceding period of warfare and disorganization and of the immense power and prestige available to those whites who intervened in Indian affairs." So it is possible that when Superintendent Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 392 Walter Runke decided in 1912 that the people of Pala should raise fruits and walnuts, the response might have been unenthusiastic. People at Pala were already raising corn, beans, hay, apricots, olives, and truck gardens, and they increased their production of the first four during the rest of the decade. They did also expand their fruit production, but walnuts, Runke's particular obsession, do not seem to have come into production under the Luiseno and Cupeno at Pala; walnut trees seem to have been planted mainly on the agency's demonstration farm.43 Runke's reasoning for introducing walnut production was logical because poor roads meant that bringing produce to market often took days. This was not something the Indian Service had much control over, so Runke's search for a product that could withstand a long, bumpy, sun baked ride seems reasonable on the surface. But the Indian Service's vision of Indians as farmers eliminated other means of earning a living. This attitude was summed up in a superintendent's statement in 1918 (covering the entire district): 43 Jack D. Forbes, Native Americans of California and Nevada rev.ed. (Happy Camp, CA: Naturegraph, 1991), 93, 96; 1912 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV; Walter Runke to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 26 December 1912, Box 873, File "Pala Resn. O & M 1911-14"; 1913 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV, Box 384, File "Annual Report 1913 Narrative and Statistical, Pala Indian School and Agency"; 1914 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV, Box 384, File "Annual Report (Narrative) 1914, Pala Indian School and Agency"; 1916 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV, Box 386, File "1917 Annual Report Narrative and Statistical, Pala Indian School and Agency" [misfiled]; all at NARA Laguna Niguel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 393 It has been a hard matter to increase the cultivated acreage this year. . . . The exorbitantly high wages offered for farm help in this locality has made it more profitable for many of the Indians to temporarily abandon their comparatively unproductive dry land and work for wages. Nevertheless, small gains have been made and an aggressive campaign to increase cul tivation will be inaugurated next year.44 In calling the land "unproductive,1 1 the superintendent acknowledged the difficulty native people must have had in raising crops, but for him and the Office of Indian Affairs, this still was not sufficient reason for Native Californians to seek paid employment. Reveal- ingly, the superintendent also wrote, "The Indians are being taught to depend upon their own efforts and forethought rather than upon Government aid,1 1 but "their own efforts" apparently applied only to farming, not to wage labor.45 Crop production at Pala fluctuated but grew overall during the 1910s and 1920s, so despite the obstacles and frustrations, farming was, in a way, successful— if simply totaling the amount of produce is the main sign of success. But the actual number of native people who grew crops declined over time. A few leased their land to other Pala Indians, and beginning in the 1920s, to Mexicans or 44 1918 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV, pp. 2—3, Box 386, File "Annual Report 1918 Narrative and Statistical, Pala Indian School and Agency," NARA Laguna Niguel. 45 Ibid., Section IV, p. 2. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 394 other non-Indians. The majority subsisted on paid labor and moved off the reservation, temporarily or full-time, in order to work. Paid and Unpaid Labor on and off the Reservation When the Cupeno arrived at Pala, they not only found no houses for them, but they also found that they were expected to work on the restoration of the old buildings of the asistencia (small church, an outpost of a mission) , San Antonio de Pala. It seems that Lummis might have had another reason for recommending that the government move the Cupeno to Pala, aside from the good land, water supply, and reasonable cost.. While there is no direct evidence showing that Lummis plotted to use Cupeno labor at Pala for a project that he was involved in, events seem too convenient to be only coincidence. In 1895 Lummis and several other southern Californians concerned with preserving the missions as part of the region's historical and cultural heritage formed the Landmarks Club. It set its sights on four missions most in need of restoration: Missions San Diego, San Juan Capistrano, and San Fernando de Rey, and the asistencia at Pala, built in 1816. Between 1896 and 1900 the club worked on the three missions, before turning to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 395 Pala. In 1901 Phoebe Apperson Hearst, a financial supporter of Lummis' work, donated $500, earmarked for the Pala restoration. In spring 1902 the Club bought the asistencia grounds and buildings, and roofing tile, and began "the extensive repairs there contemplated by the Club." In May 1903 the Cupenos moved to Pala, and according to Lummis, joined with the other people of the valley in volunteering their labor to reroof the buildings and strengthen the bell tower. The work was completed in November 1903, six months after the Cupeno relocation to Pala. As a finishing touch, a Pala Luiseno, Antonio Lugo, repainted the original pictures and designs on the chapel walls.46 It seems, like so much else that happened at Pala, that Americans gave with one hand while taking with the other. The land at Pala probably was the best the government could have bought for the Cupeno, but it is difficult to put aside the suspicion that Lummis overemphasized the qualities of the land in order to ensure that the government would approve his recommen dation. It is even possible that Lummis was able to secure a low price on the land because of his local influence. 46 Bingham, Charles F. Lummis, 104-08, 123; "The Landmarks Club" [a regular column written by Lummis], Out West 16 (May 1902), 414; "Mission San Antonio de Pala,” pamphlet printed by Mission San Antonio de Pala, n.d.; typescripts, "Mission San Antonio, Pala, California," and "Restoration," both hanging on the walls of the asistencia (photographs in my possession). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 396 Doubtlessly, Lummis considered the deal a "win-win" situation for him and the Cupeno, but there is no evidence that anyone asked the Cupeno if they wanted to help restore the mission buildings. Construction work on the San Antonio de Pala buildings was not the only labor the Cupeno and Luiseno were expected to perform. They were supposed to help build the new irrigation system and repair roads on the reservation. Is it any wonder that George Butler, the first irrigation superintendent sent by the Indian Service, reported in September 1903 that the people at Pala were uncooperative, unreliable, and unhappy generally with their situation? Or that the Cupenos had not yet planted any crops, so they would have no food to harvest in the fall?47 Between their grief at being forced to move from Cupa, the labor requirements they faced at Pala, and their lack of good housing, how would they find the energy and time to plant crops? But the people of Pala were not just demoralized. They were angry, and they certainly did not want to be taken advantage of. They refused to work at digging ditches for the irrigation project "unless all are hired." In response to this collective solidarity, Commissioner of Indian Affairs William A. Jones wrote a cold-hearted and 47 Bingham, Charles F. Lummis, 124. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 397 accusatory letter to Charles E. Shell, Superintendent of the Pala Indian School, ordering Shell to compel the Cupenos to work: It is not thought that the Warners Ranch Indians fully realize their present situa tion. They surely cannot imagine that they can always depend upon the government to supply their needs without their making any effort on their part to help themselves. The government intends to give them a good start at their new home by providing them with irrigation to insure their crops, and by giving them educational facilities, etc. These advantages with all that the govern ment has done for them should soon place them where they can become self-supporting. You are requested to do everything within your power to persuade the able-bodied Indians to work on the irrigating ditch. Endeavor to show them that no other im provement they can expect to have will be so beneficial to them and their children, as an abundance of water means plentiful crops when properly used.48 Jones' attitude was quite typical of Indian Service officials. He believed the government was generous in providing the Cupeno with land, water and schools, and that the Cupeno were ungrateful and too lazy or stupid to work to better themselves. Government officials expected native people to work where and when the government told them to, and this work "benefitted" them, by teaching them the discipline of American styles of work. 48 Jones to Shell, 6 October 1903. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 398 Commissioner Jones believed in white superiority, in the need for Native Americans to assimilate into American society, and used his position as head of the Office of Indian Affairs to supervise programs that would hasten Indians' becoming like white Americans. However, in Jones' view Native Americans would at best achieve only a low level within American society, as "farmers, stockraisers and laborers." Jones also decreased the amount of aid the government gave Native Americans on reservations, seeing this as a means to encourage them to work harder at supporting themselves.49 As Francis Paul Prucha demonstrates in The Great Father, Indian Affairs officials, Indian reformers, and government officials in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century virtually all believed in the need to "civilize" Native Americans by inculcating them and often forcing them to work and own property in the "American" fashion. They acknowledged and supported that this would lead to the "disappearance" of Native Americans, even as some of them, like Jones, did not believe that Indians could achieve true equality with whites. In this we can see a melding of white perceptions of Native Americans and African Americans, in that both groups should strive to become like European Americans, 49 Kvasnicka and Viola, Commissioners, "William A. Jones, 1897- 1904,” by W. David Baird, 212-213, 215. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 399 but that neither would attain the pinnacle of civilization that whites had.50 The extent to which native people were paid for work on reservation projects is unclear. Butler complained that the Pala Indians were being paid "for a half-hearted pretence of labor at doing nothing," and thought the government should instead issue them rations until their first harvest the following year. In the 1910s indigenous people worked "voluntarily," in exchange for farming equipment, or for wages. The existence of widespread "voluntary" labor should be doubted. For instance, in 1916 a superintendent noted that "the Indians all donate free labor on the roads each year," but in 1915 they "appoint certain days in the spring to do such work. If they cannot complete their work in this time I usually hire some of them to finish and pay them for their work in implements," and again in 1917 they worked without pay, as they "are required to do road work each year." In 1918, when the superintendent decided to stop giving any payment for road 50 Prucha discusses this at great length (and with far greater complexity) throughout Volume II of Great Father. For instance, in Chapter 24, "The New Christian Reformers," Prucha reviews the connection between the vision of a Protestant America with the Americanization efforts of white Americans that targetted not only Native Americans but also non-Anglo Saxon, non-Protestant European immigrants. (In the 1910s and 1920s, poor Mexican immigrants would also be added to the groups targetted for Americanization.) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 400 repair work, the people refused to work for nothing.51 It seems, then, that at Pala and elsewhere, indigenous people "volunteered" to work when they were "required" to do so, or were paid. When native people were paid to work on the reservations, they rarely received adequate wages and rarely had permanent work. They usually received less money than Americans, not so much because they were paid less to do the same work, but because they rarely did the same work. Americans generally did work that was considered more highly skilled, and were always the supervisors and white-collar employees. For example, in 1914 workers on the irrigation project at Morongo (in Riverside County, north of the San Luis Rey River area, but within the same administrative district of the Indian Service) were mostly Native Californians. A few were paid relatively highly, from $4.00 to $6.50 per day. One of these was a team driver, so the $4.50 he received also covered the horses and wagon. The other indigenous workers received between $0.62 and $2.50 per day, the highest of these wages going to the most skilled among them, the pipe makers. Non-Indian workers made from $1.00 to $5.00 per day, the highest pay going to the foreman. In 1917, an 51 Palmer to Olberg, 20 September 1912, Box 873, "Pala Resn. O & M 1911-14," NARA Seattle; Palmer to Olberg, 10 October 1913, Box 874, "Rincon Resn. O & M 1909-15," Seattle; 1915 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV; 1918 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 401 Indian Service official noted that wages for work on the reservations had not increased for indigenous workers for a few years, but they had gone up by 5% for foremen.52 Native Californians did not share egual opportunities for permanent with whites. The former were viewed as temporary workers by the Indian Service, as was made clear by a letter from an Irrigation Service foreman to one of the irrigation engineers in 1918. McMurtrie, the foreman, informed Palmer that he had hired Ceferiano Majada (Majoda?), "a good carpenter and has had some experience making pipe," to work along with Bernardino Couts. He went on: "I think he would be a good all around man for the work. Also at any time we do not need him we can lay him off for a few days which we could not do with a white man who always expects steady employment while in camp." So the $3.50 per day the two men were paid would be for intermittent (and temporary) employment.53 This was the typical practice of the Indian Service and the Irrigation Service, not particular to this one situation. But off-reservation was the most common location of employment, repeating the relationship between preceding generations of Native Californians and whites. All through Progress reports, U.S. Irrigation Service, 2 October 1914, 7 October 1914, Box 875, File "San Luis Rey Investigations— Rincon,” NARA Seattle. McMurtrie to H. K. Palmer, 8 October 1918, Box 874, File "Rincon 1916-21," NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 402 the 1910s, 1920s, and into the 1930s, people from Pala and other San Diego County reservations worked on the farms and ranches of the region. Typically, many Native Californians lived around Fallbrook and Escondido and other towns until the labor season ended, and then returned to their reservations. In addition, students returning to the reservations from boarding schools would "help the parents put in the crops and then leave for the ranches where they can obtain work all during the busy season.1154 Many indigenous people in 1912 and 1913 (and probably in other years) went to work on Escondido Mutual Water Company (EMWCo) construction crews. Employment by EMWCo, the county highway commission, and on "other semi-public works" generally paid well. Workers from Pala, Pauma, Rincon and La Jolla earned together almost $24,000 from working on these projects.55 Ironically, this expansion 54 1912 and 1913 Annual Reports, (Narrative) Section IV; 1915 Annual Report (Narrative), Section III, Box 385, File "Annual Report Pala Indian School and Agency, 1915 Narrative," NARA Laguna Niguel; 1916 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV, Box 386, File " Annual Report 1917 Narrative and Statistical, Pala Indian School and Agency" [misfiled], NARA Laguna Niguel; Clotts to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 21 November 1917, Box 866, File "Mission Resn's 1908—17," NARA Seattle; B.S. Garber, Chief, Education Division, Office of Indian Affairs, "Memo for Irrigation Section," 27 October, 1917, Box 873, File "Pala 1915-18," NARA Seattle; 1918 Annual Report (Narrative), Sections II, III, IV; Census roll, Rincon, 30 June 1923, Box 873, File "Rincon 1922-31," NARA Seattle; A.F. Johnson, Farmer, to C.L. Ellis, Superintendent Mission Indian Agency, 8 July 1931, summary of work in Pala Sub-agency, and Robertson, report on Pala Reservation, n.d. [ca. 1930], in Box 466, File "Annual Statistical Report, 1931 and Prior," NARA Laguna Niguel. 55 1912 Annual Report (Narrative) , Section IV, Box 384. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 403 of Escondido1s irrigation system eventually meant less water for farming on the reservations, leading to more people going off-reservation to work. So while many men from the reservations could earn good wages for a few years, they were helping to build the project that would cause farming to decline even more on their reservations over the course of many years. Off-reservation work helped continue the generations- old problem of the separation of families. Earlier periods of conquest and labor relations had torn apart clans and communities, and in the mid-nineteenth century, some parents had been forced to sell their children into indenture. In the early twentieth century, though, almost all family members were separated from each other for at least part of each year (except the very old, the very young, and mothers probably stayed together) . Men left to work off-reservation during the harvest seasons or to work on construction crews that might keep them away from home for many months. Young women also left for work, usually as domestic servants, and often remained where they worked, marrying men from that locale. Adolescent children, too, were apart from their families most of the year. Not only were they sent away to boarding school (the Sherman Indian School in Riverside), but during the school vacation when they could have spent time with their Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 404 mothers, grandparents, and younger siblings, they spent most of the season working off the reservation.56 Native Californians chose to work off-reservation because they could not make a decent living as farmers on the reservations. The one other option the Indian Service actively encouraged for making a living, or at least supplementing farming income and sustenance— craft work— also did not provide enough income. In 1915 at Pala, 58 Indian farmers sold a total of $52 00 of produce, an average of $90 each; 18 women basket makers earned $1000, or an average of $55 each, and 51 lacemakers earned $53 6, or little over $10 each. In 1928 craft work still could only supplement other income, and many fewer women worked at it: 3 basket makers made $90 together, and l lacemaker earned $50.57 Off-reservation work provided the best options to earn money. Superintendents commented on the great demand for indigenous workers, and during the World War I years, 56 1915 Annual Report (Narrative), Section 3, Pala Indian School, Box 385; 1918 Annual Report (Narrative), p. 4, Pala Indian School, Box 386; both at NARA Laguna Niguel; B. S. Garber, "Memo for Irrigation Section," 27 October 1917, Box 873, Pala Res'n, 1915-1918; Census roll, Rincon, 30 June 1923, Box 873, Rincon Res'n, 1922-1931; "Economic Survey: Report on the Pala Reservation, California" (1931), Box 775, Vol. 135; these three at NARA Seattle; Sutton, "Private Property in Land," 79; Sutton, "Land Tenure," 101-102; Shipek, Pushed, 55; David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 162-163. 57 1915 Annual Report (Statistical), and (Narrative), Section 3; "Summary of Annual Report on Pala Reservation," 16 July 1928, Box 466; both at NARA Laguna Niguel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 405 the "exorbitantly high wages offered for farm help." By 193 0 few people at Pala relied on farming for any significant portion of their livelihood: there were only 14 farmers out of an enrolled population of 204.58 Indian Service officials reacted to this with displeasure and condemnation. Not only was farming viewed as the only acceptable occupation for native people on reservations, but reliance on wage labor was seen as a repudiation of the social and moral benefits of farming. One superintendent declared, The excellent opportunity for remunera tive employment nearby and off the reserva tion has not always been conducive to the best care of the farms. Too often actually the farming operations are neglected be cause ready money received for outside em ployment is more attractive than to wait for the harvest and end of the season for a return on his labor.59 Behavior that would have been approved of in poor Americans in the cities— seeking out employment that paid the best in order to elevate the family's standard of living— was criticized among Native Americans. The Indian Service declared people on the reservations to be impatient and short-sighted and ignorant of their own best 58 1918 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV; Robertson, report on Pala Reservation. An enrolled person is a member of a band of indigenous people living on a reservation, but does not necessarily live on the reservation. 59 1913 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 406 interests, despite the real problems they faced trying to grow and market their produce. This argument echoes the views expressed by Commissioner Jones ten years earlier in 1903.60 Land for Farming Only Indian reformers who promoted the Dawes Act emphasized the neo-Jeffersonian ideals of independence and individual responsibility; they sought, through the allotment of land to individuals, the transformation of Native Americans into family farmers who would embody those ideals. When mineral deposits were found on Indian reservations, controversy over their disposition arose. Since the reservations were established in order to promote farming (and ranching, but only where conditions made farming impossible) , mineral deposits on reservations lands were supposed to be placed in the public domain and opened to leasing by non-Native Americans. As a result, when tourmaline deposits were discovered in the mountains above Pala, about 13,000 acres of the reservation's almost 60 Jones to Shell, 6 October and 29 December 1903, Box 367, "Letters Received from U.S. Indian Service October 1903" and "Letters . . . December 1903." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 407 19,000 acres were subtracted from the reservation's tribal lands.61 In so doing, the Indian Service closed off an option for the reservation's economic development and a source of income for Pala residents; simultaneously, this action invited misuse of the land by whites. As Herbert Clotts remarked, most mining on small, scattered deposits such as those at Pala rarely resulted in the payment of rent or royalties. Miners were known to use the land for "all sorts of purposes" aside from mining, and even small-scale mining operations required water that might lessen the amount flowing to the village and fields. All in all, miners would benefit economically, while Pala residents would not.62 Living Conditions: Blaming the Victims Just as the Indian Service willfully ignored the difficulty, even the absurdity, of Native Californians supporting themselves on allotments of only a few acres, and criticized indigenous people for being reluctant farmers, so too the Service spent more time and energy 61 Hubbell, "Economic Survey," 16. 62 Shipek, Pushed, 45; Clotts to Paul T. Hoffman, Superintendent, Pala Indian Agency, 20 August 1919, in Box 873, File "Pala Resn. O & M, 1919-1924," NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 408 "blaming the victims" for ill health and poor living conditions on the reservations than on making substantive improvements in those conditions. Pala, supposedly the star of the reservations in northern San Diego County, was plagued by inadequate domestic water, an unsanitary sewerage system, dilapidated housing, and accompanying health problems. Yet it was also the reservation with the best (but unutilized) sewer system and the largest irrigation system. Since Pala was the home for the Indian Service agency offices until the 193 0s, the Service was well aware of conditions on the reservation. Specific and ongoing problems with the living conditions at Pala resulted from the housing. Many of the portable houses brought in for the Cupeno were still in use at least until 1941. These one- or two-room, flimsy wooden boxes typically housed an average of five people. The houses were so small that there was no room for a toilet or a separate sink at which people could bathe; there was room only for a kitchen sink. Over the years gaps between the wooden boards enlarged, letting in rain, dust, and cold air. Second, when the sewer system was built in 1917, it was connected to only two Indian homes (and the Indian Service agent's office and home, and the Pala Indian School) because the houses were already in poor shape as early as 1911. Everyone else at Pala used Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 409 outdoor privies, described as "primitive" and "unsanitary" in numerous reports from 1918 through 1940. Third, diseases caused by unclean living conditions— tuberculosis, trachoma, impetigo, and dysentery— plagued Pala residents. It was common for the Indian Service to blame the victims for their ill health, rather than act on the recommendations of its own and of outside officials. Although the majority of portable houses had been replaced by 1940, and 54 new privies had been installed between 193 6 and 1939, Pala still needed 14 new homes in 1941, and overall living conditions were still described in negative terms. Pala residents were treated like irresponsible children, for instance, with scheduled, monthly "Clean-Up" days in 1911 through 1913. Instead of acknowledging that the reservation was a breeding ground for disease, Indian officials claimed that residents who worked off the reservation brought diseases with them when they came home to recuperate. Pala residents were lumped together with all Indians by G. C. Zuckweiler, the chief sanitary inspector for San Diego County, who declared in 193 2, "In general, the living conditions of the Indian is bad; he is indifferent and cares little if any, as to his housing conditions and does not care to change his mode of living." In contrast, a public health nurse a few years Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 410 later, in 1937, noted that Pala residents cared about improving their health. They cooperated in being tested for tuberculosis, were beginning to agree to send infected relatives to hospitals (which were not close to the reservation and were not known for welcoming Native Californians), and they tried to feed their children healthy diets "to the extent that limited budgets will permit. A lack of fresh meat and green vegetables is evident.,|63 By the time of this report, very few reservation residents were farming, and years of poverty had taken its toll in the poor health of many people at Pala. Poverty, poor living conditions, and disease were prevalent at almost all Indian reservations around the country; what makes the situation at Pala remarkable is that living conditions could have been so much better. 6 1911 Annual Report (Narrative), Section II; 1912 Annual Report (Narrative), Section II; 1913 Annual Report (Narrative), Section II; 1916 Annual Report (Narrative), Section II; 1916 Annual Report (Narrative), Section II; 1917 Annual Report (Narrative), Section II, Box 386, File "Annual Report 1917 Narrative and Statistical Pala Indian School and Agency," NARA Laguna Niguel; Clotts, Superintendent of Irrigation, to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 20 February 1918, in Box 873, File "Pala O & M 1919 to 1924," NARA Seattle; Palmer and White, "History of Irrigation, Pala, 1922," 2, 11; Hubble, "Economic Survey," 13; report by Zuckweiler on sanitary conditions and domestic water supply at Pala, 20 January 1932, Summary sections on "Living Conditions," "Water Supply," "Sewage Disposal" (copy), enclosed in G. C. Zuckweiler to Harry B. Hommon, 20 October 1934; and Charles A. Engle, Supervising Engineer, to John W. Dady, Superintendent, Mission Indian Agency, 22 October 1934, both in Box 873, File "Pala Sewer System 1937," NARA Seattle; report by Rose Siegel, Public Health Nurse, n.d. (ca. July 1937), and report of inspection by San Diego County Department of Public Health, 15 August 1940, both in Box 328, File "Indian Rehab.," NARA Laguna Niguel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 411 Additional Native Californian Responses Despite Zuckweiler's view of "the Indian's" indifference to "his housing conditions," indigenous people on reservations cared greatly about what happened to their land and under what conditions they lived. The reaction of the Rincon Luiseno in the 1910s to the allotment situation shows that reservation residents were not completely passive in the face of bureaucratic manipulations and the strange mixture of government neglect interspersed with government funding and activity. Opposition to allotment in any form was strong on some reservations outside of the San Luis Rey River valley. Kumeyaay at Mesa Grande were particularly involved in opposing the Indian Service's plan to replace older, irregular allotments on several reservations with rectilinear ones, as at Rincon. In addition, Kumeyaay protested loss of reservation lands due to incursions by American settlers. Their opposition virtually shut down allotment on their reservations between 1896 and 1920.64 Passive resistance to Indian Service policies was probably the most common form of expression of disagreement on the reservations, but it decreased in importance with the creation of Native Californian 64 Duane Champagne, Native America: Portrait of the Peoples (Detroit: Visible Ink, 1994), 315-16; Shipek, Pushed, 49-50. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 412 organizations. As Duane Champagne notes, "One of the choice ironies of the boarding school experience was the unexpected development of a pan-tribal consciousness that emerged among Indian youth, which gave birth to pan-Indian reform groups,” the first being the Mission Indian Federation, in 1919.65 People on the reservations learned different ways of making their voices heard, and they put them into action mere and more during the 192 0s and thereafter. Law suits were filed beginning in 1929 to gain monetary compensation for the lands Native Californians had lost through the failure of the U.S. Senate to ratify the eighteen treaties negotiated in 1851 and 1852. The plaintiffs won the suit in 1942 with an award of $17,500,000, or $1.25 for every acre of lost land. But the court allowed the federal government to subtract over $12,000,000, the value put on all the goods and services provided to Native Californians in the intervening years. The remaining $5,000,000 was divided among Native Californians, resulting in an award of $150 to each individual.66 65 Champagne, Native America, 314-316. 66 102 Court of Claims 837, 1944. Kenneth M. Johnson, K-344 or the Indians of California vs the United States (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1966),73-75, 77, 80- 81; Rupert Costo and Jeannette Henry Costo, Natives of the Golden State: The California Indians (San Francisco: Indian Historian, 1995), 299-302; Champagne, Native America, 317. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 413 Because of the unfairness of this settlement, Native Californians continued to pursue legal means of redress. Following the passage of the Indian Claims Commission Act in 1946, which facilitated tribes' filing legal claims against the federal government, most groups of Native Californians filed suit, including the Mission Indians in 1949. In 1964 all the California suits were settled with a payment of 47 cents an acre for all of the state's land, minus the land covered in the 1929 case and in Mexican land grants. This settlement resulted in a payment of about $800 to every Native Californian.67 Following this settlement, the reservations in the San Luis Rey River watershed filed suit because of the loss of water from the river due to diversion projects by Escondido and other towns. Native Californians also pursued local problems. After decades of little action on the housing and sewerage problems at Pala, a group contacted local government officials in 1940. From 1939 through 1941 Indian Service records show that residents at Pala tried to improve their living conditions, generally by appealing to people off the reservation and outside of the Indian Service. For instance, in 1940 Fred Magee wrote to California State Senator Ed Fletcher, who responded by contacting the 67 Shipek, Pushed, 162; Prucha, Great Father, 1019-1020; Champagne, Native America, 317. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 414 Mission Indian Agency superintendent. The next year, a group of Pala residents met with a San Diego county supervisor and a public health doctor. While these efforts met with little in the way of immediate results— the Indian Service continued to claim it did not have enough money to provide additional funds to Pala— these attempts, along with the legal suits, show that Luisenos and other Native Californians were increasingly taking advantage of legal means to improve their situations.68 Conclusion By the time American settlers were willing to allow the indigenous peoples of southern California to settle on any land of their own, little was left for them. Finally, though, between 1875 and 1910, many small reservations were created in the region, over half of them in San Diego County. The creation of reservations was a positive step, but one filled with many negative aspects. Outside capital and legislation enabled Escondido farmers to expand their small farms to take advantage of 68 Dady to X. Vigeant, Director, Rehabilitation Division, Office of Indian Affairs, 15 December 1939; Fletcher to Dady, 20 July 1940; Dady to Fletcher, 25 July 1940; Dean E. Howell, Supervisor, 5th District, to U.S. Representative Ed. Izac, 12 January 1941, all in Box 328, File "Indian Rehab.," NARA Laguna Niguel. Each of these letters is followed by a series that indicate what the Indian Service was and was not willing to do. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 415 national markets for their produce. In contrast, the federal government forced the reservation residents to accept plots of land so small that they could not honestly be called farms, and then the government barred or dis couraged residents from taking on other kinds of work. As a result, as Escondidans prospered, Luiseno and Cupeno along the San Luis Rey River became more and more impover ished, and their living conditions worsened. Looked at more broadly, Escondidans entered the twentieth century with the beginnings of agribusiness and their participa tion in national markets. They prided themselves on having accomplished this on their own, when they could not have achieved it without outside help, in the form of beneficial laws and outside capital investment. Luiseno, Cupeno, and other Native Americans, meanwhile, were forced to play out an American dream of the past, a recreation of the prosperous, independent family farmer. When they did not accomplish this, they were blamed for their failure. This cruelty is made even more ironic because the Jeffersonian ideal depended on the expropriation of land from Native Americans; in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indigenous peoples were forced to replay this dream of conquest on the few acres whites left for them. To further the irony, Cupeno, Luiseno and Kumeyaay had already incorporated many aspects of American Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 416 life. They did not need reservations and oversight by the Indian Service to teach them how to farm, how to live in houses, or how to sew. After taking virtually all the Indians possessed, settler society in northern San Diego County "handed them off" to the federal government, where they were treated as wards of the state, unable to manage their own lives. A new set of relations developed, in which the bureaucrats of the Indian Service became the intermediaries between white settlers and Native Californians, allowing settlers to distance themselves from the problems they had created for the Luiseno, Cupeno and Kumeyaay. Meanwhile, Native Californians* attempts, against great odds, to become self-sustaining on inadequate reservation lands were thwarted in many ways. Among the most important was the division of land into types of land or resources that were meant for Indians, and types that were meant for whites. Land expropriation in the twentieth century, a new era, took new forms: At Pala, for instance, removal of tourmaline-bearing lands from the reservation was one of the new forms. The supposed humanitarian purposes of reservations thus came into repeated contra diction with the white supremacist reality of Indian-white relations. A similar dynamic occurred with the water of the San Luis Rey River, as the next chapter examines. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 417 CHAPTER EIGHT DOMINANCE AT A DISTANCE: INDIGENOUS AND SETTLER WATER RIGHTS 1886-1924 Introduction Only a few years' after its founding in 1886, and despite assurances from the land developers, Escondido began running out of water. When Escondido Creek proved to be an insufficient source of water for the town's farmers, they turned to a non-local source, the San Luis Rey River, some eighteen air miles to the north. In order to obtain water from the river, the farmers had to divert it across three reservations: Potrero (La Jolla), Rincon and San Pasqual. By 1924, the water would be diverted almost completely away from these reservations and two others, Pala and Pauma, in the San Luis Rey River watershed. Unlike many neighboring settler communities, such as San Pasqual, Escondidans had virtually no direct contact with Luisenos, Cupenos, and Kumeyaay.1 Escondidans' experi 1 The San Pasqual reservation and the American town of San Pasqual are separate locations. A reservation for displaced San Pasqual Kumeyaay was finally established in 1911; it is located a number of miles north of the valley that they had been evicted from. The reservation is northeast of Escondido, about half-way between the San Luis Rey River and Escondido. It became involved in the water affairs of Escondido and the reservations along the San Luis Rey River because of the canal that Escondido eventually built to carry river water to the town; the canal crossed San Pasqual reservation. Meanwhile, the town of San Pasqual continued as an American farming community. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PAEAI ' INDIAN, - I RESERVATION EA JOLLA INDIAN RESERVATION RINCON INDIAN RESERVATION SAN PASQUAL INDIAN RESERVATION Like Wo hi ford The San Luis Rey River Watershed and the Escondido Ditch circa 1 924 Map by Patricia H. Neumann Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 419 ences with almost all people of color was very much "at a distance." Not only the geographic distance, but also the bureaucracies that arose to deal with water use, for both settlers and Native Californians, kept the peoples apart. This distancing was also taking place with the creation of the reservations, but it was deepened by the process of water expropriation in the twentieth century. The people of Escondido played an important part in the reproduction of white supremacy in San Diego County by practicing what might be called dominance at a distance. Wealthy investors funded mutual water companies in Escondido and elsewhere in San Diego County. At the same time, the United States Indian Service established a growing presence in the region. This growth of bureaucra cies in the course of water development promoted the distancing of relations between local settlers and native people. Their impact on social and economic relations in San Diego County directly affected the development of white supremacy, in the sense that increased settlement, investment and agricultural production could not have occurred without the extensive water diversion projects. By the 1910s, indigenous people living on reservations and local settlers were connected by their water needs, but interacted indirectly, through the intermediation of the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 420 engineers of the Indian Irrigation Service and the directors of the water companies. This was not a completely new dynamic in the area, as the expulsions of the Temecula Luisenos in 1875 and the Cupenos in 1902 occurred because of distant land investors, but the dynamic became the dominant one during this period. The history of water expropriation from the San Luis Rey River also suggests that the native people on the reservations did not have to suffer such great water losses as they ended up experiencing. Indian Irrigation Service officials were responsible for defining and maintaining the water rights of the San Luis Rey River reservations. Especially in the early twentieth century, in the face of Escondido Mutual Water Company's [EMWCo] expansion, and signs of other parties' growing interest in the San Luis Rey River, these officials protected the Indians' water rights— but only sluggishly, and only within the context of laws regulating water rights for Americans. They ignored the possibility of applying important legal developments in Indian water rights, notably the 1908 U.S. Supreme Court Winters decision, to the San Luis Rey River reservations. The Winters decision stated that when land was reserved for Native Americans (i.e., when Indian reservations were created), water was also reserved, of a sufficient amount to ensure that Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 421 native people could actually survive on the land, and this was the case whether the treaty (or other instrument) explicitly set aside the water or not. This meant that native people on reservations had a paramount right to water that could not be restricted by American needs in surrounding communities. Although initially interpreted to cover only reservations created by treaties, the decision was eventually interpreted as covering all Indian reservations (Arizona v California., in 1963) . The Winters decision suggested that Indian reservations' water rights were much broader than settlers' water rights.2 2 The 1908 Supreme Court decision in Winters v United States (207 U.S. 564, 28 S.Ct. 207 (1908) affirmed decisions in two lower federal court cases, resulting in the development of what has come to be known as the reserved water rights doctrine or the Winters doctrine. The first case, in 1905, began when homesteaders upstream of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Montana, diverted all the water in the Milk River during a dry year to irrigate their crops. The federal government brought suit against the settlers in federal district court to protect the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Indians' water rights, which had not theretofore been measured or recorded. The resolution of the suit rested on interpreting the 1888 agreement between the U.S. government and the Indians which reserved a portion of their territory, including the Milk River, for the Indians. Even though the agreement mentioned nothing about water, the district court judge ruled that the parties had implicitly reserved water in the river and other streams for the use of the Indians on the reservation, in order to accomplish the purposes of the reservation, which included introducing the Indians to farming. In this decision and subsequent ones at the Appeals and Supreme Court levels, the courts also held that the Indians' water rights were not restricted to just the amount then in use, but also included water that might be used in future development on the reservation. Summaries of these cases, as well as other ones related to the Winters decision appear in many works, including Norris Hundley, Jr., "The Dark and Bloody Ground of Indian Water Rights: Confusion Elevated to Principle," Western Historical Quarterly 9 (October 1978); Hundley, "The 'Winters' Decision and Indian Water Rights: A Mystery Reexamined," Western Historical Quarterly 13 (January 1982); Daniel McCool, Command of the Waters: Iron Triangles, Federal Water Development, and Indian Water (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994), Chapter 3; Lloyd Burton, American Indian Water Rights and the Limits of Law (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991), 18-24. Note that Congress in 1871 declared an end to treaty-making with Native Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 422 It may be unrealistic to expect the Indian Service to have acted aggressively and creatively in the wake of a court decision that proved as controversial as Winters did. But it is not unreasonable to expect Indian Irriga tion Service engineers in District No. 4 headquarters to have taken full advantage of legislation and legal decisions already in place and meant to cover all water users. Irrigation Service engineers, in the years after the Winters decision, did not take seriously the threat to Indian water rights by settlers, land investors and legislators, nor did the Service take seriously the opening that the Winters decision provided for expanding Indian water rights in an active way, rather than protecting them only after they came under attack.3 Americans, but continued to approve "agreements," such as the one with the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine in 1888, which came to have the same legal and political standing as treaties. Recently, John Shurts has shown that some officials within the Indian Service were willing to pursue the application of Winters to Indian reservations created by means other than or added to treaties. Shurts describes the efforts, beginning in 1914, of Howard W. Dietz, Superintendent of [Indian] Irrigation in Utah, and John Truesdell, Special Assistant to the Attorney General in Denver, to gain water rights, using the Winters decision as precedent, for the Uintah reservation, created by a combination of treaty and presidential executive orders. Shurts, "The Work of Winters'. The Local Context of the Winters Case and a Post-Winters Case Study from the Uintah Reservation." Paper presented at the annual conference of the Western History Association, Denver, 11-14 October 1995; and Shurts, "The Winters Doctrine: Origin and Development of the Indian Reserved Water Rights Doctrine in Its Social and Legal Context, 1880s-1930s” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon, 1997). McCool, Command, 117—18 also mentions the Uintah situation, along with brief discussions of other cases in the decades following the Winters decision. ^ McCool, Command, 115-16. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 423 This chapter looks at a late stage in the reproduc tion of white supremacy. It examines water rights and water use in San Diego County in the context of land expropriation and practices that helped maintain white supremacy. As in the other chapters, the emphasis in this chapter is on what local settlers did in reproducing American dominance in their region. In addition, the nature of white dominance through the expropriation of water from Indian reservations requires examining the aid local settlers received from government officials, mainly from the Indian Irrigation Service. In examining dominance at a distance, this chapter discusses a number of processes and interactions. First, as Escondido's (and the rest of the county's) need for water grew, the settlers devised projects to deliver greater quantities of water, but this necessitated infusions of larger sums of money, from increasingly distant investors; the need for more water also created divisions among the settlers themselves, which affected their water projects. Second, the creation of the Indian Irrigation Service imposed another level of bureaucracy on the Native Californians living on reservations, removing them from direct participation in yet another important aspect of their lives, even as the Irrigation Service oversaw the construction of improved irrigation systems. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 424 Third., Irrigation Service engineers, in the name of protecting Indian water rights, actually helped restrict those rights, while helping settlers and investors acquire legal rights to more water. Most of this chapter will focus on the experiences of one reservation, Rincon, and two water companies, Escondido Mutual Water Company and San Diego County Water Company. The Water Companies and Water Law White settlers took advantage of state and federal legislation and economic opportunities to create ever larger and more expensive water systems for their communities. Escondidans succeeded at this because they had the financial resources— or could induce outside investors to supply them— necessary to build and maintain a network of flumes, canals, tunnels, dams and reservoirs. Escondidans' experience with water diversion projects supports Norris Hundley1s contention that Southern Californians often benefitted from legislation that encouraged irrigation districts and mutual water companies, although farmers in central and northern California usually did not.4 4 Norris Hundley, Jr., The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s-1990s (Berkeley: University of California, 1992), 102, 105. Donald Pisani's work, along with much of The Great Thirst, focuses mainly on the limited impact of irrigation district and water company Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 425 In 1887, during the height of southern California's land boom, the California state legislature passed the Wright Act, which provided the legal and economic structure for localities to develop water for irrigation purposes. Only a few years after Escondido's creation, the settlers there discovered that their water supply, from Escondido Creek and wells, was inadequate for their irrigation needs. Escondidans formed the Escondido Irrigation District in 1888 or 1889, selling $350,000 in bonds to pay for the construction of a system to divert water from the San Luis Rey River to a reservoir in Bear Valley, just outside the town. Completed in 1895, the project resulted in a boom of citrus production.5 legislation on irrigation works and irrigators in most of California. But Pisani does point out that of 49 irrigation districts formed 1887-1895, of which only 24 actually issued bonds, 30 were in southern California, including 13 in San Diego County that did issue bonds. Donald J. Pisani, From Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850-1931 (Berkeley: University of California, 1984), 256. 5 J. Paul Hatch, "Agriculture, Horticulture, of the Good Old Horse and Buggy Days of 75 Years Ago in Escondido, California," TS, 5, EHS; Frances B. Ryan, Yesterdays in Escondido (Escondido: self published, 1973), 125; Ryan, Early Days in Escondido (Escondido: self-published, 1970), 131. Hatch states that the Escondido Irrigation District was created in 1888, while Ryan states 1889. Cal. Stats., 1887, 29. See Samuel C. Wiel, Water Rights in the Western States, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney, 1911) , 1:156-57, for a brief discussion of the Wright Act. For a fuller discussion of its provisions and its context within water law in California, see Pisani, From Family Farm, Chapter 9. For a brief description of the act and its impact on irrigation in California, see Hundley, The Great Thirst, 97-106. Both Pisani and Hundley provide ample references to the many legal and historical works that discuss the Wright Act and the advantages and disadvantages of irrigation districts and mutual water companies. Most irrigation districts ran into financial trouble because they could not raise enough money through taxes. Irrigation districts and mutual water companies differed in that the former were public entities with the power to tax, while the latter were private Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 426 Escondidans were divided over water development almost from the beginning, with those who needed only domestic water opposed to the desires of irrigators. Generally, town dwellers, whose domestic needs were then being met from Escondido Creek and private wells, along with the EL&TCo, opposed expenditures to repair, upgrade, and extend the water diversion system; they did not want to pay for what they would not use. Farmers generally supported such expenditures, since they were the ones experiencing most of the water shortages, and farmers were becoming the dominant interest in the town in the early 1900s. From 1905 to 1908, EL&TCo held the majority of positions on the water company's board of directors and blocked increased expenditures. In 1908 a new majority, organized by A.W. Wohlford, president of Escondido Savings Bank, and supportive of water development, took over the board. The new board immediately voted to improve the diversion system by replacing the flume with a tunnel through Rodriguez Mountain. Escondido Mutual raised money from its shareholders (irrigators) and other contributors, but most townspeople and city officials did not contribute. In January 1913, Escondido Mutual shareholders began to receive San Luis Rey River water transported through the tunnel; in the same year, Escondido city companies, which provided water to its shareholders and raised money through the sale of stock. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 427 opened its own refurbished water system, from new wells drilled into the banks of Escondido Creek. For ten years, Escondido had two parallel systems in operation.6 During this period, settlers and investors in other parts of San Diego County were busy establishing water claims, planning large water diversion projects, and setting up new farms and towns requiring always greater water supplies. Federal water rights law, while frequently revised by Congress, basically required water users to record their intended water appropriation and then make actual, "beneficial" use of the water by constructing a diversion system and watering crops or livestock with it, in a certain time period. (Beneficial use refers to the stricture that appropriators had to use the water for useful, productive purposes, such as growing crops or watering stock.)7 Besides appropriators, California water law also recognized the rights of riparian users. In the San Luis 6 Alan B. McGrew, Hidden Valiev Heritage: Escondido's First 100 Years. 1888-1988 (Escondido: Blue-Ribbon Centennial History Commission, 1988), 35; Jim Dixon, "Rebuilding of Water System," Escondido Times-Advocate, 4 May 1975, and "Water Cause of Discord," Escondido Times-Advocate [photocopy], n.d., files of EHS; Ryan, Early Days, 66-69. 7 Rights-of-way for water appropriators over federal land were first legislated in the Act of 26 July 1866, ch. 262, 14 Stat. 251, §9. The Desert Land Act of 1877 (Act of 3 March 1877, ch. 107, 19 Stat. 377) imposed a time restriction of three years for appropriators to actually divert and use the claimed water, but the time period was extended several times in subsequent legislation. Riparian rights were not bound by time restrictions. For a concise summary of legislation, appropriation and riparian rights as applied to California, see Donald J. Pisani, To Reclaim, 33-38. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 428 Rey River valley most water users, aside from Escondido, were riparian land owners, until 1911, when individuals began selling their property and water rights to investors who were planning large diversion projects.8 Although water law required appropriators to make beneficial use of the full amount of water they filed claims for, builders of larger projects such as Escondido's and San Diego County's were in reality creating future need as much as preparing for present need. Before Escondido Mutual rebuilt its water diversion system, it claimed 3500 miner's inches of San Luis Rey River water, even though the carrying capacity of its canals was only 1400 miner's inches, leading one Indian Irrigation Service engineer to wonder how the company managed to retain its water claim. Later, when the San Diego County system was being planned, its purpose was to provide water for the City of San Diego "when [it] 8 C. R. Olberg to Frank Mead 6 September 1911, Box 875, File "San Luis Rey Investigations. Rincon"; Olberg, "Report on Proposed Pumping Plant, Rincon Indian Reservation," October 1911, p. 12, Box 772, Vol. 127; Philip E. Haroun, "Report to the City of San Diego and to the Volcan Land and Water Company on the Safe Net yield, Value, Cost of Completed System and Cost of Water Delivered of the Properties of the Volcan Land and.Water Company," August 1914, p. 12, Box 875, Files "SLR Investigations. Rincon" and "SLR Investigations. Rincon. Water Measurement." The pages of the final report listed here are divided between these two files. All reports at NARA Seattle. From 1911 to 1917, Olberg was Superintendent of Indian Irrigation for the Los Angeles district office, which included San Diego County. Mead was the Superintendent of the Pala Indian School, which at the time also made him superintendent over Pala and the other reservations along the San Luis Rey River. Haroun was a water engineer hired by the City of San Diego and the Volcan Land and Water Company to prepare the report for them. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 429 outgrows its present supply."9 Only by developing and expanding water sources could land developers in southern California hope to attract new settlers and investors, and thereby make a profit from the land. At the same time, the Office of Indian Affairs did not pursue any increase in Indian water rights, based on current or future use, thereby damaging the prospects of Indians in the San Luis Rey River watershed. The towns and cities of San Diego County kept growing out of their water projects, causing them to look farther and farther afield for more water. Wealthy and powerful outside investors began looking at the possibility of using San Luis Rey River water for water users throughout coastal San Diego County in the 1890s, around the same time that Escondido was starting its appropriation. In the mid-189 0s, after several improvements and expansions of its water diversion system in the area surrounding the city of San Diego, a group of investors suggested a major project to bring at least 1,000 miner's inches of San Luis 9 Olberg, "Report on Water Rights, Escondido Mutual Water Company," January 1912, p. 4; and Olberg, "Report, Effect of Warner's Ranch Dam on Water Supply of Rincon and Pala Reservations, California," 15 May 1917, p. 31; both in Box 772, Vol. 127, NARA Seattle. While the 1872 California state Civil Code required speedy evidence of beneficial use from miners, court interpretations of the law allowed farmers more leeway. By the 1890s, though, "'floating' water rights"— companies' filing claims for much greater quantities than they needed— were causing havoc in state water resources. In 1913 California finally passed legislation to resolve this problem and other water allocation problems, although strong opposition to the law greatly diluted its provisions and implementation. Pisani, From Family Farm, 47, 365-70. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 430 Rey River water, sufficient to irrigate 40,000 acres, to San Diego, some 60 miles away. While the city declined this offer, having recently finished a major project that brought water from mountains about thirty miles to its east, by the 1910s, San Diego once again feared it would run out of water.10 In 1911 william G. Henshaw, an investor from Oakland, bought Warner's Ranch (fortuitously emptied of its resident Cupenos through the 1903 relocation to Pala) . His plan, in conjunction with the city of San Diego, was to rebuild and enlarge Warner's dam, at the headwaters of the San Luis Rey River. San Diego County Water Company agreed to buy the reservoir and its water rights, thereby guaranteeing Henshaw a significant profit.1 1 By 1912, even as Escondido's two water supply systems were under construction, Escondido Mutual realized it needed to plan for greater access to water for future settlement and development. James Dixon, newly elected superintendent of the water company, negotiated with Henshaw. The two parties agreed to share water that would be stored in the soon-to-be-created Lake Henshaw. Water from the reservoir would travel to central San Diego 10 Richard F. Pourade, The Glory Years: The Booms and Busts In the Land of the Sundown Sea (San Diego: The Union-Tribune Publishing Company, 1964), 228, 239. 11 Ibid., 219-20; McGrew, Hidden Valley, 36-38; Haroun, "Report to the City of San Diego,” 1-3. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 431 County via the Escondido Canal, with Bear Valley Reservoir as a storage place for some of the water. The new alliance between Escondido Mutual and Henshaw, and the prospect that Henshaw Dam would decrease the San Luis Rey River water supply, concerned settlers who were not part of the alliance. The city of Oceanside (at the mouth of the river) even threatened a law suit in 1916 to prevent diversion of more water than Escondido Mutual was then diverting from the river.12 In 1922, just as construction on Henshaw Dam began, Escondido Mutual and Henshaw negotiated new contracts. Henshaw deeded the reservoir site and its water rights to the San Diego County Water Company. Escondido Mutual retained its right to the amount of water it had previously gotten from the San Luis Rey River, plus an additional 5,000 acre-feet. EMWCo raised more money to finance increasing the height of the Bear Valley Dam, in order to accommodate the increased water supply. The holding capacity of Lake Henshaw and the construction of new canals linking it with three other reservoirs ultimately provided most of western San Diego County with 12 Ryan, Yesterdays, 78, 153; McGrew, Hidden Valley, 36; 21 June 1912 contract between Henshaw and EMWCo, copy in Box 875, "SLR Investigations: Rincon"; T. F. McCormick to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 4 June 1914; and David Rorick, to Charles Oldberg [sic], 14 April 1913; both in Box 875, File "SLR Investigations. Rincon. Water Measurement"; all files at NARA Seattle. McCormick was Superintendent of Pala Indian School at this time. David Rorick was the President of the Board of Trustees of the city of Oceanside. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 432 its water supply. By the 1920s, the above- and below- ground water supply of the county was being stretched to its capacity, resulting in the first significant decreases in water supply to the reservations in the San Luis Rey River watershed.13 For the first ten years of the Escondido Irrigation Service's operation of their water diversion project, from 1895 to 1905, there were few problems with water supply to the San Luis Rey River reservations, including Rincon. The irrigation district's diversion was quite small, and irrigation systems on the reservations covered only a small portion of irrigable land. When Escondido Mutual replaced the bankrupt irrigation district in 1905, little 13 Ryan, Yesterdaysf 78-81; McGrew, Hidden Valley, 35-38; Marjorie Whetstone, "The Escondido Story,” San Diego Historical Society Quarterly 4 (July 1963), 33. Provisions of the 1922 contract between Henshaw and EMWCo are summarized in a report written by E.C. Fortier to P. Willis, 3 June 1932, Box 872, "Pala O & M, July 1930 to " According to the above sources, soon after the enlargement of the Bear Valley reservoir, it was renamed Lake Wohlford, in tribute to Wohlford, who had died earlier in the year, and his important financial contributions to Escondido. While the expansion of the Henshaw and Bear Valley reservoirs was taking place, in 1923, Escondido city finally succeeded in dominating the water company: Escondido negotiated its own water purchases from Henshaw and then took over the Escondido Mutual's operations within the city limits. In 1946, Vista Irrigation District, which had benefitted the most from the new San Luis Rey River water diversion, took over the San Diego County Water Company. Escondido's water was supplied by the distribution system described above until 1955. Beginning in 1950 a serious drought depleted the water supplies of many cities in southern California. Escondido's water finally ran out in 1955, at which time it contracted with the Metropolitan Water District to receive Colorado River water. Congress, Senate, Select Committee on Indian Affairs, Providing for the Settlement of Water Rights Claims of the La Jolla, Rincon, San Pasqual, Pauma, and Pala Bands of the Missin Indians in San Diego County, California, and for Other Purposes, report submitted by Mr. Inouye, 100th Cong., 1st sess., 1987, Report 100—47, p. 2. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 433 changed for Rincon. During the 1910s, though, Rincon's reliance on an electric-powered pumping system during dry seasons meant that Escondido Mutual's delays in supplying water and electric power during the critical irrigation periods caused disruptions in the reservation's irrigation schedule. With the construction of the new county-wide water project, water retention in Lake Henshaw and diversion to other parts of the county created a fundamental shift in water supply, to the mainly white town dwellers and farmers and away from the reservations. Settlers' prosperity and quality of life rose as water expropriation further entrenched white supremacy. The increased water supply for settlers prompted a new burst of prosperity in the county; farm production increased, population increased, and new and old settlers enjoyed modern domestic conveniences, such as electricity and indoor running water, as well as new outdoor recreational opportunities. Indian water from the San Luis Rey River contributed to making Lake Wohlford a fishing and picnicking pleasure spot for Escondidans.14 Settlers' dominance over the area's indigenous people was also advanced through bureaucratization and the geographical distancing of the agencies in charge of both 14 McGrew, Hidden Valley, 36; Ryan, Yesterdays, 81. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 434 American and Native Californian water use. Escondido Mutual remained the party responsible for Rincon's water supply, but now it was the San Diego water company that controlled the entire river's supply. Both companies had become experienced in finding loopholes in their contracts and in stonewalling the Indian Irrigation Service whenever they wanted to limit Rincon's water to enhance their own supplies. The Irrigation Service, for its part, removed the Luisenos at Rincon from active participation in decision-making and installed itself as the only negotiator for the Indians. Even when they wanted to act, the local Irrigation Service engineers were limited in the decisions they could make; for the most part, decisions had to be approved by distant officials in Washington. The system itself had built-in supply problems that could not be resolved with a telephone call or letter from an Indian Irrigation Service engineer to the Escondido Mutual office. In skirting the law and building for future as well as present needs, the water companies created scarcity where there had been none. Scarcity mainly affected the San Luis Rey River reservations, foreclosing, by the 1920s, the possibility of exercising their full water rights, thereby limiting their options for improving their lives. White settlers, in contrast, grew in wealth and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 435 well-being from their acquisition of distant water and could expect to continue to do so in the future. The Contracts From 1894 through 1922 the Indian Service negotiated a series of contracts with Escondido and Henshaw, of which two— one with Escondido Irrigation District in 1894 and one with its successor, Escondido Mutual Water Company, in 1914, were the most important. The earlier contracts promised continued water availability and several benefits for the San Luis Rey River reservations, especially Rincon. But in the end, the contracts were more important as the legal vehicles for the restriction of the reservations1 water rights and the diversion of almost all of the river water from the reservations. These negotiations, the contracts themselves, and their imple mentation illustrate part of the method by which white settlers decreased Indians1 water supplies and increased their own. The Indian Service only once took an active approach to gaining contractual provisions that promoted the interests of the Indians on the reservations. The water companies, on the other hand, took a dynamic approach, especially in implementing the agreements in ways that Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 436 benefitted them and their water users. The water company's directors and lawyers became increasingly aggressive in taking advantage of loopholes and omissions in the contracts. In addition, Escondido Mutual often violated the terms of the contracts. The postures of the Indian Service and the water companies are clearly shown in the implementation of the agreements concerning Rincon reservation's water rights and water supply. Escondido Irrigation District initiated the first of the San Luis Rey River reservations water agreements in 1894. The irrigation district's water project required diverting San Luis Rey River water from within the Potrero reservation and placing diversion structures (ditches and flumes) across parts of two reservations in the valley, Potrero (La Jolla) , and its downstream neighbor, Rincon. In return for the rights-of-way across the reservations, the irrigation district guaranteed it would always maintain the water supply needed by reservation residents, without specifying what amount of water that might be.15 Federal legislation giving water developers rights-of-way 15 H. V. Clotts, "History of Irrigation, La Jolla Indian Reservation, California," August 1918, p. 2, Box 772, Vol. 125, NARA Seattle; William H. Sims to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 14 November 1894, marked "Exhibit ’B,'" and Agreement between Escondido Irrigation District and representatives of Potrero reservation, 4 June 1894, in Olberg, "Report on Water Rights, EMWCo.” A copy of the 1894 contract also is in Box 483, File "La Jolla— Tribal Funds," NARA Laguna Niguel, and in Olberg, "Report on Water Rights, EMWCo." Clotts was the Superintendent of Indian Irrigation who replaced Olberg; Sims was the Acting Secretary of the Department of the Interior. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 437 over Indian reservations required that ditch or canal construction minimize impact on the land to only what was absolutely necessary; appropriators also had to compensate Indians for any disruption their rights-of-way might cause on the reservation. Escondido Irrigation District, Escondido Mutual, and Henstiaw all followed these regulations in negotiating agreements with the Department of the Interior for rights-of-way over Potrero and Rincon. Representatives of three bands of Luisenos living at Potrero signed the contract with Escondido Irrigation District. At a meeting at Potrero, the U.S. Indian Agent, Francisco Estudillo, through an interpreter, explained the arrangement with Escondido Irrigation District to the representatives of the Luisenos living on the reservation.16 The four representatives— Juan Aguayo, Captain of the La Jolla band, Frank Ward, representing Potrero, and Jose M. Subish. and Pio B. Amago, representing Ya Piche— signed the contract, witnessed by two other 16 Francisco Estudillo was one of Jose Antonio Estudillo's sons. His father owned several ranchos and was active in local and state government. Jose Antonio seems to have been respected by the majority of people in San Diego County, whether Native Californians, Californios or Anglo Americans. Through his father's activities, the younger Estudillo became knowledgeable about Indian and settler affairs. Probably for this reason, he was chosen as Indian Agent. Hubert Howe Bancroft, Register of Pioneer Inhabitants of California 1542-1848, comp, from Vols. 2-5, History of California, ed. Glen Dawson and Muir Dawson (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1964), "Estudillo, Jose Antonio"; Fr. Zephyrin Engelhardt, San Luis Rey Mission (San Francisco: James H. Barry, 1921), 117-22; Richard F. Pourade, The Silver Dons . . . and the Pioneers Who Overwhelmed California (San Diego: The Unioa-Tribune Publishing Company, 1963), 162, 184. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 438 reservation residents; Estudillo, Andres Maxcy, the interpreter, and the irrigation district president, Emmett De Bell, also signed.17 Clearly, Estudillo and De Bell had worked out the conditions of the contract before meeting with Potrero representatives, but their inclusion at all harkened back to the old ways of negotiating agree ments with native peoples, which had existed in southern California as late as the 1870s. Native Californian participation in decisions that directly affected them was revived by the Mission Indian Relief Act of 1891, which required individuals or corporations seeking rights-of-way across reservations for water projects to obtain permis sion from the Indians on the affected reservation.18 The contract guaranteed "an ample supply and quantity of water for the use of [Potrero reservation] Indians for agricultural and domestic purposes and for stock belonging to said Indians," and this provision also applied to Rincon reservation. Escondido Irrigation District promised to do whatever was necessary to ensure that the two reservations received the water they needed, even if it meant shutting off their diversion of water to Escondido to allow enough water to flow onto the reservations. The irrigation district also affirmed its recognition of the 17 Olberg to John R. Granville, 17 January 1912, and 1894 agreement [Exhibit "B"] in Olberg, "Report on Water Rights, EMWCo." 18 Act of January 12, 1891, §8, 26 Stat. 712. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 439 Indians' right to San Luis Rey River water above anyone else's right.19 The district's guarantees, though, should be taken with a grain of salt, for it is doubtful that it intended to give the reservations all the water they might ever require. It is very possible that Escondido Irrigation District assumed that the reservations would never use much water, or that the Indian Service would not closely monitor the amount of water the reservations received. In addition, there are two elements that were not favorable for the Luisenos of Potrero and Rincon. One was that Escondido Irrigation District would lose nothing and gain everything by diverting river water across Potrero reservation because the district built the flume four hundred feet below the level of the Indians' fields; the Indian Service felt it was impossible to pump the water that great a vertical distance, although probably the Service's objection was more to the expense of such a plant, rather than any physical or technical barrier.20 Second, no one from Rincon was present at the Potrero council meeting. Since the irrigation district's diversion of water from the river could affect the water supply at 19 Clotts, "History of Irrigation, La Jolla," 2-3; letter, agreement in Olberg, "Report on Water Rights, EMWCo." 20 Donald Pisani, letter to author, 11 December 1995. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 440 Rincon, leaders from that reservation should have been consulted.21 Not only were the Rincon Indians denied an opportunity to participate in negotiations over water rights and water supply, they also suffered from a negative interpretation of the 1894 contract. The 1894 agreement did not give the irrigation district a legal right-of-way across Rincon (because no Rincon representa tives agreed to the contract), but in 1905, the Pala school superintendent acquiesced to the already accom plished Rincon construction. His approval became the basis for a belated formal approval from both the Indian Service and the General Land Office.22 With the next contract, in 19 08, the Indian Irrigation Service allowed Escondido Mutual to move away from the open-ended guarantee of a sufficient water supply to Rincon contained in the 1894 agreement. In 1908, the water company agreed "to deliver to the Indians such water 21 Olberg, "Report on Water Rights, EMWCo," 7-8. 22 Ibid., 7-11, Exhibit "B," copy of 4 June 1894 agreement, and Exhibit "C," copies of letters, 4 February 1906 and 4 March 1908. Because the 1894 contract did not specify Escondido Irrigation District's right-of-way across Rincon, another contract was drawn up in 1897, according to Olberg, but never approved by the Indian Service. This contract was signed by Rincon representatives and so should have superseded the 1894 one. In summarizing the various agreements between the irrigation district and the Department of the Interior for the San Luis Rey River reservations, Olberg mentions the Superintendent of the Pala Indian School but not by name. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 441 as may be required, when it is available .1,23 Gone was Escondido's recognition of Rincon's first right to any amount of water it needed. In 1913 Escondido Mutual and the Irrigation Service began a new round of negotiations to allow Escondido Mutual to build a hydroelectric plant at Rincon and install transmission lines over the Rincon and San Pasqual reservations. The agreement that resulted in 1914 contained provisions that the Indian Irrigation Service engineers, Charles R. Olberg and F. R. Schanck, worked hard to obtain.24 Olberg, along with Schanck, who then was one of the superintendents of irrigation in the District No. 4 23 Emphasis added. Charles Olberg, "Report on Power and Reservoir Investigations," 19 March 1912, pp. 22-23: Box 775, Vol. 134, NARA Seattle; Olberg, "Report on Water Rights, EMWCo," p. 8. 24 Charles Olberg played a key role in the development of the San Luis Rey River reservations' water rights. He began to work in the Indian Irrigation Service's District 4 headquarters in Los Angeles in 1910. From 1911 to 1917 he was Superintendent of Irrigation for the District and spent considerable time investigating the water rights of the San Luis Rey River reservations. He also planned and oversaw the construction of irrigation and domestic water systems on the reservations, and he negotiated contracts with San Diego County irrigation companies. Many of the reports Olberg wrote during his tenure in Los Angeles are cited in the footnotes of this paper. The earliest sign of his presence in the Irrigation Service Office in Los Angeles is the report he wrote as Acting Chief Engineer in September 1910, "Irrigation on Southern California Reservations": Box 775, Vol. 134, NARA Seattle. The last report Olberg prepared that is in the Irrigation Service files in Seattle was "History of Irrigation, Pauma Indian Reservation, California," January 1918: Box 772, Vol. 126, NARA Seattle. During his service in Los Angeles, Olberg participated in negotiations over contracts with Escondido Mutual Water Company concerning the Potrero and Rincon reservations, as well as the San Pasqual reservation, whose land Escondido Mutual gained a right-of- way over. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 442 headquarters, convinced A. W. Wohlford, still one of EMWCo's directors, that the water company should charge the Indian Service less for electricity it provided for Rincon's power plants than the company charged its other customers. Olberg and Schanck argued that Escondido Mutual and the people of Escondido benefitted greatly from the power plant and right-of-way across Rincon, and from the water flowing through the reservation. In return, Escondido Mutual should provide Rincon with cheap power.25 In exchange for allowing the water company to build its hydroelectric plant and the structures necessary to convey the electricity to Escondido, Escondido Mutual guaranteed delivery of six second-feet of water for Rincon irrigation needs during the dry months, and inexpensive electricity to power new pumping plants. The Irrigation Service planned to install these to pump water from wells when flow in the river and Escondido Mutual's ditches was too low to fulfill Rincon's needs. In extremely dry years, 25 Wohlford to Alberg [sic], 7 July 1913; Schanck to Wohlford, 10 July 1913; Schanck to Reed, 26 August 1913; [Olberg] to Reed, 27 August 1913; Reed to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 19 September 1913; all in Box 875, File "SLR Investigations (Rincon)," NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 443 the water company was required to supply only three second-feet of water during the irrigation season.26 Schanck was mainly responsible for the unusually aggressive posture of the Irrigation Service in the negotiations with Escondido Mutual. His language in describing the Rincon Indians1 water rights would never be repeated by Irrigation Service engineers: "In fact, the ownership by the Indians of all the water of the San Luis Rey River which they may need places the key to any power plant proposition from your canal in their [the Rincon Indians1] hands," Schanck wrote to Wohlford. The water company directors thought Schanck was troublesome,27 and whether due to this, or the Irrigation Service's needs elsewhere, he was gone from the District No. 4 headquarters' Los Angeles office by the time the contract was actually signed in 1914. After Schanck's departure, the Irrigation Service, which had sometimes criticized Escondido Mutual's implementation of the contract provisions, generally downplayed problems with the water company. In the years 26 Memorandum of Agreement, 2 February 1914, Pala Subagency, Reservation Administration Records, 1930-1947, Box 483, File "La Jolla— Tribal Funds,” NARA Laguna Niguel. The contract was formally approved by the Department of the Interior 21 March 1914. 27 H. K. Palmer to C. R. Olberg, 26 July 1913, Box 874, File "Rincon O & M," NARA Seattle. Palmer was then Olberg's assistant engineer, stationed primarily at Rincon, but he traveled frequently from one reservation to another to work on irrigation projects. Olberg was in Los Angeles at the time. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 444 to come, the water companies increasingly set the tone of negotiations. Olberg, who remained as Superintendent of Irrigation in Los Angeles until 1917, never suggested that San Luis Rey River reservations came with potential rights to all the river's water, nor did he ever question the right and inevitability of water development by white settlers and land investors. Neither Olberg nor Schanck involved the Rincon Luisenos in negotiating the agreement with Escondido Mutual, nor did any representatives from the reservation sign the contract. Olberg was so interested in ensuring that the new contract with the water company would be quickly implemented that he wrote to W. M. Reed, the Irrigation Service's chief engineer, asking that they forgo the formality of having any representatives from Rincon sign the new contract.28 Olberg ignored the fact that the Winters decision called for an open-ended water right for Indian reservations. Instead, he established a set water right for Rincon, based on the irrigable acreage at Rincon, of 250 to 270 miner's inches, or slightly less than six second-feet, of irrigation water. If wells were dug and pumping plants provided, they could generate between 2 35 28 Unsigned letter, but most probably from Olberg, to W. M. Reed, 27 August 1913, Box 875, File "San Luis Rey Investigations. Rincon,” NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 445 and 300 miner's inches of water. Thus, according to Olbergfs figures, even during exceptionally dry years, three second-feet (about 150 miner's inches) of river water could be combined with well water (even if the level in the wells was low) to provide sufficient irrigation water.29 Overall, the 1914 contract promised a great deal to Rincon, but unlike the earlier contract, it also restricted Rincon's water right in new ways, changing its basis so that the reservation's farmers were increasingly dependent on the water company for water and power during the- dry months. The quantification of Indian water rights has generally appeared as a secondary issue in scholarly writings on Winters, although Norris Hundley, Jr., in his 1982 article, "The 'Winters' Decision and Indian Water Rights: A Mystery Reexamined," gives this issue its due, discussing the quantification of Indian water rights as one of the troubling implementations of the decision. Hundley shows that while 5,000 inches was the minimum quantity designated for the Fort Belknap Reservation, it became, in actuality, the maximum amount the settlers allowed the Indians to have. But in the case of Fort 29 C. R. Olberg, "Report on Proposed Pumping Plant, Rincon Indian Reservation," October 1911, p. 4; and C. E. Washburn, Superintendent of Construction, 0SIS, "Cost of Completing Irrigation System, Rincon Reservation," December 1914, pp. 3-6; both in Box 772, Vol. 127, NARA Seattle. Olberg requested this report. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 446 Belknap, the Indian Service at least tried to set the Indians' water use at a much higher volume.30 This did not happen in the San Luis Rey Valley, where the Irrigation Service promoted an unrealistically low figure for all the reservations. Water quantification was the basis for determining water use throughout the West, whether by indigenous people on reservations or by settlers on farms and in towns. Indians found their water rights constricted at various times and in various ways by the Irrigation Service, Indian Service, Department of Interior, and congressional policies and activities; at the same time settlers, at least those whose irrigation districts and water companies functioned well, enjoyed virtually open- ended water rights. The healthy functioning of both Escondido Mutual and San Diego County Water Company included their using extralegal means to bolster their water rights when they calculated future as well as present need in filing their water claims. Through quantification of Rincon's and the other San Luis Rey River reservations' water rights, Irrigation 30 Western Historical Quarterly 13 (January 1982): 17-41. Robert D. Dellwo, in "Indian Water Rights— the Winters Doctrine Updated,” Gonzaga Law Review 6 (Spring 1971), 233-34, argues that the issue of quantification must be acted upon in the present day by Indian tribes; they should not rest on any past statements of water quantity rights because they were and are insufficient and could be cut even further by settlers. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 447 Service engineers effected national policy in a local setting: the Indian Service generally acted on the view that Indian water rights would need some restrictions in order to allow Americans to settle on and farm land in the West. This ran counter to the provision of an unrestricted quantity of water for Indian reservations argued in the Winters decision. Because Rincon reservation was established by executive orders in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Winters decision did not directly apply to it. But Rincon is riparian to the San Luis Rey River, and also contains various streams and springs within its boundaries. The reservation was established where a Luiseno village had already existed, where the residents had already engaged in farming and livestock raising for generations, using water from the river. From the time the reservations were created during the 1870s and 1880s until the 1920s, the native people living on the Rincon, Pala and Pauma reservations were almost the only farmers in the area.31 Thus, if only under California state laws, the 31 Information about the dates of the creation of the reservations, their locations, the expansion of Pala, and the farming background of the people is briefly summarized in Florence Connolly Shipek, Pushed Into the Rocks: Southern California Indian Land Tenure, 1769-1986 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1987), 23-7, 53- 4, 61, 188-91. Irrigated agriculture at Pala and Pauma is mentioned in O. W. Bauer, "History of Irrigation, Pauma Indian Reservation, California," January 1918, Box 772, Vol. 126; H. K. Palmer and I. F. White, "History of Irrigation, Pala Reservation, California," October 1922, Box 772, Vol. 126; and Harwood Hall, "General Inspection Pala Indian School, California," 1 January 1910, p. 1, Box 873, File "Pala Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 448 Luisenos at Rincon had both riparian and prior appropriation rights to San Luis Rey River water. Olberg argued against filing for Indian water rights, even though American settlers and investors were actively doing so for their water rights. Following the lead of the Irrigation Service's chief engineer from 1905 until 1912, W. H. Code, and the tendency of most Indian Service officials, Olberg argued that the San Luis Rey River reservations1 water rights rested on the Indians prior water use and riparian ownership. Federal courts had rejected this argument as inconsequential in the Fort Belknap cases leading up to the Winters decision in 1908, which affirmed Indians' rights to all of the water flowing through their reservations.32 Olberg stated, "Such water O & M 1911-14." Rincon's water source and evidence of the farming activities on the reservations before the Indian Irrigation Service constructed a new irrigation system is written about in many reports and letters, including O. W. Bauer, "History of Irrigation, Rincon," August 1918, p. 2, Box 772, Vol. 127. All the documents above are at NARA Seattle. 32 W. H. Code often seemed more concerned with making sure that Indian water rights did not interfere with settlers' water supply, rather than ensuring that settlers respect Indians' water rights. He also was a proponent of encouraging settlement on Indian land as one way of "protecting" Indian water rights, and of selling "surplus” reservation land to pay for irrigation projects on the reservations. For examples of Code's activities and sentiments, see Donald J. Pisani, "Reclaiming the Indians," Chapter 7 of forthcoming book [draft manuscript in my possession], p. 12, footnote 25; McCool, Command, 115; Robert D. Dellwo, "Indian Water Rights," 228; Shurts, "The Work of Winters," 27-8. The Fort Belknap cases involved conflicts over water rights between the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana and upstream, non-Indian appropriators of water from the Milk River. The suit was filed in 1905 on behalf of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Blackfeet Indians living on the reservation. The federal court found in favor of the Blackfeet, and appeals by the defendants in 1906 were rejected. The Supreme Court took on the last appeal, resulting in the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 449 rights as these reservations have belong to them through prior use, and also through the riparian rights accruing to them through the Indian lands abbutting [sic] on the ■ San Luis Rey River.1 1 He reasoned that water development companies had "undoubtedly filed on all the water of the San Luis Rey River not otherwise appropriated," although he did not find any records of such extensive water claims. "For this reason," Olberg continued, "I do not think it would be of advantage to file on any water rights of the San Luis Rey at this time." Nor did Olberg file a claim with the state water agency for Rincon's water right, before or after committing it to a contract in 1914.33 The trajectory of the restriction of Rincon's water right from 1894 till 1914 is clear: the completely open- ended guarantee of sufficient water for all purposes, not just irrigation, was narrowed in 1908 to water "when available," which was then further narrowed to a specified quantity for irrigation purposes only— and with an "escape clause" for the water company to provide even less water 1908 Winters decision. Shurts, "The Winters Doctrine," 114-127; Pisani, "Irrigation, Water Rights, and the Betrayal of Indian Allotment," in Pisani, Water, Land, and Law in the West: The Limits of Public Policy, 1850-1920 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 170-171. 33 C. R. Olberg to Frank Mead, 6 September 1911, Box 875, File, "SLR Investigations. Rincon," NARA Seattle. There is no evidence in Irrigation Service files that Olberg changed his mind in later years or that he or any other official ever filed water claims for the reservations. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 450 during very dry years. The growing restrictiveness of the agreements with Escondido Mutual rested on two bases: the Irrigation Service's willingness to quantify Rincon's water right, and its unwillingness to respond to changes, both on the reservation and in the river itself, when Rincon's water rights required protection, and even expansion. Rincon's water rights would be further restricted with the construction of Henshaw Dam in the 192 0s. In the 1922 contract with the Department of the Interior concerning Rincon, Henshaw and the Indian Service agreed that Rincon's right to San Luis Rey River water did not extend to the river's headwaters, which flowed into Lake Henshaw. This greatly limited the overall amount of water available to Rincon (and to Pala, as well).34 As a result, in the late 1920s, during the irrigation season, Escondido Mutual and San Diego County Water Company refused to release surplus water from Lake Henshaw because 34 P. Willis to A. L. Wathen, 2 May 1932, attached to report, E. C. Fortier to Willis, 3 June 1932, p. 4, Box 872, File, "F.P. 200. Pala. Misc. Only. 8/33-9/34," NARA Seattle. Wathen at this time was a Supervising Engineer in the Los Angeles district office of the Indian Irrigation Service; he had risen within the Irrigation Service from at least 1927, when his title was Engineer. Fortier was an Acting Supervising Engineer. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 451 they could claim that the Rincon farmers had used up their allotted water supply.35 When William Henshaw and San Diego County Water Company moved into the San Luis Rey River valley, their relationship with the Indians, the Indian Service and the Indian Irrigation Service was more distant than Escondido Mutual's had been. While Henshaw and San Diego County Water Company gained control over San Luis Rey River water, they did not have any significant legal responsi bility to Rincon or the other reservations. Henshaw's contract with Escondido Mutual in 1912 retained the latter's water rights and responsibilities, which included its contract with Rincon. Henshaw thus left Escondido Mutual with the responsibility of fulfilling its promise to Rincon of water and power during the dry season, but Henshaw himself and his successor, the San Diego County Water Company, controlled the river's water and did not have to worry about Rincon's share. During the 192 0s, problems with water shortages increased due to greater diversion to central and southern San Diego County. The Indian Service had to appeal to Escondido Mutual when problems with water delivery occurred. In response, 35 A. L. Wathen to C. L. Ellis, 23 June 1927; Wathen to Ellis, 6 September 1929; John Sutherland to Wathen, 6 September 1929; all in Box 873, File, "Rincon 1922-31," NARA Seattle. Ellis was the Superintendent of the Mission Indian Agency, stationed at its office in Riverside; Sutherland was the foreman of the Irrigation Service's construction crew at Rincon. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 452 Escondido Mutual usually passed the complaints along to the San Diego company, which might or might not respond in a timely or positive fashion by releasing more water from its reservoir. The provisions of the 1914 contract also reflect the policies and attitudes of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the agency he headed. Commissioner Cato Sells, who served in that capacity from 1913 until 1921, along with his predecessors, encouraged integrating Indians1 water needs with those of American settlers— always ensuring that the former would not interfere with the latter. Thus, Schanck and Olberg1s interest in underground water and pumping powered by electricity was not a solely individual one, but rather reflected a general policy. Donald Pisani notes in discussing Pima water rights and settlers' expropriation of their water in the first decade of the twentieth century: "The Indian Office favored tapping underground waters because the cheap electric power generated by the Roosevelt Dam . . . would reduce the cost of using this supply."36 The benefit to the Indians of cheap electricity, however, rarely withstood 36 Pisani, "Reclaiming the Indians," 34. In addition to Pisani's discussion in this chapter, many scholars have examined the fluctuating, conflicted role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in reservations' water rights and development. Among the more recent works are McCool, Command, especially Chapters 5 and 6; Burton, American Indian Water Rights, Shurts "The Work of Winters," and Pisani, "Irrigation, Water Rights, and the Betrayal of Allotment," Environmental Review 10 (Fall 1986). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 453 the great decline in water quantity resulting from large water projects that mainly served white Americans. Finally, Olberg could definitely have gone farther than he did in establishing and protecting Rincon' s water rights. He could have followed through on rules and methods used by settlers to protect their water rights by filing water claims for the reservations based on their greatest use of water, not on their least use. And like the Indian Service officials on the Fort Belknap and Uintah reservations, Olberg could have tried to establish Indian water rights to the San Luis Rey River under the interpretations provided by the Winters decision, even if, in practice, the Indian Service might not have been able to prevail in court. In the 1910s and 1920s, farming on Rincon reservation, as well as Pala, was expanding but kept encountering restrictions imposed by lack of water or lack of sufficient infrastructure to carry the water consistently to all the irrigable acres. The San Luis Rey River reservations might have been in the position to sell water to settler communities in the county, and this could have financed better constructed and better maintained water projects on the reservations than the Indian Service and Congress were willing to fund. The 1988 San Luis Rey Indian Water Rights Act, in fact, proposed just such a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 454 solution to the reservations' water problems— more than sixty years after those problems first became serious.37 Implementation of Contracts Escondido Mutual and the Irrigation Service frequently disagreed over the water company's contractual obligations to provide water and electric power to Rincon reservation. Escondido Mutual's longstanding, implicit policy was to gain as much water and power as possible for its shareholders and disregard its contractual responsibilities to the people of Rincon. The water company did this by delaying its release of water for irrigation as long as possible during the dry months. The company also charged for electric power it supplied the reservation in violation of the contract. These policies forced the Indian Irrigation Service to request, plead and argue to get the water arid power the reservation was legally entitled to; Escondido Mutual, meanwhile, saved water and earned extra money for its water consumers and bondholders. While not the main area of contention over the contract and Rincon's water supply, Escondido Mutual's policy of maintaining the systems at the lowest cost was 37 San Luis Rey Indian Water Rights Settlement Act, Pub. L. No. 100-675, 102 Stat. 4000 (1988). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 455 another indication of the company's unwillingness to live up to the spirit and content of the contract. Escondido Mutual often waited until Irrigation Service officials notified the company that some repairs or cleaning of the canal or other parts of the water system were needed. For instance, in the first year of operation of the electric-powered pumping plants, W. M. Reed, Chief Engineer for the Indian Irrigation Service, was forced to write to the water company regarding its failure to clean sand from the pipes leading into the power house. Not only would the sand decrease power production, but it could also damage or clog up Rincon's irrigation pipes and ditches. Several months later, the sand still had not been cleared.38 With Escondido Mutual's Rincon project nearing completion, the water company demonstrated its reluctance to freely cooperate with the terms and spirit of the contract. In late July 1915 the Escondido Mutual board of directors realized that the company could make a few Bauer, "History of Irrigation, Rincon," 4-5; E. C. McMurtrie to O. W. Bauer, 24 June 1917, Box 873, File "Rincon 1922-31," NARA Seattle. Potentially even more destructive was the water company’s failure to install a simple, automatic shut-off valve for the penstock (gate or other device controlling water flow from the canal into diversion or irrigation ditches). Without this, water pressure could rupture the pipe line, damaging both the power plant and Rincon's fields, either because of the resulting stoppage of water in order to repair the system, or through land erosion from the sudden water run-off. W. M. Reed to [Board of Directors], EMWCo, 19 February 1917, Box 875, File "SLR Investigations— Rincon," NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 456 dollars by requiring the Indian Service to purchase stock in the water company. "The laws of the company" (as well as state laws regulating mutual water companies), required water or power users to be shareholders. The company demanded that the government buy twenty-five shares at one dollar each. The Irrigation Service quickly saw through this blatant attempt. Then in August, Irrigation Service engineers and manual laborers finished installing two of the pumping plants, and they needed electricity to test them. Albert Beven, one of the directors of the water company, refused to supply power before September.39 In 1917 Escondido Mutual was especially active in making the contract and its relationship with the Indian Service work in its favor. Water supply and electric power were interlinked in the contract. Whenever water flow during the irrigation season rose above six second-feet at the Rincon power plant, Escondido Mutual was required to release water into the reservation's irrigation ditches, allowing the Rincon farmers to irrigate with "gravity water." The contract, though, did not specify whether this meant that Escondido Mutual had to supply electric power 39 C. B. Oliver to O. W. Bowers [Bauer], 7 August 1915, Box 874, File, "Rincon O & M. 1909-1915"; T. F. McCormick to C. R. Oldberg [sic], 7 August 1915; N. W. Phelps to Thomas F. McCormick, 5 January- 1916; McCormick to Olberg, 10 January 1916; Olberg to McCormick, 11 January 1916; all in Box 875, File "SLR Investigations," NARA Seattle. Bauer's title is not given in the 1915 letter, but in 1917 (see next footnote) , he was the Acting Superintendent of Irrigation; Phelps was secretary of the board of directors of EMWCo. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 457 to the pumping plants during periods of high water flow. In 1916 the water company, agreeing with the Irrigation Service, interpreted the contract to require electric power at such times; in 1917, it reversed its position. Olberg laid the blame for the change on "a new attorney and a new set of officers," who were "trying to make a showing." Olberg believed that the company was setting the groundwork for getting around the rates provision they had so reluctantly agreed to.A0 The water company continued to test the Indian Service: on August 31, 1917, at the height of the irrigation season, the company claimed to be having "line trouble," necessitating an entire shut-down of water and power delivery "for a few days and maybe for the rest of the season." After inquiries, requests, and complaints from the Irrigation Service office, Escondido Mutual claimed that it no longer had enough linemen to operate and repair the system (presumably because of the war-time draft and enrollment in armed forces). Power remained off M. C. Sinclair to H. P. Coultis 7 May 1917; Superintendent of Irrigation [Olberg] to Escondido Mutual Water Company, 9 May 1917, enclosed with Olberg to Reed, 9 May 1917; Olberg to Reed, 6 June 1917; O. W. Bauer to Hugh P. Coultis 16 July 1917; Bauer to Reed, 15 September 1917; all- in Box 875, File, "San Luis Rey Investigations. Rincon," NARA Seattle. Sinclair was now EMWCo's secretary; Coultis was a Special Disbursing Agent for the Indian Service in Los Angeles. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 458 for the month of September, just when Rincon farmers most needed water for their vegetable gardens and corn.41 The following year, Escondido Mutual still claimed it had a shortage of linemen, and shut off power to Rincon in early August. This violated the contract; when electric power was not available, the company was required to divert water from its canal into Rincon's main irrigation ditch, which it did not do. Escondido Mutual responded to inquiries from the Irrigation Service with threats to bring suit against the Indian Service to resolve ambiguities in the contract, with complaints that Rincon farmers wasted water, and with demands that the Indian Service pay more money for the electricity Escondido Mutual provided. It turned out, though, that Beven's excuses and complaints were diversions from the company's true intentions: the company wanted to clean sand and debris from its canal without waiting for the contractual ly agreed upon fall or winter season. According to the contract, non-emergency work on the system, necessitating any water stoppage, could only be performed in the fall and winter months, after the end of the irrigation 41 C. F. Blackmore to 0. W. Bauer, report for period 1-17 September [1917], Box 875, File "SLR Investigations— Rincon," NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 459 season.42 Because of Escondido Mutual's action, Rincon went without irrigation water for three weeks in 1918. The water company finally restored electric power, following an angry letter from Herbert Clotts, Olberg's replacement as Indian Irrigation Service supervising engineer. Not until 1929 did the Irrigation Service negotiate with both companies to get a new agreement that would require "a certain amount of water to be delivered on demand each month.1,43 2 Clotts to Hoffman, 15 August 1918; and McMurtrie to H. K. Palmer, 27 August 1918; both in Box 874, File, "Rincon O & M Only," NARA Seattle. McMurtrie, who was an Indian Service employee, was reporting a conversation he heard between two of the water company directors who were visiting Rincon. The 1914 contract is summarized in Fortier to Willis, 3 June 1932; the same summary is reproduced in William S. Post, "Report on Water Rights of Indian Reservations of San Diego County, Excepting Capitan Grande," April 1933, pp. 67-68, Box 775, vol. 135, NARA Seattle. This report contains summaries of all contracts regarding water use between the reservations of San Diego County and various parties. 43 Clotts to Reed, 8 August 1918; Clotts to Escondido Mutual Water Company, 8 August 1918; Don R. Osborne (an officer of EMWCo) to Bauer, 8 August 1918; E. C. McMurtrie to Bauer, report for period 9— 19 August [1918]; Clotts to Meredith Conway (President, EMWCo), 10 August 1918; Clotts to Paul T. Hoffman (Superintendent, Pala Reservation), 10 August 1918; Bauer to McMurtrie, 12 August 1918; Dixon to Clotts, 13 August 1918; Clotts to Reed, 15 August 1918; P. T. Hoffman to Clotts, 15 August 1918; McMurtrie to Bauer, report for period 15-18 August [1918]; Reed to Clotts, 20 and 21 August 1918, all in Box 875, File, "San Luis Rey Investigations. Rincon." Ellis to Clotts, 25 June 1924; Dixon to Clotts, 25 May 1928; Clotts to Dixon, 1 June 1928; Wathen to Clotts, 1 June 1928; Wathen to Ellis, 6 September 1929; all in Box 873, File, "Rincon. 1922-31," NARA Seattle. In at least two other years, 1924 and 1928, Escondido Mutual turned off or threatened to turn off water going through its canals in order to perform routine maintenance work during the irrigation season. In 1928, if the Irrigation Service had not protested vigorously, the reservation could have been without irrigation water for two months. I do not have evidence that a new contract was agreed to that would have required regular releases of water throughout the irrigation season. In 1930 Wathen stated that he was "studying" the possibility of including such provisions in a new contract. Atwood to Worthen [sic], 11 September 1930, Box 873, File, "Rincon. 1922-31," Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 460 Another area of discord between Escondido Mutual and the Indian Irrigation Service erupted over rates the water company charged for providing electricity to Rincon1s water pumps.44 But the biggest problems involved the NARA Seattle. 44 In October 1917 the first round in the fight between the Irrigation Service and Escondido Mutual over its charges for electricity occurred. C. F. Blackmore, newly hired to run and maintain the machinery operating Rincon's irrigation system, reported to his supervisor that he had noticed that Escondido Mutual had linked the electricity operating the "household items" in the Rincon power house— the lights, fan, and other electrical appliances— to Rincon's electricity meter, rather than to the company's. The Irrigation Service office was so outraged by this that it was called to the attention of the Washington office, resulting in a brief but strongly worded letter from Assistant Commissioner E. B. Meritt to Escondido Mutual. Blackmore to Bauer, report for period 1-17 October [1917]; Bauer to Reed, 16 November 1917; E. B. Meritt to Escondido Mutual Water Company, 30 November 1917; all in Box 875, File "SLR Investigations— Rincon," NARA Seattle. Disagreements about the rates for electric power exploded in 1919, lasting until at least 1925. In the 1914 contract Escondido Mutual had agreed to supply electric power to Rincon to run its pumping plants for irrigation water at the price of 1/8 cent per kilowatt hour when water at the company's intake canal was running at 2 second-feet per second or higher; when the water flow was lower, the cost of electricity would be 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Escondido Mutual was responsible for maintaining a water gauge and electricity meter and for recording the measurements, but the company did not take readings at frequent and regular intervals. The Irrigation Service did not do so, either, so it had to depend on the company's readings or on the occasional readings done by the Indian Service or other government agencies, such as the Geological Survey. The Irrigation Service only began taking its own readings when the dispute over billing had continued for a number of years. In 1919 the Irrigation Service found that Escondido Mutual was often billing the Indian Service at the higher rate when water measurements at the intake were higher than 2 second—feet; sometimes the company billed for electricity it did not supply. Based on papers in the Irrigation Service's files, it appears that the dispute was resolved in late spring, 1923, but it flared up again in 1925. Many letters document this dispute from 1919 through 1923, in Box 875, File, "San Luis Rey Investigations. Rincon," NARA Seattle; some of the more typical and important correspondences include the following: H. K. Palmer to P. T. Hoffman, 11 July 1919; [Hoffman] to Clotts, 16 August 1919; Palmer to Hoffman, 23 June 1921; Palmer to Escondido Mutual Water Company, 5 December 1921; Clotts to C. L. Ellis, 20 September 1922; Clotts to Ellis, 21 November 1922; E. B. Meritt to Clotts, 14 April 1923; Palmer to Clotts, 1 May [1923]; Clotts to Commissioner Indian Affairs, 16 May 1923; Clotts to Ellis, 19 May 1923. Letters referring to the dispute in 1925 are Ellis to Clotts, 14 May 1925, and Clotts to Ellis, 18 May 1925; both in Box 873, File, "Rincon 1922-31," NARA Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 461 fundamental issue of the amount of water Rincon would receive from Henshaw Dam. After Henshaw Dam was completed in 1923, the two water companies instituted policies for releasing water to Rincon that placed the burden of responsibility on the Indian Service. A 1924 complaint about insufficient water for irrigation at Rincon prompted B. F. Dixon (who had become the Escondido Mutual director who most advanced its oppositional relationship with the Irrigation Service) to state that the company would release water when Rincon needed it, and only after notification from the Indian Service, instead of automatically releasing it when flow in the river was low.45 In 1926, another dry year, Escondido Mutual and San Diego County Water Company again did not supply enough water to Rincon during the irrigation season.46 For the rest of the decade, the two water companies played the same waiting game for releasing water to Rincon that Escondido Mutual had occasionally used in previous years, but now they played it annually. Seattle. While Escondido Mutual was mainly responsible for the dispute over the electricity bills, the Indian Service exacerbated the problem by not always paying its bills in a timely fashion. 45 Phillip Pryde, San Diego: An Introduction to the Region (Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt, 1992), 125; Ellis to Clotts, 25 June 1924, Box 873, File, "Rincon 1922-31,” NARA Seattle. 46 Ellis to Clotts, 11 September 1926; and Clotts to Ellis, 13 September 1926; both in Box 873, File, "Rincon 1922-31," NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 462 The water companies insisted that once Rincon's water allowance— which the companies held in storage in Lake Henshaw until the dry season— was used up, they had fulfilled their obligation. Rincon's water was often gone well before the end of the irrigation season because San Diego County Water Company released the water too quickly at the beginning of the irrigation season, not bothering to retain some in the reservoir for use later on. At times, Escondido Mutual would play the charitable party and agree to release some of Escondido1s water to Rincon.47 Irrigation Service and Indian Service personnel were frequently aware of, and sometimes even disturbed by, periods of insufficient water at Rincon. But the scarcity of records that present the views of Rincon Luisenos prevents this author from developing a fully accurate picture of problems with water supply. However, items in the Irrigation Service files provide some indication of the desperation and impatience the Indian farmers felt. As early as 1921, a somewhat dry year, a Rincon Luiseno appealed directly to the irrigation engineers that not 47 Wathen to Ellis, 23 June 1927; Wathen to Clotts, 16 May 1928 (response to note, n.d., same page); Dixon to Clotts, 23 May 1928; Dixon to Clotts, 25 May 1928; Clotts to Dixon, 1 June 1928; Wathen to Clotts, 1 June 1928; Dixon to Clotts, 5 June 1928; [Dixon] to George Cromwell, 8 August 1928; Ellis to Olberg, 29 July 1929; Wathen to Sutherland, 2 August 1929; Ellis to Wathen, 26 August 1929; Wathen to Ellis, 6 September 1929; Sutherland to Wathen, 6 September 1929; all in Box 873, File, "Rincon 1922-31." Cromwell was an official of the San Diego County Water Company. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 463 enough water was coming onto the reservation, and "if we dont have rain very soon the crop in Rincon will go dry."48 in 1930 farmers at Rincon formed the Mission Indian Cooperative Society in order to investigate their water and land rights. The committee requested copies of the contracts between the United States and Escondido Mutual. One of the committee members, S. E. Calac wrote to the irrigation engineer, A. L. Wathen, about serious water shortages at Rincon in the summer of 1931, and he inquired whether any of the contracts covered water rights and supply after the completion of Henshaw Dam. Calac also wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, which seems to have resulted in the Washington office of the Indian Service requesting that the American Indian Defense Association "check up on the Escondido Water Company in its relation to the Indians," including whether they were getting their share of water during the irrigation season.49 Throughout the decade of Escondido Mutual1s grudging implementation of its contractual responsibilities, the 48 Bruno Sobinish to [H. V. Clotts], 20 April 1920, Box 874, File, "Rincon Resn. O & M Only,” NARA Seattle. 49 Venturo Arviso and Abraham Rodriguez to C. L. Ellis, 1 April 1930; J. Henry Scattergood to S. E. Calac, 15 May 1930; Stella M. Atwood to Captain Worthen [sic], 11 September 1930; S. E. Calac to A. L. Wathen, 21 July 1931; all in Box 873, File, "Rincon 1922-31,” IIS. Arviso and Rodriguez were committeemen of the Mission Indian Cooperative Society; Scattergood was Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs; Atwood was on the Board of Advisors of the American Indian Defense Association and was then working in Riverside. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 464 Indian Service and Irrigation Service usually praised the water company's adherence to the contract, despite so much evidence to the contrary. In 192 0, H. K. Palmer, the assistant engineer for the Irrigation Service's work in northern San Diego County, wrote to P. T. Hoffman, the Superintendent of the Pala reservation, "They [Escondido Mutual] have always lived up to this provision" of the 1894 contract regarding the delivery of "an ample supply and quantity of water." Palmer must have known that this was not true; he certainly did know that the contract in force in 1920 was the 1914 one, which specified that Escondido had to ensure delivery of only six second-feet of water, an amount that was only barely minimal for the reservation's irrigation needs. In 192 3 late in the dispute over electricity rates, Supervising Engineer Clotts wrote, "I do not believe that it is the policy of the Power Company to falsify their records in any way," but he did not refer to his statement in 1921 that the company was "at times unwilling or careless about complying with these contracts, especially in turning gravity water down to the Indians and to running the Rincon power plant late in the season at the l/8<£. power rate. "50 50 Palmer to Hoffman, 12 November 1920: Box 874, File, "Rincon. O & M Only"; Clotts to P. T. Lonergan, 16 November 1921; and Clotts to C. L. Ellis, 19 May 1923; both in Box 875, File, "San Luis Rey Investigations. Rincon," NARA Seattle. These are only two of many Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 465 Clearly, the Irrigation Service allowed the water companies to gain the upper hand in their implementation of the contracts. The Service's failure to ensure that the water companies followed the contracts, as well as its failure to negotiate new agreements after the completion of Henshaw Dam, allowed the investors in the water companies to profit and settlers in San Diego County to benefit from inexpensive water at the Indians' expense. In a more general sense, the Irrigation Service's actions reveal the federal government's unwillingness to set indigenous water rights apart from those of settlers, despite the fact that such a separation had been made feasible by the Winters decision. Many of the commis sioners of Indian Affairs in the early twentieth century believed that competition between native people and settlers for land, water and survival was good, natural, necessary and inevitable, and so the commissioners usually did not advocate pursuing Indian water rights too avidly. Even on the rare occasions when they started to aggres sively pursue those rights, they often failed to follow through. So it is not difficult to see why Superintendent of Irrigation Schanck might not have remained to finish negotiating the 1914 contract between Escondido Mutual and letters presenting the actions of Escondido Mutual in a positive light. Lonergan was Superintendent of the southern region of the Mission [Indian] Agency, then headquartered at Pala. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 466 Rincon, and why Olberg might not have pursued correcting some of the mistakes he made in estimating Rincon's water use and the reservation's power requirement for operating the pumping plants. Further, 1914 was the year when a congressional bill that would have given legislative approval to the main points concerning Indian water rights enumerated in the Winters decision was defeated in the Senate. The bill had been promoted by the new Commis sioner of Indian Affairs, Cato Sells, along with the new Secretary of the Interior, Franklin K. Lane, both of whom supported expanded Indian irrigation projects.51 Proximate Water Expropriation So far, I have focused on the major appropriators of San Luis Rey River water and their impact on one of the reservations, Rincon. Pauma reservation was one location where settlers engaged in direct, individual confronta tions with native people over water, in contrast to the long-range and bureaucratic character of the San Luis Rey 51 The vagaries of governmental support and lack of it for full- scale Indian water rights— including the actions and views of all three branches of the federal government— are discussed in many places. This brief discussion is based on information in Pisani, "Irrigation, Water Rights, and the Betrayal of Allotment," 161-62. See also footnote 36, above. Lane was involved in a very different project in a few years: he recruited movie industry leaders in the federal government's anti communist campaign beginning in December 1919. Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Sllen Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton: Princeton University, 1998), 129. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 467 River appropriations that affected Rincon. Pauma reservation is also the clearest example in the San Luis Rey River watershed of the damage done by the Irrigation Service's failure to protect and expand the reservation's water right. In investigating Pauma reservation' s water right, C. R. Olberg had only to turn to Pauma's 1891 land patent, which gave the Pauma Indians first right to a total of 3 3.5 inches from Pauma Creek. Pauma reservation is ri parian to Pauma Creek, a tributary of the San Luis Rey River, which served as the reservation's only water source during the period under discussion.52 As early as 1910, the Irrigation Service knew that the Pauma Luisenos used all the creek's water, which was double or more the amount they had a legal right to.53 52 O. W. Bauer, "History of Irrigation, Pauma Indian Reservation, California," January 1918, pp. 5-6, Box 772, Vol. 126, NARA Seattle. A copy of a quitclaim agreement in the files of the Pala Subagency also contains the information about the water rights of Pauma reservation. See Francis Mora v Francisco Maja, et al., 31 March 1892, California Superior Court, San Diego, in Box 484, File, "Pauma General Correspondence," NARA Laguna Niguel. What I have been referring to as Pauma reservation actually consisted of three portions: the largest part was Pauma reservation, while two smaller portions were called Yuima reservation. Water from the creek was divided between the two reservations, with Pauma entitled to 30 inches from the main branch and Yuima to 3.5 inches from a side branch of the creek. 53 Harwood Hall, report re: "General Inspection Pala Indian School, California," 25 January 1910, p. 2: Box 873, File "Pala O & M 1911—14," IIS; Charles H. Sanders to O. W. Bauer, 3 April 1915 and 14 April 1915: Box 875, File "SLR Investigations. Rincon"; and "History of Irrigation, Pauma Indian Reservation, California," January 1918, pp. 5-6: Box 772, Vol. 126; all at NARA Seattle. In April Sanders measured the flow in the Pauma diversion ditch at 78.6 miner's inches. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 468 Olberg and other Irrigation Service personnel, though, aside from gathering some evidence about water use and noting the need to ensure a greater quantity of water, did nothing about filing for an increased water right. In 1910, in his first report on the water rights of the San Luis Rey River reservations, Olberg stated that Pauma contained only about fifty irrigable acres, despite the report written earlier that year by Harwood Hall, Superintendent of the Pala Indian School, which noted that Indians at Pauma irrigated eighty acres. Five years later, when Olberg knew more about Pauma, he stated, "In case a modern irrigation system could be provided, it is probable that the Indians would have the entire 222 acres of arable land under cultivation within a short time."54 Pauma Luisenos grew mainly orchard fruits— apricots, peaches, plums, some figs and oranges— as well as corn, beans, and garden produce on approximately 33 acres. The lack of an adequate irrigation system limited the amount of land they cultivated.55 While recommending that the Indians had a right to more than 3 3.5 miner's inches because they already used 54 Olberg, "Irrigation on Southern California Reservations"; C. R. Olberg, "Report on Water Conditions at Pauma Reservation," 12 August 1915, p. 6, Box 773, Vol. 129, NARA Seattle. 55 1912 Annual Report (Narrative), Section IV, Box 384, File "Annual Report Pala 1912 Statistical, Narrative," NARA Laguna Niguel; Bauer, "History of Irrigation, Pauma,” 4; H. V. Clotts, "Report on Proposed Irrigation System, Pauma Indian Reservation, California," 4 May 1918, p. 2, Box 772, Vol. 129, NARA Seattle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 469 more than that amount to irrigate their orchards, Olberg did not formally quantify their usage or file on an increased amount of water— the full flow of Pauma Creek. Olberg's inaction is especially disturbing since he noted that the Indians had begun to earn some profit by selling their fruits, and that if held to only 33.5 miner's inches of water, "Many acres of fruit trees now just coming into bearing would have to be abandoned in order to save the older and more valuable trees. Such a procedure would undoubtedly destroy entirely the splendid enterprise which these people have displayed.1,56 In 1918, after Olberg's departure for work in other parts of Indian Irrigation District No. 4, the new Superintendent of Irrigation, Herbert V. Clotts, reported that Pauma's legally established water right was far too low. He recommended that the Indian Service file for a higher water claim, but still this was not done.57 Indeed, in the late 1910s or early 1920s the Pauma reservation orchards began dying due to lack of water. In 56 Olberg, "Report on Water Conditions at Pauma Reservation," 6- 7; Shipek, Pushed, 123, 202. 57 Clotts, "Report on Proposed Irrigation System, Pauma," 3. Clotts wrote that the land patent's specification of only 1 miner's inch per 7.5 acres of cultivated land "is wholly unjust for the reason that such a high duty of water is unattainable even by exercising the greatest care. . .. It seems not improbable however that a prescriptive right to this or even a greater amount of water might by established since the Indians have for years been the sole users of the water from Pauma Creek and have habitually used more than one miner's inch for each seven and one half acres under cultivation." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 470 1915 the American-owned Pauma Ranch Company began subdividing and selling ranch land surrounding the reservation. They could do so because the land came with a second right to Pauma Creek— the water flow above the reservation's legal thirty inches. Without this water right, the land was undesirable, did not attract individual farmers or ranchers, and might have remained uncultivated considerably longer. The ranch company constructed a diversion ditch from a point on Pauma Creek above the reservation, and the promise of water brought farmers and ranchers onto the land. However, during the dry months the creek frequently carried less than 3 0 inches and almost always carried less than the Pauma Indians could use. Even though this illegal diversion began as early as the late 1910s, even as late as 1936, the Indian Service did little to end it, aside from lodging a few protests.58 58 Shipek, Pushed, 123; Charles H. Sanders to O. W. Bauer, 12 March 1915; and Urbano Panis to O. W. Bauer, 29 July 1915; both in Box 875, File "SLR Investigations. Rincon," NARA Seattle; unsigned letters from Pala to C. L. Ellis, 20 July 1928, 28 July 1928, 5 September 1928; unsigned letters from Pala to W. L. Wathen, 30 July 1929; C. A. Engle (Supervising Engineer in the Indian Irrigation Service) to W. E. Coleman (President, Pauma Valley Land Company), 27 July 1933; P. B. E. Skiff (Assistant Engineer, Indian Irrigation Service) to Engle, 2 August 1933; A. F. Johnson (Indian Service Farm Agent headquartered at Pala), to John W. Dady (Superintendent, Mission Indian Agency, Riverside), 1 August 1935; all in Box 484, File "Pauma Irrigation," NARA Laguna Niguel. The Pauma Ranch diversion structure was built above the Indians' intake on the main branch of Pauma Creek and did not have an impact on the branch of the creek that supplied 3.5 inches to Yuima. Shipek, Pushed, 123, states that illegal diversions by settlers on the subdivision surrounding the reservation began in 1916, but the earliest evidence I have found is from 1918. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 471 The white farmers and ranchers themselves diverted water from Pauma Creek without leaving even the thirty miner's inches for the reservation farmers. The first record of a problem appears in Clotts1 1918 report on Pauma1s irrigation system, where he states that an increased demand for water has made it "essential to conserve the flow [of Pauma Creek water] as much as possible."59 The dispute over water brewed for many years, as evidenced by letters and reports written in the late 1920s and in the 193 0s that discussed then-current problems and referred to earlier written communications. In 19 3 3 an assistant engineer for the Indian Service, P. B. E. Skiff, visited Pauma "for the purpose of determining . . . the cause of trouble between the Indian water users and the Pauma Valley Water Company." He wrote that "from correspondence in the files, it appears that there has been a controversy over the division of water between the water company and the Indians each year since 1920." The Indians complained that the whites diverted too much water, not leaving the full thirty inches for the Indians, while the whites complained that the Indians "tampered with the division box." Skiff included in his report an abstract of a letter written by Palmer in 1923, alluding 59 Clotts, "Report on Proposed Irrigation System, Pauma," 4. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 472 to the need to resolve disputes between the two parties over water rights.60 Letters from 1928 through 1936 reported that water diversion problems had continued. A Pauma reservation resident, Max Peters, complained to the Irrigation Service engineer that neighboring whites were only releasing twenty inches of water for the reservation in September 1928, while one white family, the Kelloggs, were "in the habit of releasing a goodly portion of the water belonging to the Indians into the water Companies [sic] ditch." The Kelloggs were "irrigating trees knowing they had no water." The following year, D. P. Kellogg was "taking it upon himself to go to the division box and turn down a portion of the Indians water he and Max Peters . . . came near to blows recently."61 In 193 3 C. A. Engle, the Irrigation Service's District No. 4 supervising engineer, wrote to W. E. Coleman, president of the Pauma Valley Water Company, attempting to impress upon Coleman the need to respect the Pauma1s first right to water from Pauma Creek. He reminded Coleman that whenever the water in the creek fell below thirty inches, the Indians had the right to all of the 60 P. B. E. Skiff to [C. A.] Engle, 2 August 1933, Box 484, File, "Pauma Irrigation," NARA Laguna Niguel. 61 Unsigned letters from Pala to W. L. Wathen, 18 September 1928 and 30 July 1929, Box 484, File, "Pauma Irrigation," NARA Laguna Niguel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 473 water. Engle also laid the blame on the company for any water shortages experienced by its customers. Skiff's August 193 3 report was probably another attempt by the Irrigation Service to resolve the dispute. Skiff recommended installing a new diversion box, "more or less automatic," and less susceptible to tampering, as the means of resolution.62 Neither Engle's letter to Coleman, nor Skiff's report had any apparent effect. In August 1936, A. F. Johnson, the local farm agent, reported that Martin Ardilla, spokesman for the Pauma reservation, "was just in complaining that the white people, Pauma Valley, were interfering with their water." Ardilla explained that the water flow was below thirty inches, which meant that all the water should go to Pauma reservation. But "some of the whites are desperate about this. They now go and dam up or otherwise shut off the flow to the Indians [sic] line." The Pauma Indians had records of the specific dates and individuals who had done this. Ardilla laid particular blame on Coleman, who he said "has been very insulting about the affair." Ardilla informed the superintendent of the Mission Indian Agency, C .A. Engle to W. E. Coleman, 27 July 1933; and Skiff to Engle, 2 August 1933; both in Box 484, "Pauma Irrigation," NARA Laguna Niguel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 474 John W. Dady, that "what the Indians want is some action brought against whites to stop this interference.1 1 6 3 The Luisenos living on the Pauma reservation suffered from insufficient water supply because the Irrigation Service neglected to help them acquire a legally recognized right to more than 3 3.5 inches of water from Pauma Creek. This neglect was unimportant until a land developer took advantage of the supposedly surplus water of the creek and sold land parcels to ranchers and farmers beginning in the mid-1910s. Until that time, no one aside from farmers on Pauma reservation diverted water from the creek, so they were able to use all of the creek's water, even when it was more than the 3 3.5 inches they had a legal right to. Their orchards and other crops depended on all the water they could get. Settlers on the land surrounding Pauma reservation believed they had a right to Pauma Creek water, sufficient to provide for all of their needs, despite the Pauma Indians' first right. This sense of entitlement was common among settlers, whether they were taking Indian land or Indian water, and connects the Pauma Rancho settlers of the 1920s and 1930s with the San Pasqual Valley settlers of the 1870s. The main difference between them lies in the San Pasqual settlers' direct expropriation of Indian land, 63 A. F. Johnson to John. W. Dady, 1 August 1936, Box 484, "Pauma Irrigation," NARA Laguna Niguel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 475 which exemplified the methods of the 1860s and 1870s in southern California, while the Pauma ranchers' direct expropriation of water was a relic of the past. In the twentieth century, most water expropriation occurred through the intervention of water companies and wealthy, often non-local investors: dominance at a distance instead of dominance by proximate individuals. Conclusion The Irrigation Service did not pursue the application of water rights law to Indian reservations with anything like the aggressiveness and financial resources that settlers applied to their own water rights. Settlers, acting through the Escondido Mutual Water Company and the San Diego County Water Company, kept expanding their water rights and use through the construction of ever larger water diversion and distribution systems, while the Irrigation Service did little to maintain the reservations' water rights once established and did not try to expand those rights. That the Irrigation Service acted this way— even though the water companies were actually willing to negotiate with the Indian Service, to sign contracts affirming the water rights of the reservations, and comply substantially with those Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 476 contracts, and in which the watershed contained sufficient water to satisfy the water needs of all of the major parties at the time— makes the Irrigation Service's policy that much more reprehensible. Individual settlers whose water needs were not served by large water companies sometimes resorted to illegal or questionable means to gain access to "Indian water." But unlike the settlers in San Pasqual and Temecula in the 1860s and 1870s, who called on the local sheriff to expel indigenous residents from homesteaded land, settlers in the twentieth century relied on legal contracts or, if their water use was illegal or questionable, stealth or personal confrontations without the obvious support of the state. One important similarity existed between the land expropriations of the nineteenth century and the water expropriations of the twentieth century: both relied on written, legally recognized records to document one's right to a specifically described piece of land or a specific quantity of water, even as white settlers often ignored or tried to circumvent such legal records. Since California's and the West's water laws were based largely on the concept, "Use it or lose it," and "use" was recognized only when recorded, the Indian Service's failure to do so was partially responsible for decreasing Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 477 the amount of water actually available for the San Luis Rey River reservations. I have not discussed some issues that are prevalent in most scholarly discussions of water rights and water development. One of these is the role of the Reclamation Service, which is absent from this chapter because it was virtually absent from California in the period covered in this dissertation. For Norris Hundley and Donald Pisani, the Reclamation Service's absence from California meant that forms of water development other than large, federally funded projects, dominated California's water scene. I have chosen to view the agency's absence from the state in the context of the roles that settlers and investors played in water development and the entrenchment of white supremacy in San Diego County. Certainly, if the Reclamation Service had built a project in the county, it would have imposed an even greater level of bureaucratiza tion on the organization of water appropriation and use. It would have created an even greater institutional and geographic distance between native people and those directing the water projects. So one of the significant aspects of Escondido's and San Diego County's "dominance at a distance" was that it was still mainly a local affair, despite the involvement— which was, after all, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 478 only temporary— of an investor like William Henshaw, from northern California. Yet in fact, despite the Reclamation Service’s absence from the region, its activities elsewhere and its oppositional role within the Department of the Interior affected water rights and development in San Diego County. The Reclamation Service’s emphasis on helping Americans become farmers (if we view its role in its most positive light) helped maintain the balance of power within the Department of the Interior in favor of settlers and of restricting Indians1 water rights and negating the special, reserved water rights promised to indigenous people through the Winters doctrine. The Reclamation Service's absence may also have had some direct impact on relations between whites and Native Californians in the San Luis Rey River valley. First, few whites leased or bought Indian reservation land in the valley until the 19 30s. This kept direct confrontations between the two groups, such as those that happened at Pauma, at a minimum. When Americans did move onto reservation land, conflicts over water supply eventually developed. Simmering Indian discontent did not boil over until the 1960s, when increased opportunities to bring suit against the government, as well as private companies Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 479 such as Escondido Mutual, revealed longstanding problems over water. In trying to show how Americans actually created economic structures that promoted the settlers1 dominance over people they considered non-white, I have presented the appropriation of San Luis Rey River water as an illustration of a shift in settlers' methods. As laws, political institutions, financial power and the sheer weight of population growth provided a basis for settlers to assert their dominance, these same factors also precipitated a shift from individual settlers1 activities to the activities of corporation managers and government bureaucrats, from encounters between settlers and indigenous people living in the same area to these groups living at a distance, yet still connected by their need for water. Studies of the expropriation of Indian water raise questions of democracy and equal opportunity. As Donald Worster has argued in many of his writings, the "hydraulic society" of the arid United States West "is increasingly a coercive, monolithic, and hierarchical system, ruled by a power elite based on the ownership of capital and expertise., , £ A Worster examines the loss of democratic impulses as bureaucratization increased in the hydraulic 64 Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Oxford University, 1985), 7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 480 society, but he focuses mainly on relations among whites. I do not disagree with his analysis in terms of the effect of the very large irrigation projects that Worster discusses, such as those in California's Central Valley, on white farmers. Small farmers and town dwellers in San Diego County benefitted from water projects, by having cheap and consistent supplies of water for irrigation and household use, even as they became more removed from making many of the decisions about the water they used. But they still had ways of participating in decision making. Settlers chose whether to live inside or outside the Escondido Irrigation District, while later, shareholders in Escondido Mutual voted for the board of directors and for or against major expenditures, thereby affecting the type and extent of water development around them. Some farmers who had easy access to underground water decided to supply their own water rather than buy shares in Escondido Mutual. More threatening to democracy was settlers' and investors' relations with the Native Californians living on reservations, whose water was slowly stolen from them. American settlement always has resulted in coercion and oppression of people of color, and the failure to extend democracy and equality to non-whites. The Luisenos and Cupenos living on the San Luis Rey River reservations in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 481 the 1890s through the 1920s usually did not have the opportunity to participate in decisions about water development. Even though the Mission Indian Relief Act of 1891 mandated that the Indians had the right to approve or disapprove contracts for rights of way and other construction on their reservations, the Indian Service subverted this condition in the name of increased efficiency in the case of the 1914 contract covering Rincon— and doubtlessly in many other instances. Only briefly did the native people on these reservations find ways to participate in decisions about their water rights and supply: in the 1894 contract signed by representatives of Potrero reservation, and more substantially, in the first organized protests at Rincon in 1928. Significantly, California Indians could participate only by subverting the processes and relationships established by the Irrigation Service. The change to dominance at a distance over time is characteristic of the evolution of white supremacy in the United States. This distance allows white Americans to view white supremacy as a relatively impersonal process instituted mainly by large corporations and the govern ment. This in turn makes it easier for many Americans to characterize white supremacy as an overarching phenomenon Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 482 that started in the distant past of slave society and spread westward. What we see in the case of water theft in San Diego County, however, is how closely the institutionalization of white supremacy conforms to the local contours of white settlement, even in the twentieth century. The growth of white farming and white towns like Escondido happened at the direct expense of the local Indians. The creation of water districts and the bureaucratic administration of the Indian Service should not obscure the interest or compli city of ordinary white settlers in water expropriation. White settlers created and recreated a racial hierarchy that allowed them to get what they wanted. It was not racial prejudice that made them take Indian water. Instead, it was the desire for Indian water that made them collaborate in the reproduction of white supremacy. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 483 EPILOGUE Struggles over land and water on the San Luis Rey River reservations were still going on as late as the 1980s. Taking advantage of new opportunities to pursue law suits against individuals, towns, and the federal government, Luisenos and others litigated over trespass, land theft, and inequality in water distribution. Law suits over water rights were especially common. In 1968 Alex Scholder, of Pala Reservation, sued the federal government because the Indian Service had provided irrigation pipe to an allotment purchased by a white man, Willard Allers, while bypassing requests from Native American allottees for similar irrigation lines. In 1966 Allers bought an allotment from Juliana Calac, an elderly Cupeno woman whose land was burdened with a lien for her failure to pay her water bill, even though the land was not productive because there was no functioning irrigation pipe going to it. After purchasing the land, Allers submitted a request to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA; the current name for the Office of Indian Affairs, or Indian Service) for a connection to the central irrigation system, which was immediately granted. The money to pay for the work, $800r would come from funds appropriated for the Pala Indians. Meanwhile, Native American allottees had Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 484 been requesting the same service for many years, and the BIA had failed to respond, citing insufficient funds. Scholder, whose own allotment bordered the one bought by Allers, brought the suit against the BIA, contending that tribal members should be the primary recipients of funds and programs over which the BIA has control. Scholder was joined in this suit by the Pala and Rincon Bands. The initial decision went completely against the plaintiffs. U.S. District Court Judge Schwartz ruled that the BIA has jurisdiction over all the lands on the reservation, whether owned by a member of the tribe or not.1 Upon appeal, the Circuit Court did not overturn the District Court, on the grounds that the federal government is protected from law suits from individuals. However, Judge Hufstedler, writing for the three judges, stated quite strongly their opinion that the BIA's actions had been inappropriate: We have no doubt that the Bureau failed to meet its responsibility in the instant case. Over 45 percent of the Indian acreage within the Pala [irrigation] project is without functioning laterals. The area is naturally very arid. In past years Indian landowners, as well as representatives of the Pala Band, have made numerous requests to the Bureau for the construction and re pair of laterals, and the Bureau's uniform response was that no moneys were available. The former owners of the Allers property were Pala Indians, and they were forced to 1 Scholder v United States, 298 F. Supp. 1282 (S.D. Cal. 1969). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 485 give up the allotment after their fruit trees died for lack of water. Their re quests to the Bureau for repair of the lateral were refused, and the land was com pletely without water. Yet shortly after Allers, a non-Indian, purchased the proper ty, the Bureau agreed to build a lateral that would benefit solely his land. At the time the briefs for this appeal were filed, the Bureau had approved no other laterals in the Pala project. Perhaps there are exceptional circumstances that justify the Bureau's expeditious hand ling of the Allers request while, temporar ily at least, bypassing the requests of Indian residents of years' standing. If so, they have never been revealed to the un derstandably indignant Indians within the project. It is hardly surprising that the Bureau's actions have inspired a lawsuit. Its officials should find no satisfaction in our conclusion that, after two years of costly litigation, sovereign immunity shields their decision from judicial scrutiny.2 According to one informant, the BIA has, to this day, continued to favor white landowners over Native Americans in regards to irrigation services.3 In June 1969, following the resolution of the California Indians lands cases brought to the Land Claims Commission in the 1950s, the tribal governments of Rincon and La Jolla reservations filed suit against Escondido Mutual Water Company (EMWCo) and others, alleging all of EMWCo1s contracts regarding water and rights of way were 2 Scholder v United States, 428 F.2d 1123 (1970). 3 Willie Pink, interviews with author, March 27 and April 6, 1991, Pala, California. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 486 invalid, and asking for an injunction against the company taking any more water from the San Luis Rey River. In 1972 this law suit was consolidated with two others initiated by the other three reservations in the San Luis Rey River watershed, Pala, Pauma, and San Pasqual, into one suit, Rincon Band of Mission Indians v Escondido Mutual Water Co. The tribal governments, represented by the federal government, sought to void all water and rights of way contracts negotiated since 1894 between the tribes and the EMWCo, as well as the Vista Irrigation District (VID), to reach an agreement about the reservations1 water rights, and to obtain monetary recompense for damages. Additionally, in 1969, the five bands filed claims before the Federal Power Commission (later known as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) to block a renewed fifty-year contract for EMWCo to operate its hydroelectric plant and other facilities for electrical power located on three of the reservations.4 4 Rincon Band et al. v Escondido Mutual Water Company et al., Southern District of California, Civil No. 19-217-S; United States v Escondido Mutual Water Company et al., U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, No. 72-271-S; Rincon Band et al. v Vista Irrigation District, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, No. 72-276-S; San Pasqual et al. v FERC, 692 F.2d 1223 (1982); Florence Connolly Shipek, Pushed into the Rocks: Southern California Land Tenure, 1769—1986 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1987), xiv-xvi, 31, 57, 194-195; Lloyd Burton, American Indian Water Rights and the Limits of Law (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 51, 64, 77; Congress, Senate, Select Committee on Indian Affairs, S. Rep 100-47, to accompany S. 795, submitted by Mr. Inouye, 100th cong., 1st sess. (1987), pp. 3-5. A central issue in the complaint brought before FERC was whether the Secretary of the Interior has the right to negotiate contracts for the bands without obtaining their input and approval. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 487 In 1985 a proposed out-of-court settlement was brokered by the federal government regarding water rights for the San Luis Rey River reservations— 16 years after litigation began, 20 years after hearings on water rights began in front of the Indian Claims Commission, and 34 years after the issue was first brought up at the federal level, at the Claims Commission hearings on reservation boundaries. Significantly, the settlement allows for tribal control of resources and economic development backs and this up with a significant sum of money. The agreement calls for the establishment of the San Luis Rey Indian Water Authority (SLRIWA) , composed of representatives of the five bands. The SLRIWA is empowered to make decisions regarding the division of $30,000,000 set aside in a trust fund as payment for past damages (grown to at least $36,000,000 because of interest ac cumulated while the SLRIWA became established and began discussing what to do with the money). In addition, the SLRIWA will decide how to divide the water that has been assigned for the five reservations. Until the settlement, ninety percent of locally available water was used by Escondido and Vista, with only ten percent available for the reservations. The settlement calls for an equal division of local water, giving the five bands about 9,000 acre-feet yearly. Water not used by the reservations will Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 488 be purchased by EMWC and VID. Further, if drought conditions exist, the two water districts will supply the reservations with at least 7,000 acre-feet of water. In addition to local water, the federal government reached agreement with the state of California, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and the San Diego County Water Authority for the allocation of 22,700 acre- feet of unallocated Central Valley Project water, with the SLRIWA selling, at cost, 6,000 acre-feet yearly to EMWC and VID in exchange for their providing the means to transport the water. An important part of the agreement is Section 7(a), which allows the SLRIWA to choose any use for the water. This "means that if the highest and best use of their water is for recreation or commercial purposes rather than agricultural, the Bands and the Indian Water Authority have the right to use it for those purposes.I l 5 Section 7(a) is an important addition to the SLRIWA*s powers. It appears in the settlement because of a 19 63 court decision, Arizona v California, which (along with the growth of Native American political activity) was greatly responsible for a general increase in litigation over Indian water rights. The decision concerned, in part, 5 Cong., Senate, report 100-47 pp. 5-6,; meeting of SLRIWA, April 6, 1991; San Luis Rey Indian Water Rights Settlement Act, Pub.L. #100-675, 102 Stat. 4000 (1988). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 489 the rights of five Indian reservations in Arizona and California (Chemehuevi, Cocopah, Fort Yuma, Colorado River, and Fort Mohave) to Colorado River water. Justice Black argued that "the only feasible and fair way by which reserved water for the reservations can be measured is irrigable acreage," a measure now known as "practicably irrigable acreage." This decision has replaced the previously open-ended approach to the quantification of the water right. Arizona, v California was the most significant court decision on Indian water rights after Winters. Besides establishing the policy of permanently quantifying the water right, it also expanded the allowable water use to non-agricultural activities (although the water quantity would still be based on the actual or potential irrigation use).6 Despite the favorable resolution in the San Luis Rey River case, as well as others involving Native Americans in the West, there has been little change in living conditions or economic opportunities on reservations. There are several reasons for this, including years of economic underdevelopment and geographical isolation. Recent successes in operating gambling casinos in San 6 Arizona v California, 373 U.S., 83 S. Ct. 1468, 10 L. Ed. 2d 542. For discussions of the decision and its repercussions (which extend beyond Indian water rights), see Burton, American Indian Water Rights; Norris J. Hundley, Jr., The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s-1990s (Berkeley: University of California, 1992), Chap. 6. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 490 Diego County and elsewhere reflect the dearth of options available to tribal governments and reservation residents, especially on reservations even more lacking in natural resources than those in the San Luis Rey valley.7 Another important obstacle is the limited amount of water in the arid and semi-arid regions of the West, which include San Diego County. The San Luis Rey River settlement dispenses water that oftentimes does not exist, due to intermittent droughts and oversubscription of water resources— "paper water" as opposed to real, "wet water." The lack of "wet water" demonstrates that not only have water use policies been environmentally unsustain able, but that the loss of land and its resources has placed Native Californians and all Native Americans at an historical disadvantage. White Americans, such as the residents of Escondido, enjoyed many years of prosperity precisely because of the fertile land they occupied and the water they stole from the native people living in the San Luis Rey River watershed. They also benefitted from large infusions of capital at crucial moments in their history. The San Luis Rey River settlement of thirty million dollars and "paper water" is insufficient to 7 For an overview of Indian gaming, using two non-California Indian reservations as examples, see Sioux Harvey, "Two Models to Sovereignty: A Comparative History of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Navajo Nation," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 20 (1996), 147-194. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. propel the reservations to development and individual a similar level of economic opportunity. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 492 CONCLUSION White supremacy developed along two paths in the United States. One was the route of labor exploitation. Very early in American history, in both the English colonies of the Atlantic coast and the Spanish colonies in what is now the Southwest, during the seventeenth century indigenous peoples were enslaved or performed labor under some form of coercion. Additionally, in the British colonies, British colonists and African captives were also coerced laborers, more numerous than the Indians but often working under similar conditions. Unlike British and African workers, though, Indians had something that British colonists wanted even more than their labor— their land. This was the second pathway of white supremacy. By the time Americans were moving to southern California in significant numbers, in the mid- to late- nineteenth century, white racial supremacy was deeply embedded into every interaction, whether social, economic, political, or legal. But the work of implanting white American dominance whenever white settlers moved to new locations still had to be done. This was not merely a question of importing racial ideology or practices. It often involved adapting to local conditions and modifying previously held beliefs. It was heavily influenced by the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 493 "macro" level of federal, state, and local laws and • politics, but only in conjunction with actions and choices of individual settlers at the "micro" level. This study looks concretely at the methods by which whites in California— mainly Americans but also Californios— reproduced their dominance in a new location. It examines the interaction between land expropriation and labor exploitation over the course of 12 5 years. White Americans asserted their dominance based primarily on existing relations with Native Americans in other parts of the country and on the relations established by Spanish and Mexican settlers who had preceded them in California. These relations were clearly based on territorial conquest and land expropriation, as well as coerced labor. Therefore they cannot be explained exclusively by the model of racial dominance, slavery, developed in the eastern part of the United States. The Spanish missionaries and Californio rancheros in the region implanted white dominance mainly through labor exploitation. The missions and ranchos did displace many Native Californians, but in the region nominally controlled by Mission San Luis Rey, community disruption occurred more through new forms of labor both imposed on and adopted by the Luiseno, and through the impact of disease and environmental changes. The rancheros, while Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 494 occupying and taking legal title to much indigenous land, were more interested in their labor than in pushing them off of their land. This had important repercussions in later years as more whites moved to the region. Native Californians were the main target of land expropriation in the region even though Californios also lost land after California became part of the United States. This was true, in large part, because the indigenous population in northern San Diego County was more numerous and had retained more of the villages and territorial claims than had Native Californians anywhere else in the state. White settlers in the 1860s and later demanded land, and much of the best lands were where Native Californians had their homes and farms. White settlers had to confront Native Californians directly in order to push them off their lands and gain legal title. The expropriation of indigenous land in northern San Diego County was reminiscent of the expulsion of the Cherokee from Georgia (this being just the most famous example): in both cases, Native Americans who had become farmers were displaced by American farmers, whose land acquisition was often made possible by the very laws that were supposed to make "primitive" Indians into farmers. White American settlers also inherited a racialized class hierarchy already established under the Spanish and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 495 Mexicans: "indios" (Indians) were at the bottom, and "gente de razon" (Christians), or "blancos" (whites) were at the top. The former performed the manual labor that sustained the missions and then the ranchos. When some American men moved to the region during the Mexican period, they assimilated into the white society of the time, joining Juan Bandini, Pio Pico, and other Californios as the landed elite. Native Californians, meanwhile, mounted numerous efforts to overthrow or ameliorate white dominance, starting in the mission period. Armed revolts, work stoppages, legal suits and organizing white support were all tried. They were able to maintain some measure of political and territorial autonomy as long as their population was larger than that of the Americans, but as time went on, their victories were fewer and more temporary. As more American settlers moved into the region in the 1870s and 1880s, they encountered these prior conditions: indigenous people still occupying much of the desireable farming land, and an integrated Californio- American society of large land holders. New white settlers in southern California could take advantage of state and federal laws and practices already in place that helped them gain the upper hand in the region. During the influx Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 496 of white Americans into Northern California in the 1850s and 1860s, the state government favored American property owners over Californios. Federal land laws encouraged white settlers to move onto land, even if it was not yet classified as "public,1 1 and so open for settlement. The expulsions of the Temecula Luiseno and the San Pasqual Kumeyaay in the mid-1870s illustrate the different methods white Americans used to take indigenous land, and the example of the settlers in San Pasqual demonstrates the financial benefits of land expropriation. The settlers of the 1860s and 1870s had as their goal acquiring indigenous land. They were not much interested in indigenous labor. They had opposite interests to the mission priests and the rancheros, who needed Native Californian labor, and so had no interest in displacing their communities. The new focus on land expropriation accelerated in the 1870s and 1880s, as more and more white Americans moved to the region, intent on acquiring small pieces of land. These different interests between the family farmers and the rancheros created a split in the old white, Californio-American alliance. Yet there was one thing both groups had in common: they had dominated Native Californians through direct relations with them. Rancheros, in addition to occupying their land, had been employers and judges of local Indians, and squatters and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 497 homesteaders had faced off against the indigenous people whose land they were taking. The final stage of land expropriation and evolution of white supremacy covered in this dissertation resulted in the modern form of relations between whites and Indians. As shown in the discussion of the settlement of Escondido and its expropriation of water from the San Luis Rey River, this form of white supremacy rests on the distancing of whites from Indians, both geographically and through the intercession of local and federal bureaucra cies. Escondidans were not "pioneers," robbing Indians of their land, but rather modern Americans who dealt fairly with Native Californians, through contracts. The responsi bility for this "fair treatment" was assigned to the water company and the federal government. The squatting and homesteading settlers of communi ties like San Pasqual differed from the town-dwelling settlers in having had direct interactions with Native Californians. Yet both groups shared a common, invented heritage. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the indigenous population in decline and pushed to the geographic margins of white settlement, local settlers developed some feelings of remorse and sympathy for them, coupled with the certainty that they were doomed to disappear. But these local sentiments were Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 498 overwhelmed, by the new cultural trend or romanticizing the rancheros and missions. Even though the novel that precipitated the trend, Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona. was meant by its author to stir Americans1 sympathy for the dispossessed southern California Indians, whites were more interested in celebrating the elite "Spanish" Californios of the past than in trying to ameliorate the damage done to Native Californians. Local boosters, land investors, and railroad companies were especially responsible for using this new "Fantasy Heritage" to encourage tourism and new settlement. In this period, the late 1880s through 1920s (and beyond the chronological scope of this dissertation) , white Americans were creating the popular culture of white supremacy that is still current in California: The Indians had been noble but doomed, mistreated by our predecessors, but since they were disappearing, the most white Americans could do was to memorialize them. The Californios and Spanish priests became our aristocratic ancestors, white but exotic in their foreign ways. And poor Mexicans were not related to the old "Spanish" elite, being poorer and darker in skin color; they became part of the non-white, generally disreputable, working class. The legacy of land expropriation is with us today. Native Californians have only their tiny reservations as a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. land. base. Their land has already been portioned out to Americans, as has been most of their water. That some reservations have turned to casinos as the best way to generate income and capital, is a testament to how useless their reservation land has been in supporting a decent standard of living. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 500 BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES Archival Collections Escondido Historical Society (EHS), Escondido, California Fall Brook Historical Society and Museum of Fallbrook History, Fallbrook, California The Huntington Library, San Marino, California: The Cave Johnson Couts Collection (CT) Miscellaneous Huntington Manuscripts (HM) The Horatio N. Rust Papers (RU) The Abel Stearns Papers (SM) Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, RG 75: Records of the Indian Irrigation Service, Portland Area Office, National Archives and Record Service, Seattle, Washington (NARA Seattle) Records of the Mission Indian Agency,- the Mission Indian Superintendency, and the Pala Indian School, Laguna Niguel, California (NARA Laguna Niguel) San Diego History Society (SDHS)San Diego, California Braun Research Library, Southwest Museum, Charles F. Lummis Papers, Los Angeles, California Published and Unpublished Memoirs Bevington, Tamar Elizabeth Marshall. "As I Remember." San Diego Public Library, California Room, San Diego, California. Dana, Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast. New York: Airmont, 1965. Dobyns, Henry F. , ed. Hepah, California! The Journal of Cave Johnson Couts from Monterey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico to Los Angeles, California during the Years 1848-1849. Tucson: Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society, 1961. Fenton, Henry. "Boyhood Days." In San Pasqual: A Crack in the Hills, by Mary Rockwood Peet. Ramona, CA: Ballena, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 501 1973. Keiser, Mary. The Spirit of San Pasqual: A Guide to Scenic San Pasqual Valley. Self-published, 1987. Kelly, John. "Life on a San Diego County Ranch." HM 16782. Oak, Henry L. A Visit to the Missions of Southern California in February and March 1874. Ed Ruth Grey Axe, et al. Los Angeles: Southwest Museum, 1981. Peet, Mary Rockwood. San Pasqual: A Crack in the Hills. Ramona, CA: Ballena, 1973. Roberts, Elizabeth Judson. "Days of Yore." 1948. SDHS. . "Indian History." In San Pasqual: A Crack in the Hills, by Mary Rockwood Peet. Ramona, CA: Ballena, 1973. Tac, Pablo. Indian Life and Customs at Mission San Louis Rey. Ed. and Trans. Minna Hewes and Gordon Hewes. Mission San Louis Rey, n.d. First published in The Americas,, a Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History (July 1952) . Wolcott, Marjorie Tisdale, ed. Pioneer Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes. Los Angeles: privately printed, 1929. City and County Directories Escondido City Directories, 1904-1911. SDHS. Escondido Classified Business Directory. 1903. SDHS. Maxwell’s Directory of San Diego City and County, 1887- 1888. SDHS. San Diego County Directory, 1895. SDHS. Periodicals Escondido Times-Advocate Los Angeles Examiner Los Angeles Times Out West San Diego Herald San Diego Union Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 502 San Diego Evening Tribune Government Documents Jackson, Helen Hunt, and Abbott Kinney. Report on the Condition and Needs of the Mission Indians, 1883. In Reports of Committees of the Senate, 48th Cong. , 2d sess. and special sess., 1885. Reprinted in Heizer, ed. Federal Concerns. "Report of Charles A. Wetmore, Special U.S. Commissioner of Mission Indians of Southern California." Washington, D.C., 1875. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Eighth Census. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1864. Ninth Census. 1872. Tenth Census. 1882. Twelfth Census. 1901. Thirteenth Census. 1913. Fourteenth Census. 1922. Fifteenth Census. 193 3. Warner, J.J. "Minority Report of the Special Committee of the California Senate," Senate Journal, 3d sess., 1852. Reprinted in Treaty Making and Treaty Rejection. Ed. Anderson, Ellison, and Heizer. SECONDARY SOURCES Books Acuna, Rudolfo. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 3d ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1988. Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. Almaguer, Tomds. Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. Berkeley: University of California, 1994. Anderson, George E., W.H. Ellison, and Robert F. Heizer, eds. Treaty Making and Treaty Rejection by the Federal Government in California, 1850-1852. Socorro, NM: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 503 Ballena, 1978. Anthias, Floya, and Nira Yuval-Davis. Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle. London: Routledge, 1992. Aptheker, Herbert. Anti-Racism in United States History: The First 200 Years. New York: Greenwood, 1992. Armitage, Susan, and Elizabeth Jameson, eds. The Women's West. Norman: University of Oklahomoa, 1987. Bahr, Diana Meyers. From Mission to Metropolis: Cupeho Women in Los Angeles. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1993. Bancroft, Hubert Howe. California Pastoral, 1769-1848. Vol. 34 of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. San Francisco: The History Company, 1888. . History of California. 1 volumes. San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft, and The History Company, 1884-1888. . Register of Pioneer Inhabitants of California 1542- 1848. Comp, from Vols. 2-5 of History of California. Ed. Glen Dawson and Muir Dawson. Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 19 64. Barrera, Mario. Race and Class in the Southwest: A Theory of Racial Inequality. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1979. Bean, Walton. California: An Interpretive History. 2d ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973. Billington, Ray Allen. The Far Western Frontier 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Row, 1956. Bingham, Edwin R. Charles F. Lummis: Editor of the Southwest. San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1955. Black, Esther Boulton. Rancho Cucamonga and Dona Merced. Redlands', CA: San Bernardino County Museum, 1975. Blackburn, Thomas C., and Kat Anderson, eds. Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena, 1993. Blumin, Stuart M. The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 504 Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1989. Brackett, R.W. A History of the Ranchos of San Diego County, California. San Diego: Union Title Insurance and Trust, 1939. Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Bullard, Robert D., J. Eugene Grigsby III, and Charles Lee, eds. Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy. Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, 1994. Burton, Lloyd. American Indian Water Rights and the Limits of Law. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991. Camarillo, Albert. Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1979. Carrico, Richard L. Strangers in a Stolen Land: American Indians in San Diego, 1850-1880. Sacramento: Sierra Oaks, 1987. Caughey, John W. California, A Remarkable State's Life History. 3d ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970. Caughey, John Walton, ed. The Indians of Southern California in 1852. By B.D. Wilson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1995. Champagne, Duane. Native America: Portrait of the Peoples. Detroit: Invisible Ink, 1994. Churchill, Ward. Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expropriation in Contemporary North America. Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1993 . Cleland, Robert Glass. The Cattle on a Thousand Hills: Southern California, 1850-1870. San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1941. Coggins, George Cameron, and Charles F. Wilkinson. Federal Public Land and Resources Law. Mineola, NY: Foundation, 1981. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 505 Cohen, Felix. Handbook of Federal Indian Law. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1942. Cook, Sherburne. The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization. Berkeley: University of California, 1976. Cortes, Carlos E. , ed. Mexican California. New York: Arno, 1976. Costo, Rupert, and Jeannette Henry Costo. Natives of the Golden State: The California Indians. San Francisco: Indian Historian, 1995. Couro, Ted. San Diego County Indians as Farmers and Wage Earners. Ramona, CA: Ramona Pioneer Historical Society, 1975. Cowan, Robert G. Ranchos of California: A List of Spanish Concessions 1775-1822 and Mexican Grants 1822-1846. Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1956. Davis, Carlyle Channing, and William A. Alderson. The True Story of "Ramona": Its Facts and Fictions, Inspirations and Purpose. New York: Dodge Publishing, 1914. Deloria, Vine, Jr. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence. New York: Dell, 1974. Denoon, Donald. Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere. London: Oxford University, 1983. . South Africa Since 1800. New York: Praeger, 1973. Deverell, William. Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad 1850-1910. Berkeley: University of California, 1994. Dockstader, Frederick J. Great North American Indians: Profiles in Life and Leadership. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977. Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860- 1880. Ed. August Meier. New York: Atheneum, 1979. Dumke, Glenn S. The Boom of the Eighties in Southern Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 506 California. San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1944. Elliott, Wallace W. History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties with Illustrations. 1883. Reproduced and Introduced by Harry W. Lawton. Riverside, CA: Riverside Museum, 1965. Ellison, W.H., and Robert F. Heizer, eds. Treaty Making and Treaty Rejection by the Federal Government in California, 1850-1852. Socorro, NM: Ballena, 1978. Engelhardt, Fr. Zephyrin. San Luis Rey Mission. San Francisco: James H. Barry, 1921. Finkelstein, Norman G., and Ruth Bettina Birn. A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. New York: Holt, 1998. Fleming, Robert E. Charles F. Lummis. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 1981. Forbes, Jack. Native Americans of California and Nevada. Rev. ed. Happy Camp, CA: Naturegraph, 1982. Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993. Franklin, Raymond S. Shadows of Race and Class. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1991. Fredrickson, George. The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1988. . White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History. Oxford: Oxford University, 1981. Gates, Paul W. , ed. California Ranchos and Farms 1846- 1862. Including the Letters of John Quincy Adams Warren of 1861, Being Largely Devoted to Livestock, Wheat Farming, Fruit Raising, and the Wine Industry. Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1967. . Land and Law in California: Essays on Land Policies. Ames: Iowa State University, 1991. . History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 507 D.C.: Public Land Law Review Commission, 1968. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Random House, 1996. Gregory, Steven, and Roger Sanjek, eds. Race. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 1996. Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850-1890: A Social History. Berkeley: University of California, 1979. . The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1990. Gutierrez, Ramon. When Jesus Came,, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. Stanford: Stanford University, 1991. Gutman, Herbert G. Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America. New York: Random House, 1976. Haas, Lisbeth. Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769—193 6. Berkeley: University of California, 1995. Hamer, David. New Towns in the New World: Images and Perceptions of the Nineteenth Century Urban Frontier. New York: Columbia University, 1990. Handlin, Oscar. Boston's Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1941. Hanna, P.T., ed. Chinigchinich, a revised and annotated version of Alfred Robinson's translation of Father Geronimo Boscana' s Historical Account of the beliefs, usages, customs and extravagancies of the Indians of the Mission of San Juan Capistrano called the Acagchemen tribe. Santa Ana, CA: Fine Arts, 1933. Heizer, Robert F., ed. California. Vol. 8 of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1978. . The Destruction of California Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1974. . Federal Concern about Conditions of California Indians 1853-1913: Eight Documents. Socorro, NM: Ballena, 1979. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 508 Heizer, R.F., and. M.A. Whipple, eds. The California Indians: A Source Book. 2d ed. Berkeley: University of California, 1971. Heizer, Robert F. , and Alan <J. Almquist, eds. The Other Californians: Prejudice and Discrimination under Spain, Mexico, and the United States to 1920. Berkeley: University of California, 1971. Horsman, Reginald. Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783-1812. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1992, 1967. . Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1981. Hoxie, Frederick E., ed. Indians in American History. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1988. Hudson, Tom. Three Paths along a River: The Heritage of the Land of the San Luis Rey. Palm Desert, CA: Desert- Southwest Publishers, 19 64. Hundley, Norris, Jr. The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s-1990s. Berkeley: University of California, 1992. Hunt, Lynn, ed. The New Cultural History. Berkeley: University of California, 1989. Hurt, Douglas A. Indian Agriculture in America, Prehistory to the Present. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987 . Hurtado, Albert L. Indian Survival on the California Frontier. New Haven: Yale University, 1988. Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge, 1995. Jackson, Helen Hunt. The Annotated Ramona. Intro, and annot. Antoinette May. San Carlos, CA: Wide World Publishing/Tetra, 1989. . Glimpses of California and the Missions. Boston: Little, Brown, 1923. . Ramona. New York: Avon, 1970. Jackson, Robert H. , and Edward Castillo. Indians, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 509 Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1995. Jacobs, Wilbur R. Dispossessing the American Indian: Indians and Whites on the Colonial Frontier. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1985. Jaimes, M. Annette, ed. The State of Native America: Genocide,. Colonization, and Resistance. Boston: South End, 1992. Johnson, Kenneth M. K-344 or the Indians of California vs the United States. Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1966. Josephy, Alvin M-. , Jr. Now That the Buffalo's Gone: A Study of Today's American Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1982. , ed. America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus. New York: Knopf, 1992. Kain, Roger J.P. and Elizabeth Baigen. The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992. Kehoe, Alice B. North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account. 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992. Knack, Martha C., and Omer C. Stuart. As Long as the River Shall Run: An Ethnohistory of Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. Berkeley: University of California, 1984. Kousser, J. Morgan, and James M. McPherson, eds. Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward. New York: Oxford University, 1982. Kroeber, Alfred L. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bulletin 78. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1925. Kvasnicka, Robert M. and Herman J. Viola, eds. The Commissioners of Indian Affairs, 1824-1977. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1979. Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: Norton, 1987. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 510 Littlefield, Alice, and Martha C. Knack, eds. Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1996. Mathes, Valerie Sherer. Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy. Austin: University of Texas, 1990. McCool, Daniel. Command of the Waters: Iron Triangles, Federal Water Development, and Indian Water. Tucson: University of Arizona, 1994. McDonnell, Janet A. The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1991. McGrew, Alan B. Hidden Valley Heritage: Escondido's First 100 Years, 1888-1988. Escondido: Blue-Ribbon Centennial History Commission, 1988. McWilliams, Carey. Southern California: An Island on the Land. 1946. Reprint, Salt Lake City: Gibbs-Smith, 1973. Mexicans in California after the Conquest. Intro. Carlos Cortes. 1976. Miles, Robert. Racism after "Race Relations". London: Routledge, 1993. Milner, Clyde A. , II, ed. Major Problems in the History of the American West. Lexington, MA: Heath, 1989. Milner, Clyde A., Carol A. O'Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds. The Oxford History of the American West. New York: Oxford University. 1994. Monroy, Douglas. Thrown among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Berkeley: University of California, 1990. Montejano, David. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986. Austin: University of Texas, 1987. Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: Norton, 1975. Mosley, Paul. The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia 1900- 1963. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1983. Nash, Gary B. Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 511 America. 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982. . Race, Class, and Politics: Essays on American Colonial and Revolutionary Society. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1986. Nash, Gary B. et al. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society. 2d ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1990. Nelson, Paula M. After the West Was Won: Homesteaders and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900-1917. Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1986. Nordhoff, Charles. California: For Health, Pleasure, and Residence. A Book for Travellers and Settlers. 1873. Reprint, Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1974 Oliver, Melvin L. and Thomas M. Shapiro. Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge, 1995. Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2d ed. New York: Routledge, 1994. O'Neal, Lulu R. The History of Ramona, California and Environs. Ramona, CA: Ballena, 1975. Opie, John. The Law of the Land: Two Hundred Years of American Farmland Policy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1994. Osio, Antonio Maria. The History of Alta California: A Memoir of Mexican California. Trans, and ed. Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1996. Phillips, George Harwood. Chiefs and Challengers: Indian Resistance and Cooperation in Southern California. Berkeley: University of California, 1975. . Indians and Indian Agents: The Origins of the Resexrvation System in California, 1849-1852. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1997. Pisani, Donald J. From Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850— 1931. Berkeley: University of California, 1984. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 512 . To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy 1848-1902. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1992. Pitt, Leonard. The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890. Berkeley: University of California, 1966. Pomeroy, Earl. The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1965. Pourade, Richard F. The Glory Years: The Booms and Busts in the Land of the Sundown Sea. San Diego: Union- Tribune Publishing, 1964. . The Silver Dons . . . and the Pioneers Who Overwhelmed California. San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1963. Pourade, Richard F., ed., and Cecil C. Moyer. Historic Ranchos of San Diego. San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1969. Price, Edward T. Dividing the Land: Early American Beginnings of Our Private Property Mosaic. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992. Prucha, Francis Paul. Documents of United States Indian Policy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1975. . The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Vols. I and II. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1984. Pryde, Phillip. San Diego: An Introduction to the Region. Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt, 1992. Pyne, Stephen. Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire. Princeton: Princeton University, 1982. Rawls, James J. Indians of California: The Changing Image. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1984. Riley, Glenda. Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1825- 1915. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1984. Robbins, William G. Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West. Lawrence: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 513 University Press of Kansas, 1994. Robinson, W.W. Land in California: The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads. Berkeley: University of California, 1948. Roediger, David R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London: Verso, 1991. Rosaldo, Renato. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon, 1993. Ross, Steven J. Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America. Princeton: Princeton University, 1998. Ryan, Frances and Lewis Ryan. Early Days in Escondido. Escondido: self-published, 1970. . Yesterdays in Escondido. Escondido: self-published, 1973 . Ryan, Mary P. Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1981. Sakai, J. Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat. 3d ed. Chicago: Morningstar, 1989. Sanchez, Rosaura. Telling Identitites: The Californio Testimonios. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1995. Saxton, Alexander. The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California. Berkeley: University of California, 1971. . The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. London: Verso, 1990. Shandley, Robert R., ed., and Jeremiah Riemer, trans. Unwilling Germans: The Goldhagen Debate. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1998. Shepard's Citations. Digest of Public Land Laws. Washington, D.C.: Public Land Law Review Commission, 1968. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 514 Shipek, Florence Connolly. Pushed into the Rocks: Southern California Land Tenure, 1769-1986. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1987. Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1985. Solomos, John, and Les Back. Racism and Society. New York: St. Martin's, 1996. Starr, Kevin. Americans and the California Dream 1850- 1915. New York: Oxford University, 1973. . Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era. New York: Oxford University, 1985. Stasiulis, Daiva, and Nira Yuval-Davis, eds. Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class. London: Sage, 1995. Strong, William Duncan. Aboriginal Society in Southern California. Banning, CA: Malki Museum, 1972. First published in UC Publications 26 (1929) . Takaki, Ronald. Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th- Century America. New York: Oxford University, 1990. Thernstrom, Stephan. Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century City. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1964. Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1987. Usner, Daniel H. , Jr. Indians, Settlers and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1992. van den Berghe, Pierre L. Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective. 2d ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978. . South Africa: A Study in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California, 1970. Van Kirk, Sylvia. Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1987. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 515 Vanneman, Reeve, and Lynn Weber Cannon. The American Perception of Class. Philadelphia: Temple University, 1987. Viola, Herman J. Diplomats in Buckskin: A History of Indian Delegations in Washington City. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1981. Vitorio, Francisco de. Francisci de Victoria de Indis et De Jure Belli Relectiones. Trans. John Pawley Bate. Ed. Ernest Nyes. 1917. Reprint, Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana, 1964. Waldman, Carl. Who Was Who in Native American History: Indians and Non-Indians from Early Contacts through 1900. New York: Facts on File, 1990. Washburn, Wilcomb E. Red Man's Land, White Man's Law: The Past and Present Status of the American Indian. 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1994. Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier 1821-1846: The American Southwest under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1982. . Myth and History of the Hispanic Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1988. . The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University, 1992. Wellman, David T. Portraits of White Racism. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University, 1993. White, Richard. "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1991. White, Richard, and Patricia Nelson Limerick. The Frontier in American Culture. Ed. James R. Grossman. Chicago: The Newberry Library, and Berkeley: University of California, 1994. Wiel, Samuel C. Water Rights in the Western States. 3d ed. San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney, 1911. Wilkinson, Charles F. American Indians, Time, and the Law. New Haven: Yale University, 1987. Williams, Vernon J. , Jr. Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 516 His Contemporaries. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1996. Wilson, Carter A. Racism: From Slavery to Advanced Capitalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996. Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York: Oxford University, 1985. Essays, Articles, and Papers Anderson, Kat. "From Burns to Baskets." News from Native California 6 (Spring 1992) . Anderson, M. Kat, Michael G. Barbour, and Valerie Whitworth. "A World of Balance and Plenty: Land, Plants, Animals and Humans in Pre-European California." California History 75 (Summer and Fall, 1997) . Barfield, Chet. "Tribe's Trek Honors Uprooted Ancestors" San Diego Dnion-Tribune, 7 May 1993. Bean, Lowell John, and Florence C. Shipek. "Luiseno." In California, ed. Robert F. Heizer. Vol. 8 of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1978. Carlton, Robert L. "Blacks in San Diego County: A Social Profile, 1850-1880." Journal of San Diego History 21 (Fall 1975). Carr, J.C. "Among the Basket Makers." California Illustrated Magazine (October 1892). Carrico, Richard L. "Wolf Kalisher: Immigrant, Pioneer Merchant and Indian Advocate." Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 15 (January 1983). Carrico, Richard L., and Florence C. Shipek. "Indian Labor in San Diego County, California, 1850-1900." in Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives, edited by Alice Littlefield and Martha C. Knack. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1996. Cook, Sherburne F. "Historical Demography." In California. Dellwo, Robert D. "Indian Water Rights— the Winters Doctrine Updated." Gonzaga Law Review 6 (Spring 1971). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 517 Depew, Myron V. "Valle de San Jose: Cupeno History Tells of Aid Given General." San Diego Sun ca. 6 June 193 3. Dobyns, Henry F. "More Methodological Perspectives on Historical Demography." Ethnohlstory 8 (Summer 1989). DuBois, Constance. "The Religion of the Luiseno Indians of Southern California." University of California Publica tions in American Archaeology and Ethnology 8:3 (1908). Fields, Barbara Jeanne. "Ideology and Race in American History." In Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, edited by J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson. New York: Oxford University, 1982. Fitzgerald, Michael W. "The Ku Klux Klan: Property Crime and the Plantation System in Reconstruction Alabama." Agricultural History 71 (Spring 1997): 186-2 06. Fredrickson, George M. "Social Origins of American Racism." In The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1988. Garcia, Mario T. "Merchants and Dons: San Diego's Attempt at Modernization, 1850-1860." Journal of San Diego History 21 (Summer 1975) . Gifford, Edward W. "Clans and Moieties in Southern California." University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 14 (1918). Griswold del Castillo, Richard. "The del Valle Family and the Fantasy Heritage." California History 59 (Spring 1980) . Harrington, John P. "A New Original Version of Boscana1s Historical Account of the San Juan Capistrano Indians of Southern California." Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 92:4 (1934). Harris, Cheryl. "Whiteness as Property." Harvard Law Review 106 (June 1993). Harvey, Sioux. "Two Models to Sovereignty: A Comparative History of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Navajo Nation." American Indian Culture and Research Journal 20 (1996). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 518 Hicks, Joe R. "The Great Divide: America and the Race Dialogue." L.A. Weekly Supplement. Fall 1997: 8. Hitchens, Christopher. "History for Fools." The Nation, 9 June, 1997. "How Oranges are Prepared for Market.1 1 West Coast Magazine 10 (June 1911). Hughes, Charles. "The Decline of the Californios: The Case of San Diego, 1846-1856." Journal of San Diego History 21 (Summer 1975). Hundley, Norris, Jr. "The Dark and Bloody Ground of Indian Water Rights: Confusion Elevated to Principle." Western Historical Quarterly 9 (October 1978). . "The ‘Winters' Decision and Indian Water Rights: A Mystery Reexamined." Western Historical Quarterly 13 (January 1982) . Jones, William Carey. "Report of the Subject of Land Titles in California" (1850). In Mexican California, ed. Carlos E. Cortes. New York: Arno, 1976. Kazin, Michael, and Steven J. Ross. "America's Labor Day: The Dilemma of a Workers' Celebration." Journal of American History 78 (March 1992). Kelly, Catherine E. "'The Consummation of Rural Prosperity and Happiness' : New England Agricultural Fairs and the Construction of Class and Gender, 1810-1860." American Quarterly 49 (September 1997). Kroeber, Alfred L. "The Luiseno Theory of Knowledge." American Anthropologist 59 (1957). Lockhart, James. "Social Organization and Social Change in Colonial Spanish America." In The Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell, Vol. 2. Lummis, Charles F. "The Exiles of Cupa." Out West 16 (April 1903). Margolin, Malcolm. "The Cupeno Expulsion of 1903." News from Native California 5 (May/June/July 1991) . McCown, B.E. "Temeku: A Page from the History of the Luiseno Indians." Papers of the Archaeological Survey Association of Southern California 3 (1955). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 519 Nabokov, Peter, with Dean Snow. "Farmers of the Woodlands." In America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus, ed. Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. New York: Knopf, 1992. Nash, Gary B. "The Social Development of Colonial America." In Race, Class, and Politics: Essays on American Colonial and Revolutionary Society. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1986. "The Old Warner Ranch." The Southern California Rancher, November 1941. Ortiz, Bev., ed. "California Basketweavers Gathering June 28-30, 1991." News from Native California 6 (Winter 1991/92) . Pisani, Donald J. "Irrigation, Water Rights, and the Betrayal of Allotment." Environmental Review 10 (Fall 1986) . "Portola Rides Again." Westways (October 1948). "Progress Reports from the 1993 Gathering." California Indian Basketweavers Association (September 1993) . Ryan, Mary. "The American Parade: Representation of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order." In The New Cultural History, edited by Lynn Hunt. Berkeley: University of California, 1989. Shipek, Florence C. "Documents of San Diego History: A Unique Case: Temecula Indians vs. Holman and Seaman." Journal of San Diego History 50 (Spring 1969) . Shurts, John. "The Work of Winters: The Local Context of the Winters Case and a Post-Winters Case Study from the Uintah Reservation." Paper presented at the annual conference of the Western History Association, Denver, 11-14 October 1995. Smith, Gordon. "The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall of Warner Hot Springs." San Diego Reader, 15 April 1982. Smith, Sherry L. "Beyond Princess and Squaw: Army Officers1 Perceptions of Indian Women." In The Women's West, ed. Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1987. Sparkman, Philip Stedman. "The Culture of the Luiseno Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 520 Indians." University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 8:4 (1908). Sutton, Imre. "Private Property in Land among Reservation Indians in Southern California. In Association of Pacific Coast Geographers Handbook, ed. John F. Gaines. Corvallis: Oregon State University, 1967. Tamez, Sonia. "Putting Promise into Practice: California Indians and the Forest Service." Paper presented at the Ninth California Indian Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, October 1993. Tobey, Ronald, and Charles Wetherell. "The Citrus Industry and the Revolution of Corporate Capitalism in Southern California, 1887-1944." California History 74 (Spring 1995) . Waldstreicher, David. "Rites of Rebellion, Rites of Assent: Celebrations, Print Culture, and the Origins of American Nationalism.1 1 Journal of American History 82 (June 1995). Whetstone, Marjorie L. "The Escondido Story." San Diego Historical Society Quarterly 4 (July 1963) . White, Raymond. "Luiseno Social Organization." University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 48:2 (1962). Wilkinson, Charles. "Indian Tribes and the American Constitution." In Indians in American History, ed. Frederick E. Hoxie. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1988. Wolcott, Marjorie T. "The House Near Frog Pond." Westways (December 1928). Worster, Donald. "Irrigation and Democracy in California: The Early Promise." The Pacific Historian 27 (Spring 1983) . Theses and Dissertations Avina, Rose H. "Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in California." Master's thesis, University of California, 1932. Reprint ed. San Francisco: Research Associates, 1973 . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 521 Maggiano, Ron. "Verlaque's Two Acres: Theophile Verlaque and the Founding of Ramona.1 1 Master's thesis, University of San Diego, 1990. Shipek, Florence C. "A Strategy for Change: The Luiseno of Southern California.1 1 Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii, 1977. Shurts, John. "The Winters Doctrine: Origin and Develop ment of the Indian Reserved Water Rights Doctrine in Its Social and Legal Context, 1880s-1930s. Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon, 1997. Sutton, Imre. "Land Tenure and Changing Occupance on Indian Reservations in Southern California." Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1964. Unpublished Manuscripts Dyson, Verne. "California's Romantic Ranchos: The History, Stories and Legends of the Old Estates and Haciendas, with a Roll of the Rancheros, a Complete List of the Land Grants, the Biographies of the Famous Men and Women— Spanish, Mexican and American." 1913-1962. HM 26404, Box 1. Pamphlets "Pala Indian Reservation." Cupa Cultural Center, Pala Indian Reservation. "Mission San Antonio de Pala." Mission San Antonio de Pala, Pala Indian Reservation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (Q A -3 ) A ✓ 1 . 0 l.l “ in i n is («j !i IM 2.2 2 . 0 1 .8 1.25 14 1 . 6 150mm IIW IG E .In c 1653 East Main Street Rochester, NY 14609 USA Phone: 716/482-0300 Fax: 716/288-5989 ©1993, Applied Image, Inc., Ail Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Applications of abstract data types: The Trio operating system.

PDF

A randomized controlled trial of provider independent interventions to increase mammography screening among HMO members who are overdue for a mammogram

PDF

Chicanismo in selected poetry from the Chicano movement, 1969-1972: A rhetorical study

PDF

Advanced techniques for treatment of the large scale configuration interaction problem.

PDF

Be vigorous but not brutal: race, politics, and police in Los Angeles, 1937-1945

PDF

Canaries in the coal mine: Perceptions of threat and media system dependency relations.

PDF

Aspirations For Career Advancement In Public Organizations: The Case Of South Korean Bureaucracy.

PDF

Auroville: Problems in language communication. Is Suggestopedia the solution?

PDF

Correlates of children's responses to an affective television and print package designed to reduce sex-role stereotyping

PDF

Clouds of witnesses: A rhetorical analysis of narrated witness in the Gospels.

PDF

Between quest and conquest: Elizabethan romances of Ireland and the New World

PDF

Cognitive predictors of intention -behavior consistency in safer sex practices

PDF

An investigation into the regional segmentation of the commercial real estate market in the United States

PDF

City subjects: Shoplifters, bag ladies, and other figures of urban transgression in contemporary literature and film.

PDF

Clint Eastwood: An ideological study of his films, star image, and popularity

PDF

An ethnography of the macho /loca relationship

PDF

Biological and biochemical determinants of the cytotoxic potency of the thymidylate synthase inhibitor Tomudex (ZD1694) in colorectal cancer.

PDF

A working theory of film genre

PDF

A descriptive study of the dramatic function and significance of the clown during Hopi Indian public ceremony

PDF

Astrocyte regulation of endothelial haemostasis function via transforming growth factor-beta

Asset Metadata

Creator Rader, Emily L (author)

Core Title "So we only took 120 acres": Land, labor and white supremacy in the settlement of southern California, 1800-1925

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American studies,history, United States,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Ross, Steven (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Williams, Walter (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-423493

Unique identifier UC11350357

Identifier 9931884.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-423493 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 9931884.pdf

Dmrecord 423493

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Rader, Emily L.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA