Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 1 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 9

CHAPTER V

The unexplored interior, or that central portion that was at all known to the Californians, was named the Tulares, or the Tulare country, because of the immense tule swamps formed in the depression or slough between Tulare Lake and the great bend of the San Joaquin, and above it by the Kern and other small bodies of water from the streams from the Sierras on the east and south. This slough carried the surplus waters of lake and upper part of valley off into the rivers in flood seasons. The valley was dry under foot in summer and autumn seasons and in drouth periods. Around the lakes and sloughs for miles, along almost the full length of the San Joaquin and the lower half of the Sacramento and over a large territory of low ground about their mouths, extensive tule covered swamp lands formed, salty where affected by ocean tides but fresh or brackish where not.

The tule swamps, apparently one immense tract to the eye, were at intervals visited by the Spaniards and the Californians in pursuit of deserting Indians, and horse and cattle thieves. That region now embraced in Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties was inhabited by a warlike band of horse riding Indians, who not infrequently descended upon missions and ranches to run off stock and particularly mustangs, the Indian having a great fondness for horseflesh as an article of diet. The renegades piloted their wilder brothers on the forays and raids. These Tulareans were never subdued by the Spaniards, and the Tulares became in time a rendezvous for the runaway neophytes of the missions. They were also resorted to by horse thieves from New Mexico and elsewhere, and by Spanish and American adventurers to buy horses. John C. Fremont, concerning whom Senator Nesmith of Oregon once said that he had the credit with some people of having found everything west of the Rockies, had no moral scruples on his 1846 expedition to buy 187 horses from these Tulareans, despite the warning of John A. Sutter that he would receive stolen animals. A hunting knife and a handful of beads bought a horse.

Many were the expeditions sent to the Tulares. The first of which there is record was in 1773, when Pedro Fages with a few soldiers sallied out from San Luis Obispo across the Coast Range to the vicinity of Tulare Lake in pursuit of runaways. He was the first white man to look upon the great interior valley.

This Fages was a brave soldier, an undaunted explorer, a pioneer of pioneers and a gallant and picturesque figure of early California, who as a subaltern was prominent and foremost in the first land explorations of California as well as of the bay of San Francisco with Portola. He was California's first comandante of the military (1769-1773). He quarreled with Father President Serra, who had him deposed, but later retracted his accusations as unmerited. He was the fourth governor (1782-1790) and during his regime the wife's accusations and actions involved him in a juicy scandal agitating Monterey social circles from center to circumference. The end all was to prove that Fages was more sinned against than sinning, and the donna a woman, whose tact and discretion left much to be desired. In his retirement days, Fages was never out but he was followed by a band of children, attracted by the candies that he stuffed his pockets with for distribution among them.

The Tulares as the refuge of outlaws and evildoers was not infrequently the scene of conflicts with them. In 1805 a small military party was sent out from Mission San Jose to punish gentiles (Indians that were never affiliated with mission) who had attacked a missionary who had gone on an errand of mercy to their rancheria, and one of whose attendants had been killed. This party pursued the malcontents as far as the San Joaquin River, recovering thirty or forty runaways and capturing a lot of gentiles.

The routed survivors of the general uprising of February, 1824, against the Santa Barbara channel cordon of missions, fled to the valley and were pursued in June following by 103 soldiers with two field pieces. The Indians when overtaken in camp at Tulare Lake displayed a white flag. A conference followed, the two priests acted as negotiators, and as a result unconditional surrender, pardon and enforced return to their respective missions. The number engaged in this revolt was upwards of 400. Had their secret conspiracy succeeded, there would have been massacre at all the missions. Its failure discouraged other attempts for a time. Santa Inez and Purisima with burning of the buildings and Santa Barbara were the missions attacked.

Not until the spring of 1829 was there another general uprising, this time of the neophytes of Santa Clara and San Jose, who deserted and fortified themselves with gentiles near the San Joaquin River. A San Francisco expedition of fifteen men under Sergeant Antonio Soto was dispatched to capture the fugitives and destroy the fortification, but it was repulsed in penetrating a thicket of willows and brambles and withdrew to San Jose, where Soto died from his wounds. The Indians celebrated their victory with feasting and dancing, while neighboring rancherias made common cause with them, and the uprising threatened to become a dangerous one, necessitating rigorous repressive measures. Jose Sanchez was sent with a second expedition of forty from the San Francisco presidio but retired to San Jose without risking a second storming of the inner works on finding that the Indians had set up several strong lines of wooden palisades, the first of which had been destroyed.

A third expedition of one hundred from Monterey under Ensign M. G. Vallejo joined the Sanchez force with Indian auxiliaries, and after a desperate fight the fugitives were driven from their intrenchments, unable to withstand the musketry and cannonading. After the fight, "a most shocking and horrible butchery of prisoners took place." The auxiliaries ranging themselves in a circle were permitted to exercise their skill in archery upon the hapless prisoners in their midst, others were hanged from trees with vine ropes and old women shot down in cold blood. Estanislao, the native alcalde, who instigated the uprising, escaped the slaughter, delivered himself up to Father Narciso Duran of San Jose who concealed him for a time and finally secured his pardon.

Finishing his bloody campaign, Vallejo returned to San Jose and Monterey. Father Duran attempted to have him prosecuted for "the greatest barbarity ever perpetrated in the territory." One soldier was sentenced to five years penal servitude for shooting down a defenseless old squaw, but Vallejo escaped trial. Duran, who as a Spaniard opposed the republic, as did all the missionaries, wielded less influence than Vallejo, who as usual ranged himself on the popular side and was in the line of promotion, wherefore according to Historian T. H. Hittell "by degrees the bloody story was supplanted in the public mind by matters which were supposed to be of more immediate importance."

Gen. M. G. Vallejo, as he was later known, was a man who has been given much prominence in the written early history of California, as well under the Mexican as the American regime. He was a delegate to the Monterey constitutional convention, honored politically then and afterward, a leader and spokesman for the California-born Spanish speaking population, lived the life of a feudal lord and baron at Sonoma with the history of the region north of San Francisco largely that of his own family, held the military title of General to his dying day yet never commanded more soldiers than would make up the complement of one company, reveled in wealth and luxury in the halcyon days and lived his later days in comparative poverty, was as proud as the most blue-blooded Hidalgo until the very last, was honored by the Society of California Pioneers, having arrived July, 1808, and by the Native Sons of the Golden West, a quoted authority on early California history, a friend at one time and the opponent at another, of the dominant Roman Catholic church, importing and collecting for private reading and library in his younger days the very books that were forbidden by the church, and foremost as an influential individual in yielding to and advocating the change under American territorial acquisition.

A reading between the lines of history impresses one that he was a very accommodating spirit, best described by the present-day term of a "political trimmer." His advocacy of the American regime was at a time when his opposition might have been feared for its possible results when the popular sentiment was not over friendly to the American cause.

But what mattered it that a few Indians, more or less, were wantonly massacred? Some of the whites were no more considerate or humane.

Towards the end of 1833, because of the frequency of raids by Indian horse thieves, it became the custom to send monthly expeditions, aided by rancheros, to overawe the marauders. It was not unusual for them to make slave prisoners of gentile children, wherever met with. An instance came under the notice of Governor Figueroa in the early part of 1835 as the result of a San Jose expedition and the kidnaping of seven children. He denounced the outrage in unmeasured terms, ordered the papooses placed in the mission until the parents could call for them, directed that no more expeditions be sent except in actual pursuit of horse thieves, and then only with express governmental permission. Figueroa had great sympathy for the Indian, due as much to his humanity as to his Aztec blood. He was so well thought of that he was called the "Benefactor of the Territory of Alta California."

Lieut. Theodore Talbot, U. S. N., who had been left in command with nine men at Santa Barbara in September at the outbreak of the Californian insurrection, following the raising of the flag and after the retaking of Los Angeles, was called upon to surrender by one of the California military commanders. Talbot refused, but unable to resist the force of 200 against him retired to the mountains. His little party fought the pursuers, and fire was set to the woods to burn them out. Talbot and men escaped the flames and eluded the pursuit. An old soldier of ex-Governor Micheltorena, who was unfriendly to the Californians because of their expulsion of his former chief, piloted the pursued ninety miles across the mountains into the Tulares. From here they groped their way for about a month, mostly on foot, enduring hardships and suffering, for some 500 miles to Monterey, arriving early in November and rejoining Fremont after having been given up for dead.