Before L.A.: Race, Space, and Municipal Power in Los Angeles, 1781-1894 9780300156621

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Finding the Past
CHAPTER 1. A Pueblo by the Porciuncula, 1781–1840
CHAPTER 2. “Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”
CHAPTER 3. “Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”
CHAPTER 4. “Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”
CHAPTER 5. Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’ ”
CHAPTER 6. “Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”
Conclusion. “A Story Hidden Behind Every Crumbling Wall”
Notes
Index

Citation preview

BEFORE L.A.

THE LA MAR S E RIE S IN W ES TER N HI STO RY

The Lamar Series in Western History includes scholarly books of general public interest that enhance the understanding of human affairs in the American West and contribute to a wider understanding of the West’s significance in the political, social, and cultural life of America. Comprising works of the highest quality, the series aims to increase the range and vitality of Western American history, focusing on frontier places and people, Indian and ethnic communities, the urban West and the environment, and the art and illustrated history of the American West. Editorial Board Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Past President of Yale University William J. Cronon, University of Wisconsin–Madison Philip J. Deloria, University of Michigan John Mack Faragher, Yale University Jay Gitlin, Yale University George A. Miles, Beinecke Library, Yale University Martha A. Sandweiss, Princeton University Virginia J. Scharff, University of New Mexico Robert M. Utley, Former Chief Historian, National Park Service Recent Titles Subverting Exclusion: Transpacific Encounters with Race, Caste, and Borders, 1885–1928, by Andrea Geiger Hell on the Range: A Story of Honor, Conscience, and the American West, by Daniel Justin Herman William Clark’s World: Describing America in an Age of Unknowns, by Peter J. Kastor The Jeffersons at Shadwell, by Susan Kern Geronimo, by Robert M. Utley Forthcoming Titles Welcome to Wonderland: Promoting Tourism in the Rocky Mountain West, by Peter Blodgett The Shapes of Power: Frontiers, Borderlands, Middle Grounds, and Empires of North America, by Pekka Hämäläinen The Shawnee Nation, by Sami Lakomaki American Genocide: The California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873, by Benjamin Madley Nature’s Noblemen: Transatlantic Masculinities and the Nineteenth-Century American West, by Monica Rico The Rush to Gold: France and the California Gold Rush, by Malcolm J. Rohrbough The Cherokee Diaspora, by Gregory Smithers

B E F O R E L. A. Race, Space, and Municipal Power in Los Angeles, 1781–1894

David Samuel Torres-Rouff

New Haven and London

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College. Copyright © 2013 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz and set in Bulmer type by Integrated Publishing Solutions. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Torres-Rouff, David Samuel, 1973– Before L.A. : race, space, and municipal power in Los Angeles, 1781–1894 / David Samuel Torres-Rouff. pages cm. — (The Lamar series in western history) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-300-14123-8 (alk. paper) 1. Los Angeles (Calif.)—History—19th century. 2. Los Angeles (Calif.)— Population—History—19th century. 3. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Race relations— History—19th century. 4. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Ethnic relations—History—19th century. 5. Land settlement—California—Los Angeles—History—19th century. I. Title. F869.L857T67 2013 979.4⬘94—dc23 2013003567 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

10

9

8

7 6

5

4

3

2

1

This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandparents Lilly and Seymour Rouff, Frances and Max Sands, and my dear friend Tom Sizgorich

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction. Finding the Past CHAPTER 1.

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula, 1781–1840

ix 1 23

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”: Intercultural Civic Ideals, Identities, and Spaces, 1840–1855

55

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”: Choosing Between Cooperation and Confrontation, 1855–1856

94

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”: Society, Space, and Public Policy, 1857–1861

133

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’ ”: Politics, Violence, and the Power of Racialized Place, 1862–1872

169

CHAPTER 2.

CHAPTER 3.

CHAPTER 4.

CHAPTER 5.

Contents

viii

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”: The Divergent Paths of Los Angeles’s Places and Peoples, 1870–1894 204 CHAPTER 6.

Conclusion. “A Story Hidden Behind Every Crumbling Wall”: History and Memory in Los Angeles

254

Notes

269

Index

339

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

writing this book, I have had the privilege and pleasure to spend time at various research institutes, develop rich relationships with colleagues and friends, and learn a great deal about the city where I grew up. Many people and institutions invested in this project, and I hope the result merits their individual and collective generosity. I am overwhelmed by my own good fortune to have been surrounded by so many smiling faces and helping hands over the past years. I could not have asked for more patience and support than I received from Christopher Rogers at Yale University Press. From the beginning, Chris encouraged me to tell my own story, and that’s exactly the advice I needed. Christina Tucker and Laura Davulis were equally helpful in bringing the project into print. Eliza Childs edited the manuscript meticulously and offered helpful strategies for improving the clarity and consistency of the manuscript. I am also thankful that she saved me from many errors. I am grateful to John Faragher, Doug Monroy, and three anonymous reviewers who gave generously of their time in reading the manuscript at various stages. Professor Faragher, in particular, persuaded me to strive for a more invigorating, open-knit narrative, and the finished project has benefited incalculably from his advice. Writing this book would have been unthinkable without the wealth of re-

WHILE

ix

x

Acknowledgments

sources that the Los Angeles City Archives, Huntington Library, Bancroft Library, Los Angeles Public Library, and Seaver Center for Western Research have liberally shared. For weeks at a time, the Los Angeles City Clerk’s Office, Records Management Division, served as my home away from home. There— sandwiched between the city bomb squad and the delivery bay for all parking meter monies—Hynda Rudd and Todd Gaydowski, records management officers, and Jay Jones and Michael Holland, archivists, curate a fabulous and still underexplored repository of the city’s past. Moreover, they offered a joyful working environment, ongoing encouragement, friendly conversation, and an unfailing willingness to help make my vision possible. Jay and Mike served as expert guides through the city archives, and Mike answered critical emails when I could not make it to Los Angeles in person. Todd Gaydowski also went above and beyond the requirements of his office, collaborating with the Huntington Library to digitize a sprawling street map, various sections of which are reproduced here. Scholars of Los Angeles, California, and the U.S. West would struggle to produce exciting work without the Huntington Library’s invaluable collections and expert staff. In particular, Jenni Watts encouraged me to explore the Huntington’s spectacular photograph collection and thus helped me see a new way to ground the central arguments in this book’s final chapter. John Sullivan masterfully digitized the fragile, color-coded, 1887 map of Los Angeles streets. Erin Chase arranged for the digitization and publication of all Huntington images. Sara Geordi, Jaeda Snow, and others provided helpful assistance during my work in the Huntingon’s pristine reading room. At the Bancroft Library, Susan Snyder, David Kessler, and Dean Smith helped me track down some elusive but critical documents, turned around image requests with blazing speed, and have provided engaged support over many years of research. The staffs at the Seaver Center for Western History Research and the Los Angeles Public Library have been equally helpful, especially Emma Roberts at LAPL. Multiple entities offered generous funding to support my research and writing. As a graduate student, I received a U.C. MEXUS dissertation grant, and much of the work I did under its auspices remains vital to the present volume. Over seven years, the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies, the Cosgrove

Acknowledgments

xi

Endowment, and the Social Sciences Executive Committee, all at Colorado College, gave me the time and money I needed to complete this project. I could not have converted my raw research into an original narrative without the patience and wisdom of several kind and respected colleagues. Among them, John Williams, Eric Perramond, and Anne Hyde spent much time helping me refine the manuscript. They have been loyal friends, patient listeners, enthusiastic readers, and careful critics. I doubt I can ever thank them enough for their aid and companionship. In addition to their extraordinary efforts, every other permanent and visiting member of the Colorado College history department—Susan Ashley, Peter Blasenheim, Neilesh Bose, Jeff Brune, Hines Hall, Reiko Hillyer, Bill Hochman, Doug Monroy, Jane Murphy, Carol Neel, Kris Pangburn, Bryant “Tip” Ragan, Bryan Rommel-Ruiz, Claire Salinas, Dennis Showalter, and Frank Tucker—patiently read and offered comments on multiple chapters, and I am grateful for their insights and collegiality. Several scholars nudged me forward as I wrestled with key components of the story. Bill Deverell pointed me to crucial sources for the first Fiesta de Los Angeles and unhesitatingly encouraged me to find my own story no matter how closely it brushed his own excellent work. Patricia Nelson Limerick helped me think about violence in more nuanced ways, and Grace Delgado, Erika Lee, Henry Yu, and Judy Yung freely shared their expertise when I approached them with questions regarding Chinese strategies for making race and identity. Paul Spickard, who guided my graduate career at U.C. Santa Barbara, has never stopped offering feedback, advice, and a shining example of professionalism. Beyond the classroom, Paul cultivates a remarkable sense of both scholarly and social collegiality, demonstrated by the highly productive, wildly successful, and tightly knit hui he has fostered among a sizable cadre of graduate students whom I am proud to call my friends and collaborators. Randy Bergstrom, James Brooks, and Mary Furner, who witnessed the origins of my work at U.C.S.B., have continued to influence my professional development and my thinking about nineteenth-century Los Angeles. In addition to their enormous and warm hearts, Rudy Guevarra, Nancy McLoughlin, Matthew Sutton, and Warren Wood have lent their sharp minds and keen eyes to the evolution of my arguments and narration, for which I am deeply thankful. Among my peers, no

xii

Acknowledgments

one had a greater influence on my intellectual and personal development than Tom Sizgorich. His fierce mind and indomitable spirit live on in the pages of this book and in every moment of my life. In some ways, I began thinking about Los Angeles’s history as long ago as I can remember. I delivered a one-hour oral report, with slides, on the history of Los Angeles as the final project for my eighth-grade U.S. history class. The Honorable Chantal Sampogna listened politely that day, not knowing she would be subjected to hundreds more hours of my rambling on about Los Angeles over a lifetime of unconditional friendship. Two other Angelenos, Phil Lazarus and Marissa López, have been stalwart friends since before I learned to drive. Together with Mitchum Huehls, Marissa hosted me during research visits, endured my officious kitchen habits, and through her own scholarly genius shaped my thinking in more ways than she can imagine. In Colorado Springs, Denver, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., I basked in the glow of enthusiastic friends who knew exactly when to push me forward and when to offer a glass of wine or something to eat. For your tireless support as I worked, seemingly without end, to turn my dissertation into this book, I thank: John, Kum, and Cassidy Williams; Eric and Ann Perramond; Genny Love and Tania Modleski; Tip Ragan and Dennis McEnnerny; Mario, Diane, and Mando Montaño; Esteban Gomez and Nicole Anthony; Scott, Electra and Walker Johnson; Telly, Nicole, and Zannis Topakas; Isabel Tovar; Will Pestle, Tina Menendez, Christian Rodriguez and Sebastian Pestle; Darren Salkil; Tim and Erin Murtha. As I assembled and edited the final manuscript, I had the privilege of spending considerable time in Chile, where I fell into the warm embrace of a sharp-witted and nurturing group of friends, archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, and cultural anthropologists. I cannot thank Pancho Gallardo, Gloria Cabello, Mark Hubbe, Carla Mello, Gonzalo Pimentel, Emily Stovel, Bill Whitehead, Gilles Rahier, Paola Bolados, Hugo Finola, Viviana Ramos, Philippe Bellugue, Llerco Quezada, and Cristina Corvalán enough for creating an ideal environment in which to finish this book. Most people are lucky if they have a family they can depend on for love and support. I am exponentially luckier in having two, each spanning four generations. For nearly two decades, the Torres family has embraced me as one of their own and shared their homes, lives, and love with me. Manuel, María Margarita, Manolo, Donna, Miguel, Susan, Maya, and Sophie, you are unspeak-

Acknowledgments

xiii

ably kind and beautiful people. My own family has given me immeasurable and unconditional love and support throughout my life, and there are no words to properly express my gratitude. My grandparents, Frances and Max Sands and Lilly and Seymour Rouff always fostered my curiosity about the world and showed me from an early age the many small joys hidden in a giant city, from lunches in blue-collar Burbank diners to the faces of cats spray-painted onto the inflow tubes entering the Los Angeles River’s concrete channel near Union Station. Looking back, I see how Lilly’s love of words and reading and their collective joy in telling stories led me to my passion for history. My mom and dad, Leslie and Steven Rouff, spent hours schlepping my brother Michael and me around Los Angeles in our youth, not only to our distant public schools but also on countless weekend outings throughout the city and region. None of us knew it then, but they were teaching me about the place where we lived and training me to think about relationships between people and space. The bountiful, marvelous experiences of my childhood necessarily shaped my approach to this book. My parents and brother, together with my sister-in-law Aimee, have spent the ensuing years steadfastly supporting my wayfaring life while offering unfailing love, friendship, and the comforts of home in Los Angeles. I am thrilled that my return to California will allow me to help them teach my nephew Max about the city in which he’ll grow up. For twenty years I have shared my life with Christina Torres-Rouff, who makes everything possible. Her luminous smile, gleaming intelligence, and glowing heart continue to call to me in words I never knew, all the while illuminating for me myriad pathways to happiness on an adventure that has been relentlessly invigorating.

This page intentionally left blank

INTRODUCTION

Finding the Past

S I X divisions of insurrectionists mustered at the intersection of Hill and Ninth Streets at 11:30 a.m. in Los Angeles on April 10, 1894. Many of them were armed and in full military dress. At City Hall, only a few blocks away, Mayor Thomas Rowan called to order an emergency session of the Common Council. Almost immediately, a detachment of rowdy citizens stormed the council chamber. They forced the mayor’s abdication, deposed the council, and marched Mayor Rowan to Sixth Street Park, where an assembly more than ten thousand strong cheered the coup. The rebel leaders, calling themselves the Angels, crowned Mrs. O. W. Childs their Lady, Queen of the Angels. The six regiments of armed and uniformed troops consolidated their victory by marching on the park and then parading through town. An ecstatic populace wholeheartedly approved.1 The Angels’ 1894 insurrection marked the eighth conquest of Los Angeles in just over a century. Although the takeover was staged by businessmen masquerading as rebels, its significance proved more profound than the seven coups that had preceded it, for it established European American hegemony over a past shared by the diverse peoples and places of Los Angeles. One hundred and thirteen years earlier, a smaller, more ragtag band of invaders had arrived on a level mesa not far from the Porciuncula River in the

1

2

Introduction

New Spanish colony of Alta California. They found no city hall to storm, no mayor from whom to demand abdication, nor even a hostile contingent of local Tongva Indians to impede their plans. Following explicit instructions laid out in a bundle of documents bearing official seals, these conquistadores founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. Their Lady, the Queen of the Angels, was not a member of their party but the Virgin Mary. They went to work fulfilling the obligations outlined in their documents: damming the river; drawing off an irrigation channel; dividing among themselves a series of house, garden, and agricultural lots; and establishing a central plaza. In so doing, they carved a town out of the arid yet fertile basin.2 Over the next century, no fewer than six invading parties attempted to conquer Los Angeles. In 1822 representatives from the newly independent nation of Mexico delivered sealed orders requiring the pobladores (town dwellers) to lower the flag of Spain, raise that of Mexico, publicly swear allegiance to the new nation, and celebrate with due fanfare in the Plaza.3 Fifteen years later, centralist politicians in Mexico—anti-democratic, anti-federalist strongmen who aimed to consolidate their rule along a military chain of command radiating outward from Mexico City—sent Mariano Chico (1836), Nicolás Gutierrez (1836), and Manuel Micheltorena (1844) north from Mexico City with soldiers. These men tried to assume California’s governorship and replace democratically elected municipal officials with military prefects. On each occasion, Mexican Californians formed militias, resisted the interlopers, and sent them and their troops packing back to Mexico City. Without legal mandate, Californians subsequently assumed the governorship while awaiting acceptable candidates from the capital.4 In August 1846, U.S. Commodore Robert F. Stockton successfully led a phalanx of marines north from San Pedro harbor to claim Los Angeles for the United States of America, and Angelenos feted them with a musical performance in the Plaza.5 Believing the city sufficiently subdued, Stockton departed shortly thereafter. He left behind a garrison of only fifty men under the control of Archibald Gillespie. Within two months, Gillespie’s “very obnoxious regulations”—designed “to annoy the people”—and his penchant for arresting “the most respectable men in the community” on “frivolous pretexts” provoked an armed rebellion. Angelenos booted out Gillespie and his troops and reclaimed the city for Mexico. María Flores, Serbulo Varela, and José Castro, men born in California, held the town for more than four

Introduction

3

months. In January 1847 they concluded a mutually satisfactory treaty with John C. Frémont, after which Frémont and his dragoons returned to occupy Los Angeles.6 When the Angels seized control of Los Angeles in 1894, they became the eighth conquerors of Los Angeles since 1781. Marking the culmination of months of planning, community organizing, fund-raising, and advertising, members of the Los Angeles Merchants Association staged the April 10, 1894, coup to open a week-long carnival: La Fiesta de Los Angeles. The Merchants Association gambled $10,000 that La Fiesta would boost the city’s lagging economy and raise its regional and national standing.7 Giving the event a grand start, the organizers dressed in costume as the Angels, symbolically (but legally) took control of the municipal government, then handed control to their queen, Mrs. Childs, who oversaw a court of young women from cities and towns throughout the region. The subsequent festivities lasted five days and offered strategic displays of regimented marching, themed parades, and exuberant concerts designed to awe locals and visitors, who numbered in the tens of thousands and hailed from throughout the United States.8 Although the Merchants Association, mayor, and Common Council colluded in the Angels’ simulated coup, La Fiesta nevertheless carried as much symbolic power through the city’s streets as the geopolitical takeovers that preceded it. Immediately following Mayor Rowan’s abdication and the crowning of Queen Childs, an elaborate parade meandered through town. Designated “Historical Day” in accordance “with the magnitude of the occasion,” the parade condensed the story of the city’s past into nine floats.9 The first, “Prehistoric California,” featured several dozen Yuma Indians playing the part of Aztecs. While an Indian “chief ” supervised from his tepee, the women pretended to work at various tasks and the men performed a war dance.10 “Resplendent in war-paint and buckskin dress,” the Indians “dazzle[d] the sun in brightness” and turned “the average rainbow . . . green with envy.”11 Next came Juan Cabrillo’s ship, celebrating the Spanish explorer’s “discovery” of California in 1542. “The Old Missions” followed, showcasing a “picturesque” replica of Mission San Gabriel’s bell tower and a retinue of twelve habited Fernandino friars. Representing the first U.S. immigrants, a prairie schooner trailed the friars with an escort of mounted cowboys. The fifth float, “Early Mining Days,” commemorated the 1848 gold rush and carried rough-looking men panning

4

Introduction

for gold in front of a model of Sutter’s mill. “Irrigation,” which celebrated “the change brought about by the use of water” in Southern California’s “dry, but fertile soil,” contrasted Indians toiling uselessly on barren hills with a wellwatered garden oasis, “luxuriant with palm leaves and vines.”12 “Boom” and “Busted Boom” recalled the real estate rollercoaster of the 1880s. Here the Merchants poked fun at themselves, with well-known real estate market makers symbolically fishing for suckers, clinging to a safe, and drowning their sorrows in drink. “Solid Prosperity” marked the last chapter in this parade of the city’s history. Upon a chariot flanked with horns of plenty sat an enormous bag with a dollar sign painted on its side.13 For residents and visitors alike, the parade told the history of Los Angeles as a linear story of improvement and progress. Ignorant Indians had come under the control of pious fathers, who themselves gave way to ingenious Yankees, who harvested California’s gold and built aqueducts and canals, converting the arid hills of Los Angeles into a semi-tropical paradise from which they could reap agricultural wealth in perpetuity. Even the busted real estate boom had given way to a more sober, controlled commitment to “solid prosperity.” As enacted narrative, the history flowed smoothly from one epoch to the next; each chapter closed decisively and cleanly before the next one began. Much as it might on first inspection today, this parade of history made sense to the fiesteros; its clean lines and appropriate succession of people and events rang true. La Fiesta and its history parade, while new in Los Angeles, stands as one of many small fairs and international expositions that drew more than 100 million visitors between Reconstruction and World War I. In moving displays of power and spectacle, these fairs sold historical change as progress, “synonymous with America’s material growth and economic expansion,” and “promised that continued growth would result in eventual utopia.”14 As the last float in La Fiesta’s history parade, “Solid Prosperity” made a similar pledge.15 Moreover, La Fiesta and other fairs—including the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, from which the Merchants drew inspiration— created “symbolic” universes, which “ritualistically affirmed fairgoers’ faith in American institutions and social organization, evoked a community of shared experience, and formulated responses to questions about the ultimate destiny of mankind in general and of Americans in particular.” La Fiesta and its history

Introduction

5

parade, rich in symbolic meaning and linear storytelling, offered a historically specific “cohesive explanatory blueprint of social experience” for Angelenos past, present, and future.16 The city’s recent growth from 10,000 in 1870 to roughly 75,000 by 1894, and the thousands of tourists among the crowd, made the stories La Fiesta and the history parade told both appealing and effective. Such a parade would have been impossible to mount at earlier moments in Los Angeles’s history. The selective, refined version of the broader past it presented could have been neither staged nor eagerly consumed previously. Had La Fiesta been first celebrated in 1871, the history parade could not have entirely erased—as it did in 1894—the forty-two-year period during which Los Angeles was part of the independent nation of Mexico or the power and prominence of Los Angeles’s Mexican Californian inhabitants. In 1871 the mayor was Cristóbal Aguilar, and had the Angels demanded his abdication, he would have been as likely to relinquish control in Spanish as in English. At that time, too, it would have been difficult for the Merchants to solicit the Chinese community’s participation. In 1894, Chinese Angelenos led the parade’s mercantile portion with a vanguard of elaborate floats costing more than $2,500. Their flags, costumes, music, and spectacular artistry highlighted the opening festivities and drew praise as “one of the most gorgeous” spectacles “ever witnessed” in Los Angeles. By contrast, in 1871, a mob of five hundred citizens had perpetrated a devastating riot, murdering nineteen Chinese Angelenos and nearly destroying the Chinese quarter. Had La Fiesta been held in the 1860s or 1850s, it could not have sidestepped Mexican Californians’ enduring control over land and wealth or the occasionally intense political struggles among English- and Spanish-speaking Angelenos. From the town’s founding in 1781 until almost any time before 1894, fifty Indians parading through the streets enacting war dances and scalp dances would have threatened imminent attack and thrown the town into a panic. During La Fiesta, however, Angelenos reveled in the timbre of their “warwhoops” and delighted in Indians who so “enjoyed dancing for the white man’s benefit.”17 Only in 1894 could the Merchants stage La Fiesta and the history parade, because only then did they and the elite, commercial, racially exclusive interests they represented control sufficient power to make such a story stick. Erasing Mexicans, repackaging Indians and Chinese, and using these innovations to rewrite the past on the city’s streets required not only hubris but also a level

6

Introduction

of uncontested dominance that no previous elite enjoyed. Compelling Indian, Mexican, and Chinese Angelenos to participate, in fact, proved crucial to the Merchants’ will to temporal and historical power. Diversity not only added to La Fiesta’s appeal, it made possible a presentation of a “larger constellation of ideas about race, nationality, and progress” that authoritatively shaped “racial beliefs” by offering fairgoers “a powerful and highly visible, modern, evolutionary justification for longstanding racial and cultural prejudices.”18 In Los Angeles, La Fiesta successfully deployed otherwise “undesirable” Angelenos to assume stereotyped, monolithic identities while enacting a repackaged, skewed history that replaced a century of often violent intercultural negotiation and innovation with a linear tale of inevitable Anglo cultural and economic dominance. That Indian, Mexican, and Chinese Angelenos did their acting in multiple parades only enhanced La Fiesta’s didactic power because the new narrative’s central messages emerged from the very bodies of the people over whom it exercised control. In all, La Fiesta provided a clean slate upon which elite Angelenos could move forward into the future while hiding a fractured, violent, and contested past from view.19 Writing in 1914, Harris Newmark, one of Los Angeles’s most important chroniclers, recalled La Fiesta de Los Angeles of 1894. A German Jew who moved to Los Angeles in 1852, Newmark was one fiestero with long experience as a witness to Angelenos’ fraught pasts. He even put pen to paper, leaving a record for posterity in the weighty tome Sixty Years in Southern California. Therein he wrote sympathetically about Indians and Chinese, praised many Mexican Californians for their hospitality and vibrant culture, and lamented the passing of the city’s quieter days. But he swallowed La Fiesta’s version of Los Angeles history hook, line, and sinker. Seemingly still enthralled, twenty years later, by the “uncontrollable enthusiasm” that overtook the city in 1894, Newmark reckoned La Fiesta as “among the earliest and, in some respects, the most important elements contributory to the wonderful growth and development of our city,” essentially rendering meaningless the first six hundred pages of his own memoir.20 Newmark’s amnesia likely served specific purposes. After arriving in Los Angeles in the early 1850s, Newmark married and enjoyed a happy family life, operated one of Los Angeles’s most successful stores, befriended a remarkable array of English- and Spanish-speaking Angelenos, and, among other

Introduction

7

community-building activities, helped found the Hebrew Benevolent Society and Turnverein Germania. But he also lived through a period when violence and murders were so common that “stern necessity knew no law”; saw his ranchero friends lose their lands to high taxes, court cases, and scheming lenders; witnessed firsthand the 1871 anti-Chinese massacre; and endured the boom and bust of the 1880s. Consequently, Newmark and others like him had much to gain by placing La Fiesta at the beginning of Los Angeles’s history. La Fiesta, the history parade, and Newmark’s book engaged in systematic processes of selective remembering and forgetting. By omitting the difficult parts—the physical violence, the territorial predation, and the commercial chicanery— they could reset Los Angeles on a righteous, level, and historically progressive foundation. Free of its shifting and unstable past, this foundation became a sturdy base upon which future artificers could build toward long-term social peace, constrained cultural diversity, and “solid prosperity.” Projecting forward into the future, La Fiesta opened a new chapter in Los Angeles. Staged on the cusp of the twentieth century and emanating from a cartel of emergent entrepreneurs, cultural brokers, and politicians, La Fiesta marked the establishment, for the first time, of European American hegemony over Los Angeles’s peoples and places. La Fiesta painted, upon this clean canvas, a still-familiar history of Los Angeles: its Spanish fantasy past, an agricultural arcadia, vibrant commerce, tidy racial markers, and clear hierarchies all defined and solidly controlled by elite white American businessmen. La Fiesta’s participants and witnesses, Angelenos and visitors alike, offered the Merchants and the Anglo power elite they represented the nearly unanimous “spontaneous consent” required from “the great masses of the population” in order for a new vision of Los Angeles’s past, present, and future to achieve hegemonic power.21 So many accepted as natural and timeless La Fiesta’s rendering of history and hierarchy that Los Angeles emerged, like Athena, as a resplendent protometropolis through the fair’s euphoric haze. The power emanating from the spectacle of La Fiesta’s diverse displays and the progress presented in its history parade have held countless consumers, past and present, in thrall. The enduring power of the people who orchestrated the 1894 Fiesta and the messages they delivered during the fair made it the most thoroughly successful of the eight conquests of Los Angeles. The previous seven had opened periods

8

Introduction

of contestation among various parties that wrestled for control over people and space. The Angels, however, following their successful takeover in 1894, became the first conquistadores to deploy particular arrangements of history, people, place, and power without substantial opposition.

Borderlands Los Angeles La Fiesta simultaneously opened Los Angeles’s career as a modern metropolis and buried a long and complicated chapter in the city’s history as a frontier borderlands. La Fiesta, the history parade, and the legions of stories told over the intervening century have maintained a facade that covers nineteenthcentury Los Angeles’s complicated past, obscuring a world in which various people and their attendant projects competed for control over space, identity, and the power to shape the city’s future. This book is an effort to break through that facade to reveal the complex world of nuance, unexpected moments, and numerous contingent choices that characterized Los Angeles from its Spanish founding in 1781 through the 1894 Fiesta. Thought of another way, this book covers the period that began when Los Angeles’s settlers opened the borderlands and ended when La Fiesta closed them. I understand Los Angeles as a space where “real and imagined narratives overlap” in ways that disrupt both either/or dichotomies (Spanish or Indian, Mexican or American, Brown or White) and “linear historical understandings of this place and its people.”22 In Los Angeles, as in many settlements forged on the New Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. borderlands, ties of kinship and commerce rather than a notion of the nation held social, economic, and political relationships together.23 In part, such ties formed not because Los Angeles lay geographically at the fringe of an isolated frontier, but because it occupied a global crossroads where Europeans, Russians, and Spanish Mexicans, among many others, created a dynamic cultural and commercial society.24 As the destination, intentional or accidental, of multiple and overlapping migrations of Indians, Spaniards, Mexicans, Americans (North and South), Europeans, and Chinese, Los Angeles proved to be politically and socially dynamic because no single group marshaled sufficient power to completely control space or identity.25 These geopolitical and social borderlands in turn nurtured the emergence of a dynamic human and spatial mestizaje.26

Introduction

9

For nineteenth-century Angelenos, overlapping narratives about people and place, both real and imagined, shaped their complicated history. In conjunction with the city itself, Indian, Mexican, U.S., and Chinese identities were made and remade during the 113-year period between the city’s founding in 1781 and 1894. Only in 1894, only with La Fiesta, did boundaries that distinguished and separated Los Angeles’s residents emerge in now-familiar ways. Throughout the nineteenth century, the meaning of labels like “White,” “Mexican,” and “Indian” remained fluid.27 Before thousands of immigrants from the United States streamed into Los Angeles in the 1870s and 1880s, Mexican Californian locals had developed their own racial nomenclature, which included words like “californio,” “vecino,” “cholo,” and “indio” and the broader appellations “gente de razón” and “gente sin razón.” When immigrants from the United States and Europe first arrived between the 1830s to the 1850s, the city’s increasingly heterogeneous residents developed exclusively local strategies for making sense of people’s identities. Even then, the boundaries between such categories and the people who inhabited them were often contested and always blurry. In the 1860s and 1870s, Chinese immigrants subsequently destabilized both spatial practices and race-making strategies, opening a new chapter in the city’s history. While all of these factors—multiple ways of making identity, blurry boundaries, places where and moments when the same words have multiple meanings—may seem unfamiliar to contemporary readers, they proved equally confusing yet utterly inescapable parts of nineteenth-century Angelenos’ lives. This book confronts rather than elides the city’s complicated past, arguing that Los Angeles residents forged a city precisely by negotiating overlapping layers of intent and meaning. To share in this perspective, the viewer must not look back from the present but forward from the past. Only by looking forward from each moment in which individuals and groups made claims, pondered decisions, and took action in their familial, commercial, and social relationships can students of history overcome what Anne Hyde has called “the disadvantages of hindsight.”28 In this book I try to start in the past and to look forward, as clearly as possible, through the prism of Los Angeles during the nineteenth century. Doing so reveals a world of malleable identities and unexpected relationships between people and groups. There, Stephen C. Foster—a former invader and translator for the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War—became

10

Introduction

mayor and earned the respect of the city’s Spanish-Mexican population. In one startling episode, Foster resigned his office to lead a lynch mob, then won reelection without opposition the following week. His actions delighted the city’s Spanish-language press, which gushed “mejor hombre ciertamente no se podría encontrar” (certainly, a better man could not be found), while drawing ire from the city’s most prominent English-language news outlet, on facing pages of the same edition.29 The relationships between people and space explored in this book are bound up in the concepts of “race” and “place.” Over the past twenty-five years, scholars have adopted a “constructivist” approach to space and identity. Constructivists argue that neither race nor place exist naturally but emerge from multiple social, political, and economic negotiations. In most cases, constructions of race and place occur within the broader context of struggles for power and domination by one group over another in a particular location.30 Henri Lefebvre encouraged scholars to “look at history itself in a new light” by bringing together histories of “space” and “representations of space” to analyze “their relationships—with each other, with practice, and with ideology.” Intertwining spatial and racial histories produces a new narrative of Los Angeles from its founding through the nineteenth century. My history considers the genesis of various city spaces and their respective “interconnections, distortions, displacements, mutual interactions.”31 Indeed, this study reveals race and place to be but two permeable circuits in the networks along which people negotiate intimate and public iterations of power, circuits that frequently commingle in my narrative with contests regarding gender, class, nations, and citizenship. Consequently, my story offers only one interpretive strategy by which to shed new light on the history of Los Angeles and other (North and South) American places. In concert with widely accepted scientific notions that all Homo sapiens constitute a single species without racial divisions, humanists and social scientists have developed a theory of “race making” or “racialization.” They argue that as people work to differentiate themselves from one another, to make clear “that ‘they’ are not ‘us,’” individuals and groups direct various ascriptions toward those from whom they hope to differentiate themselves.32 Over time, certain clusters of ascriptions stick because they become particularly useful in creating and maintaining difference. Those ascriptions and their bases (skin

Introduction

11

tone, status, dress, manner of speech, physical characteristics, and so on) are in no way preconditioned. Instead, racial categories are selectively assembled from a multitude of potential options and combinations; only those that gain power in particular moments and prove effective at creating, clarifying, and investing with meaning difference become enshrined as racial markers.33 That people in the United States relied on skin tone, or phenotype, as a marker of racial identity while those living on Spain and Mexico’s far northern frontier relied instead on entirely different criteria to create a similarly bounded system reinforces the argument that “race” is not “natural” or “biological” but is instead an invented social category whose creation and maintenance serves critical social, political, economic, and cultural purposes. Successfully constructed, racial identities permeate nearly all structures within society.34 In the United States, skin tone has served as the primary marker of racial difference, and privileges in the form of citizenship, economic opportunity, cultural capital, and spatial access have historically been granted to those qualifying as “White” and denied to “Blacks,” “Browns,” “Reds,” and “Yellows.”35 Along the frontier of New Spain and Mexico during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, residents relied on achieved status, social behavior, and dress to differentiate gente sin razón (people without reason, especially independent Indians) from gente de razón (people with reason, Spanish-Mexicans who enjoyed full citizenship privileges). Through the 1840s, those who settled Los Angeles—most of whom occupied the lower strata of Spain’s complicated casta system—rewrote their own racial identities while inventing and elaborating a new, local system that divided people into four distinct groups: indios, cholos, vecinos, and californios. “Indios” referred to independent Indians. “Cholos” stood as a derogatory term for recently arrived Mexican menial laborers. “Vecinos,” literally meaning neighbors, described long-term local householders, independent farmers, and artisans of respectable status even if their finances kept them in the ordinary and middling classes. “Californios” appeared as a term invented by the emergent elite as shorthand for their ownership of large ranch holdings, control over substantive indio and cholo labor, and sufficient surplus income to purchase refined goods and to host elaborate fiestas. When immigrants from the United States arrived, they found their preferred race-making strategy—sorting members of society on the basis of skin

12

Introduction

color—ineffective for making sense of Los Angeles’s social landscape. Asymmetries in local Angelenos’ and immigrant European Americans’ respective strategies for determining race and citizenship meant that most Mexican Californians failed to meet U.S. standards for whiteness, and many newcomers, on account of their low social status and bad behavior, failed to pass Mexican Californians’ tests for classification as gente de razón. Despite these fundamental differences, the ways that old-time Angelenos and U.S. newcomers articulated new identity categories that drew on both traditions between the 1830s and early 1870s constitute one of this book’s key themes. Elite Mexican Californians and European Americans forged a common identity in Los Angeles based on shared power and strong familial and economic ties. They solidified their shared membership in this community by jointly relegating low-status Mexicans/cholos and Indians/indios to the bottom of the racial hierarchy, exploiting them for labor, and blaming them for local problems.36 During the 1860s and 1870s, Chinese immigrants to Los Angeles became the objects of racializing efforts by numerous Angelenos born under both the U.S. and Mexican flags, who drew on techniques they’d previously deployed to marginalize cholos and indios in creating a new “Chinese” category. Nevertheless, the ways Chinese Angelenos understood themselves and the array of other people with whom they shared Los Angeles’s spaces remain somewhat difficult to track. Building on the premise that Chinese Angelenos, and other Chinese immigrants to North America, acted as agents in the negotiation of their own identities, the question of how Chinese immigrants understood themselves and others in racial terms offers fertile ground for future research.37 Cultural geographers, historians, anthropologists, and critical theorists, among others following the work of Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey, have come to understand the construction of “place” in similarly constructivist terms. Like making race, marking and differentiating space, either physically for infrastructure or culturally by ritual occupation and use, depend on and are determined by the exercise of power.38 Specifically, place making must be understood as a process that “always involves a construction, rather than merely a discovery, of difference.” In much the same way that race making leads to the formation of new individual and collective identities, place making leads to the transformation of previously neutral spaces into places with particular meanings that contain their own individual and differentiated identities.39

Introduction

13

A brief look at the microhistory of a piece of ground located where Main Street intersected the southwest corner of the Plaza effectively illustrates the notion of place making in Los Angeles.40 In 1822, José Antonio Carrillo, owner of a substantial ranch just outside the city, received permission from municipal officials to build a house just southwest of the nearly completed Plaza church. In doing so, the comisionado (head public officer) surveyed, measured, and deeded the lot to Carrillo, on sealed paper, converting otherwise unmarked terrain into a house lot. Carrillo then built a substantial adobe home, creating place from bounded space. For four decades, Carrillo and his family resided there, but the house was abandoned following Carrillo’s death in 1862. Then Pío Pico—former governor of California under Mexico and Carrillo’s brotherin-law—bought the property, razed the building, and built an extravagant brick and stucco hotel on the site, reshaping the city’s built environment. Called the Pico House, the hotel opened on June 19, 1871. Its lavish lobby, restaurants, and bars quickly became the premier social destination for local residents and tourists alike.41 Recalling the history of this piece of ground suggests some ways that use and identity, place and race, give each other meaning. Carrillo’s adobe sported whitewashed walls and a high, gabled, Spanish tiled roof. Fashioned in the traditional U shape with an interior courtyard, one wing extended west along Calle Principal and the other sprawled south, facing out onto the Plaza. Cross walls in the rear enclosed a patio. Inside, its many parlors, bedrooms, a library, and a ballroom large enough to accommodate gatherings of more than five hundred persons provided structural proof of Carrillo’s wealth and success as a cattle rancher.42 In form, the home connected Carrillo to Spain, and in function the oversized ballroom and ample courtyards allowed him to lavish large crowds with food, drink, and entertainment, as he did for eight full days in 1834 in honor of his brother-in-law Pico’s wedding to Ignacia Alvarado. The townhouse thus reflected Carrillo’s material and cultural successes and marked his membership in the californio elite. By 1862, the deceased Carrillo’s abandoned and decrepit adobe offered symbolic witness to the imperiled californio identity. Both had nearly crumbled, together with the regional ranching economy, under the twin forces of the cattle market’s collapse and a killing drought. But expectations of the californios’ demise proved premature. Pío Pico leveraged assets and credit to revive his old friend’s home as the Pico

14

Introduction

House, returned californio influence to the city’s core, asserted his credentials as host par excellence of the city’s resident and visiting elite, and flexed his power as an American businessman. Like Carrillo’s adobe, Pico’s House stood among the city’s snazziest, although its lavishly appointed rooms were designed not for redistribution but for revenue.43 By redeveloping Carrillo’s lot, Pico changed both place and identity for himself and the city.

Piecing Together Race and Place I trace an interdependent, mutually constitutive relationship between race and space that shaped nineteenth-century Los Angeles. In this L.A. story, ongoing negotiations in the realms of society, politics, commerce, and culture produced both place and identity. Documents carved the pueblo of Los Angeles from the fertile soil watered by the Porciuncula River and placed Los Angeles first on New Spain’s and Mexico’s far northern frontier, then on the United States’ southwestern periphery. These documents reflected not only spatial but social, political, and economic ideologies tied to identity: maps made the people living in Los Angeles Indians, then Spanish colonists, then Mexicans, and finally Americans. Within the city, the location and arrangement of residences, commercial outlets, and the streets that connected them informed the fluid racial identities of the people who paraded in the Plaza, worked at its adjacent businesses, and lived in its surrounding houses. Similarly, contests over the meaning of American, Californian, Mexican, Indian, and Chinese racial categories (negotiations that took place in diverse public and private settings) played out in a variety of spatial contexts, including the shape of roads and waterways; the kinds of buildings that dotted particular neighborhoods; and the location of underground sewers, paved streets, and public festivals. For example, Carrillo’s control over the people who built, maintained, and served at his Plaza townhouse marked them as indios, whereas Carrillo’s freedom to enjoy the company of his many friends in ample comfort while being served by indios helped mark him as a californio. In other words, race making and place making are not simply analogous but interrelated activities. Making race and making Los Angeles were the same project. The shared work of racial and spatial construction suggests two conceptual consequences. First, racial identities become embedded in both the physical

Introduction

15

and cultural foundations of urban life. This assertion applies to social spaces, such as the Plaza, which serve simultaneously as critical geographical locations and venues in which Angelenos negotiated and enacted their identities. In equally powerful ways, ideas about race inform the location and shape of physical marks on the landscape, such as buildings, streets, and sewers, and subsequently become permanently embedded into the very bricks, pavement, and pipes of which they are made.44 Second, racial categories and the boundaries that separate them are contested and negotiated locally. Race in Los Angeles—or anywhere else—emerges as and remains an expressly local product. Although race making occurs within larger state and national contexts, and although race makers often summon ideas about identity forged in other places, the ways in which race and place connect in Los Angeles’s history indicate that no stable, national categories determined Angelenos’ identities. Even when events like the 1894 Los Angeles Fiesta render local racial categories in ways congruent with widely acknowledged national standards, they nevertheless spring from local action by local actors wielding sufficient power to create such displays. The outward appearance of national homogeneity, I argue, conceals so many contested local circumstances and so many nuances that race remains an expressly local artifact.45 Rather than setting in a moment and staying fixed over space and time, racial categories remain subject to constant negotiation and change, much like the places in which they arise. At bottom, this assertion contradicts the longstanding scholarly tradition that enshrines racial categories as national, and which often considers black-white relations forged on the Eastern Seaboard as the “master narrative” of race in U.S. history. While numerous historians, especially those addressing the Pacific Coast and the Southwest, have demonstrated how the presence of Indians, Mexicans, and Asians dramatically complicates black-white and other binaries, I want to push the critique still further. My research indicates that the meaning of, and the boundaries marking, racial categories changed no fewer than three times in Los Angeles during the nineteenth century. Moreover, “White” itself had no meaning in Los Angeles as a racial marker before the Mexican-American War, and then stood as only one label—deployed by a substantial minority—among many and that in time took on specific local meaning. This ongoing dynamism belies the assertion that race, like place, is ever fixed over time and cannot be exported

16

Introduction

intact over large distances. In developing this interpretation, I hope to open new lines of inquiry for students of race and a perspective from which we can reexamine racial formation in different locales, at places and in times when nations have and have not been present. Rather than obstructing efforts to write new U.S. histories, a local approach considering race and space in tandem has the potential to illuminate new avenues for research that, by repositioning space, identity, and the nation as questions rather than preexisting parameters, would generate richer, more nuanced stories.46 Much as this book draws together theoretical work regarding race and place making, it also connects to a rich and growing historical literature addressing Los Angeles’s peoples and places. Carey McWilliams’s Southern California: An Island on the Land (1946) drew together workers’ lives with regional cultural analysis in a way that bridged the gap between material and representational perspectives, but studies deploying a similar approach appeared only infrequently until the twenty-first century.47 Instead, scholars focused either on people and their communities or the city’s spatial development. Leonard Pitt’s The Decline of the Californios, 1846–1890 opened the field of ethnic history in California.48 Richard Griswold del Castillo, Alberto Camarillo, and others subsequently produced ethnic-oriented histories focusing on social life and segregation in Southern California. They brought Mexican, black, and Chinese Angelenos out from the shadows, reenvisioned the barrios and ghettoes to which Mexican and African Americans had been remanded, and established the centrality of connections between race and space to the city’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories. Like other works of their generation, they attended principally to singular communities whose a priori racial status granted almost exclusive power to white residents as the agents of segregation and marginalization.49 When scholars in the United States confronted the cultural turn, the linguistic turn, and the postmodern challenge leveled by critical theorists, the West as a place, its ethnic and ethnoracial residents, and Los Angeles as a city became, suddenly, the focus of a great deal of new research and writing. The self-styled New Western historians torched Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis”; emphasized the centrality of race, gender, and ethnicity to the western experience; reconceptualized the West as a place or region rather

Introduction

17

than a process; and insisted that people of color are not only victims of oppression but also agents of history. Douglas Monroy and Tomás Almaguer, among others, brought these insights to bear on the study of Los Angeles and California.50 Enriching this new intellectual terrain, Antonia Catañeda, Simone Bouvier, Miroslava Chávez-García, and María Casas foregrounded the centrality of women and gender relations to California’s pre-colonial, Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. histories.51 Although women served as their primary subjects, these scholars fruitfully brought gender analysis to bear on inter- and intraethnic relations, opening new avenues for family, social, and legal histories in cross-cultural economic and political contexts. Like earlier works, however, these studies treat both place and white racial identity as static and retain the metanarrative of decline.52 In The Fragmented Metropolis, the first serious urban history of Los Angeles, Robert Fogelson argues that the city’s spatial history revolved on two axes: the ceaseless waves of growth and industrialization, and the rejection of a vibrant civic center in favor of a network of suburbs.53 Like its contemporaries in social history, the book cedes overwhelming agency to immigrants from the United States and considers people of color as marginalized outsiders with little power to shape the urban landscape. The cultural turn provoked a new mode of urban inquiry and gave rise to a new “L.A. School” of urban studies, anchored to an affinity for multiplicity, local specificity, relationships between domination and resistance, and the willingness to “read” all things, including built spaces, as narrative “texts.” Although its many permutations resist easy summary, they are seemingly bound together by a common insistence on the absence of racial, cultural, or ideological hegemony; the connections among people, place, and the environment; and an exploration of the ways that the city’s periphery (be they neighborhoods, people, economic strategies, social movements and so forth) have organized its core.54 Too often, however, writers in the L.A. School fall into La Fiesta’s trap, beginning their studies with a latenineteenth-century Los Angeles that springs forth fully formed from its preurban ether. Consequently, the entire field misses out on a century of urban engagements with borders, hybridity, and other dynamics relative to articulated notions of space, identity, politics, and economy.55 Recent works by William Deverell, William Estrada, Greg Hise, Stephanie Lewthwaite, Natalia Molina, and others have united race and place. I share

18

Introduction

their attention to the centrality of public policy, space, and violence in the city’s history, the making and remaking of citizenship categories, and the importance of organizing Los Angeles’s history from within rather than without.56 My focus on the critical connections among public policy, the built environment, and local racial projects offers new pathways to situate Angelenos’ locally specific strategies for reckoning space and identity within the broader histories of other locales critical to the histories of Mexico’s far northern frontier and the U.S. Southwest, including Bisbee, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, El Paso, San Antonio, Tijuana, Nogales, and Ciudad Juarez. Throughout the region during the nineteenth century, projects regarding race, gender, and the nation overlapped, U.S. citizens and the United States as a geopolitical nation entered as immigrants, and towns occupied both isolated frontier districts and dynamic global crossroads. Exploring the fluid and consequential bonds between space and identity affords a perspective from which to reenvision the region while remaining sensitive to the determinative specificities of individual locations.

Organization This book explores Los Angeles in a variety of contexts, focusing especially on families, episodic violence, infrastructure, and public policy. Throughout the nineteenth century, local Indians, Mexican Californians, and immigrants from the United States, Europe, Mexico, and China negotiated the creation, definition, and institutionalization of difference. These people’s overlapping race- and place-making projects generated panoplies of racial and spatial formations that frequently proved either fleeting or extremely fluid. Understanding how these projects embraced cultural and material components of urban life requires sensitivity to both private action and the civic ideologies that envisioned an ideal Los Angeles, offered pathways to achieve the public good, and substantively influenced public policy. Los Angeles’s multiple and overlapping borderlands proved meaningful at the moment of its founding and remained so between 1781 and 1840. Implementing the most recent strategic invention in a long history of Spanish colonial efforts—the recruitment of entire families to settle towns in an effort to diffuse toxic gender relations resulting from Spanish soldiers’ egregiously bad behavior—mestizo settlers established a pueblo according to a Spanish

Introduction

19

vision on a piece of ground immediately adjacent to Yaanga, an independent Gabrielino-Tongva village. The pobladores entered an already dense social, political, and economic landscape shaped by increasingly specialized Tongva strategies for environmental management, food production, and trade. To that space, the newcomers carried spatial, racial, cultural, and commercial practices that had grown out of long-lasting Islamic influence on Spanish institutions and culture. Chapter 1 chronicles the ways Los Angeles’s early settlers produced race and place in Los Angeles under Spain and Mexico. Erstwhile liminal and impoverished mestizo pobladores marginalized Gabrielino-Tongva residents and transformed themselves into wealthy rancheros and self-sufficient vecinos through strategic developments in the pueblo’s institutional, spatial, and commercial infrastructure. In chapter 2, I suggest that even as Angelenos worked to weave racial boundaries into the fabric of their lives as Mexicans, they also began to build new kinds of relationships with U.S. and European newcomers. From these relationships many Angeleno families gained members with particularly useful commercial and craft acumen. Immigrant men, hailing from the United States and Europe, acquired entry into Southern Californian social and economic circles, without which they could not have organized and orchestrated the local hide and tallow trade so successfully. But these were not simply relationships of political or economic convenience or expedience. Locals opened their homes, businesses, and lands to the newcomers, and the immigrant men converted to Catholicism, swore allegiance to Mexico, and learned local strategies for cultural and economic production. Most important, immigrant U.S. men and Mexican Californian women joined in marriage and had children together. In doing so, Mexican Californian women served as a pivot in familial and gender relations. Those who married immigrant men incorporated their husbands into the complex circuits of Angeleno life, mediating the ways Yankee newcomers and established californios reworked the boundaries and meanings of their own identities and forged a new, locally specific intercultural society.57 Their relationships produced a series of shared obligations, for child rearing, labor control, land use, and municipal governance. The members of these nuclear and extended kin networks became particularly well positioned to mediate between U.S. and Mexican Californian cultures when war turned Los Angeles from a Mexican pueblo into a U.S. town.

20

Introduction

Much as recent scholars have argued that Indians in the Southwest retained primacy through the first century and more of their encounters with the Spanish, so too did Los Angeles’s Mexican Californians hold advantages during and after the Mexican War, retaining sufficient power to challenge, contest, and collaborate with newcomers from the United States from the 1840s until the 1870s. Both before and after Los Angeles’s annexation to the United States, Angelenos’ intercultural families, businesses, and social networks demonstrated the possibility of fruitful coexistence. The very bases of these earlier relationships—agreement about land use, the importance of water management, the centrality of commerce, and shared discipline over poor laborers and Indians—became the building blocks of much more elaborately intercultural communities that developed in the late 1840s and early 1850s. To be sure, the californios’ intolerance of not only Indians but also other Mexicans born outside the province, and Euro-Americans’ insistence on white racial purity as the foundational qualification for citizenship, presented a recipe for conflict. Yet they found a way forward together. Even though Angelenos born in the United States and Mexican California never completely agreed about how to how to draw racial boundaries or on the criteria upon which membership within various categories would be determined, they didn’t have to. Instead, they agreed that their disagreement didn’t matter enough to keep them from building businesses and making families together. But could such a society last? Considering the amount of emotional, personal, economic, and political capital so many Angelenos invested in developing local interculture during the 1840s and early 1850s, asking why so many decided later to go their separate ways seems more appropriate. Chapter 3 examines 1855 and 1856, focusing specifically on developments in the realms of popular violence, municipal policy, and public life that fractured and undermined long-standing social relationships. Extralegal justice, land use strategies, water laws, and the public press had until 1855 served as venues in which Angelenos reinforced their commitments to local racial and spatial arrangements. In 1855, they suddenly became arenas in which long-unsettled racial and commercial questions came to the fore, leading to injuries of words and wounds on both sides. A mayor resigned to lead a lynch mob; a police officer killed an upstanding vecino seemingly without reason; and citizens complained, in both English and Spanish, more loudly and more publicly than

Introduction

21

before about government, law enforcement, and one another’s qualification for citizenship. When numerous Mexican Californians endorsed John Frémont and the upstart Republican Party in 1856, national tensions related to sectional conflict stretched out over Los Angeles, dividing the city in much the same way it had divided the nation. Increased political and social friction, resulting from both national and local events, left the old coalitions teetering upon cracked foundations by late 1856. Relationships as long in the making and as deeply intertwined as those in Los Angeles could not be easily unmade, but local actors needed to actively maintain them if they were to endure. Over the next decade and a half, Angelenos’ actions demonstrated their ambivalence about making repairs to their cooperative relationships. As discussed in chapter 4, many Angelenos married across national boundaries, sent their children to school together, engaged in joint business ventures, and experimented with new building and spatial arrangements. However, newcomers from the United States and Mexico, who had no stake in the intercultural society forged by their predecessors, built their homes and businesses farther and farther away from the old Plaza, adding considerably to the city’s overall spatial diversity but fracturing its structural homogeneity. These spatial changes provoked further alterations to the city’s water network, closing off intercultural choices and altering the municipality’s economic orientation. Similar dynamics made choosing continued intercultural innovation in public life more difficult, even if such choices remained readily available in the private realm. Chapter 5 chronicles party politics and policy choices during the late 1860s and early 1870s. Most U.S. immigrants stood by the Democrats, while Mexican Californians joined the Republicans, recaptured political power in 1864, and remained formidable until the mid-1870s. Public policy turned acrimonious as Angelenos shed their penchant for compromise and became increasingly willing to fight about land, water, and the use of public space. This resulted in a spate of closely contested elections, maneuvering in the Common Council to neutralize the Spanish-speaking vote, and an intense debate regarding the water supply. In the midst of these battles, Angelenos engaged in a brutal anti-Chinese riot in 1871, which although commensurate with earlier episodes of cooperative vigilante discipline nevertheless amplified differences of ancestry and culture among European, Mexican, and Chinese Americans. When,

22

Introduction

amid charges of voter fraud on both sides, James Toberman defeated Cristobál Aguilar in the 1872 mayoral election, he carried an exclusivist Anglo ideology with him into office. While private cooperative ventures endured, intercultural civic ideals perished. Even though shared politics had come to an end, Los Angeles’s mixed social and cultural life survived the political tumult of 1872. Ethnic community organizations flourished, Mexican- and Chinese-owned businesses drew multiethnic crowds of evening and weekend revelers to the Plaza district, and all Angelenos celebrated religious and secular events there for some time. As much as shared work, recreation, and nightlife offered all Angelenos public venues for defining and contesting their own identities, chapter 6 argues, they ultimately could not withstand the ways the city literally changed beneath their feet. Moving aggressively, Mayor Toberman and the ascendant Democratic majority remade Los Angeles’s infrastructure and Cartesian landscape in line with an exclusivist racial vision immediately following their 1871 electoral victory. By 1894 the Common Council had enclosed dozens of irrigation canals in pipes, built a comprehensive sewer network, and graded and paved hundreds of miles of city streets. But the council built unevenly, depriving Mexican and Chinese Angelenos of access to these new services. The spatial marginalization nurtured and reinforced stereotypes of Mexican and Chinese Angelenos as dirty and backward, and the absence of sewers and paved streets in the immediate eastern vicinity of the Plaza eroded its desirability as a locus of recreational, communal, and festival gatherings. These asymmetries ultimately broke the city’s intercultural community and ushered in now-familiar racial boundaries separating White, Mexican, and Chinese Angelenos. The book ends where it began, with an analysis of the ways that La Fiesta 1894 marked the closing of one period in Los Angeles’s history and the opening of another. Only there will this story of Los Angeles conclude, lost in a swirl of dancing Indians, bags of money, and the artifice of a repackaged local history. But the story of race and place in Los Angeles now turns back from the eighth attempted conquest to the first, and joins a band of socially liminal mestizo colonists as they mark off a plaza, draw an irrigation canal from the Porciuncula River, and build a slew of mud huts, or jacales, in which to make their homes and raise their families.

CHAPTER 1

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula, 1781–1840

the winter of 1780–81, eleven families recruited from Sonora and Sinaloa set out with their military escort and a phalanx of livestock for Alta California. Along the way they divided into two parties. One proceeded up the coast, crossed the Gulf of California by boat, and then traveled over land through Baja California; another took the livestock along Juan Bautista de Anza’s trail through the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts. The twelve men, eleven women, and twenty-one children converged at Mission San Gabriel over the course of July and August. During August and September 1781, they completed their long journey with a comparatively short eleven-mile trek from the mission to the newly established El Pueblo de La Reina de Los Angeles.1 Felipe de Neve, governor of Alta California, also traveled to Mission San Gabriel from the capital at Monterey to personally mark the new pueblo’s boundaries, designate a central plaza, and distribute house, garden, and farm lots to the settlers. Pleased by the “fertility of the soil” and the “the abundance of water for irrigation,” de Neve located the pueblo near the Río Porciuncula, close to the Pacific Ocean, and adjacent to an independent Tongva Indian village called Yaanga.2 Thereafter, the physical setting played an important part in shaping pueblo residents’ civic ideals, economy, and society. Between five and ten thousand Tongva already inhabited the broad, wellDURING

23

24

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

watered basin. Drawn into the orbit of Spain’s North American colonial enterprise when explorers visited California in the 1500s, Tongva groups had been living in a world shaped by colonialism for more than two centuries. By the 1760s, they had already suffered and recovered from epidemic diseases, and long-distance trade networks frequently brought Spanish goods into the forty to sixty small villages that constituted their community.3 After 1769, renewed Spanish efforts to colonize Alta California again unsettled Tongva lifeways. Fernandino friars both gently and violently coerced many into entering the missions, leaving the work of economic, social, and cultural reproduction to fewer independent Tongva groups. Governor de Neve’s decision to locate the new pueblo next to Yaanga, therefore, created yet another node of culture contact in an already dynamic temporal and spatial landscape. Although Spanish explorers occasionally visited California’s coast from the 1540s onward, the first permanent incursions began only in 1769–70 with the founding of Mission San Diego and presidios at San Diego and Monterey. Within a decade, seven other missions and two other presidios dotted Alta California’s coast. By the late 1770s, however, the nearly exclusive presence of male colonists had provoked a pressing social and political crisis. Gabrielino-Tongva and other California Indians struggled to understand how Spanish society functioned without women, and Spanish soldiers, steeped in a “patriarchal and ethnically stratified society that devalued females and non-Europeans,” too often treated Indian women “as spoils of war.”4 Their violent behavior “served as a lightning rod for tensions,” swiftly “prejudiced the possibilities for peaceful evangelization, [and] set the stage for heightened conflict during subsequent colonization.”5 The absence of Spanish-Mexican women in the initial phases of Alta California’s settlement thus proved doubly problematic, and “the soldiers’ repeated assaults against native women” imperiled “the entire venture.”6 Men’s sexual and nonsexual violence led neophyte women to flee the missions and partially provoked a bloody rebellion at Mission San Diego and a thwarted uprising at Mission San Gabriel, both in 1775. In response, Father Junípero Serra implored secular authorities both to discipline male behavior and to stabilize Spanish society by recruiting entire families to the frontier. Serra also asked the government to encourage marriage between soldiers and neophyte women. He argued that the presence of fami-

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

25

lies “would lessen sexual assaults on native women, ease tensions between the Spanish and native peoples, and create a permanent and increasing population of gente de razón.”7 Serra’s request represented only one voice in an emerging “consensus in New Spain in favor of the participation of women in settling the northern frontier.”8 Royal authorities ultimately adopted new colonial strategies, removing legal barriers to marriage between soldiers and neophytes and founding three pueblos in Alta California. Los Angeles’s genesis as a pueblo, therefore, distinguished it from Alta California’s other colonial settlements. Rather than serving expressly religious (missions) or military (presidios) purposes, royal officials hoped the pueblo would offer a social and civic platform from which to stabilize colonial relationships. Recruiting families to create such a city proved challenging. Although the Crown offered land to work, livestock to husband, and other inducements, de Neve and his lieutenant Fernando Rivera y Moncada struggled to enlist the required number of settlers. The men and women inclined to uproot their lives, settle the frontier, and build a new pueblo generally came forward from the lower ranks of Mexican farmers and artisans to make a go of it in Los Angeles. None came north with any wealth, and only two males out of the twenty-three adults identified themselves as españoles (Spaniards or creoles born to consistently Spanish bloodlines). The rest, according to the 1781 list of Los Angeles’s original pobladores, identified as indias/os (nine), mulatas/os (eight), negros (two), and mestizos (one). “Typical of the dynamic racial and cultural mixture” in New Spain, Los Angeles’s founding families claimed a mix of European, African, and Amerindian ancestry.9 Spanish officials, therefore, drew Los Angeles into existence not on a blank canvas but instead upon a complex social and spatial landscape that bore the scars and cleavages, both deep and shallow, of historical and contemporaneous indigenous-colonial exchanges. Yet the layered colonial and indigenous past served only as the broad framework within which Los Angeles grew from a precarious Spanish settlement into a relatively prosperous Mexican town during its first six decades. Often without guidance from distant centers of political and economic power, Angelenos elaborated on established Spanish law and custom in the arenas of society, culture, and politics, developing locally specific methods for making race, place, and public policy. The pobladores developed an increasingly autonomous municipal government whose

26

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

underlying civic ideals (molded by local race and gender formations) empowered men to discipline Indians, women, and anyone else who threatened the public good. These civic and cultural practices influenced the ways men and women—Spanish-Mexican and Gabrielino—modified the land, reshaped the municipal footprint, and created new social and physical places. Although founded predominantly by people who occupied a liminal status in New Spain’s complex social strata, Los Angeles’s founding families adroitly engineered local racial hierarchies that raised themselves out of the lower ranks. At the same time, they distinguished themselves from and marginalized their Tongva neighbors.10 By 1840, Spanish-Mexican Angelenos enforced sharp boundaries between themselves and other mixed/Indian peoples, despite their own mixed ancestry. Reaching for legitimacy and erasing their recent past as immigrants, the pobladores refashioned themselves as californios (Californians) and hijos and hijas del país (sons and daughters of the land). With this local transubstantiation—worthy of any miracle central to the Catholic beliefs that undergirded Spanish colonialism—pobladores “forgot” their own complicated ancestry and forged a new town, one with social, political, and spatial relationships that soon superseded its colonial legacies.11

Spanish and Mexican Los Angeles Inconsistent rainfall and the locale’s general aridity influenced the settlers’ concerns about water use, allocation, and preservation, but the generally favorable environment sustained the pueblo’s growth. After only a decade, Los Angeles’s population increased to 31 families and 139 total residents. Of the heads of household, nearly one-third worked as laborers and another fifth as vaqueros, or cowboys. Six worked at skilled trades, for example, as blacksmith, shoemaker, mason, and tailor. In 1820, on the eve of Mexico’s independence, 61 families called Los Angeles home.12 The population of the pueblo and surrounding areas grew rapidly during the Mexican period, to 2,000 in 1836 and 2,500 in 1844, including Indians.13 Despite the growth, most Angelenos continued to work as laborers or vaqueros, and only a fraction of the populace engaged in skilled trades or commercial enterprises. Like other pueblos founded throughout New Spain, the town was an-

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

27

chored by a plaza, mandated by Governor de Neve to be “200 feet wide by 300 long.” Four main streets radiated outward from the Plaza, “two on each side; and besides these, two other streets” ran “by each corner.” The corners looked “towards the four cardinal points,” so that the “streets being prolonged in this manner” weren’t “exposed to the four winds, which would be a great inconvenience.” As the city’s physical and symbolic center, the Plaza exercised centrifugal force on public and private life. Much as Setha Low has argued that plazas in contemporary Latin America offer spaces in which people interact in formal and informal ways on a daily basis, Los Angeles’s plaza served as the pueblo’s political, social, economic, and cultural hub.14 The open space hosted numerous festivals, religious celebrations, and secular amusements. De Neve designated the east-facing side of the Plaza as its front, earmarked space for “the Church and Government Buildings,” and reserved lots on the surrounding streets for the pobladores to build their homes.15 According to de Neve’s founding orders, the pobladores lived and worked close by one another. Their houses clustered together on the streets around the plaza, and their respective farming lots created a single agglomerated rectangle. Watered by a common zanja (irrigation canal), the agricultural plots formed a community garden, with each family tending a small parcel within the larger whole (figure 1.1). It would have been easy to share tasks, divide labor, assess growth, and determine ideal harvest conditions. The layout undoubtedly offered a functional utility by centralizing the location of work and satisfying the Spanish government’s impulse to closely supervise the pobladores. Moreover, these spatial arrangements and the shared work they encouraged likely instilled a sense of common purpose and ensured an even distribution of produce. By keeping house and agricultural lots together and equalizing their size, the inhabited spaces themselves reflected the sense that individual claims did not supersede those of the community. Although the Porciuncula provided plentiful water (estimates suggest it could have supported approximately 100,000 people), its flow fluctuated with the vagaries of the inconsistent climate in Los Angeles. Uneven rainfall sometimes produced blistering droughts, only to inundate the pueblo on other occasions. In 1815 severe floods caused the Porciuncula to change course, which ruined the church. The pobladores responded by moving the whole town,

28

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

Figure 1.1. Earliest diseño (map) of Los Angeles, drawn in 1782 by José Arguello. (Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Banc MSS C-A 2 [Provincial State Papers, Archives of California, tomo 2, fol. 56])

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

29

Plaza and all, to higher ground.16 The relocation effort lasted seven years, as city officers had to contend with those who already lived and farmed on the land designated for the new church and plaza. Formerly a perfect rectangle, as per Governor de Neve’s orders, the new Plaza emerged in 1822 as “a distorted, irregular polygon.”17 No royal official had the chance to scold Angelenos for the spatial perversion, however, because Mexico achieved its independence before the new Plaza’s inauguration. In April 1822—ten months after Mexico’s victory—representatives from each of Alta California’s four presidios, a small company of troops, city leaders, and Los Angeles’s citizens gathered at the new Plaza to publicly swear their allegiance to Mexico. Spain’s colors came down, the flag of the newly independent nation of Mexico went up, and California passed into the hands of new masters. As revolutions go, this one proved unusually mild; even the ceremony lacked the pomp and circumstance customarily affiliated with such an important occasion.18 Some elite citizens undoubtedly regretted Mexico’s victory and the Fernandino fathers openly fretted about what the future held for them and their Indian charges, but no one offered more than grumbling protest. Placid as the change in power proved to be, Mexico’s liberal government did alter the relationship between people and the state. Subjects became citizens, popular political participation expanded, and pobladores found new opportunities to shape the city’s social and spatial identity. Yet differences at first remained below the surface, and most public officials retained their previous positions. For Angelenos, who lived in a thinly populated area far from the new capital, the revolution wrought incremental rather than immediate changes in daily life, which continued to revolve, as it had before, around the Plaza. Bringing “the formal and informal activities of church and state into a common space,” the relocated Plaza quickly reestablished its spatial and social status as the center of Mexican Los Angeles (figure 1.2).19 Some members of an up-and-coming elite who had received large land grants outside the city limits built town homes nearby. José Antonio Carrillo, many times alcalde (mayor) of Los Angeles, successfully petitioned the city’s comisionado for a house lot with Plaza frontage just southwest of the new church in 1822. Thereafter, Carrillo used this residence when business brought him into town from

30

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

Figure 1.2. Street Plan of Los Angeles, 1850s. (Redrawn from W. W. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo [San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1959], 8)

his ranch.20 Over the next two decades, others followed Carrillo’s lead. Pío Pico became Carrillo’s neighbor in 1834, and most of the elite ranch owners and merchants built town homes that either faced the Plaza or occupied the surrounding blocks by the early 1840s (figure 1.3).21 Working or living close to the Plaza marked high status. Los Angeles’s few independent commercial outlets joined the district’s elite residents. Smiths, dealers in dry goods, and liquor vendors could all be found in the immediate vicinity (figure 1.4). The large open space also served as the principal gathering place for both secular and religious affairs. Angelenos celebrated Corpus Christi there annually, and the pobladores commemorated Mexico’s independence with a party in the Plaza following Mass in 1837.22 In addition to its prominent role in public life, the area around the Plaza served as a primary destination for private affairs, such as family meals and smaller gatherings held in the adjacent homes. Public and private recreational opportunities also abounded. The Plaza often doubled as a ring for bullfighting and bull-and-bear fighting, Pedro Seguro’s private home on the northern corner offered games of chance, and Francisco O’Campo’s giant yard on the southern corner hosted cockfights frequently enough to earn the nickname la plazuela, or the little plaza.23

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

31

Figure 1.3. Labeled detail of the street plan showing the Plaza area during the Mexican period. (1) El Palacio, (2) Carrillo Adobe, (3) Pío Pico Adobe, (4) O’Campo Adobe/ Plazuela, (5) Coronel Adobe, (6) José del Carmen Lugo Adobe, (7) Guerrero Adobe, (8) Apablasa Adobe, (9) Del Valle Adobe, (10) Vicente Lugo Adobe, (11) Juan Sepúlveda Adobe, (12) Olvera Adobe, (13) Seguro Adobe and Gaming House, (14) Juan Andrés Sepúlveda Adobe, (15) Catholic Church.

Figure 1.4. Looking east across the Plaza, 1857, one of the earliest photographs of Los Angeles. The two-story Lugo Adobe sits left of center across the Plaza, and the Carrillo Adobe, later Pico House, with its Spanish tile roof, is at far lower right. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [482])

32

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

Identity, Work, and Society in Spanish Los Angeles Los Angeles’s Cartesian footprint and Angelenos’ use of public and private space both reflected and informed developments in the arenas of identity and labor. Race and gender already stood as dynamic axes within colonial society, and ongoing Gabrielino-Tongva engagement with the pobladores created a still more complicated spatial and social landscape. Consequently, the intersection of multiple racial and gender formations shaped the pueblo’s physical and metaphysical contours even before its official establishment. Once pobladores and Gabrielinos began to actively share space, work, and community, the pace of change accelerated and took on distinctly local dimensions. Together they drifted away from both indigenous and Spanish traditions and toward a complex and innovative intercultural society that, nevertheless, proved violent, patriarchal, and hierarchical. Almost immediately, Spanish-Mexican Angelenos jettisoned official Spanish identity markers. Since the sixteenth century, Spanish law had required census takers to carefully categorize every person in New Spain according to her or his particular blood quantum, creating a bewildering array of more than twenty distinct racial categories that came to be known as the casta system. Although common throughout Spanish America, the prevalence of familial mixing on the far northern frontier and the dearth of “pure” Spaniards sharpened the need to keep track of individual bloodlines while simultaneously complicating the effort. Casta categories ranged from the simple “mestizo,” designating the child of a Spaniard and Indian, to the truly contrived, such as a salta-atras (literally a “throwback”), which designated the child of two phenotypically European parents who looked African or Indian.24 Such an explicit recognition of previous mixing whose knowledge has been lost or erased tacitly conceded the true confusion around these issues. Royal law reserved positions of influence and power for blue-blooded Spaniards, alternately called peninsulares, españoles, or gapuchines (men of spurs), and their “pure blooded” children born in the Americas, called criollos (creoles). However, very few españoles or criollos lived in Los Angeles or in Alta California more generally.25 The first padrón, or census, taken in Los Angeles contained a racial designation for each of the twenty-three heads of family and their respective spouses. Categories listed include español, indio,

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

33

mulata, mestizo, negro, coyote (child of a mestizo and an india), and chino (child of a mulata/o and an india/o). Of these twenty-three families, six were headed by couples who had married across categories.26 The children of these mixed marriages, according to the official designations enshrined in the Spanish casta system, would have been officially reckoned as zambos (children from a negra/o parent and a mulata/o parent, seven), chinos, and mestizos (four). María and José Navarro’s three children, who had a mestizo father and a mulata mother, would have been designated calpanmulatos or cambujos had they grown up somewhere else in New Spain. Having left central Mexico, the pobladores, regardless of their family lineages, found ample opportunities to acquire land and wealth in Los Angeles, further challenging casta barriers. Although Angelenos identified as indios faced the greatest obstacles to equal social standing, “no permanent gulf separated” pobladores “identified variously as español, mulato, mestizo, coyote, and indio.” The lands they received for both houses and agriculture allowed them to achieve a landed independence that remained out of reach for most mixed-heritage people living elsewhere in New Spain.27 The pueblo’s predominantly mixed populace also took advantage of possibilities for upward social and political mobility. Out of necessity, mixed-heritage Angelenos “served as soldiers, officers, and municipal officials.” Because royal regulations reserved public offices for peninsulares or pure Spanish criollos, mestizos who served in such capacity necessarily “climbed” the casta system despite their individual lineages. Several did so immediately: of the eight men on both the 1781 settlement list and the 1790 census, seven improved their racial standing. The only one who didn’t, Félix Villavicencio, identified as español on both occasions.28 Having escaped the casta system’s bonds, Spanish-Mexican Angelenos rapidly developed local strategies for defining race and identity based on a complex relationship between ancestry, actions, and achievement. As they actively redefined their own racial identities and fashioned a new racial system, the pobladores repurposed the simpler Spanish categories gente de razón and gente sin razón to create a clear (but by no means impermeable) boundary between themselves and their Gabrielino neighbors. Literally translated as “people with reason” and “people without reason,” gente de razón used their reason to master nature, whereas nature mastered the gente sin razón. Lacking bodily

34

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

discipline and the capacity for rational thought, gente sin razón ate when they were hungry, took from nature without dominating it, freely engaged in sexual relations, and performed “magic.”29 In practice, people identified as gente de razón practiced Catholicism, spoke Spanish, lived in towns, worked as farmers, and paid taxes. Strong gender norms and acquiescence to a rigid form of patriarchy further required Angelenos desirous of gente de razón status to uphold nuclear families, “the authority of husbands and fathers over women, sexual purity or virginity before marriage, fidelity and monogamy during married life, chastity in widowhood, and shame in all bodily matters.”30 So long as they “dressed and acted more or less as Spaniards,” people claiming Indian or mixed ancestry could still achieve “rank and status” as gente de razón in Los Angeles.31 This was especially true for Mexican-Indian pobladores who “had moved outside the linguistic and cultural area they had been affiliated with as ‘Indians.’”32 Ostensibly a social and cultural measure of the degree to which any one individual practiced appropriate self-discipline and contributed to the community’s general well-being, razón operated in Spanish Los Angeles as a racialized measure of social position. Although confident they could teach the Gabrielinos razón, Serra and other Franciscan fathers worried that the establishment of pueblos would threaten ecclesiastical authority. Likely confirming their suspicions, Governor de Neve visited Yaanga, a nearby Gabrielino-Tongva village, while surveying the site for Los Angeles. Crossing the boundary between secular and religious purview, he prevailed upon several Indian youths to convert to Catholicism and stood personally as padrino in nearly a dozen baptisms, creating a personal bond of kinship that integrated him and his settlers into the larger Tongva community. He did all of this without including the friars at Mission San Gabriel, working instead to lay the groundwork for the pobladores (rather than the church) to employ the converted Indians as laborers.33 The settlers quickly elaborated on the governor’s efforts, forging economic and social relationships between themselves and Yaanga’s residents. For example, the pobladores relied on both voluntary and coerced Tongva labor when building zanjas and houses. At first, Spanish laws prohibited independent Indians from living in Los Angeles or entering private houses. Several pobladores nevertheless employed Tongva agriculturalists on a share system, exchanging a third of the crop for labor. Gabrielinos helped plant and har-

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

35

vest the pueblo’s corn and wheat crops in 1784, and reaped “more than 1,800 fanegas of corn, 340 fanegas of kidney beans, and 9 fanegas each of wheat, lentils, and garbanzos.”34 Angelenos employed Gabrielino-Tongva in a variety of other occupations, and their labor proved crucial to the pueblo’s early success. Encouraged by the fruitful partnership but worried about reports of Indian abuse, Pedro Fages, de Neve’s successor as Alta California’s governor, issued a Code of Conduct in 1787 sanctioning poblador-indio interactions, requiring settlers to respect Gabrielino rancherías (independent settlements), and mandating payment to Indian laborers. Gabrielino-made ceramics and other household goods unearthed in abundance by archaeologists suggest that Gabrielino-Tongva “women worked in pueblo households” and that pobladores pursued trade with Gabrielinos for “prized sea otter pelts and seal skins, as well as sieves, trays, mats, and other articles made of indigenous woven materials.” Although pueblo-dwelling Tongva “were beaten, starved, and abused” as they had been in the missions and presidios, the code put Indians “in a position to make decisions regarding the social and material benefits between mission and pueblo.” Unlike the Franciscans, the pobladores cared little about converting Indians to Catholicism or fomenting changes to their cultural practices, and Gabrielino-Tongva people demonstrated a preference for pueblo life.35 However much Christianized and independent Gabrielinos became incorporated into the town’s economic and social fabric, however, they did not do so as equals. Most remained categorized as gente sin razón, preventing their full participation in public life and leaving them at constant risk of violence and subjugation.36 Nevertheless, the increasing presence of Gabrielinos in Los Angeles during the 1790s “led to considerable acculturation between the Indian and Spanish communities.” Blurring already unstable boundaries, many Gabrielino-Tongva “spoke Spanish and dressed like their employers, ‘clad in shoes, with sombreros and blankets.’” Reciprocally, the pobladores learned to speak the Gabrielino language and, in time, formed mixed families.37 While living in the pueblo generally offered Gabrielinos “greater freedoms and new opportunities,” and “adapting to the emerging mestizo culture” allowed some to rise into the ranks of the gente de razón, most “remained at the bottom of the social structure” and faced marginalization.38 Rather than reproducing the casta system, Los Angeles’s settlers universally reckoned themselves as gente

36

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

de razón, regardless of their individual origins. In so doing, they debased most Gabrielinos as gente sin razón. For the pobladores, this racial maneuver involved obfuscating their own mixed ancestry and family histories of colonial subjugation while simultaneously denying the possibility that GabrielinoTongva could undergo a similar transformation.39

Elaborating Race in the Mexican Period: Californio, Vecino, Cholo, Indio When Mexico gained its independence from Spain, liberal ideologues abolished the casta system and leveled all residents of Mexico as citizens with a vested interest in the Mexican state.40 Although effected on paper with a few quill strokes, many elite Mexicans proved reluctant to relinquish their status. Complicating matters further, Mexican officials launched a corollary effort to disband and secularize the missions. The controversial initiative provoked sharp divisions among elite Californians and led to a decade of debate. Proponents hoped that Indians, emancipated from priestly control, would productively work the land, pay taxes, and contribute to society. Opponents, including remaining mission fathers, argued for a gradual approach as they did not believe the neophytes “ready” to be resituated as independent, productive, land-owning Mexican citizens. After a decade of debate, the territorial authorities, together with the Mexican government, ultimately closed the missions and secularized mission lands between 1834 and 1836.41 According to the plan, former neophytes would receive mission lands and could either remain in their homes as owners rather than charges or leave the missions and go where they pleased. Once approved, however, California officials failed to implement secularization as designed. Rather than equitably dividing mission property among the former neophytes, they engineered a bonanza for select Mexican Californians. Approximately 800 well-connected men and women snapped up more than 8 million acres of liquidated mission lands between 1834 and 1846.42 In the Los Angeles area, only twenty former neophytes (eighteen men and two women) received grants as part of secularization. None were especially large, and all twenty together totaled 3.5 sitios (square leagues, measured as 4,339 acres or 6.78 square miles each). Moreover, each individual parcel awarded to Indians

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

37

proved far smaller than the average granted to Spanish-Mexican residents and paled in comparison to large individual grants, such as the five-sitio Santa Ana del Chino awarded to Antonio María Lugo. Rather than a liberal redistribution, secularization effectively dispossessed Indians from their ancestral and mission lands, and tens of thousands left California’s coastal areas for the less populated interior.43 Over time, secularization played a central role in destabilizing and reconfiguring California society, but not in any way its architects imagined. Liberalism made Indians citizens on paper, and secularization provided for their de facto release from the missions’ formal bonds. Yet the secularization plan fundamentally failed to resituate the neophytes as landed petit bourgeoisie, and those who left the missions joined the independent Gabrielinos already living on racherías or ranchos. Los Angeles’s Gabrielino population swelled as a result of secularization. In 1830, only about 200 lived in the pueblo’s immediate vicinity. By 1844, however, nearly 400 lived within the city limits, and another 650 lived in adjacent rancherías.44 Without land of their own, Indians had to hire themselves out as workers in order to survive, leaving them open to predatory employers. Secularization also fundamentally altered California’s economy. Under Spain, the missions had been the region’s only large economic entities. Although the Spanish government had awarded a few grants to its soldiers in Alta California, secularization allowed hundreds of previously impoverished soldiers and settlers, male and female, to acquire enormous parcels of former mission lands. Most tracts included sizable herds of cattle, and the grantees became ranchers. Concurrently, Mexico’s liberal trade policies opened California’s shores to foreign commerce. Ranch-raised cattle became central to a vigorous international hide and tallow trade, and the rancheros reaped unprecedented economic rewards in the form of specie, social status, and the ability to purchase finished goods from abroad. Consequently, recipients of former mission lands began accruing sufficient wealth and status to nurture claims to elite status among gente de razón.45 The aggregate social and economic consequences of land redistribution and the growing hide and tallow trade further jumbled already fluid identity markers. Razón continued to divide people throughout the Mexican period, but less neatly. Not only did the rancheros begin to separate themselves so-

38

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

cially and economically from ordinary pobladores, three generations of mixed families and the infusion of many former neophytes into the local community softened the line between gente de razón and gente sin razón among working people. Indians’ new status as citizens also complicated available strategies for controlling sufficient labor to run the ranches and sort town residents. Thus, too many people existed close to razón’s dividing line for continued clarity, and the connection between razón and status, in turn, became less predictable.46 The newly landed, in particular, needed solutions to these dilemmas in order to leverage their ranches into social and economic advantage. Building on new relationships between land and labor, they invented new categories of social identity and established new markers of difference across Mexican Californian society. The emergent, ranch-owning elite drove these new formations, refashioning themselves as californios (Californians) and hijos del país (sons and daughters of the land), simultaneously erasing Gabrielino-Tongva as the original inhabitants and their own recent familial histories of mixing and migration.47 Among the californios, vast lands, numerous livestock, opulent displays of wealth, and ornate clothing rendered meaningless any individual’s particular lineage. As the californios transformed their identities, they nevertheless reproduced and elaborated a fairly rigid patriarchy that had been brought from Spain and developed in the colonies. Whereas californianas had to engage in an array of domestic chores, obey their fathers and husbands, and conform to strict sexual regulations in order to maintain their own and their familial honor, californio men ensured their status by a culture of leisure, excellence in horsemanship, and control over the family.48 Beyond relying on sharply defined and asymmetrical gender relations, each component of the new californio identity hinged almost entirely on the successful exploitation of other people’s work. Secularization had left many landless Gabrielinos dependent on others for food, clothing, and shelter, and californios drew hundreds of local Gabrielinos into sustaining cycles of semiand involuntary employment on ranches that reduced many Gabrielinos to peons.49 Outraged, Narciso Durán, Father President of the remaining mission system, complained to Governor Figueroa in 1833. He lamented that the two to three hundred Gabrielino-Tongva he found living around Los Angeles were almost all “servants” of ranchers who knew how to secure Indians’ “services by binding them a whole year for an advanced trifle.”50 On the ranches, Gabri-

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

39

elino women assisted “with the time consuming round of domestic chores,” and men worked in a variety of tasks related to farming and animal husbandry. For their work, they received crude huts for dwelling places; corn, beef, and beans to eat; and payment “in kind, sometimes with aguardiente and at other times with finished goods, such as blankets, clothing, and other items.”51 Although most californios characterized their own relations with Indian laborers as familial, and even if “fiestas, cloth goods, and aguardiente smoothed over the grimy bond,” the relationship nevertheless proceeded unequally.52 To be Indian meant to labor daily, frequently involuntarily. In Los Angeles, local law stated that any Indian without obvious employment should be declared vagrant, arrested, and fined. If vagrant Indians could not pay these fines in specie, the municipal government employed them on public works projects or auctioned their labor to private citizens. This work offset the fines but carried no additional salary, allowing city officers to round up most Gabrielinos as again vagrant once they were released from service. Through these policies and practices, elite and middling Angelenos imposed an improvised version of labor control resembling slavery.53 As they forged their own racial status, therefore, the californios simultaneously reenacted the same race-making practices to which their own forebears had been subjected during earlier phases of Spanish colonial rule in Mexico. The californios thus built on existing Indian racial formulations to resubjugate Gabrielinos within the new social and economic order, relying on law, custom, trickery, and violence to create and invest with meaning alleged differences between themselves and Indians, sharpening the definition of and differences between californios and indios. The very work and peonage that defined Indian identity also accounted for the material basis of the californios’ elite economic and social status, as had been the case in the forging of another North American racial system, black African slavery. The asymmetrical relationship of mutual dependency that emerged in Los Angeles diminished the californios’ work responsibilities and provided them with a suddenly valuable economic commodity: cattle hides and tallow. Californios bartered hides and tallow with seaborne foreign merchants for luxury goods, especially furniture, cloth, and precious metals, which in turn increased their material possessions and buttressed their efforts to distinguish themselves from others. Fancy furnishings differentiated the in-

40

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

terior spaces of elite homes from those of ordinary Angelenos, and flamboyant fabrics allowed dress to serve as a marker of californios’ and californianas’ status. Rancheros and rancheras also acquired simple cloth and other trinkets that they gave to the Indians. This served both as a form of compensation, reinforcing the unequal labor relationship, and as a further indicator of difference, because Indians could dress only in plain clothes.54 Thus, Californios used dress instead of phenotype as one identity marker. In addition to reinforcing the asymmetry in costume and material possessions, the trade patterns also fixed meaningful boundaries between traders and non-traders. Determining what goods were to be exchanged, on what terms, and how they would be distributed gave a person power in the Los Angeles economy. The californios’ control over possessions reinforced differences among groups and established relationships of power between them. Two additional social identity categories emerged in Los Angeles during the 1820s and 1830s: vecinos and cholos. Although less clearly defined, either on their own terms or in relation to each other, they nevertheless encompassed the majority of Angelenos. Literally translated as neighbors, vecinos included the city’s thin middle class, skilled ranch hands, independent farmers, and other working, established residents. All of these men and women qualified as gente de razón, but they did not control enough land or labor to pass muster as californios. As members of an intermediate category, vecinos could not claim elite status, but neither did they fear being treated like Indians. Vecinos enjoyed social and political equality in Los Angeles, where they hosted important social events, lived near the Plaza, and held the majority of elective and appointed offices.55 The same cannot be said for those Angelenos classified as cholos. Originally a casta category describing the offspring of two mulatos, themselves children of mixed Indian and African parentage, the term also applied to people living in Spanish-controlled Mexico who had one mestizo and one indio parent.56 Californios and vecinos drew on this epithet with particular frequency between 1825 and 1830, when four hundred “petty thieves and political prisoners” came north from Sinaloa and Sonora. These “cholos” proved particularly “corrupt and lustful,” according to Juan Bautista Alvarado, who complained that “quarrels and struggles among themselves were daily occurrences.”57 Antonio María Osio disparaged as cholos a group of Mexican soldiers from Tepic

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

41

and Mazatlán—“despicable people” who perpetrated numerous “robberies, stabbings, assassinations, and other actions”—upon their arrival in California in 1819. Osio, a mid-level political operative and fourth-generation resident of Mexico and California, attributed such behavior to the “excesses peculiar to coarse men,” adding that such “depraved practices” were “entirely unfamiliar to the californios.” He concluded by claiming still more broadly that “none” of these immigrants from Mexico to California “behaved with honor.”58 Osio, who arrived in California more than six years after these events, seemingly didn’t need to be present in order to assess the immigrants’ behavior. Categorical and ideological, prefigured without necessary recourse to an actual event, one could know how cholo immigrants from Mexico behaved in absentia.59 The californios didn’t only rail against allegedly base Mexican immigrants in their memoirs, they controlled cholos in much the same way they controlled indios—by subjecting them to vagrancy laws and binding them over for long-term service as peons. Culture, class, status, and ancestry worked together to build and sustain the new identity categories that emerged in Los Angeles during the 1820s and 1830s. Unlike the United States, where skin tone played a dominant role in marking race, minimal differences in color, language, and ancestry required Angelenos to develop different strategic mechanisms for sorting society’s members.60 Behavior as much as ancestry, occupation as much as religion, and attire as much as phenotype came to determine one’s location within the social hierarchy. Pío Pico, a cattle baron, Plaza-dweller, and California governor, held vast tracts of land, controlled hundreds of Indian and Mexican laborers, and dressed, acted, and engaged in leisure as other elite members of society. It mattered not that his grandparents included a mestizo and a mulata, or that his brother Andrés looked every bit the Spaniard while Pío had dark skin, curly hair, and African facial features (figure 1.5). None of this kept Pico from playing a central role in California’s politics and economy throughout the nineteenth century.61 Pico and his cohort in the up-and-coming Mexican Californian elite engaged in a race-making project designed to overcome the social and economic uncertainties caused by liberalism and secularization during the 1820s and 1830s. Using land and labor as the basis for reconstructing society and the local economy, the californios instituted a layered racial hierarchy that replaced

42

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

Figure 1.5. Pío Pico and family. From left: Maranata Alvarado (niece), Nachita Alvarado de Pico (wife), Pío Pico, Trinidad de la Guerra (niece). (San Diego History Center, Negative No. 3544-2)

razón as the primary marker of identity in Los Angeles. Increased wealth and control over a new source of labor could not alone facilitate the coherence of new racial categories. Throughout the Spanish and Mexican periods, these racial projects emerged in dialogue with policies shaped by the municipal government and the pueblo’s physical growth, which in turn served to create symmetry between social, political, and spatial practice. Only because of these multiple connections did the set of ideas represented by californios, vecinos, cholos, and indios become invested with meaning.

Municipal Government and Civic Ideals The elected alcalde and ayuntamiento (town council) formed the nucleus of municipal government in Los Angeles, and their policies guided the pueblo’s development under Spain and Mexico. At the municipal structure’s center stood the alcalde, who served as president of the ayuntamiento, chief executive officer of the municipal corporation, and judge of the first instance.62 Ayuntamientos, consisting of elected representatives, functioned as the pueblo’s pri-

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

43

mary legislative body and bore responsibility for securing the community’s overall welfare.63 In order to hold elective offices, candidates had to be literate, pueblo citizens, and debt free. Brought from Spain to the Americas, the position of alcalde originated as an Islamic institution, the qa¯d.ı¯, or judge.64 In Los Angeles and throughout New Spain, alcaldes oversaw the municipality as chief executives, stood as judges of the first instance, presided over the ayuntamiento, and bore general responsibility to keep the pobladores orderly and harmonious. In their daily duties, alcaldes in Los Angeles issued licenses, inspected hides before sale, issued passports to visitors and travelers, investigated crimes, presided over trials, and mediated disputes. The ayuntamiento had similarly broad oversight. It heard petitions for vacant lands, established and maintained orderly streets, ensured the appropriate distribution of water, limited vagrancy and violence, kept the pobladores productive, and brought citizens under arms when necessary. In a single session, for example, the ayuntamiento established new municipal offices, regulated the carrying of weapons, and outlawed gambling.65 Throughout the year, the city government collected fees, levied fines, and paid various expenses.66 Given the breadth of their responsibilities, alcaldes depended on the community’s respect to effectively wield their considerable powers. According to one scholar, “in municipal matters and local disputes the alcalde’s word was literally the law itself, unfettered by substantive standards (legal rules).” In adjudicating and resolving disputes, alcaldes ruled as they “saw fit, confined only by the cultural and religious mores of the local village in which [they] sat.”67 Consequently, the civic ideals that guided how alcaldes and ayuntamiento members engaged municipal governance, regulated public life, and mediated local disputes played an important part in creating both the municipality’s institutions and the larger network of social, economic, and spatial practices under the pueblo’s official purview. Alcaldes and ayuntamiento members in Los Angeles relied not on instinct alone but on a mélange of social, political, religious, and economic ideologies to steer their behavior as municipal officers. These ideologies, together with the ways city officers understood the meaning of citizenship and the pueblo’s ideal future, generated civic ideals that both informed and reflected the estimation, formulation, and implementation of public policy. By exploring

44

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

policy making, the building blocks of such civic ideals and their impact as templates for achieving the public good emerge from the dense labyrinth of petitions, ordinances, declarations, and regulations populating the archival records from the early municipal history of Los Angeles. Although at times disjointed, the strategies policy makers employed in relation to local laws, water regulation, and land tenure collectively offer a view of both dominant trends and key loci of contestation that shaped race and place in Los Angeles.68 Governor de Neve’s founding orders for Los Angeles, and the general laws governing New Spanish settlements, served as the first touchstone for civic ideals in the pueblo. De Neve decreed that all “building lots and planting lands” be distributed “equally and proportionally to all new settlers.” He further reserved all lands not occupied by the first settlers “for propios of the pueblo,” to offset public expenses and to be “awarded gratuitously” to future residents.69 When Los Angeles’s founders received titles to their lands after five years, Governor Pedro Fages (de Neve’s successor) clarified the difference between individual and communal property, “such as the Crops, water, pastures, and wood.” Moreover, “each warrant or act of Possession” contained an explicit enumeration of the limits of each title and recipients’ communal responsibilities.70 The pueblo itself held water and land as common property, and all produce grown on such lands and using such waters similarly belonged to the community as a whole. No individual could ever claim ownership of these resources or use them in any way injurious to the pueblo or the general populace. Alcaldes and ayuntamientos bore responsibility for prioritizing maximal communal benefit and for checking individual abuses. Clear and concise, these regulations failed to cover the entire ground of municipal governance, requiring municipal officers to create laws pertaining to commerce, cleanliness, behavior, and the use of public space. Checked at times by Spanish officials during the settlement’s early years, the ayuntamientos and alcaldes gained their full independence following the success of the Mexican Revolution.71 As Angelenos became citizens instead of subjects, they took on new responsibilities for determining the direction of municipal governance, and an overall shift in political culture brought both more people and more ideas into the political process. The freedom to participate in public life and invest with meaning categories of citizenship, legal rights, and electoral participation simultaneously allowed Angelenos to create substantive differences

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

45

through exclusion and inequality. While vecinos experienced dramatic new opportunities to acquire land, vote, and hold office, indios found fewer porosities in the social and political order. Although claiming to hold Indians’ interests in high regard and relying heavily on Gabrielino-Tongva labor, policy makers treated Indians alternately as child-like charges of the pueblo and as threats to the community’s physical and moral health. They used law rigidly to regulate Indian communities, Indian activities, and Indian labor. City officers similarly treated Mexican Californian women as either charges of or threats to the community, if to a slightly lesser extent. Although women could own property, receive pueblo lots, and engage in commerce, only unmarried women over age twenty-five or widows could do so without their fathers’ or husbands’ express permission. Beyond norms that required young women to be chaste, married women to be faithful, and widows to remain celibate, municipal census takers officially marked women who cohabited with men out of wedlock with the designation “MV,” shorthand for mala vida and indicating women who lived dishonorable lives. Of the thirteen women marked MV in the 1836 census and the thirty-five designated MV in the 1844 census, all were “independent females who often headed their own households.” Although none worked as prostitutes and most lived lawfully, “community leaders saw them as potentially immoral and ‘loose’ women who needed to be regulated and kept under surveillance by patriarchal authority figures.” The group included numerous widows who subsequently connected with other, unmarried men.72 Consequently, the definition of who did and did not count as a member of the community—status based on both race and gender—became central to civic ideals oriented toward a communal ethos. The idea of communal rights substantively informed the city government’s distribution of the public lands. From Los Angeles’s founding, land falling within the municipal purview belonged to the community as a whole. Individual residents desirous of occupying vacant land petitioned the ayuntamiento, whose standing land subcommittee determined whether or not anyone already held title.73 If vacant, the ayuntamiento offered petitioners provisional grants. Recipients had four months to fence the granted lot and two years to improve and cultivate the land. Once the ayuntamiento’s requirements had been met, the alcalde issued a title. Even then, pueblo rights and communal ideals carried the day. The ayuntamiento granted titles “to the use of the land rather than

46

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

to the body of the land.” No one held property privately.74 If petitioners failed to scrupulously abide by these rules, they forfeited their lots. Among the hundreds of petitions for land that occupy the first several folders of the city archives, one in particular suggests the overall ideology guiding the council in its distributive function. Antonio Maria Lugo, a prosperous Mexican Californian and Judge of the Plains, marshaled his intimate knowledge of local civic ideals and prepared a precisely tailored petition for the ayuntamiento on July 20, 1838. He promised to “fence and utilize the land,” close off an alley “only used by wrong doers,” and pay “the taxes imposed” on agricultural products. Together, Lugo rolled the idea of multiple community benefits—fencing off a criminal hangout, supporting the municipal fund, and increasing the aggregate agricultural production of the pueblo—into a single petition. Lugo framed the request as “a benefit, not only to myself, but to the public as well.”75 The council duly granted Lugo’s request but didn’t require citizens to use such forced and obsequious language to secure grants. Several petitions bear only an X, and those preparing the petitions signed others on petitioners’ behalf, noting that the petitioner did not know how to sign.76 Women had access to lands by the same process. Spanish law permitted women, married and unmarried, to own property independently. Only single women over twenty-five years old and widows could purchase, sell, and mortgage property without permission from their fathers or husbands. Several women in the Los Angeles area received or inherited rancho land grants, setting them apart from other women in the community. Ranchos provided them with resources to engage in large-scale commercial transactions and to participate as independent consumers in the local trade in both basic and luxury goods. Many more vecinas petitioned the ayuntamiento for house lots, small farms, and orchards. Although less economically mobile than the local rancheras, land-holding vecinas “nevertheless had the means with which to support themselves and their families.”77 For example, Matilde Cota requested 300 square varas of land for both a residence and a farm in March 1837, which the ayuntamiento granted.78 Most vecinas who applied for and received pueblo lands stood as heads of households, including some who had been marked as MV in the census. Not only did fewer women than men hold town lots, more female than male landowners struggled to complete the improvements neces-

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

47

sary to secure titles, because many could not pay for enough outside help to build fences, erect homes, and till garden lots.79 Beyond its control over lands granted for private use, the ayuntamiento tried to control the development of Los Angeles’s public spaces. In 1824, it ordered Santiago Rubio to tear down his house and cede his lot to the city because it was not in line with the relocated main Plaza and the principal street. After a fourteen-year interlude during which Rubio “had not the means to build,” the ayuntamiento compensated him with a new parcel and waived the regular charges.80 While wrestling with Rubio, the council made a broader effort to re-regularize the new Plaza. In 1836 the ayuntamiento appointed a commission empowered to reorder the “streets and plazas of this city.” The commission called for the platting of two maps: one indicating the city “as it actually exists,” and the other with a plan for “the most prudent means of repairing the monstrous irregularity of our streets,” resulting from “the neglect in ceding house lots and erecting houses in this city.” The committee stressed “the importance to this city in having its common lands, streets, alleys, and plazas” kept in good order and asked the ayuntamiento to “act promptly” because the task at hand, “if now difficult, in time will be truly impossible.”81 Although worried about the Cartesian order of the Plaza and its adjacent streets, the ayuntamiento had already helped to establish the Plaza as not only the central space, but also the central place, of public life in Los Angeles. In granting house lots to elite citizens, commercial permits to stores, gambling parlors, and drinking establishments, and in issuing permits for bullfights, cockfights, and public dances along and on the plaza, city officers had engineered the commercial, social, and cultural content that made the Plaza the pueblo’s hub. Moreover, it retained control over that space not only by trying to square the grid on maps but by collecting fees for and regulating the manner of all such activities there. Municipal officers kept a similarly close watch over pueblo waters. From its founding, few necessities so occupied Angelenos’ attention. Governor de Neve ordered the first settlers to “open the principal drain, or trench, form a dam, and other necessary public works for the benefit of cultivation, which the community is bound particularly to attend to.”82 The construction of this channel, the Zanja Madre, was one of the first two projects undertaken by the

48

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

pobladores.83 As the steward of the municipal waters, the ayuntamiento oversaw distribution with an eye to the communal good. The principles guiding its decisions grew out of older Spanish traditions, which held that water belonged to the entire community. Irrigating as many fields as possible proved far more important than stimulating private enterprise by allocating great quantities of water to individual petitioners.84 For example, in 1838 the ayuntamiento decided that a spring controlled exclusively by Señora Encarnación Sepúlveda “should revert to the use of the community, which is in need of same.”85 In 1839 the ayuntamiento allowed immigrant Julian Pope the opportunity to “erect a water mill for the purpose of crushing wheat” but denied him a title to the zanja and reminded him that all water he used “must be returned to the same river so that other persons living below will not be injured.”86 Members of the ayuntamiento practiced similar care when communicating to “their superiors that their verdicts had been rendered with the common good in mind.”87 For every irrigation project the ayuntamiento approved, it clarified that petitioners received permission only to use the water, never to own it. In addition to controlling the water supply, the ayuntamiento oversaw the communal maintenance of the town’s zanjas, or irrigation canals. A standing committee on zanjas supervised repairs and prepared an irrigation schedule. In an 1836 call to “widen, deepen, and straighten” the Zanja Madre and others, committee men Rafael Guirado and Nepomusemo Alvarado ordered that “all the owners of crops and orchards be compelled to contribute, with their person or an Indian to perform said improvement until accomplished.” The committee called on “all owners of crops and orchards” to select “a Zanjero” to oversee the work. The zanjero (water overseer) offered assistance, maintained quality standards, and reported back to the council, which in turn fined shirkers. Moreover, the committee ordered each of the owners to pay the zanjero “from the products of their soil.”88 The order applied to all owners, not simply those on the land affected by the improvements, because the pobladores bore collective responsibility for maintaining the waterways, just as they communally retained rights to the water flowing therein. Beyond their considerable executive and legislative duties, alcaldes served as judges of the first instance for civil and criminal proceedings throughout the Spanish and Mexican periods.89 In criminal cases, alcaldes examined crime scenes, made necessary interviews, appointed defenders for the accused, and

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

49

selected hombres buenos (good men) to provide counsel to the interested parties. Alcaldes then presided over formal hearings, consulted with the hombres buenos, and rendered decisions.90 In civil cases, alcaldes acted as arbitrators, mediating between parties to achieve mutually satisfactory resolutions. In both civil and criminal cases, alcaldes sought conciliatory judgments that fit within communal standards, despite numerous Spanish and Mexican efforts to impose more rigid legal rules.91 In common with municipal governments “throughout the Spanish borderlands,” officials in Los Angeles “preferred to resolve disputes in ways that resulted in the least harm to the community, regardless of an individual’s rights.”92 Justice relied on “culturally based goals of conciliation” and on communal pressures to “compel adherence” to decisions.93 During the first nine months of 1833, for example, Alcalde José Antonio Carrillo heard and issued decisions in nineteen separate cases, concerning debts, petty violence, theft, vagrancy, and the creation of public scandals.94 In 1839, Alcalde Manuel Dominguez mediated a dispute between Justo Morillo and José Sepúlveda over a single piece of lumber. In conjunction with the hombres buenos (Vicente de la Osa and Ygnacio Coronel), Dominguez decided that the “piece of lumber in question belonged to both litigants” and ordered it divided in half “with the only conditions that Sepúlveda deliver” Morillo’s share to Morillo’s “door . . . in compensation for his [Morillo’s] having done the work of saving the same.”95 Although simple, even obvious, Dominguez’s decision balanced the parties. Equally important, Morillo, an ordinary vecino who signed with an X, found justice against one of the community’s wealthiest and most politically powerful members. Whereas vecino men found equal footing with those who outranked them socially before the law, vecina and ranchera women did not always fare similarly well. To begin with, women risked dishonoring themselves and their families by initiating a legal or civil complaint against a husband or father, to say nothing of potential retaliation. Nevertheless, women responded to abusive and misbehaving men by turning to the local authorities, who almost always granted requests for hearings. As historian Miroslava Chávez-García argues, women who sought legal redress “did not seek to usurp the husband’s position as the head of the household or to overthrow the ideological and practical system of patriarchy.” Instead, their actions challenged “patriarchal authority figures who had failed to behave according to the gender and social roles pre-

50

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

scribed for them.” Moreover, she argues, women who went to court “sought to ensure that the system of patriarchy worked” in their favor. However, “justice frequently eluded” Angeleno women because alcaldes and judges often “interpreted the law in ways that reflected deeply rooted gender biases.” In particular, judicial and alcalde courts almost always tried to protect the honor and integrity of families, a critical, gendered component of californio and vecino society in Los Angeles. Priests assiduously refused to grant divorces, and both ecclesiastical and secular authorities pushed “reconciliation to preserve the marriage for the good of the family and social stability.” Too often, men who committed adultery or acted violently professed themselves changed only to revert to their abusive behaviors. Consequently, women frequently had to choose between renewing their formal complaint, pursuing extralegal measures, or enduring difficult domestic situations without formal redress. Occasionally local authorities punished men, usually in cases involving rape, severe domestic violence, or adultery. Even these penalties had limits, as californio or vecino male violence against Indian women—whose low racial standing left them without honor—often went unpunished or resulted in the levying of fines rather than imprisonment. Many women, despite their ability and willingness to turn to the authorities, found only gentle encouragement to keep their families together.96 Combined with the broader preference for reconciliation, community justice for women meant they frequently struggled to find relief from difficult situations. In all, the intersection of race, gender, and community principles led to systemic biases against all women and especially Indian women. The preference for “community pressures, rather than force” obtained even in serious criminal cases.97 In February 1837, Alcalde José Sepúlveda decided against executing a group of men convicted of stealing hides. After first sentencing them to death in accordance with formal law, Sepúlveda had a change of heart and meted out a different punishment. Together with the ayuntamiento and “in the interest of humanity,” Sepúlveda ordered the convicted thieves to “apologize publicly for their doings and injuries” before being “paraded afoot through the city’s streets” and banished for life.98 Banishment operated “as a community-based device” that removed “a disruptive influence” and protected the community’s future without the spectacle of a hanging.99 While this apparent weakness may suggest insecurity on the Sepúlveda’s part, offering leniency would not have been entirely out of step with a system designed primarily to manage conflict and preserve community harmony.

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

51

Although Los Angeles’s public servants built on and elaborated the basic communal ethos that guided the pueblo’s founding, the policies they chose did not create anything like an inclusive, egalitarian polity. Californios and vecinos normally thought of indios as existing outside the boundaries of their community. Few Indian-initiated petitions for land, claims for water, or civil claims in alcalde court records survive, suggesting they rarely participated in these central aspects of political life. Legal cases involving Gabrielino women and men are more common, and their outcomes bear the marks of race and gender bias. Moreover, policy makers turned widely held notions of Indian difference into institutionalized practices that furthered and substantiated inequality. Explicit policies established by the Los Angeles ayuntamiento joined the various practices californios and vecinos privately employed to create and maintain Los Angeles’s developing racial categories. The ayuntamiento regularly fretted about the presence of Indians in the city, the possibilities for and consequences of mixing between indios and pobladores, and the seemingly constant threat of violence and social disintegration they perceived indios to pose. In 1833, the council appointed comisionados to “guard and exercise a watchful supervision over the conduct of the aborigines in this neighborhood and report to the authorities.”100 The law made Indians the only group of people subject to observation by any city government official. The comisionado also had the power to round up any Indians considered vagrant and remand them to work either on municipal projects or on private ranches. Consequently, public policy and municipal officers formally supported the californios’ exploitation of Indian labor. Further inscribing racial difference, the ayuntamiento segregated Sunday Mass because “these Indians are a dirty class and on mixing prevent the people from hearing mass, and dirty their clothes.” The council also segregated the city cemetery and buried Indians in a separate area.101 Such acts reflect the ways that californios and vecinos created a highly segmented category for local Gabrielinos, including them as menial laborers but excluding them from full participation in the city’s public and religious life. Vecinos fared better in the realm of public policy, securing land parcels, water rights, and legal victories, but they acted as junior partners in the making of policy. Since no salary followed public offices, only people who did not require their own labor to survive could serve. Consequently, the system skewed leadership toward people with unusual means, leaving ordinary

52

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

Angelenos with power only as voters and petitioners. In practice, the alcalde and ayuntamiento—drawn from local rancheros and particularly successful vecinos—administered the community the same way a patriarch or council of elders oversaw an individual or extended family. Enhanced by the general approach to all indios and most women as charges of the local authorities, the agglomeration of each facet of government into the alcalde’s purview produced a communitarian ethos forged in dialogue with local ideas pertaining to race, gender, and patriarchy. Considering the degree to which these structural and ideological elements prefigured Los Angeles’s leadership as male, elite, and paternalistic, the communally based civic ideals sufficiently limited their exercise of power. By no means creators of a utopian paradise, policy makers in Spanish and Mexican Los Angeles nevertheless protected communal interests for those counted as members of the polity.

Toward an Intercultural Future The founding of Los Angeles brought the human, spatial, and ideological products of a nearly three-hundred-year-old colonial project into competition with an even older and equally complex Gabrieleno-Tongva community. Royal motivations for sending families northward to build pueblos grew in part out of a crisis caused by soldiers’ violence against Indian women. Yet the volunteers who founded Los Angeles and represented Spanish society on this new frontier embodied not pure Spanish heritage but the human mestizaje nurtured over nearly three centuries of contact. Nor did Los Angeles represent a “fresh start” spatially. The orders for its settlement, the Cartesian space of its municipal plan, and the displacement of Gabrielinos living at Yaanga represented only the latest phase of colonial incursion onto Indian social and spatial practices. In total, they carried with them the possibilities and perils bound up in the broader context of Spanish colonialism in Alta California and New Spain. The ethos that led to Los Angeles’s creation, the social dynamics set in motion by the human and historical context of its advent, and the ways its plan and location framed future relationships among the pobladores and between pobladores and their Gabrielino-Tongva neighbors, therefore, emerged within an already complicated colonial stratigraphy, which was itself composed of already fractured and interconnected layers of race, gender, and space.

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

53

Within six decades, however, Angelenos had modified social, spatial, and economic relationships, creating race, place, and municipal power on their own terms. Rooted in racial, spatial, and civic ideals, Angelenos harnessed their power to impose, perpetuate, and naturalize new relationships among work, wealth, behavior, sex, and ancestry that corresponded to the new categories of californio, vecino, cholo, and indio, all the while modifying the landscape and displacing Gabrielino villages. To be sure, the stuff of Spanish colonialism, especially in the arenas of the Plaza plan, Indian relations, and rigid patriarchy, remained critical to these new, local formations. Yet the transformation of predominantly low-ranking, impoverished, mestizo pobladores into wealthy rancheros and self-sufficient vecinos who controlled local politics, developed the local economy, and gave shape to social relations suggests the local basis for interconnected racial, spatial, and civic projects. Growing for nearly sixty years, Los Angeles had reached municipal maturity by 1840. After passing three decades in nearly complete isolation from central New Spain, pobladores had modified their spatial, social, and political environment according to local conditions and experience. Central Mexico’s distance allowed the pueblo a similar measure of independence as its institutions reached young adulthood. During its first fifteen years as a Mexican pueblo, Angelenos reshaped the local economy, civic ideals, and strategies for reckoning identity. It was onto this landscape, already rich in its own local culture, that European American immigrants and the U.S. military ultimately alighted. They brought with them very different ideas about race, gender, civic ideals, economy, justice, and the proper relationship between people, government, and the environment. But Mexican Californians stood poised to negotiate along these axes of difference. Residents had created place from space on the plain adjacent to the Porciuncula River, laying out a Plaza, building a public church and private homes, and establishing and populating numerous adjacent streets on which they made families, worked, and recreated. As a municipal body, the Los Angeles ayuntamiento adhered to coherent civic ideals that privileged communal over individual rights and favored mediation, arbitration, and compromise over authoritarian rule, complicated by reinvigorated biases against women and Indians. On the whole, Mexico’s liberalizing social policies and mission secularization scheme so blurred identity categories in Los Angeles that its would-be

54

A Pueblo by the Porciuncula

elite opted to remake racial categories and redraw racial boundaries for greater clarity. Whereas the Mexican government moved to level society by abolishing the castas and disbanding the missions, locals implemented these policies in ways that resulted in increased and more intractable inequality. Defining and reinforcing inequality, officials and ordinary citizens created and enforced a suite of harsh policies designed to control independent Indian residents. Saturated as these spaces, ideals, and social identities were with inequality, this surely was no golden age. Three essential lessons regarding race, space, and municipal power emerge from studying the Spanish and early Mexican period in Los Angeles. First, Angelenos actively engaged their own interconnected race- and place-making projects, and these projects together shaped social and spatial relations in the pueblo from its founding to 1840. Second, phenotype did not determine race in Spanish and Mexican Los Angeles; birth, behavior, and achieved status framed racial identity. Third, the racial categories that emerged during the 1820s and 1830s, however rigid, never became completely fixed—individuals could and did occupy more than one of them in a single lifetime. By 1840, there developed in Los Angeles a complex and nuanced racial hierarchy that shaped society. Space, civic ideals, and racial identity remained subject to dynamic forces, both from within and without. Conflicts between centralists and federalists raged in Mexico City, provoking ongoing political turmoil and a string of small, usually bloodless rebellions in California during the 1830s. These upheavals prevented the new identity categories, and the social and economic relationships upon which they rested, from fully cohering. Those calling themselves californios used both law and custom to make permanent the differences between themselves, vecinos, cholos, and indios, and to invest these differences with lasting meaning. However, their racial cement did not have enough time to set, let alone cure, by 1840, when an influx of traders from the United States and Europe sparked further changes. Despite these challenges, californios and vecinos confronted immigrants from the United States and Europe not as liminal mestizos but as accomplished race makers and empowered agents in the structuring of their own society.

CHAPTER 2

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves” Intercultural Civic Ideals, Identities, and Spaces, 1840–1855

I N September 1841 a wagon train arrived in Los Angeles, completing a long and dusty journey from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Following a route then becoming quite popular for U.S., European, and New Mexican traders, this particular caravan brought immigrants as well as products. Twenty-three heads of families, some born in New Mexico and the rest born in the United States, along with nearly eighty family members, Indians, and others, had come to make Los Angeles their home. John Rowland and William Workman, who would become prominent landowners and merchants in the city, led the party. Another member, Tennessee-born Benjamin Davis Wilson, had established a trading house on his home state’s Indian frontier before moving to New Mexico in 1833. Eight years later, increasing violence among New Mexicans and between New Mexicans and Indians sent Wilson packing for China by way of California. While struggling to arrange his Pacific voyage, Wilson received “so much kindness from the native Californians” that he “arrived at the conclusion that there was no place in the world where I could enjoy more true happiness and true friendship than among them.”1 So he scrapped his plans and stayed in Los Angeles. In 1843 Wilson bought a ranch from Juan Bandini in present-day Riverside and in 1844 married Ramona Yorba, daughter of Don Bernardo Yorba. Wilson, often called Don Benito, rose in economic and political status in Los

55

56

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

Angeles. He served as both alcalde and ayuntamiento member in the Mexican period, then as mayor and common councilman in the 1850s.2 Reflecting on his political experience in Mexican Los Angeles, Wilson remarked, “There were no courts, no juries, no lawyers, nor any need of them . . . [because] the people were honest and hospitable, and their word was as good as their bond—indeed, bonds and notes of hand were entirely unknown among the natives.”3 Wilson’s words and the sentiment they convey suggest the extent to which he became inculcated into and embraced the nuances of Mexican Californian civic, social, and commercial culture. Beginning in the 1820s, foreigners, including Abel Stearns, Jonathan Temple, and William Wolfskill, participated in family, economic, and political life in Mexican Los Angeles. Although only twenty-five or so expatriates lived in California before 1840, Wilson and others swelled the foreign ranks in Los Angeles to fifty-three by 1844.4 Stearns, Temple, Wolfskill, Wilson, and others in Los Angeles joined nearly two hundred other U.S. immigrants in deciding to marry Mexican Californian women between the early 1820s and 1846. Intermarriage produced “shared cultural systems of kinship,” allowed U.S. and European immigrants to “tie themselves” into Californian communities socially and legally, and “implied a whole complex of gendered, race, class, and economic relationships” between husbands, wives, and their extended families.5 Counter to folk and scholarly traditions claiming californio fathers pursued immigrant males as husbands for their daughters, the cultural and legal contours of Angeleno society suggest the opposite: immigrant men from the United States and Europe pursued relationships—as often as not with genuine affection for their californiana and vecina spouses—that involved a more reciprocal exchange between their own commercial connections and their californio and vecino fathers-in-law’s economic and political resources.6 Moreover, an ongoing surge in immigration from the United States and Europe coincided with tumultuous times, including but not limited to political instability within Mexican California, national uncertainties growing out of the Mexican-American War, and the subsequent annexation of California to the United States. The foreign-born population of Los Angeles rose from 53 in 1844 to 395 in 1850 (in a total population of 1,610), then grew to 2,316 in 1860 (in a total population of 4,385).7 The combination of fluid demographics and

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

57

geopolitical imperatives provoked rapidly evolving and increasingly complicated dynamics in the realms of identity, space, and municipal power. Rather than generating answers and creating a sharp break, the MexicanAmerican War instead stood in the middle of a longer period during which Angelenos confronted questions regarding family, economy, and public policy. Such questions arose neither independently of each other nor in a landscape marked by singular power structures. Mexican Californians had already spent decades forging locally specific strategies for reckoning race and making public policy, and the previous experiences most immigrants from the United States brought with them proved critically asymmetrical to those then operating in Los Angeles. As explored in the previous chapter, Mexican Californians developed civic ideals that claimed to look first to the overall health of the community when considering policy questions, even though their definition of community rarely included Indians or recent, poor immigrants from Mexico. Nevertheless, when resolving issues related to land, water, and the use of public space, collective rights held sway over individual claims. By comparison, civic ideals in the United States held individuals in greater esteem than communities and privileged individual claims to entities such as water and land. These differences reflected still deeper ideological divisions regarding the state’s role in society. Creating another key axis of difference, Mexican Californians and U.S. immigrants deployed very different race-making strategies. Mexican Californians made racial judgments based on a nexus of factors, including behavior, dress, status, and ancestry. Phenotype never served as determinative of one’s standing. Immigrants from the United States, many of whom hailed from the South, saw things very differently. Skin tone stood above all other measures of a person’s social worth and, according to popular thinking, not only indicated but also dictated behavior.8 For Protestant male immigrants from the United States, race and civic ideals often fused. In particular, they understood the pursuit of “private property, aggressive entrepreneurship,” individual reputation, and “capital accumulation” as key to their standing as white men. Nevertheless, these notions of race and manliness had not yet become static, and “personal and business success demanded accommodation to local conditions,” setting the context for intercultural innovation.9 These critical differences suggest that Angelenos, like others in Mexico’s far

58

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

northern frontier and later the southwestern United States, lived in overlapping social, legal, political, and spatial borderlands. The many asymmetries complicated how various constituencies understood the substance and products of their interactions. In particular, this chapter explores engagements among immigrants and resident Angelenos in the contexts of family, work, society, and municipal politics, with an eye to the variety and scope of both exchanges and their outcomes. Immigrant integration into Mexican Los Angeles affords a glimpse of an increasingly intercultural community. The Mexican-American War provoked specific crises in social relations, and the solutions Angelenos sought contributed to an ongoing fluidity in the realms of identity and public policy. When the United States annexed Los Angeles, the social, economic, and legal traditions that first arrived in newcomers’ bodies gained geopolitical weight. Angelenos subsequently renegotiated practices regarding land, water, and the rule of law while continuing to wrestle with issues regarding identity and power. The choices they made reveal much about the substance and texture of the local arrangements they forged as they found ways forward together.

Immigrants and Power Sharing in Mexican Los Angeles A limited reading of the encounters between rancheros, vecinos, and visitors from the United States could easily lead to the conclusion that no hope existed for positive and productive relations between them. Although many notable californios and vecinos had familial and commercial ties to certain immigrants, some nevertheless opposed granting residence to all newcomers and feared that if too many of the wrong sort arrived they would one day threaten Mexico’s sovereignty.10 Governor Juan Alvarado openly lamented that those who arrived after 1841 proved more adversarial than their predecessors. Pío Pico felt himself and his countrymen “threatened by hordes of Yankee immigrants” whose ambition could not be checked.11 Some travelers from the United States who became famous for publishing accounts of their visits to California held their hosts in even lower regard. Often they failed to understand local racial practices that distinguished Indians, cholos, vecinos, and californios. Lansford Hastings, who in 1841 published the popular Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California, told his readers that “although there is a great variety, and dissimilarity among” California residents

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

59

“in reference to their complexions, yet in their beastly habits and an entire want of all moral principle, as well as a perfect destitution of all intelligence, there appears to be a perfect similarity.”12 Thomas Jefferson Farnham wrote, in Life, Adventures, and Travels in California, that Mexican Californians who “by courtesy are called white” were in fact “a light clear bronze; not white, as they themselves quite erroneously imagine.” Moreover, rancheros’ and vecinos’ mixed blood retained “the Indian laziness” and left them only “somewhat humanized” and a “poor apology of European extraction.”13 Extending the failure of whiteness without to an absence of whiteness within, travel writers condemned Mexican Californians for dubious intelligence, poor behavior, and deficient work habits. Hastings counted “ignorance and its concomitant, superstition, together with suspicion and superciliousness” as hallmarks “of the Mexican character. More indomitable ignorance does not prevail,” he wrote, “among any people who make the least pretensions to civilization; in truth, they are scarcely a visible grade, in the scale of intelligence, above the barbarous tribes by whom they are surrounded.”14 Not to be outdone, Farnham railed that although “no country in the world possesses so fine a climate, coupled with so productive a soil,” Mexican Californians refused to accept nature’s invitation “to the noblest and richest rewards of honorable toil.” Instead, they preferred to “sleep, and smoke, and hum some tune of Castilian laziness.”15 In short, Hastings and Farnham—among many— branded Mexican Californians racially brown, economically backward, and culturally impoverished. Or, in Farnham’s words, “the Californians are an imbecile, pusillanimous, race of men, and unfit to control the destinies of the beautiful country.”16 Travel tales like these became immensely popular among U.S. citizens living east of the Rocky Mountains. Even though Hastings, Farnham, and others curiously described all Mexican Californians in terms similar to those deployed by californios and vecinos to racialize indios and cholos, their assessments of Mexican Californians’ color and culture echoed prevalent U.S. stereotypes that denigrated eastern North American Indians. Most people who read these stories, moreover, had never visited Los Angeles or encountered people from Mexico. Consequently they lacked prior knowledge with which to mediate what they read. Travel writers seized this opportunity to liberally shape outsiders’ imaginations of the city and to recreate Los Angeles as they wished

60

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

by painting a picture of a city populated by docile, easily dominated brown children onto blank canvases.17 Literary cultural assassinations notwithstanding, many visitors from the United States and Europe sharply disagreed with the travel writers by settling in Los Angeles and becoming thoroughly immersed in the city’s cultural, economic, and political life. During the 1820s and 1830s, a handful of Yankee newcomers integrated themselves into the Los Angeles community. Abel Stearns, a successful hide and tallow trader, settled in the city. Cave Couts also entered Los Angeles as a merchant trader. Immigrants Julian J. Williams, William Wolfskill, J. S. Guana, Lemuel Carpenter, Moses Carson, William Chard, J. Isaac Williams, and John Marsh all applied to the ayuntamiento for naturalization in the 1830s, and many of them also requested pueblo house and farm lots. At least three Europeans, John Daniel Ferguson from Ireland, John Louis Vignes from France, and Juan Bautista Leandri, an Italian, joined them. Most of these men had initially visited Los Angeles as commercial agents before settling in the pueblo. Some plied the overland route between Los Angeles and Santa Fe, exchanging blankets and serapes for horses and mules; some trapped and traded fur; and others arrived aboard ships calling at California’s ports to trade for hides and tallow.18 After 1840, more and more immigrants arrived as part of traveling parties. The Rowland-Workman party, which included B. D. Wilson, arrived in 1841 from Santa Fe, to be followed by similar parties traveling along the same route each year thereafter; others drifted south from Oregon, as part of the Hastings and other parties. Carpenter, Carson, Couts, Stearns, Temple, Wilson, both Williamses, and Wolfskill married women from prominent ranchero families. Several applied for Mexican citizenship, which entailed conversion to Catholicism. Even those who didn’t worked pueblo lands, spoke Spanish, dressed according to local custom, and answered to Hispanicized names.19 Although meaning it disparagingly, Richard Henry Dana observed that these men and their California wives raised their children “as Spaniards, in every respect.”20 Based on their work and family connections, many immigrant men became incorporated into Los Angeles’s elite echelons. Over time, they became practitioners and beneficiaries of both local civic ideals and the emergent racial hierarchy. This happened passively and actively, as the newcomers received pueblo lands, gained acceptance as members of the gente de razón, engaged in

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

61

trade, controlled Indian labor, and served as municipal officers. For example, Isaac Williams married María de Jesús Lugo in 1841. As a wedding gift, Antonio María Lugo, María de Jesús’s father, offered the five-league Rancho Santa Ana del Chino and 4,000 animals. Two years later, the couple acquired three adjacent leagues and controlled a massive rancho on which “they employed nearly eighty” Indians.21 Clearly, Williams had not only become enmeshed in californio familial and economic structures but quickly learned to control Gabrielino labor. Absorbed into families, invested in the pueblo’s future, and engaged in its life, these newcomers integrated into the social, political, and economic worlds of Los Angeles. Enacting and validating their high social standing, they played key roles in the city’s economy and held public office.22 Abel Stearns’s history in Los Angeles offers one example of the ways U.S. immigrants became enmeshed in local life. Stearns spent his childhood in New England. Orphaned at age twelve, he went to sea. During the 1820s he controlled a ship that traded with the Spanish colonies and later with the independent nation of Mexico. In 1826 Stearns moved to Mexico, living first in Vera Cruz and then in the Mexican capital of Tepic. He became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1828 (renouncing his U.S. citizenship) and moved to Los Angeles later that year. He quickly became one of the city’s most notable merchants.23 Stearns’s work trading cowhides and tallow connected him to an extensive commercial community. Merchant ship captains anchored their large boats in ports near populated areas. Smaller detachments sailed up and down the coast seeking out trading partners. Using the main ship as a base, merchants sent goods ashore to be traded out of warehouses and set up onboard trading rooms to receive customers who rowed out in turns. Most of these vessels remained in port for a full year, by which time their ships’ holds had filled with as many as 40,000 hides.24 Ranchers sent more than 1 million hides around Cape Horn to the eastern United States and Europe between 1822 and 1844. In exchange, they took home over a million U.S. dollars in luxury goods, making the hide and tallow trade critical to the development of both the ranchero economy and local racial thinking. The trade offered elite Mexican Californians an outlet for their vast herds, a reason to increase their stock and control Indian and Mexican labor, and the finished items (furnishings, décor, and dress) that distinguished californios from vecinos, cholos, and indios.

62

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

Laws regulating animal slaughter paid no attention to the comings and goings of merchant ships, impeding easy trade. As an alternative to a system of credit and collections, Stearns built a warehouse near San Pedro. There he did a brisk business, carrying on a year-round trade with ranchers and merchant ships. He bought and sold hides, tallow, and finished goods and always had plenty of room to store surplus on site.25 In this way, the sailing Stearns became a merchant middleman and resident. He realized a substantial fortune in cash and goods, and his warehouse business greatly facilitated the city’s economic growth. In 1841, Stearns married fourteen-year-old Doña Arcadia Bandini, a member of an elite ranchero family.26 They lived together in Los Angeles, a block away from the Plaza, until Stearns died in 1871. Stearns’s ascendancy in business, however successful, didn’t flow smoothly. He twice faced spurious charges for fomenting rebellion, once endured Governor Mariano Chico’s threat to hang him, and suffered severe facial stabbing wounds during a row with a local saloon owner, William Day, over a few barrels of vinegared wine.27 He also faced charges for smuggling goods in and out of his San Pedro warehouse under cover of darkness to avoid paying duties.28 The Los Angeles ayuntamiento defended Stearns and explained, “the interests of this community demand the up-building of a settlement on the beach of San Pedro where traders can supply themselves with provisions and merchandise.”29 Unsullied by the charges, Stearns served as syndico (treasurer) to the ayuntamiento the following year. During his tenure in office and afterward, he surveyed lands, participated in plans to regularize the Plaza, and worked as a census taker for the city. Other immigrants who settled, worked, and joined families in Los Angeles held public office. The Italian Leandri served as alcalde in 1840, and B. D. Wilson held the office in 1845–46, up until the U.S. invasion. Considering the communal basis for governance, these settlers had to have become familiar with Mexican Californian civic ideals to succeed in making laws, granting lands, distributing water, and mediating disputes. When Angelenos elected immigrants from the United States to office, they placed a great deal of faith in erstwhile newcomers to act like informed and enlightened locals. Legal historian David Langum has concluded that in executing their responsibilities, these foreigners “were indistinguishable in their action from the Natives.”30 Stearns, Leandri, and Wilson were only three among several settlers to hold such posi-

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

63

tions. Evidently, Angelenos trusted these newcomers to share their beliefs, values, and interests. Otherwise, they would not have shared power so willingly. Immigrants didn’t need to hold office to become enmeshed in civic ideals and the exercise of law. Jonathan, or Juan, Temple immigrated to San Diego in 1826 and moved to Los Angeles in 1827. He became a naturalized citizen of Mexico, opened Los Angeles’s first store, and married Rafaela Cota in 1830. In 1836, before immigrants began to arrive in great numbers, Temple hosted the first, and seemingly only, vigilance committee in Spanish and Mexican Californian history. As one of the group of sixty-eight male Angelenos (of whom fourteen, including Temple, had been born outside California and subsequently naturalized as citizens), Temple lynched Grevacio Alipás and María del Rosario Villa. Two years earlier, Villa had walked out on her husband, Domingo Felix, after he committed adultery. Villa then took up with Alipás, while Felix pursued formal, state-sanctioned reconciliation. In March 1836, Alcalde Manuel Requeña apprehended Villa, coerced her to reconcile with Felix, and sent the seemingly reunited spouses home together. A few weeks later, however, authorities found Felix’s dead body. Alipás had intercepted Villa and Felix before they ever reached their house, fought with Felix, and stabbed him to death. Villa helped Alipás hide Felix’s body. Claiming that capital criminals rarely received justice in California, but more likely seeking to reimpose patriarchal authority over a couple that severely violated both moral and gender norms, French immigrant Victor Prudon and California-born Manuel Arzaga demanded that the couple be formally tried and executed. When the ayuntamiento demurred, citing Mexican laws dictating that death penalties had to be authorized by Mexico City, Prudon, Arzaga, and others incorporated as the Junta Defensora de Seguridad Publico. They condemned the couple in a mock trial, in particular citing Señora Villa’s actions as a sign of moral decay and a harbinger of anarchy. The junta forwarded its manifesto to the ayuntamiento and formed an armed party. Lacking the will to anger so many prominent citizens, the ayuntamiento acquiesced to the vigilantes’ demands. Alcalde Requeña, however, did not. The armed group subsequently stormed both the jail and a private home where Villa had been incarcerated, executed the lovers by firing squad, and then disbanded. Since many of the vigilantes had recently immigrated to Los Angeles, the episode suggests that newcomers could speedily build alliances with established residents, join to-

64

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

gether in exercising male authority over women, and practice intercultural community justice.31 Newcomers from the United States also had to navigate foreign and unfamiliar rules governing the relations between individuals, land, water, and the municipality. In conformity with Spanish and Mexican law, pueblo lands served as the means by which residents provided for themselves and the community, rather than offering an opportunity for capital accumulation and profit. Consequently, titles to pueblo lands ensured continued use rather than inalienable private ownership. Like other Angelenos, immigrants seeking house and farm lots had to make improvements in order to secure such titles, then uphold the reciprocal relationship they entered into with both the municipal corporation and the community by doing so. By maintaining structures, building fences, and sharing the produce of their agricultural labors, immigrants integrated into pueblo life. Workman, Rowland, Wolfskill, and Wilson, among others, did so successfully.32 Angelenos employed an even stricter notion of communal rights, as opposed to private ownership, regarding the municipal waters. Occasionally immigrants ran afoul of these communal principles and provoked stern reprimands from municipal officers, which clarified civic ideals. When Lemuel Carpenter and Richard Laughlin pursued damages from the city for causing “serious injury” to their property by allowing Antonio Franco Coronel to draw irrigation waters over their land, the ayuntamiento chastised them for erroneously believing themselves in “ownership [of ] an element which in no way should be in the hands of two or three persons.” When Carpenter and Laughlin appealed directly to Governor Pío Pico, the ayuntamiento characterized any claim to the absolute ownership of land or water as “unreal and fabulous” and reminded Pico that the “bylaws of this town since its foundation” made clear that the municipal lands and waters were “used by everybody” and did “not belong to anyone in particular.” Beyond persuading Pico, their statement offered Laughlin, Carpenter, and any other immigrant a clear expression of communal rights.33 Disputes like these, however, arose only infrequently during the 1840s and early 1850s. A few isolated incidents of friction did not undermine cooperation and innovation in the estimation and implementation of local policy regarding land and water. In contrast to the sneering racial and cultural judgments offered by the travel writers, U.S. immigrants through the early 1840s pursued,

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

65

entered, integrated into, and prospered within Los Angeles’s californio and vecino communities. In particular, intermarried couples became “an accepted feature of the social landscape.” Intermarriage served as a “social language in which Spanish-Mexican, Indian, and Euro-American” participants exchanged “desired cultural capital” in the form “mercantile connections” for “landholding rights.” Although intermarriage produced more stable, middling families than stunning financial success stories, the practice nevertheless connected newcomers into Mexican Californian and intercultural social and economic networks.34 Similarly, those who failed to connect with the community remained vulnerable to arrest and deportation as allegedly vagrant and dangerous immigrants, leaving them in a situation not unlike that faced by Mexican immigrants regarded locally as cholos.35 The majority of immigrant ranchers, farmers, skilled craftsmen, and traders, however, forged an intercultural community with Mexican Californians, integrated into the community, found readily available land and economic opportunity, and became enmeshed in social and political life.36 Locals and immigrants worked together to forge a new basis for accumulating wealth and displaying their shared high status, and newcomers generally observed local practices regarding public policy, as both private citizens and public servants. Despite the travel writers’ accounts and some Angelenos’ worries about the United States’ penchant for naked imperial aggression, a stable, cooperative, intercultural community emerged in Los Angeles by 1845. Before the Mexican-American War, before California’s annexation to the United States, Angelenos born in different nations engaged familial, social, commercial, and political relationships that rested on intercultural innovations in the realms of race, space, and civic ideals.

Conquest, Anxiety, and an Intercultural Community During War and Peace, 1846–1850 The Mexican-American War surely tested this intercultural community’s foundations. Although few, the moments of fighting in and around Los Angeles raised new questions about future cooperation in the realms of social and public life, especially for those whose national loyalties became clouded by mixed family and business relationships. Between 1846 and 1850—a period that began with the U.S. Army’s arrival in Los Angeles and during which

66

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

the United States annexed California—developments in the realms of municipal authority and public power offer key terrain upon which to explore the strength and creative force of local intercultural relationships. Continuing to cooperate in the wake of two military occupations interrupted by a local rebellion would certainly require commitment and effort, both in basic innovation and emotional maturity. The arrival of an invading army destabilized all sorts of relationships in Los Angeles. At first, Angelenos accepted the U.S. occupation of their city. However, Captain Archibald Gillespie’s subsequent maltreatment of the locals provoked a brief but divisive and successful rebellion (September 1846–January 1847), which restored Mexican Californians to power and disrupted hopes among U.S. supporters for an easy victory. The war and rebellion left numerous Angeleno families, especially those that had both U.S.- and Californiaborn members, in an awkward situation. Rafaela Cota, wife of John Temple, sent arms from her husband’s store to rebel leaders Serbulo Varela and María Flores.37 Others, including B. D. Wilson, Isaac Williams, Louis Robidoux, Miguel Blanco (Michael White), and John Rowland, had been mustered into a “California Battalion” upon Commodore Stockton’s arrival in Los Angeles. While on a hunting trip outside the city and unaware of Flores’s and Varela’s uprising, the group found itself pinned down by the rebels at Williams’s Chino Ranch. Wilson, Williams, Robidoux, Blanco, and Rowland had all become naturalized Mexican citizens and married Mexican women before the war. As Rancho Santa Ana del Chino’s owner, Williams found himself in a particular pickle. In 1841 he had married María de Jesús Lugo and received the rancho as a wedding gift from his father-in-law, Antonio María Lugo. In September 1846 he and his brother-in-law, Vicente Lugo, suddenly stood facing each other at arms on family property. During a brief siege, Vicente Lugo and the rebels set fire to Williams’s house; his children—Vicente Lugo’s nieces and nephews— cried out from the house their uncle had set ablaze to roust the battalion. Although the Mexican Californians permitted Williams to remain at liberty, they took Wilson, Rowland, Robidoux, and Blanco—all of whom had Mexican wives and mixed children—as prisoners of war and required them to promise complete neutrality before releasing them.38 Clearly the war had complicated established intercultural relationships by imperiling those who chose one side or the other.

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

67

The uprising ended peacefully on January 13, 1847, when Mexican Californian and U.S. officials signed a peace treaty at Campo Cahuenga. The rebels received favorable terms and many hoped that a smooth transition, expected from the outset, would ensue. Yet the persistence of U.S. troops and an increasing tide of U.S. immigrants dashed Mexican Californians’ hopes that they could simply continue to lead under a new flag. New questions about race, civic ideals, and political economy emerged in ways that caused Angelenos to reconsider their own positions and to search for new solutions. How would Mexican Californians and newcomers from the United States divide or share political power? Whose social, cultural, and racial economies would hold sway? Would Angelenos reunite, or would they split into two groups at odds with each other? The ayuntamiento resumed operations in 1847—after Stockton’s entry, Gillespie’s expulsion, and the new peace signed at Cahuenga. Although a garrison of U.S. soldiers, under the command of Colonel Stevenson, remained in Los Angeles during the interregnum between the end of the Mexican-American War and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the ayuntamiento regained municipal authority. During winter and spring of 1847, the body fielded a flood of petitions from residents seeking replacement paper titles to their lands. Ramona López filed the first petition for a deed, stating that when she and her late husband, Esteban Sanchez, had been granted a town lot long ago “there were no such formalities used as are now observed.”39 The petition speaks generally to change within Mexican Los Angeles, but the timing of her request indicates a concern that future municipal authorities might not know her and therefore could question her claim. Josefa Alvarado, Tomás Talamantes, and José del Carmen Lugo also cited the recent military upheaval when they requested replacement titles in 1847. Alvarado had to take her family “away from town” during the invasion, and “during the confusions arising in such cases and which cannot be helped, I suffered the loss of some documents, amongst them the title to the land which I am possessed of and cultivating.”40 Talamantes similarly blamed “the political troubles” for missing papers but looked to the future, equating his paper deed with “the protection necessary to give security to my homestead.”41 Lugo also cited the “political convulsions” and asked the ayuntamiento to issue “a new deed to my property for my protection and safeguard.”42

68

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

Under normal circumstances, securing replacement deeds should have been easy enough to allay any substantive worries. The petitioners actively occupied or cultivated their lands, knew their neighbors well, and could have confided in the ayuntamiento to readily issue new documents and reject any counterclaims to their property. In their number and urgency, however, the petitions suggest locals feared for the sanctity of their lands in the wake of the U.S. occupation. The men and women, californio and vecino, who wrote them expressed anxiety in the face of a new government. They indicate both an awareness that people from the United States thought about and adjudicated claims to land differently and that new administrators would employ new rules. An important question lurks silently in these petitions’ subtexts: Just what happened to all of these titles in the first place? How did so many residents “lose” their papers when U.S. troops arrived? Juanita de Díos Rendon’s petition offers the only direct answer. Hearing that U.S. soldiers had begun marching toward Los Angeles, she “escaped from the city without having had a chance to protect” her “modest interests, since all I could do was to lock the doors of my house.” According to Rendon, “The Americans, on entering town, opened my house by means of false keys and carried off everything I had in it including the said title papers, thus leaving me today without any safeguard to protect my property rights.”43 Explicit in Rendon’s claim and implicit in the others, the image of “Americans” as dishonest, land-hungry thieves—the exact terms by which californios and vecinos disparaged and racialized as “cholos” immigrants from Mexico— contains the germ of a Mexican Californian–generated racial discourse, suggesting a boundary between californios/vecinos and norteamericanos, one that would grow significantly in salience and virulence in the decades to come. The petitioners’ words opened the possibility that Mexican Californians might in time draw clear differences between those who came as conquerors in 1846 and the settlers who had previously integrated into society on Mexican Californian terms, naturalized as citizens, and stitched themselves into the larger fabric of town life. Although older settlers earned acceptance into the upper echelons of Mexican Californian society, if soldiers and the cadre of dubious adventurers who followed on their heels acted like graceless commoners, to wit, gente sin razón, then they would be treated accordingly.44 Taking status,

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

69

class, and behavior together—the main litmus tests of socio-racial standing in Mexican California—any U.S. soldiers acting like common thieves would have been no different than their predecessors from the Mexican interior. Californios and vecinos would accordingly denigrate them as worthless cholos. Following this line of speculation to its conclusion, the petitioners’ responses to their missing land titles represent the first salvo delivered by californios and vecinos against the social standing of ordinary “Americans.” In addition to replacing property papers, the ayuntamiento heard numerous complaints about Indians who drank excessively, played games of chance, engaged in promiscuous sex, and participated in suspicious rituals. In early 1846, before U.S. soldiers arrived, the ayuntamiento began experimenting with new policies designed to resolve tensions between pobladores and indios— ranging from tighter supervision to disbanding the rancherías. None of the policies worked. During the summer and autumn of 1847 the ranchería remained a popular evening and weekend destination where Indians, Mexican Californians, and U.S. soldiers congregated.45 In November 1847, looming violence between vecinos and U.S. soldiers brought the ranchería question to a head. On November 3 Stevenson officially requested the abolition of the Indian settlement, fearing that “trouble of the most serious nature would be sure to occur.” Syndico Vicente Guerrero told the ayuntamiento that a duel “between Mexicans and Americans”—the probable cause for Stevenson’s entreaty—“had been arranged for next Saturday at the Indian ranchería.” He argued such a duel imperiled the pueblo’s “good order” and that the ranchería “ought to be done away with.”46 After a heated debate, the council rejected Guerrero’s proposal. Instead, it prohibited all Saturday “diversions” and warned both Indians and non-Indians that any violation of the order would lead to the ranchería’s “complete destruction.”47 Stevenson rejected the compromise. In an open letter to the ayuntamiento, he wrote that “citizens” and soldiers descended on the ranchería “almost every night” and that “disputes and conflicts,” often settled by arms, too often arose among them. “If this state of affairs is permitted to exist any longer,” Stevenson warned, “somebody will surely get killed, maybe a soldier or maybe a native, and possibly both. In such a case the garrison of this Town will find itself at swords’ points with its citizens.” Stevenson deemed this result unacceptable, claiming it would be “impossible” to fulfill his “duty to preserve order”

70

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

in Los Angeles “unless . . . this source of infamy is wiped out of existence.” Accordingly, he asked the “Honorable Council” to end all gatherings and move the “the Indian settlement to some other place within a week.” Although he hoped not to “interfere with the civil authorities,” he left the ayuntamiento no wiggle room. “Should you fail to do it within that time,” Stevenson warned, “I should feel in duty bound to take the necessary steps to preserve the good order in this Town and vicinity by destroying the Indian village.”48 In asserting his own authority, Stevenson labored to respect the ayuntamiento’s position and invited the councilors to cooperate with him in preserving the civil peace. The ayuntamiento promptly appointed a committee whose members conferred with “prominent citizens” over two days, only to find “a diversity of opinion.” The report provoked the same “protracted discussion” that had inhibited decisive action for nearly two years.49 This time, however, Stevenson’s looming ultimatum prevented further prevarication. The ayuntamiento retained its authority by choosing violence against the city’s Indian village instead of conflict with the Americans. The council required those who employed Indians to board and supervise them, remanded all vagrants to work, and prohibited all Indian gatherings. Self-sustaining Indians received roomy lots—outside the city limits. Most important, Syndico Vicente Guerrero and Councilman Rafael Gallardo were to implement the legislation’s centerpiece, ensuring that “the main settlement or Indian village shall within three days from today be razed to the ground so as to put an end to all disorderly gatherings.”50 On November 20, 1847, the two men reported having fulfilled their duty, then requested and received permission to similarly liquidate a smaller ranchería farther afield.51 By choosing to make peace with each other by joining in violence against Indians, Angelenos bridged the gap that separated U.S. newcomers from vecinos, californios, and integrated Yankees. The ayuntamiento and the U.S. military and their respective constituencies found common ground, promoting social harmony among themselves and acting violently on a shared belief that Indians posed a palpable threat to public peace. Just what had brought vecinos and soldiers to a breaking point remained unstated, but the exposure to Indians, vice, and alcohol in the context of recent armed conflict clearly compromised everyone’s razón. Colonel Stevenson and the ayuntamiento decided to stamp out the ranchería and to stabilize Mexican Californian–U.S. relations.

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

71

Whereas the ayuntamiento as a constituted body and californios and vecinos as private citizens had frequently behaved violently toward Indians as an exercise of power and racial domination, destroying the ranchería sent a message not to local indios but to the newcomers from the United States. In obliterating the village, Angelenos staked a claim both to their social equality with the norteamericanos and situated themselves and those from the United States as equally superior to Indians. On both sides of the national divide, sharing in the ranchería’s elimination likely diffused suspicions regarding each other’s respective claims to racial primacy. To those unfamiliar with Mexican Californians’ already substantive history as artificers of racial difference, Angelenos’ actions demonstrated the difference between themselves and local Indians. By respecting the ayuntamiento’s authority and confiding in its members’ ability to preserve social harmony, U.S. government representatives allayed Angelenos’ fears of being imminently overrun by a band of thieving savages from the east. Working together to obliterate a physical space that threatened their harmonious interaction, they found a new way forward together. Eliminating the ranchería thus privileged the principal similarities in their otherwise distinct understandings of race: that they shared a stratified society and that Indians belonged squarely at the bottom. The underlying motivations for and the symbolic content embodied in razing the ranchería established a new mode of relations between California- and U.S.-born Angelenos. Shared violence, moreover, sparked reconciliation among vecinos, californios, established immigrants, and newcomers. Following the ranchería’s destruction, locals and soldiers got along without further incident, and episodes of cooperation became increasingly common. Even when the occupying army installed recent immigrants as municipal officers, the appointees worked with the locals and upheld old traditions. For example, acting governor Mason appointed Stephen Foster alcalde in January 1848, two months after the ranchería’s destruction. Foster had arrived less than one year earlier, by way of Sonora, Santa Fe, and San Diego, as a translator with the Mormon Battalion. Foster quickly earned the trust of local Mexican Californians, in part because he defended the principle of home rule against his former colleagues in the U.S. Army, and in part because he took pains to learn local customs. In one instance, he oversaw the trial and execution of Juan Antonio, an independent Indian wanted in a string of cattle thefts and violent crimes over a pe-

72

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

riod of nearly twenty years. Foster, who had never presided over an execution, asked Major Graham of the U.S. forces to provide a soldier who could teach two Gabrielino volunteers how to properly build the gallows and tie the noose. When the tutor subsequently complained that “he had enlisted as a soldier and not as a hangman,” Foster candidly commiserated. Having “enlisted three years before as Interpreter and Translator,” Foster had since “twice acted as guide and spy” before becoming “a judge in Los Angeles.” Among his duties, he had to “administer justice according to Mexican law” even though he “did not know anything about any law except what I learned as I went on.”52 Training on the job, Foster consulted with established residents, adapted to communal practices, and learned well the ambiguous nature of alcaldes’ duties. In February 1848, after only one month in office yet in perfect keeping with more than fifty years of local practice, Foster called upon irrigators to put “the zanjas in proper order” ahead of the growing season. In line with longstanding communal custom, landholders worked or provided peones (involuntary Indian laborers) proportional to their holdings; as a new wrinkle, Foster required irrigators to pay the zanjero in coin rather than produce.53 The first California State Constitutional Convention presented a new challenge to vecinos’ and californios’ civil status as U.S. residents. Forty-eight regionally elected delegates convened to craft a constitution in preparation for California’s entry into the Union. Voters chose eight Mexican Californian participants: José Miguel Covarrubias, Antonio Pico, Jacinto Rodriguez, and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo from the north, and José Antonio Carrillo, Manuel Dominguez, Pablo de la Guerra, and Miguel de Predronena from the south. Voters in Los Angeles also selected four immigrants: Abel Stearns, Hugo Reid, William Hartnell, and Stephen Foster. The recently arrived Foster had earned locals’ confidence through his sensitive work as alcalde. Stearns, Reid, and Hartnell each drew on more than a decade of experience as members of intercultural families and participants in local government. As the convention unfolded, discussion of portions of the constitution pertaining to citizenship and enfranchisement provoked a spirited exchange about the meaning of whiteness, bringing asymmetries in Mexican and U.S. race-making strategies into sharp focus. A small committee presented the full body with draft language stating that “every white male citizen of the United States” would be “entitled to vote.” One European American delegate, Edward

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

73

Gilbert, suggested adding “every male citizen of Mexico.” Another, Charles T. Botts, countered that revised language specify “every white male citizen of Mexico.” In the sustained and fascinating discussion that ensued, Mr. Gilbert argued that “the meaning of the word ‘white,’ in the report of the Committee, was not generally understood in this country.” Pablo de la Guerra challenged the delegates to consider “the true signification of the word ‘white.’” Although “many citizens of California have received from nature a very dark skin,” de la Guerra pointed out, many not only voted but also held “the highest public offices.” Consequently, “it would be very unjust to deprive them of the privilege of citizens merely because nature had not made them white.”54 De la Guerra’s discourse provoked a still more wide-ranging discussion about just what “white” meant. De la Guerra suggested that a color test would exclude the darker-skinned delegates from voting to ratify a constitution they would themselves be signing. He subsequently reminded the convention that limiting Mexican Californian enfranchisement could violate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which granted full citizenship rights to all Mexicans remaining in California. Other delegates worried that omitting the word “white” would allow Indians and Africans to vote. De la Guerra agreed that “white” would satisfactorily “exclude the African race,” but he and others reiterated their previous objections. Determining the import of Indian ancestry, distinguishing between “Indians and descendants of Indians” (some of whom sat in the very room as delegates), separating (on the basis of blood quantum, behavior, or property holdings) properly civilized and franchiseworthy Indians from uncivilized and franchise-unworthy Indians proved more troublesome. Delegate Hugo Reid had married widowed former Mission San Gabriel neophyte Victoria Comicrabit in 1836 and subsequently adopted her four children. Although their marriage encompassed difficult periods, Reid and Comicrabit raised the children as full members of californio society. Reid, therefore, knew well just how fluid the relationship between birth, phenotype, and achieved status could be in Mexican California. His adopted son Felipe married María de la Resurrección Ontiveros, daughter of a respected vecino couple and lived his adult life as a similarly respected member of the Angeleno community.55 After much discussion, the assembly ultimately approved compromise wording, granting the franchise to “every white male citizen of the United States, and every male citizen of Mexico (Indians, Africans, and

74

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

descendants of Africans excepted).” To break the deadlock, delegates legally acknowledged the different systems by which people born in Mexico and the United States reckoned identity.56 Perhaps spurred by a collective desire to strengthen their case for statehood by achieving consensus on important issues, the delegates nevertheless created an intercultural strategy for determining race, whiteness, and citizenship. Such an interesting bit of compromise became possible because Mexican Californians and European Americans from Southern California demonstrated sufficient flexibility in their racial and civic ideals to inscribe an intercultural definition of citizenship and suffrage into the state constitution. Despite the influx of newcomers that preceded the conquering army and the difficult time that immediately followed its arrival, Los Angeles’s Mexican Californians retained powerful social and political voices. Moreover, some newly arrived foreigners like Foster operated in ways commensurate with local practices. On the brink of California’s admission to the United States, therefore, evidence pointed to the realistic possibility of a fruitful partnership between Mexican Californians and European Americans in Los Angeles.

Learning by Doing Regardless of the change in flag, complex familial, commercial, and social relations bound many Mexican Californian and U.S.-born Angelenos together. Those who had long lived in Los Angeles continued to dominate the city’s social and cultural life through fiestas, religious ceremonies, and the celebration of national holidays. Just as the ink dried transferring California from Mexico to the United States, the gold rush sparked a multiyear ascent in beef prices. Cows previously worth only one or two dollars suddenly brought thirty dollars per head. The cattlemen and their trading partners realized staggering economic gains and consolidated their status as the driving force behind Los Angeles’s intercultural social and political communities. Abel Stearns chaired the Los Angeles Whigs in 1851, and Andrés Pico served as a delegate at the state convention.57 Local Democrats conducted meetings in English and Spanish, and “the greatest harmony and good feeling prevailed” among them.58 Public amusements such as bullfights, bull-and-bear fights, and cockfights continued in and along the Plaza, drawing broad audiences.

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

75

Although elite and ordinary Angelenos found numerous opportunities to participate in public life, poor people from the United States and Mexico did not. Building on both Mexican and U.S. tradition, local officials preferred to discipline the pueblo’s poor residents rather than engage them in open dialogue. Over time, these prejudices spread into social relations. Whereas in the past fiestas had traditionally included the entire community, they became increasingly exclusive to middling and elite residents of U.S. and Mexican descent. When Abel Stearns threw a ball in honor of George Washington’s birthday in 1852, he invited every influential Angeleno but assiduously kept out any rough looking would-be attendees. Some drunken Yankees, claiming equal privilege to celebrate Washington’s birth, tried to crash Stearns’s party, leading to a melee involving fisticuffs, gunshots, and cannon fire.59 Such a disturbance was rather mild in comparison to the dozens of murders and scads of other violent crimes committed on Los Angeles’s streets during the early 1850s. Although the violence alarmed genteel Angelenos, it failed to deter their ongoing cooperation in public and private life. Far away as it was from U.S. centers of power, Los Angeles nevertheless could not remain completely isolated from institutions that trailed the state’s entry into a new nation. Strong U.S. legal traditions regarding private property, cultural convictions about economy, and established racial hierarchies based on color rather than achieved status trickled westward over land and sea with immigrants and on official papers. But Mexican Californians had seen other governments come and go with little effect on local conditions, and Mexican Californian Angelenos stood poised to retain their social, political, and economic power as U.S. citizens. During the Mexican period, californios and vecinos had helped U.S. immigrants negotiate the social and political borderlands they found in their adopted homes, achieving citizenship, establishing kinship ties, and building businesses, much as Tejanos had served as “cultural brokers” to Anglo-American colonists in pre-independence Texas. After California changed hands, the bonds linking the intercultural community remained strong. As in Texas, where “shared cultural and economic values between southerners and Tejanos, particularly around ideas of land, aristocracy, and bonded labor, opened avenues” to a mixed community, californios and norteamericanos had formed families and deep friendships, built political alliances, and developed lasting commercial bonds.60 Even the unpleasantness of

76

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

war and rebellion, the capture and incarceration of leading immigrant citizens, and a change of flag had not done lasting damage to intercultural connections. After the war, Mexican Californian Angelenos secured voting and citizenship rights, enjoyed a substantial political majority (even though national origins did not then cloud local politics), and held a firm grip on the region’s principal economic resources: land and cattle.61 Although aware that more and more newcomers would arrive from the east, Angelenos’ intercultural social, political, and economic relationships had resumed their prewar ease by 1850, further justifying a sense of optimism and removing lingering doubts. The shape of things to come remained fluid and open to interpretation. Mexican Californian- and U.S.-born Angelenos who had forged a rich intercultural world knew that making a bright future for their families and their children depended on continued cooperation. Abstract hope alone did not sustain Mexican Californians’ and prewar immigrants’ optimistic outlook. Numerous settlers from the United States, both publicly and privately, offered plenty of concrete reasons to believe a bright, intercultural future lay ahead. Some used public speeches on national holidays as venues in which to explore the future of social relations in Los Angeles. Addressing a large crowd assembled to celebrate the Fourth of July in 1851, Isaac K. Ogier, a Charleston, South Carolina, native who had arrived in California only in 1849 and served as the district attorney of Los Angeles between 1851 and 1853, expressed delight that so many “native citizens of California” turned out to celebrate U.S. independence. He interpreted the turnout as “evidence” that the hijos del país enjoyed “the high privilege” of “calling themselves citizens of the country of Washington, of Jefferson, and the other patriots of the revolution.” Ogier suggested that Angelenos “should endeavor to cultivate” warm feelings and that Americans in particular should act toward Mexican Angelenos in accordance with the maxim that “we look upon them as fellow citizens, enjoying the same privileges, and [as] members of the same family with ourselves.”62 Although Ogier’s heavy reliance on “we” and “them” indicates that he perceived differences between U.S.- and Mexican-born Angelenos, one can hardly imagine him giving a similar speech in his hometown of Charleston to a mixed crowd of white and black Americans. The following year, Independence Day celebrants saluted the U.S. flag in the Plaza, paraded to the beach at San Pedro, and enjoyed a properly cali-

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

77

fornio fiesta well into the following afternoon. Louis Granger spoke on the shore where Abel Stearns had been accused of smuggling, where Pico had sent Micheltorena packing, and where Stockton’s invading force had landed. He lauded the assembled scions of Anglo-Saxons and Castilians who rightly claimed unparalleled collective achievements in “adventure and valor . . . on the western continent.” Both had proved themselves “sturdy and enterprising” during “wars of independence.” Throwing off the shackles of monarchy, they became “uncompromising republicans,” who in turn united in Los Angeles to “fraternize and cooperate in [the] future for the progress of free institutions.” A “cord of mutual interest” cemented “relations between these two republican races” before which “the prejudices of generations in a moment pass away.”63 On July 4, 1853, Angelenos again made their way from the Plaza to San Pedro. Juan Sepúlveda brought with him the cannon California forces had used in rousting Gillespie from Los Angeles and holding off U.S. forces during their stunning victory at San Pascual. However, Sepúlveda brought the cannon in a spirit of peace and harmony. Together with Horace Bell and a few others, Sepúlveda rowed the cannon out into Wilmington Bay and landed it on Dead Man’s Island, where some U.S. soldiers who died during the war had been buried. From there, he commenced firing salutes back toward those celebrating at San Pedro. Don Sepúlveda explained his “triple purpose” in bringing out the old cannon and firing it: “It would dissipate the last vestige of unfriendly feeling that may have lingered in the bosoms of the sons of the country towards the United States; that it would serve to express our gratitude to the great founders of modern liberty; and it would be an appropriate salute to the seven brave mariners who lost their lives in their country’s service.”64 On these most American of occasions, U.S.- and California-born speechmakers pronounced clear visions of intercultural harmony. In both Ogier’s and Granger’s formulas, the two groups had formed extensive kinship ties—a locally specific and novel mestizaje that went beyond individual families to the city’s larger social, political, and economic fabric. The two immigrants further observed that a shared investment in republican government and commercial exchange would overshadow differences of ancestry and national loyalty. Redeploying a weapon of war as a symbol of peace and harmony, Sepúlveda demonstrated his own sense of the camaraderie among Angelenos of Californian and foreign birth, seven years after war began and five years into his life as a

78

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

U.S. citizen. Based on these mutual interests, the prejudices of birth and blood gave way to a locally developed, Mexican Californian–influenced method of reckoning community membership and social identity on the basis of behavior, economy, and achieved status. Few mid-nineteenth century orators afield of Los Angeles used public platforms to claim brown-skinned Mexicans and pale Anglo-Americans belonged to the same family, or to suggest that their work together in the arenas of society, government, and commerce would quickly supersede generations of prejudice.65 In Los Angeles, however, setting aside differences cued by color and blood became an important element of civic culture in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Easily dismissed as hollow rhetoric trotted out to nurture both good feelings and social control, Angelenos backed up the sentiments expressed in such speeches with careful, constant work to find mutually agreeable solutions in the arena of public policy. To be sure, the change in national power altered the structure of city government. In line with U.S. practices, the executive, legislative, and judicial powers that alcaldes held became neatly divided among a mayor, common council, and layers of local, county, and state jurisdictions, within which different courts handled civil and criminal matters.66 Although office titles had changed, Angelenos continued to elect both Mexican Californian- and U.S.-born representatives, choosing newcomers Stephen C. Foster, Adelpheus Hodges, and John G. Nichols; Rowland-Workman party members B. D. Wilson, David W. Alexander, and Julian Chavez; and established Angelenos, including Abel Stearns, Cristóbal Aguilar, Antonio Franco Coronel, Ygnacio del Valle, José L. Sepúlveda, and Manuel Requeña. During the military and territorial periods (January 1847 until California’s admission to the Union in 1850) and in the city’s early career following statehood, city officers reenacted and enforced policies regarding land, water, taxes, licenses, and public behavior that mirrored those in force before the war. Once during the territorial period and then again immediately after California’s admission to the Union, the Common Council enacted comprehensive civil and tax codes. These laws regulated the possession and carrying of firearms, prohibited Sunday liquor sales, pit and cesspool making, and clothes washing in the zanjas, and required householders to light their porches on dark nights and to sweep the streets in front of their houses each Saturday. The tax code required monthly license fees from the owners of billiard tables,

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

79

bowling alleys, and gambling parlors; commercial establishments; grocers; liquor sellers; and peddlers.67 Although these rules echoed those established by earlier ayuntamientos, the council established a standing “police force consisting of not less than twelve men” to enforce the laws, marking a sharp departure from Mexican practice.68 Even so, a communal ethos continued to influence enforcement. Tired of dealing with newcomers arriving “with daggers, getting drunk, fighting and inflicting wounds on one another, and committing robberies,” Alcalde Abel Stearns banished—rather than fining or imprisoning—seven recent arrivals in April 1850.69 In May 1849 the council inaugurated and in 1850 renewed a chain gang made up of all residents without work, “found loafing,” drunk, “acting in a scandalous manner,” or otherwise offending “public decency,” using public policy to reestablish control over local Indians and other alleged malefactors.70 The city also outlawed “all Indian gatherings for the purpose of indulging in games or other diversions,” reaffirming Indian domination as a foundation of intercultural californio, vecino, and norteamericano relations.71 Together, these laws and rules recreated locally specific mestizaje within the body politic. Although fairly specific, the municipal police and tax codes did not regulate the totality of city life during the early 1850s. In fact, the first policies said almost nothing about the distribution of the municipal water supply or the fate of the municipal lands. During the Spanish and Mexican periods, the pueblo collectively owned both water and land, and the ayuntamiento presided over the equitable distribution of these resources. Irrigators shared in maintaining the zanjas and paid zanjeros (water overseers) out of the produce of their fields, and the ayuntamiento granted lands on condition of their improvement and productivity. In the United States, city residents normally paid for both land and water, as underlying civic ideals considered them commodities rightly controlled by private entities.72 In Los Angeles during the 1850s, questions of practice rather than principle caused occasional friction between these asymmetrical ideals. As residents accustomed to very different traditions learned to share the waters and lands upon which they nurtured their familial and economic pursuits, disagreements created opportunities for exchange, education, and innovation. Distributing the waters of the Los Angeles River and maintaining the network of zanjas through which these waters flowed proved to be a particularly

80

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

tricky subject. As a town located on a frequently arid plain in which many of the residents depended on agriculture for their livelihood, water regulation stood paramount among the municipality’s responsibilities. In addition to managing apportionment, zanjas had to be regularly cleaned because silt accumulated in them over time and weeds grew in the silt, diminishing capacity. Once reincorporated under the U.S. flag, the city at first experimented with an independent water service whose employees managed a complicated irrigation schedule. When disagreements arose, and in line with standard U.S. practice, the various parties filed suit against each other and went to court. The new system proved so problematic that Mayor Stephen Foster officially asked the council for alternatives in 1850. On separate occasions, Abel Stearns as council president and numerous citizens in a detailed petition recommended a return to the Mexican system by appointing an experienced zanjero to mediate disputes. In response, Councilmen Manuel Garfias and José Loreto Sepúlveda drew up plans for an intercultural solution. A zanjero kept the zanjas working, compelled irrigators to clean them regularly, and withheld water as punishment for noncompliance, and a juez de aguas (water controller) oversaw apportionment and resolved all disputes. In addition, the potential productive value of each landholder’s aggregate acreage determined fees owed in specie to the city, either annually or semi-annually.73 Joining Mexican and U.S. components in the new system of water management proved challenging. When implementing the new system, the council fielded “frequent complaints” from local farmers, and Councilman Manuel Requeña, alcalde many times in the past, insisted the council write yet another code.74 Together with Cristóbal Aguilar he presented yet a third set of water rules on July 8, 1850. They ditched the juez de aguas and empowered a single zanjero to apportion and distribute water, compel assistance in maintaining the zanjas, and collect fees. If needing help, zanjeros could appoint assistants “to watch over and protect the work.” Responsibility for receiving irrigation fell to “whosoever may need water,” as the regulations required such persons to apply to the zanjero only when prepared to receive the flow. While reinstating the traditional office of zanjero and the principle of informal mediation, Requeña and Aguilar found a middle ground on the question of payment in produce versus specie in their revision: farmers growing any kind of grain could choose to pay the zanjero either one bushel from their harvest “or its

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

81

value in money”; vineyardists had to pay in coin rather than kind based on the size of their vineyards.75 Getting the new laws to work effectively proved no less difficult than making them. Individuals made so many small, semi-private canals that the council had to explicitly outlaw them in July 1851. Two weeks later, the Water Committee blamed a “lack of capacity, attention, and firmness on the part of the zanjeros” for causing “much disorder” and urged Mayor Wilson “to fill the positions with more suitable employees.”76 A deeper obstacle to efficiency made quick fixes elusive. A distribution system based on clear but minimal instructions required both users and administrators to understand and respect its rules and objectives, especially because zanjeros resolved competing claims informally. Since many residents born outside of Los Angeles had no experience with the system and because Mexican Californian zanjeros knew no other way, learning how to work together took time. A similar learning curve generated moments of intercultural education regarding water use. Shortly after settling on the new zanjero system, the council took a great interest in “keeping the principal canal free from filth of every nature, thus avoiding many ills from which the people suffer.”77 In March 1852 Ygnacio Coronel kindly offered the entire city a lesson in how to properly wash its dirty laundry without compromising the river. Recognizing washers’ need to use zanja water, he directed them to place “the plank or wash-board . . . outside of the edge of the ditch.” Although they drew in fresh water, Coronel told them, they should scrub only on the bank, taking care that “none of the dirty water coming from the clothes” would run back into the zanja or “in any manner whatsoever contaminate the drinking water.” Upon Coronel’s suggestion, the council also ordered the mayor to fine violators not less than three dollars.78 With precise, didactic language, Coronel shared his knowledge of how to wash without fouling the river, and the council backed up his teaching with formal law. Keeping the city’s streets clean required a similar amount of attention and instruction. Reinstating Mexican practice, the council required Angelenos to sweep the streets in front of their houses “every Saturday, so that on Sunday the streets are clean.” Violators incurred five-dollar fines.79 When residents failed to comply, Mayor John G. Nichols contracted with a street sweeper to do the work for fifty dollars a week. Led by Manuel Requeña, the council sus-

82

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

pended payment to the street sweeper and asked Mayor Nichols to enforce the ordinance requiring house owners to maintain the streets. When Nichols, a relative newcomer, subsequently complained to the council that the streets remained dirty, the members reminded him that “City Ordinances do prohibit the throwing of filthy matter into the streets of the community, and that it is the province of the Mayor and the Marshal to observe due vigilance in the enforcement of the Ordinances.”80 In each of these examples regarding the city’s waterways and roadways, variant civic ideals produced tensions. Mexican laws principally rested on communal practices for their use and upkeep, and alcaldes handled and resolved all disputes. Immigrants from the United States had more experience paying for services and resolving problems in court. As Angelenos learned more about each other’s practices, complaints diminished and a broader base of collective knowledge allowed for new solutions. When Antonio Franco Coronel took office as mayor in May 1853, he implored the council to pay the zanjero “a sufficient salary, enabling him to live” in order to attract a qualified individual “willing to serve usefully.” Considering Coronel’s long experience with the Mexican system, under which irrigators individually compensated the zanjero with the produce of their fields, his suggestion constituted a radical departure. The council responded by establishing the zanjero’s pay at $600 per year, then and for years thereafter the highest salary for any municipal position.81 During his term, Coronel also prodded the council to substantively expand and precisely codify the zanjero’s duties and the regulations concerning irrigation. After nearly a year of work, the council passed and Coronel signed a sixteen-section law that blended Mexican and U.S. civic ideals. The law renewed the municipality’s insistence on maximal distribution, shared maintenance provided by landowners or their designated laborers, and the zanjero’s ultimate authority to control the supply and mediate conflict. Data harvested from surveys, maps, and accounts produced specific, formal calculations for apportionment. Once drafted, the allotment schedule became publicly available and a subsequent hearing addressed complaints and adjustments. In a further move toward pay-for-use, the city reserved the right to collect taxes for future improvements; irrigators living beyond the city limits paid to have their lands surveyed and included in the irrigation schedule.82 In its various parts, the law both conformed to legalistic U.S. traditions and retained communal

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

83

rights common under Mexico. Indicating how public officials understood the place of water in the larger relationship among citizens, the city government, and the environment, the law rested on a middle ground wherein water remained paramount to the community’s well-being while becoming a commodity capable of generating other commodities for sale in a capitalist market. Only through the experience of living together and exchanging civic ideals could Coronel and the council, which included Mexican and recently arrived Angelenos, have authored an intercultural policy. As they had in addressing the city waters, Los Angeles’s public officials negotiated a legal and philosophical borderlands concerning the city lands. Mexican municipal authorities distributed available parcels freely to petitioners under the condition that the recipients promptly fenced and improved the premises by either building houses or planting crops. Once improved, the city offered deeds and titles, but under Mexican law ownership was limited to use and occupation. In the United States, most townships sold lots at auction for cash, and deed holders owned property outright. Policy makers negotiated these cultural and legal tensions as they moved forward with the city lands. The U.S. Congress complicated the quest for new solutions when it passed the Land Act in 1851. Disregarding the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo’s clear endorsement and protection of all Mexican-granted land titles, the Land Act required all owners to prove the validity of their titles in court. Residents holding Spanish or Mexican deeds and titles, including landowners born in the United States and Europe, immediately became defendants in lawsuits wherein the federal government stood as plaintiff. No aspect of the Mexican-American War or its subsequent peace had so threatened the social and economic power wielded by Los Angeles’s californios, vecinos, and their intercultural trading partners.83 Congress carved out a different set of requirements for municipal land titles. Individual holders did not bear responsibility for validating ownership of “farm lots, town lots, or pasture lots held under a grant from any corporation or town.” Instead, “corporate authorities” had to prove their town’s existence as “prima facie evidence of the claims for the land embraced within the limits” indicated.84 Although the act spared individual vecinos and established immigrants who owned town lots from the lengthy and costly adjudication process, it nevertheless required the municipality to spend more than $10,000 on lawyers,

84

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

surveys, and maps to define and defend a composite claim valued in excess of a million dollars.85 To retain the four square leagues it traditionally controlled, the city also had to challenge a state law restricting the city’s size to two square miles. Lead attorney James Lancaster Brent explained, first to the legislature and later to the land commissioners, that Los Angeles was “peculiar and different from any city in California” because of the “large number of vineyards and gardens” in its limits, all of which depended “for their successful cultivation upon a system of irrigation and a proper distribution of the waters of the River of the Pueblo.” Water management had to be “uniform and consistent, directed and controlled by one Authority alone.” Restricting the city’s size, Brent argued, would leave numerous property holders and irrigators, including the municipal corporation itself, outside the municipal water management structure. Suddenly excluded, owners would face unpredictable access and dispute resolution, causing in turn a decline in productive effort and property values—consequences Brent deemed “deplorable.” In addition, private owners whose titles required contributions to city funds would face taxation without representation. The petition ultimately succeeded and the city secured a perfect title to four square leagues. In the process, Brent created an intercultural defense of the city’s claim, shrewdly blending Mexican notions of communal ownership and municipal control over the water with thoroughly U.S. concerns about private property, property values, and taxation.86 Angelenos greeted the Land Law with nearly unanimous outrage and drew on a similar mix of Mexican and U.S. maxims to launch blistering attacks on the new policy. These broadsides appeared frequently in the two regularly published Los Angeles newspapers, La Estrella (published in Spanish) and the Los Angeles Star (published in English). Although the two newspapers had separate editors and independently controlled content, they were printed together with La Estrella folded into the center of the Star. La Estrella warned that the bill, those who went after lands granted under Mexico, and the scores of squatters who usurped other’s properties would “give Americans a very bad name and reputation.”87 In other words, they risked their razón. In English, the Star ripped the Land Act on capitalist terms, fearing a suite of deleterious effects on both property and the town by threatening “marketable value, hindering their improvement, and retarding population” growth. Echoing the sentiments of recent Fourth of July speeches, the Star complained with equal

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

85

anger that the Land Act betrayed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo’s promises to Mexican Californians regarding the “‘protection and maintenance’ in their property.” Rather than “a principle of magnanimity,” the U.S. government had intervened “as an interested and adversarial party,” resorting to “harshness and severity” in its “first stroke of the law” concerning Los Angeles.88 Public policies paralleled printed sentiments. In diametric opposition to the Land Act’s inherent suspicions, the Common Council in 1854 awarded land titles to all “persons who themselves or whose ancestors have occupied [such lands] without interruption, peaceably and in good faith, for a term of twelve years.”89 Diverting further from the spirit of federal policy, Los Angeles’s municipal officers renewed the tradition of freely distributing city lands. During 1850 and 1851, in conjunction with standard U.S. operating procedure, the mayor had periodically offered municipal lots at auction. The practice proved rather unsuccessful, generating little profit while a few buyers accrued large holdings. On August 13, 1852, the council changed course and established the “Free Land Law,” making available lots of “ten acres, within the limits of the City, or thirty-five acres without said limits.” Recipients had one year to make improvements “by building, planting orange or other fruit trees, or cultivating crops thereon.” In addition, “the value of such improvements” had to exceed “two hundred dollars” in order for the grantee to secure a permanent title. Otherwise, the parcel reverted to the city and could be requested by another resident.90 Twenty-seven residents petitioned the council for lots in the law’s first month in force. Prompted by Mayor Nichols’s concern that “some individuals” might try to piece together “immense tracts” to which they had “no right,” officials agreed to “scrutinize the documents of every interested party” to ensure equitable distribution.91 In its component parts and the public response it provoked, the Free Land Law exemplifies an intercultural policy that wove together two different civic ideals into something new and locally specific. Provisions limiting the size of granted parcels, imposing the improvement requirements, and prohibiting recipients from subsequently selling without the council’s permission grew out of Mexican principles dictating that municipalities controlled and disposed of lands on their own terms. Instead of earning titles by contributing produce to the community, however, recipients’ improvements had to realize a specific dollar value. As a test of validation, this component reflected U.S. principles

86

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

that understood both land and the products derived therefrom as commodities with capital rather than intrinsic worth. Moreover, the law played to a characteristically American insistence on an orderly development of the city, as all grants had to be “in form as nearly square as possible.”92 While the council discussed and enacted the Free Land Law, editors of both the English and Spanish pages of the Star/La Estrella offered support. Responding to Uno, a correspondent who worried that the municipality couldn’t “impose the old laws” that had “ceased to exist” over the city lands, La Estrella’s editor Manuel Clemente Rojo replied that “neither the California State Assembly nor the State Senate have the power to dictate laws that damage rights legally acquired in earlier times.”93 The Star similarly saw no “reasonable objection . . . to donating [the lands] in the manner proposed,” but for different reasons. The “fifty thousand acres of unimproved land” owned by the city had become “a burden” because of taxes owed to the county and state. The Free Land Law promised to turn the tax egress to ingress, while increased settlement and cultivation could raise property values across the board. “If the produce of grain, fruit, poultry, milk, vegetables, etc. were increased five fold,” the Star argued, “a profitable market would be found.” With opportunity knocking, distributing free land was not merely a “wholesome measure for the prosperity of our city” but also a method by which the council could fulfill the “duty of our city . . . to encourage agriculture by every means within its power.”94 Interestingly, asymmetrical civic ideals had generated divergent, though similarly enthusiastic, endorsements for the Free Land Law. Under Mexico, the municipal lands served as the pueblo’s principal reserve of potential prosperity. Officials granted lots so that residents could support themselves and their families thereon, and the recipients in turn contributed a share of their produce to the pueblo’s overall welfare. Passing a new policy to distribute such lands free of charge renewed a key component in the relationship between the municipality and the citizens. While Rojo and others with experience in Mexican Los Angeles may have understood the Free Land Law on such terms, newcomers likely did not. Instead they saw tax relief and growth opportunities, finding in the free lands the germ of new enterprise. Differences in civic ideals might have influenced the overall distribution of city lots. Over the Free Land Law’s short life, Angelenos received 8,249 acres, with roughly

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

87

60 percent (4,964 acres) going to European American men, 34 percent (2,834 acres) to Mexican Californian men, 5 percent (414 acres) to Mexican Californian women, and less than 1 percent (37 acres) to European American women.95 Considering that local californios and vecinos had already voiced their concerns regarding rising property taxes and the general preference to use land rather than speculate in real estate, the differences are not especially surprising. However, the significant uptake from Mexican Californian men and women illustrates the ways that Mexican and American ideals regarding the use of land and the relationship between the municipality, municipal lands, and Los Angeles’s residents blended to produce new, locally specific meanings. In both ethos and objectives, the Free Land Law combined features of the agrarian-oriented Mexican ideals and capital-oriented American interests. Throughout the 1850s, Angelenos born in Mexico and the United States brought their respective civic ideals together to create several intercultural policies concerning land tenure and water use. Although each contained elements and justifications familiar and foreign to one tradition or another, they mixed in ways recognizable principally to those living in Los Angeles. Despite the policies’ potentially divisive asymmetries, few objections made their way into the council minutes or found voice in the local newspapers. As innovative strategies for dealing with new circumstances, these policies provided sufficient common ground upon which Mexican Californians’ and European Americans’ respective civic ideals could peacefully coexist. Yet intercultural civic practices proved disruptive as well as peaceful, and dangerous as well as productive.

Solidifying Community: Political and Social Violence Continued attention to Indians constituted a key component in the council’s efforts to regulate public life. In keeping with both Mexican practices and the alliance forged in 1847 regarding the threat local rancherías posed to Mexican Californian and European American social harmony, the common council under the U.S. flag created a host of Indian-specific policies. After first outlawing all Indian reunions within the city limits, residents protested that Indians met and drank to excess in the surrounding orchards, causing “disorders and mischief.” The council accordingly resolved to send out patrols “to

88

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

abate the evil.”96 Five months later, the council prohibited all other Angelenos from “mixing” with Indians “during their feasts or reunions.”97 In May 1851, prompted by ongoing complaints, the council prohibited all Indian gatherings, outlawed the playing of a team gambling game called “peon” after dark, and prohibited the sale of any “intoxicating beverage” to Indians. The council fined Indians violating these rules $2.50 or remanded them to six days’ service in the chain gang; non-Indians who supplied Indians with alcohol or allowed the playing of peon on their premises incurred fines of no less than $25 and five days in jail.98 To these increasingly severe restrictions on Indians’ social and cultural lives, laws relegating vagrants to the chain gang effectively enabled the city and wealthy individuals to make use of coerced Indian labor. By continuing to segregate and discipline local Indians, Mexican and American Angelenos strengthened the institutional boundaries that defined their intercultural community. Cruel policies toward the city’s Indian residents made up only one component of life in a town often saturated by sanctioned and unsanctioned violence during the early 1850s. Although historian J. M. Guinn exaggerated greatly in claiming that “Los Angeles averaged a homicide for each day” during 1854, the murder rate reached dizzying heights during the early 1850s, even in comparison to other locales in the borderlands. In a city that ranged in population from sixteen hundred to two thousand people, murders claimed between twenty and thirty lives each year from 1851 to 1854.99 Clearly, not everyone in Los Angeles welcomed the opportunity to experiment with new social and civic combinations. Violent crimes disturbed the peace and dismayed Angelenos, but the killings rarely crossed national lines, unsettled broader social relations, or threatened the intercultural social order. The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of two immigrant Americans who failed to reach Los Angeles safely in July 1852 provoked a far less blasé response. The press paid unusual attention to the missing men, named Ludwig and McCoy, and rumors circulated that Mexicans had killed them. The Star noted their disappearance under the headline “Suspicious Circumstances” on July 24 and followed with long tales of “Terrible Events” told in both English and Spanish the following week.100 On July 27, 1852, Santa Barbara police arrested three men for horse thievery: Teodoro Savaleta, a known criminal who had recently escaped from Los

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

89

Angeles’s jail, Jesus Rivas, and Francisco Carmillo. The next day, Los Angeles Sheriffs Barton and Osburn extradited them as suspects in Ludwig and McCoy’s disappearance. Barton and Osburn appointed Manuel Requeña, Matthew Keller, J. R. Scott, Lewis Granger, Manuel C. Rojo, and John G. Downey—six respected bilingual Angelenos—to interview the suspects. At B. D. Wilson’s house the next morning, they applied the screws. Carmillo professed innocence, telling the group Rivas had bragged about killing two Americans with Savaleta a few days earlier. Rivas cracked quickly, but Savaleta held out for “four or five hours” before admitting his guilt and leading the investigators to the dead bodies. On Friday, Abel Stearns oversaw a public hearing and the investigators made their report, indicting Savaleta and Rivas for murder and ordering them to stand trial. William G. Dryden stood as inspector while Manuel Rojo and V. T. R. Sanford served as secretaries. Alexander Bell, Manuel Garfias, and Francis Mellus empanelled a jury of twelve upstanding community members: seven men born in the United States, five born in Mexico.101 An orderly trial ensued, the jury convicted Savaleta and Rivas, and Stearns sentenced them to death. On a hill just at the edge of town, Savaleta and Rivas were hanged the next day from a makeshift gallows. A large crowd gathered to watch them die.102 The entire process bore the markers of an official legal proceeding, except that Stearns turned Carmillo over to the “proper authorities,” revealing that the investigators, judge, and jury worked as a popular tribunal. Operating outside formal law, Angelenos executed Savaleta and Rivas not as officers of the state but as vigilantes. Everyone involved knew enough about legal procedure to create an ad hoc process that perfectly mimicked a legitimate trial, raising questions about the various traditions upon which they drew to bring this brand of justice to bear. The manner of investigation and the impromptu trial reflected intercultural adaptations. Happening outside the formal courts and arranged by a group of elite citizens, the entire procedure followed the general contours of Mexicanera community justice. In particular, alcaldes’ judicial responsibilities included supervising legal proceedings, gathering evidence, hearing testimony, and rendering decisions. Among the group of six who interrogated the suspects, Requeña had served as alcalde, as had host B. D. Wilson. As judge, Abel Stearns also drew on alcalde experience, and his ties to both the United States and Mexican California made him an ideal arbiter of the proceedings.103 During

90

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

the trial, he appointed representatives for each party, went with them to investigate the crime scene, reexamined the witnesses, and ultimately delivered a sentence. Alcaldes also relied on hombres buenos, impartial persons who offered advice to the alcalde regarding a final decision.104 In place of the hombres buenos, Stearns seated a twelve-man jury, following U.S. rather than Mexican tradition.105 Executing convicted murderers conformed to both Mexican and U.S. legal rules, although vigilantism did not. Middling and elite Angelenos, born in different nations and in some cases brought together by war and conquest, worked together to execute Savaleta and Rivas. In keeping with notions of locally arbitrated community justice, they blended strategies for investigating, trying, and punishing the criminals. Acting as vigilantes allowed them to punish swiftly two Mexicans who endangered continued cooperation by murdering immigrant Americans. As leaders of a most orderly lynch mob, the Angelenos who participated in and watched the proceedings delivered a form of intercultural vigilante justice.106 Harris Newmark, an immigrant to Los Angeles in 1850, later explained that “the safety of the better classes in those troublous times often demanded quick and determined action, and stern necessity knew no law. And what is more, others besides myself who have also repeatedly faced dangers no longer common, agree with me in declaring, after half a century of observation and reflection, that milder courses than those of the vigilance committees of our young community could hardly have been followed with wisdom and safety.”107 Mexican and European American Angelenos made up the better classes, and together they engaged in and benefited from vigilante justice, ostensibly to enhance public safety. The intercultural method deployed to punish Savaleta and Rivas may have proved effective in ways that went beyond stern necessity. Extralegal (and certainly illegal) mass action, especially when advertised and enacted publicly, required a very close-knit community. To be sure, Angelenos professed dissatisfaction with both the violence that surrounded them and the constituted authorities’ inability to control it. Nevertheless, only tightly bonded communities provide vigilantes sufficient security to publicly engage in premeditated murder. Otherwise, public officials and ordinary citizens would fear legal consequences for such violent behavior. Moreover, by joining together to kill Savaleta and Rivas, Spanish- and English-speaking Angelenos demonstrated

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

91

to one another their fundamental agreement about the boundaries of a working community, regardless of their asymmetrical beliefs regarding race and identity.108 Instead of leaving open questions about loyalty, extralegal violence offered middling and elite Angelenos an opportunity to proclaim both their allegiance to each other and their shared willingness to discipline those who threatened the community they had created together. Perhaps, as it had in the destruction of the Indian ranchería and the litany of laws passed to regulate Indian behavior, cooperative popular violence provided a hidden passageway to common ground upon which Angelenos engaged in bloody deeds and solidified their intercultural relationships.

A Borderlands Community Following Angelenos’ negotiations in the arenas of identity, space, and municipal power along the threads of family, economy, public policy, and popular violence, it becomes clear that Los Angeles’s residents wove their lives and interests together in ways that blurred previously clear distinctions. To be sure, Mexican Californians’ and European Americans’ divergent civic and racial ideals provoked tension and experimentation. Caught between competing visions of people, land, and water in the world they inhabited, Spanish- and English-speaking Angelenos collaborated on policies that blended communal and individual principles. The ongoing revisions regarding water policy reflect consistent tinkering with different strategies as residents gained practical experience working together, even when agreement on the particulars often obscured fundamentally different underlying motives and desired consequences. Similarly, some Mexican Californians considered certain U.S. immigrants unworthy of inclusion among the gente de razón, and many newcomers from the United States dismissed as poppycock rancheros’ claims to whiteness. As they engaged with these complex local circumstances and allowed their ideas to comingle, Angelenos pieced together an intercultural society, polity, and economy. Between 1840 and 1854 Mexican Californians and U.S. immigrants found innovative solutions to local problems and prevented differences in their civic ideals or racial worldviews from derailing their productive interactions. Elite and middling residents born in both nations shared congruent histories as

92

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

accomplished architects of racial hierarchies and public policies designed to establish and sustain their own superiority. Both constructed Indians as savages capable of neither advanced intellectual thought nor bodily discipline, and both found vagrant, violent drifters—Mexican and American—to be nearly indistinguishable from Indians in their habits and public behavior. Elite and ordinary Angelenos thus found common ground by jointly disciplining “inferior” residents, by way of both public policy and extralegal violence. Consequently, sufficient commonalities balanced Mexican Californians’ and U.S. immigrants’ mutual doubts about each other’s racial standing and national loyalties, allowing for a negotiated racial peace reinforced by cooperative violence. Innovations in the realms of public policy and municipal power produced similarly intercultural results. Although titles, job descriptions, and institutional responsibilities corresponding to municipal offices changed abruptly as California entered the United States in 1850, civic ideals did not follow suit mechanically. As Mexican Californians and U.S. immigrants shared power and policy-making responsibilities, they devised workable policies, especially relating to land, water, and public space. Newcomers and old-timers butted heads on the critical question of the right of individuals versus the right of the community, but they found common ground more often than not, both before and after the transition from one national government to the other. In much the same way that elite Mexican Californians and immigrants from the United States worked together to discipline violent people they mutually held to be racially inferior, they also cooperated in developing mutually agreeable public policies like the Free Land Law. Between 1840 and 1855, Mexican Californians and European Americans built a society bound together by a dense web of mutual relations, interests, and obligations. Although the Mexican-American War (1846–48) and waves of violence during the early 1850s strained such relationships, ties of family, property, economy, and identity nevertheless stitched together Mexican Californians and immigrants. Bonds beyond those of home and hearth also helped to persuade Mexican Californians and newcomers to find common ground and to forge a sense of shared destiny. Many newcomers played active roles in the local economy as merchants, warehousemen, and skilled craftsmen. Before the Mexican-American War, immigrants and californios worked together

“Members of the Same Family with Ourselves”

93

to expand the hide and tallow trade, and they shared in its attendant benefits for class, status, and racial standing. After war’s end, reciprocal relationships between U.S. and European settlers expanded and deepened. More Angelenos depended on each other for financial and social prosperity, and only by protecting these ties could they secure their own and their children’s and their grandchildren’s futures. Historian Leonard Pitt branded Los Angeles as “semi-gringo” during the early 1850s, but the phrase belies the ways in which negotiated compromises were neither Mexican nor American but instead dynamic, locally specific intercultural arrangements in the realms of race, space, and municipal power.109 Like other intercultural communities, this one was always precarious and frequently tendentious, yet its relative stability between 1840 and 1855 offered Angelenos legitimate, viable alternatives to the imperatives of strict loyalty to either Mexican or U.S. racial, spatial, or governmental practices. If American immigrants’ willingness to build an active intercultural community with Mexicans living in Los Angeles seems surprising from our twenty-first-century vantage point, the ways subsequent immigrants strained intercultural bonds took mid-nineteenth-century Angelenos by surprise and threatened future social harmony.

CHAPTER 3

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty” Choosing Between Cooperation and Confrontation, 1855–1856

men, Felipe Alvitre and Dave Brown, met their deaths at the ends of ropes in Los Angeles, California, on January 12, 1855. Sheriff Barton executed Alvitre, a Mexican Californian, in the jail yard as scheduled. Brown, an immigrant from the eastern United States regarded as a notorious criminal, fell victim to a lynch mob that included a broad cross-section of Angelenos: Yankees and Native Californians, city leaders and working people. Despite the differing circumstances of their deaths, both men awoke that morning in the city jail and both had been tried and convicted of murder in the county court. In fact, Sheriff Barton planned to execute the two together, but the Supreme Court of California ordered a stay of Brown’s execution while it considered his appeal. Many locals, including the mayor, rejected the supreme court’s decision and took the law into their own hands, delivering to Brown the justice they felt he deserved. While the knots of the noose around each man’s neck ensured his death, they also represented the health of the intertwined relationships that Mexican Californians and European Americans had established since the early 1840s. Over the intervening decade and more, Angelenos had developed working intercultural relationships, overcoming significant differences in their worldviews concerning race, space, and municipal power. Together they forged a

TWO

94

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

95

spate of mutually satisfactory policies and local strategies for reckoning identity. Buttressed by their relatively equal social and economic positions and their shared participation in public discipline, Mexican Californians and European Americans led Los Angeles together. When cracks in this relationship appeared during the 1840s and early 1850s, Angelenos repaired them by destroying the Indian ranchería, enacting the Free Land Law, and executing Savaleta and Rivas, as discussed in the previous chapter. All cooperative relationships in the borderlands, however, rested on foundations that could prove suddenly precarious. Tumultuous national, state, and local challenges in 1855 and 1856 put Los Angeles’s intercultural community at risk. Angelenos wrangled over a spate of unsettling questions, ranging from the meaning of justice to the proper dispensation of the city’s water to the newspaper chosen by the Common Council to publish ordinances. Mexican and European American residents had to decide quite publicly if they wanted to continue experimenting with intercultural families, businesses, and policies. Their disputes took place on the city’s streets and in the council chamber, and they spilled onto the pages of the Common Council minutes and the local papers. Debating issues both momentous and trivial provoked new difficulties regarding lingering differences in Mexican Californians’ and European Americans’ civic and racial ideals. With each new question, Angelenos’ answers became more complicated and more ambivalent, stressing the jury-rigged foundations on which local relationships rested. By late 1856, those who in early 1855 might have interpreted the preceding years of cooperation and innovation to be a guarantee of all Angelenos’ coterminal destiny would have had ample cause for uncertainty, as many local residents lost confidence in the shared future of the city and its citizens.

Dave Brown, Felipe Alvitre, and the Challenge of Extralegal Violence In October of 1854, Los Angeles authorities arrested Dave Brown, “a goodfor nothing-gambler,” for murdering Pickney Clifford. According to Harris Newmark, “The lawless act created such general indignation that vengeance on Brown would undoubtedly then and there have been wreaked had not Stephen C. Foster, who was mayor, met the crowd of citizens and persuaded them

96

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

quietly to disperse.” Foster assuaged the vigilantes by promising that, “if the case miscarried in the courts and Brown was not given his due, [Foster] would resign his office and would himself lead those who favored taking the law into their own hands.”1 A few days later, authorities arrested a Mexican Californian named Felipe Alvitre and charged him with the murder of James Ellington and an unnamed Chilean. No mob gathered to bring Alvitre to summary justice. Instead, both men faced a formal jury trial in Benjamin Hayes’s courtroom.2 Following their respective convictions, Judge Hayes, possibly with an eye to national parity, sentenced them to hang on the same day, January 12, 1855.3 The decision met popular approval as right-minded and efficient. The day before the scheduled double execution, word reached Los Angeles that the state supreme court had stayed Brown’s execution, unsettling the balance Judge Hayes had struck. Alvitre, who had also appealed, heard nothing from Sacramento.4 A mass meeting the same night drew the mayor, along with more than six hundred “persons from all parts of the County . . . composed of all classes.” Colonel McClanahan served as chair, with Captain J. D. Hunter and Juan Sepúlveda serving as vice presidents. The mayor spoke and “unequivocally proclaimed himself in favor of hanging Brown and Alvitre together.”5 The next day, Friday, January 12, 1855, a large crowd gathered around Los Angeles’s jail yard. Assisted by several armed men employed to deter outside interference, Sheriff Barton brought Alvitre to the gallows. Amid calls to hang Brown too, the drop fell at three o’clock.6 Inside the jail yard, the armed guard dispersed; outside, the assembled crowd swelled and marched to the mayor’s office demanding action. Foster greeted them warmly, “took occasion to acquit himself of his former pledge,” resigned his position, and then presided over an assembly that hastily decided to take Brown from the jail and hang him.7 Foster, now the former mayor, led the crowd into the jail. In the absence of a ready gallows, the crowd carried Brown “across to a large gateway, opposite the Court House,” where a heavy crossbeam served as his hanging tree. The rope affixed and the chair kicked out from beneath him, Brown was dead by five.8 A sensational story to be sure, but what does it say about the nature of social relations in Los Angeles at the moment it took place? Mayor Foster surely felt he had the pulse of the city and its confidence. It must have taken nothing less

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

97

to resign as mayor, break into the jail whose sanctity had only moments before been his responsibility, and lead the citizenry in an act defined by law as firstdegree murder. In what kind of community was such behavior possible, let alone celebrated? The temptation to write Brown’s lynching off as merely another eyebrowraising yarn in the densely woven tapestry of the Wild Wild West is nearly irresistible. Foster and his cohort did the deed in a small frontier community whose residents accepted violence as commonplace and wherein finer points of formal law mattered to a scant group of prudish teetotalers. Indeed, lynch mobs occasionally acted brashly and brazenly on the dusty roads in and around Los Angeles. However, Angelenos also formed relatively well-ordered vigilance committees. Recall the ersatz court they convened and the intercultural, ad hoc judicial process they followed in trying, convicting, and executing Savaleta and Rivas for killing two immigrants from the United States in 1852. The mob that ended Dave Brown’s life acted by similar fiat. A turn away from the sensationalized Wild West world of outlaws and banditos and toward the redemption-era U.S. South offers a more rigorous and compelling interpretation. In his book Roots of Disorder, Christopher Waldrep explores the community and legal dynamics that facilitated the regular lynchings that served to both mark and enforce the boundaries of Jim Crow. Waldrep argues insightfully that extralegal (and certainly illegal) mass action, especially when advertised and enacted publicly, required a very close-knit community and resulted from a substantive dissatisfaction with the regular operation of local laws and courts. Otherwise, he asserts, most public officials and ordinary citizens would be disinclined to openly commit murder.9 One new local newspaper, the Southern Californian, encouraged Angelenos to take the law into their own hands and lynch Brown, specifically in order to maintain intercultural community bonds. When news of Brown’s reprieve reached Los Angeles, the upstart Southern Californian published a brisk sheet that captured the furious local mood. William Butts and John Ozias Wheeler edited the paper. Wheeler came to California by way of Florida in 1849, ran “a general merchandise business” in “a one-story adobe at the northeast corner of Main and Commercial streets,” served as a Los Angeles Ranger in 1851, and ultimately “organized the first military company in Los Angeles” in 1853.10 He took responsibility for publishing the Southern Californian in November

98

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

1854, only a few months after its July premier. “An adopted son of the great Thomas H. Benton,” William Butts grew up in Ohio and came to California as an officer in the regular army during the Mexican American War. Before settling into the staid role of newspaper editor, the feisty Butts barely survived an epic tussle with a massive grizzly bear in San Luis Obispo, which left him permanently disfigured.11 When Wheeler joined Butts as editor in November 1854—only weeks before the trials that resulted in Brown’s and Alvitre’s death sentences—they informed readers that “a bold and manly stand at all times and under any circumstances” would be their editorial rudder.12 Butts and Wheeler published an impassioned plea for justice on January 11, the day before the scheduled hanging. The Southern Californian brooded that “the hour is hastening which will determine, whether . . . money, friends, color, or race is to be henceforth, as heretofore, the sole arbitrators in our Criminal courts; whether the citizens of the county will supinely submit to bear the damning obloquy which with too much justice has been the result of the miserable system of the past. . . . As good citizens, and having the future well-being of the community at heart, it becomes us at this time to determine the great question of the future character of our people.” Distinctly aware that the supreme court’s actions threatened the stability of local arrangements, the editorial in the Southern Californian clarified the stakes. Butts and Wheeler advocated equal justice for equal crimes, especially in light of the fact that among the two convicts, One happens to be an American, the other a Californian. The one has had thrown about him the sympathy of a portion of this community . . . [and] a powerful array, of legal talent and ability . . . while the other laboring under the prejudices of caste and race, has quietly and helplessly passed through the judicial ordeal, comparatively uncared for, and unthought of. . . . Must it ever be that crime in the county shall be measured, and weighed by outside influences? shall powerful friends and money, color and race, and legal nothingisms continue to neutralize our judiciary, and shield the unprincipled scoundrel . . . while its grasp shall be layed upon the poverty stricken wretch, whose whole career from the cradle to the grave, has been but a continued history of penury and ignorance . . . ? . . . It has ever been the boast of an American citizen, that he lived under a wise and impartial system of laws, visiting its penalties upon the rich and the poor, the influential and the friendless, with an impartial

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

99

hand. Far different has been the case with us, and its ruinous result has laid heavy upon us. In striking, often biting language, the article went beyond excoriating the local legal system to illustrate clearly the contours of intercultural relationships Angelenos had wrought. In complaining principally about the power of “outside influences,” the Southern Californian made a claim for local rules governing the meaning of identity and the application of justice. Recognizing that class and influence closed the gap of color and nation for some while leaving others like Alvitre “uncared for,” the editor nevertheless suggested that local “justice” adopt a higher standard in order to protect intercultural relationships and avoid potentially ruinous communal instability. Rather than allowing Angelenos the opportunity to settle outstanding questions regarding adherence to U.S. law and the stability of the municipal order, the high court demanded that they “herald themselves to the world as truckling sycophants to unholy prejudices.” The Southern Californian found this unacceptable. If Angelenos allowed Alvitre to die while they quaked in “fear [for] the responsibility of carrying out their own verdict upon” Brown, it would only widen “still further the breach that already exists between our native and foreign population, so prolific of future disaster to this community . . . which we may all live to regret— perhaps in blood and tears.”13 In other words, the intercultural relationships that had emerged in Los Angeles could only endure if Angelenos took the law into their own hands. Only by speaking in unison against race and class biases could they preserve what they’d built.14 When Angelenos gathered the next day and, led by the mayor himself, forced open the jail, extracted Brown, and hanged him, they met across boundaries of color, national origins, language, and social class, and they subsequently praised Mayor Foster, Colonel McLanahan, Captain Hunter, Sr. Sepúlveda, and the rest of the participants in Brown’s hanging. Not only had justice been achieved for Brown and Alvitre, but, the Southern Californian gushed, the citizens’ manifest resolve served notice to would-be criminals that “there is a power greater than all law, vested in the unity of purpose of an entire people.”15 A unified, close-knit community acting on a shared sense of community justice took the law into its own hands, murdered Brown, and reaffirmed their collective values. Although it didn’t report the twin hangings of January 12, La Estrella cel-

100

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

ebrated Mayor Foster’s reelection on January 25, less than two weeks later. The city’s Spanish-language newspaper, La Estrella shared a press with and was folded into the Star at each printing. Manuel Clemente Rojo had edited La Estrella from its founding until 1854. Rojo immigrated to Los Angeles from Peru in the late 1840s and set up shop as a lawyer defending land claims in Los Angeles. He participated in the justice administered to Savaleta and Rivas in 1852, and La Estrella generally supported organized extralegal violence. By the end of 1854, Rojo had moved to Mexico and the young, Los Angeles–born Francisco Ramirez had taken responsibility for La Estrella. The issue in which he wrote about Foster’s reelection appears to be one of the first produced under his supervision.16 Under the headline “Our Mayor,” La Estrella wrote that “Don Estevan C. Foster was reelected mayor of the city of Los Angeles. It is certain that a better man could not be found. Mr. Foster is a gentleman who has distinguished himself at various jobs. As mayor he has deserved the applause and approval of the entire town, and in his ability to carry out laws has garnered the admiration and appreciation of his many friends.”17 Embracing Foster as “our mayor,” La Estrella praised Foster’s sense of justice and his perfect representation of local interests. Despite having immigrated to Los Angeles in 1847 during the U.S. military occupation, Foster had clearly earned a position of respect within the California-born community for his ability to navigate local politics to the citizenry’s mutual satisfaction. Possibly hearkening back to Mexican-era strategies for municipal governance, wherein the alcalde both passed and enforced judgment, La Estrella specifically commended Foster for his “ability to carry out the laws.”18 Ironically, Foster’s latest admirable act had in fact been in defiance of formal law. Consequently, La Estrella’s praise seems directed at Foster’s ability to effect community-based justice. English and Spanish speakers, therefore, credited Foster and those joining him for acting publicly to maintain the relationships upon which Mexican Californians and immigrants from the United States had built their intercultural civic virtues since the early 1840s. Enacted by Angelenos from a variety of national and economic backgrounds and celebrated in the Spanish- and English-language presses, Brown’s hanging and Foster’s immediate reelection reflected a high degree of community harmony. Faced with a difficult choice, Angelenos united to make a statement about the meaning of law, justice, and their shared sense of social norms.

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

101

But had the citizens gone too far? Was it too much for the mayor himself to lead a lynch mob? Could violence, itself so destructive, continue to productively unite Los Angeles’s diverse populace? Although Foster’s resignation, his leadership in the hanging of Brown, and his hasty reelection indicated a heterogeneous community unified across lines of nationality and social position, it did not meet with unanimous approval. The city’s other English-language newspaper, the Los Angeles Star, wrote a different story. Edited in 1854–55 by James Waite, the Star was the first and most successful Los Angeles newspaper during the 1850s and 1860s. Proudly independent of party politics during the tenure of its first editors, John Lewis and William Rand, the paper had become aligned with the Democratic Party during 1853. When Waite took the reigns, he retained the paper’s role as “the advocate of Democratic men and measures.” Waite arrived to Southern California in 1849 and settled in San Gabriel, claiming squatter’s rights on a disputed piece of old mission land before moving to Los Angeles and editing the Star. He subsequently received appointment as postmaster in 1855 and sold the Star in 1856. In framing its position regarding the rule of law, Waite’s Star supported a strong police force and diligent public officials rather than vigilante justice to ensure lawful behavior in Los Angeles. Specifically, Waite argued that vigilance committees could cause as many problems as they solved.19 Although the Star’s reluctance to praise the vigilantes who murdered Brown squared with its broader editorial predilections, the specific ways in which Waite reported on the entire episode goes beyond a simple distaste for extralegal violence. Whereas La Estrella and the Southern Californian highlighted the strengths of local arrangements, the Star’s coverage offers glimpses of areas where the instabilities that produced intercultural relationships in the first place remained susceptible to special pressure. Reporting on the state supreme court’s stay of Brown’s execution, the Star ignored the broad dissatisfaction expressed by a cross section of Angelenos and instead reported “quite an excitement among the native Californians,” who felt “that if Brown is worthy of a reprieve and new trial, Alvitre is also entitled to the same.”20 Along the same lines, in covering the mass meetings of January 11 and 12, neither Mayor Foster’s resignation nor his leadership in lynching Brown drew ink. Instead, the Star characterized the vigilantes as a disorderly rabble that entered the jail “shouting and yelling like incarnate

102

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

devils” and “hung [Brown] in the most barbarous manner.” Using language recognizable to all as code for the lowest gringos, cholos, and indios, the Star completely “brownwashed” elite participation. “Thus ended this fearful tragedy,” the Star concluded, “which, God grant that our citizens may never witness the like again.”21 Considering that La Estrella was not a separate newspaper but printed on the same press and folded into the center of the Star, this entirely different story and its tinge of cultural prejudice emerges as all the more striking. What could have led the Star to tell such a different story? The simplest answer—the other papers got the story wrong—doesn’t seem to be accurate. All evidence, including Common Council records reflecting Foster’s resignation and subsequent reelection, suggests that the mayor and other elite Yankees and rancheros did participate in Brown’s hanging. The Star intentionally omitted these facts.22 Why, then, did it do so? Surely its editors couldn’t have expected to fool any Angelenos. Harris Newmark opined that “all such information was known, each week, by the handful of citizens in the little town long before the paper was published.”23 Instead, the Star, by its inclusions and omissions, voiced a more general discomfort with local arrangements and legal practices. By excising Foster and other members of the U.S. and californio elite and recasting the vigilance committee as a feral mob of Sonorans and Indians, the Star didn’t simply maintain its established opposition to the principle of extralegal violence. It lobbed an egregious racial slur at the participants and rejected the premise of intercultural community justice. Only six weeks after Alvitre’s and Brown’s executions, another Star story amplified the anxiety expressed in its previous reportage. Under the headline “Broke Jail,” the Star reported that “some eight or ten prisoners—Sonoranians and Indians” had escaped from the city prison. Opining that “poor humanity are more prone to imitate bad examples than good,” the Star referred acerbically to Brown’s lynching, arguing that “the prisoners doubtless thought, and thought correctly, that if Indians and Sonoranians could break into the jail, Indians and Sonoranians could break out.”24 Beyond further disparaging those responsible for hanging Brown, the barb suggested that good citizens obeyed the law whereas lowly Mexicans and Indians broke it. Seemingly, some Angelenos wondered what kind of American place Los Angeles had become and began to question both the appropriateness of extralegal violence and

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

103

the local tolerance for racial ambiguity it fostered. From this perspective, the Brown-Alvitre affair at once reflected the intercultural community’s strength and revealed an emergent countercurrent adhering more rigidly to familiar, U.S.-specific tropes of racial singularity and the rule of law. Following the executions, other challenges hinted that Angelenos’ intercultural community might not always cohere so easily.

Visions of an Uncertain Future Over six weeks in the winter of 1855, Spanish- and English-speaking Angelenos publicly expressed concerns about their collective future. Beyond a shared role in extralegal justice, they raised questions related to economy, civic ideals, blood, and color. The Star published a commonplace bit of western boosterism entitled “The Destiny of California” on February 15, 1855.25 It began, as did countless promotional tracts, by commending “the wisdom of those men who planned and achieved” the incorporation of California into the Union and by poetically praising California’s “inexhaustible golden stores.” Yet it assembled and peopled Los Angeles’s past, present, and future in particular ways. Once upon a time, “the old Spanish missionaries, with extraordinary courage,” founded the territory, converted “the red man” from “savages” into “piously baptized and trained Christian pupils,” and established “countless herds and fruitful vineyards.” But upon coming into power, Mexico’s “old soldiers” took neophytes for their brides, and together with “their [mestizo] children” allowed the Indians to “speedily fall back to the savage condition of their fathers.” Although they lived “happily” with their “numerous family” in “plain, cheerless looking, but hospitable adobe[s],” a recent and “rapid change” had begun. Once the hijos del país had counted “their numerous flocks fast increasing and fattening upon these smiling hills and valleys,” but a new group of conquerors had arrived to change once again California’s destiny. “The dazzling pack of the clever peddler,” having mastered Spanish “in a fortnight soon rids them of their cash, if any has been left them by the gambler or speculator.” These newcomers had almost sealed the rancheros’ destinies. “Flock by flock the cattle are changing hands,” and their “ranches are being hopelessly encumbered by the keen, calculating and intelligent stranger.”26 Forty years before the first La Fiesta history parade, the Star

104

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

began to articulate a local narrative in which the city’s destiny passed over Mexico and Mexican Californians from Spanish to American hands. While this may have been little more than fantasy in 1855, others also pondered a future Los Angeles controlled by newcomers. Juan Bautista Alvarado, former governor of Mexican California, convened a meeting of Angelenos one week later to discuss a mass emigration to Sonora, Mexico. Facing the accumulated toll of high taxes, land troubles, and spurious state laws, some hijos del país considered moving. Over the course of the evening, “several speeches” touched on “a multitude of . . . oppressions that are reducing the Californios to beggars on the lands that belonged to them.” One speaker argued “that the lands that their fathers’ possessed and that they hoped to bequeath to posterity are taken from them by some thieving lawyer;—that they will be left doubting for many years whether their lands will be confirmed or denied;—that they pay onerous taxes on lands and that the same laws that impose these taxes allow squatters to remain and enjoy the land; that they are treated like strangers in the country of their birth—and finally that native Californians cannot get justice in this State.”27 Francisco Ramirez, writing for La Estrella, agreed that Mexican Californians had suffered since the U.S. takeover and worried that “vile strangers” might thenceforth enjoy their lands and wealth. “In this sad state,” Ramirez asked, “would it be better to remain in California or emigrate to Mexico?” Although he rejected the proposition, Ramirez acknowledged “there can be no doubt that many” rancheros and vecinos who worried about their futures in the United States “would respond ‘To Mexico!’”28 In the same edition, La Estrella reprinted an incendiary, anti-californio article from the San Francisco Evening Journal. In one section, it declared “the Californios are a pack of thieves” who had “committed horrible and treacherous assassinations” and were “infesting the mountain ranges”; in another, it compared Mexican Californian women unfavorably to San Francisco’s Chinese prostitutes. Ramirez resented the “libel against all Californios without exception,” taking “personal offense.”29 Juan Bandini, a wealthy ranchero with two European American sons-inlaw, also took the editorial personally. “It is not without feeling that I take up the pen,” Bandini responded in an open letter to the Evening Journal’s editor, to “refute the treachery and audacity with which the Evening Journal’s writer attacks the natives of California without distinction and who clumsily offends

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

105

the dearest object of our affection—our families.”30 Although Bandini himself immigrated to California from Perú in the 1820s, he had so thoroughly integrated into local life that he saw himself as a californio and an hijo del país. According to Bandini, recent arrivals form the United States—people not unlike the Evening Journal’s editor—had willfully worked the ruin of californio families by the “most ingenious inventions.” Such predations constituted a heavy “penance imposed to justify the sin of owning land in California.” Bandini judged the journey to “absolution” long, and dependent on “good luck when it should instead result from righteous justice.”31 For this sad state of affairs, he held ordinary charlatans—the dazzling pack of clever peddlers—and California officeholders who had voted for high taxes and unfavorable laws equally responsible. Bandini then launched into a blistering attack on the Evening Journal’s reporter. How could he claim californios lacked “credibility” when he obviously couldn’t “contain his own impulses of fantastic passion”?32 What, Bandini wondered, had led to claims that “the californios are thieves, murderous, ignorant, and incapable of understanding civilization,” to arguments that Mexican Californians did not “merit any more personal consideration than frontier Indians,” and to comparisons of Mexican Californian women to Chinese prostitutes?33 Bandini blamed the bad neighborhood in which the editor lived, the company he kept (which undoubtedly included prostitutes), and his general ignorance of Mexican Californians. All of these flaws, in Bandini’s eyes, arose because the “poor writer’s . . . knowledge does not advance [him] past the level of a very common man, who therefore can’t understand that in all the known world there are different manifestations of nature, some useful, some harmful.” For wise people, “simple reason alone suffices to distinguish the good from the bad.”34 Bandini thus rebuked the Evening Journal’s editor and offered him a lesson in Mexican Californian strategies for evaluating and achieving racial status: thinking people looked beyond color and birth to understand the differences between gente de razón and gente sin razón. As proof, the Evening Journal reporter’s white skin couldn’t save him from being among the gente sin razón. It was he who couldn’t control his passions, kept poor company, and lacked “simple reason.” This confluence of spilt ink reveals that although Spanish- and Englishspeaking Angelenos came together rather easily to share in extralegal violence,

106

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

they could also be suspicious of each other in a number of ways. Land, specifically those parcels subject to so much contestation as a result of the Land Law, plays a central role in each piece. During 1852 and 1853 Angelenos categorically condemned the Land Law, with the Star offering one of the region’s loudest denunciations. In the “Destiny of California,” however, opposition gave way to subtle praise for the intelligent, opportunistic newcomers who used the Land Law’s vagaries to erode Mexican Californians’ economic and demographic power to their own advantage. Alvarado, those pondering migration to Mexico, La Estrella, and Bandini were only too aware of the shifting balance in demography and land ownership. They openly worried about the precarious position in which they found their property, and rightly so. These were the very parcels that, under Mexico, had made it possible for californios and vecinos to distinguish themselves both from each other and from the cholos and indios. Land loss, therefore, also cost rancheros and vecinos the right to claim status within their own social conventions. More dangerous still, the loss of land threatened their continued ability to participate as equal partners in Los Angeles’s social, cultural, and political life. Without wealth, status, and power, the hijos del país would struggle to sustain their success at building intercultural relationships with immigrants from the United States. If nothing else, the rancheros and especially the vecinos might find it much harder to convince newcomers that they shouldn’t be subjugated to second-class citizenship because of their mixed blood and brown skin. Each of the articles, in fact, demonstrates just how quickly visions of landless hijos del país could give way to racial name-calling. In contrast to the blueblooded Spanish padres, “The Destiny of California” told readers, the “old soldiers” complicated their own dubious racial heritage by marrying Indians and raising predictably “indolent” and “nomadic” mestizo children. While happily gazing out the windows of their simple adobes at their cattle fattening on the adjacent hills, they failed to seize the opportunities provided by the region’s abundant natural wealth. From the Star’s perspective, this combination of tainted blood and economic ineptitude had wrought a just reward: aggressive, astute, and presumably whiter newcomers easily separated californios from their lands and herds.35 The migration discussion and Bandini’s open letter proved no less harsh, especially when judged according to Mexican Cali-

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

107

fornian standards. Those making speeches advocating a return to Mexico regarded Americans as squatters and thieves, Ramirez called them “vile strangers” in La Estrella, and Bandini rejoined the Evening Journal’s insults with a racial slur of his own, dismissing its reporter as gente sin razón with no ability to make sense of the world. In each instance, boundaries of language, national origin, and behavior cued coded racial slurs.36 Equally meaningful, all three articles concluded by raising provocative questions about Los Angeles’s future. If commercial and political relationships served as the foundations upon which intercultural civic and racial ideals rested, their potential erosion could produce a future marked by conflict rather than cooperation. California’s destiny, according to the Star, did not include the californios, whose “cattle and lands” would soon “fall into the hands of the conquerors and new comers” who were “swelling the irresistible current of California’s prosperity to a degree rivaling that of the old Eastern States—the result of two centuries of toil and trouble.”37 Those attending Alvarado’s meeting feared irreparable damage had already been done to both their economic and social positions. Leaving Los Angeles and seeking “asylum where they will not be considered foreigners or a convenient target for any villain who desired their lands or homes” struck them as the only alternative to the “absolute ruin” that awaited should they stay.38 Bandini, however, evinced a different outlook. He remained confident in his own way of reckoning race, governance, and economic enterprise. So confident, in fact, that he predicted that the hijos del país and gringos would soon “race on the tracks” of behavior and identity being laid by the newcomers in order “to determine who will be declared the champion.”39 Contained as it was in the idiom of a horserace, Bandini declared himself game for the contest. Unlike those pondering a retreat to Mexico, Bandini was ready to stay in California and defend his principles. Whether or not such a race had in fact already commenced is difficult to determine. The popular mobilization in support of community justice for Dave Brown, which drew support across lines of class, local status, and nationality, suggested unity regarding the meaning and righteousness of equality. The Star’s questioning voice, together with the stories that appeared immediately after Brown’s execution, in contrast, indicate that people who identified as both American and Californian found certain issues considerably more trou-

108

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

bling. Much as they readily crossed boundaries to join their fellow citizens in administering extralegal justice, English- and Spanish-speaking Angelenos had apparently grown increasingly concerned about certain outsiders. Recent immigrants, squatters, state policy makers, and federal land commissioners, for better or worse, could complicate local arrangements in ways that might make future cooperation impossible. Little that took place during the remainder of 1855 and 1856 made things any clearer, as ambiguities that both offered solutions and caused problems intensified over the next twenty months. People living outside Los Angeles and unfamiliar with local relationships began to play an important role in the city’s future. The state legislature, controlled by Northern Californians, challenged Mexican Californians’ citizenship claims and cultural outlets. A law passed in 1855 deemed vagrant “all persons who are commonly known as ‘Greasers’ or the issue of Spanish and Indian blood.” Punishment options included arrest, imprisonment, fines, and the chain gang.40 Evidently some politicians beat Bandini to the starting line; the race—about race—had already commenced. The law was among the first to use explicitly racial language targeting California residents of Mexican parentage. It also paired an epithet as severe as “nigger” with a precise definition: “greasers” were people with mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry. Consequently, it is easy to see the “Greaser Act,” as it came to be called, as an important turning point in nineteenth-century California race relations. Given the sharp stratification along the lines of status and identity within Mexican Californian society, however, no rancheros or vecinos would have considered themselves targets. Much as some might have objected to the endorsement of a racial slur in the letter of the law, Angelenos continually reaffirmed their commitment to rounding up supposedly vagrant Indians and putting them to work on private ranches or the municipal chain gang. Through this prism, it seems reasonable that Los Angeles’s californios and vecinos found the Vagrancy Act of 1855 a familiar, agreeable, and wise policy. However, leaving to others, especially newcomers, the power to distinguish hijos del país from “greasers” carried greater risk. As the Evening Journal author made clear, californios’ and vecinos’ reliance on reason, behavior, and status to mark identity meant little to U.S. immigrants who saw color first when making racial judgments. The Greaser Act’s ambiguity, therefore, lay in who would enforce it. Those willing to understand the complicated human fabric of Los Angeles

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

109

presented no threat, but inexperienced or malicious enforcers did, because they carried state sanction to treat all Mexican Californians as vagrants and potential criminals. To be sure, the fears Spanish-speaking Angelenos expressed regarding their long-term regional prospects paralleled the Greaser Act’s potential for pernicious deployment. Already, the Star had entirely written off Mexican Angelenos’ part in California’s destiny. Yet both “The Destiny of California” and those pondering migration to Sonora envisioned a future that, as of the winter of 1855, had not arrived in Los Angeles. Relying on hindsight, it would be easy to declare such prophesies prescient. Circumstances on the ground at that moment, however, suggest it would be foolish to succumb to such temptation. Despite their legitimate concerns regarding the future, Los Angeles’s Mexican Californians remained equal partners in the city’s political, economic, and cultural life. In other places, such as San José—the other growing California city originally founded as a Spanish pueblo—californios and vecinos alike “suffered stunning new patterns of disfranchisement and discrimination,” including a nearly total loss of property, sustained violence, and exclusion from local politics and culture.41 Ethnic Mexicans in Los Angeles, however, outnumbered Americans locally and held office at the municipal, county, and state level. Moreover, ambitious newcomers continued to pursue familial and commercial alliances with local Mexican Californians. Whatever those judging californios and vecinos as little more than ordinary Mexican thieves might have wished for, and whatever Alvarado and potential Mexican Californian immigrants to Mexico might have feared, local relationships between the hijos del país and immigrant norteamericanos remained strong. Alvitre and Brown had gone together to their graves, just as the Los Angeles Common Council recorded Foster’s resignation and reelection in both English and Spanish on facing pages of the official minutes.

Politics and Public Policy in Transition Although the intercultural relationships shared by Mexican Californians and European Americans became more difficult during and after 1855, policy making, business arrangements, and social life remained dynamic. That dynamism pointedly demonstrated the ambiguous potential of such innovations

110

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

to keep the community together or tear it apart. Municipal policies and local politics illuminate Los Angeles’s increasingly complex and multidirectional contours, often in more subtle tones than policies emanating from Sacramento and challenges issued in the local press. The municipal government’s day-to-day operations continued to blend civic ideals and practices hailing from both Mexico and the United States. William Dryden, the city clerk, kept the council’s minutes in English and Spanish on facing pages during the 1854–55 term. The mayor still did jobs familiar to alcaldes but uncommon in U.S. municipal governance, acting as a judge and resolving policy disputes.42 Upholding a tradition dating to the 1830s, the council and mayor used vagrancy laws to round up Indians and put them to public and private work.43 Although costing the city between $62.50 and $250 per month in board, confiscated Indians provided a ready supply of labor.44 Using public policy to control Indian bodies had been essential to stratifying Los Angeles’s society under Mexico, just as cooperating with immigrants from the Unites States to destroy the Indian ranchería had been critical to cementing peaceful social relationships under the Stars and Stripes. By continuing to restrict Indian citizenship with harsh vagrancy laws, severe restrictions on liquor distribution, and policies restricting social mixing, Angelenos renewed their agreement on Indians’ proper place in society. In May of 1855, five months after Brown’s lynching and two months after Bandini’s broadside, Angelenos elected new municipal officers. Thomas Foster succeeded Stephen Foster as mayor (the two men were not related). Only Dr. Obed Macy and Ezra Drown returned to the Common Council, joined by former mayor John G. Nichols, Henry Wheeler, J. W. Ross, and J. H. Stewart. For the first time, no one with a Spanish surname held elected office. William Dryden continued as the city clerk but subsequently kept minutes in English only. The new mayor Foster, a recent immigrant to Los Angeles and an active Mason, expressed his own sense of how to achieve the public good in a sprawling inaugural message. He condemned the strict regulations and high licensing fees imposed on the city’s liquor retailers, endorsed the Free Land Law, requested funds to pay “a competent civil engineer” to create a plan for supplying the whole city with potable water, and pledged to “foster and sustain” the common schools “in such a manner as becomes intelligent freemen.”

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

111

In conclusion, Foster opined that “the crimes of former years are fast departing from our midst” and hoped that “under the benign influence of our equal laws, and by a just and fearless administration of our Municipal government, peace and prosperity may reign uninterruptedly.”45 His speech touched on each of the key areas in which Mexican Californians and European Americans had previously found common ground: licensing fees and the sale of liquor to Indians, the dispensation of municipal lands, the preservation of the water supply, public education, and the administration of justice. But Foster presented each of these issues with his own twist. Whereas Foster sided with business interests and pragmatic license fees, he rejected unfettered market principles concerning the city lands, as the Free Land Law offered a broader spectrum of citizens the opportunity to own property. Although commensurate with intercultural ideals regarding water, Foster’s preference for employing a civil engineer to achieve maximal distribution derived from a technical rather than communal approach to water distribution. His final plea, for peace and prosperity, seemingly rebuked his predecessor’s willingness to lead a lynch mob. Thomas Foster’s civic ideals—a concerted and righteous effort in the arenas of public sobriety, land and water distribution, public education, and a strict adherence to formal government—therefore carried the potential to both reinforce and remake local arrangements that had obtained since the 1840s. Thomas Foster also revealed the challenge a relative newcomer faced in navigating existing local policy making. “Upon coming into Office,” the mayor observed, “I find it impossible to ascertain with any degree of certainty the extent and character of my duties as well as those of the other officers of the City.” Foster complained that only a “few Ordinances of a general and permanent character are to be found, and those that I have met with are on loose sheets of paper in different parts of the office, and liable to be destroyed at any time. Having no publicity,” he reasoned, “the citizen whose rights and duties are, or ought to be regulated by them has but little if any knowledge of the character of their provisions.” To “remedy the evil,” Foster exhorted the council to gather “the Ordinances heretofore passed” and transcribe them into “a substantially bound book” in order to give “some evidence of their existence.”46 Foster’s call to organize, bind, and distribute municipal ordinances seems eminently sensible, but could it have resolved his central concern? A bound

112

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

ordinance book would have helped ordinary citizens to know more about the laws, and it would have made it easier for municipal officers to more strictly enforce them, but could such a book have helped Thomas Foster to apprehend the “extent and character” of his job? Since the town’s founding, local officials built on an accumulated tradition that, to an outsider, might in fact have looked a lot like “making it up as one goes along.” The free and fluid mixture of Mexican, U.S., and local strategies had fostered local practices that, if nothing else, eschewed exactly the “degree of certainty” for which Foster longed. His predecessors, for the most part, possessed the memory accrued during years of service. Rather than a guide or any set of ordinances passed and lost or passed and present, they relied on experience. Thomas Foster had none. To his recent immigrant’s eyes, the job of mayor of Los Angeles certainly had as many foreign-looking components as familiar ones. During his term, he’d have to adjudicate water disputes and serve as judge and jury in his own mayor’s court in addition to administering the law and disposing of the city lands. The “evil” Foster identified had no easy remedy; it was indeed impossible to ascertain with any degree of certainty exactly what his job required. To be sure, Foster didn’t suffer from this state of affairs in solitude. Of the six men elected to serve with him on the Common Council, only Dr. Obed Macy and Ezra Drown had resided long in Los Angeles. Another, John G. Nichols, served as mayor in 1853 but was as green then as Foster was in 1855, and Nichols’s administration left little to suggest he could guide Foster through the administrative borderlands.47 With so little local expertise at hand, Thomas Foster and the 1855–56 Common Council struggled to continue along the previous trajectory even when they wanted to do so. Working quickly, the council slashed monthly license fees from fifty dollars to ten for liquor sellers and from twenty-five dollars to ten for peddlers in their first two sessions.48 Although taking a bit longer, Foster also got the council to compile, review, bind, and publish all valid ordinances in July 1855.49 Seemingly the mayor and council needed no printed guide to continue exploiting captive Indian labor. In addition to making regular payments for the “Board of Indians as City Prisoners,” the city also put them to work on local projects. When Fort Street required repairs in August 1855, the council ordered “the Marshal of the City, with the labor of City prisoners” to do the job.50 While maintaining these old traditions, the council forged a new ethos for

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

113

the municipal government. By contracting with George Whitman to regularly water the town’s principal streets for sixteen dollars per month, responsibility for a task previously completed by individual householders shifted to the municipality.51 The council also explored the possibility of bringing in an engineer to augment the city’s water distribution network but found the costs “impracticable.”52 A growing physical separation between established residents and newcomers created the need for an extension of the city’s zanja network. Many recent immigrants from the United States settled southwest of the Plaza, in an area largely unoccupied during the Spanish and Mexican periods and that consequently had few zanjas.53 Frustrated in their efforts to publicly support the necessary expansion, the council entered a private contract with Jonathan R. Scott and Francis Mellus. Addressing the “the increase of the population, agriculture, and industrial pursuits in the South Western portion of the City,” Mellus and Scott “agreed at their own expense” to extend the system. “In consideration” for their effort the city granted them “the undisturbed use” of a “quantity of water sufficient to drive the machinery . . . in a certain brick mill owned and built by them.” Moreover, the city granted Mellus and Scott full oversight over the project, including the right to carry water destined for both the southwest portion of the city and their own mill “over any lands they may think proper.”54 In its broadest outlines, the agreement marked a substantive shift in the relationship between the municipal government, the citizenry, and the water. After directing all work on the municipal supply and requiring communal participation for seventy-five years, the city delegated work to private parties for the first time. Mellus and Scott, two private citizens, gained powers previously reserved to the Water Committee or zanjero in determining water’s passage over Angelenos’ lands. This agreement also ushered in a changed stance regarding the legitimate use of city water. Historically, water itself held an intrinsic value: to slake the thirst of people, animals, and plants so that all three could thrive. Guarding this limited and fragile resource had long been the principal responsibility of Los Angeles’s officials, whether they served Spain, Mexico, or the United States. With the 1855 contract, the council officially sanctioned industrial purposes, permitting city water to drive machinery at a brick mill. Without completely eradicating old civic ideals regarding water, the contract certainly brought new ones into the mix. Writing about the significance of

114

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

water in the American West, Donald Worster has argued that the relationships between people and water parallel relationships between people and governing principles. Under Spain, Mexico, and the United States, the Los Angeles city government emphasized communal ownership and equal access to the pueblo water and privileged agricultural activities. Worster calls this an agrarian state, because agriculturalists offered a portion of their produce as payment to those officials who judiciously distributed the water. In time, people in the U.S. West began to see water as a commodity: a tool like any other for turning machinery that in turn made products that could be sold in the marketplace for a profit. When people’s relationship to water changed in this way, so too did public officials’ adjudication of water use. With its contract with Mellus and Scott, the municipal government moved away from a rigidly agrarian ethos and toward a capitalist orientation, with appropriate consequences for relationships between people, government, and water. Specifically, Worster argues that the “the domination of nature can lead to the domination of some people over others” because the “ecological domination expressed in the new water systems” could shape “the social order of places” and create “new structures of power.”55 However startling the city’s contract with Mellus and Scott might seem through Worster’s prism, the type of change he describes took more than one day to occur. But in October 1855 elements of a capitalist state approach came to share official sanction with those of the still operative agrarian state. Just as the contract empowered private persons to take on an erstwhile public project and enshrined a commoditized conception of water, it also reaffirmed many of the traditional pueblo principles. The council demanded that Mellus and Scott “not in any manner . . . interfere with the free use of what water now runs in any zanjas of the City” and made them “responsible for all damages.” Additionally, their brickworks could not “in any manner materially . . . injure any property now irrigated nor the rights of any property holder.” Finally, the city reserved “to itself ” the right to use the water and change the beds of the new zanjas “whenever the interests of the City shall so require.”56 Containing powerful, explicit language that both granted new privileges and reiterated established practices, the October 1855 water contract signaled a further evolution in intercultural civic ideals. Just as the contract retained the language of municipal authority, protected existing irrigators, and preserved

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

115

the sense that all Angelenos were entitled to share equally in the water, it also granted to Mellus and Scott the right to construct the new conveyance as they saw fit and, moreover, to an “undisturbed” right to use water for their mill. When completed, the project would in fact more completely distribute water to the citizenry and therefore serve pueblo principles. But the water itself and the new zanjas in which it flowed also served as the physical markers of a subtle shift in municipal policy. Some of that water had been commoditized, and the channels in which it ran had been built under private auspices. Incorporating new elements without jettisoning old ones, Thomas Foster and his council added a new facet to local water administration. Moreover, the contract left open to question how the competing claims it made possible would be judged and by whom. Perhaps the mayor and council trusted Mellus and Scott to proceed with all due diligence. But the meaning of shared power certainly was changing, and the interests of newcomers (especially those who spread into the southwest side of town) and their industrial needs gained traction. For all its new wrinkles, the water contract exemplified ongoing dynamism in local civic ideals. Consequently, Foster unwittingly moved in a direction quite opposite from that for which he prayed in his mayoral address. He didn’t make it easier for future mayors to apprehend their duties “with any degree of certainty.” Instead, he brought new elements to the already complicated task of administering the municipal waters, and his own contract offered none of the specificity for which he’d previously yearned. Compromises such as this weren’t easy to engineer or maintain, and it turned out that Mayor Thomas Foster was not alone in feeling uncomfortable navigating the uncharted waters of local government. While finding success negotiating a middle course regarding water, similarly regulating the city’s public places proved more challenging. Various council members staged independent efforts to regulate the slaughter of animals in the city limits, further reduce retail license fees, and impose horse speed laws. All three policies attempted to increase regulations regarding the order, use, and sense of public space in Los Angeles. They all failed. By early November 1855, Councilmen Ross and Stewart had resigned. On November 13, Nichols and Wheeler resigned mid-session after proposing another license overhaul that Ezra Drown and Obed Macy, the only two members of the council with previous experience, voted down. Their departure left only Macy, Drown, and Timothy Fos-

116

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

ter as seated councilmen. Lacking a quorum, they met only once more in the next four weeks—to declare Timothy Foster’s seat vacant due to unexcused absences and to call for the election of four councilmen.57 On December 10, P. R. Hunt, elected in late October to replace Councilman Ross, showed up for the first time. Sworn in with him were the four newly elected members of the body: Henry Uhlbrook, John Shumacher, Robert Glass, and Cristóbal Aguilar. The voters had split between two newcomers in Uhlbrook and Shumacher and two long-established personages in Glass and Aguilar. The new council contained at least four members who had some local experience. Having been shut down for a month, the council faced a substantial backlog. After settling pressing matters regarding land sales and retail licenses, it turned again to the municipal water supply.58 The 1855–56 council’s last major effort concerned an overhaul of the existing water laws. Empanelling a special committee for the task, Drown, now president of the council, turned to Aguilar and Uhlbrook. He also called in outside help—a rare occurrence in the making of council committees—by adding Stephen C. Foster and Manuel Requeña to the task force. Aguilar was then in the middle of a long political career in the city. Requeña had served many times as alcalde during the 1840s and as president of the council from 1850 until May 1855, and Foster had and would again serve as mayor. In other words, Council President Drown and Mayor Thomas Foster had to call on experienced hands to assist in a task of such importance. Stephen C. Foster, once again, stood at the center of an effort to solidify the locally developed, hybrid civic ideals that had previously guided Los Angeles’s policy makers. The special committee ultimately produced a law containing twenty sections, making it the most detailed piece of local legislation in force. The ordinance, “providing for the better regulation, distribution, and preservation of water for purposes of irrigation,” contained both old and new provisions. All residents retained equal cultivation rights, but a separate section mandated that any owner not intending to cultivate her or his land “shall have no right to the water.” Also adhering to tradition, all cultivators had to donate labor in order to maintain the system’s infrastructure. Yet the law further required all farmers to pay an annual fee of fifty cents per acre under cultivation. These fees, together with fines paid for violating water regulations, fines collected from those found drunk in public, and $400 of seed money, established

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

117

a dedicated water fund, which covered assessment fees and paid a salary to the superintendent of the water.59 The new water regulations, like the contract with Scott and Mellus, reflected intercultural civic ideals. They reaffirmed in principle and practice the municipal government’s power to equitably distribute the city waters, prohibited special privileges, protected equal access to flow, established equal fees (in both labor and cash) for access, created a solid apparatus for administration and enforcement, and maintained the zanjero as the highest paid city employee, although with a title loftily Anglified to “superintendent of water.” Despite its familiar components, however, the ordinance contained as many opportunities for discord as harmony. Section 8 referred “all complaints” to the mayor, “who upon hearing the cause shall forthwith decide the case,” but offered no clear rubric for making such decisions. The law further required Angelenos to pay cash for zanja maintenance and contained the first ever limit to citizens’ absolute right to receive water. Like the city’s contract with Mellus and Scott, the ordinance changed the way people received water and inaugurated distribution rules that could create new social relationships of domination. Would cash-strapped local farmers be able to pay the annual fee? And if not, would they be forced to sell, and if then, what would they do for a livelihood? Would financially liquid residents be able to gather up tracts of land from those forced to sell and turn the former owners into wage laborers? And if so, how would that reshape social, cultural, and economic power relations in Los Angeles? If these seem like harsh questions and overdrawn conclusions for a mere fifty cents per acre, it is important to remember that many vecinos’ family farms distinguished them from cholos, or worse, vagrant greasers. Many lacked the language and vocational skills required for upward mobility in the burgeoning commercial sector. Receiving water for their farms was essential to maintaining their established way of life, and the addition of an annual fee to the already substantive state and local property taxes likely put vecinos in a pinch. Consequently, the smallest changes in the system of municipal water oversight could have far-reaching consequences for ongoing contests regarding race, space, and public power. By the time the special committee completed its work, however, the water

118

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

policy wasn’t the only one in force that bore the potential to chip away at the vecinos’ way of life. In addition to the Greaser Act, the 1855 the state legislature repealed the provision requiring that all laws be printed in Spanish and banned bullfights, cockfights, and similar recreational activities on Sundays.60 One action prevented vecinos from being fully informed citizens and the other short-circuited their ability to exercise cultural power in public spaces. Yet Mexican Californians fought the consequences of these policies to a draw. Although the state ceased doing so, the city continued to publish all ordinances in Spanish. In fact, the special committee presented its draft of the water ordinance in Spanish, and the bulk of translation through the 1850s was from Spanish to English.61 Bullfights and cockfights also continued to be popular Sunday activities in Los Angeles, in flagrant violation of the statewide ban. Clearly, Mexican Californians both rejected the law and resisted the intervention of any authorities to stop the amusements.62

A Turn to Experienced Hands Set for May 5, 1856, the impending municipal elections held special importance. Angelenos had experimented with their first all-norteamericano, majority-newcomer government, and it hadn’t gone well. Only two councilmen survived their term, and twelve different men had been elected to fill the other five seats in an eight-month stretch. The government had shut down completely, turned to private contractors for expanding the water supply, given up entirely on regulating slaughtering, and compromised unsatisfactorily regarding merchants, licenses, and liquor sales. In an editorial on April 5, El Clamor Publico—owned and edited by Francisco Ramirez (previously of the by-then defunct La Estrella) claimed that “a radical reform” was universally desired in the upcoming election.63 But rather than championing someone new, El Clamor looked to a very familiar face to lead this change. “We have always admired the character of Don Estevan C. Foster,” Ramirez wrote. “The knowledge that he is a candidate for the job of Mayor of the city of Los Angeles causes us great pleasure” because “we think no one his equal” in knowing “the actual needs of the population.”64 If Stephen C. Foster represented the radical alternative for which

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

119

Ramirez clamored, then it was a radical return to the recent past for which he yearned. Considering the changes afoot in Los Angeles—new ordinances, private contracts, conflicting laws, emigration schemes, and increasingly contentious confrontations between newcomers and old-timers in the press and elsewhere—such a move would indeed have been radical. Ramirez must not have been alone in yearning for such a change. On Monday, May 5, 1856, the voters chose Stephen C. Foster as their mayor. Turning out in record numbers, according to El Clamor Publico, the electorate sent Manuel Requeña, Ygnacio del Valle, A. Ulyard, Ira Gilchrist, N. A. Potter, Ezra Drown, and Juan (John) G. Downey to serve as his council. All seven men had previous experience, and most had strong ties to the local intercultural community.65 Reacquainting himself with the job of mayor, Stephen C. Foster delivered an inaugural message that directly engaged the previous administration. He advocated greater fiscal responsibility, better teachers for the common schools, decried the “continual usurpations” committed by land owners against areas mapped as streets, and suggested the necessity of officially establishing the lines of all streets as the only remedy to the problem. Following up his recent work on the new water ordinance, Foster reminded the incoming councilors that the city’s prosperity depended on their careful supervision of the city’s water supply. He offered to mediate any difficulties Mellus and Scott faced in their work expanding the zanja network and expressed confidence in their ability to do a good and fair job despite “the concessions made [to them] by the corporation.” Foster concluded by expressing his high hopes for a smooth year and a determination to hand the city to his successor in a condition better than he had received it. “I will always be ready,” Foster said, “to offer on every occasion those observations that are necessary and indispensable for the best administration of our municipal interests.”66 This Foster, it seemed, had no trouble understanding exactly what the job of mayor required. For him, it went beyond any particular policy objective. Instead, Stephen C. Foster knew, after years of practice, that the ideal mayor of Los Angeles was an arbiter in whom speakers of Spanish and English could trust to find a fruitful middle ground where the locally developed civic interculture—composed as it was of a range civic ideals derived from Mexican California and the United States—could

120

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

continue to grow and thrive. He and the new council began their term with great energy.67 Foster certainly knew the challenges of the balancing act, but he probably could not have imagined how difficult it would soon become.

Jenkins, Ruis, Vigilance, and the Rule of Law: Interculture in Crisis As the council mulled another revision to license fees, a severe crisis brewed in the streets. Nineteen months after the city united to lynch Dave Brown, a shooting provoked another mobilization for extralegal justice—but this time in ways that upset and reshaped relationships in Los Angeles. On Saturday July 19, 1856, Deputy Constable William Jenkins went to a home owned by Maria Candelaria Pollorena to serve Antonio Ruis a writ on an unpaid loan against which Ruis had promised his guitar. Ruis quietly handed over the guitar and Jenkins left. Señora Pollorena realized a few moments later that she had stashed a letter from her mother in the guitar and begged Ruis to retrieve it from Jenkins. Ruis persuaded Jenkins to return to the house with the guitar, but Jenkins refused to let Pollorena extract the letter. When she tried to take it, Jenkins covered the guitar’s opening; when she grabbed for the guitar, Jenkins drew his revolver and aimed at her. Trying to dissuade Jenkins from firing, Ruis rose to deflect Jenkins’s arm. Jenkins then turned his gun on Ruis and fired. The bullet burrowed into the right side of Ruis’s chest. The newspapers and witnesses agreed that Officer Jenkins’s “conduct . . . was wholly uncalled for” and that Ruis had not provoked such “a forcible display, much less for the sacrifice of human life.”68 Ruis died the next day. An upright citizen, hard worker, loyal husband, and dedicated father, Ruis enjoyed a solid reputation and had recently been honored as the Mexican Independence Day orator. Deputy Constable Jenkins twice entered custody—once voluntarily and once under arrest. But his supervisor, Marshall Getman, released him both times. According to the Star, “the Spanish population” took great “offence” that an alleged murderer remained at large and armed. Sensing imminent trouble, Judge Hayes remanded Jenkins to jail. On Monday, July 21, 1856, Ruis’s family and friends gave him an elaborate funeral, described as “the largest procession of its kind ever seen in Los Angeles.”69

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

121

The funeral gave way to an angry mass meeting of Ruis’s friends and other Angelenos who demanded that Jenkins be brought to summary justice. Several speakers argued that Mexican Californians had blindly followed Yankee examples of law and justice for too long; others worried that Jenkins would elude formal justice.70 During the meeting, at least three different factions emerged. One wanted to lynch Jenkins immediately. A more temperate group wanted only to hold the officer for trial in a fashion they deemed certifiably secure.71 A third, including “certain gentlemen, Californians and Mexicans,” temporarily dissuaded the crowd from trying to capture Jenkins at all. But then Fernando Carriaga, a Frenchman “animated by a curious patriotism,” swayed the crowd in favor of lynching Jenkins.72 Carriaga, according to one report, “made himself particularly obnoxious, by wholesale and violent denunciations of Americans,” and emerged as this faction’s “leader.”73 Sensational news of a menacing mob led “Americans” to take up arms, protect the jail, and prepare for battle with Carriaga’s crowd. By Monday, two armed groups of Angeleno vigilantes prepared to do battle in Los Angeles: one stood ready to sack the jail and take Jenkins, the other to defend the jail and kill anyone from the other group.74 On Tuesday evening, “rumors began to prevail” that the extreme faction of Ruis’s supporters, one hundred of “the lowest and most abandoned Sonorians and Mexicans,” had “gathered beneath a hill behind the town” and planned to attack.75 When Marshal Getman led an independent patrol out to confront them, according to the Star, Carriaga’s crowd “indulged in the fiercest maledictions against the Americans, stating their determination to wipe them out and sack the town.”76 El Clamor Publico attributed to Carriaga’s people a more modest plan: to “make an assault on the jail” in order to capture Jenkins.77 On Wednesday, a public assembly gathered “for the purpose of taking steps to prevent crime, and to organize in defence of the lives and properties of the citizens.”78 This amounted to a third organized group of vigilantes, although this one took the form of an orderly popular tribunal committed to defending the public peace against the other two. Attendees nominated one committee of prominent European Americans and Mexican Californians to “draft resolutions,” 79 and another “Committee of Twenty” to prevent criminal activity and banish those found breaking the law. Although the committee and its rules were ironically extralegal in their own right, the members pledged their “lives

122

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

and honors” against taking “the life of any man unless he is found resisting the proper authority.”80 Wednesday night passed with only one incident, Carriaga and his most outspoken supporters fled east on horseback, and there was no further intrigue.81 Although considerably more divisive, the initial outcome bore a resemblance to the patience Stephen Foster preached at the time of Dave Brown’s arrest. Many elite U.S.- and Mexican-born Angelenos opposed both extreme groups that favored violent conflict. Mayor Foster and five other rancheros served on the Committee of Twenty that finally brought peace to the town. Together with a posse of his paisanos, Andrés Pico—an old-time californio who served as an officer in the Mexican army and as sheriff in Los Angeles under the U.S. flag—put seventy miles in the saddle to track, capture, and return Carriaga to the city, where he was indicted for inciting a riot and incarcerated.82 Just as he had done in the Brown case, Foster led a mixed group of elite Angelenos to restore public peace and to allow the courts a chance to proceed formally with the administering of orderly justice. What might be done if either Jenkins or Carriaga went free no one said. Foster did not make any promises. Neither did anyone else. Three tense days and nights gave way to a month of public agony. The gears of formal justice turned slowly, Carriaga’s and Jenkins’s fates hung in the balance, and the future of peaceable relationships in Los Angeles teetered uneasily. Harsh on Jenkins from the first and unwavering in its support for the primacy of formal law, the Star implored the grand jury investigating Ruis’s death to scrutinize “the manner in which justice is dispensed throughout the county.” It was high time “for a full examination” of local law enforcement and criminal justice, including the relative merit of “the popular complaint”—that local police and judges mistreated Mexicans. If “any officer be unworthy of his position,” if “judges and officers are impartial and inefficient,” or “if there be defects in the law,” the Star asked the grand jury that they “be pointed out, so that a remedy may be applied, and no criminal permitted to escape unwhipt of justice.”83 In a follow-up article titled “Crime in Los Angeles—What Is the Truth?” the Star took up the question of prejudice directly. “Have the Mexicans had ‘fair play’ in our Courts? No doubt they do complain that great injustice has been practiced on them by public officers.” Such “an important grievance—if

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

123

it really exists” was “well worthy of investigation.”84 Compiling arrest statistics for the previous six months, the Star reported as follows: Whole number committed French—for the late riot Americans German, resisting officer in civil case Californians Indians Mexicans

110 1 7 1 11 33 5785

What these statistics mean, in comparison with Los Angeles’s overall demographic makeup, is difficult to ascertain with certainty. However, it can be roughly estimated that the part of the population rightly classified as “Mexican” hovered around 15 percent between 1850 and 1860. Yet “Mexicans” made up over 50 percent of those arrested in Los Angeles. In contrast, the “American” percentage of the local populace ranged from roughly 25 percent in 1850 to more than 50 percent by 1860, yet “Americans” represented only 6 percent of arrestees. Similarly, “Californians,” who constituted anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent of the local populace, also ran into trouble quite infrequently.86 Of course, being a Californian itself meant staying out of trouble. Nevertheless, the “popular complaint” described by the Star was that “Mexicans,” not “Californians,” complained of unequal justice. Although the statistics clearly validated the “popular complaint,” the Star rejected the premise because most people arrested, regardless of their ancestry, avoided conviction and sentence. Undoubtedly influencing this assessment was the fact that Carriaga had by then been indicted and brought to trial, but he was immediately set free as Judge Hayes dismissed the charges. Despite Carriaga’s reprieve, some Angelenos sharply disagreed with the Star’s analysis. A correspondent writing under the name “Consistency” categorically condemned the local legal system. “So little confidence have we in the workings of the legal machinery of the times,” Consistency wrote in a letter published by the Star, “that we expect all criminal trials to result in mere farce.” Yet Consistency held “the peace and good order of society as being of much more value than life” and hoped Angelenos would visit “certain and swift punishment upon all who disturb us, or in any

124

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

way violate our rights. To live in peace and be protected is not only a natural right, but it is our birth right as well as constitutional; and when we cannot have it legally we are for having it at any, or all hazards. Hence we heartily approve of the Vigilance Committee as a resort to first principles, or the inherent right of men which they never surrender or delegate to others.”87 Here was an appeal to the kind of justice administered to Brown. Consistency spoke in a first person plural—“we,” “our rights”—in ways that offered to bring the fractured community back together. Spanish and English speakers, elite and ordinary Angelenos could together rally around both written and inherent principles. They could choose, as they had since working together to destroy the Indian ranchería in 1847, to “value the peace and good order of society” over the value of any individual life. These authors wanted to live in an orderly and peaceful city and felt that an ordered mass, led by the right people, could function effectively to induce rather than deter order and could do so in a way commensurate with the U.S. Constitution and a genuine American spirit. Two weeks later, Jenkins stood trial for manslaughter. Sheriff C. E. Hale, recently appointed to replace David W. Alexander who had retired from office following the mass mobilizations in the wake of Ruis’s death, handpicked the overall jury pool. Among the twelve men seated, all had Anglo-American surnames and none had lived long in the area. The trial proceeded quickly, and the deliberations faster still. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, by a vote of eleven to one, after discussing the case for less than fifteen minutes.88 Jenkins went free while Ruis’s friends and proponents of vigilantism stewed over the perceived miscarriage of justice. For three days and four nights the entire city had perched anxiously on the edge of armed conflict as two crowds prepared for battle and a third rallied to prevent it; then everyone endured a month of discussion, accusations, and anticipation as Jenkins awaited trial. And then Jenkins went free. And no one did anything. Foster did not resign as mayor and no one came forward to lead a public tribunal. Although nearly everyone agreed that justice had been denied, no one took action. Much more than Jenkins’s fate, it seemed, had been hanging in the balance. Angelenos had three options: join those looking to hold and possibly execute Jenkins, join those prepared to attack and kill anyone trying to take Jenkins, or fall in with those who (however extralegally!) opposed all extralegal

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

125

action. The viability of these choices and their appropriateness to different constituencies within the community, however, remained unclear. Although similar to the circumstances surrounding Alvitre and Brown, this incident involved a murder that crossed national lines. Moreover, as an officer of the law, Jenkins occupied a position significantly different than had the “goodfor-nothing gambler,” Dave Brown. Perhaps contemplating summary justice against an officer of the law involved a substantially different calculus than deciding to lynch a widely loathed and obnoxious resident. Neither the Star nor El Clamor Publico identified elite supporters among Carriaga’s or Jenkins’s factions. Instead, respectable citizens had unanimously urged Ruis’s friends to show restraint, and they subsequently joined those who actively resisted any armed confrontation. Although both newspapers deemed Jenkins guilty, neither one encouraged people to take the law into their own hands in the wake of his acquittal. Beyond Jenkins’s status as an officer, the conduct of the various factions polarized the debate about the proper course of action along ethno-national lines. A day before Ruis’s murder, Judge Hayes summoned Benjamin Davis Wilson, long an architect of local compromise, to Los Angeles from his ranch in order to defuse an intense situation caused by vigilantes who had ridden into town from San Francisco.89 Wilson at first demurred, stating, “My sympathies are strongly with the vigilance as I know that patience and forbearance in the people towards those sharks who prey upon the public has long since ceased to be a virtue in this state, and that nothing but the strong arm of the people united against the corrupt officials can remedy the abuses.” When Wilson reluctantly went to town on July 21, he found the city in a tumult caused not by San Franciscans but by Ruis’s murder. In assessing the situation, his empirical support for vigilantism evaporated. “The Americans fortified themselves at the Jail and most of the American women went to Pico’s house near by”; Wilson “felt but little concerned as I felt that we were well able to whip them.” Rather than supporting those who wanted to lynch Jenkins, Wilson celebrated the work of the Committee of Twenty. “The country has remained perfectly quiet,” and Wilson predicted it would stay that way because “the Mexicans,” those trying to lynch Jenkins, “saw plainly that the Americans were not to be caught asleep and butchered like sheep but under all circumstances they the Mexicans would get the worst of a difficulty.”90 Clearly, the crowd wanting to lynch

126

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

Jenkins did not qualify as the “strong arm of the people united against . . . corrupt officials.” For Wilson, all those wanting to hang Jenkins were “Mexicans” and those who resisted them “Americans,” even those with Pico for a surname. The local papers engaged in a similar act of racial metamorphosis. Observers criticized the armed assembly of “Americans” pledged to protecting Jenkins, characterizing them as an unruly throng of ill-behaved hooligans, who in their anti-Mexican furor had attacked and nearly killed an innocent and defenseless vecino, Dr. Hernandez, during the first night of the standoff. Although at first referring to Ruis’s friends as the “Spanish population,” the Star transformed them into a band of the “lowest and most abandoned Sonorians and Mexicans” once they threatened action against Jenkins. Even El Clamor Público called those siding with Carriaga “immoral” ruffians who threatened to fall upon their victims with the rapaciousness of unrestrained savages.”91 Those seeking popular justice for Jenkins were not merely a rabble of thugs but a throng of Mexicans and Indians: Brown people.92 Although elite Mexican Californians’ wealth and status protected them from being similarly classified, they suddenly faced limited options. The connection between nationality and criminality at the level of popular perception meant that social identities were at stake in deciding whether or not to support extralegal violence. Until 1856, Angelenos’ joint participation in extralegal violence had helped to solidify intercultural civic and racial ideals. While knots tied round the neck meant death for Savaleta, Rivas, Alvitre, and Brown, they also represented the health of the intertwined relationships that Mexican Californians and European Americans nurtured during the 1840s and early 1850s. In the nineteen months since Brown’s lynching, however, various editorials, moments of race-baiting on both sides, and voter ambivalence regarding the direction of municipal governance had strained these relationships. As a possible consequence, the bonds holding the city’s intercultural community may have loosened so much that they couldn’t survive the strain of another foray into jointly administered extralegal violence. The crisis certainly brought forth a challenge to the cooperative basis of American and Californian relationships. As the various vigilantes battled over Jenkins’s fate, it became apparent that lynching Jenkins would have pitted Americans against Mexicans rather than uniting them and would have destroyed, rather than preserved, the ties that

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

127

bound the Californian and American communities together. Rather suddenly, the rules for keeping the community together changed, and preserving local relationships meant avoiding popular violence and adhering to formal law. Thereafter, those stepping outside these new boundaries risked their social status. So long as they upheld the law, Mexican Californians like Andrés Pico— whose house served as a safe harbor for the “American” women during the three-day disturbance and who had himself tracked and arrested Carriaga— could be counted among the “Americans” by men like B. D. Wilson and other members of the community. If not, they would be lumped together with an undifferentiated throng of lawless misanthropes who didn’t count as citizens and came to be labeled “Mexicans,” regardless of their ancestry. Every old-time norteamericano or hijo del país with a stake in city life must have perceived a critical shift as ancestry suddenly mapped onto racially coded boundaries between citizens and criminals: citizens were white and American; criminals brown and Mexican. That Angelenos like Andrés Pico counted as both white and American suggested the possibility that identities could remain fluid, but the Jenkins-Ruis episode led to a narrowing of the pathways to intercultural cooperation. Reduced options may have been the least of locals’ worries. Fractured relationships between newcomers, old-timers, and hijos del país produced even greater difficulties in the aftermath of Ruis’s slaying. The “disorder” had “served to erect even greater barriers than those that had long existed between the two races.”93 Less than a month after Jenkins killed Ruis, Marshal William Getman attempted to arrest Diego Nieto, California-born into a family of wellto-do rancheros. But Nieto’s friends “immediately gathered round him,” drew knives, and threatened to resist the arrest. Nieto only yielded when Getman and his men drew their revolvers. Nevertheless, Nieto supposedly “gave the officers to understand there was a determination among his countrymen to kill [the officers] off.” Reporting on the story, the Star cautioned “these people” that in the case of any such attempt “a terrible retribution will be exacted.” Rather than condemn Nieto as an individual, the Star instead lamented the “disposition among our Mexican population to resist officers in the execution of their duty” as “very general” and likely to provoke bloodshed.94 In this indirect exchange, the Star posthumously chided Ruis for resisting Jenkins’s

128

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

authority in the first place. Moreover, Nieto’s wealth and status couldn’t protect him from outright criminalization. Instead, his disrespect for the law reclassified him as just another disobedient and unruly Mexican. Clearly, Ruis’s murder and the public debate that followed threatened long-standing social arrangements and drove a wedge so deeply into local social relations that it imperiled peaceful coexistence.

Party Politics, City Printing, and Racial Name-Calling Even before the gavel fell setting Jenkins free, and in the midst of the public discussion regarding the meaning of national origins in law enforcement, party politics further aggravated differences between “the Americans and the Mexicans.” Everyone attuned to national politics and the brewing sectional struggle knew that the 1856 presidential election would have profound consequences— the future of the Union itself, many believed, hung in the balance. Los Angeles seemed an unlikely battlefield. Until August 16, 1856, the city had contracted with the Star to print ordinances in English and with El Clamor Público to print them in Spanish. Both papers received seventy-five cents per square as compensation.95 When the Star suddenly began billing the council at two dollars per square, Mayor Foster transferred the entire contract to El Clamor Público. Editor Ramirez’s revamped masthead proudly featured the phrase “Official City Paper.” Ramirez subsequently joined the upstart Republican Party. When he pledged El Clamor Público’s support for the Republicans and presidential candidate John C. Frémont beneath the new masthead, partisan tensions touched off a damaging skirmish.96 Editorship of the Star, already aligned with the Democratic Party, had recently passed into the hands of Henry Hamilton. Born in Ireland, Hamilton immigrated to the Unites States in 1848 and arrived in San Francisco in 1849. There he worked for several newspapers and ultimately founded the Calaveras Chronicle in 1851. By the time he moved to Los Angeles to take over the Star, Hamilton had become an ardent Democrat. Having witnessed the tumultuous events connected to Jenkins and Ruis, and heading into a crucial national election, El Clamor’s contract with the city and its claim as official paper in a mostly Democrat-friendly town sent Hamilton’s blood boiling. In the Star he unleashed a withering attack, excoriating Ramirez and the Common

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

129

Council for siding with “black republicans.” By making El Clamor Público the city paper, council made “their sympathy with this odious heresy palpable, unmistakable . . . so that all may be convinced how cordially they endorse the action of the nigger worshippers.” Consequently, Los Angeles found “the abolition flag thrown out to the breeze, under the sanction, and boasting the especial patronage of ‘The Mayor and Common Council.’” The article asked, tauntingly, “Democrats, is this a time for your Representatives insolently to flaunt in your faces the banner of disunion, disruption, and treason?”97 The tirade clearly established links between national identity, racial identity, and party affiliation: Americans were white, voted Democrat, and spoke English; Republicans were racially black traitors, and in Los Angeles many of them also spoke Spanish. Twice in four weeks suddenly charged discursive connections between ancestry and social identity created a challenging predicament for Los Angeles’s Mexican Californians. Those who chose to publicly endorse the Republicans rather than the Democrats might undermine their increasingly precarious racial position. The fusion of racial name-calling and party politics threatened to sink Mexican Californians’ social and political status in much the same way as the Jenkins-Ruis affair threatened their legal and national status. Voting Republican carried with it the risk of being branded racially black, limiting Mexican Californians’ political options. Manuel Requeña, the president of the Common Council, proved willing to take such a risk. Nine days after the Star’s tirade, he formally proposed “that the City printing both in English and Spanish be given to the ‘Clamor Público,’ as that paper will do the same for 75 cents per square, the other paper charging two dollars per square.” After discussion, the motion was approved, with John G. Downey casting the lone dissenting vote.98 The council held its ground despite the risk of being branded abolitionists and “nigger worshippers.” For all their outrage, those sharing the Star’s views lacked sufficient power to make their name-calling politically efficacious. Yet a suite of resignations from the city government followed fast upon the heels of the printing contract showdown. The people who had worked to build and maintain cooperative, hybrid local relationships over the previous fifteen years seemingly lacked sufficient fortitude or power to repair the recent damage. Mayor Stephen C. Foster resigned on September 22, 1856, less than one month after Jenkins’s acquittal

130

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

and the Star’s racist political tirade. A key architect of local interculture who oversaw the first council under the U.S. flag and led the mob that lynched Brown, Foster left office to execute his brother-in-law Isaac Williams’s estate. John G. Nichols, back in political favor after a rather disastrous turn as mayor, took Foster’s place. John G. Downey and Ygnacio del Valle resigned together on December 15, 1856, giving way to the far less experienced Myron Norton and George Carson.99 Ramirez used El Clamor Público to warn Mexican Californians against remaining loyal to the Democrats. He chastised Democratic presidential candidate James Buchanan as racially and culturally insensitive and reminded readers that Democrats had mistreated Antonio Franco Coronel during the preceding mayoral elections. As Coronel, a loyal Democratic Party member and former mayor, arrived to cast his ballot, Democrat toughs shouted: “‘Here comes another Greaser vote! Here comes another vote for the Negro! If the negro Coronel comes to vote, don’t let him.’” Abusing Coronel let “Californios know what measures can be expected from the Democratic Party! While you walked with them, they sang your praises; but now that it appears that you want to vote for Fremont, they cannot find more despicable words with which to degrade you. . . . Given this state of affairs, and your agreement that you have received bad treatment from Democratic officials during the past seven years, it is incredible that there could be one native Californian who still supports this evil party, and if you encounter one, it will be one who has lost all of his self respect and who agrees to be led around by his nose.”100 Ramirez articulated a relationship between party choice and social identity as starkly as the Star. Thinking Mexican Californians—gente de razón—could only be Republicans. Those sticking with the Democrats had lost their independence, pride, and the ability to reason, and therefore could not be distinguished from lowliest humanity.

On Shaky Ground Shared social position, joint discipline, and intercultural families, spaces, and policies had served as the piers on which rested the bridge that connected Mexican Californians’ and European Americans’ otherwise disparate racial and civic ideals. By the end of 1856, these piers became structurally unsound.

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

131

National and state laws, combined with the bitter verbal exchanges between European Americans and Mexican Californians on the streets, in city hall, and on the pages of the local newspapers, put tremendous pressure on these foundations. New water laws threatened vecinos’ status claims and statewide policies threatened Mexican Californian cultural practices. The Ruis-Jenkins affair sharply limited the opportunities for cooperative public discipline and narrowed Angelenos’ choices, even before the political environment turned completely poisonous during the 1856 presidential election. The overt racial slurs complicated intercultural relationships, and the political context hampered further cooperation in the realm of local policy. The flood of hostility unleashed during 1855 and 1856 fermented into a brackish slurry of national, racial, cultural, and political animosities. As it washed over Los Angeles, it further eroded the stability of the increasingly precarious platforms on which Mexican Californians’ and European Americans’ intercultural community rested. Yet these pillars did not completely crumble. By working together, Angelenos could repair and fortify the foundations of their intercultural relationships. But Stephen C. Foster, a man perhaps best equipped to do such work, had seemingly voted with his feet in the opposite direction. So too had other experienced practitioners. Instead of turning toward each other in search of common ground and reconciliation, Angelenos chose conflict and confrontation. Stephen C. Foster’s last act as mayor had been to insert strong language into a contract granting Hiram McLaughlin the right to build an iron foundry on a “small tongue of land” and the right to power his works with water from Zanja No. 3. Foster alone authored the ordinance clarifying McLaughlin’s privileges. He mandated they be “subject always to the paramount right of the use of the water remaining in said Zanja for the purposes of irrigation, and that the said McLaughlin, his heirs and assigns, shall never interfere with the free use of the water aforesaid for the purposes of irrigation.”101 As his parting shot, Foster reaffirmed his commitment to the local compromises he had worked to develop and maintain. Together with a contract that granted the use of the municipal waters for a commoditized, commercial, capitalist venture, Foster held to the maxims that he had helped preserve from the Spanish and Mexican periods. “Before I go,” he seemed to say, “I want to leave you with a final example of the best way for multiple traditions to peacefully coexist.” Perhaps he sensed

132

“Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty”

the race baiting and political polarization following Ruis’s death jeopardized intercultural relationships. Preserving them would require an active, participatory choice from a wide range of Angelenos. With his resignation, however, Foster signaled that he no longer judged himself the right man for the job. For whatever reasons, he lost confidence in his ability “to offer on every occasion those observations that are necessary and indispensable for the best administration of our municipal interests.” He left to others that weighty responsibility.

CHAPTER 4

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City” Society, Space, and Public Policy, 1857–1861

C A N N O N fire reverberated through the streets, shattering the silence of a rosy Saturday dawn. The opening salvo in a carefully orchestrated Independence Day celebration, the shots called to arms participants in the festivities. By ten o’clock pedestrians and riders filled the streets leading to the Plaza. Members of the Southern Rifles, a local militia group, led the half-mile-long procession away from the Plaza, followed by the Band of the First Dragoons, U.S.A., from Fort Tejon. Falling in behind, carriages carried the mayor, common council, and the day’s appointed speakers. The members of the Masonic order (in full regalia), the Odd Fellows, and Mechanics’ Institute followed in sequence. Three different militia groups—the French Company, the California Lancers (a mounted volunteer militia composed of the hijos del país), and the remaining Southern Rifles brought up the rear. Parading down Main Street to First, then across to Los Angeles Street, they enjoyed the cheers of a large and enthusiastic crowd. After turning southeast onto Los Angeles Street, the procession terminated at the home of Dr. Leonce Hoover, a Swiss who had arrived in Los Angeles in 1849 after serving Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops as a surgeon. On July 4, 1857, he invited the entire town to celebrate his adopted nation’s independence in his orchards and gardens. At Hoover’s estate, several speakers addressed the crowd. After George

133

134

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Whitman read the Declaration of Independence in English, Myron Norton and Phineas Banning held forth on the history and spirit of independence. Then Judge and City Clerk William Dryden read the Declaration of Independence in Spanish and offered some remarks, which drew “innumerables aplausos y vivas” from the audience. Other guests took the stage as the revelers enjoyed a substantial afternoon meal. By six o’clock the crowd had dispersed to various private parties, with some meeting in the bars of local hotels and others attending a formal ball held by the Southern Rifles.1 Celebrated less than a year after the tumultuous weeks of 1856—when Antonio Ruis’s death and racially charged partisan politics threatened to completely unravel fifteen years of intercultural community development—the Independence Day celebration offered evidence that various Angeleno constituencies had found pathways back to cooperation. Agustín Olvera, Antonio Franco Coronel, and Cristóbal Aguilar served on a twelve-member planning committee that also included notable Democrats and Republicans. Much as Fourth of July events in 1851 and 1852 had provided a forum in which various Angelenos proclaimed themselves members of the same family, the 1857 celebration offered an opportunity to renew that faded spirit. The Star remarked, “A more happy and delighted community we have never seen.” Francisco Ramirez, El Clamor Público’s editor, similarly noted it had “been a long time” since the entire city shared in such an event, awakening “noble memories” of past cooperation. He particularly praised “the great demonstrations of sincerity” with which Californians and others had been included in planning and carrying out the celebration.2 Yet tensions that emerged during the difficult summer and autumn of 1856 along national, social, and political axes had not completely abated. Although open to the public, tickets to the Southern Rifles’ ball cost five dollars, forcing many ordinary Angelenos to adjourn instead to various private homes and public houses. At a few hotel bars, Mexican Californians offered toasts and gave speeches praising the achievements of “their brave parents” for bequeathing to all a “free and beautiful republic.” Some U.S.-born onlookers took offense, giving way to a fortuitously harmless exchange of shouts, blows, and gunfire.3 Nevertheless, the incidents seemed trifling in comparison to the overall unity that prevailed that day and on those that followed. “I cannot explain to you the happiness I experienced at seeing my countrymen beginning

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

135

to take an active part in public affairs,” declared a citizen at large who submitted a report to El Clamor Público, and he asked God to grant that it would always be so.4 Parties and balls continued until the regular soldiers departed for Fort Tejon on Thursday July 9. The Lanceros and Rifles, together with numerous citizens, escorted them out of town. Just past the city’s edge, everyone “joined in a parting cup. In mutual congratulations, and the interchange and renewal of expressions of regard and esteem, a brief time was passed; finally, amidst cheering and waving of hats, the friends parted, well pleased with their experience of each other.”5 Joining to plan and execute an elaborate July 4 celebration, “in a manner never before seen in this part of California,” required Angelenos to move beyond the physical, political, and social wounds they’d inflicted on each other in 1855 and 1856.6 Even so, the tumult surrounding both Ruis’s death and the city printing contract had produced narrower standards for citizenship and status. These changes in turn influenced the form, content, and tone of the 1857 Independence Day festivities. The Southern Rifles and Los Lanceros de Los Angeles, separate American and Californian militia groups that had formed only in early 1857 as a direct response to the previous year’s challenges, keyed the parade and parties. Organizers also found strategies to control the composition and status of the various gatherings, as all of the key events took place on private rather than public property. In addition, the Southern Rifles and others holding official balls invited the entire populace, but by charging admission they kept those without sufficient cash separate from the elite. Finally, a trope praising the festivities’ good order permeated the reportage of both the Star and El Clamor Público. Clearly the turmoil of 1855–56 had not immediately undone decades of familial, commercial, and social mixing. However much certain Angelenos may or may not have liked it, they still lived in the borderlands. Many embraced the town’s dynamism and continued finding ways forward together. Despite the recent past, Angelenos during the late 1850s and early 1860s negotiated the kind of place Los Angeles would become, as both public and private citizens. But more than in the past sharp differences arose among those preferring cooperation and those preferring conflict. Consequently, the critical questions to be asked of the people, policies, and places that constituted Los Angeles after 1857 are: where did and where did not intercultural practices survive,

136

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

and where, how, and according to whose specifications? Did the city heal from fractures caused by the tumult of 1855 and 1856, growing back together even if in a knotty and disfigured way, like unset broken bones, or, to borrow a phrase used by Tomás Almaguer, did the fissures grow into seismic fault lines that threatened to tear the city’s intercultural fabric apart?7 Did Angelenos have more or fewer options or more or fewer opportunities to create new possibilities? National political tensions (which had already produced friction in Los Angeles) worsened until the nation itself ruptured. Locally, the gold rush petered out, cattle prices fell, and a severe drought complicated the answers to these already difficult questions. Each of these crises caused the economic and political ground to shift beneath Angelenos’ feet, making it increasingly difficult to maintain the old balance, even when willing and able partners presented themselves. The individual decisions of Angelenos that shaped the Independence Day celebration in 1857 represented only some examples of private choices that produced important public consequences. Residents chose whom to marry, where to live and work, and how to educate their children based on personal preferences, but these individual and collective decisions also influenced the occupation and development of the urban landscape, socially and spatially. Los Angeles’s residential and business districts expanded considerably during the late 1850s and early 1860s, driven both by gross population growth and by significant mobility among established residents. Not only did more physical space become occupied, but increased commercial activity also led entrepreneurs to develop new, customized buildings and to demand easier overland passage for their goods and products. Desiring infrastructural change, including the extension of irrigation routes and the establishment of new streets, Angelenos thrust a series of new demands upon the Common Council. While continuing to regulate and coordinate the maintenance, protection, and development of local waterways and byways, the council encountered new questions regarding the limits of its power and the arenas in which it could legislate. When, for example, individuals asked the council for permission to use city waters or city streets within the context of larger commercial ventures, they unwittingly drew the council into new arenas of decision making for which there had been few if any precedents. Establishing new relationships between citizens, infrastructure, and mu-

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

137

nicipal government would have proved thorny even in the absence of the turbulent events of the 1855 and 1856. In the broader context of Angelenos’ increasing unwillingness to cooperate in the wake of those troubles, however, new commercial practices and their attendant challenges to existing policy regimes further strained the tradition of innovation and compromise that had prevailed since the 1840s. Angelenos—especially those who’d lived in town for more than a few years—continued in their private lives to cooperate, further develop, and elaborate on the local arrangements they had forged during the previous decades. Others proved less accommodating. In public life, even as intercultural civic ideals continued to evolve, they strained to accommodate an ever wider range of different visions for the city’s infrastructure. At times, established residents begged the council to resist any further encroachments on traditional uses for land and water, while the more newly arrived submitted proposals that utterly disregarded established communal practices. The council labored to resolve competing claims and began to depart from its own cooperative tradition by either rejecting or approving proposals without any effort at modification or compromise. Although making for a somewhat messy story, these seeming disparities reflected a growing divergence between choices Angelenos made when dealing directly with people they knew personally and the increasingly distrustful way they confronted each other in the realm of public power.

Family and Community As private citizens Angelenos made many important, personal decisions indicating a preference for living intercultural lives. The increasingly toxic racial climate of the mid- and late 1850s did not dissuade Angelenos from marrying across erstwhile ethnic or national boundaries, and mixed U.S. and Mexican Californian families continued to flourish. Mixed unions increased during the late 1850s and 1860s, and the children of such unions embodied the very mestizaje that characterized Los Angeles’s social, political, and economic relationships.8 Equally noteworthy, Los Angeles families also chose to send their children to integrated public and private schools. A strong indicator of the willingness of all parents to maintain social contacts across national and linguistic divides, nearly half of the student body in the city’s public school had

138

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Spanish surnames in 1860, representing more than 40 percent of school-aged Spanish-surnamed children in Los Angeles. Composed mostly of vecinos, this group remained numerically steady even as the city grew in the ensuing decades and even though the city’s public schools offered instruction exclusively in English.9 A broad cross-section of children from the city’s wealthy families attended private schools, including the Escuela Parroquial de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles, founded by Bishop Amat and led by the Very Reverend Bernardo Raho, a popular priest. The school’s Mexican headmaster, Pioquinto Davila, taught exclusively in Spanish, but the rolls included children from prominent Jewish and Protestant families.10 While mastering their letters, therefore, a new generation of Angelenos grew up together. Whether in public or private school, Los Angeles parents saw themselves and their children as part of a single community (if at times divided by class), and their children learned a common set of values while speaking to one another in English and Spanish on equal footing. Growing up in shared spaces, children of Mexican Californian, European American, and mixed families in the 1850s and 1860s at least started their young lives with sufficient commonalities to potentially sustain a second generation of intercultural innovators. Adult Angelenos similarly shared their social and working lives across lines of national origin, if also often divided by class. The Plaza served as a spatial center for convivial meetings and exchanges, both informal and formal. The 1858 Fourth of July celebration paralleled that of 1857, with the Southern Rifles, Lanceros de California, and others staging a parade and the Rifles offering an evening ball to which tickets were again sold for five dollars. Juan Padilla and Andrés Pico joined the organizing committee. A month earlier, a similar coalition helped locals celebrate the festival of Corpus Christi. Following Mass and sermons in the church, the attendees paraded around the Plaza and celebrated in the homes of Benancia Sotelo, Ygnacio del Valle, and Agustin Olvera. They then returned to the chapel for a second Mass and staged a second parade around the Plaza that terminated at the Sisters of Charity. Juan Sepúlveda and W. W. Twist led Los Lanceros de Los Angeles and the Southern Rifles, respectively, which marched in both parades.11 Joining together to enhance a Catholic holiday celebrated in Spanish and Latin, the companies demonstrated a high level of cooperation across linguistic, national, and sectarian lines.

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

139

In private houses throughout town, the local elite celebrated weddings, births, and holidays in ample courtyards. The families hosting and in attendance themselves embodied local mixtures of Mexican Californian and European American. On other blocks, including Calle de los Negros (which immigrant Americans renamed “Negro Alley” or “Nigger Alley”) just off the Plaza, working and elite Angelenos gathered in various restaurants, saloons, and theaters, most of which advertised in both the Star and El Clamor Público, indicating their desire to recruit English- and Spanish-speakers as clients. To be sure, violence still imperiled evening revelry at times, and the Star frequently railed against the incivility of local manners and the inability of law enforcement to impose the rule of law lastingly.12 In their emergent associational lives, residents also mixed across ethnic lines to form Masonic, martial, and mutual benefit societies. As Angelenos continued to use the Plaza intensively for social, civic, and religious activities, they began living physically farther apart. The city’s population increased from 1,610 to 4,385 between 1850 and 1860 as families grew and as immigrants from both the United States and Mexico moved to Los Angeles.13 The newcomers all needed homes, and they had to look for vacant land outside the thickly settled city center. During the late 1850s and early 1860s, two identifiable, and identifiably different, residential districts emerged: one north-northeast and another southwest of the Plaza. A number of vecinos and immigrants from Sonora, including many who had rushed for gold and subsequently settled in Los Angeles rather than returning across the border, built houses in an area north of the Plaza, adding new adobe structures to those already built by Californian residents in earlier years. Spreading east from Main toward the river and north from the Plaza, the neighborhood stretched out to Yale and College Streets. Joaquín Sepúlveda’s home on Bath Street anchored the region to the Plaza. This district grew throughout the period, and by 1870, 52 percent of Spanish-surnamed Angelenos lived in its ten-block-square sector.14 Locals, especially recently arrived English speakers, came to refer to this area as Sonoratown. Analogous to Chinatown, it was a name at once descriptive and derogatory—a shorthand for a series of stereotypes that cast both the district and its residents as racially mixed outsiders who were in their looks, behavior, and origins different from other Angelenos, despite the fact that many belonged to families who had

140

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

lived in town for multiple generations. Locals repeatedly linked Sonorans to Indians as savage people, the Star’s “devils incarnate.” Newcomers like Harris Newmark reported “much indulgence in drinking, smoking and gambling, and quite as much participation in dancing” when Sonoratown’s social life was “in full swing.”15 In local parlance, the appellation would have been particularly damaging, as some of the hijos del país likely dismissed Sonoran newcomers as base cholos—gente sin razón. However, many of this district’s residents were not immigrants from Sonora but local vecinos, themselves hijos del país and longterm residents who’d occupied the middling sectors of Los Angeles’s society since the Spanish period. Although few vecinos possessed the cultural and material resources to actively participate in fashioning elite intercultural familial, business, and political relationships, their enduring connection to longterm residents at first kept them from being racially slurred. Yet the 1856 elections and the Jenkins-Ruis affair indicated that Yankee newcomers preferred to lump all of Los Angeles’s Spanish speakers together as ignorant, half-civilized Indians—unless they had enough status and power to prove otherwise. Historian William Deverell argues that the name “Sonoratown” reveals the ways that U.S. immigrants perceived the district—not as one populated by Mexicans but as a local extension of Mexico itself, and one that, in time, required special conquering.16 In this context Sonoratown became one more target for those immigrants who never sanctioned intercultural arrangements; who saw no difference between californios, vecinos, cholos, and greasers; and who remained convinced that brown skin offered ample proof of unfitness for citizenship. The name mattered: living in a place called Sonoratown further imperiled vecinos’ already liminal status in Los Angeles. The northerly district was more in keeping with the city’s residential and commercial past than the neighborhood that grew up southwest of the Plaza. Most established vecinos lived and operated businesses there from the late 1850s to the 1890s. Moreover, the district provided private and public social, cultural, and economic spaces for the majority of the city’s Spanish-surnamed population, whether they were descendants of Mexican-era residents or recent arrivals. In this context, according to historian Richard Griswold del Castillo, Sonoratown offered Mexican Angelenos a place where they “could feel at home and abandon the masks they wore in the Anglo world.”17 However

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

141

much living in a place called Sonoratown might have imperiled the vecinos’ status in the city, they built the space in an unapologetically Mexican Californian style dominated by flat-roofed, U-shaped adobe structures that served as both storefronts and residences. The paucity of European Americans in the adobe-dominated residential district north of the Plaza helped make it possible to call the neighborhood “Sonoratown” in the first place. As a rising tide of U.S. immigrants during the 1850s “cast about from pillar to post” in search of someplace to live, they forged a new residential neighborhood southwest of the city’s center. They built their homes west and south of the Plaza, often along Main Street and past First Street. Since the area had never been thickly settled, newcomers acquired house lots without displacing established residents. Although devoid of graded or paved streets, the newcomers built in a style evocative of their U.S. nativity, putting up wood and brick homes rather than using adobe. Harris Newmark, an early occupant, built “a large, old-fashioned wooden barn” that housed stock, a flat truck, and a roomy hay loft. Although notably diverse, Newmark reported that his neighbors similarly built “frame house[s],” characterized by ample rooms, “wide, high, curving verandas, semicircular baywindows, towers, and cupolas.”18 As the population swelled and the residential districts spread north and south, commerce also increased. The blocks immediately surrounding the Plaza evolved into a business district, and the variety of entrepreneurial ventures and the spaces in which they operated diversified considerably beginning in the late 1850s. To the traditional array of dry goods, grocery, and liquor stores, consumers in Los Angeles found jewelers, ice vendors, gunsmiths, haberdashers, decorative iron casters, and many others competing for their disposable income by the close of the 1860s. Around the Plaza, many of the old stores remained, and a few residences became shops after changing hands. Several inhabitants in the growing residential district north of the Plaza used the front rooms of their adobes as stores while dwelling in the rear. New buildings dedicated to commerce arose in the blocks southwest of the Plaza, at the northeastern edge of the emerging European American neighborhood. Abel Stearns and Arcadia Bandini de Stearns began experimenting with novel buildings in the 1830s. Mr. Stearns—an immigrant from Massachusetts who had enmeshed himself in the intercultural community—profited hand-

142

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Figure 4.1. El Palacio, the adobe home of Abel Stearns and Arcadia Bandini de Stearns. The brick Arcadia Block (built 1857) can be seen behind El Palacio. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL Pierce 01324)

somely from his willingness to engage in innovative structural practices. Allowing him both to stockpile hides and tallow and to keep an equally substantial store of finished goods on hand year-round, the warehouse Stearns built near San Pedro harbor in the early 1830s served as the physical waypoint between rancheros and seafaring merchants and as an important hinge in the regional economy. By providing the rancheros with specie and fine finished goods, Stearns allowed the californios to host the elaborate parties, don the fancy attire, and act out the high social position central to their identity claims. After their marriage, his wife Arcadia Bandini joined him as a spatial innovator. The couple built a massive house one block off the Plaza on Calle Principal in 1836, dubbed “el palacio” by locals. Besides being home to Don Abel and Doña Arcadia, many businesses operated in the long, low-slung adobe’s front rooms. In 1857, the pair spent nearly $80,000 building Los Angeles’s first U.S.-style business block, a two-story brick building dedicated to commerce. Named after Señora Bandini de Stearns, the Arcadia Block fronted onto both Arcadia and Los Angeles Streets and quickly became “the most notable business block south of San Francisco.”19 Built by an intercultural couple, the Arcadia Block catered to a growing commercial spirit while ensuring that its physical space remained tied to the name of a prominent californiana (figure 4.1). Slowly, entrepreneurs moved away from mixed-use buildings and into

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

143

dedicated commercial structures. In early April 1857, Newmark and Kremmer advertised in the Star that they had moved from their old location at Main and Requeña Streets to a “new store, on Commercial street, which has been built and fitted up expressly for them.” They encouraged customers to visit their new, “commodious establishment, handsomely furnished.”20 On the other side of Commercial Street, consumers could also visit Charles Duccommun’s jewelry store, Mateo Keller’s merchandise outlet, and McFarland and Downey’s apothecary.21 Harris Newmark’s brother Marco also moved in 1857, from San Bernardino to “a family grocery store” in a “new and elegant brick building just erected for them” on Main and Requeña Streets, a block south of Commercial Street.22 Jonathan Temple, like Stearns an early immigrant to California who parleyed local connections and business acumen into a small duchy of lands, cows, and specie, built the city’s second business block in 1858. Having profited from leasing the front rooms of the adobe he shared with his wife Rafaela Cota, their daughter Francisca, and her family, Temple separated his home and commercial ventures. He built the brick Temple Block just south of the intersection of Main and Spring Streets, three blocks southwest of the Plaza (figure 4.2).23 Other business owners likewise drifted southwest seeking recent immigrants’ patronage. John Downey took over Temple’s old store and remade it into the Downey Block. The owners of the Bella Union Hotel replaced their old adobe with a two-story brick building in 1857. Prudent Beaudry demolished his wood-framed business row at the corner of Los Angeles and Aliso Streets and replaced it with an ornate brick structure. O. W. Childs also built a new brick building in which to launch his retail business. Men named Perry and Brady built another two-story brick structure. They operated a store on the ground floor, offered the basement to renters as a storage space, and let the upper floor to Masons as a meeting hall.24 The new buildings did not instantly succeed, and many of their builders and tenants faced unexpected challenges. Newmark and Kremmer failed shortly after the move, in 1858. Newmark vacated his custom building on Commercial Street and reopened a smaller store inside the Arcadia Block, where he continued to sell sugar, starch, tea, coal oil, axle grease, bluing, wrapping paper, spices, yeast, blacksmith coal, and a host of other dry goods. Temple’s location at first proved a tough sell to potential tenants as it sat comparatively far

144

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Figure 4.2. Old Temple Block, northwest corner of Main and Spring Streets, late 1850s. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [569])

from the Plaza. Although Stearns’s prime location brought him lessees immediately, both he and Temple had decided to elevate their stores and storerooms in order to protect them from the Los Angeles River’s penchant for flooding city streets. Seemingly a sensible security measure, potential tenants struggled so to maneuver their merchandise in and out that few renters came forward. Worse still, Temple’s only tenants, Tischler and Schlesinger, lost their cache of wheat when the elevated floor boards gave way and sent the grain cascading into the cellar.25 Temple finally rebuilt his stores flush with the street. That decision, combined with the southwest district’s continued growth, changed the Temple Block’s fortunes and those of the emerging commercial center more generally. By the early 1860s, hatter Daniel Desmond and gunsmith Henry Slotterbeck did good business in the Temple Block’s Main Street storefronts, the local telegraph company rented space on the Spring Street side, and Jake Phillipi operated a small but successful Kneipe, or German pub. Within these new spaces, Angelenos forged and maintained enduring familial, personal, and commercial relationships. Harris Newmark recalled that

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

145

his business “enjoyed associations with nearly all of the most important wool men and rancheros in Southern California,” including Phineas Banning, John Rowland, Manuel Dominguez, Domingo Amestoy, and Juan Matías Sanchez. Thinking of his store as their own “headquarters,” Newmark noted that “as many as a dozen or more” of his clients “would oftentimes congregate giving the store the appearance of a social center.” The men discussed “with freedom the different phases of their affairs and other subjects of interest. Wheat, corn, barley, hay, cattle, sheep, irrigation and kindred topics were passed upon,” including the weather and the phases of the moon. Often “hours would be spent by these friends in chatting and smoking the time away.” Even though Newmark’s store had changed its physical location and structural form, and even though Newmark and many of his customers traveled between the relocated store and newly built homes north and south of the Plaza, the store itself served as a focal point for both commerce and friendship.26 In other new commercial and residential buildings throughout the city, families, shopkeepers, and customers forged sentimental bonds that knew no boundaries of language, color, or ancestry. Numerous business owners advertised in both the Star and El Clamor Público, spending the time to create separate announcements in English and Spanish to court potential clients speaking either language and keeping Angelenos connected despite the spatial changes.27 By the mid-1860s, then, three identifiable residential and commercial districts had taken hold in Los Angeles. In the blocks immediately surrounding the Plaza, a number of established families—californio, vecino, U.S., and mixed—still made their homes and conducted business. North of the Plaza, a Mexican Californian and Mexican American neighborhood took hold, and an equally recognizable U.S. and European American district emerged to the southwest. Looking back from the present, it’s easy to see the artificers of the intercultural social, political, and economic arrangements of the 1840s and 1850s as both spatially and metaphorically situated in the middle of a town growing apart in opposite directions. But Los Angeles in the late 1850s and early 1860s remained porous; opportunities for new cooperative ventures, public and private, proliferated. The Plaza remained, to use historian Mary Ryan’s phrase, “a durable center of urban space,” even though it no longer stood alone as the city’s core residential or commercial district. The presence of intercultural practitioners at its core offered the possibility of mediation

146

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

and the potential to negotiate local arrangements anew. Various educational, familial, and commercial ventures of the late 1850s—the mixed marriages, the Arcadia Block, and the public and private schools where children learned language and played together—suggested as much. But the city’s physical, spatial, and commercial spread and diversification also produced new challenges even while offering the potential to resolve older ones. With a broader Cartesian footprint came new demands on the river and the need for new infrastructure in the form of zanjas and streets. Entrepreneurs clamored for more order to the city’s space—the Plaza and the streets on which they hoped to invest capital and erect buildings. Consequently, the very private expansion of Los Angeles’s residential and commercial spaces created very public challenges that the Common Council had to address. The emergence of two new residential districts and the increasing importance of commerce to politically active Angelenos brought issues of infrastructure to the center of the legislative agenda. These issues, innocent enough in their own right, magnified differences in various Angelenos’ civic ideals and put even more pressure on existing intercultural practices to evolve and adapt, especially on those occasions when council members and petitioners proved reluctant to compromise.

Spatial Change, Infrastructure, and Public Power William G. Dryden, county judge and the Common Council’s veteran clerk, had a plan. More accurately, Judge Dryden had many plans, but his desire to secure legal right to supply the city of Los Angeles with “pure,” potable water by way of above-ground pipes that led directly from the Los Angeles River or private springs into people’s homes consumed him with a certain passion throughout the 1850s. A lawyer who arrived in Los Angeles in 1850, Dryden served as city attorney, judge in the police court, and for many years as clerk of the Common Council. One year after arriving, Dryden married Dolores Nieto, and following her untimely death he remarried to Anita Dominguez (a daughter of the esteemed Manuel Dominguez) in 1868.28 Few Angelenos witnessed as much municipal politics as Dryden, who served for many years as the clerk of the Common Council and rarely missed a meeting. Fluent in both English and Spanish, Dryden occupied a somewhat privileged position, regarding both information relevant to the direction of

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

147

city governance and a sense of the mood, reactions, and decision-making proclivities of its membership. In July 1855, for example, having seen an advance rendering of the city map that showed a future street running through land he owned, Dryden persuaded an inexperienced council to pay him $1,000 for the parcel. In making the sale, Dryden magnanimously offered a $500 discount from its assessed value of $1,500 “in order to settle the matter at once.” Despite the discount, the city vastly overvalued Dryden’s land and surely spent above its means.29 Throughout the 1850s the municipal treasury never claimed a cash balance above $4,500 and frequently ran close to empty, as was the case in October 1855 when Dryden’s bill came due. Lacking “funds at present to liquidate” his account, the council offered him interest “at the rate of three per cent per month until paid, interest to be paid monthly.”30 The monthly windfall of $30 generated by these interest payments netted Dryden a 60 percent raise on his clerk’s salary. The gift kept on giving: the city paid him the interest for seventeen consecutive months before he struck a still more lucrative deal in 1857. Dryden didn’t always succeed so easily. His efforts to win a contract from the city to “improve the distribution and control of the water supply” failed in 1853 and in 1856, despite earning praise from individual citizens and the Star.31 In February 1857 Dryden tried again. By then he had leverage: the city still owed him $1,000. In addition, his renewed effort coincided nicely with significant city government turmoil. The mayor and two city council members had resigned late in 1856. John G. Nichols had replaced Stephen C. Foster as mayor in October, and George Carson and Myron Norton replaced John G. Downey and Ygnacio del Valle on the council on December 30.32 Conveniently for Dryden, both newcomers landed on the Water Committee. With a new mayor and a new council in place, Dryden’s pipe dream finally came true. In lieu of the $1,000 still owed him, he graciously accepted a thirty-five-acre plot of vacant city land. The grant included the Abila Springs north-northeast of the Plaza (near the present-day intersection of Alameda and College Streets), which were fed by a subterranean flow of the Los Angeles River.33 On February 18, 1857, Dryden petitioned the council for “the right of way to convey Water over the lands of the Corporation” in pipes from his springs for the purposes of distribution to households and business. Councilmen Carson, Norton, and N. A. Potter evaluated the petition and deemed Dryden’s plan “an advantageous arrangement for the City and citizens thereof

148

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Figure 4.3. William Dryden’s waterwheel, late 1850s. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL Pierce 01276)

in general.” Meeting in special session on February 24, the council granted Dryden the right to “convey all and any water that may rise or can be collected upon his lands . . . over, under, and through the streets, lanes, alleys, and Roads of the City of Los Angeles.” Per his request, the council also gave him permission “to erect and place upon the Main Zanja of this City a Water Wheel to raise water by Machinery to supply this City with water” (figure 4.3).34 Dryden’s success effectively changed the fundamental relationship among the municipality, the citizens, and the Los Angeles River on two fronts. First, the council suggested that the waters then circulating in the zanjas lacked integrity and allowed some to be separated out prior to entering town. Second, by conceding to an individual the right to remove a portion of the municipal corpus and the power to redistribute it for profit at his own discretion, the Common Council yielded public stewardship and communal rights to a private entity. Subsequent ordinances clarified the extent of both Dryden’s success and the council’s commitment to the fundamental change in course upon which it had embarked: to make the waterwheel possible, the city ordered the

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

149

water overseer to extend the Zanja Madre to the edge of Dryden’s land; to help Dryden’s venture succeed, the city supported his effort to secure a sole corporation from the state.35 Once it began allowing objects of municipal control to be turned over to private hands for commercial profit, the council had a hard time stopping. In 1858 Francis Mellus, who operated a wholesale and retail store specializing in hardware and groceries at the intersection of Main and Spring Streets, requested permission from the city council “to place a platform scale for weighing heavy articles in the street in front of his present place of business.” The council not only granted his request, but it further allowed Mellus “to charge the sum of Fifty Cents each and every time the said scale shall be used by persons weighing articles thereon.”36 The town’s growth had required the council to expand its role in maintaining the city streets and regulating the people and products that passed through its byways. Permitting Mellus to charge fifty cents per use, however, carved a new facet into the council’s customary stewardship. City officials allowed Mellus to generate private profit from a public, municipally maintained space, effectively empowering him to use the street in front of his store as a commodity capable of producing additional revenues beyond those arising from his own economic endeavors. The decision followed the precedent established in granting Dryden a private water franchise. With both decisions, the council redefined its role in the local economy. Whereas it had previously limited its purview to preserve the order, regularity, and cleanliness of the city’s streets and zanjas for efficiency and ease of use, the council now intervened to produce privately advantageous economic outcomes. The move reflected a continuing shift toward civic ideals that viewed the municipal waters and streets as themselves commodities capable of generating profits above and beyond communal benefits. Mellus wasn’t alone in viewing the streets in the city’s central business district as both thoroughfares and commodities, nor was his scale the only incidence of city council forging partnerships with private businesses. In 1859 Jonathan Temple expanded his influence on Los Angeles’s commercial and architectural character when he persuaded the city to lease from him a twostory building designated as the public market house. Temple offered to pay $30,000 to build the public market in exchange for a ten-year lease agreement with the city, in which the city would pay as rent 1.25 percent of the costs

150

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Figure 4.4. Looking southeast across Los Angeles from Fort Hill, 1868, a view that includes the Market House (right, with clock) and Temple Block (left), with Market Street between them. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [503])

each month ($375). Temple also asked the city to concede the lot on which he built the Market House, offering as an inducement the use of one space inside the building as a new meeting hall for the council. Temple built the Market House on a small strip of land adjacent to his business block, and the building paid homage to Temple’s Massachusetts roots; it was modeled after Boston’s Faneuil Hall and featured a wooden cupola and clock above the second story (figure 4.4). Having entered into the agreement with Temple, the city passed an ordinance requiring “all Butchers and Green-grocers to sell their wares therein” in order to generate a revenue stream sufficient to offset the lease terms.37 Whereas Dryden, Mellus, Temple and others actively demanded the council’s cooperation in their personal schemes, the expansion of the city’s commercial and residential districts also put passive pressure on the Common Council to make infrastructural improvements. In particular, locating, opening, ordering, and maintaining city streets became a chief consequence of pri-

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

151

vate growth. In December 1856 the county surveyor re-marked the official lines of the Plaza. Seven months later, the council passed an ordinance mandating “the numbering of certain streets and blocks upon the City Map.” In April 1858 the council ordered the Committee on Streets to “examine all streets, lanes, and Alleys, as far as practicable, and give them appropriate names, [and] also to declare their width and extension,” as a precursor to a series of ordinances making such names and locations official.38 Over the course of the 1858–59 session, the council embarked on a series of street-related initiatives, including the erection of a $3,120 culvert along Los Angeles Street—among the most expensive projects the city had funded to that point. The council paid nearly as much to regrade Los Angeles, Alameda, Main, and Commercial Streets just south-southwest of the Plaza, where a suite of new businesses had sprung up. Lacking the power of eminent domain, the street commissioner and city council struggled to remake existing streets, as cost prohibited action. For example, a group of merchants petitioned the council in July 1857 to extend Commercial Street, located three blocks southwest of the Plaza, so it could connect to all the major roads passing into, above, and below the Plaza.39 Notions of private property, however, had thoroughly permeated local civic ideals, and many of the owners over whose lands the new street would have run demanded damages. Jonathan Temple set his price at $8,000, and Francis Mellus asked for $10,000. Manuel Requeña, whose lands would have been bisected by the expansion, required the construction of parallel seven-foot-tall brick walls on either side of the proposed street where it would cross over his property. Instead of asking for compensation, Ralf Emmerson flatly refused to surrender any of his property whatsoever to the new street.40 These demands greatly exceeded the city’s available resources. Compromising with a few owners, the council ultimately completed half of the project, extending Commercial to the east as far as Alameda. In May 1858 the city again tried to reshape the streets southwest of the Plaza. To enhance the flow of commercial and consumer traffic, it hoped to redirect the northwest line of Los Angeles Street away from its dead end into Arcadia Street so it could join Calle de los Negros, offering a smoother connection with the Plaza. The council, however, failed to persuade the interested parties to sign on and tabled the measure indefinitely.41

152

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Just as the expansion of the city’s residential footprint required new street initiatives, residents in the new northern and southwestern neighborhoods demanded new zanjas for domestic, agricultural, and commercial purposes. City governors struggled to balance civic ideals mandating equitable distribution and municipal control with newer notions of private use and ownership— including the notion of municipal liability for damages—championed by both U.S.- and Mexican-born residents.42 As it reconsidered its relationship to property owners, the council also fielded petitions from residents who sought nonagricultural water privileges and experimented with new strategies to extend the municipal supply. Paralleling its efforts to improve city streets, the council attempted to get out in front of the town’s geographic and demographic growth. Mayor John G. Nichols pushed the council to effect “several improvements,” by building a new dam four miles up the river, carrying the water through the foothills, and delivering it through a dramatically augmented zanja network.43 The Star cheered the project as both “feasible” and “lucrative.” Promising to add “untold value” to land, “which at present serves only for grazing,” the resultant fertile district would “vie, in the loveliness, beauty and magnificence of their alamedas, parks and pleasure grounds, with the most attractive places on the face of the whole earth.”44 The council appointed N. A. Potter, a former councilman, Manuel Requeña, many times alcalde and president of the common council, and Stephen C. Foster, former mayor, to join Mayor Nichols and the Water Committee in overseeing the project.45 The group established a water fund supported by a new tax of fifty cents per irrigated acre, commissioned plans, and secured an additional $1,000 to pay for a new “dam across the Los Angeles River.”46 In late February 1858 the council passed an ordinance “establishing the contribution that shall be levied upon individuals receiving water from said canal, and the days work that may be received in lieu of money from said persons,” upholding Spanish and Mexican traditions by which labor could be offered instead of cash.47 By the time Mayor Nichols won another term in May 1858, the project had been completed. Still unsatisfied, Nichols used his annual message to push for still more change. He insisted the council give its “immediate attention” to further extending “the limits of irrigation” in order to convert “a large extent of the domain of the city, which is at present waste and unproductive” into “valuable vineyards and garden lots.” Much as the Star had a year before, Nichols thus

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

153

clothed his appeal in the garments of capital exploitation, the noble calling to convert “wasted” land into a commodity that produced other commodities.48 As in its effort to reshape the city streets, the council met fierce resistance from a slew of U.S.- and Mexican-born Angelenos who actively pursued financial compensation for lands affected by the new dam and zanja project. Since the town’s founding, waterways that benefited the entire community had held right of passage over all lands, and owners had to adjust accordingly. Yet the sheer number of petitions for damages suggested that residents neither accepted the municipality’s power to reshape the landscape nor completely subscribed to the ideal of communal benefit. In separate petitions, Nieves Ruis, Juana Alvarado, and Josefa Sanchez demanded cash compensation for “damages caused” to their lands “by the passage of the new” zanjas. They received $225, $60, and $100, respectively.49 Each of these women was born in Mexican California, and each one, by 1858, had been widowed and thus controlled her own property. Their claims reveal the complicated connections between identity and civic ideals that had developed by the late 1850s. Having come of age under Mexican government, these women felt confident of their standing as equal petitioners before the Common Council and sure of their rights to independently own and oversee property.50 Yet the same experience should have made them intimately familiar with communal ideals governing water use, distribution, and irrigation networks that remained relatively fixed through the early 1850s. Nevertheless, by 1858 they had reinterpreted their own prerogatives as property owners through the newer ideal of private right held not in concert with but against that of city, leading to their successful damage claims. The council also had learned from past experience and had raised enough funds to indemnify petitioners and complete the new water network.

A Cyborg River and the Limits of Compromise A cadre of private citizens eclipsed even Mayor Nichols’s ambition for the commercial future of the Los Angeles River. A spike in petitions seeking permission for private water-based enterprises during the late 1850s suggests that William Dryden’s water franchise served as an entering wedge for all kinds of schemes relative to water, commerce, and infrastructure. Hiram McLaughlin, who had already received permission to erect an iron foundry and turn its

154

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

machinery with waterpower, won election to the City Council in May 1857. Only three months later, he asked the council for “a concession of the right of all the fall of water in the Main Zanja, from his present Mill sight down as low as Aliso Street.” In exchange for the privilege he offered to deepen the canal, but he made no mention at all of the potential consequences to other citizens. Another member of the 1857–58 council, Joseph Mullally, asked permission to build a hydraulic ram from which he would draw water out of the zanja to make bricks, which he justified as “a public benefit.” In March 1858 John Griffin became the third sitting member of the same council to ask for a special water privilege: permission to place “a water wheel, which will not impede or interfere with the zanja,” on the back of his lot. Even the parish priest of the Catholic church asked the council for permission to install a ram to draw “one half inch of water” into the church’s yard in order to satisfy “the want felt by” his parishioners.51 As is so often the case with a sudden embrace of new technology, the rush to install machinery in various zanjas didn’t proceed smoothly. Hiram McLaughlin several times agitated local officials for failing to adhere to older policies that didn’t encompass waterwheels and iron foundries. According to the terms on which the Common Council granted McLaughlin permission to build his works, he had to complete the entire building before he could begin putting the water to productive use or receive a deed to the land upon which the structure sat. Moreover, the council explicitly told McLaughlin that his privileges would be “subject always to the paramount right of the use of the water . . . for the purposes of irrigation,” and further that “his heirs and assigns, shall never interfere with the free use of the water aforesaid for the purposes of irrigation.” For two years, McLaughlin struggled to complete the project and comply with local laws. In December of 1857 Mayor Nichols and a special committee rebuked him for beginning to build before receiving specific guidelines regarding the foundry’s construction. Rather than work toward a compromise, however, committee members Juan Barré, George Whitman, and Antonio Franco Coronel, together with the city attorney, tore down what McLaughlin had already built and forced him to start over. Six months later, McLaughlin again ran afoul of local officials. His iron foundry so slowed the water’s passage that water levels upstream had risen by eighteen inches, breaking banks, flooding bridges, and damaging property. Outraged, the council targeted McLaughlin

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

155

in a new investigation and called for the city attorney and a special committee to “proceed immediately” with a complete survey of the river and all zanjas “and thereafter report, all works in progress therein and by whom.”52 While the appointed officials did their work, another petition arrived in council chambers. Benjamin Eaton, the city assessor, requested “the privilege of pumping . . . a body of water . . . through a two inch pipe,” offshoots of which would be laid along “the public streets” in order to bring water to “residents of this City who have no wells and are obliged to haul their water for household purposes from the zanja.” Beginning near McLaughlin’s iron foundry, his pump would have lifted the water thirty to forty feet above grade into a thirteen-thousand-gallon reservoir from which it would be distributed to Eaton’s customers. In exchange for the requested rights, Eaton offered to build and supply numerous fire hydrants free of charge and to “supply gratuitously all the public buildings of the City.”53 Eaton’s timing couldn’t have been worse. He asked for a privilege that would have placed him in competition with Dryden’s existing pipe plan. Although the offer to help the city in case of fire and to supply the public buildings gratis may have been attractive, it marked the sixth request to use the zanjas for purposes other than irrigation in eighteen months. And his request came just as the council had decided to audit all such schemes. Cristóbal Aguilar, reporting in Spanish for the Water Committee, flatly rejected Eaton’s petition. He wrote that the “machines that have been placed” in the zanja had not “ceased to be some kind of inconvenience.” Moreover, Aguilar argued that if the city complicated the already troublesome “business of placing hindrances in the zanja” by starting “to concede inches of water every so often,” the result would be “a grave prejudice against agriculture.”54 The other committee members supported his position, and the council accepted the decision without further discussion. By their absence, words missing from both Eaton’s request and the Water Committee’s rejection suggest challenges to intercultural civic ideals. Eaton failed to offer even a formulaic aphorism promising to protect either the municipal supply or local irrigators. Nor did the Water Committee or other councilors try to balance Eaton’s request with countermeasures protecting the water supply’s overall integrity, a precedent that guided other arrangements, including McLaughlin’s contract with the city. Aguilar had decided the river

156

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

and zanjas could not effectively serve multiple purposes, judged irrigation more important, and deemed any corrective admonitions insufficient to subvert the challenge. Looking out on a cyborg river suddenly full of alien machines, Aguilar and the Water Committee didn’t see a pathway to compromise. Fearing that the city had already turned away from agriculture, Aguilar and his Water Committee rejected Eaton outright. During the 1840s and early 1850s, both petitioners and council members actively sought middle courses and solutions that productively accommodated multiple civic ideals. By the late 1850s, however, private parties and public officials proved less inclined to recognize the plurality of ideals. Eaton’s failure to accommodate irrigation in his petition and the council’s unwillingness to negotiate provide only one example of the tensions created by the multiple and often competing ideals upon which various individuals built their efforts to influence the city’s space and infrastructure. The stern tone of Aguilar’s broader warning coincided with Angelenos’ perceptions of the heightened import and consequence of streets, water, and infrastructure, indicated by the contentiousness that permeated numerous subsequent decisions. Seemingly, the time for compromise had passed. Indeed, the city’s physical spread and the increasing number of residents looking to remake Los Angeles’s infrastructure to serve new purposes created new animosities. While trying to defend his iron foundry project from extreme municipal scrutiny, Hiram McLaughlin spent most of 1857 waging a heated political battle against the city zanjero. McLaughlin first chased A. D. Gass from the position and then charged his replacement, Jeffrey Brown, with “partiality and favor in the distribution of Water to William Wolfskill, Matthew Keller, and others.” After a full hearing, the council voted narrowly to keep Brown on as zanjero and rejected McLaughlin’s claims.55 Also in 1857, council president Manuel Requeña lost his temper following a heated debate over ten feet of land on Aliso Street. Utterly infuriated, Requeña stormed out of the chamber, vacated his position, resigned from office, and withdrew from public life for the next seven years.56 Private petitioners proved equally prickly. Fifteen ordinary citizens with English and Spanish surnames living just southwest of the Plaza objected to Mateo Keller’s effort to change the course of two zanjas in order to establish

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

157

a water-powered mill. Their petition paired a traditional concern that potentially diminished irrigation would harm the perilous productivity of the residents’ sandy lands to a far more novel argument. Referring to themselves as vecinos, they contended that Keller and his partners should be considered “without rights” as “a minority” seeking undue private benefit.57 In another petition, five irrigators (Michel Clement, Tomás Rubio, Francisco López, Martín LeLong, and José Rubio) forced to receive water from a new zanja because of a new waterwheel asked that they instead “be left to take the water from the same place that we have always used and through which we have benefited without causing bother or prejudice to the public good or our own.”58 Both petitions opposed the consequences of new machinery and claimed that irrigators and agriculturalists represented and embodied the general public benefit. In both cases, the petitioners resisted change. Although a majority of the signatories bore Spanish surnames and both groups submitted their respective petitions in Spanish, neither group of petitioners nor the petitions they produced tidily correspond to nationality, political preference, or any other handy schema. Both groups definitively favored the primacy of irrigation as already in place, and both fundamentally asked to be left alone—to remain unaffected by changes foisted upon them by a city council in partnership with newcomers looking to use municipal waters to turn machinery. Interestingly, neither group offered any sort of compromise or middle course. Taken together, these moments of unease—fracases in council affairs and petitions claiming prejudice—suggest that intercultural spatial and political practices had become profoundly strained by the late 1850s. Although standard in matters of city government, claims of favoritism and partiality surged in lockstep with both a new dynamism in the city’s infrastructure and a general move away from compromise and integrated solutions. Perhaps both the sudden unwillingness to cooperate and a parallel disposition to claim injuries of inequity resulted from the very asymmetries created by overlapping civic ideals and intercultural infrastructural arrangements. Despite the possibilities for compromise and innovation that characterized social relations during the late 1850s, Angelenos spent much of their political energy during that same period playing an increasingly all-or-nothing brand of municipal policy making, especially concerning infrastructure. Less willing to navigate new, more

158

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

complicated borderlands, ordinary citizens and municipal officeholders expressed anger, frustration, and single-mindedness instead of searching for new common ground.

“The Magic Touch of Improvement and Enterprise”: Private Choices and Public Projects As it tried (and often failed) to meet Angelenos’ growing demands for more and better streets and for freer access to more water, the city found itself on shaky ground. Some residents resisted both municipal encroachment on private property and water-use plans that competed with existing agriculture. Others—hoping to cultivate new lands, turn new machinery by means of water power, and carry people and products to and from the central district— demanded new streets, an increased capacity for irrigation, unusual water privileges, and new civic ideals to guide municipal authority over land, water, and public space. In seeking a way forward, elected officers and independent citizens placed as much pressure on local civic ideals as the city’s speedy physical growth had placed on its infrastructure. Old questions regarding the meaning of private property and proper uses of the Los Angeles River emerged anew, joining fresh uncertainties regarding the limits of municipal power over city space. Although residents prayed for and the council granted a series of major capital-intensive infrastructural improvement projects, neither elected officers nor their constituents seemed to completely anticipate the resources, both financial and legal, required to succeed. The city never had much luck raising funds by way of taxes, lacked a home rule charter necessary to exercise eminent domain or secure municipal bonds, and, most important, lacked the experience, to say nothing of the technocratic know-how, to see major projects to fruition. Inexperienced and ill equipped to mount massive infrastructural and commercial initiatives, Angelenos working on both public and private ventures found frustration and often failure. In early 1858, after a series of new water initiatives had left the city treasury as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, a large group of citizens petitioned for a full investigation into the city’s finances. The council first established a special committee “to examine the books of the Mayor and report the apparent amount of Revenue received from

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

159

different sources, and how disposed of,” then passed the proverbial buck, demanding that the mayor “make the desired statement” and publish it in both the Star (in English) and El Clamor Público (in Spanish) at “an early date.”59 The reported deficit of a few thousand dollars alarmed the citizens, but it paled in comparison to the financial straits in which the municipality found itself the following year. Project costs exceeded planned budgets, and damage payments demanded by property holders defied all expectations. On February 21, 1859, the council endured a long meeting during which the members spent a great deal of time sifting through outstanding debts for work already completed. Although already out of money, officials nevertheless pushed forward with several new projects. Councilmen formed one committee to figure out how to pay for a mayoral-initiated evening watch and another to “fill up” Los Angeles Street and Calle de los Negros to their “established grade,” arrange new drainage for the Plaza, and “to contract for repairs upon Aliso Street.”60 By April financial reality had set in. The council began to pay less than it had agreed for some work and settled with other creditors by equalizing accounts due against taxes owed to the treasury.61 Beginning to drown in a sea of debt accrued in the name of infrastructural improvement, the council boldly asked the state legislature to authorize “the Corporation of the City of Los Angeles to borrow for twenty years the sum of Two Hundred Thousand dollars, ($200,000) to be laid out and expended upon Municipal Improvements.”62 Realizing the severity of its financial predicament, especially in light of the tremendously energetic agenda it had pursued regarding improvements to city streets and the water supply, the council charted an unprecedented course. Previously, all projects had been engaged piecemeal. Even when undertaking substantive improvements, such as rerouting the Zanja Madre, the city relied on special assessments of specie or labor. In comparison to the city’s normal budget, the price tag was nothing short of staggering. The municipality rarely took in or paid out more than $10,000 in any single year, and the treasury rarely ran above $3,000 at any given moment. Suddenly, the council adopted a different set of principles, as a loan of such size required coordinated long-term plans for putting the money to work, managing the debt, and finding new revenue sources for its repayment. To be sure, the town had grown rapidly from about 1,600 people in 1850 to nearly 4,000 in 1859 and looked poised for further growth. Nevertheless, the $200,000

160

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

request remains startling, coming as it did on the heels of widespread financial distress caused by the panic of 1857 and because it would leave the city to manage twenty times more money than it had ever controlled previously. Whether or not the city could effectively use the money to reshape spatial arrangements remained an open question. The legislature granted the city’s request in April 1859. When the funds came, the municipal government embarked on still more ambitious street projects and yet another major water project. Only one year after building a new dam across the river, changing the costs and times of irrigation, and reorienting the Zanja Madre, the city appointed a new blue-ribbon commission to study the municipal water supply. On August 15, 1859, the members recommended a five-pronged plan carrying a total price tag of $70,000. Building a new dam across the river and an adjacent reservoir lay at the project’s “foundation.” With the new dam and reservoir, water could be stored each night instead of passing through the zanjas unused because no one irrigated after dark. The increased capacity in turn required the construction of several new flumes and a comprehensive effort to widen every principal zanja. The committee further proposed a second dam and ditch network to provide irrigation waters to those living east of the Los Angeles River. Completing its omnibus recommendations, the committee suggested expanding Dryden’s waterworks into a comprehensive system for potable water distribution.63 By 1860 the contracts had been bid out and work had begun, although the project ran over budget in almost all areas. As a blueprint for a substantive infrastructural undertaking that required extensive planning, the committee’s report offers an excellent window into the civic ideals of its authors and of the city officers who selected the team and accepted its recommendations. The committee consisted of John Griffin, Damien Marchessault, David Porter, Abel Stearns, William Wolfskill, and Jonathan Temple, all of whom engaged in commercial rather than agricultural pursuits as their core economic endeavors. Stearns, Wolfskill, and Temple had lived in Los Angeles since the Mexican period and had married into prominent Mexican Californian families. Although earlier committees with similar mandates almost always included Mexican Californians, no members of the 1859 blue-ribbon committee claimed Mexican birth or descent.64 While the report’s technical details leaned heavily on studies and surveys conducted by

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

161

two “experts” (George W. Gift, an engineer, and Captain William Johnson, surveyor for the U.S. Coast Survey), the authors waxed romantic about the power of enterprise and city government. To the dam, “that simple bank of earth and wood,” they granted the power to “add to the beauty and wealth of our city an hundred fold” because it represented “the magic touch of improvement and enterprise” needed to push Los Angeles “to the very pinnacle of agricultural greatness.” They encouraged the council to extend its “web of irrigating ditches—streams of silver,” arguing that if agriculture thrived then “all other branches will advance hand in hand.” Increased agricultural output—“the true source of a nation’s wealth”— would “multiply employment for the laborer, the mechanic, the merchant and the professional man.” But these benefits were not ends in themselves; profits hung in the balance. “Each new acre of land that is brought under the husbandman’s skill,” they gushed, “causes hammers to ring, and the merry hum of business to be heard.” Beyond profits, those championing the new irrigation project would become rich in civic virtue. Noting that “he is a public benefactor who causes a single spear of grass to grow or a tree to thrive,” the committee asked “how much greater benefactors will be they who shall cause our vast arid plains to thrive and blossom, and yield rich returns to honest labor?” Nothing exceeded the importance of moving the new project forward, for “upon this thread hangs the welfare of our city.”65 In these flights of fancy, the committee members revealed their civic ideals. Remaking the city’s infrastructure in order to establish a foundation upon which business could thrive, they argued, was nothing less than the council members’ civic duty. Written by private citizens and presented in public to the Common Council, the report freezes for a moment the dynamic evolution of civic ideals during the late 1850s. At one level, distributing the waters of the Los Angeles River to the maximum possible number of irrigators remained paramount, preserving the city government’s original and fundamental obligation. Even as civic ideals brought to Los Angeles by newcomers from the United States and Europe during the 1850s mingled with those rooted in Spain and Mexico, irrigation remained important for its own sake: to water the fields of the city’s farmers in order to produce agricultural and ranching products for use and consumption. In the 1859 proposal, however, the underlying ethos for supporting irrigation and agriculture had changed. The report’s authors un-

162

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

derstood both water and agricultural output as commodities that, as engines of the “merry hum of business,” would determine the city’s future. By endorsing the new waterworks on such grounds, the city continued its evolution away from what historian Donald Worster characterized as the “Agrarian State” and toward the “Capitalist State.”66 Perhaps, in this context, it makes sense that no Mexican Californian served on the committee. While possessing reliable experience solving small problems in concert with older traditions, their expertise in such matters would have been relatively worthless among a group trying to repaint a big picture guided by new ideas. The reconceptualization of water and agricultural produce as commodities wasn’t the only new idea built into the new water system. Beyond its soaring rhetoric extolling the “magic touch of . . . enterprise,” the committee’s report sharply criticized the water distribution system it hoped to replace. The authors lamented the “present waste” in irrigation, judged the existing zanjas “hardly adequate to the service required of them,” and warned that failing to undertake the recommended work would “stagnate improvement, cause business to halt, and trade to diminish.”67 In short, the committee argued that the existing system had to be replaced because its inefficiencies and inadequacies imperiled the city’s long-term economic survival, to say nothing of its inability to deliver “clean” and “pure” water to individual residents and businesses. The committee’s urgent appeal to the council to replace the existing infrastructure reinforced the sense that the space itself was the object of change. As Henri Lefebvre has argued, new relationships of production are always negotiated within and inscribed upon space in specific, complementary ways. Although such relationships hadn’t yet undergone a fundamental change in Los Angeles, the civic ideals guiding public policy and the distribution of municipal water had changed enough to affect public and private spaces. The city built two new dams, dozens of new canals, wider supply zanjas, and a network of overhead pipes for domestic distribution. This work in turn led to a significant change in the internal arrangement of every public and private building receiving the domestic supply, which had to be reconfigured with pipes and faucets in order to receive and make use of these newly available waters. Moreover, Lefebvre argues, “ideology only achieves consistency” when new spaces allow it to take on “body therein.”68 In the case of the new water project, the ideology of its iteration—combining Mexican and Spanish ideas privileging

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

163

irrigation with U.S. notions regarding the city’s obligation to spur “the merry hum of business”—became embodied in the form of the new dams, flumes, pipes, and water taps. The long effort to create a separate supply of domestic water, initiated privately by Dryden, Eaton, and others and then taken up in partnership with the city, similarly demonstrates the slippage between civic ideals, infrastructural improvement, and racializing discourses. Every effort to establish, and later improve, a dedicated network of pipes to distribute water emphasized cleanliness, purity, efficiency, and progress in comparison to its allegedly dirty, wasteful, and regressive predecessors. Moreover, a seemingly invisible line connected those shortcomings to the network’s Mexican origins. In emphasizing the potential cleanliness of the water to be provided by these new projects, their advocates cast the existing system as both substandard and dirty. If Mexican Californians agreed in principle, they never initiated similar proposals, spoke out in the public press, or submitted supporting petitions. To the contrary, their previous objections to similar but less ambitious schemes, as policy makers and petitioners, indicate that they found the system good enough—surely in need of strict regulation but not requiring replacement. Nevertheless, William Dryden, by 1860 in partnership with the city to complete the domestic conveyance network, had built a pump-driven collection tank and central distribution pipes in the middle of the Plaza (figure 4.5). In Los Angeles’s most solidly Mexican Californian space appeared an indisputable harbinger of fundamental change. Laid out at the town’s founding and serving both formally and informally to anchor the community socially and spatially, the Plaza suddenly housed a prominent monument to new civic ideals privileging commoditization, commerce, cleanliness, and profits, the very existence of which generated and nurtured further contest between immigrants from the United States and Mexican Californians. However subtly, the entire matter of a new system of water conveyance and distribution thus introduced a potentially corrosive contrast between the new, pure, and enterprising waterworks and its old, impure, and wasteful predecessor. When coded onto their respective “American” and “Mexican” origins, a link emerges between the old system’s shortcomings and its Spanish and Mexican roots. Only by replacing the dirty, inadequate, and Mexican water network with something clean, efficient, and American could the city’s infra-

164

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Figure 4.5. View of the Plaza, looking eastward over the rear of the church from Fort Hill. Dryden’s water pump is prominent in the center of the Plaza. The Lugo Adobe, the white building with two-story columns and three dormer windows, is just beyond it. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [02465])

structure support a bright future for Angelenos. The dirty/failing/Mexican versus pure/promising/American notion, already laden with social tension, further fused with the emerging ethos of commodities and business. Together they formed a new civic ideal, which in turn became built into the city’s physical landscape. Taking on physical form with each completed component, the new waterworks converted ideas coded to ethnoracial origins, notions previously written on paper and spoken on lips, into physical markers of difference embedded within the city’s earthen, wooden, brick, and pipe infrastructure.

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

165

Water-related initiatives offer only one locus of evidence suggesting the municipality’s move away from more evenly intercultural civic ideals and toward those privileging commodities and commerce. Concomitantly, the municipal government turned the lion’s share of its attention toward European Americans. The vast majority of both publicly and privately initiated action regarding the municipal waters and city streets emanated from European Americans and focused, geographically, on areas southwest of Plaza. Almost none of the boom in new street and water projects centered on the areas northwest and northeast of the Plaza, where more than half of Mexican Californian and Mexican American Angelenos lived. Although Mexican Californian residents demonstrated their continued sense of political standing by frequently petitioning the Common Council, they usually opposed new projects regarding streets and watercourses. Few petitions bearing signatures from Spanish-surnamed citizens supported or instigated new infrastructural initiatives. Mexican Californians’ participation in city government also waned; they won only four total seats on the Common Council between 1857 and 1860. Without question, the Democratic Party’s dominance and its increasingly overt racism at both the national and local levels played a role in this trend. Moreover, few Americans belonging to mixed families or experienced at maintaining intercultural civic ideals held office during these years. Such changes to broad-based participation in civic government suggest further consequences of the evolution of local civic ideals.

Growing Pains Rather than resisting commercial and spatial pressures, the city government first found ways to mediate compromises, then became an active partner in altering the tone of local politics, the balance of civic ideals, and the city’s spatial and commercial relationships. Without opening an explicitly public debate about the social and cultural consequences of these changes, municipal officers and their private partners began moving away from use-based principles and toward profit-oriented commercial practices. By modifying the city’s streets and reallocating its water, the city government offered public support for new economic modalities that conceived of water and agricultural produce as commodities rather than resources carrying their own intrinsic value. The city further offered official sanction to the notion that the Mexican Californian and intercultural infrastructure could not support commercial objectives.

166

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Although civic ideals guiding municipal government began to change rapidly, city officers did not effect a parallel refashioning of the municipal apparatus. Consequently, the city and its private partners found themselves trying produce a new kind of space without the tools necessary to succeed. Even the radical infusion of $200,000 wasn’t sufficient to remake the city’s infrastructure. Building the new waterworks proved technically challenging, and the costs consistently and significantly overran the already ambitious budget. When spring arrived in 1860, many of the new and newly widened zanjas could not deliver needed water to farmers. Rendering them “serviceable” required the oversight committee to hire extra workers, “thereby contracting certain liabilities to no inconsiderable amount.” Committee chairman and former mayor John G. Nichols recommended “further improvements” to a still incomplete zanja in August 1860 because it “in a great measure fail[ed] to furnish a supply of water adequate to the necessities of those interested.”69 Within two years, the total cost for the new waterworks had risen nearly 30 percent, from the initial budget of $70,000 to $89,000.70 Private parties found equal difficulty bringing new systems to fruition while avoiding financial ruin, especially because the state didn’t offer them the same safety net for deficit spending. Despite struggling to build its own high-quality waterways at a reasonable price, the Common Council had no patience for private citizens’ similar failures. In February 1860, several citizens threatened to sue not only the Sainsevain brothers for having built a flume so badly it caused them severe losses but also the city itself, “said flume having been constructed by permission” of the council. The council took the liability threat seriously, castigated the Sainsevain brothers, and demanded that they speedily make repairs. The Water Committee subsequently deemed the renovations poorly executed and required the brothers to completely “reconstruct said flume in strict accordance” with the earlier agreement.71 After trying and failing for three years to get his iron foundry up and running, Hiram McLaughlin quit altogether and sold his improved land and privileges to a series of individuals who subsequently found themselves vexed by the fundamental flaws in McLaughlin’s design and execution. In early spring 1861, William Dryden became the last holder of this hot potato. Dryden saw the wheel and water right as a further investment in his own water company, but he too struggled mightily to turn either the wheel or a profit. By then he

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

167

had already failed to lure the city into extending a new zanja to convey more water from his springs to the water pipes, even though he offered both parcels of vacant land and a stake in his water company as inducements.72 With McLaughlin’s wheel and privileges, Dryden hoped to finally resolve his supply problems. In April 1861 he asked the Common Council for permission and financial support to make substantive repairs to McLaughlin’s works, which included changing the waterways between the Zanja Madre and the wheel. The city, already $20,000 over budget and behind schedule in its own responsibilities for the new waterworks, refused to help. The council further informed Dryden he would be held strictly to the terms under which the city made the initial contract with McLaughlin, meaning he could not reroute the water.73 This proved to be only one of several problems Dryden encountered during 1861 and 1862. Having already spent more than $13,000 of his own money by June 1861, Dryden pleaded with the council to become his partner and loan him $2,000 so he could complete his share of the project. In exchange, Dryden offered the first profits from water sales, shares in the Los Angeles Water Company, or “any other” arrangement “that might accomplish the same object.”74 The city left him twisting in the wind for several months as it investigated other options and ultimately rebuffed all of Dryden’s advances. Dryden, whose successful efforts to secure a franchise for a separate potable water network both marked changing civic ideals and cut the channel for several other schemes to make use of the municipal waters, in the end failed to produce more than an incomplete network of leaking, unreliable pipes. Private residential choices made by thousands of citizens regarding where to live led Angelenos to occupy a much larger quantity of physical space between 1857 and 1861. The private economic choices they made led them to reconstruct the existing built environment and pursue enterprises requiring more intensive land and water use. In response, citizens and the Common Council spent the better part of five years trying to remake Los Angeles’s infrastructure and the civic ideals upon which it rested. By 1861, however, they found themselves swimming in a sea of debt, sometimes literally inundated by faulty overhead water pipes, poorly made zanjas, and ill-conceived machinery in the river and its canals. Beyond money, Angelenos paid a high price for these changes. Having moved swiftly toward a new foundation for the town’s economic and cultural ambitions, entrepreneurs and government officers began to remake

168

“Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City”

Los Angeles’s residential and business districts and the city’s underlying infrastructure in ways that alienated Mexican Californian residents from political and social participation. These same projects, if at times unintentionally, privileged capital intensive and commercial uses of the city’s byways and waterways to the detriment of irrigation (despite rhetoric to the contrary), undermining vecinos’ traditional lifeways. Tens of thousands of dollars had been invested to segregate the city waters, limiting the supply for agriculture, introducing new priorities, and ultimately marking the Plaza itself with a reservoir to assist in distribution. A Democratic Party increasingly committed to racial purity limited Mexican Californian office holding and moved still farther away from the intercultural civic ideals that held sway previously. By fundamentally changing the social and physical environments in which Angelenos lived, public officials and private citizens engaged in the first effort to do away with intercultural arrangements. At the end of 1861, the grand effort to remake the city’s spatial and political landscape failed even more spectacularly than had so many individual projects emanating from private parties and the city government. In December and January 1861–62, torrential rains soaked the city. The Los Angeles River flooded, destroying the new dam and the entirety of the new municipal waterworks. The floodwaters ripped apart every waterwheel, busted the overhead pipes of the still incomplete domestic supply network, and thrashed many of the new zanjas, all of which had supposedly been built of materials and “dimensions great enough to prevent the possibility of damage from any cause whatever.”75 Two years of blistering drought followed, devastating cattle ranchers and farmers, crushing local commerce, and leaving the city and all of its residents on the brink of utter financial ruin, regardless of their particular family relations or civic ideals. These natural disasters and their economic, social, and political consequences produced both serious challenges and interesting opportunities for new dialogues regarding the city’s social and spatial future.

CHAPTER 5

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’” Politics, Violence, and the Power of Racialized Place, 1862–1872

Christmas Eve 1861 rain began to fall over Los Angeles. The late December storm was hardly uncommon, but the rain “continued, until the morning of the 23 of January with but two slight interruptions.”1 Probably connected to a potent El Niño event creating a substantive warming of the waters off the coast of California, a series of “pineapple express” storms trained tropical moisture northwesterly across the Pacific and deposited it on Los Angeles.2 On Saturday, January 18, the storm reached peak intensity, sending down such “torrents of water” that “it seemed as if the clouds had been broken through and the waters over the earth and the waters under the earth were coming into conjunction.” Runoff filled “every gulch and arroyo, and streams poured down the hill sides.” Finally, the Los Angeles River flooded. Escaping its fixed channels, the suddenly wild river washed away vineyards, orchards, pasture lands, and entire homes with all of their contents. The Wolfskill, Frohling, and Coronel families suffered catastrophic losses amounting to roughly $25,000.3 Commercial and residential buildings in the city’s center also felt the floodwaters’ fury. At Mellus’s Row, shopkeepers waded “in water up to their waists, trying to save their goods.” While the Hellman brothers tried to salvage their wares, the neighboring rooms “occupied by Meyer & Breslauer caved in, smashing show cases and shelves, and ruining a large amount of merchandise.” Although ON

169

170

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

“friends and neighbors lent assistance to the unfortunate,” many merchants “saw the results of years of labor obliterated in a moment.”4 The floodwaters wrought havoc over private and public property, leaving behind a mucky mess and plenty of financial and emotional distress. The entire new $90,000 water system, including dam, embankments, pipes, rebuilt zanjas, and all, was “swept away—melted before the force of the water.” Despite the heavy debts the city undertook in building the network and the blueribbon advisory committee’s promises that the works could survive any challenge, it became painfully “evident that the defences from overflows are wholly inefficient.” Innovations in civic ideals and municipal power that facilitated constructing the works in the first place, however, proved far sturdier. The flood’s fury left the city to ponder another new water network, and “the question of City Improvements” instantly assumed “a magnitude not heretofore accorded to it.” Rebuilding in a “substantial and permanent manner” would come at a cost of $25,000, over and above the public indebtedness already incurred to build the now-ruined works.5 What no one knew in January of 1862 was that the storm was only the prologue to a much more slowly unfolding tragedy. By midsummer the ground had dried and then parched, as the winter floods gave way to a blistering drought. In the twenty-seven months following the deluge, only four inches of rain fell on Los Angeles. On the sun-scorched earth, crops failed, orchards and vineyards withered, and more than 50,000 cows perished. These stresses brought all manner of commerce to a halt. Specie became so scarce and profits so rare that the city could not make any tax assessment whatsoever in 1863 or 1864.6 Cattle ranching as an enterprise became one of the drought’s most significant casualties, accelerating the structural transformation of the regional economy. More and more ranch land gave way to agricultural endeavors, as farm acreage increased one hundredfold between 1850 and 1880. During the same period, the number of industrial establishments grew from 1 to 117.7 The consequences of the flood and drought thus radiated out into Los Angeles, socially, spatially, and economically, bringing a host of new challenges to those invested in maintaining the kinds of intercultural relationships forged over the preceding generation. The flood and drought undermined not only the city’s traditional economy but also the economic foundations upon which rested Mexican Angelenos’

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

171

claims to social, political, cultural, and spatial equality. People tied to the region’s ranching economy faced unprecedented obstacles. Despite being “set upon by tax collectors, squatters, loan sharks, lawyers, and politicians” as a consequence of the Land Act, high cattle prices helped ranchers offset the costs of preserving their grants. Between 1851 and 1856 rancheros of both Mexican Californian and U.S. birth sold more than 55,000 cows in San Francisco for between $30 and $45 per head. Prices began falling in 1857 and collapsed in the early 1860s in sync with the drought and its catastrophic bovine death toll. Starting over proved unfeasible, as the cattle barons faced a precipitous decline in demand, increased competition from midwestern and Texas ranchers offering a better product, and, in 1865, a bout of epidemic disease that further ravaged their already decimated herds. By decade’s end, the region’s cattle population dwindled from more than 100,000 to roughly 13,000. Fetching less than forty cents per head by 1870, the valuation of Southern California’s cattle herds had fallen from nearly $6 million to $5,200.8 Under such circumstances, it’s easy to imagine the rancheros staring into an abyss of utter financial ruin. For over forty years, ranching Californians had relied on the pastoral economy to provide the material and cultural bases of their identity claims. In the 1820s and 1830s, ranching helped californios develop and consolidate a stratified racial system in which wealth, achieved status, and labor practices sharply distinguished them from ordinary vecinos and indios. During the 1840s and 1850s, that same wealth and status allowed californios to negotiate local racial constructions in ways that mitigated against color-based racial classifications and kept not only the elite but hundreds of the city’s vecinos from being relegated to second-class citizenship under the U.S. flag. For vecinos and rancheros in Southern California, the 1860s proved more challenging than previous decades. Although most of the ranchero lands lay outside Los Angeles’s official limits, vecinos living in the city proper also struggled to hold on to their property. Vecinos had a property ownership rate of 61.4 percent in 1850, and that number likely rose by the mid-1850s as a result of the Free Land Law. By 1870, however, only 21.2 percent of vecinos owned land in Los Angeles. Moreover, their parcels’ average value plummeted from $2,105 to $1,072, even as the city’s overall assessment rolls climbed.9 For Mexican Californians in and around Los Angeles, financial ruin in turn threatened a broad-based political, social, and cultural recession, putting tremendous pressure on Mexican Ange-

172

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

lenos’ efforts to preserve and advance their claims to social equality. Shrinking economic resources further hampered the efficacy of those Angelenos committed to maintaining the political, social, and spatial interculture that had previously held sway. Despite the economic and cultural challenges elite and ordinary Mexican Angelenos faced during the 1860s, firm and circumscribed racial categories had not yet coalesced in Los Angeles in ways that precluded their participation in politics and policy making.10 Following the overt hostility of the 1856 elections, many Mexican Angelenos joined the upstart Republican Party. Although overmatched locally by Democrats benefiting from a pro-Confederate majority, Mexican Americans won four city council seats between 1861 and 1863. In 1864, the Civil War turned decisively in the Union’s favor. European and Mexican American Angelenos flocked to and energized the local Republican Party. Agustín Olvera hosted a secret junta, in the old ranchero style, and formed a ticket that swept the county offices.11 Three Mexican Californians— Antonio Franco Coronel, Manuel Requeña, and José Mascarel—won seats on the city council. Between 1864 and 1872, Mexican Californians won eighteen Common Council posts and three mayoral races.12 Given an opening, Mexican Angelenos proved they “had not yet completely lost their penchant for selfleadership and could capitalize on new political possibilities.”13 Indeed, they realized these political gains even as they became increasingly outnumbered in Los Angeles. Considering they made up only 38 percent of the population by 1870, cross-cultural confidence remained strong through the 1860s.14 Mexican Angelenos’ political resurgence provided an opportunity to champion and extend key intercultural arrangements made in the past: a retention of the city’s right to control the waters of the Los Angeles River, the legitimacy of Mexican Americans as equal partners in the city’s future and therefore appropriate stewards of the municipality, and partners in a closely knit community willing to practice vigilante violence when formal law failed to appropriately discipline ill-behaved residents. Moreover, Mexican Angelenos found a new opening to negotiate policy decisions and the subsequent development of the urban landscape. The renewed participation, among the ordinary citizens who voted and those who stood as candidates for office, showed that Angelenos committed to the intercultural community developed since the 1840s

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

173

could combat efforts by more recently arrived residents to racialize Mexican Angelenos and marginalize practitioners of intercultural civic ideals. A return to political prominence, however, did not alone ensure a renaissance of cooperation and innovation. The city continued its dynamic social and spatial development as new immigrants from the United States, Europe, and China complicated commercial and social relationships, and spurred further changes to the location and composition of the city’s business and residential districts. As a result of the resurgence of those connected to intercultural cooperation, Mexican Angelenos shared responsibility for guiding the municipal response to demographic, spatial, and social developments. As citizens, they joined their U.S., European, and Chinese neighbors in confronting the consequences of a society in economic, political, and social flux. The task proved difficult in both the public and private arenas, especially those that summoned debate precisely along the axes of earlier intercultural arrangements. In particular, four episodes in the city’s history between 1868 and 1872 highlighted three still fraught issues: control over the Los Angeles River, the place of Mexican Angelenos as equal social and political citizens, and cooperative extralegal violence. The choices Angelenos made in both public and private capacities as they negotiated these four moments—a new plan to separate the city’s domestic and agricultural water supply that produced a heated political showdown in 1868, the ways that the generally organic distinction between European and Mexican American residential districts created an opportunity for the drawing of ethnically aware electoral ward boundaries in 1870, a seemingly familiar vigilante mobilization that turned into a grizzly anti-Chinese massacre in 1871, and a racialized mayoral election in 1872—reshaped the contours of space, identity, and public power in the city. In particular, the very resurgence of Mexican Americans in elective office seems to have created an environment in which all Mexican Angelenos faced special scrutiny in the public square.

After the Flood: Rethinking Water As the policy efforts of the late 1850s and early 1860s indicated, Angelenos deemed the management and distribution of the municipal water supply critical to the city’s future. The floods of 1862 and the subsequent drought only

174

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

made this clearer, and the municipality searched for new solutions. Since Los Angeles’s founding, water had been central to the city’s history. The river’s proximity and its ample flow had influenced Spanish colonial governor Felipe de Neve’s location of the pueblo, and he had insisted that the pobladores dam the river and build the Zanja Madre before receiving their own house and farm lots. Since the early 1800s, solutions regarding water policy illustrated civic ideals as they evolved over time. Under Spain and Mexico, the ayuntamiento’s commitment to equitable distribution and tight control formed the basis of an agrarian ideal. As the preceding chapters have indicated, such civic ideals began to incorporate and then lean toward a mixed perspective that viewed water as both a concrete element and a commodity capable of turning machinery that made other goods and generated profits. These intercultural arrangements blended Spanish-Mexican and U.S. hydraulic traditions and carried the potential to reflect deeper consequences for space and citizenship. Changes in policies and practices governing the distribution and use of the city waters, therefore, magnified differences among distinct civic ideals and revealed the ways that racial discourses could permeate discussions that didn’t otherwise appear to have racial content or consequences. As they had in negotiating local arrangements related to economy, culture, politics, and identity, Angelenos had to navigate overlapping and often conflicting legal rules regarding the city’s control over the Los Angeles River. Two competing ideals in the United States produced copious state and federal legislation and jurisprudence during the mid-nineteenth century. Riparian rights doctrine held that owners of lands bordering streams together created “a pool of conditional rights” such that upstream users could not diminish the flow downstream by their use of the water. The right of prior appropriation, on the other hand, subjected “water to a ‘beneficial use’” test and placed determinative importance on the waters’ “future use.”15 Both of these doctrines entailed a “a dynamic, instrumental, and more abstract view of property that emphasized the newly paramount virtues of productive use and development,” placing them squarely in opposition to Spanish and Mexican regulations, which always privileged the community as a whole over the rights of any individual.16 Few immigrants to Los Angeles from other parts of the United States had previous experience with a communal rights system for determining water use, and Mexican Californians knew little about prevailing U.S. water policy, creat-

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

175

ing a complicated and dynamic legal borderlands regarding the Los Angeles River.17 After nearly two decades of legal wrangling, the California legislature carved out a special exception for Los Angeles, amending the city’s charter to guarantee it “succeed to all the rights, claims, and powers of the Pueblo de Los Angeles” regarding the Los Angeles River.18 By using the original Spanish name, the legislature clearly allowed the city to define water use therein by the old rules, ensuring its pueblo rights over the corpus of the water in the river.19 The arguments undergirding those rights, however, had changed. Lurking beneath the surface of state policy and legal opinions was the doctrine of prior appropriation: because Los Angeles had been founded so long ago, it deserved to keep its claim to the waters of the river.20 The value of that water to the community as a whole, as its lifeblood and the source of its well-being, scarcely merited mention. In twisting the Mexican concept of communal rights to conform to the doctrine of prior appropriation, city and state leaders replaced the community-oriented ideal of the Spanish, Mexican, and early U.S. eras with one predicated on the growth and expansion of commodity production. However camouflaged, as homage to Spanish and Mexican California or an affirmation of pueblo rights, the transition to an American construction of prior appropriation joined other, local efforts to encourage capital investment, to gain legal control over the water supply, and to promote continued economic growth. While judges and legislators wrestled with rules and principles, Angelenos confronted a ruptured dam, broken zanjas, and busted pipes. Complicated by the city’s previous indebtedness, the flood and drought sapped local and state resources and led the municipal government to seek out private partners in order to rebuild. In 1863 the Common Council conveyed Dryden’s water franchise to Jean Louis Sainsevain, who dammed a spring just north of the Plaza and built a new waterwheel. Water flowed from the reservoir onto the wheel and up to an elevated main pipe, which then relied on gravity to supply an aboveground network covering five thousand total feet. As he had previously when working on smaller projects, Sainsevain struggled to comply with the terms governing his use and distribution of the municipal waters. In 1865 citizens complained that Sainsevain was drawing water from the main zanja to supplement his reservoir. The city agreed, commanding Sainsevain to comply with the terms of the “franchise to him set forth”

176

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

and ordering the “Zanjero to see that the water be not diverted from the Main Zanja or used for any purpose by said Los Angeles Water Works Company.”21 Sainsevain’s spring and waterwheel-fed system proved woefully inadequate to supply more than a handful of people at the city’s center, and it then suffered the same ignominious fate as its predecessor: torrential rains burst the pipes and a flash flood washed away both the dam and the waterwheel.22 Out of money and patience, Sainsevain conveyed the seven years remaining on his lease to three prominent European American Angelenos: Prudent Beaudry, a frequent city officeholder, Dr. John S. Griffin, and Solomon Lazard, a successful druggist. In May 1868, Beaudry, Griffin, and Lazard ambitiously sought a fifty-year franchise from the city to distribute domestic water directly from the Los Angeles River. Greater in scale, scope, and consequences for the municipal water supply than any before it, the men proposed a system that would (in time) serve the “entire” city, promising to lay five miles of iron pipe immediately and to expand at the city’s direction in the coming years. In exchange, they offered to pay the city a small fee and to deliver water free of charge to city-owned buildings.23 Two days later a petition supporting the proposal and carrying fifty signatures arrived in council chambers. Praising the plan’s anticipation of future growth, the petitioners also rejoiced at the opportunity to secure “an ample supply of water in winter and summer, independent of the delays caused by the condition of the City dam or the zanjas leading therefrom, or other causes that have heretofore interfered with and impeded the supply of water for domestic purposes.” The signatories further encouraged the council “to make the water works what they should be, a great public convenience, and sense of security against fire, as also a preventative of epidemics and sickness and a medium through which your city can in all parts be benefited.”24 In advocating the establishment of a private network of pipes built exclusively for the distribution of potable water, Beaudry’s, Griffin’s, and Lazard’s supporters embraced a fundamental change in the relationship between municipal government, private citizens, and the Los Angeles River’s waters. Moreover, their conviction that the waterworks would prevent epidemics and sickness carried a negative assessment of Mexican Californian water as dirty and dangerous. The petition thus twisted together utilitarian and economic arguments favor-

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

177

ing the proposed waterworks with a negative assessment of existing facilities. Like the blue-ribbon committee that championed the first major waterworks initiative in 1859, these citizens characterized a water system built on Mexican and intercultural principles as epidemiologically dangerous and economically disadvantageous. Perhaps because of these lurking associations, only four citizens with identifiably Spanish surnames signed the petition. The council appointed John King, Louis Roldan, and John Schumacher as a special committee to consider the proposal. Their discussions led to a swift and sharp split. Schumacher rejected the proposal as being “to the disadvantage of the interest of the City” and “contrary to the manifest wish and desire of a very large majority of the resident property holders and taxpayers.” King and Roldan offered unqualified support, arguing that the city could neither afford to build its own system for domestic distribution nor carry on without one. Moreover, they did not “believe it advisable or prudent for the City to own property of this nature, as it is well known by past experience that cities and towns can never manage enterprises of that nature as economically as individuals, and besides it is a continual source of annoyance.”25 Few statements could so pointedly demonstrate how far civic ideals had moved away from communal responsibility for the water in favor of privatization, growth, and development. Since the town’s founding, the community’s collective and absolute ownership of the water had been unquestioned, and regulating the water’s use had been one of the municipal government’s primary functions. Whereas preserving and equitably distributing these waters had been the sacred trust of the ayuntamiento and Common Council for more than seventy years, two of its members suddenly found the responsibility a burr in the city’s side. After receiving the divided report, the council voted narrowly in favor of the franchise. Mayor Cristóbal Aguilar, however, vetoed the legislation. Since the Mexican era Aguilar had held elective public office and was also a former and future zanjero. In 1858, he responded to a petition by Benjamin Eaton seeking permission to build a wheel in the river with a similarly blunt rejection.26 A decade later, Aguilar’s veto demonstrated a sense of history and ideological tradition. “It has always been considered by my predecessors as well as myself at the present time,” he asserted, “that the prosperity of the City of Los Angeles depends entirely upon the proper management and distribution of the

178

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

water of the Los Angeles river.” Taking “water out of the river of Los Angeles and any of the canals of the city, for domestic use and sale” violated longstanding practices and threatened the city’s future. Conceding the franchise to Beaudry, Griffin, and Lazard would destroy communal rights and threaten the city’s agriculturalists; tapping the river for separate domestic distribution amounted to unnecessary practice and improper management. Moreover, Aguilar found the “term so indefinite as to extent that in the course of time” great harm could come to the city, “which we should endeavor to avoid.”27 Reasserting municipal control over the water as central to the community’s overall health, Aguilar rejected not only the proposal but also its proponents’ arguments that private ownership would be better. However dramatic, this victory for intercultural civic ideals proved shortlived. Beaudry, Griffin, and Lazard cut the lease requested to thirty years and offered to fix an absolute cap on the quantity of water that they would draw from the river. Even the revised proposal produced unprecedented public opposition as a new petition arrived in council chambers arguing that granting a franchise to Beaudry, Griffin, and Lazard “would work irretrievable injury to the prosperity of this community,” despite the reduced term. Maintaining that “the whole subject matter should be left to the exclusive control of the local authorities,” the signatories felt compelled to “most solemnly and earnestly protest against the passage of said law or any other law having a similar object in view” and appealed to state officials “to stand between us and those who, if successful in their scheme, will cripple the prosperity of this community.” The petition bore 208 signatures, making it one of the strongest statements ever made by Angelenos to the council.28 Nevertheless, the Common Council approved the revised proposal by such a majority as to make another veto useless. That his actions had effected a 40 percent reduction in the length of the franchise and restricted the amount of water to be used must have seemed to Aguilar a hollow victory. The municipality retained the right to set water rates, but that would be its only role in regulating the use and distribution of the domestic supply. It lost its traditional role in ensuring all citizens had equal access to water. In a short time, Aguilar would be out of office and his veto would stand as the final effort to preserve intercultural, communal ideals regarding the municipal water supply.

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

179

The Political Consequences of Residential and Spatial Change: The Ward System Aguilar’s veto served as only one indicator that long-standing questions regarding race, space, and municipal power in Los Angeles had reached a critical moment in their dynamic, interrelated history. Between 1866 and 1872, electoral politics, public policy, and vigilante violence brought together questions of identity, urban development, and civic ideals more explicitly than at any previous period in the city’s history. During those years, Aguilar stood four times for mayor, winning twice and losing twice, unwittingly becoming a very public focal point in political outcomes with significant racial and spatial consequences. Months after vetoing Beaudry’s, Griffin’s, and Lazard’s first proposal, Aguilar lost the December 1868 mayoral election to Joel Turner.29 In September of 1869, under Turner’s leadership, the Common Council passed a law dividing Los Angeles into two electoral wards, slicing the city in half at First Street. Although the council repealed the division a month later, it returned to the ward question before the next municipal election.30 On July 21, 1870, the members divided the city into three wards. The first ran from Marchessault Street to the city’s northern boundary, the second from First Street north to Marchessault, and the third from First Street south-southwest to the city limits. The First Ward encompassed most of the city’s oldest areas, including the Plaza, Sonoratown (a majority of whose residents were Mexican and Mexican American), and the city’s emerging Chinese neighborhood adjacent to the Plaza’s southeastern edge. The Second Ward incorporated the developing commercial center and the most concentrated area of European American homeowners. A somewhat mixed group lived in the Third Ward, although as the newest part of town it was home to more newcomers than established Angelenos. The development of distinct residential spaces in Los Angeles since the late 1850s made it possible for a straightforward geographic split to correspond rather neatly with the citizens’ ancestry. Phenotypically, such markers on the political map effectively created distinct brown and white political spaces, building on private residential choice to make a public, institutional marker. Those differences became invested with unequal values when the council

180

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

(controlled in 1870 by a European American majority with ties to the Democratic Party) apportioned the seats to be elected from each ward unequally. Of the body’s ten members, the council assigned the Third Ward four seats, the Second Ward five seats, and the First Ward only one seat. The act represented the first utterly transparent attempt to institutionally limit Mexican Californian and Mexican American political power in Los Angeles. In fact, the apportionment proved so obviously biased that the council stripped Wards Two and Three of one representative each and conveyed the seats to the First Ward during a special session only nine days later. Even then, the Second and Third Wards could dominate the First, seven seats to three.31 Four months later, the outcome of the 1870 general elections demonstrated the increasingly close connections between residential space, heritage, and local politics. The mayoral race between Cristóbal Aguilar and lawyer Andrew Glassell was among the most closely contested in the city’s history, with Aguilar winning narrowly 436 to 428. As the council pondered the canvas, Andrew King, a Democratic Party leader, filed a formal protest. He claimed operatives (including many Mexican Americans) in the First and Second Wards had engaged in various irregularities resulting in an unfair outcome. King demanded that the votes from both the First and Second be vacated, and that ballots from the Third Ward alone be counted. Suggesting that the votes in the city’s oldest districts be dismissed in favor of the Third Ward surely bore the tinge of an ethnocentric complaint, especially in light of the election’s outcome. After a grueling session, the council cast King’s objections aside and declared Aguilar the victor.32 Results from individual wards offer a snapshot of the dynamic development of space, identity, and power. The First Ward supported Aguilar, 156 votes to 49, hinting at an increasing cultural solidarity among Mexican Angelenos that transcended political affiliation. The Second and Third Wards broke for Glassell, giving him victories of 195 to 146 and 184 to 134, respectively. Nevertheless, only 16 identifiably Spanish-surnamed Angelenos populated the poll list in the Second, and 51 in the Third. Consequently, at least 130 European Americans supported Aguilar in the Second and 83 in the Third, suggesting intercultural civic ideals and local identity categories remained fluid in December 1870.33 In comparison to the porosity suggested by the mayoral canvas, results in the Common Council elections indicated that, while still fluid, categories linking

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

181

residence, ancestry, and civic ideals had begun to crystallize. Julian Chavez won a seat in the First, and European American candidates swept the Second and Third. Although Eugelio de Celis narrowly missed winning a seat in the Third, finishing a close sixth, he was the sole Mexican American candidate in either ward. The council results indicate the ward system’s potential power to determine the Common Council’s composition and suggest that links between space, identity, and civic ideals had begun to ossify in the political realm.34 Although the residential differences resulted primarily from private choices, the council’s decision to bestow more power on spaces more likely to be reckoned “American” and “white” than those perceived as “Mexican” and “brown” created a very public inequality in the city’s overall political calculus.

The Anti-Chinese Massacre: October 24, 1871 Throughout Aguilar’s two-year term, social and political tensions mounted in Los Angeles. Along the boundary between the First and Second Wards, a Chinese community had put down roots. As the delineation of the new electoral wards demonstrated, the city’s spatial development had reached a point where private differences in residential neighborhoods could feed into colorcoded political boundaries. Chinese Angelenos’ spatial and social liminality further complicated these negotiations. Although locals responded positively to immigrant Chinese during the 1850s and early 1860s, a trend of increasing hostility emerged during the late 1860s. This growing animosity coincided with intensified legal and extralegal competition among rival societies within the Chinese community. On October 24, 1871, police officers and private citizens responded to gunfire in the Chinese district and became involved in a brief and disorganized shootout that left Ah Choy and Robert Thompson dead. Trying to capture the shooters, officers deputized a growing throng of private citizens who, fueled by rumors, agitation, and preexisting racist sentiment, engaged in a grizzly anti-Chinese riot. Following a similar exchange of gunfire on October 23, police officers had arrested Ah Choy, recently arrived from San Francisco, and Yo Hing, a prominent local merchant. Choy and Hing posted bail that evening and appeared in court the following day, where both pleaded not guilty. When the hearing adjourned, both returned to the Chinese district. Yo Hing’s associates then

182

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

sought retribution against Ah Choy. They found him taking a late afternoon meal and opened fire, delivering a fatal shot to Choy’s neck. Officer Jesus Bilderrain temporarily put a stop to the shooting, arrested one man, engaged in another round of gunfire, survived a minor gunshot wound, and summoned additional help. Responding to Bilderrain’s whistle, Officers Robert Hester and Esteban Sanchez pursued gunmen into residential parts of the Coronel Block (formerly the Coronel family home, by then transformed into a warren of small apartments) and Sam Yuen’s Wing Chung store. Robert Thompson, well known and liked from his tenure owning the Blue Wing Saloon, heard the gunshots and beat a hasty path to Calle de los Negros in order to help. Officer Bilderrain deputized Thompson immediately but warned him to mind the crossfire into which he’d inadvertently wandered. Unfazed, Thompson walked straight into the Wing Chung store and fired, then reeled back as a bullet pierced his heart. While policeman attended to the wounded, most of the gunmen escaped. A mob soon gathered at the scene, responding to news of the shootout and Thompson’s death. The crowd laid siege to the Coronel Block and a few neighboring buildings, trapping dozens of innocent Chinese inside. By 6:00 p.m. the crowd neared five hundred and included a broad cross-section of workingclass and underemployed Angelenos together with several merchants, professionals, and even a city councilman. Anxious to either catch Thompson’s murderer or avenge his death, Sheriff James Burns deputized a posse of private citizens to shoot anyone who tried to escape and unsuccessfully exhorted the remaining crowd to disperse. For three hours, the groups held their respective ground. Ah Wing, a resident of Calle de los Negros, tried to make a break from the Beaudry building. The mob quickly captured him, severely beat him, and hanged him on an improvised gallows at Temple and New High Streets. For the assembled crowd, killing Tuck neither settled the score nor ended the siege. At about 9:00 p.m. the mob hatched a new scheme. Angelenos stormed the Coronel building, scaled and broke open the roof, and began shooting down from above. Most of the Chinese inside fled to the street; many made it no farther. An Associated Press employee sent telegraphs to San Francisco tallying the casualties. The crowd beat, shot, stabbed, hanged, and dismembered its victims, killing at least eighteen innocent Chinese over the ensuing

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

183

three hours. One victim was a twelve-year-old boy. Another was Chee Long “Gene” Tong, a well-known Chinese doctor. He begged for his life in English and Spanish and offered cash in exchange for his liberty, but to no avail. His killers subsequently cut off his lifeless fingers, took them and the rings he wore as trophies, then looted his house. The mob hanged thirteen more Chinese (Leong Quai, Ah Long, Chang Wan, Wan Foo, Tong Wan, Ah Loo, Day Kee, Ah Waa, Ho Hing, Lo Hey, Ah Won, Wing Chee, and Wong Chin) and shot three others (Johnny Burrow, Ah Cut, and Wa Sin Quai). Fully 10 percent of Los Angeles’s Chinese population lay dead the following morning. None of the Chinese killed by the mob had participated in the earlier shootout or bore responsibility for Thompson’s death. Only ten Angelenos faced trial for the crimes committed on the night of October 24, and none of the eight men convicted served a full sentence. Chinese Angelenos filed suit against both Yo Hing and the city. Sam Yuen, owner of the Wing Chung store, sued the city for failing to stop the rioting and looting. The city in turn blamed Antonio Coronel, charging and citing him for perpetrating a nuisance by leasing his family adobe to Chinese. Many Chinese temporarily fled the city, but most returned by the end of 1871, and the city’s Chinese population grew rapidly during the remainder of the 1870s.35 Occurring in a frequently violent district of a frequently violent city and victimizing a group marginalized both legally and socially, the anti-Chinese massacre of 1871 is too often and too easily told as a tale of frontier lawlessness and racial injustice. The narrative above usually does work as both story and analysis, leaving blame on either Chinese gunmen for having provoked the mob or the crazed rabble that committed such unspeakable violence. Few in the massacre’s immediate aftermath or since have undertaken to explore the broader context within which the riot occurred. Fewer still have sought to understand the violence of October 24, 1871, as part of the fabric of Los Angeles’s longer history and not as a singular event.36 Nevertheless, the antiChinese massacre grew out of the city’s social, spatial, and racial history, and its aftermath reverberated over the following months in ways that profoundly influenced the city’s future. The Chinese who first settled in the city during the 1850s found acceptance and opportunities in Los Angeles. Ah Fon and Ah Luce both appeared in the 1850 census as the first two Chinese Angelenos. Another Chinese arrived in

184

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

Los Angeles in 1853, earning one hundred dollars monthly in the employ of Marco Newmark.37 On March 27, 1852, a private citizen wrote the Star encouraging Chinese immigration, citing the potential benefit to Los Angeles as well as the state more generally.38 By 1861, twenty-nine Chinese lived in Los Angeles, including the proprietors of five laundries and a fish market. Chun Chick earned particular fame as the first vendor to specialize in Chinese goods, which he sold with other products to the general public from his store on Spring Street across from the courthouse.39 Angelenos continued to accept the growing significance of Chinese residents to the local economy through the middle 1860s. By 1870, 163 Chinese called Los Angeles home. Eighty lived along Calle de los Negros and most of the others inhabited the blocks immediately east. The large Chinese characters on individual stores, Chinese goods displayed in the windows, and the aromas of Cantonese cuisine marked a recognizable Chinese enclave. Although often described as a bachelor society, Los Angeles’s Chinese community included several women who lived along and around the Calle, as either wives or bound concubines. They engaged in a vibrant world of family and community, in sharp contrast to the usual aspersion that all Chinese women lived as prostitutes. Dozens more men had left spouses and families behind in China. To be sure, some Chinese men forced Chinese women into the sex trade, but this was less common than many have presumed.40 Chinese Angelenos created a rich internal community among themselves and also participated in Los Angeles’s economy and public life. Dr. Chee Long “Gene” Tong, who spoke English and Spanish, enjoyed the patronage of numerous Angelenos who sought his services in herbal medicine.41 Yo Hing, who lived on Calle de los Negros and was a key player in the intra-Chinese conflict, settled in Los Angeles in 1863. He first worked as a cook for the lawyer and Democratic Party operative Andrew King but soon prospered in a variety of businesses, including cigar manufacturing and distribution, farming, and railroad contracting. His economic success helped him build business and personal relationships beyond the Chinese community, and he was often known, during the 1870s, by the name Joseph Hinton. Sam Yuen succeeded in the retail trade, offering dry goods, clothing, and groceries at his Wing Chung store at 22 Negro Alley, in the Coronel Block.42 There were several other Chinese-operated stores, laundries, restaurants, saloons, and gambling parlors

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

185

Figure 5.1. Calle de los Negros, looking north toward the Plaza, with Coronel Adobe located just before the terminus of the alley on the left. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL Pierce 01375)

by the early 1870s, mostly clustered on and around Calle de los Negros. Considering that the Chinese community at that time numbered fewer than two hundred, Chinese clients alone could not have supported so many businesses. The small street became a popular commercial and recreational destination for residents from a range of ethnic and economic strata (figure 5.1). Although histories of Chinese immigrants to the United States and their encounters with a frequently hostile U.S. society are legion, very little has come to light regarding the ways Chinese immigrants understood themselves in racial terms. Consequently, there are few clues regarding the ways Chinese Angelenos made sense of the various Indians, Mexican Californians, and European Americans among whom they lived. To be sure, extended kinship relationships, practices, and institutions necessarily stretched across the Pacific for multiple generations to sustain ongoing movement between China, Hawaii, North America, and other places where Chinese traveled for work.43 Nevertheless, the ideas that informed and structured these relationships remain elusive and offer an important arena for future study. The vast majority of Chinese immigrants shared geographic origins, remained attached to Chinese places,

186

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

Figure 5.2. Three men in the Chinese district. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 403 [2b])

and expressed a strong sense of themselves in relation to a variety of “others.” Most immigrants from China to North America hailed from the ethnically Cantonese “Four Counties” (Sze Yup in Cantonese, Siyi in Mandarin) within Guangdong province. Despite the long journey to the United States and the frequent movement of Chinese immigrants within California, most Chinese Angelenos shared extended kinship ties and spoke the same dialect, important components of forging and maintaining identity (figure 5.2). Moreover, residents of the Four Counties had, during the early and middle nineteenth century, developed a strong sense of their own identity in opposition to Han Chinese, to those they termed “Hakka” (literally “guest people” who had immigrated from the north, unsettled the local economy, and provoked conflict), and all those deemed “Westerners” or “foreigners.”44 These components of Chinese immigrants’ sense of self and other offer only the vaguest hint of their racial worldview, but they provide a starting place from which to better understand the ideas they brought to their social and spatial negotiations with other Angelenos. Chinese Angelenos’ sense of themselves shaped the nature and operation

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

187

of their huiguan (popular social organizations). Broad-based participation by Los Angeles Chinese in one or more huiguan marked their community’s maturity. Built around kinship and geographic origins, huiguan ties stretched across the Pacific Ocean. Although the huiguan often required membership from those who’d received aid in traveling from China to the United States, the associational fees opened access to legal and social protection, provided lines of communication with relatives back home, and authorized vouchers for return passage to China. The huiguan also operated associational lounges that offered hot meals, private rooms, postal services, Chinese newspapers, and other facilities. Successful merchants served as local huiguan leaders, building on their economic power to make connections beyond the sometimes-insular Chinese communities. The most visible huiguan in California was the loose, San Francisco-based confederation of merchants known as the Chinese Six Companies. In Los Angeles during the 1860s, the small population participated primarily in one huiguan, the See Yup Company, led by Sing Lee. Yo Hing and Sam Yuen, the two merchants described above, also held leadership positions in the group. Although the spelling differs slightly, the name “See Yup” signified a tie to the place from which most Chinese Angelenos hailed, Sze Yup, or the Four Counties of Guangdong. Huiguan have frequently been conflated with a different type of Chinese association, the tong. Tongs are secret (as opposed to public) societies that generate revenues through the operation of marginally legal or illegal activities. In Los Angeles, tongs ran gambling parlors, opium dens, and brothels. Publicly, the huiguan in California regularly condemned tong actions, but the boundaries between huiguan and tong blurred frequently. Given the smallness of Los Angeles’s Chinese community in the late 1860s and early 1870s, however, drawing “any meaningful distinction between the huiguan and the tongs” proves challenging. For example, the three principal leaders of the city’s See Yup huiguan—Sing Lee, Sam Yuen, and Yo Hing—together faced charges for illegally operating a brothel—usually a tong activity—in 1866.45 As leaders of local huiguan, the three also made extensive use of the courts for their own purposes, often in conjunction with lawsuits initiated against nonChinese who had injured their businesses. By the late 1860s, Los Angeles’s Chinese community was passing into its second generation, and the See Yup huiguan endured turmoil as Sing Lee

188

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

pondered relinquishing his leadership. Both Sam Yuen and Yo Hing, his two top lieutenants, desired the post. In 1868, Los Angeles police officers cited both men for fighting, after which each opened new huiguan branches in Los Angeles. Sam Yuen, seemingly supported by Sing Lee, established an outpost for the Nin Yung huiguan, and Yo Hing established the Hong Chow Company. The companies immediately became intense rivals, engaging in a sustained turf battle not for physical territory (there wasn’t much to be had) but for the loyalty of Chinese Angelenos. When Hong Chow men purchased a woman in San Francisco in November 1870 and subsequently tortured her to extract money they believed she was withholding, See Yup members allegedly informed the police. A long cycle of retaliatory violence ensued. In March 1871 Lee Young and other Hong Chow members abducted Yut Ho. Ho was married to a See Yup member named Hing Sing, one of the men who had allegedly ratted out the Hong Chow torturers. Young took Ho from her home and directly to a justice of the peace, before whom the two were married. Sing pursued legal redress and briefly reunited with Ho after a different judge annulled the marriage to Young. But Young kidnapped Ho a second time and married her a second time in Judge Murray Morrison’s chambers. The pair, who required a police escort when leaving the courthouse to protect them from the large crowd of outraged Chinese gathered outside, entered a carriage and drove away.46 Young’s successful marriage to Yut Ho counted as a major Hong Chow victory. However, the abduction provoked a new, longer, cycle of violence and retribution between Hong Chow and the rival alliance of See Yup and Nin Yung, including the exchange of gunfire between Ah Choy and Yo Hing on October 23. Choy, allegedly a Nin Yung assassin, had recently arrived from San Francisco. Sam Yuen, Nin Yung’s chief, personally delivered $6,000 to post Choy’s bond. When Hong Chow members killed Choy the next day, the gunfire began the chain of events that ended with the siege of the Coronel Block and the subsequent massacre of innocent Chinese Angelenos. Nevertheless, the presence of a turf war on one of the town’s most abused streets did not itself cause the massacre. Internecine violence among Chinese Angelenos may have irked other residents, but the actions of the mob on the evening of October 24 grew out of specific circumstances. After finding a relatively open and accepting community in Los Angeles during the 1850s and 1860s, Chinese residents found increasing hostility dur-

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

189

ing the late 1860s and early 1870s. Some historians argue that a difficult economic climate and job competition between white and Chinese males soured relations, but no solid evidence supports such claims.47 Others suggest that a long history of Western racial prejudices caused Chinese to be “racially marked upon their arrival in California,” and that “their more apparent differences from mainstream white society aroused animosity from both Mexicans and Americans.” Historian Eric Avila points out that popular discourse in the nineteenth century frequently referred to Chinese as “celestials,” terminology “that connoted their other worldliness.”48 Yet such an argument leaves little space for the dynamic negotiation between European, Mexican, and Chinese Angelenos, especially considering the meaning of Chinese identity and the place of Chinese in the city changed over time. Rather than resulting from labor strife or merely mimicking existing orientalist tropes, European and Mexican American Angelenos drew on their considerable past experience in racializing the city’s Indian inhabitants when confronting Chinese immigrants. In Los Angeles, Spanish, Mexican, and European Americans had participated in local race-making projects that encompassed social, spatial, and political components since the late eighteenth century. Despite the challenges Mexican Californians and U.S. immigrants confronted in reconciling their respective racial ideals, they cooperated effortlessly to exclude GabrielinoTongva and other Indians from full citizenship.49 From the town’s founding through the 1860s, Angelenos condemned local Indians as heathen, savage, lazy, oversexed, unintelligent, and generally unscrupulous. At the same time, they created a network of local laws, backed up by the threat of violence, that controlled Indian space, restricted Indian cultural practices, and controlled Indian labor. Angelenos effectively redeployed these tactics against Chinese. Barbs originally directed at Indians’ perceived lack of religiosity found new traction; almost every published description of Chinese life during the late 1860s and 1870s conjoins “heathen” with “Chinese.” In the realm of economy, Angelenos always professed impatience with the alleged impossibility of compelling Indians to do an honest day’s work. In contrast, Chinese workers struck American observers as so determined and frugal that they threatened to force respectable Angelenos “back to a brutish, mere physical existence, by taking away the luxuries, the means for education, and refining leisure, which have

190

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

been within their reach.”50 When racially marking Indians during the city’s early history, European and Mexican residents argued that the Indians’ conjoined polytheism and unacceptable work habits, if allowed to persist, would prevent proper civilization from taking hold; the same combination in Chinese bodies instead portended a complete unraveling of the fabric of civilized life Mexican and European Americans believed they had stitched together over the previous three generations. Violence also took on familiar tones. Spanish, Mexican, and European Angelenos—who held Indian bodies in low regard— fostered violence toward and among Indians. During the late 1860s and early 1870s, casual violence against Chinese Angelenos surged. Just as the gente de razón could attack Gabrielino-Tongva with impunity, locals with Anglo, Irish, and Mexican ancestry freely admitted to assaulting Chinese in the streets without provocation or fear of legal consequences. Such habits undoubtedly contributed to the massacre’s severity, as many Angelenos “had come to believe the increasingly common and uncontested talk, both in the press and on the streets, that the Chinese were depraved, degraded, and subhuman—in short, fair game.”51 Whatever the broad context influencing Angelenos’ reception of Chinese immigrants, they clearly turned to tried-and-true methods for marking and marginalizing the city’s Chinese residents during the late 1860s and early 1870s. Yet still deeper contours marked the terrain, physical and metaphorical, upon which the massacre took place. Neither the rise in anti-Chinese activity nor the unresolved internecine conflicts among certain Chinese Angelenos during the months before the riot adequately explain why mob violence erupted on October 24.52 To arrive at a more satisfying perspective, the broader landscapes of space, identity, and municipal power in which the massacre occurred must be considered. Although Chinese lived throughout Los Angeles, a majority had come to inhabit the adobe buildings lining Calle de los Negros by 1870. Low rents created opportunities for Chinese merchants, and their associations and businesses subsequently attracted residents, creating the alchemy that led to intense residential and commercial concentration. Beyond the association of newly marginalized residents with a historically marginalized place, life on the Calle meant that most of the competing huiguan members lived within a few hundred yards of each other. Consequently, all huiguan-related politicking,

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

191

legal maneuvering, and violence occurred in a restricted area that offered no space for antagonists to separate or for tempers to cool. Geographically, Calle de los Negros sat on the boundary between the city’s recently established First and Second Wards. Although Chinese Angelenos could not vote and infrequently participated in local politics, their presence proved threatening. In April 1871, “some anti-Chinese wag,” according to the Star, “posted a notice in ‘Sonora’ to the effect that no ‘Heathen Chinese’ will be allowed to settle in the first ward, and notifying transient Celestials to ‘cut their lucky.’”53 Perhaps the author, who may well have been Mexican American given the ward’s demographic composition, wanted to defend the already marginalized First against further degradation by the addition of Chinese residents. The note demonstrated European and Mexican American sentiments locating Chinese Angelenos both outside of and threatening to the city’s already complicated social arrangements, and it threatened violence to control Chinese spatial practices by resisting “heathen” intruders. Questions relating to formal law, use of the courts, and extralegal community justice offer another plane on which to consider the anti-Chinese massacre. Since the early 1850s, the efficacy and wisdom of the local legal system had been critical terrain upon which Angelenos had negotiated both inhabitants’ racial identities and the kind of city in which they wanted to live. Questions regarding the place of formal law within a larger, communally defined framework of justice had frequently informed episodes of vigilante violence. When Angelenos judged the courts as serving inappropriate interests or failing to deliver “justice” in terms beyond the letter of the law, they frequently turned to extralegal measures. Moreover, immigration, changes in the relationship between citizens and the municipality, economic worries, and difficult questions about the meaning of identity amplified the importance of vigilante violence during the 1850s. Mexican and European cooperation in administering extralegal justice offered solutions to the problems of both an allegedly malfunctioning legal system and pressing identity questions. For example, when the citizens (led by the mayor) lynched Dave Brown in 1855, they rebuked the courts for failing to execute Brown legally and for unsettling spatial and social relations by leaving him unpunished. A more regular operation of the courts had emerged over the past fifteen years, but the huiguan and their leaders demonstrated a remarkable knack for

192

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

exploiting the legal system during the late 1860s and early 1870s. Although barred from testifying against whites, Chinese had full standing to bring their own cases to court and to testify against each other. Huiguan leaders used the courts both to shield their communities from racism and as proxies in their competition with each other. For example, if a Chinese woman held by one huiguan ran away or was kidnapped by a rival group, the aggrieved huiguan pressed false charges against her for theft or some other middling crime, offered a cash reward for her capture, and awaited her arrest. Once arrested, the huiguan would bail the woman out of jail, retake her as its own, and drop the earlier charges. Lawyers used similar tactics to prevent key witnesses from offering damaging testimony, by instructing an associate in a nearby town, say, Santa Barbara, to swear out a warrant against the witness a day or so before he or she was scheduled to testify. The Santa Barbara authorities would then sweep into Los Angeles, arrest the suspect, and take her or him to jail in Santa Barbara. Thus jailed, the prospective witness could not appear in Los Angeles to testify, usually resulting in the dismissal of charges.54 From the perspective of many non-Chinese, however, the novel ways huiguan leaders found to manipulate the law and its officers raised new questions about the courts’ abilities to maintain order and administer justice to those who threatened it. They saw a growing but marginalized section of the population disingenuously manipulating the U.S. legal system to create a society that operated under its own rules. When Ah Choy and Yo Hing walked out of jail on October 23 and out of court unpunished on October 24, only to begin shooting again, non-Chinese Angelenos’ lack of confidence in the courts may have pushed them to other solutions. Mexican and European Americans may again have decided that people’s will stood above the legal nuances and may have thus felt empowered to engage in vigilante violence to create the order that had seemingly eluded the constituted authorities.55 Given the public’s growing distaste for internecine struggles within the Chinese community and the parallel spike in overt racism in the form of provocative newspaper coverage and random acts of unprovoked street violence, the environment for mass excitement proved ripe. The violence European and Mexican Americans enacted against the city’s Chinese on the evening of October 24, 1871, may not have been directed solely at the recent gunfights and legal maneuvering among certain Chinese Angelenos. Anger bred during

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

193

a longer period of Chinese community development, economic growth, and legal wrangling may have contributed to the hostilities. When Sheriff Burns deputized private citizens on the Calle that evening, he granted them the “public authority and its subsequent legitimation of violence” that they had sought so many times before when dissatisfied with the disorder fostered by ineffective local courts.56 Set within the longer history of popular violence in Los Angles, the decision to constitute a posse stands as an informed and volitional choice to turn the volatile crowd loose on the Chinese trapped in the Coronel Adobe and in other buildings lining the alley. Subsequent recriminations notwithstanding, the mob’s excesses and ill-chosen targets resulted from a familiar process gone awry rather than an error of first principle in the selection of vigilantism as a strategy. The massacre’s resonance with the longer history of vigilante violence in Los Angeles deepens when considering the mob’s constitution and its targets. During earlier episodes of vigilante mobilization, European and Mexican Angelenos resolved uncertainties regarding the relative social and political positions of rancheros, vecinos, and European Americans by jointly administering extralegal justice. Together, they destroyed an Indian ranchería in 1847, lynched Savaleta and Rivas in 1851, and lynched Dave Brown in 1855. Each time they publicly pronounced their shared enforcement of a locally defined social order. Choosing to commit murder publicly and by committee established a bond among the participants to willingly protect each other from the repercussions of such obvious legal violations. At those moments, they found common ground as citizens with common municipal interests and marked those who fell into circumscribed and subordinate categories of identity and non-citizenship.57 Shared violence, therefore, had effectively bound together the city’s respectable residents, regardless of wealth and ancestry, during the 1840s and 1850s. But by the fall of 1871, the dynamic intercultural community Mexican Californians and European Americans had forged was unraveling. Fundamental economic changes remade the labor market, and spatial changes and residential practices had produced an increasingly segregated city. Economic and spatial change signaled a new period of negotiation and contestation over the meanings of social identity in terms of citizenship, economic opportunity, and public participation in both politics and culture, contests in which Euro-

194

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

pean Americans had clearly gained an upper hand. Mexican American Angelenos could also easily appreciate the social, spatial, and political boundaries rapidly closing in around their Chinese neighbors. They had similarly subjected Indians and likely hoped to avoid suffering the same fate. Responding to the (trumped-up, skewed) call to defend Los Angeles from violent, lawless Chinese, Mexican Angelenos perhaps saw an opportunity to once again join with their European American compatriots in the kind of cooperative extralegal violence that could reorder Los Angeles and revive old intercultural relationships. When gunshots rang out along Calle de los Negros during the afternoon of October 24, numerous Mexican Americans rushed to the scene. The Calle’s proximity to the most heavily concentrated Mexican American residential district may offer one reason why. However, the identities of those wounded by the first rounds of gunfire open a different possibility. Robert Thompson, the only American killed in the shootout, was married to Rosario, a Mexican American. The two had a daughter named Cecilia, and Rosario was pregnant with twins. Police officer Jesus Bilderrain, the first to be shot in the gunfight, had a European American father and a Mexican Californian mother, and Jesus Mendibles, an injured bystander, was a Mexican American teenager. Although witnesses later testified that rumors reporting that “Chinese gunmen ‘were killing the white men by wholesale in Negro Alley’” had provoked the mass gathering, neither the victims allegedly deserving vengeance nor the selfappointed avengers were simply white men. However misguidedly, Mexican Angelenos may have gathered in such numbers not to defend “white men” but their own community.58 Engaging together in vigilante justice, Angelenos claiming European, U.S., and Mexican origins found a familiar meeting ground. Facing a new moment in which sharp differences produced profound tension among themselves, they might once again have looked to extralegal violence as a solution. By translating their mutual contempt for Chinese residents into vigilante action, the city’s U.S.-Mexican intercultural community might have reunited. Against that backdrop, the anti-Chinese massacre, rather than being an anomaly, more rightly stands as another episode in an embedded local social practice that found specific traction at a specific moment as it had many times in the past. The gathered mob, the creation of a deputized posse, and the vigilante vio-

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

195

lence that followed resulted neither from a momentary outbreak of bad judgment by the deputizing officer nor from a suddenly disintegrated social order. Instead, a citizenry united across boundaries of ethnicity, nationality, and class delivered a clear message of racial difference and subordination to Chinese Angelenos. But rather than balancing Thompson’s death, the lynching of Ah Wing galvanized the crowd. The ethnically and economically mixed mob that sacked the Coronel Adobe, ransacked the Calle’s stores and domiciles, and lynched so many Chinese constituted a totalizing attack by non-Chinese on the physical, social, and economic presence of Chinese Angelenos in the city. Without question, the violence reached disturbing and unprecedented extremes. Several witnesses described a carnival atmosphere, with some of the hangmen dancing on makeshift gallows. The mob both shot and hanged or otherwise mutilated its Chinese victims. The crowd delivered its message of exclusion and subordination brutally, regardless of its victims’ social position. Whereas Mexican Californians leveraged economic and social capital to negotiate their racial status during earlier decades, wealthy and well-known Chinese instead summoned an especially violent response from the crowd. The mob either destroyed or stole $3,500 in merchandise and carried away $3,000 more in coin from Sam Yuen’s Wing Chung store during the riot.59 Dr. Gene Tong—popular, prosperous, and fluent in English and Spanish—unsuccessfully begged for his life in both languages. Rather than sparing his life, the lynchers tortured Dr. Tong on the noose until he divulged the whereabouts of his valuables, then, after killing him, cut off his fingers and carried away his rings as trophies.60 With few exceptions, no one tried to prevent the killings.61 Instead, most of the city’s highly regarded citizens offered at least tacit acceptance of the violence while it was happening. Harris Newmark, who had gone home to dinner, traveled several blocks back to the Calle upon hearing news of an impending riot, then stayed and watched as the massacre unfolded.62 Mayor Aguilar rode through the assembled mass on horseback but did nothing. Councilman George Fall reportedly threw both a chair and a brick at the holed-up Chinese and called for Yo Hing’s hanging.63 The presence and passive, if not active, participation by so many of the city’s elite proceeded symmetrically with earlier moments of popular mobilization. Set in the context of the longer history of extralegal justice in Los Angeles, the anti-Chinese massacre was neither

196

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

accidental nor erroneous nor aberrant. Instead, the turn to vigilante violence makes rather frighteningly too much sense.64 The grand jury empaneled to bring the responsible parties to justice issued only thirty-seven indictments, although the crowd numbered between five hundred and a thousand residents. Of those thirty-seven indicted, only ten ever faced trial. Juries found eight men guilty of manslaughter but each one walked out of San Quentin following appeals that succeeded in part because the arresting officers carelessly failed to specify in the original paperwork that any murders had been committed.65 By these measures, no one bore legal accountability for the massacre. Moreover, a narrative quickly took hold that cast the evening as the all-too-sad result of an uncontrollable rabble, whose very excesses had been provoked by badly behaving Chinese Angelenos. By talking and writing away their own bad behavior as an unfortunate consequence of Chinese lawlessness, non-Chinese Angelenos added injuries in the form of words to those they had physically inflicted. The massacre therefore stands as a double exercise of racial power, both in the moment of its enactment and in its long-term public memory.66 Even as the Chinese community’s demographic, economic, and cultural growth over the next two decades resisted such memory, Chinese successes prompted a more concentrated and elaborate confrontation with private residents and the municipal government. The united mob effectively marked a clear racial boundary between Chinese and non-Chinese Angelenos, but this episode of vigilante violence failed to serve as a foundation upon which European and Mexican Angelenos could build new relationships. In the past Angelenos had stood back admiringly from their cooperative vigilante efforts and from them forged intercultural communal understandings. Following the anti-Chinese massacre, however, there were few public congratulatory pronouncements. Telegraphed reports of the violence produced scathing indictments from places as far away as New York and London. Leading Angelenos quickly pivoted to condemn the disorder and to exculpate themselves from responsibility for, and even participation in, the massacre. That the grand jury did any work at all to fix blame for the riot’s excesses was only one unprecedented facet of the trailing recriminations.67 The resultant indictments remained sealed except for those of the ten men who faced trial. None of them represented the city’s middling or elite ranks: three

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

197

had recently immigrated to Los Angeles from other parts of the United States, three others had immigrated from Europe (two from Ireland and one from Poland), and the other four were Mexican or Mexican American.68 Only one prominent citizen endured special public chastisement: Antonio Franco Coronel, who had served as mayor and city councilman, and in a variety of other public positions. Coronel tried to recover damages to his property, but the Common Council cited him instead for maintaining a public nuisance at the Coronel Block, arguing that his poor maintenance of the building and poor judgment in renting it out to Chinese had facilitated the massacre.69 Combined with the Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans sentenced following the grand jury investigation, the fixing of blame took on a distinctly Mexican vector. If shared vigilante violence on the night of April 24 had alchemically reunited European and Mexican Angelenos, its aftermath proved equally if not more disintegrating. Elite and middling European American Angelenos labored to distance themselves from both the massacre’s violence and the poor Mexican Americans and immigrants they subsequently blamed for perpetrating it. Rather than finding a way to reconnect, Mexican Angelenos found themselves more detached from their European American neighbors than ever before. Public blame fell on both Mexican people and Mexican places. The Coronel Adobe and Calle de los Negros sunk to new depths of disrespectability, adversely affecting the reputations of the Plaza to which they were adjacent and the entirety of the First Ward on whose southern fringe they sat. Instead of creating a new foundation for innovative intercultural alliances, the massacre and its aftermath caused the city to fracture more sharply than it had during the previous decades along the axes of class and ethnicity.

Emerging Narratives of Race and Space: The 1872 Municipal Election Chronologically, the anti-Chinese massacre bisected the 1870 and 1872 municipal elections. In 1870, when the first election held after the advent of ethnically sensitive ward boundaries had been imposed, two important trends emerged. First, the ward system effectively limited Mexican American parti-

198

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

cipation in the city government, dovetailing with more organically emerging residential separation. Few Mexican Americans lived in the Second and Third Wards and therefore few possessed sufficient influence to stand as candidates for office. Second, the 1870 mayoral contest indicated that the ward boundaries’ social sensitivities did not map congruently on to their respective residents’ political proclivities. Cristóbal Aguilar not only won handily in the First Ward, he also earned a healthy percentage of European American votes in the Second and Third to defeat Andrew Glassell. The results suggested that social relationships remained open and that political cooperation between Mexican and U.S. Angelenos remained possible. The anti-Chinese massacre reflected ongoing dynamism in Los Angeles’s social landscape and a continued sense among both European and Mexican Angelenos that they shared stakes in the city’s future. To be sure, Mexican Americans living in Los Angeles negotiated their spatial and social membership in the community on increasingly complicated terrain. In the massacre’s wake, the English-language press and other locals turned to dark depictions of both Mexican American Angelenos and the Mexican American residential district. A story of a bullfight in Sonoratown referred to bullfighting as “one of the most barbarous amusements of a barbarous age.” Although outlawed, bullfights enjoyed a brief return to popularity in the fall of 1872. Perhaps feeling the pressure of cultural and spatial marginalization, Mexican Angelenos attempted to reimprint their cultural stamp on the city. The Star reported that a “large crowd” of the city’s “Spanish-American and Indian population” gathered to witness the battle, whose display was yet “held in esteem by the lower orders” of the residents. Three weeks later the Star rebuked the “savages of Sonora” for engaging in “another of these barbarous exhibitions,” a bull-and-bear fight it decried as a “Disgusting Spectacle.”70 Condescending characterizations of Mexican Angelenos and the spaces they occupied as savage and barbarous increased as the 1872 municipal elections approached. Leading up to those elections, there emerged a separate crescendo of uncharacteristically blunt and snide attacks on Mayor Aguilar and other Mexican American candidates. In milder moments, Aguilar’s critics stuck to the triedand-true practice of praising the modernity and intelligence of his opponents, in contrast to the backwardness and folly of the Mexican Californian incumbent. For example, a November 21, 1872, editorial urged voters to pick a new

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

199

leader who would bring to the job “the strictest economy” and “the greatest business ability.” The recently approved contract with the Southern Pacific Railroad had Los Angeles on the brink of “an epoch of expansion” unlike any before. Consequently, the city needed “men of enlarged and liberal views” who possessed the “energy and capacity,” the “business proficiency, unimpugned honesty,” and “energetic and indomitable” wills to lead Los Angeles’s emergence from “the humdrum of our contracted corporate ways” in order to “become equal to the new times that are dawning on us.”71 A by-then familiar trope emerged in these statements, linking a Mexican American mayor with a civic life lagging behind the times, just as his compatriots anachronistically reveled in barbarous pleasures such as bullfighting. Such a man, from such a culture, surely could not “fill this office credibly” and surely could not lead the city into its promising future. Less than a week before the 1872 election, the political jostling took a more overtly racial turn. A suspicious meeting had been held at the house of Eugelio de Celis, noted resident and editor of the Spanish-language paper La Crónica, to put forward candidates for the Third Ward’s Common Council seats. According to the Star, the gathering allegedly included “six candidates, two Mexicans and six Indians,” who nominated de Celis and three others, named Cruz, Dennison (an incumbent), and Dunkelberger. According to the Star, the composition of the junta accounted “for the singularly chrome ticket brought forth by it.”72 The Star’s source, Horace Bell—a former California Ranger, author of a dubious history of the city, and known to be cantankerous—had been a disappointed candidate that evening and subsequently clarified the details. He had judged those neither Mexican nor white “by their complexion. If not Indians,” Bell argued, “they had nothing to brag on in point of color.” Following the “old rule” of judging “an ‘Ethiopian by his skin,’” Bell conceded the men may have been Mexicans who “had not put on their Sunday clothes and whitewash.” He also justified his own anger at having failed to carry enough votes to win a nomination by quipping, “Who would not get a little mad to have six strapping big-footed Indians march up in a body and vote against him.”73 Other residents of the Third Ward seemed sympathetic to Bell’s complaint and called for a new nominating meeting a week later. They met at B. D. Wilson’s hall, elected former governor Downey as chair, cast ballots, narrowed the list of candidates from twenty-three to eight, and then voted again

200

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

to determine four nominees. William Osborne, Eugelio de Celis, Henry Dockweiller, and Frank Sabichi won clear victories. From the original group, only de Celis prevailed a second time; Dennison finished a distant fifth, and neither Cruz nor Dunkelberger made the final eight. In sharp contrast to the allegedly pro-Mexican junta—which in reality appears more like an intercultural rather than Mexican and Indian gathering—no one with a Spanish surname held any official seat at this second caucus. Although he finished sixth, again failing to secure nomination, Bell’s race-baiting had effectively changed the composition of the Third Ward’s ticket.74 Further accusations of trickery and shenanigans arose regarding the mayor’s race. The Star, by then officially linked to the local Democratic Party, cried foul when new mayoral candidates entered the race at the eleventh hour. The sudden emergence of new contenders, it argued, would “divide the strength of the opposition to Mr. Aguilar, and thus secure the present Mayor’s reelection.” Although officially uncertain that these late entries had “actually been put forward in the interest of the present Mayor,” the article allowed such suspicions to stick in light of the fact “that the effect of [the new candidates] remaining in the field” would secure Aguilar’s reelection.75 Essentially, the Star’s editors allowed suspicions of a sinister, pro-Mexican fix to percolate. Although such fears soon proved unfounded, the racial die had been cast. Aguilar’s opponents settled on James R. Toberman, a relative newcomer to the city. He ran on a pro-growth platform, arguing that better public finances and infrastructural improvement would spur the local economy, which would in turn attract more settlers and business to the city. Moreover, Toberman drew on the dialogues of race, nation, and language to play politics. He referred to Aguilar as a Mexican, a clearly offensive misnomer for the California-born Aguilar. Toberman also attacked Aguilar’s poor command of English, his accent, and his primitive understanding of economics.76 His tactics proved effective. Although Aguilar decisively carried the First Ward by a count of 168 to 45, he tallied only 182 in the Second and Third combined. Toberman racked up 670 votes in those wards, en route to a 715-to-350 victory.77 In a notable change from the results of the 1870 election, Aguilar lost a great deal of support in the Second and Third Wards, where the language issue played out prominently and where accusations of political chicanery took on a distinctly anti–Mexican American racial tone.

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

201

Racial and Spatial Bodies: Coming into Alignment To be sure, political opportunities had not completely disappeared for Mexican Americans. In the First Ward, Julian Valdez won another term on the Common Council. Although no Mexican Americans stood for office in the Second, the four sanctioned candidates from the Third won decisive victories. Among them, Eugelio de Celis finished second with 342 votes, compared to Aguilar who polled only 106 in the same ward. Although race had not yet become determinative of Angelenos’ political opportunities, it had clearly played an important part in the dynamics of this election. Such overt race-baiting had been absent from municipal politics since the 1856 city printing fracas. In November and December 1872, however, explicit appeals to ancestry and language gained traction as unvarnished and unabashed political tools. Near the Third Ward polling place, “little knots of citizens” engaged in heated discussions regarding the relative merits of the mayoral candidates. Among them, “a decided opposition was manifested in favor of an English speaking candidate for our municipal executive.” Between two men there arose “a lowering palaver,” which “threatened to become serious.”78 Although no fight erupted, language—and the ways language substituted for heritage—threatened to bring partisans to blows in front of the polls.79 Angelenos had rarely engaged so hotly in debate on the question of the mayor’s language skills, suggesting a further foreclosure of opportunities for Spanish speakers in the political realm. Under ordinary circumstances, Aguilar’s loss might have seemed like any other defeat, but the results of the 1872 election both reflected and generated sea changes in Los Angeles. A steady rise in immigration from the United States had tipped the demographic balance, supplementing the spatial advantages ensured by the skewed ward system. The ward tallies reveal the significance of population growth, as Toberman clearly earned newcomers’ votes by attacking Aguilar’s heritage and language. In besmirching the man, he similarly tainted Aguilar’s policy choices and civic ideals as the product of blood and culture rather than rational choice. That such invocations could spur a candidate to victory meant that racism had proven itself an effective tool with which to play politics. With the privilege of hindsight, there is a temptation to view the 1872 elec-

202

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

tion as a moment of local realignment after which Mexican Angelenos faced significant obstacles in negotiating their place in the city and in shaping the city’s future. In 1875 the Southern Pacific Railroad connected Los Angeles with the transcontinental rail network. Easy passage and inexpensive fares in turn spurred population and land booms that drastically reshaped the city’s residential and political contours. These changes, in time, undermined the Mexican American majority in the First Ward. But on December 3, 1872, no one in Los Angeles knew with certainty that José Cristóbal Aguilar would be the last Mexican American to serve as mayor of Los Angeles for 130 years, that the city’s population would grow from about 6,000 to more than 50,000 in 1890 and 100,000 in 1900, or that a real estate boom would grip the city during the 1880s, only to be followed by a devastating bust. Mexican Angelenos continued to have success in winning political office in the near term, taking a total of ten council seats between 1872 and 1875. Aguilar himself answered the call to serve as zanjero, or water overseer, between 1873 and 1878, a position of continued importance in the city. What became obvious, almost immediately, was that the focus of municipal government made a swift and decisive change under the reins of its new riders. Taking a parting shot at Aguilar, the Star excoriated the former mayor and the outgoing city council on the day following the inauguration of the newly elected officers. “Can any man walk through our rugged streets and over our unequal sidewalks, some of which are positively disgraceful,” the editors ranted, “without asking whether our City Government has really any responsibility in the premises?” The article similarly mocked “the drainage of the gutters” as having been “engineered on the principle of stagnancy.” With ever more specificity, it asked “Who, if not the late Council, is responsible for nuisances such as offend the nostrils and disseminate the seeds of pestilence,” for “overflowing sewers that smell to heaven,” and for “pools of fetid sewage that fester in the sun”?80 Such questions were not general in their location but focused on a threeblock-by-three-block trapezoid encompassing (from west to east) Los Angeles, Wilmington, and Alameda Streets, and (from south to north) Requeña, Commercial, and Aliso Streets, blocks that formed the southwestern boundary of the Mexican American residential district. Through an emergent idiom of infrastructural modernity and public health, the Star condemned the old council

Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’”

203

and set the tone for the new. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that the deficiencies in the spatial body of the city’s Mexican American district coincided with the shortcomings inherent in the former mayor’s Mexican American heritage: both indicated obstacles to Los Angeles’s ability to realize a future of growth, commerce, and progress. In his inaugural message, Mayor Toberman addressed infrastructure in a decidedly more forward-looking tone. Only the state of the city’s finances occupied more of his attention than the city streets and the need to establish a sewer system. Regarding the sewers, Toberman called for “a perfect system of drainage” to satisfy the city’s sanitary necessities. Of still greater importance, the city’s streets needed to present “a neat and decent condition so as to strike the stranger with satisfaction, and thus induce the settling amongst us of permanent residents.”81 Rather than rehash the past, Toberman laid out a clear agenda for the city’s spatial and demographic future. He planned to use the municipal government’s power to reshape Los Angeles, from the ground up, into a commodity that could be marketed to newcomers and thus fuel both population and commercial growth. His speech was far from inaugural bluster; Toberman set to work immediately and made good on his promises.

CHAPTER 6

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance” The Divergent Paths of Los Angeles’s Places and Peoples, 1870–1894

the rising sun banished night’s darkness, ringing church bells shattered a quiet dawn. The tolls emanated from Los Angeles’s old Catholic church, La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles, and they reverberated across the Plaza’s dusty, horse-beaten, treeless square. The church sat on the Plaza’s west side, dominating the scene. Its six o’clock chimes joined with the roosters to wake the sleeping town. On June 19, 1870, like every other day, the bells summoned the devout to Mass, laborers to work, and proprietors to their shops. As the sun rose in the morning sky, pedestrians, horses, and buggies filled the streets below.1 Northeast of the church and Plaza, Felis Gallardo arose. Leaving his home at 12 Bath Street, Gallardo walked southwest, across the Plaza, past the church, and down Main Street to his business, the Zaragosa Restaurant, located at 36 Main Street, diagonally across the street from El Palacio, the adobe home of Doña Arcadia Bandini de Stearns.2 He walked past the recently completed Pico House. Under construction since September 1869, the American Romanesque–styled hotel rose three stories above the Plaza. It had “deep-set arched doors and windows” and a stuccoed and painted brick facade masquerading as “light blue granite.” Built on a stone foundation, the structure boasted a cellar, brick walls, strong support beams, and a heavily corniced tin AS

204

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

205

Figure 6.1. Pico House, 1875. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [474])

roof. Visitors would soon enter into a “high lobby with a double staircase leading to a mirrored landing ornamented with statues and vases.”3 The stairway led to a second-floor parlor, and the lobby below connected to a central courtyard dominated by a large fountain and several cages of singing birds (figure 6.1).4 Somewhere within the new building, among the sumptuous new furnishings, Pío Pico prepared for an exciting day. Pico had enjoyed a long social and political career, which itself often centered on the Plaza and in which he had held high offices under the Mexican flag. After Los Angeles’s annexation to the United States, Pico enjoyed fabulous wealth as a cattle baron and then turned his efforts to business and real estate. On June 19, 1870, Pico opened his new hotel for business and engaged in one of his long life’s most important ventures. Pico’s life and the Pico House exemplified both past and ongoing changes to the society, culture, and economy in Los Angeles. Born May 5, 1801, at Mission San Gabriel in Southern California, Pico served in the Spanish army and

206

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

received a sizable land grant from the Crown. He acquired more lands after Mexico became independent and served as the territory’s last governor under the Mexican flag, from 1845 to 1846. By then Pico had become a member of the californio elite and had helped to establish the racial markers that divided California society by employing dozens of indios and cholos on his ranch, engaging in the hide and tallow trade, dressing fancily, throwing elaborate fiestas, and, in his political capacities, making and enforcing policies that kept Indians in a cycle of forced labor and forced vagrancy. During the 1820s, Pico joined his brother-in-law José Antonio Carrillo in building a townhouse facing the Plaza. Along with other californios, Pico used this house whenever business or pleasure drew him into the pueblo from his ranch.5 Like many of his cohort, Pico’s economic fortunes crested with the gold rush and were eroded by the crash in cattle prices, legal challenges to his holdings, and the killing drought of 1862–64. Pico nevertheless remained active in real estate, at times selling parts of his ranching empire and even his Plaza townhome, at other times reinvesting in new commercial opportunities. During the 1860s, Pico sold a substantial portion of his San Fernando Valley holdings and spent $115,000 to purchase and redevelop Carrillo’s abandoned adobe, and the land on which it had sat vacant for several years. Pico built a grand hotel on the site, revitalized the social life of the town’s historic center, and brought ranchero influence back to the area. From its 1870 opening through the 1880s, the Pico House enjoyed a favorable status as a cultural and social center.6 The Pico House represented a dramatic departure from traditional Mexican and Spanish architecture in both style and building materials. Three stories of brick and stucco replaced Carrillo’s adobe, as the Plaza’s first townhouse gave way to its grandest hostelry.7 In replacing an old townhouse with a hotel, Pico also embraced Los Angeles’s new economic and residential realities. Into the 1860s, demand for hotels remained relatively low; the city’s population stood steady and tourism was not yet popular. Moreover, most of the house lots surrounding the Plaza remained occupied by individuals who had no need of a hotel that could serve as a social center. By 1870 business had picked up, and many of the Plaza’s original residences had given way to commercial ventures. Pico properly appreciated these changes and replaced a private adobe residence with a modern hotel that operated as a commercial, profit-oriented

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

207

venture. The Pico House’s success offers evidence of Pico’s ability to adapt from a principally pastoral to capitalist economy.8 The timing of Pico’s triumph proves particularly curious in light of other developments simultaneously afoot. One of the city’s most fabled old rancheros reasserted significant social and cultural power at the same moment that a polarized political battle between Mexican Californians and European Americans reached fever pitch. Just as the Common Council established election wards designed to snuff out Mexican Californian political power and just as U.S.-born electioneers appealed to issues of heritage and language to carry James Toberman into the mayor’s office as Cristóbal Aguilar’s replacement, Pico reclaimed the city’s central space. He did so in radically changed circumstances and along intercultural social and economic axes. Take the name itself, the Pico House. Not a hotel or an inn, but a house, Pico’s house. Translated into Spanish, it would be “La Casa Pico” or “La Casa de Pico.” In either case, the words were the same as those Spanish speakers would have used for Pico’s former townhouse. Indeed, many of the surviving hijos del país and their descendants, having become estranged from their own Plaza townhomes, stayed at the Pico House during the 1870s and 1880s. Beyond quartering guests, the Pico House also served as Los Angeles’s premier social destination upon opening. After twenty-five years, Pico reclaimed cultural sway over the Plaza onto which he had looked from his private residence and public office as governor of Alta California during the 1840s. Pico’s and the Pico House’s stories are only two among many that suggest a range of possibilities for the intercultural relationships that persisted in Los Angeles. The first two decades during which European Americans dominated the Common Council, the 1870s and 1880s also witnessed the city’s first land, real estate, and population booms. Los Angeles’s population increased from five thousand to fifty thousand during these decades. A concomitant infrastructure boom also ensued, with the advent of gas and electric lights, streetcars, and private networks for the distribution of potable water. In addition, and among this chapter’s foci, the city built a sewer system and oversaw the grading and improvement of hundreds of miles of new streets. Despite the hostile political and social climate that produced skewed ward boundaries, the anti-Chinese riot, and the race baiting that marred municipal elections, abundant evidence from the 1870s and 1880s suggests that Angelenos con-

208

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

tinued to share their public and private lives across social and economic lines around the Plaza district. As residences and businesses diversified in type and structure and spread out across the landscape, the Plaza and adjacent blocks remained important to the city’s intercultural economic and social life. Maintaining intercultural relationships in the Plaza district, however, depended in part on the area’s built environment. The particularities of the urban landscape in part determine the ability of private citizens and policy makers to sustain and reproduce community.9 As Henri Lefebvre suggests, space should not be understood simply as “the passive locus of social relations, the milieu in which their combination takes on body.” Instead, space informs the “underlying logic” that shapes political, social, and economic power.10 Exploring the 1870s and 1880s, this chapter chronicles the various choices individuals and groups made in their domestic, working, and recreational lives side-byside with significant, policy-driven, Cartesian changes in Los Angeles’s infrastructure and built environment. The stereoscopic view such an approach affords draws into focus the layered relationship between identity, space, and public power. By bringing infrastructure and society together, I hope to explore the processes and limitations of race making, identity fashioning, and the politics of public space. In particular, I ask how individual residents and public officials limit or expand the kinds of social interactions that are possible when they alter the physical form of the city within which they live. Similarly, can differential neighborhood development provoke profound reconfigurations in the connection between people and place?

Growing Together: Shared Social Life in a Growing City In the early 1870s Los Angeles remained a “walking city.” The city had a maximum radius of three miles, keeping the walk between periphery and core to one hour and preventing the citizens, shops, and offices from falling out of communication with one another. In the walking city, rich and poor residents lived in close proximity to the commercial center of town, and citizens “depended on face-to-face relationships” to communicate.11 Although frenzied land speculation drove a real estate boom in the late 1880s, producing further outward growth, European Americans’ southwestward movement within Los Angeles had commenced in earnest during the 1870s. By 1880 the

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

209

first horse-drawn streetcars rolled along Main and Spring Streets, opening to those who could afford both the land and the ride an area stretching more than thirty blocks southwest from the town’s historic center. As had been the case since the late 1850s, private residential choices led to renewed demands on the city to provide commensurate infrastructure, creating a renewed focus on the questions of water and streets. As Angelenos spread out into new residential areas, the area around the Plaza remained the city’s most heterogeneous. European Americans, Spanish speakers of Californian and Mexican birth, and Chinese newcomers made homes, earned livings, and spent free time there, even though the neighborhood’s buildings and streets underwent important changes. Beginning in the late 1850s, several old californio townhomes passed into the hands of new European American landlords, some of whom razed the old adobes and replaced them with large business blocks. Others converted the buildings into subdivided rental units, as along Calle de los Negros where a concentrated Chinese community emerged. Despite its metamorphosis, the Plaza remained the city’s central hub, containing a mix of residential, commercial, and public space. Established and recently arrived U.S. immigrants continued to push the city’s residential and commercial footprint southwesterly, and Sonoratown grew north of the Plaza and became the city’s first recognizable Mexican American barrio.12 Consequently, while the areas surrounding the Plaza became increasingly polyglot, individual streets and neighborhoods gradually grew more homogenous. On both sides of the Plaza, buildings changed hands and uses. At 12 Bath Street, just northeast of the Plaza, the Sepúlveda Adobe transitioned from a family townhome into a bustling boardinghouse. Although Joaquín Sepúlveda, one of José Andrés Sepúlveda’s ten children, retained ownership of the building and engaged in the family ranching business, he shared his family home with an array of lodgers.13 Across the Plaza, three blocks to the southwest, El Palacio underwent a dramatic transformation. Built in 1836 by Abel Stearns and Arcadia Bandini de Stearns, the sprawling adobe was one of early Los Angeles’s most prominent residences. Following Abel’s death in 1867, Doña Arcadia remarried to Colonel R. S. Baker, a prominent capitalist and property holder who later developed present-day Santa Monica. In 1877 the couple tore down El Palacio and built the Baker Block, a three-story, steel-framed, Second

210

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Figure 6.2. Lithograph of the Baker Block, 1880, from Thompson and West’s History of Los Angeles County, 1880. (Courtesy of University of Southern California, on behalf of the USC Libraries Special Collections, CHS-m1068)

Empire building with an elaborate facade, tall cupola, and ornate interiors (figure 6.2; see figure 4.1 for comparison with El Palacio). The Baker Block soared to prominence as the largest and best-appointed residential and retail location in Los Angeles.14 Like its predecessor the product of a mixed European American–Mexican Californian marriage, the Baker Block embodied the evolution of intercultural spatial practices in Los Angeles. A showcase for its owners, it served private as well as public purposes and its ample spaces reflected not opportunities for hospitable reciprocity but capital revenues for both landlord and tenants. Despite its drift toward capital purposes, the Baker Block’s success as a business hub kept one of the city’s most important places of commerce connected closely to the Plaza (figure 6.3). Moreover, Doña Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker refused to relocate her own residence and lived “literally over her old home” in a sprawling second-floor apartment she compelled Colonel Baker to build.15

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

211

Figure 6.3. “Map of the Old Portion of the City Surrounding the Plaza, Showing the Old Church, Public Square, the First Gas Plant, and Adobe Buildings.” (From The First Los Angeles City and County Directory, 1872 [reprinted, Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1963])

Just southeast of the Plaza, Los Angeles’s burgeoning Chinese community grew along Calle de los Negros and Alameda Street. Although some Chinese moved immediately to Los Angeles upon entering the United States in the 1860s, a majority of the newcomers were likely refugees from the persistent anti-Chinese violence in San Francisco and the gold mining districts.16 Beginning in the 1860s, Chinese rented rooms and ran businesses out of the old Coronel and Lugo Adobes (figure 6.4). Between 1860 and 1870, Los Angeles’s Chinese population grew from 6 to 163, with 80 Chinese living on Negro Alley.17 By 1880, 221 Chinese lived on this five-hundred-foot-long strip, accounting for more than one-third of all Chinese in Los Angeles County. Only two French bakers broke the Calle’s complete homogeneity and, according to the 1880 census, no block was more densely populated in all of Los Angeles.18

212

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Figure 6.4. Pekin Curio Store in the Lugo Adobe, photograph circa 1905. In the 1890s, Leeching Hung & Co. occupied the building. The Canton Bazaar subsequently operated there and rented rooms to Chinese on the upper floors. In 1951, the Lugo Adobe was dismantled. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL Pierce 00680)

During the 1880s the countywide Chinese population increased from 605 to 1,871, with more than 1,200 Chinese counted in the ward that encompassed Chinatown.19 The bonds of community, kin, and language—and most Angelenos’ unwillingness to sell or rent to Chinese immigrants—produced this crowded, exclusively Chinese district.20 According to the 1880 census, the Calle’s few buildings had been divided into sixty-one distinct residential units. Two-thirds of all households included both residents and lodgers, indicating space shared across class lines as most boarders worked in manual or service trades while heads of households claimed employment as skilled workers, merchants, or professionals.21 Consequently, as in Sepúlveda’s home, Chinese Angelenos’ residential life organized itself along class lines.22 The most famous “house” in Los Angeles during the 1870s and 1880s was

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

213

undoubtedly Pico’s new hotel. Opened June 19, 1870, at 12 Main Street, the Pico House appealed instantly to Los Angeles’s commercial establishment. The Los Angeles Herald’s editor, J. M. Bassett; two drivers for the Coast Line Stage Company, David Green and Peter Smith; real estate agent R. D. Pitt; Wells Fargo agent William Pridham; and “capitalists” R. S. Baker and Vincent A. Hoover all lived in or did business at the Pico House during the 1870s. So too did several employees, including Antonio Cuyas, a Spaniard Pico poached from New York’s Barcelona Hotel as maître d’hôtel. Two-dozen members of the Pico House’s labor force lived on the premises, including a housekeeper, the bartenders, and the late-night clerk.23 Like in Sepúlveda’s adobe, the Baker Block, and many units along Calle de los Negros, Angelenos occupying a range of economic positions made their homes at the Pico House. Although some residential blocks surrounding the Plaza became ethnically homogeneous, Angelenos remained intimately connected in their working and social lives. Even as Spanish- and English-speaking Angelenos squabbled about politics and infrastructure during the late 1860s and early 1870s, they remained economic and social companions through the 1880s, and the city’s central spaces remained ethnically mixed. Where and how Angelenos spent their working and leisure time depended more on class and status than appearance, language, or nativity. Moreover, the Plaza remained a public place where residents of diverse backgrounds and economic means gathered for recreation. For elite tourists and locals alike, the Plaza-facing Pico House dominated nightlife during the 1870s and 1880s. Boasting deep-set arched doors and windows, a blue granite stucco finish, high-ceilinged lobby, fountains, an aviary, and sumptuous chairs and lounges, the Pico House greeted Angelenos as the city’s snazziest building.24 Locals quickly made it “the social and cultural center of Los Angeles.” The hotel provided many options for evening and weekend entertainment, including chandelier-lit dining rooms overlooking the Plaza and a “luxurious” bar that opened onto both Main Street and the Plaza. A billiard room completed the available amusements.25 Across lines of heritage, these amenities drew the local gentry, who joined the hotel’s guests as the most refined consumers of the city’s burgeoning social scene. As they spilled out onto the Plaza, the bar’s patios offered customers the opportunity to enjoy the city’s splendid climate and to publicly demonstrate their privilege in the city’s central space.

214

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Figure 6.5. Pico House, 1891, looking southwest down Main Street. The Merced Theatre is the white three-story building adjoining the Pico House, and the Baker Block is beyond it at far right. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [01286])

The Merced Theatre, another venue for nightlife, opened next door to the Pico House on January 30, 1871 (figure 6.5). The Merced bore the name of its owner and patroness, Mercedes Abbott, daughter of prominent vecinos José Antonio Garcia and María Guadalupe Uribe. Señora Abbott ran the theater with her husband, William, a furniture maker who moved from Indiana to Los Angeles in 1853. William bought an original town-lot adobe in 1855 where he made his home and out of which he operated a furniture store. When Pico began to build his hotel, the Abbotts decided to tear down their adobe and build a three-story building. William ran his furniture store on the bottom floor, Mercedes ran the theater on the second, and the family lived on the top floor. The theater was Señora Abbott’s pet project and named in her honor.26 Like Pico, Mercedes Abbott reconfigured her old adobe in line with U.S. building and spatial techniques in order to return Mexican Californian influence to the Plaza. While Pico’s hotel focused on business and socializing, Doña Mercedes’s theater brought elite culture back to the Plaza and helped her, a prominent local woman, enhance her position atop the city’s cultural

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

215

community. As both a structure and a stage on which plays were performed, the Merced Theatre, like the Pico House, reflected the changes of preceding decades. During the ranchero days, theater had been performed either outside on the Plaza or inside one of the adjacent townhouses, such as Coronel’s. In the 1870s, however, the Merced Theatre offered a dedicated, enclosed performance space and operated as a commercial venture for profit.27 Like other Mexican Californian women, Doña Abbott leveraged her still potent social cultural capital to rearticulate an intercultural identity and sensibility through her playhouse, which served both cultural and economic ends.28 Doña Abbott succeeded in appealing to both English- and Spanish-speaking Angelenos. She printed handbills for the Merced’s inaugural performance— a production of Fanchon, the Cricket put on by the nationally famous McKee Rankin dramatic troupe—in both Spanish and English and advertised several successive events similarly.29 Opening night drew a “fashionable audience,” and Mexican and European Americans shared the theater’s crude chairs many times thereafter.30 The Merced Theatre also brought Mexican and European Americans together for less high-minded performances. The California Minstrels and Johnny Allen’s Burlesque also played the Merced the first year, and other minstrel shows visited over the next ten years, often playing to sold-out houses. On these occasions, Mexican Angelenos renewed their claims to racial superiority and shared with white Angelenos in a ritual act of racial supremacy. Once articulators and enforcers of a racial hierarchy in their exploitation of Native Californians and ordinary Mexicans, the hijos del país and their children participated anew in building a racial order, this time along U.S. lines of color.31 Judged by the Pico House’s busy bar and restaurants and the Merced’s frequently packed house, evening culture remained interethnic during the 1870s and 1880s. The divisive politics of recent years hadn’t foreclosed on possibilities for a shared, heterogeneous cultural life among middling and elite Angelenos. Much as the Pico House and Merced Theatre dominated highbrow cultural life in the 1870s and 1880s, other attractions near the Plaza offered working-class Angelenos ample choices for recreation. Eight bars and eight billiard halls dotted the surrounding blocks, and the Chinese quarter was the epicenter of evening revelry.32 Despite the brutal anti-Chinese massacre, Chinese entrepreneurs operated twenty different establishments near and along Calle

216

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

de los Negros by 1875, among them gambling parlors, the Chinese Theater Company, and some opium dens. These enterprises proved extremely popular among working European, Mexican, and Chinese Angelenos and probably claimed as clients many middling and elite residents.33 In the Chinese district, ancestry placed no limits on interaction. Close quarters meant close contact, and visitors to gambling parlors played communal games like Fan Tan, which broke down social barriers by forcing players to crowd around tables where cards and dice determined whether they would share victory or defeat.34 The popularity of these establishments confirmed a place for Chinese Angelenos in the city’s social life, however unwilling most public observers might have been to admit it. Although sometimes congregating according to economic station, abundant social heterogeneity characterized Los Angeles’s recreational life during the 1870s and 1880s. Seemingly disconnected from the racialized tones that permeated local politics, social life remained an open venue for intercultural activity. Chinese business owners responded to the 1871 riot by making Calle de los Negros the city’s most popular attraction, and Don Pico and Doña Abbott spearheaded a Mexican Californian reclamation of cultural authority over the city’s central space. Rather than acquiesce to the tidy, compartmentalized marginalization suggested by the tone and direction of local politics, Mexican Californian, Chinese, and European American entrepreneurs ran businesses that brought Angelenos together for leisure in the Plaza district. Numerous community organizations also clustered near the Plaza. During the 1870s, more than thirty associations boasting an aggregate membership in excess of twenty-eight hundred (although this figure double-counts individuals who participated in more than one group) brought regular meetings to the area. European American clubs such as the Masons, various benevolent societies, and a German Turnverein met regularly in the district.35 By 1890, there were eleven different Mexican American community organizations, including labor, political, patriotic, military, and mutual benefit societies.36 Based on Calle de los Negros, associational huiguan held the diasporic Chinese community together. Huiguan fostered extended kin networks among immigrants, facilitated communication between the United States and China, offered a respite from a frequently hostile populace, and provided legal representation for individuals and the community. These organizations, in their aggregate ac-

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

217

tivities, added to the richness and diversity of the city’s social and cultural life throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Fraternal organizations proved especially attractive to European American men. Five chapters of the International Order of Odd Fellows claimed 320 members. The chapters kept the hall in the Downey Block full on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday nights. The F. & A.M., a Masonic organization, also boasted five chapters, each of which met regularly at the Masonic Hall next to the Merced Theatre.37 French and Hebrew Benevolent Societies and the Turnverein Germania (with 240, 75, and 110 members, respectively) appealed to specific old world attachments; each met in Stearns’s Hall on the Arcadia Block’s upper floor.38 During the 1870s, fifteen new organizations emerged, including temperance, anti-Chinese, and militia groups.39 Mexican and Mexican American community organizations similarly flowered during the 1870s and 1880s. The number of fraternal organizations, political clubs, and mutual benefit societies grew from three to eleven between 1875 and 1886, and to fifteen by the mid-1890s; La Junta Patriótica de Juárez and La Sociedad Hispano-Americana de Beneficia Mutua were foremost among them. Founded by Juan Prieto in 1863 principally as a Mexican nationalist organization, La Junta organized parades, speeches, and fiestas in honor of important Mexican national holidays. La Sociedad, the first Mexican-organized mutual benefit society and self-help agency, provided social services, granted loans to businessmen and homebuyers, and provided inexpensive medical and life insurance policies. Established in 1875, La Sociedad paralleled groups like the huiguan and Hebrew and German mutual benefit societies. La Sociedad also built a hospital for the poor, petitioned the city for a public Spanish-language school, and staged concerts and dances to raise funds for its many projects.40 Los Angeles’s Chinese community also supported two major mutual benefit societies, or huiguan. Beyond their commercial interests, Hong Chow and Nin Yung offered financial, social, and fraternal services.41 They also proved skilled at offering prompt legal services to defend Chinese residents who endured unusually harsh treatment.42 Los Angeles’s community organizations frequently orchestrated festivals during which they occupied the Plaza, a large open space at the heart of the city, in public celebration (figure 6.6). Such events merit particular attention because they offered groups the opportunity to “claim the neighborhood in

218

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Figure 6.6. Looking west across the Plaza, 1880s. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [475])

full view of other residents.”43 La Junta Patriótica Mexicana organized annual Mexican Independence Day and Cinco de Mayo celebrations that took place on the Plaza. Nearly a thousand people representing a dozen different groups marched in the 1878 parade.44 In 1881, several European American groups celebrated the city’s centennial by parading through the streets and hosting a massive fiesta in the Plaza, drawing a mixed crowd of citizens numbering in the thousands.45 An 1883 parade and Plaza party commemorating Mexican independence included poetry readings and speeches delivered in both English and Spanish, suggesting mixed, multigenerational attendance.46 Chinese celebrations during the 1870s and 1880s drew large, multiethnic crowds, which often backfilled into the Plaza, only one block away. Local papers offered elaborate reports of these “exotic” scenes and occasionally educated readers about Chinese holidays.47 The Chinese district “was brilliantly lighted with Chinese lanterns,” and “a band of music occupied a stand at the head of the alley” in Chung Ting Tsooi’s honor in 1884.48 For the festival of “Ah Dieu,” reported to be “the most important . . . in the Chinese calendar,” the Times offered two primers followed by three consecutive days of coverage. It deemed the final day’s parade the “most gorgeous street pageant ever seen in Los Angeles.”49 During Chinese New Year celebrations “all Chinatown kept open house,” drawing “hundreds of Americans, fully half of the callers

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

219

being ladies.” In 1886, “many Americans” attended ceremonies and performances at the Chinese theater and “Chinatown was thronged . . . by a large number of visitors of all ages and conditions in life, and from every section of the country.”50 Festivals, parades, and celebrations brought Los Angeles’s polyglot citizenry together in the central district during the 1870s and 1880s, mirroring the day-to-day connections among citizens in their social and community lives. The multiple people, groups, and public events centered on the Los Angeles Plaza and its immediate vicinity marked an enduring heterogeneity in the city’s lived environment. European, Mexican, and Chinese Angelenos included the Plaza in their respective quests to claim public space. Businesses, community organizations, and public celebrations drew cross-cultural crowds that generally enjoyed the district’s attractions peacefully. Precisely when European Americans seemingly silenced the political voices of the city’s Mexican and Chinese residents, Mexican and Chinese American businesses and community associations emerged and flourished. The popularity of these organizations suggests that Mexican and Chinese Angelenos increasingly identified along ethnic lines. Unwilling to accept marginalization, Chinese and Mexican Angelenos thus engaged their fellow citizens and claimed membership in the city’s broader social fabric on their own terms.51

Sewers, Streets, and Remaking Los Angeles’s Infrastructure The preponderance of shared residential, recreational, and communal spaces suggest that social relationships in Los Angeles remained relatively stable through the 1870s, and substantive social and economic interaction among all Angelenos persisted into the 1890s.52 The city’s spatial arrangements, however, underwent dramatic transformations. In the two decades following James Toberman’s 1872 mayoral victory, power relationships along the axes of policy and politics realigned with substantive consequences for the city’s built environment. Writing about the connections between race, place, and policy during the nineteenth century, historical geographer David Delaney argues that “space and power are so tightly bound that changing one necessarily entails changing the other.”53 Changes to both space and power swept over Los Angeles during the 1870s and 1880s as the close connections between politics,

220

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

public policy, and the built environment spurred rapid change in the city’s infrastructure. What appeared as a burst of activity proved over time to be the advent of wholesale change in Los Angeles’s infrastructure, especially concerning water, sewers, and streets. True to their campaign promises, European Americans who secured control over the city council in 1872 wasted little time remaking the city’s built environment. They took steps to convert the sleepy pueblo of shops and farms into a haven for industrial and agricultural commerce. Establishing a connection to the transcontinental railroad, although not exclusively under the council’s purview, stood as one linchpin in this project. In 1876 tracks connected Los Angeles to Oakland and the transcontinental line; a direct eastward link, through El Paso, was completed in 1881; and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe arrived in 1885.54 Although railroads made the movement of people and products possible on a grand scale, they alone did not ensure the realization of the boosters’ goals. By the mid-1880s, gas- and electric-powered city lights and street railways made it possible for residential districts to spread out. The combination of new businesses, a railroad link, local transportation, and new infrastructural amenities generated a cycle of land speculation, sales, and development that produced the city’s first population and real estate boom in the late 1880s. Before any of that transpired, however, Los Angeles itself had to become attractive, both to businesses and prospective workers, or in Mayor Toberman’s words, to assume “a neat and decent condition so as to strike the stranger with satisfaction, and thus induce the settling amongst us of permanent residents.”55 To those ends, Toberman and the Common Council elected in 1872 spearheaded a burst of activity that fundamentally changed the city’s infrastructure and water use habits. On April 4, 1873, the Los Angeles Common Council established the city’s first public sewer. Creatively named the “Main Sewer,” it replaced Zanja No. 9, one of hundreds of open canals crisscrossing the city to deliver water for irrigation and, in some places, domestic use. Instead of the zanja’s open trench, the Main Sewer was to move water underground, through eight-foot segments of brick pipe that had an internal diamond-shaped tube fifteen inches in height.56 The council ordered the conversion of two other zanjas into sewers within the next two months. This action marked the first significant strategic shift in water conveyance since the founding of Los Ange-

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

221

les in 1781. Those zanjas that retained their initial purpose also underwent profound changes in spring 1873 as the city decided to replace all open zanjas with closed pipes for agricultural use.57 Subsequent councils carried these projects further forward. By 1890 the city had channeled almost all primary surface waters into closed pipes, establishing separate wastewater, salable irrigation water, and potable water networks. Los Angeles’s thoroughfares experienced a similar transformation; hundreds of miles of dirt roads became named, graded, improved, and paved streets. Infrastructure development is important because sewers, pipes for potable water, and roadways not only constitute a city’s physical foundation, they also determine the arrangement of its built space. Because such spaces are homes, businesses, and gathering places, they in turn shape a city’s social life and economy.58 Consequently, in both their construction and location, streets and sewers play a critical role in defining the physical and cultural geography of urban places. Having secured a political victory, pro-growth European American city leaders set their plan into action, building in Los Angeles the modern, commercially oriented metropolis for which they had so stridently yearned. None of this, however, would have been possible without the less glamorous efforts regarding water, waste, and the city streets—projects that established an infrastructure capable of supporting residential and commercial growth. No one made the connection between infrastructural development and commercial growth clearer than William Jenkins, the city’s zanjero. In his 1883 annual report, Jenkins complained that although the Common Council controlled a water supply “sufficient to turn half the spindles of Lowell,” the open, earthen zanjas let it go “to waste in unproductive sand.” Such inefficiency prevented the city from garnering maximal revenues and hampered efforts to attract capital investment. Only by enclosing all irrigation waters in closed pipes could the city make good on its opportunity to attract “cotton, wool, paper, and dozens of other sorts of factories here,” whose owners stood “ready to pay you enormous sums”—enough to cover “the entire expenses of the city government.”59 During the 1870s and 1880s, the Common Council enclosed all surface water within separate pipe networks for irrigation and sewage. (Potable water had already been siphoned off by the Los Angeles Water Company following its successful bid for a thirty-year franchise in 1868.)60 Separate waste and irrigation networks allowed the city to designate specific waters for specific pur-

222

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

poses, to direct flow through and to different areas, to control access and delivery options, and to levy fees. An 1873 ordinance made all open water off limits and required all domestic water to be purchased, either from the city water company or a water seller.61 The law effected a radical change in the relationship among people, water, and the city government as Angelenos lost access to water formerly available for general use, whether agricultural or otherwise. For nearly one hundred years, waters in the Los Angeles River had been communally owned and commonly distributed. After 1873, however, everyone had to pay, and those able to afford more water got more water.62 The Los Angeles Common Council authorized the first three public sewers in April and May of 1873, thereby initiating the process of modernizing Los Angeles’s infrastructure for waste conveyance and disposal.63 This project proceeded in fits and starts through the end of the nineteenth century. The absence of an advanced waste disposal system did not adversely affect the pueblo during the 1850s and 1860s. When only 1,610 people lived in the pueblo in 1850, the zanjas capably irrigated the villagers’ lands and carried most waste not deposited into individual privies out of town, with farmers using the rest for fertilizer. Even as the population grew to 5,728 between 1850 and 1870, the zanja system continued to function. Only when the city expanded more rapidly, between 1870 and 1890, did residents produce “far more refuse,” reducing “the space available for its disposal.”64 The population doubled between 1870 and 1880, then quintupled to more than 50,000 inhabitants by 1890. Acute droughts in the late 1870s and early 1880s accelerated city leaders’ concerns regarding irrigation and waste management. Early on, the council placed closed pipes in the trenches of formerly open zanjas to establish sewer lines through town, although all sewers deposited their untreated waste back into a specific section of the zanja network farther down the line. Early efforts met with mixed success: some of the sewers backed up, leaked, and failed to drain, producing noxious and fetid cesspools in the low spots.65 The city moved quickly to construct new sewers that terminated at the city’s southern boundary. There, the South Side Irrigation Company disposed of the sewage in return for the right to sell the sewer water for irrigation.66 This arrangement sufficed for more than a decade. In an interesting twist, the Common Council’s commitment to sewers—

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

223

Figure 6.7. Map showing the varieties and lengths of sewers laid on December 1, 1891. Mexican and Chinese districts are in the unshaded area; dark lines indicate sewers. The small circle just right of center represents the Plaza. (J. H. Dockweiler, Los Angeles City Engineer, submitted and bound with City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Municipal Reports, 1891, bound between pages 53 and 54; from the collection of Los Angeles Public Library)

lauded as a universal public benefit—excluded the thickly settled Mexican American and Chinese residential districts. Most Mexican American Angelenos lived in a neighborhood that spread east from Main Street to the Los Angeles River and north from Aliso Street to Main Street. Chinatown sat just south of Sonoratown and clustered around Los Angeles, Commercial, and Alameda Streets.67 Comparing the city engineer’s 1891 sewer system map to residential patterns reveals that no sewers crisscrossed these enclaves (figure 6.7). Two sewers grazed Sonoratown’s southern boundary, and one ran along

224

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Chinatown’s southern edge. Annual reports from various entities inside the city give no reason to suspect this disparity found a quick resolution after 1891. No direct evidence explains the causes of this infrastructural asymmetry. Most sewer work resulted from petitions filed by property owners requesting the new service, suggesting that landowner initiative played a decisive role in the sewer network’s specific growth.68 Special property assessments funded most sewerage projects through the 1880s, and sewer ordinances usually required owners to pay.69 Most residents in Chinatown and Sonoratown didn’t own their own homes, meaning few Mexican or Chinese Angelenos would have had the opportunity to request sewers for their neighborhoods.70 Consequently landlords, rather than local residents, would have had to make the investment. Had this been the only means by which the city council established sewers, the combination of class and neglect would suffice to explain unequal distribution. But the state legislature had granted Los Angeles the power of eminent domain in 1872, affording city governors another tool for extracting fees to offset construction costs, a tool it used when establishing the first sewer and several subsequent lines.71 In other cases, the council simply made compliance mandatory, ordering sewers to be “constructed at the cost and expense of the several parties owning property along its route.”72 By 1890, the city had even more options at its disposal. Driven by railroad price wars and an increasingly active real estate market, the city’s population rose from eleven thousand to fifty thousand between 1880 and 1890. The rapid growth overwhelmed the existing network and prompted the exploration of other options. Voters ultimately approved one million dollars in bonds to fund a comprehensive sewer system (figure 6.8).73 These bonds gave the city a mandate to act and provided the requisite capital to build a comprehensive sewer system, but the money sat in city accounts largely unspent for some time. Consequently, a lack of means or funds fails to explain the absence of sewers in Mexican and Chinese American neighborhoods.74 City leaders couldn’t cry ignorance anymore than they could cry poverty. Beginning in 1879 and continuing into the 1890s, health officers and sewer committees frequently lamented the poor state of sanitation and public health in areas where Chinese and Mexican Angelenos resided and repeatedly requested sewers for these locales. In 1879 the city’s public health officer,

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

225

Figure 6.8. Sewer bond issued July 1, 1890. (Courtesy of Los Angeles City Archives)

Dr. Walter Lindley, declared Chinatown “the crying sanitary evil of Los Angeles.” Although he stated emphatically that an additional sewer to drain Chinatown was “the great need of the city,” his request did not lead to immediate action. Five years later, the Sewer Committee deemed Chinatown’s lone sewer “to be thoroughly worthless” and “so rotten that in many places the wood had entirely disappeared, leaving only an earthen mould through which the sewer fluid found passage.” The same report twice called for new sewers to “afford an outlet for the locality north of Macy Street, and between Alameda and San Fernando Streets on the west and the Los Angeles River on the east,” an area that corresponded directly to Sonoratown.75 Through the first half of the 1890s, none of these entreaties provoked action. While using public funds to build sewers where Mexican and Chinese citizens lived might not have been the smartest political decision for elected officials, ignoring their own committees and endangering the city’s general public health seems equally unwise. The city’s unwillingness to sewer these neighborhoods contrasted sharply with its active program to provide sewers to others.76 Given the options at its disposal, it is difficult to find a reason other than discrimination to explain why the city simply refused to build sewers in the Mexican and Chinese residential districts.

226

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Los Angeles’s streets experienced a parallel transformation between 1872 and 1890. Established piecemeal as the town grew, the city’s dirt roads followed irregular, unlit paths and became dangerous or impassable in bad weather. From the late 1850s onward, businesspeople requested graded and paved streets wide enough to carry commerce and customers easily through town, real estate market-makers demanded some sense of predictability regarding where and when new streets would be opened, and merchants, realtors, and others clamored for more cleanliness, order, and beauty in the streets’ arrangement and appearance.77 Pressure for change mounted during the late 1860s and early 1870s as boosters demanded more streets and critics decried existing ones as dirty, narrow, and uneven. Worse still, critics argued, the streets’ inadequacies retarded the local economy.78 Pointing out the streets’ shortcomings was easy; fixing them required the purchase of private property, paying high construction costs, and determining what streets would be improved, where new ones would open, and who should pay. By 1871, however, calls to open more streets, to widen and smooth those already operating, and to improve general cleanliness and lighting became too loud to ignore.79 Between 1872 and 1890, civic ideals, pro-growth elements, and municipal will aligned, and the Common Council oversaw the establishment, grading, and improvement of hundreds of new streets (figure 6.9). As with the sewer system, however, few streets in Mexican and Chinese Angelenos’ neighborhoods benefited from paving and improvement. The city’s 1887 map indicating streets and their respective conditions demonstrates marked inequality in the number and quality of graded and surfaced streets in the residential areas near downtown. The city’s commercial center saw its streets universally graded and paved. So too did two principal residential districts. One, the Huber tract, encompassed one hundred square blocks of uniformly graded and surfaced streets (figure 6.10). Another, the Mott tract, boasted fifty square blocks of graded and paved streets (figure 6.11). In the Mexican and Chinese American residential districts, there were only eleven graded streets, each surfaced with loose gravel. Another sixteen streets remained ungraded dirt roads. Many paved streets ran through the Anglo residential neighborhoods and commercial center but abruptly yielded to dirt as soon as they crossed into Sonoratown and Chinatown (figure 6.12).

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

227

Street improvement projects were subject to different policy-making rules than sewer building, so the unequal spread of paved streets arose under different circumstances than the unequal sewer network. Owners initiated almost all street work and thus bore primary responsibility for the unevenness of street improvements. Since few Mexican and Chinese Angelenos owned their homes in the 1870s, they had little control over the condition of their streets. The city lacked regular power to impose street improvements on private owners, but the Common Council could have acted to resolve street inequalities. According to a special provision in the city charter, a vote by two-thirds of the council members carried absolute power to effect street improvements or changes. Consequently, the city could have acted had it seen fit to do so, but it did not.80 Neither owners nor policy makers developed a sense of urgency regarding spatial inequality or property values in Mexican and Chinese neighborhoods. Regardless of the council’s relative reluctance to impose equitable access to sewers and paved streets, Los Angeles’s unequal infrastructural development poignantly underscored the relationships between race, space, and municipal power. In determining where and at what standard such services were to be provided, European American public officials and private property owners repeatedly chose to build last, if at all, in neighborhoods populated by Mexican and Chinese Angelenos and used shoddy materials when doing so. Street and sewer projects did more than refigure the city’s physical landscape. By taking responsibility for a series of functions formerly left to individual citizens, the Common Council opened new terrain in its institutional relationships with residents. However, city officers excluded Mexican and Chinese Angelenos from these new relationships and denied them the new services.81 Moreover, the city’s sharp infrastructural asymmetries undoubtedly produced a sense of appreciable, even palpable difference between predominantly Chinese, Mexican, and European American neighborhoods. When no Angelenos benefited from sewerage or paved streets, the relative cleanliness of different neighborhoods remained roughly equal. By 1890, however, certain portions of the city reaped the rewards of sewers and paved streets while others continued to contend with dirt roads and open cesspools. These decisions produced a city that physically imposed inequality on its citizens.

Figure 6.9. Map of the City of Los Angeles, compiled from surveys made by the city surveyor during 1886, and from records on file in the county

recorder’s office. (V. J. Rowan and Theo G. Rocherle, surveyors, formerly of the city surveyor’s office, 1887; courtesy of the Los Angeles City Archives)

230

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Figure 6.10. Detail of the 1886 city map showing the Huber tract, a predominantly European American residential district located southwest of the Plaza and just south of the Mott tract. All shaded streets are graded and surfaced; the darkest shading indicates brick or Belgian Block pavers.

Calle de los Negros: Marked for Destruction Perhaps the Common Council refused to offer the Chinese district infrastructural services because it hoped to destroy rather than improve the area surrounding Calle de los Negros. Running a short block northeasterly from Arcadia Street, the Calle dead-ended into another alley just east of the Plaza.

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

231

Figure 6.11. Detail of the 1886 city map showing the Mott tract, located just southwest of the Plaza, which appears as a circle in the upper right-hand corner. All shaded streets are graded and surfaced, with the darkest shading for brick or Belgian Block pavers.

The adobe buildings running along both sides had originally housed elite families including the Coronels and Avilas. During the 1850s, a number of drinking establishments and gambling parlors opened there, bringing both clients and frequent bouts of violence. Beginning in the 1860s, the Calle became home to more and more Chinese newcomers, ultimately serving as the central space for Chinese life in Los Angeles. By the mid-1870s, however, pro-business in-

232

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Figure 6.12. Enlargement of the 1886 city map showing the Sonoratown area. The small circle at lower left is the Plaza. Many darkly shaded streets west of the Plaza, paved with brick or Belgian Block, can be seen yielding to lightly shaded or completely unshaded streets east of the Plaza and Upper Main. The absence of shading means a street was an ungraded dirt road; the lightest shading is for graded dirt roads with no additional surface.

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

233

terests wanted to bulldoze Calle de los Negros and the buildings that formed its edges, widen the street, and merge it with Los Angeles Street to create a commercial artery connecting the city’s southern districts directly to the new terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad on Alameda. Unable to impose extra assessments on the owners who would benefit from the work and stymied by those owners who demanded exorbitant compensation for property to be lost, the city repeatedly failed to negotiate the terms of Calle de los Negros’s destruction.82 Changing its official name to Los Angeles Street in 1877 represented the only progress.83 As city officials sought sufficient traction to remake Calle de los Negros into Los Angeles Street, vigilantes opposed to the presence of any Chinese within the city limits found an alternative solution. During 1886 and into the summer of 1887, firebugs staged a series of unsuccessful efforts to set the Calle’s buildings ablaze. Their felonious efforts finally reached fruition in the small hours of the morning on July 24, 1887. By sunrise, the east side had been reduced to smoldering ash.84 Chinese Angelenos, through huiguan-funded lawyers and the Chinese consul, Colonel F. A. Bee, sued for damages in county court and filed formal complaints with the Common Council. Bee had served as spokesman for the Chinese Six Companies before being appointed by the Qing emperor as consul, which made him responsible for protecting Chinese living in the United States.85 Bee demanded compensation for losses caused by the fire and clamored to bring the responsible parties to justice.86 Sensing an opportunity, the Common Council opened negotiations with Bee, recalcitrant Calle de los Negros property owners, and Chinese community representatives aiming to establish a “New Chinatown.” They struck a deal in principle that included a massive lot at the corner of Ducommun Street and Labory Lane (several blocks southwest of the Calle) and made plans to build sixty two-story buildings to be filled by businesses and residents.87 In exchange, Hellman, Haas, and Company would quit blocking the city’s efforts to bulldoze Calle de los Negros, clearing the way for the long-desired extension of Los Angeles Street. Turning arson into “a piece of good fortune,” the fire on the Calle appeared to have created an opportunity for the city’s center to be “revolutionized.”88 Celebrations proved premature. Although the Board of Health and the Police Commission praised the project’s every detail, local residents, area prop-

234

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

erty owners, the School Board, and even the city attorney raised objections.89 In a last-ditch effort to save the deal, the Common Council held a special session, together with Mr. Haas, at the proposed building site to mollify these concerns. Instead, something akin to a riot broke out. Rather than engaging in calm discussion, the raucous crowd abused council members, shouted down Mr. Haas, and made incendiary threats to the councilmen, Haas, and the prospective Chinese residents. To prevent an outbreak of physical violence, Councilman Jacob Kurhts moved on the spot that Mr. Haas suspend his plans and that the Common Council kill the proposal.90 Although forced to issue the motion that quieted the crowd, Councilman Kurhts didn’t give up on the plan to reshape the city’s center. Four months later he took over as superintendent of streets. During his second day on the job, he bragged to a Los Angeles Times reporter, “I will tear down all that part of the long, festering rookery that stands in the way.”91 Kurhts forced the owners of the old adobes along Negro Alley’s west side to yield to Los Angeles Street. Although Hellman, Haas, and Company still refused to yield property on the Calle’s east side, Kurhts used the city’s power and newly available bond funds to demolish the buildings that formed Negro Alley’s west side and opened Los Angeles Street from Arcadia to the Plaza and then a few blocks further northnortheast until it intersected with Alameda Street (figure 6.13).92 On January 11, Kurhts and his crew bulldozed the old adobes originally forming the southeastern portion of the Plaza district.93 The new line of Los Angeles Street reshaped the city’s Chinese district, although Chinese residents and businesses still occupied both sides of the street. The locus of Chinese life, however, shifted east and north. Occupants of the buildings formerly constituting Calle de los Negros’s eastern edge turned inward on to what had been their rear courtyards to create a new locus of commerce. Others moved a short ways north, to Ferguson’s Alley, which ran easterly from the new Los Angeles Street to Alameda. According to an 1893 map, Angelenos had already crassly renamed the block “Niggar Alley,” bringing back a local moniker for a street recently destroyed. Judging from the map, Chinese dwellings, businesses, gambling parlors, opium joints, and houses of ill fame crowded into the block between Los Angeles and Alameda from Arcadia Street north to Marchessault Street (figure 6.14). Had the Common Council’s efforts to physically move Chinatown stood

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

235

Figure 6.13. Map of the Plaza District, 1893. The new line of Los Angeles Street is shown connecting to Marchessault Street at the Plaza’s northeastern edge, and from there to Alameda Street. (From Dakin Publishing Company, Map of the City of Los Angeles California 1888 [updated 1893], map 4; reprinted from W. W. Robinson, Maps of Los Angeles, from Ord’s Survey in 1849 to the End of the Boom of the Eighties [Los Angeles: Dawson’s Bookshop, 1966], 56)

236

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Figure 6.14. Detail of the 1893 map showing the Chinese district. The new “Niggar Alley” runs between North Los Angeles and Alameda Streets at center. Gambling parlors, a theater, and an opium joint are visibly marked. Two banks of houses of ill fame (code for brothels, labeled here as “Hos of I.F.”) appear on either side of the alley along Alameda Street at the top. Other parts of the map label lots with the names of the property owners, but here most lots are simply marked “Chinese.” The shadowy line at right center shows the former path of Calle de los Negros, bulldozed by the city in 1888.

alone, it could conceivably be argued that purely commercial interests had nudged Calle de los Negros into the municipality’s crosshairs. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, however, private citizens and public officials in Los Angeles participated in broader regional and national efforts to prohibit future Chinese immigration and to marginalize Chinese already living in the United States.94 In 1882 Congress passed legislation that made it illegal for ordinary Chinese to enter the country.95 While battling to clear Calle de los Negros and extend Los

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

237

Angeles Street, the council engaged in a parallel campaign designed to roust Chinese residents and strong-arm their landlords by using public health and other codes to regulate the alley out of existence. Policy initiatives often proved sensitive to provocation from the pro-growth, anti-Chinese Los Angeles Times, which published editorials articulating a locally specific rhetoric that fused concerns regarding development and public health and singled out Chinese and Chinatown as human and spatial plagues blighting the city. On March 4, 1882, for example, a piece described Calle de los Negros as a disgrace to the otherwise “beautiful city” that stung “the nostrils of all decent people,” echoing sentiments expressed a decade earlier by the Star in reference to Sonoratown.96 On April 8, 1882, the Times chastised the Calle’s intransigent property owners for being “blind to the universal desire and demand of citizens for the removal of Chinatown” and preventing “the development of the finest laid out street for commercial purposes in the city,” all while allowing the “intolerable” Chinese district to remain “a physical and moral blot in the midst of our fair city.”97 The owners’ crime cut both ways—it impeded increased commercial activity and offered an undesirable element sanctuary. At a regularly scheduled council meeting that same day, another effort to settle the future of Los Angeles Street fizzled. Councilman Cohn moved and the body unanimously supported ordering the city attorney “to draft an ordinance” excluding “any and all Chinese” from the city’s “general fire limits” and instructed the Board of Health to evict the entire Chinese community.98 Portending to facilitate the opening of Los Angeles Street by driving out Chinese tenants and forcing property owners’ hands, the conjoined rhetoric of commercial development and public health regulation became instantly and immensely popular.99 A series of exposés on Chinatown’s threat to public health appeared in the Times during the following two weeks.100 One, titled “Hell’s Half Acre,” decried the Chinese district as “a cancer that is fastening itself in almost the business center of our city.”101 These stories and the council’s proposal inspired other Angelenos to call for a general boycott on Chinese launderers and vegetable peddlers and to dismiss Chinese servants from employment in private homes.102 Despite the enthusiasm for expulsion as a solution, City Attorney H. T. Hazzard reported that doing so would violate federal and international law. Instead, Hazzard suggested, the city could rigidly enforce its public health code in Chi-

238

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

natown from room to room and building to building.103 City officers took up Hazzard’s suggestion and launched an aggressive public health crackdown in May 1882. By early June, the Times reported finding the district “marvelously cleansed from its physical filth.”104 Over the next few years, most anti-Chinese activity fell into a steady rhythm of public complaint about the district’s condition followed by a flurry of activity that led to a temporary cleanup. These campaigns swept over the city in the summers of 1882 and 1884 and during the spring of 1885.105 In October 1885 the grand jury declared Chinatown “a disgrace to the city” and called on city health officers “to see that the ordinances of the city respecting nuisances are properly enforced in Chinatown before some epidemic” broke out.106 City leaders also touted a suite of public health benefits during the failed 1887 effort to establish a “new Chinatown.”107 Even after Kurhts destroyed Calle de los Negros, anti-Chinese Angelenos deployed hostile sentiments through the idiom of public health.108 On June 3, 1889, for example, the City Council (officially renamed as part of the 1889 city charter) declared all of “Chinatown” a nuisance and demanded it be “suppressed” entirely. The city attorney reluctantly informed the body that federal law prohibited such action against “a whole district” and suggested instead that “individual cases could be singled out” for condemnation.109 A year later the Board of Health again tried and again failed to condemn the entire Chinese district as “unfit for human habitation.”110 In repeated attempts to either establish rules governing daily life in the Chinese district or to completely exclude Chinese residents from living within the city limits, the municipal government tried to generate leverage over Chinese bodies. City officers tried to remake the social and cultural components of the Chinese enclave in ways equivalent to the force it applied to Chinatown’s physical space. The effort to control the city’s Cartesian space by destroying Calle de los Negros and building a wider, rerouted Los Angeles Street in its place was only one facet of a larger project designed to impose the municipal will over Chinese places within the larger urban landscape. The intersecting concerns of commerce, public health, and spatial change created a feedback loop that influenced efforts to clear Calle de los Negros and banish Chinese who lived there, and then radiated out to other parts of the city. Surely the absence of adequate sewerage and street improvements in the Chinese district served as a material cause for a good deal of the area’s pub-

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

239

lic health challenges. The city left the district to fester while it battled with Hellman, Haas, and others for the right to destroy the Calle entirely. Neither public officials nor the alley’s intransigent owners did anything to rectify its emerging spatial inequality compared to other parts of the city. The same language with which the city targeted Chinese spaces—as both impediments to commerce and threatening to the city’s overall public health—were easily exported northward a few blocks to Sonoratown, where similarly old buildings, unimproved streets, absent sewers, and a growing population ostensibly posed the same threats. These spatial asymmetries also influenced private choices, as would-be entrepreneurs and existing business owners located new commercial and residential ventures in areas south and west of the Plaza. There property changed hands more freely and owners, residents, and customers could wander paved and sewered streets while engaging in economic, social, and cultural activities. Moreover, the frequent condemnations of the central district as a locus of vice and filth and the steady movement of businesses and residences southwesterly, away from the Plaza, began to tear at the social and cultural fabric that had previously brought Angelenos together for recreation and community life. For more than two decades, beginning with the anti-Chinese riot in 1871 and continuing through the mid-1890s, the city proved unable to fully remove Chinese people or Chinese places from its midst. Nevertheless, the tangled discourse of commercial development and public health unleashed in an effort to roust Chinese residents combined with the spatial challenges produced by infrastructural inequality to create powerful new narratives of difference— told, imagined, and experienced. As these new narratives fused to characterize the Los Angeles–specific variant of anti-Chinese racism, the interconnections between commerce, public health, and space proved capable of carving still broader and deeper cleavages into the city’s human and physical landscape.

Beyond Maps and Policies: The Lived Experience of Spatial Inequality The consequences of living in increasingly densely populated urban spaces without access to sewers or surfaced streets proved far more pernicious to Mexican and Chinese Angelenos than the emergence of institutional discrimi-

240

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

nation and Cartesian inequalities. Although a certain amount of anti-Chinese and anti-Mexican bias led public health officers in Los Angeles and throughout the West to overemphasize disease rates in Chinese and Mexican neighborhoods, public health there likely deteriorated in the 1870s and 1880s. The population in these areas rose significantly during the 1870s and 1880s. Home to 80 Chinese in 1870, 221 lived in the city’s two-block Chinatown by 1880, and more than 1,200 Chinese Angelenos lived in the single census ward that encompassed the relocated Chinese district in 1890. Sonoratown grew substantially, if less dramatically, during the same period. More people than ever shared houses and rooms in houses, exacerbating already difficult health conditions resulting from the absence of sewers and paved streets. In sharp contrast to the city’s Mexican and Chinese districts, the rest of Los Angeles benefited from rapidly increasing cleanliness as a result of sewers, paved streets, and a building boom. Whereas all of Los Angeles was once loosely populated, dusty, and dependent on the zanjas, it became spatially bifurcated during the 1870s and 1880s. The predominantly white districts, especially those west and south of the old Plaza, witnessed the rise of new buildings served by sewers and located on paved streets. The city’s older neighborhoods, near and adjacent to the Plaza, remained dotted with older adobes, dirt roads, and open gutters. The consequences of the resultant inequality proved profound. By the early 1890s, the infrastructural asymmetry produced a sense of appreciable, even palpable, differences between Anglo neighborhoods and Mexican and Chinese American neighborhoods. These asymmetries served to reinforce stereotypes of Mexican and Chinese Angelenos as dirty, diseased, backward, and unable to change with changing times. Into the mid-1870s, Los Angeles’s residential neighborhoods looked relatively similar despite the emergence of ethnically specific housing communities. Photographs from the 1870s of two neighborhoods—one a European American neighborhood southwest of the Plaza (figure 6.15), and the second of Sonoratown (figure 6.16)—both demonstrate spread-out houses, unpaved streets, and trees. Although building styles in these two neighborhoods differed, they looked roughly similar and reflected the relatively equal development of Los Angeles’s residential districts through the early 1870s. But by the early 1890s unequal infrastructural and commercial development had created marked asymmetries in city spaces. Photographs from those years reveal with striking power the changes to predominantly European American business and

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

241

Figure 6.15. Third Street looking east from Hill Street, 1876. (Courtesy of University of Southern California, on behalf of the USC Libraries Special Collections, CHS-m500)

residential districts south and west of the Plaza (figures 6.17, 6.18, 6.19). These images from the 1880s and 1890s show broad streets, orderly sidewalks, bigger buildings, large stores, and even street surfaces. The residential neighborhoods in particular look much changed from those of the 1870s (compare, for example, figure 6.19 with figure 6.15).

Figure 6.16. View looking along North Broadway into Sonoratown from Fort Hill, 1875. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL Pierce 01379)

Figure 6.18. Olive Street, Central Los Angeles, 1880s–1890s. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [328])

Figure 6.19. Looking east along First Street from Hill Street, 1888–95. (Courtesy of University of Southern California, on behalf of the USC Libraries Special Collections, CHS-m488) Figure 6.17. (facing page) Looking north on Main Street just south of Fourth Street, 1887. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [320])

244

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Figure 6.20. Adobe residences and businesses in Sonoratown (New High or Spring Street), 1895. Multiple doorways are cut into each individual building, illustrating the subdivision of units previously occupied by individual families. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [495])

Meanwhile, streets and buildings remained largely unchanged in the Mexican and Chinese residential areas over the same period (figures 6.20, 6.21, 6.22, 6.23). In addition to the enduring adobe structures, the streets largely remain unpaved and in many cases ungraded. Streets in the Chinese district appear to be unmaintained dirt roads, with planks across open sewers (figures 6.24 and 6.25). The evolution of Spring Street southwest from the Plaza toward Second Street offers particularly sharp evidence of change in the urban landscape. Two photographs, taken a few years apart, both show a bustling commercial district, streetcar tracks, and a dense cluster of large buildings (figures 6.26 and 6.27). The later image also shows that stone pavers replaced the com-

Figure 6.21. Adobe house, north side of Spring Street, Sonoratown, about 1905, previously the home of Cristóbal Aguilar, mayor. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL Pierce 01321)

Figure 6.22. Republic and New High Streets, Sonoratown, 1880s, with the Magnolia Saloon at right. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [595])

Figure 6.23. Shopping arcade on North Broadway, Sonoratown, about 1887. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL Pierce 01389)

Figure 6.24. Chinatown (relocated) street scene, 1890s, featuring open sewers and an ungraded, unpaved road surface. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 403 [2d])

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

247

Figure 6.25. Street view of Chinatown (relocated), 1895. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [498])

pacted dirt surface on Spring Street, and that double streetcar tracks had been embedded in the pavers. These two images also offer an interesting visual comparison to the Sonoratown retail district (figures 6.21 and 6.23), which shows mixed use of old adobes, narrow arcades, and a dirt street. The infrastructural changes and their attendant spatial asymmetries produced meaningful, experiential anchors for new racial categories. Politicians, newspaper reporters, and private xenophobes could say whatever they liked, but name-calling alone only posited racial boundaries. Even when the ethnoracially tailored ward boundaries limited Mexican Angelenos’ political citizenship, the relative equality of Los Angeles’s spaces and the central district’s popularity left open possibilities for further negotiations in the arena of social identity. Indeed, the Pico House and Merced Theatre offered only two examples of the possibility for further intercultural innovation and, with it, alternative models for identity fashioning. However, public policies that systematically excluded Mexican and Chinese Angelenos while initiating new and unequal institutional relationships between the municipality and the citizens proved devastating in their long-term consequences. Rather than occupying the city’s central space, the Plaza by 1894 marked the edge of development and

248

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

Figure 6.26. Junction of Main and Spring Streets, 1889. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL [568])

Figure 6.27. Spring Street looking south from Temple Avenue toward First, 1892–95. The road surface is paved by this time, and also features double tracks and further building development. (Courtesy of University of Southern California, on behalf of the USC Libraries Special Collections, CHS-m745)

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

249

improvement. The paved and sewered streets leading northeasterly toward the Plaza gave way to loose gravel and ungraded dirt roads on the other side. The spatial rupture precluded the possibility for further heterogeneity; the absence of sewers and paved streets in the Plaza’s immediate eastern and northern vicinities eroded its desirability as a locus of domestic, recreational, communal, and festival gatherings. The proximity of such different neighborhoods created and validated stereotypes that became racial markers, untangling intercultural connections and replacing them with firm, categorical boundaries. Spatial theorist Henri Lefebvre argues that “what we call ideology only achieves consistency by intervening in social space and in its production, and by thus taking on body therein” ideologically guided movements create the spaces that guarantee their success. In Los Angeles, proponents of civic ideals guided by racial exclusivity created durable spaces where racial separation became experiential and enduring.111 White citizens lived in newly built homes and conducted business on paved streets, all served by adequate sewers; Mexican and Chinese Angelenos lived in older buildings on unimproved dirt roads and did not have sewers. These spatial patterns created and reinforced the categories of White, Mexican, and Chinese. Moreover, they nurtured definitions reckoning Whites as clean, progressive, and modern, and of Mexican and Chinese Angelenos as dirty and backward. The experiential quality of unequal space, linking together suddenly distinct places and their residents, ultimately foreclosed further possibilities for intercultural innovation among Los Angeles’s residents. The dramatic spatial differences impeded the sharing of social and cultural life, and living in any of the city’s three main districts conveyed one message or another to the residents about their own social worth in the city.

An Unbridgeable Gap: The Racial Consequences of Spatial Change Since Los Angeles’s founding, the Plaza and its surrounding neighborhoods had been at the center of the city’s social, commercial, religious, and recreational life. But property holders and policy makers during the 1870s and 1880s oversaw an unequal development of the city’s infrastructure, which produced meaningful asymmetries in street surfaces and sewerage. The buildings

250

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

erected atop this unequal infrastructure amplified neighborhood differences and access to other urban amenities, marking the Plaza and the adjacent Mexican and Chinese districts as distinct from the rest of the city. These asymmetries created sharp spatial boundaries that led the Plaza to be experientially unsavory compared with the new European-American dominated residential and business districts to the southwest. As one reporter wrote in 1887, there was “no place in the modern Los Angeles for the ancient Sonoratown, nor for the dilapidated structures of decaying Chinatown.”112 Collectively, these inequities broke the spatial relationships that had long held the city together and unhooked the Plaza district, Sonoratown, and Chinatown from the European American–dominated southwestern districts. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, the Pico House and Merced Theatre brought Mexican Californians and European Americans together for shared social life. Changes to the city’s spatial relationships, however, clearly strained these heterogeneous social relationships by the end of the 1880s and early 1890s. The Plaza’s prominence as the center of the city’s intercultural community life waned as it became an increasingly undesirable destination for evening activities. Without wealthier patrons to support high-level productions, the Merced experienced a “long progressive deterioration, both in type and quality of performance, and in audience.”113 Although the Pico House fared somewhat better, it too began struggling to maintain its stature as the city’s premier social destination in the early 1890s. By then Pico had lost the property to creditors and bowed out of public life. The fraternal, Masonic, and ethno-national community organizations that once filled meeting rooms around the Plaza every night of the week moved southwest into various buildings in the burgeoning new business district or northeast into Sonoratown. Many of the hijos del país retreated to whatever remained of their old ranchos. Although they maintained active social relations with European American relatives and friends, they spent less time in the city center, perhaps unwilling to endure further political and economic abuse, and perhaps also continuing to think themselves superior to the ordinary Mexicans and Chinese living in the neighborhood they once dominated.114 Mexican and Chinese Angelenos continued to use the Plaza for festivals on special occasions, but European Americans slowly withdrew southwesterly, holding more events at new park locations, such as the city’s central park

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

251

(now Pershing Square) several blocks away. In their eyes the Plaza became unsuitable for such events. “Civilization at its best and worst” gathered there for the Chinese New Year festival in 1886, as “Christianity and heathenism stood confronting each other, looking across the gulf of immeasurable distance, with nothing in common.”115 In 1887 planners organized a massive Fourth of July celebration in the Plaza. Some twenty thousand Angelenos (nearly 40 percent of the populace) turned out to “view the finest pyrotechnic display ever given in Southern California.” Nevertheless, the Times led with the headline “A Wretched Place, but a Fine Display.” Despite the big turnout, “the site selected did not give general satisfaction” because many Angelenos “did not care to visit the roughest portion of town.”116 The complaint likely referred as much to the dirt roads, open cesspools, and crumbling adobes that dominated the neighborhood as to the crowd’s human composition. A gathering that included undesirable people—Mexican and Chinese Angelenos—in an undesirable place obviously marred this most “American” of holidays. The development of Los Angeles’s infrastructure and built environment in the 1870s and 1880s worked to refigure the power relationships that informed and made possible the establishment and maintenance of racial categories. One local observed that “the average Indian possesses more luxuries, and can be no more unsavory” than Chinese living in Chinatown.117 In a particularly malignant Chinatown exposé, the Times described “long, dark and narrow halls, bare of every touch of civilization,” which led to rooms “where humanity stands on a level that is scarcely human; where filth, and disease, and vice wallow together” creating a “degradation lower, if possible, than reached of old by the native races of this coast.”118 Base in its racism, the article nonetheless illustrates the terms upon which whites in Los Angeles built boundaries between themselves and Mexicans, Indians, and Chinese. As a consequence of the ways whites imagined Chinese living habits—an imagination made possible because policy makers and property holders refused to pave or sewer Chinatown’s streets—“filth and disease” sank Chinese Angelenos below Indians and Mexicans, who had been equally denigrated on the same grounds in earlier times. Although Mexican Californians had drawn upon their economic and political status to avoid being lumped together with cholos and greasers during the 1850s, even the wealthiest Chinese merchants lacked this escape route. By the mid-1890s, race trumped class in fixing the social hierarchy.

252

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

European Americans imposed a new racial structure in which they reserved Whiteness and the privileges of full citizenship for themselves, with Mexicans, Indians, and Asians occupying successively lower rungs on the social ladder. Social and cultural changes followed the spatial changes, remaking local racial hierarchies, changing relationships between people and place, and setting the tone for the decades to follow. When immigration peaked in conjunction with the land boom of 1887, the mass of migrants, mostly European Americans, arrived in a place already controlled by other European Americans. This affected where they lived, the jobs they worked at, and the social and cultural environment. At the same time, when more Chinese arrived, when Japanese came, and when a great migration north from Mexico crested in the early twentieth century, Los Angeles’s spatial and social die was similarly cast. Positions in the labor market were rigid. In the early 1900s, thousands of Mexican, Asian, and Black American newcomers clustered into the central district, which came to be dominated by densely packed boardinghouses. Chinatown spread into the three surrounding blocks, and Little Tokyo abutted it on the northeast end. Nevertheless, organizations with the experience and membership to mediate these circumstances were also in place, and they continued to play a central role in resisting oppression. Despite the outward appearance of decline and decay, inside the crumbling adobes and packed boardinghouses Chinese and Mexican Angelenos engaged in a vigorous life of work, play, and community activity. Los Angeles’s adolescence ended and its adulthood began between 1870 and 1890. The pueblo celebrated its centennial in 1881 and grew enormously after 1887. Precisely because some two million people moved to the city between 1890 and 1930, the development of Los Angeles’s urban form during the 1870s and 1880s proved critical. Tracing the life of the Los Angeles Plaza and its vicinity during the 1870s and 1880s brings changes to the urban form into focus and captures the social, cultural, and economic relations that structured the explosive growth of the following decades. Establishing connections between what the City Council could achieve by public policy and the gross realities of life on the street clarifies the relationship between race, space, and public power in Los Angeles. Taken together, the unequal growth and development of Los Angeles’s infrastructure and built environment first undermined and then overwhelmed

“Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance”

253

intercultural relationships by the mid-1890s. The combination of spatial, social, and political change provided European Americans the leverage to impose and maintain new racial boundaries—hierarchies they deployed not only through discourse and policy but also through the asymmetries in the urban landscape. Only when discursive and physical distinctions of place had been achieved, bringing ideology and space into harmony, and only when Los Angeles’s very streets and buildings offered prima facie proof of Mexican and Chinese Angelenos’ alleged inferiority and European American’s selfproclaimed superiority, did it become possible to fix locally defined racial categories for Whites, Mexicans, and Chinese. Decades passed before contests regarding identity, space, and municipal power in Los Angeles regained the fluidity and dynamism that prevailed there throughout the 1800s.

CONCLUSION

“A Story Hidden Behind Every Crumbling Wall” History and Memory in Los Angeles

1894, race, space, and municipal power had configured Los Angeles through three distinct periods. Of course, their interrelationship did not end where this book does. Despite Los Angeles’s staggering growth from 5,000 to 50,000 residents between 1870 and 1890, its population continued to expand rapidly during the four following decades, doubling to 100,000 at the turn of the century, then quintupling to 500,000 by 1920, and passing 1.2 million in 1930. In addition to the ceaseless tide of newcomers arriving from points east, including a growing contingent of black Americans, many new immigrants arrived from Asia. Still more—100,000 between 1910 and 1930—moved to Los Angeles from Mexico as part of a broader Great Migration into the U.S. Southwest.1 Under such circumstances, the pressure put on the city’s spaces could not help but influence notions about social identity and civic ideals. Indeed, the burgeoning Mexican, Chinese, and later black, Japanese, and Filipino American communities strengthened and augmented the ethnic and community institutions founded during the 1870s and 1880s. Reaching maturity in the early twentieth century, these organizations supported their members in a renewed effort to compete for social, cultural, and economic power. European Americans countered by embracing formal, Jim Crow–style segregation for the first BY

254

Conclusion

255

time, adding a new layer of inequality to institutional and infrastructural relationships. While the move to overt segregation resulted in a city more solidly built around notions of race and place than ever before, it also forced the different parties to publicly articulate their respective positions. Brought into the open, discriminatory practices that violated the law could, for the first time, be clearly contested. The accumulated consequences of the relationship between race, space, and municipal power between 1781 and 1894 had already brought dramatic changes to the city, its inhabitants, and its built environment. Born into a mature colonial project when the original pobladores broke ground to excavate the Zanja Madre, Los Angeles took physical and social shape according to centralized administrative guidelines designed to facilitate the imposition of one group of people onto another. Almost immediately, however, those plans broke down and locals began to craft their own strategies for reckoning identity and building the city. Just as local racial and civic ideals began to crystallize in the late 1830s, immigrants from the United States and Europe provoked a new period of negotiation and innovation that began before and continued after the United States conquered Los Angeles. Intercultural families, enterprises, social groups, and governing bodies maintained locally specific practices for sorting citizens and distributing land and water. As Angelenos chose privately to settle new neighborhoods both north and south of the Plaza during the late 1850s and 1860s, they strained the existing infrastructure and pushed the city government into new territory regarding waterways and byways. In supporting infrastructural expansion, city officials often characterized Mexican technologies and structures as impediments to the city’s otherwise bright prospects for future prosperity, however unintentionally denigrating intercultural civic ideals. Even as the city’s political and cultural climate grew increasingly hostile during the late 1860s and 1870s, Angelenos continued to elaborate the terms of their private social and commercial interactions. Although interactions in the private sphere indicated that Mexican, Chinese, and European Angelenos would continue to incubate locally specific intercultural relationships, further spatial change foreclosed on that potential future. European Americans, in only eighteen years of unfettered control over city government, remade the city’s physical landscape with profound trailing consequences for Angelenos’ social identities.

256

Conclusion

So much had changed since the 1870s that no resident estranged from Los Angeles since the 1850s or earlier could have recognized it. Hundreds of miles of paved and graded surface streets connected places of residence, business, and leisure. Rather than inhabiting small adobe homes, most Angelenos lived in the wood-framed and brick houses that dominated the scene. The central business district had itself drifted south and west, down Main, Broadway, and Spring toward First, leaving behind the Plaza and the unimproved blocks to its north and east for an area with paved streets, ample sewers, and extensive street railways. The complicated network of zanjas that had originally been the city’s life blood had entirely vanished from view, and with it the imperatives of communal distribution and maintenance evaporated. Hidden beneath Angelenos’ feet, water coursed through a series of separate potable, agricultural, and sewage pipes. The streets and pipes themselves, by their presence or absence, reflected not only a new locus of municipal power tied to infrastructural projects but also the ways that intercultural innovation and compromise, especially regarding civic ideals, had recently and precipitously become uncommon. Those responsible for Los Angeles’s new spatial arrangements embraced civic ideals that situated individuals ahead of the general community and understood space and water as commodities that could be manipulated for profit rather than as communal resources to be divided equitably among the citizens. None of this happened without consequences for the city and its people. Whereas each citizen previously shared in communal responsibility for the orderly appearance, function, and maintenance of the city’s streets and zanjas, the city government incrementally took control of road surfaces, water distribution, and waste management, among other projects. Municipal officers subsequently became partners in a host of new, uneven relationships with various private and public constituencies. In some cases the inequalities physically inscribed onto Los Angeles’s new foundations coded the ancestry, language, and appearance of those citizens making lives there. Sewers and paved streets rarely found their way into Mexican and Chinese American neighborhoods. Consequently, public policy translated dynamic, socially negotiated identities into frozen infrastructural realities, producing a place full of spaces that marked off social difference. Once built, inequalities in the city’s infrastructure dictated and reflected the articulation of racial identities in Los Angeles’s society more generally. The new spaces made the labels “Mexican,” “Chinese,”

Conclusion

257

and “White” meaningful beyond the realms of talk, name-calling, and political power. Having become embedded in the city’s physical environment, built into its very streets, buildings, and pipes, the spatial corollaries of Mexican, Chinese, and White social status would also thereafter be part of any future renegotiations, adding unprecedented durability and rigidity to previously fragile and fluid arrangements.

A Reckoning: Boosters, History, and Visioning Los Angeles’s Racial and Spatial Future The new infrastructural and experiential realities of life on Los Angeles’s streets had progressed to the point of reordering local racial hierarchies by the late 1880s. Once that project had succeeded, it dawned on some Angelenos that in their haste to reengineer the city some important parts of its structural past might be permanently lost. The emergence of public efforts to preserve some of Los Angeles’s older buildings during the late 1880s offered another indication of the accumulated consequences of the ongoing relationship between race, space, and civic ideals. Although many old “adobe structures must give place to the demand for modern improvements,” perhaps, some argued, “it should not all be destroyed. Nor should every evidence of antiquity give place to modern brick and mortar.” Drawing a comparison to England’s “castles and cathedrals,” the Times in 1887 urged the city to preserve its “old mission buildings” and “the best specimens of the old adobe casa of the Spanish grandee.” In issuing this gentle rebuke to the unbridled spread of commerce, the article’s author failed to realize that no mission ever existed in Los Angeles. The author similarly ignored the fact that one of the city’s most important old adobes— belonging to the Coronel family—was to be destroyed for the abatement of Calle de los Negros and the expansion of Los Angeles Street, a project the Times itself championed repeatedly. While “mission” buildings and “Spanish adobes” merited saving, there was “no place in the modern Los Angeles for the ancient Sonoratown, nor for the dilapidated structures of decaying Chinatown.” Even though these neighborhoods boasted the greatest concentration of old buildings, the Mexican and Chinese districts had to yield to modernization. As a consequence, the effort to save old buildings included only discrete parts of the city, and specifically the most verifiably Spanish components of its

258

Conclusion

structural heritage. Any building whose former owners, present inhabitants, or specific location had marked it with the taint of color, seemingly, did not merit saving. In its call for a highly selective preservation effort, the Times expressed a particular sense of history. As remnants of a “civilization which has vanished,” the old buildings stood as the sole remaining artifacts of that past. If the buildings yielded to modernity, and the vanished civilization were completely forgotten, future Angelenos would come to “regret it . . . when it is too late.” The buildings alone would suffice, as there was “a romance written in every archway of the old doors; a story hidden behind every crumbling wall.” In this historical scheme, neither Mexican Americans nor the children and grandchildren of the city’s intercultural families could help to keep such connections alive as the fact of their actual lives had seemingly vanished as well. Unfit to connect the present city to its past, Mexican Angelenos had no part in this vision of its future. Without a home in “the modern Los Angeles” for Sonoratown and Chinatown, Mexican and Chinese Angelenos would necessarily fade into the background and disappear entirely. The torch of Los Angeles’s history, both physically and metaphorically, would pass directly from its Spanish colonial founders (increasingly remembered as having been white despite having rarely been considered so forty years earlier by their American contemporaries) to its enterprising European American citizens. This highly specific and instrumentalist historical sensibility could serve future residents in their efforts to reconnect with the past and also offered one more bullet point in Los Angeles’s new marketability to tourists and prospective immigrants. According to the Times, the old buildings marked “distinctive features of California, and the Englishman coming across the sea, and the Yankee, traversing the continent, will look upon them with the same interest that he regards other ruins.”2 Just as the article’s author labored to safely seal off descendants of that bygone time—with no agency in the present and no prospects in the future—a fictional version of that past had to remain accessible to tourists and newcomers. This created a somewhat macabre oneway street, at whose terminus visitors from any point in the future could find disembodied Mexican Californians, literally reduced to ruins, locked in a specific (and not remotely accurate) moment in time. Such an arrangement

Conclusion

259

would ensure a perpetual reproduction of this skewed history and offered the added benefit of generating revenue. Here lies yet another intersection of race, space, and public power, another node where they work together cheek by jowl. The connection made between immigration and tourism, on one hand, and the rapid disappearance of historic buildings on the other is more than causal. In fact, the very growth threatening the city’s structural links to its past had also been an essential cause of Los Angeles’s sudden national and international presence. This it surely did not have in 1845, when Lansford Hastings found Los Angeles “of much less importance” than most other towns in California.3 Forty-five years later, however, Los Angeles had achieved sufficient prominence to merit a 3,500-word article in Harper’s Weekly. The essay’s rendering of the city’s founding, history, and recent growth ran along the same tracks as those laid out above. Its national readership, however, was likely less aware than locals of the little myths present in such depictions of the city’s past, present, and future. This essay, by Clarence Pullen, devoted the first six and several subsequent paragraphs to the city’s origins, settlement, early system of government; to the importance of its location near the Porciuncula River; and to the pueblo’s relationship to the Spanish colonial project. The end of this period, however, merited only two sentences. Both are devoted to Commodore Stockton’s August 1846 arrival in Los Angeles, “where, without opposition, the United States flag was raised with the usual ceremonies.” Since then, paralleling the tendencies expressed in the local papers, Mexican Californians existed more as relics of the past than agents of the present. In the “old Spanish quarter, known locally as ‘Sonora,’” one could find “swarthy-skinned people . . . indolently watching the tide of traffic” as they sat against the sides of the district’s dilapidated houses. Occasionally the setting was “picturesquely enlivened by the appearance on the plaza of a reminder of the old times in the shape of a caballero (horseman) wearing a sombrero, and sporting saddle trappings of silver and huge spurs, who sits his steed with unbounded pride.” The horse, spurs, silver adornments, and unbounded pride all suggest a scion of the Mexican Californian elite, which was reduced in this telling to a specter that materialized from the dust to remind the idle loafers of times gone by as it haunted the Plaza. The

260

Conclusion

article’s only other mention of living Mexican Americans appears in conjunction with a discussion of orange grove laborers, “chiefly Mexicans and Chinamen, who display a marked aptitude for this class of work.” While Mexican Americans and Chinese either performed agricultural labor on the outskirts of town or loitered in their own districts, business elsewhere was booming. The essay praised Los Angeles’s congenial climate, healthful environment, and abundant natural resources. The city was easily reached by any of eleven different rail lines, and horse, cable, and electric street railways provided ample local transportation. All of these factors came together to produce a vigorous pace of building and commerce. In addition to several specific projects, Pullen remarked more generally that “since 1886 nearly every business street has been paved with Belgian block, and the main residence thoroughfares generally have concrete pavements bordered with curbed cement sidewalks. An extensive sewerage system, costing $750,000, has recently been completed, adding to the naturally fine sanitary condition of the city.” Evidently, Pullen didn’t spend much time in the city’s Mexican and Chinese districts where such improvements had not alighted.4 Clearly, the physical, social, and institutional changes that had reshaped Los Angeles between 1872 and 1890 impressed Pullen. However unwittingly, his piece demonstrates that the efforts of European American city leaders to reconfigure race, space, and civic ideals had met with considerable success. Mexican Californians played no significant part in Pullen’s understanding of the city’s past, present, or future. Dominating the scene instead were thriving commercial and agricultural sectors driven by an army of white businessmen, all of whom lived in and moved through spaces marked by sewers, paved streets, and curbed cement sidewalks. Taken together, these developments suggested the success of racially exclusive, pro-growth civic ideals in reordering nature and society in the service of the capitalist state. As a traveler’s account, Pullen’s piece did double duty as booster literature, a story of progress fit for pasting into any advertisement. His article is thus a final proof of the success of European Americans’ public philosophy, which had transformed the city itself into a valuable commodity. By controlling both race and space, the city government as well as private business people could use the city as a commercial instrument.

Conclusion

261

An Ending and a Beginning: La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 1894 Between the 1872 elections and the end of the late 1880s real estate boom, the emergent, racially exclusive, pro-growth policy makers and boosters transformed Los Angeles spatially and socially, laying new infrastructural foundations before the city connected to the transcontinental railroad. They nearly completed the infrastructural revolution before rate wars between the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe Railroads produced tickets from the Midwest to Los Angeles costing only one dollar. The real estate boom busted in 1889, and Los Angeles suffered further during 1893 when economic difficulties gripped the entire nation. After two decades of seemingly endless growth, leading European Americans found that maintaining their political, social, and economic dominance became considerably more challenging. But “growth” and “progress” had created their own imperatives for more of the same. Facing suddenly dire financial straits and dim hopes for a quick return to prosperity, area businessmen formed the Los Angeles Merchants Association in 1893. The fledgling organization’s future “was somewhat precarious” during its first year, as Los Angeles “was suffering a depression.”5 In early 1894, the Merchants Association met “to devise ways and means for alleviating the economic ills of the city.” Max Meyberg, a member of the Merchants, recalled that their “desperation” provoked several meetings to discuss strategies for improving their circumstances. Influenced by the successes of the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 and San Francisco’s Midwinter Fair, Meyberg “suggested a proposition which I felt sure would help our deplorable condition. That was the creation of La Fiesta de Los Angeles of 1894.” Meyberg assumed responsibility for organizing the event and “held meeting after meeting to inculcate into people’s minds the wonderful opportunity” to celebrate Los Angeles’s bountiful advantages, and to impress upon them that it was their “duty” and “salvation to make La Fiesta” a vehicle “for advertising Los Angeles.”6 Certainly enticed by the success Chicago’s merchants enjoyed during and following the world’s fair, Meyberg wanted to imitate the results but not the form. A later newspaper article reported his insistence that “Los Angeles should contrive and carry out some exhibition of its own,” which led him to

262

Conclusion

propose a carnival. Above all, Meyberg demanded the event “be an original . . . not one of the stereotyped things produced in eastern cities but something typical of Southern California.”7 The City Council opened a contest for the carnival’s name and offered a bounty to the winner. Harry E. Brook, local booster and Los Angeles Times reporter, claimed the prize for suggesting La Fiesta de Los Angeles. The title intentionally summoned the town’s Spanish past, and a dozen different committees developed a program of events— replete with dancing, demonstrations of opulence, parades, concerts, and theatrical productions—that took on the form of a massive, multiday party like those held by californios during the Spanish and Mexican periods.8 As Meyberg and others worked to plan La Fiesta, it became evident that the local flavor should extend from form to content. Designed to draw visitors arriving from around the state and across the country, the fair, as envisioned by Meyberg, would show off Los Angeles as a “gift of nature,” especially “our beautiful climate, our mountains, and valleys, fertility of the ground, our ocean.” Beyond the physical environment and pleasant April weather, Meyberg and the Fiesta organizers looked to exploit certain “advantages no other cities in our country enjoy,” including Los Angeles’s atypical demographic makeup.9 La Fiesta’s organizers scrambled to include an exotic array of living people, whom they believed would enhance the spectacle. Meyberg and others recruited Mexican Americans to ride as mounted conquistadores to represent the city’s Spanish (but not Mexican) past during the history parade, contracted to bring Yuma Indians from eastern California to perform various “Indian dances,” and invited the Chinese community to contribute floats and dancers to the mercantile section of two different parades. Many Angelenos, both within the Merchants group and among the citizens at large, objected strenuously to the prospect of Chinese participation, but ultimately a compromise was reached by which various ethnic and national groups were invited to join. La Fiesta’s planners struggled some to “obtain” Indian performers. Francisco Estudillo, the local Indian agent, demanded both official orders and close supervision. Jose Palmee, according to the Times a Yuma headman, refused to “to lay aside his dignity to the extent of allowing himself to visit the festival.” Having finally worked out the kinks, Fiesta directors brought in the Yuma on boxcars and confined them in close quarters near the train station, leaving them

Conclusion

263

“a little sore (in spirit).”10 Nevertheless, the hundred-member contingent performed as savage Aztecs on two different days, demonstrating a “war-dance” and a “step-dance” as part of the history parade, followed on Wednesday evening by a rendition of the “scalp-dance,” which thrillingly included “burning an Indian woman at the stake.”11 Tipis, common among Plains Indians but unusual in Southern California and central Mexico, dotted the float’s ersatz landscape. Harrison Fuller—also tasked to wrangle and costume burros for the mining display—outfitted the Yuma, choosing to “rig them out” with choice items from the “large collection” of “war-paint and costumes” he had amassed while working as an Indian agent in the Northwest.12 In an inventive scene, Yuma Indians wore clothing of the Pacific Northwest culture area while performing as Aztecs who lived in Plains Indian houses on floats in a parade that helped struggling businessmen appropriate a Spanish (and specifically nonMexican) cultural event for the purposes of reclaiming for themselves and Los Angeles its lost status as an emerging regional power. Almost every aspect of the Yuma participation reflected the ways that La Fiesta’s organizers could collapse specific components of Indian life, past and present, into a monolithic, marketable notion of essential Indian-ness. Despite facing initial hostility, Chinese Angelenos produced a demonstration that drew effusive public praise. Flag bearers and banners preceded a sedan chair and gongs, carried on many shoulders. Then a militarized group of forty men, armed with decorative spears and marching in two columns, passed by, followed by two children on horseback (wearing elaborate costumes and displaying “highly-painted cheeks”), a float carrying musicians, and twelve mounted, costumed men carrying floral banners, one of which read “Peace.” The centerpiece, “a large float with a canopy top in fiesta colors and handsomely trimmed with fiesta bunting,” carried men dressed as six Chinese kings seated on carved chairs and surrounded by their various entourages “attired in all the regal splendor that oriental art could devise.” More musicians and marching men in costume completed the Chinese procession, which led out the entire mercantile section of the opening parade.13 All told, the display cost more than $3,000, a substantial investment in light of the fact that Meyberg planned the rest of the week’s festival on $10,500. Chinese merchants clearly saw themselves as members of the city’s larger business community and among those who stood to benefit from La Fiesta’s success.

264

Conclusion

Organizers exulted in their ability to “‘produce representatives of four out of the five human races—Caucasians, Mongolians, Africans, and red men from the residents of its immediate locality.’”14 Counter to two decades of municipal policies targeting Chinese residents, a century of efforts to dominate local Indians, and a history parade that completely erased the existence of the city’s Mexican past, La Fiesta’s organizers labored to bring Chinese, Indian, and Mexican Angelenos into the center of public life, to the core of an effort to raise the city’s economic fortunes out of the doldrums. Meyberg and others believed that successfully selling La Fiesta and Los Angeles depended on an exotic, marketable spectacle. Soliciting Indian, Mexican, and Chinese participants provided benefits beyond the bottom line. Despite La Fiesta’s novel form and Meyberg’s desire for originality, the carnival took cues from its more noted contemporaries. Like the recently concluded World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, La Fiesta created a scene of “mythopoeic grandeur” in which “an ideology of economic development, labeled ‘progress,’ was translated into a utopian statement about the future.” Anthropologists at Chicago’s world’s fair, for example, deemed its Midway Plaisance “a ‘great object lesson’ in anthropology,” in part because it provided an explicit comparison between the Great White City’s architectural and intellectual wonders and the Midway’s ethnological pastiche of “honkytonk” amusements.15 In Los Angeles, Meyberg and the Merchants generated “spontaneous consent” from the city’s Indian, Mexican, and Chinese communities to play ethnic and historical roles. Their performances coalesced into a linear narrative of historical, geopolitical, social, and economic progress that rewrote their own and their ancestors’ participation in the city’s contested and frequently violent intercultural past. In doing so, the performers acted as cultural authorities who, however unwittingly, placed a de facto stamp of approval on this new, invented history. Moreover, La Fiesta repurposed people who had so often been decried as impediments to the city’s future as human commodities who helped turn the engine of commerce for Los Angeles. The Merchants made obvious and subtle efforts to simultaneously summon a traditional Spanish fiesta in Los Angeles and deploy the event as a marketing vehicle that itself silenced the very past during which such fiestas took place. Yet the Merchants came closer to emulating their fiesta-hosting Mexican (and not Spanish) forebears than they likely imagined. Reflecting a month later, in

Conclusion

265

May 1894, the Los Angeles Herald deemed the city’s “first attempt at the distinctive gaieties of the people of the Latin race a spectacular and joyous success.”16 In Southern California during the first half of the nineteenth century, those distinctive gaieties included using fiestas as a venue for public displays of wealth and social power that corresponded to the exalted status californios understood themselves to occupy. La Fiesta offered its planners and backers comparable leverage in 1894. Recall that the californios used fiestas as public opportunities to solidify not only their own social positions but also the entire local racial hierarchy they had invented with themselves at the top. Los Angeles’s emergent, selfdefined American businesspeople and boosters had similarly developed their own specific elite identity over the past years. To achieve ascendancy, they had to dislodge long-standing intercultural compromises, which created porous boundaries between middling and elite Angelenos and minimized color as determinative of citizenship. La Fiesta served its masters as earlier fiestas served the californios—as a vehicle for an opulent display that signaled their wealth and connections. Merely passing by the Plaza, La Fiesta took place in the city’s new central park, now Pershing Square, writing the Plaza out and the new park in as the city’s spatial center (figure 7.1). Moreover, La Fiesta offered a stage upon which the Merchants could perform a false history that led directly, inexorably to their own dominance while excising decades of Mexican and American intercultural innovation. Californio fiestas suggested fluid and egalitarian social relations among all Angelenos, concealing the daily relations of domination by californios and vecinos over indios, whose compelled labor provided the material wealth that made such elaborate displays of hospitality and redistribution possible. So, too, the Merchants’ hopes for La Fiesta’s success hinged on securing participation from Mexicans, Chinese, and Indians—the very Angelenos otherwise regarded as the city’s greatest impediment to greatness. By creating a seemingly inclusive, elaborate public party that worked to both smooth over and reproduce racialized relations, La Fiesta matched the cultural work done by fiestas in earlier decades. All the ways La Fiesta allowed attendees to both “borrow from and denigrate” Indian, Mexican, and Chinese cultural forms contributed to its success at defusing social tensions while reinforcing the very hierarchies that created such tensions in the first place.17 Attendees responded to La Fiesta’s acts of racial domination by offering

266

Conclusion

Figure 7.1. Looking southeast across Central Park, now Pershing Square, 1882. (This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, photCL 188 [585])

“an unconditional surrender.” By the end of the first day, Angelenos “old and young, rich and poor,” encompassing “all classes grades and conditions of men, women and children” had “given themselves over entirely and unequivocally and unstintedly to the occasion.”18 Their swift surrender—to the carnival, to the Merchants’ and Angels’ conquest, and to the narrative conquest of the past expressed in the history parade—made them equal partners with La Fiesta’s organizers by investing unequal identity categories with new meaning. Greedily feasting on the cotton candy history and spun-sugar social relations on offer, those in attendance acted as co-conspirators in drawing a veil over the sometimes violent, frequently fraught decades of intercultural cooperation in the realms of social identity, space, and public policy, making La Fiesta’s covert social work as successful as its boosterism. Although it was not without its particular kinks as a first-time event, the Merchants Association and many others deemed La Fiesta a triumph. Immediately, newspapers and private citizens called for La Fiesta to become an annual celebration. Claiming its “fame” had already “echoed all over the vast American continent,” the Los Angeles Herald prophesied La Fiesta would “equal and in many respects exceed the Mardi Gras festival in new [sic] Orleans.” As if that wasn’t pressure enough, the Herald went on to declare that the 1895 fiesta “must be on a grander scale, with more artistic merit, embodying the elements of science, art and music of this city . . . for it is to these talents, if properly man-

Conclusion

267

aged and drawn together, that the future renown of Los Angeles will greatly depend.”19 Creating a successful Fiesta—and lodging within it effective narratives that gained hegemonic power to rewrite the city’s past, present, and future—seemingly didn’t suffice as a one-time event. Meyberg and company faced almost immediate pressure to improve upon and exceed their first success. Doing so certainly required another dazzling display by the city’s Chinese. The Chinese Merchants Association, however, declined the invitation for a return engagement, in part because so many attendees mistreated the Chinese over the course of La Fiesta 1894. Surprised and quite concerned, a delegation of La Fiesta 1895 organizers met with representatives of the Chinese Merchants Association, in Chinatown, and pleaded with them to reconsider. Some argued that a “Fiesta without the Chinese float would tilt toward chaos,” and another claimed that if the Chinese participated, their presence would establish a bond of common cause with European American businessmen and, by extension, the city’s overall prosperity. All of which, according to the committee members, would erode negative perceptions of the Chinese community. Ultimately, the Chinese merchants agreed to participate, topping their previous display by adding an eight-hundred-foot-long dragon, an especially compelling attraction.20 At this far side of Los Angeles’s nineteenth-century historic arc, representatives for the Chamber of Commerce implored a group of Chinese merchants to make themselves and their culture available for the Fiesta, an event that marketed Los Angeles by selectively silencing parts of its past, present, and future. The same aspirations that led the city’s commercial sector to demand the destruction of Chinatown and the banishment of all Chinese residents to areas outside the city limits paradoxically led La Fiesta’s organizers to beg Chinese to take a place of prominence in the pantheon of Los Angeles’s public culture. Certainly this amounted to manipulation, a conclusion as obvious now as it was then to the reluctant Chinese merchants. Given the pervasive antipathy toward Chinese Americans locally and nationally, those businessmen, or any other Chinese Angeleno, for that matter, likely appreciated the instrumentalist aspects of the Fiesta committee’s overtures. The Chinese merchants could have rebuffed the committee, rejecting its entreaty as nothing more than an attempt to add insult to injury. Although agreeing to participate opened the door

268

Conclusion

to a further solidification of European American dominance, it also offered Chinese leaders an opportunity to combat it. As condescending as the offer was, participating in La Fiesta allowed Chinese Angelenos to break through the silence, to claim central space as their own, and to take the power to present for themselves their own image of Chinese culture to the city and those in attendance. By taking that opportunity, the Chinese Merchant’s Association opted to risk further subordination in exchange for a public voice, however muted by the context. The encounter between the Chamber of Commerce and the Chinese Merchants Association, and its attendant ironies, paradoxes, and open outcomes, serves as a final reminder of both the perils and the possibilities related to racial and spatial projects. The Merchants had to pander to a group of citizens it normally considered an impediment rather than an asset in order to maintain their vision of Los Angeles as a viable commodity. Even their success in getting the Chinese to participate had unclear effects: by compelling Chinese participation, white businessmen further cemented existing power relations, but admitting the importance of Chinese participation to La Fiesta’s success made clear that the Merchants’ supposed dominance rested on shaky ground and depended on contributions from the very people and places it dominated. For their part, Chinese business owners faced a similar conundrum. Granting a request made by European Americans who had so often worked for their exclusion from city life could amount to outright submission, but doing so also provided Chinese Angelenos a rare chance to define and contest their own identities publicly. Much as californio and intercultural projects aimed to shape Los Angeles’s people and places, the effort by European American boosters and businessmen to consolidate their racial, spatial, and civic ideals remained open to contestation and negotiation.

NOTES

Introduction. Finding the Past 1. “Pleasures Reign,” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 1894, 8, and Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913 (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Bookshop, 1984), 604. 2. “Governor Neve’s Order for the Founding of Los Angeles,” in The Founding Documents of Los Angeles: A Bilingual Edition, ed. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. (Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California, 2004), 157–60. William Estrada argues that no formal ceremony or celebration inaugurated the settlement, contrary to the story told by noted Los Angeles historian W. W. Robinson. See William David Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 31, and W. W. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1959), 22. 3. David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 6–9, quote at 8. See also Herbert E. Bolton, “The Iturbide Revolution in the Californias,” Hispanic American Historical Review 2 (1919): 188–242, and George Tays, “The Passing of Spanish California, September 29, 1822,” California Historical Society Quarterly 15:3 (June 1936): 139–42. 4. Weber, Mexican Frontier, esp. 242–72. Juan Bautista Alvarado became governor in 1836 and Pío Pico took over in 1844, symbolically moving the capital from Monterey to Los Angeles. 5. James M. Guinn, A History of California and an Extended History of Los Angeles and Environs (Los Angeles: Historical Record Company, 1915), 349. 6. Benjamin Davis Wilson, “Observations on Early Days in California and New Mexico,” manuscript written from the author’s dictation by Thomas Savage, Nov. 28–Dec. 6,

269

270

Notes to Pages 3–7

1877, 67, BANC MSS C-D, Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. See also Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 25–28, and Douglas Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 177–80. 7. “La Fiesta de Los Angeles” Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1894, 6. For a trenchant discussion of the career of La Fiesta de Los Angeles, see William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Making of Its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), chapter 2. 8. “La Fiesta,” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1894, 22. An earlier article estimated the crowd at 75,000, which historian William Deverell finds “impossible” as it “would have equaled the entire population of Los Angeles in the mid-1890s.” Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 58. 9. “Pleasures Reign,” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 1894, 8. 10. “The Parade,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1894, 4. 11. “Pleasures Reign,” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 1894, 8. 12. Whether or not other Yuma stood on this float or costumed non-Indians played Indian remains unclear. 13. “The Parade,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1894, 4. 14. Robert Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 4. 15. Describing the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, William Cronon suggests that the fair’s organizers presented Chicago as “the fulfillment of a destiny that Columbus had long ago set in motion.” William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 341. Writing about La Fiesta 1894, William Deverell argues that “from the vantage of a century later, La Fiesta looks like the party white Los Angeles threw to celebrate the triumph of Manifest Destiny in the Far West.” Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 64. 16. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 3, 2. 17. “The Parade,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1894, 4. 18. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 2, 6. 19. Deverell argues La Fiesta offered Anglo Angelenos “the ideal vehicle by which to forget—to whitewash” the city’s complicated and often unpleasant past “as well as the entire bloody history of the Southwest throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 59. 20. Newmark, Sixty Years, 604. Also quoted in Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 59. 21. Rydell argues that all of the era’s fairs stand as “triumphs of hegemony.” All the World’s a Fair, 4. Antonio Gramsci theorized “hegemony” as an alternative form of state power over ordinary people. If direct domination by brute force lay at one end of a spectrum of power relations in civil society, Gramsci posited, then hegemony occupied the opposite end and arose from “the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.” Gramsci argued that states normatively controlled citizens by way of hegemony

Notes to Page 8

271

and resorted to the “apparatus of state coercive power” only when “groups did not ‘consent’ actively or passively,” or when the state anticipated “moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed” across the community. See Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Noel Smith, eds., Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 12. 22. Edward Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), 5. Also cited in Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 7. 23. A borderlands approach further raises questions about the utility of the “nation”—as an idea and a geopolitical reality—as an organizing analytical category. For studies exploring the ways economic, cultural, and family ties connected locals to (and at times set them in opposition against) each other in ways that often eclipsed their link to any particular national identity, see Anne F. Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011); Carlos Manuel Salomon, Pío Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010); Katherine Benton-Cohen, Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor in the Arizona Borderlands (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009); Raul Ramos, Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821–1861 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Eric V. Meeks, Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007); Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Weber, Mexican Frontier. While I see strong transnational familial, cultural, and commercial connections in nineteenth-century Los Angeles, Michael González argues that Spanish-Mexican Angelenos actively stitched themselves into the young Mexican nation. Michael N. González, This Small City Will Be a Mexican Paradise: Exploring the Origins of Mexican Culture in Los Angeles, 1821–1846 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005). 24. Louise Pubols, “Born Global: From Pueblo to Statehood,” in William Deverell and Greg Hise, eds., A Companion to Los Angeles (West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 20–39, and Marissa K. López, Chicano Nations: The Hemispheric Origins of Mexican American Literature (New York: New York University Press, 2011). Specifically, López argues that Mariano Vallejo understood Spanish and Mexican California not as a distant frontier “but the red-hot center of the late nineteenth-century Americas” (61). 25. Tom Sizgorich defines borderlands as “a space in which no one cultural or political force is able to exercise uncontested hegemony, and in which one is likely to encounter discursive economies which incorporate (but do not necessarily assimilate) the influences of various cultural traditions and political interests.” Thomas N. Sizgorich, “Narrative and Community in Islamic Late Antiquity,” Past and Present 185 (November 2004): 9–42, 16. Writing about San Antonio, Texas, Raul Ramos suggests that “borderland” offers one way to describe the “relationship of a region to two or more nation-states and thus begs the question of what nationalism looks like on the border of a nation.” Ramos, Beyond the

272

Notes to Pages 8–10

Alamo, 8. Nevertheless, borderlands exist in many Cartesian and discursive spaces remote (in both time and place) from nation-states. 26. For the concept of “spatial mestizaje,” see Chris Wilson, “Spatial Mestizaje on the Pueblo-Anglo-Hispanic Frontier,” Mass 10 (1994): 40–49. For work exploring the possibilities and peril of mixed communities in the Southwest, see esp. Brooks, Captives and Cousins. 27. A similar fluidity characterizes the present volume. Assigning labels to groups whose sense of themselves and others remained dynamic is only one of the challenges here. In addition, a commitment to avoid reinforcing a priori racial categories and the labels that describe them further muddies the nomenclatural waters. When possible and appropriate, I use words that the actors in this story used to describe themselves and others. When grouping on my own, I refer to indigenous residents of the Los Angeles basin as Tongva, Gabrieleno-Tongva (a blended term incorporating both indigenous and Spanish naming strategies), Gabrielinos, and Indians. I refer to those connected to the Spanish colonial project, subsequent immigrants, and their California-born offspring alternately as Mexican Californians, Spanish-Mexicans, and for those born into these families after 1848, Mexican Americans. I call immigrants from New Spanish and independent Mexico Mexicans, and later in the book I use “Mexican” as a racial term only once it seems to have crystallized. Immigrants to Los Angeles from the United States and Europe, and their Los Angeles–born children, present the most vexing naming issue. I most frequently use the term “European American” to refer to such individuals and groups, despite the fact that some Iberian immigrants to California and their descendants are also rightly European American. Intermittently, I use the terms “Yankee,” “gringo,” and “norteamericano” specifically because they carry with them cultural baggage as understood by Mexican Californians. Scholars in ethnic history frequently deploy the simpler term “Anglo,” which I use only sparingly because many Angelenos’ southern European origins and/or non-Protestant religious proclivities lose historical presence under the Anglo umbrella and because these people did not fully become “white” until after World War II. As with my use of “Mexican” as a racial marker, I only use the term “white” in the context of explicit negotiations regarding race. I do so in part because I argue that white as a racial marker emerged only in time and only in dialogue with the development of referential Indian, Mexican, and Chinese racial categories. Finally, readers will note that I go to great lengths to use the term “American” sparingly, despite the resulting stylistic awkwardness. In geopolitical terms, all residents of North and South America have claim to the appellation. More specific to this study, I refuse to yield the term “American” as a centered, normative, and uncontested label for immigrants from the United States to Spanish and Mexican California or to subsequent immigrants from lands east of Los Angeles during the U.S. period. 28. Anne F. Hyde, “The Disadvantages of Hindsight: A Re-Reading of the Early American West,” Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 19:6 (November 2005): 7–11. 29. La Estrella de Los Angeles and The Los Angeles Star, vol. 4, no. 38, February 1, 1855. See chapter 3. 30. In her landmark essay, Joan Scott describes gender as constructed and negotiated along axes of social, political, economic, and cultural power. Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A

Notes to Pages 10–12

273

Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91:5 (December 1996): 1053–75. 31. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991), 42. 32. On the absence of biological racial difference among humans, see Jonathan Marks, Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995). The central works in racialization and new race theory are Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), and Stephen Cornell and Douglas Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 1998). See also Barbara Jeanne Fields, “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America,” New Left Review 1:181 (May–June 1990): 95–118. 33. Fine examples of historical studies that draw out this notion include Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Back Bay, 1998); Martha Menchaca, The Mexican Outsiders: A Community History of Marginalization and Discrimination in California (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995); and Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1996). 34. Anthropologist Audrey Smedley, following Stuart Hall, argues that as people realize the “adaptive usefulness” of racial categories, “they become established as givens, as worldviews or ideologies.” Smedley defines “worldview” as “a culturally structured, systematic way of looking at, perceiving, and interpreting various world realities.” As a worldview, racial ideas become institutionalized and consequently “feed back into human thought and actions,” ultimately becoming “enthroned as mind-sets,” which “may even achieve the state of involuntary cognitive processes, actively if not consciously controlling the behavior of their bearers.” Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview (Boulder: Westview, 1999), 18. 35. See Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedoms: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); George Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988) and The Black Image in the White Mind (New York: Harper and Row, 1971). 36. While Douglas Monroy, David Gutierrez, and Philip Ethington suggest that elite Mexican Californians and European Americans jointly assumed a white racial identity and together dominated laboring Angelenos, I argue instead that they created a locally specific intercultural identity that followed neither californio nor U.S. strategies precisely. Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers; David Gutierrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and Philip J. Ethington, “Ab Urbis Condita: Regional Regimes Since 13,000 Before Present,” in William Deverell and Greg Hise, eds., A Companion to Los Angeles (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 177–215, 190–91. 37. Henry Yu, “Mountains of Gold: Canada, North America, and the Cantonese Pa-

274

Notes to Pages 12–15

cific,” in Chee Beng Tan, ed., Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora (New York: Routledge, 2013), 108–21. Yu’s work suggests that kin connections, places of origin within China, and shared Cantonese dialects bound Chinese immigrant communities together in North America. Moreover, Chinese immigrants, many of whom came from the same region in Guangdong, held a strong sense of their distinctness from Han Chinese, Hakka (guest people who had migrated into Guangdong from northern China), and foreigners. 38. Historical geographer David Delaney argues that “space and power are so tightly bound that changing one necessarily entails changing the other.” David Delaney, Race, Place, and the Law, 1836–1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 7. 39. Lefebvre, Production of Space; Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era,” in Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, eds., Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 13. 40. More accurately, this is the southwest corner of the third Los Angeles Plaza, as floods forced it to be moved twice during the pueblo’s first three decades. Consequently, this particular spot took on spatial significance in relationship to the Plaza only after it settled in its third, and final, home. Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 9. 41. Until this time, the Plaza had been a strictly public place, hosting social, religious, and ceremonial functions. Carrillo’s adobe was also the Plaza’s first private space. Several other noted ranching families, including the Picos, Lugos, and Avilas, followed suit in the next decade. Salomon, Pío Pico, situates Pico’s development of the lot as commensurate with Pico’s ongoing commercial, real estate, and entrepreneurial engagement in Los Angeles. 42. Robinson, From the Days, 32. 43. Geographer J. Nicholas Entrikin argues convincingly that people’s “relations to place and culture become elements in the construction” of their “individual and collective identities.” Tracing the relationship between place and identity requires an approach that considers both the “social and economic forces” that “shape places and in turn are shaped by places.” J. Nicholas Entrikin, The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), quotes from 1 and 21. 44. Doreen Massey argues that “spatial differentiation . . . is not just an outcome: it is integral to the reproduction of society and its dominant social relations.” Doreen Massey, Spatial Divisions of Labor: Social Structures and the Geography of Production (New York: Methuen, 1984), 299–300. Cited in Entrikin, Betweenness of Place, 21. In this same spirit, I adhere to Dolores Hayden’s insight that “indigenous residents as well as colonizers, ditchdiggers as well as architects, migrant workers as well as mayors, housewives as well as housing inspectors, are all active in shaping the urban landscape.” A public historian, Hayden’s work suggests that all Angelenos be considered agents in the city’s construction and that an evaluation of their contributions can illuminate the meaning of the built environment. Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 15. 45. I do not mean to suggest that Los Angeles or notions of race there developed in complete isolation from larger historical phenomena. Indeed, Los Angeles was a node on multiple and overlapping transnational circuits. Spanish officials ordered Alta California’s

Notes to Page 16

275

settlement within the broader context of the Bourbon reforms, Mexico gained its independence from Spain against the backdrop of the Napoleonic invasion, and concerns about imperial projects sponsored by Britain, France, Russia, and the United States informed much of the city’s history during the nineteenth century. However, local rather than international issues determined Los Angeles’s social and spatial evolution. 46. For a transnational perspective, Nicholas De Genova, ed., Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). For works centered in the Southwest, see Benton-Cohen, Borderline Americans; Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Meeks, Border Citizens; and Maria Montoya, Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840–1900 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005). These trends are not limited to the “more complicated” Southwest. For stories that undermine, however unintentionally, the notion of stable black-white relations along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States during the nineteenth century, see Victoria Bynum, Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free United States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961). A sprawling body of work has appeared on the subject of transnationalism, much of it offering new ways to think about the issue of the nation itself as a fluid category. See Laura Briggs, Gladys McCormick, and J. T. Way, “Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis,” American Quarterly 60:3 (September 2008): 625–48; Reséndez, Changing National Identities; Truett, Fugitive Landscapes; and a suite of excellent essays in Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, eds., Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). Marissa López suggests that if scholars adopt a hemispheric/transnational approach without recognizing the troubled past of American studies as a discipline, they “run the risk of falling into an intellectual solipsism that mirrors U.S. geopolitical dominance.” López, Chicano Nations, 11. Los Angeles was certainly a node on multiple and overlapping transnational circuits. Likewise, the town’s Cartesian plan and administrative structure had mixed Moorish and Spanish origins, crossed the Atlantic to Mexico City, and radiated outward into New Spain for over two hundred years (with ongoing modifications) before taking root in one Alta California pueblo. Over multiple generations, many Angelenos had similarly complex origin stories. Nevertheless, this work remains rooted in Los Angeles and looks out from the city, based on the conviction that the relative significance of Los Angeles to transnational circuits proved less critical to the city’s history than did local actors and local circumstances. 47. A journalist, activist, lawyer, and essayist, McWilliams wrote numerous treatises exploring Mexican immigrants, agricultural work, and the Southwest’s Spanish fantasy heritage. His works have become increasingly popular touchstones among the region’s historians in the past decade. See, among many, Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land, 9th ed. (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1980), and Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1949).

276

Notes to Pages 16–17

48. Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios, 1846–1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). 49. The civil rights movement influenced the social and cultural foci of these works, and the new urban history’s statistical and spatial innovations influenced their methodology. Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848–1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 1979). Similar “barrio studies” appeared exploring Los Angeles in the early twentieth century at roughly the same time, including Ricardo Romo, East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983); Raymond Lou, “The Chinese American Community in Los Angeles, 1870–1900: A Case of Resistance, Organization, and Participation” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 1982); Pedro G. Castillo, “The Making of a Mexican Barrio: Los Angeles, 1890–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1979); and Lawrence B. De Graaf, “The City of Black Angels: Emergence of the Los Angeles Ghetto, 1890–1930,” Pacific Historical Review 39 (August 1970): 323–52. This literature is largely congruent with the so-called ghetto studies works, which principally explored neighborhood segregation, black marginalization, and community resistance in the U.S. urban north. See Thomas Lee Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle Class Reform, Chicago, 1880–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976); Allan H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); and Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (New York: Harper and Row, 1966). All of these studies built on two germinal works in urban ethnic history: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1899), and Horace R. Cayton and St. Clair Drake, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (London: Jonathan Cape, 1946). 50. Monroy’s consideration of Indians, missionaries, rancheros, vecinos, and U.S. immigrants in the formation and reformation of Los Angeles’s economy, society, and culture brought local Indians to the center of the story; illustrated moments of both cooperation and conflict; looked at Los Angeles’s career under Spain, Mexico, and the United States; and reframed Los Angeles as a dynamic place full of cultural, social, and familial mixing. Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers. For a more regional study of Southern California, see also Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769–1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Almaguer explicitly challenged the notion of a single, black-white racial binary and explored instead the multiple origins of racial identity and white supremacy in California through interactions between and among Indians, Mexican Californians, and immigrants from the United States, Mexico, China, and Japan. Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). For a similar work addressing Texas, see Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). For the new western history’s germinal works, see Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Patricia Nelson Limerick,

Notes to Page 17

277

Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987); William G. Robbins, “The ‘Plundered Province’ Thesis and the Recent Historiography of the American West,” Pacific Historical Review 55 (1986): 577–97; and Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 51. Antonia I. Castañeda, “Presidarias y Pobladores: Spanish-Mexican Women in Frontier Monterey, Alta California, 1770–1821” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1990); Virginia M. Bouvier, Women and the Conquest of California, 1542–1840 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001); Miroslava Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004); and María Raquél Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820–1880 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2007). 52. In Nature’s Metropolis William Cronon offers a notable and pertinent exception. Cronon views the frontier not as “some implicitly racist ‘meeting point between savagery and civilization,’ but the ongoing extension of market relations into the ways human beings used land—and each other—in the Great West” (53). His book revolves around the core concept that “the ways people value the products of the soil, and decide how much it costs to get those products to market, together shape the landscape we inhabit” (50). Moreover, “geographical arguments do not explain” how Chicago transformed from a small Indian village in 1830 to a massive metropolis only decades later. “Only culture and history can do that,” Cronon argues, noting that “whatever the advantages of a particular landscape, people seem always to reshape it according to their vision of what it should be” (55). Regarding the ways Pío Pico’s life challenges the narrative of decline, see Salomon, Pío Pico, esp. 7–8. Writing specifically about Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo’s historical narrative, Marissa López writes that he offers “not just a narrative of loss but also a narrative of future possibility.” Moreover, she argues that “ignoring this future possibility means ignoring half of Vallejo’s narrative,” an idea worthy of being exported to the whole of nineteenth-century California history, as the scholarly emphasis on loss has ignored at least half of the story. See López, Chicano Nations, chapter 2, esp. 67 and 88–89. See also Ethington, “Ab Urbis Condita,” 189. 53. Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967). Forcefully argued and taking as its subject a city peripheral to the field of urban studies (in comparison to cities like Chicago, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia), Fogelson’s work stood unchallenged for nearly three decades. 54. Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1990, and New York: Vintage, 1992). For key theoretical texts exploring urban postmodernity and articulating the L.A. School, see Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989); Michael J. Dear, Greg Hise, and H. Eric Schockman, eds., Rethinking Los Angeles (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996); Allen J. Scott and Edward W. Soja, eds., The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000); Michael J. Dear, The Postmodern Urban Condition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); Michael J. Dear, ed., From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory (Thousand Oaks,

278

Notes to Pages 17–18

Calif.: Sage, 2001); Michael J. Dear and Gustavo Leclerc, eds., Postborder City: Cultural Spaces of Bajalta California (New York: Routledge, 2003); Greg Hise, “Border City: Race and Social Distance in Los Angeles” American Quarterly (2004): 545–58. For critical assessments, see David R. Diaz, Barrio Urbanism: Chicanos, Planning, and American Cities (New York: Routledge, 2005); the special forum “Historicizing the City of Angels,” American Historical Review 105:5 (December 2000): 1667–91; and Phillip Ethington, “Waiting for the ‘L.A. School,’” Southern California Quarterly 80:3 (Fall 1998): 349–62. For historical works addressing the environment, public policy, and the urban form (much of which is in direct conversation with Fogelson), see Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Jennifer Wolch, Manuel Pastor, and Peter Drier, eds., Up Against the Sprawl: Public Policy and the Making of Southern California (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York: Vintage, 2004); William Deverell and Greg Hise, eds., Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006). Some, but certainly not all, of these scholars are volitionally invoking a comparison to the noted Chicago School, which asserted the primacy of the city’s core and its power to organize the periphery. For the classic example of this see, Robert E. Park and Derrick Burgess, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925). 55. As Philip Ethington has recently observed, “the abiding influence of the UtoAztecan, Spanish, and Mexican periods on the US regimes has been significantly underestimated by most scholars, who have likewise underestimated the shaping influence of the larger-scale regional context: the Spanish Borderland location of Los Angeles.” Ethington, “Ab Urbis Condita,” 179. 56. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe; Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza; Hise, “Border City”; Stephanie Lewthwaite, Race, Place, and Reform in Mexican Los Angeles: A Transnational Perspective, 1890–1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009); and Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). See also Salomon, Pío Pico; Isabella Seong-Leong Quintana, “National Borders, Neighborhood Boundaries: Gender, Space, and Border Formation in Chinese and Mexican Los Angeles, 1871–1938” (Ph.D. diss., history, University of Michigan, 2010); Phoebe S. Kropp, California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Mary Ryan, “A Durable Center of Urban Space: The Los Angeles Plaza,” Urban History 33:10 (December 2006): 457–83; González, This Small City; Cesar Lopez, “El Descanso: A Comparative History of the Los Angeles Plaza Area and the Shared Racialized Space of the Mexican and Chinese Communities, 1853–1933” (Ph.D. diss., ethnic studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2002); Matt García, A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900–1970 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Greg Hise and William Deverell, Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); William Alexander McLung,

Notes to Pages 19–23

279

Landscapes of Desire: Anglo Mythologies of Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Raúl Villa, Barrio-Logos: Space, and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000); and Norman M. Klein, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory (London: Verso, 1997). 57. My use of “intercultural” here is an effort to adopt a term that accurately characterizes both the possibilities and perils that arose as Indians and immigrants from Spain, Mexico, the United States, China, and Europe made and remade Los Angeles between 1781 and 1894. Interactions deemed intercultural represent exchanges in which existing notions about one’s own culture and community change and are mediated by engagement with others. See, for example, Richard L. Wiseman, Intercultural Communication Theory (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995). I am also hoping to avoid more fraught but rightly appropriate terms, including “mestizaje” or “hybridity.” In The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha argues that in colonial and postcolonial contexts in which multiple groups compete for space, resources, and power, the “representation of difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation.” Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 2. Specifically, I use “intercultural” to depict familial, political, economic, and cultural interchanges in which Mexican Californians and immigrants from the United States both relinquished some of their key identity markers to build together a new society in Los Angeles. To be sure, these sometimes dynamic and fleeting formations never involved everyone in Los Angeles and always emerged within already existing fields of power. In particular, my analysis remains sensitive to the critique leveled by María Casas, who argues that intermarriages during the 1840s and 1850s “became false symbols of peaceful invasion and control by the United States” because they sublimated the choice of a few into a broader narrative (driven by colonial desire) that “reinforced white Euro-Americans’ cultural fantasies that racially ‘inferior’ peoples would accept and gravitate to the newcomers’ ‘superior’ presence and control.” Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 80.

Chapter 1. A Pueblo by the Porciuncula, 1781–1840 1. William David Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 27–31; Miroslava Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004), 18. The settlement party divided into two groups in Alamos, Sonora. When the group crossing the Sonora Desert reached the Colorado River, they divided again. Most crossed the Mojave Desert immediately, while Fernando Rivera y Moncada, California’s lieutenant governor and officer in charge of this detachment, stayed behind with a small group of soldiers so the animals could forage and rest before the final desert crossing. However, they carelessly let the animals eat pasture and crops cultivated by Quechan Indians. Together with Mojave allies, the Quechan attacked the group, killing ninety-five, including Rivera y Moncada (Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza, 28–29). 2. Felipe de Neve, “Reglamento Para el Govierno de la Provincia de Californias, Apro-

280

Notes to Pages 24–26

bado por S. M. en Real Orden de 24, Octubre, 1781,” in “Documents Pertaining to the Founding of Los Angeles” Annual Publication (Southern California Historical Society) 15 (1931): 188. 3. Population data from Louise Pubols, “Born Global: From Pueblo to Statehood,” in William Deverell and Greg Hise, eds., A Companion to Los Angeles (West Sussex: WileyBlackwell, 2010), 20–39, 22. “Gabrielino-Tongva” brings together the Spanish name given to the local indigenous people (Gabrielino) and the preferred name used by contemporary members of the group, which originates in their own Shoshonean language (Tongva). As Pubols and others note, however, in the late eighteenth century “they identified themselves by village, clan, and family” (22). Bioarchaeologist Lisa Kealhofer suggests that although Gabrielino-Tongva likely faced population stress due to epidemic disease, the evidence indicates that the group’s health and population had stabilized by the time the Spanish permanently settled Southern California. Lisa Kealhofer, “The Evidence for Demographic Collapse in California,” in Brenda J. Baker, ed., Bioarchaeology of Native American Adaptation in the Spanish Borderlands (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), 56–92. 4. Quote from Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 8. The absence of women accompanying Spanish explorers or Spanish settlements vexed indigenous people throughout Spain’s northern frontier. According to Juliana Barr, Caddo Indians in present-day Texas viewed strangers who arrived without women as intent on making war, whereas those who came to trade brought their families. There, the presence of the Virgin on several standards seems to have convinced the Caddo, at first, that the Spaniards came to trade. Eventually, however, men’s bad behavior and sexual violence led the Caddo to expel the Spaniards from their midst. Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), esp. chapter 1. 5. Virginia M. Bouvier, Women and the Conquest of California, 1542–1840 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), xvi. 6. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 5. 7. Ibid., 14. 8. Bouvier, Women and the Conquest of California, xvi. 9. Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 27–33, quote at 27. 10. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 23. Angeleno women, who played a central role in reproducing “the social, physical, ideological, and institutional foundations of Spanish and Mexican society and culture on New Spain’s northernmost frontier,” nevertheless found creative ways to engage local laws and to challenge and modify gender roles and definitions in the pueblo. 11. María Raquél Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820–1880 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2007), 8–9. Casas writes that claiming “a timeless and natural association” with the territory justified “their acts of violence, conquest, and eventual development of the land for their own economic and social advantage.” See also Carlos Manuel Salomon, Pío Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 5–6. 12. William M. Mason, Los Angeles Under the Spanish Flag: Spain’s New World (Burbank: Southern California Genealogical Society, 2004); 71–73, 88–96.

Notes to Pages 26–32

281

13. Total for the 1836 census taken from Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). This count included an area broader than the formal city limits. The 1844 census can be found at the Los Angeles City Archives, vol. 3, folder 4 (entire). Archives of the City of Los Angeles, Records Management Division Offices, Los Angeles City Clerk’s Office, Los Angeles, Calif. (hereafter LACA). Documents cited as Los Angeles City Archives (LACA) consist of manuscripts that were formerly bound but have since been unbound. The individual sheets are kept in folders, although the former volume numbers are still used to reference particular manuscripts. Some manuscripts are divided into multiple folders. 14. Following field work in Costa Rica, Low argued that plazas express “systems of representation and social products” and as specific spatial forms confirmed rather than caused social differentiation. Setha M. Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 180. Also cited in Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 8. 15. Nunis, ed., Founding Documents, 157, 160. 16. Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 44; Blake Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 139–41. 17. Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 44–45. 18. News of Mexico’s independence took six months to reach Los Angeles, and the ceremony waited four months more. David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 6–9, quote at 8. See also Herbert E. Bolton, “The Iturbide Revolution in the Californias,” Hispanic American Historical Review 2 (1919): 188–242; and George Tays, “The Passing of Spanish California, September 29, 1822,” California Historical Society Quarterly 15:3 ( June 1936): 139–42. 19. Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 26. 20. William Wilcox Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1959), 32. The large building featured whitewashed adobe walls, one of the town’s few high, gabled, Spanish tiled roofs, and two wings. One extended west along Calle Principal (Main Street) and the other extended south and faced the Plaza. Cross walls in the rear enclosed a patio. Inside, there were several parlors, bedrooms, a library, and a ballroom large enough to accommodate gatherings of more than five hundred persons. 21. Robinson, From the Days, 32–35, 38–39. 22. LACA, September 12, 1837, untitled records series, vol. 3, folder 2, 196–97. 23. Robinson, From the Days, 32–35, 8–9; Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913, Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1984), 98–111. Rancheros, merchants, and Yankee newcomers played monte, often for high stakes at Seguro’s gaming house. Due south, diagonally across the Plaza, stood Ocampo’s adobe. His quadrangular yard bore the moniker la plazuela, and frequently served as an arena for a variety of games in addition to cockfights. 24. “Note on Races and Castes of Mexico,” in Nunis, ed., Founding Documents, 164. Nunis takes as his source Mexico a Través de los Siglos (Mexico: Editorial Oceano, 1991), vol. 2, 471. Such complications became greater in successive generations, producing cat-

282

Notes to Pages 32–34

egories such as “Calpan Mulata,” the product of a mulata mother (defined as the product of Spanish and African) and a “Zambo” father, who would himself have been the descendant along the male line of a salta-atras scion whose male children, successively, produced children with mulatas for two generations, followed by an Indian, then an African woman, and then another Indian. Indicating the limits of the ability to keep track, the child of this Calpan Mulata would be termed “tente en el aire,” or up in the air, his grandchild “no te entiendo” (I don’t understand you), and his great-grandchild would bear the marker “ahí te estas,” or “and there you are” (all of this would only have been possible by these men having children with another Zamba, a Mulata, and finally an Indian coming down the generations, otherwise everything would have been different still). The casta system predicated every category on further mixing, establishing clearly that Spanish officials expected nothing less. Interestingly, the child of a mestizo and an español became a “castizo,” and if that child married another español, their children became sufficiently sanitized to return to full español status. 25. Historian Steven Hackel estimates that in 1790, besides Franciscan missionaries, “there were only ten persons living in California who had been born in Spain, and probably no more than twenty native Spaniards at any time lived in Alta California.” Steven W. Hackel, Children of the Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish relations in Colonial California, 1769–1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 57. 26. “Padrón of Los Angeles,” in Nunis, ed., Founding Documents, 161–63. Consequently, their offspring would have fallen into some of the more complex categories in successive generations. 27. This phenomenon was common throughout Spain’s northern frontier, although it went against the plan. In its conception, the casta system operated to “keep elements of a polyethnic society clearly identified and stratified so that the mixed progeny of Spaniards, Indians, and blacks could be kept in socially subordinate positions.” Almost from the start of Spain’s presence in southwestern North America, however, this plan proved impractical. Part of the problem can be located within the Spaniards’ other aim: to convert the Indians into citizens. Although the Spanish hoped to develop the area as a buffer zone, it could not do so with its own people and had no great supply of willing participants from Mexico’s interior. Consequently, they tried to slowly turn Indians into Catholics and villages into loyal pueblos. As people acculturated over time, and occasionally mixed with immigrants from Spain and Mexico, “the real or ascribed cultural characteristics of each group (casta) were not sufficiently stable to persist.” leading to a “muddled and largely ineffective” system. Adrian Bustamante, “‘The Matter Was Never Resolved’: The Casta System in New Mexico, 1693–1823,” in Laurie Weinstein, ed., Native Peoples of the Southwest: Negotiating Land, Water, and Ethnicities (Westport, Conn: Bergin and Garvey, 2001), 203. For more on the Spanish colonial plan in southwestern North America, see the classic work by Herbert E. Bolton, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution in the Spanish-American Colonies” American Historical Review 23:1 (October 1917): 42–61, and Weber, Mexican Frontier, chapter 5. 28. Hackel, Children of the Coyote, 59–60. 29. Maynard Geiger, “Reply of Mission San Carlos Borromeo to the Questionnaire of the Spanish Government in 1812 Concerning the Native Culture of the California Mission

Notes to Pages 34–36

283

Indians,” The Americas 6:4 (April 1950): 467–86; and Maynard Geiger, “Reply of Mission San Antonio to the Questionnaire of the Spanish Government in 1812 Concerning the Native Culture of the California Mission Indians,” The Americas 10:2 (October 1953): 211–27. 30. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 20. See also Douglas Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), esp. 22; and Gloria Miranda, “Racial and Cultural Dimensions of Gente de Razon Status in Spanish and Mexican California,” Southern California Quarterly 70 (Fall 1988): 265–78. 31. Hackel, Children of the Coyote, 60. 32. William Marvin Mason, The Census of 1790: A Demographic History of Colonial California (Menlo Park: Ballena, 1998), 61. Also cited in Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 28. 33. Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 30–31. 34. Hackel, Children of the Coyote, 310–12. An imperial Spanish measure of the dry volume of any given agricultural good, a fanega roughly equates to 2.5 U.S. bushels of produce. 35. Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 36–37; Kealhofer, “Evidence for Demographic Collapse,” 72. 36. Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 39. 37. Hackel, Children of the Coyote, 310–12. 38. Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza, 41. 39. This race-making project both paralleled and intersected with the dynamic development of gender in Los Angeles. On one analytical plane, ideas about gender—the emphasis on chastity for young women and their unyielding fidelity in marriage for female gente de razón as compared to the assumed promiscuity of all Gabrielino women and the fluidity with which they made and unmade nuclear families—permeate the new racial relationships. On another, many pobladoras who rose up from their own india, mulata, and mestiza pasts in the new racial system in turn employed Gabrielino women in their own homes. In doing so these Angelenas took advantage of their new racial privilege to lessen their own heavy domestic workload by transferring some onto the backs of exploitable Gabrielino women. See Bouvier, Women and the Conquest of California, and Chávez-García Negotiating Conquest. 40. The move to convert Indians to citizens accompanied several independence movements in Latin America during the nineteenth century, most famously José de San Martín’s 1821 declaration that “todos los indios son Peruanos.” See John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808–1826 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 181. 41. The battle between those who supported and those who opposed secularization reveals much about elite Mexican Californians’ impressions of the Indians. Mission fathers and their supporters considered neophytes unfit for full citizenship, doubted the sincerity of Indians’ conversions, and questioned Indians’ ability to discipline themselves without close supervision. Even the California Junta de Fomento, a group of liberals charged by the national government to chart a course for the territory’s development and the missions’ most forceful critics, characterized California Indians as so “easily managed, friendly, docile, and indolent” that “the use of military power for their subjugation is not often necessary.” Keld J. Reynolds, “Principal Actions of the California Junta de Fomento, 1825–

284

Notes to Pages 36–39

1827,” California Historical Society Quarterly 25 (December 1946): 267–77, 347–56. That two different Spanish-Mexican factions squabbled for exclusive rights to determine Indians’ future clarifies the divide Mexicans, regardless of politics, saw between themselves and indios. For an extended discussion of secularization, see Weber, Mexican Frontier, 60–67. 42. Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846–1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 10. 43. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 60–62, 76–78. See also Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 125, who estimates that nearly five thousand mission Indians perished during the secularization period, and Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 10. 44. Hackel, Children of the Coyote, 413, counted “at least 377” Gabrielino-Tongva living in the city proper. The 1844 census counted ranchería dwellers separately. LACA, Census of 1844, untitled records series, box b-1367, folder 2 (entire). 45. Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 98; Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 135; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 208. 46. Frederik Barth, “Introduction,” in Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 15–16. Writing about relationships among settlers in New England and local Wampanoag and Narragansett Indians, Jill Lepore argues that weak boundaries were one reason why Indians, Praying Indians, and English settlers went to war. See her masterful The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York, 1998), esp. chapter 2. 47. Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 8–9; Salomon, Pío Pico, 5–6. 48. Chávez-García Negotiating Conquest, 68, 26. 49. Archaeologist Lisa Kealhofer found a variety of “lithic tools, faunal evidence of wild species, as well as other artifacts” on Southern California rancho sites, suggesting “that ranchos attracted many disenfranchised Native Americans as laborers and provided an alternative context for cultural adaptation and transformation.” Moreover, her evidence indicates “rancho sites commonly demonstrate a stronger tie with indigenous groups than is seen in the pueblos,” although both provided contexts “for indigenous transformation after contact.” Kealhofer, “Evidence for Demographic Collapse,” 72. 50. Father Narciso Durán to Governor José Figueroa, July 3, 1833, cited in C. Alan Hutchinson, Frontier Settlement in Mexican California: The Híjar-Padrés Colony and Its Origins, 1769–1835 (New Haven, 1969), 222–23, and Weber, Mexican Frontier, 211. Durán accused secularizers of false liberalism, claiming that “the equality with the white people, which is preached to them, consists in this: that these Indians are subject to a white comisionado, but they are the ones who do the menial work.” Yet Durán concluded that “the benevolent ideas of the Government with regard to the plan that the poor Indians should be proprietors and independent of white people, will never be realized, because the Indian evinces no other ambitions than to possess a little more savage license, even though it involved a thousand oppressions of servitude.” 51. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 68. 52. Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 154. Amid Los Angeles’s dynamic social milieu, fiestas both differentiated society’s members and bound the community together. Usually hosted by californios or wealthier vecinos, fiestas remained always and intentionally open to the public and Angelenos mixed freely at these affairs. Interactions across group bound-

Notes to Pages 39–41

285

aries allowed the hosts to cultivate a stilted sense of social harmony and unity while reinforcing their own social position and displaying their wealth. A similar spirit loomed large in the rancheros’ legendary hospitality, whereby they proved their wealth by sharing of it freely with strangers. See Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 145–49. For a fascinating ethnographic and ethnohistorical account of the significance of fiestas to present-day Aymara communities in Bolivia, see Thomas Alan Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power: Ethnography and History Among an Andean People (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998). 53. This proved true even among those former neophytes who secured individual land grants. Although the opportunity to work their own lands prevented them from relying on rancho or pueblo labor and afforded Gabrielino property holders “a measure of upward social mobility and economic independence that distinguished them from other native peoples,” they remained at risk. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 78; Michael J. González, This Small City Will Be a Mexican Paradise: Exploring the Origins of Mexican Culture in Los Angeles, 1821–1846 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), esp. chapter 4. 54. Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 138, and Weber, Mexican Frontier, 218–20. 55. Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 139. Monroy argues that vecinos “lived in relation to other vecinos. They were not independent citizens who lived in relation to the state.” Michael González explores the nuances of social markers in different terms, eschewing a discussion of vecinos in favor of examining differences between ranchers and agriculturalists. He argues that ordinary Angelenos disliked rancheros’ preference for living off of others’ labors, whereas agriculturalists had more in common, regardless of aggregate wealth, with other agriculturalists in the city, fostering a broader shared identity. Nevertheless, in his story Angelenos also identified themselves in dialogue with and in opposition to Indians. González, This Small City. 56. The first reference to “cholos” appears in Comentarios Reales de los Incas by Gracilaso de la Vega. Others speculate that its use to describe mixed people survived well past other casta categories resulted from its similarity to the Nahuatl word xolotl, or mutt. 57. Juan Bautista Alvarado, “History of California” (5-vol. manuscript held at the Bancroft Library as part of the Documentos para la Historia de California collection), 3:12–13. Cited in Antonio Maria Osio, The History of Alta California: A Memoir of Mexican California (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 267, n5; Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 127–28. 58. Osio, History of Alta California, 53. 59. Editorial annotations suggest Osio lived in Baja California until 1825. Osio, History of Alta California, 13. 60. Clear boundaries made it possible for californios, vecinos, cholos, and indios to freely drink and dance at fiestas. As anthropologist Frederick Barth argues, well-defined, stable boundaries “canalize social life,” facilitating rather than limiting interaction in mixed communities. Barth, “Introduction,” 15. 61. Salomon, Pío Pico, offers an original analysis of Pico’s economic, political, and social achievements within the context of California during the Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. periods. For a discussion of Pico’s family background, see esp. 12–16.

286

Notes to Pages 42–43

62. James Rood Robertson, “From Alcalde to Mayor: A History of the Changes from the Mexican to the American Local Institutions in California” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1908); 42–49. Although Mexican municipal structures did not impose a strict separation of powers, Robertson argues that among alcaldes’ duties, “the judicial functions were predominant, as his title of judge would suggest” (49). See also Theodore Grivas, “Alcalde Rule: The Nature of Local Government in Spanish and Mexican California,” California Historical Society Quarterly 40:1 (1961): 11–32, 11. 63. Grivas, “Alcalde Rule,” 18. Under this broad purview fell maintenance of public areas, including the town plaza and pueblo streets; regulation of weights, measures, and monies; community projects such as schools; record keeping for marriages, births, and deaths; and the making of laws to carry these purposes into effect. In carrying out these duties, the ayuntamiento under both Spain and Mexico reported annually to the territorial governor. 64. Robertson, “From Alcalde to Mayor,” 42–49; David J. Langum, Law and Community on the Mexican Frontier: Anglo-American Expatriates and the Clash of Legal Traditions, 1821–1846 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 30; Grivas, “Alcalde Rule,” 11; Richard R. Powell, Compromises of Conflicting Claims: A Century of California Law, 1760 to 1860 (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana, 1977), 29. 65. LACA January 4, 1833, untitled records series, vol. 2, 14–16. The growth of ranching and ranch living on Los Angeles’s outskirts led the ayuntamiento to establish positions for judges of the plains and auxiliary alcaldes, “for the better administration of justice and the Public peace.” Judges of the plains heard cases in rural areas, usually involving horses, cows, and tools. Auxiliary alcaldes oversaw “ranchos adjoining this Town,” including San Gertrudis (Juan Perez), San Rafael (Julio Verde), Santa Ana (Bernardo Yorba), and San Pedro (Manuel Dominguez). The ayuntamiento hoped to prevent “the utter poverty to which some families are reduced” by games of chance, fining both operators and players. First-time offenders paid fines and recidivists faced trial and possible imprisonment. See also LACA, January 9 and January 22, 1833, untitled records series, vol. 2, 18, 19. 66. For fees charged in relation to surveying and giving titles to pueblo lands, see LACA, July 1837, untitled records series, vol. 3, folder 1, 84–86. Accounts of license fees paid by owners of stores can be found at LACA, n.d. [1836], untitled records series, vol. 3, folder 1, 46–47. Records of license fees paid by liquor vendors appear at LACA, n.d. [1836] untitled records series, vol. 3, folder 1, 51–53. The ten men and one woman who sold liquor (a rather high number for a town of fewer than a thousand people) contributed more than 500 pesos of the city’s annual revenue, which rarely exceeded 700 pesos during the late 1830s. 67. Langum, Law and Community, 30. Ideally, alcaldes combined administrative skill with solid character, serving as agents “for the good government and police of the Pueblos, administration of justice, direction of the public works, [and] division of the ‘turns’ of water.” Governor de Neve, worried the rookie pobladores would prove untrustworthy, appointed Los Angeles’s first two alcaldes and required future governors to certify the people’s choice in subsequent years. Throughout the Spanish period, appointed military comisionados could veto ayuntamiento legislation and alcalde decisions, further limiting their power. Felipe de Neve, “Reglamiento para el gobierno de la provincia de californias,” October 24, 1781, article 14, section 18; Spanish originals and translation reprinted in

Notes to Page 44

287

Nunis, ed., Founding Documents, 105 (English), 216–17 (Spanish). Cited frequently elsewhere, with a slightly different translation, including Langum, Law and Community, 32; Robertson, “From Alcalde to Mayor,” 48; and Grivas, “Alcalde Rule,” 12. 68. I define civic ideals as a set of ideas and principles that inform the way individuals and groups conceive of and act to achieve that which they understand to be the public good. As Hugh Heclo points out, “ideas are a source of political power,” and people acting in the political arena “are constantly using certain conceptual lenses to understand what is happening around them.” Hugh Heclo, “Reaganism and the Search for a Public Philosophy,” in John L. Palmer, ed., Perspectives on the Reagan Years (Washington, D.C.: Urban Studies Institute Press, 1986), 31. Viewed in their wholeness, James W. Caeser argues, these ideas “set forth an entire conception of where society should be heading and of what arrangement of governing institutions and powers (as well as which policies) are supposed to get us there.” John W. Caeser, “Toward a New Public Philosophy,” Bradley Lecture delivered at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, March 8, 1999. Accessed at http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.10141/pub_detail.asp, August 12, 2006. Michael Sandel sees in civic ideals power to translate ideas into action, as they constituted the “political theory implicit in our practice, the assumptions about citizenship and freedom that inform our public life.” Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 4. Yet, as Rogers Smith established, civic ideals, much like race and place, do not exist a priori but are instead fashioned in dialogue with multiple ideologies and are often based on difference. Economic, political, and social theories, although sometimes expressed in absolute terms, are always steeped in discourses of difference, and they therefore often permit or mandate certain forms of exclusion. As principles that both shape and are shaped by practice, civic ideals create institutions that can be rooted in and subsequently impose ideas about difference and inequality. Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). See also Samuel Beer, “In Search of a New Public Philosophy,” in Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1978); Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Dutton, 1963; orig. 1909); and the many works of John Dewey, including Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon, 1957; orig. 1920), The Public and Its Problems (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994; orig. 1927), and Liberalism and Social Action (New York: Putnam, 1935). 69. Felipe de Neve, “Order for the Founding of Los Angeles,” reprinted in Nunis, ed., Founding Documents, 157–60. Nunis translates propios as “lands that belong to a city or town and are used to pay for public expenses” (160, n3). Nunis further notes that the document printed in his edition is only a portion of the order, taken from a certified copy from the surveyor general’s office, “filed as evidence in Los Angeles District Court, Case no. 1344, March 11, 1869.” He adds that “there is no copy of the original Spanish-language document in existence” (157, n1). 70. Pedro Fages, “Distribution of Town Lots and Tracts of Land for Irrigation and Dry Planting,” Monterey, August 14, 1786, reprinted in Nunis, ed., Founding Documents, 165– 66. Original held in Archives of California, State Papers, Missions and Colonization, tom. 1, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. “Crops” capitalized in original.

288

Notes to Pages 44–46

71. From then until 1837, alcaldes served without supervision by other civil or military authorities. Following a shift from Federalist to Centralist principles, the Mexican government in 1837 substantively reorganized frontier governance. The Centralists divided Alta California into prefectural and sub-prefectural districts governed by military officers, who were responsible up the chain of command to district commanders and ultimately the governor. Los Angeles retained the formal right to have elected civilian leaders, however, because its alcalde and ayuntamiento had been instituted prior to 1808. In practice, distance, poor organization, and overwhelming resistance kept the 1837 laws from full implementation throughout Alta California. See Grivas, “Alcalde Rule,” 13; and Weber, Mexican Frontier, chapter 2, esp. 32–40. The year 1808 held significance for lawmakers in Mexico City because it marked the date of the so-called Bourbon reforms, enacted by a liberal Congress operating as a fiat government following the Spanish king’s abduction by Napoleonic forces. Their decisive move toward democracy and home rule included Spain’s foreign colonies. In choosing 1808, the rather antidemocratic Mexican Centralists allowed only those local institutions that had subsequently received endorsement from the restored monarchy to remain in session after 1837. For an extended discussion of the Bourbon reforms, see Lynch, Spanish American Revolutions, 5–15. 72. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 46; Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 114. 73. In most cases, lands needed only to be vacant, undeveloped, or previously unclaimed. Successful petitioners claimed categorically that they had both the means and the intention of developing or cultivating the lands. Some requested parcels as house lots and others for agricultural purposes. If vacant, the standing Committee on Vacant Lands visited the site and took measurements. If previously granted to another, the standing Police Committee investigated the plot to see if, due to a failure of the previous grantee to fulfill his or her duties in fencing and cultivating the land, the petition could be granted. In either case, the committee reported back to the ayuntamiento, which made final decisions. If granted land, solicitors paid nominal fees to the municipal fund and applied directly to the alcalde for a deed. Alcaldes recorded all grants in a book. Straightforward examples of this process can be found in LACA, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, box 1366, 126–28 and 129–31. Grivas suggests that “the legal process at times was cumbersome; and therefore, extra legal grants were made, the result being that the question of land titles arose and became the most important legal controversy in the early statehood of California.” Grivas, “Alcalde Rule,” 18. 74. Vincent Ostrom, Water and Politics: A Study of Water Policies and Administration in the Development of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Haynes Foundation, 1953). 75. LACA, July 20, 1838, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, 511. Lugo served as judge of the first instance in rural areas, heard cases related to ranch property, and oversaw annual rodeos (when cattle were rounded up, counted, and branded) and regular matanzas (sanctioned periods when cows could be slaughtered). 76. This further suggests that someone in town prepared petitions on behalf of those unable to write. When José Alejandro Lopes offered a petition claiming land previously granted to another resident but not yet fenced or cultivated, the investigating committeeman, Cristóbal Aguilar, specifically asked Lopes by what law he denounced said land, to

Notes to Pages 46–49

289

which Lopes replied that “he did not know any such thing existed in his petition.” LACA, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, box 1366, 338. 77. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 53, 70–72, quotes from 72. 78. LACA, March 3, 1837, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, box 1366, 468. 79. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 75. The ayuntamiento held that vecinas, like other recipients of pueblo lands, “had to defer to the rights of the larger community, which, according to the local authorities, took precedence over individual rights.” 80. LACA, July 30–August 14, 1838, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, 533–34. 81. LACA, March 17, 1836, untitled records series, vol. 3, folder 2, 146–47. 82. Neve, “Reglamento,” 188. 83. Ostrom, Water and Politics, 29. They built a weir of willow poles and diverted the Río Porciuncula into the mouth of the zanja, which then carried the water into the pueblo. Pobladores received their seeds and livestock only after completing this zanja madre. Over the next one hundred years, Angelenos added more and more zanjas, creating an elaborate network that conveyed water from the Porciuncula throughout the pueblo for irrigation and consumption. With the exception of a few private water sellers, who filled containers from private springs and sold them for domestic use, these zanjas served Angelenos’ domestic needs. Beginning in the 1850s, a series of individuals, syndicates, and corporations endeavored to create a delivery network, also in enclosed pipes, for potable water. These schemes met with varying degrees of success until the advent of the Los Angeles City Water Company in 1868. 84. Donald J. Pisani, Water, Land, and Law in the West: The Limits of Public Policy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1996), and Michael C. Meyer, Water in the Hispanic Southwest: A Social and Legal History, 1550–1850 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984). 85. LACA, November 13, 1838, untitled records series, vol. 3, folder 2, 265. ChávezGarcía notes that Sra. Sepúlveda subsequently appealed to Governor Alvarado, who overruled the ayuntamiento and restored her exclusive privilege. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 74–75. 86. LACA, March 2 and March 23, 1839, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, 303, 304. 87. Meyer, Water in the Hispanic Southwest, 163. 88. LACA, March 3, 1836, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, 102–3. 89. Although at odds with the experiences most immigrants brought to Los Angeles, legal historian David Langum points out that similar combinations had been common in the northeastern United States following independence. In addition, U.S. frontier towns commonly “combine[d] these functions so as to achieve economies of operation.” Langum, Law and Community, 51. In addition, a few notes from Ygnacio Maria Alvarado bear the title of city attorney, suggesting some official separation. See the Los Angeles City Archives. LACA, n.d., untitled records series, vol. 1, 398–406. 90. Leonard Rudolph Blomquist, “California in Transition: A Regional Study of the Changes from Mexican to American Life and Institutions in the San Luis Obispo Districts, 1830–1850” (master’s thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1943), 162–63. In serious cases, higher authorities—the governor or a court when one existed—confirmed decisions. See also Grivas, “Alcalde Rule,” 16.

290

Notes to Pages 49–51

91. Spain instituted a nine-volume legal code that contained more than 6,000 laws representing a staggering 400,000 royal orders in 1760, but no Spanish court ever held session in Alta California. Instead, alcaldes practiced free from formal Spanish law. Langum, Law and Community, 31, 33. Mexico’s elaborate system of courts at the local, state, and national level similarly failed to take hold in California. In 1826 the Mexican National Congress fused California with the state of Sonora for legal purposes, establishing a district court for California and an appellate court for the region. But it took district judge Luis de Castillo Negrete eight years to arrive. He became embroiled in local politics and left in 1836 following a serious political dispute. Mexican officials never replaced him. There are no records of appeals from California being heard in the higher court in Sonora. When Centralist forces ousted the Federalists from Mexico City in 1837, they restructured the territories into military departments and established a centralized, hierarchical court system. Again, however, distance, finances, and general instability complicated efforts to implement the new structure. Two years passed before the prefecture system manifested in California, and three more before the new court system began to operate. Even then, parties presenting themselves to the newly constituted courts had to bring certification that they had attempted formal conciliation through their alcalde. The high court, or Tribunal Superior, began operating in California in 1842, led by four judges: Juan Mallarín, José Antonio Carrillo, José Antonio Estudio, and Antonio María Osio. In 1844, however, a Californian rebellion against the Centralists unraveled the new system after only two years in operation. Langum, Law and Community, 34–40. 92. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 66. 93. Langum, Law and Community, 5. 94. LACA, n.d. [1833], untitled records series, vol. 3, folder 2, 130–33. In each case, the decision laid out the terms by which the offended parties would be compensated, almost always in the form of a payment in cash, kind, or labor. In one extreme case, the “foreigner Daniel” was conscripted to nearly eight months’ labor on the pueblo’s public works because his debt to Juan Bautista Leandri (another foreigner) had to be paid on his behalf out of the municipal fund. 95. LACA, July 1, 1839, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, 50. 96. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 26–51, quotes on 26. See esp. pages 39–46 for Chávez-García’s discussion of extralegal responses women and men pursued. 97. Langum, Law and Community, 5. He sees the preference for communal strategies as part of Mexican California’s legal objective—to advance its own ideal of jurisprudence and dispute resolution—and argues that conciliation among the parties had a larger cultural basis in the region. 98. LACA, February 23, 1837, untitled records series, vol. 3, folder 2, 237–38. 99. Langum, Law and Community, 75. He goes on to argue that banishment, in fact, “demonstrates the localized, community-based notion of criminal justice” (76). 100. LACA, January 22, 1833, untitled records series, vol. 2, 19. This comisionado was the subject of father Durán’s complaint noted above. 101. Alfred Robinson, “The Indians of Los Angeles,” 161–62. Also discussed in Weber, Mexican Frontier, 214–15, and Hackel, Children of the Coyote, 414. For a fuller discussion

Notes to Pages 55–59

291

of the fraught relationship between the ayuntamiento, pobladores, and local indios, see González, This Small City.

Chapter 2. “Members of the Same Family with Ourselves” 1. Benjamin Davis Wilson, “Observations on Early Days in California and New Mexico,” manuscript written from the author’s dictation by Thomas Savage, Nov. 28–Dec. 6, 1877, 24, BANC MSS C-D 177, Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 2. Wilson also held a U.S. federal appointment as Indian agent for Southern California during his later years and served as a state senator. 3. Wilson, “Observations on Early Days,” 24. 4. Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 8. 5. María Raquél Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820–1880 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2007), 9. 6. My argument here follows Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, esp. 10–16 and 76–80. Scholarly narratives cleaving to the protocol that Mexican Californian women and their fathers preferred mates from the United States and Europe stretch from Hubert Howe Bancroft’s California Pastoral, 1769–1848 (San Francisco: History, 1888) to Tómas Almaguer’s Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 7. Griswold del Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 35. 8. Although historian Philip Ethington notes in a recent essay that californios and U.S. immigrants forged an “agreement to be ‘white’ together, in common domination over the irreplaceable source of their wealth: agricultural laborers,” little evidence suggests they agreed on the terms by which they defined themselves as racially superior. Californios infrequently substituted their own complex methods for defining racial status for a colorbased scheme, and few immigrants from the United States referred to Los Angeles’s rancheros and vecinos as “white.” Instead, Mexican Californians and U.S. immigrants forged an intercultural community based not on the notion of common phenotype but a series of social, political, and spatial compromises and innovations. Philip J. Ethington, “Ab Urbis Condita: Regional Regimes Since 13,000 Before Present,” in William Deverell and Greg Hise, eds., A Companion to Los Angeles (West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 77– 215, 190–91. 9. Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 50, 51. 10. David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 204. 11. Douglas Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 163. 12. Lansford Hastings, The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California, containing scenes and incidents of a party of Oregon Emigrants; A description of Oregon; scenes and

292

Notes to Pages 59–61

incidents of a party of California emigrants; and A description of California; with a description of the different routes to those countries; and all necessary information relative to the equipment, supplies, and the method of traveling (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932; reprint of original, Cincinnati: George Conclin, 1845), 113–14. 13. Thomas Jefferson Farnham, Life Adventures, and Travels in California. To Which are Added the Conquest of California, Travels in Oregon, and History of the Gold Regions (New York: Nafis and Cornish; St. Louis: Van Dien and MacDonald, 1849), 358–59. First published in 1844 by Saxton and Miles in New York City, Life, Adventures, and Travels in California was Farnham’s third book, following earlier tomes on the western prairies and Oregon. He later wrote about California’s conquest and the gold regions. By 1848, publishers around the country began to compile Farnham’s works into omnibus volumes. Between its 1844 debut and 1862, at least eight different presses (in New York, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and London) published the book in one form or another. 14. Hastings, Emigrants’ Guide, 113–14. 15. Farnham, Travels in California, 344. 16. Ibid., 363. Another writer in this vein, William Robert Garner, serially published his “Letters from California” in a variety of eastern newspapers and promoted the U.S. military conquest of California. Garner claimed that even the self-styled californios had “not the least forethought” and would “not look one day ahead. The greater part of the natives, I think I may say without exaggeration, nineteen-twentieths of them think of nothing in the world but gambling, dress, horse-riding, women, and stealing to maintain these vices.” William Robert Garner, Letters from California, 1846–1847 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 127–28. 17. For an analysis of the cultural work of conquest travel literature wrought, see Antonia I. Castañeda, “The Political Economy of Nineteenth-Century Stereotypes of Californianas,” in Adelaida R. Castillo, ed., Between Borders: Essays on Mexican/Chicana History (Encino: Floricanto, 1990). 18. At first, the mission fathers acted as the primary agents in these foreign exchanges, as they controlled vast herds of cattle that could be slaughtered on demand as trade goods. Following secularization, the californios succeeded the padres as primary traders. 19. John Walton Caughey, California, a Remarkable State’s Life History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 139. Cited in David J. Langum, Law and Community on the Mexican Frontier: Anglo-American Expatriates and the Clash of Legal Traditions, 1821–1846 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 21. For Carpenter’s petition for citizenship, see LACA, January 14, 1836, untitled records series (Spanish originals), vol. 1, 196–97. 20. Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of a Life at Sea (New York: Random House, 2001; orig. pub. 1840), 188. 21. Miroslava Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004), 60. 22. Several U.S. immigrants also became entangled in the rebellions provoked by Centralist-Federalist struggles during the 1840s. In 1845, Southern Californians organized under the leadership of Pío Pico in a rebellion against Manuel Micheltorena, a nonCalifornian dispatched by the centralist government in Mexico to serve as the territory’s

Notes to Pages 61–64

293

governor. The forces on both sides claimed U.S. and European immigrants among their numbers. As the two parties prepared to face off in a canyon near Los Angeles, Pico deputized B. D. Wilson to treat secretly with English-speaking immigrants in Micheltorena’s force. Wilson convinced them to meet directly with Pico. Aware that Micheltorena had convinced them to fight in exchange for land grants, Pico asked if any among them were Mexican citizens. When all replied in the negative, Pico informed them that the “‘title deeds given you by Micheltorena are not worth the paper they are written on, and he knew it well when he gave them to you.’” After the murmuring subsided, Pico made a series of promises as to their fate if he should prevail and become governor. Pico offered those who would “‘abandon the Micheltorena cause’” his “‘word as a gentleman’” to “‘protect all and each one of you in the land that you hold now, in quiet and peaceful possession, and promise you further, that if you will take the necessary steps to become citizens of Mexico, I under my authority and the laws of Mexico, will issue to you proper titles.’” When Wilson interpreted Pico’s promises, the men who had marched with Micheltorena “bowed and said that was all they asked, and promised not to fire a gun against us” (Wilson, “Observations on Early Days,” 54). Although this story leaves an impression of these immigrants as little more than mercenaries prepared to exchange armed service for lands, they nevertheless swore allegiance to Pico and became invested in the future of Mexican Californian politics. At the same time, Pico’s overtures and promises indicate the importance of such men to the development of society and his desire (before it turned into fear a few years later) to include them into the larger Mexican Californian family. 23. Doris Marion Wright, A Yankee in Mexican California: Abel Stearns, 1798–1848 (Santa Barbara: Wallace Hebberd, 1977), 6–9. 24. Adele Ogden, “Hides and Tallow: McCulloch, Hartnell and Company, 1822–1828,” California Historical Society Quarterly 6:3 (September 1927): 254–64, and Adele Ogden, “Boston Hide Droghers Along California Shores,” Quarterly of the California Historical Society 8:4 (December 1929): 289–305. The English-owned McCullough, Hartnell and Company was among the first to engage in consistent business with the California coast, particularly with the mission fathers who controlled the lion’s share of the state’s economy. In the late 1820s, the balance shifted in favor of Bryant, Sturgis and Company, a Boston outfit whose ships took more than 500,000 hides away from California between 1822 and 1842, with some 400,000 transported in the 1830s alone. 25. Langum, Law and Community, 18. 26. Wright, Yankee in Mexican California. Stearns’s role in public life is described on 65–75, and his courtship and marriage to Bandini are detailed on 84–97. 27. Ibid., 18–28, 76–83, 68–70. Already branded cara de caballo (horse face), by his fellow Angelenos, the fight with Day left him with deep facial scars and a pronounced speech impediment, as one of Day’s blows had nearly severed Stearns’ tongue. 28. LACA, May 16, 1835, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 1, 5–8. 29. LACA, September 29, 1835, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 1, 9. 30. Langum, Law and Community, 49. 31. Fuller accounts of the vigilance committee can be found in James Miller Guinn, History of California and Extended History of Los Angeles and Environs (Los Angeles: Historical Record Company, 1915), 183–85; Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 43–45;

294

Notes to Pages 64–65

and Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 129–32. Chávez-García argues that outrage over Villa’s willingness to challenge notions of female obedience and the sanctity of marriage by going so far as to be complicit in her husband’s murder informed the severity of her punishment. Casas argues that a Centralist takeover of the Mexican government and the questions such a takeover provoked regarding home rule in California generally and Los Angeles in particular served as context for the vigilante activities. Further, she suggests that the participation of thirteen naturalized U.S.-born citizens (including Temple, who both hosted and had an interest in the outcome as the murdered Felix’s brother-in-law through marriage) and their “sense of frontier justice” inspired the vigilantes’ violent response. (131). For a broader exploration of patriarchy in Spanish and Mexican California, see Louise Pubols, The Father of All: The De La Guerra Family, Power, and Patriarchy in Mexican California (San Marino: Huntington Library Press, 2010). 32. See, for example, LACA, August 7 and August 12, 1840, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, 394, 395; LACA, October 7, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 1, 236, 238; and LACA, n.d., untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 492–93. 33. Specifically, Carpenter and Laughlin complained that Julian Chavez, judge of the water, had hastily and incorrectly identified the most efficient route between the Zanja Madre and Coronel’s lands. Moreover, they claimed that Coronel’s father, the ayuntamiento’s secretary, had influenced the decision to save his son from the costs of building a new zanja on a different route. See LACA, June 3, June 5, June 8, and June 12, 1846, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, 66–67, 69–71, 71–75 (quote at 74), and 81–82. 34. Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 76. For her discussion of the struggles some mixed couples faced, see 54–60, 77. Casas also suggests that a “second wave” of intermarriages after 1840 proved “less economically stable,” and that immigrant husbands proved “less willing to fully incorporate themselves into Californio society,” leading to instances of “divorce and separation” (144). 35. For example, California authorities worried that Isaac Graham and his militia company, the Rifleros Americanos, intended an uprising in 1840. The governor ordered all foreigners arrested, except those with legal permission to reside in the territory, married to hijas del país, or well known and doing honorable work. In all, sixty-five immigrants endured arrest and deportation. Such orders suggest the presence of an intercultural clique in which not all immigrants participated. Indeed, “Californios and Euro-Americans alike championed the removal of this group.” Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 136–37. 36. Historian Leonard Pitt playfully referred to these immigrants as “Mexicanized Yankees.” Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 124. Casas argues that “successful intermarriages became false symbols of peaceful invasion and control by the United States” and “reinforced white Euro-Americans’ cultural fantasies that racially ‘inferior’ peoples would accept and gravitate to the newcomers’ ‘superior’ presence and control” (Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 80). Although valid for the ways future immigrants to Los Angeles may have retroactively understood such marriages, it should not be applied to those men and women who engaged in such marriages and who actively participated in forging and elaborating an intercultural community before and after the Mexican-American War.

Notes to Pages 66–69

295

37. Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 179. 38. Guinn, History of California, 128; Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913, Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1984), 168; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol. 5, 1846–1848, pages 311–14 (vol. 22 of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft) (San Francisco: History Company, 1886). In an analogous yet opposite situation, brothers Salvador and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, together with the latter’s U.S.-born son-in-law, Jacob Leese, endured imprisonment in Northern California, first under the leadership of John C. Frémont and his Bear Flag Party, then under the U.S. flag. As was the case with the imprisoned European Americans in Los Angeles who returned to their intercultural lives after imprisonment, so too did Mariano Vallejo continue his support for California’s inclusion into the United States after his ordeal. Alan Rosenus, General Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans (Berkeley: Heyday, 1995), esp. 105–76. 39. LACA, February 27, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 1, 46. 40. LACA, May 14, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 1, 78–79. 41. LACA, n.d., untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 1, 154. 42. LACA, July 31, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 1, 182. 43. LACA, October 29, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 1, 228–29. 44. Although many among Los Angeles’s Mexican Californian elite accepted incorporation into the United States because it offered greater opportunities for home rule, they undoubtedly looked down on ordinary U.S. soldiers with the same contempt they held for soldiers from the Mexican interior who had been frequently dispatched to rule over them in years past. For example, Rendon’s 1847 assertions bear a remarkable similarity to Antonio María Osio’s characterization of soldiers sent from Mexico to Monterey in 1819 as thieves, criminals, and generally coarse men who knew not the civilized ways of behavior that dominated life in Alta California (see chapter 1). 45. See, for example: LACA, February 19, 1846, and May 2, 1846, untitled records series, vol. 1, folder 1, 412, 414. (Spanish originals, LACA ayuntamiento records, vol. 1, folder 1, 527, 530.) On March 13, 1847, the council enacted the following ordinance: Article 1st. Every person giving employment to Indian servants shall house them within his own property and in case they do any cooking they are to remain subject to the house discipline and sleep in the house, so that by these means the excesses may be kept in check. Article 2nd. Indians that have no master but support themselves, shall be located on various lots on the outskirts of the City which shall be adjudicated to them as their property by the corresponding title, which lots, however, must be separated in a manner so as to prevent all gatherings of a scandalous character. Article 3rd. Persons other than Indians are prohibited to take part in the diversions which the Indians may get up in their homes, and all mingling with them must be avoided, and the diversions shall be limited to the hours from eight to eleven at night. Article 4th. And as it may happen that the Indians, seeing their excesses restricted, may want to move to some other place where they are under no restraint in their diversions, all owners of ranches and mission-overseers are notified that, under their

296

Notes to Page 69

strictest personal responsibility, they must not allow any vagrant or unknown Indian to live on their premises nor to assist at any entertainments of their servants. Article 5th. That, these measures being conducive to the general welfare of the public, it is expected that every person, encharged with their fulfillment and strict observance, execute and carry out the same, bearing in mind that all transgressions will be punished according to their gravity and in conformity with the Police Regulations. (LACA, March 13, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 1, 283–84) In June 1847, council members agreed that “the object of removing the rancherías is to suppress depredations and abolish crime” but pointed out that “this has often been attempted, but with indifferent success.” They pinned these failures squarely on the Indians, declaring them “so utterly depraved that no matter where they may settle down their conduct would be the same, since they look upon death even with indifference, provided they can indulge in their pleasures and vices. Pursuant to the committee’s recommendations, the ayuntamiento passed the following alternative legislation: 1st. To make every effort to reduce drunkenness among the Indians, and to let them remain in their present quarters until such time as they can be moved to some other place. 2nd. To stop their diversions at eleven o’clock at night, and not to allow any white people to mix with them. 3rd. To hold the councilmen and Peace Officers responsible should they fail to do their duty in the premises. (LACA, June 3, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 328–29) Interestingly, the English translator substituted “white” for Mexican racial terminology. The original Spanish for Article 2 reads “sin dejar mezclar alli a los de razón,” or literally, “without allowing them to mix there with the gente de razón.” LACA, June 3, 1847 (Spanish originals), ayuntamiento records, vol. 4, folder 2, 416. The ranchería continued to vex the ayuntamiento during the summer and fall. At one meeting councilmen lamented “the impossibility of enduring [Indians’] scandalous conduct and excesses any longer.” LACA, October 30, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 497. At another meeting Syndic Vicente Guerrero and Councilman Julian Chavez scolded ayuntamiento member Rafael Gallardo for over-policing the Indians, fining them without cause and depriving them of their Saturday aguardiente. LACA, September 11, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 470–71. At other times the same men joined Gallardo in deploring the lack of enforcement at the rancherías, especially as such lapses had allowed mixing with non-Indians. LACA, October 23, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 495. Looming over all of this was a central tension in the relationship between economy and society for the ranchero elite, in that Indian bodies were necessary to the success of the former while their beings threatened the stability of the latter. 46. LACA, November 3, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 498, 499. The original Spanish describing the scheduled shooting match reads “entre los vecinos y los Americanos.” LACA, Spanish originals, ayuntamiento records, vol. 4, folder 2, 622.

Notes to Pages 69–74

297

47. LACA, November 3, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 500. 48. LACA, November 6, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 505–6. Emphasis preserved from original. “Citizens” appears as “vecinos” in the original Spanish. LACA, November 6, 1847, Spanish originals, ayuntamiento records, vol. 4, folder 2, 632. The phrase “maybe a soldier or maybe a native” appears as “o de los militares o de los del país,” LACA, November 6, 1847, Spanish originals, ayuntamiento records, vol. 4, folder 2, 632. The original Spanish suggests Stevenson both referred to local vecinos in respectful tones and separated vecinos from indios, indicating a sensitivity to local nomenclature. In addition, Stevenson’s use of the possessive in describing a mutual relationship between the soldiers and the citizens seems to further express a sense of connectedness between the two groups, a social relationship too valuable to be imperiled by the foolish behavior of drunk and disorderly men. Stevenson also subtly referred to having a preliminary conversation with “the police of that village.” The person in charge of that police was Rafael Gallardo, the ayuntamiento member who had repeatedly called for the disbandment of the ranchería over the past months and who had himself been chastised for treating the Indians too harshly. 49. LACA, November 8, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 507. 50. Ibid., 507–8. Vagrancy, the subject of Article 4, was a failure to seek or acquire work for four consecutive days. 51. LACA, November 20, 1847, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 510. At the same meeting, Guerrero reported having collected twenty-four pesos from the citizens in an effort to help the displaced Indians “move their shanties and belongings.” 52. Stephen C. Foster, “Angeles from ’47 to ’49 as seen by Stephen Clark Foster, translator with the Mormon Battalion, First Alcalde of Los Angeles Under the U.S., etc.,” manuscript, written from the author’s dictation by Thomas Savage, 1877, 55, BANC MSS C-D 82, Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Foster’s narrative includes a long discussion of “The Execution of Juan Antonio” (pp. 47–61), in which local Gabrielinos captured the renegade, delivered him to the local authorities, helped keep him incarcerated during the trial, and enacted the execution. Foster, acting as judge in the trial, empaneled a six-man jury and called a variety of witnesses, including Mexican Californians, U.S. immigrants, and the Indian alcalde. 53. LACA, February 4, 1848, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 2, 531–36, quote on 535. 54. J. Ross Browne, “Report of the debates of the Convention of California, on the formation of the state constitution, In September and October, 1849” (Washington, D.C.: John T. Towers, 1850), 62–73. 55. Reid’s life, his marriage to Victoria Comicrabit, and the complicated history of their relationship and their children’s lives has been the subject of both scholarly inquiry and serves as the basis for the wildly popular Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. See Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 63–73, and Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 77–78. 56. Browne, “Report of the debates of the Convention of California,” 62–73. The issue of suffrage and whiteness at the constitutional convention is also discussed in Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 55–56, and Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 43–45.

298

Notes to Pages 74–79

57. Los Angeles Star, May 24, 1851. 58. Los Angeles Star, June 24, 1852. 59. Los Angeles Star, February 28, 1852, and Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger: Early Times in Southern California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 80–82. 60. Raul Ramos, Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821– 1861 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 91. 61. Mexican Californian–born people represented a substantial majority of Los Angeles’s total population in 1850, accounting for 1,215 of the city’s 1,610 residents. This threeto-one advantage meant that recent European American arrivals could not successfully play politics purely on the basis of national origin, as they did elsewhere in California. 62. Los Angeles Star, July 12, 1851. For more on Ogier’s background, see Newmark, Sixty Years, 53–54. 63. Los Angeles Star, July 17, 1852. 64. Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, 134. 65. In Bexár/San Antonio, Texas, following the success of Texas independence, Tejanos fared far worse despite their active support of the secessionist cause. Ongoing threats of a Mexican reconquista provoked a “transformation in social relations” in which “an ethnic connection to being Mexican stood in for a political connection to Mexico.” Pressures such as these forced Tejanos into turmoil that Mexican Californian Angelenos initially avoided. Whereas tensions in Texas before and after the Mexican-American War led Tejanos in Bexár to quickly form an ethnic Mexican identity that shaped their actions as policy makers and private citizens, californios and vecinos in Los Angeles operated more freely and faced fewer difficult choices through the early 1850s. See Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 167–204, quote at 170. 66. In Los Angeles, as in other cities during the period, a small mayor’s court remained operational for small-scale civil disputes. 67. See LACA, May 25, 1849, and January 5, 1850, untitled records series, box b-1367, vol. 4, folder 3, 571, 753–58; LACA, August 30, 1850, November 20, 1850, and December 4, 1851, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 67–72, 104–9, and 201–2. 68. The officers, who reported to the council, received salaries from city funds. LACA, January 5, 1850, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 3, 753–58. For comparison to Mexican-era policies and enforcement strategies, see LACA, January 4, 1833, records of common council, box b-1366, vol. 2, folder 1, 14–16. 69. LACA, April 13, 1850, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 3, 813–14. 70. LACA, May 25, 1849, untitled records series, box b-1367, vol. 4, folder 3, 571; LACA, August 30, 1850, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 67–72. 71. LACA, January 5, 1850, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 3, 753–58. 72. Historian Donald Worster has characterized asymmetries in the relationship between culture and ecology as fundamental to water’s role as a motive force in the history of the U.S. West. In Rivers of Empire, Worster argues that lurking behind disagreements over nature’s role in society lay a conflict between two distinct environmental ideals. Agrarian states, like Mexico along its far northern frontier, “provided an adequate and dependable supply of water to the village, and in turn demanded a payment of tribute in the form of money or crops” (37). Capitalist states, like the United States, saw in water “no intrin-

Notes to Pages 80–84

299

sic value, no integrity that must be respected,” and so deployed modern technologies to control water as “purely and abstractly a commercial instrument” (52). Whereas agrarian states viewed water as the communal lifeblood of prosperous agricultural communities, capitalist states viewed water as a “commodity that is bought and sold and used to make other commodities that can be bought and sold and carried to the marketplace” (52). Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 73. LACA, April 6, 1850, May 18, 1850, and June 22, 1850, untitled records series, box b-1367, vol. 4, folder 3, 810, 825–26, and 854–58. 74. LACA, July 5, 1850, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 16–17. 75. LACA, July 8, 1850, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 19–23. 76. LACA, July 9, 1851, and July 23, 1851, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 178 and 183–85. 77. The accumulated debris of harvested crops and autumnal refuse had so outraged the council members that beyond castigating negligent citizens, they threatened the mayor and marshal that “a repetition of this sort of neglect will compel Council to resort to more serious measures even to the extent of its powers.” LACA, November 6, 1850, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 98–99. 78. LACA, March 6, 1852, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 213–14. 79. LACA, July 7, 1849, untitled records series, box b-1367, vol. 4, folder 3, 586. 80. LACA, June 3, 1852, and August 12, 1852, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 3, 226 and 256. 81. LACA, May 14, 1853, and June 10, 1853, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 3, 311 (quoted) and 317–18. 82. LACA, March 14, 1854, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 3, 389–96. 83. On the rancheros’ large parcels roamed the vast herds of cattle that supplied both the cash and luxury goods upon which their status claims rested. Even though the number of titles revoked proved small, the process took time. Between payments owed to lawyers and squatters, many who successfully defended their lands in court nevertheless had to either sell or surrender what they had fought to preserve. Catalina and Julio Vergudo, for example, took out a loan of $3,445 to cover taxes and legal fees in 1857, but the debt grew to $58,759 by 1869, forcing the sister and brother to sell 31,500 of their 34,000 acres. In all “nearly half (46 percent) of the original owners in the Los Angeles area went bankrupt in the process of defending those claims.” Indians fared worse, losing their rancherías to the public domain. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 139, 125. See also Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 89–103, 118. 84. Los Angeles Star, May 17, 1851. 85. Los Angeles Star, February 14, 1852. 86. Brent further pointed out that because the city itself owned much of the potentially excluded land, the municipal corporation “while having the rights of an owner” would be “debarred from all jurisdictional control thereof.” LACA, January 21, 1852, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 208–11. The progress of the city’s relation-

300

Notes to Pages 84–88

ship with Brent and its negotiations with the Land Commission can be traced in LACA, October 8, 1852, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 3, 267; and LACA, September 12, 1855, September 18, 1855, December 5, 1856, December 15, 1856, May 18, 1857, and May 25, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 55–56, 58–63, 331, 334, 410, and 415–17. The federal government appealed the city’s initial victory, causing still more legal costs until the situation ultimately resolved. 87. La Estrella, October 23, 1852. Original Spanish reads: “dando al nombre de americano una fama bien mala.” Indeed, the Board of Land Commissioners created by the Land Law at first declared it would only hold hearings in Monterey. Antonio Franco Coronel spearheaded a petition signed by fifty-three holders that ultimately persuaded the commissioners to visit Los Angeles. Los Angeles Star, February 28, 1852. 88. Los Angeles Star, May 17, 1851. 89. LACA, March 28, 1854, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 3, 406–7. 90. LACA, August 13, 1852, “An Ordinance Concerning the Municipal Lands,” records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 3, 248–51. 91. LACA, September 2, 1852, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 3, 259. 92. LACA, August 13, 1852, “An Ordinance Concerning the Municipal Lands,” records of the common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 3, 253. For a discussion of U.S. immigrant criticisms of Los Angeles’s spatial irregularities, see Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967), 24–29. For a more general discussion of the relationship between an even grid, development, and public philosophy, see Hendrik Hartog, Public Property and Private Power: The Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730–1870 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), esp. chapter 11. 93. La Estrella, June 19, 1852. Original Spanish for Uno reads: “las leyes que asi disponian han dejado de ecsistir en California, y en su lugar estan en observancia otras que pertenecen a la Nacion y al Estado; por ellas son dueños de los terrenos en cuestion. . . . Y las Ciudades no tienen hoy mas derecho sobre aquellos terrenos que los que les señalan las mismas leyes, estas no las autorizan ni para recerbarse ese dominio directo.” Rojo’s reply reads, “el derecho de imponer esos canones es un derecho adquirido por el Concilio mucho antes que se dictaran las leyes que hoy rijen a nuestro Estado, y ni la Asamblea ni el senado de California tienen facultad para dictar leyes que perjudiquen los derechos adquiridos legalmente en epocas anteriores. Ademas, no hay en California una sola ley que nos contradiga en esta parte.” 94. Los Angeles Star, July 17, 1852. 95. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 143. 96. LACA, May 4, 1850, untitled records series, vol. 4, folder 3, 824–25. 97. LACA, October 16, 1850, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 93. In a separate provision, the council members required everyone selling fruit or vegetables they did not themselves produce to carry “a paper proving his lawful acquisition thereof,” effectively targeting Indians as thieves. 98. LACA, May 21, 1851, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 2, 164–

Notes to Pages 88–90

301

66. Peon is a traditional game played both past and present by a variety of Indian groups in Southern California and the Southwest. By both historical and contemporary accounts, a member of one team conceals a white or black bone in one hand, with arms folded, while a member of the other team tries to guess in which hand the bone is held. Other team members sing songs to confuse members of the rival team as to where the bone is located. Correct guesses result in a stick being awarded to the other team from a pool of such sticks that determines the game’s length. After guessing, the teams switch positions, with the other concealing the bone and the former trying to guess in which hand it is held. In Los Angeles, wagers seem to have taken place during each round. 99. John Boessenecker, Gold Dust and Gunsmoke: Tales of Gold Rush Outlaws, Gunfighters, Lawmen, and Vigilantes (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999), 323. Boessenecker uses the FBI’s method of counting murders per 100,000 to come up with homicide rates comparable to present times. The 1851 murder rate in Los Angeles, he writes, “calculates to a gargantuan rate of 1,240 per 100,000. This is by far the highest known homicide rate ever reported in the United States, and utterly dwarfs modern rates of murder.” The county rates for 1854–59 work out to 200, 250, 160, 240, 110, and 140, respectively, compared with the 1997 rate of supposedly violent Los Angeles of 33 per 100,000. See also James Miller Guinn, “The Story of a Plaza,” Annual Publications 4 (Historical Society of Southern California, 1899), 247–56, quote at 253. 100. Los Angeles Star and La Estrella, July 24 and July 31, 1852. 101. The jurors represented the city’s U.S.- and Mexican-born elite: W. C. Winston, O. Morgan, Horace Hoover, W. L. Kennedy, S. Lazard, John Ward, José Antonio Yorba, Andrés Pico, Dolores Sepúlveda, Francis Mellus, Felipe Lugo, and Julian Chavez. Chavez came with the Rowland-Workman Party from Santa Fe to Los Angeles in 1841. 102. Los Angeles Star, July 24 and July 31, 1852. 103. The office of alcalde, like many other municipal posts during the Mexican period, originated with the Spanish settlement. In Spain, alcaldes had been elected locally to serve simultaneously as town judge and mayor since the 1400s, as centuries of Moorish influence left behind an Islamic institution, the position of qa¯d.¯ı , or judge. After the expulsion of the Moors at the close of the fifteenth century, the hispanicized alcalde took on much the same role as the qa¯d.¯ı had previously fulfilled. In New Spain, the position lacked the formality of U.S. municipal offices. Beyond basic rules, alcaldes relied on community norms to guide the execution of their duties. See Langum, Law and Community; James Rood Robertson, “From Alcalde to Mayor: A History of the Changes from the Mexican to the American Local Institutions in California” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1908), 42– 49; and Leonard Rudolph Blomquist, “California in Transition: A Regional Study of the Changes from Mexican to American Life and Institutions in the San Luis Obispo District, 1830–1850” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1941). 104. Although “not required to know the law,” hombres buenos “were to be just what their name implied.” According to Robertson, “the good men considered the facts” with “the natural equity of a just heart, impartially, and with an eye to peace among [their] fellow citizens,” and gave their opinions to the alcalde before he ruled. Robertson, “From Alcalde to Mayor,” 52. Final quote taken from Juan Barqueña, Directorio politico de alcaldes constitucionales (Mexico City: J. B. Arizpe, 1820), quoted in Robertson, “From Alcalde

302

Notes to Pages 90–96

to Mayor,” 52, n2. Original Spanish reads “pues para el efecto creo que basta la equidad natural en un Corazon recto, imparcial y amante de la paz de sus conciudadanos, porque esto quiere decir hombres buenos.” 105. In San Luis Obispo during the 1849 interregnum, Blomquist reported the substitution of a “juri” of “eight men, six of whom were Californians,” for hombres buenos. After hearing the case and the punishment recommended by the prosecution and defense, each of the eight men offered his separate opinion of the proper punishment to the alcalde, who, taking all of this under consideration, made the final decision. Blomquist, “California in Transition,” 164. 106. The Star beamed that throughout the incident, “there was no excitement among our citizens,” and admired that “all who took part in the subsequent proceedings did so with pain and anguish.” Los Angeles Star, August 7, 1852. 107. Newmark, Sixty Years, 141. 108. My argument here is inspired by Christopher Waldrep’s work on the community and legal dynamics that facilitated the regular lynchings that served to both mark and enforce the boundaries of Jim Crow. Christopher Waldrep, Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817–1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998). Elliott Young similarly suggests that shared violence against Indians united Anglo Americans and Mexican Texans in Laredo during the late 1800s. In his story, that violence is symbolic and performed as part of the public spectacle that surrounds celebrations of George Washington’s birthday in Laredo. Nevertheless, during these celebrations “Anglos and Mexicans, in spite of their history of bitter conflicts, thus symbolically united in opposition to a common enemy” and “suppressed emerging racial tensions by simultaneously constructing a barbaric enemy and rendering it powerless.” Elliott Young, “Red Men, Princess Pocahontas, and George Washington: Harmonizing Race Relations in Laredo at the Turn of the Century,” Western Historical Quarterly 29:1 (Spring 1998): 48–85, 59. For another story of lynching, immigrants, and community formation in late nineteenth-century Texas, see Cynthia Skove Nevels, Lynching to Belong: Claiming Whiteness Through Racial Violence (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007). 109. Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 120.

Chapter 3. “Impossible to Ascertain with Any Degree of Certainty” 1. Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913, Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1984), 139. 2. Southern Californian, November 2, 1854. 3. Benjamin Wilson Hayes, Pioneer Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes, 1849–1875 (New York: Arno, 1976), 107–8. 4. The high court offered Brown a temporary reprieve while considering his appeal. In a cruel twist, the court had also stayed Alvitre’s execution, but the order traveled separately and arrived in Los Angeles after both men had been hanged. Newmark, Sixty Years, 147. 5. Southern Californian, January 18, 1855. 6. In an agonizing moment the noose around Alvitre’s neck came loose, depositing the

Notes to Pages 96–100

303

half-dead murderer on the ground. A flurry of insults and a hail of stones rained into the jail yard, but no one on either side fired a shot. The hangman retied the noose and affixed it again around Alvitre’s neck, successfully ending his life. 7. Southern Californian, January 18, 1855. 8. This summary is drawn from Los Angeles Star, January 18, 1855; Southern Californian, January 18, 1855; Newmark, Sixty Years, 139–41; and Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, or Early Times in Southern California (Los Angeles: Yarnell, Caystile and Mathers, 1881), 279. Brown’s final comments were to disparage those making his noose and he “called to an acquaintance and requested him to get some Americans who understood it, to hang him.” Supposedly, Brown objected to “being hung by a lot of greasers.” Accounts differ as to whether or not any “white men” came forward to do the job. Brown’s request is especially ironic considering that the “Americans” who hanged Alvitre completely botched the knot. 9. Christopher Waldrep, Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817–1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998). In a subsequent work, Waldrep argues that residents throughout California engaged in lynchings during the 1850s and 1860s, and that they defended their actions by pointing up the irregular and unpredictable operation of the official courts. Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), chapter 3. Michael Pfeifer argues that participants in western lynch mobs, and those who supported “rough justice” more generally, engaged an ongoing battle with reformers who championed due process. Michael Pfeifer, Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004). 10. Newmark, Sixty Years, 38. 11. Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, 253–55. Butts edited the Southern Californian from its first issue until he and Wheeler sold the newspaper to John F. Brodie in 1856. Butts then embarked on a filibustering expedition to Nicaragua, where he suffered severe wounds that sent him home to Ohio and ultimately took his life. 12. Southern Californian, November 9, 1854. 13. Southern Californian, January 11, 1855. 14. The Star also covered Brown’s reprieve but offered a much plainer rebuke. Its editors wished to “express the public sentiment when we say the action of Judge Murray was very questionable policy, and should not have intervened to prevent the sentence of the Court being carried into execution.” Los Angeles Star, January 11, 1855. 15. Southern Californian, January 18, 1855. 16. William B. Rice, The Los Angeles Star, 1851–1864: The Beginnings of Journalism in Southern California, ed. John Walton Caughey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947), 14–15, 70. Rice refers to a February 2, 1855, article in the San Francisco newspaper Alta California praising Ramirez’s prose, indicating he had begun to write the pages of La Estrella by early 1855. 17. La Estrella, February 1, 1855. Original Spanish: “Nuestro Mayor. —El Señor Don Estevan C. Foster fué re-electo Mayor de la ciudad de Los Angeles. Mejor hombre ciertamente no se podría encontrar. El Señor Foster es un caballero que se ha probado desem-

304

Notes to Pages 100–104

peñando varios empleos. Como Mayor ha merecído los aplausos y aprobacion del peublo entero: y en la capacidad de representante a la legislatura la admiracion y aprecio de sus numeros amigos.” 18. Foster himself was no stranger to the office of alcalde, judging criminal cases, or overseeing executions, as he had done all three during 1849 as alcalde of Los Angeles. Stephen Foster, “Angeles from ’47 to ’49 as seen by Stephen Clark Foster, translator with Mormon Battalion; First Alcalde of Los Angeles Under the U.S. etc.,” manuscript written from the author’s dictation by Thomas Savage, 1877, BANC MSS C-D 82, Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. See esp. pages 53–60. 19. Rice, Los Angeles Star, 59–60, 88–89. Quote at 59. 20. Los Angeles Star, January 11, 1855. 21. Los Angeles Star, January 18, 1855. 22. Bell and Newmark corroborate the Southern Californian version, and the records of the Los Angeles Common Council bear evidence of Foster’s resignation on January 12. The Star did cover Foster’s subsequent reelection. 23. Newmark, Sixty Years, 93. 24. Los Angeles Star, March 1, 1855. 25. For examples of the connection between booster activities and race making in Los Angeles during later years, see William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), and Deverell and Douglas Flamming, “Race, Rhetoric, and Regional Identity: Boosting Los Angeles, 1880–1930,” in Richard White and John M. Findlay, eds., Power and Place in the North American West (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 117–43. For a more general treatment of individual business people and booster activity, see Daniel Boorstin, “The Businessman as City Booster,” in Alexander B. Callow Jr., ed., American Urban History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 94–102. 26. Los Angeles Star, February 15, 1855. 27. La Estrella de Los Angeles, February 22, 1855. Original Spanish: “Pronunciaron varios discursos en los que se declaró que por causa de la dilación de la ley—de la invación de los esquatas,—de las contribuciones exhorbitantes,—y una multitud de otras opresiones los Californios se están reduciendo a la mendicidad en la tierra que les pertenecia y gozában sin interrupción;—que los terrenos que sus padres poseian y que esperaban decenderán a su posteridad para siempre, son arrancados de ellos por algun abogado ladrón;—que estarán años enteros dudando si sus terrenos serán confirmados ó desaprobados;—que pagan impuestos onerosos sobre terrenos y que las mismas leyes que imponen esos impuestos permiten que los esquata los ocúpen y gozen; que son tratados como estraños en el país que los vió nacer—y finalmente que los nativos Californios no pueden tener justicia en este Estado.” 28. La Estrella, February 22, 1855. I have condensed the response somewhat for space. The complete original Spanish reads as follows: “Casi cada palabra de lo que dice . . . es verdad: los Californios han sufrido muchísimo desde la anexión de su país a la Confederación Americana. Ahora no poseen ni la cuarta parte de lo que tenían hace cinco años, y así cada año sus propiedades se han reducido á razon de cincuenta por ciento.

Notes to Pages 104–7

305

Las contribuciones exhorbitantes que pagan anualmente los arruina, y la desolación habita en sus hogares. Esto lo prueba la lista que se verá en otra columna, de las propeidades que se venderán al remate para pagar las contribuciones. La Comisión de Terrenos los ha deprivado de sus ranchos—desaprobándoles las tierras que les dejaron sus abuelos— aquellos hombres intrépidos que colonizáron a California, y todos sus trabajos, todas sus privaciones seran gozadas por unos viles extrangeros. En cuanto a la dispensación de la ley, digan haber si le han hecho justicia. ¿Cuantas veces? Sucede con mucha frecuencia que [unreadable] justicia despues de haberles quitado hasta el pan de la boca. No hay ninguno que niegue esto. Y en este triste estado ¿sera mejor quedarse en California ó emigrar para México? No hay duda que muchos responderon ‘a México!’” Ramirez countered that the grass would not be any greener in Sonora, where long-established residents would be no more willing to share land, power, or justice with a group of refugees than were their newly arrived co-residents from the United States. 29. La Estrella, February 22, 1855. Original Spanish: “El referido diario de la tarde dice que los Californios son un atajo de lardones, y que han sido autores de los asesinatos mas horrible y alevosos, que las gavillas de malhechores que infestaban las rerranias se componian de ellos. Esto es un libelo sobre todos los Californios sin excepcion, y como nosotros tenemos la desgracia de ser Californio, tomamos la ofensa personalmente.” 30. La Estrella, March 1, 1855. Original Spanish: “No sin sentimiento tomo la pluma para refutar ligeramente la alevosía ó audacia con que el redactor del Evening Journal ataca generalmente a los natives de California, sin distincion, y aun con una torpe ofensa al mas caro objeto de nuestro cariño que son nuestras familias.” 31. Ibid. Original Spanish: “Esto es que, segun las trabas que se han impuesto a la justificacion del pecado de ser deuños de terrenos en California, apenas estamos my al principio y por lo que se vé, se tardara mucho para obtener la absolucion; que es como un caso de fortuna, cuando debia ser de rigorosa justicia.” 32. Ibid. Original Spanish: “Olvidandose que cuanto mas exageradas hayan sido sus producciones, tanto mas a riesgo se le ha puesto de que se le de credibilidad, mayormente cuando no ha podido contaner los impulso de una frenética passion.” 33. Ibid. Original Spanish: “Dice V. que los californios son ladrones, asesinos, ignorantes, e incapaces de comprender lo que es civilizacion, y que las consideraciones personales de ellos no merecen mas aprecio que el que se puede haver a los indios de las fronteras.” 34. Ibid. Original Spanish: “Pobre escritor del Journal, sus conocimientos no lo avanzan mas alla que a los de un hombre muy comun, pues no sabe prevenir que en todo el mundo conocido hay diferentes producciones naturales, unas que nos son útiles y otras dañosas, y la sencilla razón basta para distinguir lo bueno de lo malo.” 35. Ironically, the rancheros used remarkably similar terms to draw boundaries between themselves and Indians during the 1820s and 1830s. See chapter 1 for an extended discussion. 36. Such exercises of racial ascription usually include implicit or explicit comparative self-definitions. Compared to the californios, the Star rendered newcomers “clever,” “keen,” and “intelligent” entrepreneurs who easily mastered Spanish and let nothing stand in the way of economic growth and progress. Bandini, on the other hand, made it clear throughout his letter that color, phenotype, and language failed to appropriately cleave

306

Notes to Pages 107–11

society. A person’s individual intelligence, actions, and demeanor mattered more to him as markers of one’s place in society. Using criteria other than color had the potential to resort the racial identities attributed to both Mexican Californians and European Americans, such that the Evening Journal’s editor would fall on the other side of the racial divide from Bandini, his Yankee sons-in-law, and his mixed-heritage grandchildren, all of whom he would have considered gente de razón. 37. Los Angeles Star, February 15, 1855. 38. La Estrella de Los Angeles, February 22, 1855. Original Spanish: “Y que el quedarse aquí por mas tiempo acarrea absoluta ruina, y es mejor buscar un asilo en donde no sean considerados como extrangeros ó como una presa conveniente para cualquier malvado que dese sus tierras y casas.” 39. La Estrella, March 1, 1855. Original Spanish: “Continue V. su oficio, señor editor, y si prosigue como va pronto tendremos que corer a las pistas que V. provoca, par aver quien se declara campeon del dia. Siga la danza y á dios, hasta otra vez.” 40. California Legislature, The Statues of the Sixth Session, 1855 (Sacramento: B. B. Redding, 1855), 217–18. For a discussion of the “Greaser Act,” see Tómas Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 57. 41. Stephen J. Pitti, The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), chapter 2, esp. 29–40. 42. The council minutes suggest evidence of a mayor’s court, in which the mayor alone heard cases, passed judgment, and determined penalties. LACA, May 15, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 9. He also heard all suits relating to animal slaughtering regulations. LACA, February 28, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 2, 244–50. Regarding land, when Mascimo Valenzuela and Maria Trinidad Romero, a couple long living in Los Angeles, asked for a replacement deed to their city lot, the council “resolved that the petition be referred to his honor the Mayor, who may require any proof that he may think necessary—and thereafter, give the corresponding title.” LACA, June 19, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 292. 43. Minutes from the council meetings show accounts submitted regularly for “board of Indians as City prisoners,” for “guarding City prisoners whilst out at work for the city,” and for “superintending Indians on public works.” LACA, March 28, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 2, 272–74; LACA May 15, 1855 and May 22, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 8, 11. 44. James Lee served as the jailor and Indian overseer in 1854–55, drawing $62.50 per month in salary (LACA, March 28, 1855, and April 20, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 2, 272–74, 286) and Francis Carpenter occupied the same position, which carried a significantly higher salary, in 1855–56 (LACA, October 30, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 73). 45. LACA, May 15, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 3–5. Foster deemed the high retail license fees, designed to “suppress the unrighteous traffic in spirits carried on between small vendors and the Indians” a “failure” and claimed that the recently adopted system of auctioning the city lands “has been greatly abused by being taken advantage of by speculators, and fallen far short of an equitable and just disposal.”

Notes to Pages 111–18

307

46. LACA, May 15, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 4. 47. J. H. Stewart, H. Z. Wheeler, J. W. Ross, and Timothy Foster were absolute newcomers to local governance. Timothy Foster actually won election a month later, on June 13, 1855, to fill a seat unclaimed since May by a Mr. Lloyd. LACA, May 29, 1855, and June 14, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 19, 23. 48. Proposed May 22, 1855, passed May 29, 1855. LACA, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 10, 15–16. 49. Doing so required a special session, held July 6, 1855, and attention at the regular meeting on July 10, 1855. LACA, July 6, 1855, and July 10, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 31–33, 34. 50. LACA, July 3, 1855, and August 14, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 30, 46. 51. LACA, May 22, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 10. Although the notion of watering dirt roads in a desert may seem crazy, doing so kept the dirt stuck to the ground, especially on windy days. 52. LACA, May 29, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 15. 53. Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967). Mary Ryan, “A Durable Center of Urban Space: The Los Angeles Plaza,” Urban History 33:10 (December 2006): 457–83. 54. LACA, October 11, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 68–71, quotes on 69 and 70, respectively. 55. Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 37–52, quotes on 50. 56. LACA, October 11, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 71. 57. LACA, November 13, 1855, and November 28, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 77, 78. 58. The new council’s first act reflected enduring intercultural principles. It blocked P. Ord’s sale of a lot straddling the zanja madre as “detrimental to the interests of the City.” Instead, the council reaffirmed its power to determine the limits of private property by demanding the lot “be reserved for the benefit of the City.” LACA, December 11, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 80. At the same meeting, newly seated councilman Henry Uhlbrook proposed a repeal of the $1,000 bond required of liquor sellers, only to see the measure vetoed by Mayor Foster, whose understanding of the public good had evidently evolved such that his faith in unrestrained commerce had come to be checked by his desire to retain leverage against those who might otherwise sell alcohol to Indians with wanton abandon. LACA, December 11, 1855, January 8, 1856, and January 15, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 83, 93, and 97–98. 59. Aguilar, Uhlbrook, Stephen C. Foster, and Manuel Requeña joined the special committee on February 21, 1856. LACA, February 21, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 112–13. After several meetings and follow-up sessions, the ordinance passed on April 1, 1856. The minutes contained reference to the ordinance but not its text. However, El Clamor Público published the complete ordinance in English and Spanish on April 5. El Clamor Público, April 5, 1856 (Spanish on p. 2, English on p. 3). 60. Robert Fleming Heizer, The Other Californians: Prejudice and Discrimination Un-

308

Notes to Pages 118–21

der Spain, Mexico, and the United States to 1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 150. 61. The council responded to the submission of the draft in Spanish with a resolution “that the same be referred to the City for translation and the wording of the same in a legal manner—and in conformity to the statues of California.” LACA, February 26, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 114. Although official council minutes were not kept in Spanish after May of 1855, many petitions and committee reports were submitted in Spanish by both private citizens and public officials. 62. Newmark, Sixty Years, 161, 182, 282. 63. “Una reforma radical es la que piden todos.” El Clamor Público, April 5, 1856, 2. 64. El Clamor Público, April 5, 1856, 2. “Siempre hemos admirado el carácter de Don Estevan C. Foster, y nos causa infinito placer el saber que es un candidato para el empleo de Mayor de la ciudad de Los Angeles. Despues de una larga residencia en California es my concocido por todos nuestros compatriotas que lo veneran y respetan.” “Como Mayor creemos que nadie le ha igualdo, tanto en el conocimiento de las personas y las cosas, como en las necesidades actuales de la poblacíon.” 65. El Clamor Público, May 10, 1856, 2. 66. El Clamor Público, May 17, 1856, 1. “Siempre estaré listo para hacer en todas ocaciones las observaciones que sean necesarias e indispensables para el majormanejo de nuestros intereses municipales.” 67. Foster and his council decided to continue printing all ordinances in English in the Star and in Spanish in El Clamor Público even though a new state rule only required laws to be printed in English (LACA, June 2, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 285–86). Addressing the bereft municipal treasury, they directed receipts from a new 0.25 percent property tax and increased licensing fees for “Hawkers and Peddlers” into several specific accounts designed to ease the careful management of public funds (LACA, June 9, 1856, June 10, 1856, July 14, 1856, and July 21, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 288–89, 290–91, 300, and 301.) Longtime resident and former council member Dr. John Griffin became superintendent of the common schools, joined by Francis Mellus, Agustín Olvera, and William C. Wallace as school commissioners. Together they refused to sign off on their predecessors’ final report, asking for and receiving permission to paste new pages over the older ones “so that the indecorous language therein written, by the School Commissioners of the year 1855, can never again be read or seen” (LACA, July 7, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 297–98). 68. Los Angeles Star, July 26, 1856. 69. Ibid. 70. Another police officer, Ned Hines, had been charged and indicted for murdering a Mexican Californian in the line of duty but had jumped bail and had to be tried in absentia only a week earlier. 71. El Clamor Público, July 26, 1856. “Exigir seguridades que no dejarian escapar al reo, como frecuentementa ha sucedido.” 72. El Clamor Público, July 26, 1856. “Un francés, animado por algun patriotismo curioso.” In this instance, the patriotism El Clamor Público’s editor referred to was for the Mexicans dismayed by the death of Ruis.

Notes to Pages 121–23

309

73. Los Angeles Star, July 26, 1856. The “Frenchman’s” name appeared differently in the Spanish-language press as Judge Benjamin Hayes, who presided over Jenkins’s subsequent trial noted two spellings: Carierga and Carriaga. Hayes, Pioneer Notes, 108–9. 74. El Clamor Público, July 26, 1856. El Clamor Público also reported that the estimable Sr. Dr. Juan Hernandez had been overtaken at the entrance to the courthouse by the American mob, which was “armed and made many bellicose demonstrations” (“los americanos estaban armandose y haciendo otras demonstraciones belicosas”). An unnamed friend intervened to preserve Hernandez’s life, although rumors circulated that the “Americans” had killed Hernandez. 75. El Clamor Público, July 26, 1856. “En la noche de este dia una partida de cerca de cien mexicanos armadas, bajaron de la loma inmediata a la ciudad.” 76. Los Angeles Star, July 26, 1856. 77. El Clamor Público, July 26, 1856. “No se sabe cuales serian sus intenciones, pero se cree que pensaban hacer un asalto en la cárcel.” 78. Los Angeles Star, July 26, 1856. 79. Namely, J. S. Griffin, C. Sims, R. S. Drummer, John Shore, Andrés Pico, Wilson Jones, Edward Hunter, Francisco Mellus, Ira Thompson, Tomas Sanchez, Abel Stearns, Antonio F. Coronel, Juan Padilla, Louis Sainsevain, Jacob Elias, H. Penelone, Myron Norton. 80. Los Angeles Star, July 26, 1856. As an intermediate measure, any armed rider could be detained, disarmed, and questioned. 81. According to the Star, “a couple of mounted Mexicans,” riding through the Plaza on Wednesday night, fired on and injured “one of our citizens” slightly. Los Angeles Star, July 26, 1856. Another account of the Jenkins-Ruis affair can be found in Lawrence E. Guillow, “Pandemonium on the Plaza: The First Los Angeles Riot, July 22, 1856,” Southern California Quarterly 77 (Fall 1995): 183–97. For a different argument about the JenkinsRuis affair, see Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, chapter 1. Deverell positions this incident as the first in a series of events that amounted to, in Leonard Pitt’s phrase, a “race war” in Los Angeles. In Deverell’s work, Jenkins-Ruis and subsequent events indicate the long duration of the Mexican war, one which in fact intensified as a war between Americans and Mexicans long after the ink on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had dried. 82. One could argue that the rancheros were also looking to protect other Mexican Californians, as their language assuring that no one would get hurt as long as they did not resist represented a poignant effort to separate their aims from Jenkins’s original act. This further serves notice that race also mattered to these men. 83. Los Angeles Star, August 2, 1856. 84. Los Angeles Star, August 9, 1856. 85. The Star rarely published or analyzed such statistics. 86. Getting a bead on Los Angeles’s demographics in 1856 proves tricky. The date lies between censuses and no other locally generated data exists. In 1850, Spanish-surnamed residents made up nearly three-fourths of the population (1,215 out of 1,610), but their relative size dropped to less than half by 1860 (2,069 out of 4,385). Richard Griswold del Castillo counted 242 Mexican-born (meaning not in Los Angeles) residents of Los Angeles in 1850 and 640 in 1860. Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890:

310

Notes to Pages 124–28

A Social History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 40. Consequently, people properly designated Mexican amounted to about 15 percent of the 1850 population and 14.5 percent of the 1860 total. Of course, there are good reasons to assume that a Spanish speaker committing a crime would almost automatically be considered Mexican rather than Californian, although the boundaries separating Californians, Mexicans, and Indians might have fluctuated. The population of European Americans likely rose by more than 1,000 by the mid-1850s as a consequence of the gold rush. Conservatively estimating the Los Angeles population at 3,000 in 1856, about 1,500 would have had Spanish surnames, including about 225 Mexican-born Angelenos. “Americans,” who represented nearly 50 percent of the population, were therefore charged with less than 10 percent of all crimes. Spanish speakers represented 50 percent of the population and were charged with more than 60 percent of the crimes. Ninety of the 110 crimes, or more than 80 percent, are attributed to either Mexicans and/or Indians—so frequently linked in reportage of criminal activity—clearly above their relative presence in the local population. 87. Los Angeles Star, August 9, 1856. To the Star’s credit, it ran the letter from “Consistency” in the column immediately next to the story containing the arrest statistics, giving readers a chance to see two sides of the debate. 88. Los Angeles Star, August 23, 1856. The jurors were J. H. Low, S. S. Thompson, S. J. Reynolds, A. J. King, Wm. Graham, Adam Kerns, George V. Dycke, J. W. Crandall, James Carter, John Dunlap, A. J. Henderson, and Samuel Elphinstone. The process of seating a jury gave the sheriff a great deal of discretion. The judge made a call for a designated number of jurors and ordered the sheriff to find suitable jurors and bring them into court on the appointed day. Considering population demographics (however difficult to pinpoint, Mexican Californians made up nearly 50 percent of the population), the exclusion of Spanish-surnamed jurors must have been intentional. Even into the 1870s, juries without at least one Mexican Californian member were extremely rare. 89. Hayes, Benjamin [signature] to B[enjamin] D[avis] Wilson, Los Angeles, 1856, July 19, Huntington Library, B. D. Wilson papers, box 5, WN 368. 90. Wilson, Benjamin Davis to Margaret S. Hereford Wilson, 1856, July 20–Aug 3, Lake Vineyard Ranch, Huntington Library, B. D. Wilson Papers, box 5, WN 1756. 91. El Clamor Público, July 26, 1856: “el inocente sufre las consecuencias de un populacho inmoral que se abalanza sobre sus víctimas con la rapacidad de salvajes desenfrenados.” 92. El Clamor Público’s reportage gives but little reason to suspect the truth of this characterization. Its report makes one reference to “individuos de diversas nacionalidades” who joined the Mexicans in their Tuesday foray. 93. El Clamor Público, July 26, 1856. Ramirez deemed Ruis’s killing an “assassination” and lamented the agitation of differences between the “Americans and the Mexicans.” “Pero todos estan convencidos que fue un asesinato—nada mas ni menos. . . . Sentimos mucho las diferencias que se han suscitado entre los americanos y los mexicanos. El desorden que tuvo lugar el martes solo ha servido para poner mas y mas distantes las barreras que por mucho tiempo existen entre las dos razas.” 94. Los Angeles Star, August 9, 1856. 95. LACA, June 2, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 285. 96. Although leading the military campaign against Mexico in California, Frémont’s

Notes to Pages 129–34

311

willingness to leave locals in control of their own political future had earned him many friends among the hijos del país. 97. Los Angeles Star, August 16, 1856. 98. LACA, August 25, 1856, records of common council, box B-1364, vol. 2, 313. Born in Ireland, Downey came to California during the gold rush. In addition to serving on the city council, he had a long career as a Democrat in state politics, winning office as lieutenant governor and serving as governor at the outset of the Civil War. 99. LACA, September 22, 1856, December 15, 1856, and December 30, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 316, 333–34, 335. 100. El Clamor Público, October 4, 1856. “‘Aquí viene otro voto de Greaser, Aquí viene otro voto por el Negro. Si viene el negro Coronel a votar no lo dejen.’” Esos eran los gritos infames que atronaban los oidos el dia de Eleccion para Mayor. Sepan Caliofrnios el medo de espresarse del partido Demócrata! Mientras que vosotros andabais con ellos, solo alabanzas os eran prodigadas; pero ahore que aparece que queries votar a favor de Fremont, no encuentran palabras demasiado viles con que degradaros, esos demagogos cuya ocupacion ha sido buscar bueno empleos, (o mejor dicho) procurando “mamar las chiches del Gobierno.” Tened esto presente, y acordaos del mal tratamiento que hebeis recibido de los oficiales Democraticos durante los siete años pasados, es incredible que pueda haber un nativo Californio, que todavía siga con ese partido malvado, y si se encuntra uno, será aquel que ha perdido todo el respecto a si mismo, y que conviene ser estirado por la naríz. 101. LACA, September 22, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 316–19.

Chapter 4. “Upon This Thread Hangs the Welfare of Our City” 1. Drawn from Los Angeles Star, July 11, 1857, and El Clamor Público, July 11, 1857. An advertisement for the celebration, including names of the Program Committee’s members appears in El Clamor Público, July 4, 1857. 2. El Clamor Público, July 11, 1857. Excerpted from the following original text: “El cuatro de Julio fue celebrado en esta ciudad de una manera que jamas se habia visto en esta parte de California. Desde mucho tiempo todos los extrangeros habian sido invitados a participar en la celebracion de esta fiesta patriotica que debe despertar tantos noble recuerdos a todos los ciudadanos norte americanos. La poblacion francesa y California, sobre todo, fue invitada con las mas vivas muestras de simpatía; y así pocos de nuestros compatriotos fueron los que no concurrieron a esta cortes invitacion.” 3. El Clamor Público, July 11, 1857, “Comunicado.” “En varias partes de la ciudad, y principalmente en los hotels se hallaban reunidos muchos caballeros, celebrando con brindis y discursos la memoria de sus valientes padres, que a costa de su noble sangre consiguieron legarles una república libre y hermosa. Fue tal la animacion y entusiasmo que estos gratos recuerdos infundieron en la mente de nuestros conciudadanos, que creyeron estar no entre sus amigros, sino enmedio del enemigo en la batalla de Bunker Hill, y comenzaron

312

Notes to Pages 135–41

a descargarse unos con otros, tanta multitud de bofetadas como que no les costaba ninguna dificultad levanter la mano para dejarla caer sobre el que se presentaba primero. . . . Me aseguran que huvo algunos balazos, pero por fortuna ninguna desgracia que lamentar.” 4. El Clamor Público, July 11, 1857, “Comunicado.” “No puedo explicar a Vdes. el gusto esperimenté al ver que mis paisanos empiezan ya a tomar una parte activa en los negocios Públicos, y Dios quiera que así suceda siempre.” 5. Los Angeles Star, July 11, 1857, “Celebration of Fourth of July.” 6. Ibid. 7. Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 8. Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 76. At least forty-nine Mexican Americans, mostly women, married non-Mexican Americans between 1856 and 1866; forty more did so between 1867 and 1870. 9. Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 85–9. Antonio Franco Coronel tried unsuccessfully to institute bilingual public education in 1854, and the City Council failed to act on petitions for Spanish-language instruction in 1855, 1857, and 1858. Because bilingual people themselves controlled some of those councils, it is possible that they viewed mastery in English to be an advantage for their own and their compatriots’ children. 10. Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 226–27. 11. El Clamor Público, June 5, 1858, 2. 12. On April 4, 1857, the Star offered a blisteringly sarcastic review of a week’s violence by asking, “Who will say we are in want of amusement? Who thinks of supplying such want by a theatre? How tame, flat and unprofitable such mimic scenes would be!” For good measure, the editor added, “If the players can afford to spill the crimson flood every night, they may come along, but we must have no shamming. We are used to realities and will be satisfied with no make-believers.” Los Angeles Star, April 4, 1857. Three weeks later, in a much more severe and sober mood, the paper lamented, “A thousand things are of daily occurrence here—are smiled at approvingly, or passed over unheeded—certainly unchecked, which would condemn men to disgrace and infamy, did a high moral tone prevail in the community.” It followed with a deep meditation on the shortcomings of society and the need not for better laws but better citizens to uphold them. Los Angeles Star, April 25, 1857. 13. Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 35. Of the 4,385 people living in Los Angeles in 1860, 2,069 were Mexican or Mexican American, or about 47.1 percent. 14. Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 141, 149. 15. Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913, Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1984), 31. 16. William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 16. 17. Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 140. 18. Newmark, Sixty Years, 335, 518.

Notes to Pages 142–50

313

19. Ibid., 226. 20. Los Angeles Star, April 4, 1857. 21. Robinson, From the Days, 66. 22. Los Angeles Star, April 25, 1857, 2. Newmark and Cohen also desired “particularly to inform the ladies of Los Angeles and vicinity, that they have received and will constantly keep on hand, many articles and delicacies which heretofore have never been found in the city.” 23. John Steven McGroarty, Los Angeles from the Mountains to the Sea (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1921), 916–17. 24. Los Angeles Star, June 6, 1857, and July 3, 1858. 25. Newmark, Sixty Years, 342–46. 26. Ibid., 421–22. 27. See, for example, Los Angeles Star and El Clamor Público on October 16, 1858, and September 3, 1859, for overlapping advertisements from Solomon Lazard, Hellman and Co., Francis Mellus, Fleishman and Sichel, Workman Bros., Ducommun, Jonas and Clark, and others. 28. Newmark, Sixty Years, 50–51. 29. In the same session, former mayor Benjamin Davis Wilson offered a lot and house to the city for use as a common school for only $375. LACA, August 14, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 47. 30. LACA, October 9, 1855, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 67. 31. LACA, May 23, 1853, and June 21, 1853, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 1, folder 3, 315, 322; Newmark, Sixty Years, 116–18; Los Angeles Star, March 15, 1856. In 1853, the Common Council objected to both the principle of separate distribution and the two square leagues (roughly 9,000 acres, or half of the size of the municipality itself ) that Dryden demanded in exchange for construction costs. Harris Newmark, however, supported a replacement for the unclean water running in the zanjas and sold by the town’s two water vendors. Bill the Waterman and Dan Schieck sold water from sixty-gallon barrels atop horse-drawn carts during the 1850s and early 1860s. Customers stored water in terracotta urns called ollas, which originated in Spain and, due to their porous material, kept water cool even on hot days. 32. LACA, October 4, 1856, and December 30, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 322, 335. 33. Blake Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 63. 34. LACA, February 18, 1857, February 23, 1857, and February 24, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 341–42, 343, 345–46. 35. LACA, March 16, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 351–52. 36. Mellus also asked for “the further permission that should he move his present business location he shall have the right to remove his Plat-form scale likewise.” LACA, August 30, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 29. 37. LACA, January 25, 1859, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 51–52. The city retained an option to buy at any time during the ten-year period. The council read

314

Notes to Pages 151–53

Temple’s proposal and referred it to a special committee (comprised of Stephen C. Foster, John S. Griffin, David Porter, and Antonio Franco Coronel) eight days earlier. LACA, January 17, 1859, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 48. 38. LACA, December 5, 1856, June 29, 1857, and April 12, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 331, 428–29, 490. 39. LACA, July 20, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 431–32. This would have required an extension of one block to the northwest, from Main to New High Street across the lands of Jonathan Temple, and by two blocks to the east, from Los Angeles Street to Alameda over the properties of Francis Mellus, Soledad Coronel de Yndart, Ralf Emmerson, Paubla Romero de Pryor, and Manuel Requeña. 40. LACA, August 10, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 438–39. 41. LACA, May 26, 1858, and May 27, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, pages 6, 7. Doing so would have required “all the interested parties in the rear of said new line so changed” to agree to the new plan. In addition, Abel Stearns, Horace Bell, and Antonio Franco Coronel would have had to relinquish pieces of their land along Calle de los Negros to form a right angle where it intersected Los Angeles Street’s new line. 42. In one example, Jean Louis Sainsevain and his neighbors brought their dispute regarding a broken zanja to the council. The officials ordered the zanjero to make the repairs in such a way that Sainsevain’s property “may not be injured.” The ruling departed from past precedent in that it presumed the city’s liability for damages to Sainsevain’s land and in that it offered the zanjero’s labor to protect such property. Under earlier strategies, Sansevain should rightly have handled the project himself and the notion of damages would not have entered into the equation; LACA, June 22, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 426. In another instance the council had to reject a petition requesting tighter control over a particular zanja because of “rights already acquired” that “ought not to be interfered with.” LACA, August 4, 1856, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 306. 43. Newmark, Sixty Years, 218. 44. Los Angeles Star, June 20, 1857. 45. LACA, August 31, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 442. 46. LACA, November 13, 1857, January 4, 1858, and February 15, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 452, 466, and 480. 47. LACA, February 22, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 482–83. By March the council selected a contractor, received the survey, and charged the special committee to resolve all issues relating to routing and financing. LACA, March 8 and March 29, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 490, 494. 48. Los Angeles Star, May 15, 1858. Nichols likely wanted to ensure that new irrigators took advantage of the extended water works and probably hoped rising property values would generate greater tax revenues. In heeding the new call to action, the council departed from a purely communal ethos and established a pay-for-use precedent. The members declared “all owners of land North and above the Garden of José Sepúlveda” completely “exonerated from all Taxation for the construction of said water canal” because they did not stand to receive any new water; only those who would “receive water from the said ca-

Notes to Pages 153–56

315

nal” had to pay “one dollar per acre on the lands by them irrigated.” LACA, May 31, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 8. 49. LACA, July 26, 1858, August 2, 1858, August 9, 1858, and November 29, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 20, 22, 23–24, 40. Several other claimants rejected the city’s first offers. In response, the council established a separate commission to mediate solutions, which ultimately resulted in an aggregate payment of $693.33 to various parties in August 1858. LACA, August 2, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 22. 50. Few U.S.-born women brought petitions before the council on any matter during the entire 1850s, even though state law made such action permissible. For example, supporters of Mrs. Hoyt, a female teacher in the public schools, asked the Common Council to pay her a monthly salary equal to that of her male colleagues. Mrs. Hoyt did not make the request herself. LACA, April 29, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 365. For an excellent discussion of women, property, and the connections between gender and power, see Miroslava Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004). 51. LACA, August 10, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 439–40; LACA, March 9, 1858, March 22, 1858, and July 19, 1858, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6., 286, 287, 312. 52. LACA, September 22, 1856, and December 3, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 316–19, 458–59; LACA, May 31, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 8. 53. LACA, May 26, 1858, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 302. Received in council and read on June 7, 1858. LACA, June 7, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 11. 54. LACA, July 5, 1858, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 303. “La comicion nombrada para examinar la solicitud de Benj. S. Eaton por el asunto a que se le conseda el pribilejio de sacar dos pulgadas de hagua de la sanja principal; informa que con las pocas maquinas que se an puesto en la dicha sanja sin un pribilejio como el que se solisita, las mas de hellas no an dejado de aser algun trastorno al huso de la hagua, y si sebá aumentando este negocio de poner estorbos en la sanja, y comensando á ora aconseder pulgadas de hagua al menudeo al fin llegara a ser un grabe perjuicio a la agricultura, por lo que ese dicha comicio no es de consederse la presente solicitud.” 55. LACA, January 4, 1858, and January 5, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 467, 468. See also LACA, May 18, 1857, November 23, 1857, and November 30, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 411, 454, 456. 56. Prudent Beaudry asked the city to cede him ten feet of land on the north side of Aliso Street where it intersected with Calle de los Negros so he could erect a new building square with the streets. Francis Mellus opposed Beaudry’s request, claiming the property was his own, that the intersection’s line had already “been fixed and established by the proper and competent power,” and that “no subsequent ordinance” could deprive him of the property. Although Requeña served on the Street Committee to which the council referred both petitions, it supported Beaudry over Requeña’s dissent. During an extended

316

Notes to Pages 157–66

discussion, the council made no effort to find a middle course between the two competing claims. Requeña cast the lone vote against Beaudry, then demanded “to have spread upon the minutes ‘That the Common Council has no power to divest any person or persons of vested rights, guaranteed by Ordinance.’” Requeña then excused himself from his seat as president and walked out. Prudent Beaudry, petition to City Council, LACA, April 12, 1857, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 245. Francis Mellus, petition to City Council, LACA, April 23, 1857, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 252–53. Minutes, LACA, April 29, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 363–65. 57. LACA, June 2, 1857, untitled records series, box b-93, vol. 6, 256–57. The petitioners further asked the council to keep Gregorio Fraijo’s zanja, from which they were accustomed to drawing their irrigation waters, intact and essentially private in its own right. Seeking support for traditional water access by the somewhat unusual argument against declaring public a zanja that ought never, by similar tradition, have been considered private, the petitioners offered an oddly mixed presentation that nevertheless supported irrigation over machinery. As “vecinos,” the petitioners seemingly made a distinction between themselves as “public” citizens who contributed to the general public good (despite relying on a private water source to do so) and others pursuing “private interests” and who therefore did not merit city government attention. 58. LACA, July 29, 1857, untitled records series, box b-93, vol. 6, 263–64. 59. LACA, January 25, 1858, and February 1, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 473, 475. 60. LACA, February 21, 1859, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 56–57. 61. LACA, March 14, 1859, and April 18, 1859, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 63, 70. 62. LACA, February 21, 1859, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 4, 56–57. 63. LACA, May 21, 1860, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 416–20. This document follows a pasted, printed copy of the 1859 proposal onto the pages of the new report. 64. When the council appointed a Water Improvement Committee in August 1857, it included Manuel Requeña. LACA, August 31, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 442. In composing a group to investigate problems with McLaughlin’s iron foundry in November 1857, Antonio Franco Coronel served. LACA, November 30, 1857, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 457. Coronel also sat on the committee tasked with the previous effort to dam the river and renovate the zanjas. LACA, February 15, 1858, records of common council, box b-1364, vol. 3, 480. 65. LACA, May 21, 1860, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 416–20. 66. See Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), esp. 37–52. 67. LACA, May 21, 1860, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 416–20. 68. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991), 44. 69. LACA, August 9, 1860, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 431–32. 70. In June 1861, the Water Committee needed an additional $4,000 to fund a wheel and other infrastructure to complete the domestic supply system. LACA, June 26, 1861, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 481–83. Six months later, funds remained short and the Water Committee estimated a further infusion of $15,000 would be required to

Notes to Pages 166–72

317

complete the works and liquidate existing liabilities. This amount included completing the domestic supply, erecting a new waterwheel, installing pipes, and building a brick house for the water overseer at the site of the dam. LACA, December 23, 1861, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 495–96. 71. LACA, February 4, 1860, and August 9, 1860, untitled records series, box b-0093, v0l. 6, 395–97, 432. In another instance, the Morris Brothers and Prager, entrepreneurial mill operators and vineyardists, spent $1,300 fixing an old, ill-functioning zanja in the hopes of selling it to the city in exchange for a new flume, but they failed to persuade the council to buy it back. At first the Water Committee refused to build the new flume because the city would “receive no benefit from the construction of such flume” because “the benefit to be derived therefrom” would “accrue only” to the petitioners. After investing in preliminary repairs, the city subsequently declined to buy the zanja back for $500 and then $100, on the grounds that the consortiums’ zanja was so “badly constructed” it would “require considerable outlay to [be] put . . . in order.” LACA, March 11, 1861, October 21, 1861, and June 23, 1862, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 471–72, 491–93, 498–99. 72. LACA, July 16, 1860, and August 20, 1860, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 424, 343–45. 73. LACA, April 15, 1861, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 474–75. 74. LACA, June 3, 1861, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 476–77. 75. LACA, May 21, 1860, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 417.

Chapter 5. Judging “an ‘Ethiopian by His Skin’” 1. Los Angeles Star, January 25, 1862, 2. 2. For a discussion of the longer history of such storms, see Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Vintage, 1999). 3. Los Angeles Star, January 25, 1862, 2. 4. Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913, Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1984), 309. 5. Los Angeles Star, January 25, 1862, 2. 6. Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 42; Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 244–48. 7. Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 32–33. 8. Ibid., 42. 9. Ibid., 47. 10. As soaring cattle prices in the early 1850s brought the rancheros an unprecedented windfall, their interest in seeking municipal office waned to the point where not a single Mexican Californian stood for elective office in 1855. Nevertheless, local officials generally enacted policies commensurate with intercultural civic ideals. 11. Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 241. Olvera won the county judgeship, Manuel Garfías became the county treasurer, and Ygnacio del Valle won office as recorder. 12. “Los Angeles City Officials, 1850–1938,” unpublished compilation, held at LACA. 13. Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 241.

318

Notes to Pages 172–75

14. Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 35. Castillo calculated the total Mexican American population of Los Angeles at 2,160 people in 1870. The federal census that year counted 5,278 inhabitants for the city. 15. Donald J. Pisani, Water, Land, and Law in the West: The Limits of Public Policy, 1850–1920 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1996), 1. 16. Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 31. 17. The complex story of water law and policy in California and the U.S. West is carefully documented in Donald Worster’s pathbreaking study Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon, 1985), and elsewhere. At first, the Supreme Court of California and the state legislature moved in different directions. For a discussion of the ways the court pursued a dual jurisprudence in key decisions in 1853, 1855, and 1865, see Pisani, Water, Land, and Law, 15, and Eddy v. Simpson, 3 Cal. 252 (1853). Meanwhile, the legislature, by then composed in part of Hispano-Americans, passed laws in line with communal rights doctrines, establishing commissions to ensure maximal and equitable distribution. See State Legislature of California, The Statues of the Fifth Session, 1854 (Sacramento: B. B. Redding, 1854), 76. More in line with the courts, the law did not apply to counties where mining was the key industry and also prohibited interference with downstream riparian owners. In 1868 lawmakers established the “California Doctrine,” which accepted riparian principles but also made room for the nationally legislated Mining Acts of 1866 that acknowledged the right of appropriation in the public domain. For owners of state land or a Mexican grant, their water rights were declared riparian. All water claimed from the public domain before 1866 was granted rights of prior appropriation (this came from the Mining Acts). All state or federal lands granted after 1866 came under riparian rule: appropriators could divert only as much as the riparian flow would allow, even if rights were reclaimed by the riparian owner after significant improvements had been made by a downstream prior appropriator. This scheme superseded the communal rights granted to Los Angeles and other cities in 1854, until the special amendment to the Los Angeles charter in 1870. Worster, Rivers of Empire, 107–8. 18. William McPherson, Charter and Revised Ordinances of the City of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Star Press, 1873), 7. 19. The legislators clarified their intent in 1874 by further amending Los Angeles’s charter to mandate “that there be and hereby is granted to said corporation, to be by it held, used, and enjoyed in absolute ownership, the full, free, and exclusive right to all of the water flowing in the river of Los Angeles at any point from its source or sources to the intersection of said river with the southern boundary of said city.” State Legislature of California, Statutes of California Passed at the Twentieth Session of the Legislature, 1873–1874 (Sacramento: C. H. Springer, State Printer, 1874), 633. 20. The reaffirmed right to control the flow of the Los Angeles River did not impress all riparian claimants against the city. Twice in five years the city attempted to bring pressure on an owner found in conflict with its rights. Both times, the target of the suit was Leon Baldwin, who owned land above the city and had diverted some water from the river to irrigate his own land. In each case the California Supreme Court ruled against the city. In its 1879 decision upholding the verdict of the lower court, the high court ruled that “the

Notes to Pages 176–80

319

claim set up by the city in this action—that the city is the owner of the corpus of water in the Los Angeles River—finds no support in the evidence.” The court based its findings in part on the Eddy v. Simpson ruling from 1853, and also found that Baldwin was an “upper riparian owner” and as such was making lawful use of the water. (City of Los Angeles v. Leon Mac L. Baldwin, 53 Cal. 469 [1879]. This ruling also conformed to the California Doctrine described above.) Clearly, the state’s highest court proved either unaware or unmoved by both the concept of communal rights and the letter of the law in Los Angeles’s charter. To convince the court, the city cast its arguments in language more familiar to the bench. As defendants against Anastacio Feliz in 1881, city lawyers jettisoned Mexican communal rights doctrine. During a severe three-year drought, the city had cut off some upper riparian farmers in order to increase the municipal water supply, and Feliz successfully enjoined the city’s efforts. On appeal the state supreme court reversed the injunction on the basis of a new conception of “pueblo rights.” The justices declared, “From the very foundation of the pueblo, in 1781, the right to all the waters of the river was claimed by the pueblo, and that right was recognized by all the owners of land on the stream, from its source, and under a recognition and acknowledgement of such right, plaintiffs’ grantors dug their ditches, and, by the permission and consent of the municipal authorities, plaintiffs thereafter used the waters of the river. Can they now assert a claim adverse to that of the city? We think not. The city under various acts of the legislature has succeeded to all the rights of the former pueblo” (Anastacio Felíz v. City of Los Angeles, 58 Cal. 73, 79 [1881]). Although the high court referenced the city’s history, its decision rested not on Spanish and Mexican communal rights but on prior appropriation. The pueblo “claimed” the river from its founding and therefore was first in time, and it had improved the flow and used the water consistently since then. Consequently, Los Angeles had a claim of prior appropriation against any riparian owners. 21. LACA, November 22, 1865, Council Minutes, box b-1364, vol. 5, 476. 22. Vincent Ostrom, Water and Politics: A Study of Water Policies and Administration in the Development of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Haynes Foundation, 1953), 41–42. 23. LACA, May 25, 1868, Council Minutes, vol. 6, 668–69. 24. LACA, May 27, 1868, Council Minutes, vol. 6, 682–83. The concern over fire prevention reflected the spatial changes U.S. immigrants had wrought in the city, preferring wood to adobe as a building material. 25. LACA, June 1, 1868, untitled records series, box b-0095, vol. 10, 677, 680–81. 26. LACA, July 5, 1858, untitled records series, box b-0093, vol. 6, 303, see chapter 4. 27. LACA, June 6, 1868, Council Minutes, vol. 6, 684–85. 28. Petition to City Council, n.d., box 2, item 105, 7 pages. Antonio F. Coronel Papers, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. 29. Aguilar subsequently served as zanjero of Los Angeles before returning to the mayor’s office in 1870. When the federal census taker visited him as part of counting the 1870 census, Aguilar gave as his occupation “ex-mayor of Los Angeles.” 30. LACA, September 23, 1869, and October 28, 1869, Council Minutes, vol. 7, 8, 20. 31. LACA, July 21, 1870, and July 30, 1870, Council Minutes, vol. 7, 133–34, 706–7. 32. LACA, December 9, 1870, Council Minutes, vol. 7, 216–20.

320

Notes to Pages 180–84

33. The Second Ward poll list can be found in the Los Angeles Daily News, December 2, 1870, 2, and the Third Ward Poll List in Los Angeles Daily News, December 3, 1870, 2. 34. Los Angeles Daily News, December 6, 1870, 3. 35. I assembled the preceding narrative by drawing on several previously published works, including Chester P. Dorland, “The Chinese Massacre at Los Angeles in 1871,” Southern California Quarterly 3:2 (1894): 22–27; Newmark, Sixty Years, 432–35; Elmer Clarence Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991; orig. pub. 1939), 48; Paul De Falla, “Lantern in the Western Sky,” Quarterly of the Historical Society of Southern California 42:1 (March 1960): 57–88 (part 1), and 42:2 (June 1960): 161–85 (part 2); Scott Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles in 1870–1871: The Making of a Massacre,” Southern California Quarterly 90:2 (Summer 2008): 109–58; Victor Jew, “The Anti-Chinese Massacre of 1871 and Its Strange Career,” in William Deverell and Greg Hise, eds., A Companion to Los Angeles (West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley, 2010), pp. 110–28; and Zesch, The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). The names of the dead and how they died are drawn from Zesch, Chinatown War, 132–44, and Jew, “Anti-Chinese Massacre,” 122–23. 36. Recently Scott Zesch and Victor Jew have broken this silence. As Jew astutely observes, the “largely uncritical and unreflected on” transmission of nearly the same narrative for 130 years “has had the practical effect of foreclosing the interpretive outlook necessary to see the massacre for its broad significance beyond its bloody excess.” Jew, “Anti-Chinese Massacre,” 113. In noting the ways that Kevin Starr argued the massacre sparked boosterism and how Allen Scott and Edward Soja plotted the massacre as the genesis of a long history of mistreating minorities and the precursor to subsequent disruptions including the Watts and Rodney King–related uprisings, Jew further argues, “If the stakes are raised and the massacre is put forth as the epicenter of a possible new start to Los Angeles’s modern history, then new ways of telling its history need to be imagined” (113). 37. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 110; Newmark, Sixty Years, 123. 38. Los Angeles Star, March 27, 1852. 39. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 110; Newmark, Sixty Years, 298. 40. Questions addressing the presence and occupation of Chinese women in California have provoked scholarly debate for several years. George Peffer, Erika Lee, and Judy Yung have offered a clearer picture of Chinese women in nineteenth-century California. Peffer argues that immigration laws targeted women and consequently kept the percentage of female Chinese immigrants to the United States much lower than comparable percentages among female Chinese immigrants to Hawaii, Australia, Singapore, Penang, and Malaca. He also chronicles intentional undercounting of women by census takers. Lee suggests most male Chinese immigrants came to California not as bachelors but as married men who left wives and families behind in China. Yung, writing exclusively about San Francisco, teases out Chinese cultural traditions that led married women and daughters who accompanied their husbands and fathers to the United States to remain largely in private spaces and out of public view, which in turn created a false perception that the only Chinese women in San Francisco were those prostitutes seen on the streets and in the windows of their brothel rooms. George Anthony Peffer, If They Don’t Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration Before Exclusion (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Erika Lee,

Notes to Pages 184–89

321

At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Working with raw census data, Scott Zesch argues that “more than half of the thirty-four Asian women living in Los Angeles may have been wives or concubines” in 1870. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 118. 41. Dorland, “The Chinese Massacre,” 22–27; and Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 139. 42. Raymond Lou, “The Chinese American Community in Los Angeles, 1870–1900: A Case of Resistance, Organization, and Participation” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 1982), 27; and Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 130. Writing about Chinese migration to Mexico, Grace Delgado notes that “in the absence of generational ties on which to draw,” the earliest immigrants “were compelled to create alternative mechanisms to establish connections to their new home and neighbors” and so their “sense of social belonging and residential permanency was initially tethered to relationships mostly with Mexicans.” It might therefore be appropriate to consider the possibility that the numerous connections early Chinese settlers in Los Angeles forged with English- and Spanish-speaking Angelenos represented a similar effort to establish a sense of belonging. Grace Peña Delgado, “Neighbors by Nature: Relationships, Border Crossings, and Transnational Communities in the Chinese Exclusion Era,” Pacific Historical Review 80:3 (August 2011): 401–29, 406. 43. Madeline Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and South China, 1882–1943 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 44. Henry Yu, “Mountains of Gold: Canada, North America, and the Cantonese Pacific,” in Chee Beng Tan, ed., Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora (New York: Routledge, 2013), 108–21. 45. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 115–17, quote at 117; and Lou, “Chinese American Community,” 25–27. 46. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 131–36. Hing pursued various strategies of retribution against See Yup, including orchestrating the kidnapping of Yut Ho. 47. Elmer Sandmeyer offered one of the first scholarly treatments of the anti-Chinese movement in California in 1939. He outlined multiple causes for the growth in white hostility toward Chinese immigrants, pointing especially to the hot-button issue of the coolie trade’s threat to free labor and a simultaneous effort by whites to reserve the labor market for themselves. Others have followed this general trend, including Kevin Starr in his omnibus history of California. I join with the recent work of Victor Jew and Scott Zesch, among others, who have similarly dismissed the labor market argument on the grounds that Chinese and European American workers infrequently competed directly for the same jobs. Most Chinese who worked for wages did so as cooks or domestic servants, arenas in which they did not compete with other males, and the rest worked as entrepreneurs of one sort or another, running stores, laundries, and vegetable businesses. Jew and Zesch also note, drawing on earlier work by William Locklear, that the anti-Chinese movement didn’t really take hold in California until the mid-1870s. See Sandmeyer, Anti-Chinese Movement; Kevin Starr, California: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2005); William Locklear, “The

322

Notes to Pages 189–90

Celestials and the Angels: A Study of the Anti-Chinese Movement in Los Angeles, 1882,” Quarterly of the Historical Society of Southern California 42:3 (September 1960): 239–56; Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles”; Jew, “Anti-Chinese Massacre.” 48. Eric Avila, “Social Flashpoints,” in Deverell and Hise, eds., A Companion to Los Angeles, 95–109, 99. Avila’s arguments fit with scholarship that argues northern Europeans racially marked Asian and African immigrants as “other” prior to their respective arrival in North America. For the two classic works on this subject see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), and Winthrop Jordan, White over Black: Attitudes Toward the American Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968). 49. In an innovative and insightful essay, Nicholas De Genova elegantly elucidates the ways that the English-European colonial encounter with North American Indians served as a longitudinally significant experience in racialization, components of which have been strategically redeployed in subsequent moments of identity negotiation. “While it is certainly necessary to attend to the respectively irreducible particularities of the specific historical experiences of all the groups that have come to be crudely homogenized under the generic racial umbrellas Native Americans, Latinos, and Asians,” De Genova argues, “It is, nevertheless, productive to emphasize the broad analogies that reveal compelling continuities among these experiences because such comparisons facilitate theorizing the social relations that historically conjoin them despite their apparent divergences.” He also argues that Asian racial formations in the United States “have been constructed like [those] of Native Americas, to be essentially not ‘American’ at all. Like American Indians, therefore,” De Genova concludes, “Asians have each served as a constitutive outside against which the white supremacy of the U.S. nation-state could imagine its own coherence and wholeness.” Here I seek to add to De Genova’s discussion by suggesting the local specificities of this broader trend and by illustrating the ways that, in Los Angeles, two groups with distinct colonial histories and national traditions similarly drew on their memories of anti-Indian racialization to make sense of and exclude Chinese immigrants. Nicholas De Genova, “Introduction: Latino and Asian Racial Formations at the Frontiers of U.S. Nationalism,” in De Genova, ed., Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 1–20, quotes at 7–8, 11. 50. Los Angeles News, May 21, 1869, quoted in Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 126. 51. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 128. Here too, Angelenos created a link between 1871 and previous decades. Throughout the Spanish, Mexican, and early U.S. periods, the suspicion that Indians might behave beyond the established boundaries of acceptable behavior provoked concern and, at times, municipally sanctioned preemptive violence. 52. My argument here follows one David Nirenburg advanced in his book Communities of Violence. Writing about relationships between Christians and Jews under the Crown of Aragon during the fourteenth century, Nirenburg compellingly demonstrated that although Christians held strongly anti-Semitic feelings throughout the period, these feelings erupted into anti-Semitic violence only at specific moments when such talk and action offered particular traction in specific circumstances. David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities During the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

Notes to Pages 191–96

323

53. Los Angeles Star, April 27, 1871, 3. Also quoted in Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 128. 54. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 118–22. In 1870, a See Yup rival had Sing Yu, a prostitute under See Yup’s control, arrested in Santa Barbara to prevent her from testifying in Los Angeles. See Yup’s attempt to recapture her resulted in an exchange of gunfire between members of the Los Angeles and Santa Barbara huiguan and spread into the carriage where a Santa Barbara police officer and a U.S. marshal held Sing Yu. 55. Such an argument fails to explain why the mob targeted not the provocateurs but indiscriminately slaughtered innocent Chinese Angelenos who had no history of violent behavior or legal manipulation. However, the note posted at the First Ward boundary and other, increasingly common, acts of random violence against Chinese on the streets suggest that Mexican and European Angelenos failed to distinguish when choosing their victims. 56. Jew, “Anti-Chinese Massacre,” 116. As Jew rightly asserts, “the invocation of ‘posse’” on that evening “harnessed the vigilante power that had already ordered and disordered Los Angeles for at least twenty years.” 57. In his pathbreaking study of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Christopher Waldrep argues that a deep distrust of formal law and courts combined with anti-black racism to create white communities bound together by the administration of extralegal violence and lynchings. Such choices could be made safely, he argues, only in tightly knit communities in which everyone agreed with the principle of vigilantism and protected each other from the legal consequences of committing murder in public places. Christopher Waldrep, The Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817–1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998). See also Michael Pfeifer, Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004). 58. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 138–39. Zesch takes the quotation from the testimony given by N. L. King and published in the Los Angeles Star, October 27, 1871. Isabella Seong-Leong Quintana makes a similar observation about the potential motives for Mexican Americans’ participation in the riot. Isabella Seong-Leong Quintana, “National Borders, Neighborhood Boundaries: Gender, Space, and Border Formation in Chinese and Mexican Los Angeles, 1871–1938” (Ph.D. diss., history, University of Michigan, 2010), 41–42. 59. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 141. This was a small portion of Yuen’s evident wealth. When Sam Yuen posted $6,000 bail for Ah Choy (no less than $100,000 in contemporary equivalence), rumors swirled that “thousands of dollars were to be had, if only the right circumstances could be worked to pry it from some hiding place within the Chinese quarter.” Jew, “Anti-Chinese Massacre,” 116. 60. Dorland, “Chinese Massacre at Los Angeles,” 27; Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 139–40. 61. Henry Hazzard, Cameron Thom, James Goldsworthy, Judge Robert Widney, and Sheriff Burns stand notably alone for their valiant efforts to quell the crowd’s fury. 62. Newmark, Sixty Years, 434–35. 63. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 144. 64. I am suggesting a third interpretive alternative to those offered recently by Scott

324

Notes to Pages 196–99

Zesch and Victor Jew. Zesch considers the massacre “the expected result of a collapse of the communal forces that usually operate to keep the sinister side of human nature in check,” as part of a larger argument that unrestrained racism undergirded the grizzly events of October 24, 1871 (Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 143). Taking a different approach, Jew attributes the excesses of the massacre to the fact that “law utterly failed. It failed to stop the massacre. It failed to dispel the crowd. It failed to disburse the mob. After a good number were killed, the law failed thereafter to prosecute the full compass of those involved, and in the end, it failed to incarcerate even the few who were convicted” ( Jew, “Anti-Chinese Massacre, 120). Within the larger history of extralegal violence in Los Angeles, I am making a far more troubling argument: that the actions of the posse reflected not the collapse but the volitional exercise of communal forces, and that law did not fail because the mob did exactly the kind of work it was expected to do, even if the extremity and randomness of the violence created such post hoc horror it produced recriminations and outrage. 65. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 144–45; Jew, “Anti-Chinese Massacre,” 121; and De Falla, “Lantern in the Western Sky,” 178–84. 66. I deliberately summon one of the core arguments Jill Lepore formulates in The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Making of American Identity (New York: Vintage, 1998). Lepore argues that English colonists resorted to extreme violence, far outside that normally sanctioned, to wage and win King Philip’s War, then created published accounts that blamed Indians for forcing them to employ savage tactics, thereby winning a second victory in the battle for the war’s memory. 67. Only one year earlier, a vigilance committee and trailing mob of more than three hundred Angelenos had executed a Frenchman named Lachenais for multiple murders. The grand jury refused to investigate the participants, telling Judge Ygnacio Sepúlveda “that if the law had hitherto been faithfully executed in Los Angeles, such scenes in broad daylight would never have taken place” (Newmark, Sixty Years, 420). 68. The men sentenced were L. F. Crenshaw, a drifter from Nevada; Louis Mendel, Polish-born and working as a clerk; A. R. Johnston, recently arrived from Ireland and working as a plasterer; Patrick McDonald, also a recent Irish immigrant; Charles Austin, a Maine-born farmer; Refugio Botello, a Mexican-born butcher; Jesus Martinez, and Estevan A. Alvarado. In addition, Adolfo Celis and D. W. Moody, an immigrant farmer from Missouri, were acquitted during the same trial. One additional Mexican American, Ramón Dominguez, was to face trial with the others but filed a motion claiming he could not be tried fairly, and the case against him was evidently dropped. William David Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 76–77; Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 144–45 and n225. 69. Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles,” 142. See also Quintana, “National Borders, Neighborhood Boundaries,” 51–52. 70. Los Angeles Star, October 28, 1872, 3, and Star, November 20, 1872, 3. The events broke the letter of the law and the bull-and-bear fight may have been unsavory as the bear had reportedly been kept in captivity since its infancy and had little fight in it. 71. Los Angeles Star, November 21, 1872, 2. 72. Los Angeles Star, November 28, 1872, 3. 73. Los Angeles Star, December 2, 1872, 2.

Notes to Pages 200–208

325

74. Los Angeles Star, November 30, 1872, 3. 75. Los Angeles Star, November 28, 1872, 2. 76. William Estrada, “The Last Latino Mayor of Los Angeles: José Cristóbal Aguilar, 1866–1868, 1871–1872,” Center for Law in the Public Interest, digitally published on The City Project Blog, June 30, 2005. Last accessed May 9, 2011, at http://www.cityprojectca .org/blog/archives/117. 77. LACA, December 5, 1872, Council Minutes, vol. 8, 132–35. The Star reported a different tally for the First Ward, to wit: twenty-eight more votes for Aguilar. I have chosen to use the final tally recorded by the council here. Los Angeles Star December 3, 1872, 2. 78. Los Angeles Star, December 3, 1872, 2. 79. Although mid-nineteenth-century municipal politics were characteristically roughand-tumble, the 1872 election was among the first after a suite of new laws imposed a far more orderly balloting environment. The Star’s editor complained heartily in the same issue that he was “thoroughly and utterly disgusted with the new and uninteresting character our laws have given to elections.” He declared, “There is no fun in them,” and reckoned election day as being “as staid as a Quaker meeting”; Los Angeles Star, December 3, 1872, 2. 80. Los Angeles Star, December 12, 1872, 2. The Star further characterized these problems as creating “nurseries of disease.” 81. Los Angeles Star, December 12, 1872, 3.

Chapter 6. “Looking Across the Gulf of Immeasurable Distance” 1. The First Los Angeles City and County Directory, 1872 (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie, 1963); 5, 9; Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913 (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1984), 72. 2. Los Angeles City Directory, 1872, 5; Los Angeles Directory Company, Los Angeles City Directory, 1875 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Directory Company, 1875). 3. W. W. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1959), 70. 4. Los Angeles Daily News, June 20, 1870. 5. James M. Guinn, Historical and Biographical Record of Southern California (Chicago: Chapman, 1902), 1187. 6. For an innovative and balanced treatment of Pico’s political and economic life, see Carlos Manuel Salomon, Pío Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). 7. Robinson, From the Days, 69–73. 8. Rather than suggesting Pico had to turn to capitalism, the argument highlights Pico’s understanding and desire to succeed in the economy. 9. The estimable urban historian Sam Bass Warner, Jr., argued that the “arrangement of streets and buildings” at a given moment “represent[s] a temporary compromise among such diverse and often conflicting elements as aspirations for business and home life, the conditions of trade, the supply of labor, and the ability to remake what came before.” Sam Bass Warner, Jr., Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870–1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 15.

326

Notes to Pages 208–12

10. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991), 10. Lefebvre also asks, rhetorically, “What is an ideology without a space to which it refers, a space which it describes, whose vocabulary and links it makes use of, and whose code it embodies?” (43). 11. Warner, Streetcar Suburbs, 20–21. 12. Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 141, 149. By the end of the 1870s, 52 percent of Mexican Angelenos lived in this ten-block-square area. 13. The 1872 city directory listed one Felis Burdell at 12 Bath Street and his occupation as hostler. Felis Gallardo, owner of the Zaragosa Restaurant at 36 Main Street, opposite El Palacio, and the widow Francisca de Martinez lived at 12 Bath Street during the 1870s. By 1880, Francisco Martinez, possibly Francisca de Martinez’s son, appeared in the city directory at 12 Bath Street as “proprietor of lodging house.” Los Angeles City Directory, 1872, 5, 2; Los Angeles City Directory, 1875; Aaron Smith, Los Angeles City Directory, 1878 (Los Angeles: Mirror, 1878); Howard L. Morris, The Los Angeles City Directory for 1879–1880 (Los Angeles: Morris and Wright, 1879). 14. Newmark, Sixty Years, 510–11. 15. María Raquél Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820–1880 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2007), 153. 16. Lawrence Edward Guillow, “The Origins of Race Relations in Los Angeles, 1820– 1880: A Multi-Ethnic Study” (Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University, 1996), 217. 17. Office of the Census, Ninth Census (1870). 18. The cramped quarters held 61 residential units, but the increase in population meant that the average number of people living in each household unit in the Chinese district increased from 2.3 in 1870 to 4.6 in 1880. Data derived from the manuscript rolls of the Tenth Census (1880). Office of the Census, Tenth Census (1880). See also Raymond Lou, “The Chinese American Community in Los Angeles, 1870–1900: A Case of Resistance, Organization, and Participation” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 1982), 39. 19. Office of the Census, Tenth (1880) and Eleventh (1890) Censuses. Unfortunately, the manuscript records for the Eleventh Census (1890) burned in a fire, making detailed analysis impossible. City directories offer scant help as the majority of Chinese residents are not listed. Lacking these materials, the analysis for the period between 1880 and 1890 draws on the compendium census data, information gleaned from local papers, and the few existing secondary sources. 20. Sensational reports emphasizing the crowded and dirty nature of the Chinese district appeared regularly during the 1870s and 1880s. These stories, which claimed that as many as forty Chinese men shared sleeping halls measuring twenty-four feet by nine feet, always angled toward demonizing Chinese Angelenos and rallying support for Chinese exclusion. See for example Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1882. 21. Census Office, Tenth Census, 1880; manuscript census of California, 1880, roll 67, pp. 12–17. The 1880 census for Los Angeles lists the names of the street in the left margin. The 1870 census does not provide street information and is consequently less useful in

Notes to Pages 212–15

327

determining the demographics of Negro Alley. I built the following tables from the manuscript census records from 1880. Residence Patterns on Negro Alley, 1880 Occupants No lodgers 1–3 lodgers 4 or more lodgers

Number 15 33 12

Negro Alley Dwellings Without Lodgers, 1880 Living arrangement Singles Husband and wife Families with children

Number 5 6 4

22. Although the number of couples and families is higher than the historiographical canon on Chinese immigration would predict, they were few compared to the relative total. Most Chinese nuclear families, however, lived away from Negro Alley. The 1880 census reports ninety-two Chinese families, of which only ten dwelled in the core residential district. Consequently, although one-third of all Los Angeles Chinese lived on Negro Alley, only one-ninth of nuclear Chinese families lived there. The data suggests a relationship between class and family. Perhaps those Chinese able to immigrate as intact families or those able to marry once in the United States possessed the economic resources to live elsewhere in Los Angeles. 23. Los Angeles City Directory, 1875; Robinson, From the Days, 70. Entries in the 1875 directory contain both addresses and occupations and indicate whether the address listed corresponds to a business or private residence. 24. Robinson, From the Days, 70; Los Angeles Daily News, May 25, 1870. 25. Robinson, From the Days, 71–73. 26. Newmark, Sixty Years, 186. 27. Sue Wolfer Earnest, “An Historical Study of the Growth of the Theatre in Southern California, 1848–1894” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1947), 374. Interculturally experienced Angelenos Pico, Sepúlveda, and John Downey formed the committee that planned the opening ball. 28. My analysis here follows that offered by Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land, 148. Although Casas does not discuss Doña Abbott or the Merced Theatre, she argues that “Californianas were aware of the ‘middle ground’ on which they stood” and that in the face of increasingly active efforts to differentially racialize European and Mexican Americans they “nevertheless still actively negotiated, protected, and maintained their social, cultural, and racial privileges for themselves and for their children.”

328

Notes to Pages 215–17

29. Earnest, “Growth of the Theatre,” 375. Harris Newmark kept one of the bills printed in Spanish, and remarked, “Plays were often advertised in Spanish.” Newmark, Sixty Years, 422. The placard read, “Teatro Merced/Los Angeles/Lunes, Enero 30 de 1871: Primero funcíon de la Gran Empresario Veterano de San Francisco, Veinte y Cuatro Artistas de ambos sexos, todos conocidos como estrellas de primera clase.” 30. Los Angeles Daily Star, July 1, 1871. The Star gave the show a generally favorable review. 31. Earnest, “Growth of the Theatre,” 374–75. For a similar argument regarding the ways that minstrel shows helped bind racially ambiguous Irish Americans to white identity, see David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (London: Verso, 1991). 32. Los Angeles City Directory, 1875; Lou, “Chinese American Community,” 202–25. European Americans also owned gambling houses throughout the city. 33. Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1887, reported finding no fewer than “50 to 100 white people wandering around that sweet-scented neighborhood on any given night.” 34. Raymond Lou described Fan Tan as “a game of chance in which the players bet on the numbers, from one to four, of buttons (or any like object) remaining from a random quantity that the dealer had placed beneath a cup or bowl and counted out in groups of four. The last group of buttons determines the winner. Players also have the option of betting odd or even.” For those who wanted to gamble but were unwilling to interact so intimately with others, the Chinese lottery offered more casual access, yet tickets were available only at certain gaming houses and Chinese-operated businesses around town. Even the most hesitant players had to purchase their tickets and redeem their winnings through face-to-face interaction with Chinese residents. Interestingly, lottery games had both recreational and economic components. Lou, “Chinese American Community,” 206–7. 35. Los Angeles City Directory, 1872, 28–31. 36. Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 134–38. 37. Los Angeles City Directory 1872, 28–29. The directory did not list the F. & A.M.’s meeting times. 38. Ibid., 30. 39. Los Angeles City Directory 1875, 88–94; Smith, 1878 City Directory, 6–8; Morris, Los Angeles City Directory, 1879–1880, 26–30. Neither the 1878 nor the 1879–80 directory provides membership data. 40. Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 134–38. New groups such as Los Caballeros de Trabajo, an organization of workers dedicated to labor concerns; El Corte de Colón, a fraternal organization; and political clubs like the Spanish-American Republican Club (conservative) and La Sociedad Progresista Mexicana (progressive) joined older organizations, for example, Los Hijos de Temperencia (a temperance society) and Los Lanceros de Los Angeles (a militia company founded by Juan Sepúlveda). Other new societies included La Companía de Rifleros, La Junta Guardía Hidalgo, and Las Reformistas. 41. Lou, “Chinese American Community,” 25–57. 42. Nevertheless, the boundary between public, communally oriented huiguan and the more criminal tongs remained blurry, making it important to avoid romanticizing the huiguan and their impact on the community. Competition for work contracts, commercial power, or ownership of particular women occasionally provoked internecine violence,

Notes to Pages 218–19

329

which created negative public opinion and, at times, imperiled the entire community. Too often, however, this is the only aspect of tongs presented in the literature, and their genuinely productive role in community life is ignored. See Scott Zesch, “Chinese Los Angeles in 1870–1871: The Making of a Massacre,” Southern California Quarterly 90:2 (Summer 2008): 109–58, 115–17, and 119–23. 43. John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 28. 44. La Crónica, September 18, 1878. The paper reported that every group and political party had representatives in the parade, and many more participated in the larger festivities, which included public speeches and a full-blown fiesta with food, music, and dancing. 45. Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846–1890 (Berkeley, 1971), 263. One of the floats carried the town’s “founding fathers”: two Indian women who claimed to be 102 and 117 years old, respectively. 46. Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 266–67. 47. A story relating the Festival of the Moon can be found in Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1882, and a report on a ceremony commemorating ancestors staged by the Chinese Masonic fraternity appeared on September 7, 1882. The “elaborate ceremonies” relating to a funeral are described in detail in Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1885. 48. Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1884. The Times described Tsooi as a “Chinese priest” and “great religious teacher” who “lived in China three thousand years ago.” The description of this triennial event demonstrates some of the characteristic ambiguity expressed by whites toward Chinese Angelenos. Although summoning numerous anti-Chinese stereotypes, calling them heathens and sarcastically referring to their use of opium, the article also called Chinese “religious heathens” and took Tsooi’s religiosity and works seriously. 49. Los Angeles Times. Primers appeared October 13 and 22, and coverage ran October 23–25, 1887. Despite the aesthetic praise and a genuine effort to discuss the celebration objectively, the Times still savaged Chinese participants, especially “the average Chinaman,” who “would probably be found to be in a condition . . . similar to the American youth could he have two Fourths of July together and a Christmas following.” To wit, “he is about to celebrate something about which he cares little and knows less, which comes around once in three years, and has a significance perhaps to Chinese of education, but to ‘John’ is a three day’s lay-off and a good time generally.” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1887. 50. Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1886, and February 5, 1886. 51. Richard Griswold del Castillo’s work with Spanish-language newspapers during the period supports this argument. “The increasing use of ‘La Raza’ as a generic term in the Spanish-language press,” Castillo writes, “was evidence of a new kind of ethnic consciousness.” Additionally, Castillo argues that “La Raza emerged as the single most important symbol of ethnic pride and identification,” noting it was frequently used in opposition to “Anglo-Sajones” or “norteamericanos.” His data come from a number of different, and differently oriented, newspapers and the references he cites occur over time from the 1850s to the 1890s. Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 133–34, and nn79–83. 52. Intertwined lives across ethnoracial boundaries continued into the twentieth cen-

330

Notes to Pages 219–22

tury, as demonstrated by Mark Wild in Street Meeting: Multiethnic Neighborhoods in Early Twentieth Century Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 53. David Delaney, Race, Place, and the Law, 1836–1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 7. 54. Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 249; William Deverell, Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad, 1850–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 55. Los Angeles Star, December 12, 1872. 56. LACA, April 4, 1873, Council Minutes, vol. 10, 269–73. 57. LACA, May 3, 1873, Council Minutes, vol. 10, 279. 58. David Delaney, a historical geographer, has suggested that spatial organization in society is key because “the world of everyday life is carved up into meaningful spaces” that “contain culturally specific codes which condition basic experiences of access, exclusion, and protection.” These codes have tremendous power, Delaney argues, because “call[ing] to mind the experience of access granted or denied, of exclusions and expulsions enforced, of protection or sanctuary respected or violated, is to become conscious of the social relations of power.” Delaney, Race, Place, and the Law, 4–5. Writing about New York, Matthew Gandy theorizes that putting questions of environmental justice at the center of analysis “compels us to see urban environmental change not simply as a function of technological change or of the dynamics of economic growth but as an outcome of often sharply different sets of political and economic interests.” Matthew Gandy, Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 4. 59. City of Los Angeles, “Zanjero’s Report, 1883,” Los Angeles Municipal Reports, 1879–1896, 115. 60. It is important to note, however, that the city retained control of this water despite the changes. The fees applied not only to those living within the city, but those outside the limits also had to pay for use of the water. From this perspective, the city exercised its claim to the corpus of the water in the river. 61. LACA, May 3, 1873, “An ordinance to provide for the . . . management and control of the Zanjas and irrigating ditches in the city of Los Angeles and to regulate the prices and the equitable distribution of water flowing therein” Council Minutes, vol. 10, 292–95. The ordinance ordered the zanjero “to divide the city in the best and most convenient manner into three irrigating districts,” with an individual deputy for each. These deputy zanjeros directed water from the main zanjas through access gates at each landholder’s property according to his or her purchases. For twelve hours of daytime flow, the city charged $1.75, for nighttime, $1.00, and a combined $2.75 for twenty-four hours of access. Those living outside the city limits but drawing water from the river paid premium rates of $3.00 during the day, $2.00 at night, and $5.00 for a full twenty-four-hour cycle. Moreover, the ordinance made it illegal to receive water without payment and, under threat of arrest, made it illegal for any person to remove water directly from the principal zanjas. 62. Although the idea of pueblo rights remained operational in a legal sense, it did so under a new set of rules that privileged hygiene and revenue over communal use, changing the meaning of pueblo rights on the ground. See chapter 5. 63. LACA, April 4, 1873, Council Minutes, vol. 10, 269–73.

Notes to Pages 222–24

331

64. Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967), 26. 65. Los Angeles Evening Express, April 20, 1877. 66. City of Los Angeles, Revised Charter and Compiled Ordinances of the City of Los Angeles, compiled by William M. Caswell (Los Angeles: City Publication, 1878), 425–29. 67. Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 139–50, map at 147. 68. In an act amending the city charter, the California State Legislature granted Los Angeles both the power of eminent domain and the right to impose special assessments “upon the petition of a majority of the owners of real estate fronting upon any street or avenue of said city, or upon a vote of two thirds of the Common Council.” Consequently, the city could impose its will on owners even if they had not petitioned the council for a project. For the amendment’s full text, see LACA, February 20, 1872, untitled records, box b-0094, vol. 7, 476. 69. LACA, July 3, 1887, Council Minutes, vol. 23, 231. By 1887 the city clerk filled in the details of individual sewer ordinances on a form that already contained the cited language. Sewers like these came into being after enough landowners along the proposed line signed a petition to the city. Such projects became frequent by the late 1880s. On July 3, 1887, the council authorized ten other sewers, all laid out on preprinted forms. If owners accounting for “two-thirds of the frontage thereof ” filed a “written remonstrance against said improvement, the same [would] not be further proceeded in or made.” 70. Drawing from my own analysis of the 1880 census, only fifteen of sixty-one households in Chinatown’s most crowded block were without lodgers. Of these, it is doubtful that more than a handful actually owned their homes. Census Office, Tenth Census, manuscript census of California, 1880, roll 67, 12–17. In Sonoratown, according to Castillo, only about 10 percent of the district’s 1,000 residents owned real estate. Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 141–50. 71. See, for example, LACA, April 4, 1873, Council Minutes, vol. 10, 272. For a substantive discussion of socioeconomic elements of the location of the first sewers, which crossed through the lands of several long-tenured Angelenos, see David Torres-Rouff, “Water Use, Ethnic Conflict, and Infrastructure in Nineteenth Century Los Angeles,” Pacific Historical Review 75:1 (February 2006): 119–40. 72. LACA, May 16, 1873, Council Minutes, vol. 10, 304. The city further charged the surveyor and the street superintendent to submit a list of all delinquent owners to the city attorney, who made a second effort to collect, after which he placed liens against the property of owners still shirking. LACA, May 23, 1873, Council Minutes, vol. 10, 299–300. 73. “Report of Fred Eaton, City Surveyor, May 3, 1887,” and “Report of Rudolph Herring, Consulting Engineer, September 6, 1887,” Department of Sewage Design, City Hall, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Herald, August 31, 1892; Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 32–34. 74. In his 1893 annual report, the city engineer noted that only 965 feet of sewer had been laid using the bonds, at a cost of only $7,752. Considering that the total amount of bonds authorized exceeded a million dollars, the city made little effort to put the bond funds to immediate use. City of Los Angeles, “City Engineer’s Report, 1893,” Los Angeles Municipal Reports, 1879–1896, 34.

332

Notes to Pages 225–33

75. City of Los Angeles, “Sewer Committee’s Report, 1884,” Los Angeles Municipal Reports, 1879–1896, 106. 76. Writing about New York, but thinking more broadly about urban infrastructure during this period, Matthew Gandy suggests, “The modernization of nineteenth-century cities in Europe and North America was not carried out in order to improve the conditions of the poor but to enhance the economic efficiency of urban space for capital investment.” This argument fits well within the umbrella framework I sketch regarding the transition in Los Angeles from the agrarian to the capitalist state. In this framework, the absence of sewers in Sonoratown and Chinatown would derive from those areas not being part of this larger economic plan. Further, Gandy argues, “In this sense, the scale of new public works and the pace of technological change masked the persistence of [extant] social and political inequalities.” Gandy, Concrete and Clay, 37. 77. During a similar phase in Manhattan’s development, the city government argued that “an attractive city was an orderly city” and commissioned a map subjecting all of Manhattan to a grid, which became a blueprint for all future growth. Although many private holders objected to the changes made to their streets (and to Manhattan as a whole by essentially leveling all topography in making a flat surface), this opposition faded when property holders, real estate developers, and investors realized that conformity to the plan made all growth predictable and therefore quite profitable. Historian Hendrik Hartog concludes that this plan “transformed space into public philosophy,” one that specifically embodied growth, regularity, and predictability. Hendrik Hartog, Public Property and Private Power: The Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730–1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 158–63, quotes on 159 and 163. 78. See, for example, Los Angeles Star, December 12, 1872. 79. In addition to the discussion below, see Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 24–42. 80. LACA, February 28, 1872, Council Minutes, vol. 7, 476. The city gained this muscle when the California State Assembly altered the city’s charter and granted it the “power, upon the petition of a majority of the owners of real estate fronting upon any street or avenue of said city, or upon a vote of two thirds of the Common Council of said city to open, widen, improve, grade or cause to be improved or graded, such streets or parts of streets, or avenues, and to make repairs or improve the sidewalks and crosswalks of said streets, by grading, paving, or planking such streets, sidewalks and crosswalks . . . at the cost and expense of all such owners of real estate in proportion to the number of feet fronting on such street or part of street owned by each one. . . and for all such costs and expenses, the contractors under the city and the city shall have a lien upon the real estate so fronting upon said streets and shall have power by ordinance to prescribe the mode and manner of collecting the same.” 81. This idea has reached its fullest expression in Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1978), and Poggi, The State: Its Nature, Development, and Prospects (Cambridge: Polity, 1990). 82. In particular, Isaias Hellman and Hellman, Hass, and Company, which owned key buildings along the line, gave the city fits. In 1875 their tactics led the city to abandon its first effort to extend Los Angeles Street. Starting in 1877, city leaders decided to expropriate property valued at $50,000 and subsequently spent two more years lobbying the state

Notes to Pages 233–34

333

legislature for permission to sell bonds sufficient to generate the necessary cash. Just as the printed bonds arrived at the municipality—approved and ready for sale—the state supreme court granted the property owners an injunction, leading the matter to be dropped entirely. Hellman, Haas, and others repeatedly thwarted the city thereafter by agreeing to let work begin and then demanding a reappraisal of their property and a renegotiation of the terms just as work was to have commenced (see, for example, Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1882). Still hopeful but hardly optimistic that it could get the owners along the proposed new route of Los Angeles Street to yield, the Common Council reopened negotiations to clear Negro Alley beginning in March 1882. The Times touted the 1882 effort to eradicate Chinatown, then lamented another failure. Linking racial hostility to commercial and booster aspirations, the Times argued that the failure to open Los Angeles Street impeded development. Moreover, the Chinese who lived there lessened the city’s appeal to outsiders even though “any intelligent mind” would recognize “that the enhanced value” of their property “would more than compensate the owners for their temporary loss.” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1882. 83. Even changing the name proved challenging. The resolution’s text, as logged into the City Council minutes, provides some insight as to the challenge at hand. On the original ordinance, the secretary first wrote “Nigger Alley,” then he or someone later thought better of it, scratching out “Nigger” and replacing it with “Negro” above. LACA, March 22, 1877, Council Minutes, vol. 12, 647–49. 84. Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1887. 85. Yucheng Qin, The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy Toward Exclusion (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 102. 86. For the Chinese response, see Los Angeles Times, July 26 and August 3, 1887. Specifically, Chinese community leaders and business owners demanded that the city find the responsible parties, bring them to justice, and compensate the business owners for their losses. Of particular importance, the Chinatown firebugs also operated at the end of a broader statewide movement by anti-Chinese activists to set fire to Chinese districts. As a result of the wave of fires, every insurance company had cancelled policies that covered Chinese residences and commercial operations. Consequently, Los Angeles’s Chinese had no other pathway to compensation. 87. Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1887. The lot measured nine hundred by three hundred feet, and the buildings were to face inward onto a central courtyard. Bee claimed that “the Chinamen objected to my plans at first, but I soon talked them around.” Editorials claiming the fire had created a good opportunity for the opening of the alley appeared on July 28 and August 2, 1887. 88. Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1887. 89. LACA, August 29, 1887, Council Minutes, vol. 23, 679–82; Los Angeles Times, August 30, 1887. At the council’s regular meeting of August 29, 1887, Dr. Hagan reported that everything seemed in fine shape. However, property owners in the area filed complaints with the city, and by August 19 more than 360 Angelenos had signed a petition of protest. The Board of Education issued a formal protest to the City Council on August 22, the same day on which the city attorney admonished the council that it needed to play a greater role in the process, from investigating the concerns of neighboring residents to exercising

334

Notes to Pages 234–37

greater oversight through the offices of public works and public health. Los Angeles Times, August 16, 19, and 23, 1887; and LACA, August 22, 1887, Council Minutes, vol. 23, 673–74. Specifically, the Board of Education argued that “the presence of this obnoxious class in the neighborhood of these large and crowded schools will greatly hinder all efforts to educate these children into good citizenship by thus familiarizing them from their most tender years with degradation and vice.” LACA, August 22, 1887, Council Minutes, vol. 23, 673. 90. Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1887. One member of the crowd promised that “the advent of the Chinese in that vicinity would be marked by such an era of bloodshed and rapine that it would horrify the whole world.” 91. Los Angeles Times, January 10, 1888. 92. The City Council and interested parties apparently considered this sufficient to avoid further delay. West-side property holders agreed to the plan on December 6, and the mayor reported the imminent action to the city on December 20 as part of his annual message. Participating property interests all along Los Angeles Street were so happy they gave City Attorney Daly, who had been instrumental in moving the project forward, a gold watch as a Christmas gift. It bore the inscription “from the property-holders of Los Angeles Street, as a token of appreciation of his valuable services in securing the opening of the street.” Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1887, December 21, 1887, and December 25, 1887. 93. Work began on January 11, 1888, and seemingly caught many of the residents off guard. The surviving account of the demolition is, unfortunately, badly fragmented (Los Angeles Times, January 12, 1888), but it can be deduced that the Chinese gathered around the workmen before realizing that this time it would not be stopped, then busied themselves with packing their belongings. Although one of the property owners enjoined further work on January 19, because the city had not yet paid him as promised, work resumed shortly thereafter. Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1888. 94. For the classic scholarly treatment of the anti-Chinese movement in California, see Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991, orig. pub. 1939). Taking a more national perspective are Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), and Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 95. In March 1882, the U.S. Congress passed a bill sponsored by Senator Miller that would have excluded all Chinese immigration for twenty years and barred Chinese immigrants already living in the United States from naturalizing as citizens. President Chester Arthur enraged anti-Chinese advocates when he vetoed the act because it jeopardized diplomatic and commercial relations with China. By May the Congress passed a new bill that reduced the period to ten years and specifically excluded only “Chinese laborers,” defined to “include both skilled and unskilled workers.” Arthur signed the new bill on May 6, 1882, ushering in a new regime of immigration restriction and border control. Sandmeyer, AntiChinese Movement, 92–95, quote at 94. 96. Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1882; Los Angeles Star, December 12, 1872. 97. Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1882. 98. LACA, April 8, 1882, Council Minutes, vol. 15, 317–18. Los Angeles Times, April 9,

Notes to Pages 237–38

335

1882. Councilman Cohn, who introduced the resolution, drew on an 1880 state law titled “An Act to Provide for the Removal of Chinese Whose Presence Is Dangerous to the Well Being of Communities,” and on article 19, sec. 4 of the state constitution, which granted “municipalities the right to remove Chinese from the limits of its boundaries, or to designate certain territory within its boundaries to be occupied by Chinese.” Although municipalities throughout the West made similar efforts to legislate Chinese residents from their boundaries during this period, questions about public health had remained in the background in Los Angeles as economic concerns took center stage. For extensive and insightful examinations of the relationship between race and public health in nineteenth-century Los Angeles and San Francisco, see Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), and Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 99. A letter to the editors on April 12, 1882, not only commended Councilman Cohn but also thanked the Times, to whom the author credited with introducing the idea (a brief notice on March 17 suggested Chinatown’s condemnation). Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1882, and March 17, 1882. 100. On April 14 and 15, 1882, the Times ran two such pieces. The first reported on a police-guided tour of the Chinese district. The following day the Times reported on the visit of a doctor to the area, documenting both the poor health of one syphilitic Chinese and the crowd that gathered upon hearing a doctor was in the vicinity. Los Angeles Times, April 14, 18882, and April 15, 1882. 101. Following a journey through a “Chinese house” in an old adobe, a prostitute’s crib, and an opium den, the author decried the poor air, foul-smelling exteriors (themselves a product of the lack of sewerage), diseased call girls, and degraded dope fiends that agglomerated “here in the fairest spot on God’s footstool.” Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1882. 102. Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1882. 103. LACA, April 22, 1882, Council Minutes, vol. 15, 354. Specifically, Hazzard worried that expelling Chinese Angelenos would be “contrary to the Constitution of the United States and indirectly in conflict” with the Burlingame Treaty. Signed in Washington, D.C., in July of 1868, the Burlingame Treaty required both the United States and China to recognize “the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance, and also the mutual advantage of the free migration and emigration of their citizens and subjects, respectively for purposes of curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents.” Particularly salient to Hazzard’s refusal to comply with the council’s request to draft an ordinance banishing the Chinese from the fire limits of Los Angeles, the treaty stipulated that “Chinese subjects visiting or residing in the United States, shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities, and exemptions in respect to travel or residence, as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation.” Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement, 78–79. Consequently, Hazzard argued, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution could be invoked by the federal government to overrule the city because the proposed measure targeted a single, specific group. See also Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1882. 104. Los Angeles Times, May 17, 1882, and June 7, 1882. 105. Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1882, August, 29, 1882, September 22, 1882, July 14,

336

Notes to Pages 238–54

1883, and July 19, 1883. Editorials on August 19, August 29, and September 22, 1882, wove together appeals to open Los Angeles Street for commercial reasons with complaints about the deleterious consequences Chinese Angelenos foisted on the city’s public health. On July 14 and 19, 1883, the paper again decried Chinatown as dirty and diseased. Amid frustration that Negro Alley’s property owners continued their resistance, the Times unleashed another series of complaints based on public health in March 1885. 106. Los Angeles Times, October 4, 1885. 107. LACA, August 29, 1887, Council Minutes, vol. 23, 679–82. The brick buildings were to be “supplied with water, gas, and a thorough sewer system.” Other amenities included water closets and porcelain sinks, a paved rear yard, and gutters connected to the sewers, convincing the city’s head public health official, Dr. Hagan there would “be no reason” why any “nuisance or filth should be maintained on the premises.” 108. For an extensive discussion of the use of public health codes to impose racially informed projects against Chinese, see Molina, Fit to Be Citizens, esp. chapter 1. 109. Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1889, and June 22, 1889. 110. Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1890. 111. As an example, Lefebvre asks what would remain of “Judaeo-Christian” ideology “if it were not based on places and their names: church, confessional, altar, sanctuary, tabernacle? What would remain of the Church if there were no churches?” He answers that Christian ideology “created the spaces which guarantee that it endures.” Lefebvre, Production of Space, 43–44. 112. Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1887. 113. Earnest, “Growth of the Theatre,” 377. Melodramas and vaudeville replaced the “respectable” companies, minstrel shows became common, and patrons could order drinks during performances. 114. Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 252–53. “The traditional rancho culture persisted” not in the core of Los Angeles but instead in the San Fernando, San Gabriel, and San Bernardino Valleys, and up the coast toward Ventura and Santa Barbara. There, important families continued to “entertain one another in round-robin fashion,” although without the “opulent form” of the fiestas of old. Nevertheless, theses events often brought more than sixty families together, many of them intercultural or bringing along European American guests. 115. Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1886. 116. Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1887. Detonating fireworks so close to the old adobes that made up Chinatown, the whole event was perhaps a ruse to burn the district (which had been unsuccessfully attempted only ten days earlier, and which would be effected only twenty days hence), but Chinese residents kept their roofs wet and protected their homes. 117. Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1881. 118. Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1886.

Conclusion. “A Story Hidden Behind Every Crumbling Wall” 1. Annie Reynolds, The Education of Spanish-Speaking Children in Five Southwestern States, United States Department of the Interior Bulletin, No. 11 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1933), 6.

Notes to Pages 258–65

337

2. Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1887. The sweep of time and events suggested here bears a striking resemblance to an article titled “Destiny of California” published in the Los Angeles Star on February 15, 1855, three decades earlier, and to La Fiesta’s history parade, staged seven years later. 3. Lansford Hastings, The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932; orig. Cincinnati: George Conclin, 1845), 108. 4. Clarence Pullen, “Los Angeles,” Harper’s Weekly 10:18 (1890): 807. 5. Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913, Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1984), 605. 6. Seaver Center for Western History Research, 1178 OV, Max Meyberg Fiesta Scrapbook (hereafter SC, Max Meyberg Fiesta Scrapbook), second item in scrapbook, letter written by Meyberg on corporate stationery, with archivist’s pencil notation suggesting date of 1930–31. Also cited in William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 54. For fuller accounts of the history of La Fiesta de Los Angeles, see Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, chapter 2, and Deverell and Douglas Flamming, “Race, Rhetoric, and Regional Identity: Boosting Los Angeles, 1880–1930,” in Richard White and John M. Findlay, eds., Power and Place in the North American West (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 117–43. I am grateful to Professor Deverell for pointing me to the Max Meyberg scrapbook and for encouraging my analysis of the 1894 Fiesta. 7. SC, Max Meyberg Fiesta Scrapbook, sixth item, clipping from unnamed, undated newspaper. 8. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 53–54. 9. SC, Max Meyberg Fiesta Scrapbook, second item, letter from Meyberg. 10. “Fiesta Features,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1894, 4; “Pleasures Rein,” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 1894, 8. 11. “Pleasures Rein,” 8. 12. “Fiesta Features,” 4. 13. “Pleasures Rein,” 8. 14. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 57–58, quoting from Christina Wielus Mead, “Las Fiestas de Los Angeles: A Survey of the Yearly Celebrations, 1894–1898,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 31 (June 1949): 63–113, quote at 69. Besides Chinese and Yuma Indians, the Turnverein and Maccabees marched with other organizations, and a black American group produced a float for the mercantile section, “a handsome piece” sporting “three or four appropriate banners, such as ‘United We Stand. Divided We Fall.’” “The Parade,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1894, 8. 15. Robert Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 6, 40. 16. SC, Max Meyberg Scrapbook, clipping from Los Angeles Herald, May 18, 1894. For the role of parades in giving social order to nineteenth-century cities, see Mary Ryan, “The American Parade: Representations of Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 131–53. 17. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 61. Deverell offers a nuanced discussion of the ways La Fiesta evinced a “contrived” social peace.

338

Notes to Pages 266–67

18. SC, Max Meyberg Scrapbook, “It Has Taken the Town,” undated newspaper clipping. 19. SC, Max Meyberg Scrapbook, clipping from Los Angeles Herald, May 18, 1894. 20. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 68; Raymond Lou, “The Chinese American Community in Los Angeles, 1870–1900: A Case of Resistance, Organization, and Participation” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 1982), 238–39.

INDEX

Note: An italicized f or n following a page number indicates a figure or endnote, respectively. Alameda Street, 147, 151, 202, 211, 223, 233, 234, 235, 236f alcaldes: communal ethos and, 52, 72, 82, 301n103; Indian, 297n52; as judges, 43, 48–51, 89–90, 286nn62 and 65, 289nn89–91, 298n66, 301nn103–4, 302n105; role and history of, 42–44, 286nn65 and 67, 288nn71 and 73, 301n103. See also elections; mayors; municipal government and public policy Alexander, David W., 78, 124 Alipás, Grevacio, 63 Aliso Street and tract, 143, 159, 229f, 315n56 Almaguer, Tomás, 17, 136, 276n50 Alta California, 2, 23, 24, 25 Alta California (newspaper), 303n16 Alvarado, Juan Bautista, 40, 58, 104, 106, 107, 109, 269n4, 289n85 Alvarado de Pico, Nachita, 42f

Abbott, Mercedes, 214–15, 216 Abila Springs, 147 Africans, 32, 40, 41, 73–74, 264, 282n24, 322n48. See also blacks (negros); skin tone agrarian state, 114, 162, 298n72 agriculture: commodification of, 161–62, 165, 220; droughts and, 168, 170; La Fiesta and, 4; founding period and, 2, 27, 33, 34–35; Free Land Law and, 86; racialization and, 285n55. See also irrigation; land Aguilar, Cristobál: anti-Chinese massacre and, 195; bilingualism of, 5; elections and, 22, 78, 179, 180, 197–203, 319n29; home of, 245f; Independence Day celebration and, 134; on land, 288n76; Los Angeles Star on, 200, 202; as mayor, 80, 177–79, 181; water and, 80, 116, 155–56, 177–78, 307n59; as zanjero, 177, 202, 319n29

339

340

Index

Alvitre, Felipe, 94, 96, 99, 101, 109, 126, 302nn4 and 6 anti-Chinese massacre (1871): commercial response to, 215–16; context and causes of, 183–94, 196–98, 320n36, 321n47, 323n56, 324n64; described, 181–83; elites and, 195–96; forgetting of, 5, 7; interculture and, 194–95; racialization and, 21, 173 anti-Chinese riots (1887), 233, 234 Antonio, Juan, 71–72, 297n52 Arcadia Block, 142f, 143, 146, 217 architecture, 31f, 141–45, 149–50, 204–7, 209–10f, 256, 281n20, 319n24 arson, 233–34, 333nn86 and 89, 336n116 Asians, 15, 254, 322nn48–49. See also Chinese Avila, Eric, 189, 322n48 Avila family and adobe, 231, 274n41 ayuntamiento (town council). See municipal government and public policy Aztecs, 3, 263 Baker, R. S., 209–10, 213 Baker Block, 209–10f, 214f Bandini, Juan, 104–7, 305nn32–34, 306n39 Bandini de Stearns, Arcadia, 62, 141–42f, 204, 209–10 banishment, 50, 79, 290n99 Banning, Phineas, 134, 145 Barton, James R., 89, 94, 96 Bath Street, 139, 209, 326n13 Bear Flag Party, 295n38 Beaudry, Prudent, 143, 176, 177–78, 315n56 Bee, F. A., 233, 333n87 Bell, Horace, 77, 199, 200, 304n22, 314n41 Bella Union Hotel, 143 Bhabha, Homi K., 279n57 Bilderrain, Jesus, 182, 194

bilingualism: Aguilar and, 5; Chinese, 184; El Clamor and, 307n59; criminal procedures and, 89; Dryden and, 110, 134; education and, 312n9; fiestas and, 218; municipal government and, 109, 308n67; theaters and, 215, 328n29. See also English language; Spanish language blacks (negros), 25, 33, 130, 252, 254, 337n14. See also Africans; skin tone Blomquist, Leonard, 302n105 blue-ribbon commission, 160–62 Blue Wing Saloon, 182 bonds, 224, 225f, 234 boosterism: Chinese and, 268, 320n36, 333n82; La Fiesta and, 261–62, 265; infrastructure and, 220, 226, 261; racialization and, 103–4, 257–60, 304n25 borderlands: Ethington on, 278n55; homicides and, 88; interculture and, 58, 91–93; land and, 83; L.A. School and, 17; municipal government and, 49; national identity and, 271nn23 and 25; racialization and, 8–14, 18–19; water and, 175 Bourbon reforms, 275n45, 288n71 Brown, Dave: extralegal justice and, 94–97; interculture and, 97–103, 126, 191, 193; racialization and, 303n8; Star on, 100–102, 107, 303n14; stay of execution of, 94, 96, 98, 302n4 brownness, 11, 126, 127, 140. See also racialization; skin tone buildings, preservation, 257–59 bull-and-bear fights, 30, 74, 198, 324n70 bullfights, 74, 118, 198, 199 Burlingame Treaty, 335n103 Burns, James, 182, 193, 323n61 business districts. See commercial districts Butts, Williams, 97, 98–99, 303n11

Index California, State of: annexation, 66, 103; Brown’s stay of execution and, 94, 96, 98, 302n4; criminal proceedings and, 289n90; land and, 84; loans and, 160; Mexican Californians and, 108, 118; sewers and, 224; statehood, 92; streets and, 331n68, 332nn80 and 82; and water policy, 174, 175, 318nn17, 19, and 20 California Constitutional Convention, 72–74, 297n56 California Doctrine, 318n17, 319n20 California Junta de Fomento, 283n41 californios (hijos del país, rancheros): agriculturalists versus, 285n55; arrest records, 123; ayuntamiento and, 52; cloth and, 40; defined, 9, 11, 26; disfranchisement of, 109; drought and, 168, 170–71; Evening Journal on, 104–5, 107; gambling and, 103, 292n16; Graham’s militia and, 294n35; Indians and, 38, 54, 206, 284n49, 305n35; interculture and, 285n52, 336n114; intermarriage and, 19; Jenkins and, 309n82; juries and, 301n101; land and, 7, 106, 299n83; Mexican identity and, 298n65; mission secularization and, 292n18; Pico House and, 207; Plaza and, 250; racialization and, 36–42, 53, 54, 171, 265; Ramirez on, 104, 304nn27–28; social position and, 142; Sonoratown and, 140; Vagrancy Act and, 108; wealth of, 13–14; as whites, 291n8; women, 46. See also cattle hide and tallow trade; elites; gente de/sin razón; Mexican Californians Calle de los Negros (“Negro Alley”), 185f, 235f, 236f; censuses and, 327n21; Chinese and, 184, 185, 190–91, 209, 211; destruction of, 230–39, 257, 314n41, 332n82, 334nn92–93, 336n105; Mexican Californians and, 194; name

341

change of, 333n83; regrading of, 159; residences and, 212, 326nn18 and 20, 327n21; social life and recreation, 139, 215–16; Times and, 257 Campo Cahuenga treaty, 67 Canton Bazaar, 212f capitalism. See commercialization; commodification; private property capitalist state, 114, 162, 260, 299n72, 332n76 Carmillo, Francisco, 89 Carpenter, Lemuel, 60, 64 Carriaga, Fernando, 121–22, 123, 126, 309n73 Carrillo, José Antonio, 14, 49, 72, 206, 290n91 Carrillo Adobe, 13, 29–30, 31f, 206, 274n41, 281n20 Carson, George, 130, 147 Cartesian space, 22, 32, 47, 52–53, 146, 208, 238, 275n46, 332n77. See also space Casas, Mariá Raquél, 17, 279n57, 280n10, 291n6, 294nn34 and 36, 327n28 casta system. See racialization Catholic Church and Catholicism: European Americans and, 19; holidays, 138; hydraulic ram and, 154; Indians and, 34, 282n27, 283n41; Mexican citizenship and, 60; Plaza and, 204; racialization and, 34 cattle hide and tallow trade: californios and, 39–40; European Americans and, 19, 60; gente de/sin razón and, 37–38; interculture and, 92–93; mission secularization and, 292n18; prices, 136, 171, 206, 317n10; statistics, 61, 293n24; Stearns and, 62; warehouses, 142 Cayton, Horace R., 276n49 Celis, Eugelio de, 181, 199, 200, 201 cemeteries, 51

342

Index

censuses. See population and statistics Central Park. See Pershing Square Chamber of Commerce, 267–68 Chavez, Julian, 78, 181, 294n33, 296n45, 301n101 Chávez-Garciá, Miroslava, 17, 49, 289n85, 294n31 Chicago, 277n52 Chicago School, 278n54 Chico, Mariano, 2, 62 Childs, O. W., 143 Childs, O. W., Mrs., 1, 3 Chinatown, 139, 212, 218–19, 250, 251; population of, 240, 331n70; public sewer and street improvements and, 223–25, 226, 238–39, 246f, 247f, 332n76; removal efforts and relocation of, 231–39, 252, 257–58, 267, 333nn82 and 86, 336nn105 and 116 Chinese, 8, 16, 186f, 252, 274n37; anti-Chinese groups, 217; arson suit and, 233–34, 333nn86 and 89; background, 183–92, 211–12; celebrations and, 218–19; commercial enterprises, 184–85, 187, 215–16; economic class and, 212; La Fiesta and, 5–6, 262, 263, 267–68; gambling and, 184, 187, 216, 234, 236f, 328n34; infrastructure and, 250; labor and, 321n47, 334n95; land and, 331n70; laws and, 335n98; legal maneuvers and, 187, 191–92, 323n54; Los Angeles Times and, 237, 238, 251, 329nn47–49, 335nn99–101, 336n105; Mexican Californians and, 189, 190, 191, 192–94, 196–97, 321n42, 323nn55 and 58; population and statistics, 183–84, 211–12, 240, 326nn18, 19, and 21, 331n70; racialization and, 9, 12, 185–87, 189–90, 322n49; recreation and, 215–16; sewers and, 221–25, 238–39, 239–40, 246f, 249, 336nn107–8; social belonging and, 321n42; streets

and, 246f, 247f, 249, 256, 334n93, 336n105; United States and, 236, 237, 334n95, 335n103; ward system and, 179, 191; women, 320n40. See also anti-Chinese massacre (1871); huiguan Chinese Merchants Association, 267–68 Chinese New Year festival, 251 Chinese Six Companies, 187, 233 cholos, 9, 11, 12, 40, 54, 65, 285n56. See also gente de/sin razón; Mexican Californians; racialization Choy, Ah, 181, 188, 192, 323n59 Christianity, 336n111 Cinco de Mayo, 218 citizenship: brownness and, 127, 140; Gabrielino-Tongva and, 283nn40–41; historiography and, 18; Indians and, 38, 283nn40–41; interculture and, 76; Mexican Californians and, 173; Mexican Independence and, 29, 36; Mexican period and, 60; racialization and, 11, 20, 44–45, 127, 135; soldiers and, 297n48; U.S., 72–74, 76 city council (ayuntamiento; Common Council). See municipal government and public policy city finances, 117, 147, 158–60, 166, 167, 170, 203, 308n67, 387n69. See also bonds; fees and taxes; loans civic ideals: buildings and, 257; defined, 287n68; Democratic Party and, 168; economic factors, 107; extralegal violence and, 126, 131; La Fiesta and, 268; floods and, 170–71; S. Foster and, 119–20; Thomas Foster and, 111; founding and Mexican periods, 42–54, 57, 174; Free Land Law and, 85–87, 92; infrastructure and, 82, 146, 149, 160–63, 165, 167, 226, 255–56; Mexican period and, 25–26, 42–52, 56–58, 57; municipal government and, 42–52, 82–83, 92, 95, 110, 152,

Index 153, 156–58, 163, 166, 170, 317n10; power and, 287n68; racialization and, 26, 53, 74, 91–92, 165, 173, 201, 249, 254, 260, 287n68, 317n10; U.S., 57, 79; U.S. immigrants and, 60, 62–63, 64, 65, 67; ward system and, 179, 180, 181; water and, 64, 79, 113–15, 116–17, 137, 155–58, 160–67, 170–71, 174–75; women and, 153. See also commodification; communal ethos; infrastructure; interculture; municipal government and public policy civil engineers, 111, 113 civil rights movement, 276n49 Civil War, 172 El Clamor Público: business advertising in, 139, 145; city finances and, 159; on 1856 election, 118–19, 128–30, 308n64, 311n11; on Independence Day celebrations, 134, 135, 311nn1–3; on Jenkins-Ruis incident, 121, 125, 126, 308nn71–72, 310nn92–93; party politics and, 128, 129, 130, 311n100 clothing, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41 Code of Conduct (1787), 35 Cohn, Bernard, 237, 335nn98–99 colonialism. See Spain and colonialism Comicrabit, Victoria, 73, 297n55 comisionados, 13, 29, 51, 286n67, 290n100 commerce: droughts and, 170; founding period and, 19, 26, 35; global, 8, 37; interculture and, 56, 60, 65, 74, 75, 77, 173; missions and, 292n18, 293n24; municipal government and, 44, 47, 79; racialization and, 40, 54, 78; spatial mestizaje and, 8, 14; women and, 45, 46. See also cattle hide and tallow trade; commercial enterprises; commercialization commercial districts: Chinese, 184–85, 190; European-American, 141–46, 244–47, 248f, 250; interculture and,

343

145–46; Mexican Californians and, 140; Sonoratown, 244f–46f; space and, 141–46; ward system and, 179. See also commercialization; Plaza (Los Angeles) commercial enterprises, 26, 187, 206–7, 215–16, 286n66, 321n47 commercialization: californios and, 107, 109, 117; Chinese and, 234, 236, 237, 238, 239, 268; La Fiesta and, 4, 7, 264, 267, 268; infrastructure and, 136, 149–51, 158–65, 162–63, 220–26, 239, 256; infrastructure inequality and, 167–68, 226, 233, 239, 240, 244, 247, 248f; interculture and, 19–21, 137, 165–68, 208–19; Mexican Californians and, 163, 168; municipal government and, 165–68, 175–78; Plaza and, 30, 141–46, 206, 209, 210, 216, 247, 249, 274n41; racialization and, 57, 203, 255, 259–60, 305n36; Sonoratown and, 239, 247; space and, 141–46; Times on, 237, 257. See also civic ideals; commodification Commercial Street, 143, 151, 314n39 Committee of Twenty, 121, 122, 125 commodification: agriculture of, 161–62, 165, 220; civic ideals and, 165, 175, 177–78, 256, 260; of space, 256. See also commercialization; commodification of water; fees and taxes; private property commodification of water: capitalist state and, 299n72; domestic and drinking water, 220, 289n83; Dryden’s pipes and, 146–49; European Americans and, 165; interculture and, 80, 114–15, 131–32, 152–53, 174, 177–78; irrigation and, 152–57, 162, 168, 221–22; Mexican Californians and, 162, 175; racialization and, 176–77, 256; space and, 221; Toberman and, 203. See also fees and taxes; mills; waterwheels

344

Index

Common Council. See municipal government and public policy communal ethos: agriculture and, 27; Aguilar and, 177–78; alcaldes and, 44, 52, 72, 82, 301n103; anti-Chinese massacre and, 324n64; dams and, 153; founding period and, 50–51; individuals versus, 57, 92, 256, 289n79; laws and justice and, 49–50, 79, 97, 290nn94, 97, and 99; municipal government and public policy and, 27, 45–46, 48, 53, 64, 137, 222, 289n79, 307n58; size of city and, 84. See also irrigation; water, communal ethos and “Consistency,” 123–24, 310n87 constructivism, 10, 12 Coronel, Antonio Franco: bilingual public education and, 312n9; Chinese and, 183, 197; Democratic Party and, 130, 311n100; elections to office, 78, 172; Independence Day celebration and, 134; interculture and, 82–83, 134; irrigation and, 64, 82, 154, 294n33, 316n64; land commissioners and, 300n87; Los Angeles Street and, 314n41; Temple project and, 314n37; vigilantism and, 309n79 Coronel, Ygnacio, 49 Coronel Adobe (Coronel Block), 31f; anti-Chinese riot and, 182; Calle de los Negros and, 215, 231, 257; Chinese and, 183, 184, 188, 193, 195, 197, 211; image of, 185f; theater and, 215 Coronel family, 169 Corpus Christi celebrations, 30, 138 Cota, Rafaela, 63, 66, 143 cowboys, 3, 26 criminal proceedings and juries: alcaldes and, 43, 48–51, 89–90, 286nn62 and 65, 289nn89–91, 298n66, 301nn103–4, 302n105; anti-Chinese massacre

and, 196–97, 324n68; Antonio and, 297n52; Brown and Alvitre and, 96; European American, 124; extralegal justice versus, 94, 303n9, 324n67; interculture and, 89–91, 301n101, 302n105; Jenkins trial, 310n88; lack of, 56; lynch mobs and, 94; Mexican Californian elite and, 301n101; Mexican Californians and, 310n88; patriarchy and, 63–64; vigilantism and, 324n67. See also extralegal justice; justice criollos (creoles), 25, 32, 33 La Crónica (newspaper), 199, 329n44 Cronon, William, 270n15, 277n52 Cuyas, Antonio, 213 dams: civic ideals and, 153, 160–63; floods and, 168, 170, 175, 176; municipal government and, 160, 314n47, 316n64; Nichols and, 152; of Plaza spring, 175, 176; of Porciuncula River, 2, 174 Day, William, 62, 293n27 Dead Man’s Island, 77 death penalties, 63, 89, 90 deeds, 13, 67–68, 83, 154, 288nn73 and 76, 293n22, 306n42 Delaney, David, 219, 274n38, 330n58 Democratic Party, 21, 22, 128, 129, 130, 165, 168, 180, 184 “The Destiny of California,” 103, 106, 109, 337n2 Deverell, William, 17–18, 140, 270nn8, 15, and 19, 309n81, 337n17 diseases, 280n3 divorce, 50, 294n34 Dominguez, Manuel, 49, 72, 145, 146 Downey, John G. (Juan), 89, 119, 129, 130, 143, 199, 311n98, 327n27 Downey Block, 143, 147, 217 Drake, St. Clair, 276n49 droughts, 168, 170–71; californios and,

Index 13; communal water rights and, 319n20; founding period and, 27; interculture and, 136; irrigation and sewers and, 222; rancheros and, 170–72, 206; water rights and, 173–74, 175 Drown, Ezra, 110, 112, 115–16, 119 Dryden, William G.: background, 146–47; bilingualism and, 110, 134; McLaughlin’s waterwheel and, 166–67; Rivas/Savaleta and, 89; water pipes project of, 146–49, 153, 155, 160, 163, 164f, 313n31 DuBois, W. E. B., 276n49 duels, 69 Durán, Narcisco, 38, 284n50, 290n100 Eaton, Benjamin S., 155–56, 163, 177, 315n54 economic factors: borderlands and, 271n25; Chinese and, 189, 212; civic ideals and, 107; European Americans and, 61, 261; floods and, 169–70; interculture and, 74, 76, 92–93, 136; intermarriage and, 65; Los Angeles Star on, 103; Mexican Californians and, 171–72; space and, 21, 162; work and leisure and, 213 Eddy v. Simpson (1853), 319n20 education and schools: bilingual, 312n9; S. Foster on, 119; Thomas Foster on, 110, 111; interculture and, 137–38, 146; school commissioners, 308n67; space and, 136; Spanish language and, 217 elections, 325nn77 and 79; interculture and, 78, 118–19, 317n10; racialization and, 21–22, 128–30, 140, 165, 173, 179–81, 197–203, 325n77. See also party politics; ward system elites: anti-Chinese massacre and, 195, 196–97; Calle de los Negros and, 231; Chinese entertainment and, 216; citi-

345

zenship and, 36; education and, 138; European-American immigrants and, 60–61; family life and, 139; La Fiesta and, 5–6, 259; immigrants as, 60–61; Independence Day celebrations and, 134, 135; Indian labor and, 296n45; interculture and, 12, 91–92, 273n36; Jenkins-Ruis incident and, 122, 125; lynchings and, 102; Mexican Independence and, 29; mission secularization and, 36–37; Plaza and, 30, 213; racialization and, 41–42, 54; skin tone and, 171; theater and, 215; United States and, 295n44; violence and, 90–91. See also californios; economic factors; European Americans; interculture emigration to Mexico, 104 Emmerson, Ralf, 151, 314n39 English language: education and, 138; elections (of 1872) and, 200, 201; Independence Day celebrations and, 134; municipal government and public policy and, 128, 308n61; newspapers and, 84, 128, 198; party politics and, 128–30. See also bilingualism entrepreneurialism. See commercialization españoles, 25, 32, 33 Estrada, William, 17–18, 269n2 La Estrella: on Americans, 107; on Brown, 101, 102; on 1856 election, 118–19; on S. Foster, 100, 303n17; on Free Land Law, 86, 300n93; on lynchings, 99–100; on Mexican Californians, 104, 304nn27–28, 305n29; Ramirez and, 303n16 Ethington, Philip, 273n36, 278n55, 291n8 European-American hegemony: challenges to, 261; La Fiesta and, 1–2, 7, 268; infrastructure and, 220; intermarriage and, 279n57, 294n36; newspapers on, 103–4, 107, 109; racialization and, 58–65, 140, 279n57;

346

European-American hegemony (continued) scholarship and, 275n46; space and, 17, 255; U.S. immigrants and, 58–65. See also commercialization; commodification; interculture; power, social and economic European Americans, 293n22; arrest records, 123; Bandini on, 105; commercial districts, 141–46, 244–47, 248f, 250; defined, 272n27; Free Land Law and, 87; interculture and, 12, 19–21, 55–58, 76; Jenkins-Ruis incident and, 126; juries of, 124; land and, 80, 83, 85; Los Angeles Star on, 104; Mexican-American War and, 66; party politics and, 21–22, 129; Plaza and, 250–51; racialization and, 11–12, 15, 17, 57, 58–59, 108, 252, 254–55, 276n50; residences and residential districts, 141, 208–9, 240–43, 241f, 243f; Rifleros Americanos and, 294n35; space and, 173, 255; ward system and, 179, 180, 198; water and, 80, 83, 85, 113, 165. See also elites; European-American hegemony; interculture; United States Europeans, 8, 9, 19, 60, 255, 272n27. See also European Americans; Spain and colonialism Evening Journal (newspaper), 104–5, 107, 108, 306n37 extralegal justice (vigilantism) and lynchings: Chinese and, 182–83, 191; criminal proceedings and juries versus, 94, 303n9, 324n67; interculture and, 87–103, 107–8, 120–28, 173, 191, 193–96, 302n108, 323nn55 and 57; Mexican Californians and, 121–28, 172, 193–95; Mexican Centralists and, 294n31; patriarchy and, 63, 294n31; racialization and, 98–99, 102–3, 106–7, 193, 309n82. See also anti-Chinese massacre; Jenkins-Ruis incident; violence

Index Fages, Pedro, 35, 44 Fall, George, 195 families: Chinese, 327n22; interculture and, 137–46; intermarriage and, 19–20; recruitment of, 18, 25, 26, 52. See also intermarriage Fan Tan, 216, 328n34 Farnham, Thomas Jefferson, 59, 292n13 fees and taxes: city funds and, 158; codes, 78–79; commercial enterprises and, 115, 286n66; droughts and, 170; infrastructure and, 158, 159; irrigation and, 80–81, 82, 84, 116–17, 314n48; land and, 46, 86, 87, 104, 117, 171, 308n67, 314n48; liquor control and, 286n66; rancheros and, 7, 299n83; sewers and, 224; unimproved land and, 86; water and, 72, 78, 79, 82, 84, 116–17, 152, 222, 314n48, 330nn60–61 Fernandino Friars, 3, 24, 29 La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 1–8, 22, 261–68, 270nn8, 15, and 19, 329n45, 337nn2, 14, and 17 fiestas and festivals: californios and, 265; Chinese, 218, 329nn47–49; community organizations and, 217–18; interculture and, 74, 76–77, 217–19, 250–51, 284n52, 285n60; racialization and, 75, 265–66 Filipino Americans, 254 fire hydrants, 155 fire prevention, 319n24 First Street, 243f floods, 27, 144, 154, 168–70, 173–78, 274n40 Flores, María, 2–3, 66 flumes, 166, 317n71 Fogelson, Robert M., 17, 277n53 forgetting and remembering, 5–6, 7, 26, 104, 258–60, 262–65, 266 Foster, Stephen Clark (Estevan): on Antonio, 297n52; background and role of, 9–10, 71–72, 297n52, 304n18; Brown lynching and, 95–97, 99–101;

Index Carriaga/Jenkins and, 122; election (in 1856) of, 119–20; La Estrella on, 100, 303n17; interculture and, 74, 78, 100, 116, 119–20, 130, 132, 308n67; irrigation and, 72, 80, 116, 131–32, 152; newspapers on, 99, 118–19, 303n17, 308n64; resignations of, 10, 96–97, 101, 102, 109, 129–30, 132, 304n22 Foster, Thomas, 110–12, 115, 116, 122, 124, 128 Foster, Timothy, 115–16, 307nn46–47 founding period (Spanish period, pre1821): communal ethos and, 50–51, 79; described, 1–2, 23–32, 269n2; forgetting of, 259; Indians and, 18–19, 24–25, 34–36, 279n1, 284n49; interculture and, 52, 54; land and, 45–47; maps, 28f; municipal government and, 42–45; racialization and, 18–19, 26, 32–42, 51–54; recruitment of families and, 18, 25, 26, 52; water and, 47–48, 175; women and, 45–47, 49–50, 329n45. See also Spain and colonialism Free Land Law (1852), 85–87, 92, 95, 110, 111, 171, 300n93 Frémont, John C., 3, 21, 128, 130, 295n38, 310n96 Frohling family, 169 frontier, 8, 16–17, 58, 271n24, 277n52, 282n27, 289n89 funerals, 120–21, 329n47 Gabrielino-Tongva: borderlands and, 8; californios and, 38, 54, 206, 305n35; casta system and, 282n24; Catholicism and, 282n27, 283n41; censuses and, 32; citizenship and, 283nn40–41; colonialism and, 24, 52; defined, 272n27, 280n3; elections (of 1872) and, 199; elites and, 91–92; enfranchisement and, 73–74; extralegal justice and, 193; La Fiesta and, 4, 5–6, 262–63, 329n45; Thomas

347

Foster and, 112; founding period and, 33; as gente sin razón, 33–34, 35–36; Guerrero and, 297n51; inequality and, 54; infrastructure and, 251; interculture and, 12, 32, 79, 92, 95; labor and, 34–40, 45, 51, 110, 112, 265, 283n39, 284nn49–50, 295n45, 306n43; land and, 50, 70, 285n53, 299n83; laws and ordinances and, 39, 45, 51, 69–70, 87–88, 189, 295n45, 300nn97–98; liquor control and, 88, 110, 296n45, 307n58; Los Angeles Star and, 103; marginalization of, 19, 53; Mexican period and, 36–42; Mexicans and, 284n41; mission secularization and, 36–37, 38, 283n41, 284n43; Monroy on, 276n50; municipal government, 39, 45, 51, 52–53, 69–71, 87–88, 108, 300n97; population figures, 23–24, 37, 284nn43–44; as prisoners, 112, 306n43; public policy and, 39, 45, 50, 51, 52–53, 87–88, 108, 300n97; racialization and, 171, 189, 190, 322n49; rancheros and, 305n35; recruitment of families and, 25; role of, 276n50; social standing and, 33, 34; Sonoratown and, 140; Spaniards and, 282n27; Spanish male behavior and, 24, 26, 280n4; Star on, 103; vagrancy and, 39, 92, 108, 110; vecinos versus, 297n48; violence against, 88, 190, 302n108, 322n51; women, 24–25, 38–39, 50, 51, 52, 103, 106, 283n39, 329n45. See also racialization; rancherías Gallardo, Rafael, 70, 296n45, 297n48 gambling, 231; californios and, 103, 292n16; Chinese and, 184, 187, 216, 234, 236f, 328n34; European Americans and, 328n32; fines and, 286n65; laws and, 43, 79, 88; Plaza and, 47; Sonoratown and, 140. See also rancherías Garfias, Manuel, 80, 89

348

Garner, William R., 292n16 gas plant, 211f gender. See women and gender gente de/sin razón: Bandini and, 306n37; definition and origin of, 9, 11, 33–34; European Americans and, 12, 91; Gabrielinos and, 35–36; laws and, 296n45; Mexican-American War and, 68–69; party politics and, 130; secularization and, 37–38; skin tone and, 105; Sonoratown and, 140; SpanishIndian marriages and, 25 Getman, William, 120, 121, 127 ghetto studies, 276n49 Gillespie, Archibald, 2, 66, 77 Glassell, Andrew, 180, 198 gold rush (1848), 3–4, 74, 136, 139, 206, 211, 292n13 González, Michael, 271n23, 285n55 government. See municipal government and public policy Graham, Isaac, 72, 294n35 Granger, Lewis, 77, 89 Greaser Act (Vagrancy Act of 1855), 108–9 greasers, 108, 130, 303n8 Griffin, John S., 154, 160, 176, 177–78 gringos, 272n27 Griswold del Castillo, Richard, 16, 140, 309n86 growth and industrialization, 17, 170, 199, 200, 332n77. See also commercialization; mills; population and statistics de la Guerra, Pablo, 72, 73 Guerrero, Vicente, 69, 70, 296nn45–46, 297n51 Guerrero Adobe, 31f Haas. See Hellman, Haas, and Company Harper’s Weekly, 259–60 Hartnell, William, 72, 293n24 Hartog, Hendrik, 332n77

Index Hastings, Lansford, 58–59 Hawaii, 185 Hayes, Benjamin, 96, 120, 123, 125, 309n73 Hazzard, Henry T., 237–38, 323n61, 335n103 hegemony, 270n21, 271n25. See also European-American hegemony; power, social and economic Hellman, Haas, and Company, 233, 234, 313n27, 332n82 Hellman brothers, 169 Hernandez, Juan, 126, 309n73 hijos del país, 26. See also californios hindsight, 9, 109, 201–2 Hing, Yo ( Joseph Hinton), 181–82, 183, 184, 187, 188, 192, 195 historic preservation and, 257–59 historiography, 16–18 history, 3–10, 16, 257–68, 337n2 Ho, Yut, 188 hombres buenos (“good men”), 49, 301n103 homes. See residences and residential districts Hong Chow Company, 188, 217 horse speed laws, 115 hospitals, 217 Huber tract, 226, 228f, 230f huiguan, 187–88, 190–92, 216–17, 233, 328n42 Hunter, J. D., 96, 99 hybridity, 17, 279n57. See also mestizaje; mixed-heritage people (mestizos); racialization hydraulic ram, 154 identity. See californios; Mexican Americans; national identities; racialization ideologies, 43–44, 46, 162–63, 249, 326n10, 336n111 Independence Day celebrations: Mexican, 218, 329nn44–45; U.S., 76–77, 133– 35, 136, 138, 251, 311nn1–3, 336n116

Index Indians. See Gabrielino-Tongva; Yuma Indians indios, 9. See also Gabrielino-Tongva industrialization and growth, 17, 170, 199, 200, 332n77. See also commercialization; mills; population and statistics infrastructure: capitalist state and, 332nn76–77; city debt and, 158–60; civic ideals and, 82, 146, 149, 160–63, 165, 167, 226, 255–56; in 1870s–80s, 219–30; election (of 1872) and, 202–3; Harper’s Weekly on, 260; individual choices and, 209, 255; interculture and, 137, 157–58, 255; lived experience and, 239–49; Mexican Californians and, 165, 168; municipal government and, 158–65; Plaza and, 239, 249–50, 251, 256; racialization and, 15, 22, 165, 168, 224–53, 255, 256–59, 332n76; space and, 146, 162–63, 208, 220–21, 238. See also commercialization; dams; railroads; residences and residential districts; sewers; streets; water interculture: Aguilar election and, 198; anti-Chinese violence and, 191, 192–93, 194–95; civic ideals and, 110, 119–20, 130–32, 146, 152, 173; decline of, 193–94; defined, 279n57; pre-1855 European American immigrants and, 58–65; elites and, 12, 91–92, 273n36; forgetting of, 265, 266; founding period, 52, 54; Free Land Law and, 85; interregnum period, 91–93; Mexican-American War and, 66; Mexican period and, 53–54, 74–87; space and, 145–46, 210, 213, 219, 329n52; spatial mestizaje, 8, 14, 272n26; suffrage and, 74 intermarriage, 312n8; European American hegemony and, 279n57, 294n36; founding period, 24–25; interculture

349

and, 19–20, 56, 65, 137–39, 146, 294n36; Mexican-American War and, 66; Mexican period and, 56, 291n6; soldiers/Indians, 24–25, 106; space and, 136; whiteness and, 73. See also mixed-heritage people (mestizos) interregnum period (1846–48): extralegal justice and, 87–91; interculture and, 19–20, 91–93; intermarriage and, 65; population, 56–57; public office and, 62–65; racialization and, 57–61, 309n81; rebellions, 292n22. See also Mexican-American War irrigation: blue-ribbon commission and, 160, 161; commodification of water and, 152–57, 162, 168, 221–22; communal vs. private ethos, 48, 64, 72, 82–83, 113–14, 154, 173–78; fees and taxes and, 116–17, 152, 314n48; interculture and, 82–83, 116–17, 131–32; public policy and, 79–82; reservoir for, 160, 168, 175; size of city and, 84. See also agriculture; water; zanjas Islam, 19, 43, 301n103 jacales, 22 Jackson, Helen Hunt, 297n55 Japanese Californians, 252, 254 Jenkins, William (constable), 120–21, 122, 124–28, 129–30 Jenkins, William (zanjero), 221 Jenkins-Ruis incident, 120–28, 129–30, 131, 135, 140, 309n81, 310n93 Jew, Victor, 320n36, 321n47, 323n56, 324n64 Jewish families and organizations, 7, 138, 217 Jim Crow laws, 97 judges. See alcaldes; mayors judges of the plains, 46, 286n65, 288n75 juez de aguas, 80. See also zanjeros La Junta Patriótica de Juárez, 217, 218

350

Index

juries. See criminal proceedings and juries justice, 49, 111, 122–23, 290nn94, 97, and 99. See also criminal proceedings and juries; extralegal justice (vigilantism) and lynchings Kealhofer, Lisa, 280n3, 284n49 Keller, Matthew (Mateo), 89, 143, 156–57 King, Andrew, 180, 184, 310n88 King Philip’s War, 324n66 Kneipe, 144 Kurhts, Jacob, 234, 238 labor, 252; Chinese and, 237, 321n47, 334n95; founding period, 26, 27, 32–36; Gabrielinos and, 34–40, 45, 51, 110, 112, 265, 283n39, 284nn49–50, 295n45, 306n43; instead of cash, 152; irrigation and, 72, 152; marriages and, 19; McWilliams on, 16; Pico House and, 213; prisoner, 306n43; public policy and, 79; racialization and, 12, 260; recreation and, 215–16; vagrancy and, 51, 88, 110; women and, 283n39 Lachenais, Michel, 324n67 Los Lanceros de Los Angeles, 135, 328n40 land, 293n22; Chinese and, 331n70; communal vs. private ethos and, 44, 45–47, 64, 79, 84, 111, 137; deeds, 13, 67–68, 83, 154, 288nn73 and 76, 293n22, 306n42; European Americans and, 61, 139; founding period and, 44, 287n69; Indians and, 50, 70, 285n53, 299n83; interculture and, 83–84, 255; marriages and, 19; mayor’s court and, 306n42; MexicanAmerican War and, 67–68, 83; Mexican Californians and, 87, 103–4, 299n83, 331n70; Mexican immigrants and, 139; Mexican vs. U.S. law and, 83; mission secularization and, 36–37; mixed-heritage people and, 33; munic-

ipal government and, 13, 83–84, 85, 86, 299n86; newspaper opinions and, 86, 107, 109; private projects and, 147, 154; public policy and, 79, 85; racialization and, 13–14, 33, 105–7; rancheros and, 299n83; vecinos and, 40, 46, 51, 106, 171; water and, 117, 152, 154, 174; women and, 37, 45, 46–47, 87, 153. See also agriculture; Free Land Law; Land Act; private property; real estate booms and busts Land Act (U.S., 1851), 83–87, 106, 171, 299n86, 300n87 land commissions, 47, 84, 108, 300nn86–87 landscape, 277n52 Langum, David, 62, 289n89 Laughlin, Richard, 64, 294n33 laws and ordinances (municipal): antiChinese massacre and, 324n64; Chinese maneuvering and, 187, 191–92, 323n54; communal ethos and, 49–50; elections and, 354n79; enforcement of, 81–82, 88, 112; experience versus, 112, 116, 118–20; Thomas Foster on, 111–12; Indians and, 39, 45, 51, 69–70, 87–88, 189, 295n45, 300nn97–98; organizing and binding of, 111–12; racialization and, 99, 127, 128, 296n45, 310n86; segregation and, 255; sewers and, 331n69; Spanish influences, 25–26, 290n91; and Spanish language, 118; vigilantism versus, 127; women and, 49–50, 280n10. See also criminal proceedings and juries; fees and taxes; liquor control; vagrancy Lazard, Solomon, 176, 177–78, 301n101, 313n27 Leandri, Juan Bautista, 60, 62, 290n94 Leeching Hung & Co., 212f Lefebvre, Henri, 10, 12, 162, 208, 249, 326n10, 336n111

Index Lepore, Jill, 284n46, 324n66 “Letters from California” (Garner), 292n16 lights, city, 220 Lindley, Walter, 225 liquor control: fees and, 286n66; Thomas Foster on, 110, 111, 112, 306n45; Indians and, 88, 110, 296n45, 307n58; norteamericano council and, 118; temperance groups, 217 literacy, 288n76 Little Tokyo, 252 loans, 159–60, 166. See also city finances López, Marissa K., 271n24, 275n46, 277n52 Los Angeles, historiography of, 16–18 Los Angeles Herald, 213, 265, 266–67 Los Angeles Merchants Association, 3, 261–62, 264–65, 266 Los Angeles River (Río Porciuncula), 1–2, 14, 22, 23, 27, 144, 153–58, 160, 168, 169–70, 173–78, 259, 289n83 “Los Angeles School” of urban studies, 17, 277n54 Los Angeles Star: advertising of businesses in, 139, 145; on Aguilar, 202; arrest statistics and, 123, 309n82; on Brown, 100–102, 303n14; on bullfight, 198; on californios, 107, 306n38; on Carriaga, 310n87; on Chinese, 184, 191; city finances and, 159; elections (of 1872) and, 199, 200, 202–3, 325nn77 and 79; English language and, 84, 128; on S. Foster, 304n22; on Free Land Law, 86; on Independence Day celebrations, 134, 135; on Indians, 140; Jenkins-Ruis incident and, 120, 121, 122–23, 125, 126, 127–28; on Land Law, 106; on Ludwig and McCoy, 88; on Mexican Californians, 103–4, 107, 109, 122–24; Newmark and Kremmer and, 143; on Nieto arrest, 127; party politics and, 128–30;

351

racialization and, 102; racial slurs, 305n36; on Savaleta and Rivas incident, 302n106; on Sonoratown, 237; on violence, 139, 312n12; on water, 152 Los Angeles Street: Calle de los Negros and, 233–38, 257, 314n41, 332n82, 334nn92–93, 336n105; commercialization and, 143, 336n105; culvert and, 151; map, 235f; regrading of, 151, 159 Los Angeles Times: boosterism and, 262; Chinese and, 218, 237, 238, 251, 329nn47–49, 335nn99–101, 336n105; history and, 257–58, 337n2; on Indians, 262; Kurhts and, 234; on Plaza, 251 Los Angeles Water Company, 176, 221 Lou, Raymond, 328n34 Low, Setha M., 27, 281n14 Ludwig and McCoy, 88–89 Lugo, Antonio Mariá, 37, 46, 61, 288n75 Lugo, José del Carmen and adobe, 31f, 67 Lugo, María de Jesús, 61, 66 Lugo, Vicente and adobe, 31f, 66, 211, 212f Lugo family, 274n41 lynchings. See extralegal justice (vigilantism) and lynchings Maccabees, 337n14 McCoy and Ludwig, 88–89 McCullough, Hartnell and Company, 293n24 McFarland and Downey, 143 McLaughlin, Hiram and foundry, 131, 153–56, 166–67, 316n64 McWilliams, Carey, 16, 275n47 Macy, Obed, 110, 112, 115–16 Magnolia Saloon, 245f Main Street, 13, 151, 204, 209, 213, 214f, 242f, 248f. See also Temple Block mala vida (MV), 45, 46

352

male behavior and patriarchy: californios and, 38; civic ideals and, 26; European Americans and, 57; gente de razón and, 34; Indian women and, 18, 24–25, 26, 52, 103, 106; interculture and, 64; municipal government and, 45, 49–50, 52; space and, 32. See also soldiers, Spanish Manhattan (N.Y.), 332n77 Marchessault, Damien, 160 Market House, 149–50, 324n37 Market Street, 150f marriage. See intermarriage Masonic orders and Hall, 133, 139, 143, 216, 217, 250, 329n47 mayors: interculture and, 119; as judges, 110, 112, 117, 298n66, 306n42; Mexican Californian (1864–72), 172, 199, 201, 202; role and history of, 78, 85, 110; space and, 274n44. See also alcaldes; elections; municipal government and public policy Mechanics’ Institute, 133 Mellus, Francis: advertising by, 313n27; Commercial Street extension and, 314n39; jury duty of, 301n101; land dispute of, 315n56; platform scale of, 149, 313n36; Savaleta and Rivas and, 89; as superintendent of schools, 308n67; vigilantism and, 309n79; water and, 113–15, 117, 119 Mellus’s Row, 169 men. See male behavior and patriarchy Merced Theatre, 214–15, 247, 250, 327n28, 328n29, 336n113 mestizaje, 8, 52, 77, 79, 137, 272n26, 279n57. See also hybridity; mixedheritage people; racialization mestizos. See mixed-heritage people Mexican Americans. See Mexican Californians Mexican-American War (1846–48), 15, 19–20, 56–58, 65–74, 83, 92–93, 309n81

Index Mexican Californians (Mexican Americans): arrest records, 123; blue-ribbon commission and, 160, 162; Chinese and, 189, 190, 191, 192–94, 196–97, 321n42, 323n58; defined, 272n27; economic factors and, 170–72; election to office of, 119, 165, 172, 202, 317n10; emigration plan of, 104–5, 107, 109; as entrepreneurs, 167–68; extralegal violence and, 89–91, 95–102, 121–28, 172, 193–95; forgetting of, 5–6, 104, 258–60, 262, 263, 264; S. Foster and, 10, 119–20, 131–32; Independence Day celebrations and, 134–35; juries and, 310n88; land and, 87, 103–4, 299n83, 331n70; Mexican-American War and, 19–20; newspapers on, 304nn27–28, 305nn32–34, 306n39; party politics and, 21–22, 129–30, 168, 172–73; Plaza and, 207, 213–15, 216, 217–18; population statistics, 298n61, 318n14; racialization and, 9, 11, 12, 105–7, 108–9; residences and residential districts, 145–46, 202–3, 223f, 242f, 244–49, 244f–246f; social life and recreation and, 118, 134; twentieth century and, 254–55; ward politics and, 202–3; ward system and, 179, 180–81, 197–98; water and, 153, 163–65; whiteness and, 59. See also californios; cholos; elites; interculture; intermarriage; Mexican period (1822– 46); racialization; Spanish Mexicans; vecinos Mexican Centralists, 2, 54, 288n71, 290n91, 292n22, 294n31 Mexican Independence, 29, 36, 44, 275n45, 281n18 Mexicanized Yankees, 294n36 Mexican period (1822–46): civic ideals and, 42–52, 57; criminal proceedings and, 48–50; European Americans and, 60–65; Indians and, 26, 38–40,

Index 45, 87–88; influences of, 278n55; interculture and, 32, 52–54, 74–87; intermarriage and, 19–20, 24–25, 56; land and water and, 79, 85–87, 113; municipal government and, 25–26, 42–52; Plaza and, 29–31f; population, 26; racialization and, 19, 32–42, 54, 57, 58–60, 322n51. See also alcaldes; interregnum period (1846–48); Mexican Californians; Mexican Independence Mexicans, 272n27, 275n47, 310n86. See also racialization Mexico: alcaldes and, 288n71; European Americans and, 58; European and American immigrants and, 19; La Fiesta and, 5–6; frontier and, 18; identities and, 54, 271n23; independence from, 53; Indians and, 110; invasions by, 2; law and, 49, 290n91; Los Angeles and, 276n50; municipal lands and, 86; Tejanos and, 298n65; water policy and, 113, 114, 174. See also borderlands; Mexican Californians; Mexican Independence; Mexican period (1822–46) Meyberg, Max, 261–62, 264, 267 Meyer & Breslauer, 169 Micheltorena, Manuel, 2, 77, 292n22 middle classes, 196–97, 215, 216 military and territorial periods, 78 militia groups, 2, 3, 133, 134, 135, 138, 217, 294n35, 328n40 mills, 113–15, 154, 157 mining, 3–4, 263, 318n17 minstrel shows, 215, 328n31, 336n113 missions: commerce and, 293n24; founding period and, 24; secularization of, 36–39, 54, 283n41, 284nn43 and 50, 292n18 Mission San Diego, 24 Mission San Gabriel, 3, 23, 24, 34 mixed-heritage people (mestizos): californios and, 38; children of, 33, 40,

353

103, 106, 282n24; defined, 32, 41; European Americans as not, 54; as founders, 18, 22, 25; Gabrielinos and, 35; Spanish law and, 32–33. See also hybridity; mestizaje; racialization mobility, 136 Monroy, Douglas, 17, 273n36, 276n50, 285n55 Monterey, 24 Moors, 275n46 Morris Brothers and Prager, 317n71 Mott tract, 226, 228f, 231f mulatos, 25, 33, 282n24 municipal government and public policy: bilingualism and, 109, 308n67; borderlands and, 49; buildings, 27, 149–50; capitalism and, 114; Chinese and, 183, 230–39; commerce and, 44, 47, 79; communal ethos and, 27, 45–46, 48, 49, 50, 53, 64, 137, 222, 289n79, 307n58; English/ Spanish languages and, 118, 128, 135, 308n61; European vs. Mexican Americans and, 109, 165; La Fiesta and, 1, 3; founding period (Spanish period) and, 42–45, 48; history of Los Angeles and, 18; Indians and, 39, 45, 51, 52–53, 108, 300n97; interculture and, 19, 21, 33, 42, 60–61, 66, 71, 92–93, 109–18, 172–73, 307n58; intermarriage and, 65; MexicanAmerican War and, 67–71, 78, 79; Mexican law and, 288n71; Mexican period and, 2, 25–26, 42–52, 56–57; party politics and, 21; patriarchy and, 49–50, 52; power and, 113, 136, 148–49, 224, 227, 234–39, 331n68; private property and, 46, 64, 151–52, 153, 307n58; public spaces and, 47, 115; racialization and, 33, 42, 44–45, 51–52, 162–65, 227–40, 247–49; rancherías and, 35, 69–71, 87–88, 295n45; religion and, 51; role and history of, 42–44, 286n63; space and,

354

Index

municipal government and public policy (continued) 21, 27, 47, 162–63, 239–49; Spanish influences, 25–26, 33, 43, 49; women and gender and, 45, 46, 49–51, 52, 87, 153, 280n10, 315n50. See also alcaldes; civic ideals; commodification; elections; fees and taxes; infrastructure; laws and ordinances (municipal); sewers; streets; water mutual benefit societies, 7, 63, 139, 216, 217, 218, 337n14. See also huiguan national identities, 15–16, 271nn23 and 25 Negrete, Luis de Castillo, 290n91 de Neve, Felipe: alcaldes and, 286n67; Gabrielino-Tongva and, 24, 34; land and, 44, 387n69; location of pueblo and, 23; Plaza and, 27, 29; Zanja Madre and, 47, 174 New England, 284n46, 289n89 New High Street, 245f Newmark, Harris: anti-Chinese riot and, 184; background, 6–7; barn architecture and, 141; on Brown incident, 95–96, 102; business of, 143, 144–45; on La Fiesta, 141; on S. Foster resignation, 304n22; on Sonoratown, 140; on Spanish handbills, 328n29; on vigilantism, 90; water policy and, 313n31 Newmark, Marco, 143, 184 Newmark and Cohen, 313n22 Newmark and Kremmer, 143 New Mexicans, 55 newspapers: English language and, 84, 128; interculture and, 87, 103–7; and lynchings, 97–100; Spanish language and, 84, 329n51 New Western historians, 16–17 Nichols, John G.: election to office of, 78, 110; foundry and, 154; irrigation and,

152–53, 314n48; land acquisition and, 85; as mayor, 81–82, 112, 130; resignation of, 115; Water Committee and, 147; zanjas and, 166 Nin Yung, 188, 217 Nirenburg, David, 322n52 norteamericanos, 8, 68, 109, 118, 272n27. See also European Americans North Broadway, 242f, 246f Norton, Myron, 130, 134, 147 O’Campo Adobe/Plazuela, 31f, 281n23 Odd Fellows, 133, 217 Ogier, Isaac K., 76, 77 Olive Street, 243f Olvera, Agustín and adobe, 31f, 134, 138, 172, 308n67, 317n11 ordinances. See laws and ordinances organizations, community, 187–88, 216–18, 250, 252, 254 Osborne, William M., 200 Osburn, William E., 89 Osio, Antonio María, 40–41, 285n59, 290n91, 295n44 padrón (census), 32 El Palacio (Stearns Adobe), 31f, 142f, 144, 204, 209 party politics: interculture and, 74, 131; public policy and, 21; racialization and, 128–30, 134, 165, 172–73; social life and, 22. See also Democratic Party; elections; Republican Party; ward system patriarchy. See male behavior and patriarchy Pekin Curio Store, 212f peon (game), 88, 301n98 Pershing Square, 251, 265, 266f Pico, Andrés, 41, 74, 122, 127, 138, 301n101 Pico, Antonio, 72 Pico, Nachita Alvarado de, 42f

Index Pico, Pío, 30, 42f, 58, 64; background and career of, 41, 205–7, 216, 250, 274n41, 277n52, 285n61, 325n8, 327n27; as governor, 13, 206, 269n4; and Pico House, 13–14, 205, 206–7, 213, 214, 250; in rebellion (of 1845), 292n22 Pico family, 42f, 125, 126, 274n41 Pico House, 31f, 214f; architecture, 204–5f, 206–7; background, 13–14, 213; capitalism and, 207, 213, 325n8; elite social life and, 213; interculture and, 30, 127, 215, 216, 247, 250; Jenkins-Ruis affair and, 125, 126, 127 Pío Pico (Salomon), 274n41, 285n61 pipes, water, 163, 221, 222, 256, 289n83, 317n70 Pitt, Leonard, 16, 93, 294n36, 309n81 place, 10, 12, 13, 14–18, 53, 274nn43–44 platform scale, 149, 313n36 Plaza (Los Angeles), 31f, 211f, 222, 235f; commercial districts, 202–19; commercialization and, 30, 141–46, 206, 209, 210, 216, 247, 249, 274n41; descriptions and uses of, 27, 29, 30, 47, 204–5, 218f, 281n14; La Fiesta and, 265; floods and, 274n40; infrastructure and, 239, 249–50, 251, 256; interculture and, 138, 145–46, 207–8, 209, 213, 326n13; Mexican Californians and, 207, 213–15, 216, 217–18; private homes and, 274n41; racialization and, 13, 15, 22; relocation of, 29–30, 274n40; social life and, 47, 213–15, 217–19, 250–51; space and, 22, 141–46, 147; vecinos and, 40; ward system and, 179; water and, 159, 163, 164f, 168 Plaza Church (La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles), 27, 31f, 204, 211f la plazuela, 30–31f, 281n23 police force, 79, 100, 298n68

355

politics. See elections; party politics Pollorena, Maria Candelaria, 120 poor people, 75. See also economic factors population and statistics (censuses): Chinese, 183–84, 211–12, 240, 320n40, 326nn18–19, 327n22, 331n70; founding period, 26; in 1830s–50s, 26, 56–57, 88, 123, 139, 298n61, 309n86; late 1850s–early 1860s, 136, 156, 159; in 1870–1900, 5, 202, 222, 224, 240, 254, 318n14, 326n12; in 1890–1930, 252, 254; foreign-born/ total (1844–50), 56; GabrielinoTongva, 37, 284nn43–44; Mexican born (1850–60), 309n86; Mexican Californians, 298n61, 318n14, 326n12; racialization and, 32; rancherías, 37, 284n44; Sonoratown, 240; sources, 281n13; street information and, 326n21; transportation and, 220; women, 45, 320n40 postmodernism, 277n54 Potter, N. A., 119, 147, 152 power, social and economic: racialization and, 8, 10, 11, 12, 16, 53; space and, 10, 12, 158, 162–64, 208, 219–20, 246–49, 251–53, 274n38 preservation, 256–57 prior appropriation, right of, 174, 175, 318n17, 319n20 prison escapes, 102 private property: municipal government and public policy and, 46, 64, 151–52, 153, 307n58, 314n42; Protestant European Americans and, 57; sewers and, 224; size of city and, 84; water and, 146–49, 152–58, 314n42, 315n49. See also commodification; land privatization. See commodification propios, 44, 287n69 prostitution and brothels, 184, 187, 236f, 320n40, 335n101

356

Index

Protestants, 57, 138 public health campaign, 237–39, 330n62, 336nn107–8 public market, 149–50f public policy. See municipal government and public policy public spaces, 47, 115. See also Plaza (Los Angeles); social life and recreation pubs, German, 144 pueblos, 25, 284n49 Pullen, Charles, 259–60 racialization: borderlands and, 8–14; casta system, 32–33, 35–36, 282nn24 and 27; citizenship and, 11, 20, 44–45, 127, 135; elections (of 1872) and, 199–202; La Fiesta and, 6, 261–66; interculture and, 57–58, 91–92, 291n8, 327n28; modern scholarship and, 16–17, 276n50; national identity and, 15; nomenclature and, 272n27; place and, 12, 13, 15–16, 18, 53, 274n43; power and, 8, 10, 11, 12, 16, 53; space and, 14–18, 22, 32, 53, 201–3, 249, 251–53, 254–56, 274nn43–44, 330n58; streets and, 226–30; transnational factors, 274n45; worldviews and, 273n34 railroads, 199, 202, 220, 224, 233, 261 Ramirez, Francisco, 100, 104, 107, 118–19, 128–29, 130, 134, 303n16, 305n28, 310n93 rancherías: Code of Conduct (1787) and, 35; destruction of, 69–71, 95, 100, 110, 124, 193, 296nn45–46, 297n48; loss of, 299n83; municipal government and, 35, 69–71, 87–88, 295n45; population figures, 37, 284n44 ranchos and rancheros. See californios Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, 61, 66 real estate booms and busts, 4, 202, 206, 208–53, 224, 261 rebellions: Centralists and, 290n91,

292n22; La Fiesta and, 1, 3; Gillespie and, 2–3, 66–67; Indian women and (1775), 24; interculture and, 66–67, 76, 295n38; Rifleros Americanos and, 294n35; Stearns accused of, 62 recreation. See social life and recreation Reid, Felipe, 73 Reid, Hugo, 72, 73, 297n55 religion, 51, 74, 272n27. See also Catholic Church and Catholicism Rendon, Juanita de Díos, 68, 295n44 Republican Party, 21, 128, 129 Republic Street, 245f Requeña, Manuel: background, 78; Barton and Osburn and, 89; Commercial Street extension and, 314n39; elections to office, 119, 172; party politics and, 129; resignation of, 156; streets and, 81–82, 151, 315n56; Villa and, 63; water and, 80, 116, 152, 316n64 Requeña Street, 143 reservoir for irrigation, 160, 168, 175 residences and residential districts, 31f; Chinese, 190, 211–12, 230–39, 244, 246f–247f, 249, 326nn20–22; European American, 141, 208–9, 240–43, 241f, 243f; expansion of, 136–41, 145, 146; infrastructure and, 165, 167–68, 208–9, 239, 253; Mexican Californian, 145–46, 202–3, 223f, 242f, 244–49, 244f–246f; Plaza and, 27, 29; racialization and, 21, 173; social interactions and, 208–53; streets and, 150–51, 226–27; ward system and, 179–80 Rifleros Americanos, 294n35 right of prior appropriation, 174, 175, 318n17, 319n20 riparian rights and owners, 174, 318nn17 and 20, 319n20 Rivas, Jesus, 89, 90, 95, 100, 126, 193, 302n106 Rivera y Moncada, Fernando, 25, 279n1

Index Rojo, Manuel Clemente, 86, 89, 100 Ross, J. W., 110, 115, 307n46 Rowan, Thomas, 1, 3 Rowland, John, 55, 64, 66, 145 Rowland-Workman party, 60, 78, 301n101 Ruis, Antonio, murder of, 120–28, 129–30, 131, 135, 140, 309n81, 310n93 Sainsevain, Jean Louis, 166, 175–76, 309n79, 314n41 Sanchez, Esteban, 67, 182 San Diego, 24 San José, 109 San Pascual, 77 San Pedro, 76–77 Santa Ana del Chino, 37 Savaleta, Teodoro, 88–90, 95, 100, 126, 193, 302n106 Schumacher, John, 116, 177 Scott, Jonathan R., 89, 113–15, 117, 119 secularization of missions, 36–39, 54 See Yup Company, 187–88, 323n54 segregation, 51, 88, 254–55 Seguro Adobe and Gaming House, 31f, 281n23 Sepúlveda, Dolores, 301n101 Sepúlveda, Encarnación, 48, 289n85 Sepúlveda, Joaquín, 139, 209 Sepúlveda, José Andrés, 49, 50, 209, 327n27 Sepúlveda, José Loreto, 78, 80 Sepúlveda, Juan Andrés, 31f, 77–78, 96, 99, 138 Sepúlveda, Ygnacio, 324n67 Sepúlveda Adobe, 209 Serra, Junípero, 24, 34 sewers: Chinese and, 221–25, 238–40, 246f, 249; funding and, 224, 331nn72 and 74; ordinances, 331n69; Plaza and, 249; racialization and, 15, 22, 251, 256; Star on, 202; Toberman on, 203. See also infrastructure sexuality, 38, 45

357

Sisters of Charity, 138 Sizgorich, Tom, 271n25 skin tone: californios and, 265; elections (of 1872) and, 199; elite and, 171; gente de/sin razón and, 105; New Western historians on, 15–16; racialization and, 10–12, 215, 276n50; U.S. immigrant perceptions and, 17, 57, 59, 108; ward system and, 181. See also blacks; brownness; whites and whiteness slaughter of animals, 115, 118, 306n42 Smith, Rogers, 287n68 social life and recreation: Calle de los Negros and, 139; intercultural, 213–19; interculture and, 133–37, 215–17, 218, 250; party politics and, 22; Pico House and, 213; Plaza and, 47, 213–15, 250–51; residential and commercial buildings and, 145; Sonoratown and, 140; space and, 136 social status and mobility, 33, 34, 40, 213, 285n53, 306n37. See also racialization La Sociedad Hispano-Americana de Beneficia Mutua, 217 soldiers, Spanish: Indian women and, 18, 24–25, 52, 103, 106; land loss and, 106; mission secularization and, 37; mixed heritage and, 33; racialization and, 41–42; vecinos and, 297n48 soldiers, U.S., 69, 70, 71, 72, 295n44 Sonoratown, 242f, 244f–246f; community organizations and, 250; growth of, 139–41, 209; Harper’s Weekly on, 259; infrastructure and, 250; land ownership and, 331n70; public health campaign and, 239; racialization and, 139–41; sewers and, 223–25, 239–40, 249; streets and, 226–39, 249; ward system and, 179 South Americans, 8, 272n27 Southern Californian (newspaper), 97–99, 303n11

358

Index

Southern Rifles, 133, 134, 135, 138 South Side Irrigation Company, 222 space: Cartesian, 22, 32, 47, 52–53, 146, 208, 238, 275n46, 332n77; determinants of, 208, 275n45, 325n9; ideologies and, 249, 326n10, 336n111; power and, 10, 12, 158, 162–64, 208, 219–20, 246–49, 251–53, 274n38; racialization and, 14–18, 22, 32, 53, 201–3, 249, 251–53, 254–56, 274nn43–44, 330n58; spatial mestizaje, 8, 14, 272n26 Spain and colonialism: administrative structure and, 49, 255, 275n46, 288n71, 290n91; Cartesian plan and, 32, 52–53, 275n46; La Fiesta and, 262; Indians and, 24, 32, 52–53, 276n50, 280n4, 322n49; municipal government influences, 25–26, 33, 43, 49; racialization and, 32–33, 34, 36, 39, 54, 255, 258, 259, 272n27, 279n57, 282n27; recruitment of families and, 18, 25; social and civil purposes and, 25, 26, 280n11; water policy and, 48, 113, 114, 174; women and, 46. See also founding period Spaniards, pure blooded, 32, 282n25 Spanish language: education and, 138; English versus, 5; Independence Day celebrations and, 134; municipal government and, 118, 128, 308n61; newspapers and, 10, 128, 329n51; party politics and, 128–30; Pico House and, 207. See also bilingualism Spanish Mexicans, 272n27 Spring Street, 143, 144f, 184, 209, 247, 248f Starr, Kevin, 320n36, 321n47 statistics, 86–87 Stearns, Abel: background, 56, 61–62, 160; commerce and, 62, 141–42; crimes accused of, 62, 77; Day fight and, 62, 293n27; elections to office, 72, 75, 78; as judge, 89–90; Los Ange-

les Street and, 314n41; as mayor, 79; water and, 80, 160. See also Arcadia Block Stearns Adobe (El Palacio), 31f, 142f, 144, 204, 209 Stearns’s Hall, 217 Stevenson, Jonathan D., 67, 69–70, 297n48 Stewart, J. H., 110, 115, 307n46 Stockton, Robert F., 2, 66, 77, 259 street railways, 220, 247, 248f streets, 241f–247f; censuses and, 326n21; Chinese and Mexican Californians and, 226–39, 251, 256; cleaning, 81–82; S. Foster on, 119; Manhattan and, 332n77; municipal government and public policy and, 47, 78, 81–82, 113, 149–51, 159, 202–3, 226–39; plans, 30f, 31f, 47; Plaza and, 249; prisoner labor and, 112; private property and, 151; racialization and, 226–30; space and, 221; state legislature and, 331n68, 332nn80 and 82; watering of, 307n51 suburbs, 17 suffrage, 73–74, 297n56 Sunday Mass, 51 superintendent of water. See zanjeros Supreme Court of California, 94, 96, 98, 318n17 and 20 Sutter’s Mill, 4 tallow. See cattle hide and tallow trade taxes. See fees and taxes Tejanos, 75, 298n65 telegraph company, 144 Temple, Francisca, 143 Temple, Jonathan ( Juan): background, 56, 60, 63, 143, 160; blue-ribbon commission and, 160; Commercial Street extension and, 314n39; streets and, 151; Villa lynching and, 63, 294n31. See also Market House; Temple Block

Index Temple Block, 143–44f, 150f Texas, 75, 271n25, 276n50, 280n4, 298n65, 302n108 theaters: bilingualism and, 215, 328n29; Chinese, 216, 219, 236f; interculture and, 139, 215; Star on, 312n12 Thompson, Robert, 181, 182, 183, 194 Thompson, Rosario, 194 Toberman, James R., 22, 200, 201, 203, 207, 220 Tong, Chee Long “Gene,” 183, 184, 195 Tongs, 187, 328n42 Tongva. See Gabrielino-Tongva tourism, 258, 259 transportation, 220. See also railroads travel writers, U.S., 58–60 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 67, 73, 83, 85 Tsooi, Chung Ting, 218, 329n48 Turner, Joel, 179 Turnverein Germania, 7, 216, 217, 337n14 Uhlbrook, Henry, 116, 307n58 United States: Chinese and, 236, 237, 334n95, 335n103; civic ideals, 57; Eastern Seaboard, 275n46; identities and, 9; land and water policies, 68, 79, 300n86; Los Angeles claimed by, 2; the South, 57; Southwest, 18, 254, 272n26, 275n46, 276n47; urban north, 276n49 use vs. private ownership, 64, 83 vagrancy: cholos and, 41, 65; Indians and, 39, 51, 70, 79, 92, 110, 206, 296n45; labor and, 41, 51, 88; municipal government and, 79; racialization and, 92, 108–9 Vagrancy Act of 1855 (Greaser Act), 108–9 del Valle, Ygnacio and adobe, 31f, 78, 119, 130, 138 Vallejo, Mariano Guadalupe, 72, 271n24, 277n52, 295n38

359

vaqueros, 26 Varela, Serbulo, 2–3, 66 vecinos: ban on recreational activities, 118; californios and, 54; education and, 138; extralegal justice against, 193; indios and, 50; intermarriage, 56; justice and, 49; land and, 45, 46, 51, 106, 171; law and, 50; printing in Spanish and, 118; public policy and, 51–52; racialization and, 9, 11, 171; ranchería destruction and, 69, 297n48; social status of, 40, 285n53; Sonoratown and, 139, 140–41; Vagrancy Act and, 108; voting and, 45, 109; water and, 117, 157, 168. See also gente de/sin razón; Mexican Californians vigilantism. See extralegal justice (vigilantism) and lynchings Vignes, John Louis, 60 Villa, María del Rosario, 63, 294n31 violence: anti-Chinese, 190, 191, 211, 231, 233, 234, 323n55; Calle de los Negros and, 139; centrality of, 18; Chinese, 188; enforcement of laws and, 79; Fernandino friars and, 24; Foster and, 10; founding period and, 32, 35; against Indians, 88, 190, 302n108, 322n51; interculture and, 92; New Mexico and, 55; Nirenburg on, 322n52; poor people and, 75; public policy and, 51; racialization and, 20, 39, 92; rancherías and, 70; recruitment of families and, 52; Star on, 312n12; statistics (1850s), 88, 301n99; against women, 50. See also anti-Chinese massacre; extralegal justice (vigilantism) and lynchings Waite, James, 100 Waldrep, Christopher, 97, 302n108, 303n9, 323n57 ward system, 179–81, 191, 197–98, 199, 200, 201, 207, 247

360

Index

warehouses, 61–62, 142 Washington’s Birthday parties, 75, 302n108 water: agrarian vs. capitalist states and, 298n72; blue-ribbon commission on, 160; California state law and, 318nn17, 19, and 20; civic ideals and, 64, 79, 113–15, 116–17, 137, 155–58, 160–67, 170–71, 174–75; domestic drinking water distribution projects, 147–49, 155–56, 160, 162–63, 176–78, 221, 289n83, 316n70; drinking water, laundry and, 81; Dryden and, 146–49, 313n31; education and, 299n72; European Americans and, 165; finances and, 159–60, 166; floods and, 168, 173–74; S. Foster on, 119; Thomas Foster on, 110, 111; founding period and, 26, 27–28, 175; government and, 113–14; ideology and, 162–63; Indians and, 50; interculture and, 81, 91, 117, 162–63, 173–78, 255; land and, 152; Mexican Californians and, 131, 163–65, 172; municipal government and public policy and, 47–48, 115, 116, 118, 149, 152–57, 174–79, 221–22, 299n77, 307n59, 314n47; ordinance (of 1856), 116–18, 307n59; ordinance requiring purchase of, 222; power, 114, 117; racialization and, 117, 163–65, 174, 176–77; rights and, 174–75, 318n17, 319n20; separation of irrigation and wastewater, 221–22; space and, 21; vecinos and, 51. See also commodification of water; fees and taxes; floods; infrastructure; irrigation; Los Angeles River; water, communal ethos and; waterworks water, communal ethos and: agrarian states and, 299n72; commodification of water and, 174–75, 177, 222, 318n17; Eddy v. Simpson and,

319n20; hygiene versus, 330n62; Mellus and Scott and, 113–14; Spanish and Mexican periods and, 79; U.S. immigrants and, 64. See also irrigation Water Committee, 113, 147, 152, 155–56, 166, 316nn64 and 70, 317n71 water overseers. See zanjeros water pump, 163, 164f waterwheels, 148f, 154, 157, 167, 168, 175–76, 316n70, 317n70 waterworks, 163–64, 168, 176–77. See also Dryden, William G. Wheeler, Henry Z., 110, 115–16, 307n46 Wheeler, John Ozias, 97–99, 303n11 White, Michael (Miguel Blanco), 66 whites and whiteness: anti-Chinese massacre and, 194; Brown and, 303n8; California State Constitutional Convention and, 72–74; californios as, 291n8; Chinese and, 329n48; citizenship and, 127; defined, 272n27; economic factors, 57; European Americans and, 91; fluidity of category, 8, 9, 15; Indians and, 284n50; infrastructure and, 240, 249; Mexican Californians and, 59; minstrel shows and, 328n31; party politics and, 129; power and, 16; racialization and, 252, 258; suffrage and, 297n56; travel writers and, 20. See also racialization Whitman, George, 113, 133–34, 154 Williams, Isaac, 60, 61, 66, 130 Wilson, Benjamin Davis (Don Benito), 199, 293n22, 313n29; background and career of, 55–56, 60, 291n2; communal ethos and, 64; elected to office, 62, 78; Mexican Californians and, 127; U.S. occupation and, 66; vigilantism and, 89, 125 Wing, Ah, 182, 195 Wing Chung store, 182, 183, 184, 195

Index Wolfskill, William, 56, 60, 64, 156, 160 Wolfskill family, 169 women and gender: californianas, 38; Chinese, 184; Chinese celebrations and, 219; commercial enterprises and, 313n22; Evening Journal on, 104; histories and, 17; immigrants, 25; Indian, 24–25, 38–39, 50, 51, 52, 103, 106, 283n39, 329n45; lack of women, 24; land and, 37, 45, 46–47, 87, 153; municipal government and public policy and, 49–51, 52, 280n10, 315n50; racialization and, 283n39; Scott on, 272n30; Spanish settlers and, 280n4; United States and, 18. See also families; intermarriage; male behavior and patriarchy working classes. See labor Workman, William, 55, 64 Workman Bros., 313n27 World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893), 3–4, 261, 264, 270n15 Worster, Donald, 114, 162, 298n72 “Yankees,” 58, 272n27. See also European Americans Yorba, Bernardo and Ramona, 55 Yorba, José Antonio, 301n101

361

Yuen, Sam, 182, 183, 184–85, 187, 188, 195, 323n59 Yuma Indians, 3, 262–63, 270n12 Zanja Madre (Main Zanja), 47–48, 148–49, 154, 159, 167, 174, 176, 255, 307n58 zanjas: commercialization and, 152–53; Eaton’s project and, 155–56; floods and, 168, 170; founding period, 27, 289n83; Keller’s mill and, 156–57; McLaughlin’s project and, 131; Mellus and Scott and, 113, 114, 119; Morris Brothers and Prager and, 317n71; pipes and, 221, 222; private property and, 314n42, 315n49, 316n57; sewers and, 220–21. See also irrigation zanjeros: Aguilar as, 177, 202, 319n29; commodification of water and, 113, 156, 176; duties of, 80; house of, 317n70; informality of, 81; McLaughlin’s foundry and, 156; private property and, 314n42; role and history, 48, 80, 82, 330n61; salary of, 82, 117, 230n61 Zaragosa Restaurant, 204 Zesch, Scott, 320n36, 321n47, 323n58, 324n64