Receiving these instructions, Colonel Richard B. Mason, who became military governor upon General Kearny’s departure, made his own attempt at clarification. “This is a military government,” he declared, responsible only for such duties “as are necessary to the full enjoyment of the advantages resulting from the conquest, and to the due protection of the rights of persons and of property of the inhabitants.” The war with Mexico dragged on, and the situation in California remained volatile. The inhabitants “dislike the change of flags,” Mason reported to Washington, and Californios in the Los Angeles district “would rise immediately if it were possible for Mexico to send even a small force into the country.” He expressed confidence that the United States would ultimately prevail, but until the war was concluded, military rule of the Californios would remain his principal assignment. “Nothing keeps them quiet but the want of a proper leader and a rallying-point,” Mason wrote. “We must keep up a show of troops, however small in numbers.”
Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson of the New York Regiment of Volunteers was sent to command the garrison in Los Angeles. The Mormons departed at the end of the year of service to which they had agreed, but that left Stevenson with nearly four hundred men—two companies of New York volunteers and another of dragoons. A big man, with a square face and a jutting jaw, Stevenson presented himself as a hard but fair ruler. Shortly after he arrived, he called together a group of Angeleno leaders to announce his intentions. As long as they “preserved a quiet and peaceful deportment,” Stevenson said, he would “protect them in all their rights and property.” Their municipal institutions—alcalde and ayuntamiento—would continue to function without American interference. But at the first sign of resistance, he warned, he would “treat them as a conquered province under martial law.” He intended to “rely upon their word of honor,” Stevenson said, until the people of Los Angeles gave him cause “to doubt their good faith.”
THE CALIFORNIOS LOVED DANCING. The ordinary fandangos and elite balls often went on well into the early morning hours. Those evenings became the occasion for regular social contact between American enlisted men and officers and Angelenos. “No doubt the Society of Los Pueblanas will in some measure reconcile you to a longer residence in California,” an American officer wrote to army surgeon John S. Griffin, posted in Los Angeles with the dragoons. “War you have tasted of—women and wine are still left to you.”
On the Fourth of July, with the construction of the earthenwork fort atop the hill nearing completion, Stevenson invited Angelenos to a dedication ceremony, to be followed that evening by a gala ball for officers and prominent Californios. The entire garrison paraded up to the fort and assembled around a towering pole as the flag was raised and the regimental band played “The Star Spangled Banner.” Stevenson gave an interminable speech, dedicating the fort in honor of Captain Benjamin Moore, killed at San Pasqual, followed by ceremonial readings of the Declaration of Independence in both English and Spanish. Stevenson reported only one problem: “no Californians came.” He had wanted the event to be an occasion for reconciliation, yet seemed oblivious to the contradiction of holding it on an American patriotic holiday. The Angelenos would obey Stevenson’s command to remain peaceful and orderly, but that did not mean they would participate in this American ritual. “It is very evident from the state of feeling,” Stevenson wrote, “that we shall have as much as we can do with our small force . . . to keep possession of this post.”
The ball that evening got off to a bad start when Angelenos arrived to find the hall decked with the symbols of American nationalism, including the same large flag hoisted on the hill that morning. In attendance was José Antonio Carrillo, the outspoken squadron commander who had humiliated the Americans at the Battle of Rancho San Pedro, and throughout the evening he kept up a running commentary on the boorishness of his American hosts. At midnight a jury of American officers announced a competition to select the “belle of the evening,” and after all the women had promenaded they chose beautiful María Guadalupe Zamorano, the fourteen-year-old sister of María Dolores Francesca Zamorano de Flores, wife of the exiled former commandante of the uprising, José María Flores. A number of Angelenos claimed to be insulted. Carrillo took particular offense at the competition among American officers for a chance to dance with the young woman. At one point she was escorted to the dance floor by Captain Jefferson Hunt, a grizzled Mormon at least three times her age. Hunt proved himself especially clumsy at the waltz, and Carrillo remarked scornfully that he “danced like a bear.”
That comment circulated quickly among all the American officers, and when Hunt caught word of it the next morning, he declared that Carrillo must either apologize or provide him with satisfaction. “When this was communicated to me,” Stevenson later reported, “I considered it a very good opportunity to let the turbulent spirits know that they were understood.” Carrillo was “a great knave, and undoubtedly one of the shrewdest men in California,” commanding “great influence with the lower order of his countrymen,” so Stevenson instructed Stephen Foster, principal translator for the Americans, to go to him with a demand that he make a public apology at a special meeting of American officers and prominent Angelenos called for later that day. Foster approached Carrillo with trepidation, but Don José received him graciously and without a moment’s hesitation agreed to attend and deliver the apology. “When a man was convinced he was wrong,” he told Foster, “he ought to take back what he said.” He had given the matter a great deal of thought and had concluded that his comparison was “unfair to the bear, the better dancer of the two.” Not daring to challenge Carrillo, Foster merely reported to Stevenson that Don José had agreed to attend and hoped for the best.
Americans and Angelenos began assembling around noon at the home of vineyardist Nathaniel Pryor, where the meeting was being held. Pryor set out an ample selection of his wines, and plenty had been consumed by the time Carrillo arrived. Stevenson embarked on another windy speech, reminding the Californios that his mission was to retain possession of the country, that he was attempting to do that by promoting peace and harmony, and that he would not tolerate conduct promoting conflict. Carrillo was then introduced, but as he began to speak he was rudely interrupted by Captain Hunt, deep in his cups. It was outrageous, Hunt declared, that he and his fellow officers should be forced to suffer the insults of “an unregenerate Mexican with the blood of Americans still red on his hands.” The room erupted in pandemonium. Carrillo left in a huff, remarking to Foster on his way out, “sus paisanos son un atajo de pendejos y borrachos”—your countrymen are a bunch of idiots and drunks. It was for the best, Foster concluded, for “if Carrillo had continued speaking, I am sure that he would have made the same remarks that he did to me, and there would have been the devil to pay.”
WHILE THE ELITE attended the officers’ ball, ordinary Angelenos and common soldiers celebrated at a fandango sponsored by American enlisted men. In the early morning hours of July 5, as several American soldiers made their way home from the event, they literally stumbled over the body of a man lying dead in the dusty street. It was Julien Bartolet, a young Frenchman employed as a cooper at one of the vineyards, killed by a blow that smashed his head like a pumpkin. Alcalde José Salazar opened an investigation. Bartolet had left the fandango in the company of a Californio and several American soldiers. One of the Americans had been seen arguing with Bartolet in a dark alley, but his fellow soldiers provided him with an alibi. There Salazar’s investigation stalled.
Excluding the American occupation force, the French made up the largest group of foreign born in Los Angeles, providing the skilled labor required in winemaking. During the fighting in 1846 most of them remained neutral and attempted to maintain good relations with both Californios and Americans. With no indictment or any prospect of one, a group of French residents petitioned Colonel Stevenson, asking that he press Alcalde Salazar “to act with all rigor and formality prescribed by the laws of the courts in the prosecution of so impo
rtant a case.” Stevenson summoned the alcalde and ordered him to arrest the Californio who had gone off with Bartolet that night, which Salazar refused to do. The investigation quickly became mired in mutual suspicion. Criminal violence was common in Los Angeles, John Griffin noted, and “the worst of it is, there seems to be no means of finding out who are the authors of the crimes.” Local officials, he thought, were quick to place the blame on Americans. “So long as the alcaldes supposed that it was a dragoon who committed the murder, they were excessively energetic—but the evidence being clear that the man was not guilty, no further prosecution was had in the case.”
RATHER THAN BRINGING Americans and Californios together, as Stevenson intended, the celebrations on the Fourth had led to further estrangement. A few days afterward, Angelenos commenced the celebration of their own traditional summer festival. The Americans were invited to attend, but fearing violence Stevenson ordered them confined to quarters at Fort Moore. From their perch atop the hill, the men watched as Angelenos indulged in several days of feasting, dancing, and bullfighting. They fumed when they saw Andrés Pico and other former officers of las fuerzas nacionales parade through the Plaza in their military finery, including the very lances they had carried into battle at San Pasqual. “I have a guard of about twenty volunteers and ten dragoons on the heights with two pieces of artillery,” Lieutenant John McHenry Hollingsworth noted in his journal, “ready for a fight at any time the Californians want it.”
Throughout that summer and into the fall there were continual rumors of insurrection and invasion. Soldiers on patrol frequently overheard Angeleno women chanting a little ditty en español, very likely aimed at raising American anxiety:
Poco tiempo
Viene Castro
Con mucho gente.
Vamos Americanos.
In a little while
Castro will come
With many people.
Goodbye Americans.
There was never any chance of that. Neither José Antonio Castro nor Pío Pico, the exiled leaders of the department of California, had the least success in getting a hearing for their cause in Mexico. Rather, the taunt signaled the deteriorating relationship between Angelenos and the occupiers. By the late autumn of 1847, things had grown so tense that Stevenson issued a curfew order, confining his men to barracks after eight o’clock each evening. There would be no more fandangos, no more fraternizing in the cantinas. “Everything is quiet,” Lieutenant Hollingsworth noted in early December, “though I think that the country is in a very unsettled state.”
On December 6, the anniversary of the Battle of San Pasqual, an argument between Americans and Californios on the Plaza turned violent, and several men were injured, though none seriously. The next morning Stevenson received intelligence—faulty intelligence, it turned out—that Angelenos were planning a general uprising for that night. He doubled the guard and ordered his whole force to be on the alert. “As night came on,” wrote Hollingsworth, “I could not but feel anxious.” At midnight he armed himself and accompanied by another officer took several turns about the Plaza. Everything appeared normal, so they returned to the fort and retired to bed. About an hour later Hollingsworth was jolted awoke by a powerful explosion that rocked the entire pueblo like an earthquake. The guardhouse had been blown to bits, and after investigation an explanation was pieced together. A nervous sentry had challenged what he thought was an approaching horseman—in fact a wandering cow—and receiving no reply, fired blindly into the night. The guard formed to repel the attack, the call to arms sounded, and in the subsequent excitement a soldier accidentally dropped a lighted match into an open chest of ammunition, touching off the blast. Four Americans were killed, and ten or twelve badly wounded. The explosion “cast a gloom over us all,” wrote Hollingsworth, but “the Californians are much delighted at our misfortune.”
That accident, the product of suspicion and mistrust, was the most important event to take place at Fort Moore. The construction of a cannonaded fortification on the hill, conceived as protection for the Mormon Battalion against Frémont’s rifleros, was in truth an unfortunate mistake. As Archibald Gillespie and his men discovered in 1846, the hill was impossible to hold for the simple reason that there was no water there. At the conclusion of the military occupation of Los Angeles, Fort Moore would be abandoned.
TEN DAYS AFTER THE EXPLOSION Angelenos held their annual election for new municipal officers, resulting in the selection of José Loreto Sepúlveda and Ygnacio Palomares as alcalde and assistant alcalde, respectively. Both men were rancheros with long records of public service. But Stevenson considered them incorrigible rebels, men of “the worst class,” as he wrote to Governor Mason, elected solely because of their opposition to American rule. With Mason’s compliance, Stevenson nullifed the election. The entire ayuntamiento resigned in protest. Mason appointed official translator Stephen Foster alcalde pro tempore, and he was installed in an improvised ceremony during which he swore “to administer justice in accordance with Mexican law.” That was going to be difficult, Foster later wrote, since “I then knew as much about Mexican law as I did about Chinese.”
But he proved a quick study, served well not only by his fluency in Spanish but also his native talent for diplomacy. He also raised his credibility with elite Angelenos by marrying María Merced Lugo, the widowed daughter of wealthy ranchero Antonio María Lugo. Foster’s legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Angelenos, however, came none too readily. In December 1848, after serving a full year, he announced another election for municipal officers. “But no attention was paid to my proclamation,” he later recalled, “so I was directed to continue as alcalde until the people were willing to act.” He would continue to serve until the final departure of American military forces from the pueblo.
During the occupation, which ran from January 1847 to May 1849, nine murders were recorded in the Los Angeles district. Six of the victims were Indians, four of them killed by Californios. In one of those cases a ranchero was accused of murdering a military leader of the Cahuillas, a crime with political implications. The mangled body of Captain Yerbabuena, with several gaping wounds and a knife still lodged in his throat, was found in the foothills near Mission San Gabriel in April 1847. A young Indian woman named Acahual reported that she and Yerbabuena had been walking together when two Californios approached them on horseback. Acahual hid in the chaparral and watched as the Californios confronted her friend, accusing him of supporting the Americans during the late war. No, Yerbabuena replied, “yo establa con los Californios”—I was with the Californios. The Cahuillas, known for their fierce loyalty to the Lugo family of Rancho San Bernardino, had joined José del Cármen Lugo in attacking and massacring the pro-American Luiseños at Temecula. Yerbabuena was a Cahuilla “captain,” so the charge these Californios made against him was scarcely credible. But the men were angry and had no intention of arguing the point. Acahual saw one of them lasso Yerbabuena and drag him away. After considerable investigation the alcalde ordered the arrest of Felipe Ballesteros, brother of the Californio killed during the fighting at Chino. Young Ballesteros denied having anything to do with the murder, although Acahual positively identified him as one of the attackers. The alcalde found Ballesteros guilty, but ordered his release on bond while the verdict was appealed. And there the record falls silent.
With Foster as alcalde and thus judge, American procedure began to slip into Mexican legal process. In September 1848 Pedro Pacheco was indicted for the murder of José María Machado. According to Pacheco, the conflict between them began with a dispute over a card game at Negro Manuel’s tavern. Machado called Pacheco a “motherfucker” and other epithets that, in Pacheco’s words, “naturally provoked a response.” They began to fight but were separated by bystanders. Later, as Pacheco rode down the street, Machado struck him with a club, knocking him from the saddle. Pacheco picked himself up, charged Machado, and thrust a knife into his side, inflicting a mortal wound. He claimed self-defense. The prosecutor argu
ed that he had armed himself, evidence of malice aforethought, but Pacheco, representing himself, countered that he always carried a knife, which he used in his trade as a cobbler. This was one of the first criminal trials in Los Angeles to proceed according to the adversarial model of the common law, with prosecutor, defense attorney, and a jury of “six legal and impartial neighbors.” They found Pacheco not guilty. The case marked a transition in the legal administration of justice in Los Angeles.
THE NEWS OF THE DISCOVERY of gold in the Sierra Nevada reached Los Angeles in late March or early April of 1848, and within weeks Angelenos were leaving for the north in droves. Stevenson had enormous difficulty holding on to his soldiers. They were “deserting rapidly,” Lieutenant Hollingsworth wrote in July. “There is great excitement among the men—we much fear that many more will go.” By that time, the summer of 1848, the fighting in Mexico had ended and a treaty negotiated ceding California and New Mexico. Word of ratification by the respective governments of the United States and Mexico was expected at any time. “The gold fever is raging now and there is a great disposition to desert among the men and much dissatisfaction,” Hollingsworth wrote in early August. “The news of the peace has made the men the more impatient to be discharged.”
A few days later Governor Mason received official word of the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. “Americans and Californians will now be one and the same people,” he proclaimed optimistically, “subject to the same laws, and enjoying the same rights and privileges.” There would be “a new order, . . . a firm and stable government, administering justice with impartiality, and punishing crime with the strong arm of the law.” This was little more than wishful thinking. In fact, the end of the war placed Governor Mason in an impossible position. The New York volunteers, who had enlisted for the duration, now clamored to be discharged, and rather than risk mutiny, Mason took steps for their orderly release.
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