Eternity Street

by John Mack Faragher

  Posting several men to stand watch until the wagons and coffins arrived from the pueblo, Getman directed the rest of his men on toward San Juan. Spying a group of riders on the ridge of a nearby hill, he led a charge on their position, but the mounted men vanished. Unprepared for an extended chase through the chaparral, Getman and his posse moved on to San Juan. While the men refreshed themselves in the grogshops, Getman went to John Forster to learn what he could. Forster was unimpressed. “I am sadly afraid they will do no good,” he reported to a correspondent, “on account of their apparent disorderly arrangement.” The Manillas remained in the general area, Forester believed, but capturing them would require a force with considerably more discipline. He was right. After several days spent chasing shadows, Getman led his men back to the pueblo. “His party returned having accomplished nothing,” noted schoolteacher William Wallace. “They came in sight of the robbers once, but they would not attack them until they had had their coffee!”

  The bodies of Barton and his men were brought back to Los Angeles on Sunday, and the funeral took place the following morning. An elaborate procession wound through city streets and up cañada de los muertos to the American graveyard on Gallows Hill. None of the victims were Catholic, and there wasn’t a single Protestant clergyman in Los Angeles, so there would be no religious service. Barton and Little had been members of the Masonic order, and their brother Masons conducted a short ceremony beside the graves, including Baker and Daley in the ritual as a matter of courtesy. Henry Barrows found the occasion disheartening. “We poor Americans in Los Angeles,” he wrote, “are liable to die, as many of us have lived, as though there were no God.”

  The thoughts of most Anglos were far from God. “There is a call for blood revenge,” wrote Wallace. “No demand is made for sheriffs or constables—the only demand is for rifles and pistols.” The Star published a poem calling for action, written by a fifteen-year-old Los Angeles schoolgirl named Josephine Donna Smith.

  Parents, brothers and sisters will mourn for the lost,

  For, alas, they can never regain them,

  And in heart-breaking sorrow will pray to their God

  For revenge on the ones who have slain them.

  Aye, revenge on their murderers! Is there no true man,

  Not one, to act as the avenger

  Of the four noble beings who lost their own lives

  In defending this people from danger?

  Go, seek for the inhuman, ruffianly horde,

  Nor strive, as ye do, to avoid them,

  Go forth in the names of the brave men they’ve killed,

  And rest not until you’ve destroyed them.

  And they, who are sleeping in death’s cold embrace,

  Time can n’er from our memory estrange them;

  Then, O! while the sod is yet damp on their graves,

  Go forth, in God’s name, and avenge them.

  Marshal Getman had learned from John Forster that most of the Manillas were Californios, one of them an Angeleno. That was Antonio María Varela, known as Chino (Curley), the sixteen-year-old son of Sérbulo Varela. Some months earlier young Varela had gone on record, complaining that he “could not stand to live under American rule.” If the son of a man so widely admired by Americans had turned outlaw, what did that say about Californios in general? Anglos began to suspect that many were in cahoots with the Manillas. Californio leaders understood the importance of proving them wrong, as Francisco Ramírez did in an editorial addressed to his fellow hijos del país. “We are bound by indissoluble ties with the Americans,” he wrote, and “now is the time to prove that we are loyal to the homeland, that we are good citizens, and like everyone else we desire public peace and the welfare of our families.”

  Californios! We know that this gang of thieves is without principle, without mercy, without religion, stealing and killing everyone they encounter. They steal from both the Americano and the Californio, they target both the French and the Jew! . . . We are sure none of our good citizens harbor the slightest sympathy with them. Put aside any animosity, forget the misfortunes of the past, and think only of the future of our families!

  Motivated by such sentiments, Andrés Pico organized a mounted company of fifty-one lanceros, and on Monday afternoon, at the conclusion of the funeral, he led them out of the pueblo, toward San Juan. The Californios would bring the Manillas to justice.

  “IN THE MATTER of the Estate of James R. Barton.” The notice of probate, naming Barton’s brother-in-law John Reed as executor of the estate, appeared in the Star in late January. “Since his death,” the paper noted, “we find that all Mr. Barton’s property has been left to his eldest son.” That would be José Santiago Barton, his only son, the child of María del Espiritu Santo. Like so many other individuals of Indian ancestry, the mother disappeared from the record and her ultimate fate is unknown. But when the federal census enumerator made his rounds in 1860, he found the son, not once but twice: listed first as “James Barton,” living at Rancho La Puente with John Reed and his wife, Nieves Rowland Reed, a couple the boy surely considered his aunt and uncle; then as “José Santiago Barton,” living in the pueblo at the home of Bailio and María Jurado, in a neighborhood of Californio, Mexican, and Indian families. Perhaps young Barton’s dual residency—like the Spanish and English versions of his name—was an aspect of his mixed parentage. In 1870, at the age of sixteen, he enrolled as a student at St. Vincent’s, a Catholic high school in the center of the pueblo.

  Five years later, turning twenty-one, he registered to vote under his legal name, José Santiago Barton. But an adult life was not something he would be granted. The following year he died of unknown causes at the tender age of twenty-two. He may have been suffering from a chronic disease, for he seems to have anticipated an early passing in a last will and testament he signed some months before his death: “This is to show that if anything should happen to me, and I should fail suddenly, I, the undersigned, will all my property to William and Joseph Perdue, brothers.” They were the children of William Perdue, who came to California with James Barton in 1842 and married another of the Rowland daughters. With the son’s death, his father’s estate was finally liquidated. Put up for sale in 1878, Barton Ranch was described as a bountiful property that included a orchard of mature English walnut trees producing large crops of excellent nuts that fetched top dollar in the San Francisco market.

  •

  CHAPTER 22 •

  THE CRIME MUST BE AVENGED

  WITHIN HOURS of Sheriff Barton’s death, self-appointed groups of vigilantes began patrolling the county’s roads in search of the perpetrators. One was led by William B. Osburn, who had served for years as Barton’s undersheriff and was his close personal friend. “When the word came,” Osburn’s eldest son later recalled, “my father was greatly disturbed.” He packed a bag and told the boy to saddle his favorite horse. “I am going away and may never come back again,” he said. “The crime must be avenged.”

  Osburn had known Barton since his arrival in Los Angeles as a hospital steward attached to the New York Regiment of Volunteers. Osburn was older than the typical volunteer, and he brought along two of his three children, boys aged ten and six. His youngest son he left behind with his wife in upstate New York. There was surely a complicated backstory there, which must remain untold in the absence of evidence, but it would appear to be the tale of a man looking to start his life over, for at war’s end Osburn remained in Los Angeles with his two sons. There is no record that he ever divorced his wife in New York, yet he soon married a Mexican woman in Los Angeles, who became stepmother to the boys. With no training other than his wartime experience, he advertised himself as “Dr. Osburn,” and Angelenos accorded him the respect due a regular physician. In addition to practicing medicine and acting as undersheriff, Osburn served a term as justice of the peace and was the pueblo’s first postmaster. He was credited with a number of other “firsts,” like teaching the first English common school and opening the first pho
tography studio, which made him a favorite subject of antiquarians. He and Barton served as officers in a local temperance organization and went into business together drilling for artesian wells. After Barton declined to run for reelection, Osburn relocated to San Gabriel, where he purchased two hundred acres and opened the county’s first commercial nursery, raising and marketing the first ornamental roses cultivated in southern California. He was elected to serve as a justice of the peace. Benjamin Hayes described Osburn as a “most useful man.” He was also a well-practiced vigilante, although local historians said little or nothing about that.

  On the morning of January 29, 1857, some days after Barton’s death, Osburn and a party of Americans were patrolling the roads not far from Mission San Gabriel when they came upon two mounted men who roused their suspicions. When confronted, the pair sped off at a gallop, the Americans in hot pursuit. In a running gunfight one of the men, a Mexican later identified as José Santos, received a mortal wound. The other, a Californio named Miguel Soto, jumped from his horse and plunged into a ciénega, or marsh, attempting to hide among the tules. The Americans burned him out, and one of the King brothers from the Monte brought him down with a rifle shot. The body was dragged out, and a quick search of the man’s pockets produced a Masonic ring thought to belong to Sheriff Barton.

  The Americans—ten or fifteen men from San Gabriel and the Monte—reacted like angry wasps from a disturbed nest. Assuming that Santos and Soto were somehow connected with the local Californio community, they swarmed through the neighborhood surrounding the mission, rousting residents from their homes and driving them at gunpoint to a small plaza in front of the mission, where they were forced to witness a terrifying spectacle orchestrated by William Osburn. The body of one of the dead men was brought up in a carreta and dumped on the ground. An eyewitness described what happened next. Osburn “came forward, knife in hand, rolled up his sleeves, and with one hand took the dead man’s head by its long hair, cut it from the body, and tossed it aside; thrust his dagger into the heart of the corpse, then kicked the head into the midst of the crowd as they shouted and cheered.” Hilliard P. Dorsey, another resident of San Gabriel and register of the U.S. Land Office, then stepped forward and did the same with his own knife, followed by several other Americans. In the words of a further witness, they acted “with a brutality rarely seen among barbarians.” Savagery and sadism inevitably accompanied mob law, and would recur for as long as vigilantism was tolerated.

  But the vigilantes were just getting started. During their rampage through the village, they had seized three young Californios—Juan Valenzuela, Pedro López, and Diego Navarro—on suspicion of aiding and assisting the two dead men. In the Star, editor Henry Hamilton reported that “a number of arrests were made at the time by the people, who afterwards organized a court, tried the prisoners, and sentenced them to be hung.” In El Clamor Público, Francisco Ramírez told a different story. The Americans, he reported, “threw themselves on a few miserable victims, like voracious lions with unchecked appetites.” As residents watched in horror, the three men, their hands bound behind their backs, were wrestled to the center of the plaza. “All this was happening before our eyes,” said one Californio. “We could not imagine that they would hang those poor men so suddenly, without a formal trial and no evidence of their crime.” There was only Osburn’s call to the mob—“all in favor of hanging the prisoners will hold up their hands”—and shouts of “Death! Death!” from the Americans. Osburn distributed ropes, nooses were tied and placed around the necks of the three men, and they were pulled up from the branches of an overspreading oak. The hanging proved a messy business. The legs of the victims were not bound, and their bodies convulsed violently as they strangled to death. A rope snapped, and one of the men crashed to the ground, the noose still around his neck. His wife rushed to his side as vigilantes finished him off with their pistols.

  José Santos, the man who died in the running gunfight, was later confirmed as one of the Manillas. His associate, Miguel Soto, in whose pocket the vigilantes found Barton’s ring, was apparently not affiliated with the gang, although he had a long criminal record. No evidence, however, connected either of them to the three men hanged in front of the mission. Henry Hamilton, generally uncomfortable with vigilantism, nevertheless defended the justice of the San Gabriel lynching on general grounds. Juan Valenzuela, he wrote, was “an old offender” with a record of many robberies, Pedro López a thief, “never known to work,” and Diego Navarro “a man of general bad character, and dangerous to be permitted to live in any peaceable community.” Ramírez responded to Hamilton’s wretched argument with righteous indignation. Ad hominem attack did not change the facts. The three Californios had been murdered by an American mob. He insisted the county grand jury take up the matter. “Nothing less than a complete and impartial investigation will satisfy the public mind,” he wrote. But there is no indication that there was an official investigation of any kind.

  Michael White, an English immigrant in his midfifties and a longtime resident of San Gabriel, witnessed the entire episode. He tried to stop the killing before it started, insisting that the man hiding in the ciénega be captured alive in order that he be interrogated. White was also among a small group of Anglos who attempted to prevent the lynchings, but were pushed aside. “We will not forget their noble conduct,” wrote Ramírez. During the late war, White had been among the Anglos captured at Rancho Santa Ana del Chino and imprisoned for several months by the Californios. He understood the emotional necessity of revenge. But he could not comprehend why those three Californios in particular had been hanged. He had known them since they were boys, and whatever their faults he was certain they had nothing to do with the Manillas. Later that afternoon, standing over their bodies, he asked an old friend why they had been singled out. He didn’t know, the man admitted. “Neither did I,” White later recalled, “except that I was convinced that they were killed because they were Spanish and their murderers willed it.”

  WILLIAM WALLACE was teaching the boys’ class at the schoolhouse in Los Angeles when a friend rushed in with a report of the violence at San Gabriel. “I had to adjourn immediately,” Wallace wrote in a dispatch to the Daily Alta California of San Francisco, “for in these times, when everybody is so bloodthirsty, I can’t bear to be locked up.” He found the streets thronged with excited men, predominantly Anglos. There were few Californios and Mexicans to be seen, something quite unusual. Wallace wholeheartedly approved of the San Gabriel lynchings—“Osburn was judge, and his conduct of the cases was characteristic and satisfactory”—but he wondered where the retribution for the deaths of Barton and the three members of his posse would end. “There is not dark blood enough in all California to pay for the four murdered men. God grant that in this crusade against crime we do not prove ourselves devils.” Wallace soon heard a second report—“that the natives of the mission were to join the natives of the pueblo and ravage and murder indiscriminately.” He did not quite believe it, but the rumor kept popping up, embellished with new particulars in each successive telling—that a large number of Mexicans and Californios had already left San Gabriel, marching for the pueblo; that the residents of Sonoratown, north of the Plaza, were stockpiling arms; that their leaders had vowed to wipe out all gringos. Fear of retribution by defeated natives is the worst nightmare of colonizers. Vengeance breeds fear, and fear provokes the need for further vengeance.

  Early that evening, at a torchlight meeting held on the street before Montgomery House, Anglo residents organized what they called, in a reference to the American Revolution, a “Committee of Safety.” To lead it they appointed Dr. John S. Griffin, the hardheaded surgeon who had come to southern California with General Kearny’s dragoons. Retiring from military service after the war, Griffin settled in Los Angeles, where he established a medical practice and eventually married Louisa Hayes, sister of Judge Hayes, who taught the girls’ classes at the pueblo’s single public school. Despite being Hayes’s brothe
r-in-law, Griffin was an enthusiastic vigilante, and as the pueblo’s newly appointed commandant he turned security over to several Anglo volunteer companies, tasking them with establishing a defensive perimeter on the city’s eastern outskirts. The watch for the invading army from San Gabriel was kept up all night with no sign of an attack. “There was really more danger from friends than enemies,” wrote Wallace, “from careless shooting.”

  Fear of an attack faded with the sunrise, and Griffin turned his attention to the supposed enemy within, ordering his men to surround Sonoratown and block every avenue of escape, after which Marshal Getman conducted a sweep of the neighborhood. “He entered each house,” Wallace reported, “and as he found a villain, quietly tapped him on the shoulder and motioned to the guard, who silently marched him off to jail.” How Getman distinguished villains from ordinary villagers, Wallace didn’t say, but by the end of the day the county jail was crowded with several dozen men. According to Ramírez, most of them “were there simply for being poor and friendless.”