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The Little Lady of Lagunitas

R >> Richard Henry Savage >> The Little Lady of Lagunitas




Don Miguel warns the padre that the rude "bear flag" of the revolted
foreigners victoriously floats at Sonoma. It was raised on July
4, 1846. Castro and Pio Pico are driven away from the coast. They
only hold the Santa Clara valley and the interior. There is but
one depot of arms in the country now; it is a hidden store at San
Juan. Far away in Illinois, a near relative of the painter and
hoister of the "bear flag" is a struggling lawyer. Todd's obscure
boyhood friend, Abraham Lincoln, is destined to be the martyr
ruler of the United States. A new star will shine in the stars and
stripes for California, in a bloody civil war, far off yet in the
mystic future.

In the narrow theatre where the decaying Latin system is falling,
under Anglo-Saxon self-assertion, the stern logic of events teaches
Don Miguel better lessons. His wild riders may as well sheathe
their useless swords as fight against fate.

The first blood is drawn at Petaluma. A declaration of independence,
rude in form, but grimly effective in scope, is given out by the
"bear flag" party. Fremont joins and commands them. The Presidio
batteries at San Francisco are spiked by Fremont and daring Kit
Carson, The cannon and arms of Castro are soon taken. On July 7,
Captain Mervine, with two hundred and fifty blue-jackets, raises
the flag of the United States at Monterey. Its hills reecho twenty-one
guns in salvo from Sloat's squadron.

On the 8th, Montgomery throws the national starry emblem to the
breeze at the Golden Gates of San Francisco. The old PORTSMOUTH'S
heavy cannon roar their notes of triumph.

Valois remains lonely and inactive at Lagunitas. His priestly
friend warns him that he would be assassinated at any halting place
if he tried to join his friends. In fact, he conceals his presence
from any wayfaring, Yankee-hunting guerillas.

Don Miguel is bound by his military oath to keep the field.
A returning straggler brings the crushing news that the San Juan
military depot has been captured by a smart dash of the American
volunteers under Fremont and Gillespie. And San Diego has fallen
now. The bitter news of the Mexican War is heard from the Rio
Grande. A new sorrow!

Broken-hearted Don Miguel bravely clings to his flag. He marches
south with Castro and Pico, The long weeks wear along. The arrival of
General Kearney, and the occupation of San Diego and Los Angeles,
are the prelude to the last effort made for the honor of the Mexican
ensign. Months drag away. The early winter finds Don Miguel still
missing. Commodore Stockton, now in command of the powerful fleet,
reinforces Fremont and Gillespie. The battles of San Gabriel and
the Mesa teach the wild Californians what bitter foes their invaders
can be. The treaty of Coenga at last ends the unequal strife. The
stars and stripes wave over the yet unmeasured boundaries of the
golden West. The Dons are in the conquerors' hands. After the fatal
day of January 16, 1847, defeated and despairing of the future
of his race, war-worn Miguel Peralta, Commandante no longer, with
a few followers rides over the Tehachape. He descends the San
Joaquin to his imperilled domain.

With useless valor he has thrown himself into the fire of the Americans
at the battles near Los Angeles, but death will not come to him.
He must live to be one of the last Dons. The defeats of Mexico
sadden and embitter him. General Scott is fighting up to the old
palaces of the Montezumas with his ever victorious army.

In these stormy winter days, when the sheeted rain drives down from
the pine-clad Sierras, Donna Juanita day by day turns her passive
face in mute inquiry to the padre. She has the sense of a new burden
to bear. Her narrow nature contracts yet a little with a sense of
wounded native pride.

In all her wedded years her martial lord has always returned in
victory. Fandango and feast, "baile" and rejoicings, have made the
woodland echoes ring.

The growing Dolores mopes in the lonely mansion. She demands her
absent father daily.

Before the troopers of Lagunitas return with their humbled chieftain,
a squad of mounted American volunteers ride up and take possession.
For the first time in its history the foreigner is master here,
Though personally unknown to these mixed revolutionists, Maxime
Valois is free to go in safety.

While he makes acquaintance with his fellow "patriots," the advance
riders of Don Miguel announce his home-coming. It is a sad day
when the Commandante dismounts at his own door. There is a sentinel
there. He lives to be only a sullen, brooding protest in the face
of an accidental progress.

Standing on his porch he can see the "mozos," under requisition,
gathering up his choicest horses by the fifties. They are destined
for the necessary remount of the victors.

After greeting his patient helpmeet, henceforth to be the partner
of his sorrows, he sends for the padre and his major-domo. He takes
on himself the only dignity left to his defeated pride, practical
self-isolation.

He bears in his bosom this rankling thorn--the hated Fremont
he rode out to bring in a captive, is now "His Excellency John C.
Fremont," the first American governor of California.

With his flocks and herds scattered, his cattle and horses under
heavy requisition, his cup is full. He moodily curses the Gringo,
and wishes that the rifle-ball which wounded him at San Gabriel
had reached the core of his proud old heart.

From all sides come fugitives with news of the Americanization of
the towns. The inland communities are reorganized. His only friend
is the Padre, to whose patient ear he confides the story of the
hopeless campaign. With prophetic pessimism he sees the downfall
of the native families.

Three months have made Larkin, Redding, Ide, Sutter, Semple,
Merritt, Bidwell, Leese, and Lassen the leading men of the day. The
victorious military and naval chiefs, Sloat, Stockton, Montgomery,
Fremont, Kearney, Halleck, and Gillespie are now men of history.
All the functions of government are in the hands of American army
or navy officers. The fall of the beloved Mexican banner is as
light and unmarked as the descent of the drifting pine-needles torn
from the swaying branches of the storm-swept forest kings around
him.

His settled gloom casts a shadow over Lagunitas. The padre has lost
his scholars. The converts of the dull Indian tribes have fled to
the hills, leaving the major-domo helpless. All is in domestic
anarchy. At last the volunteers are leaving.

When the detachment is ready to depart, Maxime Valois is puzzled.
The Mexican War raging, prevents his homeward voyage as planned.
It will be months before the war vessels will sail. If allowed to
embark on them, he will be left, after doubling Cape Horn, a stranger
in the north, penniless. Why not stay?

Yet the shelter of Lagunitas is his no more. The maddened Don
will not see an American on the bare lands left to him. His herds
and flocks are levied on to feed the troops.

Many an hour does the youth confer with Fran‡ois Ribaut. The priest
is dependent on his patron. The Church fabric is swept away, for
Church and state went down together. With only one friend in the
State, Valois must now quit his place of enforced idleness.

The meagre news tells him the Fremont party is scattered. He has
no claims on the American Government. But Fremont has blossomed
into a governor. He will seek him. Happily, while Maxime Valois
deliberates, the question decides itself. He is offered the
hospitality of an escort back to Santa Clara, from whence he can
reach Monterey, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. In the new State no
present avenues are open to a castaway. His education is practically
useless. He is forced to consider the question of existence. The
utmost Padre Francisco can do is to provide him horse and gear.
A few Mexican dollars for the road are not lacking. The lot of
fate is drawn for him by necessity. For the present he must be a
Californian. He cannot leave until the future provides the means.

When the vigil of the departure comes, the young man is loath to
leave his friend. In their companionship they have grown dear to
each other.

The camp of the volunteers is ready for the next day's march. At
their last dinner, the simple cheer of the native wine and a few
cigaritos is all the padre can display.

"Maxime, listen. You are young and talented," the padre begins. "I
see a great community growing up here, This is a land of promise.
The termination of the war ends all tumult. Your fleet holds the
coast. Mexico seems to be under the talons of your eagle. Your
nation is aggressive. It is of high mechanical skill. Your people
will pour into this land and build here a great empire. Your
busy Yankees will never be satisfied with the skeleton wealth of a
pastoral life. They will dig, hew, and build. These bays and rivers
will be studded with cities. Go, my dear friend, to Yerba Buena.
I will give you letters to the fathers of the Mission Dolores.
Heaven will direct you after you arrive. You can communicate with
me through them. I shall remain here as long as my charge continues.
If driven out, I shall trust God to safely guide me to France. When I
am worn out, I shall die in peace under the shadows of Notre Dame."

At the hour of mass Maxime kneels to receive the blessing of the
Church.

The volunteers are in the saddle. It is the man, not the priest,
who embraces the freed "pathfinder." Valois' eyes are dim with tears
as he waves the adieu to the missionary. Not a word does Don Miguel
vouchsafe to the departing squad. The aversion of the dwellers in
Lagunitas is as great as their chief's.

Maxime joins the escort on the trail. Runaway sailors, voyageurs,
stray adventurers are they--queer flotsam on the sea of human life.
He learns from them the current stories of the day. He can trace
in the mysterious verbal "order to return," and that never-produced
"packet" given to Fremont by Gillespie, a guiding influence from
afar. The appearance of the strong fleet and the hostilities of
Captain Fremont are mysteriously connected. Was it from Washington
these wonders were worked? As they march, unopposed, over the
alamedas of San Joaquin, bearing toward the Coast Range, they pass
under overhanging Mount Diablo. The Louisianian marvels at the
sudden change of so many peaceful explorers into conquering invaders.
Valois suspects Senator Benton of intrigues toward western conquest.
He knows not that somewhere, diplomatically lost between President
Polk and Secretaries Buchanan, Marcy, and Bancroft, is the true
story of this seizure of California. Gillespie's orders were far in
advance of any Mexican hostilities. The fleet and all the actions
of the State, War, and Navy departments prove that some one in high
place knew the Pacific Coast would be subdued and held.

Was it for slavery's added domains these glorious lands were
destined?

Maxime is only a pawn in that great game of which the annexation
of Texas, the Mexican War, and California conquest are moves.

Wise, subtle, far-seeing, and not over-scrupulous, the leaders of
southern sentiment, with prophetic alarm, were seeking to neutralize
free-State extension in the Northwest. They wished to link the
warmer climes, newly acquired, to the Union by negro chains. Joying
in his freedom, eager to meet the newer phases of Californian life
under the stars and stripes, Valois rides along. Restored in health,
and with the light heart and high hopes of twenty, he threads the
beautiful mountain passes; for the first time he sees the royal
features of San Francisco Bay, locked by the Golden Gates.






BOOK II.

GOLD FOR ALL.--A NEW STAR IN THE FLAG.

CHAPTER V.

THE GOLDEN MAGNET.--FREE OR SLAVE?





Maxine Valois marvels not that the old navigators missed the Golden
Gate. It was easy to pass the land-locked bay, with its arterial
rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin. Fate hung a foggy curtain
on the outside bar. Greenest velvet sward now carpets the Alameda
hills. It is a balmy March day of 1847. The proceeds of his horse
and trappings give the youth less than a hundred dollars--his
whole fortune.

The Louisianian exile, with the world before him, is now a picture
of manly symmetry. Graceful, well-knit physique, dark hair and
eyes, and his soft, impassioned speech, betray the Franco-American
of the Gulf States. While gazing on the glories of Tamalpais and
the wooded mountains of Marin, he notes the little mission under
the Visitacion hills. It's a glorious scene. All the world's navies
can swing at ease in this superb bay. The only banner floating
here is the ensign at the peak of the frigate Portsmouth. Interior
wanderings give him a glimpse of the vast areas controlled by this
noble sheet of water. Young and ardent, with a superior education,
he may be a ruling spirit of the new State now about to crystallize.
His studies prove how strangely the finger of Fortune points. It
turned aside the prows of Captain Cook, La Perouse, Vancouver, and
the great Behring, as well as the bold Drake, who tarried within
a day's sail at his New Albion. Frenchman, Englishman, and Russian
have been tricked by the fairy goddess of the mist. The Golden
Gates in these later days are locked by the Yankees from the inside.

Leaping from the boat, Valois tosses his scanty gear on the strand.
It is a deep, curving bay, in later years to be covered with stately
palaces of commerce, far out to where the Portsmouth now lies.

A few huts make up the city of Yerba Buena. Reflecting on his
status, he dares not seek the alcalde, Lieut. Washington Bartlett
of the navy. From his escort he has heard of the many bickerings
which have involved Sloat, Stockton, Fremont, and Kearney.

Trusting to Padre Francisco's letters, he hires a horse of a
loitering half-breed. This native pilots him to the mission.

The priests receive him with open arms. They are glad for news of
their brother of the Sierras. Maxime installs himself as a guest
of the priests. Some current of life will bear him onward--whither
he knows not.

Idle days run into weeks. A motley five or six hundred whites
have gathered. The alcalde begins to fear that the town limits are
crowded.

None of the wise men of the epoch dare to dream that in less than
three years two hundred vessels will lie tossing, deserted in the
bay; that the cove will be filled with ships from the four corners
of the earth in five years.

Frowning hills and rolling sand dunes are to be thrown bodily into
the reentrant bay. They are future coverings for sunken hulks.
Where for twenty square miles coyote and fox now howl at night,
the covert oaks and brambles will be shaved off to give way to a
city, growing like a cloud-land vision.

Active and energetic, Valois coasts down to Monterey. He finds
Fremont gone, already on his way east. His soldier wrists are bound
with the red tape of arrest. The puppet of master minds behind the
scenes, Fremont has been a "pathfinder" for others.

Riding moodily, chafing in arrest, at the rear of the overland
column, the explorer receives as much as Columbus, Pizarro, or
Maluspina did--only obloquy. It is the Nemesis of disgrace, avenging
the outraged and conquered Californians.

A dark shade of double dealing hangs around the glories of the
capture of California. The methods used are hardly justified, even
by the national blessings of extension to this ocean threshold of
Asian trade. The descent was planned at Washington to extend the
domineering slave empire of the aspiring South. The secret is out.
The way is clear for the surplus blacks of the South to march in
chains to the Pacific under the so-called "flag of freedom."

Valois discovers at Monterey that no man of the staff of the
"Pathfinder" will be made an official pet, They are all proscribed.
The early fall finds him again under the spell of the bells of the
Mission Dolores. Whither to turn he knows not.

Averse to manual labor, like all Creoles, the lad decides to seek
a return passage on some trader. This will be hardly possible for
months. The Christmas chimes of 1848 sound sadly on his ears.

With no home ties but his uncle, his memories of the parents, lost
in youth, fade away. He feels the bitterness of being a stranger in
a strange land. He is discouraged with an isolated western empire
producing nothing but hides and tallow. He shares the general
opinion that no agriculture can succeed in this rainless summer land
of California. Hardly a plough goes afield. On the half-neglected
ranchos the owners of thousands of cattle have neither milk nor
butter. Fruits and vegetables are unattainable. The mission grapes,
olives, and oranges have died out by reason of fourteen years'
neglect. The mechanic arts are absent. What shall the harvest of
this idle land be?

Valois knows the interior Indians will never bear the strain of
development. Lazy and ambitionless, they are incapable of uniting
their tribal forces. Alas for them! They merely cumber the ground.

At the end of January, 1848, a wild commotion agitates the hamlet
of San Francisco. The cry is "Gold! Gold everywhere!" The tidings
are at first whispered, then the tale swells to a loud clamor.
In the stampede for the interior, Maxime Valois is borne away. He
seeks the Sacramento, the Feather, the Yuba, and the American. He
too must have gold.

A general hegira occurs. Incoming ships, little settlements, and
the ranches are all deserted, for a wondrous golden harvest is
being gleaned. The tidings go forth over the whole earth. Sail and
steam, trains of creaking wagons, troops of hardy horsemen, are all
bent Westward Ho! Desertion takes the troops and sailors from camp
and fleet pell-mell to the Sacramento valley. A shabby excrescence
of tent and hut swells Yerba Buena to a town. In a few months
it leaps into a city's rank. Over the prairies, toward the sandy
Humboldt, long emigrant trains are crawling toward the golden canyons
of the Sierras. The restless blood of the Mexican War pours across
the Gila deserts and the sandy wastes of the Colorado.

The Creole boy learns that he, too, can work with pick, pan,
cradle, rocker, at the long tom, sluice, and in the tunnel drift.
The world is mad for gold. New York and New Orleans pour shiploads
of adventurers in by Panama and Nicaragua. Sailing vessels from
Europe, fleets around the Horn, vessels from Chile, Mexico, Sandwich
Islands, and Australia crowd each other at the Golden Gates.

In San Francisco six months show ten thousand madmen. Tent, hut,
shanty, shed, even pretentious houses appear. Uncoined nuggets,
glittering gold dust in grains and powder, prove the harvest is
real.

The Indians and lazy Californians are crowded out of the diggings.
The superior minds among the priests and rancheros can only explain
the long ignorance of the gold deposits by the absolute brutishness of
the hill tribes. Their knowledge of metals was absolutely nothing.
Beyond flint-headed spears, their bows and arrows, and a few mats,
baskets, and skin robes, they had no arts or useful handicraft.
Starving in a land of plenty, their tribal career never lifted
itself a moment from the level of the brute. And yet gold was the
Spaniards' talisman.

The Mexican-descended rancheros should have looked for gold. The
traditions even indicated it. Their hold on the land was only in
the footprints of their horses and cattle.

Had the priests ever examined the interior, had a single military
expedition explored the State with care, the surface gold deposits
must have been stumbled on.

It remains an inexplicable fact, that, as early as 1841, gold was
found in the southern part of the State. In 1843, seventy-five
to one hundred ounces of dust were obtained from the Indians, and
sent to Boston via the Sandwich Island trading ships. Keen old Sir
Francis Drake's reports to good Queen Bess flatly spoke of these
yellow treasures. They, too, were ignored. English apathy! Pouring
in from the whole world, bursting in as a flood of noisy adventurers
on the stillness of the lazy land of the Dons, came the gold hunters
of California.

Already, in San Francisco, drinking booth, gambling shop, and
haunts of every villany spring up--the toadstools of a night.

Women throng in to add the incantations of the daughters of Sin to
this mad hurly-burly. Handsome Mexicans, lithe Chilenas, escaped
female convicts, and women of Australia were reinforced by the
adventuresses of New Orleans, Paris, New York, and Liverpool--a
motley crowd of Paphian dames.

Maxime Valois, reaching Suiter's Fort by a launch, falls in with a
lank Missouri lad. His sole property in the world is a rifle and
his Pike county name of Joe Woods. A late arrival with a party
of Mexican war strays, his age and good humor cause the Creole to
take him as valuable, simply because one and one make two. He is
a good-humored raw lad. Together in the broiling sun, half buried
under bank or in the river-beds, they go through the rough evolution
of the placer miner's art.

The two thousand scattered foreigners of the State are ten thousand
before the year is out. Through the canyons, troops of gold seekers
now wander. Sacramento's lovely crystal waters, where the silvery
salmon leap, are tinged with typical yellow colors, deepening every
month. Tents give way to cabins; pack trains of mules and horses
wind slowly over the ridges. Little towns dot the five or six river
regions where the miners toil, and only the defeated are idle.

From San Diego to Sonoma the temporary government is paralyzed.
It loses all control except the fulmination of useless orders.

Local organization occurs by the pressure of numbers. Quaint names
and queer local institutions are born of necessity.

At San Francisco the tower of Babel is duplicated. Polyglot crowds
arrive in the craziest craft. Supplies of every character pour
in. Shops and smiths, workmen of all trades, appear. Already an
old steamboat wheezes on the Sacramento River. Bay Steamers soon
vex the untroubled waters of the harbor. They appear as if by magic.

A fever by day, a revel by night, San Francisco is a caravansera
of all nations. The Argonauts bring with them their pistols and
Bibles, their whiskey and women, their morals and murderers. Crime
and intrigues quickly crop out. The ready knife, and the compact
code of Colonel Colt in six loaded chapters, are applied to the
settlement of all quarrels.

While Valois blisters his hands with the pick and shovel, a matchless
strain of good blood is also pouring westward. Young and daring
men, even professional scholars, cool merchants, able artisans, and
good women hopeful of a golden future, come with men finally able
to dragoon these varied masses into order.

Regular communications are established, presses set up, and even
churches appear. Post-office, banks, steamer and freight lines
spring up within the year of the reign of gold. Disease raises
its fevered head, and the physician appears by magic. The human
maelstrom settles into an ebb and flood tide to and from the mines.

All over California keen-eyed men from the West and South begin to
appropriate land. The Eastern and Middle States pilgrims take up
trades and mechanical occupations. All classes contribute recruits
to the scattered thousands of miners. Greedy officials and sly
schemers begin to prey on the vanishing property rights of the
Dons. A strange, unsubstantial social fabric is hastily reared.
It clusters around the western peaks by the Golden Gate.

Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana are sending great
contingents. Mere nearness, with a taste for personal adventure,
causes the southern border element to brave the overland journey.
The northwestern overland travellers are more cautious. They have
longer roads to drag over. They come prepared for farming or
trade, as well as rude mining. As soon as the two lines of Eastern
steamers are established, the Eastern and Middle States send heavy
reinforcements. They are largely traders or permanent settlers. From
the first day, the ambitious, overbearing men of the slave States
take the lead in politics. They look to the extension of their
gloomy "institution," negro slavery.

Valois keeps much to himself. Resolutely he saves his golden
gleanings. He avoids the gambling tables and dance-houses. Joe
Woods works like a horse, from mere acquisitiveness. He fondly looks
back to a certain farm in Missouri, where he would fain squire it
when rich. Public rumor announces the great hegira of gold seekers.
The rush begins. Horse stealing, quarrels over claims, personal
encounters, rum's lunacy, and warring opinion cause frequent bloody
affrays.

Already scattered mounds rudely marked prove the reign of grim King
Death. His dark empire stretches even here unstayed, unchallenged.
Winter approaches; its floods drive the miners out of the river
beds. Joe Woods has aggregated several Pike County souls, whose
claims adjoin those of the two young associates. Wishing to open
communication with Judge Valois at Belle Etoile, Maxime ceases
work. He must recruit for hardships of the next season. He leaves
all in the hands of "partner Joe," who prefers to camp with
his friends, now the "Missouri Company." Valois is welcome at the
Mission Dolores. He can there safely deposit his splendid savings.

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