History of California

by Helen Elliott Bandini

Various games were played. Blindman’s buff was a great favorite for moonlight nights. There was also a game called cuatrito, in which the players threw bits of stone at a mark drawn on the ground at a certain distance.

“In my time,” said a prominent Californian of to-day, “we used to play this game with golden slugs instead of stones; there was always a basket of slugs sitting door. We liked them because they carried well, and we thought it nothing unusual to use them as playthings. They were abundant in most of the houses; my mother and her friends used them as soap dishes in, the bedrooms.

“In the spare rooms was always a little pile of money covered by a napkin, from which the visitor was expected to help himself if he needed. We would have considered it disgraceful to count the guest money.”

“Our parents were very strict with us,” said another Californian, “much more so than is the custom to-day. Sometimes while the parents, brothers, and sisters were eating their meal, a child who was naughty had for punishment to kneel in one corner of the dining room before a high stool, on which was an earthen plate, a tin cup, and a wooden spoon. It was worse than a flogging, a thousand times. As soon as the father went out, the mother and sisters hastened to the sorrowful one and comforted him with the best things from the table.”

The clothes were not laundered each week, but were saved up often for several weeks or even a month or two, and then came a wash-day frolic. Imagine wash day looked forward to as a delightful event! So it was, however, to many California children. Senorita Vallejo, in the Century Magazine (Vol. 41), thus describes one of these excursions:—

“It made us children happy to be waked before sunrise to prepare for the ‘wash-day expedition.’ The night before, the Indians had soaped the clumsy carreta’s great wheels. Lunch was placed in baskets, and the gentle oxen were yoked to the pole. We climbed in under the green cloth of an old Mexican flag which was used as an awning, and the white-haired Indian driver plodded beside with his long oxgoad. The great piles of soiled linen were fastened on the backs of horses led by other servants, while the girls and women who were to do the washing trooped along by the side of the carreta. Our progress was slow, and it was generally sunrise before we reached the spring. The steps of the carreta were so low that we could climb in or out without stopping the oxen. The watchful mother guided the whole party, seeing that none strayed too far after flowers, or loitered too long. Sometimes we heard the howl of coyotes and the noise of other wild animals, and then none of the children were allowed to leave the carreta.

“A great dark mountain rose behind the spring, and the broad, beautiful valley, unfenced and dotted with browsing herds, sloped down to the bay [of San Francisco]. We watched the women unload the linen and carry it to the spring, where they put home-made soap on the clothes, dipped them in the spring, and rubbed them on the smooth rocks until they were white as snow. Then they were spread out to dry on the tops of the low bushes growing on the warm, windless southern slopes of the mountain.” After a happy day in the woods came “the late return at twilight, when the younger children were all asleep in the slow carreta and the Indians were singing hymns as they drove the linen-laden horses down the dusky ravines.”

As at the missions, soon the ranchos, little was raised for sale save hides and tallow from the cattle. It was not the fault of the settlers that, living in so fertile a country, they made so little use of its productiveness. Spain’s laws in regard to trade were made entirely in the interests of the mother country, the settlers of New Spain, especially of Alta California, having no encouragement to raise more than they needed for use at home. They could not sell their produce to ships from foreign countries, for the penalty for that was death to the foreigner and severe punishment for the colonist. All trade had to be carried on in Spanish vessels, and it was forbidden to ship olive oil, wine, or anything that was raised or made in the home country. As California and Spain were much alike in climate and soil, this law really stopped all outside trade except that arising from cattle.

After the territory became a Mexican province, the rules were not so severe in regard to foreign trade, and finally the New England vessels freely entered the ports by paying certain duties to the government.

To the young people upon the ranchos the arrival of a trading vessel was a great event. If the port was not far from the house, the Patrona and the young ladies sometimes went on board to select for themselves from the miscellaneous cargo the things they desired; but as they were generally afraid of the water, especially of trusting themselves in the ship’s boats, the father and boys often represented the family on such occasions.