Upon one thing the Pioneer women could rely,—the universal respect shown them by the men. In the roughest mining camp in California an unprotected girl would not only have been safe, she would have been treated with the utmost consideration and courtesy. Such was the society of which the English critic declared that “its laxity surpassed the laxity of savages!”[61]
In this respect, if in no other, the Pioneers insisted that foreigners should comply with their notions. Nothing, indeed, gave more surprise to the “Greasers” and Chilenos than the fact that they were haled into court and punished for beating their wives.
As to the Mexican and Chilean women themselves, it must be admitted that they contributed more to the gaiety than to the morality or peacefulness of California life. “Rowdyism and crime,” remarked the “Alta California” in October, 1851, “increase in proportion to the increase in the number of Señoritas. This is true in the mines as well as in the city.”
At a horse-race that came off that year in San Francisco, we hear of the Señoritas as freely backing their favorite nags with United States money, though how it came into their possession, as a contemporary satirist remarked, “is matter of surmise only.” This species of woman is portrayed by Bret Harte in the passionate Teresa, who met her fate, in a double sense, in The Carquinez Woods, finding there both a lover and her death. The Spanish woman of good family is represented by Doña Rosita in The Argonauts of North Liberty, by Enriquez Saltello’s charming sister, Consuelo, and by Concepcion,[62] the beautiful daughter of the Commandante, who, after the death of her lover, the Russian Envoy, took the veil, and died a nun at Benicia.
Even before the discovery of gold a few Americans had married into leading Spanish families of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Monterey and Sonoma. The first house erected on the spot which afterward became San Francisco was built in 1836 by Jacob P. Leese, an American who had married a sister of General Vallejo. It was finished July 3, and on the following day was “dedicated to the cause of freedom.”
There is something of great interest in the union of races so diverse, and Bret Harte has touched upon this aspect of California life in the character of that unique heroine, Maruja. “‘Hush, she’s looking.’ She had indeed lifted her eyes toward the window. They were beautiful eyes, and charged with something more than their own beauty. With a deep, brunette setting, even to the darkened cornea, the pupils were blue as the sky above them. But they were lit with another intelligence. The soul of the Salem whaler looked out of the passion-darkened orbits of the mother, and was resistless.”
Chapter and verse can always be given to confirm Bret Harte’s account of California life, and even Maruja can be authenticated. A Lieutenant in the United States Navy, who visited the Coast in 1846, gave this description of the reigning belle of California: “Her father was an Englishman, her mother a Spanish lady. She was brunette, with an oval face, magnificent grey eyes, the corners of her mouth slightly curved downward, so as to give a proud and haughty expression to the face. She was tall, graceful, well-shaped, with small feet and hands, a dead shot, an accomplished rider, and amiable withal. I never saw a more patrician style of beauty and native elegance.”[63]
California was always the land of romance, and Bret Harte in his poems and stories touched upon its whole history from the beginning. Even the visit of Sir Francis Drake in 1578 was not overlooked. In The Mermaid of Light-House Point, Bret Harte quotes a footnote, perhaps imaginary, from an account of Drake’s travels, as follows: “The admiral seems to have lost several of his crew by desertion, who were supposed to have perished miserably by starvation in the inhospitable interior or by the hands of savages. But later voyagers have suggested that the deserters married Indian wives, and there is a legend that a hundred years later a singular race of half-breeds, bearing unmistakable Anglo-Saxon characteristics, was found in that locality.”
This was the origin of the blue-eyed and light-haired mermaid of the story; and it is only fair to add that the tradition of which the author speaks was current among the Nicasio Indians who inhabited the valley of that name, about fifteen miles eastward of Drake’s Bay.
Among the women who first arrived from the East by sea, there were many of easy virtue; but even these women—and here is disclosed a wonderful compliment to the sex—were held by observing Pioneers to have an elevating influence upon the men. “The bad women,” says one careful historian, “have improved the morals of the community. They have banished much barbarism, softened many hard hearts, and given a gentleness to the men which they did not have before.”[64]