California Romantic and Resourceful / A plea for the Collection, Preservation and Diffusion of Information Relating to Pacific Coast History

by John Francis Davis

Let me rather call attention to three incidents of our history, ignoring all the rest, to enforce the point of its uniqueness, its variety, its novelty, its importance, as entitling it to its proper proportionate place in the history of the nation.

And first of all, the story of the missions. The story of the missions is the history of the beginning of the colonization of California. The Spanish Government was desirous of providing its ships, on the return trip from Manila, with good harbors of supply and repairs, and was also desirous of promoting a settlement of the north as a safeguard against possible Russian aggression. The Franciscans, upon the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, had taken charge of the missions, and, in their zeal for the conversion of the Indians, seconded the plans of the government.

"The official purpose here, as in older mission undertakings," says Dr. Josiah Royce, "was a union of physical and spiritual conquest, soldiers under a military governor co-operating to this end with missionaries and mission establishments. The natives were to be overcome by arms in so far as they might resist the conquerors, were to be attracted to the missions by peaceable measures in so far as might prove possible, were to be instructed in the faith, and were to be kept for the present under the paternal rule of the clergy, until such time as they might be ready for a free life as Christian subjects. Meanwhile, Spanish colonists were to be brought to the new land as circumstances might determine, and, to these, allotments of land were to be made. No grants of lands, in a legal sense, were made or promised to the mission establishments, whose position was to be merely that of spiritual institutions, intrusted with the education of neophytes, and with the care of the property that should be given or hereafter produced for the purpose. On the other hand, if the government tended to regard the missions as purely subsidiary to its purpose, the outgoing missionaries to this strange land were so much the more certain to be quite uncorrupted by worldly ambitions, by a hope of acquiring wealth, or by any intention to found a powerful ecclesiastical government in the new colony. They went to save souls, and their motive was as single as it was worthy of reverence. In the sequel, the more successful missions of Upper California became, for a time, very wealthy; but this was only by virtue of the gifts of nature and of the devoted labors of the padres."

Such a scheme of human effort is so unique, and so in contradiction to much that obtains today, that it seems like a narrative from another world. Fortunately, the annals of these missions, which ultimately extended from San Diego to beyond Sonoma—stepping-stones of civilization on this coast—are complete, and their simple disinterestedness and directness sound like a tale from Arcady. They were signally successful because those who conducted them were true to the trustee-ship of their lives. They cannot be held responsible if they were unable in a single generation to eradicate in the Indian the ingrained heredity of shiftlessness of all the generations that had gone before. It is a source of high satisfaction that there was on the part of the padres no record of overreaching the simple native, no failure to respect what rights they claimed, no carnage and bloodshed, that have so often attended expeditions sent nominally for civilization, but really for conquest. Here, at least, was one record of missionary endeavor that came to full fruition and flower, and knew no fear or despair, until it attracted the attention of the ruthless rapacity and greed of the Mexican governmental authority crouching behind the project of secularization. The enforced withdrawal of the paternal hand before the Indian had learned to stand and walk alone, coupled in some sections with the dread scourge of pestilential epidemic, wrought dispersion, decimation and destruction. If, however, the teeming acres are now otherwise tilled, and if the herds of cattle have passed away and the communal life is gone forever, the record of what was accomplished in those pastoral days has linked the name of California with a new and imperishable architecture, and has immortalized the name of Junípero Serra[[1]]. The pathetic ruin at Carmel is a shattered monument above a grave that will become a world's shrine of pilgrimage in honor of one of humanity's heroes. The patient soul that here laid down its burden will not be forgotten. The memory of the brave heart that was here consumed with love for mankind will live through the ages. And, in a sense, the work of these missions is not dead—their very ruins still preach the lesson of service and of sacrifice. As the fishermen off the coast of Brittany tell the legend that at the evening hour, as their boats pass over the vanished Atlantis, they can still hear the sounds of its activity at the bottom of the sea, so every Californian, as he turns the pages of the early history of his State, feels at times that he can hear the echo of the Angelus bells of the missions, and amid the din of the money-madness of these latter days, can find a response in "the better angels of his nature."

In swift contrast to this idyllic scene, which is shared with us by few other sections of this country, stands the history of a period where for nearly two years this State was without authority of American civil law, and where, in practice, the only authority was such as sprang from the instinct of self-preservation. No more interesting phase of history in America can be presented than that which arose in California immediately after the discovery of gold, with reference to titles upon the public domain. James W. Marshall made the discovery of gold in the race of a small mill at Coloma, in the latter part of January, 1848. Thereupon took place an incident of history which demonstrated that Jason and his companions were not the only Argonauts who ever made a voyage to unknown shores in search of a golden fleece. The first news of the discovery almost depopulated the towns and ranches of California, and even affected the discipline of the small army of occupation. The first winter brought thousands of Oregonians, Mexicans and Chilenos. The extraordinary reports that reached the East were at first disbelieved, but when the private letters of army officers and men in authority were published, an indescribable gold fever took possession of the nation east of the Alleghanies. All the energetic and daring, all the physically sound of all ages, seemed bent on reaching the new El Dorado. "The old Gothic instinct of invasion seemed to survive and thrill in the fiber of our people," and the camps and gulches and mines of California witnessed a social and political phenomenon unique in the history of the world—the spirit and romance of which have been immortalized in the pages of Bret Harte.

Before 1850 the population of California had risen from 15,000, as it was in 1847[[2]], to 100,000, and the average weekly increase for six weeks thereafter was 50,000. The novelty of this situation produced in many minds the most marvelous development. "Every glance westward was met by a new ray of intelligence; every drawn breath of western air brought inspiration; every step taken was over an unknown field; every experiment, every thought, every aspiration and act were original and individual."

At the time of Marshall's discovery, the United States was still at war with Mexico, its sovereignty over the soil of California not being recognized by the latter. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was not signed until February 2d, and the ratified copies thereof not exchanged at Querétaro till May 30, 1848. On the 12th of February, 1848, ten days after the signing of the treaty of peace and about three weeks after the discovery of gold at Coloma, Colonel Mason did the pioneers a signal service by issuing, as Governor, the proclamation concerning the mines, which at the time was taken as a finality and certainty as to the status of mining titles in their international aspect. "From and after this date," the proclamation read, "the Mexican laws and customs now prevailing in California relative to the denouncement of mines are hereby abolished." Although, as the law was fourteen years afterwards expounded by the United States Supreme Court, the act was unnecessary as a precautionary measure[[3]] still the practical result of the timeliness of the proclamation was to prevent attempts to found private titles to the new discovery of gold on any customs or laws of Mexico.

Meantime, California was governed by military authority,—was treated as if it were merely a military outpost, away out somewhere west of the "Great American Desert." Except an act to provide for the deliveries and taking of mails at certain points on the coast, and a resolution authorizing the furnishing of arms and ammunition to certain immigrants, no Federal act was passed with reference to California in any relation; in no act of Congress was California even mentioned after its annexation, until the act of March 3, 1849, extending the revenue laws of the United States "over the territory and waters of Upper California, and to create certain collection districts therein." This act of March 3, 1849, not only did not extend the general laws of the United States over California, but did not even create a local tribunal for its enforcement, providing that the District Court of Louisiana and the Supreme Court of Oregon should be courts of original jurisdiction to take cognizance of all violations of its provisions. Not even the act of September 9, 1850, admitting California into the Union, extended the general laws of the United States over the State by express provision. Not until the act of September 26, 1850, establishing a District Court in the State, was it enacted by Congress "that all the laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable shall have the same force and effect within the said State of California as elsewhere in the United States[[4]]."

Though no general Federal laws were extended by Congress over the later acquisitions from Mexico for more than two years after the end of the war, the paramount title to the public lands had vested in the Federal Government by virtue of the provisions of the treaty of peace; the public land itself had become part of the public domain of the United States. The army of occupation, however, offered no opposition to the invading army of prospectors. The miners were, in 1849, twenty years ahead of the railroad and the electric telegraph. The telephone had not yet been invented. In the parlance of the times, the prospectors "had the drop" on the army. In Colonel Mason's unique report of the situation that confronted him, discretion waited upon valor. "The entire gold district," he wrote to the Government at Washington, "with few exceptions of grants made some years ago by the Mexican authorities, is on land belonging to the United States. It was a matter of serious reflection with me how I could secure to the Government certain rents or fees for the privilege of procuring this gold; but upon considering the large extent of the country, the character of the people engaged, and the small scattered force at my command, I am resolved not to interfere, but permit all to work freely." It is not recorded whether the resolute colonel was conscious of the humor of his resolution. This early suggestion of conservation was, under the circumstances, manifestly academic.

The Supreme Court of the United States, in commenting on the singular situation in which Colonel Mason found himself, clearly and forcefully states his predicament. "His position," says that Court, "was unlike anything that had preceded it in the history of our country . . . . It was not without its difficulties, both as regards the principle upon which he should act, and the actual state of affairs in California. He knew that the Mexican inhabitants of it had been remitted by the treaty of peace to those municipal laws and usages which prevailed among them before the territory had been ceded to the United States, but that a state of things and population had grown up during the war, and after the treaty of peace, which made some other authority necessary to maintain the rights of the ceded inhabitants and of immigrants, from misrule and violence. He may not have comprehended fully the principle applicable to what he might rightly do in such a case, but he felt rightly and acted accordingly. He determined, in the absence of all instruction, to maintain the existing government. The territory had been ceded as a conquest, and was to be preserved and governed as such until the sovereignty to which it had passed had legislated for it. That sovereignty was the United States, under the Constitution, by which power had been given to Congress to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States, with the power also to admit new states into this Union, with only such limitations as are expressed in the section in which this power is given. The government, of which Colonel Mason was the executive, had its origin in the lawful exercise of a belligerent right over a conquered territory. It had been instituted during the war by the command of the President of the United States. It was the government when the territory was ceded as a conquest, and it did not cease, as a matter of course, or as a necessary consequence of the restoration of peace. The President might have dissolved it by withdrawing the army and navy officers who administered it, but he did not do so. Congress could have put an end to it, but that was not done. The right inference from the inaction of both is, that it was meant to be continued until it had been legislatively changed. No presumption of a contrary intention can be made. Whatever may have been the causes of delay, it must be presumed that the delay was consistent with the true policy of the Government[[5]]."