Volume 88, Number 4 - California Historical Society
Volume 88, Number 4 - California Historical Society
Volume 88, Number 4 - California Historical Society
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california history<br />
volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011 The Journal of the <strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />
Interim Executive Director<br />
Mary Morganti<br />
Editor<br />
JANET FIREMAN<br />
Managing Editor<br />
Shelly Kale<br />
Reviews Editor<br />
JAMES J. RAWLS<br />
Spotlight Editor<br />
jonathan spaulding<br />
Design/Production<br />
sandy bell<br />
Contributing Writer<br />
Marie silva<br />
Editorial Consultants<br />
LARRY E. BURGESS<br />
ROBERT W. CHERNY<br />
JAMES N. GREGORY<br />
JUDSON A. GRENIER<br />
ROBERT V. HINE<br />
LANE R. HIRABAYASHI<br />
LAWRENCE J. JELINEK<br />
PAUL J. KARLSTROM<br />
R. JEFFREY LUSTIG<br />
SALLY M. MILLER<br />
GEORGE H. PHILLIPS<br />
LEONARD PITT<br />
c o n t e n t s<br />
From the Editor: Ties That Bind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2<br />
Collections: Hipolita Orendain de Medina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3<br />
Invisible Borders: Repatriation and Colonization of<br />
Mexican Migrant Workers along the <strong>California</strong> Borderlands<br />
during the 1930s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5<br />
By Benny J. Andrés Jr.<br />
If Walls Could Speak:<br />
San Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22<br />
By Victor A. Walsh<br />
“Saludos from your comadre”: Compadrazgo as a<br />
Community Institution in Alta <strong>California</strong>, 1769–1860s. . . . . . . . . . . . 47<br />
By Erika Pérez<br />
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63<br />
Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74<br />
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79<br />
Donors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84<br />
Spotlight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <strong>88</strong><br />
<strong>California</strong> History is printed in<br />
Los Angeles by Delta Graphics.<br />
Editorial offices and support for<br />
<strong>California</strong> History are provided by<br />
Loyola Marymount University,<br />
Los Angeles.<br />
on the front cover<br />
<strong>California</strong> State Parks’ recent renovation of the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Old Town San Diego State<br />
Historic Park was as much a discovery as a restoration. Peeling back layers of construction from previous<br />
decades revealed a treasure trove of physical evidence about owner Albert Seeley’s conversion of the singlestory<br />
Casa de Bandini adobe into a two-story fashionable hotel and stage office in 1869, whose restoration<br />
is depicted in this photograph. Archaeologists also uncovered building materials from 1827–29, when<br />
Don Juan Bandini erected his beloved home overlooking the pueblo’s plaza. The casa’s legacy, and the<br />
historical and cultural memory it preserves, is explored in Victor A. Walsh’s article, “If Walls Could<br />
Speak: San Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini” (pages 22–46).<br />
Photograph by Sandé Lollis<br />
1
f r o m t h e e d i t o r<br />
ties that bind<br />
CALIFORNIA HISTORY, September 2011<br />
Published quarterly © 2011 by <strong>California</strong><br />
<strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />
LC 75-640289/ISSN 0162-2897<br />
$40.00 of each membership is designated<br />
for <strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong> membership<br />
services, including the subscription to <strong>California</strong><br />
History.<br />
KNOWN OFFICE OF PUBLICATION:<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />
Attn: Janet Fireman<br />
Loyola Marymount University<br />
One LMU Drive<br />
Los Angeles, CA 90045-2659<br />
ADMINISTRATIVE HEADQUARTERS/<br />
NORTH BAKER RESEARCH LIBRARY<br />
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Contact: 415.357.1848<br />
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Website: www.californiahistoricalsociety.org<br />
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<strong>California</strong>, and at additional mailing offices.<br />
POSTMASTER<br />
Send address changes to:<br />
<strong>California</strong> History CHS<br />
678 Mission Street<br />
San Francisco, CA 94105-4014<br />
THE CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY is a<br />
statewide membership-based organization designated<br />
by the Legislature as the state historical<br />
society. The <strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong> inspires<br />
and empowers <strong>California</strong>ns to make the past a<br />
meaningful part of their contemporary lives.<br />
A quarterly journal published by CHS since 1922,<br />
<strong>California</strong> History features articles by leading<br />
scholars and writers focusing on the heritage<br />
of <strong>California</strong> and the West from pre-Columbian<br />
to modern times. Illustrated articles, pictorial<br />
essays, and book reviews examine the ongoing<br />
dialogue between the past and the present.<br />
CHS assumes no responsibility for statements<br />
or opinions of the authors. MANUSCRIPTS for<br />
publication and editorial correspondence should<br />
be sent to Janet Fireman, Editor, <strong>California</strong><br />
History, History Department, Loyola Marymount<br />
University, One LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA<br />
90045-8415, or jfireman@lmu.edu. Books for<br />
review should be sent to James Rawls, Reviews<br />
Editor, <strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>, 678 Mission<br />
Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-4014.<br />
No one could be surprised that the soulful songster Bruce Springsteen would<br />
write: “Now you can’t break the ties that bind / You can’t forsake the ties that<br />
bind.” Sentiments of love and belonging are surely universal, but their expression<br />
is more overt and more conspicuous in some cultures than others.<br />
“Invisible Borders: Repatriation and Colonization of Mexican Migrant Workers<br />
along the <strong>California</strong> Borderlands during the 1930s,” by Benny J. Andrés Jr.,<br />
tells the back story of a voluntary Mexican repatriation in the 1930s, motivated<br />
by love for homeland, fueled by strategies to secure fair wages and improving<br />
working conditions, and made possible by the supportive administration of<br />
President Lázaro Cárdenas. How it came to be that 175 Mexican families living<br />
in the San Joaquin Valley, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and the Imperial Valley<br />
formed a convoy and traveled to the Mexicali Valley in Baja <strong>California</strong> to establish<br />
a farm commune on land the Mexican government had expropriated from<br />
powerful foreign owners offers fresh insight on received understanding of Mexican<br />
farm workers during the Great Depression.<br />
Acknowledging the significance of places that preserve our cultural memories,<br />
stories, and identities, <strong>California</strong> State Parks recently restored the nineteenthcentury<br />
Cosmopolitan Hotel in San Diego. In “If Walls Could Speak: San<br />
Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini,” Victor A. Walsh recounts the story of this<br />
landmark historic building that stands as a testament to waves of change from<br />
Californio to American frontier society. With its later commercially stimulated<br />
alterations inspired by affection for a much romanticized Spanish past stripped<br />
away, the full history of the current hotel, restaurant, and bar is revealed for<br />
readers and visitors alike.<br />
Compadrazgo, or godparentage, practiced extensively during the Spanish and<br />
Mexican eras—and beyond—helped create spiritual, familial, and community<br />
bonds, as well as business networks. Erika Pérez introduces the concept and<br />
provides numerous examples of its application by Native American, Spanish,<br />
Mexican, and Anglo-American families in “‘Saludos from your comadre’: Compadrazgo<br />
as a Community Institution in Alta <strong>California</strong>, 1769–1860s.”<br />
Nation, family, home, tradition: these are the ties that bind.<br />
Janet Fireman<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />
www.californiahistoricalsociety.org<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
c o l l e c t i o n s<br />
Hipolita Orendain de Medina<br />
maintained this album for almost<br />
forty years as a sentimental record<br />
of love and friendship. It contains<br />
sonetos and other poems, canciones<br />
(songs), and notes, written for<br />
her by family, friends, and acquaintances<br />
in Spanish, English, and<br />
German, as well as sketches, pressed<br />
ferns and flowers, cards, stickers,<br />
and, sadly, an obituary for Czarina<br />
Celsa, the Medinas’s daughter.<br />
Most of the writings in the album<br />
treat the themes of romantic love,<br />
platonic fidelity, and religious duty,<br />
though politics occasionally intervenes,<br />
as in a simple 1865 dedication:<br />
La paz, progreso y libertad<br />
(peace, progress, and liberty).<br />
Album, 1865–1908, Hipolita Orendain<br />
de Medina correspondence and<br />
miscellany, MS 1441, <strong>California</strong><br />
<strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />
Hipolita Orendain de Medina<br />
To the images of missions, ranchos,<br />
and caballeros—and the romance of<br />
Mexican <strong>California</strong> they evoke—CHS’s<br />
Hipolita Orendain de Medina collection<br />
stands in clear contrast, offering<br />
a glimpse into the domestic, cultural,<br />
and political life of a cosmopolitan,<br />
multilingual community of native<br />
Californios and Latino immigrants in<br />
San Francisco in the second half of the<br />
nineteenth century.<br />
Correspondence, notebooks, sheet<br />
music, poetry, ephemera, cards, photographs,<br />
and an album of remembrance<br />
(above)—Hipolita collected them all as<br />
recuerdos de amistad (tokens of friendship).<br />
Intimate in scale, the collection<br />
nonetheless registers larger historical<br />
forces—the Franco-Mexican War, the<br />
rise of Mexican and Latin American<br />
nationalisms, the development of the<br />
Spanish-language press in <strong>California</strong>—
c o l l e c t i o n s<br />
as they shaped the lives of Hipolita, her<br />
husband Emigdio Medina, and their<br />
families in Mexico and <strong>California</strong>.<br />
Hipolita Orendain was born in Mexico<br />
in 1844 and moved to San Francisco<br />
with her mother, the widowed heiress<br />
Francisca Tejada de Orendain, and<br />
her sister Virginia in the late 1850s. In<br />
1868, she married the Mexican-born<br />
musician, journalist, editor, and real<br />
estate investor Emigdio Medina. While<br />
Emigdio pursued business and literary<br />
ventures, founding San Francisco’s<br />
Spanish-language newspaper La Republica<br />
in 1<strong>88</strong>1, the educated and polyglot<br />
Hipolita became an active member<br />
of the city’s junta patriótica (patriotic<br />
assembly) and worked as a dressmaker,<br />
naming herself head of the Medina<br />
household in the 1900 census.<br />
These images from the Hipolita<br />
Orendain de Medina Collection<br />
sample Hipolita and Emigdio’s wideranging<br />
commitments—to literature<br />
and music, family and religion, the<br />
Mexican American community and the<br />
nascent Mexican republic—while opening<br />
a sentimental, sometimes surprising<br />
view onto their world.<br />
One of more than sixty photographs in the collection, Hipolita presented this cartede-visite,<br />
made in San Francisco on Christmas day 1<strong>88</strong>1, when she was in her late<br />
thirties, to her sister Virginia. Like many of the cartes-de-visit it bears an affectionate<br />
inscription: to “muy amada hermanita” (much loved little sister). A note on<br />
the card indicates that Hipolita was “referred to affectionately as Grammacita,” a<br />
hybrid term of the English “Grandma” and the Spanish diminutive “cita.”<br />
Cabinet card, 1<strong>88</strong>1, MSP 1441; CHS2011.585.tif<br />
Emigdio Medina’s business card presenting him as editor and manager of Los<br />
Angeles’s El Estandarte Mexicano is one of more than 100 business cards in the<br />
collection. Medina was active in the Spanish-language press on both sides of the<br />
Mexico-United States border, representing a variety of newspapers. This restless<br />
and enterprising journalist was also a poet, musician, and principal of Emigdio<br />
Medina & Co., Mining & Agricultural Land Agency in San Francisco.<br />
Business card, ca. 1908, MS 1441<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
Invisible Borders: Repatriation and Colonization<br />
of Mexican Migrant Workers along the <strong>California</strong><br />
Borderlands during the 1930s<br />
By Benny J. Andrés Jr.<br />
The Mexican peon does not settle; he comes and earns something and goes back.<br />
—Harry Chandler, Colorado River Land Company, Mexicali, Baja <strong>California</strong>, 1930 1<br />
In December 1934, two weeks after the presidential<br />
election of Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico’s<br />
twentieth-century champion of agrarian and<br />
working-class reform, the first tremor in a<br />
seismic shift rumbled through the <strong>California</strong>-<br />
Baja <strong>California</strong> borderlands. Joe Herrera, editor<br />
of La Gaceta del Valle Imperial, wrote a rare and<br />
unprecedented article for his parent newspaper<br />
The Brawley News, reporting on the voluntary<br />
repatriation of 175 Mexican families from Corcoran,<br />
Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Santa Paula,<br />
Calipatria, and other areas in <strong>California</strong>. The<br />
Mexican government had arranged for 700 colonists<br />
to settle on 6,700 acres in a farm cooperative<br />
directly across the border in Baja <strong>California</strong>’s<br />
Mexicali Valley. The repatriation caravan, consisting<br />
of 152 persons, was the advance party. 2<br />
The caravan stopped in Brawley, the center of the<br />
irrigated desert agricultural region, to pick up<br />
additional colonists eager to return to Mexico for<br />
better opportunity. There the repatriates shared<br />
food and supplies, while the group’s orchestra<br />
entertained the “jolly crowd” with music. Most<br />
of the participants had saved thousands of dollars.<br />
“We do not want any help. We have already<br />
arranged everything about the land,” remarked<br />
the group’s leader. The Mexican consul in Calexico<br />
(the American town adjacent to Mexicali, capital<br />
of the northern Baja <strong>California</strong> territory) had<br />
their repatriation papers in order. Herrera served<br />
up a subtle warning to American agribusiness<br />
for cracking down harshly on Mexicans during<br />
labor strikes that year: “They are glad to go back<br />
to their homeland.” 3<br />
The convoy’s journey across the international<br />
line to establish a farm commune in the Mexicali<br />
Valley is part of a larger story about the ways in<br />
which Mexican migrants on the <strong>California</strong>-Baja<br />
<strong>California</strong> borderland navigated rapidly changing<br />
economic and political conditions during the<br />
Great Depression. Mobile workers on the U.S.<br />
side of the international border strove to improve<br />
their lives through migration, strikes, and voluntary<br />
repatriation to Mexico. Legal and illegal residents<br />
used the services of mutualistas (benevolent
societies) to forestall deportation and forced repatriation<br />
for receiving public assistance. Across<br />
the border in the Mexicali Valley, workers used<br />
xenophobic arguments to persuade the Mexican<br />
government to force out Asian competitors,<br />
deploying nationalistic rhetoric steeped in the<br />
Mexican Revolution’s ideology to justify demands<br />
for their government to expropriate land owned<br />
by foreigners and redistribute it to Mexicans. 4<br />
Historians have narrowly interpreted Mexican<br />
repatriation during the 1930s through an immigration/citizenship<br />
framework, whereby “repatriation”<br />
means forced expulsion from the United<br />
States. This perspective confuses immigration for<br />
permanent settlement with the act of temporary<br />
migration. Indeed, only a small percentage of<br />
Mexicans intended to become U.S. citizens, as<br />
reflected in the naturalization records. 5 Circular<br />
movement across the international line was not<br />
only a rejection of American citizenship; one<br />
could argue that the regularity and repetition of<br />
this pattern rendered the border invisible. The<br />
immigration/citizenship focus also ignores the<br />
Mexican government’s response to the brutal<br />
treatment of its citizens in the United States. 6<br />
This rigid nation-state model has straitjacketed<br />
American scholars, preventing deeper consideration<br />
of ethnic Mexicans’ repatriation to their<br />
native land. 7<br />
With very few exceptions, for the past seventy-six<br />
years historians have followed a narrative similar<br />
to that presented in Carey McWilliams’s 1935<br />
Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm<br />
Labor in <strong>California</strong>, which only briefly relates the<br />
callous actions of U.S. welfare and immigration<br />
officials in forcibly repatriating ethnic Mexicans<br />
during the Great Depression. 8 The standard<br />
interpretation of repatriation in this era is that<br />
city and county welfare agencies worked in conjunction<br />
with the U.S. Border Patrol to expel ethnic<br />
Mexicans who received public aid in violation<br />
of current immigration law. This accepted narrative,<br />
however, does not explain what transpired<br />
in the Imperial Valley, where the failure of farm<br />
workers’ strikes and an influx of competitors for<br />
their jobs—not county efforts to reduce public<br />
assistance—prompted the valley’s Mexican workers<br />
to voluntarily repatriate.<br />
The north-south framework presented in Factories<br />
in the Field is also inaccurate. In actuality, Mexican<br />
migrants followed irregular, often circular<br />
paths. 9 Mexican border crossers were migrants<br />
rather than immigrants, traversing familiar<br />
transnational and domestic circuits. 10 Another<br />
flaw in the repatriation paradigm is its chronicle<br />
of a great injustice done to a powerless people.<br />
Rather, the agency of Mexican repatriates in battling<br />
to secure fair wages and improving working<br />
conditions is a more accurate account. For<br />
campesinos (field workers) in the Imperial Valley,<br />
migration, mutualistas, strikes, and repatriation<br />
were all viable strategies for economic survival.<br />
This article offers a new interpretation of Mexican<br />
repatriation, weaving together the body of<br />
scholarship on farm workers’ activities in the<br />
Imperial Valley during the 1930s with published<br />
Spanish-language sources of the “Mexicanization”<br />
of Mexicali by repatriates to demonstrate<br />
how their strategies for improved labor conditions<br />
empowered them to significantly change<br />
transborder migration patterns. The Mexican government’s<br />
active involvement in repatriation and<br />
colonization of its northern borderlands under<br />
President Cárdenas, and its coordination with<br />
the U.S. Border Patrol, established the working<br />
relationship for the binational labor agreement<br />
known as the Bracero Program (1942–64). 11<br />
Roots of Repatriation<br />
Mexican officials routinely attempted to prevent<br />
migration to the United States, especially after<br />
the creation of the U.S. Border Patrol in 1924<br />
and during the massive forced repatriation efforts<br />
by the U.S. government in the 1930s. 12 During<br />
the early years of the Great Depression, Mexico<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
struggled to resettle its repatriated and deported<br />
citizens. Unlike his predecessors, Cárdenas’s<br />
administration (1934–40) developed a settlement<br />
program in agricultural communities along the<br />
borderlands, 13 vigorously encouraging repatriation<br />
to populate and economically develop the<br />
Mexicali Valley. In 1937, when Cárdenas expropriated<br />
the vast landholdings of the Colorado River<br />
Land Company (CRLC)—a Los Angeles-based<br />
syndicate headed by the owner of the Los Angeles<br />
Times—thousands of Mexicans escaped a hardscrabble<br />
life by flocking to the Mexicali Valley.<br />
Consequently, the harsh treatment of Mexican<br />
nationals during the Great Depression played<br />
into Mexico’s long-term objective to build up its<br />
northern borderlands, regain its citizens living<br />
in the United States, and give repatriates a fresh<br />
start as small farmers.<br />
The Imperial-Mexicali Valley, an agricultural cornucopia<br />
nourished by the Colorado River, was located at the intersection<br />
of <strong>California</strong>, Arizona, Sonora, and Baja <strong>California</strong>.<br />
This 1927 map, published by the Boulder Dam Association,<br />
shows the region with the proposed 82-mile-long All-<br />
American Canal—an irrigation network connecting the<br />
Imperial and Coachella Valleys with the Colorado River.<br />
Running parallel to the Mexico-<strong>California</strong> border, its completion<br />
in 1940 propelled the growth of the Imperial Valley’s<br />
agricultural industry.<br />
Courtesy of the author
Local newspapers such as The Brawley News and<br />
the Calexico Chronicle provide extensive details<br />
of this transnational history. Yet these two media<br />
outlets catered to distinct constituencies and<br />
perspectives. The Brawley News, an agribusiness<br />
organ, hewed a conservative, anti–field labor,<br />
anti-Mexican, Republican viewpoint. In contrast,<br />
the Calexico Chronicle was the mouthpiece for<br />
Calexico’s merchants who owed their existence to<br />
commerce and crossborder tourism in Mexicali.<br />
With its pro-Mexican perspective, the Calexico<br />
Chronicle closely reported both nations’ borderenforcement<br />
activities, as well as news from<br />
Mexicali, major events in Mexico, and agriculture<br />
in the Mexicali Valley, particularly regarding the<br />
CRLC, which owned most of the land in the Mexicali<br />
Valley (over 800,000 acres) and which purchased<br />
its food and supplies across the border in<br />
Calexico. The CRLC shipped its products by train<br />
through Calexico, since the Mexicali Valley had<br />
no land transportation link to the Mexican interior.<br />
Calexico’s dependence on the CRLC’s trade<br />
explains why the Calexico Chronicle closely followed<br />
Mexican repatriation to the Mexicali Valley.<br />
The repatriation story dates to colonization of<br />
this arid region for agribusiness in 1900, when<br />
the isolated Imperial-Mexicali Valley was sustained<br />
by a canal that brought water from the<br />
Colorado River. World War I demand for farm<br />
products transformed the region on both sides<br />
of the international line into a cotton mecca,<br />
requiring an abundance of seasonal pickers. In<br />
1920, a scarcity of pickers prompted Imperial<br />
Valley farmers to join Arizona cotton growers in<br />
forming a labor-recruitment organization—the<br />
first time large numbers of Mexican migrants<br />
were brought to the area. From this point on,<br />
the valley’s farmers were among the staunchest<br />
supporters of an open border for campesino<br />
migrants. After the war, farmers diversified into<br />
labor-intensive crops and relied primarily on<br />
mobile Mexican workers. Supported by police<br />
and judges, they suppressed field unions and<br />
crushed strikes. 14<br />
In the Mexicali Valley, the CRLC raised cattle and<br />
grew cotton. The company hired Chinese tenants<br />
and imported Chinese cotton pickers in order to<br />
discourage Mexican settlement and demand for<br />
land. 15 Its exclusion of Mexicans ended during the<br />
United States’ post–World War I economic recession.<br />
Across the border in the Imperial Valley,<br />
farmers had promised U.S. immigration officials<br />
that they would send imported Mexicans on contract<br />
back to Mexico after the cotton harvest. But<br />
bankrupted by the recession, they did not have<br />
the money to return the campesinos. Stranded<br />
Mexicans drifted into the Mexicali Valley, squatted<br />
on CRLC land, and petitioned the governor of the<br />
northern territory of Baja <strong>California</strong> for jobs. 16<br />
Campesinos faced a formidable opponent. Territorial<br />
military governors funded their governments<br />
by taxing foreign landowners. 17 They<br />
frequently sent soldiers to break up strikes and<br />
land disputes. 18 In 1921, the Mexican government<br />
responded to anti-Chinese violence on the northern<br />
borderlands by banning the entry of Chinese<br />
laborers. In November 1925, officials in Mexicali<br />
announced strict enforcement of a law requiring<br />
that half of all paid workers had to be Mexicans. 19<br />
Incessant demands for land in the Mexicali Valley<br />
forced the governor to establish several farming<br />
communes beginning in 1924. 20<br />
Mexico’s ban on imported Chinese workers<br />
spurred the CRLC to bring workers from Sinaloa<br />
and Sonora. 21 Between 1921 and 1924, 13,000<br />
Mexicans arrived in Mexicali, 22 but they did<br />
not linger there long when Americans induced<br />
them with higher wages to cross the line. Thus,<br />
the CRLC supported and sustained the circular<br />
migration corridor from western Mexico to the<br />
Mexicali Valley and into the United States, 23<br />
employing 8,000–10,000 Mexicans, 4,000 Chinese,<br />
and 800 Japanese by 1930. 24 After each<br />
harvest, the CRLC discharged tenants and day<br />
laborers and burned their makeshift huts to prevent<br />
squatting. 25<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
Around 1900, early irrigation efforts transformed the dry, sandy Imperial Valley into a garden of abundance for<br />
specialty crops. Shortly afterward, cotton, a labor-intensive crop requiring a large labor force, was introduced to<br />
Imperial County. In this photograph from the early 1900s, cotton bales are stacked next to a railroad track at a<br />
typical cotton gin in the Imperial-Mexicali Valley.<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>; CHS2011.583.tif<br />
The 1930 Strike<br />
Repatriation in the Imperial Valley began with<br />
a violent pea strike in January 1930. The brutal<br />
crackdown that crushed the walkout resulted in<br />
the valley’s first large-scale voluntary repatriation<br />
movement. The union’s defeat set in motion a<br />
chain of events that culminated in the redirection<br />
of circular migration to repatriation in the Mexicali<br />
Valley. In the midst of the strike, A. Mejía, the<br />
union president, sent telegrams to Mexico’s president<br />
and agricultural department requesting aid<br />
to repatriate thousands of Mexicans. When the<br />
union announced that the Mexican government<br />
had granted Mejía’s request, an overflow crowd<br />
in Brawley’s union hall spilled into the street,<br />
cheering wildly. Mejía declared: “We believe that<br />
colonization on a Mexican agricultural project will<br />
be better than 30 to 35 cents an hour in Imperial<br />
valley.” He then closed the hall to all meetings<br />
except those dealing with repatriation. 26<br />
Within three months, Brawley’s union militants<br />
had organized the Vanguardia de Colonización<br />
Proletaria (Vanguard of Proletariat Colonization).<br />
The campesinos were ambitious. The group’s<br />
representative told a leading Mexico City newspaper<br />
that he was in the nation’s capital to convince<br />
government officials to support the Vanguardia’s<br />
plan to relocate millions of ethnic Mexicans<br />
from the United States to a gigantic colonization<br />
enterprise in Mexico. He claimed that the group<br />
had 40,000 Mexican and Mexican American<br />
members and $40,000 in the bank and that they<br />
anticipated raising $12–15 million within five<br />
months to enact the plan. 27<br />
The existence of this strategy and others like<br />
it suggests the enthusiasm with which ethnic<br />
Mexicans in the United States viewed repatriation,<br />
though it is doubtful that the Mexican government<br />
provided land for the Imperial Valley
Upon purchasing land in northern Baja <strong>California</strong> in the early 1900s, the Los Angeles-based Colorado River<br />
Land Company (CRLC) began to construct an irrigation system, creating a highly productive agricultural empire<br />
in the Mexicali Valley. This newly dug main canal (note the absence of weeds on the banks) snaked through the<br />
fertile desert to irrigate the CRLC’s vast landholdings.<br />
Sherman Library<br />
repatriates at this time. In 1934, a Brawley mutualista<br />
report documented local labor conditions,<br />
revealing that campesinos there had organized “a<br />
mass repatriation” that “was only partially accomplished.<br />
Similar groups with identical ideas were<br />
formed practically all over the State of <strong>California</strong>,<br />
particularly in Southern <strong>California</strong>.” The popularity<br />
of repatriation schemes showed “how hopeless<br />
the Mexican situation was” in America. 28<br />
Imperial Valley campesinos were in a tenuous<br />
position because farmer-worker relations there<br />
were as contentious as in the Mexicali Valley,<br />
where governors set minimum wages and arbitrated<br />
labor disputes, usually favoring employers.<br />
Yet workers in Mexicali could appeal directly<br />
to the territorial governor and to the executive<br />
branch in Mexico City for redress. Although<br />
unions were plentiful and workers frequently<br />
went on strike, once a governor made a laborrelated<br />
decision, it was final. If workers did not<br />
return to work, Mexicali troops scattered picketers<br />
and arrested the leaders. Hard-core labor<br />
activists were occasionally dispatched to prison.<br />
Executive labor decisions minimized massive<br />
walkouts, but Mexico’s political structure also<br />
gave unions bargaining power by instructing<br />
workers to strike in order to force the governor<br />
to raise wages. Power to set wages put governors<br />
10<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
in the tenuous position of balancing the needs of<br />
business and labor, which often resulted in workers’<br />
dissatisfaction. Workers responded to unfavorable<br />
decisions by petitioning the president to<br />
replace the governor. Though the territorial government<br />
in the Mexicali Valley differed distinctly<br />
from the Imperial Valley’s political structure,<br />
pro-landowner bias often was similar. Harsh<br />
conditions in the Mexicali Valley thus factored<br />
into migrants’ decisions of whether to leave the<br />
Imperial Valley, strike, or voluntarily repatriate to<br />
Mexico.<br />
Migrants were caught in a borderland’s vice. In<br />
the Imperial Valley they faced declining wages<br />
and a repressive police state; in the Mexicali Valley<br />
they encountered unsympathetic governors,<br />
a scarcity of available land, and a lack of jobs<br />
due to the Depression’s devastation of the cotton<br />
industry. Within months of the 1930 strike, Mexican<br />
officials expressed alarm over the explosion<br />
of expatriates deported and forcibly repatriated<br />
from the United States. The Mexican government<br />
sent Secretary of Communications and<br />
Public Works General Juan Andreu Almazán to<br />
investigate conditions on Mexico’s northwestern<br />
borderlands. Almazán’s report to President<br />
Pascual Ortíz Rubio strongly recommended<br />
immediately purchasing “at any cost” the CRLC’s<br />
fiefdom and resettling there industrious but<br />
unemployed Mexican nationals living in the<br />
United States. Almazán argued it was a matter<br />
of national security because Americans, including<br />
the CRLC, had been and were scheming to<br />
acquire part of Sonora, as well as Baja <strong>California</strong>.<br />
The nationalistic report criticized Asians and<br />
recommended their deportation. Almazán also<br />
urged colonization of the region to increase Colorado<br />
River water use as a strategy to strengthen<br />
Mexico’s negotiating position in allocating the<br />
river before Boulder (later Hoover) Dam became<br />
operational. 29 Two months later, Ortíz Rubio<br />
directed the agricultural ministry to cancel or<br />
revise the CRLC’s land concession. In the meantime,<br />
the government reduced customs duties<br />
for items that the repatriates brought with them<br />
into Mexico. Additionally, Mexicali officials began<br />
deporting Chinese and Japanese to free up tenant<br />
and farm jobs. 30<br />
The Public Charge, Self-Help, and<br />
Strikes<br />
In the United States, Mexican emigrants, many<br />
of whom were undocumented aliens, feared poverty<br />
and long-term unemployment because of the<br />
increased risk of deportation. According to the<br />
immigration code’s “likely to be a public charge”<br />
provision, they could be deported or forced to<br />
repatriate for vagrancy, inability to pay medical<br />
bills, or application for public assistance. 31 To<br />
minimize violations of the public charge provision,<br />
Mexico instructed its consuls in the United<br />
States to organize mutualistas to provide charity<br />
to the sick, unemployed, and destitute. 32<br />
In 1925, when U.S. officials refused public assistance<br />
to Mexican nationals, the Mexican consul<br />
created local chapters of the mutualista la Cruz<br />
Azul Mexicana in several Imperial Valley towns.<br />
The consul instructed the charity’s officers in<br />
Brawley to inform the local judge that Mexicans<br />
would no longer burden him with pleas for<br />
public assistance. 33 In Calexico, where Mexicans<br />
comprised 60 percent of the community’s 6,500<br />
residents, a mutualista operated several clinics<br />
and maintained half a dozen beds reserved for<br />
ethnic Mexicans in the hospital. 34 Despite these<br />
self-help efforts, whites continued to stereotype<br />
Mexicans as addicted to public aid. Countering<br />
this perception, the state labor statistician told<br />
farmers that contrary to popular opinion, “It is<br />
not his nature that makes the Mexican take charity,<br />
but the fact that he is underpaid. He has little<br />
share in the wealth which he helps create.” 35<br />
Campesinos’ ability to engage in circular migration<br />
and avoid transgressing the public charge<br />
11
Beginning in the early twentieth century, Mexican communities created mutualistas—cultural, political, service, and<br />
social organizations that included the families of workers. For Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans living in<br />
poverty conditions in the Imperial Valley, such institutions provided significant economic support. This structure, which<br />
housed the Centro Mutualista de Zaragoza in Tijuana, Baja <strong>California</strong>, is similar to the mutualistas found on both sides<br />
of the U.S.-Mexico border.<br />
San Diego History Center<br />
provision diminished during the Great Depression.<br />
Nationally, the U.S. Border Patrol aggressively<br />
deported legal and illegal Mexicans who<br />
applied for public assistance or who could not<br />
pay their medical bills. In various states, relief<br />
workers pressured ethnic Mexicans who received<br />
public assistance to repatriate. 36 Towns in the<br />
Imperial Valley set up privately funded programs<br />
to feed and clothe residents, but migrants did<br />
not receive aid. By the summer of 1933, the sheer<br />
number of aid cases overwhelmed private relief,<br />
compelling state and federal welfare agencies to<br />
provide food and clothing to the needy, including<br />
noncitizens, even during strikes. 37 Around the<br />
country, the introduction of New Deal welfare<br />
programs shifted funding sources and decisionmaking<br />
from locals to outsiders with different<br />
criteria for giving or denying aid. This played a<br />
significant role in ending large-scale Mexican<br />
repatriation across the United States.<br />
In the Imperial Valley, the introduction of federal<br />
aid provoked controversy. Early in 1934, for<br />
example, farmers were furious when striking<br />
pea pickers received relief. Local officials seized<br />
control of the relief decisions and ensured that<br />
welfare policy would be predicated on the needs<br />
of agribusiness. By the beginning of the cantaloupe<br />
harvest later that summer, 9,895 persons<br />
received public assistance. Although Mexicans<br />
made up only one-third of the county’s population,<br />
they accounted for more than 57 percent of<br />
those receiving aid. 38 Welfare provided an incentive<br />
for migrants to stay in the area, but it served<br />
the needs of Imperial Valley farmers as well. By<br />
allowing campesinos to get relief between har-<br />
1 <strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
vests, growers maintained an overabundance of<br />
labor that drove wages down. 39<br />
Momentous events in the latter half of the year<br />
convinced migrants to avoid the Imperial Valley,<br />
voluntarily repatriate to the Mexicali Valley, and<br />
demand land from the Mexican government.<br />
Privation, failed strikes, deportations, and forced<br />
repatriation in <strong>California</strong> combined to radicalize<br />
many campesinos in the Imperial-Mexicali Valley.<br />
The introduction of socialist and communist<br />
organizers on both sides of the international line<br />
fueled transborder radicalism and exploded in<br />
massive strikes on both sides of the border.<br />
The Imperial Valley cantaloupe strike of 1934 has<br />
been well documented. Crushing it required a<br />
combination of unprecedented violence and the<br />
strike-breaking activities of the Mexican consul<br />
Joaquín Terrazas, who siphoned workers away<br />
from the campesino union and into a pro-farmer<br />
union under his control. 40 Local welfare officials<br />
soon entered the fray. In the midst of the labor<br />
walkout, they moved to intimidate campesinos<br />
by announcing the forced repatriation of 1,200<br />
aliens on relief. The timing of this threat, and the<br />
fact that there was no follow up to it, suggests it<br />
was a warning to workers to get back to work. 41<br />
After the strike, the relief office transitioned into<br />
a farm employment agency. Relief recipients<br />
were stricken from the relief rolls if they did not<br />
take low-paying field jobs. Agribusiness functionaries<br />
also used public assistance as a weapon<br />
against strikers. 42 Migrant disempowerment<br />
continued the next year when Consul Terrazas<br />
was transferred to another post. Without him, the<br />
field union evaporated, leaving campesinos without<br />
union representation. 43<br />
Land Expropriation<br />
Immediately following the strike, agraristas<br />
(agrarian militants) in the Mexicali Valley began<br />
organizing and petitioning the government for<br />
ejidos (communal farms). Unlike the small, pri-<br />
vately owned farm cooperatives and the territorial<br />
cooperatives already in existence, the ejidos<br />
were federal projects. Petitioners for ejidos were<br />
emboldened by the government’s increasingly<br />
nationalistic stance toward the CRLC. In the<br />
midst of the 1934 presidential election, Mexican<br />
officials forced an American to sell his 18,000-<br />
acre ranch to the government, which then distributed<br />
parcels to Mexican yeoman farmers<br />
supported by long-term government loans. While<br />
campaigning in September of that year, candidate<br />
General Lázaro Cárdenas, who supported redistributing<br />
foreign-owned land, visited Mexicali to<br />
inspect the agricultural colonies. 44 Upon his election<br />
in November, Mexicans on both sides of the<br />
Baja <strong>California</strong> borderland sent him numerous<br />
telegrams expressing their hardships and asking<br />
for help. Cárdenas responded by dispatching federal<br />
officials to investigate conditions and resolve<br />
disputes. 45 In time, the return of thousands of<br />
expatriates pressured Mexican officials to negotiate<br />
land sales from the CRLC and to develop the<br />
region for Mexican farmers.<br />
When the aforementioned repatriation convoy<br />
crossed into Mexicali, the December 15 issue of<br />
the Calexico Chronicle described their entrance<br />
with “chickens, goats, ducks, geese, farm implements,<br />
household goods and innumerable<br />
Momentous events in the latter<br />
half of the year [1934] convinced<br />
migrants to avoid the Imperial<br />
Valley, voluntarily repatriate to the<br />
Mexicali Valley, and demand land<br />
from the Mexican government.<br />
1
The December 1934 caravan of Mexican nationals who voluntarily repatriated to Mexico settled on Colónia<br />
Mexico Libre, a 2,800-acre communal farm expropriated from foreign landowners as part of Mexico’s agrarian<br />
reform movement. Departing Calexico, the 152 colonists crossed the border at Mexicali, Baja <strong>California</strong>,<br />
stopping at the checkpoint of the international boundary (foreground).<br />
Courtesy, Pomona Public Library, Pomona, CA<br />
children” in twenty-eight cars and trailers. They<br />
had been planning the move for eight months.<br />
Several months prior, they had sent a delegation<br />
to select their land and to confer with Mexican<br />
authorities who had negotiated the deal. U.S.<br />
and Mexican customs and immigration officials<br />
cooperated to speed the group across the border,<br />
but the repatriates waved away all offers of U.S.<br />
assistance, explaining that they had squirreled<br />
away the necessary funds during their years of<br />
planning. 46<br />
Two days later, the Calexico Chronicle shed additional<br />
light on the colonization of the Mexicali<br />
Valley, reporting on a discussion about the<br />
repatriation convoy between <strong>California</strong> governor<br />
Frank Merriam and General Agustín Olachea, the<br />
governor of the northern territory of Baja <strong>California</strong>.<br />
Olachea indicated that he was pleased the<br />
migrants were returning home. He asserted that<br />
Mexico stood to gain from the scientific knowledge<br />
the campesinos had acquired while working<br />
on commercial farms in the United States.<br />
Merriam emphasized that the migrants had done<br />
nothing to cause <strong>California</strong> authorities to request<br />
their removal. 47<br />
The exchange between the two executives underscores<br />
the different meanings each attached to<br />
repatriation. Whereas Olachea expressed smug<br />
satisfaction that the migrants’ return would<br />
benefit Mexico, Merriam inferred that the<br />
campesinos were welcome to labor in <strong>California</strong><br />
as long as they did not request relief. Indeed, the<br />
1<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
decision of thousands of migrants to abandon<br />
their circular migration patterns to settle in the<br />
Mexicali Valley boded ill for <strong>California</strong> farmers<br />
in general and in particular for growers in the<br />
Imperial Valley who had become dependent on<br />
mobile campesinos.<br />
As the Great Depression and strikes crippled<br />
agricultural production in the Imperial Valley, in<br />
1935 the Mexicali Valley’s farm economy broke<br />
out of its economic slump. Farmers planted<br />
100,000 acres in cotton, 35,000 acres in wheat,<br />
and various other crops. Local leaders expressed<br />
optimism for solid profits and plentiful jobs. The<br />
giddy head of the Mexicali Chamber of Commerce<br />
bragged that every available acre had been<br />
planted and that farmers had even plowed “virgin”<br />
ground. The sheer size of the cotton acreage<br />
required another 1,000 pickers recruited from<br />
Mexico’s interior and other parts of Baja <strong>California</strong>.<br />
When cotton prices rose suddenly in December<br />
1935, Mexicali farmers sent urgent notices for<br />
harvesters. For the first time since the depression<br />
began, field hands were making good money.<br />
Bountiful cotton profits convinced farmers to<br />
plant an additional 15,000 acres in 1936. 48<br />
Functionaries of the Mexican government continued<br />
to express grave concerns about the hardship<br />
and abuses endured by its emigrants across<br />
the border. High-level officials frequently visited<br />
southern <strong>California</strong> to explore the feasibility of<br />
settling repatriates onto ejidos in the Mexicali<br />
Valley. The Cárdenas administration forced the<br />
CRLC to sell portions its holdings to repatriates<br />
on long-term mortgages backed by the nation’s<br />
farm bank. In March 1935, for example, government<br />
officials finalized the sale of a 2,800-acre<br />
ranch, renamed Colonia México Libre, home<br />
of the repatriation convoy that had arrived the<br />
previous December. The bank furnished loans to<br />
purchase equipment for the farmers’ communal<br />
use and seed to grow animal feed crops and cotton.<br />
Deeds to their private holdings were for 40<br />
acres. Colonia México Libre symbolized both the<br />
This railroad labor camp along the Colorado River Delta,<br />
among the vast holdings of the Colorado River Land Company<br />
in 1934, housed workers and their families. Built from timber<br />
and brush from the Colorado River, the camp is representative<br />
of the harsh housing and working conditions of campesinos in<br />
rural Mexicali Valley. Confiscating foreign-owned land for use<br />
by campesinos would become a significant element of President<br />
Cárdenas’s six-year agricultural reform program.<br />
Sherman Library<br />
hope of the new property owners and the act of<br />
throwing off the yoke of foreign landowners. In<br />
line with the government’s push to educate the<br />
masses, officials pledged to erect a school. 49<br />
The Mexican government had published its intention<br />
to colonize Baja <strong>California</strong> in early 1935. The<br />
high priority given to populating Mexicali was<br />
reflected in the government’s actions to make<br />
the region attractive. Responding to frequent<br />
requests, in mid-1935 farm implements were<br />
added to the list of products allowed to pass duty<br />
free through the Mexicali port of entry. Although<br />
the duty had been small, the decree was another<br />
measure that helped to pull expatriates back to<br />
Mexico. A year later, officials purchased material<br />
to build six modern rural schools. 50<br />
President Cárdenas sent scores of bureaucrats<br />
to prepare for land redistribution. In April 1935,<br />
1
Migrant families in the Imperial Valley often lived year round in ramshackle homes made of discarded lumber, tarps,<br />
burlap, and cardboard. Nearby ditches provided water for cooking, bathing, and drinking. There were no latrines. The<br />
most important items for mobile workers were the stove (see pipe protruding from the roof) and the automobile. In this<br />
photograph, a young girl peeks out the door of her makeshift dwelling against the backdrop of a harvested field.<br />
Library of Congress, photograph by Dorothea Lange<br />
Secretary of Agriculture Tomás Garrido Canabal<br />
toured Mexicali to inspect the conditions among<br />
the repatriates and to plan for further colonization.<br />
His entourage included twelve commissioners<br />
and subcommissioners, experts in irrigation,<br />
agriculture, land development, and engineering.<br />
At a gigantic open-air gathering in Mexicali, and<br />
later in Los Angeles, Canabal promoted the government’s<br />
ambitious plans to encourage one million<br />
Mexicans living in the American Southwest<br />
to settle in the Mexicali Valley as self-supporting<br />
yeoman farmers. The impetus for the plan,<br />
he explained, was the severe disappointment<br />
expressed by migrants who had left their native<br />
land with high expectations of work in the United<br />
States but instead had found unemployment<br />
and hardship. Returning penniless, they became<br />
a burden upon Mexican society. The Cárdenas<br />
administration’s plans for interior colonization<br />
would diminish the individual and collective<br />
effects of the campesinos’ disappointments. 51<br />
Later that fall, Baja <strong>California</strong> governor General<br />
Gildardo Magaña conferred with business and<br />
government leaders in Mexico City on how to<br />
develop the Mexicali Valley. Afterward, a federal<br />
commission arrived in the valley to explore all<br />
aspects of settling the region. On November 23,<br />
Secretary of the Interior Silvano Barba González<br />
announced a forthcoming visit to Mexicali to<br />
inspect the border immigration stations and<br />
investigate the feasibility of establishing farming<br />
cooperatives. Within days, General Saturnino<br />
Cedillo, the new secretary of agriculture, arrived<br />
with a contingent of army officers to tour the territory.<br />
He then traveled to Los Angeles to exhort<br />
Mexicans to move to Mexicali. Magaña and other<br />
government officials also visited Los Angeles to<br />
encourage repatriation. After attending a picnic<br />
in his honor, the governor flew to Mexico City to<br />
finalize colonization plans. Between 300 and 400<br />
people a month moved to the Mexicali Valley,<br />
based on the number of border-pass applications<br />
to shop in Calexico. 52<br />
1<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
Despite the intense government activity in settling<br />
the Mexicali Valley, the CRLC sold few individual<br />
plots. A combination of inertia and a lack<br />
of settlers with sufficient capital resulted in slow<br />
land sales. In April 1936, the CRLC finally inked<br />
a contract with the Mexican government to sell<br />
165,000 acres of its developed land to Mexican<br />
farmers in parcels ranging from 40 to 375 acres.<br />
Although the agreement provided for twenty-year<br />
financing, it effectively locked out the vast majority<br />
of campesinos, most of whom did not have<br />
the funds or access to credit to purchase property,<br />
equipment, and other necessities. 53<br />
These events marked the end of an era of Mexican<br />
circular migration on the <strong>California</strong>-Baja<br />
<strong>California</strong> borderland. Following the 1934 cantaloupe<br />
strike, the domination of campesino labor<br />
in the Imperial Valley began to shift with the<br />
arrival of thousands of destitute workers in 1935.<br />
A deluge of white and black domestic migrants<br />
from the South and the Southwest fleeing economic<br />
dislocation arrived in the Imperial Valley,<br />
along with 6,000 male Filipino workers, some<br />
from as far away as Alaska. The newcomers<br />
saturated the labor market, took jobs from ethnic<br />
Mexicans, and lowered wages for all. In 1936,<br />
with the arrival in <strong>California</strong> of almost 85,000<br />
Dust Bowl refugees, white transients began<br />
replacing Mexicans as <strong>California</strong>’s dominant<br />
farm labor force. By mid-1937, they comprised<br />
half of the valley’s field workers. According to the<br />
periodical Country Gentlemen, farmers claimed<br />
whites were “better workers, less transient but<br />
more labor conscious,” making “agricultural<br />
unions more potent.” Agribusiness responded<br />
to numerous resulting strikes by creating the<br />
Associated Farmers, a militant organization<br />
whose “special deputies” broke up picketing and<br />
smashed unions. 54<br />
A perfect storm now brewed along the Baja<br />
<strong>California</strong> borderlands. A superabundance of<br />
workers and low wages in the Imperial Valley<br />
combined with opportunities to acquire land in<br />
A perfect storm now brewed along<br />
the Baja <strong>California</strong> borderlands. A<br />
superabundance of workers and<br />
low wages in the Imperial Valley<br />
combined with opportunities to<br />
acquire land in the Mexicali Valley<br />
made repatriation to the Mexicali<br />
Valley even more attractive to<br />
campesinos.<br />
the Mexicali Valley made repatriation to the Mexicali<br />
Valley even more attractive to campesinos. To<br />
free up jobs, Mexican repatriates and unions in<br />
Baja <strong>California</strong> petitioned government officials<br />
to expel Asian laborers and tenants. Xenophobic<br />
screeds prompted the Chinese consul in Mexicali<br />
to send the Chinese home. 55 The Mexicali Valley’s<br />
Japanese colony departed as well. 56<br />
Salvador España, a young engineer, was an<br />
influential local advocate for ejidos in the mid-<br />
1920s. A decade later, he launched a transnational<br />
movement on the Baja <strong>California</strong> borderlands to<br />
encourage the landless to petition for the federal<br />
government’s expropriation and redistribution<br />
of the CRLC estate. Although deathly ill and bedridden,<br />
España worked tirelessly to see his life’s<br />
work come to fruition. 57 In June 1936, ejido activists<br />
brought together 3,000 campesinos in Mexicali<br />
to demand land. 58 Baja <strong>California</strong> residents<br />
also requested government favors and subsidies.<br />
In July 1936, for example, the new territorial<br />
1
governor, General Gabriel Gavira, met with President<br />
Cárdenas to discuss speeding up land sales<br />
and building a railroad line to the adjoining state<br />
of Sonora. 59 To placate frustrated residents, the<br />
government purchased construction material and<br />
announced plans to start laying tracks, putting<br />
700–800 men to work. 60<br />
After a year of investigations and reports on<br />
colonizing the Mexicali Valley, President Cárdenas<br />
urged citizens in a national radio address in<br />
September 1936 to support his vision of building<br />
up the southern territory of Quintana Roo<br />
and the northern territory of Baja <strong>California</strong>. He<br />
estimated a cost of eight million pesos to build<br />
schools, rail lines, irrigation projects, and eliminate<br />
import duties. He referred to negotiations<br />
with the United States to allow a satisfactory portion<br />
of the Colorado River to irrigate Mexicali and<br />
invited expatriates to return to Mexico. A week<br />
later, the Mexican Senate affirmed Cárdenas’s territorial<br />
development plan. 61<br />
Over a period of nine months following its April<br />
1936 contract with the Mexican government,<br />
the CRLC had settled only a few hundred colonists.<br />
Disaffected ejidatarios (supporters of communal<br />
farms) responded to the slow pace with<br />
violence. Agraristas seized farms and compelled<br />
the government to legitimize their actions. Their<br />
defiance is celebrated today in the Mexicali Valley<br />
as “El Asalto a las Tierras” (The Assault on the<br />
Lands). At a rowdy meeting with the governor on<br />
January 26, 1937, a leader exclaimed: “Look Mr.<br />
Governor, Article 27 of the Constitution says that<br />
the lands are the property of the nation; that is<br />
why we request them. If you are going to deny<br />
us our constitutional rights as Mexicans, we will<br />
use force to take the lands, and if you do not<br />
give us water, we will break the floodgates.” 62<br />
The next morning, some 400 agraristas seized<br />
CLRC ranches and chased off the Asian and<br />
Mexican tenants. Troops hauled the leaders to the<br />
stockade, but President Cárdenas immediately<br />
released them. Taken aback by the brazen land<br />
grab, Cárdenas requested the agraristas send a<br />
delegation to Mexico City to meet with him. 63<br />
In the interim, militants took over farms and<br />
told small landowners, tenants, and even longtime<br />
farmers living on the territorial communes<br />
to leave. When reports of these abuses reached<br />
Cárdenas, he ordered the territorial governor<br />
to send soldiers to quell the disorder. In a stern<br />
message, the governor released a statement<br />
from the president that called illegal land seizure<br />
treason. Over the next few days, troops arrested<br />
some eighty squatters. But agraristas ignored<br />
the soldiers, leaving tenants and Mexican farmers<br />
wondering whether to proceed with planting<br />
or wait until the government resolved the crisis.<br />
Although a new governor, Colonel Rodolfo Sánchez<br />
Taboada, assured the public that unrest and<br />
squatting would not be tolerated, the Cárdenas<br />
administration gave no assurances to the small<br />
landowners who had signed long-term mortgages<br />
with the CRLC or to the residents of the territorial<br />
cooperatives that their property would be protected<br />
beyond the current year. 64<br />
News of the agraristas’ land seizure galvanized<br />
the country’s major labor organizations to send<br />
messages to President Cárdenas urging him<br />
not to use the military against the militants. In<br />
Mexico City, the meeting between the delegation<br />
of agraristas and Cárdenas had the desired effect.<br />
No longer willing to tolerate the suffering of the<br />
peasantry, the president jettisoned the colonization<br />
plan for self-supporting farmers and decided<br />
instead to expropriate the CRLC’s estate in March<br />
1937. The stunning announcement came from<br />
the chief of the agrarian department, who would<br />
remain in Mexicali until the transfer of CRLC<br />
property to ejidos was complete. The government<br />
opened a land bank and an agrarian agency with<br />
an engineer to oversee the technical aspects of<br />
the operation. The National Bank of Communal<br />
Farm Credit in Mexico City pledged a million<br />
pesos in farm financing to 2,500 ejidatarios. 65<br />
1<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
Bolstered by the expropriation announcement,<br />
agraristas issued menacing threats to the small<br />
landowning farmers, cooperative farmers, and<br />
tenants. Spurred by rumors of impending violence<br />
and land seizure, the governor reiterated<br />
that current contracts and tenant agreements<br />
would be enforced. Terrorized by militants,<br />
farmers and tenants sent telegrams to President<br />
Cárdenas begging for assurance their property<br />
rights were secure. Receiving no reply, a delegation<br />
of yeoman farmers traveled to Mexico City<br />
to personally state their case. A few days later,<br />
a thousand small farmers and tenants staged a<br />
U.S.-style sit-down strike in the territorial palace<br />
demanding protection and exemption from the<br />
ejido plan. When union members sympathetic to<br />
the small farmers met in Mexicali, several hundred<br />
agraristas assaulted them. In the countryside,<br />
armed militants told farmers to leave. 66<br />
With the government unwilling to enforce martial<br />
law in the rural areas, farm families converged<br />
in the territorial palace’s park. For twenty<br />
days, 10,000 protesters held a sit-down strike,<br />
refusing to leave until they met with the president.<br />
When Cárdenas rejected their demands,<br />
they sent a scathing letter accusing officials of<br />
misleading him. Cárdenas assigned a presidential<br />
commission to resolve the dispute. But the “striking<br />
farmers” had allies among the commercial<br />
sectors of Mexicali and with trade unions, and<br />
expressions of support poured in from around<br />
the nation. As tense negotiations dragged on, the<br />
determined farmers and their allies threatened a<br />
general shutdown of Baja <strong>California</strong>. Local and<br />
national support for the strikers convinced Cárdenas<br />
to modify his communal plan. He exempted<br />
the territorial cooperatives, eleven newly created<br />
federal colonies, four privately owned colonies,<br />
nine colonies created by the CRLC under the<br />
original colonization contract, and Colonia<br />
México Libre, established for the December<br />
1934 repatriation caravan. Government officials<br />
also pledged compensation to farmers for losses<br />
caused by the agraristas. 67<br />
The Mexican government swiftly prepared ejidos<br />
for landless residents and repatriates. Shipments<br />
of farm machinery arrived, surveyors marked<br />
boundaries, and tenants were given final dates to<br />
harvest crops and vacate ranches. In a surprising<br />
announcement, after years of lobbying by Mexicali<br />
merchants and businesses, Cárdenas decreed<br />
a (mostly) duty-free zone along the Baja <strong>California</strong><br />
borderlands in June—another example of the<br />
president’s determination to populate and spur<br />
economic growth on the borderlands. By July,<br />
the Agrarian Commission had created over forty<br />
ejidos with almost 5,000 settlers. When Cárdenas<br />
left office three years later, the government had<br />
taken over 422,000 acres dedicated to more than<br />
fifty communal farm settlements. Between 1915<br />
and 1946, a total of sixty-four ejidos and thirty-six<br />
colonies were carved out of the CRLC’s fiefdom. 68<br />
divergent economic outcomes<br />
The astounding developments in the Mexicali<br />
Valley had an immediate impact on the Imperial<br />
Valley labor force. The overabundance of labor<br />
that had pleased Imperial Valley farmers ended at<br />
the same time as the expropriation of the CRLC<br />
estate. In March 1937, ten days after the CRLC<br />
seizure, a roundtable discussion among prominent<br />
state and local officials and agribusiness<br />
leaders had conferred to address unemployment,<br />
welfare, and seasonal labor for the upcoming harvests.<br />
Traditionally in June, when the cantaloupe<br />
season reached its zenith, plenty of workers vied<br />
for jobs. But migratory campesinos were not<br />
arriving as before and employers complained of<br />
a severe shortage of “experienced” (the code word<br />
for Mexicans, in agricultural parlance) melon<br />
pickers to harvest the highly perishable crop.<br />
Although white men were begging for jobs, the<br />
employment director affirmed, “Let it be understood<br />
that I want and will accept only thoroughly<br />
experienced men.” Despite his request of 150<br />
pickers from other county employment agencies,<br />
1
would show up. In February 1938, some 2,000<br />
white families from Texas and Arizona answered<br />
advertisements for American pea pickers. It<br />
appears that campesinos had rejected the Imperial<br />
Valley as a destination on the migration<br />
circuit. Lackluster crop prices in 1938 and 1939<br />
further reduced migrant jobs. 70 Thus, events on<br />
both sides of the invisible Imperial-Mexicali border<br />
drew repatriates to the Mexicali Valley.<br />
A Mexican migrant worker thins and weeds cantaloupe plants in the<br />
Imperial Valley in March 1937. Illustrative of back-breaking industrial<br />
agriculture, each cantaloupe in this field had a waxed paper<br />
“cap” placed on it by hand and spread over a wire wicket to protect<br />
against cold and to accelerate growth. By June, campesinos had<br />
found better working and living conditions across the border, impacting<br />
the availability of Mexican laborers in the Imperial Valley.<br />
Library of Congress, photograph by Dorothea Lange<br />
150 Mexicans from other areas who were released<br />
from the welfare rolls spurned the Imperial Valley.<br />
Only twenty-six men showed up, with a few<br />
small groups trickling in later. 69<br />
In October of that year, while officials in the<br />
Mexicali Valley were settling repatriates on ejidos<br />
across the border, the Imperial County employment<br />
officer who had played an instrumental<br />
role in forcing unemployed persons off the welfare<br />
rolls and into the fields could not explain<br />
why Mexicans had not arrived to pick cotton,<br />
despite the availability of 500 jobs. “Migratory<br />
farm laborers are not coming back to the valley<br />
this year as early as in past years,” he remarked.<br />
Three weeks later, he was still hoping migrants<br />
In 1939, President Cárdenas embarked on a<br />
two-month, 6,000-mile farewell tour of Mexico’s<br />
northern border. He inspected 400 communities,<br />
devoting nearly all his time on agrarian<br />
projects ushered in during his administration.<br />
Cárdenas spent five days in Mexicali, conferring<br />
day and night with peasants and small farmers.<br />
In a speech at an ejido, he exhorted the settlers<br />
to work hard, shun drinking, and rebuild the<br />
Mexican economy. In another speech, he urged<br />
Mexicans living in the United States to return<br />
home. Cárdenas deepened his commitment<br />
to develop the desert region by approving of a<br />
twelve-million-peso irrigation district on the former<br />
CRLC estate. In addition to pledging to finish<br />
the railroad to Sonora, he endorsed a two-millionpeso<br />
bond to finance a 131-mile road to the port of<br />
San Felipe to develop fishing and tourism, as well<br />
as other business-friendly initiatives. 71<br />
Underscoring the high government priority given<br />
to colonizing the Mexicali Valley, Cárdenas designated<br />
Ramón Beteta, Mexico’s undersecretary of<br />
state for foreign affairs, with overseeing the repatriation<br />
of Mexican nationals living in <strong>California</strong>.<br />
Cárdenas set up the northern territorial colonization<br />
commission, headed by the territorial<br />
governor. As chief colonizing agent, the governor<br />
was given broad powers to speed up settlement.<br />
He was also instructed to recruit colonists from<br />
both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Cárdenas’s<br />
efforts to Mexicanize the northern portion of Baja<br />
<strong>California</strong> paid handsome dividends. The region’s<br />
1940 census (including Tijuana) revealed that<br />
77,509 of the 78,907 residents were Mexicans.<br />
0 <strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
In the Mexicali Valley, the population increased<br />
from 29, 985 in 1930 to 44,399 a decade later. 72<br />
Bridging Eras<br />
The Great Depression ended a generation of<br />
Mexican family circular transnational and domestic<br />
migration. A repertoire of strategies including<br />
U.S. migration, mutualista self-help, strikes, and<br />
voluntary repatriation, which had given Imperial<br />
Valley campesinos the ability to improve their<br />
economic status, ended when wages declined,<br />
strikes failed, and jobs became scarce. National<br />
and international events overshadowed changing<br />
local conditions. The United State’s deportation<br />
and massive forced repatriation of Mexican<br />
nationals played into President Lázaro Cárdenas’s<br />
vision of colonizing Mexico’s northern borderlands<br />
with small farmers. In 1937, when Cárdenas<br />
expropriated the CRLC’s vast landholdings,<br />
Mexican repatriates embraced the opportunity to<br />
exchange a difficult itinerant lifestyle in America<br />
for the prospect of farming in the Mexicali Valley.<br />
Although repatriation, land expropriation, and<br />
colonization took place across the U.S.-Mexico<br />
borderland, recent scholarship on Cárdenas’s<br />
repatriation efforts in the Mexican states adjoining<br />
Texas most closely resembles what transpired<br />
in the Imperial-Mexicali region, albeit with<br />
significant differences. More ethnic Mexicans<br />
lived in Texas than in any other U.S. state and<br />
most repatriates came from Texas, which had a<br />
reputation of being virulently anti-Mexican. Consequently,<br />
there were more repatriate colonies<br />
in the Mexican states south of Texas. One of the<br />
unique factors of colonization in the Mexicali<br />
Valley was Baja <strong>California</strong>’s vulnerability to U.S.<br />
annexation, which propelled Mexico to populate<br />
the region. Another difference between the<br />
Mexicali Valley and other parts of Mexico’s far<br />
north involved the race to build up water usage<br />
from the Colorado River before the completion of<br />
Boulder Dam.<br />
Voluntary repatriation bridged two eras of Mexican<br />
mobility: family circular migration and the<br />
Bracero Program. The depopulation of ethnic<br />
Mexicans from the United States alarmed American<br />
employers during World War II. The loss of<br />
plentiful low-wage campesino migrants, however,<br />
presented an opportunity to create a new<br />
seasonal Mexican labor regime, but this time<br />
without families, theoretically avoiding the vexing<br />
issues of housing, schooling, and assimilating<br />
ethnic Mexicans. Building on the cooperation<br />
between the U.S. Border Patrol and Mexico’s<br />
Migration Service for voluntary repatriation, the<br />
two governments enacted the Bracero Program,<br />
a partnership creating a labor migration arrangement<br />
restricted to men.<br />
The Bracero Program was initially appealing<br />
to Mexico because it now regulated migration,<br />
thereby maintaining a steady flow of remittances<br />
while providing a safety valve for excess<br />
unemployment. It also minimized the number<br />
of expatriates and eliminated the need to resettle<br />
thousands of Mexican nationals expelled from<br />
the United States during an economic downturn.<br />
U.S. employers strongly supported the Bracero<br />
Program because it gave them the ability to regulate<br />
seasonal labor needs. Braceros eventually<br />
replaced most American migrant farm workers<br />
in the American West and significantly reduced<br />
strikes, which served to maintain wages and<br />
working and living conditions satisfactory to U.S.<br />
employers.<br />
Benny J. Andrés Jr. is Assistant Professor, Department<br />
of History and Latin American Studies Program, at the<br />
University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His current work<br />
is a manuscript tentatively titled “Power and Control in the<br />
Imperial-Mexicali Valley: Nature, Agribusiness, Labor and<br />
Race Relations, 1900–1940.”<br />
1
If Walls Could Speak:<br />
San Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini<br />
By Victor A. Walsh<br />
From the far side of the historic plaza, the<br />
restored, two-story Cosmopolitan Hotel<br />
with turned wooden columns and baluster<br />
railings stands in the soft morning light—a<br />
sentinel to times gone by. Originally built in<br />
1827–29 as the family residence of Juan Bandini<br />
and forty years later converted into Old Town’s<br />
principal hotel and stage office, it is one of the<br />
most noteworthy historic buildings in the state. 1<br />
Few buildings in <strong>California</strong> rival its scale or size<br />
(8,000 sq. ft.) or blending of nineteenth-century<br />
Mexican adobe and American wood-framing construction<br />
techniques. It boasts a rich and storied<br />
past—one that has been buried in the material<br />
fabric and hidden in written and oral accounts<br />
left behind by previous generations.<br />
Over its 182-year history, this San Diego landmark<br />
changed and evolved to accommodate new<br />
uses, new construction methods and materials,<br />
and new cultural values and tastes. Like history, it<br />
is not a museum piece. As Juan Bandini’s singlestory<br />
adobe home, its construction depended<br />
largely on local materials and the availability of<br />
Kumeyaay Indian labor from nearby Mission San<br />
Diego de Alcalá. Its very size, advanced design,<br />
zaguán (central entranceway), and elevated position<br />
on the plaza represented the elite status<br />
and patriarchal values of a man who envisioned<br />
his home as the center of family life and pueblo<br />
activities. It also signified something less tangible<br />
or obvious: Bandini’s resolve to stay and make<br />
San Diego his patria (homeland).<br />
In 1869, when Albert Lewis Seeley, the Texas<br />
stage master, converted Bandini’s adobe into the<br />
Cosmopolitan Hotel, Old Town was already losing<br />
much of its Mexican orientation and part of<br />
its Californio character—a way of life that was<br />
largely seasonal, task-oriented, and oral. The<br />
hotel, the pride of an American frontier society in<br />
transition, personified this cultural shift. It incorporated<br />
new building materials, architectural<br />
elements, and interior furnishings and features,<br />
as well as such amenities as clocks, newspapers,<br />
printed fees, and schedules. It offered a multiplicity<br />
of relatively new commercial services,<br />
including a post office and barbershop, along<br />
with its operation as a hotel, bar, restaurant, and<br />
stage office. In a word, the hotel embodied what<br />
society was becoming: more mobile in terms of<br />
distance and speed and more disciplined and<br />
exacting in time. It also reflected the differentiation<br />
between public and private space that was<br />
less sharply delineated in the earlier Mexican era.<br />
Beginning in 1930, three successive remodels<br />
transformed the building into an upscale tourist<br />
attraction. The first, undertaken by Bandini’s<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
The recently renovated Cosmopolitan Hotel in Old Town San Diego stands once again on the historic plaza, resplendent<br />
in its original nineteenth-century glory. It is, as one current observer put it, “a resurrection of the past,” when<br />
many envisioned the hotel’s opening in 1869 as a sign of a new and more prosperous era for the tiny frontier community.<br />
This historic landmark—initially the home of Juan Bandini, one of Mexican <strong>California</strong>’s most prominent<br />
citizens, and today a hotel, restaurant, and bar—fulfills the long-term goal of many San Diegans to recognize and<br />
preserve a part of their cultural and architectural heritage.<br />
Photograph by Sandé Lollis<br />
grandson Cave J. Couts Jr., was the most important<br />
because it signified a cultural redirection<br />
by a struggling community hoping to capture a<br />
portion of the heavy auto-tourist traffic en route<br />
to the city’s acclaimed <strong>California</strong> Pacific International<br />
Exposition. <strong>Historical</strong> myths celebrating<br />
southern <strong>California</strong>’s Spanish origins arose out<br />
of nostalgia for an idealized past shattered by the<br />
sudden rise of a modern, urban-industrial society.<br />
Future operators, attracted by potential profits<br />
from Old Town’s identity with a Spanish past,<br />
converted the building into a luxurious Spanish<br />
Colonial hacienda that not only misrepresented<br />
its history and those associated with it, but also<br />
ignored the nineteenth-century Mexican Californio<br />
heritage.<br />
The preservation of historic buildings, structures,<br />
and landscapes provides tangible links to<br />
an otherwise physically vanished past. They are<br />
part of a “living tradition”—voices from the past<br />
that help tell us how those who came before us
once lived and worked. They narrow the “space<br />
of experience” that separates us from them. This<br />
is why <strong>California</strong> State Parks, with invaluable<br />
assistance from local preservation organizations,<br />
decided to restore this historic landmark to its<br />
appearance as the Cosmopolitan Hotel. 2<br />
Historic preservations and restorations are<br />
important for another less tangible but equally<br />
compelling reason. They are places that hold collective<br />
memories, multiple stories. 3 They offer us<br />
a coherent identity. The question or challenge is<br />
which cultural memories, stories, or identities<br />
can or will be remembered. The Cosmopolitan<br />
Hotel is a case in point. Recently, the San Diego<br />
Reader published an article arguing that its restoration<br />
as an American hotel ignores by necessity<br />
or choice its Mexican origins and heritage. 4 The<br />
implication is clear: either the building should<br />
have been left alone, unrestored in its nonhistoric<br />
state, or it should have been restored as the Casa<br />
de Bandini, requiring the removal of the entire<br />
second floor in violation of preservation standards<br />
and law. Neither of these options is acceptable.<br />
The solution, if one exists, is to provide<br />
tours, a documentary film or commemoration, or<br />
nonintrusive exhibits that address the building’s<br />
multiple layers of history and those cultural<br />
memories associated with it.<br />
Mexican <strong>California</strong>: The Casa and<br />
the Don, 1829–1859<br />
Juan Bandini would become one of the most<br />
prominent men of his day in <strong>California</strong>. Born in<br />
Arica, Peru, on October 4, 1800, he was the son<br />
of Captain José María Bandini, a Spanish-born<br />
naval officer stationed near Lima, and Ysidora<br />
Blancas, a native Peruvian of Spanish descent.<br />
The only surviving child of that marriage, Bandini,<br />
like his father, was the product of the<br />
Old and New Worlds. In his youth they sailed<br />
together to Europe, where Bandini completed his<br />
schooling in Spain and Italy with a focus on law. 5<br />
During the second decade of the nineteenth century,<br />
Spain’s New World territories were in the<br />
throes of rebellion against Spanish rule. Captain<br />
Bandini, who had returned to a politically unstable<br />
Lima, spent much of his time on the open<br />
sea, stopping and trading at Latin American and<br />
Mexican ports. In 1819 and 1821, he sailed up the<br />
Pacific coast from San Blas to deliver supplies<br />
and troops to the presidios at San Diego, Los<br />
Angeles, and San Francisco. A year later, by then<br />
retired, a widower, and a loyal citizen of Mexico,<br />
he decided to resettle in San Diego, lured by the<br />
promise of a new beginning. His twenty-twoyear-old<br />
son Juan, who admired his father and<br />
had no lasting ties to Lima, accompanied him. 6<br />
In 1827, Governor José María Echeandía granted<br />
Juan Bandini and José Antonio Estudillo, his<br />
brother-in-law, adjoining house lots on the plaza,<br />
measuring “100 varas square [277.5 x 277.5 ft.]<br />
in common.” 7 Through his marriage to Dolores<br />
Estudillo and after her death in 1833 to Refugio<br />
Argüello, the daughter of another influential<br />
Spanish Californio family, Bandini carved out an<br />
illustrious career as a politician, civic leader, and<br />
rancher. He allied his large family with influential<br />
American immigrants and welcomed American<br />
statehood. His American sons-in-law included<br />
Abel Stearns, the wealthy Los Angeles trader and<br />
cattle baron, Colonel Cave J. Couts, a prominent<br />
San Diego rancher, and Charles Robinson Johnson,<br />
a Los Angeles business associate. 8<br />
Bandini’s one-story adobe home was originally<br />
U-shaped, with two wings extending away from<br />
the plaza parallel to present-day Juan and Calhoun<br />
Streets. 9 It featured built-in, adobe-layered<br />
cornices and unexposed roof rafters—Spanish<br />
Colonial elements usually found only in the<br />
designs of <strong>California</strong>’s missions. According to<br />
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo’s drawing from memory,<br />
10 the house had eight rooms, 11 a zaguán, a<br />
kitchen attached to the wing on Calhoun Street, 12<br />
and two patios in the rear, 13 along with a corral<br />
and shed for rigging and harnessing horses.<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
In 1856, the artist Henry Miller traveled<br />
throughout Alta <strong>California</strong> along the El<br />
Camino Real, from San Francisco to San<br />
Diego, sketching cities, towns, missions,<br />
and landscapes. “For one view of San<br />
Diego,” the jurist Benjamin Hayes wrote,<br />
“Mr. Miller received the beggarly sum of<br />
$10. An artist here cannot make enough<br />
to pay his bill at the hotel for four days.”<br />
Despite this obstacle, Miller completed<br />
a sketch illustrating the pueblo, a detail<br />
of which shows Juan Bandini’s adobe<br />
and the adjacent Casa de Estudillo, the<br />
pueblo’s two largest homes.<br />
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library,<br />
University of <strong>California</strong>, Berkeley
<strong>California</strong> State Parks’<br />
Restoration<br />
The three-year renovation of the Cosmopolitan Hotel by<br />
<strong>California</strong> State Parks, with support from local preservation<br />
organizations and companies, began in 2007. In this photograph,<br />
archaeologists patiently uncover the original cobblestone<br />
foundation of the north wing of the Casa de Bandini, which<br />
collapsed during an earthquake in 1862 and was never rebuilt.<br />
Cobbles were stacked in multiple layers to support the weight<br />
of the former adobe brick wall. Measuring as much as 7 ft. in<br />
width, the foundation extends outward with a cobble skirt sloping<br />
downward beyond the wall in order to deflect water runoff<br />
from the roof.<br />
Courtesy of <strong>California</strong> State Parks<br />
Water was available from two hand-dug wells.<br />
The drawing reveals that no exterior doorways<br />
opened onto the main streets or plaza, probably<br />
because the building stood on a level cobblestone<br />
foundation well above the street grade, making<br />
access difficult. 14 At the southwest corner directly<br />
across from the plaza, archaeologists have uncovered<br />
sections of the original foundation. It rises<br />
4 1 ⁄ 2 ft. from the original street grade to the adobe<br />
block. The building literally sat on a pedestal<br />
dominating the plaza. 15<br />
Alfred Robinson, the New England shipping<br />
agent for the trading agency Bryant, Sturgis &<br />
Co., described the stately whitewashed adobe in<br />
1829 as a “mansion,” which “when completed<br />
[will] surpass any other in the country.” 16 Built at<br />
the same time as the Estudillo adobe, the Casa<br />
de Bandini would take nearly two years to finish.<br />
The rooms had 3- to 3 1 ⁄ 2-ft.-thick adobe walls<br />
and deep-seated windows with wooden shutters.<br />
Cobalt blue floral patterns were painted on<br />
the finished lime-painted plaster of some of the<br />
interior walls. The ceilings were heavily beamed<br />
and covered with muslin to trap insects and dirt.<br />
The roof was covered with thatch and later clay<br />
tile. Materials such as the tiles, wood beams, and<br />
lintels probably were salvaged from the hilltop<br />
presidio, already in a state of deterioration. In<br />
1828, Bandini ordered palos colorados (redwood<br />
posts) from the American merchant John Cooper<br />
in Monterey. The posts, which measured 1 ⁄ 3 vara<br />
(11 in.) in diameter and 4.5–5 varas (12.5–13.9 ft.)<br />
in length, probably were used for the veranda facing<br />
the lower patio. 17<br />
The household maintained rigid hygienic standards,<br />
according to Arcadia Bandini Brennan,<br />
Juan Bandini’s great-granddaughter. One interesting<br />
practice carried out by Indian servants was<br />
hauling the household’s “slops” to the beach,<br />
where they were buried in holes and braced or<br />
enclosed with logs. The logs were then removed<br />
and the human wastes were carried out to sea<br />
by sand swept in by the waves. Adobe walls were<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
either painted with lime (whitewash) or plastered<br />
with slaked lime mixed with sand because the<br />
high acidic (Ph) levels in the lime kept the walls<br />
free of fungus and other bacteria. 18<br />
The front sala (parlor room) was the hub of<br />
“social gaiety” in old San Diego. Here, Bandini,<br />
a superb dancer, hosted lavish parties, including<br />
the weddings of two of his five daughters,<br />
Dolores and Ysidora, and met with representatives<br />
from the Mexican Republic and the United<br />
States. Measuring 33 x 16 ft., the large room was<br />
the only one in the house with a wooden (white<br />
pine) floor, and it was well worn by years of<br />
dancing. Brennan recalled a family tradition of<br />
placing “little gold dollars” in painted cascarones<br />
(eggshells), which were tossed to the guests by<br />
Indian servants during the parties. By the late<br />
1840s, the room sported a huge Yankee clock<br />
case, several English fox hunting paintings, a<br />
picture of George Washington, and an American<br />
flag, according to U.S.A. Major Samuel P.<br />
Heintzelman. 19<br />
Most of the other rooms had compact earthen<br />
floors. In her memoir, Brennan noted an interesting<br />
household practice as described by her<br />
grandaunt. “She told me that . . . the floors were<br />
fixed by having the ground in each room well<br />
swept, then wet down by buckets of water. When<br />
dry, green grasses or soft leafy branches were put<br />
all over, evenly laid and the beautiful rugs were<br />
rolled out.” 20<br />
Alfred Robinson wrote an evocative account of<br />
the festivities surrounding the blessing of the<br />
newly constructed home on December 28, 1829.<br />
The ceremony began at noon, attended by the<br />
governor (then in residence in San Diego), presidio<br />
officers, family, and friends. A priest from<br />
the nearby mission walked from room to room,<br />
beginning with the sala, sprinkling holy water on<br />
the walls. Guests then sat down to a sumptuous<br />
afternoon dinner. That evening, men, women,<br />
and children from the entire community, “without<br />
waiting for the formality of an invitation,”<br />
Robinson recalled, crowded into the grand home.<br />
In the candlelit sala, a graceful couple performed<br />
el jarabe (Mexico’s national dance) amid “shouts<br />
of approbation”: “The female dancer . . . cast her<br />
eyes to the floor, whilst her hands gracefully held<br />
the skirts of her dress, suspending it above the<br />
ankle so as to expose to the company the execution<br />
of her feet. Her partner . . . was under the<br />
full speed of locomotion, and rattled away with<br />
his feet with wonderful dexterity. His arms were<br />
thrown carelessly behind his back, and secured,<br />
as they crossed, the points of his serape, that still<br />
held its place upon his shoulders. Neither had he<br />
doffed his ‘sombrero,’ but just as he stood when<br />
gazing from the crowd, he had placed himself<br />
upon the floor.” 21<br />
Bandini envisioned his home as a gathering<br />
place for family and friends. He was deeply fond<br />
of his daughters Arcadia and Ysidora, who had<br />
moved to Los Angeles in 1841 when fourteenyear-old<br />
Arcadia married Abel Stearns. Twelveyear-old<br />
Ysidora was sent as a companion to her<br />
older sister. 22 In 1846, he set about refurbishing<br />
the casa and grounds in hopes of tempting them<br />
to visit Refugio and him on a more regular basis.<br />
He ordered fifty pieces of glass, all 8 x 10 in., for<br />
the installation of paned, wood-framed windows.<br />
The following year, he replanted the gardens with<br />
“pretty flowers,” remodeled the lower patio with<br />
clay brick, and built a detached wooden bathhouse<br />
for the comfort and privacy of his daughters<br />
when they visited. “I think they are going to<br />
like it very much,” he wrote to Stearns. 23<br />
As time passed and the family grew, more rooms<br />
were added to both wings. By the late Mexican<br />
period, there were between twelve and fourteen<br />
rooms, according to contemporaries. William Kip,<br />
<strong>California</strong>’s first Episcopal bishop, who stayed at<br />
the casa in January 1854, described it as “built in<br />
the Spanish style, around the sides of a quadrangle<br />
into which most of the windows open.” 24<br />
To Bandini, a man driven by an exacting sense<br />
of duty, caring for the home meant caring for
his family. The casa was the pride of the sparsely<br />
populated Mexican community, a symbol of the<br />
family’s patrimony and elite social position. He<br />
built it to last, to put down roots. San Diego had<br />
become his patria. 25<br />
In 1831, Bandini helped launch a successful<br />
revolt against Governor Manuel Victoria and an<br />
abortive uprising in 1836–38 against Governor<br />
Juan Bautista Alvarado. 26 Like his father, he saw<br />
tremendous potential in a resource-rich Alta<br />
<strong>California</strong>, provided it could free itself from the<br />
yoke of political dominance by Monterey and<br />
Mexico City. The “great Mexican Federal Republic,”<br />
he concluded in his Historia de la Alta <strong>California</strong>,<br />
had deprived Californios of reaping the<br />
“advantages and benefits” of their territory. It had<br />
failed to promote colonization, to protect citizens<br />
against Indian unrest, to support institutions of<br />
civil government, and to capitalize on a global<br />
hide-and-tallow trade by waiving import duties on<br />
foreign goods. “It is <strong>California</strong> that has suffered<br />
the most from the misfortunes that afflict us,” he<br />
wrote his close friend Mariano Vallejo in 1836. 27<br />
To Bandini, a man driven by<br />
an exacting sense of duty,<br />
caring for the home meant<br />
caring for his family. The<br />
casa was the pride of the<br />
sparsely populated Mexican<br />
community, a symbol of the<br />
family’s patrimony and elite<br />
social position. He built it<br />
to last.<br />
Prior to the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–48), Bandini<br />
had coordinated the sale and shipment of<br />
provisions to the U.S. military by boat through<br />
the American consul Thomas Larkin of Monterey.<br />
28 Ongoing business dealings with American<br />
traders, especially his ranching activities with<br />
his son-in-law and business partner Abel Stearns<br />
and son-in-law Cave J. Couts, had convinced him<br />
that <strong>California</strong>’s future lay with the United States,<br />
not Mexico. 29<br />
During the war, Bandini forged close relations<br />
with U.S. military officers stationed in San Diego,<br />
including Commander Samuel F. Dupont, Lt.<br />
Colonel John C. Frémont of the <strong>California</strong> Battalion,<br />
and later Commodore Robert F. Stockton,<br />
who had arrived in San Diego in November 1846<br />
on the frigate USS Congress. Stockton’s mission<br />
was to fortify and garrison the pueblo and thereby<br />
protect U.S. access to the bay, the only real harbor<br />
south of San Francisco, and Bandini’s home<br />
became his headquarters. “Don Juan Bandini and<br />
family received the Commodore elegantly at their<br />
mansion and entertained him sumptuously,”<br />
recalled the jurist Benjamin Hayes. 30<br />
San Diego remained an armed camp, its<br />
residents uneasy in the wake of continued skirmishes<br />
and cattle rustling. Stockton had fortified<br />
the abandoned hilltop presidio with gun emplacements<br />
and U.S. dragoons drilled on the plaza,<br />
renamed Washington Square. In early December<br />
1846, messengers from General Stephen Watts<br />
Kearny’s Army of the West arrived at Bandini’s<br />
home to inform Stockton that hostile forces had<br />
surrounded Kearny’s troops in the San Pasqual<br />
Valley. 31 Stockton sent out a large force to rescue<br />
the battered column and escort it back to San<br />
Diego. On December 12, a wounded Kearny and<br />
his exhausted men arrived at the plaza, greeted<br />
by the strains of “Hail, Columbia” from Stockton’s<br />
band. 32<br />
After the war, the pueblo became a welcome<br />
stopover for thousands of miners en route to the<br />
Sierra goldfields. A brisk commerce developed as<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
hotels, restaurants, billiard halls, tobacco shops,<br />
and hardware, dry goods, and clothing stores<br />
sprang up around the plaza, soon to be named<br />
Old Town, to cater to the throngs of male fortune<br />
seekers. In 1850, Bandini opened a store in his<br />
home. Its profits and loans enabled him to make<br />
improvements to the casa and the following year<br />
erect a magnificent, two-story, wood-framed lodging<br />
house east of the plaza, which he named Gila<br />
House. 33<br />
Bandini’s extravagant lifestyle and penchant for<br />
entertaining continued. Doña Refugio recalled<br />
the Gold Rush as “the reign of prosperity and<br />
plenty”: “How often did we spend half the night<br />
at a tertulia [salon]—till 2 o’clock in the morning—in<br />
the most agreeable and distinguished<br />
society. Our house would be full of company;<br />
thirty or forty persons at a table; it would have<br />
to be set twice. A single fiesta might cost a thousand<br />
dollars. But, in those days, receipts at my<br />
husband’s store might pass $18,000 a month.” 34<br />
With his grand home and extravagant ways,<br />
Bandini embodied the manners and bearing of<br />
a transplanted Spanish aristocrat. In later years<br />
and after his death, he was often referred to as a<br />
don, the signature title of Old World origins and<br />
rank. The American author Richard Henry Dana<br />
Jr., who had met Bandini in 1836, described<br />
him as “accomplished and proud, and without<br />
any office or occupation, to lead the life of most<br />
young men of the better families—dissolute and<br />
extravagant when the means were at hand. . . . He<br />
had a slight and elegant figure, moved gracefully,<br />
and waltzed beautifully, spoke the best of Castilian,<br />
with a pleasant and refined voice and accent,<br />
and had throughout the bearing of a man of high<br />
birth and figure.” 35<br />
However, Bandini’s letters to Mariano Vallejo<br />
and Abel Stearns during the late Mexican period<br />
reveal a far different man—a hardworking<br />
rancher beset by chronic illness, periodic hardship,<br />
worry over his family and property, and<br />
uncertainty about the future of his “native land,”<br />
During the Mexican era, Juan Lorenzo Bruno Bandini (1800–<br />
1859) served as secretary to Governor Pío Pico, congressional<br />
delegate, assembly member, town council member, customs collector,<br />
mayor, and San Gabriel Mission administrator. During<br />
the American transition period, he was a San Diego district<br />
superior judge and city treasurer. His home, Casa de Bandini,<br />
was at the center of San Diego’s social and political life during<br />
the 1830s–50s. Despite documentation of burdensome financial<br />
failures and political disillusionment, it is Bandini’s reputation<br />
as a wealthy, Spanish-bred gentleman steeped in romantic, cultural,<br />
and literary pursuits that remains in the forefront of our<br />
cultural memory.<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>; CHS2011.584.tif<br />
<strong>California</strong>. He frequently asked for assistance<br />
unavailable to him in the form of food or medicines,<br />
like quinine and castor oil, to relieve his<br />
coughing, asthma, and headaches and to treat<br />
assorted illnesses afflicting his family and his<br />
workers. After a poor harvest in 1836, he wrote<br />
Vallejo in the “name of friendship,” confessing<br />
that he and his family were in “great need.” He<br />
asked his close friend if he could spare “a little bit<br />
of wheat and other things whose use will be adequate<br />
to sustain life.” Continuing, he explained,<br />
“Feeding my family is all I yearn for, since misfortune<br />
has reached its utmost, I lose sleep, I
work incessantly to obtain sustenance, but oh my<br />
friend, even this doesn’t suffice, this is an unfortunate<br />
time. . . . I beg you not to miss the opportunity<br />
if you can send me something to eat.” 36<br />
William H. Thomes, a crew member of the<br />
Admittance who met Bandini in 1843, described<br />
him as “prematurely old” with heavy-set eyes,<br />
deep wrinkles around the temples, and a decided<br />
stoop to his shoulders—an indication that hardship<br />
and worry had taken a toll on his health.<br />
“This was only five years after Mr. Dana had seen<br />
him,” noted a surprised Thomes, “and the change<br />
must have been great in that short time.” 37<br />
By the summer of 1847, Bandini’s initial optimism<br />
about American rule had given way to<br />
growing disillusionment. He decried the coarseness<br />
of American manners, the breakdown of<br />
civil order as a result of the Gold Rush, and passage<br />
of the U.S. Land Act in 1851 allowing U.S.<br />
claimants to challenge the validity of Spanish and<br />
Mexican land grants in court. “One sees in the<br />
towns nothing but drunkenness, gaming, sloth,<br />
and public manhandling of the opposite sex,” he<br />
despaired in a letter to Abel Stearns. 38<br />
Forced to abandon several ranchos due to Indian<br />
attacks and to defend others in costly court proceedings,<br />
Bandini became an outspoken critic of<br />
American policies and legal jurisprudence. He<br />
condemned the Land Act as a land grab. “We<br />
are wronged, reviled and insulted,” he wrote in<br />
the Southern <strong>California</strong>n, a Los Angeles–based<br />
Spanish-English newspaper. The law, he correctly<br />
noted, required landholders to present evidence<br />
in the form of surveys to support their claims<br />
rather than diseños (hand-drawn maps), as was<br />
the custom under Mexican rule. “The modes of<br />
procedure were strange to us, everything was foreign,<br />
even our manner of speech,” he explained.<br />
“Our inheritance is turned to strangers—our<br />
houses to aliens.” 39<br />
Once the placer (or surface) gold had run out,<br />
the miners stopped coming through San Diego<br />
en route to the goldfields, and many businesses,<br />
including the Gila House, folded overnight. With<br />
no profits from his store, falling cattle prices, and<br />
wasteful investments, Bandini mortgaged his<br />
family home and other properties in April 1851 to<br />
a French gambler, Adolfo Savin, for $12,822.90<br />
to cover the loan plus interest that he owed this<br />
creditor. Disaster was only averted when Bandini’s<br />
son-in-law Charles Johnson, who recently<br />
had married Bandini’s daughter Dolores, asked<br />
Stearns to help. “They are awfully cast down<br />
about this affair,” he wrote to Stearns the following<br />
month. Stearns interceded and repaid Savin’s<br />
loan and interest in late 1851. 40<br />
That year, a debt-ridden and disheartened Bandini<br />
renounced his U.S. citizenship and returned<br />
to Baja <strong>California</strong>. Expelled for inciting political<br />
unrest, he moved back to Old Town by April 1854<br />
and opened a tienda barata (cheap goods store),<br />
in the front sala of his casa. The effort failed,<br />
however, and by August he had leased part of the<br />
house to county treasurer Joseph Reiner, who<br />
opened a hardware and dry goods store. 41<br />
The following year, Bandini attempted unsuccessfully<br />
to sell his properties. On August 19,<br />
1859, he transferred ownership of his home and<br />
ranchos in Tecate and Guadalupe to Stearns, to<br />
whom he owed $32,000. He died less than three<br />
months later on November 1, 1859, at Stearns’s<br />
home in Los Angeles. 42<br />
Over the next decade, the old mansion, reflecting<br />
Old Town’s decline, fell into disrepair. By 1860, it<br />
was unoccupied, a forgotten epitaph to Bandini’s<br />
death. In 1862, an earthquake cracked the adobe<br />
walls in several rooms and collapsed one of the<br />
end walls. Clearly frustrated by his inability to<br />
maintain or lease “the old house in San Diego,”<br />
Stearns wrote to Couts in 1864 that “it would be<br />
well to nail up the doors and encharge some one<br />
there to look after it.” 43<br />
0 <strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
American Transition: The Cosmopolitan<br />
Hotel, 1869–1<strong>88</strong>8<br />
In 1869, Stearns at last found a buyer in Albert<br />
Seeley, a thirty-seven-year-old stage driver from<br />
Texas, who bought the ruin for $2,000 in gold<br />
coin. A driver since the age of seventeen, the 5 ft.<br />
10 in. ruddy-faced Illinoisan had arrived in Old<br />
Town from Los Angeles in 1867 with his English-born<br />
wife, Emily, and their children. Shortly<br />
afterward, he was awarded a government contract<br />
to carry mail and passengers between Los Angeles<br />
and San Diego. 44<br />
Seeley and his partner, Charles Wright, remodeled<br />
and refurnished the Franklin House on the<br />
south side of the plaza. Their new operation, the<br />
U.S. Mail Stage Line, faced multiple difficulties.<br />
The mail never arrived on time (three times<br />
weekly) due to poor road conditions, especially<br />
during winter when rainstorms washed out entire<br />
sections of the coastal route to San Juan Capistrano.<br />
River crossings were particularly dangerous,<br />
and holdups, although infrequent, did occur. 45<br />
The purchase of Bandini’s house and adjoining<br />
lots provided Seeley with an opportunity to build<br />
the necessary facilities for his stage operation and<br />
to house his passengers in what he called a “firstclass<br />
hotel.” With Emily’s recent inheritance of<br />
$8,000, he hired the contractors Henry F. and<br />
Samuel H. Parsons to renovate the deteriorating<br />
adobe and add a wood-framed second story and<br />
new balcony. 46<br />
An experienced stage driver, Albert Lewis Seeley (1832–<br />
1898) arrived in 1867 in Old Town, where he operated<br />
the U.S. Mail Stage Line between San Diego and Los<br />
Angeles from the Franklin House. Two years later, he<br />
erected the Cosmopolitan Hotel with money from his<br />
wife Emily’s inheritance. As his business and investments<br />
grew, the fashionable hotel became the town’s<br />
social hub, noted for its “delightful festivity.” Seeley was<br />
an effective self-promoter, given to exaggeration and fanfare.<br />
In 1874, he purchased “the largest and most splendid<br />
stagecoach in San Diego County [and] gave everyone<br />
in Old Town a free ride.”<br />
Courtesy of <strong>California</strong> State Parks<br />
The Cosmopolitan Hotel, or Seeley House as it<br />
was nicknamed, was an imposing vernacularstyle<br />
Greek Revival building. Eight thousand<br />
square feet in size, it represented a fusion of<br />
nineteenth-century Mexican adobe and American<br />
wood-framing construction techniques.<br />
The siding on the second story was mill-sawn,<br />
old-growth redwood clapboard. The first-floor<br />
veranda featured turned wooden columns, and<br />
the second-story balcony was enclosed with<br />
turned baluster railings. The doorways had fullheight<br />
pilasters, and the windows were framed<br />
by large wooden shutters. Bandini’s clay tile<br />
roof was replaced with a wood-shingled hip<br />
roof featuring a wide, level overhang covering<br />
the balcony. The lime-plastered adobe walls on<br />
the first floor were scored or lined to resemble<br />
mortared stone—a common practice employed<br />
to beautify commercial buildings. A large sign<br />
on the rooftop read Cosmpolitan Hotel. Another<br />
sign painted on the first-floor adobe façade next<br />
to the entrance read Los Angeles Stage Office. An<br />
1
“The very best Concord stages run on this line,” boasted proprietors Albert Seeley and Charles Wright in an advertisement for<br />
their stage line between San Diego and Los Angeles, which departed from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Old Town San Diego.<br />
Though billed as mail coaches, the Concord stagecoaches also transported passengers, gold, and currency throughout the western<br />
United States. In an interview, Don Luis Serrano, a Seeley stage driver, reflected on the twelve-hour trip on a coach with<br />
“tough mustangs, about half-broken. . . . I drove two years without an accident, due no doubt to the efficacy of prayer.”<br />
San Diego History Center<br />
exterior stairway in the back and an interior stairway<br />
from the entrance hallway provided access to<br />
the second-story guest rooms. 47 “The new hotel<br />
of Mr. A. L. Seeley . . . is truly an elegant building,”<br />
opined the San Diego Union. “Its broad<br />
verandahs above and below extending on three<br />
sides of the whole building give the place a comfortable<br />
southern air.” 48<br />
The Cosmopolitan Hotel opened in September<br />
1869, serving also as a post office and stage office<br />
for Seeley’s stage line from 1871 to 1<strong>88</strong>7. Advertisements<br />
in the San Diego Union billed it as a<br />
“first-class hotel” whose “large and commodious<br />
hotel” featured “large, well ventilated, and finely<br />
furnished” rooms and a well-stocked table and<br />
bar boasting “the choicest wines, liquors and<br />
cigars.” 49<br />
Contrary to Seeley’s self-promotional efforts, the<br />
hotel was not a first-class establishment. It did<br />
not have gas lighting, plumbing, or private suites.<br />
Like many frontier institutions, it was multifunctional,<br />
serving as a telegraph and post office, stage<br />
depot, and hotel with a bar, billiard room, and<br />
barbershop operated by a “gentleman of color.” 50<br />
Except for the corner suite overlooking the plaza,<br />
the second-story guest rooms were small, indicating<br />
that private space, unlike today, was not a<br />
highly valued commodity. The rooms facing the<br />
street were about 14 ft. deep x 11 ft. wide, while<br />
those overlooking the rear courtyard, occupied<br />
by single boarders, were 10 x 11 ft. 51 The rooms<br />
probably had window shades or possibly blinds,<br />
one or two mahogany bedsteads with straw or<br />
woolen mattresses, a washstand, lamp, and a<br />
table with bowl, pitcher, and mirror. The large<br />
corner room overlooking the plaza featured a red<br />
brick fireplace and sliding pocket doors with an<br />
oak faux finish. 52<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
The Seeley House catered to visitors traveling by<br />
stage and to residents of the sparsely settled outlying<br />
areas with family and business connections<br />
in Old Town. These included Miguel de Pedrorena<br />
Jr. of Jamul Valley, whose married sister<br />
Isabel lived in Old Town; William J. Gatewood,<br />
the recently hired editor of the San Diego Union;<br />
and Andrew Cassidy, an Irish-born Soledad Valley<br />
rancher and county supervisor. Interestingly,<br />
members of Bandini’s immediate family—Refugio,<br />
daughters Arcadia and Dolores, and sons<br />
José María and Juan Bautista—stayed at the hotel<br />
when visiting relatives. Unfortunately, none of<br />
them left a written record of what it was like to<br />
revisit their former home. 53<br />
<strong>California</strong> State Parks’<br />
Restoration<br />
Grander and larger than the upstairs guest<br />
rooms, the bar and sitting rooms on opposite<br />
sides of the entry hall were the hotel’s public<br />
show places. The tongue-and-groove Douglas fir<br />
floors were stained a deep red-brown finish. Most<br />
of the original woodwork, including the redwoodbeaded<br />
wainscoting, window wells, and trim, has<br />
remained intact. The bar itself was probably a<br />
front-back bar counter, made of either mahogany<br />
or black walnut with recessed panels. 54<br />
Along with wine, champagne, and assorted<br />
liquors, the bar sold its male clientele imported<br />
Havana cigars for twenty and twenty-five cents<br />
each; fresh lager beer by the glass, bottle, or gallon;<br />
all choice brands of liquor; and the “Uncle<br />
Toby” brandy-rum punch, five for twenty-five<br />
cents. 55 Ice was available, as were “all the newspapers<br />
of the day.” Although no known record<br />
of the bar’s furnishings exists, it most likely<br />
included an iron safe, a key rack, wall clock,<br />
hanging lights with ceiling medallions, armchairs<br />
and tables, and such conventional items as<br />
ten- and twenty-gallon kegs and spittoons. 56<br />
Seeley enlarged Bandini’s sala into a “spacious<br />
sitting room with a fire.” Like the bar, it provided<br />
a gathering place where female guests and their<br />
children, boarders, and visitors could take their<br />
As the cement stucco, chicken wire, and tar paper on the second<br />
story were removed—remnants from a 1930s remodel by Bandini’s<br />
grandson, Cave J. Couts Jr.—workers discovered that the hotel’s original<br />
door and window opening had been boarded up with roof decking,<br />
providing a perfect blueprint of their locations and dimensions.<br />
Nearly all of the original mill-sawn redwood clapboard remained<br />
intact. To see the knot-free, smooth-grained, old-growth redwood is to<br />
connect with a forgotten past when Old Town was a struggling, dustridden<br />
frontier hamlet.<br />
Courtesy of <strong>California</strong> State Parks
the whole thing hugely. American ladies as well<br />
as gentlemen being among the lookers-on, from<br />
the balcony of the Franklin and Cosmopolitan.” 58<br />
Guests of Albert Seeley’s Cosmopolitan Hotel enjoyed a grand<br />
view of the plaza’s activities—both unique and mundane—from<br />
the building’s newly constructed second story. The artist of this<br />
1<strong>88</strong>7 drawing, originally printed in Harper’s Weekly, preferred<br />
to capture the romantic notions of the plaza’s Californio past,<br />
with caballero, bird, and mission bell singing the virtues of an<br />
earlier time.<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>/USC Special Collections<br />
meals and relax. By the early 1870s, as Emily<br />
and Albert’s social standing rose, the large room<br />
with the red-brick fireplace’s warming glow had<br />
evolved into the town’s community center. It was<br />
the scene of raffles, family reunions, dances,<br />
Christmas parties, evening balls, and weddings. 57<br />
The hotel’s upstairs balcony was literally the<br />
town’s grandstand where guests and locals could<br />
observe an array of activities on the plaza—from<br />
holiday celebrations and circus performances to<br />
mule team races and bullfights. Rufus Porter, the<br />
correspondent for the San Francisco Daily Evening<br />
Bulletin, left a detailed account of one such<br />
bullfight in December 1869: “Last week Old San<br />
Diego was in all its ancient and pristine glory—<br />
the Plaza fenced in and scores of poor bulls<br />
driven round by the Hijos del Pays [País, Sons<br />
of the Country] on horseback, care having been<br />
taken first to saw off the animals’ horns. . . . The<br />
saloon, store and hotel-keepers seemed to enjoy<br />
The stage line was the modus operandi for the<br />
hotel’s existence. By 1871, Seeley had purchased<br />
the adjoining lot, rebuilt a large barn to house his<br />
coaches and mud wagons, bought the Blackhawk<br />
Livery Stable, and put up corral fencing and a<br />
windmill for pumping water from a red-brick,<br />
lime-mortared well. The windmill, erected in<br />
1870 and designed and built by William I. Tustin<br />
of Vallejo, featured wide horizontal blades,<br />
a turntable beneath the main shaft, and a selfregulating,<br />
360-degree turning wheel that could<br />
shut itself off by turning out of the wind during<br />
dangerous high-wind conditions. It represented<br />
mechanical technology far ahead of its time. In<br />
1872, Seeley purchased the two remaining block<br />
lots, built another Tustin-designed windmill outside<br />
the yard, rebuilt or replaced several sheds,<br />
and planted eucalyptus trees along Juan Street as<br />
a windbreaker. In 1873–74, the improved hotel lot<br />
was valued at $2,000. 59<br />
Seeley’s profit margin was based on delivering<br />
the U.S. mail, not passengers. By 1871, his Los<br />
Angeles–San Diego stage service was running<br />
every day except Sundays in order to service the<br />
increasing volume of mail. With an overnight<br />
stop at San Juan Capistrano, the trip took thirtyfive<br />
hours and cost ten dollars, plus meals. A year<br />
later, it was cut to twenty-three hours. Passengers<br />
made the trek in sturdy canvas-roofed Concord<br />
coaches, while the mail was hauled in lighter<br />
mud wagons. Over the next several years, Seeley<br />
and Wright extended their operation into more<br />
remote areas where mining and farming were<br />
developing. In 1874, they contracted with Wells<br />
Fargo and Co. to run coaches to local mountain<br />
mines and deliver mail and passengers to the<br />
gold-mining town of Julian. Four years later, the<br />
U.S. Postmaster General granted Seeley contracts<br />
from San Bernardino to Los Angeles, Anaheim to<br />
San Diego, and San Diego to Julian. 60<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
Among the watercolor sketches of<br />
<strong>California</strong>’s adobes by Eva Scott Fenyes<br />
(1849–1930)—initiated at the urging of<br />
Charles Fletcher Lummis “as a means<br />
to record an imperiled landscape”—is<br />
this 1907 painting of Juan Bandini’s<br />
renovated Cosmopolitan Hotel during the<br />
Akerman-Tuffley era. Fenyes overlooked<br />
the building’s worn condition to create<br />
an idealized image of the old hotel—<br />
adjacent to the Casa de Estudillo—that<br />
promoted her romantic vision of the<br />
state’s Spanish and Mexican heritage.<br />
Braun Research Library, Autry National<br />
Center; FEN.64<br />
The great fire of 1872 devastated the historic plaza<br />
and without sea or rail connection, the community<br />
languished. “Old Town is a heap of adobe<br />
ruins with a few scattering habitable dwellings,”<br />
wrote the historian Hubert Howe Bancroft after a<br />
visit to Benjamin Hayes in early 1874. The number<br />
of guests at the Cosmopolitan Hotel steadily<br />
dropped. As of 1<strong>88</strong>2, it was “without a guest,”<br />
noted the travel writer William Henry Bishop. 61<br />
The arrival of the railroad to Los Angeles in 1878<br />
and New San Diego in 1<strong>88</strong>5 signified the end of<br />
an era in Old Town. By 1<strong>88</strong>7, Seeley had ceased<br />
running stages, except for a local line between<br />
San Diego and Ocean Beach. The following year,<br />
he sold his hotel and stables to Israel Cohnreich<br />
from San Francisco for $15,000 in gold coin. 62<br />
Boardinghouse: Akerman and Tuffley,<br />
1<strong>88</strong>8–1919<br />
In the decade that followed, the hotel became<br />
a rooming house. In 1896, the English entrepreneurs<br />
Edward Akerman and Robert Tuffley<br />
leased the building, including Seeley’s large barn,<br />
from Josephine Newman, who had purchased it<br />
from Cohnreich earlier that year. They converted<br />
the barn and, a few years later, the downstairs of<br />
the hotel into olive-pickling and -packing rooms.<br />
Bandini’s beloved sala became their office. The<br />
Old Mission Olive Works won many national<br />
and international awards for their olive products,<br />
in part because the building’s thick adobe walls<br />
provided a cool, year-round “even temperature.”<br />
The Akerman and Tuffley families, along with a<br />
few of their employees and friends, lived in the<br />
upstairs guest rooms. 63<br />
In her memoir of her years growing up in Bandini’s<br />
casa, Susan Davis Tiffany, a family friend<br />
of the Akermans, recalled many of the physical<br />
details of the house during the early 1900s. “The<br />
Bandini house had neither plumbing nor electricity<br />
when I went there [in 1898], but both were<br />
installed later. . . . There was a large fireplace in a<br />
big room downstairs which had presumably been<br />
the Bandini parlor, and two small grates were in<br />
upstairs rooms. None of these supplied adequate<br />
warmth and we supplemented them with portable<br />
kerosene-burning heaters. . . . Small kerosene<br />
hand lamps were our only lighting.” Cooking was<br />
performed on a wood-burning iron stove. As in<br />
days past, water was kept cool in ollas (earthenware<br />
jars). There was no telephone, no gas and<br />
no refrigeration. 64
The house and grounds, however, had been<br />
significantly altered since the Cosmopolitan<br />
Hotel’s heyday. The second-story rooms were<br />
divided up and rented out to boarders, including<br />
the Tiffany family. Eucalyptus and pepper trees<br />
shaded the house and morning glory and honeysuckle<br />
vines grew in profusion on the porches.<br />
There were also outdoor tennis and croquet<br />
courts. The two old wells dating to Bandini’s<br />
time—one located at the end of a wing and the<br />
other in the horse corral—were boarded up. 65<br />
The Tiffany memoir provides insight into the<br />
boarding house experience in early twentiethcentury<br />
America. The household was multiethnic<br />
and multigenerational. Along with<br />
Mexican and Indian servants who lived nearby,<br />
the residents included the Akermans and Tuffleys;<br />
the Altamiranos, an old Californio family<br />
related to the Pedrorenas and Estudillos; and<br />
Susan, her sister Elizabeth, and their great aunt,<br />
Rebecca Davis from North Carolina. The children<br />
were the household’s bonds. “We grew<br />
up together like sisters and brothers,” recalled<br />
Susan. “There were usually twelve or more<br />
regular residents in the house, and sometimes<br />
visitors for a short period. . . . So in the Historic<br />
Bandini house were several generations and a<br />
variety of national and genealogical lines.” 66<br />
Akerman and Tuffley operated the olive works<br />
at the hotel until 1915, when construction of<br />
their new plant, a large Mission-style building<br />
a block away, was completed. 67 The Casa de<br />
Bandini’s association with an industry dating to<br />
the Franciscan missionaries “seems to remind<br />
one of the days ‘before the Gringo’ came when<br />
black-eyed senoritas would sit in the evening<br />
thrumming the guitar and gossiping over<br />
the last Fandango,” noted a San Diego Union<br />
reporter in 1902. 68<br />
Nostalgia, though, did not halt the historic<br />
building’s deterioration. Photographs from<br />
the 1920s show huge chunks of plaster broken<br />
off from the adobe walls, railings missing, and<br />
a badly rotting porch deck. By 1920, only four<br />
boarders—Edward Akerman, his wife Ysabel<br />
Altamirano, his sister Ellen, and Robert Tuffley—remained.<br />
The following year, the building’s<br />
assessed value dropped to a mere $300 from<br />
$1,250 in 1900. By 1928, it stood vacant, abandoned<br />
by the misfortune of time. 69<br />
A Landmark Saved: Couts’s Restoration,<br />
1928–1945<br />
On July 21, 1928, Bandini’s grandson Cave J.<br />
Couts Jr. bought the entire block on which the<br />
old hotel stood for $12,500. Two years later, he<br />
transformed the dilapidated family home into<br />
a hotel and restaurant remodeled in the thenpopular<br />
Steamboat Revival style. The establishment<br />
was called the Miramar Hotel. 70<br />
The first-floor porch was plastered and trimmed<br />
with a balustrade railing of “cast stone,” or<br />
concrete. Decorative white lath curved screens<br />
embellished the tops of the porch and balcony on<br />
all sides. The cement stucco walls were painted<br />
yellow, the window sashes white, and the porch<br />
trim green and brown. The wide, horizontally<br />
In the early 1930s, Cave J. Couts Jr. (1856–1943)—<br />
the self-described “Last of the Dons” (opposite,<br />
inset)—remodeled his grandfather Juan Bandini’s<br />
former residence in the fashionable Steamboat Revival<br />
architectural style. He stuccoed the entire building,<br />
covered the roof with asphalt shingles, and embellished<br />
the tops of the porch and balcony with white lath<br />
screens. Despite adding modern conveniences, Couts<br />
publicly associated his new hotel with the cultural<br />
traditions of a festive and romantic Spanish past. In<br />
later years, he spearheaded efforts to restore the Pala<br />
Mission, beautify Old Town’s plaza, and repair the<br />
County Courthouse. His final project, a plan to create<br />
El Pueblito Centro Internacional on the historic<br />
community’s plaza, never bore fruition.<br />
Couts’s portrait: Courtesy of County of San Diego, Parks<br />
and Recreation History Office; Couts’s Casa de Bandini/<br />
Miramar Hotel: <strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>/USC Special<br />
Collections<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
extended overhang that graced the roof of the<br />
Cosmopolitan Hotel was removed. The wooden<br />
shingles of the old hotel were replaced with<br />
asphalt shingles. Junipers, century plants, and<br />
other exotic shrubbery lined the garden beds<br />
along Mason and Calhoun Streets. For the first<br />
time, the building was equipped with plumbing<br />
to provide hot and cold running water for the<br />
bathrooms and kitchen and gas lines for modern<br />
appliances, such as a three-burner gas-plate<br />
range. The electrical system, installed in the<br />
century’s first decade, was upgraded. 71<br />
The development of the auto-tourist industry and<br />
the public’s captivation with the state’s Spanish<br />
origins had convinced Couts, who envisioned<br />
himself as “the last of the dons,” to market the<br />
hotel as an upscale tourist destination that celebrated<br />
a Spanish heritage rich in pageantry and<br />
refinement. His decision was influenced by the<br />
city’s transformation into a tourist Mecca noted<br />
for its Mediterranean-like climate and gay festive<br />
spirit and by efforts to promote the historic<br />
community’s Spanish heritage.<br />
In 1908, sugar magnate and investor John D.<br />
Spreckels had extended his downtown streetcar<br />
line to Old Town and hired local architect Hazel<br />
W. Waterman to restore the Casa de Estudillo, by<br />
then a ruin, adjacent to the Casa de Bandini. It<br />
was restored “as a typical old Spanish <strong>California</strong><br />
dwelling,” she explained, not “as it was originally,<br />
nor as it developed thru changes and alterations.”<br />
Completed in 1910 on the eve of the Panama-<br />
<strong>California</strong> Exposition, the restoration launched<br />
one of <strong>California</strong>’s earliest historic tourist attractions<br />
and helped engender a mythical fascination<br />
with the state’s early Spanish heritage. Under<br />
showman Tommy Getz’s management, the<br />
historic adobe was promoted as “Ramona’s Marriage<br />
Place,” attracting a steady stream of sightseers<br />
who believed that the chapel in the casa<br />
was the real setting of a marriage between the<br />
two principal characters in the bestselling 1<strong>88</strong>4<br />
novel, Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson. Couts,<br />
who had consulted on the restoration, admittedly<br />
dismissed the novel as a “greatly distorted”<br />
romance, but as he confessed to Mrs. S. I. Harritt<br />
of the Pioneers <strong>Society</strong> of San Diego, “I certainly<br />
would hesitate in doing anything that would<br />
detract from ‘Ramona’s Marriage Place’ at Old<br />
Town” out of friendship to Getz and appreciation<br />
of Spreckels. 72<br />
Other changes followed. The 37-acre Presidio<br />
Park, overlooking Old Town, opened on July 16,<br />
1929, the 160th anniversary of the founding of<br />
<strong>California</strong>’s first mission. The park’s terraced<br />
grassy expanses, groves of trees, and strikingly<br />
beautiful white stucco Junipero Serra Museum,<br />
with its 70-ft.-high domed tower, recast the historical<br />
memory of San Diego’s Spanish origins.<br />
Its development under civic leader George Marston<br />
and completion of the new Pacific Highway<br />
spurred Couts and others to reinvent Old Town’s<br />
historic identity. 73<br />
Couts’s hotel, however, never prospered during<br />
the Great Depression and World War II. Few<br />
tourists visited. Rent money often was directed<br />
back into maintenance. Rooms sometimes were<br />
crowded with local transients to reduce expenses,<br />
and finding responsible or reliable lessees was an<br />
ongoing problem. Mrs. J. W. Fisher, who managed<br />
the leasing contracts and took a personal<br />
interest in the building, complained in one of<br />
her letters to Couts that “poor old men from the<br />
county [are] sleeping two, three & four in a room,<br />
two in the cantina between the dining room &<br />
scullery and all the other rooms similarly filled.<br />
Of course that makes it [the casa] not an apartment<br />
house, club or rooming house or hotel. It is<br />
just a rest home.” 74<br />
In March 1935, Couts leased the building to<br />
Margaret Adams Faulconer, who operated the<br />
business as a cultural venue under the name<br />
Casa de Bandini. The timing seemed opportune.<br />
The <strong>California</strong> Pacific International Exposition<br />
would open that summer at San Diego’s Balboa<br />
Park. Couts hoped to attract visitors from the fair<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
The image of Spanish dancers illustrating the cover of the official guide to San Diego’s <strong>California</strong> Pacific<br />
International Exposition (1935–36) reinforced the city’s focus on “its glorious past dedicated to a glorious<br />
future.” “Here in southern <strong>California</strong>,” wrote exposition President Frank Belcher, “we have a rich heritage<br />
from the gracious days of the Spanish dons. Hospitality has always been a keynote in our lives.”<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>
y linking the Casa de Bandini with the cultural<br />
traditions of Old Spain as exemplified by his<br />
grandfather. 75<br />
Cave J. Couts Jr. promoted the casa’s proximity to the enormously<br />
popular exposition in Balboa Park—“6 Minutes from the Exposition”—in<br />
this tourist brochure. Inviting visitors to “Live as the Dons<br />
did,” he appealed to the public’s fascination with “Old Spain.”<br />
“Your stay within its walls,” he promised potential hotel guests, “will<br />
become an exquisite memory.” Couts’s description of a residence that<br />
was “preserved intact as it was in the days of the Dons, and changed<br />
only by the addition of all modern conveniences” may have appealed<br />
to popular taste for Spanish romance, but it misrepresented his<br />
significant changes to the adobe’s original architectural elements.<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />
Faulconer ran full-page advertisements in the San<br />
Diego Union featuring images of gaily dressed<br />
dancers and guitar-strumming caballeros (gentlemen)<br />
posing in the courtyard garden. One advertisement<br />
proclaimed: “In all <strong>California</strong> there is<br />
no more romantic building than the Casa de<br />
Bandini, located in Old Town San Diego. Here,<br />
where once the dashing Dons and lovely senoritas<br />
recreated the social grace of aristocratic Castille,<br />
in this one-time province of Spain, has endured<br />
for nearly a century and a quarter the tradition of<br />
a great family. Out of the pages of the past onto<br />
the stage of the present comes a restored and<br />
brilliant Casa de Bandini. In this transition from<br />
yesterday to today, nothing of its former charm or<br />
beauty has been lost. Much of <strong>California</strong>’s history<br />
has centered in this truly magnificent specimen<br />
of real <strong>California</strong> architecture. . . . It was the home<br />
of Don Juan Bandini, noted caballero. Today it is<br />
still owned by the Bandini family, in the person<br />
of Cave Couts, grandson of Don Juan. On May 25,<br />
a few days previous to the opening of the <strong>California</strong><br />
Pacific International [Exposition], the Casa<br />
de Bandini once again will assume its traditional<br />
place as the center of <strong>California</strong>’s social gaiety.” 76<br />
During this time, the Casa de Bandini hosted a<br />
full repertoire of theatrical, literary, and historical<br />
events, including evening historical lectures<br />
and slide shows and workshops by the San Diego<br />
State Teachers College on “early <strong>California</strong> plays.”<br />
The Daughters of the American Revolution and<br />
other organizations held dinners and meetings,<br />
usually in the old sala, now a dining area. There<br />
was even a Spanish costume ball. Theatrical performances<br />
often focused on the rich pageantry of<br />
events associated with the region’s early history.<br />
Evening performances of Heart’s Desire, a play<br />
about the Bandinis set at the casa in 1846 during<br />
the U.S.-Mexican War, were staged on the<br />
rear patio and balcony, glowing with footlights.<br />
0<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
A reviewer characterized “Don Juan Bandini” as<br />
“a man of culture and refinement” and observed<br />
that “Bandini, his wife Dolores, and his three<br />
beautiful daughters, Ysidora, Arcadia and Josefa,<br />
were the center of social activities in San Diego.”<br />
He noted that “each night scores of their friends<br />
and acquaintances gathered to dance and enjoy<br />
the beauty of the Bandini home and garden.”<br />
Such plays and the promotional literature of the<br />
day helped popularize a legendary Bandini who<br />
was celebrated and remembered for his Old<br />
World gentility and rank—the “Prince of Hosts,”<br />
in the words of historian and San Diego Union<br />
columnist Winifred Davidson. 77<br />
Of course, Couts’s remodel played upon the<br />
refrain of an imagined past. The building was<br />
not a “magnificent specimen of real <strong>California</strong><br />
architecture” but the Cosmopolitan Hotel remodeled<br />
in a Steamboat Revival architectural style.<br />
The casa’s historic adobe walls and other features<br />
were concealed beneath cement stucco façades.<br />
Balconies and porches that had never existed<br />
in Bandini’s time were decorated with white<br />
vertical lath. 78<br />
Couts’s work crews salvaged and reused nearly<br />
everything from Seeley’s hotel. They covered the<br />
massive adobe walls with chicken wire and then<br />
applied a thick lime plaster over them. This not<br />
only served as a bonding agent for the stucco, but<br />
also insulated the adobe from the stucco, allowing<br />
it to breathe and wick away moisture. The<br />
hotel’s original door and window openings on<br />
the second story were boarded up with roof decking.<br />
These sections stand out from the redwood<br />
clapboard siding, providing a perfect blueprint<br />
of the locations and dimensions of the doors and<br />
windows of the Cosmopolitan Hotel. In addition,<br />
the stucco layered over chicken wire and tarpaper<br />
protected the clapboard and square-top ironcut<br />
nails.<br />
With the country then mired in the Great Depression,<br />
it was both costly and impractical for contractors<br />
to replace existing building materials<br />
The building is a veritable<br />
museum of historic fabric,<br />
layer upon layer revealing<br />
the secrets of lost crafts<br />
and building practices. . . .<br />
Such firsthand evidence is<br />
the single most important<br />
source of information<br />
about the building’s<br />
history. Nothing—historic<br />
photographs, drawings,<br />
written records, or off-site<br />
salvaged materials—can<br />
replace it.<br />
with goods shipped by boat or train. As a result,<br />
the building is a veritable museum of historic<br />
fabric, layer upon layer revealing the secrets of<br />
lost crafts and building practices. In some areas<br />
of construction, such as the brass pipe for the<br />
water lines and tongue-and-groove Douglas<br />
fir flooring on the second floor, Couts did not<br />
scrimp on money.<br />
Nonetheless, there was a concerted effort to reuse<br />
existing material. As a result, much of the historic<br />
fabric and many architectural features were<br />
concealed and preserved on-site. Such firsthand<br />
evidence is the single most important source<br />
of information about the building’s history.<br />
Nothing—historic photographs, drawings, written<br />
records, or off-site salvaged materials—can<br />
replace it. Unknowingly, Bandini’s grandson<br />
helped save a family historic landmark for future<br />
restoration. 79<br />
1
<strong>California</strong> State Parks’<br />
Restoration<br />
Tourism and Myth: The Cardwell<br />
Ownership, 1945–1968<br />
In 1945, the proprietors James H. and Nora<br />
Cardwell bought the Casa de Bandini from the<br />
Couts estate for $25,000. 80 With their financial<br />
backing, their son Frank renovated it into an<br />
upscale motel in the image of a Spanish Colonial<br />
hacienda. The Cardwells hired local architect<br />
Lloyd Ruocco, an associate of the noted San Diego<br />
architect, Richard Requa, for the redesign. 81<br />
Undertaken during 1947–50, when the building<br />
stood vacant, the renovation was extensive.<br />
Prominent Steamboat Revival features such as<br />
the lath, railing, and posts were removed. The<br />
building assumed a quasi-Spanish Colonial<br />
appearance with its stucco columns, decorative<br />
wrought-iron trim, rustic wooden posts and railings<br />
on the balcony, and ceramic and stone tiles.<br />
Tropical plants such as palms, banana trees, and<br />
birds of paradise decorated the courtyard, and<br />
succulents bordered a large lawn. City directories<br />
listed the property as the Casa de Bandini Hotel<br />
under James H. Cardwell’s management from<br />
1950 to 1965. Cardwell claimed that the remodel,<br />
which included soundproofing the rooms and<br />
overhauling the electrical and water systems, cost<br />
$100,000. 82<br />
In 1930, Cave Couts Jr.’s work crews covered the massive<br />
exterior walls of the Casa de Bandini with cement stucco.<br />
This photograph documents the surprise discovery by renovation<br />
crews of the intact adobe brick on the first floor,<br />
with traces of lime paint dating to the Seeley period. The<br />
patch of thick lime plaster in the upper corner was applied<br />
in 1930. The adobe’s walls—some 12 ft. high and 31⁄2 ft.<br />
thick—are an enduring testament to the grueling ordeal of<br />
nineteenth-century hand labor.<br />
Courtesy of <strong>California</strong> State Parks<br />
Cardwell portrayed his hotel as representative<br />
of early Old Town’s Spanish period even<br />
though it had no association with either the<br />
historic building or the community. Tourist brochures<br />
described the “lavish restoration” as the<br />
embodiment of “the charm of the early Spanish<br />
atmosphere.” Images of costumed dancers and<br />
musicians with guitars and Caribbean drums<br />
graced many of the pages. 83<br />
Conflicting Goals: A State Historic<br />
Park, 1968–2007<br />
In 1968, the 12.5 acres surrounding the historic<br />
plaza became Old Town San Diego State Historic<br />
Park. On December 18 of that year, the state of<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
<strong>California</strong> acquired the Casa de Bandini and<br />
other Old Town properties from the Cardwells<br />
for $898,176. 84 Over the next decade, the Casa<br />
de Bandini stood empty, except for two years,<br />
1974–76, during which it operated as the park’s<br />
visitor center. In 1978, it was leased to Diane<br />
Powers, a talented interior designer who had successfully<br />
launched her stylish Bazaar del Mundo<br />
in the park’s historic Casa de Pico Motor Hotel<br />
in 1971. 85<br />
Completed in 1950, Frank and Nora Cardwell’s three-year,<br />
$100,000 renovation transformed the historic building into<br />
a lavish vernacular Spanish Colonial hacienda. The massive<br />
stucco columns, wide arcade, decorative wrought-iron<br />
fixtures, and stone front steps created a false sense of history<br />
and perpetuated old San Diego’s association with the<br />
then-popular Spanish heritage fantasy.<br />
San Diego History Center<br />
Over the next two years, Powers altered the rear<br />
courtyard and first floor to accommodate indoor<br />
and outdoor dining. Decorated with her unique<br />
and bright décor, the dining ambiance was more<br />
South American, especially Peruvian, than Spanish<br />
or Mexican. Powers installed new lighting<br />
and doors, timbered false beams, glass panels in
wall partitions, and stone and ceramic tiles and<br />
regraded and raised the courtyard outdoor dining<br />
area around a large fountain. She expanded<br />
and upgraded kitchen facilities in the adobe end<br />
room of the Calhoun Street wing, adding a foodpreparation<br />
area and a separate freezer space.<br />
Much of the building’s façade, especially along<br />
Mason Street, was concealed beneath a tangle<br />
of tropical shrubbery. 86 The second-story guest<br />
rooms were converted into offices and storage<br />
spaces. 87<br />
The state’s long-term plan to restore the building<br />
to its appearance as the Cosmopolitan Hotel triggered<br />
internal divisions and disagreements over<br />
the state’s preservation standards. Apparently,<br />
local staff had allowed Powers to remove portions<br />
of historic interior walls in the first-floor dining<br />
area, dating to Seeley’s or possibly Akerman’s<br />
time, without the knowledge or approval of the<br />
Resource Preservation and Interpretation Division<br />
(RPID) of Parks and Recreation. <strong>88</strong><br />
On May 23, 1979, the issue reached a head when<br />
RPID head James P. Tryner sent a memo to Richard<br />
A. May, chief of the Development Division,<br />
stating that “this project must be stopped immediately”<br />
to prevent further “destruction of historic<br />
interior walls that are composed of full-dimension<br />
timbers, square nails, and other material aspects<br />
indicating a 19th-century date.” In subsequent<br />
correspondence, Tryner and Dr. Knox Mellon, the<br />
State Historic Preservation Officer, explained that<br />
the removal of historic fabric should be kept to a<br />
minimum, or if that was not possible, properly<br />
documented, marked, and stored. On June 18,<br />
May wrote Tryner that the rear partition wall in<br />
the proposed dining area, already altered with a<br />
door opening, “will be completely removed.” 89<br />
Historians, archaeologists, and other preservation-minded<br />
individuals argued that Powers’s<br />
remodel of the Casa de Bandini was but another<br />
example of a park run amuck by commercialism.<br />
State Senator James Mills, who helped spearhead<br />
the park’s creation, told the state Park and Recreation<br />
Commission in 1980 that “Old Town . . . has<br />
taken on the theme of a shopping center.” He<br />
accused the state of allowing Powers to take a<br />
150-year-old building “with an unhistoric appearance<br />
and make it much more unhistoric than it<br />
was before.” Writer-historian Richard W. Amero<br />
called the Bazaar del Mundo and Casa de Bandini<br />
remodels a “garish intrusion into a historic state<br />
park” and blamed the Department of Parks and<br />
Recreation for allowing it to occur. Others, such<br />
as park concessionaire Geoffrey Mogilner, argued<br />
that the building should have been restored<br />
under the state plan as the Cosmopolitan Hotel<br />
rather than remodeled as an exotic contemporary<br />
restaurant. 90<br />
Public sentiment, however, sided with Powers.<br />
Under her management, the Casa de Bandini<br />
Restaurant became an immediate success and<br />
extremely popular with local San Diegans. The<br />
San Diego Union described its opening in 1980 as<br />
the dawn of a “new era”: “Every effort has been<br />
made to create the house that thrived 100 years<br />
ago. Intricacies of <strong>California</strong>’s history and memorabilia<br />
are scattered throughout, as well as the tile<br />
and paint artistry of Craftsmen from Mexico and<br />
Southern <strong>California</strong>. Furnishings and statuary of<br />
rich wood and brass make every corner a source<br />
of charm; woven upholstery and wall hangings,<br />
from the looms of Mexico and Guatemala grace<br />
every room. Outside the sunny patio surrounds<br />
a romantic fountain on the very site of Juan<br />
Bandini’s original structure. Patrons dine in an<br />
environment of lush gardens, colorful umbrellas,<br />
shrubbery and trees that closely duplicate the<br />
surroundings that Juan Bandini himself enjoyed.<br />
An extensive menu incorporates the best of<br />
Spanish Mexican and Early <strong>California</strong> cuisine. A<br />
sampling; Especial de San German, Red Snapper,<br />
Taco Feast, (and) Crab Enchiladas.” 91<br />
Powers, like Couts and Cardwell before her, promoted<br />
the casa’s history as a fanciful recreation<br />
of a past that had never existed in early San<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
Diego. Over this fifty-year period, the building’s<br />
historic identity and meaning became a masquerade<br />
concealed by imposing stucco columns<br />
and walls, wrought iron grillwork, ceramic and<br />
stone tiles, and exotic gardens. By the 1980s,<br />
it had taken on the appearance of a luxurious<br />
quasi-Spanish Colonial hacienda that in no way<br />
resembled either Bandini’s original home or<br />
Seeley’s hotel.<br />
Why had this happened Historic architect Ione<br />
Stiegler argues that the alterations were “commercially<br />
motivated . . . always conducted under<br />
the claim of authentic restoration representing<br />
<strong>California</strong>’s romantic Spanish past.” This raises<br />
several questions: Why did Couts, Cardwell,<br />
Powers, and so many others embrace what the<br />
social reformer and journalist Carey McWilliams<br />
has called the “Spanish heritage fantasy” What<br />
explains the nostalgia for an idealized Spanish<br />
heritage that seemed to grip southern <strong>California</strong><br />
in general and San Diego in particular 92<br />
San Diego, like much of southern <strong>California</strong>,<br />
was an instant creation that had evolved over<br />
several decades into a modern, sophisticated, and<br />
progressive city, despite its limited size. Its civic<br />
leaders and boosters were aware that its bayside<br />
location, warm and health-inducing climate,<br />
unspoiled beauty, and Spanish origins made it<br />
a unique and inviting place, a harbinger of an<br />
urban future designed as much for leisure as<br />
for work. This period of cultural transformation<br />
was framed by the 1915–16 Panama-<strong>California</strong><br />
and 1935–36 <strong>California</strong> Pacific International<br />
Expositions. Internationally acclaimed, the fairs<br />
showcased the city’s prominence and introduced<br />
millions to Spanish Colonial architectural styles<br />
and the region’s identity with a romantic Spanish<br />
past. During its 377 days of operation, the second<br />
exposition attracted 7.2 million visitors. “The<br />
world,” remarked board chairman G. Aubrey<br />
Davidson, had become “San Diego conscious.” 93<br />
At the heart of Spanish<br />
fantasy in Old Town<br />
is the man Juan<br />
Bandini. . . . He was the<br />
epitome of a Spanish<br />
don, “the aristocracy of<br />
the country.” Bandini,<br />
in short, became an<br />
American invention, a<br />
caricature of his real self.<br />
Newcomers and tourists, largely white and middle<br />
class, came to San Diego with the expectation<br />
of finding what historian Phoebe S. Kropp has<br />
called “the Spanish-inspired good life.” Developers,<br />
entrepreneurs, publicists, architects, artists,<br />
and writers promoted this Anglo-American version<br />
of the past not only to further commerce<br />
and growth, but also to instill a regional identity<br />
and pride. As historian Kevin Starr points out, its<br />
allure stemmed in part from the fact that it “had<br />
behind it the force of history, in that <strong>California</strong><br />
began as part of the Spanish Empire.” 94<br />
At the heart of the Spanish fantasy in Old Town<br />
is the man Juan Bandini. In the words of his<br />
grandson Cave J. Couts Jr., he was a “noted caballero”<br />
who embodied the grace and elegance of<br />
Old Spain. 95 In this remote frontier society, his<br />
proud bearing, education, flamboyant dress,<br />
and extravagant ways set him apart. He was the<br />
epitome of a Spanish don, “the aristocracy of the<br />
country,” according to Dana. 96 Bandini, in short,<br />
became an American invention, a caricature of<br />
his real self.
This is the cultural memory enshrined in San<br />
Diego’s folk annals and traditions. Bandini is<br />
remembered, as one writer recently put it, as a<br />
“legendary renaissance Californio” who entertained<br />
“legions of notables.” 97 His home in Old<br />
Town likewise has become fused with the memory<br />
of him as a don whose life embodied the<br />
traditions of Old Spain. Even the building itself,<br />
despite multiple uses, alterations, and changes in<br />
name, is registered on the <strong>California</strong> State <strong>Historical</strong><br />
Landmarks as the Casa de Bandini. 98<br />
Postscript: <strong>California</strong> State Park’s<br />
Restoration, 2007–2010<br />
In April 2010, <strong>California</strong> State Parks completed a<br />
three-year, $6.5 million rehabilitation and restoration<br />
of the historic landmark, returning it to its<br />
appearance as the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Roughly<br />
80 percent of the original fabric and features<br />
have been preserved or accurately reconstructed,<br />
including the hotel’s redwood clapboard siding,<br />
turned wooden columns and baluster railings,<br />
wood-shingled hip roof, chimneys, tongue-andgroove<br />
wainscoting and flooring, and doors, door<br />
fenestrations, windows, and trim. In addition,<br />
much of the adobe brick, remnants of whitewashed<br />
walls, most of the original cobblestone<br />
footprint, and hand-hewn lintels dating to Bandini’s<br />
time were preserved.<br />
This was an unprecedented historic restoration,<br />
arguably the most important one currently in the<br />
state. Few other buildings rival its scale or size,<br />
blending of adobe and wood-framing construction,<br />
association with significant people and<br />
events, and retention of historic fabric. 99<br />
The building is important for another, perhaps<br />
more compelling reason: It allows us the opportunity<br />
to ask how we should interpret it and those<br />
connected to it. As an adobe mason who worked<br />
on the building, I am still haunted by what I<br />
saw and felt. I remember seeing a fragment of a<br />
smooth, white-plaster medallion buried in debris,<br />
patches of fading lime paint and plaster on interior<br />
walls, and always the long red-brown adobe<br />
bricks with their deep X-grooved, Mission-era<br />
scratch marks. They are part of a living tradition,<br />
but whose tradition We will never know<br />
the answer. Those workers—Indian, Californio,<br />
Mexican, immigrant, or American; men, women,<br />
or children—are gone, missing from our cultural<br />
memory, but their legacy survives in their toil, in<br />
what they left behind. 100<br />
Victor A. Walsh is a historian and adobe conservator<br />
with the San Diego Coast District of <strong>California</strong> State Parks.<br />
He earned a Ph.D. in American history, with a focus on<br />
nineteenth-century ethnicity and race, from the University of<br />
Pittsburgh in 1984 and taught as a lecturer at San Francisco<br />
State University, the University of San Francisco, and College<br />
of San Mateo. In 1991, he won the Carlton C. Qualey Award<br />
for his article on Irish drinking customs (published in the<br />
Journal of American Ethnic History), followed in 2004 by the<br />
Institute of History Preservation Award for his article on the<br />
Casa de Estudillo of Old Town San Diego (published in The<br />
Journal of San Diego History). In 2008, he published an article<br />
in <strong>California</strong> History on Torrey Pines State Reserve, another<br />
one of his parks.<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
“Saludos from your comadre”:<br />
Compadrazgo as a Community Institution in<br />
Alta <strong>California</strong>, 1769–1860s<br />
By Erika Pérez<br />
“. . . inasmuch as the province [i.e. territorio] depends more exclusively than any other portion of<br />
Spanish America on extraneous supplies, and here, accordingly, foreigners and natives cordially<br />
mingle together as members of one and the same harmonious family.”<br />
—Sir George Simpson (1841–42) 1<br />
In 1851, Victoria Bartholomea Reid, the missionized<br />
Gabrielino wife of Scotsman Hugo Reid,<br />
wrote to the Los Angeles businessman and landowner<br />
Abel Stearns hoping to enlist his help during<br />
a time of personal distress. Unable to locate<br />
her husband, Victoria asked her “dear compadre”<br />
Stearns for assistance in finding him, closing her<br />
letter, “remember me to my comadre Arcadia.” 2<br />
Like the Reids, the Stearns were an interethnic<br />
couple: Abel Stearns was a Massachusetts-born<br />
merchant and his wife Arcadia Bandini was a<br />
<strong>California</strong>na. 3 However, the Stearns held greater<br />
political and social clout than the Reids due to<br />
their wealth. Aware of this asymmetry, Victoria<br />
invoked the bonds of obligation and reciprocity<br />
inherent in compadrazgo (godparentage), an<br />
institution of Catholic sponsorship that required<br />
compadres (spiritual coparents) to offer each other<br />
assistance and respect. Her letter demonstrates<br />
that interethnic and intercultural ties forged<br />
through Catholic sponsorship during the Mexican<br />
era still maintained social currency in the<br />
early years of American conquest in southern<br />
<strong>California</strong>.<br />
Practiced throughout the Spanish, Mexican, and<br />
American eras, compadrazgo in southern <strong>California</strong><br />
generated spiritual and familial bonds of<br />
intimacy between people of different cultures,<br />
nationalities, genders, and socioeconomic strata. 4<br />
This intimacy constitutes moments of sexual contact<br />
and marriage as well as cultural exchanges<br />
and the spectrum of emotions generated from<br />
colonial encounters—from affection and loyalty<br />
to suspicion, ambivalence, and hate. 5<br />
This article represents an ongoing exploration<br />
into compadrazgo’s meaning, applications, and<br />
participants. It argues that compadrazgo emerged<br />
as an effective instrument in establishing interethnic<br />
ties that furthered community formation<br />
in southern <strong>California</strong>, embodying both spiritual<br />
and material dimensions. Within the mission<br />
system, compadrazgo also offered native peoples<br />
a new way of ritualizing and affirming kinship<br />
bonds, though these ties, paradoxically, were<br />
threatened by the missionization process itself<br />
through invasion and demographic decline. In<br />
this article, the focus on godparentage in southern<br />
<strong>California</strong> rests not on whether it developed
differently than other regions, but rather in its<br />
ability to withstand transitions in political power<br />
and changing social climates, offering a new perspective<br />
on an established practice that helped<br />
shape <strong>California</strong>’s early history and the American<br />
West. 6<br />
The Mission Era<br />
Rooted in Iberian Catholic traditions, Spanish-<br />
Mexican settlers replicated compadrazgo in<br />
southern <strong>California</strong> and other regions of the<br />
Spanish borderlands. 7 Godparents promised to<br />
aid in the spiritual upbringing of their godchild,<br />
assuming the role of spiritual coparents alongside<br />
the individual’s natural parents. In colonial<br />
Latin America, compadrazgo’s emphasis on the<br />
relationship between godparent and godchild<br />
or between compadres varied, depending upon<br />
region, time period, and the participants’ ethnicity,<br />
race, class, and gender. In southern <strong>California</strong>,<br />
Catholic sponsorship represented more<br />
than a mere transplanting of respected customs<br />
for the benefit of colonial settlers. Its practice<br />
furthered the spiritual conquest of the region<br />
by encouraging Spanish-Mexican Christians,<br />
or gente de razón (people of reason), to sponsor<br />
native peoples, modeling Spanish-Catholic values<br />
and behaviors to neophytes (new converts). 8<br />
Conquest depended upon the establishment of<br />
indigenous Catholic communities that would<br />
eventually become integrated into the Spanish<br />
empire as taxpaying populations and act as a<br />
defensive buffer zone to thwart imperial rivals. 9<br />
Thus, compadrazgo not only advanced a spiritual<br />
purpose in southern <strong>California</strong>, but addressed<br />
economic and political goals as well.<br />
From the very beginning of <strong>California</strong>’s mission<br />
system, asymmetrical relationships developed<br />
between Spanish Mexicans and indigenous communities.<br />
Godparents listed in various southern<br />
<strong>California</strong> mission registers during the missions’<br />
founding years were overwhelmingly Spanish-<br />
Mexican soldiers, servants, and their wives. At<br />
Mission San Buenaventura, <strong>88</strong>.9 percent of all<br />
baptisms of Indian males from 1782 to 1787 were<br />
sponsored by Spanish Mexicans, the overwhelming<br />
majority of them soldiers and their female<br />
kin. From 1783 to 1787, gente de razón godparents<br />
sponsored an average of 85.4 percent of<br />
Indian female baptisms. 10<br />
Later, native communities provided increasing<br />
numbers of baptismal sponsors to neophytes,<br />
demonstrating their adaptation to Catholic sponsorship.<br />
Only three years after its 1771 founding,<br />
Mission San Gabriel witnessed a surge in both<br />
Alta and Baja <strong>California</strong> Indian godparents, the<br />
latter arriving with Franciscans in Alta <strong>California</strong><br />
in 1769, as illustrated below.<br />
Baptismal Sponsorship of Alta <strong>California</strong> Indians at Mission San Gabriel<br />
Godparents<br />
1771–1773<br />
(76 baptisms)<br />
1774–1775<br />
(173 baptisms)<br />
1800–1801<br />
(195 baptisms)<br />
1810–1811<br />
(568 baptisms)<br />
Gente de razón 95.3% 23.2% 7.1% 9.8%<br />
Baja <strong>California</strong> Indian 2.9% 36.1% 0.6% 0%<br />
Alta <strong>California</strong> Indian 1.8% 38.1% 52% 85.2%<br />
Zero (0) 0% 1.3% 36.8% 1.0%<br />
Dual: 1 male, 1 female 0% 1.3% 3.5% 4.0%<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
An example of an Iberian tradition transplanted to <strong>California</strong> is this 1857 certification of the May 7, 1844 baptism<br />
record for Maria Alejandra Atherton, daughter of Faxon Dean Atherton and Dominga Goñi, from Valparaiso, Chile,<br />
1857. In 1840, the American-born Atherton settled in Chile, where he became a successful merchant and married the<br />
daughter of the prominent Goñi family. The Spanish Catholic practice of compadrazgo is evident in the listing of the<br />
names of the godparents, “Padrinos, Francisco Prietos and Guadalupe Goñi.”<br />
Faxon Dean Atherton Papers, Vault MS 5, <strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>
y offering indigenous sponsors. This godparenting<br />
analysis also reveals periods of demographic<br />
decline: 1800 to 1801 witnessed a rate of 36.8<br />
percent of Indian baptisms without a named<br />
godparent, signifying a baptism performed due<br />
to danger of death. Finally, the sample taken from<br />
1810 to 1811, consisting of 568 Indian baptisms,<br />
reveals that 85.2 percent of neophytes received<br />
Indian godparents. As this table indicates, Baja<br />
<strong>California</strong> Indians played a stronger role during<br />
the early years at Mission San Gabriel, as did<br />
gente de razón godparents, but by 1800, local<br />
Indians sponsored themselves for baptism in<br />
significant numbers, reflecting the emergence of<br />
new indigenous Catholic communities. 11<br />
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel was the fourth in the chain<br />
of twenty-one <strong>California</strong> missions, often referred to as the<br />
“Godmother of the Pueblo of Los Angeles.” The mission’s<br />
baptismal font, a hammered copper basin still intact today,<br />
was the site of more than 25,000 baptisms between the<br />
mission’s founding in 1771 and 1834—the largest number of<br />
baptisms in the mission chain.<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>/USC Special Collections<br />
Although the San Buenaventura and San Gabriel<br />
missions’ founding years demonstrated the most<br />
intensive rates of interethnic sponsorship, no set<br />
formula existed as to when mission communities<br />
or missionaries transitioned away from gente de<br />
razón to neophyte godparents. The slight delay<br />
in the development of intracommunity godparentage<br />
exhibited in Alta <strong>California</strong> also occurred<br />
earlier in colonial Mexico, revealing similarities<br />
in the evolution of indigenous godparentage. 12<br />
Nevertheless, the presence of soldiers and their<br />
families at missions meant that gente de razón<br />
godparents continued occasionally to sponsor<br />
indigenous <strong>California</strong>ns throughout the mission<br />
period. 13<br />
While gente de razón godparents in this sample<br />
peaked at a rate of 95.3 percent from 1771 to 1773,<br />
their numbers quickly plummeted to 23.2 percent<br />
from 1774 to 1775. These were transitional, as<br />
sponsorships of native baptisms by Baja <strong>California</strong><br />
Indian godparents increased to 36.1 percent<br />
and those by Alta <strong>California</strong> Indians—local neophytes—to<br />
38.1 percent. Apparently, missionaries<br />
here were less concerned with the duration of<br />
Catholic training among indigenous godparents<br />
than with the desire to encourage new baptisms<br />
Sponsorship Selection<br />
One telling indication of the uneven nature of<br />
compadrazgo in early southern <strong>California</strong> is the<br />
lack of reciprocal sponsorship between Indian<br />
Christians and Spanish Mexicans. Despite the<br />
presence of indigenous Christians by the 1790s,<br />
they remained excluded as sponsors of Spanish<br />
Mexicans for baptism; the rare exception<br />
consisted of Christian Indian brides of Spanish-<br />
Mexican husbands who sponsored jointly. 14 This<br />
lack of mutual sponsorship is hardly surprising.<br />
0<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
The first page of the baptismal register of the Mission San Buenaventura was signed by Father Junípero Serra on Easter Sunday,<br />
March 31, 1782, the day the mission was founded. By 1816, more than 1,000 neophytes were living at the mission. The<br />
Chumash neophyte María Rosa and her husband Bartolomé Miguel Ortega, owner of Rancho las Vírgenes (Rancho Talepop<br />
in mission records), were godparents to Chumash from surrounding villages. Such kinship relationships, though spiritual in<br />
nature, generated social, political, and economic associations between native people and their Hispanic neighbors.<br />
Braun Research Library, Autry National Center; P.17775<br />
1
Interethnic compadrazgo ties in<br />
Spanish Alta <strong>California</strong> flowed<br />
vertically, connecting people across<br />
class and ethnic lines, rather than<br />
horizontally among social equals.<br />
Such sponsorship of gente de razón godchildren<br />
would require that they and their natural parents<br />
pay respect and deference to Indian padrinos<br />
(godparents). 15 Spanish-Mexican settler Antonio<br />
Franco Coronel recalled the typical exchange<br />
between godparent and godchild, stating, “When<br />
young people met their godparents anywhere,<br />
they were obliged to take off their hats and ask<br />
a blessing. The godparents’ obligation was to<br />
substitute for the parents if they should die, if<br />
necessary provide for the godchild’s keep and<br />
education, and give good advice.” 16 The social,<br />
political, and economic hierarchies instituted<br />
by Spanish-Mexican colonizers in Alta <strong>California</strong><br />
required that they remain at the top of the<br />
godparenting complex above native peoples. 17<br />
Interethnic compadrazgo ties in Spanish Alta<br />
<strong>California</strong>, then, flowed vertically, connecting<br />
people across class and ethnic lines, rather than<br />
horizontally among social equals. 18<br />
An obvious question that emerges from this study<br />
is whether Franciscans selected godparents for<br />
Indian neophytes, or whether Indians exercised a<br />
choice or preference in their spiritual coparents.<br />
According to James Sandos, the Father President<br />
Junípero Serra selected a Spanish soldier as the<br />
proposed godfather to a Diegueño baby who was<br />
to receive Spanish clothing and serve as the first<br />
baptism in Alta <strong>California</strong>. 19 Certainly the lack of<br />
familiarity between Spanish Mexicans and native<br />
<strong>California</strong>ns suggests that missionaries assigned<br />
godparents in the early years of conquest. However,<br />
on at least seventy-four occasions, native<br />
relatives stood as godparents, implying that some<br />
families exercised a preference. For example, an<br />
Indian woman Gertrudis stood as madrina to<br />
her nephew Diego from the village of Apinjaibit<br />
at Mission San Gabriel in 1811. That same year,<br />
María Cleofe was madrina to her brother Juan de<br />
la Cruz at Mission San Gabriel. 20<br />
Interethnic Compadrazgo<br />
Interethnic kinship bonds between Spanish<br />
Mexicans and native peoples offered material<br />
incentives and encouraged cultural exchanges.<br />
These intimate ties may have stabilized tensions<br />
following violent encounters that generated<br />
deep-seeded animosity and mistrust between<br />
these groups. 21 Food proved welcome to native<br />
<strong>California</strong>ns in the aftermath of ecological and<br />
microbial revolutions that threatened traditional<br />
food sources and their health. 22 “Out from the<br />
presidio come great heaps of tortillas sent by<br />
godfathers for their godsons,” wrote Father Serra<br />
in a letter to Father Guardian Francisco Pangua<br />
in 1774, continuing, “Even though each day a<br />
mighty cauldron of pozole is filled and emptied<br />
three times over [at the mission], these poor little<br />
fellows still have a corner for the tortillas their<br />
godfathers send them.” Not only food but other<br />
material goods possibly drew Indians into compadrazgo<br />
relationships with Spanish soldiers.<br />
Again noting the attraction of compadrazgo in<br />
a letter to Viceroy Bucareli dated 1775, Father<br />
Serra indicated that “heaps of remnants given in<br />
exchange, or as gifts by godfathers to their spiritual<br />
sons” were welcomed by families. 23<br />
Anecdotal examples reveal that some indigenous<br />
godchildren maintained contact with gente de<br />
razón godparents after sponsorship. During<br />
the 1830s and 1840s, interethnic tensions grew<br />
in the San Diego region, and unconverted and<br />
Christianized native peoples plotted to kidnap<br />
gente de razón women and attack ranchos (Spanish-Mexican<br />
land grants). Candelaria, the Indian<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
In this 1<strong>88</strong>5 photograph of a mission ramada (shady place), a gente de razón couple (seated, left, and standing, right)<br />
visits with mission Indians at Mission San Juan Capistrano. Though gente de razón couples godparented one another’s<br />
children, often reaffirming blood bonds or longstanding friendships, their sponsorship of neophytes established bonds of<br />
obligation and reciprocity where none existed before, furthering the conquest of Alta <strong>California</strong>.<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>/USC Special Collections<br />
goddaughter and servant of Doña Josefa Carrillo<br />
de Fitch, revealed the plot saving her godmother<br />
and others. 24 Whether Candelaria’s actions were<br />
due to affection for her godmother, loyalty, or fear<br />
that she would become ensnared in the plot’s<br />
ensuring investigation is unclear. Nevertheless,<br />
she alerted rancho owners of impending danger.<br />
Chumash Fernando Librado recalled seeing his<br />
gente de razón godfather Ramón Valdez at Mission<br />
Santa Ines for the Corpus Christi celebration<br />
where Librado sang the Catalan mass. 25 While<br />
Librado’s testimony reveals no emotion toward<br />
his padrino, Candelaria’s example demonstrates<br />
the difficulty for some indigenous godchildren in<br />
balancing loyalty to the indigenous community<br />
and gente de razón godparents. 26<br />
The existence of sponsorship rituals among<br />
indigenous <strong>California</strong>ns offers one possibility for<br />
convergence between indigenous and Catholic<br />
rituals. Precontact sponsorship practices such as<br />
Indian puberty rituals, which assigned same-sex<br />
sponsors to adolescent initiates, possibly eased<br />
Indian acceptance of Catholic godparentage.<br />
For example, Luiseño adolescents underwent<br />
the Mani (toloache, or jimson weed) ceremony,<br />
which required the participation of village elders
Indigenous Compadrazgo<br />
Puberty rituals such as the toloache ceremony enlisted adult<br />
sponsors, often of the same sex, who imparted sacred knowledge<br />
and new responsibilities upon initiates. Catholic sponsorship<br />
may have resonated with native <strong>California</strong>ns, possibly easing<br />
their acceptance of compadrazgo.<br />
Braun Research Library, Autry National Center; P.1185<br />
who instructed younger initiates in the songs<br />
and other cultural teachings of their people. The<br />
Cahuilla kiksawal puberty ceremony also required<br />
sponsorship by adult members who paired with<br />
initiates to teach them and assist them through<br />
the process. During the waxan (pit-roasting ceremony),<br />
Gabrielino women cared for and sang to<br />
younger women who reached the age of maturity,<br />
typically the onset of menarche. 27 Diegueño,<br />
Luiseño, and Cahuilla girls also experienced rituals<br />
and sponsorship by adult women in their<br />
communities. 28 Evidence of some traditional<br />
male leadership roles, such as village captains,<br />
persisting within the mission system is further<br />
indication that native peoples transplanted some<br />
traditional roles and practices to the mission<br />
setting. 29<br />
Defined by acts of reciprocity and obligation,<br />
compadrazgo among native <strong>California</strong>ns was<br />
unlikely to include the same offerings of European<br />
goods or foods as interethnic godparentage.<br />
However, indigenous godparents maintained<br />
more frequent contact with godchildren by residing<br />
at the mission or a neighboring ranchería<br />
(Indian village), thereby offering enhanced<br />
spiritual sustenance and intimacy. Furthermore,<br />
indigenous godparents quite possibly contributed<br />
financially to traditional or indigenous-influenced<br />
ceremonies and dances to commemorate life<br />
events, as did Latin American godparents. 30<br />
According to Fernando Librado, a “godfather<br />
might pay the paha [ceremonial leader] $2.50,”<br />
who in turn gave the money to a village or<br />
mission captain to pay for the performance of<br />
the Fox Dance at a wedding or baptism. This<br />
payment to honor important events remained<br />
consistent with the ceremonial complex in early<br />
southern <strong>California</strong>. 31 Thus, intracommunity<br />
godparents potentially fulfilled the material and<br />
spiritual needs of their community as well. In<br />
fact, indigenous compadrazgo offered native<br />
peoples greater fulfillment of traditional kinship<br />
and community obligations than did interethnic<br />
godparentage, especially if indigenous godparentage<br />
included payments for indigenous rituals.<br />
Whatever significance godparentage held for<br />
indigenous Catholics, mission records provide<br />
examples of individual neophytes sponsoring<br />
scores of their community members, a pattern<br />
not typical of all missionized peoples. In a<br />
sample analysis of Mission San Gabriel baptisms<br />
for the year 1811, a few individuals stand out. Of<br />
forty-four total Gabrielino male and female neophytes<br />
and their spouses mentioned that year as<br />
godparents, five (11.4 percent) godparented fellow<br />
mission Indians more than 100 times each<br />
throughout their lifetime, an uncharacteristic<br />
level of sponsorship. María del Carmen sponsored<br />
as many as 180 indigenous godchildren<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
A large body of knowledge of Chumash Indian language, lore, traditional history, and Chumash-Christian adaptations<br />
has been preserved through the relationship between the Chumash Fernando Librado Kitsepawit and the<br />
linguist-ethnographer John P. Harrington, who recorded Librado’s tribal knowledge. Born circa 1930s and raised<br />
at Mission San Buenaventura, where he was baptized, Librado recalled how an indigenous godfather contributed<br />
financially to a traditional wedding or baptism ritual.<br />
Braun Research Library, Autry National Center; P.618<br />
between 1783 and 1806. Even more impressive<br />
was Ana María, who stood as godmother to 202<br />
neophytes in her community between 1808<br />
and 1815. 32<br />
Indigenous men also were prolific godparents<br />
during the Spanish period. At Mission San Diego<br />
de Alcalá, Thomas Locau served as a spiritual<br />
parent to over sixty Indian converts from 1786<br />
to 1804. 33 Justo and Benito José of Mission San<br />
Gabriel sponsored 165 and 175 mission community<br />
members, respectively. Those individuals<br />
who sponsored mass community members for<br />
Catholic sacraments illustrate the impact of one<br />
person within a mission community. Southern<br />
<strong>California</strong> mission records reveal that every mission<br />
maintained a core group of Indian godparents<br />
who resided in houses adjacent to the<br />
mission or in a neighboring ranchería. These<br />
people may have been called upon frequently<br />
because missionaries entrusted them to serve as<br />
Catholic role models and assigned them; alternatively,<br />
local Indians turned to individuals whom<br />
they accepted as community sponsors.<br />
In contrast to the minority who frequently sponsored,<br />
many neophytes did not. Thirty-three of<br />
the forty-four Gabrielinos studied (or 75 percent)<br />
sponsored fewer than ten people during their<br />
lifetime. Ana María’s husband, Rogerio, never<br />
appeared as a baptismal godparent, and María del<br />
Carmen’s husband, Marcelino, sponsored only<br />
two baptisms. Others from that locale, including<br />
married couples Pasqual and Pasquala and<br />
Victorico and Victorica, sponsored only one baptism<br />
each. 34
Given the symbolic importance of conversions<br />
of native elites in each cycle of conquest by the<br />
Spanish, some of the prolific sponsors probably<br />
participated to maintain their elite status. The<br />
wife of an Indian captain, María Serafina Hilachap,<br />
sponsored twenty-four San Diego neophytes<br />
in the 1780s and 1790s, ensuring a sense of continuity<br />
for her community by her visibility at the<br />
mission. Indian captains residing at rancherías<br />
and missions personally sponsored Indians<br />
for sacraments, or had close family members<br />
undergo sacraments, a minimum of 241 times at<br />
Mission San Diego de Alcalá from 1769 to 1840,<br />
seventy-three times at Mission San Fernando Rey<br />
from 1798 to 1816, seventy-three times at Mission<br />
San Gabriel from 1774 to 1823, and thirteen<br />
times at Mission San Buenaventura from 1783<br />
to 1804—a conservative accounting. 35 Although<br />
this represented a small percentage of all sacraments<br />
administered to Indians, the participation<br />
of Indian captains and their kin encouraged commoners<br />
to accept Catholic sacraments.<br />
Fray Fermín Francisco de Lasuén noted how one<br />
Indian captain drew converts to Mission Santa<br />
Barbara. Commending José María, a Chumash<br />
leader at the mission, Lasuén wrote that “he<br />
collaborates in bringing about the subjection,<br />
pacification, and education of those who are<br />
Christians, and the conversion of the pagans. He<br />
is beloved by the whole nation.” 36 However, the<br />
degree of authority wielded by these “captains”<br />
remains uncertain. As Edward Spicer notes in<br />
his research on northern Mexico, some designated<br />
as “captains” may have been individuals<br />
who showed more willingness to establish contact<br />
with missionaries. Thus, while the designation<br />
of some captains in Alta <strong>California</strong> mission<br />
registers signifies a continuation of precontact<br />
leadership roles among elites, others who lacked<br />
such status during this era made new claims of<br />
authority or represented a faction willing to collaborate<br />
with missionaries. 37<br />
Campadrazgo by Foreign Converts<br />
Compadrazgo was perpetuated not only among<br />
Spanish-Mexican inhabitants and indigenous<br />
<strong>California</strong>ns, but also among foreign-born<br />
merchants entering <strong>California</strong> from the 1820s<br />
onward. Such participation in compadrazgo by<br />
extranjeros (foreigners) linked them to existing<br />
family networks, enhanced their business and<br />
interpersonal connections, and furthered their<br />
acculturation. The aforementioned Abel Stearns<br />
and Hugo Reid engaged in a business partnership<br />
and friendship over a number of years<br />
before they memorialized their closeness through<br />
Catholic godparentage. Prior to Stearns’s marriage<br />
in 1841 to the elite <strong>California</strong>na Arcadia<br />
Bandini, Reid assured his friend that “should<br />
there be anything which my family can do for<br />
you in household affairs in order to facilitate<br />
matrimonial matters, command with the necessary<br />
confidence of a friend.” 38 Shortly thereafter,<br />
Reid stood as a sacramental witness at Stearns’s<br />
wedding, as did other merchant traders who<br />
sponsored their foreign-born peers for Catholic<br />
baptism and marriage to Alta <strong>California</strong> women.<br />
Reciprocation of compadrazgo ties among converted<br />
extranjeros and native-born Catholic<br />
inhabitants remained a common practice in<br />
Mexican <strong>California</strong>. Years after his friend’s wedding,<br />
Reid wrote Stearns stating, “I am obliged<br />
to use other measures to accelerate [sic] our compadrazco,”<br />
and he offered tortas de pan (loaves<br />
of bread) made by his wife Victoria, Stearns’s<br />
“comadre,” as an enticement to the couple’s<br />
request that the Stearns sponsor their son Carlitos<br />
Reid for holy confirmation in March 1843.<br />
In letters exchanged after the event, the two men<br />
referred to each other as “compadre” and to his<br />
compadre’s wife as “comadre,” honorific terms of<br />
affection that acknowledged their socioreligious<br />
and kinship bonds. 39 Despite his wife’s reluctance<br />
to write, Reid frequently included “saludos<br />
from your comadre,” offering Victoria’s affection<br />
in letters to the Stearns. 40 Following Carlitos’s<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
A daughter of Doña Dolores Estudillo and Don Juan<br />
Lorenzo Bruno Bandini, one of San Diego’s most<br />
distinguished citizens, Arcadia Bandini de Stearns<br />
Baker (1852–1912) (right) married Abel Stearns, the<br />
Los Angeles cattle baron and trader (below), in 1841<br />
at Mission San Gabriel. She was fourteen and he was<br />
forty-three. Stearns would become Los Angeles’s greatest<br />
landowner and Arcadia one of the state’s wealthiest<br />
women at the time of her death. The influential<br />
Stearns were compadres to Scotsman Hugo Reid and<br />
his wife Victoria Bartholomea Reid, a Gabrielino<br />
woman from the village of Comicrabit. Acculturated<br />
foreigners such as Reid and Stearns, fluent in Spanish<br />
and comfortable with local customs, relied upon compadrazgo<br />
to integrate themselves into Californio society<br />
and further their business dealings in the region.<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>/USC Special Collections<br />
confirmation, Reid turned to Stearns for advice<br />
and assistance during moments of economic distress,<br />
demonstrating the men’s ability to speak of<br />
intimate concerns.<br />
A world within a world emerged in Mexican and<br />
transitional <strong>California</strong> through mutual sponsorship<br />
for baptism and marriage among interethnic<br />
couples. Scottish-born Reid sponsored the Englishman<br />
Henry “Perfect Ugo” Dalton for baptism<br />
at Mission San Gabriel in 1847, paving the way<br />
for Dalton’s marriage to <strong>California</strong>na Doña Guadalupe<br />
Zamorano. Significantly, Reid had previously<br />
worked as an agent for Dalton’s trading<br />
company in Peru, and the men sacramentalized<br />
their relationship through godparentage. When<br />
the Belgian-born, naturalized Mexican citizen<br />
Victor Eugene August “Don Agustin” Janssens<br />
married María Antonia Pico on January 27, 1843,<br />
the Scottish shipmaster Señor Juan Wilson and<br />
his <strong>California</strong>na wife Doña Ramona Carrillo de<br />
Pacheco attended as the couple’s witnesses. One<br />
year later, Janssens and Wilson entered into a<br />
proprietary partnership in a Santa Barbara store,<br />
their business relationship strengthened by compadrazgo<br />
and their shared history as husbands
A world within a world<br />
emerged in Mexican and<br />
transitional <strong>California</strong><br />
through mutual sponsorship<br />
for baptism and marriage<br />
among interethnic couples.<br />
of <strong>California</strong>nas and patriarchs of growing mixed<br />
families. 41<br />
Godparentage also strengthened existing blood<br />
ties among <strong>California</strong>nas who married foreigners,<br />
as in the case of the Carrillo family. Doña<br />
María Josefa Carrillo and her Boston-born husband<br />
William “Guillermo” Dana requested that<br />
María Josefa’s father Carlos Carrillo and her sister<br />
María Antonia Carrillo sponsor the couple’s<br />
one-day-old daughter, María Josefa Antonia<br />
Sirila Dana, in 1829. María Josefa’s cousin Doña<br />
Ramona Carrillo and her Scottish-born husband<br />
John “Don Juan” Wilson sponsored Juan Francisco,<br />
another child of María Josefa and William<br />
Dana, for baptism in 1836. In 1840, the Wilsons<br />
bestowed the same honor upon the Danas by asking<br />
them to serve as baptismal sponsor to their<br />
daughter María Ygnacia Felipa Wilson. In 1845,<br />
the Wilsons also godparented Ysabel Robbins,<br />
the daughter of Ramona’s cousin Encarnación<br />
Carrillo and her American husband Thomas<br />
“Tomas” Robbins. As these examples indicate,<br />
<strong>California</strong>nas often played a pivotal intermediary<br />
role by incorporating foreign-born husbands into<br />
local godparenting networks, while simultaneously<br />
reaffirming preexisting kinship bonds. 42<br />
Godparentage also reinforced ethnic and national<br />
links among Frenchmen during the Mexican and<br />
early American eras. The presence of increasing<br />
numbers of extranjeros from France and the British<br />
Isles evidenced the increasing cosmopolitan<br />
flavor of southern <strong>California</strong> beginning in the<br />
1820s. Several French husbands of <strong>California</strong>nas<br />
sponsored the children of Gallic countrymen. For<br />
example, Luís Bauchet of France and his <strong>California</strong>na<br />
wife Basilia Alanis sponsored Espiridion<br />
Baric, the son of Carlos and Sofia Baric of “Burdeos”<br />
(Bordeaux), France. Frenchman Victor<br />
Leon Prudhomme and his wife María Merced<br />
Tapia requested that bachelor Estevan Jourdain of<br />
France and Basilia Alanis, Luís Bauchet’s widow,<br />
stand as godparents to their daughter María Emidia<br />
Tomasa Prudhomme in 1848. 43<br />
Like the French, men from the British Isles and<br />
New England sponsored compatriots for baptism<br />
and marriage and were godparents to their mixed<br />
offspring produced from unions with <strong>California</strong>nas.<br />
Irishman James “Santiago” Burke and his<br />
wife Josefa Borunda became padrinos to the son<br />
of Gorge [George] Antonio Allen of Ireland and<br />
his <strong>California</strong>na wife Petra Bermudez on October<br />
19, 1832. Anita de la Guerra and her Boston-born<br />
husband Alfredo [Alfred] Robinson became the<br />
spiritual parents of José María Alfredo Hill, son<br />
of Bostonian Daniel Hill and Rafaela Ortega. Hill<br />
and Ortega honored the godfather Don Alfredo<br />
Robinson by bestowing his name upon the child.<br />
In the Mexican era, extranjeros, often joined by<br />
their <strong>California</strong>na wives, godparented interethnic<br />
offspring for baptism at least forty-three times<br />
prior to 1848 in southern <strong>California</strong> and fourteen<br />
additional times during the early American<br />
period. 44 Evidence of continuing participation in<br />
compadrazgo by extranjeros after American conquest<br />
lends credence to their continued respect<br />
for this socioreligious practice, despite the formal<br />
transfer of political power into American hands. 45<br />
Compadrazgo and Indian Labor<br />
Although Catholic godparentage offered potential<br />
material benefits to some Indian converts during<br />
the Spanish era and provided one way for them<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
to ritualize and reaffirm kinship ties, over time<br />
the practice evolved into a tool for Californios and<br />
extranjeros to access Indian labor. According to<br />
Antonio Franco Coronel, Indian children, probably<br />
Yumas orphaned and captured in warfare<br />
with Spanish Mexicans, arrived in southern <strong>California</strong><br />
in 1840 or 1841 with a settler from Sonora.<br />
Coronel took an interest in a girl aged twelve or<br />
fourteen years old, testifying “I acquired her as a<br />
houseservant [sic], [and] had her baptized Encarnación.”<br />
46 Recall as well the Indian goddaughter<br />
Candelaria, who revealed an Indian conspiracy<br />
to attack ranchos in San Diego. Her proximity to<br />
her godmother as the family servant suggests the<br />
This christening bib of fine needle lace from the 1800s was<br />
owned by Francisca Vallejo McGettigan, granddaughter<br />
of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who married Charles D.<br />
McGettigan in San Francisco. <strong>California</strong>-born wives<br />
of Frenchmen, New Englanders, and British Islanders<br />
integrated their husbands into existing kinship networks<br />
through marriage and Catholic sponsorship. These couples<br />
mutually sponsored each other for marriage and the mixed<br />
children produced from such unions for baptism. Increasing<br />
numbers of interethnic families emerged in places such<br />
as Monterey and Santa Barbara by the 1840s.<br />
Autry National Center; 2004.22.4.11
incorporation of some godchildren into households<br />
as laborers. As these examples reveal, baptism,<br />
godparentage, and Indian labor occasionally<br />
intersected in Mexican <strong>California</strong>. This “exploitation<br />
of Native American labor” continued into the<br />
American period, signifying a cultural compatibility<br />
rather than a clash. 47<br />
Foreigners and Californios, indeed, shared a<br />
paternalistic ideology with respect to native<br />
peoples in the early American era. This Catholic<br />
paternalism or maternalism dating to the Spanish<br />
era converged with new American indenture<br />
laws in the 1850s and 1860s that codified into<br />
law the inability of Indians to exercise freedom of<br />
movement or independence. According to Tomás<br />
Almaguer, kidnappings and auctions of Indians<br />
resulted in the trafficking of approximately 4,000<br />
children between 1852 and 1867. 48 Children without<br />
families to defend them certainly fell victim<br />
to indentures and vagrancy laws, which is not to<br />
suggest that all of these trafficked children were<br />
baptized by locals or even Catholic. However, the<br />
possibility remains that godparentage paved the<br />
way for the binding of Indian children to southern<br />
<strong>California</strong> households or ranchos during the<br />
early American era through claims of spiritual<br />
obligation.<br />
One motivation for sponsorship of Indian<br />
children for baptism by Californios and extranjeros<br />
at this time lay in their ability to check<br />
competition from outsiders for Indian labor.<br />
Alternatively, others possibly thought that they<br />
could better protect indigenous peoples from<br />
abuse by newcomers through sponsorship and<br />
the regulation of Indian labor. Whether or not<br />
Indian children were incorporated into southern<br />
<strong>California</strong> households as godchildren, the widescale<br />
trafficking of and market for Indian labor<br />
decimated native communities by tearing apart<br />
existing family units.<br />
A few examples of indentured servant agreements<br />
and legal petitions in the mid to late nineteenth<br />
century reveal how <strong>California</strong>nas relied<br />
upon new American legal instruments to attach<br />
Indian godchildren to their households and family<br />
ranchos. Doña Ysidora Bandini de Couts,<br />
Arcadia Bandini’s sister and the <strong>California</strong>na<br />
wife of the American military man and ranchero<br />
Cave J. Couts, submitted a petition through<br />
her husband to retrieve her runaway godson<br />
Francisco in 1858. 49 Introduced into Catholic<br />
godparenting practices by Ysidora, Couts vigorously<br />
defended her claim to the local justice of<br />
the peace. 50 In accordance with American laws<br />
passed in the early 1850s and 1860s, Indian children<br />
were subject to indentured servitude until<br />
the age of eighteen (later extended to twenty-five).<br />
Indian vagrants, that is, those considered unemployed<br />
without any regular attachment to a rancho<br />
or home, also fell vulnerable to involuntary<br />
servitude through the auctioning of their bodies<br />
and labor to the highest bidder. 51<br />
Significantly, Ysidora’s petition cited preexisting<br />
godparenting ties while parroting the language<br />
of American indenture agreements. The document<br />
stated that she held “care and control of<br />
said Indian Boy, and that said child has been provided<br />
with suitable food and clothings[.]” It also<br />
indicated that the boy had resided on the Couts’s<br />
ranch, Rancho Guajome, but was “enticed away<br />
by others,” suggesting interference from outsiders.<br />
Justice William C. Ferrell, citing the “custom<br />
of the country”—specifically, Ysidora’s baptism of<br />
Francisco in church—ordered the boy’s return to<br />
the rancho, where he was to remain until the age<br />
of eighteen. 52<br />
During the 1850s and 1860s, the Couts-Bandini<br />
family participated in other indentures that<br />
bound native peoples and at least one black<br />
minor to them. 53 Ysidora’s adoption of American<br />
indenture practices is evidenced by a contract<br />
dated April 1855 for Juan, a boy of ten or eleven<br />
years of age. Her obligations included a payment<br />
of $2.50 per month to Vicente and Comada,<br />
Juan’s adopted parents, in exchange for the boy’s<br />
0<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
Abel Stearns gave Rancho Guajome as a wedding gift to his American brother-in-law, Cave J. Couts, who married<br />
Ysidora Bandini, Arcadia’s sister, in 1851. The Couts family placed indentured children and godchildren to work on<br />
the rancho and in the household as servants and laborers. One godchild, Francisco, was the subject of an 1858 petition<br />
for recovery after running away from his godmother’s home.<br />
Braun Research Library, Autry National Center; P.17037<br />
services and labor; she also agreed to provide<br />
clothing and provisions to Juan until adulthood.<br />
One phrase in the agreement is revealing of the<br />
cultural superiority shared among Californios<br />
and Americans over native peoples at this time:<br />
“This boy is thus bound for his own good, as well<br />
as for the maintenance of Vicente + his woman<br />
Comada.” Only upon reaching the age of maturity,<br />
would Juan be “set free or at liberty.” 54<br />
The contract also prevented Juan’s removal from<br />
Ysidora’s control in the event of his adopted parents<br />
Vicente and Comada’s deaths. This agreement’s<br />
language would be echoed in the petition<br />
for Ysidora’s godson Francisco three years later.<br />
Conveniently, Cave Couts, who was a witness<br />
to Juan’s indenture agreement, and William B.<br />
Couts, his brother, who witnessed a different<br />
agreement in 1866, both did so in their capacity<br />
as justices of the peace in the San Luis Rey<br />
township. 55 Although the family probably did not<br />
baptize all children who fell under their control<br />
as indentures, Couts certainly increased the productivity<br />
and value of his land with the sweat and<br />
labor of his wife’s Indian godchildren and those<br />
indentured to the family. Adding further context<br />
to his willingness to defend his wife’s compadrazgo<br />
claims, Couts came from a slave-owning<br />
family in Tennessee.<br />
Californio households bound Indian godchildren<br />
and adopted children, passing them to other<br />
1
Compadrazgo remained embedded<br />
with multiple layers of meaning<br />
and power in <strong>California</strong> from the<br />
Spanish period into the Mexican<br />
and early American eras.<br />
family members like moveable property in wills.<br />
María Gabriela Pollorena’s will, dated May 11,<br />
1832, bequeathed to her natural daughter a Yuma<br />
orphan whom she considered “almost a daughter,<br />
named Teresa.’” 56 At least sixty-six Yuma captives<br />
were baptized at southern <strong>California</strong> missions<br />
between 1826 and 1848 and incorporated into<br />
Californio households, by chance coinciding<br />
with the rise of the rancho era and the need for<br />
Indian labor in Mexican <strong>California</strong>. Following the<br />
American conquest, <strong>California</strong>nas continued the<br />
practice of transferring Indian children through<br />
wills. Juana Ballesteros bequeathed her orphaned<br />
godchild Francisco to her natural son in a will<br />
dated July 24, 1859: “I confer and place [as] the<br />
guardian of my god child, an orphan of father<br />
and mother, and under age, named, Francisco,<br />
to my son Juan Avila to take care and educate . . .<br />
until he becomes of age or till he marries, should<br />
he marry before his minority.” 57 These two wills,<br />
one authored during the Mexican period and the<br />
other in the American, reveal the persistence of<br />
unequal and intimate ties between Indian godchildren,<br />
orphans, and <strong>California</strong>na godmothers<br />
and guardians.<br />
Shaping the American West<br />
Clearly, compadrazgo remained embedded with<br />
multiple layers of meaning and power in <strong>California</strong><br />
from the Spanish period into the Mexican<br />
and early American eras. Indian converts in Alta<br />
<strong>California</strong>, forced to adopt compadrazgo under<br />
missionization, nonetheless managed to use it to<br />
regenerate community ties severely undermined<br />
by invasion and demographic decline. Not only<br />
did this socioreligious practice establish intimate<br />
ties between ethnic groups with no prior<br />
familiarity, it also aided in the incorporation and<br />
acculturation of newcomers such as foreign-born<br />
merchants. <strong>California</strong>nas utilized godparentage<br />
to enhance their prominence and esteem in their<br />
respective communities and families. In later<br />
years, Spanish Mexicans and Anglo Americans<br />
shared an ideology of paternalism toward native<br />
peoples, as evidenced by the language of obligation<br />
and reciprocity invoked by godparents and<br />
in new American indenture servitude laws that<br />
regulated Indian bodies at mid-century. The institution<br />
of compadrazgo played a key role in shaping<br />
families and communities in the American<br />
West, a notion that historians of <strong>California</strong> are<br />
now appreciating, although almost certainly further<br />
research on compadrazgo’s intersection with<br />
labor practices is likely to yield fresh perspectives.<br />
Erika Pérez is currently a visiting assistant professor in<br />
American Cultures Studies at Loyola Marymount University<br />
in Los Angeles, where she teaches undergraduate courses on<br />
colonial American history, nineteenth-century U.S. history,<br />
and twentieth-century race, gender, and sports history. She<br />
completed her dissertation, “Colonial Intimacies: Interethnic<br />
Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1769–1<strong>88</strong>5,” in August 2010 at the University of <strong>California</strong>,<br />
Los Angeles under the guidance of Stephen Aron. Her<br />
research and teaching interests include the Spanish Borderlands/American<br />
West, gender and sexuality, Native American<br />
history, and Chicano-Latino Studies. A native of southern<br />
<strong>California</strong> with family roots in El Paso, Texas, she developed<br />
her research on compadragzo after twice becoming a godmother.<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
n o t e s<br />
Invisible Borders: Repatriation and<br />
Colonization of Mexican Migrant<br />
Workers along the <strong>California</strong><br />
Borderlands during the 1930s, By<br />
Benny J. Andrés Jr., PP 5–21<br />
I would like to thank David García and Alicia<br />
Carrillo for research assistance. My sincerest<br />
gratitude goes to Tom Rogers, Mary<br />
Ann Irwin, Shelly Kale, and Janet Fireman<br />
for their insightful comments and editorial<br />
suggestions. I also thank four anonymous<br />
readers for their comments.<br />
1 Statement of Harry Chandler, U.S. Congress,<br />
House Committee on Immigration<br />
and Naturalization, Western Hemisphere<br />
Immigration: Hearings on H.R. 8523, H.R.<br />
8530, and H.R. 8702, 71st Cong., 2nd sess.<br />
(Washington, DC: Government Printing<br />
Office, 1930), 70; http://babel.hathitrust.<br />
org/cgi/ptid=mdp.39015014316932, acc.<br />
Jan. 16, 2011.<br />
2 The Brawley News (hereafter cited as TBN),<br />
Dec. 14, 1934; for the figure of 152 repatriates,<br />
see the Calexico Chronicle (hereafter<br />
cited as CC), Dec. 17, 1934; for the origin of<br />
the families, see CC, Dec. 15, 1934.<br />
3 TBN, Dec. 14, 1934.<br />
4 For the agency of peasants, see James C.<br />
Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms<br />
of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University<br />
Press, 1985).<br />
5 According to the 1920 census, 2.7 percent<br />
of Mexican alien men over the age of 21<br />
in <strong>California</strong> were naturalized. <strong>California</strong><br />
Mexican Fact-Finding Committee, Mexicans<br />
in <strong>California</strong>, Report of Governor C. C. Young’s<br />
Mexican Fact-Finding Committee (San Francisco,<br />
CA: R and E Research Associates,<br />
1970 [© 1930]), 63.<br />
6 Mercedes Carreras de Velasco, Los<br />
Mexicanos que devolvió la crisis, 1929–1932<br />
(Tlatelolco, MX: Secretaría de Relaciones<br />
Exteriores, 1974). For the best scholarly<br />
treatment on Mexican repatriation, see<br />
Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso, Que se queden<br />
allá: El gobierno de México y la repatriación<br />
de mexicanos en Estados Unidos (1934–1940)<br />
(Tijuana, MX: El Colegio de la Frontera<br />
Norte, 2007).<br />
7 For studies of repatriation during the<br />
Great Depression, see Manuel Gamio, Mexican<br />
Immigration to the United States: A Study<br />
of Human Migration and Adjustment (New<br />
York: Arno Press and The New York Times,<br />
1969 [© 1930]) and The Mexican Immigrant:<br />
His Life-Story (New York: Arno Press and<br />
The New York Times, 1969 [© 1931]); Paul<br />
S. Taylor, A Spanish-Mexican Peasant Community:<br />
Arandas in Jalisco, Mexico (Berkeley:<br />
University of <strong>California</strong> Press, 1933); James<br />
C. Gilbert, “A Field Study in Mexico of the<br />
Mexican Repatriation Movement” (master’s<br />
thesis, University of Southern <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1934); Emory S. Bogardus, The Mexican in<br />
the United States (Los Angeles: University of<br />
Southern <strong>California</strong> Press, 1934).<br />
8 In chronological order, see Carey McWilliams,<br />
Factories in the Field: The Story of<br />
Migratory Farm Labor in <strong>California</strong> (Hamden,<br />
CT: Archon Books, 1969 [© 1935]), 129<br />
and North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking<br />
People of the United States (New York: Praeger,<br />
1990 [© 1948]), 176; Abraham Hoffman,<br />
Unwanted Mexican Americans in the<br />
Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures,<br />
1929–1939 (Tucson: The University of Arizona<br />
Press, 1974); Francisco E. Balderrama,<br />
In Defense of La Raza: The Los Angeles Mexican<br />
Consulate and the Mexican Community,<br />
1929 to 1936 (Tucson: The University of<br />
Arizona Press, 1982); Dennis N. Valdés, Al<br />
Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes<br />
Region, 1917–1970 (Austin: University of<br />
Texas Press, 1991), chaps. 3 and 4; George<br />
J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American:<br />
Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano<br />
Los Angeles, 1900–1945 (New York: Oxford<br />
University Press, 1993), chap. 10; Zaragosa<br />
Vargas, Proletarians of the North: A History<br />
of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and<br />
the Midwest, 1917–1933 (Berkeley: University<br />
of <strong>California</strong> Press, 1993), chap. 5; Camille<br />
Guérin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers and<br />
American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation,<br />
and <strong>California</strong> Farm Labor, 1900–1939<br />
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University<br />
Press, 1994); David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and<br />
Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants,<br />
and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley:<br />
University of <strong>California</strong> Press, 1995), 72–74;<br />
Dionicio N. Valdés, Barrios Norteños: St. Paul<br />
and Midwestern Mexican Communities in<br />
the Twentieth Century (Austin: University of<br />
Texas Press, 2000), chap. 3; Matt García, A<br />
World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in<br />
the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900–1970<br />
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina<br />
Press, 2001), chap. 3; Francisco E. Balderrama<br />
and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of<br />
Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s,<br />
rev. ed. (Albuquerque: University of New<br />
Mexico Press, 2006), 236–63; Gabriela F.<br />
Arredondo, Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity,<br />
and Nation, 1916–39 (Urbana: University<br />
of Illinois Press, 2008), chap. 3; Kathleen<br />
Mapes, Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor,<br />
Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics<br />
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009),<br />
216–20.<br />
9 Paul S. Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United<br />
States: Migration Statistics, vols. 2 and 3<br />
(Berkeley: University of <strong>California</strong> Press,<br />
1933) and vol. 4 (1934); <strong>California</strong> Mexican<br />
Fact-Finding Committee, Mexicans in <strong>California</strong>,<br />
chap. 1. For an excellent contemporary<br />
analysis of Mexican circular migration,<br />
see Josef Barton, “At the Edge of the Storm:<br />
Northern Mexico’s Rural Peoples in a New<br />
Regime of Consumption, 1<strong>88</strong>0–1940,” in<br />
Land of Necessity: Consumer Culture in the<br />
United States-Mexico Borderlands, ed. Alexis<br />
McCrossen, 217–47 (Durham, NC: Duke<br />
University Press, 2009) and “Borderland<br />
Discontents: Mexican Migration in Regional<br />
Contexts, 1<strong>88</strong>0–1930,” in Repositioning North<br />
American Migration History: New Directions<br />
in Modern Continental Migration, Citizenship,<br />
and Community, ed. Marc S. Rodriguez, 141–<br />
205 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester<br />
Press, 2004).<br />
10 Donna R. Gabaccia, “Is Everywhere<br />
Nowhere: Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant<br />
Paradigm of United States History,”<br />
The Journal of American History 86, no. 3<br />
(Dec. 1999): 1115–34.<br />
11 See, for example, Repatriation of Mexican<br />
Nationals, file 55957/456, Department of<br />
Labor and Naturalization Service, Record<br />
Group 85, National Archives, Washington,<br />
DC.<br />
12 Andrés Landa y Piña, El servicio de<br />
migración en México (Talleres Gráficos de<br />
la Nación, MX: Secretaría de Gobernación,<br />
1930); Arthur F. Corwin, “Mexican Policy<br />
and Ambivalence toward Labor Emigration<br />
to the United States,” in Immigrants and<br />
Immigrants: Perspectives on Mexican Labor<br />
Migration to the United States, ed. Arthur F.<br />
Corwin, 179–94 (Westport, CT: Greenwood<br />
Press, 1978).<br />
13 John J. Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute: The<br />
Expropriation of American-Owned Rural Land<br />
in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham, NC:<br />
Duke University Press, 2008); Casey Walsh,<br />
Building the Borderlands: A Transnational<br />
History of Irrigated Cotton along the Mexican-<br />
Texas Border (College Station: Texas A & M<br />
University Press, 2008).<br />
14 Paul S. Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United<br />
States: Imperial Valley (New York: Arno Press<br />
and The New York Times, 1970 [© 1930]).
n o t e s<br />
For the Imperial Valley’s defense of undocumented<br />
migrants, see file 0766-0775, 0782-<br />
0786, 0793-0796, 0828-0837, 0857-0861,<br />
roll 15, Records Group 85, Records of the<br />
Immigration and Naturalization Service<br />
Series A, Subject Correspondence Files<br />
pt. 2: Mexican Immigration 1906–1930,<br />
National Archives and Records Administration<br />
(Bethesda, MD: University Publications<br />
of America, 1993); Louis Bloch, “Report on<br />
the Mexican Labor Situation in the Imperial<br />
Valley,” 22nd Biennial Report of the Bureau<br />
of Labor Statistics of the State of <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1925–1926 (Sacramento: <strong>California</strong> Bureau<br />
of Labor Statistics, 1926): 116–23; Mark<br />
Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican<br />
Immigrant Labor in the United States,<br />
1900–1940 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,<br />
1976), 60–67. For a general history, see<br />
Benny J. Andrés, “Power and Control in the<br />
Imperial Valley: Nature, Agribusiness, Labor<br />
and Race Relations, 1900–1940” (PhD diss.,<br />
University of New Mexico, 2003).<br />
15 For the history of the CRLC from the company’s<br />
perspective, see Dorothy P. Kerig,<br />
“Yankee Enclave: The Colorado River Land<br />
Company and Mexican Agrarian Reform<br />
in Baja <strong>California</strong>, 1902–1944” (PhD diss.,<br />
University of <strong>California</strong>, Irvine, 19<strong>88</strong>); for<br />
the Mexican view of the CRLC, see Pablo<br />
Herrera Carrillo, Reconquista y colonización<br />
del valle de Mexicali y otros escritos paralelos<br />
(Mexicali, MX: Universidad Autónoma de<br />
Baja <strong>California</strong>, 2002), chaps 17–24; also<br />
important are Eugene K. Chamberlin, “Mexican<br />
Colonization versus American Interests<br />
in Lower <strong>California</strong>,” Pacific <strong>Historical</strong><br />
Review 20, no. 1 (Feb. 1951): 43–55; Robert<br />
H. Duncan, “The Chinese and the Economic<br />
Development of Northern Baja <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1<strong>88</strong>9–1929,” Hispanic American <strong>Historical</strong><br />
Review 74, no. 4 (Nov. 1994): 615–47.<br />
16 David Acosta Montoya, “Precursores del<br />
agrarismo” y “El Asalto a Las Tierras” en el<br />
Estado de Baja <strong>California</strong> (Mexicali, MX:<br />
Universidad Autónoma de Baja <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1985), 26–86.<br />
17 TBN, June 12, 1920.<br />
18 Oscar Sánchez Ramírez, Crónica agrícola<br />
del valle de Mexicali (Mexicali, MX: Universidad<br />
Autónoma de Baja <strong>California</strong>, 1990),<br />
82–84, 101–4.<br />
19 For the ban, see Duncan, “The Chinese,”<br />
633; TBN, Nov. 7, 1925.<br />
20 TBN, Sept. 12 and 15, 1924; Sánchez<br />
Ramírez, Crónica agrícola, 72–82; Carrillo,<br />
Reconquista y colonización, 162–64; Abelardo<br />
L. Rodríguez, Memoria administrativa<br />
del gobierno del Distrito Norte de la Baja<br />
<strong>California</strong>, 1924–1927 (Mexicali, MX: Universidad<br />
Autónoma de Baja <strong>California</strong>, 1993<br />
[© 1928]), chap. 4.<br />
21 Statement of Harry Chandler, 72.<br />
22 Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United States:<br />
The Imperial Valley, 17–18.<br />
23 Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United States:<br />
Migration Statistics, 4:36–49.<br />
24 Statement of Harry Chandler, 62, 64.<br />
25 Carrillo, Reconquista y colonización,<br />
179–80.<br />
26 TBN, Jan. 14, 1930.<br />
27 Balderrama and Rodríguez, Decade of<br />
Betrayal, 199–200.<br />
28 “Report Rendered to the Honorable Federal<br />
Board of Investigation by the Comité<br />
Mexicano de Bienestar Social (Mexican<br />
Social Welfare Committee) of Brawley, <strong>California</strong>,<br />
February 1934,” carton 14, folder 38,<br />
n.p., Inventory of the Paul S. Taylor Papers,<br />
MSS 84/38C, The Bancroft Library Archival<br />
Collections, University of <strong>California</strong>,<br />
Berkeley.<br />
29 Spanish and English translation of an<br />
excerpt from “Report Submitted by General<br />
Juan Andrew Almaz[á]n, Secretary of<br />
Communications and Public Works, to the<br />
President of the Republic, with Reference<br />
to His Journey through the Northwestern<br />
Part of the Country, Mexico, July, 1930,”<br />
29–37, in the Spanish report, file Mexico,<br />
folder 1, Imperial Irrigation District Archive,<br />
Imperial, CA.<br />
30 TBN, Sept. 30 and Oct. 2, 1930.<br />
31 Natalia Molina, “Constructing Mexicans<br />
as Deportable Immigrants: Race, Disease,<br />
and the Meaning of “Public Charge,” Identities:<br />
Global Studies in Culture and Power 17<br />
(2010): 641–66 and Fit to Be Citizens: Public<br />
Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939<br />
(Berkeley: University of <strong>California</strong> Press,<br />
2006), 120–30, 136–41.<br />
32 Jaime R. Aguila, “Protecting ‘México de<br />
Afuera’: Mexican Emigration Policy, 1876–<br />
1928” (PhD diss., Arizona State University,<br />
2000) in Dissertations & Theses: Full Text<br />
(Publication No. AAT 9990715), 65–82, ret.<br />
May 6, 2011.<br />
33 TBN, Apr. 20, 1925.<br />
34 Statement of C. B. Moore, U.S. Congress,<br />
Senate Committee on Immigration, Restriction<br />
of Western Hemisphere Immigration:<br />
Hearings on S. 1437, 70th Cong., 1st sess.<br />
(Washington, DC: Government Printing<br />
Office, 1928), 61; http://babel.hathitrust.<br />
org/cgi/ptid=mdp.39015014316940, acc.<br />
Jan. 16, 2011.<br />
35 TBN, Apr. 10, 1926.<br />
36 Agnes K. Hanna, “Social Services on<br />
the Mexican Border,” National Conference<br />
of Social Work (1935): 692–702; Norman<br />
D. Humphrey, “Mexican Repatriation from<br />
Michigan Public Assistance in <strong>Historical</strong><br />
Perspective,” The Social Service Review 15,<br />
no. 3 (Sept. 1941): 497–513; www.jstor.org/<br />
stable/30013706, acc. July 5, 2010.<br />
37 Andrés, “Power and Control,” 223–28.<br />
38 TBN, May 2, 1934.<br />
39 Andrés, “Power and Control,” 230–35.<br />
40 For the 1934 strikes, see Cletus E. Daniel,<br />
Bitter Harvest: A History of <strong>California</strong><br />
Farmworkers, 1870–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell<br />
University Press, 1981), chap. 7; Gilbert G.<br />
González, “Company Unions, the Mexican<br />
Consulate, and the Imperial Valley Agricultural<br />
Strikes, 1928–1934,” The Western<br />
<strong>Historical</strong> Quarterly 27, no. 1 (Spring 1996),<br />
60–73 and Mexican Consuls and Labor<br />
Organizing: Imperial Politics in the American<br />
Southwest (Austin: University of Texas Press,<br />
1999), 174–96; Andrés, “Power and Control,”<br />
2<strong>88</strong>–315.<br />
41 TBN, June 6, 1934.<br />
42 Ibid., Nov. 15 and 16, Dec. 27, 1934.<br />
43 CC, Apr. 16 and 22, May 8, 1935.<br />
44 Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute, 46, 59; CC,<br />
Sept. 19, 1934; for the land sale, see CC,<br />
Sept. 21, 1934.<br />
45 Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute, 181.<br />
For Lázaro Cárdenas’s relations with<br />
campesinos as the governor of Michoacán,<br />
see Christopher R. Boyer, Becoming<br />
Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian<br />
Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán,<br />
1920–1935 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University<br />
Press, 2003), chap. 6.<br />
46 CC, Dec. 15, 1934.<br />
47 Ibid., Dec. 17, 1934, Jan. 11, 1935.<br />
48 Ibid., Mar. 4 and 27, July 23, Nov. 21, Dec.<br />
6 and 17, 1935, and May 6, 1936.<br />
49 CC, Mar. 6, 1935; for the CRLC’s perspective<br />
of land sales and expropriation, see<br />
Kerig, “Yankee Enclave,” 314–81.<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
50 CC, Mar. 5 and May 28, 1935 and July 9,<br />
1936.<br />
51 Ibid., Apr. 6, 12, 13, and 15, 1935.<br />
52 CC, Nov. 12, 23, and 25, 1935; Dwyer, The<br />
Agrarian Dispute, 48; CC, Jan. 23 and 27 and<br />
May 14, 1936.<br />
53 CC, Nov. 21, 1935 and Feb. 11 and Apr. 17,<br />
1936.<br />
54 Ibid., Nov. 21, 1935, July 20 and Sept. 17,<br />
1937.<br />
55 CC, Sept. 27, 1934; for sinophobia, see<br />
Marco Antonio Samaniego López, “Formación<br />
y consolidación de las organizaciones<br />
obreras en Baja <strong>California</strong>, 1920–1930,”<br />
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 14,<br />
no. 2 (Summer 1998): 329–62; www.jstor.<br />
org/Mon., July 24 23:41:58 2006, acc. July<br />
24, 2006.<br />
56 CC, Apr. 2, 1936.<br />
57 Ibid., Jan. 5, 1937.<br />
58 Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute, 61.<br />
59 CC, July 15, 1936.<br />
60 Ibid., June 8 and Aug. 5, 1936.<br />
61 Ibid., Sept. 30 and Oct. 8, 1936.<br />
62 Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute, 44–45.<br />
63 Acosta Montoya, “Precursores del<br />
agrarismo,” 73–77, 87–109, 129–37; Sánchez<br />
Ramírez, Crónica agrícola, 104–6. For<br />
agrarista identity and agency, see Boyer,<br />
Becoming Campesinos, chap. 4.<br />
64 CC, Jan. 28, Feb. 2, and Mar. 4, 1937;<br />
Sánchez Ramírez, Crónica agrícola, 111–14.<br />
65 CC, Mar. 13 and 16, 1937; the Calexico<br />
Chronicle converted the peso amount to<br />
$277,500. Kerig, “Yankee Enclave,” 358.<br />
66 CC, Mar. 13 and 30, Apr. 1, 7, and 17,<br />
1937.<br />
67 Ibid., Apr. 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29,<br />
May 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 1937; for “striking<br />
farmers,” see CC, May 11 and 12, 1937.<br />
68 CC, Apr. 16, June 28 and 29, 1937; Kerig,<br />
“Yankee Enclave,” 380; for the 1915–46 statistics,<br />
see María Eugenia Anguiano Téllez,<br />
Agricultura y migración en el Valle de Mexicali<br />
(Tijuana, MX: El Colegio de la Frontera<br />
Norte, 1995), 100; for a breakdown of the<br />
different categories of colonies in Mexicali<br />
from 1915 to 1945, see 102 (Table 8).<br />
69 CC, Mar. 23 and June 21 (quote) and 22,<br />
1937.<br />
70 CC, Oct. 7 (quote) and 28, 1937; TBN,<br />
Feb. 7, 1938; CC, Apr. 6 and Aug. 3, 1938,<br />
Dec. 14, 1939 and, for hundreds of ethnic<br />
Mexicans destroying pea vines in anger<br />
because of a lack of jobs, Jan. 14, 1939.<br />
71 CC, July 5, 6, 7, and 10, 1939; TBN, July<br />
5, 10, and 13, 1939; for Mexico’s agreement<br />
to pay the CRLC and 318 other American<br />
owners for expropriated land, see Dwyer,<br />
The Agrarian Dispute, 258–59.<br />
72 CC, July 18, Aug. 24, Oct. 23, 24, and 26,<br />
1939; Chamberlin, “Mexican Colonization,”<br />
55; Duncan, “The Chinese,” 620.<br />
If Walls Could Speak: San Diego’s<br />
Historic Casa de Bandini, By Victor A.<br />
Walsh, Pp 22–46<br />
The author wishes to thank Shelly Kale<br />
for reviewing the manuscript and pointing<br />
out the important conceptual link between<br />
cultural memory and historic preservation;<br />
Ellen Sweet, an independent historian, for<br />
her extensive research; <strong>California</strong> State<br />
Parks senior interpreter Mary Helmich for<br />
comments on the Seeley stage operation;<br />
<strong>California</strong> State Parks archaeologist Nicole<br />
Turner for assistance with images; and Nena<br />
Reid and Cynthia Hernandez for transcriptions<br />
and translations of Spanish-language<br />
documents.<br />
Caption sources: Victor Walsh, “The Cosmopolitan:<br />
A Resurrection of the Past,” Save<br />
Our Heritage Organisation Magazine 41, no.<br />
1 (2010); Benjamin Ignatius Hayes, Pioneer<br />
Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin<br />
Hayes, 1849–1875 (Los Angeles: M. T. Wolcott,<br />
1929); “That Delightful Dance, Seeley’s<br />
Place a Treasury of Delight Tuesday Night,”<br />
The Daily World, Sept. 26, 1872; “A. L. Seeley’s<br />
Personal Story,” typescript, n.d., Document<br />
Vertical File, San Diego Coast District<br />
Library (hereafter cited as SDCDL); James<br />
Mills, “Journalistic Remarks on the Los<br />
Angeles and Tucson Mails,” San Diego <strong>Historical</strong><br />
<strong>Society</strong> Quarterly 3, no. 3 (July 1957);<br />
“<strong>Historical</strong> Miscellany,” San Diego <strong>Historical</strong><br />
<strong>Society</strong> Quarterly 4, no. 1 (Jan. 1958); Virginia<br />
Scharff and Carolyn Brucken, “The House<br />
of the Three Women: A Family Legacy in the<br />
American Southwest,” <strong>California</strong> History 86,<br />
no. 4 (September 2009); Ellen L. Sweet, “A<br />
Landmark Saved: Couts Preservation Work,”<br />
Cosmopolitan Chronicle 3, no. 14 (June 12,<br />
2009); <strong>California</strong> Pacific International Exposition:<br />
Official guide, program and souvenir<br />
picture book (San Diego, CA: G. R. Wolcott,<br />
1935); Arthur Conan Doyle, The Boscombe<br />
Valley Mystery (Strand Magazine, 1891).<br />
1 A. P. Nasatir and Lionel U. Ridout,<br />
“Report to the Mayor and City Council and<br />
<strong>Historical</strong> Site Board on <strong>Historical</strong> Survey of<br />
Old Town Plaza” (typescript, 1967), 11.<br />
2 They include Save Our Heritage Organization<br />
(San Diego), IS Architecture (La Jolla),<br />
Heritage Architecture and Planning (San<br />
Diego), and ASM Affiliates Inc. (Carlsbad).<br />
Soltek Pacific Construction (San Diego) was<br />
the general contractor. Funding was provided<br />
by the <strong>California</strong> Cultural and Historic<br />
Endowment, <strong>California</strong> State Parks, and<br />
previous concessionaire Delaware North<br />
Companies.<br />
3 The French historian Pierre Nora has<br />
argued that memory is attached to places or<br />
“sites” that are concrete and physical—such<br />
as battlefields, cathedrals, buildings, or<br />
burial places that embody tangible notions<br />
of the past—as well as nonmaterial—such<br />
as spectacles, rituals, and public displays<br />
or commemorations that impart an aura of<br />
the past. He calls such places of collective<br />
significance “sites of memory.”’ See Steven<br />
Hoelscher and Derek H. Alderman, “Memory<br />
and Place: Geographies of a Critical<br />
Relationship,” Social and Cultural Geography<br />
5, no. 3 (Sept. 2004): 347–55; Greg Hise,<br />
“Sixty Stories in Search of a City,” <strong>California</strong><br />
History 83, no. 3 (2006): 8–26.<br />
4 Bill Manson, “Who’s Looking Out for<br />
These Ladies” San Diego Reader 39, no. 39<br />
(Sept. 30, 2010): 24–41.<br />
5 Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of <strong>California</strong>,<br />
vol. 2 (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft &<br />
Company, 1<strong>88</strong>5), 708–9; Margaret Gaffey<br />
Kilroy, historical and biographical notes<br />
regarding Juan Bandini manuscript and<br />
typescript (1985), box 1, folder 7, Bandini<br />
Family Papers, MSS Coll. 101, Special Collections,<br />
Young Research Library, University<br />
of <strong>California</strong>, Los Angeles (hereafter cited<br />
as Bandini Family Papers); José Bandini, A<br />
Description of <strong>California</strong> in 1828, trans. Doris<br />
Marion Wright (Berkeley, CA: Friends of<br />
the Bancroft Library, 1951), vi–vii; Arcadia<br />
Bandini Brennan, Arcadian Memories of <strong>California</strong>,<br />
32 (typescript, 1952), box 1, folder 5,<br />
MSS C-D 5206, Bancroft Library, University<br />
of <strong>California</strong>, Berkeley. This source is also<br />
available at the San Diego History Center,<br />
San Diego. The Bancroft collection also contains<br />
photographs and additional folders on<br />
the family, including copies of the Bandini<br />
crest and shield. The crest, entitled Laus Dio<br />
Bandini, features two snakes coiled around<br />
a cross; the shield, entitled Bandini Giustiniani—Prince<br />
of Rome, the double-headed<br />
eagle.
n o t e s<br />
6 Bancroft, History, 2:261, 440, 708; Bandini,<br />
A Description of <strong>California</strong>, vii; Brennan,<br />
Arcadian Memories, 12. Sometime<br />
after Ysidora’s death in 1801, José Bandini<br />
married Manuela Masuelos y Capaz of Arequipa,<br />
Peru, by whom he fathered six children.<br />
The fifth child, Manuel Antonio, born<br />
on June 13, 1814, became the twenty-fourth<br />
archbishop of Lima.<br />
7 Bancroft, History, 2:546–47. One vara is<br />
33.3 in.<br />
8 See Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of<br />
<strong>California</strong>, vol. 3 (San Francisco: The History<br />
Company, 1<strong>88</strong>5), 136, 189, 612, 633; Katherine<br />
L. Wagner, “Native of Arica: Requiem<br />
for a Don,” The Journal of San Diego History<br />
17, no. 2 (Spring 1971): 3–4; H. D. Barrows,<br />
“Juan Bandini,” <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong> of Southern<br />
<strong>California</strong> 4 (1899): 243–44; William E.<br />
Smythe, History of San Diego, 1542–1908, vol.<br />
1 (San Diego: The History Company, 1908),<br />
164–67; Patricia Baker, “The Bandini Family,”<br />
The Journal of San Diego History 15, no. 1<br />
(Winter 1969): 26–27; Daily Alta <strong>California</strong>,<br />
Aug. 23, 1849; San Diego Herald, Apr. 22,<br />
1854; Los Angeles Times, Sept. 24, 1944, in<br />
Brennan, Arcadian Memories, 63–64.<br />
9 Bancroft states that José Bandini built the<br />
house; Bancroft, History, 2:708. It is more<br />
likely that it was a joint effort, given the<br />
scope of construction, the fact that the older<br />
Bandini suffered from gout, and that the<br />
house lot was owned by Juan Bandini.<br />
10 Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, “Plano de la<br />
Casa Havitacion de Don Juan Bandini en<br />
San Diego,” n.d., box 1, folder 211, Alviso<br />
Family Papers, MSS C-B 66, Bancroft<br />
Library. Vallejo visited the house in 1829,<br />
but the date of his drawing, apparently from<br />
memory, is unknown. The drawing shows<br />
two doorways on opposite sides of the<br />
zaguán (entrance hall) facing the side street.<br />
Four other doorways opened out onto the<br />
inner patios. One interior doorway opened<br />
into the sala. See also “Juan Bandini,” (typescript,<br />
n.d.), Bandini I, Documents Vertical<br />
File, Department of Parks and Recreation,<br />
San Diego Coast District Library, San Diego<br />
(hereafter cited as “Juan Bandini” SDCDL).<br />
11 One of the rooms facing Calhoun Street<br />
had a tabique (thin partition wall) that did<br />
not support the weight of the structure.<br />
12 The kitchen may not have been constructed<br />
with ceiling-high adobe walls. ASM<br />
Affiliates archaeologists, hired to assist<br />
in archaeological excavations, uncovered<br />
a brick-lined, sandstone-block drainage<br />
system beneath the earthen floor from the<br />
rear or upper courtyard that cut across the<br />
room emptying onto the Calhoun St. side;<br />
Jerry Schaefer, draft report, 2010 (hereafter<br />
cited as Schaefer 2010). It most likely dates<br />
back to the late 1840s or early 1850s, since<br />
the bricks are American. Bandini may have<br />
hired a skilled Mormon mason in 1847 to<br />
build a brick-lined well on the patio. The<br />
drain may have been part of that job. Judging<br />
from the ash and charcoal deposits,<br />
open hearths were used for cooking.<br />
13 The traspatio (rear patio) occupied<br />
higher ground above the lower patio. ASM<br />
Affiliates archaeologists uncovered the<br />
cobblestone foundation of an adobe wall<br />
dividing the two patios, whose purpose was<br />
to reduce sediment runoff onto the lower<br />
patio during rainstorms.<br />
14 The absence of doorways and steps may<br />
also indicate that this socially elevated family<br />
sought privacy from the din of public<br />
activities on the plaza. ASM Affiliates<br />
archaeologists uncovered remnants of a cobblestone<br />
foundation within the footprint of<br />
the original 1829 south wing along Calhoun<br />
Street. There is a remnant lintel embedded<br />
in the adobe wall. The foundation below<br />
the lintel drops more than a foot, suggesting<br />
that a doorway may have existed here.<br />
The original street grade at this location is<br />
about 1 1 ⁄2 ft. below the adobe base, making<br />
it feasible to build a doorway here. Stephen<br />
Van Wormer (ASM Affiliates archaeologist),<br />
in discussion with the author, Apr. 25, 2008;<br />
Schaefer 2010.<br />
15 For an informed discussion of the<br />
pedestal-type design at the corner and south<br />
and west sides of the building, see Nini<br />
Minovi, David Felton, and Karen Hildebrand,<br />
Historic Structural Investigations at<br />
the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Old Town San Diego<br />
State Historic Park (Sacramento, CA: Department<br />
of Parks and Recreation, Archaeology,<br />
History and Museum Division, 2007), 58.<br />
16 Alfred Robinson, Life in <strong>California</strong> (Oakland,<br />
CA: Biobooks, 1947), 12.<br />
17 See Ione R. Stiegler et al, Historic Structures<br />
Report for the Casa de Bandini (La Jolla,<br />
CA: Department of Parks and Recreation,<br />
2004), 15, 19–20, 28; Fred A. Tinker,<br />
“Casa Bandini: Its Owner and His Days of<br />
Intrigue, Joy and Despair,” in La Campana<br />
de Escuela . . . Old School House Historians,<br />
ed. Dr. James R. Moriarty, 55 (n.p.: Old<br />
Town San Diego, 1974); Brennan, Arcadian<br />
Memoirs, 34; Merle Clayton, “The Bandinis:<br />
Grandees in an Era of Grandeur,” San Diego<br />
Magazine 21, no. 6 (Apr. 1969): 155–56;<br />
Bandini to John M. Cooper, 7 de Julio de<br />
1828, 7 de Agosto de 1829, 7 de Octubre de<br />
1829, 7 de Noviembre de 1829, 21 de Marzo<br />
de 1831, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo Papers,<br />
MSS X-X 2 Film, Bancroft Library (hereafter<br />
cited as Vallejo Papers).<br />
18 The practice of removing human wastes<br />
and nonburnable trash to the beach helps<br />
explain why archaeologists before and during<br />
the restoration discovered only a few<br />
shallow trash sites on the property dating<br />
to Bandini’s time. On-site inspections also<br />
revealed remnants of lime wash and plaster<br />
on the first-floor adobe walls, including an<br />
entire section of lime plaster underneath the<br />
stairway in the entrance hall leading to the<br />
second story when the building operated as<br />
the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Lime wash or paint<br />
was commonly used in nineteenth-century<br />
hospitals because of its hygienic properties.<br />
Scott Wolf, Associate Archaeologist, ASM<br />
Affiliates, Inc., in correspondence with the<br />
author, June 13, 2011; Brennan, Arcadian<br />
Memories, 34; Bandini Era Finishes, draft<br />
report, n.d., 1–6.<br />
19 Symthe, History of San Diego, 133; Daily<br />
Alta <strong>California</strong>, Feb. 27 and May 17, 1851;<br />
Stiegler et al, Historic Structures, 21; Tinker,<br />
“Casa Bandini,” 55–57; John S. Griffin, A<br />
Doctor Comes to <strong>California</strong> (San Francisco:<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>, 1943), 76;<br />
Brennan, Arcadian Memories, 23; Walter<br />
Gifford Smith, The Story of San Diego (San<br />
Diego: City Printing Co., 1892), 50; William<br />
Heath Davis, Seventy-five Years in <strong>California</strong>,<br />
ed. Harold A. Small (San Francisco: John<br />
Howell Books, 1967), 215; John L. White,<br />
“Founder of Fort Yuma; Excerpts from the<br />
Diary of Major Samuel P. Heintzelman,<br />
U.S.A., 1849–1852” (master’s thesis, University<br />
of San Diego, 1975), 14–15.<br />
20 Brennan, Arcadian Memories, 34–35.<br />
21 Robinson, Life in <strong>California</strong>, 33–34;<br />
Hubert Howe Bancroft, <strong>California</strong> Pastoral<br />
(San Francisco: The History Company,<br />
1<strong>88</strong>8), 412, 416.<br />
22 Bandini often mailed presents to his<br />
daughters and, in his correspondence to<br />
Stearns, frequently sent them unsolicited<br />
advice about how to behave. In one letter, he<br />
wrote: “I beg you to tell Ysidorita to change<br />
the clothes of her brothers, to mend them<br />
so they are not raggedy, to arise early and<br />
clean her room and the room of her sister,<br />
to make the coffee, to sweep early, and to<br />
dust, for this exercise is good for the health<br />
and is beneficial to the interest and to the<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
good education as well” and Bandini to<br />
Stearns, 16 de Septiembre de 1842, box 1,<br />
folder 1, Bandini Family Papers. See also<br />
Bandini to Stearns, 8 de Diciembre de 1841,<br />
SG box 5, Abel Stearns Coll., Huntington<br />
Library, San Marino, CA (hereafter cited as<br />
Stearns Coll.).<br />
23 Bandini to Stearns, 29 de Mayo de 1846,<br />
Bandini to Stearns, 23 de Junio de 1846, SG<br />
box 6, Stearns Coll.<br />
24 William Ingraham Kip, The Early Days<br />
of My Episcopate (New York: T. Whittaker,<br />
1892), 59 (quote).<br />
25 See Richard L. Kagan, Urban Images of the<br />
Hispanic World, 1493–1793 (New Haven: Yale<br />
University Press, 2000), 129–32.<br />
26 Bandini was the “leading spirit” of insurrection<br />
against Alvarado, despite the fact<br />
that he had been appointed administrator<br />
of San Gabriel Mission by the governor.<br />
On Christmas night in 1838, Alvarado sent<br />
troops to Bandini’s casa to arrest him. The<br />
house was packed with guests, including<br />
Pio and Andrés Pico, who were watching<br />
a performance of the traditional Pastorela<br />
in the sala. Bandini was not present and<br />
thus escaped arrest. The Picos, who supported<br />
the revolt, were taken prisoners. See<br />
Smythe, History of San Diego, 164–65.<br />
27 Juan Bandini, Apuntes Para la Historia de<br />
la Alta <strong>California</strong> Desde el año de su fundacion<br />
en 1769 hasta año de 1845, 6, 264–84, 283<br />
(quote), MSS C-D, Bancroft Library; Bandini<br />
to Mariano G. Vallejo, 21 de Marzo de 1836,<br />
Vallejo Papers; “Abel Stearns Correspondence<br />
and Legal Papers, 1832–1868,” box 2,<br />
folder 1, Bandini Family Papers; Bancroft,<br />
History, 3:1<strong>88</strong>–89, 200–10, 247, 367, 371–75,<br />
419–20, 478–99, 515–21, 556–66, 613;<br />
Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of <strong>California</strong>,<br />
vol. 5 (San Francisco: The History Company,<br />
1<strong>88</strong>6), esp. 282–83; Ray Brandes and James<br />
Robert Moriarty III, History and Archaeological<br />
Report, Master Plan Old Town San Diego<br />
State Historic Park (Sacramento, CA: Department<br />
of Parks and Recreation Archives,<br />
1974), 315; Baker, “The Bandini Family,”<br />
23–24; Tinker, “Casa Bandini,” 56–57.<br />
28 See Bandini to Larkin, 28 de Junio de<br />
1844, no. 127, MSS C-B 38, pt. 1, and Bandini<br />
to Larkin, 26 de Febrero de 1845, no.<br />
41, MSS C-B 39, pt. 3, Documents for the History<br />
of <strong>California</strong>, Bancroft Library.<br />
29 See box 5, folder 18 (Juan Bandini),<br />
Joseph Mesmer Papers, MSS Coll. 539,<br />
Special Collections, Young Research Library,<br />
UCLA; Carolina Lokrautz, “María Arcadia<br />
Bandini, First Century Families” (typescript,<br />
1962), 6, box 6, <strong>California</strong> Ephemera Collection,<br />
MSS Coll. 200, Special Collections,<br />
Young Research Library, UCLA; Cave J.<br />
Couts to Abel Stearns, Feb. 8, 1852, box 2,<br />
folder 3, Bandini Family Papers.<br />
30 See John Charles Frémont, Memoirs of My<br />
Life (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001),<br />
564; Extracts from Private Journal-Letters of<br />
Captain S. F. DuPont, while in command<br />
of the Cyane, during the war with Mexico,<br />
1846–1848 (Wilmington, DE: Ferris Bros.,<br />
1<strong>88</strong>5), 98; Bancroft, History, 5:326–28, 330,<br />
356, 433; Benjamin Hayes, Emigrant Notes,<br />
456, 459, MSS C-E 62, Bancroft Library;<br />
Mark J. Denger, “Historic <strong>California</strong> Posts,<br />
Forts DuPont and Stockton,” http://www.<br />
militarymuseum.org/DuPont-Stockton.<br />
html; Bandini to Vallejo, 29 de Enero de<br />
1847, Vallejo Papers; Smith, The Story of San<br />
Diego, 89; Baker, “The Bandini Family,” 24;<br />
Tinker, “Casa Bandini,” 58–59.<br />
31 In one of the few battles fought in<br />
<strong>California</strong>, Kearny’s column suffered 31<br />
casualties, including 19 killed, while the<br />
Californios under General Andrés Pico lost<br />
one soldier.<br />
32 For a general discussion of San Diego<br />
during the war, see Smythe, History of San<br />
Diego, 200–27; Richard Griswold del Castillo,<br />
“The U.S.-Mexican War in San Diego,<br />
1846–1847: Loyalty and Resistance,” The<br />
Journal of San Diego History 49, no. 1 (2003):<br />
21–41; Hayes, Emigrant Notes, 459.<br />
33 Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
23–24; Daily Alta <strong>California</strong>, Jan. 1, 1853;<br />
Hayes, Emigrant Notes, 229; “Keen Memory<br />
of Angelo Smith, Who Lived in the Day of<br />
the Bandinis, Pedrorenas, and Other Noted<br />
Spanish Families” (news clipping, San<br />
Diego Union), box 68, Old Town History<br />
Subject Vertical File, San Diego <strong>Historical</strong><br />
Center (hereafter cited as Subject Vertical<br />
File, SDHC). According to “Letter from San<br />
Diego” published in the Daily Alta <strong>California</strong>,<br />
Mar. 28, 1869, Bandini built a balcony<br />
to provide seating “for the judges who<br />
resided over those taurine tournaments” of<br />
not long ago. The balcony was accessible<br />
by either a trap door or possibly a stairway.<br />
Benjamin Hayes (Emigrant Notes, 319) notes<br />
the discovery of the trap door.<br />
34 Hayes, Emigrant Notes, 591.<br />
35 Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before<br />
the Mast (New York: Penguin Books, 1964),<br />
222–23; see also Lokrantz, “María Arcadia<br />
Bandini,” 4.<br />
36 Hayes, Emigrant Notes, 226; Bandini to<br />
Vallejo, 21 de Agosto de 1836, 21 de Marzo<br />
de 1836, Vallejo Papers; Bandini to Stearns,<br />
23 de Junio de 1846, SG box 6, Stearns Coll.<br />
37 William H. Thomes, On Land and Sea:<br />
<strong>California</strong> in Years 1843–1845 (Chicago: Laird<br />
& Lee, Publishers, 1892), 257.<br />
38 Bandini to Stearns, 7 de Junio de 1847,<br />
SG box 6, Stearns Coll., as quoted in Wagner,<br />
“Native of Arica,” 5.<br />
39 “Law Report,” Daily Alta <strong>California</strong>, Oct.<br />
16, 1854; Juan Bandini, “Los títulos de los<br />
terrenos en <strong>California</strong>,” Southern <strong>California</strong>n,<br />
11 de Abril de 1855; see also Southern<br />
<strong>California</strong>n, 23 de Mayo de 1855, reprinted<br />
in Benjamin Hayes, Scrapbooks, <strong>California</strong><br />
Notes and Incidents, vol. 4, 4<strong>88</strong>–91, The Bancroft<br />
Library.<br />
40 Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
24–25; Pitt, Decline of the Californios (Berkeley,<br />
University of <strong>California</strong> Press, 1966),<br />
111; Charles R. Johnson to Abel Stearns, May<br />
26, 1851, SG box 36, Stearns Coll.; Wagner,<br />
“Native of Arica,” 5–7.<br />
41 See business advertisements in the San<br />
Diego Herald, Aug. 26, Sept. 16, 1854, Feb.<br />
3, 1855; Brandes and Moriarty, History and<br />
Archaeological Report, 320; Henry Miller’s<br />
1856 sketch of San Diego in <strong>California</strong><br />
Mission Sketches by Henry Miller, Bancroft<br />
Library.<br />
42 See sales advertisements in Spanish and<br />
English in the San Diego Herald, Dec. 15,<br />
1855. Other property listed in the transfer<br />
included 2,000 head of cattle, 300 horses,<br />
and 300 sheep of “all classes, ages, and<br />
descriptions” in <strong>California</strong> and Lower<br />
<strong>California</strong>, as well as Rancho Jurupa, the<br />
Gila House site (destroyed in an 1858<br />
windstorm), and Bandini’s mark and cattle<br />
brand. See Wagner, “Native of Arica,” 10;<br />
Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report, 26.<br />
43 Stearns to Cave J. Couts, Nov. 16, 1864,<br />
SG box 37, CT 2223, Stearns Coll.; Benjamin<br />
Hayes, Notes on <strong>California</strong> Affairs,<br />
490–93, box 1, folder 9, MSS C-E 81, Bancroft<br />
Library. The earthquake also cracked<br />
Thomas Whaley’s sturdy brick home in<br />
several places. Other damaged buildings<br />
included the Pico and Wrightington adobes<br />
and the Colorado House, a three-story woodframe<br />
hotel.<br />
44 See “Seeley Stable” (brochure), 1, box 68,<br />
Subject Vertical File, SDHC; Richard B.<br />
Yale, “Albert Lewis Seeley, Stage Line Operator,<br />
U.S. Mail Contractor, Innkeeper” (Sac-
n o t e s<br />
ramento: Department of Beaches and Parks,<br />
Jan. 1973), 3, 21–23, 34–35, Dick Yale Papers,<br />
SDCDL; Barbara Palmer, “Albert Seeley,”<br />
Old Town Character Studies: Sketches and<br />
Sources (San Diego: San Diego Coast District,<br />
Department of Parks and Recreation,<br />
2001), n.p, SDCDL. On Seeley’s residence,<br />
see City of San Diego, Population Manuscript<br />
Census Schedule, 1870, and County of San<br />
Diego, Tax Assessment List (1873–1874), box<br />
6, item 28, Public Records Coll., SDHC<br />
(hereafter cited as Tax Assessment List,<br />
SDHC).<br />
45 Franklin House advertisement, San Diego<br />
Union, Oct. 10, 1868; letter to the editor in<br />
defense of Seeley, San Diego Union, Apr. 14,<br />
1869; “How The Mails Are Not Carried to<br />
San Diego,” San Diego Union, Mar. 24, 1869,<br />
and “The Mails Again,” San Diego Union,<br />
Apr. 7, 1869; “Letter from San Diego (From<br />
Our Own Correspondent),” San Francisco<br />
Daily Evening Bulletin, June 6 and 15, 1868.<br />
46 For Seeley’s use of inheritance money<br />
to build the hotel, see Daniel Cleveland,<br />
“Pioneer Tells of Romance of San Diego,”<br />
San Diego Union, Dec. 13, 1925. American<br />
businessmen often converted single-story<br />
Mexican adobes into commercial operations<br />
by adding wooden second stories.<br />
The Exchange Hotel, Franklin House, and<br />
American Hotel in Old Town followed this<br />
construction pattern.<br />
47 See William H. Godfrey, Apr. 1872, photographs<br />
15519, 20203-2, 20203-3, 20203-4,<br />
and Parker, 1874, photograph OP 16391-38,<br />
Photograph Coll., SDHC; Stiegler et al,<br />
Historic Structures Report, 30–33; San Diego<br />
Union, June 22, 1873.<br />
48 San Diego Union, Sept. 8, 1869.<br />
49 See, for example, San Diego Union, Jan. 6,<br />
Mar. 3, Oct. 20, and Nov. 17, 1870.<br />
50 San Diego Union, July 20, 1873 (quote).<br />
51 These measurements are based on the<br />
witness marks of the original rooms and<br />
discovery of toe-nosed studs with iron-cut,<br />
square-head nails.<br />
52 In 1930, Cave J. Couts Jr. completely<br />
rehabilitated the hotel guest rooms on the<br />
second floor, including refinishing them<br />
with lath and lime plaster and installing<br />
bathrooms in the smaller box-size rooms<br />
overlooking the rear courtyard. On-site<br />
inspections have uncovered remnants of<br />
first-floor ceiling lath and 2” x 3” studs toe<br />
nailed to floor plates with iron-cut, squarehead<br />
nails in several second-story rooms,<br />
indicating that Seeley, most likely, had<br />
used lath and lime plaster to cover interior<br />
walls. On room furnishings, see Inventory<br />
of Effects of Franklin House, Old Town,<br />
Tyler Curtis & Co. vs. James W. Cullen and<br />
Manuel Torres, 17th District Court, Case 435,<br />
October 1870, box 13, file 1, Public Records<br />
Coll., SDHC (hereafter cited as Inventory of<br />
Effects, SDHC).<br />
53 See Cosmopolitan Hotel Register, Apr. 21,<br />
1870–July 1, 1<strong>88</strong>7, <strong>California</strong> State Library,<br />
Sacramento (CSL); Ellen L. Sweet, Cosmopolitan<br />
Register Names (typescript, Mar. 27,<br />
2008), SDCDL. The latter source provides a<br />
list of all registered guests whose names are<br />
legible from 1870 to 1874, the dates of their<br />
stay, and a brief biographical vignette of<br />
each individual. After that year, the names<br />
were seldom recorded in the register.<br />
54 Bruce Coons (historical consultant) in<br />
discussion with the author, Aug. 29 and<br />
Sept. 9, 2008; Susan L. Buck, Cross-Section<br />
Paint Microscopy Report, Cosmopolitan Hotel,<br />
San Diego, <strong>California</strong> , unpublished draft (La<br />
Jolla, CA: IS Architecture, 2008), 128–31.<br />
An advertisement in the Cosmopolitan Hotel<br />
Register refers to a billiard room.<br />
55 This popular punch was a blend of lemon<br />
juice and pulp, sugar, boiling water, brandy,<br />
rum, and sometimes porter. See Jerry<br />
Thomas, The Bar-Tenders Guide or How to<br />
Mix Drinks (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald,<br />
1<strong>88</strong>7).<br />
56 San Diego Union, June 9, 1870 (quote),<br />
July 20, 1873, Aug. 24, 1876; Inventory of<br />
Effects, SDHC.<br />
57 Buck, Cross-Section Paint Microscopy<br />
Report, 104–6; San Diego Union, June 9,<br />
1870 (quote), July 27, 1873, “The Ball at Old<br />
Town,” Jan. 8 and 25, 1874, July 1, 1874,<br />
June 1, 1875; “Christmas Social Party, Cosmopolitan<br />
Hotel, Thursday Evening, Dec.<br />
24, 1874,” Invitations, Documents Vertical<br />
File, SDHC.<br />
58 “Letter from San Diego,” San Francisco<br />
Daily Evening Bulletin, Dec. 21, 1869. In his<br />
opinion, Porter considered the bullfight a<br />
spectacle of torment more akin to bull baiting<br />
than bull fighting: “When a poor terrorstricken<br />
bull could not be made to face any<br />
kind of an enemy, not even by fire crackers,<br />
the muchachos [boys] would fasten a tin can<br />
to his tail and then his gyrations caused<br />
immense applause. One would frequently<br />
break through the barrier and escape outside<br />
in a vain endeavor to fly from his tormenters;<br />
but he was speedily captured by<br />
the hijos [sons] on horseback, and dragged to<br />
the scene of his suffering again.”<br />
59 Richard Pourade, The Glory Years (San<br />
Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing Company,<br />
1964), 46–47; Mary A. Helmich and<br />
Richard D. Clark, Interpretive Program, Old<br />
Town San Diego State Historic Park, vol. 2<br />
(Sacramento: Department of Parks and Recreation,<br />
1991), n.p.; Kevin Moore, Historic<br />
Information Design Report, Historic Windmill<br />
Reconstruction Project, Old Town San Diego<br />
State Historic Park (Cloverdale, CA: Rock<br />
Ridge Windmills, LLC, 2008), esp. 3–4; San<br />
Diego Union, June 23, 1870, Jan. 18, 1874;<br />
Tax Assessment List (1873–74), 28, SDHC;<br />
see also Schiller, 1869, photograph 3861-A<br />
and Godfrey, 1872, photograph 80:3286,<br />
Photograph Coll., SDHC.<br />
60 San Diego Union, Mar. 24, 1869, June 23<br />
and July 4, 1874; “Information Sheet Seeley<br />
Stable,” 3–4, Seeley Documents Vertical<br />
File, SDCDL; Yale, “Albert Lewis Seeley,” 11;<br />
James D. Sleeper, “The Best Parts of <strong>California</strong><br />
as Seen from a Seeley & Wright Stage,”<br />
Butterfield Express 5, no. 3 (Jan. 1967): 1; San<br />
Diego Daily World, Dec. 1, 1871.<br />
61 Hubert Howe Bancroft, Personal Observations,<br />
MSS C-E 113, 19, Bancroft Library;<br />
“Who Was Albert Seeley” (brochure, n.d.),<br />
Seeley Documents Vertical File, SDCDL;<br />
San Diego Union, Jan. 6, 1876; William<br />
Henry Bishop, “Southern <strong>California</strong>,”<br />
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 66, no. 391<br />
(Dec. 1<strong>88</strong>2): 62. Bancroft came to Old Town<br />
to arrange to buy Hayes’s vast collection of<br />
scrapbooks, manuscripts, and papers on<br />
Southern <strong>California</strong>—“the most valuable in<br />
the state,” according to this distinguished<br />
historian, with the exception of his own.<br />
62 Railroad development out of Los Angeles<br />
had affected Seeley’s business by the<br />
late 1870s. The run from San Diego to Los<br />
Angeles, for instance, was shortened to San<br />
Diego to Anaheim, where the railroad could<br />
pick up the mail. It reduced the run from<br />
23 to 17 hours. Winifred Davidson, “Tales of<br />
the Old Southwest,” San Diego Union, Sept.<br />
24, 1939; “Who Was Albert Seeley”, San<br />
Diego Union, May 3, 1<strong>88</strong>7; Abstract of Titles:<br />
Old Town, Block 451, Public Records Coll.,<br />
SDHC.<br />
63 Susan Davis Tiffany, “Memory Like the Ivy<br />
Clings”: Reminiscences of One Who Lived in<br />
the Bandini House 1898–1911 (unpublished<br />
manuscript, 1973), 42–43, 45, 51, SDHC;<br />
Los Angeles Times, Dec. 17, 1899; “<strong>California</strong><br />
Olive Oil,” San Diego Union, Apr. 22, 1902;<br />
“Medals Received from Two Expositions,”<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
San Diego Union, Sept. 6, 1902, “Akerman<br />
& Tuffley, San Diego Manufacturers Win<br />
Gold Medal for Olive Oil,” San Diego Union,<br />
Oct. 7, 1900; “San Diego Olive Oil Gets<br />
First Prize at London,” San Diego Union,<br />
Nov. 22, 1902; Stiegler et al, Historic Structures<br />
Report, 34–35.<br />
64 Tiffany, “Memory Like the Ivy Clings,”<br />
11–12.<br />
65 Ibid., 1–5.<br />
66 Ibid., 49–50.<br />
67 Nancy Carol Carter, “San Diego Olives:<br />
Origins of a <strong>California</strong> Industry,” The Journal<br />
of San Diego History 54, no. 3 (Summer<br />
2008): 150–51; “Akerman & Tuffley to Have<br />
Big Modern Pickling and Oil Factory,” San<br />
Diego Union, Apr. 9, 1911.<br />
68 “<strong>California</strong> Olive Oil” (quote).<br />
69 Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
37–40; Casa de Bandini, 1928, photograph<br />
S-442 and Passmore, Jan. 4, 1930, photograph<br />
1136B, Photograph Coll., SDHC.<br />
70 See Ellen L. Sweet, “A Landmark Saved:<br />
Bandini-Couts Family, 1924–1930,” Cosmopolitan<br />
Chronicle 3, no. 13 (June 5,<br />
2009); deed of title to Cave Couts Jr., July<br />
21, 1928, box 79, folder 10, Cave Johnson<br />
Couts Papers, The Huntington Library,<br />
San Marino, CA (hereafter cited as Couts<br />
Papers).<br />
71 Invoice from Ingle Manufacturing<br />
Company, June 25, 1930, box 79, folder<br />
10, Couts Papers; Stiegler et al, Historic<br />
Structures Report, 41; William F. Mennell,<br />
“Bathrooms,” Part II, Cosmopolitan Chronicle<br />
2, no. 17 (Jan. 2, 2009); “Home of Don<br />
Juan Bandini,” Old Town San Diego, San<br />
Diego County, <strong>California</strong>, Historic American<br />
Buildings Survey, HABS Survey CAL.46<br />
and Index Cal.37-Olto 2–1 (1937), Library of<br />
Congress. See also Guy J. Giffen, 1935, photographs<br />
17076 and 17155, Braun Research<br />
Library, Autry National Center, Los Angeles,<br />
CA.<br />
72 Phoebe S. Kropp, <strong>California</strong> Vieja: Culture<br />
and Memory in a Modern American Place<br />
(Berkeley: University of <strong>California</strong> Press,<br />
2006), 44; Stiegler et al, Historic Structures<br />
Report, 42–43; Victor A. Walsh, “Una Casa<br />
del Pueblo—A Town House of Old San<br />
Diego,” The Journal of San Diego History 50,<br />
no. 1 & 2 (Winter/Spring 2004): 1–16; Hazel<br />
W. Waterman, “Restoration of Typical Spanish<br />
<strong>California</strong> Dwelling Known as ‘Marriage Place<br />
of Ramona,’” 6 (quote), Hazel Waterman<br />
Papers, MSS-226, box 1, folder 12, SDHC; Event,” “Historic Casa To Be Scene of Lecture;<br />
Show,” “College to Offer Early Califor-<br />
“Bandini Home, Old Town,” n.d., box 79,<br />
folder 13, Couts Papers; Los Angeles Times, nia Play Course,” “Bandini Home in Old<br />
June 12, 1932; Cave J. Couts to Mrs. S. I. San Diego Scene of Stirring Drama of City’s<br />
Harritt, July 24, 1924 (quote), box 45, Couts Early History, Back in Year 1846,” “Long<br />
Papers; Robert G. Wright, Interview with Ago in San Diego, Don Juan Was Prince of<br />
Elaine Sweet (June 17, 1973), 7, SDHC. Hosts” (news clippings, 1930s), San Diego<br />
73 Union and San Diego Tribune, Old Town,<br />
Gregg P. Hennessey, “Creating a Monument,<br />
Re-Creating History: Junipero Serra<br />
Casa de Bandini, box 67, Subject Vertical<br />
File, SDHC.<br />
Museum and Presidio Park,” The Journal of<br />
78<br />
San Diego History 45, no. 3 (Summer 1999): Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
136–65; George W. Marston, “History of San 45.<br />
Diego City Parks, 1936,” 11–13, George W. 79 For a discussion of the Cosmopolitan<br />
Marston Papers, MSS-35, box 2, folder 37,<br />
Hotel restoration, see Minovi et al, Historic<br />
item 3b, SDHC; Victor A. Walsh, “A History<br />
Structural Investigations at the Cosmopolitan<br />
of the Old Town Plaza,” (unpublished typescript,<br />
2006), 4, SDCDL.<br />
Hotel, esp. 10–16, 57; Victor A. Walsh, “The<br />
Art of Historic Detection,” Parts I and II,<br />
74 Winifred Davidson (San Diego <strong>Historical</strong><br />
<strong>Society</strong>) to Couts, Nov. 14, 1934, box 46, 2008), no. 6 (Apr. 18, 2008) and “The Chal-<br />
Cosmopolitan Chronicle 1, no. 5 (Apr. 11,<br />
folder 2, Faulconer to Couts, July 18, 1935, lenge of Historic Preservation,” no. 8 (May<br />
box 79, folder 11, Mrs. Fisher to Couts, Apr. 2, 2008).<br />
8, 1940, box 79, folder 13, Couts Papers. 80 Couts died in July 1943.<br />
75 The exposition’s popularity further convinced<br />
long-time civic leader George Mar-<br />
81 Requa passed away in June 1941 and thus<br />
played no role in the design.<br />
ston, along with Richard Requa, the fair’s<br />
82<br />
chief architect, that the historic community Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
could be turned around by focusing on its 48, 50, “Historic Residence at Old Town<br />
Spanish heritage. In 1937, the San Diego to Be Remodeled Soon,” San Diego Tribune<br />
Chamber of Commerce hired the architect Sun, June 20, 1945; “Casa de Bandini,” Old<br />
to design the area around the plaza into San Diego (San Diego: San Diego County<br />
a popular Mexican Mart, modeled after <strong>Historical</strong> Days, 1950), 10, Old Town Documents<br />
Vertical File, SDCDL; Casa de Ban-<br />
Los Angeles’s then popular Olvera Street.<br />
The first step in Marston’s revitalization dini Motel, circa 1955, photographs 1742<br />
effort was the Casa de Pico Motor Hotel, an and 12423-1355, Old Town Buildings, box<br />
upscale Spanish Colonial auto court that 128, Photograph Coll., SDHC; Casa de Bandini,<br />
ca. 1960, photograph OTSD-46 and<br />
opened in 1940 on Calhoun Street. Unlike<br />
Olvera Street, Old Town, Requa argued, ca. 1968, photograph OTSD-70, Photograph<br />
should be set aside as an historic district Coll, SDCDL.<br />
without modern buildings interspersed<br />
83 Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
among historic ones. His plan did not materialize<br />
due, in part, to his unexpected death<br />
49; “Casa de Bandini,” Old Town San Diego,<br />
10; Mary Lloyd, Saludos Amigos: The Birthplace<br />
of <strong>California</strong> (Potrero, CA: Mary Lloyd,<br />
in 1941. See “Mexican Village Plan Outlined<br />
to Chamber Chiefs,” San Diego Union, Nov.<br />
1950), 24.<br />
13, 1936; “Requa Outlines Plan to Create<br />
84<br />
Old Mexico Town,” San Diego Union, Feb. Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
19, 1937; “Mexican Mart Plan at Old Town Is 55; Architectural Survey and Report, Bandini<br />
Explained,” San Diego Union, Feb. 26, 1937; House (June 15, 1971), 4, Department of<br />
Mary Taschner, Richard Requa: Southern <strong>California</strong><br />
Architect, 1<strong>88</strong>1–1941 (master’s thesis, Northern Service Center (NCS), Sacramento,<br />
Parks and Recreation, Unit File Archives,<br />
University of San Diego, 1982), 164–69. CA.<br />
76 “Lease between Cave J. Couts, Lesser<br />
85 “Diane and Bob Powers,” Los Angeles<br />
and Margaret Adams Faulconer, Lessee,” Times, June 22, 1980; Betty Quale, Interview<br />
with Diane Powers (July 29, 1993), esp.<br />
box 79, folder 11, Couts Papers; “The Casa<br />
de Bandini, Social Center of Old <strong>California</strong>, 11–13, SDHC. According to Powers, “the real<br />
Restored to Former Brilliance,” San Diego inspiration” for the creation of the bazaar<br />
Union, Apr. 28, 1935 (quote) .<br />
was her visit to the Bazaar Sabado outside of<br />
77 Mexico City.<br />
“Where Flag Was Made Setting of D.A.R.
n o t e s<br />
86 Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
55–56; Bandini House Development Plan,<br />
Apr. 26, 1979, sheet 1, Department of Parks<br />
and Recreation, San Diego Coast District.<br />
87 Wall alterations consisted of blocking up<br />
interconnecting doorways between Couts’s<br />
bathrooms and guest rooms; Bandini House<br />
Development Plan, sheet 2.<br />
<strong>88</strong> In the 1<strong>88</strong>0s, round or wire iron nails<br />
were beginning to be used instead of<br />
square-head, iron-cut nails in the construction<br />
trade in the United States. By 1898,<br />
when Akerman converted the old hotel into<br />
a boardinghouse, round iron nails were<br />
widely used, but given Old Town’s dismal<br />
economic situation and the condition of the<br />
building, Akerman’s work crews may have<br />
also reused iron-cut nails from Seeley’s<br />
time.<br />
89 Kenneth W. McClellan (Development<br />
Division, Department of Parks and Recreation)<br />
to Alice A. Huffman (Deputy Director,<br />
DPR), May 29, 1980; James P. Tryner<br />
(Resource Preservation and Interpretation<br />
Division, DPR) to Richard May (Development<br />
Division, DPR) May 23, 1979; Tryner<br />
and Dr. Knox Mellon (State Historic Preservation<br />
Officer) to John H. Knight (Associate<br />
Director of Operations, DPR) June 1, 1979;<br />
Mellon to Knight, June 5, 1979; May to<br />
Tryner, June 18, 1979, NSC.<br />
90 George Frank, “Business Blamed for<br />
‘Historic Lie’ in Old Town Park,” Los Angeles<br />
Times, Sept. 13, 1980 (quote); Robert Montemayor,<br />
“New History for Old Town Park,<br />
Rebuilding of Historic Homes Favored,” Los<br />
Angeles Times, Apr. 11, 1981; Richard C. Paddock,<br />
“The Saga of Diane Powers and Her<br />
Old Town Bonanza,” Los Angeles Times, June<br />
21, 1981; Richard W. Amero, “Old Town<br />
Buff Yearns for Fidelity,” San Diego Evening<br />
Tribune, Mar. 19, 1981 (quote). See also Harriet<br />
Kimbro, “Bazaar del Mundo—Old Town<br />
Cinderella or Her Pumpkin,” unpublished<br />
paper delivered at the 17th Annual Institute<br />
of History, San Diego (1985), SDHC.<br />
91 San Diego Union, May 25, 1980, as quoted<br />
in Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
55.<br />
92 Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report,<br />
45; Carey McWilliams, Southern <strong>California</strong><br />
Country: An Island on the Land (New York:<br />
Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946), 70–83; Victor<br />
A. Walsh, “Stop the Old Town Myths,”<br />
Voice of San Diego, Dec. 27, 2005; Matthew<br />
F. Bokovoy, The San Diego World Fairs and<br />
Southwestern Memory, 1<strong>88</strong>0–1940 (Albuquerque:<br />
University of New Mexico Press, 2005),<br />
xvi–xx.<br />
93 See Uldis Ports, “Geraniums vs. Smokestacks,<br />
San Diego’s Mayoralty Campaign of<br />
1917,” The Journal of San Diego History 21,<br />
no. 3 (Summer 1975): 51–56; Kropp, <strong>California</strong><br />
Vieja, esp. 103–32; Roger M. Showley,<br />
Perfecting Paradise (Carlsbad, CA: Heritage<br />
Media Corp., 1999), 80–87; Bokovoy, The<br />
San Diego World Fairs and Southwestern<br />
Memory, esp. xvi–xvii, 50–55, 80–86, 114,<br />
141–64; Richard W. Amero, “The Making of<br />
the Panama-<strong>California</strong> Exposition, 1909–<br />
1915,” The Journal of San Diego History 36,<br />
no. 1 (Winter 1990): 1–47; David Marshall<br />
and Iris Engstrand, “San Diego’s 1935–1936<br />
Exposition, A Pictorial Essay,” The Journal<br />
of San Diego History 55, no. 4 (Fall 2009):<br />
177–90; Richard S. Requa, Inside Lights on<br />
the Buildings of San Diego’s Exposition, 1935<br />
(San Diego: n.p., 1937), 5 (quote).<br />
94 Kropp, <strong>California</strong> Vieja, 261–69; Kevin<br />
Starr, Americans and the <strong>California</strong> Dream,<br />
1850–1915 (Santa Barbara/Salt Lake City:<br />
Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1981), 390, 396–97.<br />
95 “The Casa de Bandini,” San Diego Union,<br />
Apr. 28, 1935.<br />
96 Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 222.<br />
97 Vonn Marie May, “Old Town: Whose History<br />
Is It Anyway” Voice of San Diego, Nov.<br />
28, 2005.<br />
98 It was listed on Dec. 6, 1932. The text<br />
reads: “This adobe house was constructed<br />
about 1827 by José and Juan Bandini. As<br />
headquarters of Commodore Robert F.<br />
Stockton in 1846, it was the place where Kit<br />
Carson and Edward Beale delivered their<br />
urgent message of December 9, 1846, calling<br />
for reinforcements to be rushed to the<br />
aid of General Kearny.” See <strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong><br />
Resources, Office of Historic Preservation,<br />
State of <strong>California</strong>; http://www.<br />
ohp.parks.ca.gov/listed_resources/default.<br />
aspnum=72.<br />
99 See Victor A. Walsh, “The Cosmopolitan<br />
Hotel: A Resurrection of the Past,” Save Our<br />
Heritage Organisation Magazine 41, no. 1<br />
(2010): 2–11. See also Minovi et al, Historic<br />
Structure Investigations at the Cosmopolitan<br />
Hotel, esp. 10–16, 102–5. As of May 1, 2011,<br />
this restoration project has won <strong>California</strong><br />
State Parks and Recreation’s William Penn<br />
Mott Award (2010), Old Town Chamber<br />
of Commerce’s Certificate of Excellence<br />
(2010), Save Our Heritage Organisation’s<br />
People in Preservation Award (2010), and<br />
the City of San Diego’s Excellence in Historic<br />
Preservation Award (2011).<br />
100 Except for the jehus (stage drivers), virtually<br />
nothing was found in the historic record<br />
about servants and other workers at the<br />
Casa de Bandini and Cosmopolitan Hotel,<br />
not even references to their names.<br />
“Saludos from your comadre”:<br />
Compadrazgo as a Community<br />
Institution in Alta <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1769–1860s, By Erika Pérez, PP 47–62<br />
The author thanks Shelly Kale and Janet<br />
Fireman for their editorial assistance and<br />
comments, and the anonymous reviewers<br />
for their helpful suggestions.<br />
Caption sources: John G. Douglass and<br />
Patrick B. Stanton, “Living during a Difficult<br />
Time: A Comparison of Ethnohistoric,<br />
Bioarchaeological, and Archaeological<br />
Data during the Mission Period, Southern<br />
<strong>California</strong>,” <strong>Society</strong> for <strong>California</strong> Archaeology<br />
(SCA) Proceedings 24 (2010); Harry<br />
W. Crosby, Antigua <strong>California</strong>: Mission and<br />
Colony on the Peninsula Frontier, 1697–1768<br />
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico<br />
Press, 1994); John R. Johnson, “The Trail to<br />
Fernando,” Journal of <strong>California</strong> and Great<br />
Basin Anthropology 4, no. 1 (1982); Fernando<br />
Librado, The Eye of the Flute: Chumash Traditional<br />
History and Ritual as Told by Fernando<br />
Librado Kitsepawit to John P. Harrington, eds.<br />
Travis Hudson, Thomas Blackburn, Rosario<br />
Curletti, and Janice Timbrook (Banning,<br />
CA: Malki Museum Press, 1981).<br />
1 Sir George Simpson, Narrative of a Voyage<br />
to <strong>California</strong> Ports in 1841–1842 (San Francisco:<br />
Thomas C. Russell, 1930), 123.<br />
2 Victoria Reid to Abel Stearns, May 1851, in<br />
Susanna Bryant Dakin, A Scotch Paisano in<br />
Old Los Angeles: Hugo Reid’s Life in <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1832–1852 Derived from His Correspondence<br />
(Berkeley: University of <strong>California</strong><br />
Press, 1978), 194. In her letter, Victoria<br />
refers to Stearns as “mi querido compadre.”<br />
Natural and spiritual co-parents use the<br />
term compadres when referring to each other<br />
in the plural form; when used singularly,<br />
compadre (co-father) is the masculine form<br />
and comadre (co-mother) is the feminine.<br />
In this essay, I use the terms godparent and<br />
sponsor interchangeably.<br />
3 <strong>California</strong>-born woman of Spanish-<br />
Mexican descent.<br />
0<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
4 <strong>California</strong>’s Spanish era ranged from 1769<br />
to 1821, the Mexican years from 1821 to<br />
1848, and the American period from 1848<br />
onward.<br />
5 My definition of intimacy is influenced by<br />
Ann Laura Stoler’s study of Indonesia and<br />
how state institutions furthered the goals of<br />
empire by regulating intimate matters such<br />
as sexuality, definitions of legitimacy, and<br />
labor. See Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge<br />
and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate<br />
in Colonial Rule (Berkeley/Los Angeles:<br />
University of <strong>California</strong> Press, 2002). See<br />
also Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties:<br />
Women in Fur-Trade <strong>Society</strong>, 1670–1870<br />
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,<br />
1980); Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer<br />
S. H. Brown, eds., The New Peoples: Being<br />
and Becoming Métis in North America (Winnipeg:<br />
The University of Manitoba Press,<br />
1985); Asunción Lavrin, ed., Sexuality &<br />
Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln:<br />
University of Nebraska Press, 1989); Martha<br />
Hodes, ed., Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries<br />
in North American History (New York:<br />
New York University Press, 1999); Albert<br />
L. Hurtado, Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender,<br />
and Culture in Old <strong>California</strong> (Albuquerque:<br />
University of New Mexico Press, 1999);<br />
Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and<br />
French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter<br />
in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University<br />
of Massachusetts Press, 2001); and<br />
María Raquél Casas, Married to a Daughter<br />
of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and<br />
Interethnic Marriage in <strong>California</strong>, 1820–1<strong>88</strong>0<br />
(Reno/Las Vegas: University of Nevada<br />
Press, 2007).<br />
6 For ongoing exploration of this subject, see<br />
Erika Pérez, Colonial Intimacies: Interethnic<br />
Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern<br />
<strong>California</strong>, 1769–1<strong>88</strong>5 (PhD diss., University<br />
of <strong>California</strong> Los Angeles, 2010) and “The<br />
Paradox of Kinship: Native-Catholic Communities<br />
in Alta <strong>California</strong>, 1769–1840s,” in<br />
On the Borders of Love and Power, ed. Crista<br />
DeLuzio and David W. Adams (forthcoming,<br />
the University of <strong>California</strong> Press). For<br />
a study on northern <strong>California</strong> missions<br />
that reaches a similar conclusion about<br />
compadrazgo’s regenerative potential for<br />
native kinship ties, see Quincy D. Newell,<br />
Constructing Lives at Mission San Francisco:<br />
Native <strong>California</strong>ns and Hispanic Colonists,<br />
1776–1821 (Albuquerque: University of New<br />
Mexico Press, 2009), chap. 5.<br />
7 I use the term Spanish-Mexican to<br />
describe the colonial settlers of Alta <strong>California</strong>.<br />
Although most were born in Mexico,<br />
these people emphasized their Spanish<br />
ancestry while minimizing their indigenous<br />
and African roots. A few inhabitants of<br />
Alta <strong>California</strong> from the administrative and<br />
officer class, such as Don José de la Guerra<br />
y Noriega, were of Spanish birth but represented<br />
a minority.<br />
8 José Antonio Esquibel, “Sacramental<br />
Records and the Preservation of New Mexico<br />
Family Genealogies from the Colonial Era to<br />
the Present,” in Seeds of Struggle/Harvest of<br />
Faith: The Papers of the Archdiocese of Santa<br />
Fe Catholic Cuatro Centennial Conference on<br />
the History of the Catholic Church in New<br />
Mexico, ed. Thomas J. Steele, S. J., Paul<br />
Rhetts, and Barbe Awalt, 29 (Albuquerque:<br />
LPD Press, 1998).<br />
9 Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The<br />
Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United<br />
States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533–<br />
1960 (Tucson: The University of Arizona<br />
Press, 1962), 292–93, 304; Virginia M.<br />
Bouvier, Women and the Conquest of <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1542–1840: Codes of Silence (Tucson: The<br />
University of Arizona Press, 2001), 33–34.<br />
10 Averaging the rates of Indian male baptisms<br />
with gente de razón godparents. The<br />
rates are as follows: (1782) 100%; (1783)<br />
<strong>88</strong>.9%, (1784) 85.7%, (1785) 96.6%, (1786)<br />
85.7%, (1787) 96.2% (N=553.1/6 for an<br />
average of 92.2%). No Indian females were<br />
baptized at Mission San Buenaventura<br />
in 1782. The subsequent annual rates of<br />
Indian females sponsored by gente de razón<br />
godparents are as follows: (1783) 77.8%,<br />
(1784) 94.4%, (1785) 96.6%, (1786) 69.6%,<br />
(1787) <strong>88</strong>.5% (N=426.9/5 for an average of<br />
85.4%). Baptismal information derived from<br />
Mission San Buenaventura Baptisms, US/Can<br />
Reel #913170, Latter-Day Saints Los Angeles<br />
Family History Library, Los Angeles, CA<br />
(hereafter cited as LAFHL). See also Sidney<br />
W. Mintz and Eric R. Wolf, “An Analysis<br />
of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),”<br />
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6, no. 4<br />
(Winter 1950): 353. Mintz and Wolf note that<br />
“Spaniards who were members of exploring<br />
parties frequently served as sponsors for<br />
Indian converts.”<br />
11 Statistics for the years 1771–75 derived<br />
from Mission San Gabriel Arcangel Baptisms<br />
1771–1819, US/Can Film #2643, LAFHL.<br />
Statistics for the sample years of 1800–1<br />
and 1810–11 were derived from Baptism and<br />
Godparent Databases for Mission San Gabriel,<br />
The Huntington Library, Early <strong>California</strong><br />
Population Project Database, 2006 (hereafter<br />
cited as ECPP).<br />
12 Ritual sponsorship became commonplace<br />
among the Tlaxcalans of colonial Mexico<br />
within a few decades of their general acceptance<br />
of Catholic baptism and marriage.<br />
See Hugo G. Nutini and Betty Bell, Ritual<br />
Kinship: The Structure and <strong>Historical</strong> Development<br />
of the Compadrazgo System in Rural<br />
Tlaxcala, vol. I (Princeton, NJ: Princeton<br />
University Press, 1980), 343, 346.<br />
13 For examples of ongoing gente de razón<br />
sponsorship of native <strong>California</strong>ns in the<br />
1840s, see Mission San Juan Capistrano<br />
Baptism Database, nos. 04568-04572<br />
(5/15–8/21/1842), 04580 (9/12/1842), 04585<br />
(11/15/1842), 04591-04592 (5/10/1843),<br />
ECPP.<br />
14 For sponsorship of a gente de razón child<br />
by Indian Maria Bernarda and her gente de<br />
razón husband, soldier Antonio Cota, see<br />
Mission San Gabriel Baptism Database, no.<br />
01300 (Feb. 10, 1786), ECPP; for Indian<br />
bride Maria Guadalupe and her gente de<br />
razón soldier husband Salbador Cariaga<br />
[Salvador Careaga]’s sponsorship of two<br />
gente de razón and one mestizo (mixed)<br />
child, see Mission San Juan Capistrano Baptism<br />
Database, nos. 00907 (Dec. 2, 17<strong>88</strong>),<br />
01069 (Apr. 11, 1791) and Mission San<br />
Diego Baptism Database, no. 01296 (Oct.<br />
20, 1787), ECPP. I have not come across any<br />
lone Indian or native couple sponsoring a<br />
gente de razón child.<br />
15 Padrino means godfather and madrina<br />
means godmother in Spanish; the plural<br />
form padrinos usually refers to a pair of godparents,<br />
one of each gender.<br />
16 Antonio Coronel, Tales of Mexican <strong>California</strong>,<br />
ed. Doyce B. Nunis Jr. and trans. Diane<br />
de Avalle-Arce (Santa Barbara, CA: Bellerophon<br />
Books, 1994), 79.<br />
17 Anthropologists note that asymmetry<br />
in compadrazgo was common in Europe<br />
as well as in colonial Latin America. For a<br />
material interpretation of compadrazgo, see<br />
Mintz and Wolf, “An Analysis of Ritual Co-<br />
Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” 341–68. For<br />
a spiritual and theological interpretation of<br />
Catholic sponsorship, see Stephen Gudeman,<br />
“Spiritual Relationships and Selecting<br />
a Godparent,” Man 10, no. 2 (June 1975):<br />
221–37. Gudeman (p. 234) argues “the nonreciprocal<br />
form forces parents to have more<br />
co-parents than the reciprocal form, and this<br />
creates greater social cohesion.”<br />
18 For a discussion of vertical and horizontal<br />
flows in compadrazgo relationships, see<br />
Mintz and Wolf, “An Analysis of Ritual<br />
1
n o t e s<br />
Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” 342, 347–<br />
48, 363–64. For a comparison of compadrazgo<br />
in the Iberian and Spanish colonial<br />
context, see George M. Foster, “Cofradía and<br />
Compadrazgo in Spain and Spanish America,”<br />
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9,<br />
no. 1 (Spring 1953): 9.<br />
19 James A. Sandos, Converting <strong>California</strong>:<br />
Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (New<br />
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 42.<br />
Research on early Mexico remains uncertain<br />
about whether missionaries appointed godparents,<br />
made godparent recommendations<br />
to converts, or whether Spaniards volunteered.<br />
See Nutini and Bell, Ritual Kinship,<br />
336–37.<br />
20 Mission San Gabriel Baptisms Database,<br />
nos. 05083 and 05086, ECPP. For additional<br />
examples from San Luis Obispo in<br />
the north to San Diego in the south, see the<br />
Godparent Database in the ECPP.<br />
21 José Antonio Esquibel maintains that<br />
interethnic compadrazgo “created the initial<br />
spiritual and social bonds between the Spanish<br />
and their Indian compadres, forming<br />
the very foundation of the Catholic community<br />
of New Mexico that still thrives today.”<br />
He does not, however, question whether<br />
Indians welcomed this. See Esquibel, “Sacramental<br />
Records,” 29, 31. Discussions of<br />
rape and other acts of violence against <strong>California</strong><br />
peoples have been discussed by other<br />
scholars; see, for example, Sandos, Converting<br />
<strong>California</strong>, 51–52.<br />
22 Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote,<br />
Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish<br />
Relations in Colonial <strong>California</strong>, 1769–1850<br />
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina<br />
Press, 2005), chap. 3; Also, David Igler,<br />
“Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the<br />
Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770–1850,” American<br />
<strong>Historical</strong> Review 109, no. 3 (June 2004):<br />
693–719.<br />
23 Junípero Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra,<br />
vol. 2, ed. Antonine Tibesar, Publications of<br />
the Academy of American Franciscan History<br />
(Washington, DC: Academy of American<br />
Franciscan History, 1956), 71–73, 307.<br />
24 Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz,<br />
trans., Testimonios: Early <strong>California</strong><br />
through the Eyes of Women, 1815–1848<br />
(Berkeley: Heyday Books and The Bancroft<br />
Library, 2006), 131–32 (testimonio of Juana<br />
Machado).<br />
25 Fernando Librado, Breath of the Sun: Life<br />
in Early <strong>California</strong> as Told by a Chumash<br />
Indian, Fernando Librado to John P. Harrington,<br />
ed. Travis Hudson (Banning and<br />
Ventura, CA: Malki Museum Press and Ventura<br />
County <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>, 1979), 48.<br />
26 Unfortunately, additional anecdotal<br />
material about godparents in missionary<br />
records or by native <strong>California</strong>ns is generally<br />
lacking for southern <strong>California</strong>. Searching<br />
for signs of native peoples’ resistence to<br />
compadrazgo, but finding none, I reviewed<br />
the following works: Junípero Serra, The<br />
Writings of Junípero Serra, 4 vols., ed. Antonine<br />
Tibesar, O.F.M., Publications of the<br />
Academy of American Franciscan History<br />
(Washington, DC: Academy of American<br />
Franciscan History, 1955/6); Fermín Francisco<br />
de Lasuén, The Writings of Fermín<br />
Francisco de Lasuén, 2 vols., ed. and trans.<br />
Finbar Kinneally (Washington, DC: The<br />
Academy of American Franciscan History,<br />
1965); Gerónimo Boscana, Chinigchinich: A<br />
Revised and Annotated Version of Alfred Robinson’s<br />
Translation of Father Gerónimo Boscana’s<br />
<strong>Historical</strong> Account of the Belief, Usages,<br />
Customs and Extravagancies of the Indians<br />
of this Mission of San Juan Capistrano Called<br />
the Acagchemem Tribe, annotations John P.<br />
Harrington (Banning, CA: Malki Museum<br />
Press, 1978); Juan Cortés, The Doctrina and<br />
Confesionario of Juan Cortés, ed. and trans.<br />
Harry Kelsey (Altadena, CA: Howling Coyote<br />
Press, 1979); Maynard Geiger, O.F.M.,<br />
ed. and trans., Fray Antonio Ripoll’s Description<br />
of the Chumash Revolt at Santa Bárbara<br />
in 1824 (Santa Barbara, CA: Mission Santa<br />
Barbara, 1980); José Señán, “The Ventureño<br />
Confesionario of José Señán, O.F.M.,” University<br />
of <strong>California</strong> Publications in Linguistics<br />
47, ed. Madison S. Beeler (Berkeley/Los<br />
Angeles: University of <strong>California</strong> Press,<br />
1967); Pablo Tac, Indian Life and Customs at<br />
Mission San Luis Rey, eds. and trans. Minna<br />
and Gordon Hewes (San Luis Rey, CA: Old<br />
Mission, 1958); Librado, Breath of the Sun<br />
and The Eye of the Flute.<br />
27 Lowell John Bean and Charles R. Smith,<br />
“Serrano,” in Handbook of North American<br />
Indians, ed. Robert F. Heizer and William C.<br />
Sturtevant, 3:572 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian<br />
Institution).<br />
28 For Fernando Librado’s testimony about<br />
the coexistence of Indian and Catholic marriage<br />
rituals, see Librado, Breath of the Sun,<br />
28. For a discussion of Nahua and Spanish<br />
parallels in marriage ceremonies, see Lisa<br />
Sousa, “Tying the Knot: Nahua Nuptials in<br />
Colonial Central México,” in Religion in New<br />
Spain, ed. Susan Schroeder and Stafford<br />
Poole, 43 (Albuquerque: University of New<br />
Mexico Press, 2007). For <strong>California</strong> puberty<br />
rituals, see Constance Goddard DuBois,<br />
“The Religion of the Luiseño Indians of<br />
Southern <strong>California</strong>,” University Publications<br />
in American Archaeology and Ethnology 8,<br />
no. 3 (1908): 77–84, 93–6; Alfred L. Kroeber,<br />
Handbook of the Indians of <strong>California</strong><br />
(Berkeley: <strong>California</strong> Book Co., Ltd., 1953),<br />
856, 858, and 862; William McCawley, The<br />
First Angelinos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los<br />
Angeles (Banning and Novato, CA: Malki<br />
Museum Press and Ballena Press, 1996),<br />
151–53; Lucile Hooper, “The Cahuilla Indians,”<br />
University of <strong>California</strong> Publications in<br />
American Archaeology and Ethnology 16, no.<br />
6 (April 1920): 345-8; Ruby Modesto and<br />
Guy Mount, Not for Innocent Ears: Spiritual<br />
Traditions of a Desert Cahuilla Medicine<br />
Woman (Arcata, CA: Sweetlight Books,<br />
1980), 40.<br />
29 Steven W. Hackel, “The Staff of Leadership:<br />
Indian Authority in the Missions of<br />
Alta <strong>California</strong>,” The William and Mary<br />
Quarterly 54, no. 2 (April 1997): 350,<br />
364–74.<br />
30 For a discussion of pre-Hispanic rites<br />
and ceremonies expressed alongside or<br />
in conjunction with compadrazgo among<br />
seventeenth-century Tlaxcalans, see Nutini<br />
and Bell, Ritual Kinship, 352–53 and chap. 8<br />
for a discussion of the socioeconomic and<br />
religious motivations in godparent selection;<br />
Stephen Gudeman, “The Compadrazgo as a<br />
Reflection of the Natural and Spiritual Person,”<br />
Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological<br />
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, no.<br />
1971 (1971): 56, 66; Gudeman, “Spiritual<br />
Relationships and Selecting a Godparent,”<br />
225; Ann Osborn, “Compadrazgo and<br />
Patronage: A Columbian Case,” Man 3, no.<br />
4 (Dec. 1968): 593–608; John M. Ingham,<br />
“The Asymmetrical Implications of Godparenthood<br />
in Tlayacapan, Morelos,” Man 5,<br />
no. 2 (June 1970): 283; and Mintz and Wolf,<br />
“An Analysis of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),”<br />
341–68.<br />
31 Librado, The Eye of the Flute, 69. For a<br />
discussion of the term paha, see Librado,<br />
The Eye of the Flute,19, 112, and Thomas<br />
Blackburn, “Ceremonial Integration and<br />
Social Interaction in Aboriginal <strong>California</strong>,”<br />
in Native <strong>California</strong>ns: A Theoretical Retrospective,<br />
ed. Lowell J. Bean and Thomas<br />
C. Blackburn, 229, 231–33, and 240–43<br />
(Ramona, CA: Ballena Press, 1976). Blackburn<br />
notes that indigenous leaders used<br />
ceremonies to distribute foods and goods to<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
lesser members of the community, thereby<br />
enhancing their esteem and power.<br />
32 See Mission San Gabriel Baptism and<br />
Godparents Database, ECPP. Analysis of<br />
each and every person who served as baptismal<br />
sponsor throughout the mission<br />
system’s existence represents a daunting<br />
task, but employing an arbitrary sample<br />
and conducting a broad search by name of<br />
each godparent or spouse denoted in those<br />
records yielded telling results.<br />
33 See Mission San Diego Baptism and Godparents<br />
Database, ECPP.<br />
34 See Mission San Gabriel Baptism and<br />
Godparents Database, ECPP.<br />
35 Space limitations prevent the exhaustive<br />
listing of each appearance of Indian<br />
captains in the southern <strong>California</strong> mission<br />
databases, ECPP.<br />
36 Fermín Francisco de Lasuén to Marqués<br />
de Branciforte, Apr. 25, 1797, in Lasuén,<br />
Writings, 2:18.<br />
37 Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, 249; Hackel,<br />
“The Staff of Leadership,” 350, 364–74.<br />
38 Dakin, A Scotch Paisano, 77.<br />
39 Ibid., 106, 107.<br />
40 Dakin, A Scotch Paisano, 149, 153, 194.<br />
41 For Dalton’s baptism, see Mission San<br />
Gabriel Baptisms, no. 08909, ECPP; Dakin,<br />
A Scotch Paisano, 12. For an example of<br />
foreign witness testimony in Diligencias<br />
Matrimoniales, see investigation of Jesse<br />
Ferguson and María Rendon in San Gabriel<br />
Mission Matrimonial Investigation Records<br />
[digitized], William McPherson Collection,<br />
Special Collections, Libraries of The<br />
Claremont Colleges, http://ccdl.libraries.<br />
claremont.edu/collection.phpalias=mir, acc.<br />
May 31, 2010; Agustín Janssens, The Life<br />
and Adventures in <strong>California</strong> of Don Agustín<br />
Janssens, 1834–1856, William H. Ellison,<br />
ed., and Francis Price, ed. and trans. (San<br />
Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1953),<br />
117–18. For marriages among bicultural<br />
offspring and with foreigners, see Catholic<br />
Church, Mission San Luis Obispo, Extracts<br />
of Church Records, 1769–1917, US/Can Film<br />
Reel #944282, item 4, Thomas Workman<br />
Temple, II and Zoeth Skinner Eldredge,<br />
trans. and comp. (Salt Lake City: Genealogical<br />
<strong>Society</strong> of Utah, ca. 1987), LAFHL; see<br />
entries after 1858, for example nos. 893,<br />
896, 902, 907, 932.<br />
42 Santa Barbara Presidio Baptisms Database,<br />
nos. 840, 1270, 1381, 1705, and 1178,<br />
1209, 1299, 1331, 1417, 1627, 1699, ECPP.<br />
43 For Espiridion Baric, see Los Angeles<br />
Plaza Church Baptisms Database, no.<br />
965 (Feb. 12, 1840) and for María Emidia<br />
Tomasa Prudhomme no. 1917 (Aug. 6,<br />
1848), ECPP.<br />
44 See Santa Barbara Presidio nos. 00878,<br />
00951, 01056, 01064, 01084, 01148, 01156,<br />
01171, 01184, 01199, 01257, 01270, 01299,<br />
01326, 01331, 01348, 01455, 01545, 01627,<br />
01699, 01705, Baptismal Book II entries:<br />
01719Y [original no. 10], 01729Y [20],<br />
01810Y [101], 01836Y [127], Los Angeles<br />
Plaza Church nos. 00502, 00965, 01264,<br />
01486, 01583, 01632, 01783, San Diego<br />
nos. 06639, 06916, 06968, 07010, San<br />
Gabriel nos. 08742, 08980, Santa Ines nos.<br />
01427, 01514, 01578, and San Luis Obispo<br />
nos. 02936, 02947; from 1848 onward,<br />
see Santa Barbara Presidio Baptism Book<br />
II, nos. 01894Y [original no. 185], 01926Y<br />
[217], 01944Y [235], 2013Y [304], Los Angeles<br />
nos. 01810, 01876, 01<strong>88</strong>3, 01917, 01926,<br />
01950, 01976, 01982, and San Luis Obispo<br />
nos. 03056, 03123, Baptisms Database,<br />
ECPP.<br />
45 For Gorge Antonio Allen (Jr.’s) baptism,<br />
see Santa Barbara Presidio Baptisms Database,<br />
no. 951. For José María Alfredo Hill’s<br />
baptism, see no. 1064 (July 9, 1934), ECPP.<br />
46 Coronel, Tales of Mexican <strong>California</strong>, 67.<br />
47 Michael Magliari, “Free Soil, Unfree<br />
Labor: Cave Johnson Couts and the Binding<br />
of Indian Workers in <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1850–1867,” Pacific <strong>Historical</strong> Review 73, no.<br />
3 (Aug. 2004): 358.<br />
48 Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The<br />
<strong>Historical</strong> Origins of White Supremacy in <strong>California</strong><br />
(Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of<br />
<strong>California</strong> Press, 1994), 149–50.<br />
49 Cave J. Couts graduated from West<br />
Point and arrived in <strong>California</strong> with the<br />
U.S. Army. He married Ysidora Bandini on<br />
April 5, 1851, and received Rancho Guajome<br />
from his brother-in-law Abel Stearns as a<br />
wedding gift. See biographical sketch written<br />
by “Cuevas,” the son of Cave Johnson<br />
Couts and Ysidora Bandini, box 89, folder<br />
1, and for the petition and William Caswell<br />
Ferrell’s judgment in Cave J. Couts vs. Francisco,<br />
May 6, 1858, see CT 204, box 4, Cave<br />
J. Couts Papers, The Huntington Library,<br />
San Marino, <strong>California</strong> (hereafter cited as<br />
Couts Papers).<br />
50 For the Tennessee Couts’s participation<br />
in slavery, see letters from John F. Couts to<br />
Cave J. Couts discussing slave purchases<br />
and transactions, CT 386, CT 3<strong>88</strong>-391 (letter<br />
1), box 8, Couts Papers. Couts served as a<br />
justice of the peace in San Luis Rey township<br />
from 1854–62. His brother William<br />
Blount Couts also served as a local justice<br />
of the peace. For Cave J. Couts’s cases, see<br />
box 4, and for documents indicating Cave J.<br />
Couts’s election in 1853, see CT 500, box 9,<br />
Couts Papers.<br />
51 Robert F. Heizer and Alan J. Almquist,<br />
The Other <strong>California</strong>ns: Prejudice and Discrimination<br />
under Spain, Mexico, and the<br />
United States to 1920 (Berkeley/Los Angeles:<br />
University of <strong>California</strong> Press, 1971), chap.<br />
2; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, chap. 5;<br />
W. W. Robinson, The Indians of Los Angeles:<br />
Story of the Liquidation of a People, Early<br />
<strong>California</strong> Travels Series, vol. 7 (Los Angeles:<br />
Glen Dawson, 1952), 2–3; Magliari,<br />
“Free Soil, Unfree Labor,” 349–89. For an<br />
overview of the 1860 statutes adopted in<br />
<strong>California</strong>, see A. S. Ensworth to Cave J.<br />
Couts, Jan. 10, 1860, CT 199 (8), box 4,<br />
Couts Papers.<br />
52 CT 204, box 4, Couts Papers.<br />
53 For Couts family indenture agreements,<br />
see CT 193 (40), CT 193 (49), CT 207, CT<br />
2615, box 4, and CT 309, box 6, Couts<br />
Papers.<br />
54 “Vicente & Comada, bind their son Juan<br />
to Da. Ysidora B. de Couts,” Apr. 20, 1855,<br />
CT 193 (4), Couts Papers.<br />
55 “Vicente & Comada,” Couts Papers. See<br />
also “Indenture of Indian mother, Jacinta,<br />
binding her son to Isidora Couts” for 3<br />
years, Aug. 13, 1866, CT 207, box 4, Couts<br />
Papers. The indenture agreement, wills, and<br />
petition mentioned in this section contain<br />
no testimony from the Indian children<br />
themselves.<br />
56 Will cited in Michael J. González, This<br />
Small City Will Be a Mexican Paradise:<br />
Exploring the Origins of Mexican Culture in<br />
Los Angeles, 1821–1846 (Albuquerque: University<br />
of New Mexico Press, 2005), 133.<br />
57 There are records of 41 Yuma baptized<br />
at San Diego (including one baptism in<br />
1805), 15 at Los Angeles Plaza Church, 4 at<br />
San Gabriel, 1 at San Buenaventura, and 6<br />
at San Juan Capistrano, Baptism Database,<br />
ECPP. “Copies of Petition for Probate of<br />
Will of Juana Ballestero, 1859,” File A5746-<br />
34, Avila Family Papers Collection No. 1239,<br />
Seaver Center for Western History Research,<br />
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles<br />
County, <strong>California</strong>.
e v i e w s<br />
Edited by James J. Rawls<br />
Racial Propositions:<br />
Ballot Initiatives and<br />
the Making of Postwar<br />
<strong>California</strong><br />
By Daniel Martinez HoSang<br />
(Berkeley: University of <strong>California</strong><br />
Press, 2010, 392 pp., $60.00 cloth,<br />
$24.95 paper)<br />
Alien Neighbors,<br />
Foreign Friends:<br />
Asian Americans,<br />
Housing, and the<br />
Transformation of<br />
Urban <strong>California</strong><br />
By Charlotte Brooks (Chicago:<br />
University of Chicago, 2009,<br />
352 pp., $40.00 cloth)<br />
The Color of America<br />
Has Changed: How<br />
Racial Diversity Shaped<br />
Civil Rights Reform in<br />
<strong>California</strong> 1941–1978<br />
By Mark Brilliant (New York:<br />
Oxford University Press, 2010,<br />
384 pp., $34.95 cloth)<br />
Reviewed by Stan Yogi, coauthor of<br />
Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway<br />
Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers,<br />
and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in<br />
<strong>California</strong><br />
This trio of books examines the<br />
complex ebb and flow of <strong>California</strong> civil<br />
rights history in the twentieth century,<br />
especially during the post–World War<br />
II era.<br />
In Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives<br />
and the Making of Postwar <strong>California</strong>, his<br />
fascinating study of six decades of ballot<br />
initiatives with racial implications,<br />
Daniel Martinez HoSang convincingly<br />
argues that electoral debates about<br />
these propositions were confined to<br />
a historic framework, emphasizing<br />
individual rather than systemic racism.<br />
Proponents often characterized initiatives<br />
such as the 1964 effort to ban fair<br />
housing laws and the 1996 proposition<br />
to end affirmative action as “civil<br />
rights” measures. This framing permitted<br />
a majority white electorate to deny<br />
or ignore <strong>California</strong>’s history of racism<br />
and disclaim any responsibility for perpetuating<br />
policies damaging the rights<br />
of racial minorities. Opponents of these<br />
racially charged initiatives consequently<br />
were compelled to shape their arguments<br />
within circumscribed parameters<br />
set by the propositions’ backers.<br />
HoSang’s provocative analysis merits<br />
the attention of scholars, organizers,<br />
and advocates interested in the<br />
intersection of race and the initiative<br />
process.<br />
Charlotte Brooks’s Alien Neighbors,<br />
Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing,<br />
and the Transformation of Urban<br />
<strong>California</strong> provides some of the history<br />
that the voters HoSang writes<br />
of forgot, ignored, or didn’t know. In<br />
the 1930s and 1940s, for example,<br />
the Federal Housing Administration<br />
required racial restrictions on homes<br />
it underwrote. And residents in many<br />
<strong>California</strong> neighborhoods organized<br />
to exclude racial minorities. Brooks<br />
argues that housing discrimination<br />
against Chinese and Japanese immigrants<br />
and their families in San Francisco<br />
and Los Angeles reflected U.S.<br />
relations with China and Japan. Her<br />
framework is compelling, especially<br />
regarding the treatment of Chinese<br />
and Japanese Americans from the late<br />
nineteenth century through World<br />
War II. But the analysis is less strong<br />
when applied to Cold War fears of<br />
the People’s Republic of China and<br />
complicated intracommunity tensions<br />
between Chinatown leaders who<br />
supported Taiwan and other Chinese<br />
Americans who were sympathetic to<br />
the People’s Republic.<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
The book could benefit from editing to<br />
eliminate repetition and typographical<br />
errors, but Brilliant usefully complicates<br />
civil rights history beyond a blackwhite<br />
framework and demonstrates<br />
how <strong>California</strong>’s multiracial past contributed<br />
to multiple concurrent victories<br />
and setbacks for racial equality.<br />
Nevertheless, Alien Neighbors, Foreign<br />
Friends is a significant addition to historical<br />
understanding of Asian American<br />
integration into previously white<br />
neighborhoods in Los Angeles and<br />
San Francisco.<br />
Brooks writes of a public housing<br />
project in San Francisco’s Chinatown<br />
that put Chinese American leaders at<br />
odds with civil rights advocates who<br />
promoted desegregation of public<br />
housing. Mark Brilliant examines<br />
incidents such as this in The Color<br />
of America Has Changed: How Racial<br />
Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reforms<br />
in <strong>California</strong> 1941–1978. His exploration<br />
of judicial and legislative efforts to<br />
combat racial discrimination in education,<br />
employment and housing, and to<br />
win farm workers’ rights and bilingual<br />
education reveals that despite attempts<br />
to organize a singular <strong>California</strong> civil<br />
rights movement, the varied historical<br />
experiences and manifestations of discrimination<br />
confronted by the state’s<br />
African Americans, Asian Americans,<br />
and Latinos in the 1940s through the<br />
1970s resulted in separate, sometimes<br />
conflicting civil rights agendas.<br />
The Father of All: The<br />
de la Guerra Family,<br />
Power, and Patriarchy<br />
in Mexican <strong>California</strong><br />
By Louise Pubols (Berkeley:<br />
University of <strong>California</strong> Press and<br />
San Marino: Huntington Library,<br />
2010, 448 pp., $44.95 cloth)<br />
Reviewed by Brett Garcia Myhren, University<br />
of Southern <strong>California</strong><br />
Beginning with José de la<br />
Guerra and his wife María Antonia<br />
Carrillo, then following their descendants,<br />
Louise Pubols tracks the de la<br />
Guerra family of Santa Barbara in her<br />
exploration of Californio society. With<br />
incredible detail, she recasts the history<br />
of early nineteenth-century <strong>California</strong>,<br />
focusing on “the critical obligations<br />
and dependencies that family relations<br />
demanded” instead of “government<br />
actions, landholdings, or military conquest.”<br />
Organizing her analysis around<br />
patriarchy and its methods for maintaining<br />
and distributing power, Pubols<br />
brings a fresh perspective to many<br />
well-worn scholarly trails.<br />
Because of de la Guerra’s elevated and<br />
central position in the community, “at<br />
the center of a dense web of relations,”<br />
his hands touch a remarkable sampling<br />
of nineteenth-century politics and<br />
economics, from elites in Mexico City<br />
to laborers on local ranchos. Pubols<br />
makes the most of this material, using<br />
it to reveal the social machinery operating<br />
beneath the surface of Californio<br />
lives. Despite her recognition of de la<br />
Guerra’s achievements, Pubols does<br />
not present him as an unblemished<br />
figure, noting his biases in his treatment<br />
of Native Americans, women,<br />
and the lower classes. In fact, Pubols<br />
excels at uncovering the remarkable<br />
complexities of the Californios in their<br />
relations with individuals, institutions,<br />
and even nations. In all of these cases,<br />
patriarchy exerts an influence, shaping<br />
events and reactions. During the<br />
U.S. occupation, it allowed the de la<br />
Guerra family to “tread a path between<br />
cooperation and resistance,” and after<br />
statehood it “combined relatively<br />
smoothly with . . . American forms of<br />
democracy.”<br />
Pubols’s approach is particularly fascinating<br />
regarding marriage, where her<br />
discussions about how various players<br />
worked with and through the patriarchy<br />
allow for considerable nuance and
e v i e w s<br />
invert a number of long-held assumptions.<br />
For example, some historians<br />
claim Mexican women facilitated<br />
U.S. takeover via their marriages to<br />
foreign merchants. Yet Pubols shows<br />
how marriage formed part of a calculated<br />
strategy to “contain the threat”<br />
of foreign merchants “by integrating<br />
[them] . . . into familial webs of reciprocity<br />
and dependence.”<br />
The risk with this kind of study<br />
involves questions of broader applicability.<br />
Though the book intersects with<br />
global theoretical concepts (like patriarchy<br />
and its permutations), the subject<br />
remains intensely local, focused<br />
primarily on a single town in southern<br />
<strong>California</strong>. Some readers will be<br />
reluctant to engage with a volume that<br />
devotes nearly 300 pages to analysis<br />
on this scale, thinking that it contains<br />
little relevant to the world beyond its<br />
boundaries, but they will be mistaken.<br />
This excellent book has a great deal to<br />
say about families, ethnicity, and gender,<br />
as well as the levers of power that<br />
move behind the scenes. In fact, the<br />
fine-grained analysis and accumulation<br />
of specific details make the book more<br />
robust in its theoretical dimensions.<br />
At the outset, Pubols writes that she<br />
chose the de la Guerra family because<br />
she believes “a study on this scale can<br />
reveal critical historical dynamics that<br />
a study of an entire class, gender, or<br />
nationality can overlook.” Her book<br />
proves that point decisively.<br />
Berkeley<br />
By Wendy P. Markel (Charleston,<br />
SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009,<br />
128 pp., $21.99 paper)<br />
Reviewed by Peter R. Hoffman, Associate<br />
Professor of Geography and Urban<br />
Studies, Loyola Marymount University<br />
In less than two decades, Arcadia<br />
Publishing has emerged as arguably<br />
the preeminent publisher of pictorial<br />
local histories in the United States.<br />
With more than 6,000 titles in print,<br />
Arcadia effectively demonstrates that<br />
a boutique publishing house can successfully<br />
develop a niche market provided<br />
the content and graphics of its<br />
offerings are of sufficiently high quality<br />
to appeal to both the casual readers<br />
looking for a quick dose of visual nostalgia<br />
about their home town and more<br />
serious scholars seeking insight into<br />
the historical landscapes and daily life<br />
of their study area.<br />
One of the titles in Arcadia’s Postcard<br />
History Series, Berkeley typifies many<br />
of the series’ offerings—it’s an intriguing<br />
amalgam of vintage postcards and<br />
abbreviated historical commentary in<br />
the form of short captions. Loosely<br />
organized into five chapters—“First<br />
There was the Land,” “Two Towns<br />
Become One,” “The University Is<br />
Established,” “Lost History,” and “Specialty<br />
Cards”—the approximately 200<br />
postcards depicted are the essential<br />
essence of the book. The accompanying<br />
captions typically provide both spatial<br />
and temporal contexts for the images,<br />
along with unexpectedly detailed commentary<br />
about selected key figures and<br />
events in Berkeley’s history.<br />
Taken in its totality, this little book<br />
is seemingly encyclopedic about the<br />
development of the city of Berkeley<br />
and its University of <strong>California</strong> campus<br />
during the period depicted in the postcards—roughly<br />
1900 to 1940—but the<br />
history it presents is difficult to synthesize<br />
into a collective whole, given the<br />
fragmented nature of its commentary.<br />
The lack of an index, the absence<br />
of dates for many of the postcards<br />
included, and the somewhat random<br />
ordering of the individual cards in<br />
each of the chapters may frustrate the<br />
serious historian attempting to utilize<br />
this book in any systematic study of<br />
Berkeley’s history. Conversely, all these<br />
same attributes make the book full of<br />
surprises and curiosities for the casual<br />
reader looking for some nostalgic<br />
images and historical trivia about one<br />
of America’s best-known college towns.<br />
While the book doesn’t really invite<br />
a methodical, cover-to-cover read, it’s<br />
hard to put down—turning each page<br />
takes the reader around another virtual<br />
corner and opens up another fascinating,<br />
monochromic vista of long-ago<br />
Berkeley. Like any trip down memory<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
lane, it’s hard to stop, but the destination<br />
is inevitably equivocal.<br />
Given their inherent similarities, it<br />
is impossible to avoid comparisons<br />
between Berkeley and Picturing Berkeley:<br />
A Postcard History, edited by Burl<br />
Willes (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith,<br />
2005). With roughly twice as many<br />
postcard images, including some identical<br />
to those in Berkeley, and more substantive<br />
textual content, Willes’s book<br />
arguably provides more comprehensive<br />
coverage of the same Berkeley period<br />
history. Moreover, Picturing Berkeley has<br />
somewhat greater aesthetic appeal due<br />
to its inclusion of some color reproductions<br />
of original hand-tinted postcards,<br />
while Berkeley has only black and white<br />
images. Picturing Berkeley might belong<br />
on the coffee table in your period-correct<br />
Berkeley bungalow, but Berkeley<br />
is certainly worthy of a spot on your<br />
nightstand.<br />
Books for Review<br />
Please send to:<br />
James J. Rawls<br />
Reviews Editor, <strong>California</strong> History<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />
678 Mission Street<br />
San Francisco, CA 94105-4014<br />
JUstinian Caire and<br />
santa CrUz island<br />
the rise and fall of a <strong>California</strong> dynasty<br />
By Frederic Caire Chiles<br />
$34.95 Hardcover · 240 pages · 34 b&w illus.<br />
one of the fabled channel islands of southern california,<br />
santa cruz was once the largest privately owned<br />
island off the coast of the continental united states.<br />
this multifaceted account traces the island’s history<br />
from its aboriginal chumash population to its acquisition<br />
by the nature conservancy at the end of the<br />
twentieth century. the heart of the book, however, is a<br />
family saga: the story of French émigré Justinian caire<br />
and his descendants, who owned and occupied the<br />
island for more than fifty years. the author, descended<br />
from caire, uses family archives unavailable to earlier<br />
historians to recount the full, previously untold story.<br />
Pío PiCo<br />
the last Governor of mexican <strong>California</strong><br />
By Carlos Manuel Salomon<br />
$19.95 paperback · 256 pages, 7 b&w illus<br />
two-time governor of alta california and prominent<br />
businessman after the u.s. annexation, pío de Jesus<br />
pico was a politically savvy californio who thrived in<br />
both the mexican and the american periods. this is the<br />
first biography of pico, whose life vibrantly illustrates<br />
the opportunities and risks faced by mexican americans<br />
in those transitional years.<br />
“Thanks to this expertly researched and vividly written<br />
biography by a next-generation historian making a stunning<br />
debut, PíoPico now emerges into full historical perspective as a<br />
pivotal and representative figure in the transition of <strong>California</strong><br />
from Mexican province to American state.”—kevin starr,<br />
professor of History, university of southern california<br />
University of<br />
oklahoma Press<br />
2800 venture drive · norman, ok 73069<br />
tel 800 627 7377 · oupress.com
The Joaquín Band<br />
The History behind the Legend<br />
lori lee wilson<br />
The Joaquín Band is a fascinating<br />
examination of the role of the<br />
Joaquín band legend in <strong>California</strong><br />
and Chicano history and how it was<br />
shaped over time.<br />
$29.95 hardcover<br />
*For complete descriptions<br />
and to order, visit us online!<br />
<strong>California</strong> Women<br />
and Politics<br />
From the Gold Rush<br />
to the Great Depression<br />
Edited by Robert W. Cherny, Mary<br />
Ann Irwin, and Ann Marie Wilson<br />
<strong>California</strong> Women and Politics examines<br />
the wide array of women’s public<br />
activism from the 1850s to 1929<br />
and reveals unexpected contours to<br />
women’s politics in <strong>California</strong>.<br />
$40.00 paperback<br />
www.nebraskapress.unl.edu<br />
800-848-6224 • publishers of Bison Books<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
i n d e x<br />
volume <strong>88</strong><br />
A<br />
A View from Telegraph Hill (Alice Burr)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 1), 64<br />
Agraristas (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 13, 18, 19<br />
Akerman, Edward (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 35, 36, 44<br />
Albert, Judy Gumbo (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 29<br />
Albert, Stew (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 21, 29<br />
Alexander, George (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 49<br />
All-American Canal (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 7<br />
Allen, Steve (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 55; and The Steve Allen<br />
Westinghouse Show (<strong>88</strong>, 3) 55<br />
Alta <strong>California</strong> (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 25, 28; and<br />
compadrazgo (godparentage), 47–62<br />
Altamirano, Ysabel (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 36<br />
Alvarado, Juan Batista (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 28<br />
Andrés, Benny Joseph Jr., “Invisible Borders:<br />
Repatriation and Colonization of Mexican<br />
Migrant Workers along the <strong>California</strong><br />
Borderlands during the 1930s” (<strong>88</strong>, 4),<br />
5–21<br />
Angelo, John (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 12, 15<br />
Anthony, Susan B. (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 49, 50<br />
Argüello, Refugio (Bandini) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24, 27,<br />
29, 33<br />
Atherton, María Alejandra (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 49<br />
Atherton, Faxon Dean (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 49<br />
Automobile Boulevard (Junipero Serra<br />
Boulevard, San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 27<br />
Avella, Steven A., For Both Cross and Flag:<br />
Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and<br />
National Security Politics in World War II<br />
San Francisco (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 59<br />
B<br />
Bagley, Will, So Rugged and Mountainous:<br />
Blazing the Trails to Oregon and <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1812–1848 (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 72–73<br />
Baja <strong>California</strong> (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15,<br />
16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 30<br />
Balboa Park (San Diego) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 38, 40<br />
Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (Franz<br />
Rickaby) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6, 12, 14–15, 16<br />
Bancroft, Hubert Howe (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 35<br />
Bandini, Arcadia (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 26, 27, 33, 41, 47, 56,<br />
57, 60<br />
Bandini, Dolores (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 27, 30, 33<br />
Bandini, Juan (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 22, 23, 24–30, 33, 40,<br />
42, 44, 45, 46, 57<br />
Bandini, Ysidora (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 27, 41, 60–61<br />
Baptism, Alta <strong>California</strong> (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 47–62<br />
Baptismal Sponsorship of Alta <strong>California</strong><br />
Indians at Mission San Gabriel (chart) (<strong>88</strong>,<br />
4), 48<br />
Bardacke, Frank (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 13, 14, 15, 16, 17–18,<br />
29<br />
Berkeley Barb (newspaper) (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 15, 16, 17<br />
Bishop, William Henry (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 35<br />
“Bloody Thursday” (People’s Park) (<strong>88</strong>, 1),<br />
21–27<br />
Bloom, Khaled J., Murder of a Landscape: The<br />
<strong>California</strong> Farmer-Smelter War, 1897–1916<br />
(book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 63<br />
“’Boes in Facultate: The Short, Creative Life<br />
of Franz Rickaby,” by Gretchen Dykstra<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6–21<br />
Boulder (Hoover) Dam (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 7, 11, 21<br />
Bracero Program (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 6, 21<br />
Brawley (Imperial County) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 5, 9, 10, 16<br />
Bridge Builders Union (San Francisco)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 2), 18, 19<br />
Brilliant, Mark, The Color of America Has<br />
Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil<br />
Rights Reform in <strong>California</strong> 1941–1978 (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 75<br />
Brooks, Charlotte, Alien Neighbors, Foreign<br />
Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the<br />
Transformation of Urban <strong>California</strong> (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 74–75<br />
Building Trades Council (San Francisco)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 2), 6, 7, 13<br />
Burns, Fritz B. (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 49<br />
Burr, Alice, A View from Telegraph Hill (<strong>88</strong>, 1),<br />
64<br />
C<br />
Caballero (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 3, 34, 40<br />
Calexico (Imperial County) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 5, 8, 14, 16<br />
Calexico Chronicle (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 8, 13, 14<br />
<strong>California</strong> Ephemera Project (CHS Collections)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 1), 3–7; (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 3–5<br />
<strong>California</strong> Pacific International Exposition,<br />
1935–36 (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 23, 38–40, 45<br />
<strong>California</strong> State Parks (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24, 26, 33, 42<br />
Californio (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 22, 24, 28, 34, 36, 46, 57,<br />
61, 62<br />
Campesinos (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17,<br />
19<br />
Cárdenas, Lázaro (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 5, 6, 7, 13, 15, 16, 18,<br />
19, 20, 21<br />
Cardwell, James H. (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 42, 43, 45<br />
Cardwell, Nora (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 42, 43<br />
Carpet dyeing (Los Angeles) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 47–52<br />
Casa de Bandini (San Diego) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 22,<br />
24–30, 31, 36, 38, 40, 43, 46<br />
Casa de Estudillo (San Diego) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24, 25,<br />
26, 35, 38<br />
Casey, Michael (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 8, 9<br />
Cash, Jon David, “People’s Park: Birth and<br />
Survival” (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 8–29<br />
Central Pacific Railroad (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 38, 40, 41<br />
Chadwick, George C. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 24<br />
Chadwick & Sykes (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2),<br />
24–31<br />
Cheit, Earl (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 8<br />
Chinese Exclusion Convention (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 23<br />
Chumash Indians (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 51, 53, 55, 56<br />
City Dye Works and Laundry Co. (Los Angeles)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 3), 45<br />
City Front Federation (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2),<br />
5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 20<br />
City Front Federation Strike (San Francisco)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 2), 4–23<br />
Claremont (Riverside County) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6, 8,<br />
16, 17<br />
Cohnreich, Israel (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 35<br />
Colby, William Edward (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 35, 36<br />
Colorado River Land Company (CRLC) (<strong>88</strong>, 4),<br />
7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20<br />
Compadrazgo (godparentage) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 47–62<br />
Concord stagecoaches (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 32, 34<br />
Coronel, Antionio Franco (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 52, 59<br />
Cosmopolitan Hotel (San Diego) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 22–<br />
46; and <strong>California</strong> State Parks’ restoration,<br />
24, 26, 33, 42, 46; and preservation<br />
controversy, 42–44<br />
Couts, Cave J. Jr. (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 23, 33, 36–42, 44, 45<br />
Couts, Colonel Cave J. (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24, 28, 30, 60,<br />
61<br />
Culver, Lawrence, The Frontier of Leisure:<br />
Southern <strong>California</strong> and the Shaping of<br />
Modern America (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3),<br />
73–74<br />
D<br />
Dana, Richard Henry Jr. (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 29, 30, 45<br />
De Medina, Hipolita Orendain (CHS<br />
Collections) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 3–4<br />
Delacour, Mike (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 11–12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 29<br />
Devil’s Tea Kettle, Geyser Springs, Cal. (907)<br />
(Eadweard Muybridge) (CHS Collections)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 2), 3<br />
Dillon, Richard (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 38<br />
Diseños (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 30<br />
Dolin, Eric Jay, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The<br />
Epic History of the Fur Trade in America<br />
(book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 72–73<br />
Draymen’s Association (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2),<br />
8, 13, 15, 18<br />
Dupont, Samuel F. (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 28<br />
Dykstra, Clarence (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 20, 21<br />
Dykstra, Gretchen, “’Boes in Facultate: The<br />
Short, Creative Life of Franz Rickaby”<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6–21<br />
Dykstra, Lillian (Katar Rickaby) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6, 7, 9,<br />
10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20–21; and marriage<br />
to Clarence Dykstra, 20<br />
E<br />
E. H. Rollins & Sons (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 47<br />
“Eastern Promises: The Role of Eastern Capital<br />
in the Development of Los Angeles, 1900–<br />
1920,” by Timothy Tzeng (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 32–53<br />
Eaton, Frederick (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 42<br />
Echeandía, José María (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24<br />
Ejidos (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 13, 16, 19, 20<br />
El Camino Real (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 25
i n d e x<br />
Elrick, John, “Social Conflict and the Politics<br />
of Reform: Mayor James D. Phelan and the<br />
San Francisco Waterfront Strike of 1901”<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 2), 4–23<br />
Emmons, David M., Beyond the American<br />
Pale: The Irish in the West, 1845–1910 (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 74–76<br />
Employers’ Association (San Francisco)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 2), 5, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19<br />
Estudillo, Dolores (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24, 57<br />
Estudillo, José Antonio (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24<br />
F<br />
Faulconer, Margaret Adams (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 38, 40<br />
First Continental Railroad (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 41<br />
Fenyes, Eva Scott (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 35<br />
Frémont, John C. (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 28<br />
Friday Morning Club (Los Angeles) (<strong>88</strong>, 1),<br />
45–47, 50<br />
Furuseth, Andrew (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 13, 14, 16, 22<br />
G<br />
Gage, Henry T. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 14, 18, 19<br />
Ganz, Rudolph (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 35<br />
Gente de razón (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 48, 50, 52, 53<br />
Gibson, E. Kay, Brutality on Trial: “Hellfire”<br />
Pedersen, “Fighting” Hansen, and the<br />
Seamen’s Act of 1915 (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 2),<br />
66<br />
Gila House (San Diego) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 29, 30<br />
Glusman, Paul (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 12, 13, 15<br />
Gold Rush (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 29, 30<br />
Goldberg, Art (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 13, 14, 15, 20<br />
Golden Gate Bridge (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 33; opening day, 34<br />
Golden Gate International Exposition (1937)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 3), 34<br />
Golden Gate Park (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 24, 26, 30; (<strong>88</strong>, 3),<br />
24, 26, 33<br />
Gowan, Teresa, Hobos, Hustlers, and<br />
Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 67<br />
Great Depression (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 21, 38<br />
Great Sand Waste (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 24,<br />
26<br />
H<br />
Harriman, Edward (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 38, 40, 41, 47<br />
Harris, Norman W. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 44, 45, 47, 48<br />
Hayes, Benjamin (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 25, 28, 35<br />
Heynes, Roger W. (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 8, 10, 18–21, 26<br />
Historia de la Alta <strong>California</strong> (Juan Bandini)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 4), 28<br />
Hollywood (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 40, 41, 46, 54, 56; movie<br />
studios, 46; sound studios, 46<br />
Horton, Inge Schaefer, Early Women Architects<br />
of the San Francisco Bay Area: The Lives and<br />
Work of Fifty Professionals, 1890–1951 (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 68<br />
HoSang, Daniel Martinez, Racial Propositions:<br />
Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar<br />
<strong>California</strong> (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 74<br />
Huntington, Collis (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 38, 39, 40, 48, 50<br />
Huntington, Henry E. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 32, 38, 39, 41,<br />
42<br />
Hydraulic Erosion (Alma Lavenson) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 72<br />
I<br />
“If Walls Could Speak: San Diego’s Historic<br />
Casa de Bandini,” by Victor A. Walsh<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 4), 22–46<br />
Imperial Valley (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15,<br />
16, 17, 19, 20, 21<br />
Imperial-Mexicali Valley (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 7, 8, 9, 13<br />
In Front of the St. Charles Hotel, Downieville<br />
(Alma Lavenson) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 80<br />
Indian puberty rituals (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 53–54<br />
“Invisible Borders: Repatriation and<br />
Colonization of Mexican Migrant Workers<br />
along the <strong>California</strong> Borderlands during<br />
the 1930s,” by Benny Joseph Andrés Jr.<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 4), 5–21<br />
J<br />
Jackson, Helen Hunt (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 38<br />
James Speyer (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 39–40, 41, 48–49, 52<br />
Johnson, Charles Robinson (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24, 30<br />
Junta patriótica (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 4<br />
K<br />
Kearny, Stephen Watts (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 28<br />
Knox, Frederick H. (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 12; and the Dakota<br />
Playmakers, 12, 13<br />
Kountze-Leach Syndicate (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 46, 47, 48,<br />
49<br />
Kropp, Phoebe S. (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 45<br />
L<br />
La Republica (newspaper, San Francisco)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 4), 4<br />
Labor Council (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 6, 8, 10,<br />
14, 16, 20<br />
Larkin, Thomas (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 28<br />
Lavenson, Alma (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 72; (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 80<br />
Leach, Arthur Burtis (banker) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 33, 43<br />
Leary, James P. (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 14<br />
Lee, Erika (and Judy Yung), Angel Island:<br />
Immigrant Gateway to America (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 70–71<br />
Librado, Fernando (Chumash) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 53, 54,<br />
55<br />
Lincoln Heights (Los Angeles) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 42, 43,<br />
44, 54<br />
Lincoln Way (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 30<br />
Loma Linda Hospital (Seventh-day Adventists’<br />
Hospital) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6, 18–20<br />
Lomax, Alan (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6<br />
Lomax, John Avery (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6<br />
Los Angeles Aqueduct (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 32–53<br />
Los Angeles City Water Company (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 42,<br />
43<br />
Los Angeles Department of Water (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 43<br />
“Love Among the Redwoods: The Story of<br />
Margaret and David Paddock,” by Daimar<br />
Paddock Robinson (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 22–43<br />
Lummis, Charles Fletcher (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 35<br />
Lustig, R. Jeffrey, ed., Remaking <strong>California</strong>:<br />
Reclaiming the Public Good (book review)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 2), 62<br />
Lyon, Mike (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 13, 14, 15<br />
M<br />
MacLeish, Archibald (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6<br />
Madigan, Frank (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27<br />
Markel, Wendy P., Berkeley (book review)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 4), 76–77<br />
Mathews, Joe (and Mark Paul), <strong>California</strong><br />
Crackup: How Reform Broke the State and<br />
How We Can Fix It (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 2),<br />
62<br />
Mathews, William Burgess (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 43, 44, 45,<br />
47, 48, 52<br />
McCarthy, P. H. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 11, 21<br />
McGettigan, Francisca Vallejo (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 59<br />
McPherson, Aimee Semple (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 45<br />
McWilliams, Carey (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 6, 45<br />
Medina, Emigdio (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 4<br />
Mellus, Henry (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 62<br />
Merchants’ Association (San Francisco)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 2), 10, 12<br />
Metro Studios (Hollywood) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 46<br />
Mexicali (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 6, 8, 14, 16<br />
Mexicali Valley (borderlands) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 5–21<br />
Miller, Henry (artist) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 25<br />
Miller, William Cosby (“Big Bill”) (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 13,<br />
14, 15<br />
Mills Seminary, Seminary Park, Alameda<br />
County, by Edweard Muybridge (<strong>88</strong>, 4), <strong>88</strong><br />
Mission District (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 22, 36<br />
Mission San Buenaventura (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 48, 50,<br />
51, 55<br />
Mission San Fernando Rey (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 56<br />
Mission San Diego de Alcalá (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 22, 55,<br />
56,<br />
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 29, 48,<br />
50, 52, 54, 55, 57<br />
Mission San Juan Capistrano (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 53<br />
Mission Santa Barbara (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 56<br />
Mission Santa Inés (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 53<br />
Modoc County (CHS Collections) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 3–5<br />
Moore, Harry Humphrey (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 87<br />
“Mother of Clubs” (Caroline Severance) (<strong>88</strong>, 1),<br />
39, 44, 52<br />
Moulin, Gabriel (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 22, 23<br />
Muir Woods (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31<br />
Mulholland, William (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 32, 42, 43, 44, 45,<br />
48, 52, 53<br />
Mutualistas (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 5–6, 10, 11, 12, 21<br />
Muybridge, Eadweard (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 3; (<strong>88</strong>, 4), <strong>88</strong><br />
N<br />
N. W. Halsey & Co. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 47<br />
N. W. Harris & Co. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 45, 47<br />
Newhall, George (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 14, 16<br />
0<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
O<br />
Old Mission Olive Works (San Diego)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 4), 35<br />
Old Town San Diego (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 22, 23, 29, 30, 31,<br />
32, 33, 35, 38, 42, 43, 45<br />
Old Town San Diego State Historic Park<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 4), 42<br />
Olympic Auditorium (Los Angeles) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 47<br />
Otis, Harrison Gray (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 32, 47<br />
Owens Master Carpet Dyers (Los Angeles)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 3), 40–61<br />
Owens River (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 44, 45, 51<br />
Owens Valley (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 32, 45, 51<br />
P<br />
Pacific Electric Railway Company (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 42<br />
Pacific Mail Steamship Company (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 24,<br />
25<br />
Paddock, Daimar (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 33, 35, 36, 39<br />
Paddock, David Anthony (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 22, 26–27,<br />
28, 29–39<br />
Paddock, Hosea (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 26<br />
Paddock, Margaret (Heyde) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 22, 24–25,<br />
28, 29–39; and the Sutro Library (San<br />
Francisco), 37–38<br />
Paddock, Stuart Roy (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 35, 36, 37, 39<br />
Panama-<strong>California</strong> Exposition, 1915–16<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 4), 38, 45<br />
Parkside district (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 24–31<br />
Parkside Realty Company (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 24, 26, 30<br />
Parkside Transit Company (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 24, 30<br />
Parmelee Art Company (San Francisco)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 3), 29, 32<br />
Parry, J. S. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 23<br />
Paul, Mark (and Joe Mathews), <strong>California</strong><br />
Crackup: How Reform Broke the State and<br />
How We Can Fix It (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 2),<br />
62<br />
“People’s Park: Birth and Survival,” by Jon<br />
David Cash (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 8–29<br />
Pérez, Erika, “‘Saludos from your comadre’:<br />
Compadrazgo as a Community Institution<br />
in Alta <strong>California</strong>, 1769–1<strong>88</strong>5” (<strong>88</strong>, 4),<br />
47–62<br />
Phelan, James D. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 4–23<br />
Phillips, George Harwood, Vineyards &<br />
Vaqueros: Indian Labor and the Economic<br />
Expansion of Southern <strong>California</strong>, 1771–1877<br />
(book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 71–72<br />
Pico, Pío (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 29<br />
Pile Drivers Local #1(San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 18,<br />
19, 20, 23<br />
Pomona College (Claremont, CA) (<strong>88</strong>, 3),<br />
6, 16, 17; Hobo Club, 17, 18–19; Franz<br />
Rickaby Memorial Sundial, 19<br />
Post-War House (Los Angeles) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 49<br />
Powers, Diane (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 43–44, 45<br />
Pubols, Louise, The Father of All: The de la<br />
Guerra Family, Power, and Patriarchy in<br />
Mexican <strong>California</strong> (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 4),<br />
75–76<br />
Pujo Committee (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 37, 52<br />
R<br />
Ramona (Helen Hunt Jackson) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 38<br />
Ranchería (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 54, 55<br />
Ranchos (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 30, 51, 52, 60<br />
Read, Jon (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 13, 15<br />
Reagan, Ronald (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 19, 20, 21, 25, 26–27<br />
Rector, James (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 22, 24, 26<br />
Red Roof (El Nido) (Caroline Severance) (<strong>88</strong>,<br />
1), 44, 45, 52<br />
“Rediscovering San Francisco’s Parkside<br />
Neighborhood” (photo essay) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 24–31<br />
Redwood Empire (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 28, 30<br />
Reid, Hugo (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 42, 56, 57<br />
Reid, Victoria Bartholomea (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 47, 57<br />
Repatriation, Mexican (1930s) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 5–21<br />
Requa, Richard (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 42<br />
Reuf, Abe (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 20, 23, 24<br />
Rickaby, Franz (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6–20; and poems, 9;<br />
and plays, 6; and Knox College (Galesburg,<br />
IL), 8–9, 17; and University of North<br />
Dakota (Grand Forks), 6, 7, 11<br />
Rickaby, Lillian (Katar Dykstra) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6, 7, 9,<br />
10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20–21; and marriage<br />
to Clarence Dykstra, 20<br />
Robinson, Daimar Paddock, “Love Among<br />
the Redwoods: The Story of Margaret and<br />
David Paddock” (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 22–43<br />
Rogers, W. Lane (and James R. Smith), The<br />
<strong>California</strong> Snatch Racket: Kidnappings<br />
during the Prohibition and Depression Eras<br />
(book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 69<br />
Rosenberg, Ed (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 14<br />
Ruocco, Lloyd (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 42<br />
S<br />
SS Ecuador (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 24, 25<br />
Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 10, 13<br />
Salomon, Carlos Manuel, Pío Pico: The Last<br />
Governor of Mexican <strong>California</strong> (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 65<br />
“‘Saludos from your comadre’: Compadrazgo as<br />
a Community Institution in Alta <strong>California</strong>,<br />
1769–1<strong>88</strong>5,” by Erika Pérez (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 47–62<br />
San Buenaventura (Ventura County) (<strong>88</strong>, 1),<br />
40, 41<br />
San Diego (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 35,<br />
44, 45<br />
San Fernando Mission Land Company<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 2), 47<br />
San Francisco Chronicle (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 27, 32, 33, 38<br />
San Juan Capistrano (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 31, 34<br />
San Pedro (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 42, 44<br />
Scheer, Robert (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 8, 15<br />
Schlesinger, Wendy (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 9, 12, 15, 19, 29<br />
Schmitz, Eugene (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 20, 21, 23<br />
Schrag, Peter, Not Fit for Our <strong>Society</strong>:<br />
Immigration and Nativism in America (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 60<br />
Schwartz, Davis Francis (artist) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 1,<br />
62–63<br />
Schwartz, Isabella Ethel (Mellus) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 1,<br />
62–63<br />
Scott, Adam Sherriff (artist) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 63<br />
Seeley, Albert Lewis (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 22, 31–35, 41, 42,<br />
44<br />
Seeley, Emily (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 31, 34<br />
Seeley House (Casa de Bandini, San Diego)<br />
(<strong>88</strong>, 4), 31, 33, 34<br />
Serra, Father Junípero (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 51, 52<br />
Severance, Caroline Maria Seymour (<strong>88</strong>, 1),<br />
30–31, 33–52; women’s rights, 31, 36–39;<br />
early childhood education, 45; women’s<br />
clubs (Los Angeles), 45–47; women’s<br />
suffrage (Los Angeles), 49–52<br />
Severance, James Seymour (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 39–41, 43,<br />
48<br />
Severance, Mark Sibley (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 39–41, 43, 48<br />
Severance, Theodoric Cordenio (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 30–49<br />
Sherman, Moses (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 47<br />
Sielen, Alan B., “We Dye for the Stars”: Los<br />
Angeles Remembered” (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 44–61<br />
Sierra Club (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 27, 29, 30, 34, 35<br />
“Significant Others: The Defining Domestic<br />
Life of Caroline Seymour Severance,” by<br />
Diana Tittle (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 30–52<br />
Sitton, Tom, Grand Ventures: The Banning<br />
Family and the Shaping of Southern<br />
<strong>California</strong> (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 66–67<br />
Smith, James R. (and W. Lane Rogers), The<br />
<strong>California</strong> Snatch Racket: Kidnappings<br />
during the Prohibition and Depression Eras<br />
(book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 69<br />
Smith, Richard Cándida, The Modern Moves<br />
West: <strong>California</strong> Artists and Democratic<br />
Culture in the Twentieth Century (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 58<br />
“Social Conflict and the Politics of Reform:<br />
Mayor James D. Phelan and the San<br />
Francisco Waterfront Strike of 1901,” by<br />
John Elrick (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 4–23<br />
Southern Pacific Railroad (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 35, 38–39,<br />
40, 47, 49, 50<br />
Spanish heritage fantasy (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 44–46<br />
Speyer & Co. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 39, 40, 41, 49–50<br />
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 49<br />
Stearns, Abel (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,<br />
47, 56, 57<br />
Stockton, Robert F. (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 28<br />
Stone, Lucy (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 49<br />
Sutro, Adolph (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 37<br />
Sutro Library (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 37–38<br />
T<br />
Teamsters (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 8, 9, 11, 18,<br />
19<br />
Telegraph Avenue (Berkeley) (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 8, 9, 10,<br />
14, 15, 22, 24<br />
The Brawley News (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 8<br />
Tiffany, Susan Davis (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 35–36<br />
1
i n d e x<br />
Tittle, Diana, “Significant Others: The<br />
Defining Domestic Life of Caroline<br />
Seymour Severance” (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 30–52<br />
Toloache (Indian puberty ceremony) (<strong>88</strong>, 4),<br />
53, 54<br />
Torabene, Joseph Eric (“Super Joel”) (<strong>88</strong>, 1),<br />
13, 14–15<br />
Tuffley, Robert (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 35, 36<br />
Tzeng, Timothy, “Eastern Promises: The Role<br />
of Eastern Capital in the Development of<br />
Los Angeles, 1900–1920” (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 32–53<br />
U<br />
U.S. Border Patrol (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 6, 12, 21<br />
U.S. Land Act (1851) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 30<br />
U.S.-Mexican War (Mexican-American War,<br />
1846–48) (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 28<br />
Union Labor Party (San Francisco) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 20,<br />
21, 23<br />
Union Pacific Railroad (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 41, 47<br />
University of <strong>California</strong>, and People’s Park<br />
Controversy (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 8–29<br />
V<br />
Vachel Lindsay, Nicholas (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 6, 8, 9, 10<br />
Vallejo, Mariano Guadalupe (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 24, 28,<br />
29, 59<br />
Van der Ryn, Sim (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 10, 18, 19, 20, 21,<br />
26, 29<br />
Vernon, Edward W., A Maritime History of Baja<br />
<strong>California</strong> (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 64<br />
Victoria, Manuel (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 28<br />
W<br />
Walsh, Victor A., “If Walls Could Speak: San<br />
Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini” (<strong>88</strong>, 4),<br />
22–46<br />
Water Works Bonds (Aqueduct Bonds) (<strong>88</strong>, 2),<br />
42, 43, 44–45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52<br />
Waterman, Hazel W. (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 38<br />
“We Dye for the Stars”: Los Angeles<br />
Remembered,” by Alan B. Sielen (<strong>88</strong>, 3),<br />
44–61<br />
Welles, Orson (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 55; and The Mercury<br />
Wonder Show, 55<br />
Wilkie, Laurie A., The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi: A<br />
<strong>Historical</strong> Archaeology of Masculinity at a<br />
University Fraternity (book review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3),<br />
70<br />
Women’s clubs (Los Angeles) (<strong>88</strong>, 1), 30,<br />
45–47, 50<br />
Wright, Charles (<strong>88</strong>, 4), 31, 32, 34<br />
Y<br />
Yorke, Father Peter C. (<strong>88</strong>, 2), 15, 16, 18<br />
Yung, Judy (and Erika Lee), Angel Island:<br />
Immigrant Gateway to America (book<br />
review) (<strong>88</strong>, 3), 70–71<br />
<strong>Volume</strong> <strong>88</strong>, number 1<br />
<strong>Volume</strong> <strong>88</strong>, number 2<br />
<strong>Volume</strong> <strong>88</strong>, number 3<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011<br />
<strong>Volume</strong> <strong>88</strong>, number 4
2011 legends of <strong>California</strong><br />
©2011 photokatz.com<br />
Julius Blank , Jay Last, Gordon Moore, pictured, left to right<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong> was proud to celebrate<br />
<strong>California</strong>’s Legendary Spirit of Innovation<br />
in honoring the 2011 Legends of <strong>California</strong><br />
The Traitorous Eight – Founders of Silicon Valley<br />
Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last,<br />
Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and C. Sheldon Roberts<br />
Tuesday, May 10, 2011<br />
The St. Regis San Francisco<br />
San Francisco, <strong>California</strong><br />
Thank you to our generous sponsors:<br />
final logo / grayscale<br />
Investing in Relationships<br />
Media sponsor:<br />
individual sponsors:<br />
Reid W. Dennis, Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock,<br />
and R. Thomas Decker
d o n o r s<br />
The <strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong> is deeply grateful<br />
to the following individuals, corporations, foundations,<br />
and government and business organizations<br />
for their contributions.<br />
INDIVIDUALS<br />
$50,000 and above<br />
Anonymous<br />
$10,000 to $49,999<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Reid W. Dennis, Woodside<br />
Ms. Jeanne S. Overstreet, Bennington, VT<br />
Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock, San Francisco<br />
$5,000 to $9,999<br />
Mr. Sandy & Mrs. Linda Alderson,<br />
Rancho Santa Fe<br />
Mr. & Mrs. S. D. Bechtel, Jr., San Francisco<br />
Mr. John E. Brown, Riverside<br />
Mr. & Mrs. R. Thomas Decker, San Francisco<br />
Drs. Maribelle & Stephen Leavitt, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Bill Leonard, Sacramento<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Greg Martin, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Robert A. McNeely, San Diego<br />
Mr. John L. & Mrs. Susan L. Molinari,<br />
San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Cristina Rose, Los Angeles<br />
Mr. Peter Wiley, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Helen Zukin, Beverly Hills<br />
$1,000 to $4,999<br />
Anonymous<br />
Katy & John Bejarano, San Mateo<br />
Jan Berckefeldt, Lafayette<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Andrew E. Bogen, Santa Monica<br />
Ms. Joanne E. Bruggemann, Redwood City<br />
Mrs. John Edward Cahill, San Rafael<br />
Brian D. Call, Monterey<br />
Mr. Michael Carson & Dr. Ronald Steigerwalt,<br />
Palm Springs<br />
Mr. Robert Chattel, Sherman Oaks<br />
Mr. David Crosson & Ms. Natalie Hala,<br />
San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Leonore Daschbach, Atherton<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Joseph E. Davis, Laguna Beach<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Ray Dolby, San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Gloria Gordon Getty, San Francisco<br />
Justice & Mrs. Arthur Gilbert, Pacific Palisades<br />
Mr. Larry Gotlieb, Los Angeles<br />
Mr. Fredric Hamber, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Alfred E. Heller, Kentfield<br />
Mr. Robert & Mrs. Kaye Hiatt, Mill Valley<br />
Mr. Austin E. Hills, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Sean A. Johnston, San Francisco<br />
Mr. George Kennedy, Santa Cruz<br />
Mr. & Mrs. A.M.D. G. Lampen, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Hollis G. Lenderking, La Honda<br />
Mr. Ray & Mrs. Lynn Lent, San Rafael<br />
Mr. Stephen LeSieur, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Linda Lee Lester, Gilroy<br />
Mr. Stephen O. Martin, San Mateo<br />
Mr. William S. McCreery, Hillsborough<br />
Mr. Fielding M. McGehee III & Dr. Rebecca<br />
Moore, San Diego<br />
Drs. Thomas & Jane McLaughlin, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Mary Meeker, New York, NY<br />
Drs. Knox & Carlotta Mellon, Carmel Highlands<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Burnett Miller, Sacramento<br />
Mr. Holbrook T. Mitchell, Napa<br />
Mr. Lawrence E. Moehrke, San Rafael<br />
Mr. Ken Moore, Los Altos<br />
Mr. Mark A. Moore, Burlingame<br />
Mr. Steve Moore, Los Altos<br />
Mr. Tim Muller, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Peter Johnson Musto, San Francisco<br />
Rick & Laura Pfaff, San Francisco<br />
Dr. Edith & Mr. George Piness, Mill Valley<br />
Mr. Adolph Rosekrans, Redwood City<br />
Mrs. Charlotte Schultz, San Francisco<br />
Mr. H. Russell Smith, Pasadena<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Steven L. Swig, San Francisco<br />
John & Andrea Van de Kamp, Pasadena<br />
Mr. A.W.B. Vincent, Monte Carlo, Monaco<br />
Stein & Lenore Weissenberger, Mountain View<br />
David & Rene Whitehead, Sebastopol<br />
Mrs. Alfred S. Wilsey, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Sheila Wishek, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Wulliger,<br />
Pacific Palisades<br />
Mr. Paul M. Wythes, Palo Alto<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Lee Zeigler, San Francisco<br />
$500 to $999<br />
Ms Judith Avery, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Milton Axt, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Ted Balestreri, Monterey<br />
Ms. Marie Bartee, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Michael & Marianne Beeman,<br />
Woodland<br />
Janet F. Bollinger, Sacramento<br />
Ms. Lynn Bonfield, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Ernest A. Bryant, III, Santa Barbara<br />
Mrs. Dewitt K. Burnham, San Francisco<br />
Audrey Edna Butcher, Sunnyvale<br />
Mr. Ted Buttner, Sunol<br />
Mrs. Park Chamberlain, Redwood City<br />
Ms. Lisa Chanoff, San Francisco<br />
Dr. & Mrs. Melvin D. Cheitlin, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. John C. Colver, Belvedere-Tiburon<br />
Renate & Robert Coombs, Oakland<br />
Mrs. Suzanne Crowell, San Marino<br />
Ms. Karen D’Amato, San Carlos<br />
Mr. & Mrs. William Davidow, Woodside<br />
Mr. Lloyd De Llamas, Covina<br />
Frances Dinkelspiel, Berkeley<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Frederick K. Duhring, Los Altos<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Gordon Fish, Pasadena<br />
Mrs. Donald G. Fisher, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. William S. Fisher, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Linda Jo Fitz, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. William S. Floyd, Jr., Portola Valley<br />
Ms. Myra Forsythe, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Launce E. Gamble, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Milo Gates, Redwood City<br />
Mr. Harry R. Gibson III, South Lake Tahoe<br />
Dr. Erica & Hon. Barry Goode, Richmond<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Richard W. Goss II, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Lucy Hamilton, Lexington, KY<br />
Mr. William Alston Hayne, St. Helena<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Joe Head, San Jose<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Robert E. Henderson, Hillsborough<br />
Ms. Ruth M. Hill, Daly City<br />
Janice & Maurice Holloway, San Francisco<br />
Mr. William L. Horton, Los Angeles<br />
Mrs. Katharine H. Johnson, Belvedere-Tiburon<br />
Mr. & Mrs. G. Scott Jones, Mill Valley<br />
Mr. Douglas C. Kent, Davis<br />
Mr. David B. King, Fremont<br />
Mr. Robert Kleiner, Mill Valley<br />
Corrine & Mike Laing, Carmichael<br />
Mrs. Betsy Link, Los Angeles<br />
Mr. Robert London Moore Jr., Verdugo City<br />
Ms. Janice Loomer, Castro Valley<br />
Mr. Bruce M. Lubarsky, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Stephen C. Lyon, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Robert S. Macfarlane Jr., Olga, WA<br />
Ms. Rosemary MacLeod, Daly City<br />
Neil MacPhail, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Leonis C. Malburg, Vernon<br />
Ms. Cathy Maupin, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Loretta A. McClurg, San Mateo<br />
Mr. Michael McCone, San Francisco<br />
Mr. J. Peter McCubbin, Los Angeles<br />
Mr. Ray McDevitt, Mill Valley<br />
Mrs. Nan Tucker McEvoy, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Robert Folger Miller, Burlingame<br />
Mrs. Bruce Mitchell, Burlingame<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Peter J. O’Hara, Sonoma<br />
Susan Olney, San Francisco<br />
Dr. Douglas K. Ousterhout, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. W. Robert Phillips, Yountville<br />
Mr. Kevin M. Pursglove, San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Wanda Rees-Williams, South Pasadena<br />
Ms. Carol Rhine-Medina, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Daniel W. Roberts, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Robert E. Ronus, Los Angeles<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
Mr. Allen Rudolph, Menlo Park<br />
Mr. Paul Sack, San Francisco<br />
Farrel & Shirley Schell, Oakland<br />
Mr. Randy Shaw & Ms. Lainey Feingold, Berkeley<br />
Mr. & Mrs. John B. & Lucretia Sias, San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Thomas Siebert, Springfield<br />
Ms. Margaretta Taylor, New York, NY<br />
Ms. Lynne Tondorf, Daly City<br />
Ms. Catherine G. Tripp, San Francisco<br />
Jane Twomey, San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Virginia Van Druten, Lafayette<br />
Mr. Richard C. Warmer, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Jeanne & Bill C. Watson, Orinda<br />
Mr. Paul L. Wattis, Jr., Paicines<br />
Ms. Barbara J. Webb, San Francisco<br />
Kathleen Weitz, San Francisco<br />
Miss Nancy P. Weston, San Francisco<br />
Walter & Ann Weybright, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Deborah Zepnick, Calabasas<br />
$250 to $499<br />
Ms. Ann C. Abbas, San Francisco<br />
Mr. George H. Anderson, Hollister<br />
Mr. Richard Anderson, Redwood City<br />
Ms. Elizabeth Anderson & Mr. John Rodgers,<br />
San Francisco<br />
Mr. Scott C. Atthowe, Oakland<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Peter Avenali, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Alessandro Baccari, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Richard Banks, Santa Barbara<br />
Mr. & Mrs. George D. Basye, Sacramento<br />
Mary Ann & Leonard Benson, Oakland<br />
Bill & Claire Bogaard, Pasadena<br />
Sandra & William Bond, Carmel<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Dix Boring, San Francisco<br />
Betty Borne, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Dorothy Boswell, Greenbrae<br />
Ms. Barbara Bottarini, San Francisco<br />
Mr. DeWitt F. Bowman, Mill Valley<br />
Mr. Neal Brockmeyer, La Canada-Flintridge<br />
Mrs. William H. V. Brooke, San Francisco<br />
Ross & Lillian Cadenasso, Oakland<br />
Mr. & Mrs. William Cahill, Ross<br />
Ms. Mary E. Campbell, Mill Valley<br />
Ms. Christina Cansler, Richmond<br />
Ms. Christina E Carroll, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Alfred Cavanaugh, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Gordon Chamberlain, Redwood City<br />
Mr. Fred Chambers, San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Jean Chickering, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Herman Christensen, Jr., Atherton<br />
Ms. Marie G. Clyde, San Francisco<br />
Mr. John Coil, Santa Ana<br />
Alan & Janet Coleman, Greenbrae<br />
Mr. David J. Colt, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Darrell Corti, Sacramento<br />
Mr. Jeff Craemer, San Rafael<br />
Ms. Anne Crawford, Half Moon Bay<br />
Mr. Brandyn Criswell, Saint Helena<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Gerald B. Cullinane, Oakland<br />
Mr. Keith Cunningham, Portland, OR<br />
Ms. Gail C. Currey, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Walter Danielsen, Livermore<br />
Mr. Bill Davidson, Redwood City<br />
T. R. Delebo, M.D., Sausalito<br />
Mr. & Mrs. R. Dick, Healdsburg<br />
Mr. Gilmore F. Diekmann, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Laura Bekeart Dietz, Corona Del Mar<br />
Mr. & Mrs. William G. Doolittle, Carmel By<br />
The Sea<br />
Mr. David A. Duncan, Mill Valley<br />
Mr. John East, Saratoga<br />
Mr. Robert M. Ebiner, West Covina<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Robert F. Erburu, West Hollywood<br />
Jacqueline & Christian Erdman, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. John Fisher, San Francisco<br />
Helene & Randall Frakes, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Mark Franich, Los Altos<br />
Deborah Franklin, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Perry Franklin Fry, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Robert D. Funk, Santa Barbara<br />
Ms. Ilse L. Gaede, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Michael S. Gagan, Los Angeles<br />
Ms. Pam Garcia, Oakland<br />
Mr. Karl E. Geier, Lafayette<br />
Mr. Thomas R. Gherini, San Mateo<br />
Mr. George T. Gibson, Sacramento<br />
Mr. & Mrs. John Stevens Gilmore, Sacramento<br />
Mr. J. Jeffrey Green, Monterey<br />
Mr. James Grieb, Pacifica<br />
Mrs. Richard M. Griffith Jr., Belvedere-Tiburon<br />
Ms. Jeannie Gunn, Burbank<br />
Charles & Ginger Guthrie, Richmond<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Timothy J. Hachman, Stockton<br />
Mr. Noble Hamilton, Jr., Greenbrae<br />
Ms. Beth Harris, West Hollywood<br />
Mr. & Mrs. L. W. Harris Jr., Carmel<br />
Dr. & Mrs. R. S. Harrison, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. David Hartley, San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Barbara Hayden, Pasadena<br />
Mr. Warren Heckrotte, Oakland<br />
Ms. Stella Hexter, Oakland<br />
Mr. Bruce Mason Hill, San Francisco<br />
Richard Hitchcock, Ph.D., San Lorenzo<br />
Ms. Linda K. Hmelo, San Francisco<br />
Charles D. Hoffman, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Eric H Hollister, Palo Alto<br />
Ms. Lois J. Holmes, Greenbrae<br />
Dr. Robert L. Hoover, San Luis Obispo<br />
Dr. & Mrs. R. W. Horrigan, San Francisco<br />
Mr. William Hudson, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Robert C. Hughes, El Cerrito<br />
Ms. Audrey Hulburd, San Rafael<br />
Mr. Richard Hyde, Belvedere-Tiburon<br />
Ms. Carol G. Johnson, Redwood City<br />
James & Paula Karman, Chico<br />
Ms. Margaret J. Kavounas, San Francisco<br />
Harold Kellman, Fremont<br />
Mr. Michael Kurihara, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Gary F. Kurutz, Sacramento<br />
Irmgard Lafrentz, San Jose<br />
Mr. & Mrs. William C. Landrath, Carmel<br />
Mr. Jack Lapidos, San Francisco<br />
Drs. Juan & Joanne Lara, Pasadena<br />
Mr. Jeri Lardy, El Dorado Hills<br />
Ms. Judy Lee, Redwood City<br />
Ms. Jamila Mei Chun Leung & Mr. Siew Weng<br />
Lee, Berkeley<br />
Mr. Leandro Lewis, Healdsburg<br />
Mrs. Maryon Davies Lewis, San Francisco<br />
Jerri Lightfoot, Fremont<br />
Mr. & Mrs. John G. Lilienthal, San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Robert Livermore, Danville<br />
Mr. Tim Madsen, Santa Cruz<br />
Mr. John J. Mahoney, Pleasant Hill<br />
Francis R. Mahony III, June Lake<br />
Dr. & Mrs. William Margaretten, Burlingame<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Thomas H. May, Oakville<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Dean Mayberry, Palo Alto<br />
Mrs. David Jamison McDaniel, San Francisco<br />
Mr. David McEwen, Newport Beach<br />
Mr. Robert McIntyre, Riverside<br />
Ms. Mary Ann McNicholas, Alameda<br />
Ms. Rachel Metzger, San Francisco<br />
Mr. James Miller, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. O’Malley Miller, Pasadena<br />
Ms. Alicia Morga, San Francisco<br />
Susan Morris, Belvedere-Tiburon<br />
Ms. Elaine Myers, San Francisco<br />
Andrew T. Nadell, M.D., San Francisco<br />
William & Carland Nicholson, Ross<br />
Mr. & Mrs. J. E. C. Nielsen, Mill Valley<br />
Ms. Joanne Nissen, Soledad<br />
Mr. Stanley Norsworthy, Fresno<br />
Ms. Mary Ann Notz, Burlingame<br />
Mr. Thomas E. Nuckols, South Pasadena<br />
Barbara O’Brien, Daly City<br />
Ms. Harriett L. Orchard, Carmichael<br />
Ms. Kathleen O’Reilley, San Mateo<br />
Dr. Thomas J. Osborne, Laguna Beach
d o n o r s<br />
Ms. Diane Ososke, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Otter, Belvedere-Tiburon<br />
Ms. Mary J. Parrish, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Warren Perry, San Francisco<br />
James Brice & Carole Peterson, Pleasanton<br />
Dr. & Mrs. John O. Pohlmann, Seal Beach<br />
Ms. Bonnie J. Portnoy, San Rafael<br />
Mr. Herbert C. Puffer, Folsom<br />
Ms. Carolyn Rees, Caldwell, ID<br />
Mr. Richard W. Reinhardt, San Francisco<br />
Mr. James Reynolds, Berkeley<br />
Mr. Terence Riddle, San Francisco<br />
Mrs. Benjamin H. Rose III, San Francisco<br />
Mr. William C. Rowe, Redwood City<br />
Mr. Rudolfo Ruibal, Riverside<br />
Mrs. A. Sawyer, Atherton<br />
Sarah Schulman, El Cerrito<br />
Mr. Bernard Schulte Jr., Orinda<br />
Rev. Thomas L. Seagrave, San Mateo<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Frederic Shearer, Essex, England<br />
Mr. David Sheldon, Menlo Park<br />
Ms. Jan Sinnicks, Petaluma<br />
Mr. & Mrs. J.E.G. Smit, Santa Ynez<br />
Ms. Harriet Sollod, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Martin & Sherril A. Spellman,<br />
Fremont<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Robert & Susan Spjut, San Francisco<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Moreland L. Stevens, Newcastle<br />
Mr. Daniel E. Stone, San Francisco<br />
Mr. George David Sturges, Park City, UT<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Stephen L. Taber, San Francisco<br />
Tony & Beth Tanke, Davis<br />
Mr. Robert Telfer, San Mateo<br />
Ms. Carmen Terry, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Arnold Thackray, Menlo Park<br />
Mr. Max Thelen, Jr., San Rafael<br />
Mr. Richard L. Tower, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Thomas Tragardh, San Francisco<br />
Ms. Marilyn Tragoutsis, San Mateo<br />
Mr. Christopher VerPlanck, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Paul A. Violich, San Francisco<br />
Kathleen Whalen, Sacramento<br />
Mr. Thomas J. White, Oakland<br />
Mrs. J. Wiest, Riverside<br />
Mr. Walter J. Williams, San Francisco<br />
Mr. Steven R. Winkel, Berkeley<br />
Mr. Mark L. Woodbury, Oakland<br />
Mrs. Edwin Woods, Santa Maria<br />
Ms. Nancy C. Woodward, Carmichael<br />
Mr. Robert A. Young, Los Angeles<br />
CORPORATE, FOUNDATION<br />
& GOVERNMENT SUPPORT<br />
$200,000 and above<br />
Council on Library & Information Resources,<br />
Washington, DC / The Andrew Mellon<br />
Foundation, New York<br />
$50,000 to $199,000<br />
The San Francisco Foundation, San Francisco<br />
$10,000 to $49,999<br />
Barkley Fund, Corona Del Mar<br />
Grants for the Arts, San Francisco<br />
Institutional Venture Partners, Menlo Park<br />
Intel Community Grant Program, Hillsborough<br />
Union Bank of <strong>California</strong>, San Francisco<br />
$1,000 to $9,999<br />
<strong>California</strong> State Library (Library Services &<br />
Technology Act, Local History Digital<br />
Resources Program), Sacramento<br />
Chanel, Inc., New York<br />
Dodge & Cox, San Francisco<br />
George W. Davis Foundation, Belvedere<br />
Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, Palo Alto<br />
Institute of Museum &Library Services,<br />
Connecting to Collections Grant,<br />
Washington, DC<br />
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ<br />
John E. & Helen K. Cahill Fund, Novato<br />
Louise M. Davies Foundation, San Francisco<br />
Mayfield Fund, Menlo Park<br />
Moore Dry Dock Foundation, San Francisco<br />
National Endowment for the Humanities,<br />
Preservation Assistance Grant,<br />
Washington, DC<br />
Sacramento Trust for Hist. Preservation,<br />
Sacramento<br />
Sansome Street Advisors, San Francisco<br />
The S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, San Francisco<br />
Silicon Valley Community Foundation,<br />
Mountain View<br />
Simcha Foundation of the Jewish Community<br />
Endowment Fund, San Francisco<br />
Trinet HR Corporation, San Leandro<br />
$250 to $999<br />
Bands of Angels, LLC, Menlo Park<br />
Colliers Parrish International, Inc., San Jose<br />
Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Daly City<br />
The Desk Set, San Francisco<br />
JRP <strong>Historical</strong> Consulting Services, Davis<br />
Limoneira Company, Santa Paula<br />
Metropolitan Arts Partnership, Sacramento<br />
MOC Insurance Services, San Francisco<br />
Muex Home Museum, Fresno<br />
Raymond K. & Natha Ostby Foundation, Saratoga<br />
The San Francisco Club of Litho. & Print,<br />
San Francisco<br />
In Kind Donations<br />
Sandy Alderson, San Diego<br />
Kirk Amyx, San Francisco<br />
Amyx Photography, San Francisco<br />
Anchor Brewing Company, San Francisco<br />
Apertifs Bar Management, Santa Rosa<br />
Belfor Property Restoration, Hayward<br />
Mr. David Burkhart, San Bruno<br />
John Burton, Santa Rosa<br />
Candy Store, San Francisco<br />
H. Joseph Ehrmann, San Francisco<br />
Elixir Cocktail Catering, San Francisco<br />
Elixir Saloon, San Francisco<br />
Etherington Conservation Services,<br />
The HF Group, Walla Walla, WA<br />
Heller Ehrman, LLP, San Francisco<br />
Katzgraphics, San Francisco<br />
Korbel, Sonoma<br />
Mitchell Landy, Richmond<br />
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles<br />
John & Sue Molinari, San Francisco<br />
Jean Moulin, Moulin Studios Archive<br />
Sentinel, San Francisco<br />
Square One Organic Spirits, San Francisco<br />
St. Regis San Francisco<br />
Union Bank of <strong>California</strong>, San Francisco<br />
United States Bartenders Guild<br />
CALIFORNIA LEGACY<br />
CIRCLE<br />
Estate Gifts Received<br />
North Baker, Tiburon<br />
Muriel T. French, San Francisco<br />
J. Lowell Groves, San Francisco<br />
Louis H. Heilbron, San Francisco<br />
Arthur Mejia, San Francisco<br />
Mary K. Ryan, San Francisco<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011
O F F I C E R S<br />
thomas R. owens, San Francisco, President<br />
Thomas Decker, San Francisco, Vice President<br />
Larry Gotlieb, Sherman Oaks, Secretary<br />
John Brown, Riverside, Treasurer<br />
B O A R D O F T R U S T E E s<br />
Sandy Alderson, Rancho Santa Fe<br />
jan berckefeldt, Lafayette<br />
melinda bittan, Los Angeles<br />
Robert Chattel, Sherman Oaks<br />
Fred Hamber, San Francisco<br />
Robert Hiatt, Mill Valley<br />
Gary Kurutz, Sacramento<br />
STEPHEN LeSIEUR, San Francisco<br />
john L. molinari, San Francisco<br />
Sue Molinari, San Francisco<br />
mark a. moore, Burlingame<br />
christina rose, Los Angeles<br />
BLANCA ZARAZúA, Salinas<br />
C A L I F O R N I A H I S T O R I C A L<br />
F O U N D A T I O N B O A R D<br />
DEWITT F. BOWMAN, Mill Valley, President<br />
Bill McCreery, Hillsborough<br />
robert a. McNeely, San Diego<br />
PETER MUSTO, San Francisco<br />
EDITH L. PINESS, Mill Valley<br />
DAVID BARRY WHITEHEAD, San Francisco<br />
p r e s i d e n t s e M E R I T I<br />
MARIBELLE LEAVITT, San Francisco<br />
ROBERT A. McNEELY, San Diego<br />
Edith L. Piness, Mill Valley<br />
Stephen L. Taber, San Francisco<br />
JOHN K. VAN DE KAMP, Los Angeles<br />
e x e c u t i v e d i r e c t o r e m e r i t u s<br />
MICHAEL McCONE, San Francisco<br />
s p e c i a l a d v i s o r<br />
HUELL HOWSER, Los Angeles<br />
on the back cover<br />
Over the course of his career, the widely traveled artist Harry Humphrey Moore<br />
painted a variety of landscapes and portraits influenced by his sojourns in Europe<br />
and Asia—among them paintings of Spanish beauties. The iconic images of<br />
romantic Spanish costume, culture, and architecture depicted in this painting have<br />
been accepted as representations of the state’s Spanish and Mexican heritage despite<br />
a growing historical record of economic, social, and political realities.<br />
Harry Humphrey Moore (American, 1844–1926)<br />
Woman Playing Guitar (Spanish Girl), n.d.<br />
Oil on canvas, 16 1 ⁄ 2 x 9 1 ⁄ 2 inches<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong>, gift of James J. Coyle, 69-224-1-2<br />
Digital file cah331513; The Bridgeman Art Library<br />
f e l l o w s<br />
William N. Davis Jr., Sacramento<br />
Richard H. Dillon, Mill Valley<br />
Charles A. Fracchia, San Francisco<br />
Robert V. Hine, Irvine<br />
Gloria Ricci Lothrop, Pasadena<br />
James R. Mills, Coronado<br />
James Jabus Rawls, Sonoma<br />
Andrew Rolle, San Marino<br />
Earl F. Schmidt Jr., Palo Alto<br />
Kevin Starr, San Francisco<br />
Francis J. Weber, Mission Hills<br />
Charles Wollenberg, Berkeley
s p o t l i g h t<br />
Photographer<br />
Eadweard Muybridge<br />
Location<br />
Alameda County<br />
Mills Seminary, Seminary Park, Alameda County,<br />
Cal., [1127], circa 1872<br />
Albumen print<br />
<strong>California</strong> <strong>Historical</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />
Gift of Dr. Albert Shumate,<br />
CHS2011.470.tif<br />
They look comfortable, these young<br />
friends, even in those clothes. It was<br />
some time in the 1870s that these<br />
young women relaxed on the expansive<br />
grounds of Oakland’s Mills Seminary,<br />
later known as Mills College, posing for<br />
the celebrated photographer, Eadweard<br />
Muybridge.<br />
How did they envision their future<br />
What were their dreams Privileged<br />
Yes, certainly. Determined to make the<br />
most of it Time would tell.<br />
It would not be until 1910, well into<br />
their maturity, that these <strong>California</strong><br />
women would gain the right to vote.<br />
Their poise, calm, and good humor<br />
would be a great addition to the polity.<br />
We could use some of that now.<br />
Jonathan Spaulding<br />
<br />
<strong>California</strong> History • volume <strong>88</strong> number 4 2011