CHAPTER X
RACIAL ARISTOCRACY
In all the annals of time, there is no record of a situation like that in California during the forty years of pastoral peace from 1781 to 1821. The hardships of that earlier decade were soon forgotten; the trials of travel by sea and by land quickly faded from memory; Arcadian content descended upon this distant land of perpetual springtime, and the curtain of isolation hid from a happy people the turmoil and strife of other lands.
To them it mattered not at all that a young military genius from Corsica fought his way to the throne of France, made war on the rest of Europe, rose to the zenith of kingly power, made and unmade kings and princes, and aroused all Europe to sanguinary conflict. In the lotus-land of California, a carefree people, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” lived in peaceful quiet while the new-born United States engaged in oldworld controversies, and fought another war with England; while in South America the fires of revolution were kindled in the colonies of Spai, to spread their conflagration northward to the land of the ancient Aztecs. Nothing they cared, for little did they know of the happenings of a world beyond their own California. At the beginning of this period, in 1781, according to the most competent and dependable authorities, there were about six hundred white people in California, a majority of whom were in and about Monterey. A few had come in the little sailboats from Mexico, but most of
them over the difficult and dangerous Anza trail. By this route, too, through waterless deserts and across moun-
tain ranges, had been driven the live stock, that in this
land of favoring clime and fruitful soil, had multiplied with such astonishing rapidity. The white population during these four decades increased from six hundred to thirty-two hundred seventy in 1820. The most reliable estimates are, 1780, 600; 1790,
970; 1800, 1200; 1810, 2130; 1820, 3270. And almost entirely by births, for immigration practically ceased when the Anza trail was closed by the Yuma massacre in 1781. Isolated from the rest of the world, these happy adventurers of Spanish descent and their rapidly increasing progeny, under a genial sky, and amid surroundings the most delightful that nature had ever prepared for man, recked little of the world beyond their imperial and fruitful domain. This was the Spanish period— Mexican independence came in 1821—and California was, politically,a Spanish colony.
But Spanish control
was remote, and of an exceedingly tenuous nature. It was exercised indirectly through Mexico, and Mexico was itself a distant land, and only mildly concerned with the local affairs of California. Practically the only concern of either Spain or Mexico respecting California during this period was that it should be occupied by their own people, and not by those of some other nation. Chapman characterizes the up governing motives of Spain and Mexico when after referring to the “twelve years of teeming Facsimile Signature activity from 1769 to 1781,” and Carlos the quiet that followed, he says:
“Though they could not have dreamed it, the Alta Californians were filling the role which Bucareli—Mexico’s greatest Viceroy—had cast for them; a role of deep significance, and fraught with moment. Few as they were, imperfect as were their standards of civilized life, they were
on the ground,
and that in itself was
enough to keep Alta California safe from foreign occupation, with the mineral wealth undiscovered. They compelled the Englishman and the Russian to make the center
of their
settlements
farther
north,
within
the
immediate range of the profitable fur trade, instead of
locating in Alta California, as each of them wished to do.
In this way the Alta Californians virtually saved the intervening coast of Oregon and Washington. They were the sine qua non of American occupation. Americans may rejoice that they were there, and people of other nationalities feel glad or sorry, according as their sympathies may direct them, but in the light of events as they occurred, who can say that the Alta Californians
did not play an important part in the history of North America? In justice, not anybody.” But neither thought nor care did these Alta Californians give to international jealousies or to national necessities. They only knew that they had found a land of sweet delights, where a maximum of pleasure attended a minimum of toil. The restrictions of government rested lightly on these happy people, and the offices of that day, except those of Governor and Alcalde, were more or less of an ornamental nature, carrying with them certain honors and precedence. There was much official ceremony, and courtly manners were cultivated and practiced. Indeed, these early Californians were a ceremonious people, and courtesy seemed a part of their nature. The Presidio garrison, with its highly ornamented officers added just the right touch of color to the local picture. There really wasn’t much else for these officers to do.). A mental picture of the California of 1781-1821 is not easily produced. The first and greatest difficulty is the elimination of a century of human progress—the casting out of mind of steam and electric energy, now multifariously applied; of transmission of intelligence by wire and wireless; of swift transportation by land, by sea and through the all-encircling air; of our present familiarity, through frequent and world-wide explorations, with the then hidden places of the earth; and of the multitude of human achievements, now commonplace and not easy of mental effacement, then unknown and unimagined. Without this attitude of mind, however, it will be impossible properly to understand and appreciate the pastoral days of Spanish California. Most important, the imagination must conceive a distant and little known land, where a happy and hospitable people, knowing little of the outer world—and caring less—lived upon nature’s bounteous gifts with a minimum of labor; where a handful of white people, with the emotional and sprightly characteristics of a Latin race, had subjugated and utilized forty times their number of semi-barbarous Indians, who supplied the “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for their pale-faced brothers. These Spanish Californians were not only masters of this enchanted land, but were
freed from
the irksomeness
of uncon-
genial toil, and the inevitable result was a racial aristocracy, an inferior race subjected by peaceful means to the rule of a few adventurous invaders. Be it said to the credit of the Spaniard that his rule was benign. Through the medium of the Missions, harmonious relations between these untutored natives and their self appointed masters were maintained, and Aristotle’s ideal aristocracy, where a small minority, morally and intellectually superior, governed a large majority of inferiors, became a fact. Racially, the line was marked and definite. There was no slavery, nor was there any servile relation, but there was a dependent class that relieved the Spaniard of every form of labor that was not congenial to his taste. The relationship may be glimpsed from a statement
made by the wife of General Vallejo when asked by Torres what could be found to do for so many servants as he saw about her home. She replied, “Each one of my children, boy or girl, has a servant who has no other
duty but to care for him or her. I have two servants for myself. Four or five grind the corn for the tortillas, for here we entertain so many guests that three grinders are not enough. Six or seven serve in the kitchen. Five or six are constantly busy washing the clothes of the children and servants, and nearly a dozen are required to
attend to the sewing and spinning. As a rule, the Indians are not inclined to learn more than one duty. She who is taught cooking will not hear of washing clothes; and a good washerwoman considers herself insulted if she is compelled to sew or spin. All our servants are very clever. They have no fixed pay; we give them all they need. If sick, we care for them;
when their children are born we act as godparents; and we give their children instruction.” This picture is typical of the relationship that existed between the races, and from which developed a social aristocracy that gave to Spanish California a rare and distinctive charm. Probably the most unique feature, and the one most difficult mentally to grasp of this period, is the grace and refinement of manner, and the ceremonial courtesies cultivated and practiced in this remote land by adventurous pioneers. We are accustomed to associate frontier life with rude and primitive surroundings, and to think of pioneers as hardy folk with little thought for the social graces; but here was a frontier whose isolation from the world centers of civilization was all but complete, and yet where life was easy and pleasant, and the
surroundings all conducive to happiness and joy. Here were pioneers, who to reach this distant land, had bravely faced the formidable dangers of land and sea, but who had not lost their love for social pleasures, nor left behind their habits of ceremonious courtesy. The seeming strangeness of it all, however, will disappear when we reflect that the conditions in Spanish California were precisely those from
Yi) ees,
which have ever developed the re- = V a 3 finements that mark the social inter- ~ course of a leisure class. It was so in Greece and in Rome,
where
developed
a leisure class for whom
all
menial duties were performed by servitors of an inferior social caste. It was so in our southern states before the civil war, when slaves administered to the wants of an
aristocracy whose political influence long controlled our nation, and whose social prestige was recognized on two continents. And so it was in far away California in that wonderful pastoral period when the ceremonial Don was relieved of every uncongenial task by the numerous natives who became his willing servitors, and who cheer-
fully attended to his personal and his domestic needs. To this must, of course, be added the chivalrous inheritance of the Spaniard, and the delightful charm of his new found home.