Merced County CA Archives History - Books .....Indians, Spaniards, And Mexicans 1925
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Book Title: History Of Merced County California

CHAPTER I

INDIANS, SPANIARDS, AND MEXICANS

   Merced County extends entirely across the San Joaquin Valley, with its
greatest length in an approximately east-northeast and west-southwest direction.
It is approximately sixty miles long by thirty wide and contains 1907 square
miles. On the east it runs up a few miles into the beginnings of the low
foothills of the Sierra Nevada; on the west it reaches to the most easterly
summit of the Coast Range. Its lowest point, where the San Joaquin River leaves
the county to pass into Stanislaus on the north, is less than a hundred feet
above sea level. The greater part of the surface is plain, sloping gently down
from both west and east to the San Joaquin, which bisects the county into
roughly equal West Side and East Side.

   Besides the San Joaquin, the principal stream is the Merced, nearly forty
miles of the lower course of which lies within the county's boundaries, roughly
parallel to and about six or seven miles from the easterly half of the northern
border. These two are the only streams which have /their sources in the high
mountains and therefore have anything like a year-around water supply. On the
East Side south of the Merced, Bear Creek, Mariposa Creek, and the Chowchilla
River carry considerable water during the rainy season, but run very low or
entirely dry during summer and fall. The two first-named head in the Mariposa
County hills at an altitude around two thousand feet. The Chowchilla, which
forms the boundary between Merced and Madera Counties for something like
twenty-five miles, from the eastern foothills to the vicinity of the main State
highway up and down the San Joaquin Valley, is somewhat larger and heads
somewhat higher, but is also dry during a considerable portion of the year.

   Between these streams other smaller creeks of similar intermittent character
run down towards the San Joaquin. All, even including the Chowchilla and Bear
and Mariposa Creeks, spread out and merge into sloughs as they approach the San
Joaquin, so that their lower courses are difficult to trace.

   On the West Side similar intermittent streams run down from the eastern
summit of the Coast Range to the San Joaquin. They lie for the most part in a
region of still smaller rainfall than those of the East Side just mentioned, and
run dry even sooner. Of these Los Banos, San Luis, Romero, and Quinto Creeks are
the chief.

   The Merced reaches the San Joaquin through a depression having bluffs of
twenty to forty or fifty feet on each side, and has a considerable river valley
of its own, of rich farming land. The smaller streams flow through the lower
country through channels which they have cut through the plain, and it is the
rule that the land immediately along their sides is higher than that at a
distance. They have built up the land near them by successive deposits of silt,
like miniature Niles or Mississippis.

   Except for a dozen-mile strip of scrub timber and brush along the higher part
of the western hill portion, and a quarter mile or less of willow, cottonwood,
water oak and lesser growth along the San Joaquin and Merced River bottoms, the
county as found by civilized man was practically treeless. It just about reached
the beginnings of scrub growth along its eastern boundary, there was here and
there a little timber along the smaller creeks, in the southeast especially some
scattering water oaks dotted the open country at wide intervals, and along the
course of the San Joaquin, extending widely beyond the limits of its bordering
trees and bushes, was one of those regions which we see frequently referred to
in the early accounts as tulares—a place of tules—its bounds coinciding more or
less closely with the part of the San Joaquin's plain subject to annual overflow
from the snow waters of early summer.

   But on the whole the impression the territory conveyed was that of a treeless
plain, across which in the old days of horseback travel it was a long, and in
the dry season a pretty cheerless journey. With an annual average rainfall at
Merced of between ten and eleven inches, and less than that as we go south and
west, it was dry and desolate enough for the several months from the early
ending of spring until the fall rains, and we can enter into the feelings of
Ensign Gabriel Moraga, redoubtable soldier of Spain and the man who more than
any other of his race touches the county's history, which led him to confer upon
the river the name afterwards applied as well to the county.

   It was in the latter half of September, 1806, when on a punitive expedition
against "Gentile" Indians of the Valley who had contracted the objectionable
habit of running off horses from around San Juan Bautista and San Jose, that
this Spanish pioneer entered what is now Merced County, probably by way of the
present route of the Pacheco Pass highway and San Luis Creek. With an expedition
of twenty-five men, including Father Pedro Munoz, chaplain and diarist, he
crossed the San Joaquin somewhere near where the Santa Rita bridge now is,
crossed and named the Arroyo de los Mariposas not far from its mouth, and
proceeding north and northwest, came after a dry and weary ride to the stream
which, supposedly because of the refreshment it afforded his men and animals, he
named the "River of Our Lady of Mercy."

   From the Merced Moraga proceeded further north and successively passed the
Tuolumne, Stanislaus, Calaveras, and Mokelumne, then turned south and reached
the San Joaquin where it flows southwest, now forming the boundary between
Madera and Fresno Counties. On the Stanislaus he found the Indian village of
Tualamne. At the San Joaquin and again three days later on the Kings—the "Rio de
los Reyes," discovered and named by an expedition in the preceding year—Indians
told him a tale of white soldiers who had come across the eastern mountains
twenty years before and fought a battle. Possibly, Chapman surmises, some not
otherwise known and disastrous expedition had formerly been made by Spaniards
from New Mexico.

   There seems to be no certain record of the name of any Spaniard who entered
what is now Merced County before Gabriel Moraga— or even the larger territory
which for a brief time was Merced County. Garces and Anza, and Joaquin Moraga,
Gabriel's father, at about the time of the American War of Independence, came
into the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, but it does not appear that
they stayed in it so far north. Gabriel Moraga himself had been on the San
Joaquin the previous year. It is said that Los Banos Creek received its name
from the Fathers of San Juan Bautista, who were accustomed to cross the eastern
Coast Range summit to the rock pools—the baths—near its head, to refresh
themselves; but from what we read of ,the relations with the inland Indians at
the time of Moraga's expedition, it seems probable that this was at a later date.

   By this year, 1806, Spain had extended her occupation of California
practically as far as she was ever to do, with the exception of San Rafael and
Sonoma north of San Francisco Bay. For a clear understanding of the situation as
it then existed, we must resolutely banish from our minds the present eastern
boundary of California. Substantially the eastern summit of the Coast Range
marked Spain's most easterly extension of her occupation. The heyday of the
missions was soon to pass; and though we find some mention of the
Christianization of the Gentile Indians of the great interior valley as the
reason for expeditions thither, it is principally to that noble animal the horse
that we owe what was done along that line—to the horse and the desire of the
Indian, both neophyte and Gentile, to possess him, and to the restiveness of
growing numbers of the neophytes, who fled from the discipline of the missions
across the mountains to their kin in the San Joaquin Valley to the eastward, and
for a third cause, to the fear the Spaniards were coming to have of the Gentile
Indians as corrupters of the neophytes. Mariano Payeras, who became president of
the missions in 1815, expressed the opinion that the time had come to heed the
Reglamento for founding establishments east of the Coast Range—not merely
missions but strong presidios. He says in his biennial report for 1817-1818:

   "The object of our ministry being the propagation of the Faith among the
Gentiles, and Gentiles no longer existing among the coast mountains, the padres
of various missions have attempted to baptize those living in ,the district
called the Tulares. They, however, have never succeeded. The Tulare Indians are
inconstant. Today they come, tomorrow they are gone—not on foot, as they came,
but on horseback. With such guests, no horse is safe in the northern valley. And
the worst of it is that having crossed the Tulare Valley and the mountains that
surround it, they kill the horses and eat them. The government has not been
neglectful in pursuing such deadly enemies, but little has been effected,
because great lagoons surrounded by green tules shelter them from our horsemen.
For this reason the padres and more intelligent officers think it needful to
form in the Valley of the Tulares a new chain of missions with presidios. . . .
If this be not done, the time will come when the existence of the province will
be threatened, and a region that up to a recent time has been a center of
tranquility will be changed into an Apacheria."

   Payeras writes to the padres in July, 1819:

   "The Governor of this province, Don Pablo Vicente de Sola, advises me that he
has been informed from the South of the scandalous abuse at certain missions
(San Fernando and San Gabriel) of neophyte equestrianism. Neophytes take with
brazenness, and in broad daylight, horses even though tied. They load them with
women in the public roads. I am reminded by the Governor of the many royal
cedulas forbidding Indians to ride and that even your reverences cannot give
them permission to own or use a horse, if Law 33 of Book VI, Title 1, of the
Recopilacion is observed. . . . In the Tulares (I am told by the Governor) both
Christians and Gentiles make their journeys on horseback. Even the women are
learning to ride. Fairs are held at which horses stolen from the missions are
put up for sale."

   There were three other expeditions besides Moraga's in this year of 1806, but
none of them appear to have come near Merced County. Chapman tells us that one
set out from San Francisco, but that there is no account of its discoveries
surviving. There is but little more of a second which set out from San Diego and
seemingly went inland to the north of San Luis Rey. The third, under Lieutenant
Francisco Ruiz, with Father Jose Maria Zalvidea as diarist, appears to have come
across from Santa Ynez into Kern County to Buena Vista Lake, reaching its
farthest north about the present site of Bakersfield.

   Turning south they came on the fourth day, says Chapman, to a place where,
years before, the Indians had killed two soldiers— "an allusion to an otherwise
unknown expedition." It is interesting to note that this is the second otherwise
unknown expedition commemorated by one lone incident, and of course it will not
do to conclude too dogmatically that there may not have been others.

   The runaway neophytes had taught their wild kinsmen Spanish ways, the use of
firearms, and their appetite for horseflesh. The problem therefore combined
plans for saving the souls of the Indians and the horses of the Spaniards. Thus
the search for mission sites which might serve as a means of defense as well as,
for the purposes of conversion, became a principal object in Governor
Arrillaga's plans in sending out these expeditions.

  Moraga confirmed previous accounts as to mission sites and Indians, Chapman
tells us, and adds in the next sentence that his diarist Munoz's account
mentioned the Merced River as the best location they had found, and spoke
favorably of the Kings River, though a presidio would be required. Aside from
them there were few promising sites, he says.

   From this reference to the Merced, if what Moraga confirmed was what Munoz
mentioned, apparently there had been an earlier expedition into the territory of
this county, quite conceivably the expedition of 1805.

   Richman says that throughout 1806 local troops in search of fugitives, under
Moraga and other commanders, ranged the Tulare region from Tejon Pass to the
latitude of San Francisco. It is entirely possible, therefore, that others
besides Moraga and his men may have reached the Merced that year. It is
interesting also to note the early-use of "Tulare"—clearly the place of the
tules, and as clearly applied to the whole valley.

   Summing up the four expeditions in his biennial report in March, 1807, says
Chapman, Father-President Estevan Tapis stated that they had visited twenty-four
native villages with a total population of fifty-three hundred Indians. Mission
sites were few and in any event a presidio would be necessary, he said, because
of the remoteness of that section and the great number of Indians who dwelt
beyond the regions lately explored. Referring, apparently, to Indians living in
the Sierra Nevada, Richman says 192 of the 5300 Indians encountered were baptized.

   As to the location of the proposed mission site on the Merced, Eldredge tells
us (Vol. II, p. 94) that it was on that stream, near the site of the present
city of Merced, and leaves us to make what inferences we can from that. At any
rate, none of the plans for establishing missions or presidios in the interior
ever materialized.

   The only remedy against the Indians of the interior continued to be small
military expeditions similar to those of Moraga and the others in 1806. Moraga
himself was the most prominent of the leaders, and commanded expeditions all the
way from the Colorado to well north on the Sacramento. Chapman tells us that his
service sheet of 1820 shows that he had taken part in forty-six such
expeditions—"vastly more than the few of which the historians as yet have
knowledge." We read of him successively as private, corporal, sergeant,
color-sergeant, brevet-lieutenant, and lieutenant. He died at Santa Barbara,
June 15, 1823.

   In a remarkable expedition in 1808, in which he penetrated apparently about
as far north as Butte City, and explored the Sierra rivers from about Stockton
to Butte well up into the mountains, he turned south and in the latter part of
October "made his customary up-river explorations," Chapman tells us, "of both
the Tuolumne and Merced." How extensive these explorations were we can only
judge from the fact that it was October 13 when he crossed the Feather River,
"certainly not far from Oroville," and that after the long journey southward,
the explorations in question and additional travel which involved "crossing the
San Joaquin at the mouth of the Merced," and going northward to Pescadero on
Union Island, he reached Mission San Jose on October 23.

   He touched Merced County again in 1810, when he marched south from the
vicinity of Walnut Creek up the west shore of the San Joaquin, and at some point
in Merced County turned west along San Luis Creek and went through a pass in the
mountains to San Juan Bautista—apparently Pacheco Pass. This was in August. In
October of the same year he was back again on a flying trip. Leaving San Jose on
the 19th he struck east to Pescadero, next day captured eighty-one natives,
fifty-one of whom were women, whom he presently released, crossed to the right
bank of the San Joaquin, ranged the country watered by the Stanislaus, Tuolumne,
and Merced, without, however, capturing any more runaways, and on October 27th
reached Santa Clara again.

   "Neither on this expedition nor in that of August," says Chapman, "had he
found suitable mission sites. Indeed the previously much praised Merced country
was now characterized as unsuitable." Do we here possibly get a hint that 1810
was one of those abnormally dry years when the Merced carries only a third or a
quarter of its normal flow? It must be confessed that the foundation for such an
inference is slight, for the Spaniards had not found sites on ephemeral rivers
unsuitable in the coast region.

   Perhaps the explanation is to be sought rather in the politico-ecclesiastical
situation than in the foibles of nature, for it was just at this time that the
plan of mission expansion in the interior was "superseded by the hitherto
incidental factors of pursuing runaways, recovering stolen animals, and
punishing the Indians who had committed the robberies." That the mission plan
was not given up without a struggle is indicated by the fact that an expedition
four years later to the vicinity of Lake Tulare made search for a suitable site
for one.

   The presence of the Russians north of San Francisco Bay now drew attention
that way, and the great central valley was somewhat neglected. There seems to
have been no important expedition in 1812. In 1813, however, there was one,
commanded by Sergeant Francisco Soto. With a hundred Indians from Mission San
Jose and twelve soldiers who came from San Francisco by boat, he fought a
battle, presumed to have been on the San Joaquin. The story is that there were a
thousand Indians against him, of whom many were killed, while the Spaniards lost
only one man, one of the mission Indians. Making due allowance for the
reluctance of the Spanish chronicler, whoever he may have been, to hew to the
strict line of truth, the account probably gives a fair enough idea of how far
from formidable the Indians of all this part of the State were.

   In 1815 Governor Sola arrived and sent out his so-called "great expedition"
into the tulares after runaways. It seems to have consisted of simultaneous
expeditions from various points. Accounts of two survive. Sergeant Juan Ortega,
with Father Cabot and thirty soldiers, marched from San Miguel into the southern
part of the great valley. Sergeant Jose Dolores Pico, commanding the other, with
Father Jaime Escudo, started from San Juan Bautista on November 3. Five days
later, somewhere near the junction of the Kings and the San Joaquin, he fell
upon a village and captured sixty-six Indians, fifty of whom were Christians.
Ortega with his party soon after joined him, and they marched to the San
Joaquin. It is recorded that on one occasion they saw two hundred and fifty
horses, most of them recently killed. They recovered a large band of animals and
sent them back to the missions. At Mariposa Slough, the Indians by some artifice
misled the Spaniards and enabled a number of renegades to escape. On November 29
Pico reached San Juan Bautista with ten sick soldiers and nine prisoners. There
does not seem to have been much foundation for Governor Sola's boast that the
"great expedition" had been a pronounced success.

   By 1817, after several years of rather slight attention, the Indians had
become more troublesome, and Governor Sola sent out three expeditions—one under
Sergeant Sanchez, which fought a "great" battle with the Mokelumnes at or near
modern Stockton; a second under Lieutenant Jose Maria Estudillo, which went from
Monterey into the Kern country and returned down the Kings and the San Joaquin
and turned westward to San Juan Bautista and Monterey; and the third, under
Gabriel Moraga, now a lieutenant, against the Mojaves far to the south.

   In 1823 the last and one of the greatest expeditions of the Spaniards to the
interior marched into the Sacramento Valley to investigate a rumor of a party of
Americans or Englishmen some forty or fifty leagues to the north of San
Francisco. It was commanded by the famous Luis Arguello, included fifty-nine
officers and soldiers, Father Bias Ordaz as chaplain and diarist, John Gilroy as
interpreter, and a number of mission Indians. It seems to have found no
Anglo-Saxons. Who they were does not appear—most probably Hudson's Bay Company
trappers.

   Spanish rule gave place to Mexican in that year. Punitive expeditions did not
cease under the Mexicans, but internal problems distracted them pretty
completely from any plans of founding missions in the interior.

   Hittell tells us of one of the Mexican expeditions of several years later:

   "In 1839 an expedition of nine soldiers and six rancheros, under the command
of Ensign Pedro Mesa, marched against the Tularenos in the San Joaquin Valley
with the object of punishing horse-thieves and recovering stolen stock, but soon
found that the Indians were much more formidable than they had anticipated. Mesa
and six of his men were severely wounded; three were killed; and all might
perhaps have lost their lives if a second expedition, consisting of twenty-seven
whites and an auxiliary force of fifty friendly Indians, had not marched to
their relief."

   Seemingly the Indians had been improving in the art of war— perhaps the horse
was an aid to them, perhaps they had acquired some of the methods and arms of
the whites, perhaps both. Dr. Bunnell's account of the fighting in the Indian
war of 1851 in the foothills of Mariposa and Madera Counties bears this out.

   The day of the Spaniard and Mexican was drawing near its close. Their numbers
had always been insignificant. With the secularization of the missions the
neophytes fell away or died off; soldier bickered with priest and priest with
soldier. Like all of Spain's attempts at colonization in the new world, the
whole occupation was weak in provisions both for industry and for human liberty.
A few white men had crossed the Sierras as early as 1819, Payeras says. "There
had been some wanderers who had gone from village to village, selling their
clothing for food, and making their way to San Jose. One wonders," says Chapman,
"who they were!" Whether any of them were Americans it is doubtful if we shall
ever know, but even as early as this it seems about as likely that they should
have been Americans as Spaniards. Lewis and Clark's and Pike's expeditions were
then more than a decade in the past, and a large fur trade, carried on by as
resourceful and venturesome a lot of men as ever lived, had already grown up
west of the Missouri.

   Up to the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century— to a century
ago today—we have no certain records of Americans in the San Joaquin Valley. In
the third decade there is the perfectly well established expedition of Jedediah
Smith, referred to in the next chapter, who came in 1827, and trapped on a
stream supposed to have been the Merced. Other trapping and trading expeditions
followed—Americans and Hudson's Bay Company parties—for the next twenty years,
but it was only at the end of that time that settlement began, shortly before
the discovery of gold.

   As we have seen, the troubles of the people west of Pacheco Pass, whom we
should now call 'Mexicans, but who were then known as Californians, continued
with the Indians in the matter of horse-stealing, as witness Pedro Mesa's
expedition in 1839. The plans for missions and presidios in the interior valley
came to naught, and there had been no settlement there by people of Spanish
blood. There was a little settlement under the later part of the Mexican regime;
there are today on the West Side four large ranches which had their origin as
Mexican grants, and a generation ago there were a few ranchitos tucked away in
little valleys back among the hills of the east slope of the Diablo Range: Wild
cattle and especially wild horses, the overflow of the ranches west of the
range, were a heritage which the San Joaquin received from the Spaniards and
Mexicans, and many place names from their language survive today.


Additional Comments:
HISTORY OF
MERCED COUNTY
CALIFORNIA
WITH A
Biographical Review
OF
The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been
Identified with Its Growth and Development
from the Early Days to the Present

HISTORY BY
JOHN OUTCALT

ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME
HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
1925


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