Yolo County CA Archives History - Books .....The Fair Amazon California 1913
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Book Title: History Of Yolo County

CHAPTER IV 

THE FAIR AMAZON CALIFORNIA

    The name "California" has come through broken accounts from an origin vague,
distant, impalpable. The treasure-mad adventurers of Spain always seeking
undiscovered golden troves, believed in the fierceness of their desire, there
were other places on the new continent rivaling the stored wealth of the
Peruvian Inca from whom Pizarro looted richly and murderously or of Montezuma,
the pitiable victim of the insatiable Cortes. Fictionists of the times wrote
stories of mighty cities in the mystic west peopled by semi-supernatural beings
who jealously watched their vast treasuries. One of these writers was Ordonez de
Montalvo, and his book, "Sergas de Esplandian," published in 1510, told of the
fairy "Island of California," where beautiful amazons and grim griffins ruled
not only the feminine wealth but the mineral treasure as well. The young and
valiant grandee and knight of belt and spur, Esplandian, in his wanderings over
mystic seas meets the wild queen "Califa," in her capital city, where after
numberless fierce fights between his followers and her dragon-like people, he
succeeds—if not in wholly conquering the place—in making her fall in love with
him. Califa was devoted to her Spanish cavalier— something of the devotion of a
tigress—and it took all the valor and vigilance of her lover to keep his life
secure when she had an unusual "tender" spell. Her savage griffins also had an
unpleasant habit of flying around on their bat-wings and picking up white
soldiers which they would joyfully lift to a great height and then drop. Of
course, the trooper thus treated was of no use afterwards. Because of their
bird-like manners, Montalvo, in his book, dipped into the Greek and calls them
"ornis," and Califa is from "Kalli" (beautiful) in the same classic tongue. "The
f was inserted for the sake of euphony," said the late Prof. George Davidson,
the navigator and translator—hence we have "California"—beautiful bird.

A GOLDEN TALE

    This golden Ali Baba tale was popular with the Spanish knights of fortune,
and doubtless Juan Rodrigues Cabrillo, when he saw the group of islands off the
southern coast of this state named them after the amazon queens of the novel, as
they were first known as "Las Californias." Should he have gone further into the
province he found and named so fittingly for the golden queen, Califa, he might
have won the golden lure that had drawn him thither. But his death and burial on
one of his newly-discovered coast-islands ended him and his career.

SPAIN IN HER MAD DANCE OF DEATH

    During a slumber interval of almost two centuries Spain had moved downward.
On land and sea her once colossal power had diminished. She yet held her many
colonies but her grasp was weak. On the oceans her commerce was the prey of any
nation or nations who chose to plunder it. English and Dutch privateers and
freebooters from all parts of the globe issued from their piratical lairs to rob
her ships and ravish her ports at home and abroad. The energy, enterprise,
courage and knighthood that had won her the highest place among the nations were
passing, and she was dying in the demoralization of her own wealth and
greatness. Her kings and nobles were whirling in a mad dance in the midst of a
national luxury never before known, while her peasants were lying in degradation
and starvation. Official stupidity, corruption, disloyalty and others forms of
national decay were breaking down the once strong kingdom, and placing her at
the mercy of her old enemies. Spain had never been a gentle foe and those who
had felt her heavy hand were now ready to strip her. Then she had a partial
awakening. Her foreign lands must be colonized with loyal Spanish subjects and
these welded to the home country, forming the whole into the once-invincible
kingdom. Where white colonists were not available, the natives must be
Christianized, civilized and citizenized. It became an era of
politico-religio-zeal—in fact as courage went down in the Spanish soldier it
arose in the Spanish priest, and Spain planned to use it to bulwark her
threatened possessions. The Jesuits were encouraged to begin in Lower
California, and among these savages—about as savage as any on the American
continent—the laborious padres presently had sixteen missions in commission.
These priests continued there until the royal edict drove them from Spanish
dominions. The Franciscans were given charge of the Jesuit missions of Baja
California in 1768, and from a material point of view it was a poor gift, as the
sterile soil around the settlements could hardly support a flock of goats.
Consequently Junipero Serra, the president of the order, extended his territory
northward, and the chain of twenty-one missions from San Diego to Sonoma was the
result of that zealous father's labors. This work of occupation and colonization
of Alta California was the joint work of the state and church, hence when the
missions were secularized in 1834—sixty-five years after—the government
justified its act on the ground that the state was supreme in control and
disposal of the property.

THEY TELL THE ROSARY OF THE MISSIONS

    While the Franciscans here sowed the seeds of Christian civilization it
cannot be said that the seed dropped on other than sterile ground—and sterile
ground, too, is a term foreign to California. Their voices went crying into the
wilderness to fall in stony places, stony hearts, and the colonization scheme
that was to shape the Indian into a militant part of the Spanish kingdom only
resulted in a string of churchly landmarks stretching along the coast more or
less in ruins. Yet they tell a quaintly fascinating story these adobe piles that
stand on the Camino Real—"royal road" that runs along the twenty-one
missions—and they were the stopping places along that seven hundred miles of the
highway of the cross. And these quaint sites tell the rosary of the California
missions, stripped of all but the saintly association of a past day.

CARLOS AND HIS MIGHTY DOMINION

    California was the last accumulation, the last domain added to the vast
empire-kingdom of that monarch who was at once an emperor (Charles Y of Germany)
and a king (Carlos I of Spain). He first came to the German throne through his
deceased maternal grandfather, Maximilian, and while fighting at the head of his
army in the Netherlands he was lifted to the Spanish crown by the death of his
paternal grandfather, Ferdinand Charles—or Carlos, whatever name the reader may
select. He was a good fighter, a zealous churchman, and made things exceedingly
interesting for his political and ecclesiastical opponents. As Henry VIII of
England and Francis I of France were defeated though not discouraged candidates
for the imperial part of his double royal job, and as Martin Luther at that
auspicious period was shaking Europe with the Reformation, the emperor-king had
full opportunity to exercise his militant characteristic. But they wore him out
in thirty years of battle, and resigning his crowns he died in the peace and the
silence of a monastery. "The path of glory leads but to the grave." The
rebellious dispositions of most of the subjects in his empire kept him so busy
that he did not see his kingdom—then the greatest on earth—for years, and the
maladministrations of his six immediate successors further sent Spain on the
downward road that ended when her flag fell in Cuba and the Philippines, and the
last of her foreign possessions passed away.

PLAYING AT GOVERNMENT IN MANANA LAND

    In constant turmoil at home Spain left her western possessions, Mexico and
California, to get along with only intermittent attention. Between 1767 and 1822
ten Spanish governors had more or less ruled Alta California, but these
easy-going soldiers of fortune had stayed pretty close to the seashore. They
found the pueblos around the missions better stocked with food—produced by the
padres and their Indian converts—than any wilder inland station could be. Of
course, the different governors and comandantes frequently aroused themselves
for a "family row," but there was in these contentions more fluent talking than
real fighting; and the placid siesta was soon on again. They occasionally defied
the mother country—whether Spain or afterwards Mexico—but a few lurid
proclamations, "pronunciamentos," would clear away the war-clouds. It was on
again, off again, without any powder burned over the political changes in this
"manana" land. Yet there was one issue that drew these sons of Old Spain into
something like unity, and that was the North American, the Gringo. For
generations Castile-and-Aragon had seen her standards tossed and torn on English
bayonets and her armadas go gurgling down in the deep under the guns of the
invincible Albion and the Yankee was of that perfidious blood—and to be feared
and shunned. The Spanish in California, with the purblindness which has been a
distinct national characteristic of the race always, often carried to extreme
lengths their senseless antagonism to their sole and powerful neighbor,— even to
annexing themselves to some European monarchy. And there is no doubt that Great
Britain would have been that monarchy had not the American fleet been in
Monterey bay at the psychological hour.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from

HISTORY OF YOLO COUNTY CALIFORNIA
WITH
Biographical Sketches
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
TOM GREGORY
AND OTHER WELL KNOWN WRITERS
ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME

HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA [1913]


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