Yolo County CA Archives History - Books .....Spain Mothered Her Simple People 1913
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Book Title: History Of Yolo County

CHAPTER V
SPAIN MOTHERED HER SIMPLE PEOPLE

    Spain was an infliction on the North American continent notwithstanding
Columbus, Isabella and the heroic pawning of the royal gems. And yet, Spain
being here, did fairly well. The world looking over her blunders, her ruins, may
see amid the debris of what was once a portion of her national greatness gleams
of something that can be marked "bueno"—good. A portion of the "well" she did
was turning her priests at the savages she found here, and the work of St.
Solano, Junipero Serra and others in evidence that the cowled warrior of Castile
and Aragon in the foreign missions was the knightly Spaniard when the military
manhood of Spain was dying. And the mother-country seemed to understand her
colonists—her simple people, and she selected for them about what was good for
them. A ponderous political institution such as we gringos stagger under would
have crushed them; so she gave them a government tempered with maternalism; gave
them burdens easy to be borne; put them under laws simple in reading and easy to
be kept, and she often failed to note and correct their faults. Possibly the
ultra-mild supervisions made the revolutions so frequent and popular in
Spanish-America. The adobe in which they housed themselves was not a thing of
beauty, but it was warm in winter, cool in summer—a joy to live in and easy to
build. There was no ornamentation without or within and little variety of form
anywhere, and while every man was his own architect and builder he architected
and built like his neighbor. From "dirt" floors to tile roofs in the big houses
there was so little wood or any combustible that the fire insurance business was
the last institution that- got over the Sierras into California. The front or
upper story of the house contained the quarters of the don and his family, which
was generally a large one, and here he entertained his social equals— the
quality folk of the pueblo. The other portions of the hacienda were for the
herders, house-servants, also the retainers and rancho loafers. These latter
were Indians, full or half-breeds, and world-floats of an unknown moral quality.

THE DON AND HIS CHILDISH PENSIONERS

    But the Spanish-Californian was kind to his pensioners. Doubtless often in
their quantity and general uselessness he found them an almost insufferable
nuisance, but while he had a league of rancho left or a head of cattle straying
over it he fed them. The grain lands did not produce great harvests "before the
gringo came," but there were plenty of tortillas (thin cakes baked by any kind
of fire) and came. Out in a near tree in the clean, dry air where it would keep
fresh till eaten was there not a fresh beef, and was there not more out on the
range? And were there not beans and hot peppers for the ola prodrida pot? Madre
de Dios! did one go hungry then!

   A civic government in a Spanish colony was simply and wisely handled. Its
junta, or council, were two alcaldes (mayors or judges), two or four councilmen
and a treasurer. The alcaldes were the presiding officers, and the councilmen
helped, but it was the treasurer who did the heavyweight work, for he was tax
collector, city attorney, clerk, recorder and other useful things—and he got no
regular salary. The treasury part of his official duty was the lightest, as
taxation and public expenditure were ever at low ebb. It did not cost much to
run a city then.

    The hordes of high-salaried officials and political heelers quartered on the
municipality were not a civic necessity then. Politicians may have been no more
honest then than now, but where there was nothing to steal there was no
stealing. The city-dads prevented the plundering of the taxpayers by the simple
expedient of having no taxpayers. Most all cooking was done in outdoor ovens and
kitchens and in these adobe houses there was not fuel to keep a fire department
in existence. The water utility was a public well in the plaza where the
housekeeping senoras with their water jars met to mix the gossip of their
different localities, and the street-lighting consisted of a lantern hung over
or before the door from twilight until the candle burned out. The policing of
the town was generally done by some ex-soldier—whose army training and militant
fierceness were supposed to overawe would-be disturbers of the pueblo peace.
Street work seldom extended beyond an occasional digging and shoveling before
one's own premises.

NO PONDEROUS JUDICIARY NEEDED

    The judiciary was as simple as the legislative. Among the Spanish pioneers
of California there were few breeches of law and order and hardly any crime. For
the first mentioned a fine or flogging was the result and for the greater
offenses the penalty came sure and soon, with the priest to chant the prayers
for the dying. Those were days rough and wild with an open countfy-4it which a
bad man might escape, consequently the courts made deterrent examples when they
corralled the bad man. These tribunals weighed the old, old questions of right
and wrong, and not the verbal formation of a law term, and Spanish justice did
not become lost under American technicalities. Minor offenses and actions
involving $100 and less were settled before the alcalde, while cases of more
weight or importance were passed up to the district or the supreme courts.
Either party could demand a jury, and as this body of three or five persons was
chosen from only the best and most intelligent citizens of the place, and as the
courts did not tolerate "sparring for time," the trial went through unhampered
by wrangling lawyers and archaic rules of procedure. The members of a junta or
ayuntamiento, though serving without pay, were liable to fine for
non-attendance, and resignations were difficult. Even under the government of a
Spanish king three-quarters of a century ago, California had the referendum.
When a question of importance was before the ayuntamiento and there was a
division of opinion, the alarma publica bell was rung and every citizen gathered
immediately at the assembly hall, or was fined for failure to respond. Then and
there the people by the simple raising of hands voted upon and decided the
question. Some of these old alcaldes were unique in their reasonings and all
were wise in their generation. A woman complained to the town court that her
husband persisted in serenading another woman, much to his wife's discomfort. It
is possible that the other woman was the prettier, but the alcalde knew that
justice was no respecter of beauty. Yet there was nothing in the code nor city
ordinance touching the playing of musical instruments or singing to unattached
females. However, the judge looked beyond the written law and saw the fellow and
his guitar at the pleasure of the wrong woman and he trusted that inspiration
would direct him to an equitable adjustment of the matter. And it did. The man
haled into court was sternly ordered to play the same tune he had played for the
too-fascinating senora, and after he had nervously done so, the alcalde sat as
an expert in melody and fined the prisoner $2, holding music so atrocious could
be only a disturbance of the peace.

MILD PRIESTLY REGULATIONS

    Occasionally the padres worked into the ordinances measures tinctured like
unto the Connecticut Blue Laws, as in the old records of Monterey (1816) there
is an order that "all persons must attend mass and respond in a loud voice, and
if any person should fail to do so without good cause he shall be put in the
stocks for three hours." It may be presumed that the good father took this means
to secure a better attendance at church and warm up the backsliders. Although
the priests were in constant clash with the military, who were always "agin" and
jealous of churchly authority, they maintained a very mild and often a vague
spiritual dominion over the Californians. Maria was a good church-woman, as is
her sex ever, but Jose was lukewarm, as is his sex usually. He had more fear, if
not respect, for the alcalde and the police power of the pueblo than for the
parish priest; moreover, the stern father denied to him his highest-prized sins,
while the civil authorities frequently condoned his offenses. These padres in
their strong opposition to a non-Roman Catholic population laid the ban of the
church upon marriage between foreigners and native women. But dogma was no
barrier to the American pioneer or wanderer from the states, when he found one
of the many comely senoritas willing to annex him to the Republic of Mexico and
to her fair self. Generally the local priest would consent to baptize the new
"convert" and then marry him to his new wife, and the question was well
settled—the church would get a new member, the Republic of Mexico another
subject, and the girl a more practical and useful husband than her own country
could supply.

ALL, THE WORLD LOVES THE SPANISH GIRL

    All the world over there is no more charming woman than the daughter of
Spain. Her upholstery may not represent the golden store of a wealthy man; it
may be only a simple chemisette and skirt with silk shawl or mantilla thrown
over head and shoulders to fall easily toward the small, slippered feet, but it
is a dainty combination of brilliant color and natural grace, and all mankind
loves the wearer. The women of the Latin race, whether they hail from Genoa or
Seville, alone of the world's sisterhood, have learned how to wear their
hair—and that is without any covering. Hence the Californienne of the last
century wore her black braids of tress free of the fearfully and wonderfully
made hat or bonnet of today, and her comeliness has not been improved upon.
These Spanish-American girls along the Pacific littoral made good wives, good
housekeepers in their pioneer homes, and good mothers to their large families.
Whether the foreign wooer came from over the Sierras or over the Atlantic, if he
showed a disposition to settle down to home-building he could find a young woman
favorable to the project and often a big slice of rancho for experimental
ground. And as the Mexican don for years had been tending away from the
intolerant aristocracy and political bigotry of case-hardened Spain to the broad
democracy of North America, he generally approved of his young daughter's choice.

    Socially the Californian in general had no objection to the North American.
It was officialdom wrangling within its ranks for the small distinction and the
small gain an office in this territory gave. The padres, who intensely disliked
the interferring, not too-conscientious governors, comandantes and small-fry
officers, strongly opposed republican ideas. Most of them were natives of Spain
and were loyal to the mother-country that had established their missions and had
made them powerful and wealthy. They were not only disloyal to the Republic of
Mexico, but were a barrier to immigration and a check to the progress of Alta
California. The mission ranchos, church lands, absorbed the known best tracts of
the state and the secularization of the vast property was the logical outcome.
There are yet great undivided tracts of land in California —in Yolo—for which
the landless are calling.


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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