PEACEMAKER: ‘The kind Mrs. Hartnell [nee Maria Teresa de la Guerra]– one of the noblest among the native ladies of California’ saved the life of Monterey alcalde Walter Colton with ‘her roots and herbs’

Even the Indians caught the fever and, within a month, members of the gente de razon who remained in Monterey were without servants, besides other comforts of life.

Ruefully Colton describes his own situation:

‘We have a house and all the table furniture and culinary apparatus requisite, but our servants have run.

‘A general of the United States army, the commander of a man-of-war, and the alcalde of Monterey in a smoking kitchen, grinding coffee, toasting herring and peeling onions.

‘Those gold mines will upset all the domestic arrangements.’

The alcalde, overworked and underfed, fell ill at this time, and would have been in serious condition had it not been for Dona Teresa Hartnell.

With undying gratitude he says:

‘In a half-delirious state, which followed close upon the attack, I looked up and saw bending over me the kind Mrs. Hartnell — one of the noblest among the native ladies of California. . . . . I resigned myself to all her drinks and baths; she did with me just what she pleased. 

‘She broke the fever without breaking me; restored my strength and in a week I was in my office, attending to my duties.

‘What she gave me I know not, but I believe her roots and herbs saved my life.’

The hardships of a servantless life at home grew to seem worse to Colton than any the mines had to offer; so he locked his office and joined the rush himself.

Hartnell, with a deliberation which came from advancing years and ill health, finished his legal assignment.

He then went, by order of General Riley, who succeeded Richard Mason as military governor of California, to oversee the printing in San Francisco.

It was to be done by the press of the Alta California, which had absorbed the first little paper, the Californian, edited and published by Colton, Semple, and Hartnell himself.

Three hundred copies he ordered “for distribution among the officers of the existing Government, to be paid out of the Civil Fund.”

Hartnell arrived in San Francisco toward the end of May, to find great changes from the sleepy little pueblo of his early visits.

Overnight, almost she had become a crude American city, powerless to resist the horde of “argonauts” who were hastening by land and sea to wrest a fortune out of the rich northern lodes.

San Francisco already was a boom town.

The original community of adobe houses centering around the plaza had simply been absorbed into a sprawling, noisy city of frame and canvas.

Susanna Bryant Dakin: The Lives of William Hartnell, published by Stanford University Press, 1949, pages 284 – 285.

PEACEMAKER: ‘A little daughter named Margarita Amelia was born to Dona Teresa and Don Guillermo [Hartnell] on February 22, 1847′

This interview with Dona Teresa put the lonely and disgruntled officer in such a good frame of mind that when he met Teresita in the hallway, he forgot to look behind her ears.

He only noted, this time, that she was “extremely graceful and pretty.”

The magic of the Hartnell home was working even on Lieutenant Wise, who had been correct in his surmise.

A little daughter named Margerita Amelia was born to Dona Teresa and Don Guillermo on February 22, 1847.

Mission records show that this was the seventeenth Hartnell offspring (even the mother lost count occasionally).

Four sons had already died.

Another, the little Nathaniel who had been born at Alisal in 1840, died shortly after his seventh birthday, cause unknown.

In those days a child’s death was regarded as truly an act of God as his birth.

Pediatrics, like birth control, was a science yet to be discovered.

Don Guillermo spent the remainder year 1847 and early 1848 making a selection, translation, and digest in English of such Mexican laws as were “supposed to be still in force and adapted to the present condition in California.”

As various sections were finished, the Americans posted copies prominently in all the pueblos of Alta California.

But Governor Mason (relieving Kearney while the general went to Washington for further instruction in occupation) planned in addition that the digest be printed by the government press in San Francisco and distributed in greater numbers than ever had been possible in the past.

Besides his task of legal selection and translation, Hartnell continued to edit the Spanish section of the Monterey Californian (moved to San Francisco in May 1847).

He enjoyed such work, but soon was roused from his scholarly abstraction by news from the north that gold had been discovered at New Helvetia by James Marshall, while building a sawmill for Captain Sutter.

Don Guillermo rode to the capital from Alisal, to sort out facts from rumors.

Everyone seemed similarly engaged, and work was suspended.

Finally, the alcalde sent a messenger all the way to Sutter’s Fort, to seek the truth.

Two weeks later, when the man rode into the Monterey plaza, he had to force his way through a crush of Californians and their conquerors.

In Colton’s own words:

‘As he drew forth the yellow lumps from his pockets and passed them around among the crowd, the doubts which had lingered till now fled. . . . . .

‘The excitement produced was intense and many were soon busy with their hasty preparations for departure to the mines.

‘The blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the baker his loaf and the tapster his bottle.

‘All were off for the mines, some on horses, some on crutches, and one went in a litter.’

 

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

PEACEMAKER: Pages 282 – 283

Susanna Bryant Dakin

Stanford University Press 1949

 

PEACEMAKER: Dona Maria Teresa de la Guerra Hartnell ‘gave her full consent to any schemes undertaken in California for the amelioration of her sex’

Hutton was welcome in such homes as Hartnell’s and Jimeno’s because of mutual interests and good manners.

Others were not so fortunate.

One young navy officer, who arrived in the rainy season and lacked the social graces, described the same people unkindly, with little understanding or knowledge of their ways.

Lieutenant Wise notes in his diary that “with the denizens of Monterey, even the wealthiest, cleanliness was an acquirement very little appreciated or practised.”

Even while “playing the agreeable” with a young lady he noticed a “chemisette of a chocolate hue peeping through a slit in her sleeve,” and resolved, in the case of becoming infatuated like so many others, “to exact a change of raiment in the marriage contract.”

This was Teresita Hartnell, who learned the polka from Wise, never suspecting his horrid thoughts.

By chance, the lieutenant was sent by his superior officer on an errand to la casa Arnel.

In the courtyard he passed by Indian servants “rejoicing in great masses of wiry shocks of hair, quite coarse enough to weave into bird cages.”  

He was glad to see that the rain was doing for some of these savages “what they never had the energy to perform themselves — washing their faces.”

Finally, says the navy officer:

‘I reached terra firma, thankful to have escaped with my boots overflowing with mud and then we marched boldly into the domicile.

‘We entered a large, white-washed sala where, after clapping hands, a concourse of small children approached with a lighted tallow link (for it was a dark day) and in reply to our inquiries, without further ceremony, ushered us by another apartment into the presence of the mistress of the mansion.

‘She was sitting a la grand Turque, on the chief ornamental structure that graced the chamber — namely the bed, upon which were sportively engaged three diminutive brats, with a mouse-trap — paper cigarrittos — dirty feet, and other juvenile and diverting toys.

‘The Dona herself was swallowing and puffing clouds of smoke alternately —  but I must paint her as she sat, through the haze.

‘”Juana,” said she, calling to a short, squat Indian girl, “lumbrecita por el Senor” a light for the gentleman — and in a moment I was likewise pouring forth volumes of smoke.

‘She wore her hair, which was black and glossy, in natural folds stright down the neck adn shoulders, dark complexion, lighted by deep, black, intelligent eyes, well-shaped features, and brilliant white teeth.

‘I saw but little of her figure, as she was was almost entirely enveloped in shawls and bed-clothes. . . . .

‘She excused herself on the plea of indisposition for not rising, and it being one I surmised she was a martyr to every year or so, I very readily coincided in opinion, but in truth I found the Senora . . . . . sensible, good-humoured, and what  was far more notable, the mother of fourteen male and five female children — making nineteen the sum of boys and girls total, a she informed me herself, without putting me to the trouble of counting the brood; and yet she numbered but seven and thirty years, in the very prime of life, with the appearance of being again able to perform equally astonishing exploits for the future.

‘She named many of her friends and relatives who had done wonders, but none who had surpassed her in these infantile races.

‘In Spain she would receive a pension, be exempted from taxes and the militia.

‘On being told this she laughed heartily, and gave her full consent to any schemes undertaken in California for the amelioration of her sex.’

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

Susanna Bryant Dakin

Pages 281 – 282

At Misiones San Jose, Santa Clara, San Rafael, San Francisco y Santa Cruz, DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL found ‘poverty, everywhere grim depletion of neophytes by disease and desertion, and resentment against greedy administrators’

+++  He found that their town house had been whitewashed in his absence, and that new “cattle-branding places” had been built at the ranch.  Dona Teresa seemed to have managed better than her letters led him to believe.

  While at Alisal, Hartnell received a letter from Hugo Reid, asking him to intercede with Alvarado or Jimeno for the grant of ‘Rancho Santa Anita’ near San Gabriel.  Reid claimed title in the name of his Indian wife and her Indian children and concluded sentimentally: “You are no doubt long ere this once more in the bozom of your family, enjoying with double zest after your petty absence, that hearfelt satisfaction and felicity which every good man feels in the center of those dependent and cherished by him.”

  During the last week of August, Hartnell resumed the role of ‘visitador’.  Conditions in the northern missions (San Jose, Santa Clara, San Rafael, San Francisco, Santa Cruz) did not differ materially from those in southern and central California.  Everywhere there was poverty, everywhere grim depletion of neophytes by disease and desertion, and resentment against greedy administrators.  But the only place where violence flared was at Sonoma, where Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the ‘comandante general’ who was also ‘administrador’ of San Francisco Solano, declined to open his records to his former tutor, or even to admit him within mission precincts.  Hartnell protested with spirit, but was forced to accept a prepared report on the state of the mission.  Senor Vallejo traded on the fact that he was Alvarado’s uncle, a person entitled to privilege.  He typified the arrogance that derives from inherited wealth and impregnable position.

  At Yerba Buena, on September 23, Hartnell recorded having finished the inspection of accounts “which are as one might expect since the administrator does not know how to read or write.”  The Indians here complained that they had to work too hard and did not receive sufficient food or clothes.  Santa Cruz was the last stop for Senores Hartnell and Castro; and ‘el visitador’ wrote to the Governor:  ”The Indians ask for their liberty and to have the little that is left distributed to them.  They greatly fear the present administrator.”

  +++

Dona Maria Teresa de la Guerra Hartnell wrote to DON GUILLLERMO HARTNELL: ‘Your loving wife who longs to embrace you unendingly’

+++  Not only the administrators, in fear of losing their lucrative positions, but members of the ‘gente de razon’ who had profited by nepotism, were beginning to fear, even to hate, Hartnell and his zeal for reform.  Don Manuel Cota had spewed verbal venom upon him and attempted physical violence.  Pio Pico’s animosity, though more subtly and politely expressed, was no less violent.  Don Francisco Castillo felt he had been insulted at San Fernando, and Senor Valle was angry that ‘el visitador’ had not supported his claim to ‘Rancho San Francisco’.  These were only a few of the open enemies accumulated on what Alvarado had fondly believed would be a good-will tour.

  Hartnell had been without illusion all along.  So perhaps it did not come as too great a shock when he received a warning from a friend named Nicolas Den.  This Irish doctor wrote from Santa Barbara in Indian dialect telling “me to be vigilant because he has learned that some harm to my person is planned before I leave this neighbourhood” [Hartnell's 'Diario', entry of July 20].

  How welcome, in the atmosphere of hate where he now so often found himself, was a love letter received simultaneously from Dona Teresa.  The handwriting is atrocious, but the sentiment that inspired it is beautiful and undying.  After fourteen years of married life, and bearing him eleven children, Teresa ends her laboriously written epistle (translation): “And now, goodbye dear heart, I shall never again stay alone so long.  Your loving wife who longs to embrace you unendingly.”

  A letter to Don Manuel Jimeno, dated July 27, shows that at least one of Hartnell’s enemies decided threats will get him nowhere.

  ’Senor Manuel Cota presented himself to me with all humility at La Purisima Mission, putting himself at my disposal and urging me to reinstate him in the administration of Santa Barbara.  I answered that by no means  could I return to him his position now; that it was necessary for him first to cancel or settle Mission accounts which he had left pending with many of the tradesmen and inhabitants of Santa Barbara, to submit them to me and then we would see.  But to Your Excellency I shall say frankly that by no means should he be reestablished in his present position, and I am ready to prove it when it is necessary.’

+++

El Visitador DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL found failure at all missions along ‘El Camino Real’, save at ‘Misiones San Gabriel y San Juan Capistrano’

+++  In his ‘diario, el visitador’ describes the interview with the Indians wherin he informed them of concessions secured from the government:

‘July 14 – Sunday – Today I went to the mission to appoint an alcalde mayor.  I told the Indians that one by one they should come with me to put down the name of the person that each wanted for the position . . . . but I charged them to name a man of worth and one capable of discharging his obligations.  So it was done; and Ambrosio, one of the present alcaldes, having obtained 56 votes and no one else more than 10, he obtained the position.  After this election I warned the Indians that now that they do not have an ‘administrator de razon’ they must work hard so that the mission will prosper and they have clothing . . . . By means of their interpreter Jaime the Indians of this mission said to me,

  ’”Senor, the people are very happy about what you have done here and we thank you very much.  We are poor as you know, but there are a few hides and some tallow; take what you want.”‘

  Hartnell held an audience with the grateful Indians and distributed government money for clothing and staples.  During the day, ragged strangers came and threw themselves at the feet of ‘el visitador’.  These were runaways from San Diego and San Luis Rey.  They asked for pardon from their fearless champion.

  ’The first ones said it was a well-known fact that in their mission [San Diego] there was no longer anything to eat and that the whole Indian population went about almost nude.  Therefore they had come to Santa Barbara to get, by their work, something with which to cover themselves.  The latter said that all that the San Luis Rey Mission produces is not enough for the administrator [Don Pio Pico], his brothers, and brothers-in-law. . . . . They all say that if the administrators are removed they will return to their missions and take the responsibility of founding them again.’

  The story was the same at Santa Ines, next in line along ‘El Camino Real’.  Everywhere, save at San Gabriel and San Juan Capistrano, the ‘visitador’ found a failure in responsibility on the part of the civil administrators.  His final recommendation was forming in his mind.  It would hit hard, and without discrimination, at the lay successors of the founding fathers.

+++

DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL suspended Don Manuel Cota for disrepecting Padre Narciso Duran, putting the latter back in charge of Mision Santa Barbara

+++  Next day Hartnell receives a note from Father Narciso Duran warning him that Cota had become “devil-possessed or rather a demon; that he had dragged an Indian by the hair and when the Padre wanted to separate them the administrator knocked him down, treating his scandalously!”  Duran advises taking three or four soldiers to subdue the madman, but Hartnell writes: “I went immediately to the mission but without any soldiers. . . . I reproached Cota for the lack of respect which he had shown the padre; and as it was lacking with me too (not recognizing me as his chief) . . . I made known to him the suspension of his position.”

  Don Guillermo gave over direction of Santa Barbara Mission to Padre Duran during the suspension of Senor Cota, and wrote to Manuel Jimeno of all he had done lately, trying to help the abused Indians.  At the same time, in fulfillment of Duran’s desire, he said:  ”I also sent word to the administrators from San Buenaventura to San Diego suggesting to them that, in regard to worship, the padres . . . . should have the power to punish on their own authority any offense which the latter [neophytes] might commit in this direction.”

  On July 13, Don Guillermo is still in Santa Barbara, sending another letter to his brother-in-law:

  ’Very satisfactory were the contents of your Excellency’s two official notes dated the 7th of this month, in which you impart to me the agreeable news that all my transactions and arrangement from San Diego to San Fernando have been approved as much by Your Excellency’s honorable predecessor as by Your Excellency himself: and I shall try in the future to so conduct myself that I may merit the continued approbation of my superiors.’

  Hartnell was backed by the government in every move he made, and could report with some satisfaction that “for a time at least the neophytes became more contented and industrious under Father Duran’s supervision.”  In spite of recent despoliation, considerable increase in livestock and agriculture was noted by Hartnell at the end of 1839; also, the buildings were in better repair than elsewhere.

+++

DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL ‘was pleasantly surprised at the look of things’ at Misiones San Fernando y San Gabriel

+++  The mission has planted 22 fanegas of wheat, 2 of barley, 4 of corn, 3 1/2 of beans, 1 1/2 of peas, and 1/2 of lentils, all in good condition.’

  To Padre Zalvidea or even Don Alfredo Robinson these figures must have seemed pitifully small in contrast with the past.  In 1829, Don Alfredo had estimated the population as from twelve to fifteen hundred, and said that it probably possessed “from eighty to over a hundred thousand head of cattle, besides horses, mules, and sheep and countless numbers which run at large.”  But Hartnell found hope in the fact that Bandini was encouraging his charges to emerge from hopeless lethargy, to commence the task of rebuilding from the ruins.  He continues his report:

  ’The vineyards, too, promise to produce more than last year.  The Indians have worked hard to enclose them with walls; now all the vineyards have them except the large one that is being enclosed with a wooden fence; the farming lands also have their walls.’

  In Zalvidea’s day, no protective fencing had been necessary, save cactus hedges to keep the cattle out of vegetable and flower gardens close to the mission buildings.

  On June 13, while ‘el visitador’ is examining the accounts, he notes:

  ’Nothing in them can be understood clearly before the time of the present administrator, because he took over without inventory, and many documents are lacking, especially the ‘libro maestro’ that was used in the time of Padre Sanchez.’

  After mass, on the fifteenth, Hartnell and Castro mounted their horses for a day’s ride to San Fernando Mission.  Here Don Guillermo was pleasantly surprised at the look of things, as he had been at San Gabriel.  Crops were good.  Grapes of best quality were forming on the 30,000 vines that composed the mission vineyard, and “a stately garden was in front, with many choice fruit trees.”  But on entering the mission to examine the records, ‘el visitador’ found them in hopeless confusion.

+++

Neophytes at Mision San Juan Capistrano didn’t like Mexican administrator Don Santiago Arguello; they asked DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL to have him removed

+++  According to Hugo Reid, he always preached to them in their own tongue and was godly looking, a tall man of commanding presence, fair complexion, and red-gold hair.  Courtly manners hinted at nobility of rank as well as of spirit.  Even in his maddest moments he never betrayed annoyance at others, only at himself.

  Zalvidea’s literary contributions were a diary of exploration in 1806, and a powerful petition written in 1827 on behalf of the Indians.  At San Gabriel he became renowned as a viticulturist, and of all physical evidences of his accomplishment there, he seemed proudest of the extensive vineyards.

  Most of his time at Capistrano was spent in reading devotional books and walking about the mission gardens.  Occasionally he would stop to make strange gestures and exclaim, “Va-te, Satanas,” as if in mortal conflict with the evil one.  Some thought him crazy during these moments of intense concentration, because he paid no heed to warnings of danger.  It is said that, while he was in a trance, wild cattle could charge upon him without harming him or evoking more than an admonition: “Shame, for throwing dirt upon this book!”

  An entry of June 5 in Hartnell’s diary tells of a disturbing incident at Capistrano concerned with Senor Arguello whom the Indians disliked:

  ’When I made the Indians see [by talking their language] that I had not found in the conduct of the administrator any cause to take his post away from him, they, both men and women, became greatly excited, shouting that if I did not remove him everyone was going to run away because they were tired of feeding as many mouths and furnishing clothing for as many people as compose the administrator’s family.  Neither the padre, who was exhorting them to patience and obedience to the government, nor I, who said all I could to calm them, could succeed in quieting them.  At first they wanted the administrator removed immediately . . . . but when the padre assured them that anybody else who might be put in would be worse than the present, and that I absolutely refused to do such an act of injustice, they asked to be left alone under the rule of the padre since they know that the mission is not in a condition to pay the salary of the administrator.  

+++

DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL visited Padre Jose Maria de Zalvidea, a friend of his youth, at Mision San Juan Capistrano

+++  Only this handful of people remained, descended from the 1300 neophytes who were living in or near the mission on December 8, 1812.  That fateful day, an earthquake toppled down the bell tower, and many were killed kneeling in prayer below.  This act of God commenced the destruction of Capistrano.  Few repairs were attempted in the years between the earthquake and the various secularization decrees which accelerated disintegration of the mission.

  The ‘visitador’ finds that “all the people ask to have the administrator sent away.”  But Don Santiago is able to refute their charges, supported by the padre, Jose Maria de Zalvidea, a friend of Hartnell’s youth.

  Don Guillermo welcomed an interlude when he could visit with Father Zalvidea, the man who by his intelligence and energy and devotion raised San Gabriel to leading place among the missions.  After twenty years of service he had been transferred in 1826 to hospitalization at San Juan Capistrano, suffering from a nervous breakdown.  But Hartnell found him, at fifty-nine years of age, not greatly changed from the days of his dealing with Macala y Arnel.  Always Zalvidea had certain eccentricities, and inflicted frequent punishments on himself in the tradition of the founding fathers.  Serra used a stone to beat his breast, and by his bedside kept a thong of iron links for scourging himself.  Zalvidea made frequent use of the scourge and, under his coarse robe, always wore a belt with iron points penetrating his flesh.  His health had become impaired by self-flagellation and abstemiousness, as much as by hard work and heavy responsibility.

  Born in Spain, he had escaped exile from California by playing no part in politics.  In 1829 he swore allegiance to the Mexican Republic “so far as was consistent with his profession.”  Nine years later, Zalvidea declined a pension provided by his order, plus passage to a fine home and distinguished family in Spain, because he know of no one to take his place in California.

  His service at Capistrano proved less spectacular than at San Gabriel, since times were changing, and he had fewer tools with which to work miracles.  But the simple Indian venerated him as a saint.

+++