DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL wrote to his father-in-law Don Jose de la Guerra about the power struggle between Mexican governor Echeandia + State Treasurer Don Jose Maria Herrera over Mexican Californian-Russian trade relationships

+++  A typical hunting arrangement was described in February 1826 by William Hartnell to Don Jose de la Guerra.  Don Guillermo consulted his father-in-law about securing a license, under the name of Jose Antonio Carrillo, for Khlebnikov’s current command.  This was the ‘Baikal,’ carrying a Russian crew and Aleut hunters who would tie themselves into tiny skin canoes called ‘bidarkas’ to pursue the elusive sea otter along the California coast.  ++  To his ‘compadre’ Carrillo, Hartnell frankly admitted: “I haven’t money to spare for such speculations.”  But he took considerable pains to secure a license for Carrillo and Khlebnikov.  He even promised to make a visit to Fort Ross in their interest, “if it can be done without danger.”  ++  During a brief interval, under special permit secured by Hartnell from State Treasurer Herrera, the ‘Baikal’ was allowed to hunt sea otter and seal from San Luis Rey south to Todos Santos.  But Khlebnikov made a fatal error, from admirable motives.  He stopped in at San Diego to pay his respects to the ailing Echeandia.  The Russian captain and Mexican governor met aboard the ‘Baikal’ to drink a friendly toast.  But when Echeandia learned the precise nature of Khlebnikov’s activities along the coast, he became enraged at the presumption of Don Jose Maria Herrera in making such an arrangement.  Straightway he cancelled it.  Hartnell wrote to his father-in-law at this time: “It seems that these two gentlemen do not like each other very much for, as I see it, everthing the former does, the latter undoes.”  Shortly afterward, Herrera was banished from the country for subversive activities directed against Echeandia.  ++  The Hartnell-Khlebnikov friendship seems an isolated molecule in the complex structure of Californian-Russian relationships.  For many became embittered by suspicion and fear, as can be sen from a pronouncement of the Mexico City ‘junta’ (legislative assembly) the year following Echeandia’s cancellation of the ‘Baikal”s permit (translation):  ++  ‘That political colonist Russia, having mastered her confines in Europe and a part of Asia, now has taken possession down to the port of Bodega, less than one degree away from San Francisco which is the last point of our possessions. . . .’ +++

The ‘John Begg’ was the first foreign ship to be made welcome by Mexican authorities in San Diego

+++  The ‘John Begg’ sailed from summer in the south to summer in the north, from late in March to early in June 1822.  The first landing on California soil was at San Diego, southernmost port of Alta California.  From a singularly undramatic setting, at placid, almost land-locked bay surrounded by flat and treeless territory, customs officials emerged from a mud-colored hut by the water’s edge to make the partners welcome.  ++  McCulloch’s information proved correct; legislative removal of many commercial restrictions had commenced in Mexico City during the fall of 1821.  On December 13 of that year, only seven months preceding the ‘John Begg”s appearance, the ‘junta’ had decreed that the California ports of Monterey and San Diego be opened to foreign trade.  Since it  took months for this news to reach the coast, coming overland by courier from Mexico City, the ‘John Begg’ was the first ship to be made welcome by port authorities.  ++  It was onl within the past twenty years that any non-Spanish trading vessel ever had done business in Alta California.  The few which had were manned by smugglers (Russian, American, French, or British) likely to receive a cannon ball across the bow.  The entrance of foreign vessels into California ports for any purpose had been forbidden.  Even Spanish commerce was confined almost entirely to transports from San Blas, bringing no more than necessities to the mission establishments and ‘presidios’ (garrisons) which contained California’s entire poplulation of “reasonable beings” (California Indians called the first Spaniards ‘chichinabros,’ meaning “reasonable beings.”  Later, in irony, the Indians transferred this title to the weapons used by their conquerors.) .  ++  During the revoluton in Mexico and the consequent cessation of Spanish trade, faraway California became so desperate as to demand a change in commercial regulations. …  [Thus ends the first page of the second chapter entitled ‘Trader’ of Susanna Bryant Dakin’s ‘The Lives of William Hartnell’] …  +++