Part 10 (1/2)

Mrs. Bates, whose account of California is never exaggerated, tells us of a miner who, night after night, deserted his dying brother for a gambling house, leaving him unattended and piteously crying for water until, at last, he expired alone.

It must be remembered, also, that the moral complexion of California changed greatly from year to year. The first condition was almost an idyllic one. It was a period of honesty and good-will such as never existed before, except in the imagination of Rousseau. There were few doors, and no locks. Gold was left for days at a time unguarded and untouched. ”A year ago,” said the ”Sacramento Transcript,” in October, 1850, ”a miner could have left his bag of dust exhibited to full view, and absent himself a week. His tools might have remained unmolested in any ravine for months, and his goods and chattels, bed and bedding might have remained along the highway for an indefinite period without being stolen.”

There was much drinking, much gambling, and some murders were committed in the heat of pa.s.sion; but nowhere else in the world, except perhaps in the smaller villages of the United States, was property so safe as it was in California.

”I have not heard,” wrote Dr. Stillman in 1849, ”of a theft or crime of any sort. Firearms are thrown aside as useless, and are given away on the road.” Grave disputes involving the t.i.tle to vast wealth were settled by arbitration without the raising of a voice in anger or controversy. Even in Sacramento and San Francisco, merchants left their goods in their canvas houses and tents, open to any who might choose to enter, while they went to church or walked over the hills on Sundays. Their gold was equally unguarded, and equally safe.

”It was wonderful,” said a Pioneer early in the Fifties, ”how well we got on in '49 without any sort of government beyond the universally sanctioned action of the people, and I have often since questioned in my own mind if we might not have got on just the same ever since, and saved all the money we have paid out for thieving legislation and selfish office-holders.”[51]

The change came in the late Summer and early Autumn of 1850, and was chiefly owing to the influx of convicts from Australia and elsewhere,--”low-browed, heavy-featured men, with cold, steel-gray eyes.”

In a less degree the change was also due to the deterioration of a small minority of Americans and Europeans, whose moral stamina was not equal to life in a lawless community, although at first that community was lawless only in the strict sense of the word;--it had no laws and needed none. As one Pioneer wrote, ”There is no law regarded here but the natural law of justice.”

Beginning with the Autumn of 1850, things went from bad to worse until February, 1851, when robbery and murder in San Francisco were stopped by the first Vigilance Committee; and in the mines the same drastic remedy was applied, but not always with the same moderation. A Sacramento paper said in December, 1850: ”It is an undeniable fact that crime of almost every description is on the increase in California, especially horse-stealing, robbery, arson and murder. In the city of Sacramento alone, since last April, we should judge there have been at least twenty murders committed, and we are not aware that any murderer has suffered capital punishment, or any other kind of punishment. We have got used to these things, and look upon it as a matter of course that somebody will be killed and robbed as often as once a week at least; and yet notwithstanding all this our people generally are composed of the most orderly, respectable citizens of the United States. The laws furnish us no protection because they are not enforced.”

But the Reader may ask, why were the laws not enforced? The answer is that the Pioneers were too busy to concern themselves with their political duties or to provide the necessary machinery for the enforcement of the laws. State officers, munic.i.p.al officers, sheriffs, constables and even judges were chosen, not because they were fit men, but because they wanted the job, and no better candidates offered themselves. Moreover, the Pioneers did not expect to become permanent residents of California; they expected to get rich, off-hand, and then to go home, and why should they bother themselves about elections or laws? In short, an attempt was made to do without law, and, as we have seen, it succeeded for a year or so, but broke down when criminals became numerous.

A letter from the town of Sonora, written in July, 1850, said: ”The people are leaving here fast. This place is much deeper in guilt than Sodom or Gomorrah. We have no society, no harmony. Gambling and drunkenness are the order of the day.”

In four years there were one thousand two hundred homicides in California.

Almost every mile of the travelled road from Monterey, in the southern part of the State, to San Francisco, was the scene of some foul murder in those eventful years. There was more crime in the southern mines than in the northern, because the Mexicans were more numerous there.

In Sonora County, in 1850, there were twenty-five murders in a single month, committed mainly by Mexicans, Chilians, and British convicts from the penal colonies. A night patrol was organized. Every American tent had a guard around it, and mining almost ceased. Murder and robbery had reached the stage at which they seriously interfered with business. This was not to be endured; and at a ma.s.s meeting held at Sonora on August 3, the following resolution was pa.s.sed: ”Resolved: That for the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of this portion of the country, notice shall be given immediately ordering all Mexicans and South Americans to remove from towns.h.i.+p No. 2 in one week from this date.”

The consequence was a melancholy exodus of men, women and children, which included the just and the unjust. Many of them were dest.i.tute, and, as respects the Mexicans, many were being banished from the place of their birth. ”We fear,” remarked a contemporary citizen, ”that the money-making, merry old times in Sonora are gone forever.”

This was a characteristic Pioneer remark. The ”old times” meant were somewhat less than a year back; and their ”merry” quality was, as we have seen, considerably modified by robbery and murder. The point of view is much like that of the landlord of a hotel in Virginia City, where Bret Harte was once a guest. After a night disturbed by sounds of shouting, scuffling and pistol shots, Mr. Harte found his host behind the counter in the bar-room ”with a bruised eye, a piece of court-plaster extending from his cheek to his forehead, yet withal a pleasant smile upon his face.

Taking my cue from this, I said to him, 'Well, landlord, you had rather a lively time here last night.' 'Yes,' he replied, pleasantly, 'it _was_ rather a lively time.' 'Do you often have such lively times in Virginia City?' I added, emboldened by his cheerfulness. 'Well, no,' he said reflectively; 'the fact is we've only just opened yer, and last night was about the first time that the boys seemed to be gettin' really _acquainted_!'”

The absence of police, and, to a great extent, of law, led to deeds of violence, and to duelling; but it also tended to make men polite. The civility with which cases were conducted in court, and the restraint shown by lawyers in their comments upon one another and upon the witnesses were often spoken of in California. The experience of Alcalde Field in this regard is interesting:--”I came to California with all those notions in respect to acts of violence which are instilled into New England youth; if a man were rude, I would turn away from him. But I soon found that men in California were likely to take very great liberties with a person who acted in such a manner, and that the only way to get along was to hold every man responsible, and resent every trespa.s.s upon one's rights.”[52]

Accordingly, young Field bought a brace of pistols, had a sack-coat made with pockets appropriate to contain them, and practised the useful art of firing the pistols with his hands in his pockets. Subsequently he added a bowie-knife to his private a.r.s.enal, and he carried these weapons until the Summer of 1854. ”I found,” he says, ”that the knowledge that pistols were generally worn created a wholesome courtesy of manner and language.”

Even the members of the State Legislature were armed. It was a thing of every-day occurrence for a member, when he entered the House, to take off his pistols and lay them in the drawer of his desk. Such an act excited neither surprise nor comment.

At one time Mr. Field sent a challenge to a certain Judge Barbour who had grossly insulted him. Barbour accepted the challenge, but demanded that the duel should be fought with Colt's revolvers and bowie-knives, that it should take place in a room only twenty feet square, and that the fight should continue until at least one of the princ.i.p.als was dead. Mr. Field's second, horrified by these savage proposals, was for rejecting them; but Field himself insisted that they should be accepted, and the result was what he had antic.i.p.ated. Judge Barbour, of his own motion, waived, first the knives, then the small room, and finally declined the meeting altogether. But the very next day, when Field had stepped out of his office, and was picking up an armful of wood for his stove, Barbour crept up behind him, and putting a pistol to his head, called upon Field to draw and defend himself. Field did not turn or move, but spoke somewhat as follows: ”You infernal scoundrel, you cowardly a.s.sa.s.sin,--you come behind my back, and put your revolver to my head, and tell me to draw! You haven't the courage to shoot,--shoot and be d.a.m.ned!” And Barbour slunk away.

Shooting at sight, especially in San Francisco and the larger towns, was as common as it is represented by Bret Harte. For the few years, beginning with and succeeding 1850, the newspapers were full of such events. On November 25, 1851, the ”Alta California” said: ”Another case of the influenza now in fas.h.i.+on occurred yesterday. We allude to a mere shooting-match in which only one of the near by-standers was shot down in his tracks.”

Even so late as August, 1855, the ”San Francisco Call” was able to refer in a modest way to the ”two or three shooting encounters per week” which enlivened its columns.[53]

Duels were common, and in most cases very serious affairs, the battle being waged with destructive weapons and at close range. As a rule, they took place in public. Thus, at a meeting between D. C. Broderick, leader of the Democratic Party in the State, and one J. Cabot Smith, seventy or eighty persons were present. Broderick was wounded, and would have been killed had not the bullet first struck and shattered his watch.

These California duels must be ascribed mainly to the Southern element, which was strong numerically, and which, moreover, exerted an influence greater than its numbers warranted. One reason, perhaps the main reason, for this predominance of the Southerners was that the aristocratic, semi-feudal system which they represented had a more dignified, more das.h.i.+ng aspect than the plain democratic views in which the Northern and Western men had been educated. It made the individual of more importance.

Upon this point Professor Royce makes an acute remark: ”The type of the Northern man who has a.s.sumed Southern fas.h.i.+ons, and not always the best Southern fas.h.i.+ons, has often been observed in California life. The Northern man frequently felt commonplace, simple-minded, undignified, beside his brother from the border or the plantation.... The Northern man admired his fluency, his vigor, his invective, his ostentatious courage, his absolute confidence about all matters of morals, of politics, of propriety, and the inscrutable union in his public discourse of sweet reasonableness with ferocious intolerance.”

The extreme type of Southerner, as he appeared in California, is immortalized in Colonel Starbottle. The moment when this strange planet first swam into Bret Harte's ken seems to have been seized and recorded with accuracy by his friend, Mr. Noah Brooks. ”In Sacramento he and I met Colonel Starbottle, who had, of course, another name. He wore a tall silk hat and loosely-fitting clothes, and he carried on his left arm by its crooked handle a stout walking-stick. The Colonel was a dignified and benignant figure; in politics he was everybody's friend. A gubernatorial election was pending, and with the friends of Haight he stood at the hotel bar, and as they raised their gla.s.ses to their lips he said, 'Here's to the Coming Event!' n.o.body asked at that stage of the canva.s.s what the coming event would be, and when the good Colonel stood in the same place with the friends of Gorham, he gave the same toast, 'The Coming Event!'”

This may have been a certain Dr. Ruskin, a Southern politician, who is described by a Pioneer as wearing ”a white fur plug hat, a blue coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, a buff-colored vest, white trousers, varnished boots, a black satin stock, and, on state occasions, a frilled s.h.i.+rt front. He always carried a cane with a curved handle.”[54] This, the Reader need not be reminded, is the exact costume of Colonel Starbottle,--the ”low Byronic collar,” which Bret Harte mentions, being the only item omitted.