Tag Archives: Alvarado’s coup d’etat

“…the vast San Fernando Plain”

I discovered this evocative photograph of the Valley (thank you KCET).

The view, taken on a cool drizzly day in 1875, is south, looking over what had been lands of the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana, toward Mt. Cahuenga and the Cahuenga Pass. Los Angeles lies just over the hill.

The Valley was, in the Mexican period, historically contested land, the buckle of Alta California. One army could camp at San Fernando and the other at the Cahuenga Pass, and they could lob cannonballs and race squadrons of cavalry at each other across the Valley floor.

John C. Fremont would have seen it looking much like this on the rainy January morning in 1847, as he rode from the Convento toward Campo de Cahuenga to receive the surrender of Gen. Don Andres Pico, and end the Mexican War in California. In fact, as Fremont knew, the whole plain was Pico’s land, Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando. It must have especially galled Don Andres that Fremont and his Battalion of Bear Flag ruffians were camping there.

This view also was important to Gov. Juan Bautista Alvarado in 1836, during his coup d’etat. Southern Californios, led by the Pico Brothers and the Carrillo clan, had camped with their militia at San Fernando Mission. The rebels hoped to sever Southern California from the tyranny of Monterey, and to spite the treachery of Alvarado; but to do so they had to defend their capital of Los Angeles, and head off Alvarado’s Norteno army at the Pass. Bloodshed on this plain by fathers and sons on both sides was a real threat, but the Surenos finally acquiesced to Alvarado’s rule. Soon after, the land grants began, and the loyal Surenos weren’t stinted.

This strategic plain was also the site of the Californio rebellions against the Mexican Governors Micheltorena and Victoria. These Battles of Cahuenga and Providencia were violent and explosive, and they had real political consequences. But casualties were almost nil, intentionally, of course.

The land was shaped this way by the Franciscans, with orchards, arable, and rangelands. It was then managed by Don Andres Pico, and his mayordomo Valentin Lopez. Tongva and Tataviam Indians were the vaqueros and orchardmen who worked the ranch. It appears here roughly in the condition in which it was sold off by the Picos to Isaac Lankershim for his huge dry-wheat farms and farmstead tracts; and to Charles Maclay for his City of San Fernando. The line of oaks in the center marks the San Fernando Road.

This is the landscape as Collis P. Huntington and his SPRR engineers saw it. In fact this may have been a surveyor’s photograph: a year later, in 1876, they and thousands of Chinese workers drove the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad right down that line of oaks, along San Fernando Road, and changed this view forever.

The Mission lands ran to the line of mist before the hills. This is roughly the line of the Los Angeles River. Here, in the cool shade of Cahuenga, the beautiful mountain that looks like a lady lying down, was the Tongva Council Grove of Sycamores (by the Gene Autry National Center in Griffith Park.) Beyond the River, most of the hill-scape you see was Col. Griffith J. Griffith’s portion of the old Rancho Los Feliz. Today it is Griffith Park.

The Convento of the Mission appears still in good shape, but the church, the farmyard and outbuildings (including possibly the Andres Pico Adobe?) are muddy piles. Charles Fletcher Lummis would find the ruins in even worse shape ten years later. Appalled by the decrepitude of California antiquities, Fletcher founded the Landmarks Club to rally public forces in Los Angeles and across the nation to preserve San Fernando, and three other Missions.

Land that became North Hollywood and Valley Village appears here, at the center far right, between the orchards and the low-sloping Cahuenga Pass.

A 17th century Spanish province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Its capital was balmy Loreto in Baja until 1777, when the seat was moved north to foggy Monterey, then to chaotic Los Angeles in 1835. (Note the scallop shell of St. James the Greater, “Santiago.”)

I love the visual inference of this treatment: an island of Catholic Spanish red-and-yellow, wrapped by a band of briny blue. This echoes the old legend from Cortez’s time, that California was an island.

The Jesuits ran Las Californias until 1765, when, as part of Carlos III’s “Bourbon Reforms,” Don Jose de Galvez arrived from Madrid. He announced he was the Visitador, a rank above the Viceroy himself. The Jesuits were promptly expelled from Baja, and their missions given over to the Dominicans. The Franciscans were brought in to missionize northwards, up into unexplored Alta California. Galvez put the whole plan – including the Jesuit expulsion from Baja – under the command of a new governor, Don Gaspar de Portola.

In 1804, the thriving province was split in two, Baja California and Alta California, Lower and Upper.

In 1838, following rebellions by Californio surenos, the removal of the capital from Monterey to the Angels in Southern Alta California, Alvarado’s coup d’etat of nortenos, a formal secession from Mexico as the Free and Sovereign State of Alta California, a sureno loyalist backlash, and the forcible expulsion of two incompetent governors, Mexico promulgated a constitution that re-welcomed the quasi-breakaway province. Mexico even gave Alvarado back control of Baja, recombining both Californias. Ten years later the province was again split by the Treaty of Guadeloupe-Hidalgo.

Baja has itself been split into two Mexican states: the Free and Sovereign States of Baja California and Baja California Sur – “Southern Lower California” – organized only in 1974. Its emblem remains the design above.

Wikipedia is the source of these wonderful digital coats of arms.

Don Jose de Jesus Pico, aka “Tortoria” PIco. (This is sometimes rendered Topio, or Tito, or Torio…it will be fun to find out what his name really was!)

He was the cousin of Pio and Andres Pico. His dad, like their dad, was a lower-level Spanish soldier, moved from Mission pillar to Presidio post.

Tortoria’s home base became Rancho Las Piedras Blancas, Ranch of the White Rocks, on the central coast. (Pico had supported Alvarado in the Californio coup d’etat of 1836; as a reward he’d been appointed administrator of the lands formerly belonging to Mission San Miguel. Thus it was on the central coast that his political influence was strongest, and where he made his own rancho. In 1869 Pico sold his land to George Hearst, whose son Billy built San Simeon on the remnants of Pico’s old rancho…)

In 1846 Tortoria was captured by the leather-chested ruffians of the California Battalion, who were marching through San Luis Obispo en route to re-take Los Angeles. As a Pico, Tortoria was branded a spy. He was presented as such to Col. John C. Fremont, who, characteristically, sentenced him on the spot to a firing squad at dawn. Pico was reportedly struck dumb. (Fremont’s selfish, rash judgments – ”I don’t have room for prisoners” – had recently caused the summary shootings of prominent and friendly Californios Don Jose de Berryessa, and his nephews the de Haro twins. Their only crime was landing their rowboat on the shore where the Bears of the Battalion happened to march by.)

Pico’s wife, Dona Francisca Xaviera, suddenly appeared before the Yankee colonel in a black veil. Behind it her eyes were streaming floods of tears. She was clutching Pico’s young daughters to her side; they were also attired in mourning weeds, and were all weeping for Papa. Dona Francisca and the children threw themselves on the Pathfinder’s dusty feet, pleading mercy for their husband and father, until Fremont’s boots glistened and ran clean.

The family appeal sounded the depths of Manifest Destiny’s chivalry, his honor, and his own sense of manhood. Something seemed to snap in John C. Fremont – his self-important anger; his sense of illegitimacy; his childish ambition; his greed for masculine vain-glory. In place of a great man, he stood there, at last, merely a fine man.

Reportedly, Fremont lifted the Dona to her feet, mumbled something chivalrously apologetic, and immediately pardoned Pico. Tortoria, who had been mutely transfixed, himself burst into tears of relief and gratitude, embracing the Pathfinder and Mrs. Pico. The men reportedly developed a deep friendship on the (often rigorous) march south, and they shared many mutual interests.

At the end of their long journey to San Fernando, Tortoria repaid the Colonel for his clemency when, from the Battalion’s camp at San Fernando Mission, Pico agreed to ride over to the Verdugo ranch to parley a surrender with his cousin Andres, Commandante of California and General of the California Lancers.

The Valley Village View

Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.

Tag Archives: Alvarado’s coup d’etat

“…the vast San Fernando Plain”