The Remarkable Story of Atanacio Moreno

Even for the incredibly violent years of the first half of the 1850s in Gold Rush-era Los Angeles, the story of Atanacio (sometimes given as Anastacio) Moreno stands out.  His tale, though, is one that is part factual and part suppositional, though all of it is interesting.

Moreno, a native of Sonora, Mexico, came to Los Angeles at an unknown date and established himself as a merchant.  According to Horace Bell, whose memoirs Reminiscences of a Ranger and the posthumous On the Old West Coast, have to be taken with many grains of salt, Moreno went bankrupt in August 1853.

Meanwhile, in late July, it was alleged that the famed and feared bandido, Joaquin Murrieta, was killed by a posse in San Benito County in the north.  According to two accounts of the semi-mythical Murrieta, the early months of 1853 found the bandit chieftain and his henchmen committing a series of robberies and murders in Calaveras County in the heart of California's gold fields.

At Yaqui Camp, near the town of San Andreas, an attempt was made in mid-January 1853 to round up a posse to capture Murrieta and his gang, led by Charles H. Ellis, said to have been the deputy sheriff of the county.  According to The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit, a fanciful account published in 1854 and penned by Yellow Bird (John Rollin Ridge), Ellis (spelled Ellas in the book) only had a single volunteer

He found no one at all prepared to accompany him but a Mexican merchant in the place named Atanacio Moreno, a man who was worth money, and stood well in the community.  Unsuspected by Ellas, the man secretly belonged to the band of Joaquin Murieta, or I should rather say, to the tremendous organization that that bold chieftain had established throughout the country.  

Yellow Bird went on to state that Moreno had assisted Ellis in capturing a horse thief and supplied him with information and men and horses in other posse activities, though this was, evidently, only because Moreno had conflicts with those who were pursued.  The account went on to say that, after Moreno's assistance led to no results when it came to finding Murrieta

It became known before a great while, for a certainty, that this man was a scoundrel, and leaving the country in a few weeks after his connection with Joaquin was discovered, he joined Sena [Senate], a petty robber of some note in the south.

Meanwhile, a later account, Walter Noble Burns' The Robin Hood of El Dorado, which appeared in 1899, stated the situation with Moreno in Yaqui Camp a little differently.  While noting that Moreno was supposedly the only one to respond to Ellis' call for assistance, Burns offered some details on him:

He was an impressive looking man, tall and rather stout, a smooth and voluble talker, and of manners suave and ingratiating.  This obliging person came forward with an offer to guide the deputy sheriff to the exact spot at which Murrieta could be found.  The offer surprised Ellis but he could not doubt the good faith of so distinguished a citizen.

Burns wrote that Murrieta was standing just a few feet away incognito, while Moreno offered his assistance to Ellis and went on to note that, "Atanacio Moreno was a merchant and quite prosperous.  Also he was Murrieta's spy and secret agent and at times took personal part in the murderous crimes of the outlaws."

What followed in the account was dialogue purportedly uttered by Moreno and Ellis regarding the assistance offered by the former to the latter.  After slogging through mountains and forests for some forty miles, however, Murrieta was nowhere to be found and only then, apparently, did Ellis realize that "Moreno had made fools of them."  Evidently, Burns went on,

Moreno had need of all his eloquence and adroitness to argue them out of stringing him up to a tree, but, in the end, they gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him off with his life.  Upon his return to Yaqui Camp, Moreno hurriedly packed his effects and left for parts unknown, and was never seen in that region again.

Bell, meanwhile, only stated that Moreno's store was "the first commercial failure in Los Angeles" but does not indicate when he arrived in Los Angeles to set up shop.  Bell did write that, "Moreno was a tall, straight, fine appearing white man, belonged to the best blood of Sonora, and up to the time of his disappearance stood well in society, and was highly respected."  But, after his store collapsed, Moreno vanished.

According to Bell, a crime wave washed through Los Angeles in the last part of 1853 and that, after news of Murrieta's death reached town, fears were stoked "that the frightened bandits [from Murrieta's gang] were making their way southward."  Moreover, the animated chronicler continued, "the excitement and alarm was fearful, the city was actually in a state of siege, business was at a standstill, and so October passed and November set in."

On the evening of 7 December, Los Angeles constable (Bell wrote that he was the city marshal and indicated the incident happened months before in August) John "Jack" Wheelan, a veteran of the Mexican-American War who came to California with Stevenson's New York Regiment of volunteers and who was just elected to his position in September, went to what was called the "Sonora camp" near the zanja, or water ditch--this was almost certainly what became Sonoratown on the north end of town--to serve a warrant on the charge of murder against Gabriel (a.k.a. Jesús) Senate.  Senate stabbed Wheelan through the heart, killing the constable.

Despite a search by Sheriff James Barton, the Los Angeles Rangers citizen militia and others, Senate escaped.  The 10 December edition of the Los Angeles Star observed that "the assertion has often been made, that Sonorean thieves and murderers are harbored and assisted in our midst" and the paper charged that "circumstantial complicity" was manifested by some twenty others who stood by as Senate killed Wheelan.

The paper also reported that there was so much anger and excitement generated by Wheelam's death that there was talk of attacking "the whole mixed race" among the Sonorans, but that cooler heads prevailed, even if "a single word" might set off a mob offensive.  Typically, Horace Bell claimed that any vigilante committee action was halted because“the bad characters were evidently in the majority, and might turn out and banish the committee and their backers.”

In that same issue of 10 December, Sheriff Barton advertised for a $500 reward was offered for the delivery of Senate, either alive and brought to the county jail, "or the same price for his head, if killed, by any person attempting to arrest him."  In a 1929 book of selected diary entries of District Court Judge Benjamin Hayes, the jurist tried to prevent Barton from advertising the reward because he was concerned about vigilantes taking advantage of the situation.

A short article about the robbery and rape committed at the home of Martin and Josefa Lelong from the 28 January 1854 edition of the Los Angeles Star as reprinted in the San Francisco Alta Calfornia on 5 February.  Retrieved from the California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside. Click on any image to see them in enlarged views in a new window.

Still, weeks went by with no sign of Senate.  On 20 January 1854, a gang of "six Mexicans" robbed Martin Lelong of a little more than $50, as well as rings, earrings, two watches, a horse and other personal property and then raped Lelong's Californio wife, Josefa Alanís.  According to Horace Bell, who only referred to the victim as a "Frenchman" and his wife, this happened the prior November just after the robbing of the "grand opening ball" of the first brothel opened by outsiders--these being "fair and frail sisters from San Francisco."  Bell also claimed the number of robbers was a dozen, so his accuracy, as noted in this blog several times before, is to be questioned.

In any case, on the 25th, shock, surprise and delight greeted the news that Senate and Juan Burgos, alleged to have bragged that he was Joaquin Murrieta (others evidently did so throughout California), had been killed, their corpses delivered to Sheriff Barton and the bodies quickly buried.  The Star's edition of the 28th, however, noted that, while some of the story it related could be corroborated, some of it "lacks confirmation."

What then followed was the statement that Senate and Burgos, accompanied by several other men, invited four young men to join them at a dance, but actually perpetrated the outrage at Lelong's house.  After decamping to a nearby rancho, part of the gang left for other locales, leaving the four youths with Senate and Burgos.  When the latter proposed killing two Americans at the ranch, the quartet balked and, according to the story, "the four referred to, finally killed Senate and Burgos."

The response in Los Angeles was that "the death of these two villains caused universal joy to our citizens."  The paper concluded by noting that Senate and Burgos were "desirous of emulating the exploits of Joaquin."  Only later did it emerge that Atanacio Moreno was involved to the extent that he drove the wagon into town with the bodies of Senate and Burgos and claimed he had killed them—and then claimed his reward.

According to Bell, Moreno claimed he had been kidnapped by the two and that he killed them in the course of escaping.  Bell also stated that the reward was $1500, not the $500 that Barton actually advertised.

Judge Hayes, in his diary of 25 January, wrote "To-day Senate and Borghias, two assassins, are brought in dead . . . they were killed by one of their companions in the late robbery of Lelong, Atanacio Moreno, a bankrupt merchant who joined the remnants of the Murrieta gang . . . they were delivered at the jail by the stepfather of Manuel Marquez, and the reward paid."

Then, on 8 February, Moreno was arrested, as reported in the Star three days later:

Atanacio Moreno, the man who killed Senate, was arrested in this city . . . on Wednesday, he was in the act of trading in a watch, which was recognized as the one recently sold to Mr. Lelong.  Atanacio was taken before Justice Dimmick, where Mr. Lelong identified the watch, and also the shirt the prisoner had on, as the property taken by the robbers in the recent attack upon his house.  He also testified that Atanacio was a leader in that affair—that he threatened him with a drawn sword, if he made any noise, and took the watch with his own hands.

Moreno was indicted in February, remained in jail for about two months until his trial on 5 April on two indictments, one for the robbery against Lelong and another for grand larceny in the theft of a horse from the Los Angeles Rangers.  This case is one of the few in the surviving court records of the era that has a great deal of material remaining in the folder, including testimony offered at trial.  Moreno was convicted on both counts and sentenced to 10 years for the Lelong robbery and 5 years for the Rangers grand larceny.

Judge Hayes had a notable statement to make in his scrapbooks, which now reside at the Bancroft Library at the University of California in Berkeley, about Moreno:

No courts and juries may have charity for one they believe to be a criminal.  But, charity is a Heavenly feeling that cannot approve iniquity.  We may lament the fate of one who has forfeited the noble privileges of the citizen.  While we pity him in his fallen condition, we must not forget, that the interests of society need also our sympathy and our care and that they depend, for their preservation, less even upon the character of our laws, than upon the fidelity with which they are administered.

When Hayes imposed sentence on the convicted man, the judge recorded in his diary on the 5th that "he took the sentence with perfect composure."

Atanacio Moreno's registration at San Quentin State Prison, 10 April 1854.  Retrieved from Ancestry.com

On the 10th, Moreno arrived at San Quentin and was registered as prisoner 362.  The 24-year old convict listed himself as a merchant, though one indication of his other profession was indicated by the fact that he had a "scar on right leg from Gun Shot."

Yet, Moreno proved to be a model prisoner in what was nothing less than a hellhole.  In his 1859 state of the state address to the legislature, Governor John Weller had much to say about San Quentin, in terms that are not much different than what is often sad today about California's penal system and large prison popluation.

First, he noted there were nearly 600 prisoners in a facility that was built to hold half or less, stating that  "until additional buildings are provided, so as to separate these convicts and classify them, that institution must stand a disgrace to the State—a disgrace to humanity."  Moreover, he continued,

Unless something is done speedily to provide for the accommodation of this army of convicts, the Executive may be compelled to pardon some of them, with a view to their transportation beyond the State.  The law of self-preservation may compel me to throw them upon other communities.

As for pardons, Weller stated that "these petitions are oftentimes numerously signed by respectable citizens, and occasionally pressed by the streaming tears of broken-hearted kindred."  He added that he turned down 20 such cases in the past year, as well as all four of the petitions for commutations of death sentences.  Although not required to, the governor stated his reasons for using his power of the pardon, highlighting "the record in each case, closely examined, and the facts, rather than the character or number of the petitioners . . . I have neither stopped to count the number or consult public sentiment."

In these lights, Weller decided to pardon Moreno in May 1858, noting that

during that time [of incarceration--about 4 years] the officers certify that he had behaved with great propriety, and given evidence of reformation.  His conduct, prior to conviction, was bad.  I therefore pardon him, however, upon the express conditions 1. That he be placed on a vessel immediately bound for Mexico, and never return to this State. 2.  That if he land in California after he is placed on the vessel, he shall forfeit all the privileges and immunities conferred by the pardon. 3. That his friends shall execute and deliver a satisfactory bond in the sum of $3000, for the performance of these conditions . . .

The governor also noted that the petitioners claimed that the "term of conviction being extraordinary, for such an offence.  That the time of conviction was at a period when prejudice ran high, and sentences were no commensurate with offences."  It was also stated that Moreno was only 20 when sent up to prison (again, his registration shows him as 24), but that "his confinement, which has already lasted four years is, in the opinion of your petitioners, reason sufficient for the exercise of Executive clemency."

The petitioners included two trial jurors, R.D. Sheldon and Antonio Franco Coronel, Los Angeles mayor in 1853 and later a legislator and state treasurer, as well as Sanford Lyon, J.W. Halsey, Timothy Wolfskill and Francisco P. Ramirez, then proprietor of El Clamor Público, Los Angeles' Spanish-language newspaper.  Judge Hayes wrote in his diary that Moreno's mother started the petition and perhaps she lobbied for it from Mexico and had parties in Los Angeles take up her cause.

Yet, within five years of his pardon, presuming he did go to Mexico as ordered by Weller, Moreno made his way back to Los Angeles.  If his "propriety" and "evidence of reformation", as cited by the governor, were legitimate, they were not long lasting.

On 5 December 1863, during a flurry of criminal activity and a corresponding "cleaning of the calaboose" by vigilantes, who hung several men during November and December, Moreno was tried and convicted in the Court of Sessions (renamed the County Court the following year) on a charge of grand larceny for stealing a horse from Jesse Stark.  He received a sentence of ten years at San Quentin and checked in there on the 11th as prisoner 2651.  Notably, he was listed as being 39 years old, though if his age during his first term was correct, he should have been 33.

Moreno's second registration at San Quentin, 11 December 1863.  Also from Ancestry.com.

While Horace Bell wrote that Moreno was again pardoned in 1867, this was not true.  His second San Quentin registration shows that Moreno was discharged in February 1872, after serving a little over 8 years.

Not long after Moreno's release from his second stint in prison, Star publisher Benjamin C. Truman wrote of early Los Angeles crimes and told a version of the Moreno story that may have been fed to him by Bell or vice-versa.  As reprinted in an 1889 Los Angeles County history, Truman's version stated that "Luis Bulvia [Burgos]" was a lieutenant of Murrieta, who drifted south after Joaquin was killed and brought "a remnant of Murrietta's gang."  In Los Angeles, then "they were joined by Atanacio Moreno, a bankrupt merchant, who in the reorganization of the party was elected captain, Senati being a member of the same."

Truman repeated the story of the migrant prostitutes and their party, though he wrote that it was in 1854, which would square with the Lelong incident.  In Truman's telling, though, "Moreno, with his gang, numbering eighteen men, swopped down upon the scene . . . and relieved every man and woman of all the valuables they had about them."  They then proceeded to Lelong's house "and robbed it of the most thorough and systematic manner; after which they committed an outrage too horrible for recital."

Truman added more robberies of "several houses" and claimed the gang "carried off a number of Mexican girls," incidents not stated at the time.  Then "a deputy city marshal" was killed by "Senati" and a $1500 reward offered for the murderer, dead or alive.  Later, the city jailer was greeted by Moreno with the dead bodies of "Bulvia" and "Senati," though again, the reports in the paper stated that it was another man who delivered the corpses.

But, then, after Moreno received the reward, this account continued, Moreno "was the lion of the town, and lived royally upon his blood-money."  When he went to the store of Charles Ducommun, however,and tried to sell Lelong's watch, the merchant went to the Los Angeles Rangers and Moreno was arrested by Marshal William Getman.

Truman then offered details not previously reported about how Moreno killed Burgos and Senate, stating that "he and Senati were left along in camp, all the other members of the gang having left on a scout.  While Senati was cleaning his saddle, Moreno blew his brains out."  Before Moreno could get Senate's corpse ready for transport to Los Angeles, Burgos heard the short and "returned to camp and asked the meaning of it.  Moreno told him that Senati's pistol had gone off accidentally."  When Burgos asked where Senate was and Moreno informed him that Senate was asleep, Burgos lifted a blanket covering the dead man's face, at which "Moreno completed his murderous work by plunging a sword blade through his heart!"

Another interesting tidbit offered in the 1889 history was that "the bodies of Senati and Bulvia were buried on Mariposa Hill, where they were disinterred in 1886 when exacavations were made for the present county jail.  Their bones were carted to the city's dumping grounds."

Horace Bell, however, claimed that Moreno was "tempted by cupidity," whatever that means, and that Senate was killed first by the sword and then Burgos shot.  The noise brought three other gang members to the camp were they were "treacherously murdered in detail," though Bell left out those details!  He also claimed that Moreno confessed to being the captain of the bandit band, with Senate and Burgos being his lieutenants and that he led the raids on the brothel and the home of the Lelongs.  Moreover, Bell asserted that Moreno attempted an escape from San Quentin with a San Francisco forger "but disgracefully failed, and [they] were severely punished."

Not only are these statements totally uncorroborated or false--Governor Weller's pardon makes it clear that Moreno was well-behaved while behind bars at San Quentin.  If there had been any escape attempt in 1855, a pardon three years or less from then would clearly have been impossible.  And, of course, Bell's assertion that Moreno received a second pardon in 1867 is another indication of how Bell's talent for a good story has to be measured by what else can be learned about the stories!

As for Moreno, he disappeared after his second release from prison in early 1872 and was lost to history, but his tale is one of the more interesting ones in a fascinating era of early American-era Los Angeles' criminal justice history.

Horace Bell: Reminiscences of a Ranger, Part Five

As noted here before, Horace Bell, in his two volumes of memoirs, Reminiscences of a Ranger (1881) and On the Old West Coast (posthumously publised in 1929), had a habit of assigning fantastic qualities to certain figures, some of dubious reputation.  This was certainly true, in Reminiscences, with his portrayal of John A. (Jack) Powers (1827-1860).

To an admiring Bell, Powers, a native of Ireland who came to California during the Mexican-American War with Jonathan D. Stevenson's New York Volunteers and became well-known (that is, notorious) in San Francisco and in southern California, was "the most noted character, probably, in all California" in the early 1850s.  Powers was "a great gambler," "gifted with mental qualities of the highest order," had "a form and face physically perfect," and "under favorable circustances might have attained to the most honorable distinction."

Bell claimed he not only was admired by gamblers and the Spanish-speaking population, but was friends with two governors Frederick McDougall and John Bigler, who served consecutively from 1851 to 1856.  Moreover, Bell went on, Powers could have served in Congress or been governor himself.

The accolades continued:  "Jack was a power in this land" and he was chief of the community of some 400 gamblers in Los Angeles.  He also "was a lord in the land" with a fine ranch, raiser of hounds and race horses and "maintained an army of followers at his own expense, and boldly defied the authorities."

One of the more interesting aspects of Powers' life was his shielding of Edward McGowan, a police court judged purportedly involved in the murder of journalist James King of William, and who was wanted by the vigilance committee in San Francisco in 1856.

Although Powers was discharged after being indicted for harboring a fugitive in a trial moved from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, Bell claims this was the end of Powers' glory days and "he concluded to fly the country he could no longer rule."  Powers decamped to the northern Mexican state of Sonora near Hermosillo where "those gentle and practical people . . . converted Jack to the most profitable possible use . . . they chopped him up and fed him to their pigs!"

Once again, with Bell, there is more to the story, even as he stated that some "tried to hold Jack up as an out-and-out highwayman", but to Bell, he was "a man born to be prominent in that sphere of life to which fate may have assigned him."  There are other versions--this blogger summarized Powers' life in an essay "Banditry in California, 1850-1875," published in Volume 1 of Icons of the American West, an anthology by Greenwood Press in 2008.

First off, Bell noted Powers' arrival with Stevenson's regiment but either was unaware or chose to avoid the fact that Powers was a deserter just before his ship left New York.  After his arrival at Yerba Buena, soon renamed San Francisco, in March 1847, just after the war formally ended, Powers was sent to Santa Barbara, where his company was noted for a lack of discipline, inclination to drinking and gambling and poor relations with the locals, causing military governor Richard Mason and his aid William Tecumseh Sherman, later of Civil War fame, to impose order personally.

When the Gold Rush erupted and soldiers stationed to protect the new American possession went AWOL in large numbers, Powers went to the gold fields and then returned to the boom town of San Francisco.  He became part of "The Hounds," a gang comprised of former soldiers and others who were in a semi-official capacity when they attacked Chilean miners and others in town.  Powers was among a group arrested for their role in these affairs and a public tribunal by vigilantes held, though Powers was acquitted.

Feeling the heat turning up, Powers headed back to the gold country, made some money and, after a brief sojourn in San Francisco, headed south to resettle in Santa Barbara once again.  Powers did claim a ranch along with Dr. Richard Den, a prominent man in the area, but Powers was said to have lost his claim as did the good doctor.  Powers was quoted as saying that, if he had not lost his claim to the property, he would have lived a different life, but did not elaborate on what that meant.  Bell, however, claimed Powers seized some artillery in Santa Barbara and held off the sheriff, his fellow Stevenson's Regiment mate W. W. Twist, and retained his position on his ranch.

Yet, it has been stated by writers about Powers that he controlled a long stretch of El Camino Real near present Los Alamos, south of Santa Maria and that Powers took over the gang of famed bandit Salomon Pico, when the latter headed for Mexico.

While Bell cited author Charles Nordhoff as claiming that Powers was "incapable of personally committing a robbery" and that Edward F. Beale, lord of the massive Tejon ranch corroborated this, it is actuallly the reverse.

Nordhoff's famed work California for Health, Pleasure and Residence quotes Beale as saying that "Jack Powers and his gang used to herd their bands of stolen horses on my own rancho as they drove them through the country."  It is true, though, that Powers was also described as a courteous man by Beale.

Powers was charged at least twice with crimes.  In the summer of 1853 at Santa Barbara he was indicted for his role in a murder committed by his fellow New York Volunteer Patrick Dunne.  After a deadlock in that county, the case was transferred to Los Angeles.  All that was filed, however, was an indictment and no evidence was presented at trial, so the two were freed.  In 1856, Powers was charged with harboring McGowan and the case also moved to Los Angeles, but there was insufficient evidence and he again was freed.  After Los Angeles County Sheriff James Barton and members of his posse were ambushed early in 1857, Powers was the subject of an arrest warrant on burglary charges, which may not have been connected to the banditry that led Barton to try and capture what became known as the Flores-Daniel Gang (this will be the topic of the next post).  Powers was ordered to attend a hearing at Los Angeles, but, again, there was not enough evidence to warrant a trial, so he was freed.

In a way, Powers might be called a "teflon bandit" for his success in evading conviction or prosecution for the four incidents cited here.  But, in 1858, two associates of Powers involved in crimes in San Luis Obispo County implicated him in the murders of two Basque men, though the confessions were certainly forced.  On the basis of these, Governor John Weller issued a $500 reward for Powers' arrest, but he and Dunne fled by steamer to Mexico.

Notably, Bell mentioned none of this, suggesting only that Powers "emigrated" after his influece waned by 1857.  It appears that Bell's tale of Powers would have been compromised if the linkage of him to murder and his fleeing (rather than emigrating) was to be included.

While Bell and other sources indicate Powers had a ranch in Sonora, others indicate he was a bit north of the Mexican border in the Arizona mission town of Tubac.  There he was killed in late 1860, either by Mexicans in his employ or by a woman he coveted and her lover.  Evidently, they dumped his body in a hog pen and only a few remains were retrieved for burial.  This certainly seemed a notably ignominious death for a man Bell claimed was a brilliant lord who could have ruled anywhere he chose.

The next post concerns the dramatic and vicious series of events dealing with the killing of Sheriff Barton and three of his posse in January 1857 and the aftermath that stretched out over almost two years.  Bell describes these events, as well, but, once again, his account should be questioned on several grounds.

Horace Bell: Reminiscences of a Ranger, Part Four

In his 1881 memoir, Reminiscences of a Ranger, Horace Bell opens his third chapter with an account of more lynching, starting with the February 1853 story of a man named Smith who "was arrested at San Gabriel, summarily tried by a hastily constituted lynch court, and sentenced to be hung instanter."  Bell went on to write that Smith was taken on a cart, driven to a nearby oak tree, where a rope was hung around his neck and slung onto one of the tree's branches and ready to meet his maker "when old Taylor, from the Monte, put in an appearance and interposed on behalf of Smith."

With this admonition, it was stated that constable Frank Baker (of whom we will hear more about in an upcoming post) took Smith into Los Angeles and confined the prisoner in jail.  Then, Bell continued, "the city lynch court thereupon held a meeting, at which a man decried the waste of tax monies for the administration of justice, though Bell said the unnamed individual was not on the assessment roll, which was the same for those most likely to agree with the speaker.

After it was suggested that Smith be tried by the tribunal and hung if guilty and freed if not, this same man led a group of "the ragtag and bobtail of the gambling fraterity" over to the jail (the same noted in an earlier post about the city's calabooses that had a single log running along the floor with staples to which prisoners were chained).

Bell went on to suggest that jailer George Whitehorn "made some show of resistance, but was soon overpowered" and Smith taken to another building under guard, while a tribunal was seated.  According to this account, "they proved nothing whatever against Smith," but another unnamed man moved that Smith be given fifty lashes at the Plaza and released.  When this was voted down, Charles Norris, a petty criminal of repute in town, moved that there be eighty-five lashes and that Smith be sent to Jurupa and a United States Army camp there as deserter.  This evidently was approved by the assemblage.

Then, Bell continued, "a Mexican who had severely cut a pie vendor with a knife" was brought in for consideration of the tribunal's attention and "a chilvalrously inclined gambler suggested that fifty lashes would be a sufficient punishment."  Consequently, those present voted to give him the same number as Smith.  After an Indan brought "an armful of stout willow switches," Bell stated that "the Mexican culprit dramatically came to the front and begged the privilege of being whipped first, saying that he was a man of honor, was no thief, had only used his knife when insulted, and he thought he was entitled to that much consideration."

This was, apparently, approved and the man tied to a post in front of the building, while "the Indian stepped forward with an air of intense satisfaction" to administer the whipping "to the great delight of the assembled patriots."  Taking his punishment with little show of feeling and getting dressed, the Mexican man evidently brandished a smile and a provided drink and stated, "Now I will have the pleasure of seeing this damned gringo whipped."

Bell claimed that Smith addressed the crowd, saying "Gentlemen, I am an American; and it is disgrace enough to be publicly whipped, but surely you will not have a gentleman whipped by an Injun" and requested a white man be appointed to apply the punishment.  Supposedly, a new arrival "from across the plains" agreed to accept $16 cobbled together by the spectators (gamblers) and laid on the switches as Smith took "an occasional pull at his flask . . . filled with brandy and gunpowder."  Some of the gamblers present did not like a white man doing the whipping for money and gave him a violent blanket toss.

This event was covered in the Los Angeles Star's edition of 12 February 1853, in which Smith's real name was said to be Isaac D. Martin and that he and a man only known as Williams were accused of stealing horses from El Monte.  A San Gabriel resident, Jesse Hildreth, was told by a lodger that Martin and Williams were in the area with the stolen animals and locals were alerted so that a trap was laid for the thieves.  While Williams managed to escape, Smith was captured at a nearby house and calls for his immediate execution were made "but a proposal to bring him into town prevailed."

While no mention was made of who convinced the crowd to take this course, Michael White, a long-time resident of the area near the Mission San Gabriel, recalled in an 1877 interview just four years before Bell's book was published that Martin (Smith) and Peter Williams worked for him for a time before going to El Monte, where they stole the horses.

According to White, it was Joseph Caddick who "caught Smith in the act, brought him with a rope around his neck to the mission, [and] threw the end of the rope over the limb of a tree."  White said there were about thirty men present as this was going on, including a lawyer who queried him on whether it was horse stealing warranted a hanging.  White reported that he pled for the mob to spare Martin's life and they agreed by taking him to Los Angeles, where "they gave him 39 lashes" and gave him 24 hours to leave town or he would be hung.  White also noted that Martin confessed his crime to Frank Baker while en route to Los Angeles.

The Star did report on "a lynch trial" held "by some persons in town" on Tuesday the 8th, and that "no one [was] appearing to oppose it very strenuously."  After there was the posting of some noticed, the paper stateed that "a small number of persons met" with the result that Martin "was sentenced to receive 78 lashes."

This punishment was inflicted the same afternoon, the account ended, "Smith [Martin] and a Mexican passing through the ordeal together."  There was no detail of the whippings provided, only a concluding note that "Smith has made tacks, and is now at liberty to resume his profession."  It should be added that the paper began the piece with:

Our citizens have suffered so severely in the loss of stock by thieves within the last year, that they are now extremely careful and vigilant and it requires an old hand to practice the horse-stealing profession to advantage.  Within the last ten days a party of Americans who have been following this nefarious business for a long time, have been effectually routed.

This statement is a reflection of the fact that, as the California Gold Rush brought hordes of treasure seekers to the coast, some of them, finding little success in the Sierra Nevada mining regions, drifted to towns and cities for easier ways to make money.  San Francisco had its vigilance committee in 1851, so many criminals steered clear of the City by the Bay.  Los Angeles, which had a very lucrative trade with the gold fields in fresh beef from its often-enormous and well-stocked cattle ranches, was an attractive target for thieves, who also had wide open spaces in all but the western direction for their escape.

Notably, there is a case file in the county court records, from 5 February, for a Justice Court hearing on a William Smith, charged with grand larceny on "Joseph M. Catrick" and Santiago Lobo for a stolen horse.    Moreover, Caddick, in July 1852, was charged in the Court of Sessions with an assault to murder James R. Barton, the future sheriff of the county and there was a co-defendant, the same Charles Norris Bell said motioned for Martin's punishment.  There was no disposition in that case, but there must have either been a dropping of the charge or an acquittal.  As for Norris, he was charged with the assault to murder of constables William Reider and Moses Searles and a man known only as Scofield in October 1851, but there is no known disposition in the matter.

So, again, Horace Bell's accounting of historical events may be filled with detail, including lengthy quotations recollected decades later, and based on some measure of corroborated fact, but there is much that either cannot be reconciled with other sources or appear to be enhancements for effect.

Horace Bell: Reminiscences of a Ranger, Part Three

Generally speaking, if Horace Bell, in his 1881 memoir Reminiscences of a Ranger, liked someone, he would not only lavish praise on them, but refer to them by name.  If, however, he had contempt for an individual, they were referred to by some usually mocking phrase or title, such as Old Horse Face (Abel Stearns) or "the man from Arkansas," the latter being the subject of this post.

Bell's book began with this arrival in the rollicking Gold Rush town of Los Angeles just in time for a popular tribunal, presided over by "Old Horse Face", in judgment of men accused of the murder of San Gabriel saloon-keeper and militia general Joshua Bean.  In his colorful way, Bell described his version of this extralegal proceeding and then went off on a variety of tangents and diversions, some covered here in the previous two posts.

He then returned to the matter of the sentencing of the several prisoners, with Stearns calling for and receiving a motion for the death sentence of hanging and the motions were entertained for each, including one that turned over one man, who Bell claimed was the true killer, over to the legally-constituted authorities.  That story will have to wait for a fuller discussion of the Bean murder, however.

Horace Bell's fantastical tale of how the Los Angeles Rangers engineered a "court martial" of marshal Alveron S. Beard seems totally fabricated, but sure is fun to read.

When it came time to execute those found guilty by the vigilante tribunal, Bell stated that "an immigrant from Arkansas had been stalking around the streets for some days previous, in a ragged and half-clad condition" and then offered to serve as the hangman.  Bell continued, "a purse was accordingly raised in his behalf, and the great man from Arkansas became the hangman of the mob."  Moreover, the day afterward, it was stated, "the uncouth Arkansas man appeared on the streets dressed in the very extreme of elegant and expensive fashion."  The unnamed individual "soon thereafter became the village pedagogue" and took out an advertisement in the Los Angeles Star for a school he had opened.  Finally, Bell reported that "at the next municipal election, the elegant hangman was honored by our people by being elected City Marshal."

Bell then told a tale about how, about June 1853 when "the southern counties were overrun with Mexican banditti" two contingents of Rangers were formed, the one in Los Angeles that Bell joined, and another in Calaveras County.  On a Sunday evening, he went on, the marshal called for the newly-constituted Rangers to arrest some thieves said to be at a fandango (dance) in town.  When the Rangers arrived, they were disposed to enjoy the festivities instead, while the marshal evidently made an excuse about having to get his revolver before going to the party.

After awhile the Rangers believed they had been deceived by the marshal, Bell claimed, and went to his home where they "found the delinquent chief in the arms of his newly wedded bridge, who, by the by, had another husband, then living, I believe, at El Monte."  After waking him up, the Rangers allegedly told the marshal that there had been a terrible fight, two of their members had been killed, and the official was needed to assist in the preservation of order.

Then, it was stated that "it required at least half an hour for him to make his toilet" before he made his appearance wearing kid gloves and carrying a gold-headed cane.  Bell went on to assert that he was then seized by the Rangers, who carried the marshal to a ditch where "a court-martial was organized, which proceeded to try the marshal on a charge of treason and desertion."  Naturally, the account continued, "he was found guilty, and the military code was read to him from a greasy pack of monte cards."  The penalty was decreed to be "cat-hauling in the public water-ditch."

Bell only referred to Beard as "the man from Arkansas" rather than by name and, indeed, Beard, a native of North Carolina, resided in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1850 just after his service in the Mexican-American War.  Within a few years, he relocated to rough-and-ready Gold Rush-era Los Angeles.

The "astonished representative of official pomposity" was tied up with a rope "and the irate Rangers amused themselves until the break of day in dragging the produ dignitary up and down the water ditch, when they left him more dead than alive and retired to their barracks."  Bell wrote that the Rangers were then arrested and a trial was held in the Justice Court, which ended when the merchant, only identified as Tom H------, who supposedly represented the Rangers went on a rampage "capsizing the court, bench and all, whereupon the Rangers went to work, and smashed the tables, broke the chairs, and tore things up generally . . . so ended this remarkable episode."

Finally, Bell claimed, this event "ended the official career of that illustrious character, born of the first great Los Angeles mob."  He went on to assert that "the boys would hoot him on the street, and he was forced to resign."

Not content with stopping there, however, Bell could not resist another story, adding "then I will consign him to the life of vagabondism that he has led down to the present day."  This had to with a welcome party for Ezra Drown, who would be a prominent attorney, common council member, and district attorney in Los Angeles, in May 1853, at which "the pompous marshal" was in attendance ostensibly for "official protection" but allegedly "to get a deluging supply of gratuitous liquid comfort."  When a fight broke out between attorney Lewis Granger and the federal district attorney, who was unnamed, and "the officious head of the infantile city police" jumped in, Granger "downed the Arkansas man, and chawed his nose until it resembled a magnificent pounded and peppered beefsteak."  Bell claimed the marshal had the federal district attorney arrested, but the matter was handled without a trial and the two walked "arm in arm  . . . to the Bella Union, where they smiled at the bar and swore eternal friendship."

As is so often the case with Bell, there are grains of truth, uncorroborated statements, and an array of falsehoods in his characterization of the "man from Arkansas," who was Alviren S. Beard.  There is not a great deal of information available on Beard, who was a native of Davidson County, North Carolina and born about 1820.  He was married in his home county as a young man in the early 1840s and then served in the Mexican-American War.  Within a few years, he was in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, before making his way to Los Angeles.

There is no corroboration that Beard was the hangman in the lynching of the men accused of involvement in Joshua Bean's death.  District Court Judge Benjamin Hayes's voluminous papers at the Bancroft Library at U.C. Berkeley, include material on the lynchings of the accused men, and there are lengthy articles in the Los Angeles Star--none of which mention Beard, which is not to say Bell was wrong.

The same is the case with Bell's "rags to riches" description of Beard before and after the hangings, but it is true that Beard in mid-December 1852 received Los Angeles Common Council approval to operate a school and be paid $35 a month for teaching poor children, the number of which were to be determined by the council.  This is the earliest documented record of Beard being in the town, though it is certainly possible he was there earlier, including when the Bean lynchings took place.

Several months later, he did secure election as Los Angeles city marshal in early May 1853, about a half year after the lynchings.  Perhaps akin to the situation in which Tomás Sánchez, who had a major role in the capture and lynching of suspects in the murder of Sheriff James Barton in January 1857, was elected county sheriff in 1859 and retained that seat for several years, it is possible Beard was "rewarded" for his services in the Bean lynchings be being elected marshal--but there is no proof that this was the case.

Interestingly, however, Beard's sureties to guarantee his behavior in office were former mayor John G. Nichols and Lewis Granger, who Bell claimed pummeled Beard's nose into "beefsteak" around the same time as the election.  Why Granger would, at virtually the same time, beat Beard up and then put up bond money as the new marshal's surety is puzzling, unless Bell expansive storytelling impulses created the Granger pummeling to make Beard look more comical than he was.

But, none of Bell's tales are as outlandish as his claims of the Rangers' "court-martial" of the marshal.  Again, no other sources mention any event remotely similar to this and the Star would certainly have covered it if it had happened.  Moreover, the claim that the entirety of the militia was arrested and tried before the Justice Court--a serious case of assault and battery for the serious injuries Bell claimed were inflicted would have gone before the Sessions Court, anyway--just defies belief.  This is especially true with the part about the trashing of the courtroom.

Despite his many misadventures in Los Angeles, Beard was elected as a Justice of the Peace in San Bernardino and it is listed as his occupation in the 1860 census.

As it was in real life, Beard was already pretty amusing or worse on his own without embellishment.  For example, shortly after taking office as marshal, Beard petitioned the Common Council for a salary and did so again in October and November, but the council replied that the schedule of fees paid to the marshal for various services was considered sufficient.  After the last attempt, the council's minutes for 23 November included the admonition that, if fees were not sufficient compensation for Beard, "he is at liberty to resign."

Other conflicts between the town's governing body and Beard included his issuing business licenses instead of collecting the fees, which was his job as dictated by ordinance and question about fees he was charging for services, such as arrests made of individuals who, as the council recorded in its minutes of 21 June 1853, "had not paid any fine because they succeeded in making good their escape owing to the lack of vigilance on the part of the Marshal."  Consequently, his claims were reduced only to account for those prisoners who did not escape and who paid their fines!  At one point, Beard requested fees for burying a dead Indian, but the council rejected this, noting that such an action was under the auspices of the county, nor the city.

The marshal also had a trio of legal problems within months of his assuming office, involving bigamy, unlawful detainer of an Indian and his role in the homicide of a man he ordered to jail.  These incidents will be discussed later in a more detail post about Beard.

Beard's resignation in early 1854, however, was not due to being shamed by the Rangers. Instead, he failed to forward money to the city treasurer in his role as the town's tax and fines collector.  More on this will be presented in that forthcoming post on Beard, but it turned out that Beard was hundreds of dollars in arrears.  The Los Angeles Common Council pressed him for the assessment book and funds until the matter led to the vacating of his office and the demand of the monies from his sureties, the same Lewis Granger mentiond above and former mayor John G. Nichols.  Eventually Beard ponied up some cash, as did Granger and Nichols, though it looks like a couple hundred bucks never made it to the city's coffers.

As to Bell's claim that Beard was a vagabond for the next few decades, it is true that the former marshal moved around a good deal.  In 1860, he was in San Bernardino serving as Justice of the Peace--an indication that, despite his misadventures in Los Angeles, voters in his new home found him worthy of a judicial position.

Within a decade, though, Beard decamped to Virginia City, in what was then Idaho Territory.  The settlement was new, having been founded as a mining boom town in 1863, but within months crime became rampant, as was often the case in western American mining communities.  The response was a vigilance committee that operated at the end of that year and into the next, which also was when Montana was declared a territory of the U.S. by President Lincoln.  Dozens of men were killed by so-called "road agents," and, in turn, about fifteen or twenty of the latter were executed by what were known as the Montana Vigilantes.  

Whether Beard was in Virginia City, which served as Montana's capital from 1865-75, during this period is not known, but it is ironic that he may have been a vigilante executioner in Los Angeles in 1852 and then happened to live in Virginia City eighteen years later, a few years removed from its own vigilante period.

In any case, by the mid-1870s, he had moved once more, this time to Elko County, Nevada, where he was a rancher.  He appeared in an 1875 state census there and just afterward was quoted in a Los Angeles Herald article about a cannon said to have been used in a notorious fight at an 1852 party in town.  

In 1880, he had roamed back to California, this time taking up residence in San Pasqual, near San Diego, which was the site of the famed 1846 battle when Californios defending their homeland defeated American forces in the main victory for locals in the Mexican-American War in California.  It appears that Beard remained at San Pasqual into the 1890s and may have died during that decade, while in his seventies.  Whether this frequent moving from place to place constituted "vagabondism" or not is arguable.

In Bell's telling, Alveron S. Beard was a dirty, dishelved volunteer vigilante hangman, an effete and cowering marshal, and a discredited vagabond.  Bell's pungent penchant for elaboration, exaggeration and embellishment can obscure those elements of documented history that are present in his work, as well.  Other sources, however, indicate that Beard certainly had some significant character flaws--as he was a bigamist, a marshal with questionable discretion, and an (ab)user of public funds while Los Angeles's marshal. 

As is so often the case, parsing out accounts of first-person history (if Bell can be viewed as a reliable chronicler) can be a challenge and sorting out fact from fancy frustrating!

Horace Bell: Reminiscences of a Ranger, Part Two

As Indiana native Horace Bell settled in to his new home in the Gold Rush-era frontier town of Los Angeles, he took a great interest in the more unsavory aspects of his adopted community.  An early instance of this was his encounter with "Ricardo Urives," actually Ricardo Uribe, who Bell, in his 1881 memoir Reminiscences of a Ranger, stated was "the most perfect specimen of a desperado I ever beheld."

Bell went on to aver that Uribe "could stand more shooting and stabbing than the average bull or grizzly bear" and described an instance in which Uribe single-handledly evaded a phalanx of other desperadoes in the Calle de los Negros, leaving a half-dozen wounded men in his wake as he sported "at least a score of wounds" and was, in addition "so cut and carved that his own mother would have failed to recognize him."

Bell watched from a second-floor balcony of "Captain Bell's residence" [again, not explaining that he was the nephew of said captain] as Uribe left the field of battle to get patched up before riding off to his sister's Rancho de los Coyotes, one of the ranches carved from the massive Nieto grant and located in today's cities of Cerritos, Buena Park, Stanton and La Mirada.

Waxing grandiloquently, Bell went on to say that "Ricardo's courage was that of the lion or the riger, and like those barons of the brute creation, when brought face to face with moral as well as physical courage, the animal bravery of the desperado would quail."

He then went on to relay the tale of how Uribe was off on a bender of some kind "tormenting, berating and abusing every one who came in his way" when"a quiet young gentleman" demanded that Uribe stop his bullying.  As Uribe menacingly brandished a knife, the young man coolly displayed a revolver and calmly told his adversary that he'd shoot him dead if he didn't step away.  Astonishingly, Uribe, the man who took several bullet and knife wounds fighting half a dozen men in Bell's previous tale, merely "turned and slunk away."

At that moment, the county sheriff, James Barton, rode up and congratulated the young man on his bravery, even as the individual in question appeared not to know just who he had confronted.  Bell finally identified the courageous young dude as John G. Downey, who he claimed was "then a stranger," although Downey had been a druggist in town for at least three years and was on the Los Angeles Common [City] Council in 1852, the year of Bell's arrival.

Downey, Bell went on, became governor of California in 1860, being elevated from lieutenant governor when John B. Weller was elected to the U.S. Senate.  He then, according to Bell, was"the best governor, possibly, our state ever had," even though Downey only served two years and returned to Los Angeles.  It might be that Bell's desire to laud Downey led him to magnify the circumstances of the conflict with Uribe, though there is no other source to corroborate Bell's tale.

A portion of Horace Bell's fanciful account of Ricardo Uribe's battle with the "Jim Irvin" gang from Bell's 1881 memoir Reminiscences of a Ranger.  Unfortunately, most of Bell's account is not particularly accurate, though the story is great fun to read.

There was one other Uribe story--this having to do with the 1851 arrival from the northern gold fields of a gang of bandits to the Los Angeles area.  Bell's version has it that "Jim Irvin" and his men "found some friends in jail" and that "Irvin" decided "to take the prisoners out of the hands of the sheriff, and take them along with him" to Mexico, his destination.

After a company of U.S. troops showed up in town and thwarted "Irvin" and his gang, Bell said the desperadoes headed to the Los Coyotes ranch "and made a hostage of Ricardo, who was the majordomo or foreman of his sister's rancho, in exchange for a supply of good horses on which to make their escape to Mexico.

Then, Bell stated that "Irvin" and his men headed north and east to the San Gorgonio Pass and towards the Colorado River, which was hardly the quickest way to Mexico--that would have been the coastal route through San Diego.  In any case, Uribe decided to, singly, follow the party "whom he had doomed to destruction" and crossed the Chino Hills, possibly through today's Carbon Canyon leading from Brea to Chino Hills, as a shortcut.

Suddenly, the reader learns that Uribe "with a chosen band of Cahuilla Indians" native to the area east of modern San Bernardino, confronted the bandits, "who rode quietly into the ambush and were slaughtered to a man.  According to Bell, the Indians reported later that while they "fought from their place of concealment," Uribe charged the gang "face to face, [and] let them know that he was the avenger of his own wrongs" back at Los Coyotes.

Bell claimed that he was told the circumstances of this heroic standoff by Uribe during "the gorgeous honor of eating beef stewed in red pepper, beans and tortillas, at Ricardo's table"  Moreover, the account concluded, Uribe was "neither robber nor gambler, but a good-hearted, honest fellow, who just fought for the very love of fighting, for fighting was the order of the day."

The problem with Bell's version of the "Irvin" tale is that it is basically not true.  Bell was not in Los Angeles in early 1851 when the events took place and existing sources, mainly the lengthy narrative written by attorney Joseph Lancaster Brent, tell a very different story.

The larger incident, known as the Lugo Case, will be covered here subsequently, but suffice it to say for now that James "Red" Irving, a former soldier with the American invasion of Mexican California, had, indeed, rode with his gang of thieves into the Los Angeles area on his way to Mexico.  Irving learned, however, that two members of the prominent Lugo family had been arrested on the charge of murder after an incident near Cajon Pass.  Ironically, Bell later discussed the matter elsewhere in Reminiscences as if it was completely separate from Irving's involvement.

Seeing an opportunity for extorting some cash from the Lugos, Irving visited the family's Rancho San Bernardino at the base of the pass and offered to break the brothers from jail, Menito and Chico, from jail, but was refused by the family.  Enraged by this lack of gratitude from the Lugos, Irving decided to storm the jail and take the brothers as revenge.  It is true that, as a court case was in process and Irving and his men waited for their opportunity, a military force happened to show up in Los Angeles, preventing the bandit chief from carrying out his designs.

However, Irving headed straight for Rancho San Bernardino, not to Los Coyotes, to exact his frustrations on the Lugos and Brent stated in his account that he sent a warning.  There is no indication that Uribe had anything to do with what followed as he is not mentioned by Brent or other sources.  The battle between the Cahuillas, led by their chief Juan Antonio, and the Irving gang in San Timoteo Canyon near modern Redlands, did take place and the bandits were annihilated, excepting one survivor.  But, it is almost certain that Ricardo Uribe was not there--still Bell's tale is certainly entertaining.

To conclude, Bell's assertion that Uribe was a good fellow, despite his violent tendencies, is a common theme in the major's two books. He would make the same statement about Dave Brown, who will be discussed here later, as well, and a few other characters, actual or fictional.

Uribe, in fact, did have a few run-ins with the law.  On 14 June 1850, just as the American legal system in Los Angeles was getting underway, the very first criminal court case held at the Court of Sessions (later the County Court) was that of People v. Ricardo Uribe three charges of assault and battery against three men: Pedro Romero, Jose Antonio Cuaja and Juan Lopez.  The case files don't contain any details about the incident, but Uribe was found guilty on the first two counts, while he was acquitted on the last.

On 11 February 1851, Uribe was again before the Sessions court, on a charge of assault on a public officer, with the defendant accused of having attacked Deputy Sheriff William B. Osburn.  While Uribe was "held to answer" after a preliminary hearing, there is no known disposition of the case.

So, these tales of the fierce and brave Ricardo Uribe and, especially, Bell's claims of his involvement in the imperfect rendering of the Lugo Case are good examples of where a reader of Reminiscences of a Ranger and On the Old West Coast should be mindful of how the author can be enormously entertaining, if somewhat loose with facts.

Horace Bell: Reminiscences of a Ranger, Part One

For those interested in the history of nineteenth-century Los Angeles, there are two autobiographies that are standard reading: that of merchant Harris Newmark, who arrived in the town in 1853, and the one written by Horace Bell, who predated Newmark by a matter of months, coming to town in 1852. The difference between the two is dramatic, however,

Newmark's book, Sixty Years in Southern California, published in 1913, is a collection of factual reminiscences laid out chronologically, offering relatively little commentary, and, frankly, lacking a sense of narrative and story.  Subsequently, many people use Newmark almost like a reference book, picking out the book when they want to learn more about a person or event.  He has been and will continue to be utilized here on this blog with great frequency.

Bell is an entirely different chronicler in his two works, Reminiscences of a Ranger (1881, reprinted in 1927) and On the Old West Coast, published in 1929 after his death.  While he liked to refer to himself as a "truthful historian," Bell was far more interested in telling rollicking, action-packed, character-based tales than laying out a series of facts.  Anyone with a good general understanding of the 1850s, which is the period in which Reminiscences largely takes place will be able to find many substantial errors and energetic exaggerations in Bell's text.

This is, in no way, a suggestion that Bell not be consulted.  His books are highly entertaining, but they need to be taken with a factual grain (or two or dozens) of salt.

A native of Indiana who came, as so many thousands did, to Gold Rush California in 1850 when he was barely out of his teens, Bell migrated south to Los Angeles in late 1852 where he had an uncle, Alexander Bell, a prominent merchant (though, strangely, Bell never refers to him as a relative in Reminscences when he talks about him at all.)

His detailing of the stage ride from the rudimentary harbor at San Pedro to the village of Los Angeles is the template for how the rest of Reminiscences is written.  The prose is lively, full of alleged, colorful quotes by the people Bell wrote about and replete with italics and exclamation points to hammer home the feeling about the wild frontier community that the author was determined to make as clear as possible.

While Bell delighted in talking about desperadoes, card sharks, immoral and unethical bigwigs, fallen women, gambling houses and other places of entertainment, and the like, he professed to have an aversion to discussing the horrors of extreme violence and the accompanying atmosphere surrounding much of Los Angeles' sordid criminal history, even as he often betrays himself by doing just that.  Still, he claimed that his purpose was to take more of a lighthearted approach, using comedy filled with irony and no small amount of critical commentary about events and persons.

Later an attorney and publisher of a relatively unknown weekly paper, accurately styled The Porcupine, Bell had an acidic, aggressive and confrontational style when it came to those contemporaries he did not like, while he could, on the other hand, be effusive, warm and highly complimentary of those he did.  Often the objects of his disdain went nameless in the text, except for some mocking sobriquet, such as "a most useful man" or "Old Horse Face."

When it came to criminal matters, Bell found himself arriving in Los Angeles just as a major event was taking place.  Joshua Bean, general of an Indian-fighting militia and owner of a San Gabriel salloon, was recently murdered and, the day after settling in, Bell found "a very small adobe house, with two rooms, in which sat in solemn conclave, a sub-committee of the great constituted criminal court of the city."  In other words, he stumbled upon a popular tribunal of citizens acting, ostensibly, in support of the legally-constituted courts in trying the matter of the men accused of killing Bean.

Bell, soon to join a militia of citizens formed to fight crime known as the Los Angeles Rangers (covered here in recent posts) and later a filibusterer with William Walker in Nicaragua, portrayed himself in Reminiscences as diametrically opposed to vigilantism.  In mocking tones, he reported upon the "very refined proces of questioning and cross-questioning" utilized in the tribunal and the way in which any contradictory statements made by a defendant who was "frightened so badly that he would hardly know one moment what he had said the moment previous" were considered "conclusive evidence of guilt."

It is interesting in this case to compare Bell's account with that of the sole newspaper in town, the weekly Star, and, in fact, the Bean murder will be covered here in more detail later.  For now, it is enough to say that the several men subject to the popular tribunal were, not surprisingly, found guilt and lynched.  While it was rumored that the legendary Joaquin Murrieta (or one of the several possible variations of him said to be roaming California) was directly involved in the Bean murder, Bell accepted his presence as an incontrovertible fact.

Having heard the substance of the trial, Bell departed and saved the hanging of the condemned men for a later, dramatic discussion, complete with a rainstorm, bursts of thunder and the like, and went on to talk about how Los Angeles "was certainly a nice looking place" in the midst of a Gold Rush windfall that enriched a great many ranchers and merchants in the small town through the lucrative cattle trade.

His tour on that second day in town, of course, included the more colorful establishments in town, including the many grog shops, gambling dens and other places of entertainment in and around the Calle de los Negros, known by Anglos as Nigger Alley, though the place was actually named for a dark-skinned Mexican who lived there in previous years.

This is where Bell made his famed, unsubstantiated, but generally accepted allegation that "the year '53 showed an average mortality from fights and assassinations of over one per day in Los Angeles."  He went on to say that "police statistics showed a greater number of murders in California than in all the United States besides, and a greater number in Los Angeles than in all of the rest of California" for the same year, though there is no citation, naturally, for the sources.

As noted here previously, there are other sources that suggest that the murder rate in Los Angeles was far lower and, almost certainly, far more accurate, but even at a few dozen documented murders in a given year, for a town of just several thousand, the rate is still astronomical.  What Bell doesn't discuss in any detail is just why the conditions were present for such a marked rate of murder in Gold Rush-era Los Angeles.

In any case, there is no question that crime and violence were mind-numbingly high in a community lacking monetary and material support for policing and court operations, abundant in young men from many ethnic and racial backgrounds and willing to fight out their differences in many kinds of circumstances, including those fueled by alcohol as well as prejudice, and awash in a sentiment that encouraged personal (or even group) justice over existing legal structures.

Bell's exaggerations serve the purpose of the dramatic storytelling that animated him, even if the grains of truth in his assertions need to be picked out and analyzed at a level of detail and corroboration he studiously avoided.  Still, his accounts are valuable because they are so rare and, again, because his style is so fun to read.

The next post takes us to his association with the Rangers and other tales of crime and violence in 1850s Los Angeles.

Joaquin Murrieta and the Los Angeles Rangers

On this day in 1853, the Los Angeles Star newspaper had two articles of interest regarding crime and justice in early LA.

The first was about the recent formation of a citizen militia organized to defend the town and county against what was perceived as rampant, unmitigated, unchecked criminal activity.

The Rangers were formed at a time when, throughout the United States, citizen militias were very popular.  The captain was A.W. Hope, who was the first designated police chief, when a small force was created in 1851, during another time of grave concern about crime.  The treasurer and clerk was David W. Alexander, later a two-time sheriff (1856, 1876-77) of the county.

Part of a 6 August 1853 article in the Los Angeles Star newspaper discussing the recent formation of the citizen militia called the Los Angeles Rangers.

Members included Horace Bell, whose 1881 memoir Reminiscences of a Ranger was noted in the last post; William Little, a member of the posse led by Sheriff James Barton which was mowed down by Latino bandits in present-day Orange County in January 1857; William C. Getman, who was a city marshal and briefly sheriff before he was killed in the line of duty just a year after Barton; C.E. [listed as E.C.] Hale, who replaced Alexander as sheriff in 1856; Eli Smith, a future deputy sheriff; Octavius Morgan, who was publisher of the short-lived, but colorful (and vigilante supporting) newspaper, the Southern Californian; Thomas Rand, whose brother William was a founder of the Star and of the famed Rand McNally firm; and W.T.B. Sanford, whose brother-in-law Phineas Banning became one of the region's most prominent citizens and a vigilante.

There were quite a few citizen militias in Los Angeles through the 1870s, but the Rangers appeared to have been the most active by far, at least for a stretch there in the middle Fifties.  Bell's colorful and exaggerated book burnished and expanded the group's image significantly, but it is also fair to suggest that its presence was helful in trying to put a crimp on crime.  More on the Rangers in future posts.

Meantime, the other article of interest was one that reported on the supposed capture and extralegal execution of the famed and semi-legendary bandido Joaquin Murrieta.  The San Francisco Alta California, the week prior on 30 July, published a report stating Joaquin and six of his bandits were confronted by a militia called the California Rangers, led by Captain Harry Love, who was, however, absent when Joaquin was captured and killed.  The report continued that Love had returned with prisoners "and the head of Joaquin preserved in spirits."

Here's more on the membership and leaders of the Rangers, as well as an article about the purported capture of the semi-mythical bandido Joaquin Murrieta from the same issue of the Star.

According to some sources, it is unclear if there was one Murrieta or several. There have also been claims that Murrieta wasn't caught and that someone else was taken and killed instead.  Histories purporting to tell the story of the notorious bandit have been published, but have to be taken as largely imaginary, given that contemporary sources are sketchy and spotty at best.

Murrieta' s legend was enlarged significantly when it was reported that his picked head, said to have been long displayed in San Francisco, was reported destroyed in the great earthquake and fire of April 1906.

As for the Los Angeles area, it was said that Murrieta frequently appeared in town and, in one particular case, involving the murder of San Gabriel saloon keeper and Indian fighter Joshua Bean, he may have had a direct role.  More, too, on that in a subsequent post.

A Murder a Day?: Homicide in 1850s Los Angeles

Los Angeles, the City of Angels, had a nationwide reputation as a den of deviltry.  During the 1850s and, especially, the heyday of the Gold Rush in the first years of that decade, the levels of violence found in the town and country was nothing less than shocking.

Naturally, homicide is the type of crime that gets the greatest amount of attention.  When it comes to trying to get a handle of how much homicide there was during the tumultuous Fifties, however, there is a wide range of information out there.

For example, Horace Bell, a longtime resident who arrived in the town in late 1852, wrote in his entertaining but exaggerated memoir, Reminiscences of a Ranger, published in 1881, that "the year '53 showed an average mortaility from fights and assassinations of over one per day in Los Angeles."  He went on to claim that "police statistics" showed more murders in California than in the rest of the United States and more in Los Angeles than throughout the state.

This excerpt from the 1927 edition of Horace Bell's Reminiscences of a Ranger states that there was more than a murder a day in Los Angeles in 1853.

The polar opposite of Bell in temperament and style was merchant Harris Newmark, a migrant of 1853 to Los Angeles who wrote his Sixty Years in Southern California in, of course, 1913.  Newmark observed that "human life at this period was about the cheapest thing in Los Angeles" and identified Calle de los Negros, or "Nigger Alley" as Newmark expresed it, a short, narrow lane off the southeast corner of the Plaza as where "a large proportion of the twenty or thirty murders a month" took place.

William Lewis Manly, a survivor of the ill-fated Death Valley '49ers emigrant party, wrote in his book, Death Valley in '49, that "the country was overstocked with desperate and lawless renegades in Los Angeles, and from one to four dead men was about the number picked up in the streets each morning."

There were, however, more muted reports.  Rev. James Woods organized a Presbyterian church at Los Angeles in 1854-55 and, in his Recollections of Pioneer Work in California, observed "I do not think it would be much exaggeration to say that, during that year, there was an average of one person killed each week."  Bear in mind that Woods admitted this could be a slight distortion of the truth.

William Brewer who wrote of his experiences as a surveyor through California, stated in his memoir that "fifty to sixty murders per year" was common in Los Angeles in the years prior to his first visits around 1860.

Merchant Harris Newmark in his memoir, Sixty Years in Southern California, claimed that there were some 240 to 360 murders a year in Los Angeles when he arrived in town in 1853.

Then, there is the 11 October 1851 edition of the fledgling newspaper, the Los Angeles Star, which cited a list provided by the deputy sheriff showing that, over the preceding fifteen months, there had been 44 homicides in Los Angeles County.  Twenty of these were in the city and outlying township of Los Angeles.  Notably, seventeen were in the San Bernardino area, which had only recently been established as a Mormon outpost.  Of these, however, eleven were members of the Irving bandit gang killed in a clash with Cahuilla Indians near present-day Redlands.

This latter brings up an important point:  if these bandits were outsiders from northern California who happened to be in the region for a short period of time and then were killed in a pitched battle, how do we define "homicide" or "murder"?  How many more of the reported "homicides" were matters of self-defense, suicide, or other types of death that are distinct from murder?

Finally, there is the ambitious effort mounted by the sociologist Eric Monkonnen and students to tally all homicides in Los Angeles from 1827 to 2002.  Conducted for the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State University, the database could not be further refined when Monkonnen suddenly died in 2005.

What the table of homicides show is a range of between eight and twenty-eight incidences during the 1850s, with the peak occurring in 1854 and twenty-five more homicides taking place the following year.  These totals were nearly twice as much as the third highest total, fifteen in 1853.  Subsequent years showed a noted decline, to three each in 1862 and 1863, and then, as Los Angeles experienced its first significant growth in the late 1860s and early 1870s, a rise to as high as seventeen homicides in 1870 and eleven the next year.

There is a problem, however, with this data.  On 24 October 1871, a nightmare of staggering proportions was experienced when a multiethnic mob of Europeans, Americans, Mexicans and Spanish-speaking Californios shot, stabbed and hung nineteen Chinese males (including a 15-year old) in a mass lynching.  These victims inexplicably are missing from the table Monkonnen and his associates compiled.

The Rev. James Woods, a Presbyterian minister in Los Angeles in 1854-55, stated, with not "much exaggeration" that about 50 persons were killed in the town that year in this statement from his Recollections of Pioneer Work in California.

In any case, the significant variations in statistics are notable.  Perhaps the best the can be said is that the extremes of a "murder a day" found in Bell, Newmark and Manly are almost certainly gross exaggerations.  At the same time, the Monkonnen research is probably undercounted.  Maybe Woods, Brewer and the Star were closer to the mark.

Even so, assuming that 30-60 homicides (murders or otherwise) took place in a given year during the 1850s, this is a stunning rate for a town that could not have been much larger than, say, five thousand persons or so.

An important tangent:  the 1850 federal census, conducted in early 1851, tallied 1,610 persons in Los Angeles and 3,530 in the county.  However, a state census taken just over a year later in 1852 came up with a total figure of just under 8,000 persons in the county.  The difference appears to have mainly been in the head count of native Indians.  The federal census only enumerated a couple hundred odd native people, while the state census came up with nearly 4,000!  In 1860, by contrast, the native total was just a little over 2,000 and the city was listed as having over 4,400 residents with the county topping 11,000.

Returning to proportions: even a "modest" total of 30 or 40 homicides in a year for the county is something in the range of 1 in 200 to 1 in 250 or so, if we accept a general figure of 8,000 county residents.  Given that Los Angeles County had a reported 551 homicides among a population of around 10 million or 1 for every 18,000 or so people, it is easy to see how staggering the homicide rate was in the 1850s.  The "murder a day" totals would suggest somewhere around 4.5% of the population of the county was killed in a given year.

Sure, it could be argued that there was much more transiency in Gold Rush-era Los Angeles, so that many of those killed in the town and county were passers-by rather than settled residents.  There is no question, though, that the homicide rate, by any standard, was simply astronomical.

Why is almost certainly impossible to pinpoint with accuracy, just like finding reliable statistics on homicide and other crimes, but this blog will devote significant attention to the environment in mid 19th-century Los Angeles and look to provide some context for these mind-blowing numbers!

Before his death, Eric Monkonnen completed an article on his research for the Journal of Interdisciplinary History and which was published in Autumn 2005.  This statement might be as apt as one can find for the tentative nature of the homicide question and for most of the history of that era of Los Angeles as a whole:

On this basis of this patchwork history, we can begin to understand how a beautiful and prosperous region can become tainted with vicious, lethal crime.  Beginning is the best we can do at this point because social scientists, historians and other scientists cannot yet fully explain the causes of homicide, nor what works in its suppression.  The facts are elusive, the theories and hypotheses unconnected and speculative, and the data difficult to compile . . . as an overview, it raises as many questions as it answers.

This blog and the book of the same name, now being written, basically hold to this view.  We cannot know with certainty how crime and justice interrelate because the evidence is elusive, the interpretations are often speculative, and the data is hard to compile.  More questions are raised than answers.

But, we have to begin somewhere on the path to this fascinating patchwork history of crime and justice in Los Angeles between 1850 and 1875.  Welcome and join me as we tentatively navigate this remarkable journey!