The Barton Massacre of 1857, Part Two

As the melancholy news of the murders of Los Angeles County Sheriff James R. Barton, Los Angeles constables William Little and Charles Baker and volunteer Charles Daly reached town late on Friday, 23 January 1857, it didn't take long for the sadness to manifest itself into anger and then vengefulness.

The first report in El Clamor Público on the 24th stated "it is impossible to give an idea of the feelings of pain and consternation that this sad news will cause the friends of Mr. Barton" and then noted that the bandits faced "a terrible retribution . . . for the wickedness of the crimes they have been committing."

A week later, the Star offered this passionate statement:

Will their deaths be unavenged—will the people rise in their might, and seep the villains and murderers from the face of the earth—or will the present deep feeling be allowed to exhaust itself in idle complainings?  Time will tell.  Four of our best and bravest have fallen.  Their blood cries from the ground for vengeance.  How long?

Details were provided in both papers in their editions of the 31st, including the fact that, on the 21st, Garnet Hardy, whose brother Alfred survived the attack, was rode with goods for San Juan Capistrano and was warned there that he would be robbed and killed if he showed himself.  It was Hardy who was the victim of a robbery of three horses valued at $225 by Juan Flores and Juan Gonzalez, for which the two men were convicted in April 1855 of grand larceny and sentenced to three year terms at San Quentin.  On 8 October 1856, Flores and Gonzalez escaped from the prison and headed south with compatriots--it is possible they did so with the express purpose of exacting revenge for their convictions.  Gonzalez was later recaptured and returned to San Quentin in July.

Details of the massacre as published in the Star, 31 January 1857.

Hardy wrote to his brother in Los Angeles about the threat to him and Barton was notified, with the formation of the posse being the result.  On Thursday, though, the robberies of Garcia, Charles, Krazewski and Pflugardt and the murder of the latter took place.  It was said that, at the store of the latter, the criminals, "ordered his assistant to serve up supper for them on the counter, where they deliberately ate it, the dead body lying before them all the time."

Friday morning, Barton and his men reached the Sepulveda home at Rancho San Joaquin and were told that there were some fifty men in the gang, but this warning was ignored.  Pressing on twelve miles more, the little posse encountered a lone rider a mile off, and Little and Baker headed out to follow him, at which some twenty men, it was reported, attacked.  By the time, the Sheriff and the volunteers arrived (it was also stated there was an unnamed and unarmed French guide with the group), the Los Angeles constabes were dead.

It was reported that one bandit was heard shouting, "God damn you, I have got you now," to which Barton replied, "I reckon I have got you too."  Horace Bell, in his account of the incident in his Reminiscences of a Ranger, claimed he was told by Andres Fontes, one of the bandits, that it was Fontes who uttered this to the sheriff.  But, the account on the 31st in the Star stated that it was Daniel who killed Barton and that the former was considered the captain of the group until he was wounded by the sheriff in his futile return fire.  Flores, reported to have killed Baker, then took control of the gang after Daniel was incapacitated.

Daly, who was on a mule, managed to ride three miles while being chased before he was overtaken and gunned down.  Hardy "seeing Barton fall, called to Alexander, stating, also, that he had lost his pistol" in the confusion and they galloped straight for the Sepulveda place, narrowly avoiding being hunted down by some of the bandits, of whom it was said three were killed in the melee.  After the bandits returned south, Alexander rode on to El Monte and Hardy to Los Angeles to break the news of the disaster.

What may have stirred the anger and resentment of the community at large more than anything, however, was what was found when the bodies of the dead quartet were retrieved and returned to Los Angeles for funerals and burials.  The bodies had been looted and Barton's papers were found torn into pieces, which were carefully gathered and reassembled later.  The sheriff's boots were missing as were the hats of Little and Baker.  Not only were the men found with bullet wounds from the battle but Barton was shot in the left eye and the constables were each shot in the right eye--this was clearly a message left by the bandits, who also shot Daly in the mouth, in what was an "execution style" desecration of the bodies after death.

The names of some of the alleged bandits were published, though it is unknown how that information was provided,  They included Daniel, Flores, Juan Silvas, alleged to have killed Little, Antonio María Varela, Gonzalez, a man known at the time only as Benito, Faustino Garcia, and twins Dolores and Lorenzo Ruiz.  There were, in turned out, more, as will be noted subsequently.

Almost immediately, a part of some forty men, headed by marshal William Getman, rode south to try to locate and ferret out the gang and spent Sunday and Monday, the 25th and 26th, at an abandoned camp, said to have been that of the bandits, and then at San Juan, where they were told that Flores and others had been there, "boasting that they were desperadoes and relating with exultation the incidents of the massacre, at the same time giving their victims credit for having fought bravely."  During this foray, an El Monte resident named only as Buckner accidentally shot himself and died of his wounds before the group returned to Los Angeles.

On Thursday the 29th a large public meeting was held in Los Angeles to organize a defense of the region and a manhunt for the killers, with the general coordination supervised by physician John S. Griffin, who came to Los Angeles with the invading American forces during the Mexican-American War.  Interestingly, several companies of citizen cavalry were pressed into service, including those consisting of French, German and native Californian citizens, while there were at least two American groups, with a large coterie of "Monte Boys" from El Monte in the lists.  Early on Friday the 30th, men from these different cohorts rode out to attend to their duties.

An editorial and article on the Barton killings in El Clamor Público, 31 January 1857.  A microfilm copy of the paper was provided by Paul Bryan Gray.

Writing about the events of the week, El Clamor Público exclaimed,

"Californios!  It is a friend who speaks to you.  For many years we have patiently suffered infinite calamities.  Our beautiful city has been the theater of innumerable murders, robberies, and crimes of every species.  Our families have seen infinite dangers and our isolated ranches have seen the evil incursions of thieves."  

 Noting that the Spanish-speaking community was "indissolubly tied with Americans," the paper called on its readers to respect the law and seek to protect life and propoerty.  It observed that "now is the time to prove that we are loyal to the country and are good citizens and that we desire to be united with all for the public tranquility and welfare of our families."
The paper went on:

Californios!  It is known that a squad of thieves walks, without principles, without religion, and without piety, stealing and murdering all that they find.  They respect no one: they steal as much from the American as the Californios; they murder the French as the Hebrew! . . . If by chance we find some of the criminals, do not hide him, but deliver him to justice so that, as a delinquent, he is to receive the punishment deserved and that he may be a lesson for those who have strayed due to the impulses of his bad inclinations.

It concluded by observing that "we are sure that none of our good fellow citizens shelter the thieves or offer the least sympathy.  We deny every animosity and we forget our misfortnes, being occupied only with the future of our families!"

The opening stanzas from verses by the teenage poet Ina Coolbrith, later a famed literary figure in California, written on 26 January 1857 and published in the Star on  the 31st.

Then, there was the outpouring of emotion by a young teenaged girl, a budding poet who submitted a lengthy meditation on the horrors attending the massacre of Barton, Baker, Little and Daly in stanzas ranging from melancholy to utter rage:

Aye, lay them rest in the damp, cold earth,

And “let there be wailing and weeping,”

For no voice but God’s can again call them forth

From the graves where they’re silently sleeping.

Yet first bend above them to take one last look,

At those who have passed through Death’s portal,

Ere the cold earth has closed over four as brave hearts,

As e’er beat in the breast of a mortal.

Then hark, to the sod on their coffin lids fall,

As their forms to the grave we have given ;

Never, no never to behold them again,

Till we meet them, all glorious, in heaven.

Alas, for their kindred in lands far away,

When, at length, they shall hear the sad story,

How the forms of their lived ones, far over the sea,

Were found, all so mangled and gory.

Parent, brothers and sisters, will mourn for the lost,

For, alas, they can never regain them,

And in heart-breaking sorrow will pray to their God

For revenge on the ones who have slain them.

Aye, revenge on their murderers!  Is there no true man,

Not one, to act as the avenger

Of the four noble beings who lost their own lives

In defending this people from danger.

Go, seek for the inhuman, ruffianly horde

Nor strive, as ye do, to avoid them,

Go forth in the names of the brave men they’ve killed,

And rest not until you have destroyed them.

And they, who are sleeping in death’s cold embrace,

Time can ne’er from our memory estrange them ;

Then, O! while the sod is yet damp on their graves,

Go forth, in God’s name, and avenge them.

Her name was Ina Coolbrith and, while she had published a few poems in the Star recently, she would later go on to fame as one of California's noted literary figures in subsequent years.  Her "Lines on the Recent Massacre" may be as redolent of the raging feelings of many in Los Angeles as any other writing from the time.  With this, we'll continue the story with the next post.