The Placer herald., 1871-01-21

THE EARLY sPANIARDs OFCALIFORNIA.
Their History and Their Fate.

Their History and Their Fate.
A San Francisco correspondent cf the Gin
cinnati Commercial gives this interesting bit
of historical reminiscence:
"One of the most melancholy and vet in
structive chapters in the marvellous history
of California will be that which relates to
the evil and miserable destiny which has
overtaken the brave old prncely Spaniards,
only in less degree than the inferior Mex-
cans and barbarians whom they suhjugated.
When the discovery of gold flashed upon
this goodly land they were living in patri
archal and virtuous simplicity, the owners of
the ranches across which one might gallop
all a Summer day, and of lordly herds which
no man could number With here and there
an exception of some rancorous enmity
against prying and bargaining Yankee,
the hospitality of the superb old grandees
was absolutely lmitless, and to the wanderer
roaming over these boundless plains they
gladly offered the choicest Of their herd Of
saddle horses as a relief to his own, SO re-
joiced were they to behold strangers face.
Then came the fatal discovery, and the land
was filed from end to end with eager, clam
orous, hungry men, tearing up all the banks
of the pellucid streams, and pushing even
far up into the mountains, to corrupt the
fountain heads; and straightway, without a
stroke of their hands, Or an outlay of Span
ish dollar, these old grandees found them
selves richer than all the Indies. Every
high-horned and shining bullock in their
countless herds became a skinful of silver,
and the yellow marrow of his bones was like
fat gold.
"Before such unheard of temptations it
was only mortal that they should fall. Know
ing nothing whatever of the use of money.
hardly more than if Adam in his primitive
innocence in the garden, had suddenly been
endowed with all the coinage of India, they
scattered their new-found gold like the regal
spendthrifts they were. They fell from Par
adise, and the swarming sheriffs attachments
against their lordly estates were the flaming
sword which turned every way to keep the
way of the tree of life Vainly did old Pio
Pico, that bitter hater of Americans, warn
his countrymen against the treacherous and
ns.duous race I'VE find yourselves threat
ened by hordes of Yankee immigrants, who
have already begun to flock into our coun-
try, and whose progress we cannot arrest.
Already have the wagons of that per6dious
people sealed the almost inaccessible summit
of the Sierra Nevada, crossed the entire con-
tinent, and penetrated the fruitful valley of
the Sacramento
ha.~ 81,
one by one from their enervated and luxur-
Gus grasp, and pass forever into the posses
sion Of that 'perfdous people. They be-
held all their noblest and fairest maidens slip
heplessly away from their proud old ale
giauce, because their own countrymen were
becoming too poor to support them in their
sumptuous Incidence, and becoming the
wives of the hated and despised intruders.
They saw their gallant but ruined sons, con-
demned to celibacy, pass swiftly down to an
infamous drunkard' grave, gnaw their proud
hearts and die. The race of the haug ghty
family of the Amadors to-day drags out
miserable and despised existence as a squat
ter on the ancestral estate Oh San Francisco
Bay, now worth millions. The noble and
kindly old missionary, Padre Altemira, Of
Sonoma, whose possessions once surpassed
all the riches of Israel or the lndumean pat
riarch, now lives in exile in a convent in Ten
erifle.
"No more do the gallant wedding trains,
with fair women and brave men, booted and
spurred cavaliers, gorgeous with all the trap
pings of Castiian magnifcence, with boots
of Cordovan leather, and pouches of purple
and of wolf s fur or spotted like a pard sweep
in gay cavacade from mission to mission be-
fore the eyes of wandering catechumens and
Indian neophytes. No more do the gay and
careless sons of he proud rancheros scud on
their fleet mustangs through the light violet
baze, beneath the silvery moon, bent on er-
rands of love, or flee through the darkness,
terror-stricken and dumb, before the terrible
form of 'The Spectre Bull of Salines. No
more are their soft thrilling waltzes and the
tinkle Of the light guitar heard within their
simple mud walls, undsturbed by the pres
ence of the hated ntruders, while the rich,
red wine from the City of the Angels passed
gaiy around to each in the capacious gourd.
''They are strangers and aliens now in the
land they once possessed In Southern Cal
fornia, being somewhat massed together,
they are still able to make some head against
the incursion of American ideas and Ameri
can customs but most of them even there.
who have not become absolutely worthless,
are trading, trafficing, close, practical like
Americans toward Americans. | have
known proud, old family too indolent to
labor, and too naughty, trying to live on
hundred cattle pastured on the range, bor-
rowing shotgun from an American to shoot
some quails, as they had absolutely nothing
in the Louse to eat. A good many of their
daughters of the lower sort subsist almost
entirely on the presents Of their lovers, the
bachelor ranchers, like the Partisan grsettes,
and they do not work like the latter. All
of them who are manageable, except some
few of the proudest and purest families who
keep the old bitterness, are on the lookout