The record-union., 1891-07-18
THE "GREASER.'
His Origin Traced and Character
istics Explained.

Camarillos, Ortegas, Guerras and
Obiols-The Aborigines Have Faded
Away.
! Especial Correspondence of RECoRD-UNIoN.]
Ventura County, with its pure and
drowsy climate, its great orchards and
vast tracts of bean land, its oranges and
! lemons and flowers, where the somnolent
influence of the past has mingled with
the somnolent influence of the present
and made it more intense and irresistible,
has not always been asleep onehalf the
time.
History declares that on more than one
occasion there was war and rumors of
war in the Santa Clara Valley and among
the rugged hills that rise on either hand
rough. abrupt and precipitous, with
their southern facings covered with sage
! brush and cactus thickets, and SCARED
with land-slides.
The hills of Ventura County near the
coast are Of purely oceanic origin. They
were cast up by the sea, and the fine,
sandy formation, offering little resistance
to the rains of winter, were cut down into
high and pointed peaks, jagged ridges,
and treacherous slopes. The canyons, or,
as they are more generally called here,
! barancas, are long. deep and narrow.
Because OF the narrowness of the can
! yons, the ruggedness of the hills and the
may nature of the winding ridges, it
was no easy matter for the early settlers
| to wage war successfully against the In
dlans, and for the same reason the In
dians, who antagonized the padres all
| along the coast, made it extremely un-
comfortable for the faithful followers of
| Junipero Sierra.
But that time is gone, and both the
! faithful and the unfaithful are now asleep
in the worlds last cradle, with the mold
and dust OF a century about their bones.
Many of the followers of the pioneer mis-
Sionaries sleep in the old mission burial
ground, upon which IuXuriant crop of
barley was grown this summer, but the
vast majority have been lost and forgot
ten to such an extent that their graves
are mythical things to the inquirer of to-
! day.
When the Mission of San Buenaventura
was established there came to it many
wealthy, aristocratic Castlilian families,
men as proud as Lucifer, and women as
! beautiful as the dream-goddess of Per-
sian Prince, and they ruled with power
limited only by the extent of their do
mains and their adherence to the re-
| lgion of their mother country.
These men held large grants; great
tracts ofland whereon their cattle, sheep
and horses grazed, ,and the inevitable olive,
fig, pear and vine grew and produced
with little or no cultivation.
With these grandees, these naughty
Dons, came many dependents, the poems,
who, IN lazy, careless way, Obeyed their
masters rules and regulations, stuck
knives into each other, intermarried with
| the Indians and gave unto the world that
mixture of swarthy features, childlike
! simplicity, treacherous cupidity, dare
devil courage and passionate, touch-me-
not temper-the ''greaser" of Southern
California.
Despised by the Dons, unfavored by the
MeXicans who were responsible for his
existence, cursed and called a natural
| born thief by the whites, the lot of the
''greaser' was not happy one. AT his
door was laid all the thefts and murders
of the time, and he, acting upon that
| principle which persuades us that it is
| better to be hung tor sheep than lamb,
took up the cudgel and waged war against
society in that peculiar way of which So
| ciety had accused him.
But now the power of the old Dons of
the land of sunset has passed away. They
no longer possess great tracts of land,
| immense herds and fiocks, and there are
no small armies of poems and hangers
! on. A century has rolled away, and with
1 it the glory of the Camarillos, the Orte-
gas, the Guerras, the Obiols and other
once-noted families has departed. Year
| by year they are becoming more deeply
| sunken in the strata of modern times,
and their day, now in the heavy shadows
of its twilight, will be gone when the
next quarter-century mark is reached
But for all that the part Spanish, part
Indian and part Mexican vaquer0 is
common enough. He is not the proud
vaquero of Mexico. He wears the
h, inn, Na1 1,,,4 :
sombrero made in New York, and not
Mexican one, trimmed with gold braid and
| silver buckles. 1t is, however, the best
| the poor devil can get. He rolls his own
| cigarettes, makes his own hair ropes and
! brides, drinks aguadiente, logs along
with one leg in the saddle and his hat
string under his nose as of yore, but he is
not, and never can be, the vaquero of
fifty years ago or the vaquero of Mexico
to-day.
The blue blood of the old Castillians is
! almost a thing of the past in this land of
missions. Sons and daughters of the old
! Dons and DonnaS were married to the
representatives of other nations, often at
! a loss to themselves, and now it is hard
to tell whether the owner of once IA
nous Spanish name is the possessor of
even 80 per cent of Spanish blood.
Very few of the Dons who were young
men fifty years ago remain, and ii is Just
as well. They are out of place here. /
met one few years ago who had seen the
! power of his people in California leveled
to the earth by the democratic plow-
| shares of advancement, and he was a
study for an artist. With erect form,
white hair, piercing black eyes and silent,
scornful lips, he had wrapped himself in
! his serapa, drawn over il mantle of sor-
row and contempt, and glared out upon
the world from beneath his dingy SOM
brero, seeing in the present only a mock
ing, tantalizing shadow Of the past, hear
! ing only the echoes of the now silent
1 and clinging to the old customs and
traits of his fathers with all the despair
ing tenacity of a passionate, naughty
monarch who has seen his throne de-
stroyed but would reign yet among the
ruins.
One is struck with the scarcity of the
Indian element here. A century ago
the Indians were inhabiting this part of
the State in hordes. The sea gave them
fish and mollusks. and the hills furnished
them with all else they craved. 1t was
by Indian hands that the first adobe
brick was made in in 1872; it was Indian
! muscle that cut and hued and raised the
first of Gods temples on this coast; it was
Indian ignorance and heathenism that
brought the ancient friars from sunny
Spain to erect missions in California,
And it was Indian craftineSs that made
the situation anything but pleasant for
/ the Christion element in the first years of
the evolution.
Now there is not one simon-pure In
dian in all San Buenaventura The abo-
rigines have faded away as completely as
though they had been whisked up bodily
into the air and absorbed by
the sun. It was little work they
accomplished; therefore no works