Vallejo's July 4 oratory a history lesson

July 4, 2004

By GAYE LEBARON
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Here is a timely historical factoid for you to think about: Gen. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, one of the most powerful figures in Mexican California, the military leader from whom California was wrested by heroic Americans (in the more fanciful versions of the story) was born in Monterey in 1807 -- on the Fourth of July.

And he grew up to be a regular Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Well, maybe that's going a bit far, but it is true that, despite his position of power under the Mexican governors, he was inclined to favor the United States as California's destiny.

In the days before the Mexican War, when Russia and England and France were sniffing along our shores, eyes on the prize, Vallejo welcomed Americans above all others.

As a boy in Monterey, he knew and liked the first Americans who arrived into what was then Spain's California. In later life, he read Washington and Jefferson and -- as Mexico's rule of California became more capricious -- he became more intrigued with the American idea of democracy.

I suppose it's silly to think that the fact that he was born on the 31st anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has anything to do with it, but, well, there it is.

WHEN the United States celebrated its 100th anniversary on July 4, 1876, he was invited to be the featured speaker at Santa Rosa's observance. The general, observing his 69th birthday, was the "grand old man" of Sonoma County, known by all (all, that is, but those of Pomo, Coast Miwok or Wappo descent) as the region's "first citizen."

There have been 127 Fourths of July since the Centennial -- including the grand and glorious 200th in 1976 -- but, let me tell you, my friends, never before or since have we been treated to the history lesson the Santa Rosa crowd -- estimated by newspaper reports at 8,000 -- heard that day in the Santa Rosa plaza.

His very presence, in fact, was a history lesson. And I gather, from the report on the event in the Sonoma Democrat, that Vallejo almost didn't come.

"Gen. M.G. Vallejo arrived on the morning of the Fourth in Santa Rosa, having concluded to accept the invitation of the committee sent from Santa Rosa some days previously."

In the procession that preceded the ceremonies, Vallejo was delivered, with other dignitaries, in "an elegant open barouche ... drawn by four-cream-colored horses with silver manes and tails ... with stylish gold-mounted harnesses."

It was a reunion, of sorts. The general sat on the platform with Frank Bedwell of Franz Valley and Patrick McChristian of Green Valley, two members of the Bear Army who had taken him prisoner in the establishment of the short-lived California Bear Republic 30 years earlier.

Also on the platform were Henry Marshall of Green Valley who had been one of Vallejo's guards when he was a captive at Sutter's Fort, and Joel Walker, the Sebastopol pioneer, who was Vallejo's fellow delegate to the State Constitutional Convention.

VALLEJO'S ACCOUNT includes the earliest attention paid to this area, which the Spanish claimants generally dismissed as the wild and unsettled Indian country of "La Frontera del Norte."

He recalled "the stories I have heard my father and his contemporaries relate" of the four cannons the Spanish mounted at Bodega Bay when Indians reported English ships in that harbor in 1793, of the days in 1809 when Spanish soldiers, watchful of the arriving Russians, lighted fires on the hills above Bodega Bay to communicate with the Presidio of San Francisco, when Padre Jose Altimira planted a cross on the land that became first the mission and then the pueblo of Sonoma. It was the Fourth of July, 1822.

He told of the "City of the Future" planned by the Mexico City government on the banks of Mark West Creek, which lasted only months because of what Vallejo called the "restless spirits" that had been sent to colonize.

This is what we would today call a positive spin. There is evidence they were convicts sent to what would have been a penal colony. A change in the government saved Vallejo that fate. And all of us, as well.

Their leaders were recalled to Mexico and Vallejo was ordered to arrest the colonists and ship them back. He happily obliged.

THE RUSSIANS were a thorn in Vallejo's paw until 1841, seemingly always ready to advance inland from their oceanside fort. Finally, he told his audience, the Russians "retired" and "left the country in the possession of their rivals, who, like good Anglo-Saxons, knew how to maintain their rights."

He talked about the Russian departure leaving the country "without fur-bearing animals" and their offer to sell him Fort Ross.

Again, he puts a positive spin on what was a major disappointment. He told the 1876 audience he couldn't buy the fort because it was never the Russians' to sell. They were squatters -- "the pioneer squatters of California" he said, on land claimed by Spain and ceded to Mexico.

His most recent biographer, Alan Rosenus, says that Vallejo wanted Fort Ross desperately, but the governor of the time -- his nephew , Juan Alvarado who was jealous of Vallejo's power -- refused permission and instead granted the right to buy Fort Ross to his new friend, the Swiss-German poseur, John Sutter, who was building his own empire in the Sacramento Valley.

ON WHAT he termed "a day of brotherhood" Vallejo testified that he bore "no sentiment of hostility" to the Bear Army, the rag-tag bunch of 33 settlers who "seized" Sonoma in 1846 and raised the flag of the independent Republic of California.

He does, however, go to lengths to explain that he didn't consider this a military defeat since he had let his soldiers go several months before, when Mexico City stopped sending money to pay them. The American settlers had "seized" an unarmed garrison.

He also explained that he had no intention of turning out the settlers as ordered.

"These instructions were that I should at once force the immigrants to recross the Sierra Nevada and depart from the territory of the Republic. To say nothing of the inhumanity of these orders, their execution was physically impossible, first because I had no military force and second, because the immigrants came in autumn when show covered the Sierra so quickly as to render return impracticable.

"We always made a good show of authority, but were well convinced all the time that we had no power to resist the invasion that was coming in upon us.

"With the frankness of a soldier I can assure you that the American immigrants never had cause to complain of the treatment they received at the hands of either authorities or citizens."

Besides, as he attested, he saw the United States as "an intelligent nation which opens her doors to the industrious citizens of the whole world under the standard of true liberty."

Despite all his good intentions and protestations, Vallejo, his brother, his brothers-in law and his aide, were "carried as prisoners to Sacramento and kept ... in a calaboose for 60 days or more, until the authority of the United States (which had, meantime, gone to war with Mexico and sent a Marine delegation from a gunboat in San Francisco Bay to secure the pueblo of Sonoma) made itself respected and the honorable and humane Commodore Stockton returned us to our hearths.

"I will simply remark that I retain no sentiment of hostility either against those who attacked my honor and my liberty, or against those who endangered my life, disrupted my family and took possession of my property.

"This should be a day of brotherhood and in presence of my compatriots, I say 'let bygones be bygones.'"

THERE WERE just 35,000 people in the county in 1876, but even these few could mourn the "good old days" when they heard the general talk about what it was like 40 years before.

"This region abounded at that time in game such as deer, bear, mountain sheep, hares, rabbits, geese, quail etc. and the streams were stocked with fish of many kinds. There was, besides a great abundance of edible seeds and fruits growing wild, of which the natives gathered each year a great store.

"... In truth the valleys of Sonoma, Petaluma, Santa Rosa and Napa form an Eden where nothing is lacking for the subsistence of man. My hearers can bear witness to the truth of this assertion since in these valleys they have their homes, their vineyards, gardens, orchards and broad grain fields: each of us may claim to have within his hand the 'horn of plenty.'"

He had paeans of praise for the region -- "the finest of forests ... flowing streams and springs. Our vineyards are numerous," he said, "some of them the largest in the state and produce the best grapes of every variety, consequently, the best wine.

"The scenery is picturesque, romantic and of Arcadian similitude. Hence, it may be logically inferred, as my audience attests, that a fine looking and healthy race of men and the loveliest of women inhabit this Hesperian land of beauty and productiveness."