Californio Lancers: The 1st Battalion of Native Cavalry in the Far West, 1863-1866
248
Californio Lancers: The 1st Battalion of Native Cavalry in the Far West, 1863-1866
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780806157528 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Oklahoma Press |
| Publication date: | 03/08/2017 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 248 |
| Sales rank: | 691,275 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d) |
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Californio Lancers
The 1st Battalion of Native Cavalry in the Far West, 1863-1866
By Tom Prezelski
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 University of Oklahoma Press, NormanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5308-7
CHAPTER 1
The Californios and the Rebellion
On the following day, a large meeting of Mexicans and their sympathizers was addressed by F. P. Ramirez, Esq. His speech was delivered in Spanish. In the course of it, he strove to impress upon his audience that a deep feeling of sympathy was felt by the American Govt towards Mexico in its current struggle, and that it was the duty of resident Mexicans to aid in the support and defence of the Federal Govt against the rebellion now seeking its overthrow.
ALTA CALIFORNIA
In 1861 some observers worried about California remaining firmly in Union hands. In the most recent national election, the state had gone for Abraham Lincoln by only a narrow plurality. Its popular governor, Irish-born John Downey, was a Democrat who in the past had been associated with his party's Southern-leaning "chivalry" faction, as had his lieutenant governor, Pablo de la Guerra. While citizens of the well-populated corridor from Sacramento to the San Francisco Bay area largely remained loyal to the Union in the face of secession, those who favored the Confederacy were vocal and ever present, particularly in the southern counties.
The loyalty of California's Spanish-speaking population was a source of some doubt too. The "Californios," as they called themselves — known as "Native Californians" to their English-speaking contemporaries — had numbered some ten thousand to fifteen thousand when what had been a frontier province of Mexico was forcibly annexed by the United States in 1848. Thereafter they were quickly outnumbered by the rush of new settlers from the eastern states as well as Europe and Latin America.
In terms of language, culture, and religion, the Californios were essentially Mexican, but in the years before the conquest, they were more likely to identify themselves with their home province rather than the mother country. New arrivals from la otra banda were, at least initially, disparaged as cholos and regarded as ill mannered and racially suspect despite the mixed-race origins of many Californios, even the most prominent. Nominally they were Roman Catholic, but religious ritual had largely become the province of women, and with some notable exceptions, there was generally little patience for the institutional church. Those who concerned themselves with politics were republican in sentiment, outwardly embracing nineteenth-century liberalism in theory, but not necessarily in practice. In reality, life and political power were largely about family, and the patriarchs at the center often ruled their kin and households with an apparent dictatorial authority that astonished many outsiders.
Ranching dominated the state's preconquest economy. Men thus were nearly "always on horseback" and could "hardly go from one house to another without mounting a horse." Outsiders writing of the Californios frequently described them as being among the best horsemen in the world. A merchant seaman who visited California in the 1830s wrote that they were "put upon a horse when only four or five years old, their little legs not long enough to come half-way over his sides," and would simply be left there until their legs grew to reach the stirrups. The same writer described the Californios' aggressive and often brutal horsemanship:
When they go on long journeys, they ride one horse down, and catch another, throw the saddle and bridle upon him, and, after riding him down, take a third, and so on, until the end of the journey.... [T]hey make no use of their stirrups when mounting, but striking the horse, spring into the saddle as he starts, and, sticking their long spurs into him, go off on the full run. Their spurs are cruel things.... The flanks of the horses are often sore from them, and I have seen men come in from chasing bullocks, with their horse's hind legs and quarters covered with blood.
Anglo-American outsiders regarded the Californios with a mix of romanticized admiration and derision. Patriarchs like Pío Pico and Mariano Vallejo were praised for their hospitality, generosity, and genteel manner, but were also described as some sort of landed nobility who did little but dabble in politics and engage in petty feuds. Though they bore the important responsibility of maintaining their family and property, English-speaking correspondents did not regard this as real work. Likewise, while the hardworking rancheros were admired for their skill in the saddle, their indulgent pastimes, the fandangos, cockfights, bear-baitings, and other "kinds of amusement and knavery" were offensive to the protestant sensibilities of observers from the United States. Generally, even to their admirers, the Californios were regarded as decadent and their traditions were seen as quaint at best.
After the conquest Californios did not accept the new order quietly but were in little position to resist or even assert themselves. Not only were they quickly overwhelmed in terms of population, but the fact that their wealth was almost entirely in cattle and land made them ill prepared for the new cash economy. Even the most prominent Californios found their influence greatly diminished as their ranchos were reduced piece by piece as they were legally outmaneuvered or forced to sell property to pay debts. In the "cow counties" south of San Jose, which generally attracted fewer Anglo-American settlers than other areas and where ranching was still economically important, the Native Californians were able to retain a portion of their land and their clout. A handful, through a combination of charisma, respect, and political skill, even remained prominent in public life. But the overall decline was nonetheless precipitous. The "nativist" political movement of the mid-1850s, which culminated in the brief rise of the Know-Nothing Party both nationally and in California, was also a great blow to the community. Discriminatory laws, like the so-called Greaser Act of 1855, were ostensibly designed to target immigrants but did not spare the native-born Californios. The worst passed within a few years, however, and the Native Californians were able to recover a bit of their political standing by finding solidarity with immigrants from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. By the time of the attack on Fort Sumter, not even a full generation after the conquest, the once-proud Californios had largely become, in the eloquent words of former governor Pío Pico, foreigners in their own land.
Anglo California, meanwhile, was increasingly preoccupied by the issues dividing the country, though the question of slavery seemed secondary to sectional sympathies. Word came to San Francisco by Pony Express on April 24, 1861, that Fort Sumter had fallen, but the coming of the war was long obvious even on the West Coast, where public demonstrations by secessionist sympathizers had been occurring in communities around California for weeks. Brigadier General Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of the U.S. Army's Department of the Pacific, had already resigned his commission as the first step in his eventual defection to the Confederacy, and more Southern officers would soon follow. Even though many soldiers in the army remained loyal, it was clear by the end of the month that most of them would be withdrawn to the fight in the East. There seemed a very real possibility that California, with its gold and strategically important ports, could be lost to the rebels.
Because of Governor Downey's political alliances and ambivalence about slavery, there were those who doubted his loyalties. Nonetheless, in July, when the Pony Express brought a request from Secretary of War Simon Cameron for the state to provide one regiment of infantry and four companies of cavalry to secure the overland route across Mormon-dominated Utah, Downey enthusiastically and even personally took to the task of raising these volunteers. In August the governor and his entourage were on the road to New Almaden when he met the geological-survey party of Professor Josiah Whitney. There, he offered a volunteer commission to one of its members, a twenty-one-year-old Californio named José Juan Francisco de Jesús Guirado, who also happened to be Downey's brother-in-law. In September Guirado was mustered in as first lieutenant of what became Company B of the 1st Regiment of Cavalry, California Volunteers.
Downey's initial success led the War Department to request additional units, and by the end of August, the call was increased to include five regiments of infantry and two of cavalry, more than 7,000 officers and men. The mission of these volunteers likewise expanded. In response to civil unrest in Southern California and a Confederate invasion of New Mexico, Guirado's company was first sent south, then east across the desert as part of the California Column, a brigade of 2,350 men, including infantry, cavalry, and artillery, to secure the Southwest for the Union. During the course of the war, there would be some 16,000 California volunteers, serving as far north as the Columbia River and as far east as the Rio Grande. For the most part, these men would be Anglo-Americans and European immigrants recruited in the San Francisco Bay area and from the mining camps of the Sierra Nevadas, regions where Union sentiment was strong. For the time being, few if any Californios served in the ranks, and Guirado would remain the only Spanish-surnamed officer.
Distant from both the active theaters of fighting and the issues behind the conflict, Native Californians were ambivalent about the Union cause. Given the litany of wrongs they had suffered since the American conquest, their lack of enthusiasm was understandable. Additionally, many Californio community leaders, particularly in Southern California, had allied themselves with political elements sympathetic with the Confederacy, though this was largely the product of expedience rather than sentiment.
Events south of the border played some role in breaking this complacency. In January 1862, with the United States distracted by the rebellion, France landed an expeditionary force in Mexico and intervened on behalf of a conservative faction in an ongoing civil war there. By the summer of 1863, Mexican president Benito Juárez had been forced to flee northward, moving his government to El Paso del Norte, within sight of a U.S. Army garrison across the Rio Grande, while the French controlled the national capital and most of the key cities. The insurgents declared a monarchy in July and eventually offered the imperial crown to Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, an Austrian nobleman, who accepted and arrived to take power the following May.
In California these events were followed closely by the press, particularly the Spanish-language newspapers. This popular excitement was not entirely an accident, for Juárez had agents in San Francisco actively working to raise money and recruits for his Republicano cause, and stirring up popular support suited their purposes. Nonetheless, the celebration that followed the victory of a Mexican force over the French at Puebla on May 5, 1862, was sincere. In their enthusiasm Spanish-speaking residents of all stripes organized "patriotic clubs" across the state and rallied around what they saw as the struggle for the sovereignty of the Americas against an arrogant European colonial aggressor.
The first anniversary of this victory was celebrated in various places around California, marking the earliest observation of what would become known as Cinco de Mayo, a holiday of sorts among Mexican Americans. One such celebration, staged by a local chapter of La Junta Patriótica Mexicana, a club founded to promote Mexican solidarity, occurred one evening in 1863 on a prominent hill overlooking Los Angeles. It was a well-organized affair attended by a reported four hundred "resident Mexicans and native Californians" who gathered around a bonfire and large portraits of President Juárez and the late general Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín, hero of the fifth of May. Festivities included an honor guard of militia, speeches, music, musket volleys, and pyrotechnics. When it was over, the assembled walked down the hill and processed respectfully through the town. A group of some twenty-five Frenchmen assembled and marched through the streets as well, and for a time it appeared that the evening would end violently. Fortunately, however, the Mexicans remained orderly while the French expatriates restricted their display to singing "La Marseillaise"; there was no confrontation.
For the Spanish-speaking participants, the "patriotic commotion" did not end there. The next day the junta called a "large meeting of Mexicans and their sympathizers." There, firebrand attorney Francisco P. Ramirez addressed the assembled in flowery and eloquent Spanish. He called upon the crowd of Californios and immigrants from Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Central America to stand united behind Juárez. He went a step further and made a thinly veiled call for the audience to take a stand in the struggle faced by their new country: "Fellow citizens! You have the sympathies of all the good citizens of the United States. Mexicans of California! Be always faithful and loyal citizens! Do not stain yourselves with treason against the country of Franklin, of Adams, and of Jefferson."
While Confederate ties with the Imperialists in Mexico were well known, this did not figure into Ramirez's speech. Instead, he focused on the importance of maintaining the Union, a sentiment expressed over and over again in similar public gatherings across the state. This meeting concluded with the assembled forming in procession behind a band and a color guard, then marching through the streets with the flags of Mexico and the United States side by side.
By this time an effort was already underway to provide more substantive support to the Union effort. State senator Romualdo Pacheco of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties was a passionate supporter whose loyalties led him to abandon his Democratic Party for the Unionist ticket. A general in the state militia, he seems to have been the first to suggest that a battalion of volunteers could be raised from among the Mexican American population of Southern California and the Central Coast. Eager to showcase the patriotism of his fellow Californios, Pacheco believed that their legendary horsemanship skills could be put to good use in Texas. In December 1862 Brigadier General George Wright, commander of the Department of the Pacific at San Francisco, forwarded a request by telegram to Washington, D.C., for authorization to raise a four-company battalion of "native cavalry" in and around Los Angeles. He received permission from the War Department a month later.
At some point in planning, the notion arose that this unit should be armed with lances. This was not out of parsimony or a misguided effort to keep firearms out of Mexican American hands, for at least one company later would be armed with state-of-the-art carbines. The weapon had a storied past in California, extending back to the earliest days of Spanish settlement, when mounted soldados de cuera imposed a new religion and the rule of a distant king upon the local tribes at the point of the lance. Later, ad-hoc companies of lancers raised from among the citizenry fought for one side or another during the numerous petty rebellions that occurred with regularity following Mexican independence. Likewise, in the absence of a competent regular army, such militias formed the core of the forces that were organized against Indians and, eventually, invaders from the United States. After the American conquest, this tradition continued as prominent Californios would organize volunteer lancer companies to pursue bandits or Indians or to otherwise maintain the peace. Lanceros in fancy traditional dress remained a common sight in local parades.
In the U.S. Army the lance was a bit of a novelty, though there were veterans who championed its use after having witnessed its effectiveness in the hands of the enemy in Mexico. As a result of this interest, the manual of the lance was included in some cavalry drill books, and there were official specifications for lance design for Federal service based on an Austrian model George McClellan had brought back from Europe in the 1850s. The weapon used by the Native Cavalry was manufactured at the Federal arsenal at Benicia. The bulk of its length was a nine-foot-long ash shaft. At one end was a steel ferrule, or buttcap, which would fit in a socket on the right stirrup to make it easier to carry on the march. At the other was a head consisting of a narrow eleven-inch steel triangular blade attached to the shaft by two steel flanges that also ostensibly served to protect the wood against saber blows in combat. The head was festooned with a red linen pennon, which tended to give the weapon a flamboyant appearance but originally served a more gruesome purpose, namely to wick up the blood that would otherwise run down the shaft and make it too slick to handle securely. Cavalrymen were to supplement the lance with the more conventional saber and Colt pistol.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Californio Lancers by Tom Prezelski. Copyright © 2015 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Preface,
Acknowledgments,
A Note on Language,
1. The Californios and the Rebellion,
2. Company A: San Jose,
3. Service in the Northern Counties,
4. Company B: San Francisco and the Central Coast,
5. Company C: Santa Barbara,
6. Company D: Los Angeles,
7. Service in the Southern Counties,
8. Assembling the Battalion,
9. The March to Arizona,
10. Watching Maximilian's Frontier,
11. Campaigning against Apaches,
12. Into the Sunset,
Appendix A. The Men of the Native Cavalry,
Appendix B. The Women of the Native Cavalry,
Appendix C. The Chain of Command,
Appendix D. Desertions in the Native Cavalry,
Appendix E. Lieutenant de la Guerra Pursues Deserters, December 1864,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,