Inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City in 1996, John Forster was the archetype of pastoral California’s silver dons. A century and a half prior to his induction, Forster, who was English by birth and Mexican by naturalization, had declared his allegiance to the United States and singularly contributed to its acquisition of California.

In 1830, at age 16, John Forster left home in Liverpool, England, to work for his uncle, James ‘Santiago Johnson, at Guaymas, Mexico. After sailing to Valparaiso, Forster lingered for several months seeking passage before continuing on to Guaymas, where his uncle and a job with the trading firm of Johnson and Aguirre awaited.

Forster remained in Guaymas for two years until the expansion of his uncle’s firm required his relocation. He then came overland to California, reaching Los Angeles in June 1833. The following year he began his own trading enterprise, and in 1837 he married Isadora Pico, sister of a future Mexican governor of California, Po Pico. The young couple moved into a house between Spring and Main streets in the Pueblo de Los Angeles, where the first of their nine children was born in 1839.

Forster also assumed the management of Abel Stearns’ Casa de San Pedro in 1840. Stearns, a wealthy Connecticut emigrant, had developed a large warehouse, store and living quarters at the port of San Pedro. There, as Stearns’ agent, Forster traded manufactured goods for articles of local production such as hides, tallow, horns and wines. It was also there that his distaste for the existing Mexican government first emerged. It is a dam’d bore to be put under different restrictions every day by the confounded government, he said. God knows what will come next. Yet that very same government appointed him captain of the port in March 1843. That year he was also granted the 26,000-acre Rancho Nacional. It was his first land, but only a small portion of what would one day become his quarter-million-acre empire on the coast of southern California.

Forster ended his association with Stearns in 1844. The following year he purchased 44 acres and the buildings of the former Mission San Juan Capistrano at public auction for $710. It became his home.

In April 1846, news reached U.S. President James Polk that Mexican troops had crossed the Rio Grande and attacked General Zachary Taylor’s force. The resulting war with Mexico made America’s acquisition of California opportune. On June 30, General Stephen Watts Kearny’s Army of the West left Fort Leavenworth (Kan.) to conquer and take possession. A week later, Commodore John D. Sloat, commander of the Pacific Fleet, annexed California upon the fleet’s arrival at Monterey.

Major John C. Frémont, with his battalion of irregulars, reached San Diego aboard Cyane on July 29 and began marching to Los Angeles. About that same time, José Antonio Pico (Forster’s oldest brother-in-law) and José Antonio Cot acquired the mission of San Luis Rey. Forster traveled from San Juan Capistrano to take formal title of the property for the new owners. As Forster took occupancy, Frémont and his American force rode into view. Forster fled back to San Juan Capistrano, leaving the property in the hands of the alcalde, Juan Mara Marron.

In Forster’s judgment, his taking occupancy of the property thwarted Frémont’s plan to seize the mission for personal gain. He became exasperated against me and swore he would shoot me, Forster wrote in his 1878 work Pioneer Data From 1832. He rode into San Juan Capistrano one or two days later with the determination of capturing and executing me. Frémont and his whole force (Kit Carson, [Alexander] Godey, the Indian company of Shawnees were with him) surrounded the mission buildings at San Juan Capistrano believing that I would attempt to escape. He was savage against me until we had an explanation when he became convinced that I was favorably disposed to the United States, at the same time that I was trying to save the interests of my relatives, the Pico family.

Frémont would have been less favorably disposed had he anticipated that four days later Forster would begin to plan the escape to Mexico of another brother-in-law, Governor Po Pico. For several weeks, Forster hid Pico in the mountains near San Juan Capistrano; then, at an opportune time, Forster outfitted Pico for a dash to the border on September 7, 1846.

Meanwhile, General Kearny’s force had secured Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he left the larger portion of his command. Kearny and his dragoons crossed the Colorado River and entered California in late November. In the pre-dawn hours of December 6, the small American force battled General Andrés Pico (yet another of Forster’s brothers-in-law) and his Californio command (Mexicans born in Alta California) at San Pasqual. The U.S. forces suffered their costliest defeat of the war in California–18 dead and 13, including the general, wounded.

Kearny’s crippled command reached San Diego on December 12 and joined forces with the American naval command under Commodore Robert Field Stockton. Kearny and Stockton planned a military expedition from San Diego to Los Angeles to reclaim southern California from Californio insurgents. On December 29, the two commanders left San Diego with their eclectic force of 55 dragoons, 379 naval Jack-tars and Marines, and 84 mounted volunteers–30 Californians, 10 scouts and 44 officers.

On New Year’s Day, 1847, the makeshift army reached Mission San Luis Rey and came upon Forster, who had ridden from San Juan Capistrano to offer assistance. Forster, though an Englishman and brother-in-law of both the Californio governor and the commander of the insurgents, determined that the pragmatic thing to do was to offer assistance to the Americans. Like other large landowners, Forster recognized that Mexico’s political instability posed a constant threat to his economic interests. Any of three alternatives was preferable: British annexation, independence in the fashion of Texas’ Lone Star Republic, or American annexation. I was desirous of seeing the country under the United States or any stable government, he said. Stockton, more gracious than Frémont, sent Captain Samuel Hensley with Forster to San Juan Capistrano, where Hensley obtained 28 yokes of oxen and a supply of fresh horses. Returning with Hensley, Forster announced his intention of joining the force on the northward march.

On January 5, the army marched to San Juan Capistrano. Forster’s eldest son, 8-year-old Marcos (Marco), was playing with friends in the road as the American force approached. All of the children fled except Marco. Are you afraid? asked Commodore Stockton. No, replied Marco. Stockton invited him to ride, and the boy said that he would like that very much. Marco rode into San Juan Capistrano on the commodore’s horse. As they entered the village surrounding the mission, the band played Life on the Ocean Waves.

When the army marched north from San Juan Capistrano, Kearny and Stockton told Forster that Rámon Carrillo, an officer in Juan Padilla’s band of Californios, had killed two Americans, Thomas Cowie and George Fowler, near Santa Rosa. Anxious to induce Carrillo and his followers to leave the Californio forces, Stockton instructed Forster that should he encounter Carrillo, he was to convey to him the commodore’s promise to provide Carrillo with security–the past would be forgiven and forgotten.

On January 7, the army marched from Santa Ana Abajo, near the town of Olive, toward the Rancho Los Coyotes. As the force crossed the Rio Santa Ana, Forster’s horse lost its footing, and both horse and rider tumbled into the river. I rolled over and got thoroughly wet, Forster recalled. I had to go back to the house to change my garments. Just at this time the Californian reconnoitering party rushed in, and I expected to have been made a prisoner, but the commander of the party happened to be Rámon Carrillo, the very man I had been wanting to see.

Forster delivered the message from Stockton. Carrillo hesitated, not wanting to forsake his countrymen. Forster hoped that Carrillo might change his mind if he could be handed Stockton’s guarantee in writing. Carrillo agreed to meet Forster later that night at the ranch of Tomás Colima. Promising to return, Forster rode north to Rancho Los Coyotes, the American encampment. Remarkably, Forster found the army there in the midst of a fiesta, staged by the ladies of the rancho. The California ladies, Forster wrote, were soon whistling around in the giddy mazes of the waltz, with their taper waists encircled by arms, which on the day following, would beyond a doubt be dealing death blows upon friends and relatives. But it made no odds to the Ladies, there was music and there was a chance for dancing, and at it they went as if this was the last night in the world.

The dancing continued as Forster huddled with Stockton, who provided him with a written guarantee for Carrillo. Accompanied by Don Juan Avila, Forster returned to Colima’s ranch, but Carrillo was gone. They searched for his encampment on the banks of the Rio San Gabriel. (The great flood of 1867 later cut a second channel in the flood plain. The old channel became the Rio Hondo. The new channel is the present-day San Gabriel.)

My horse (a favorite one) was now completely fagged, and I saw it was necessary to procure a fresh one before I could proceed to the bank of the river, Forster recalled 30 years later. The caponera [corral] of the ranch was near, and we drove into the corral and selected a horse, leaving mine there, repaired to the house to inform the owner or someone representing him of what I had done, but found the house abandoned. There was only one old Indian who could hardly make himself clearly understood in Spanish. From him I learned that every man in the place, and everywhere else, had been pressed into military service, and the Californian forces (about six hundred strong) were ambushed in the willow thickets and mustard patches near what is now the town of Gallatin (about 10 miles south of Los Angeles). Avila rode on in an effort to locate Carrillo, while Forster rode back to tell Stockton and Kearny of the impending ambush.

The information that Forster had inadvertently uncovered proved accurate. General José Mara Flores moved his army from San Fernando to Lemuel Carpenter’s La Jabonera (Soap Works) crossing of the Rio San Gabriel (near the present-day crossing of the Rio Hondo by the Santa Ana Freeway). The Californios waited in ambush for the Americans.

At Rancho Los Coyotes, Forster informed Stockton and Kearny of what was in store for them if they continued their march in the contemplated direction. The next morning the American force stood at attention while Stockton told them of the likelihood of a fight. He called upon them to deport themselves in accordance with those other Americans who, on that very day (January 8) 32 years earlier, had achieved victory over the British at New Orleans during the War of 1812. The watchful army then started its march toward the Rio San Gabriel and the awaiting ambush.

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