During the summer of 1851, while people in the northern half of California were suffering from gold fever, their neighbors to the south were suffering from another kind of fever — war fever.

The short of it was that several of the Indian tribes living in Los Angeles and San Diego counties were deep into an ambitious plan to revolt against Americano law and order, and in reply, Americanos were busy preparing to put the revolt down, regardless of cost. An attack of major proportions by one or the other appeared imminent. The only question seemed to be the matter of first strike. Would the Americanos stop the revolt before it started? Would the Indians strike first?

Americanos believed that the troublesome tribes — generally living east of Los Angeles and San Diego — were busily assembling war parties and weapons, getting ready to stream across the deserts and down out of the mountains to attack. The Indians, on the other hand, living in the most desolate areas, in abject poverty, believed that the Americanos in larger numbers were preparing to attack them from the west, taking what little the tribes had in the way of property and squeezing them into a life even more destitute than they were already living.

This sorry state of affairs had been spawned from an ill-advised decision made by a handful of politicians. A year earlier, San Diego County officials recklessly decided to slap a $600 a year property tax on some of their dirt-poor Indian neighbors. Living miles away from San Diego, they received no city services. But the white politicians were so sure that the Indians would pay up and not complain that the names of the tribal capitanes were added to the county’s tax rolls without so much as a whisper of warning before they levied the tax.

The county auditor was charged to collect and he in turn sent Sheriff Agoston Haraszthy out to get the money. Short of that, he was to take their cattle, and short of that, take whatever he could find to take. Haraszthy’s collection of the 1850 tax assessment went off with without a hitch. And so it might have been the next year, in 1851, when collecting time came.

In July 1851, however, about the time Haraszthy was getting ready to make his second round of collections, trouble arrived in the form of Maj. Gen. Joshua Bean. The officer in charge of the Southern Division of the California Militia, Bean, for reasons he took to his grave, threw a dirty boot sock into the sweet-smelling waters of San Diego’s property tax watering hole.

Decked out in a colorful uniform, astride his horse and leading a small contingent of other militiamen, Bean was an authority figure to the Indians. He rode among the tribes ordering them not to pay. ‘He forbade them to pay,’ Haraszthy reported back to the county auditor when he returned empty-handed from his second collection round. In the words of Arthur Woodward, noted California and Indian historian, ‘[Bean] was something of a pompous ass who loved to strut his stuff and exercise his authority.’ Bean said to Haraszthy, the only way you are going to collect any taxes from here on is to sue me for them, in court. Bean clearly knew nothing about taxes and the law. ‘A property tax,’ Haraszthy informed him, ‘is a judgment against [a person's] property, and it doesn’t take a lawsuit to collect it.’ People have to pay. If they don’t, the county can take their property, pure and simple. No matter that, Bean refused to change his position in the matter.

Finding himself caught between the stubbornness of county lawmakers (get out and collect) and militiaman Bean (don’t pay them anything), Haraszthy professed that he didn’t really want to collect, but he had to. It was his duty. At that point, someone — though it’s unclear whom — suggested that maybe the property tax law wasn’t legal. To settle the matter, Haraszthy announced he would write the attorney general and ask his advice. The response was quick, clear, and simple. ‘The property tax law is legal,’ the attorney general said.

Haraszthy thereupon sent word to the capitanes that they would have to pay up. The capitanes, not unexpectedly, refused.

Hadn’t General Bean told them not to pay? It became clear to Haraszthy that if he rode out into the settlements, to fill his saddlebags, he would likely face armed resistance. Particularly if he rode in with a force of armed men. The tribes were harboring deep feelings of distrust of Americanos and they had good cause.

Farmers and miners, according to historian Clyde Milner, ‘had hunted [the Indians] like wild animals.’ Bounties were paid for killing them. Indeed, as Milner puts it, ‘murder, starvation and white man’s disease had created a demographic disaster.’ In 1845 the native population living in California numbered about 150,000. By 1851, six years later, their number was half that.

Haraszthy figured that if he rode into the settlements with a small army there would surely be a bloody confrontation. He apparently decided to ride out alone. As he made his way through the San Diego County hinterlands, to first one and then another of the Indian settlements, he told the capitanes what they owed and asked for the money. A few of the capitanes paid, or paid what they could. A few were willing to pay but didn’t have anything to pay with. Most refused to pay, however, citing General Bean’s order not to pay.

Bean was wrong, Haraszthy explained to the holdouts. The law’s the law. And unless they obeyed it and paid up, he said, he’d have to come back with enough men to round up their stock and drive the beasts to San Diego to be sold. Haraszthy’s threat, however, did not have the effect he had hoped for. The holdouts still refused to pay. San Diego County officials now had to decide whether to back off or to send Haraszthy out again to seize the tribesmen’s pitifully small property.

News of the situation spread through southern California. It certainly reached a ranch half a mile southeast of Warner Hot Springs. Former mountain man Jonathan Trumbull Warner lived at the ranch and operated a health spa. Also living at the ranch were two employees who were later identified as the leaders of the rebellion to come: Antonio Garrá and Bill ‘Sailor’ Marshall.

It is believed that Garrá had been born near the springs and educated at San Luis Rey Mission. And, by the time property taxes had become a cause for grave concern to southern California tribesmen, Garrá had advanced himself in life to become a capitane and one of John Warner’s headmen. (It is believed that a son of Antonio Garrá also lived and worked on the ranch, Antonio Junior.)

Sailor Bill Marshall, on the other hand, was a renegade white man. Known to have jumped ship in the San Diego harbor a few years earlier, Marshall had fled into the hills and there taken up with the daughter of Jose Noca, another headman at Warner’s ranch. Although Antonio Garrá would carry the blame, it was perhaps Marshall who planted and nurtured the seeds of rebellion in the Indian’s mind. The military prosecutor at Bill Marshall’s later trial said that Marshall was ‘well known’ to both the tribesmen and the Americanos living in the backcountry. And he was also well known to travelers entering California via the southern route. By late September 1851, winds of war were swirling around the Warner ranch. Despite his later denials, Marshall may have been a major player, although his exact role remains uncertain. The San Diego property tax was just one more cross for the Indians to bear. Even if they could pay it, the money would just go toward making life better for the white people living in San Diego. The only thing left, the hard-liners were urging, was for the Indians to fight. The flames of anger rose and spread from Warner Ranch, reaching the ears of neighboring tribesmen as well as Americanos living in Los Angeles and San Diego and the towns and villages in between.

To all appearances, war was inevitable. It was a time for building. A call went out from Antonio Garrá, urging warriors from all the tribes living west of the Colorado River, and south of San Bernardino and the lower reaches of the San Joaquin Valley, to unite in a Mexican-California army. News of Garrá’s recruiting efforts stirred up the Americanos, of course. Visions of war-whooping, hatchet-wielding Indians storming across their yards and through their windows became more frightening and ominous as the number of attackers they imagined grew steadily. During the last days of September, the topic of the day on the streets and over the fences in San Diego, Los Angeles and other communities was the Indian problem.

‘The rumors swirling about,’ Woodward noted, ‘put people in a fine dither.’

Between Los Angles and San Bernardino, the thing uppermost in the minds of the whites was their proximity to the fearsome Cahuilla tribe. Living in the desert and in the mountains south of present day Interstate 10, the Cahuillas, under the leadership of strongman Juan Antonio, were thought to be ‘wild and uncivilized.’ If they joined the army Antonio Garrá was recruiting, the Cahuilla posed a terrible threat to people living all along the trail to Los Angeles. The threat was greatest around Beaumont, Banning and Palm Springs. Indeed, rumor had it that Juan Antonio and his’savage’ followers were mustering in force, about to attack and murder every man, woman and child. Juan Antonio had reportedly taken up arms to ward off an attack by the ‘Pah-Utes,’ but many whites believed that his real purpose was to destroy Los Angeles. And then, Santa Barbara would be next. On top of this, an attack by the Tulares was also feared. And down in San Diego, the whites expected Yuma and Cocopah warriors to come swarming at them from the lowlands of the Colorado, up across the mountains and down to the bay, killing and raping everything in front of them.

If the whites were troubled about their future, the tribes were no less troubled. As historian Arthur Woodward noted, Sheriff Haraszthy was known to be a no-nonsense lawman. And he had warned the capitanes. If they didn’t pay, he’d be back, with enough men to take away their cattle and their tools. The Indians would have no way to make a living and would become the slaves of the whites. Hadn’t that been done in other places?

The fear and distrust on both sides evolved into a self-fulfilling prophecy. By mid-October, scarcely three months after General Bean had told the capitanes not to pay, each side was convinced absolutely that the other was about to attack. The only question was when.

The first smell of blood came on November 20, when John Warner received a terse warning from capitane Lazaro, headman of the Diegueno at Santa Ysabel. A war party, Lazaro warned, was heading John’s way and John should get out, now. Taking Lazaro at his word, Warner packed his family off to what he hoped was safe haven in San Diego. But he stayed on.

It was two days later, on November 22, when the attack came. At first light, about 50 Indians and a white man rode in and started firing on the Warners’ two-room, adobe ranch house. Warner and a few men loyal to him returned fire. One of Warners’ trusted Indian servants was killed. In turn, the defenders quickly dispatched four of the attackers. But it was a lost cause. Realizing this, John Warner slipped away during a lull in the fighting. Left unchallenged, the attackers pillaged and burned the ranch house and outbuildings. They next fell upon the health spa Warner Hot Spring and murdered four white invalids.

The attackers then rounded up the Warners’ livestock. Leaving smoking ruins and dead whites behind, they made their way to Los Coyotes, a little mountain village where they celebrated their victory.

Warner meanwhile arrived in San Diego with news of the attack. By November 28, word had spread northward to Los Angeles.

The Americanos living in Southern California were now in a rage. Everything they had heard and feared and hoped was not true, was true. People were dead. Their property and possessions were being taken or destroyed. It was time for action. In Los Angeles a war council was held, where the county judge, Court of Session justices and other citizens considered ways and means to defend themselves and their property.

Pages: 1 2