The Tulares as the refuge of outlaws and evildoers was not infrequently the scene of conflicts with them. In 1805 a small military party was sent out from Mission San Jose to punish gentiles (Indians that were never affiliated with mission) who had attacked a missionary who had gone on an errand of mercy to their rancheria, and one of whose attendants had been killed. This party pursued the malcontents as far as the San Joaquin River, recovering thirty or forty runaways and capturing a lot of gentiles.
The routed survivors of the general uprising of February, 1824, against the Santa Barbara channel cordon of missions, fled to the valley and were pursued in June following by 103 soldiers with two field pieces. The Indians when overtaken in camp at Tulare Lake displayed a white flag. A conference followed, the two priests acted as negotiators, and as a result unconditional surrender, pardon and enforced return to their respective missions. The number engaged in this revolt was upwards of 400. Had their secret conspiracy succeeded, there would have been massacre at all the missions. Its failure discouraged other attempts for a time. Santa Inez and Purisima with burning of the buildings and Santa Barbara were the missions attacked.
Not until the spring of 1829 was there another general uprising, this time of the neophytes of Santa Clara and San Jose, who deserted and fortified themselves with gentiles near the San Joaquin River. A San Francisco expedition of fifteen men under Sergeant Antonio Soto was dispatched to capture the fugitives and destroy the fortification, but it was repulsed in penetrating a thicket of willows and brambles and withdrew to San Jose, where Soto died from his wounds. The Indians celebrated their victory with feasting and dancing, while neighboring rancherias made common cause with them, and the uprising threatened to become a dangerous one, necessitating rigorous repressive measures. Jose Sanchez was sent with a second expedition of forty from the San Francisco presidio but retired to San Jose without risking a second storming of the inner works on finding that the Indians had set up several strong lines of wooden palisades, the first of which had been destroyed.
A third expedition of one hundred from Monterey under Ensign M. G. Vallejo joined the Sanchez force with Indian auxiliaries, and after a desperate fight the fugitives were driven from their intrenchments, unable to withstand the musketry and cannonading. After the fight, "a most shocking and horrible butchery of prisoners took place." The auxiliaries ranging themselves in a circle were permitted to exercise their skill in archery upon the hapless prisoners in their midst, others were hanged from trees with vine ropes and old women shot down in cold blood. Estanislao, the native alcalde, who instigated the uprising, escaped the slaughter, delivered himself up to Father Narciso Duran of San Jose who concealed him for a time and finally secured his pardon.
Finishing his bloody campaign, Vallejo returned to San Jose and Monterey. Father Duran attempted to have him prosecuted for "the greatest barbarity ever perpetrated in the territory." One soldier was sentenced to five years penal servitude for shooting down a defenseless old squaw, but Vallejo escaped trial. Duran, who as a Spaniard opposed the republic, as did all the missionaries, wielded less influence than Vallejo, who as usual ranged himself on the popular side and was in the line of promotion, wherefore according to Historian T. H. Hittell "by degrees the bloody story was supplanted in the public mind by matters which were supposed to be of more immediate importance."
Gen. M. G. Vallejo, as he was later known, was a man who has been given much prominence in the written early history of California, as well under the Mexican as the American regime. He was a delegate to the Monterey constitutional convention, honored politically then and afterward, a leader and spokesman for the California-born Spanish speaking population, lived the life of a feudal lord and baron at Sonoma with the history of the region north of San Francisco largely that of his own family, held the military title of General to his dying day yet never commanded more soldiers than would make up the complement of one company, reveled in wealth and luxury in the halcyon days and lived his later days in comparative poverty, was as proud as the most blue-blooded Hidalgo until the very last, was honored by the Society of California Pioneers, having arrived July, 1808, and by the Native Sons of the Golden West, a quoted authority on early California history, a friend at one time and the opponent at another, of the dominant Roman Catholic church, importing and collecting for private reading and library in his younger days the very books that were forbidden by the church, and foremost as an influential individual in yielding to and advocating the change under American territorial acquisition.
A reading between the lines of history impresses one that he was a very accommodating spirit, best described by the present-day term of a "political trimmer." His advocacy of the American regime was at a time when his opposition might have been feared for its possible results when the popular sentiment was not over friendly to the American cause.
But what mattered it that a few Indians, more or less, were wantonly massacred? Some of the whites were no more considerate or humane.
Towards the end of 1833, because of the frequency of raids by Indian horse thieves, it became the custom to send monthly expeditions, aided by rancheros, to overawe the marauders. It was not unusual for them to make slave prisoners of gentile children, wherever met with. An instance came under the notice of Governor Figueroa in the early part of 1835 as the result of a San Jose expedition and the kidnaping of seven children. He denounced the outrage in unmeasured terms, ordered the papooses placed in the mission until the parents could call for them, directed that no more expeditions be sent except in actual pursuit of horse thieves, and then only with express governmental permission. Figueroa had great sympathy for the Indian, due as much to his humanity as to his Aztec blood. He was so well thought of that he was called the "Benefactor of the Territory of Alta California."
Lieut. Theodore Talbot, U. S. N., who had been left in command with nine men at Santa Barbara in September at the outbreak of the Californian insurrection, following the raising of the flag and after the retaking of Los Angeles, was called upon to surrender by one of the California military commanders. Talbot refused, but unable to resist the force of 200 against him retired to the mountains. His little party fought the pursuers, and fire was set to the woods to burn them out. Talbot and men escaped the flames and eluded the pursuit. An old soldier of ex-Governor Micheltorena, who was unfriendly to the Californians because of their expulsion of his former chief, piloted the pursued ninety miles across the mountains into the Tulares. From here they groped their way for about a month, mostly on foot, enduring hardships and suffering, for some 500 miles to Monterey, arriving early in November and rejoining Fremont after having been given up for dead.
CHAPTER VI
Fresno County lies in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, and the latter is the central portion of the state. Fresno City is practically the geographical center of the state, as it is the central spot of the valley. As valley or county, the region is one with many claims to distinction and not" a few to supremacy. Fresno is one of the five richest agricultural counties in the United States.
Between the San Joaquin and the Kings rivers, streams that rise in the perpetual snows of the Sierras, bringing the life-giving waters out upon the parched plains, to yield in orchard, vineyard and alfalfa fields, returns greater than ever did the local gold placers, lies a broad-backed divide,, known as the Fresno plateau, though to the eye it is a part of the undulating fertile plains of the great valley. The plain-like Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley — The Great Valley of California — was once a vast inland sea. Geological proof of this is not lacking. The plain is 400