by Paul R. Spitzzeri
This second and final part of this post on Henry D. Barrows’ essay in the Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California, published in 1894 and reprinted from a paper he gave at a Society meeting on 5 November, moves from his factual review of the life of Don Pío Pico and to the second portion of the piece, which Barrows called a “character sketch.”
Barrows started off by telling the reader,
I do not know that I shall be able to persuade English-speaking people to see Pio Pico as those, both Americans and native Californians, who knew him best, saw him. [Hubert Howe] Bancroft [for whom an 1877 interview of Pico, among many others, was conducted concerning life before the American seizure of Mexican California], who was not particularly friendly to him, says most truly, as all who know him well will aver: “Pio Pico is a man who has been much abused far beyond his deserts.”
One principal critique of Pico’s governorship at the end of the Mexican period was that he sold mission property to line his pockets, with Bancroft quoted as suggesting that Don Pío “had a perfect right to favor his friends by land grants in the last days of his power, and to prefer that California should fall into English rather than American possession.”
Bancroft opined that Alta California was a “most unfathomable pool of corruption” and that, while he scored Pico for apparently antedating grants following his return to California in 1848, the historian didn’t feel he could condemn or exonerate him, much less any other person given his view of the context of purported corruption.
Jonathan Trumbull (a.k.a, Juan José, or J.J.) Warner told Barrows that he’d intended to publish a statement and asked the latter to do so if he could not—Warner was then 87 and died in 1895, defending his compadre of decades on two matters: the issuance of land grants after August 1846 and the American taking of Los Angeles after Pico decamped to México and that “he gave contradictory information before American courts.”
Barrows agreed with Warner on these points, adding that, in his forty years of knowing Pico (for Warner, it was over sixty), “a somewhat intimate knowledge of Don Pio’s character . . . out to enable us to form a reasonably reliable judgment . . . [for] acts, many Americans who did not know the man, seem willing to believe he was responsible for.”
The writer saw no problem with Pico issuing grants after the Americans seized Monterey—Washington’s policy was that the 7 July capture of the northern town, formerly the capital of Alta California, was the red line for the governor’s official acts—”until shortly before the capture of Los Angeles” because “Los Angeles was then the capital” and anything he decreed before 12 August, when he left for México was, therefore, legitimate.
Barrows cited Warner’s analogy that General Zachary Taylor’s crossing of the Río Grande was no more a justification for nullifying any acts by the Mexican government until the capital city was taken that those who claimed that Pico’s acts were illegal after the seizure of Monterey. He continued,
More than that, this unjust decision of our government, which was but a mere brutum fulmen [literally “a harmless thunderbolt” and figuratively a meaningless act] of a conquering power, without any sanction of right, worked a great wrong on private parties who received, prior to August 12, 1846, lawful grants of land; and, besides, it cast a very unjust reflection on the rightful official acts of a man who, in the opinion of those who know him well, was incapable of intentionally wronging any living being.
In fact, it has been suggested that Pico earnestly sought to make land grants to Californios and extranjero (foreign) naturalized citizens so that current residents would have property before the Americans took over. When a land claims act was passed in 1851 forcing grantees, no matter which ethnicity, to prove their grants were legitimate, the policy in Washington was to automatically appeal any successful land commission and federal district court ruling so as to free up as much land as possible for American immigrants to the Golden State. As argued by Warner and Barrows, Pico complied fully with the requirements of his office.
Moreover, Warner told Barrows “with the utmost earnestness that he did not believe that Pio Pico ever signed his name as Governor to a grant of one foot of public land after he left Los Angeles” and that “all alleged grants issued after that date . . . pretending to bear his signature and rubric, are sheer, absolute forgeries.” Critics could no more charge Pico with illegal acts, it was remarked, that anyone could of American-era governors John G. Downey or George Stoneman.
When it came to accusations that Pico contradicted himself in testimony before the land claims commission created by the 1851 legislation, Warner stated that,
At the early period when Don Pio, who knew nothing of the English language, or of the methods of procedure in American courts, was called upon to give his testimony . . . [and] when Governor Pico’s testimony (given in Spanish) was translated into English, he had no means of knowing whether it was correctly rendered or not . . . [concerning] niceties and shades of meaning as given in one language were truly reproduced in the other; in short, Don Pio did not and could not know what he was made to say—what his testimony was made to appear in English . . . [otherwise, in a poor translation] what chance had he to correct the same?
Beyond this, Barrows pointed out that “there are many attorneys . . . who are not above taking every possible advantage of a witness by confusing him and making him, if possible, contradict himself” and what would this mean for someone, like Pico, who did not speak the language, while a judge, not knowing Spanish, would be “helpless” to “extend protection in such a case.” The conclusion was that Pico suffered “because of unworthy race prejudices, coupled with misinformation” and that it was “for somebody’s interest to misrepresent and abuse him.”
Rising to an emotional tone, the writer went on,
Is it not high time that some one spoke out in his defense? Now, that the venerable ex-Governor has been laid in his grave—and that, O most pitiful spectacle, a pauper’s grave!—is it not time that calumnies against him should cease? There are many of our people who did not know him, and who aim to be just, who still seem willing to believe ill of him; and there are, I am sorry to say, plenty of writers who are very ready to pander to unworthy prejudices against people who are not of our own race and who do not speak our language. It may yet be too early, but some day a friendly, sympathetic life of Pio Pico should be written.
Barrows did not stop there, but extended his passionate plea to the broader issue of the fate of the Californios:
The story of the pastoral, almost idyllic, life of the Californians before the United States conquest, and of the disastrous experiences of many of them since the change of government, which they did not invite, but which was forced upon them, has only been told, or partially told, from the American point of view. Let us hope that it will some time be told from the standpoint of the Californians themselves, and in such a spirit of truthfulness and kindliness as will not do them injustice! For I hold that the Spanish Californians have not hitherto been given a fair show in the forum of American public opinion.
Another matter was brought forward and this was the assertion that Pico was overly litigious and Barrows acknowledged that “this charge, doubtless, has as much foundation and is about as just, as applied to Pico, and to many other native Californians” as it would be to Americans generally. He asked what the alternatives were and wondered if they were to “quietly submit to be despoiled of their lands by greedy land sharks and sharpers” ready to exploit flaws, legitimate of not, in titles, legal technicalities, perjury, forgery, conspiracy and others.
It was averred that “Pio Pico, who was formerly a very rich man in land and cattle, was forced into litigation, which finally left him without a foot of land, and absolutely without means of his own, and dependent on gracious charity for shelter and for his daily bread.” Attorney George H. Smith, who represented him in four suits over loans, stated that “Don Pio’s name and rubric had been forged by expert scoundrels, but that he was able to defeat these suits in every case.”
Barrows then turned to “one of the most flagrant cases of the miscarriage of justice in in [sic] the history of California,” this being the long court battle with Bernard Cohn. It was on “the most flimsy technicalities” that Pico was swindled in his old age of property worth up to a half-million dollars for a debt of $62,000, but which grew to $103,000. Noting that “it is not an easy matter to discuss this case in temperate language,” the author referred Society members to the state Supreme Court’s statement in its ruling against the ex-governor.
Turning to the personality of Don Pío, Barrows offered that “all who came into social or business relations with the venerable ex-Governor, spontaneously bear witness to his kindness of heart, to his uniform courtesy, and to his entire lack of malice or ill-will, towards any human being.” Rather than being “crafty” as some Americans stated he was, Pico “was, if anything, too confiding—which weakness was one of the causes of his financial undoing.”
This, it was continued, was because Don Pío “listened to the advice of one of the conspirators who sought to despoil him of his magnificent estate by persuading him to deposit, for safe keeping, the instrument which would have compelled a reconveyance of that estate, with a party from whose custody it has never since emerged.”
Barrows told the Society that he often spoke with Pico “about the grievous financial troubles that came to him in the last years of his life” and that, with sadness, but “without a tinge . . . of bitterness,” which would have been understandable, Don Pío recalled those who wronged him often met untoward demises. When Barrows remarked that it seemed that some form of Providence was at hand, Pico merely answered, “parece,” or “it would seem so.”
In discussing the patent injustices of the Cohn case, the writer commented that Pico had the money to repay the original loan amount, with interest, and that, while Superior Court Judge Volney E. Howard ruled that what what Don Pío signed “was a security deed only” and that, once the loan was repaid, “all parties would have been made whole,” the aged Californio “fervently, almost devoutly, replied: “Ojala! Ojala! (“If only!”)
Because Pico’s “kindness of heart was a peculiarly prominent trait,” he was unable to say “no” to those seeking money, to secure his signature for security on a loan, or for favors. Barrows’ former father-in-law, William Wolfskill, once remarked “that Don Pio had specifically requested him to refuse to loan money to any man who came to him to borrow on his (Pico’s) security or indorsement.”
Lastly, Barrows wrote about the compadre relationship Pico had with Warner, and which, as we’ve noted here before, existed with the Workman and Temple family, as well, and this was deemed “a beautiful social relation.” The writer was surprised to find his two older friends addressing each other as padrino, or godparent, and ahijado, godchild, and asked Don Pío about why this was the case. Pico stated that a ship captain, William A. Gale, left his daughter, Anita, with him for a period of time and Warner married her, with Pico as sponsor for the wedding, so those terms were used, even if they were specific to baptisms. The article concluded with the observation that “the relation of ‘com-padres,’ is, I believe, unknown in English speaking countries, and, so far as I know, there is no equivalent word for it in the English language.”
Contrasted to the Harry Ellington Book encomium in The Land of Sunshine magazine for October 1894, the paean to Pico by Barrows is full of personal touches and detail that are striking not just for their particular application to Don Pio, but for the passionate call for the history of the Californios to be told from their point of view, not that of the Americans. It is a remarkable tribute for a remarkable figure and the Homestead is fortunate, thanks to the initiative of Walter P. Temple, that Pico and his wife, María Ignacia Alvarado, rest in peace in the mausoleum at El Campo Santo.