Editor’s Note Hot Tamales! – Eating History Thank you to all my family, friends, Want to travel back in time and partake of one of the most

and supporters of the first edition! It is enduring pieces of southern California history? Eat a tamale!

very gratifying to know you are there. That’s right. Tamales have been around in California since the

beginning of the Spanish Mission era and, fortunately, they’re

I continue to re-discover fascinating still with us. While the many adobe homes have fallen to ruins

and mostly forgotten stories about our and no one remembers the name of that guy who founded the

ancestral Californians and the city centuries ago, the tamale continues to keep its legacy and

heritage they pass down to us. tasty goodness alive.

For example, who knew Riverside The tamale originated among the women cooks of the Aztec

started as a failed silk worm farm and Maya armies as an easily carried and re-heated comestible.

because people were shifting from Tamales were introduced to the Spanish conquistadores of

beaver-felt top hats to silk ones? Cortez in 1521. Centuries later, they arrived in southern

Who knew the braided horse-hair California with the Portola-Serra Expedition in 1769.

riatas of the vaqueros were mostly At the Presidios and in the earliest pueblos the tamales

made from the manes and tails of cooked at home in outdoor kitchens.

wild horses? Or that…well, those

are other stories to be told in later As early as 1875, a tamale vendor with a pushcart was seen in

issues of the newsletter. downtown Los Angeles as evidenced by this excerpt from the

memoirs of Jonathan Mansfield:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“My two companions, however, more fastidious than myself, became restive, and being possessed of that

inquiring instinct of the Yankee to improve present conditions, encountered in their evening stroll the chicken

tamale man, which at once aroused their desire for trade and the possession of the tempting morsel so deftly

trussed up in corn husks.”

(left) Tamale vendor Highland Park (, a suburb of Northeast Los Angeles) in 1885 (right) XLNT Tamale vendor, c. 1890s

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EPIDEMICS: SMALL POX OLD MAN RIVER

AND INFLUENZA – THE SANTA ANA , Part II

One of the often unmentioned historical facts about Juan Crespi, “the other Father” on the Portola-Serra

the expedition of Rivera y Moncada to found the “Sacred Expedition” recorded that on July 29, 1769,

pueblos of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, in 1781, the men and animals crossed the newly-named is

is that along with the soldiers and pobladores came Santa Ana River “with great difficulty, on account

the scourge of smallpox, which had been ravaging of the swiftness of the current.”

Baja California.

Little was written about the Santa Ana for decades

Much has been written – often historically false -- except that its waters were shared in the north by San

claiming that the Spanish used disease as a kind Gabriel Mission and in the south by San Juan

biological warfare against the local indigenous Capistrano as a water source and irrigation. Later,

tribes as a form of control. On the contrary, the when the great ranchos of the period flourished,

opposite appears to be true from the actual records. the Santa Ana was tapped by irrigation ditches,

miles long to provide water for the thousands

Not only to protect themselves, but also the natives, of cattle owned by the rancheros.

the Franciscan friars kept the diseased newcomers

in isolated quarantine some distance from the mission With winter floods, the river changed course

because several of the children were convalescing many times in its history. Generally emptying into

from the dread disease. This is doubly recorded in the Pacific Ocean just slightly west of Newport Bay,

a report from Governor Felipe de Neve to the Com- in 1822, great flooding of the river radically changed

mandante General de las Provincias in October of its outflow to the upper bay, creating the Balboa

1781. peninsula and the sand bars that would eventually

become Balboa, Lido Harbor, and the Linda

King Carlos III of Spain, himself, ordered a book on Islands.

how to combat smallpox epidemics to be distributed

throughout New Spain. This was no empty gesture. By the time California became a state, in 1850, the

A letter of September 15, 1786, from the Military United States Army Corps of Engineers had dubbed

Governor of New Spain to Governor Pedro Fages the Santa Ana River the worst flood threat west of

in California records sending 20 copies of the book the Mississippi.

to be distributed to the missions, pueblos and

presidios. A well-used copy is still in the archives That amiable chronicler of his times, Judge

of the mission at Santa Barbara. Benjamin Hayes wrote in his diary entry for January

29, 1851 that the mail rider from San Diego arrived

The book covers not only the practices of quarantine in Los Angeles having been ten days on the road,

and isolation, but also the new method of vaccination seven of which were spent waiting for the Santa Ana

and the importance of care of those already diseased. River to become passable again.

The second outbreak of smallpox in California came But such floods must be considered minor compared

In May of 1798, when the regular supply ship from to the great floods of 1861-1862.

San Blas arrived in Santa Barbara with some infected

passengers who were immediately quarantined. It was In Southern California, beginning on December 24,

advised by the Governor’s office that innoculations 1861, it rained for almost four weeks for a total of 35

should proceed. A special set of instructions for the inches at Los Angeles. The flooding drowned

procedure were circulated throughout Alta California. thousands of cattle and washed away fruit trees and

Vaccination by the missions’ staff was to be offered vineyards that grew along the Los Angeles River.

to the neophytes as well as the non-Christian Indians.

-- to be continued -- In what was then Los Angeles County, now Orange

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FIESTA DE PICO PIO OLD MAN RIVER

– THE SANTA ANA , Part II continued On November 5, from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM, County , the flooding Santa Ana River created an

at Pio Pico State Historic Park, 6003 Pioneer inland sea which lasted over three weeks with water

Boulevard, in Whittier, you can get your fiesta standing four feet deep up to four miles distant from

on in the grand old fashion. And it’s free! the river. Still at flood levels In February 1862, the

Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana Rivers

Historical Reenactors merged. Government surveys at the time indicated

Pio Pico - portrayed by Roberto Garza that a solid expanse of water covered the area from

Costumed docents Signal Hill to Huntington Beach, a distance of some

Live entertainment (music, dancers) eighteen miles.

Adobe brick making

Food and drinks Next month – Part III

SOFT GOLD: THE FUR TRADE

While the Gold Rush of 1849 garners the greatest

portion of the history of California’s booms, very

little is recorded about its predecessor, the fur

rush. Beginning in the late 1770s and lasting until

after statehood in 1850, the “soft gold” of California

beaver and otter drew hardy trappers to the coastal

and inland waterways and provided decades of rich

findings despite Spain’s and later Mexico’s laws

against it.

By the 1820s, otter pelts were selling for $22 and beaver furs only slightly less. The furs were selling to China

and Europe for luxury clothing and men’s beaver felt top hats and the trappers and fur traders were shipping

their wares back to Louisville where they would top up their supplies and then head out once more to the wilder

areas of the country for another load. It was the promise of such riches that began to draw Americans to the

borders of southern California where the coastal streams and rivers abounded with game.

It was on one such excursion – in 1827 – that my gr-gr-great grandfather, Nathaniel (later known as Miguel)

Pryor came to southern California with the Sylvester Pattie party. Because Mexico had recently broken away

from Spain, these “strangers” were first suspected by the authorities to be spies, either in the pay of Spain or the

United States. Eventually proving that they were trappers, their furs were confiscated or lost. Some left back to

the east, a few stayed on – still occasionally plying their illegal trade – still just as often having their fur caches

confiscated when found. It is estimated that around the time of the fur trade’s heydays, some 16000 otter were

to be found along the California rivers. In Richard Henry Dana’s account Two Years Before the Mast in the

1830s, he writes that his ship finally sailed from California with “several barrels of beaver and otter hides”.

While it had produced fabulous wealth for some and prompted peaceful trade between Indian tribes and

trappers, the change in fashion – from beaver felt top hats to ones made of silk – spelled the death knell to the

major thrust of the “soft gold” rush. The next “big thing” – liquid gold: oil! – was waiting in the wings.

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SHOW ME THE HISTORY

November is an ideal month to step back in time and explore the rich heritage of Balboa Park San Diego.

San Diego’s historic and cultural gem began as a scrub mesa in 1868 and developed – through strong

civic investment and two world Expositions -- into one of California’s architectural showplaces.

Stepping back in time here presents the visitor with the impression of what it must have been like at

the first World’s Fair, the Panama-California Exposition of 1915-1916. To commemorate the opening

of the Panama Canal, the park was filled with stunning buildings designed in the heavily ornamented

Spanish Renaissance style. Realistic larger than life statues, bas-relief, and rococo scrollwork adorn the

exterior walls of museums, artfully restored.

The 1935-36 California Pacific International Exposition, held to boost the local economy during the

depression, added other cultural organizations, structures and landscaping. Many of the buildings around

the Pan American Plaza at the southern end of the Park were created for the 1935 Exposition and present

a fascinating architectural history of the Southwest, from earlier Aztec influences through Mexican

pueblo style to art deco and arte moderne.

To add to the old school charm of the park, there is a vintage electric trolley car ride and the newly-

refurbished lily pad pool. Put on your straw boater or top hat, your Gibson girl picture hat and put up

your fringed parasol and visit the Balboa. Don’t just see the history, become part of it!

Balboa Park information and calendar of events

COMING IN THE NEXT ISSUE

Old Californio Christmas Traditions

Old Man River – The Santa Ana, Part III

And more

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