Brave Old Spaniards and Indolent Mexicans: J

American Journalism, 31:1, 100–126, 2014 Copyright C American Journalism Historians Association ISSN: 0882-1127 print / 2326-2486 online DOI: 10.1080/08821127.2014.875347 Brave Old Spaniards and Indolent Mexicans: J. Ross Browne, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, and the Social Construction of Off-Whiteness in the 1860s By Michael Fuhlhage The purpose of this article is to examine J. Ross Browne’s construction of racial identity in the territories acquired by the United States after its war with Mexico in 1846–1848. The intent is to reveal the interaction between a journalist’s social identity and his construction of the social reality of race relations by examining the most widely circulated works, personal trajectory, surrounding cultural influences, and private correspondence by Browne, one of the earliest Anglo journalists to chronicle American development of the Mexican Borderlands based on firsthand experience. The research method was cultural contrapuntal reading, which employs a combination of Marion Marzolf’s content assessment and Edward Said’s contrapuntal reading. Browne cast Spanish California elites as bringers of European progress and helpers to the Anglo American government and business leaders, Mex- ican peons as a cheap labor force for mining interests, and Spanish ladies and mixed-race temptresses as objects of desire. he American mission of resource development in the West took root in unsettled conditions. The discovery of gold in California triggered migration that inundated the Spanish-descended ricos T 1 who had long held power over lower-class Mexican and Indian populations. 1J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (New York: Touchstone, 1981). The nomenclature of race is complicated by misunderstandings about the meaning of race itself. Americans of the nineteenth century referred to people of dark but not Negro complexions as “Mexicans” even if they were citizens of the United States. Many citizens of Mexico had light skin, owing to their Spanish ancestry and a hierarchy of race that put Mexicans of pureblooded Spanish descent Michael Fuhlhage is an at the top and pureblooded Indians at the bottom. Labels for indigenous assistant professor in the School of Communication people are complicated by similar factors. A person whom current and Journalism at Auburn American scholars might label “Native American” might actually be an University, Tichenor Hall indigenous person from Mexico, whereas indigenous Americans in a 237, Auburn, AL 36849, broader sense may be natives of an Indian nation in the United States, [email protected]. Mexico, or Canada. Even the nomenclature of Latinos in old California r American Journalism 31:1 101 Anglo newcomers who arrived with the Gold Rush of 1849 treated native Californians as “Mexicans,” regardless of their US citizenship.2 Underpin- ning this was an emergent wave of xenophobia, driven by speculation that Catholics were conspiring to undermine American freedom, that took hold among believers in Protestant, Anglo-Saxon superiority.3 Amid these influences, the 1850s saw the nation on increasingly perilous political ground. Southerners took growing umbrage at Northerners’ attacks on slavery as planters sought land to extend their peculiar institution.4 These forces played a substantial role in shaping the way US journalists perceived racial, na- tional, and religious difference between themselves and the Mexicans they encountered.5 Among these journalists was John Ross Browne, whose articles for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine provided a detailed picture of the strangeness of Western territories and commentary on relations among Span- ish Californian elites, Mexican peons of mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry (see Figure 1), and Anglo interlopers. Extensive experience in the Borderlands in the 1850s and 1860s informed Browne’s writing, which re- flected the complexities of class and race in California and the territories that make up present-day Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. This article examines Browne’s journalistic work in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, personal trajectory, and the cultural influences that surrounded him. Its purpose is to examine Browne’s construction of racial identity in the territories acquired by the United States after its war with Mexico in 1846–1848.6 The is complicated by the shift from Mexican to US control. Thus, for purposes of this article, “Anglo” is used instead of “white,” “Spanish” is used for people of Iberian descent, “Californio” is used for Spanish- and Mexican-descended elites who are natives of California, “Mexican peon” is used to refer to less privileged poor working-class Californians of Mexican descent, and “Indians” is used to refer to indigenous people of North America. “Anglo” and “Indian” are referred to as “Anglo American,” “Anglo European,” “Mexican Indian,” “California Indian,” or by the names of their specific nations, such as Navajo, Apache, and so on, where such labels are needed for clarity. “Native Californians” is used to refer to non-Anglo natives of California who were citizens of Mexico before they were annexed under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War. “Mestizo” is used to refer to people of mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry. 2Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, Frontiers: A Short History of the American West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 86. 3David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (London: Verso, 2007); Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (New York: Macmillan, 1938). 4Michael F. Holt, The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004). 5Shelley Streeby, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 6Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, established in 1850, served as a magazine of serialized novels, travel narratives, and other long-form nonfiction, poetry, and political commentary. It preceded Harper’s Weekly, launched in 1857 as an illustrated family newspaper to compete r 102 Fuhlhage Figure 1: “Santa Cruz Greasers.” Arguing intermarriage led to lack of vigor, laziness, and poverty, Browne wrote, “When these mixed races are compelled to work they sicken and die.” Typical of the “indolent Mexican” type that recurred in his Harper’s articles, Browne wrote they barely farmed enough to sustain themselves. In J. Ross Browne, “A Tour through Arizona. Fourth Paper,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, January 1865, 149 (color figure available online). intent is to reveal the interaction between a journalist’s social identity and his construction of the social reality of race by examining Browne’s most widely circulated work and private correspondence. These research questions guide this inquiry: How did Browne por- tray Mexicans, Indians, and Spanish-descended Californians in the land the United States acquired from Mexico? What influences—in popular culture, ideology, religion, and journalistic practice—shaped Browne’s representa- tion of the Borderlands? This article reveals the mentality of a reporter as he experienced changes brought by colonization, answering James Carey’s 1974 call for a cultural history of reporting.7 The study also answers John with mammoth illustrated papers such as Brother Jonathan. Harper’s Weekly is best known for its lavish illustrations and its campaign to bring down the Tweed Ring, the machine that controlled city government in New York in the 1860s and 1870s. Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 Years 1690 to 1940 (New York: MacMillan, 1941), 382–384. 7James W. Carey, “The Problem of Journalism History,” Journalism History 1, no. 1 (Spring 1974): 1, 3–5, 7. r American Journalism 31:1 103 Nerone’s 2011 appeal for a critical history of journalism as an industry. Nerone’s analysis of American Journalism and Journalism History articles revealed another disciplinary need: Race is a subject of enduring interest, yet Nerone found no mentions of Latino ethnicity. Thus, the article also extends the boundaries of journalism history beyond the white–black racial binary.8 Browne’s writing is significant because of his reputation for integrity as a public servant and influence on public policy and popular literature, but also because Harper’s New Monthly reached so many readers. The magazine dominated periodical publishing with a circulation of 100,000 copies that reached 500,000 readers each month.9 Its middle- to upper-class readers hungered for its serializations of European novels, American fiction, and nonfiction descriptions of strange lands abroad and in the West, providing the Harpers a target for their promotion of American values, culture, and information. This question guided their choices of what to publish: “Is it moral, as well as interesting and instructive?”10 Hence, Browne’s writing also reveals what he and the Harpers believed readers needed and wanted. Browne’s images of Mexico did not end in the magazine. He expanded his six-part 1864–1865 serial “A Tour through Arizona” and provided sketches for the compilation Adventures in the Apache Country. First published in 1868, Adventures proved popular enough that it was republished in 1869, 1871, 1874, and 1878.11 Browne drew his notions about Mexicans and Spaniards from experience as a US Treasury Department and Office of Indian Affairs investigator—a low-level job that allowed him to travel in dangerous areas under federal pro- tection and learn about Western affairs by demanding the facts from those who collected government funds—and as the first US mining statistics com- missioner, a position that gave him prestige among commercial interests and earned enough respect that his fellow Californians succeeded in nominating him to serve as US ambassador to China in 1868–1869.12 8John Nerone, “Does Journalism History Matter?,” American Journalism 28, no. 3 (Fall 2011): 7–27. 9Eugene Exman, The House of Harper: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Publishing (New York: Harper & Row, 1945), 71; 100,000 copies printed, Broadside, 1852.

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