Chapter I Indians, Spaniards, and Mexicans

History of Merced County, California By John Outcalt, 1925 Transcribed by Kathy Sedler (chapter VI transcribed by Liz Brase) INDEX I Indians, Spaniards, and Mexicans II American Explorers III First American Settlers to California IV John C. Fremont V Mother Mariposa VI The Founders of the County VII Organization and Boundaries VIII The Assessment Roll for 1857 IX Early Days in the County X A Cross-Section of Merced County Life in 1865 XI The Settlement of the Plains XII Early Days on the West Side XIII The Cattle Industry & the No-Fence Law XIV Coming of the Railroad & Founding of Merced XV Merced Becomes the County Seat XVI County Officials XVII Population XVIII Tansportation XIX Education XX Newspapers XXI Irrigation XXII Towns and Subdivisions CHAPTER I INDIANS, SPANIARDS, AND MEXICANS Merced County extends entirely across the San Joaquin Valley, with its greatest length in an approximately east-northeast and west-southwest direction. It is approximately sixty miles long by thirty wide and contains 1907 square miles. On the east it runs up a few miles into the beginnings of the low foothills of the Sierra Nevada; on the west it reaches to the most easterly summit of the Coast Range. Its lowest point, where the San Joaquin River leaves the county to pass into Stanislaus on the north, is less than a hundred feet above sea level. The greater part of the surface is plain, sloping gently down from both west and east to the San Joaquin, which bisects the county into roughly equal West Side and East Side. Besides the San Joaquin, the principal stream is the Merced, nearly forty miles of the lower course of which lies within the county's boundaries, roughly parallel to and about six or seven miles from the easterly half of the northern border. These two are the only streams which have their sources in the high mountains and therefore have anything like a year- around water supply. On the East Side south of the Merced, Bear Creek, Mariposa Creek, and the Chowchilla River carry considerable water during the rainy season, but run very low or entirely dry during summer and fall. The two first-named head in the Mariposa County hills at an altitude around two thousand feet. The Chowchilla, which forms the boundary between Merced and Madera Counties for something like twenty-five miles, from the eastern foothills to the vicinity of the main State highway up and down the San Joaquin Valley, is somewhat larger and heads somewhat higher, but is also dry during a considerable portion of the year. Between these streams other smaller creeks of similar intermittent character run down towards the San Joaquin. All, even including the Chowchilla and Bear and Mariposa Creeks, spread out and merge into sloughs as they approach the San Joaquin, so that their lower courses are difficult to trace. On the West Side similar intermittent streams run down from the eastern summit of the Coast Range to the San Joaquin. They lie for the most part in a region of still smaller rainfall than those of the East Side just mentioned, and run dry even sooner. Of these Los Banos, San Luis, Romero, and Quinto Creeks are the chief. The Merced reaches the San Joaquin through a depression having bluffs of twenty to forty or fifty feet on each side, and has a considerable river valley of its own, of rich farming land. The smaller streams flow through the lower country through channels which they have cut through the plain, and it is the rule that the land immediately along their sides is higher than that at a distance. They have built up the land near them by successive deposits of silt, like miniature Niles or Mississippis. Except for a dozen-mile strip of scrub timber and brush along the higher part of the western hill portion, and a quarter mile or less of willow, cottonwood, waiter oak and lesser growth along the San Joaquin and Merced River bottoms, the county as found by civilized man was practically treeless. It just about reached the beginnings of scrub growth along its eastern boundary, there was here and there a little timber along the smaller creeks, in the southeast especially some scattering water oaks dotted the open country at wide intervals, 2 and along the course of the San Joaquin, extending widely beyond the limits of its bordering trees and bushes, was one of those regions which we see frequently referred to in the early accounts as tulares—a place of tules—its bounds coinciding more or less closely with the part of the San Joaquin's plain subject to annual overflow from the snow waters of early summer. But on the whole the impression the territory conveyed was that of a treeless plain, across which in the old days of horseback travel it was a long, and in the dry season a pretty cheerless journey. With an annual average rainfall at Merced of between ten and eleven inches, and less than that as we go south and west, it was dry and desolate enough for the several months from the early ending of spring until the fan rains, and we can enter into the feelings of Ensign Gabriel Moraga, redoubtable soldier of Spain and the man who more than any other of his race touches the county's history, which led him to confer upon the river the name afterwards applied as well to the county. It was in the latter half of September, 1806, when on a punitive expedition against "Gentile" Indians of the Valley who had contracted the objectionable habit of running off horses from around San Juan Bautista and San Jose, that this Spanish pioneer entered what is now Merced County, probably by way of the present route of the Pacheco Pass highway and San Luis Creek. With an expedition of twenty-five men, including Father Pedro Munoz, chaplain and diarist, he crossed the San Joaquin somewhere near where the Santa Rita bridge now is, crossed and named the Arroyo de los Mariposas not far from its mouth, and proceeding north and northwest, came after a dry and weary ride to the stream which, supposedly because of the refreshment it afforded his men and animals, he named the "River of Our Lady of Mercy." From the Merced Moraga proceeded further north and successively passed the Tuolumne, Stanislaus, Calaveras, and Mokelumne, then turned south and reached the San Joaquin where it flows southwest, now forming the boundary between Madera and Fresno Counties. On the Stanislaus he found the Indian village of Tualamne. At the San Joaquin and again three days later on the Kings—the "Rio de los Reyes," discovered and named by an expedition in the preceding year—Indians told him a tale of white soldiers who had come across the eastern mountains twenty years before and fought a battle. Possibly, Chapman surmises, some not otherwise known and disastrous expedition had formerly been made by Spaniards from New Mexico. There seems to be no certain record of the name of any Spaniard who entered what is now Merced County before Gabriel Moraga, or even the larger territory which for a brief time was Merced County. Garces and Anza; and Joaquin Moraga, Gabriel's father, at about the time of the American War of Independence, came into the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, but it does not appear that they stayed in it so far north. Gabriel Moraga himself had been on the San Joaquin the previous year. It is said that Los Banos Creek received its name from the Fathers of San Juan Bautista, who were accustomed to cross the eastern Coast Range summit to the rock pools—the baths—near its head, to refresh themselves; but from what we read of the relations with the inland Indians at the time of Moraga's expedition, it seems probable that this was at a later date. By this year, 1806, Spain had extended her occupation of California practically as far as she was ever to do, with the exception of San Rafael and Sonoma north of San Francisco Bay. For a clear understanding of the situation as it then existed, we must resolutely banish from 3 our minds the present eastern boundary of California. Substantially the eastern summit of the Coast Range marked Spain's most easterly extension of her occupation. The heyday of the missions was soon to pass; and though we find some mention of the Christianization of the Gentile Indians of the great interior valley as the reason for expeditions thither, it is principally to that noble animal the horse that we owe what was done along that line—to the horse and the desire of the Indian, both neophyte and Gentile, to possess him, and to the restiveness of growing numbers of the neophytes, who fled from the discipline of the missions across the mountains to their kin in the San Joaquin Valley to the eastward, and for a third cause, to the fear the Spaniards were coming to have of the Gentile Indians as corrupters of the neophytes. Mariano Payeras, who became president of the missions in 1815, expressed the opinion that the time had come to heed the Reglamento for founding establishments east of the Coast Range—not merely missions but strong presidios. He says in his biennial report for 1817-1818: "The object of our ministry being the propagation of the Faith among the Gentiles, and Gentiles no longer existing among the coast mountains, the padres of various missions have attempted to baptize those living in the district called the Tulares.

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