Imperial (192 page)

The Tale of Don Hugo Reid—Hartnell, p. 43 (ed. fn.).

William Hartnell’s marriage—Ibid., p. 17 (biographical sketch of W.H.).

“I have come to please my blooming vulva . . .”—León-Portilla and Shorris, p. 108 (“Song of the Women of Chalco,” from the
Cantares Mexicanos
, collected fifteenth century).

The twentieth-century researcher who studies rural California divorce records—Griswold, pp. 1, 4, 232. The divorce records hail from Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in 1850-90. He assures us of the basic uniformity of rural California at that time, so why not lazily apply his findings to Imperial?

The Mexicali barber—Interviewed in his shop in July 2005. Not the same barber whom I interviewed formally and at length about the Chinese tunnels. He spoke English. When he got excited, he nicked my cheek with his straight razor and said damn.

The marriage and career of Cave Johnson Couts: “the Guajomne Grant, a wedding gift” and “Having been appointed subagent for the San Luis Rey Indians . . .”—Samuel T. Black, vol. 1, p. 417.

Hittell on marital superiority of Mexicanas to Indian women—Op. cit., p. 90.

“Andres, an Indian . . .”—Elliott,
History of San Bernardino and San Diego
, entry for Couts, p. 196.

Description of Arcadia Stearns,
née
Bandini—After a photograph reproduced in Osio, p. 140.

Death of Juan Bandini (4 November 1849)—Gostin, pp. 496-97 (records #156-62).

Map of the Abel Stearns Ranchos—McPherson, advertising end matter, map between pp. II and III.

“One of the worst abusers of Indian field hands . . .”—Street,
Beasts of the Field
, p. 124.

“The soul of honor . . .”—Elliott,
History of San Bernardino and San Diego
, entry for Couts p. 196.

Señorita Couts at the Club Anahuac—Sitton and Deverell, p. 166 (Douglas Monroy, “Making Mexico in Los Angeles”).

28. The Indians Do All the Hard Work (1769 -1906)

Epigraph: “And as the concomitant differentiation and specialization . . .”—Veblen, p. 348 (
The Theory of Business Enterprise
, 1904).

“The Indians . . . do all the hard work . . .”—Dana, p. 100.

Ordeal of the 42 Cochimi campesinos, 1769—Street,
Beasts of the Field
, pp. 9-11.

Decline of Cochimi labor—Loc. cit. and ff.

Osio’s observation on mission registers—Op. cit., p. 124.

“Rape, murder, execution, whippings . . .”—Street,
Beasts of the Field,
p. 23.

Spanish vs. American treatment of Indians—Heizer and Whipple, pp. 564-65 (S. F. Cook, “Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization”).

“The Indians worked, . . . as if they had a lifetime for the job.”—Wasserman, p. 31 (John Lloyd Stephens, 1840s).

“The innumerable Indians loaded like beasts of burden”—Ibid., p. 36 (Fanny Calderón de la Barca, 1840s).

Comanche and Apache raid, 1849—Ibid., p. 110.

History of Indian labor in California, 1833-62—Street,
Beasts of the Field
, pp. 94, 110-11, 146-47, 151.

“Indians did the labor and the white man spent the money . . .”—Bell, p. 2.

“These Indians of California have large bodies . . .”—Salvator, p. 39.

Indian labor in Imperial, 1906—DeBuys and Myers, pp. 115-16.

29. The Inland Empire (1860 -1882)

Epigraph: “We wish to form a colony of intelligent, industrious and enterprising people . . .”—Quoted in Holmes et al., p. 24.

Riverside’s original name of Jurupa; fate of the vineyards; “essentially a city of homes” and “morally clean”—Riverside Fire Department, pp. 10-11.

The Rubidoux family, their land and history—Bynon and Son, pp. 14, 18-20, 23, 63.

Planting of the first orange tree in Riverside; Mrs. L. C. Tibbetts’s navel oranges, etc.—Holmes, p. 44 et seq.

“Nothing contributes more to set off the appearance of a festive table than the orange.”—Brown and Boyd, p. 419.

She kept her seedlings alive on dishwater—After Wagner, p. 46.

Parent Tree Brand orange label—Reproduced in McClelland and Last, p. 10.

As of 1989 the tree was still alive—Information from Riverside Municipal Museum, p, 24.

Experiment with opium poppies—Patterson, p. 50.

“Here may be seen large nurseries of orange . . .”—McPherson, p. 60.

The Riverside Fruit Exchange: “The foundation of the organization is the local association, a strictly neighborhood affair.”—Holmes et al., p. 123.

James Bettner’s accomplishments—Patterson, pp. 159, 221. The Heritage House was erected in 1891, when Riverside was desert, mountains, and long rows of young orange groves—not to mention an opera house.

Entry for Catherine Bettner—Bynon and Son, p. 156.

Riverside’s wealth rating in 1895—Riverside Municipal Museum, p. 61 (Vincent Moses, “Machine in the Garden”).

The expert from the USDA: “The magnificent hills and valleys with their seas of orange groves . . .”—G. Harold Powell, pp. 39-40 (letter of 11 February 1904, to Gertrude Powell).

“The largest orange and lemon ranch in California”—Ibid., p. 35 (letter of 8 February 1904, to Gertrude Powell).

“In 1907, the California Fruit Growers’ Exchange starts advertising, first in Iowa.”—Information from the same book, p. 3 (introduction).

Advertisement for the Inland Empire Gas Company in El Centro—Imperial Valley Directory (1930), p. 30.

Descriptions of Etiwanda—Based on Elliott,
History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties
, Dumke, pp. 106-7.

“Promises Fulfilled”—Patterson, p. 95.

The USDA man on Ontario: “One of the great orange centres . . .”—G. Harold Powell, p. 33 (letter of 8 February 1904, to Gertrude Powell).

Definitions and extensions of the Inland Empire—Wagner, p. 17.

“On the other side is a low range of sandhills . . .”—Elliott,
History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties
, p. 102.

30. Subdelineations: Waterscapes (1850 -1900)

Epigraph: “Nearly all of California that slopes toward the Colorado . . .”—Hall, p. 34.

Epigraph: “Down here, behind the Coast Mountains . . .”—Richards, p. 94.

Statistic on artesian wells of San Bernardino County—Elliott,
History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties
, p. 104. The exact figure was 16,153,600 gallons per day.

Judge Willis’s well—Ibid., p. 103.

The New River as “formed by the surplus waters of the Colorado”—Ibid., p. 172.

“In the southwest . . .”—UC Berkeley. Bancroft Library. Paul S. Taylor papers. Carton 4. Folder 4:34: “Irrigation Crusade, 1969,” p. 2 (quote from Walter Gillette Bates,
Scribner’s
magazine, 1890).

Number of irrigation companies east of Los Angeles, 1880-1902—Dumke, p. 228.

Area of present-day San Diego County (4,207 square miles)—San Diego Water County Authority, p. 1.

Names and descriptions of western San Diego County’s main rivers—Hall, pp. 39-49.

The fact that these 7 rivers all run dry in the summer—San Diego Water County Authority, p. 2.

The 7-fold-plus variation in San Diego rainfall—Pryde, who states (p. 103) that San Diego’s rainfall has varied from a high of 25.97 inches in 1883-84 to a low of 3.46 inches in 1960-61. This citation is also given in the “Dissolutions” section, in the chapter “The Water Farmers.”

The thirsty citrus groves in 1904—G. Harold Powell, p. 49 (letter of 25 February 1904, to Gertrude Powell). Reservoir plans of the Mount Tecarte L & W Co.—Ibid., p. 56.

Works of the Riverside Water Company—Hall, p. 199.

Coroner’s jury on Saint Francis Dam—William Leslie Davis, p. 238.

“At first, you see, each farmer tried to get a farm that was beside a stream . . .”—Richards, p. 227.

Tale of the wicked water company at Lake Tahoe—
Fresno Morning Republican
, Thursday, March 25, 1920, “Ask Congress to Intervene to Prevent Lowering of Dam.”

Fights over water in San Gabriel Cañón—
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County
, p. 107.

Effusions of
The City and County of San Diego
—Pp. 54-56.

“Riparian doctrine gets superseded,” etc.—
The California Water Atlas
, p. 24: “. . . the story of California water rights is consequently in large part a history of the continued assault upon the riparian doctrine by . . . the competing doctrine of appropriation. Under this doctrine, the right to water is awarded to the first person who puts it to a beneficial use. . .”

[Original footnote:] “*Under that doctrine, the owners of lands adjoining a stream were held to share the right to the waters of the stream for use on these adjoining lands to the exclusion of use on other lands.”

Footnote: Percentage of Mexican land that is arable—Wasserman, p. 64.

“Those that produce the
best results
from the most
economical
use”—James,
Reclaiming the Arid West
, p. 28.

Language of H.R. 13846: “The right to the use of water shall be perpetually appurtenant to the land irrigated . . .”—Ibid., p. 16. The rememberer of this language was Dr. Frederick H. Newell of the United States Geological Survey.

Footnote: “An era which depended on individualism . . .”—
The California Water Atlas
, p. 27.

Same footnote: 1950 editorial—
California Farmer
, vol. 193, no. 1 (July 1, 1950), p. 4.

“R. R. Sutherland filed notice at Riverside . . .”
—California Cultivator
, vol. XXIII, no. 6 (August 5, 1904), p. 142. In 1906, some ranchers are
suspected of stealing water from the Santa Ana river above Riverside
(
California Cultivator
, vol. XXVII, no. 19 [November 8, 1906], p. 443 [“News of Country Life in the Golden West”]). One wonders what they did that R. R. Sutherland didn’t do? Was it simply that they refrained from filing on the water they’d appropriated?

“They sought economic gain . . .”—DeBuys and Myers, p. 80.

Remarks on the Desert Land Act of 1877—UC Berkeley. Bancroft Library Manuscripts Collection. Paul Schuster Taylor, 1895-. Papers, 1895-1984. BANC MSS 84/38. Carton 5. Folder 5:2: “To Make the Desert Bloom Like the Rose, 1969?” Yellow typescript on “The American West” letterhead, entitled “Issue: Colorado Book,” pp. 3-5.

“Another boomer,” on the subject of Blythe: “water communication from the center of the tract with all the harbors of the world . . .”—Lech, p. 216 (Herb or Hugh Elias to D. W. McLeod of Riverside).

The California Convention of 1878-79—UC Berkeley. Bancroft Library Manuscripts Collection. Paul Schuster Taylor, 1895-. Papers, 1895-1984. BANC MSS 84/38. Carton 5. Folder 5:2: “To Make the Desert Bloom Like the Rose, 1969?” Yellow typescript on “The American West” letterhead, entitled “Issue: Colorado Book,” p. 18.

Warning of Francis G. Newlands—UC Berkeley. Bancroft Library. Paul Schuster Taylor papers. Carton 4. Folder 4:34: “Irrigation Crusade, 1969,” pp. 5-6.

Remarks on “waterscape improvements” generally—UC Berkeley. Bancroft Library Manuscripts Collection. Paul Schuster Taylor, 1895-. Papers, 1895-1984. BANC MSS 84/38. Carton 5. Folder 5:2: “To Make the Desert Bloom Like the Rose, 1969?” Yellow typescript on “The American West” letterhead, entitled “Issue: Colorado Book,” pp. 3-5.

Song of Nanaya: “Dig no canal; let me be your canal . . .”—Leick, p. 93 (Alster 1975); slightly “retranslated” by me for euphony; meaning unchanged. Nanaya was the Sumerian Venus.

31. Their Needs Are Easily Satisfied (1871 -1906)

Epigraph: “You look at a man’s eyes. . .”—Steinbeck,
East of Eden
, p. 164.

An Angeleno: “In fact, now that they are here . . .”—Salvator, pp. 41, 43.

Chinese in Riverside—The Great Basin Foundation Center for Anthropological Research, vol. 1, pp. 2, 13, 175, 178, Chronology sec.

Engraving of the two pigtailed “Celestials”—Ibid., p. 5 (Harry W. Lawton, University of California, Riverside: “Riverside’s First Chinatown and the Boom of the Eighties”).

Footnote: Leo Klotz’s memories—The Riverside Municipal Museum, p. 53.

Riverside historian: “popular antagonism”—Patterson, p. 342.

“It is difficult to see how the present fruit crop . . .”—The Great Basin Foundation Center for Anthropological Research, vol. 1, p. 2. In 1887 the T. E. Langley Ranch in Lugonia employs mainly Chinese and Indians for drying peaches; naturally the Indians’ presence is anachronistic (ibid., p. 41).

Unless otherwise stated, all remaining dates and events in this discussion of Chinese labor in California are from the same source’s long “Chronology.”

Continuation of Chinese history in Riverside, to 1906—Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 5, 195, 38, 46, 49, Chronology sec.

Artifacts excavated from Riverside’s Chinatown—The Great Basin Foundation Center for Anthropological Research, vol. 2 (Archaeology), pp. 326-27, 403, 408, 354.

32. Los Angeles (1875)

Epigraph: “The constant ripening of fruits . . .”—
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County
, p. 353.

Indian place-names relating to Los Angeles—Ibid., p. 11.

Editor of the
Los Angeles Star
: “The most degraded race of aborigines upon the North American Continent . . .”—Quoted in Robinson, p. 15.

Miscellaneous other Los Angeles events—
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County
, pp. 100-103, 105.

L.A. gets title to L.A. River water rights, 1884—Hall, p. 535.

Artesian wells “at pleasure”—McPherson, p. 55.

L.A.’s water supply: “Ample for a very large city . . .”—Ibid., p. 44.

Events of 1887—
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County
, p. 108.

Depredations of coyotes—Salvator, p. 27.

“A small town,” “bituminous pitch”—Pattie, p. 268.

Number of orange trees in 1856—Dumke, p. 13.

Miss Francisca Wolfskill’s oranges; the huge beehive—McPherson, pp. 22-23.

33. The Second Line (1893)