Up and Down California in 1860–1864. The Journal of William H. Brewer, Professor of Agriculture in the Sheffield Scientific School from 1864 to 1903 ed. by Francis P. Farquhar (review)

Reviews 81 did create a useful social fabric, and the fact that it was what it was did not in itself constitute as much a reason for destroying it as was sometimes used in rationalizing the destruction. Certainly the methods often employed reflect no great credit: exorbitant rates of interest, legal maneuvers by lawyers employed by the Californios to protect them from squatters, the failure to publish laws and announcements in Spanish, as required by the Constitution of California, and the failure to protect Californios from squatters. Securing state revenue mainly from property taxes in the early days was economically discriminating. (After reading this book I find myself somewhat sardonic about the present-day desire to lower property taxes, to reestablish large ranches, and to import braceros to work in the fields.) The Californio was quite effectively excluded from the gold fields. There soon developed action to exclude foreigners, and the foreigners most often driven out were Mexicans. Then the distinction between Mexicans and Californios was dropped. The exclusion from public office and the violation of terms of treaty and constitution created generations of bitterness with the loss of power and prestige. In 1855 all schools were ordered to teach strictly in English; in the same year the law requiring publication of laws and public announcements in Spanish was suspended. The final result has been what Mr. Pitt calls a “schizoid heritage,” by which Anglos are far less kindly disposed toward the Mexican-Americans than toward the imaginary Californios. Of further interest in the book is the picture of Los Angeles during the Civil War, when the sentiment of the town was more with the South. The Californio saw the Union as a possible help against the state. And of more emotional interest to him was the revolution going on in Mexico. The brightest spot in the picture was the welfare of the Church. The only clause of the Hidalgo treaty truly honored was the one requiring religious equality. With its own reform movement and with the support and sympathy of many Yankees, the Church persevered. The two chapters devoted to “bandidos” provide excellent antidote to romance and prejudice. The book also provides interesting, possibly surprising to many, information on the relationship between the Californios and the vigilante movement. R o s c o e L. B u c k la n d , California State College at Long Beach Up and Down California in 1860-1864. The Journal of William, H. Brewer, Professor of Agriculture in the Sheffield Scientific School from 1864 to 1903. Edited by Francis P. Farquhar. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966. 583 pages. $10.00.) Brewer’s journal was originally published in 1930, under the guidance of 82 Western American Literature the present editor, by Yale University Press — most fittingly, as Brewer was a professor at Yale for 40 years after leaving California. The second edition was issued by the University of California Press in 1949; the minor changes in the present edition are detailed in a preface. William H. Brewer nominally served as botanist of Josiah Dwight Whit­ ney’s State Geological Survey, a grandiose but ill-defined scheme for determin­ ing California’s potentialities. In practice, Brewer was the field leader, shep­ herding his small party (including young Clarence King, later a well-known figure in nature study in the West) the length and breadth of the infant state, often under the most primitive conditions. The California which comes to life in the pages of this lucidly written journal was not, of course, the El Dorado of early Gold Rush days. It was the more stable (though scarcely staid) California of Twain’s Roughing It and contemporary works. From the modem view, Brewer’s California was an odd jumble of the primitive and the comparatively sophisticated — sleeping in an armed camp to guard against mule-thieves; attending the glittering gas-lit pavilions of the State Fair; struggling up the cliffs of Yosemite Valley; observing the fireworks of Chinese New Year; being shipwrecked (in potentially dangerous circumstances) off Alcatraz Island; struggling for funds with an indigent and unreliable state administration; dickering testily with “Secessionists.” Brewer was among those resourceful and enterprising men...