By Shahin Berenji

Between September 1850 and 1851, more than thirty-one homicides were committed in the small pueblo of Los Angeles. ¹ This is an extraordinarily high number of homicides considering the fact that the city had a permanent population of less than 2500. To put this statistic in modern perspective, this would be the equivalent of an annual homicide rate of 1,240 per 100,000 people, as calculated by the modern Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) crime rate scale. ² This is by far the highest known homicide rate ever reported in the United States and it utterly dwarfs modern rates of murder. ³ Throughout the rest of the 1850s, Los Angeles continued to experience horrific homicide rates, reaching a climax during the years 1853-55 with an average of a homicide per day! ⁴ So violent was the city, according to Horace Bell, a noted citizen, that conversations often started with the question “how many were killed yesterday?”⁵ This startling information invariably raises the question: Why was such a small city as Los Angeles so violent and bloodthirsty?

To answer this question, one must fully understand the historical context surrounding the growth of violence in Los Angeles. During the late 1840s and early 1850s, events in northern California such as the discovery of gold and the organization of vigilance committees set in motion a sudden flow of immigration into the cow counties.⁶ By triggering waves of immigration into southern California, the aforementioned events forever changed the social landscape of Los Angeles, leaving social repercussions that would immediately translate into the shocking levels of violence described above. ⁷

The formation of vigilance committees in northern California, particularly in San Francisco, produced a mass exodus of criminals into southern California. In 1851, following the creation of the San Francisco vigilance committee, a newspaper stated  the recent hanging and banishing of the friends and companions of these villains caused a stampede to the southern portion of the state, where they formed themselves into organized banditti, robbing and murdering indiscriminately.⁸ This quote illustrates the well-known fact that troublemakers who had escaped vigilante justice were frequently taking refuge in southern California. More often than not, these fugitives settled in Los Angeles for the simple reason that if forced to move further on, it was only a short ride to Mexico; while on the other hand if the conflict subsided in northern California, it was possible to quickly return. ⁹

Perhaps, more than any other vigilante movement, the San Francisco vigilance committee of 1856 produced the greatest exodus of criminals ever recorded in California history. Despite the fact that this committee hanged only four men, thirty criminals were officially banished (of which twenty-five actually left) and it is estimated that eight hundred other villains left the city in fear. A most notorious individual who fled San Francisco and sought safe-haven in the suburbs around Los Angeles was Ned (also known as Edward) McGowan. As a corrupt judge and an accomplice to multiple San Francisco murders (including the murder of James King of William), the vigilantes sought to bring McGowan to justice. However, like many other fugitives from San Francisco, he evaded capture and took refuge in Los Angeles County until the vigilance committee disbanded. The influx of long-time, professional villains like Ed McGowan created such a high concentration of criminals in Los Angeles that the city soon evolved from a ‘cow town’ to a criminal enclave. And so, because of this great immigration of criminals, the violence and lawlessness that so devastatingly plagued San Francisco suddenly spread to the City of Angels in the 1850s.

Yet, in addition to the vigilance committees, the notable migration of individuals prompted by the gold rush of 1848 also impacted the level of violence in Los Angeles. Because of the pandemic excitement triggered by the gold rush, thousands of Mexicans traveled overland to northern California. While most of these Mexican miners came from Sonora, there were also small bands from the northern provinces of Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Durango. Starting from Tubac (which is on the border of Sonora), they typically traveled over the old Anza trail to Yuma, crossed the Colorado River, and then entered Los Angles via the Cajon Pass or San Gorgonio Pass en route to the mines. Finding Los Angeles to be a convenient stopping place to rest and re-supply their caravans, Mexicans initially just passed or “drifted” through the city (however, this would change two years later). ¹⁰

Between 1848 and 1850, more than 10,000 Sonorans passed through the city each spring on their way to the mines. Staking out good claims on the Tuolumne and Calaveras rivers, the Sonorans, using their advanced mining techniques, made remarkable progress extracting the placer gold. Unfortunately, their success incurred the wrath and resentment of xenophobic Americans, who felt that Mexicans or “greasers,” as they were derogatorily called, were stealing gold from rightful US citizens. ¹¹

Spurred by racism and jealousy, the American miners used an interesting combination of violence and legislation to force the Mexicans to leave the mother lode. ¹² In January 1849, the commander of the US army stationed in California, General Persifor F. Smith, issued a declaration stating that “anyone not a citizen of the United States” who enters upon public land and digs for gold “is a trespasser.”¹³ Enforcing Smith’s doctrine of trespass, vigilantes at Sutter’s Mill and along the Sacramento River drove away hundreds of Mexicans. The attacks on Mexicans only increased with the passage of the Foreign Miners’ Tax Law of 1850. Authored by a racist Texan legislator known as Thomas Jefferson Green, it placed a $20 monthly impost on foreign miners, mainly individuals of Latin American descent.¹⁴

As most Mexicans could not afford this astronomical tax, the American miners used this as a pretext to oust them from their claims. In 1850, a mob of 2,000 American miners descended on the Mexican mining camp of Sonora (so named because it had so many Sonorans) and “firing at every Mexican in sight, proceeded to raze the town.”¹⁵ Similarly, in other mining districts, Mexicans were brutally murdered and lynched for not paying their taxes. Under direct assault, the vast majority of Mexicans, most of whom were Sonorans, chose to leave the mining districts and return home. The fact that the population of Sonora, California fell from 5000 in 1850 to less than 3000 a year later truly illustrates this point. ¹⁶ However, as historian J.M. Guinn correctly noted, not all of them returned to their native land;there was a residuum left in California, especially southern California. ¹⁷ While almost impossible to ascertain the size of the residuum, it must have been quite large since every southern California settlement, including Los Angeles, had its own ‘Sonora-town’.

The Mexican emigration from Northern California, also called the ‘Sonoran invasion’, created an extremely volatile social environment in Los Angeles. As they suffered from terrible injustices and injuries in the mines, the Mexicans who immigrated to Los Angeles and other parts of southern California naturally bore great animosity and hatred towards most Americanos or gringos, especially the miners. Nonetheless, because the American population was so negligible in Los Angeles in 1850 and 1851, the widespread feelings of hostility usually amounted to very little violence. ¹⁸ This would radically change with the discovery of placer deposits in Havilah, Kern County in 1853.

Producing widespread excitement, the exaggerated discovery of gold in Kern County attracted hundreds of American miners from northern California. In 1853, Los Angeles attained a total population of 3500 to 4000, including about 300 Americans; and in 1854 a total of 5000-of whom 1500 or 2000 were Americans. ¹⁹ This means that the proportion of Americans relative to the total population increased from 7.5% to 40% in less than a year, indicating the significant demographic impact the gold rush had on Los Angeles. These statistics are underestimates, however, since they exclude hundreds of miners who simply drifted through the city and used it as a southern gateway to the mines.²⁰

The gold rush had an immediate effect on Los Angeles in that it brought to Los Angeles many reckless, and undesirable people, among them gamblers and desperadoes, who flocked in the wake of the gold-diggers.²¹ Consequently, numerous saloons, brothels, dance houses, and gambling halls sprang up to cater to this new footloose population. Thinking of themselves as sojourners, rather than settlers, the hordes of single, adventurous, restless young men who arrived in Los Angeles totally disregarded social norms. This population of “undesirable people” only increased once most miners returned unsuccessful and bitter from the Kern County gold fields. ²²

Many of these ruffians and troublemakers ended up on the infamous one-block thoroughfare in Los Angeles known as Calle des los Negros or Nigger Alley (probably named after the dark-skinned Indians and Mexicans who frequented this street), which was home to many outlaws and desperadoes including Crooked Nose Smith, Cherokee Bob, and Ricardo Urives. ²³ Although, in length it did not exceed more than five hundred feet, in wickedness it was unlimited.²⁴ When the deaths averaged one a day in the mid-1850s, the Calle de Los Negros was the central point from which the wickedness and violence radiated. It was so dangerous a place that no officer, according to Horace Bell, “would have had the temerity to attempt an arrest in Nigger Alley.”²⁵ For this reason, most murders committed in Nigger Alley went unsolved, which subsequently permitted violence to flourish in this small pocket of Los Angeles.

While the immigration of ruffians into a small densely packed neighborhood contributed to the growing violence in Los Angeles, it fails to highlight the primary cause of violence in the city and that was diversity. The migrations to Los Angeles that began in the early 1850s, as outlined in the previous pages, produced a more heterogeneous society comprising not only Indians and Californios but also Americans and Mexicans, especially Sonorans. ²⁶ Although the Spanish-speaking greatly outnumbered the Americans and constituted a majority in Los Angeles, they were noticeably divided along class lines into two groups: the rich or rico Californios (or the rancheros) and the Mexicans. Beginning with the American conquest of Mexico in 1846, the native Californios, often called the Spanish dons, aligned themselves with the Americans. Over the next few years, through ties of marriage and bonds of commerce, not to mention their innate social conservatism, they solidified their alliance with the incoming Americans. By cultivating this strong relationship, the Californios maintained control over Los Angeles and its city government in coalition with the minority American population. ²⁷

Meanwhile, the Mexicans who had neither ties of blood nor ties of commerce with the Americans or Californios were treated much differently. Since Mexicans were part of the paisono or lower class (i.e. craftsmen, artisans, vaqueros, and major-domos), the Americans and Californios discriminated against them and treated them with contempt and disdain. Both the aforementioned groups felt that the Mexicans were not gente de razon or “people of reason” since they owned little property/land and were overwhelmingly illiterate and/or poorly educated, mestizo (darker-skinned individuals), Mexicans. ²⁸ In the post-war society, nationalism and anti-Mexican sentiment still dominated the Californian frontier. It was widely assumed in the 1850’s that Mexico was a very sick nation, as sick as Turkey in Europe, and consequently in need of Yankee medicine. So predominant were these feelings that numerous filibustering campaigns were launched against Mexico in order to annex that country to the United States. ²⁹

Although these campaigns all failed, they nonetheless demonstrate the hostile atmosphere Mexicans lived under in Los Angeles and the rest of Southern California. The fact that the vast majority of Mexicans had just experienced countless injustices and injuries in Northern California prior to their immigration south made them even angrier at the treatment they received. Stating their outrage, the editor of El Clamor Publico (the Public Outcry in English), Francisco P. Ramirez, wrote “Oh! Fatalidad! Mexicans alone have been the victims of the people’s insane fury! Mexicans alone have been sacrificed on the gibbet and launched into eternity!”³⁰ All that was necessary to translate this anger into violence and bloodshed was a simple catalyst. This stimulus ultimately came from the unequal distribution of justice in both the vigilance committees and the legally constituted courts.

More often than not, the actions of the Los Angeles vigilance committees reflected deep-rooted racial biases against Mexicans. None better illustrates this argument than the second vigilance committee of 1852. Formed shortly after the murder of Major General Joshua H. Bean on November 7, 1852, the committee, composed mainly of Americans but also including a few Californios (such as M.C. Rojo), convened and quickly arrested five Sonorans and an Indian supposedly connected to the crime. ³¹ They were Eleulerio or Benito Lopez, Cipriano Sandoval, Felipe Reid, Juan Rico, Reyes Feliz (or Felix), and Jose Alvios. Although the last three individuals were completely ignorant of the crime, the committee still detained them because of their past activities as members of Salomon Pico’s legendary band. ³² Another outlaw, Benito Lopez, confessed several murders (and even disclosed the spot where the bodies of his victims were concealed) but admittedly knew nothing about Bean’s death. Meanwhile, the honest, hard working, and well-respected cobbler Cipriano Sandoval maintained his innocence and testified that young Felipe Reid, the adopted Indian son of Hugo Reid (a well-known Scotsman), had confessed the murder to him shortly after its occurrence. Interestingly enough, Felipe Reid denied his confession and pleaded complete innocence. ³³

The committee ultimately sentenced all the accused to death except for Felipe Reid. While the Mexican community generally tolerated the sentences, they could not accept those handed down for Reid and Sandoval. At the time, it was a well-known fact that Felipe Reid had a rivalry with Bean for the attentions of an Indian woman. More importantly, as an Indian, it seemed likely that Felipe felt mad at Bean’s bloody campaign against his people. Therefore, Reid had a clear motive or mens rea to kill Bean; yet the committee did not execute him, even in light of the evidence provided by the honest cobbler – Sandoval. Ironically enough, Sandoval, who had neither a history of crime nor an intent to commit bloodshed, was pronounced the murderer. As Felipe Reid was clearly protected by his father’s rich and influential friends, the Mexicans slowly began to distrust and doubt the justice of vigilantism. Years later, their suspicions would only prove true as Reid, the real murderer, would confess the crime on his deathbed, thus revealing Sandoval’s innocence. ³⁴

Fueling their anger was the fact that almost every important lynch-law episode involved Mexicans. The vigilance committee of November 1852 lynched five Sonorans while the vigilance committee of July 1852 lynched two Sonorans. ³⁵ The fact that the vigilance committees overlooked the crimes of Americans and solely punished Mexicans made them believe there was a double standard of justice. Remembering their bitter experiences in the mines, the Mexicans soon equated vigilante justice with Anglo justice and concluded the Americans were again victimizing them. Consequently, their enmity began to grow and all that was needed was another provocation to make it boil to the surface.

The trouble began brewing on July 19, 1856 when Deputy Constable William W. Jenkins, tried to repossess a guitar belonging to Antonio Ruiz who was in arrears on a small debt. When met with some opposition, Jenkins, the panicky constable, reached for his pistol and killed Ruiz. This outraged the Mexican community since he was no criminal like Benito Lopez, Reyes Feliz, Juan Rico, or Jose Alvios. On the contrary, he was a law-abiding, hardworking family man who was well respected within Southern California, so much so that he had recently delivered the Mexican Independence Day oration. Mexicans all across Southern California, not just Los Angeles, reacted since they perceived the murdering of Ruiz as needless, wanton, and inexcusable. ³⁶

Although Jenkins was arrested and brought to trial, he was placed on bail which so exasperated the spirit of all Mexicans that they felt bound to execute justice themselves. ³⁷ Anger overcame the mourners and so they finally resorted to violence. According to the words of the Los Angeles Star, at sundown on July 22, the lowest and most abandoned Sonorans and Mexicans gathered on the hills surrounding Los Angeles and decided on a violent course of action. ³⁸ A Frenchman named M. Carriaga, “who made a wholesale and violent denunciation of Americans,” assumed the role of leader. ³⁹ Retrieving arms from a cache hidden since the Mexican war, the rebels, numbering two to three hundred, demanded Sheriff Getman release the prisoner. ⁴⁰ After receiving a negative response, the Mexican rebels attacked the city at midnight, injuring a couple of the city’s defenders, including the Sheriff. For the next few days, there were on and off skirmishes between the Mexicans and the combined force of rico Californios and Americans. Nonetheless, the ‘race war’ came to a partial halt with the sudden capture of the leader, M. Carriaga. ⁴¹

However, soon afterwards, the violence began escalating again as Mexicans roaming the countryside threatened to exterminate the Americans. By the end of 1856, the ‘war of the races’ took on a new dimension as Mexican bandidos or bandits joined the fight in southern California. Tiburcio Vasquez, an outlaw, well reflected the sentiments of the bandits when he said, “a spirit of hatred and revenge took possession of me. I had numerous fights in defense of what I believed to be my rights and those of my countrymen. I believe we were being unjustly deprived of the social rights that belonged to us.”⁴²

Unlike their counterparts who attacked Los Angeles just to retrieve Jenkins and mete out punishment, the bandidos were an extremely bold group who targeted all Americans. Although the Californios were also disliked, the Mexican bandidos did not target them since some Californios (such as Vicente Guerrero and his son), especially those that were poor or middle class, joined their ranks and sympathized with their cause. In addition, the bandidos could not attack the Californios since they depended on this group for supplies, shelter, and protection. For this reason, the Californios, unlike the Americans, were usually spared. ⁴³

The most notorious bandidos in Southern California were Juan Flores and his lieutenant, Pancho Daniels. Heading the largest bandit aggregation ever seen in California, the Juan Flores-Pancho Daniels gang instilled such a fear into the American population that many expected a massive Mexican invasion of the southland. In January 1857, the gang broke and looted three shops owned by Miguel Krasewski, Manuel Garcia, and Henry Charles. Soon thereafter, they entered the house and store of George Flughardt whom they ruthlessly slaughtered. Heading out to investigate these crimes, Sheriff J.R. Barton assembled a small posse of ten men to track the outlaws. However, lured into a trap and significantly outnumbered by the Juan Flores-Pancho Daniels gang, all of the officers save two were killed. ⁴⁴ For months, Southern California was totally lawless as the gang continued their relentless campaign of murdering and pillaging. While resisting Anglo injustice, it is evident based off their actions that the Mexican bandidos were more criminal than rebellious. Nevertheless, as the line of demarcation between rebel and robber, pillager and patriot, was dimly defined, the oppressed Mexican population generally looked up to or even admired the bandidos. ⁴⁵ This explains why the bandidos managed to evade capture from the Americans for such a long period.

In retaliation to bandido attacks, the Americans responded by lynching Mexicans remotely suspected of being connected to the gang. For instance, the El Monte rangers lynched an innocent boy named Diego Navarro who was believed to be a bandido. ⁴⁶ The El Monte rangers, among other California ranger groups, were notorious for never bringing back prisoners. And so, they frequently executed their own version of quick justice as the above-mentioned example demonstrates. The murder of Navarro so inflamed the Mexican community that the El Clamor Publico wrote “in all countries which go by the name ‘civilized’ there is one distinction between virtue and vice, namely one man must not pay for the fault of others.”⁴⁷ As the number of bandidos steadily increased in the late 1850s, the retaliatory lynchings also increased. Soon, according to Carey McWilliams, “the practice of lynching Mexicans became an outdoor sport in southern California.”⁴⁸ In 1857 alone, American vigilantes hanged four Mexicans in El Monte and a shocking fifteen in Los Angeles, signifying the prevalence of racial violence. ⁴⁹

Although the Juan Flores-Pancho Daniel band soon disbanded after the capture of its leaders, the “Flores Revolution” (as it has come to be called) inaugurated the unofficial, undeclared war between Mexicans and Americans. ⁵⁰ This violence and bloodshed continued well into the 1860s and early 1870s and only ceased once the Americans clearly outnumbered the Mexicans. The turmoil and conflict between the Americans and Mexicans destroyed the conditions of tolerance under which some measure of assimilation and acculturation might ultimately have occurred. And so, after the conflict subsided, the Mexican community continued to be oppressed and excluded from southern Californian society. Consequently, they developed a silent bitterness that would occasionally manifest itself in sporadic and racially motivated violence in the late nineteenth century. ⁵¹

Thus, the extraordinary acts of violence that arose in Los Angeles during the early to mid-1850s stemmed from the migration of northern Californians. The almost simultaneous migration of aggressive, racist, and nationalistic Americans with bitter, angry, anti-American Mexicans produced an extremely volatile social environment that inevitably led to some of the most violent confrontations since the Mexican-American War. While diversity was the main cause of violence, the migration of ruffians and troublemakers in the wake of the gold rush and vigilantism undoubtedly helps explain the smaller, isolated instances of bloodshed that occurred in places like Calle des los Negros or Nigger Alley. Interestingly enough, the fact that Los Angeles is still trying to deal with many of these same issues, like diversity, in order to curb violence is indicative of its seriousness and/or importance in the past, present, and near future.

Works Cited

• Bancroft, Hubert Howe. History of California 1848-1859 (Volume 6) . Santa Barbara: Wallace Hebberd, 1970.
• Bancroft, Hubert Howe. Popular Tribunals (Volumes 1 and 2) . New York: Arno Press in cooperation with McGraw-Hill, 1967.
• Bell, Horace. Reminiscences of a ranger: early times in Southern California. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
• Blew, Robert W. ìVigilantism in Los Angeles, 1835-1874.î Southern California Quarterly LIV (Spring 2002) : 11-30.
• Boessenecker, John. Gold Dust and Gunsmoke: Tales of Gold Rush Outlaws, Gunfighters, Lawmen, and Vigilantes. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc., 1999.
• Boessenecker, John. Badge and Buckshot: Lawlessness in old California. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.
• Carr, Harry. Los Angeles: City of Dreams. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1935.
• Cleland, Robert Glass. The Cattle on a Thousand Hills: Southern California, 1850-1880. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1951.
• Guinn, James M. Historical and Biographical Record of Los Angeles and Vicinity. Chicago: Chapman Publishing Company, 1902.
• Layne, Gregg. Annals of Los Angeles 1769-1861. San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1935.
• McWilliams, Carey. Southern California: An Island on the Land. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1973.
• Newmark, Harris. Sixty Years in Southern California (1853-1913). Los Angeles: Dawsonís Book Shop, 1984.
• OíFlaherty, Joseph S. End and a Beginning, the south coast and Los Angeles 1850-1887. New York: Exposition Press, 1972.
• Pitt, Leonard. The Decline of the Californios: A Social-History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966.

Endnotes:

¹ Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger: Early Times in Southern California (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), viii-ix; John Boessenecker, Gold Dust and Gunsmoke: Tales of Gold Rush Outlaws, Gunfighters, Lawmen, and Vigilantes (New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc., 1999), 323.


² Boessenecker, op. cit, 323


³ For instance, today, the average annual rate is about 9 or 10 homicides per 100,000; in 1997, the national homicide rate was 11 murders per 100,000 ( Los Angelesí homicide rate for that year was three times that of the national average)


⁴ Bell, op. cit., 13


⁵ Bell, op. cit., 13


⁶ Cow counties is another way to refer to southern California


⁷ Throughout this paper, it shall be accepted as fact that the Tehachapi Range divides southern California from northern California. Therefore, any mention of southern California describes the area south of the Tehachapi Mountains. Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1973), 3-5.


⁸ Hubert Howe Bancroft, Popular Tribunals (New York: Arno Press in cooperation with McGraw-Hill, 1967) I, 438


⁹ Bell, op. cit., 13


¹⁰ Because Sonorans were so numerous during the gold rush era, the term came to be synonymous with Mexican.


¹¹ McWilliams, op. cit., 55-57


¹² The mother lode is a loosely used term and it refers to all the gold deposits from Coloma to Mariposa (about 120 miles in distance between the two cities)


¹³ Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), 55-56


¹⁴ McWilliams, op. cit., 58-59; Pitt, op. cit., 60-64


¹⁵ McWilliams, op. cit., 58


¹⁶ Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California 1848-1859 (Santa Barbara: Wallace Hebberd, 1970), VI, 469


¹⁷ Cited in McWilliams, op. cit., 56-57


¹⁸ By 1851, Los Angeles had only seventy-five Americans out of a total population of 2500.


¹⁹ Pitt, op. cit., 122


²⁰ Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California 1853-1913 (Los Angeles: Dawsonís Book Shop, 1984), 148-49


²¹ Ibid, 148-149


²² Robert W. Blew, ìVigilantism in Los Angeles 1835-1874,î Southern California Quarterly LIV (Spring 2002): 11-12


²³ Bell, op. cit., 13-17


²⁴ James M. Guinn, Historical and Biographical Record of Los Angeles and Vicinity (Chicago: Chapman Publishing Company, 1902), 108.


²⁵ Op. cit., 13


²⁶Hereafter, the author shall not discuss the Native Americans since they never agitated for change in the social structure (at least in southern California). Moreover, by the mid to late 1850s, most of the Indians had died and so no they longer made up a great social force.


²⁷ McWilliams, op. cit. , 50-64


²⁸ The Californios preferred to think of themselves as Spaniards, not Mexicans. McWilliams, op. cit., 51-55


²⁹ In 1853, William Walker attempted to take over Baja California and Sonora; in 1857, a similar expedition was launched by Henry A. Crabb but was unsuccessful.


³⁰ Cited in Pitt, op. cit, 181


³¹ A Mexican War veteran, he served as the first mayor of San Diego and as an Indian agent for southern California. He later became major general in the state militia, leading several bloody campaigns against the California Indians.


³² Salomon Pico, cousin of Pio and Andres Pico, led a band of outlaws in southern California between 1850-51


³³ Blew, op. cit., 16-18; Bancroft, Popular Tribunals, I, 491-93; Pitt, op. cit., 156-158


³⁴ Blew, op. cit., 16-18; Bancroft, Popular Tribunals, I, 491-493; Pitt, op. cit., 156-158


³⁵ In the vigilance committee of July 1852, two Sonorans ñ Doroteo Zavaleta and Jesus Rivas ñ were hanged for murdering two American cattle buyers.


³⁶ Pitt, op. cit., 162-166; Bancroft, Popular Tribunals, I, 496-503


³⁷ Remembering the murderer of Domingo Haime, Ned Hines, who ran away shortly after being placed on bail, the Mexicans decided to prevent the so-called ìNed Hines disappearing act.î Pitt, op. cit., 162


³⁸ Cited in Pitt, op. cit., 163


³⁹ Pitt, op. cit., 163


⁴⁰ Bancroft, Popular Tribunals, I, 498


⁴¹ Term used in Bancroft, Popular Tribunals, I, 498


⁴² McWilliams, op. cit., 59-60


⁴³ Pitt, op. cit., 167-180


⁴⁴ Bancroft, Popular Tribunals, I, 496-500; Pitt, op. cit., 162-166


⁴⁵ Bell, op. cit., 100


⁴⁶ Navarro came from a very good family


⁴⁷ Cited in Pitt, op. cit., 170


⁴⁸ op. cit., 60


⁴⁹ McWilliams, op. cit., 60; the lynched Mexicans included Juan Flores and Miguel Blanco (an individual who had been in jail for assault against the sheriff)


⁵⁰ Boessenecker, op.cit., 128-133


⁵¹ McWilliams, op. cit., 60-61

SarahI

View all posts