AXIS OF EGO - The Conquest of California

I urge those who still adhere to the “Great Man” theory of history, to consider what historian T.H. Watkins has called the “low comedy…” of the American conquest of California. There wasn’t a “Great” man in the entire cast, despite having three chances at one. In fact, the second act was almost reduced to slapstick, thanks largely to Marine Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie.

The curtain on Act One of our little farce came down grandly on 11 August, 1847, when the United States captured Los Angeles with little more than a band playing “Yankee Doodle”. Sacramento, Monterey and San Diego had already succumbed to the Americans. After decades of intermittent and ineffective government from Mexico, the 3,000 citizens of the pueblo of Angles were optimistic about joining the “Norteamericanos”.  But after just three weeks they had to abandon command of the largest town in California to the oversight of Lt. Gillespie and his forty volunteers, whereupon “Archie” proved to be a far better Lieutenant than he was an Alcalde - or Mayor.

Gillespie was arrogant and not very bright, and had never had an independent command before. Instead of trying to bond with the community leaders, this popinjay bullied and blustered and placed the town under martial law.  His curfew starved the stores and cantinas surrounding the plaza until their cash flow resembled the usually anemic L.A. River.   Homes were searched and personal belongings were confiscated.  Anyone who tried to reason with Gillespie was arrested. Finally, on the night of 23 September, 1847, when a group of drunken Angelinos got into a fight with some drunken soldiers, the Lieutenant panicked and retreated to a hill top fort overlooking the town.

Unfortunately the fort had no water supply. And this combination of American arrogance and stupidity swelled the ranks of the Californian rebels’ with self confidence. Their numbers rose to 400. On 8 October, 1847 Gillespie was forced to quit the waterless “Fort Monroe”.  End of Act II. Gillespie and his 40 men retreated to San Pedro, where he recruited seamen and marines from a naval sloop.  But when they advanced on L.A., 150 picadors drove them off again. (The “greasers” were short on guns and powder, but not brains or courage.) Towns all across southern California now staged their own revolts, and suddenly the American conquest of California, an accomplished fact in mid-August, was in doubt all over again.

Two men rode to Gillespie’s rescue. One was a dull, journeyman soldier with a real talent for carrying a grudge, Brigadier General Stephen Kearny (pronounced 'Karney'),  known as the Father of American Cavalry. He was marching west with 300 dragons after having conquered New Mexico. The other man was Colonel John C. Fremont, who had an actor’s sense of direction and a soldier’s sense of subtly, and would prove to be one of the luckiest idiots in American history. Fremont was currently in Monterey, commanding the 500 barflies of the “California Battalion”, right now the single largest land force West of the Colorado River.  Informed of Gillespie’s retreat, Fremont immediately set off for Los Angeles with about 150 of his more sober warriors.

Meanwhile out in the parched, wind swept California high desert, the exhausted General Kearny had run into Kit Carson, who informed him that California was already conquered. Relieved, Kearny sent 200 of his dragoons back to Santa Fe, and resumed his march west with just 100 men. But then he ran into Gillespie, with the story of the uprising in Los Angeles.

Gillespie assured Kearny that the Californians had almost no guns, were disorganized and could be easily bullied by real soldiers. What followed was the battle of San Pasqual, which ended with a half dozen American dead and both Kearny and Gillespie wounded, (Kearny losing an arm) and the Americans trapped atop a waterless Mesa. I suspect the site was chosen by Gillespie.  They were rescued only when Kit Carson made a daring escape under fire and returned with navy reinforcements from San Diego. Needless to say, after that everybody stopped taking any advice from Gillespie.

Meanwhile Fremont had been marching down the coast, reasserting American dominance like an avenging angel, sort of. There was no fighting. There was no shooting. There were no flaming haciendas.

And most important of all, after peacefully occupying San Luis Obispo on 14 December, 1847, Fremont was met not by an opposing army but by the lovely Dona Ruiz, married to the cousin of Andres Pico, the last Mexican commander of the Californians. She was the perfect weapon for the operation.  Lovely, smart and sophisticated, she seduced Fremont into considering the possibility of a peace treaty with the rebellious natives who had just violated an earlier treaty.

Three weeks later Kearney was approaching the San Gabriel River, marching northward towards Los Angeles. He was now leading a force of 550 sailors and his surviving dragoons. He found his route blocked by about 300 Californian picadors. Kearney had just ordered his cannon to unlimber, when he as countermanded by Commodore Stockton, who had just arrived on the scene and commanded the U.S. Navy in these parts. Technically, Kearney was in command of all land forces while Stockton was just as an observer. But all the gunners were sailors, and rather than argue the point Kearney decided to ignore the troublesome Stockton and waded his infantry across the knee deep river.  After Kearney's men fired off a few rounds, the Californians retreated.

Two days later, on 9 January, 1848 came the real fighting at the battle of La Mesa. All day the Californians rode around the Americans, looking for an opening, and finding none. They suffered 15 dead and 25 wounded, to 1 dead and 5 wounded Americans. The Californians abandoned Los Angeles and retreated to Pasadena.

On 10 January,  1848 American forces entered Los Angeles for the second time.  Gillespie was allowed to raise the flag over the post he had squandered, after which he was quietly kept out of sight because, as another Lieutenant recorded, “The streets were full of desperate and drunken fellows, who…saluted us with every item of reproach.”  And I think we can all imagine just what kind of salute that was.  Commodore Stockton immediately sent a rider north to find Fremont with the good news. The Pathfinder was easy to find, just over the Cahuenga Pass, in the San Fernando Valley.

And it was there that Dona Ruiz had reappeared. Dona arranged a meeting between her uncle-in-law, Californian commander Andres Pico, and General Fremont, at a humble six room adobe with the ostentatious title of Campo de Cahuenga. As Fremont explained, “The next morning (13 January, 1848) …in a conference with Don Andreas, the important features of a treaty of capitulation were agreed upon…”

The treaty, signed at a kitchen table, was what might be called “generous”.  After turning over all their “artillery and public arms”, of which they had almost none, the Californians could either go home, or they could go south to fight the Americans again, in Mexico. They would not be required to take an oath of allegiance to the United States until a peace treaty was officially signed with Mexico, at some time in the future. The Californians were so pleased with the treaty they threw a 3 day fiesta for Fremont and his men. Appropriately enough, the reconstructed Campo de Cahuenga sits on Lankershim Boulevard, in North Hollywood, at the foot of Universal Studios Amusement Park. And on the bottom of a drawer in that kitchen table, amongst a list of far more important signatures, is my own humble name. But I am getting ahead of myself…

General Kearney was not pleased with the treaty. As the ranking field commander he should have been the one to negotiate and sign it. His men had done all the fighting. He had lost an arm to the Californians. That had left him a little grumpy. Nor was he happy to hear that Commodore Stockton now took it upon himself to appoint Fremont as the new governor of California; especially since he, Kearny, carried a Presidential appointment making himself the governor. There was a lot of ego in the air over the next few weeks, until Kearney finally forced Fremont to acknowledge that legally Kearney was the governor.

He wasn’t governor for long, though. Kearney was ordered to return to Washington to explain what the hell had happened. And not having much trust in the United States Navy - for some reason - he made his return overland. But remember what I said about the General knowing how to carry a grudge? He now unloaded it. One of Kearney’s last acts as governor was to order Fremont to return with him, overland. That would take a couple of months.  And as soon as “The Pathfinder” reached Kansas, General Kearney had him arrested and court-martialed for insubordination. Fremont was convicted and discharged from the army before Kearney even got to Washington.

Kearney was promoted and sent south to take part in the conquest of Mexico. Unfortunately, before he could reach the “Halls of Montezuma”, the general contracted Yellow Fever, He returned to his home in St. Louis where he died in October of 1848 at the age of 54. It had been a very busy year for the General.

And now I have to remind you about Fremont being a lucky idiot. Forced out of the army, Fremont moved with his wife to California where, later in 1848 he bought some land. And guess what; in 1849 about $10 million worth of gold was found on his property.  Not by him, if course. But that is not yet the lucky part. Fremont became rich enough that in 1856 he could afford to be the first Republican candidate for President. He lost. And then in 1860 the second Republican candidate for president was Abraham Lincoln. And he won. and thus Fremont did not want to deal the civil war. So you see how lucky he was.

Oh, and Gillespie? After driving Los Angeles into rebellion, history pretty much dumped him like a hot potato. He retired a Captain before the civil war. And nobody wanted him to contribute to that hot bag of manure. He became a businessman and died in San Francisco in August of 1873.

He was almost forgotten entirely, but during World War II, the U.S. navy built so many ships they decided to name one of them, a destroyer, after Lt. Gillespie. The DD-609 performed heroic service through out the war, earned nine battle stars and was then mothballed until 1971. Two years later she became a target hulk.  I think it would be a good idea for all future candidates for the title "Great Man" to keep in mind the ultimate fate of the U.S.S. Gillespie - sunk by her own navy.

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THE COMEDY TEAM APPROACH TO HISTORY - John C. Freemont and Pruess

I would say that John C. Fremont is proof of Garrison Keillor’s observation that, “God writes a lot of comedy. The trouble is, he’s stuck with so many bad actors who don’t know how to play funny.” And that was why God created Charles Preuss.

The 27 year old Lt. John C. Fremont first met the 39 year old Charles Preuss just before Christmas of 1841. Fremont was an impulsive egomaniacal young officer with a character flaw, described succinctly by author Ferol Egan as : “He lacked character.” Typical of his spontaneous nature was Fremont’s hiring of the methodical and dour cartographer on the spot simply because the middle aged father of two was broke and needed the job.

But if Fremont had rescued this European urbanite from poverty, he had also sentenced Preuss to five months of intensive labor, trapped in the wilderness with a lunatic, i.e. Fremont. The straight man and his second banana had met.

“We set out on the morning of the 10th (of June, 1842)”, wrote Fremont, as his 21 men left the site of present day Kansas City, seeking to map the eastern half of the Oregon Trail. The expedition was “well armed and mounted, with the exception of eight men, who conducted as many carts, in which were packed our stores, with the baggage and instruments…” Once truly upon the sea of grass Fremont waxed poetic. “Everywhere the rose is met with…It is scattered over the prairies in small bouquets, and, when glittering in the dews and waving in the pleasant breeze of the early morning, is the most beautiful of the prairie flowers.”

The same terrain failed to find the poet in Herr Preuss, writing in German for his personal diary. “Eternal prairie and grass… Fremont prefers this to every other landscape. To me it is as if some one would prefer a book with blank pages to a good story….I wish I were in Washington”. And always hovering over Mr. Preuss there was the energetic and annoying commander. “There was such a hurry this morning, that Fremont became angry when my horse urinated. He whipped its tail when it had only half relieved nature.”

In Fremont’s record the expedition seems triumphant over any obstacle. “We reached the ford of the Kansas late in the afternoon of the 14th…(it) was sweeping with an angry current. The man at the helm was timid on water, and in his alarm capsized the boat…”

The timid man at the helm was, of course, Preuss, who blamed his near drowning on the decision to chance the current. “It was certainly stupid of the young chief to be so foolhardy where the terrain was absolutely unknown.” Unaccustomed to horseback, Preuss’ thighs quickly became chapped and Fremont ordered him to ride in a cart. But the Prussian was not grateful. “I have bruised my nose in this cart because of the bumpy road….I miss my wife.” A few days later Preuss insisted on halting to sketch a distant cluster of trees, until the forest moved. He had spotted the expedition’s first herd of buffalo.

This became the occasion for a feast described by Fremont (“At any time of the night might be seen pieces of the most delicate and choicest meat, roasting…on sticks around the fire”) and by Preuss (“We start with the bullion which is, of course, not skimmed off. If one could eliminate the dirt it would be a delicate broth. The marrow was too raw and too fat for my taste, the ribs, likewise, too raw”) It is almost as if they are on separate picnics.

On July 10th Fremont notes, “For a short distance our road lay down the valley of the Platte, which resembled a garden in the splendor of fields of varied flowers, which filled the air with fragrance.” Meanwhile Preuss struggled to learn the art of survival from men like scout Kit Carson. “I have decided to imitate one of our hunters by keeping my shirt on my body until it falls off.” But experience eventually led him to a happier solution. “I was lucky to engage one of the men to do my laundry.” Still, by Fort Laramie in present day Wyoming, Preuss is wearing two pairs of pants at a time “…so that one can cover the holes in the other.”

In mid August, with Preuss having mapped the south pass through the Rockies, Fremont picked a mountain almost at random and dragged the party on a six day, five night exertion through snow and ice to the peak.

"I sprang upon the summit, and…fixing a ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave in the breeze where never a flag waved before….We had climbed the loftiest peak of the Rocky mountains, and looked down upon the snow a thousand feet below; and, standing where never human foot had stood before, felt the exultation of first explorers.” It was an inspiring moment, soon to be recorded in paintings and poetry, but as Preuss suspected, Fremont had not climbed the highest mountain in the Rockies. He had not even climbed the highest mountain in Wyoming. But he took the time while on the summit to insist his freezing companions suffer through to a speech.

And only then was Mr. Preuss allowed time to read his barometer and sketch the landscape. Then, Preuss groused to his journal, “As on the entire journey Fremont allowed me only a few minutes for my work….After about fifteen minutes we started on our return trip.” On the way back down the mountain in the dark Preuss fell and tore his only pair of pants. He began to refer to Fremont as “The Field Marshal”.

On 10 October 1842, the expedition returned to the mouth of the Kansas River, and by the end of October Fremont and Preuss were back in Washington. In the spring of 1843 Fremont’s report was released (AN EXPLORATION OF THE COUNTRY LYING BETWEEN THE MISSOURI RIVER AND THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS…), and “touched off a wave of wagon caravans filled with hopeful emigrants” heading west. Fremont became famous as “The Pathfinder”, even though all the paths he had found were already found, and it was Preuss who had drawn the maps of them.

But Preuss’ diary would not be translated into English and published until the 1950’s. And only then would it become clear that John C. Fremont, long ago written off as a pompous self promoter, was actually one of the funniest writers in American history. As a social commentator once observed, “Life is full of second bananas. But they are never really funny without a straight man.”

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FROM HERE TO TIMBUKTU - When the Price of Gold Dropped

I have to say that Mansa Musa made quite an entrance. He materialized out of the Sahara desert heat shimmers like a mirage in 1324. His unexpected arrival stunned the Islamic potentates of Cairo and Mecca out of their smug self assurance, and shocked the European Christians out of their complacency. Because when Mansa paused in Cairo to stock up on souvenirs, he paid in gold. And he bought a lot of souvenirs. Mansa was leading 80 camels just to carry his gold. He came from a land whose ancient name was Kaya Magha, which meant “King of Gold”.  And Mansa was certainly that.

Mansa spent so much gold on his Hajji, his religious visit to Mecca,  that for the only time in all of recorded history, the price of gold in all of Europe and Africa and the Middle East was determined by one single man. And no one had ever heard of Mansa before, nor of his kingdom of Mali, nor of the city he claimed to have come from, the mysterious and mythical, Timbuktu. In the Berber language of the desert tribes, the name means “the well at the end of the world”.

The river Niger begins as a tiny spring in the West African highlands of Ghana, just 150 miles from the Atlantic. But the Niger immediately turns its back on the ocean and instead flows eastward. As it does the river collects vast amounts of gold, which could easily be extracted from it's waters.

Dugout canoes then carried the gold downstream, following the river’s arc to the north, penetrating the desert. At the northern peak of that arc, in Timbuktu, slabs of salt, mined from the blistering floor of the heart of the Sahara, and carried 500 miles south across the sands on camel back, were exchanged for the gold.

The salt was then transferred to other canoes for distribution a thousand miles further south in the equatorial heart of black Africa. There, the final commodity, slaves, were  exchanged for the salt and then marched, locked in shackles, back upstream.

And it was at the point of contact between the two worlds, the Arab north and the African south, that the economic ties were joined. And at about the same time that William the Conquer was winning the battle of Hastings, the village of Timbuktu was founded.

What made this trade possible, what made the city of Timbuktu possible, was the Niger River and an extraordinary pack animal, the Arabian camel (Camelus dromedarius). This ungulate with three stomachs evolved in North America, but went extinct there about 1 million years ago, at the start of the ice ages. By the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, its new home range was the arid and unforgiving Arabian Peninsula.

This amazing beast can lose up to 40% of its body weight in water, and can gulp down  21 gallons of salt laden brackish water within 10 minutes to refresh itself. Either behavior would kill a lesser creature. Its mouth and throat are so soft that it can ingest thorns and bare branches without injury. Its huge soft padded feet allow it to climb sand dunes with ease. Its long eyelashes and double eyelids allow it to survive the most fierce sand storms on earth. Known in Arabic as a Jamal, the camel can easily carry 200 pounds of cargo for twenty miles a day through blistering heat. And it can do it for fifty years.

The camel was first domesticated in Arabia about 3.500 years ago, and by the time they were introduced into the Sahara by Arab traders about the second century C.E., there were few wild dromedaries left. It was these ships of the desert, combined with the great Niger river, which built the greatest of West African kingdoms, Mali.

Mansa was the second Musa (or “King of Kings”) from Mali to go on Hajji. His predecessor, Kankan Musa, had appointed Mansa as his Deputy King when he began his pilgrimage. But the desert had swallowed Kankan and his party without a trace, and after a year of silence, in 1307, Mansa had been crowned Musa of Mali, Emir of Melle, Lord of the Mines of Wangara, conqueror of Ghanata and Futa-Jallon, and quite possibly the richest man in the world. Only Genghis Khan ruled a larger empire.

Mali was a multi ethnic and multi-religious kingdom larger than Western Europe, and containing some 400 cities and uncounted villages. Timbuktu was the gateway for Islam into Mali. There it thrived alongside shrines to Sango, the thunder God, and Legba, messenger to all the African gods. A devout Muslim, Mansa felt no need to convert his subjects. Instead, when he returned to Mali in about 1325, he was inspired to rebuild Timbuktu, already a mud brick metropolis of 100,000 people.

Mansa brought an architect from Muslim Spain to design his new palace, as well as the mud brick Djinguereber Mosque , (above), where 2,000 people still take their daily prayers. The cities’ University of Sankoré began attracting world class astronomers and mathematicians and Islamic scholars. A Mali proverb observed, “Salt comes from the north, gold from the south…but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu.”

The city was famous for its libraries. Leo Africanus, an Islamic historian, wrote that in Timbuktu, “There is a great demand for books, and more profit is made from the trade in books than from any other line of business.” The scholar Ahmad Baba claimed that his personal library was one the smaller ones in the city, containing only 1,600 books. The entire city and its environs was said to hold during the golden age of Mali perhaps 10,000 ancient, pre-Islamic manuscripts, more than any other library in the world.  Book copying was a big business in Timbuktu.

Musa ruled his kingdom for perhaps 25 years. He died about the year 1337. The city of Timbuktu was ruled by his descendents for another century, until the empire of Mali was replaced by the Sunni empire, which was more African than Muslim. But the stories of so much gold attracted the interest of European monarchs, and in the sixteenth century Portuguese “explorers”, pushing down the coast, reached out and destroyed Timbuktu without ever seeing the city.  First contact diseases killed thousands. Armies from Morocco then killed more when they captured the weakened city in 1591.

But although the Moroccan leader Ahmad I al-Mansur hungered for the wealth of Timbuktu, he had no conception on what that wealth was based. In 1593 he began to dismantle the economic engine by first exiling the scholars, men like Ahmad Baba, because he considered them “disloyal”. For the first time it its history ignorance reigned in Timbuktu. The economic engine had lost its spark, and slowly died.

When Europeans finally arrived in the early nineteenth century they were shocked to discover the mysterious and romantic city of Timbuktu was a dusty backwater, little more than a local market town, slowly being reclaimed by the desert from which it had mysteriously sprung.

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