Santa Barbara’s Royal Rancho: The Fabulous History of Los Dos Pueblos

By Walker A Tompkins

When this book was first published as a bestseller in 1960, reviewers noted that the 400-year history of Ranchero Dos Pueblos mirrored in microcosm the history of California itself.

Dos Pueblos bears one of California’s oldest place-name, christened by Cabrillo during his voyage of discovery in 1542. Dubbed a “royal rancho” by historians because it was a gift of King Carlos III of Spain, Dos Pueblos was intended to support Mission Santa Barbara during the presidio period following Santa Barbara’s founding in 1782.

The first private owner, Irish-born Nicholas A. Den, a medical man, was awarded ownership of the ranch in 1842 by Mexican governor Juan B. Alvarado. When Col. John C. Fremont came over the mountain to seize Santa Barbara for the U.S. during the Mexican War, he emerged onto Dos Pueblos Ranch.

During the Gold Rush of ‘49, Den made his fortune selling Dos Pueblos beef to mining camps. Following Den’s death in 1862 the ranch was subdivided among his widow and numerous children.

Before and after the turn of the century Royal Ranch was the scene of many diverse activities. One of its later owners bred racehorses. Another converted Dos Pueblos into the world’s largest orchid farm. A major oil company established off-shore petroleum production from pumps operated on the ranch. At the present time the historic spread specializes in such exotic crops as macadamia, cherimoyas and avocados.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Jan 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789123166

Walker A Tompkins

Walker Allison Tompkins (July 10, 1909 - November 24, 1988) was a Santa Barbara historian and author. He was born in Prosser, Washington, in 1909, the son of Charles E. and Bertha Tompkins, who had moved to Washington from Missouri. Tompkins grew up on a wheat farm in Walla Walla County before moving with his family to Turlock, California in 1920. He began his writing career in Turlock, at the age of fourteen, as a reporter for the Daily Journal. At the age of 21, he sold his first western novel to Street and Smith of New York, just before beginning college at Washington State. He also attended Modesto (California) Junior College. During the 1930s, Tompkins worked his way around the world with his typewriter, traveling by steamer to Europe, Asia, Africa and the Dutch East Indies. During World War II he served for three years as an overseas correspondent for the Army. Following the war, Tompkins settled in Santa Barbara, California, and turned his attention to local history. He worked for the Santa Barbara News Press from 1957-1973. In 1962, he wrote a ham radio novel based on San Miguel Island, DX Brings Danger. He married Barbara H. Tompkins in 1975, who became the editor for his many books, including The Yankee Barbarenos, which Walker A. Tompkins had left following his death in Santa Barbara in 1988 at the age of 79, and Mrs. Tompkins edited over a number of years and published in 2004.

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Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

SANTA BARBARA’S ROYAL RANCHO

THE FABULOUS HISTORY OF LOS DOS PUEBLOS

BY

WALKER A. TOMPKINS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

MAP 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 5

PART ONE—Crucifix and Castanets—1542-1842 7

PROLOGUE 7

CHAPTER I—TWILIGHT FOR THE CANALIÑO 9

CHAPTER II—DOS PUEBLOS UNDER THE PADRES 18

CHAPTER III—FROM DUBLIN TO DOS PUEBLOS 26

CHAPTER IV—TRAINING A YANKEE DON 35

CHAPTER V—DOS PUEBLOS BECOMES A LAND GRANT 43

PART TWO—Rancheria to Rancho—1843-1849 58

CHAPTER VI—DON NICOLAS TAKES A BRIDE 58

CHAPTER VII—DEN SAVES SANTA BARBARA MISSION 63

CHAPTER VIII—FRÉMONT VISITS DOS PUEBLOS 69

CHAPTER IX—INVASION VIA SAN MARCOS PASS 80

CHAPTER X—DOS PUEBLOS IN THE GOLD RUSH 89

PART THREE—Decade of the Desperado—1850-1859 99

CHAPTER XI—AMBUSH IN REFUGIO PASS 99

CHAPTER XII—THE ARROYO BURRO BATTLE 106

CHAPTER XIII—FUGITIVE FROM VIGILANTE LAW 114

CHAPTER XIV—McGOWAN HIDES AT DOS PUEBLOS 122

CHAPTER XV—THE END OF JACK POWERS 130

PART FOUR—Ruin for the Rancheros—1860-1886 138

CHAPTER XVI—HALCYON DAYS AT DOS PUEBLOS 138

CHAPTER XVII—THE GREAT DROUGHT OF 1864 146

CHAPTER XVIII—HARD TIMES AT DOS PUEBLOS 155

CHAPTER XIX—THE IMPACT OF COL. HOLLISTER 164

CHAPTER XX—THE BISHOP-HOLLISTER FEUD 169

PART FIVE—Phantom City by the Sea—1887-1917 175

CHAPTER XXI—FINIS FOR THE DEN DYNASTY 175

CHAPTER XXII—BOOM DAYS AT DOS PUEBLOS 190

CHAPTER XXIII—NAPLES GIVES UP THE GHOST 198

CHAPTER XXIV—S. P. OPENS THE COAST LINE 203

PART SIX—Oil Wells and Orchids—1918-1960 212

CHAPTER XXV—COUNTRY GENTLEMAN H. G. WYLIE 212

CHAPTER XXVI—NICOLAS DEN’S BLACK GOLD LEGACY 219

CHAPTER XXVII—SAM MOSHER’S ORCHID ODYSSEY 225

EPILOGUE 230

BIBLIOGRAPHY 235

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 237

MAP

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

RARELY do modern literary prospectors strike virgin paydirt in such a thoroughly mined mother lode as California history. The writer found just such a bonanza in his own back yard—the Dos Pueblos land grant west of Santa Barbara, encompassing the coastal area now known as the Goleta Valley.

Although this Mexican grant was one of the most important ranchos along El Camino Real during the Mission period; although such noted personages as Cabrillo, de Anza, Portolá, Ortega and Frémont were intimately associated with its history; despite such a rich background, the bibliography on Dos Pueblos Rancho was virtually non-existent.

Why had historians neglected this corner of a frontier State which had otherwise been so thoroughly documented? The answer lay in the geographical barriers of ocean and mountain which isolated the Santa Barbara area from the rest of California during the first half-century of its Statehood.

This meant the author had to glean his research material from primary sources. This is a laborious, but infinitely more gratifying method of compiling a history. Such sources took three forms; contemporary newspapers, diaries, and letters; legal documents; and personal interviews with pioneers.

Pertinent manuscripts were studied at the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley; the Spanish Archives at Sacramento; the Col. J. D. Stevenson Papers at UCLA; the Fernald, Stearns, and Gaffey Papers at Huntington Memorial Library in San Marino; faded Spanish and Mexican parchments of the Archivum Provinciae at Santa Barbara Mission; the Galvin Family manuscripts at Rancho San Fernando Rey near Santa Ynez; and public records in San Francisco, San Jose, Stockton, Sacramento, Los Angeles, the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institute and Santa Barbara.

In addition to the librarians of the institutions listed above, the author acknowledges a deep debt of gratitude to the staffs of the Santa Barbara County recorder and clerk; Mrs. Bertha Lewis of the reference department, Santa Barbara Public Library; Mrs. Georga Scheftic, Santa Barbara News-Press librarian; Curator Phil C. Orr and Botanist Clifton F. Smith of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History; Fr. Maynard Geiger OFM, historian, Santa Barbara Mission; Director and Mrs. Edwin Gledhill of the Santa Barbara Historical Society; Allan Ottley, of the California Room, State Library, Sacramento; Mrs. Hester Robinson, Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco; Richard H. Dillon, Sutro Library, San Francisco; James deT. Abajian, California Historical Society library; Frank Morgan, consulting geologist, Los Angeles; Hon. Atwell Westwick, Superior Court Judge, Santa Barbara County; and actor Leo Carrillo, Santa Monica.

Special thanks go to Dr. T. M. Storke, publisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press, for making available the century-old files of his newspaper and its contemporaries; and to Mr. Samuel B. Mosher, who provided the facilities of the legal department of the Signal Oil & Gas Company, present owners of Dos Pueblos Rancho.

At the ranch, invaluable assistance was obtained from Ray C. Ault, Harold Gunderson, Mrs. Anna Van Moll, Miss Mary Sakamoto, Lavern Beavers, Robert Norton, Sebastian Plo, Frank Silva, Benjamin Gates and Arthur P. Williams. In the Signal organization, Robert Pete Harms, Robert Van Dyke, Walter Greenfield and Gregg Reay were particularly helpful.

Pioneers or their descendants, ranging in age from 70 to 96, opened the treasure-houses of their memories during six months of daily interviewing. Not a few of them passed on while the book was in preparation, but their irreplaceable recollections were safely transcribed and glint, like golden grains, amid the details in the following pages.

My list of these pioneers, their relatives and/or friends, is regrettably incomplete. It includes Mrs. Dexter Monroe, Mrs. Anita Den Weigand, Jim Smith, James Williams, James Hall Bishop Jr., Hon. Louis G. Dreyfus Jr., Miss Jane Kimberley, Dr. T. M. Storke, Mr. and Mrs. John Wade, Louis Tripp, W. Howard Johnson, Rose Sexton Dearborn, Francis Price Sr., Mr. and Mrs. Otto Schwerdtfeger, Sheriff James Ross, Mrs. Florence Williams, George Willey, Mr. and Mrs. William Rutherford, A. B. Watkins, J. J. Hollister Sr., Louisa Peck, Mrs. Carl G. Erickson, Edward S. Spaulding, Frank F. Flournoy, Mrs. Norman Rowe, Mrs. Ora Doty, Mrs. Martin Erro, Archie Edwards, Mrs. Harry Sexton, Michael Ferren, Nels Brown, William Luton, Richard Bell, Harry Arthur, Alonzo V. Buell, Mrs. Frank Birabent, Miss Litti Paulding, Mrs. Myra Manfrina, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Seaton, Misses Yris and Aurora Covarrubias, Dwight Murphy, W. T. Lillard, Russell Ruiz, Mrs. John Franklin, Isaac A. Bonilla, John Gorin, Annie Roberts, Garret Van Horne, Mrs. H. J. Knudson, Richard Buffum, Horace Sexton, Owen H. O’Neill, Gail Harrison, Anna B. Lincoln, Katherine Hammond, Steve Sullivan and Dr. Hilmar O. Koefod.

Permission to quote from Katherine Den Bell’s Swinging the Censer was granted by the great-granddaughter of N. A. Den, the original grantee of Dos Pueblos Rancho, Mrs. Katherine Cheney Hammond of Montecito, the copyright owner.

This book is intended to be a regional history. It is as accurate and objective as the author’s ability permits. His presentation, however, is that of the novelist. Such a style would be unacceptable in a doctoral dissertation. It may be frowned upon by the purist and criticized by the scholarly reviewer.

To these worthy gentlemen the author can only point out that Santa Barbara’s Royal Rancho is an attempt to make history live and breathe for the average reader as well as the Californiaphile.

WALKER A. TOMPKINS

Rancho Los Dos Pueblos,

Santa Barbara, California

July, 1960

PART ONE—Crucifix and Castanets—1542-1842

PROLOGUE

LONG BEFORE the Pyramid of Cheops thrust its wedge into the azure skies of Egypt—between five and seven thousand years before the birth of Christ, according to scientific estimates—a race of aboriginal Indians had settled on the sunset side of a continent unknown to the civilized world, a continent washed by the surf of an equally unknown ocean.

On modern maps, this Elysian shore is delineated as the first fifty miles of the Riviera like coast where North America turns the corner of California to begin its long continental sweep southeastward to the Isthmus of Panama.

Mastodons and saber-tooth tigers once prowled the jungled swamps of the region. Uncounted milleniums of time brought changes of climate and verdure. Finally Homo sapiens replaced the monsters of the Tertiary age. They found a semi-arid land.

Man evolved slowly through stages which latter-day experts arbitrarily label as the Oak Grove and Hunting-People cultures. By Columbian times, the coastal shelf was densely inhabited by Canaliños or Channel-dwellers, who spoke a tongue classified as Chumashan.

Compared to the Sioux or the Mohawk, the Canaliños were primitive. Compared to other California tribes, they were a superior people. Subsisting on seafood, berries, nuts and grains, the Canaliños preferred to locate their rancherias on the shore where fresh-water streams drained into the sea from the coastal mountains.

Two of the largest and most important of these Canaliño villages were called Kuyamu and Mikiw when the Spaniards discovered them. This occurred fifty years and one month after Columbus’ landfall in the Caribbean islands.

The twin towns faced each other across a canyon mouth, at a point midway along the sun-kissed shoreline fronting the azure waters now called the Santa Barbara Channel. To these villages the Spaniards bestowed the prosaic and utilitarian label of los dos pueblos—the two villages.

The name survives to this day, four centuries later.

Kuyamu and Mikiw disappeared during the Mission Period, but their sites were the heart of one of California’s most important land grants during the Mexican regime. Today the land grant bears the erroneous name of the Goleta Valley, and comprises some of the most costly real estate in California.

...As spectators of history in the making, let us go back to the first curtain-rise on a continuing drama now in the fifth century of its run.

The day history began at Los Dos Pueblos was probably as commonplace as all those which had gone before it. Commonplace, that is, until shortly before the sun touched the low promontory of Point Concepción, the elbow-tip of Southern California.

That was when a freshening breeze dissipated a wooly ground-fog which had blanketed the surf since daybreak Revealed there on the bosom of the deep was the most extraordinary sight the oldest Indian of Dos Pueblos had ever seen—or ever would see.

The date was Monday, the 16th of November, in the Year of Our Lord 1542....

CHAPTER I—TWILIGHT FOR THE CANALIÑO

WHEN the fog bank lifted, a Canaliño fisherman was down on the beach at the canyon mouth, caulking his plank canoe with asphaltum he had pried from a seep in the cliffs. His startled shout set the two rancherias on the mesa rim to buzzing like upset beehives.

Men scrambled naked from their temescal sweat-houses. Children abandoned their play. Women left their cookfires. Every inhabitant of the two towns gathered on the brink of the seventy-foot palisades to stare at the astonishing sight off-shore.

Near at hand—just outside the kelp beds—two gigantic canoes with tremendous gray wings rode the lazy groundswells. Limned in the rosy glow of day’s end, the swanlike boats were unlike any ocean craft these maritime Indians had ever seen.

Above the organ tones of the surf could be heard the voices of the strange-looking creatures on board. Some, walking the decks, were shouting to others aloft in the rigging, who were engaged in folding the wings. Their tongue was as outlandish as their appearance.

The strangers were pale of skin. Hair grew dark and thick on their faces. What manner of creatures were they?

Having dropped anchors and furled canvas, the bearded strangers gave no sign of coming ashore. In fact, the only reason for this overnight anchorage was because the pilots dared not navigate the uncharted waters of an unexplored coast except in daylight.

The canoes were the unwieldy caravels San Salvador and La Victoria. They flew the royal banner of Spain, and were in the command of the discoverer of California, Portuguese navigator Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo.

The dawn of history for Dos Pueblos began the moment some unknown hand penned the following entry in Cabrillo’s log;

On Monday, the 16th day of said month [November 1542] they proceeded four leagues, and anchored in the evening opposite dos pueblos.

Bartolemé Ferrelo, the chief pilot, carried a nautical sextant and an astrolabe for navigation, but the instruments of the Sixteenth Century were too crude to pinpoint the site of Los Dos Pueblos any more precisely than 34° 27ʹ North Latitude, 119° 57ʹ West Longitude.

Cabrillo’s commission from the Spanish crown was to cruise up the western coast of the New World until he reached the Strait of Anián, the western end of a Northwest Passage which imaginative geographers believed to be a navigable saltwater link between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.

En route, Cabrillo was to take soundings, note landmarks, and conduct an informal study of any natives he might find. As a matter of course he would lay claim in the name of Spain to everything, by right of discovery and exploration.

Cabrillo’s crewmen, many of whom were conscripts from Spanish prisons, were a scurvy-ridden lot, uneducated and swinish. Not a few had volunteered for the voyage in the hope of jumping ship when and if they reached California, a Garden of Eden believed to exist somewhere in this quarter of the globe, populated only by Amazonian females.

This Circian land was the locale of a contemporary best-selling novel by Garcí Ordónez de Montalvo, a fictional Arcadia described as being an island on the right hand of the Indies, very near to the Terrestrial Paradise.

On this mellow evening of November 16, 1542, the bearded mariners on Cabrillo’s ships could have been pardoned for wondering if Los Dos Pueblos might be the Terrestrial Paradise they sought.

Scenery-wise, the area certainly fitted the most glowing descriptions they had heard of the fabulous California. Cabrillo himself had never beheld a fairer scene this side of the Mediterranean, and he was a widely-traveled cosmopolite.

Directly off their starboard beam, within range of a musket ball, a gentle surf was creaming against cliffs which formed the ramparts of a lush green tableland extending inland to meet the foothills of the coastal mountains.

The coastal terrace, or mesa, was split by the broad canyon of a mountain stream which sluiced its cool waters into a tidal estero between the two Indian villages. This stream was lined with ancient sycamores and willows, while the outer tableland was mottled with liveoaks.

The creek’s source appeared to be high in a cobalt-shadowed cañada on the south slope of a 3,000 foot range which was black with chaparral and sparse pines. The ridge of this mountain barrier ran east and west, paralleling the beach some six miles inland

At the water’s edge, Indian cookfires glowed like earth-bound stars in the gathering dusk. The Dos Pueblos were clusters of semi-spherical thatched huts, like inverted bowls.

Smoke-columns lifted skyward to dim the first stars. The fires were reflected like wavering red fence-pickets on the glass-smooth waters of the Channel, and the cooking odors which wafted out to the Spaniards’ nostrils made a man’s mouth water. Altogether, this was a sight to sooth the ragged nerves of the most homesick sailor.

Through his spyglass, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo watched men and boys scrambling down the canyon walls to the beach, where plank fishing canoes clotted the sandy crescent. He took no alarm at seeing the Canaliños launch their craft and come bobbing out through the breakers to visit his ships. This had been a daily occurrence along the Channel coast for the past week; in fact, their westward passage had been convoyed by speedy canoes from village to village along the coast.

Cabrillo had found the Canaliños to be a friendly, naïve, almost childish race.

Had it not been for the approach of darkness, Cabrillo might have permitted a few Dos Pueblos Indians to come on board the San Salvador and La Victoria. They came laden with gifts—fresh and dried fish, baskets of acorn meal, flour from the chia sage which formed a staple of their diet.

In return, the Spaniards tossed down worthless treasures and priceless trash—colored beads from Venice, scraps of brightly-dyed cloth, coins, and gew-gaws. The most prized gift of all was a broken knife-blade from the galley, which some lucky Canaliño would cherish all his life. The Indians had never encountered a cutting edge harder than obsidian.

Cabrillo firmly but courteously rejected the sign-language invitations of the Indians to visit Los Dos Pueblos. Time was running out for the Portuguese skipper, and he knew from bitter experience how difficult it was to get his sailors back from shore liberty—particularly if the local maidens were receptive to libidinous overtures, which they invariably were.

Cabrillo had set sail in June from Navidad, a port on the western coast of Mexico, with provisions for eight months. Six of those months were already behind him, and he had sighted nothing that resembled the Strait of Anián. Winter was coming. He had to keep moving while the weather held fair.

The San Salvador and La Victoria weighed anchor at dawn next morning, crossing the Channel to inspect the islands before continuing northward up the coast of the mainland.

It was the end of easy sailing for Cabrillo’s expedition. Once around the stony corner of Point Concepción, the caravels were buffeted by some of the roughest water in the world. Foul weather finally forced them back to the shelter of the Channel Islands again. They had sailed as far north as 42°, off the Rogue River of Oregon.

Cabrillo had had the misfortune to break an arm on his first visit ashore at San Miguel. By the time he returned to make winter camp there, gangrene had developed. On the third day of the new year 1543 Cabrillo died, and was probably buried within sight of the friendly villages of Dos Pueblos.

His grave is lost to history. Authorities cannot even agree as to the exact identity of the island where the expedition spent the winter.

Gradually, the visit of the Big Canoes and the men with the fair skins and hairy jaws took their place in the folklore of Dos Pueblos. Slowly the memory receded down the corridors of time until the eyewitnesses of 1542—even the babes in arms—had lived out their allotted spans and returned to dust. Their children, and their children’s children, ran through their life cycles, knowing of Cabrillo’s visit only by hearsay.

227 years were to elapse before Los Dos Pueblos had its next direct contact with white men, although there had been other European traffic along the California coast during that time.

The red-bearded English freebooter Francis Drake was too busy seeking treasure-laden Manila galleons to plunder for him to notice Dos Pueblos when his Golden Hind skirted the California coast in 1579.

Sebastian Vizcaíno was preoccupied with stormy weather when his three frigates passed Dos Pueblos in 1602. Vizcaíno did leave one important reminder of his passage: a Carmelite monk in his complement bestowed the name Santa Bárbara to the channel and adjacent Islands, in honor of a Roman martyr on whose feast-day they had first anchored in the vicinity.

In 1741 an event occurred far to the north which was to profoundly affect the history of this tierra incognita, California.

A Danish explorer, Vitus Bering, laid claim to Alaska and the New World attached to it in the name of the man who was underwriting his expenses, Czar Peter the Great of Russia. The appearance of Muscovite otter hunters in California waters alerted the Spaniards to the danger of losing their northern Mexican provinces to a hostile foreign power.

As a result, in 1768 King Carlos III of Spain ordered his viceroy in New Spain, the Marquis de Croix, to bolster the defenses of the two Californias muy pronto. The viceroy turned the job over to his Inspector-General, one José de Gálvez, and things began to happen.

Gálvez’s master plan was three-pronged. First, to build presidios at strategic points along the coast to keep potential enemies at bay. Second, establish a chain of Catholic missions to save the souls of the heathen population. Third, colonize the country by offering subsidies of free land.

The army would accomplish the first objective; the Franciscan Grayfriars, replacing the recently-ousted Jesuit Order, would establish the missions; and colonization would follow in due time.

Gálvez set out to accomplish his triple program in Baja and Alta California in 1769. The first great need was to locate a good harbor. Treasure galleons from the Philippine Islands, one a year since 1566, had skirted the North American coastline without discovering a good anchorage anywhere—overlooking Puget Sound and San Francisco Bay.

A good harbor was known to exist, however, for Vizcaíno had discovered it in 1602 and named it the Bay of Monte Rey. His log was somewhat vague, however, as to its location.

Thus Gálvez ordered two expeditions sent northward to find the Bay of Monte Rey, one by land and one by sea. The land expedition was led by a Catalan soldier who was appointed California’s first governor, Don Gaspar de Portolá.

Portolá’s column numbered sixty-seven Spaniards and Indians. It included as a body guard twenty-seven leather-jacket soldiers for defense in case of attack by Indians. Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada commanded these mercenaries.

Seven Catalonian volunteers were headed by a man destined to become California’s fourth Mexican governor, Lt. Pedro Fages. The chief engineer for the expedition was Miguel Costansó. The most colorful member of the expedition was Portolá’s chief scout, serving both as trailblazer and pathfinder—Sergeant José Francisco de Ortega of Celaya, Mexico.

Two gray-robed friars of the Franciscan order, Juan Crespi and Francisco Gomez; four Indian servants from Baja California; seven muleteers; and fifteen neophytes completed the personnel of the historic march.

Leaving San Diego in mid-July of 1769, Portolá worked his way up the coast in easy stages. He came in sight of Dos Pueblos late in the afternoon of August 21.

Awaiting his arrival were the great-grandchildren of the Indians who had welcomed Cabrillo. They lined the rim of Dos Pueblos Canyon, watching the Spanish column approaching through the oak groves to eastward. Sunlight flashed on lance tips and furbished armor; clouds of dust boiled up from the long string of pack animals and cavalry mounts.

The dusky-skinned Canaliños of Dos Pueblos waited in awe and anticipation, rather than in fear, as Portolá’s column neared.

Sergeant Ortega, in the vanguard, was the first white man to set foot on the soil of Dos Pueblos. He was accompanied by a party of Baja California Indians armed with brush hooks and axes. Behind them came Portolá and his officers, then the two friars and the four sections of the mule train, laden with supplies. Captain Rivera’s soldados de cuera formed the rearguard, armed with shields, spears, swords and muskets.

More to the amazement of the Canaliños than the vividly caparisoned soldiers were the four-legged beasts used for riding and for carrying burdens. Horses, which were to play such an intimate role in Dos Pueblos life in the century to follow, had never before plunged their dusty muzzles into the cool rivulet of Dos Pueblos Creek prior to this historic 21st of August, 1769.

Fortunately for modern historians, the Portolá expedition is well documented. No less than five experts kept daily logs—Portolá, Fages, Costansó, Ortega, and Fr. Crespi.

Thus we know exactly what transpired at Dos Pueblos on that historic afternoon nearly 200 years ago, when white men for the first time actually appeared on the scene. Here is Father Crespi’s account:

Proceeding westerly along the coast, we journeyed for two leagues in sight of the sea, over high hills. We passed through a grove of live oaks, and arrived at a watering place [Dos Pueblos Creek] situated within a cañada. On the banks of this rivulet, and extending down to the beach, is an Indian settlement of more than 1,000 souls.

We camped on the right bank of the cañada, not very far from the village, the inhabitants of which immediately came to greet us, bringing us gifts of fresh fish...Some of us thought that, instead of only one, this rancheria really consisted of two.

Having been the recipient of similar welcoming-committee rituals at other villages north of Malibu, Portolá and his men can be pardoned if they had to stifle yawns of boredom at Dos Pueblos. Their surfeited stomachs were beginning to lose their zest for a steady diet of seafood. Even more important, at this stage of their journey they badly needed sleep and rest.

Some idea as to the riotous welcome which the friendly Dos Pueblans pressed upon their first white visitors can be gleaned from Padre Crespi’s narrative:

They were not satisfied with spreading food before us, but also desired to entertain us. Toward evening, the chief of each town came...in paints and feather ornaments, holding in their hands split reeds, the motion and noise of which served to keep time to their chants and dances. This they performed so well and uniformly that it sounded very harmonious.

The dances lasted all through the evening, and we had a hard time ridding ourselves [of the Dos Pueblans]. We dismissed them, begging them by signs not to come back during the night to disturb us; but in vain.

As soon as darkness had set in, they returned, blowing horns, the infernal noise of which was sufficient to rip our eardrums to pieces. As we were afraid our horses might stampede, Capt. Portolá, with his officers and some soldiers, sallied forth to meet with the Indians.

They gave them some beads, and endeavored to impress on them that they must retire; and that in case they returned and disturbed our sleep, that they would not be our friends, and we would not receive them well.

This sufficed than to depart, and leave us in peace during the remainder of the night.

It would be interesting to know what the Canaliños of Dos Pueblos were thinking when they retired to their beehive-like huts that long-ago night.

Let us hope they slept well, for the last hour of their race was soon to strike.

The following morning Don Caspar de Portolá got his first good look at Dos Pueblos by daylight, and was so favorably impressed by the beauty of his surroundings that he ordered the expedition to lay over an extra day to give the explorers time to make a detailed survey of the area.

This recorded intention to examine a campsite in more detail lends credence to a theory held by some historians that Dos Pueblos might have been seriously considered as the site of the future Presidio and Mission of Santa Barbara. That they were eventually established seventeen miles down the coast was due to the larger concentration of heathen souls needing salvation at the latter site, although the Santa Barbara area, with its swamps and inferior water supply, was in no way the equal of Dos Pueblos.

Few prehistoric settlements are so well described for posterity as Dos Pueblos. The choice of written accounts give the varying viewpoints of engineer, explorer, priest, politician and professional soldier.

What manner of human beings did Portolá find at Dos Pueblos?

From the Spanish accounts, backed by years of study by anthropologists from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and the University of California at Santa Barbara, we know that the Canaliños were of medium height, well proportioned, the women not uncomely even by Caucasian standards.

The males wore their coarse black hair long, bound with a cord woven of sea-grass fibers. The females wore the front hair short in bangs, the rest falling over their shoulders. Adult males plucked whiskers from their chins with clamshells used as tweezers; the women wore necklaces and bracelets and anklets of shell, stone, bone and wood. Their grass skirts were weighted at the hem with lumps of natural tar. Both sexes wore animal skins in cold weather, which rarely occurred.

Engineer Costansó studied the unique hemispherical thatch huts of the Dos Pueblans with the educated eye or his profession. His detailed description matched those left by Cabrillo two and a quarter centuries earlier.

A framework of willows, set in a circle and tied together in the center to resemble half an orange, was laced with grass cordage and the whole made weathertight with a