Andrés Pico's Hunt for Juan Flores
Dawn to Dusk of the Californio Sun
1855 – THE MAKING OF JUAN FLORES
The calm in Los Angeles never remained for long. With the death of Joaquín Murietta fresh in the memory of Californians and the riots of Los Angeles subsiding, the rise of a young Californio named Juan Flores began. Sentenced to hard labor at San Quentin for the pedestrian crime of horse stealing in May of 1855, Flores had come from a prominent Californio family. Described as “a most beautiful figure in the fandango or on horseback,” his average height, dark complexion, and slim figure made him unassuming. Major Horace Bell best described the man in his early twenties:
“There was nothing peculiar about Juan except his tiger-like walk—always seeming to be in the very act of springing upon his prey.”
He continued, “His eyes, neither black, grey, nor blue, greatly resembling those of the owl—always moving, watchful and wary, and the cruelest and vindictive-looking eyes that were ever set in a human head.”
By October of 1856, Juan Flores used his gracefulness to slide out of the maximum-security San Quentin. He escaped with only the most determined souls, surviving the less competent guards. Flores was the first to answer the “Red Horse” Jim Webster’s battle cry. Webster screamed to the prisoners, “Who dare follow the Red Horse? Onward, boys, for the brig and liberty!” They battled to escape, breaking out and taking a brig, the prisoners threw the captain and crew overboard. They received fire from a distance, with the riflemen on the wharf shooting at Webster, Flores, and their men. Flores took command of the Spanish speakers, the “Red Horse” commanding the English speakers. They escaped the rifles and cannonballs aimed at them. Crossing the Bay to Contra Costa, Juan Flores and Pancho Daniel separated from Webster and continued their escapades with fifteen men in San Luis Obispo, with an eye on Los Angeles.
Webster headed north to Timbuktu. Webster’s legend—forty kills—ended in the Coast Ranges. Quarreling with a subordinate, he threatened death by dawn. The man sat on a stump; Webster fired a blank. Coolly, the man rose, shot the “Red Horse” dead.
At the time the Flores-Daniel gang started their terror, Jim Barton had won his fifth term as Los Angeles County Sheriff. Barton had come to California during the Mexican War, a volunteer under General Stephen Watts Kearny. Lured back from retirement and his 170-acre rancho on the bank of the San Gabriel River, Barton received more than two-thirds of all votes cast, outpolling the Democratic national ticket. He had horses, a flourishing orchard, and the first planting of English walnuts. The area would later be celebrated for those walnuts. Barton had a wonderful life. Retired life among the elite may not have been enough for Barton — as a Sheriff, he earned a healthy $10,000 per year. He lived with María del Espiritu Santo, a Cupeño woman raised at Mission San Juan Capistrano, and their son, José Santiago.
Barton and Santo had a strange and contentious relationship. They were unwed, and when Barton had mistreated Santo, she felt forced to flee from Barton to the comforting arms of her family and other Indians in a ranchería, east of the Los Angeles River. One of the persistent questions and a source of many arguments was José Santiago’s paternity. Barton claimed the son as his own, and perhaps Santo had wished Barton were not the father. When she left, Barton refused to let her walk peacefully. When Barton tracked Santo down and confronted her, a violent argument ensued, and when she resisted returning to his rancho, Barton grabbed her by her scalp and dragged her away.
While the confrontation between Barton and Santo reached its climax, a local Los Angeles “loafer” named Andrés Fontes happened to be riding by on his horse. There are claims that Fontes interjected because María Santo was his sister, though the Indian registries do not confirm their relationship. Whatever the relation, a fight between Barton and Fontes erupted, with Fontes getting the better of Barton that day, forcing Barton to walk away without his mistress. Not to be disgraced, Barton sought revenge against Fontes.
Two days later, with the power of his elected office, he charged Fontes with felony horse stealing. Fontes, an Indian man, was indicted, tried, and convicted. Though Fontes was seen as a powerless good-for-nothing “loafer” in a City where Barton wielded his power, Fontes was not one to forgive such a wrong. Fontes was an uncivilized man, illiterate, a carpenter by trade. Barton should have seen the danger with a man with little to lose.
Horace Bell claimed Fontes was “a desperate sort of fellow given to the use of his knife on slight provocation.” Fontes was sent to San Quentin for two years at the expense of Barton’s issue, and as the driver of the stagecoach headed for San Quentin, pulled off the brakes, Fontes leaned out and looked directly at Barton. Fontes expressed in a cold and severe tone, “I am innocent. You put up this job on me. In two years, I will return and kill you.” He quietly served his time and was released with little attention.
Flores and Daniel met the now ambitious Andrés Fontes in San Luis Obispo. By early 1857, Juan Flores and crew headed south, gaining in men and horses and leaving Anglo fears in their wake. Flores had started a war, proclaiming he would “go to Los Angeles, raise the standard of revolt and rid the country of the hated gringos.” The Los Angeles Star reported a “repetition of crimes and outrages” that showed the “organized band of ruffians” had arrived. Everyone, both ethnic-Mexicans, Anglos, and others, agreed with the Los Angeles Star, the extermination of the group “must be acted against by a combination among the citizens generally.”
The Flores-Daniels gang hid out in the rocky terrain in the Angeles National Forest, sustaining itself by preying on local settlers. With talks of vigilance committees that had been so prevalent in San Francisco, Los Angeles Sheriff James Barton attempted to calm the situation. Barton felt he was in control. He was wrong.
On January 22, 1857, Flores, Daniel, and Luciano Tapía raided San Juan Capistrano, plundering the stores of Manuel Garcia, Henry Charles, and Miguel Kraszewski. Kraszewski was one of the lucky ones, escaping death by hiding under a large clothes basket. He was one of the few lucky ones. Local German shopkeeper George W. Pflugardt was not so fortunate.
While his servant prepared his evening meal, Flores, Daniel, and Tapía attacked. After killing Pflugardt, they placed his body on his dining room table. With Pflugardt’s body on the table, they threatened Pflugardt’s servant to continue his dinner service chores. They enjoyed a hearty meal, with Pflugardt at Flores' behest, under threat of Flores’ threats.
Barton, along with twelve men, made their way south toward Santa Ana. Barton, the former carpenter turned lawman, stopped for breakfast at the home of José Andrés Sepúlveda at the head of Newport Bay. Sepúlveda was suspicious of Flores, the young Californio from a prominent family in Santa Barbara. He warned Barton of the danger of the Flores-Daniels gang, perhaps with some inside information from the Mexican community. Even Sepúlveda’s cook, an old Frenchman, assured Barton that he was walking into a trap. Barton did not heed the warnings of either man. He and his posse set down their guns and proceeded to breakfast at Sepúlveda’s. Sepúlveda’s servant, Chola Martina, waited on the men. Martina was one of the many sweethearts of Juan Flores. As the men ate their breakfast, Martina tampered with their guns in favor of Flores. After breakfast, the men headed further south in search of Flores and his men.
Barton, along with constables William H. Little and Charles K. Baker, moved south toward Flores. Charles F. Daley, an early blacksmith, Alfred Hardy, and Frank Alexander rounded out Barton’s group of five volunteers. Twenty of Flores’ men spotted Barton and his men from above and charged down the hill, bushwhacking them. Barton and his men tried to shoot back. Barton tried to shoot his double-barreled gun, but he pulled the trigger, and the gun did not fire. In the attempt, he fell from his horse and attempted to save his own life with the firing of his six-shooter, but again, nothing happened.
Their guns had been rendered useless by Martina. Fontes finally had his day. He calmly walked up to Barton, shooting him in the heart three times. Barton made another defiant move, fighting like a wounded Grizzly, he threw his pistol at his attacker. He missed. Barton propped himself with one elbow, refusing to give up. Fontes pointed his gun one more time at Barton, shooting him through the eye and fulfilling his promise to enact revenge on the man who unjustly sent him to prison.
It was Fontes’ vindictiveness that encouraged Flores to pursue the murder of Barton, but it was Flores who reaped the reward. As reported by the Star, Flores took Barton’s gold watch, “and from the party were taken two double-barreled guns, one musket, two navy revolvers, one five-shooter, two knives, and other plunder.” Baker, Little, and Daley lost their lives with Barton, while Hardy and Alexander managed to escape.
1857 – HUNTING JUAN FLORES
The City of Los Angeles fell into Martial Law, with whites banding together despite their own social and ethnic tensions. As Harris Newmark describes, “the frenzy was indescribable,” and after Barton’s death, the formation of a Vigilance Committee and Committee of Safety was assembled immediately. The Vigilance Committee’s singular purpose was to avenge the death of Barton and his men. An intense search began, with the ethnic Mexicans targeted explicitly under suspicion of housing Flores and his men. Locals arrested approximately 50 persons, while the State Legislature voted to provide Los Angeles with financial assistance, and Fort Tejón sent 50 soldiers to help pursue the band. Well-supplied troops from San Diego made their way north and were under the command of the Los Angeles authority.
Mounted Rangers joined the cause, so too did American, German, and French citizens, along with two companies, one from El Monte and another from San Bernardino. Many Mexicans living in California stood back out of “sympathy or fear,” as Newmark recalled, but not all the ethnic-Mexican citizenry stood with the Flores-Daniels gang. The great distrust of the ethnic Mexican population was undoubtedly a threat to the Californio community as much as it was to the Mexican laboring class of California. In an attempt to cool the heated Mexican-Anglo tensions, Andrés Pico and the El Monte boys took an active role, jumping into action. It was Pico, new Sheriff Jim Thompson, and Tómas Sánchez calling upon volunteers to stop and forcibly punish the murderous group.
Adding to the contentiousness and emotion stirred by the Flores-Daniels gang was the Great Quake of 1857, which shook Los Angeles for weeks. The first quake struck at half-past eight the morning of January 9, 1857. Newmark recalled, “…a tremor shook the earth from North to South — the first shocks being light, people deserted their homes as the quake grew in power. Men, women, and children sought refuge in the streets, and horses and cattle broke loose in wild alarm. For perhaps two, or two and a half minutes, the trembling continued, and much damage was done.”
Aftershocks struck fear into Southern California, with over twenty in a single week. At Temple’s Rancho and Fort Tejón, significant gaps in the earth opened and closed with each quake. Large dunes emerged, and trees were uprooted, barreling down the hillsides, taking cattle down with them. Adobe crumbled, military men feared for their safety, and officers and soldiers found refuge in tents. Tidal waves threatened the sea and coasts from San Pedro to the Golden Gate. There were roughly fifty quakes in total that accompanied the door-to-door searches for the banditos.
Andrés Pico composed the California Company, with nineteen men armed with their ash wood lances, and moved to his brother, Don Pío Pico’s rancho, from El Monte. From Don Pío’s rancho, of the forty-four men available, Andrés only selected thirty-five because of the lack of arms. They trekked further south to the rancho of Don José Andrés Sepúlveda, where they brought their number of men to fifty-one, taking to San Juan Capistrano next. Pico’s California Company met with Pauma Indian Chief Manuelito Cota from Temecula, adding 43 Indians who served as spies and scouts, helpful in securing the mountain passes. The group of one hundred and nineteen men was, perhaps deliberately, as the Star noted, “the theme of all tongues.”
Pico’s mission to terminate Flores was to help alleviate the burden on ethnic-Mexicans and to retrieve the bodies of the slain for honorable burial. They conducted the impressive burial ceremonies the following Monday. Newmark noted, “there was not a Protestant clergyman in town at the time, but the Masonic Order took the matter in hand and performed their rites over those who were Masons, and even paid their respects, with a portion of the ritual, to the non-Masonic dead.”
General Pico paid his respects and left immediately after the funeral. Beyond the pomp and circumstance, General Pico had to focus on demonstrating his loyalty in a move that balanced individual ambition, Mexican preservation, and overall community peace. Pico had the charisma and trust of many Anglo Americans, as Newmark noted, Pico “was especially prominent in running down the outlaws, thus again displaying his natural gift of leadership...General Pico knew both land and people.”
Indeed, he did. Pico also knew Flores did not need to affirm the negative stereotypes of his community. The death toll of newly arrived Mexicans mounted under suspicion that every Mexican was connected to Flores, and the noose crept ever closer to the Californios. Sepúlveda, perhaps feeling a sense of duty because of Barton’s death, inevitably and enthusiastically joined Pico’s cause to track down Flores.
Cota’s scouts, along with Juan Sepúlveda, tracked Flores and his men, locating his hideout. One of the scouts headed back just before dark to alert the hunters that General Flores camped at the head of Santiago Canyon. Just before sundown, another scout returned to tell the General that one of Flores’ men had sent intel to the General. Word came from “Chino” Antonio María Varelas, a nephew of Californio Juan Avíla, that a sixteen-year-old boy was attempting to spare his own life by winning favor with the General. He gave the General a tactical advantage in positioning his men to ensure success. As the night ticked away and the moonlight dissipated, the night and the plan soon snuck away from the General.
At the crack of dawn, the General marched his men toward Flores’ presumed position. The General, it seems, was double-crossed. Flores had crept from his position to an overhanging rock, and after seeing the General, Flores bolted. The commotion caught Pico’s attention, and he charged up the mountain toward the fleeing Flores. In terror, Flores grabbed “Chino” Varelas and put his gun to his head. The Americans appeared, and the commotion set off an exchange of gunfire. “Chino” Varelas escaped to Tómas Sánchez as Flores fled from the hail of bullets. Flores climbed a high mountain peak on his horse up Aliso Canyon. Pico bravely pursued as they broke through a ridge between Santiago and Harding Canyons, then continued the chase for Flores and ten others up the two-hundred-foot peak of Santiago Canyon.
The Americans and other men guarded the surrounding mountains to ensure there was no escape. They exchanged gunfire. American Francis Goddard was wounded, José Antonio Serrano fell and broke his leg, but they were able to catch some of the men, but not Flores. They took the prisoners they captured to Teodocio Yorba’s ranch.
Flores managed to escape, riding his blindfolded horse down a fifty-foot ledge. His blindfolded horse neighed as he barreled down the steep hills. Then, using the brush on the hillside, Flores and two others ditched their horses in an even more desperate escape attempt. Flores, Jesus Espinosa, and Leonardo Lopez continued their descent, going down another five hundred feet with the aid of overgrown brush running nearly perpendicular to the wall — the brush allowed them to make yet another impossible escape to a chaparral. Juan Silvas and Francisco Ardillero looked at the daring and seemingly impossible move made by Flores, Espinosa, and Lopez. Not brave or crazy enough to continue, they surrendered to Pico and the Californians. Pancho Daniel, Andrés Fontes, and two others splintered from the gang and departed for Los Angeles. Tómas Sánchez split from Pico in pursuit of the fugitives with “Chino” as his guide to the gang’s City hideout.
Meanwhile, on January 29, 1857, Cyrus Sanford was attacked in East Los Angeles at Mission San Gabriel by bandito Miguel Soto and others of the Flores-Daniels gang. Sanford refused to sit idle while being attacked, and when Soto fired, Sanford returned fire with accuracy, hitting Soto in the thigh. Soto hid in a nearby marsh, covering himself with weeds and mud. By then, Sanford had several citizens' help in setting fire to the weeds, exposing Soto. They wasted no time with a trial and shot him to death on the spot. They arrested others, Juan Valenzuela, Pedro Lopez, and Diego Navarra, who were to be the first to pay for Barton’s death. At first, they attempted to hang the men. After the rope proved to be too short for a proper lynching, they grew impatient and opted to shoot the men instead.
In the early morning of Sunday, February 1, 1857, Flores, Espinosa, and Lopez hid near a ravine cave until, in the darkness of the early morning, the men tumbled down a hill and landed right into a gringo camp. Flores, Espinosa, and Lopez, with no mode of escape, surrendered to Pico and the Americans. In the commotion, Flores had accidentally injured his right arm with his gun the previous evening when he scaled the five-hundred-foot wall. Flores and his men were wounded, exhausted, and starving, having not eaten for three days. The men were taken six miles to Teodocio Yorba’s rancho, where they were tied up. Amid great excitement, we can safely assume many drinks were had by the Californians that night. Perhaps too comfortable with their achievement, the proud men slept the rest of the night away.
In the morning, Pico’s men discovered their two best horses and captives had vanished. Because Flores was wounded, the Americans tied him up softly. Flores had worked toward his men at roughly midnight, working their backs to one another; one unknotted another, and the men escaped. Once again, they engaged in a firefight. This time, the gang nearly captured Pico. Perhaps it was his age or his battered body that left the seed of doubt about the old General, but flashes of the young Andrés Pico emerged, still slick enough to escape the grasp of the young banditos. Pico, once free, attacked the men and executed his task with “biblical efficiency.” Spectator William Wallace declared, “He came upon them in their fastness, slaughtered them and captured them in detail.” Even with the General’s battlefield brilliance, Flores and the two others managed to escape.
But Pico still had Ardillero and Silvas in his grasp. Infuriated by Flores, Espinosa, and Lopez’s escape, Pico held a vigilante trial for his prisoners. The crowd called for the execution of two of Flores’ most notorious men, Silvas and “Güero” Ardillero. Pico commented on the two men who attempted to assassinate him, “Here are two who will never get loose,” hanging them from the first suitable tree.
To make his message even more apparent, Andrés chopped the ears of the dying men off as trophies and left their bodies swinging on display for six months as a message to those with ideas of bandito glory. Pico walked back into town wearing the ears around his burly neck, strung by a rawhide string as evidence of his swift action. Jesus Espinosa and Leonardo Lopez got as far as San Buenaventura by the next day. Espinosa, only eighteen years of age at the time, emptied his guilty soul to Father Serrano and was hanged in Santa Barbara on February 2, 1857. Lopez escaped and remained a fugitive for two more days until he, too, was “dispatched to other realms.”
With the search still running hot, Deputy Sheriff J.F. Burns captured and executed a few of the Flores-Daniels gang himself. James Thompson went after Flores through Tujunga with a company of horsemen. United States soldiers were on the lookout for Flores high upon the Simi Pass on February 3, 1857. Two soldiers spotted a Mexican man searching for water. The soldiers ordered the man to dismount from his miserable mustang. The man was unarmed but alarmed by the extended ordeal. They questioned the man. The man claimed his name to be Sanchez and that he was from Mission San Fernando.
When asked what his business was, he claimed he was hunting horses. Weary of any Mexican man who could be a criminal tied to the Flores-Daniel gang, they took him to their camp. Juan Flores was immediately recognized. Thompson took Flores downtown to stand trial along with some fifty-two others. On Valentine’s Day of 1857, citizens feared Flores would escape with the help of Spanish-speaking citizens who saw Flores more as a hero than a criminal. Flores awaited his most certain fate in his jail cell. Sitting slumped in his black coat, wearing white pants and a light-colored vest, he reminisced about his short twenty-two years of life. In his jail cell, deflated and not the vibrant and, as Bancroft describes, “formidable desperado of a fortnight ago,” Flores repented by declaring it was Pancho Daniel who was the leader all along and that he was merely following orders.
Angelinos assembled to propose a more immediate execution plan. Judge Jonathan R. Scott called upon the crowd to determine the prisoner’s fate. Several citizens stood up to give their “unqualified approbation.” In contrast, several others “mounted a platform and harangued the people, advising them to execute at the same time three Mexicans, two of whom had robbed a horseman in the Tejon, the third having attempted his assassination.” Some shouted, “Hang him!” Judge Scott yelled to the crowd, “Gentlemen, you have heard the motion; all those in favor of hanging...will signify by saying, Aye!” The answer was unanimous.
The patience of the crowd waned; they rushed the jail and, “without a dissenting voice,” a convicted Flores was sentenced to death. The excited and impatient citizens overran the small adobe structure and subdued Frank J. Carpenter. He was taken near the top of Fort Hill, as over half the county’s population, some 3,000 spectators, cheered on while sitting on wooden benches.
Flores walked the quarter mile up the hill, accompanied by two priests to ease his fear of the spectacle that was to be his execution. Bancroft describes the tense scene: “Companies of Monte men, Californians, and Frenchmen, mounted and on foot, were prepared to enforce order if necessary.” In his calm tone, Flores was sure to adjust the rope himself, hoping for a smooth transition to his heavenly father. The Star reported, “His legs were then bound, and the rope adjusted around his neck.” The amateur hangman placed a handkerchief over Flores’s head, and the plank pulled from under him, and “Flores swung in the air.” At 2 p.m., the life of the 22-year-old slowly and painfully came to an end.
The amateur hangman made the rope too short, and Flores “struggled in agony for a considerable time.” The townsfolk applauded as nine others (eleven in total) of the fifty-two men left in Flores’ gang were lynched on the heavy crossbeam over the “gate at the Tomlinson and Griffith Corral and Lumberyard.” The others went to prison or were set free due to insufficient evidence. “Chino” Varelas was set free; according to El Clamor, it was in large part that he came from a “good family.” However, if it had not been for Varelas, the ordeal with the Flores gang would have likely continued.
Two days after Flores’ execution, Luciano Tapía and Thomas King met their mortal fates. As Newmark describes, “Tapía’s case was rather regrettable, for he had been a respectable laborer at San Luis Obispo until Flores, meeting him, persuaded him to abandon honest work. Tapía came to Los Angeles, joined the robber band, and was one of those who helped to kill Sheriff Barton.” There was little tolerance shown to the Monte-playing King. He received his death sentence without any emotion to the verdict, claiming until his last breath that he was not guilty. His work with Flores was not his only charge. In September, he murdered Lafayette King at the Montgomery, a gambling joint King frequented. The Daily Alta claimed he was “brave, and he looked triumphant” through his first case, but by his second trial, “his countenance fell,” they wrote, “he will sneak out of this life a blabbering liar, as a traitorous assassin.” He was executed and “again exhibited his cowardly, mean nature, by denying his guilt.”
Another of the gang was Encarnación Berryessa. He had come to the defense of the Flores-Daniels gang as they bullied through San Buenaventura. Berryessa was a vicious criminal; his house was “the retreat of every evil doer,” one noted, “and he has never been seen in company with a man who could be called respectable.” He helped in the gang’s robbing of local citizens, attacking and plundering the house of Raimundo Olivas. Berryessa beat the wife of Olivas, ripping her earrings out and taking his share of $275. He took another $100 cartridge box, believing it to be a gold coin, without his fellow banditos’ knowledge, only to find it was no more than a few Mexican pesos. He served as their guide in escape from the area as well, helping the gang move smoothly through the backchannels.
Though he did not participate in the killing of Barton, his participation led to his presumed execution in Santa Clara County, hanging him for his crimes. Authorities sent Berryessa’s body to his friends for burial, but apparently, lynchings in Santa Clara were executed by less skilled operators than those done in Los Angeles. Berryessa rose again, going on a murderous rampage with visible rope burn marks on his neck. The Los Angeles Star quoted Berryessa during his life on the run: “I do not know how these Americans learn everything so quickly. When the Vigilance Committee of Santa Clara was disposed to hang me, it is true that I killed the American whose body was found in San Vicente. A number of us were in the thicket, when about midnight an American passed, riding a mule—we lassoed and dragged him from his mule, and I finished him by stabbing him.” He was captured and finally executed for good.
Pancho Daniel was still on the loose, and the Americans sought to capture the wild Mexican bandits. While cruising the two-and-a-half miles from his house to Mission San Juan Capistrano, Michael White, known as Miguel Blanco by his Californio friends, made claims of seeing Flores’ men in San Juan Capistrano. He barked at the rascals for not working. He deemed the three young men playing cards “lazy” as they sat in the shade of a large oak tree. He thought nothing of them. White’s view was a conventional narrative among Anglo Angelinos of their young Mexican counterparts. White mistook their identity. He later claimed they were the banditos who were terrorizing California, the men they called the Manilas.
His interactions with the wild bunch were not limited to his casual passing. Later, as White was cutting firewood near his mill, a man rode up. He thought it was a local doctor, but when he yelled hello, he received no response. The man rode up, cold and quiet in manner, pointing his gun at White. His son, Joséph, ran up to his father, clamoring in fear, “Father, the man that just passed here is a robber. Go and get your gun.” His interaction was with that of Pancho Daniel. White would later, perhaps in an exaggerated fashion, express Joséph’s words about the incident, with Joséph claiming, “I could have killed him easily, but as you have told me never to shoot at anybody, I did not do it.” Joséph would meet his fate by the barrel of the gun himself, murdered some years later in El Monte.
When they figured out who the men were, the chase for Daniel ensued, and White grabbed his gun and went to the swamp with Stockton, Osborne, three of the King boys, Darcy, and many others. White claimed, “I told them if they would promise me not to kill the man on my premises, I would catch him. My idea was to take him alive, so as to ascertain from him who were his associates.” Tensions ran high, shots rang out, and White rushed to the scene only to find one of the men lying on his back, taking his last gasp for air. They took the body, about $200 of gold coins from the corpse, and what was said to be Sheriff Barton’s Masonic ring from the man’s finger. They carried the man back to the San Juan Capistrano Mission by mule. White claimed that once the body arrived, Dr. Osborne cut the corpse’s head off with the intention of having the people of El Monte impale it and put it on display.
Major Horace Bell remembered the account differently. The man, according to Bell, was Mexican Joe, a young laborer for Billie Rubottom of El Monte, who was on an errand to Benito Wilson’s house. In haste, the young man was ambushed, killed, and decapitated at the San Gabriel Mission. Rubottom identified Mexican Joe and interred him in Los Angeles. Like Mexican Joe, eleven others were put to death by hanging via vigilante hunts. The Americans felt justified in their cause to prevent lawlessness and disorder, and the Mexican population had to pay the toll of their ethnic Mexican brothers in innocent blood. At the very least, White’s perspective is a display of the omnipresence of danger on the minds of Californians and the inner thoughts of the heroes they could have been. White would later claim of Barton’s murder, “I had a good deal of regard for Barton and regretted his death but could do nothing but regret.”
The hunt for Pancho Daniel dragged on. A bounty was put on his head by Governor Johnson for $2,500. Another $1,500 was raised by the citizens. On January 19, 1858, while hiding in a haystack in San José, the Sheriff captured Pancho Daniel. He was put in solitary confinement for a time as they siphoned through three attempted trials. Their last venue change was to Santa Barbara. With the long, drawn-out process, the citizens wished to put the memory of the Flores-Daniels gang to rest. On November 29, 1858, in their frustration, the citizens of Los Angeles once again took control of their City, with 220 citizens working silently in the night. They gently wrestled the key away from the jailer, walked peacefully to Daniel’s cell, and took him to his fate. The group did their deed, vanished into the night, and not a soul was disturbed from their peaceful slumber. When dawn cracked the horizon, to the delight of Los Angeles, Pancho Daniel hung in the gateway of the jail yard. Los Angeles had survived an apocalyptic event, finally released from the anxiety and fear brought by the Flores-Daniels gang.
Andrés Fontes escaped the grasp of Andrés Pico, but he, too, would be executed in 1860 in Baja California by Solomon Pico, the General’s cousin. Feliciano A. Esparza, determined to rid La Frontera of outlaws, set out on committing vigilante justice of his own in Baja. On May 1, 1860, Esparza executed Solomon Pico. The message was clear: emulate Flores and face the wrath of death. There was no room in a moral and just society where bandito and outlaw culture could survive.
Pico reinforced his hero narrative; he and his men had, as Wallace stated, “earned for themselves the respect and admiration of the whole community” with the capture and execution. Not everybody in the Mexican American community saw Pico’s actions as heroic. Francisco P. Ramirez, a fellow Californio whose grandfather, Francisco Avíla, was the former alcalde (mayor) of Los Angeles, wrote about Pico in the most popular Spanish-language paper in Los Angeles. Ramirez worked as an editor for the Los Angeles Star’s Spanish section, later founding the aptly named and widely circulated El Clamor Público (the Public Outcry). Ramirez had firm words for the General, and it was clear that Ramirez echoed sentiments felt throughout the ethnic Mexican community.
Ramirez was no fan of Pico. In a March 28, 1857, article, Ramirez questioned the General’s courage, his scruples, and claimed the act against Flores’ men was simply the display of Pico’s insecurities. Pico’s act, in the view of El Clamor, was a brutal display of unnecessary cruelty. To Ramirez, Pico’s actions only further reinforced the haunting narrative and unwanted attention to ethnic Mexicans as a whole. In the August 22, 1857 edition of El Clamor, they saw Pico’s actions as creating a divide among the ethnic Mexican community, stating, “Mexicans in California—they have no union—they have no fraternity.” Ramirez emphasized that the Californios had “more animosity” toward their Mexican-born counterparts “than toward the Indians.” From Leonard Pitt’s The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890, published in 1998 by University of California Press, page 174. Where Ramirez and Pico likely agreed was that Californios and Mexicanos, to the white American population, were one. Unity was ever more vital to reinforce positive narratives, and violence did not benefit anyone.
From Pico’s view, it was a pivotal moment of self-preservation and a chance to ascend the ranks in American society. He had indeed earned the Yankees' trust while discouraging the glorification of bandito culture. The words of Ramirez were valid, but to the General, the best remedy to any conflict was swift, precise, and decisive action. There were no right answers on how to handle such violent situations. The clustering of events in Los Angeles, like those experienced by Pico in the 1850s, made handling tensions among the layers of ethnicity, race, and religion impossibly tricky. Suppose the post-Flores world was any indication of how the Anglo community perceived Pico’s actions. In that case, one need only look at his appointment as Brigadier-General of the U.S. National Guard.
Further, his reputation helped Pico win his election to the California State Legislature as an Assemblyman and Senator. This success radiated to others, with his fellow Californio vigilante Tómas Sánchez elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for three years between ‘57 and ‘59. The people of Los Angeles later elected Sánchez as Los Angeles County Sheriff, a position he held for the better half of a decade. There is little question that the incident helped solidify Californio power both locally and nationally. The Land Commission and Anglo migration brought challenges in the coming years. Mexican Americans faced further discrimination when droves sought a clean start from the horrors of the Civil War, or by the 1880s, when many found a simple trip via the railroad brought them to paradise. There was little Andrés Pico could do to keep the peace between the competing Anglo and ethnic-Mexican communities of Los Angeles.
The root of all the racism was the competition for limited resources. It was the same in many ways during the Mexican and Spanish periods. The oppressive Casta System that deemed them inferior was the very thing their generation rebelled against. The color of their skin was merely a culturally acceptable excuse to pounce on their opulent lifestyle. All those shot or lynched (sometimes both) were only transitory points of the Anglicization. What occurred in Pico’s lifetime in Los Angeles was a force nobody could stop. Los Angeles was no different in their process than any other place in the West. General Pico’s battle was unwinnable, and it likely became more evident to him and his Californios in later years. Due to an early death, the General missed Los Angeles’s transitional 1880s, and the end of Californios in prominent political and social positions.
Bibliography⎪References
Bancroft, Hubert Howe. 1886. History of California, Vol. VI (1848–1859). San Francisco: The History Company.
Bell, Horace. 1881. Reminiscences of a Ranger: Or, Early Times in Southern California. Los Angeles: Yarnell, Caystile & Mathes.
Deverell, William. 2004. Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Faragher, John Mack. 2016. Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Hayes, Benjamin. 1929. Pioneer Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes, 1849–1875. Edited by Marjorie Tisdale Wolcott. Los Angeles: Privately printed.
McAfee, Ward M. 1992. “A Social History of Southern California’s Great Quake of 1857.” Southern California Quarterly, no. 74 (2): 111–138.
Newmark, Harris. 1926. Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913: Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark. Edited by Maurice H. Newmark and Marco R. Newmark. New York: The Knickerbocker Press.
Pitt, Leonard. 1998. The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846–1890. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Originally published 1966)
Rasch, Philip J. 1957. “The Story of Hangman’s Tree.” The Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, no. 39 (1): 59–64.
Rasmussen, Cecilia. 1998. “When Justice Was a Mob and a Rope.” Los Angeles Times, October 4, 1998.
White, Michael C., and Thomas Savage. 1956. California All the Way Back to 1828. Edited by Glen Dawson. Los Angeles: Glen Dawson.
Newspapers and Periodicals
Daily Alta California. San Francisco.
El Clamor Público. Los Angeles. (Especially Vol. 2, Nos. 32 and 39, 1857)
Los Angeles Star. Los Angeles. (Especially Vol. 6, Nos. 39 and 52, 1857)
Specific Issues Cited
“Execution of Juan Flores.” 1857. Los Angeles Star, February 14, 1857.
“Capture of Flores.” 1857. Los Angeles Star, Vol. 6, No. 39, February 7, 1857.
Ramírez, Francisco P. 1857. “Untitled Editorial.” El Clamor Público, Vol. 2, No. 39, March 28, 1857.
———. 1857. “Untitled Editorial on Californio Division.” El Clamor Público, August 22, 1857 (quoted in Pitt 1998, 174).