Stranger in a Strange Land: Solomon Nunes Carvalho in Los Angeles

Carvalho's self-portrait

Solomon Carvalho (1815-1897) holds a unique place in the history of the West. Carvalho was a Sephardic Jew of Portuguese descent from Philadelphia, an accomplished painter, and a daguerreotypist who documented the lives of Native Americans and Mormons as a member of explorer John C. Frémont’s 1853 survey team.

In June of 1854, Carvalho stumbled into Los Angeles, suffering from the effects of his grueling cross-country journey. Here he found solace and hospitality at the home of Manuel Domínguez and his family. During the several weeks he spent in the Southland, Carvalho met many of the Californio families; painted portraits of Manuel and Maria Engracia Domínguez, Pío Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, and others; conferred with the few Jewish citizens of the pueblo; did a little paleontology; and took in the sights. He assured his place in history by leaving behind a detailed journal of his travels at a time when the West was still pretty wild.[i]

Wonders to behold

In his journal, Carvalho demonstrates a keen interest in the geography and geology of the Los Angeles basin. While the Domínguez Rancho covered a wide swath of the Southland, Carvalho appears to have explored beyond the confines of the Rancho. For example, he extolls the virtues of the hot springs near “the mission of San Juan de Capestrano [sic]”:

“These hot springs … excel all others in the neighborhood (and there are many), in regard to their medicinal virtues, both from their chemical combinations and the results obtained by their healing qualities in all those diseases for which the chalybeates [iron salts] are reported to cure.”

The springs still flow hot in the Santa Ana Mountains, but are no longer open to the public.

Carvalho does not mention it, but it is possible he visited the hot springs for his own health. For much of his stay in California, he suffered a “brain fever.” The term might be appropriate to describe a brain inflammation, such as meningitis or encephalitis, but, more likely, in this case, it refers to a physical and nervous breakdown resulting from Carvalho’s long, arduous journey westward with Colonel Frémont. He credits the wife of Manuel Domínguez with nursing him back to health:

“I was prostrated at this gentleman’s house by a severe attack of brain fever, superinduced by exposure in travelling over the hot deserts of sand, between Salt Lake and San Bernardino. His good, kind-hearted wife, Donna [sic] Gracia, paid me all the attentions and devotion of a mother. For ten days I was delirious, during that time she hardly left my bedside. Doctor Brinkerhoff who resided with them, volunteered his medical advice. To their combined skills and care I owe my recovery.”

The Redondo Salt Works. Image courtesy of University of Southern California Libraries and the California Historical Society via Calisphere.

Among the geological wonders Carvalho witnessed was a salt lake – not exactly like the Great Salt Lake he had experienced during his sojourn among the Mormons of Utah, but salt nonetheless:

“On this rancho, towards San Pedro, is a salt lake, which was being worked by a company of gentlemen. The salt is of superior quality, and brings a good price in Los Angeles.”

The salt lake he describes is one that existed on the extreme western edge of the Rancho lands, in Redondo Beach. (Carvalho’s geography is somewhat suspect, since Redondo Beach is nowhere near San Pedro.) The site of the “Old Salt Lake” is now California State Historical Landmark No. 373. According to local historians, Manuel Domínguez sold 215 acres of his property to two merchants, Henry Allanson and William Johnson, for approximately $500 in December, 1854, the same year that Carvalho was a guest at the Rancho. No doubt he heard talk of the negotiations. The property contained a spring-fed natural salt lake about 25 acres in size. Allanson and Johnson established the Pacific Salt Works, which remained in operation until approximately 1881.

We must also suspect Carvalho’s sense of direction in describing tar pits:

“On this same place [as the salt lake], near the shores of the Pacific Ocean, there is a lake of bitumen or asphaltum, used almost altogether in Los Angeles, as a covering for the roofs of houses. In winter it does very well, but the dropping of hot pitch from the eaves of the houses in hot weather, is not agreeable ... Gentlemen’s clothing is frequently spoiled by this material.”

The La Brea Tar Pits, in Los Angeles’ Wilshire District, were a well-known land-mark long before Carvalho’s arrival and it is likely he would have been taken to see them as a tourist. Smaller seeps of tar no doubt existed at various places around the Southland, but it seems unlikely that Carvalho would have ignored La Brea in favor of something much less spectacular.

Finally, perhaps inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits and the fossilized animals found therein, Carvalho undertook to do a bit of bone-hunting himself:

“In making geological examinations on Dominguez’ land, I had the curiosity to dig into a mound of earth raised up several feet from the surface, and not fifty yards from the dwelling-house. I found several pieces of large size petrified bone, too colossal for horses or oxen. Procuring a pick-axe, I penetrated further, and was gratified in exhuming portions of a mastodon. I collected four perfect teeth; the largest weighed six pounds.”

In recent months, transportation projects in both Los Angeles and San Diego have encountered a trove of mammoth and mastodon bones. Carvalho would have loved it!

  

 Artist Charles Knight's illustration of a mastodon, 1897.

 

A version of this story appeared in The Museum Review, the newsletter of the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum.

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[i] Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West: With Col. Frémont's Last Expedition Across the Rocky Mountains: Including Three Months' Residence in Utah, and a Perilous Trip Across the Great American Desert to the Pacific. Published by Derby & Jackson, 1860.

 

 

Californio Justice: Judge Manuel Domínguez

1849 Map showing the Pueblo Los Angeles surrounding by farm and ranch lands.

Life in Los Angeles during the Californio era, and for some time thereafter, was pretty rough and tumble. Like every wild west town, the residents of Los Angeles struggled to maintain law and order. Culture clash was an ongoing problem, of course, as the Spanish padres, Mexican and African-blooded settlers, indigenous peoples, Americanos, and mixed-race families collided in Alta California.

Infighting among the Californios themselves, as they competed for land and resources, took up much of the attention of the alcaldes (mayors) and the ayuntamiento (council) during the first half of the 19th century.

Our man, Manuel Domínguez, inheritor of Rancho San Pedro, took an active role in the public life of the pueblo. He served four times in one-year terms as primero alcalde or segundo alcalde (something like an assistant mayor) beginning in 1832 when he was only 29 years of age. The sketchy records of the time make it difficult to ascertain the specific role played by any one individual. What is clear is that a select group of Dons shared the duties of governing the pueblo among them. Familiar names like Dominguez, Tapia, Carillo, Soto, Alvarado, Cota, and Sepúlveda appear regularly in various official capacities.

The Wisdom of Solomon

Early Los Angeles had a calaboose, a small jail house for rowdies and miscreants, but nothing like an adequate penal system. The nearest presidio was 100 miles away in Santa Barbara. As a result, justice was often dispensed summarily – generally by hanging for serious crimes or by more creative means for minor transgressions and civil cases.

In his various official capacities, Manuel Domínguez was called upon to act as judge in a number of cases. The Los Angeles Municipal Archives provide us with a record of one case where Dominguez did, indeed, have to employ the wisdom of Solomon. In July 1839, a case came before Segundo Alcalde Dominguez involving a piece of lumber taken from a beach. The English translation of the Spanish document reads:

“Morillo [is] suing Sepúlveda for taking a piece of lumber from the beach on the place called La Bolsa, and having commenced to work the same. The case was properly ventilated and after some arguments, a conclusion was arrived at that the piece of lumber in question belonged to both litigants and it was decided to divide the same and each receive a half with the only conditions that Sepulveda deliver the half belonging to Morillo at the door of the latter’s house in compensation for his having done the work of sawing the same.”

Some of the sense of this matter is a bit lost in translation, but we can guess that there may have been more than one piece of lumber at stake; perhaps a matter of boundaries or personal honor was in play. Unlike the baby at the heart of King Solomon’s famous decision, the pile of lumber that Morillo had created from a found log or logs was cut in half.

Domínguez may have had his own interests in mind in splitting his decision. While Justo Morillo was likely a commoner, if a landholder, who signed the decision with an “X,” José Sepúlveda was a prominent Don and one with whom Domínguez maintained an ongoing and litigious feud regarding the boundary between their respective ranchos. It might not do to add fuel to the fire by ruling against him.

There are other interesting things to note about the document. It makes reference to the “good men” who accompanied the litigants: Don Vicente la Osa and Don Ygnacio Coronel. Apparently, it was common for such hombres buenos to act as advisors to both the litigants and to the judge. Their signatures on the document attest to their approval of the decision.

It is also interesting to note that a form of due process was allowed to vecinos like Morillo, although he surely did not have the same standing as the Dons.

Nor was this the only case in which Alcalde Domínguez was forced to think on his feet. Apparently, horse-racing was a big source of both entertainment and litigation in those days. In one case unearthed from the Los Angeles County Archives by Robert Gillingham, author of The Rancho San Pedro, Domínguez settled a disputed horse race by ordering that the race be re-run within 21 days and that a member of the town council act as judge.

Report of Manuel Dominguez in an 1839 lawsuit. Courtesy of University of Southern California Digital Library via Calisphere. Page two of the original Spanish document in this case show the signatures of the principals. Domínguez and Sepúlveda each signed with a flourish. The two “good men” signed below a mark which appears to be “H.b,” for “Hombre bueno.” Señor Morillo could not write and so signed with a lopsided “X” which appears more like a “T.”

A version of this story appeared in The Museum Review, the newsletter of the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum.

Sources include:

Robert Cameron Gillingham, Ph.D., The Rancho San Pedro, 1961.

David Samuel Torres-Rouff, Before L.A.: Race, Space, and Municipal Power in Los Angeles, 1781-1894, 2013.

Witness to History: The Eagle Tree of Rancho San Pedro

 

The Eagle Tree in 1952. 

Courtesy of the Gerth Archives and Special Collection, CSU Dominguez Hills

“Beginning at a Sycamore tree….”

Thus begins the legal description of the borders of the Rancho San Pedro as proclaimed by President Buchanan in 1858. In fact, the tree served as a literal landmark throughout the long, convoluted, and contentious ownership history of the Rancho, beginning with a Spanish survey of 1817. It stood at roughly the Northeast corner of the land claimed by the Dominguez family. Some have noted that, without the continued existence of the tree, the family would have had a much harder time proving ownership of their lands as California went from Spanish to Mexican to American rule.

In early California, land surveys depended on immovable landmarks from which measurements could be taken in lengths of rope or chain. The 1857 survey map attached to the American land patent notes the tree as “Stake 1: Place of beginning.” Other landmarks along the rancho boundary line include “pile of stones,” “three rocks,” San Pedro pond,” “four rocks,” “rocks in water,” “old wagon road,” “Sepulveda’s dwelling and salt works,” and more than one “witness post,” markers placed at sharp turns in the boundary line where no other landmark could be found. It is easy to understand that most, if not all, of these “immovable” landmarks have long since disappeared from the landscape. The Eagle Tree, perhaps 300 years old or more, was likely the last. Even the Los Angeles River, the eastern boundary of the Rancho, was not a permanent fixture, moving as much as half a mile during floods.

The tree through the years

The sycamore probably sprouted early in the 18th century, if not earlier, well before the rancho era. Tall trees were rare in the area until the mid-19^th century and the tree must have stood out on the dusty plains. At some point after it had grown to a significant height it became known as the Eagle Tree due no doubt to the birds that perched in its branches. While the Eagle Tree outlived many landmarks, the metropolis grew up all around it. In recent decades it stood behind fencing between apartment buildings in a dusty right of way owned by Standard Oil Company, later Chevron, at East Poppy and North Short Avenues in Compton. A plaque recognizing the tree’s significance to the Rancho San Pedro was placed at the base of it in 1947 by the Native Daughters of the Golden West.

The 1857 survey that informed the American land grant notes that the tree measured 60 inches (five feet) in diameter; A century later historian Robert Gillingham reported the tree at six feet in diameter and 60 feet high.  A bit of high school math calculates the circumference at approximately nineteen feet.

On April 7 of this year the Eagle Tree collapsed into an adjacent parking lot. Without any perceived trigger for the event, we can assume it was rotten from the inside. It had likely been dead for some time. A few days later the carcass was lifted out by crane and taken to a nearby utility property for safekeeping. A number of citizens have advocated for a permanent home for the remnant trunk, but at this writing its fate is unknown.

The main trunk of the fallen Eagle Tree is moved to storage. Photo courtesy of Kim Cooper, Esotouric Tours. See more photos on their blog post: The Eagle Tree: Dead or Alive? 

What remains

While the Eagle Tree is gone, several small saplings remain, likely direct descendants of the mother tree. We can hope that one or more of these will be allowed to grow and thrive at the site while others, perhaps, may be transplanted to other locations. The much-defaced plaque remains, hidden behind the fencing.

A few years ago, artist Alvaro D. Marquez used bits of a fallen branch of the tree in an art installation titled “The Eagle Tree is a Witness” which he exhibited at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Others are now brainstorming ways to memorialize this witness to history.

Detail of 1859 land grant showing the northern border between Rancho San Antonio and Rancho San Pedro. The sycamore tree is indicated at the "Place of beginning."

A version of this story appeared in The Museum Review, Fall 2022, the newsletter of the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum.