Kiosk - Behind the Hills (page 2)

Behind the Hills
(continued)

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The Indians who first lived in these canyons and mountains found abundance and natural beauty here. It was a place of rolling, foliage-covered hills, shady oaken canyons, chilly, rugged peaks, and ocean breezes. The earth ran wet from the many rivers and streams that connected the mountains to the coast, and in the plain to the north was the great river that burst its banks in the spring, swollen with melted snow from faraway mountainous lands. In the canyons of the people the Spanish called the Juaneno and Luiseno, nature teemed with the fertility and nourishment that was in the waters. For food, local Indians could hunt deer and rabbit in the foothills, or catch the fish that swam in the rivers—small brown bottom-feeders with sucking mouths, or the quick flashes of silver and rainbow that came down from the mountains, or the large dog-faced fish with its firm red flesh, coming yearly from the sea to lay its eggs. Some of the hunters might even make the day’s journey to the coast to harvest the glistening abalone covering the shores.

But this idyll was not to last. In 1769, the Spanish military, led by Gaspar de Portola, the conquistador of Southern California, made an epic journey of exploration and conquest, traveling north from Mexico to Monterey along an age-old Indian road that would eventually come to be known as El Camino Real, or The King’s Road. Near the canyons of present-day Orange County, Portola and his men found a gushing freshwater spring at the base of a hill. To this day, the spring is called Portola Springs. Local lore holds that Portola also lost a trabuco, an old Spanish pistol with a blunderbuss-style flared barrel, while on an expedition into the mountains up one of the canyons. The long, forested canyon would afterwards be named Trabuco. Further north in their journey, the men came out onto the floodplains and camped on the banks of a major river. At this encampment, they felt California’s first recorded earthquake.

During the time of Portola’s journey, the Spanish were operating missions up and down the coast of California, attempting to control and convert the indigenous population. In November of 1776, four months after the colonies in the east declared independence from Great Britain, Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in the lands of the Juaneno and Luiseno peoples. The beige walls were constructed out of limestone and sandstone quarried from the canyons’ streams and were supported by broad oak and sycamore beams cut from the deep woodlands that fed on the canyons’ water supply. So useful were the trees that a craggy, meandering canyon toward the northern end of the mountain range was called Canyon de la Madera, or Timber Canyon.

The founding of the mission marked the beginning of a bloody period during which Spanish forces suppressed a series of Indian rebellions. But the coming of the Spanish was only the first manifestation of the exploitation that came with the arrival of the white man, and that would come to characterize the region’s history. From that time on, the canyons of the Santa Ana Mountains would be a place where conflicting interests would converge, and where California’s ethnic and cultural differences would explode into passionate and violent struggles for the resources that flowed down the slopes and through the canyons.

What is known as the last Indian massacre in Southern California took place in 1831, when a group of highly trained American frontiersmen were hired out of New Mexico by officials in the Spanish pueblo of Santa Ana to track down an elusive band of horse thieves. The thieves, a band of Gabrielino Indians, lived in their hideaway in a secluded fertile valley in the upper reaches of the Santa Ana Mountains. The Americans were trappers and hunters, armed with high-tech rifles and an understanding of the terrain that rivaled that of the Indians. They soon tracked down the thieves. A one-sided battle ensued and the Indians, armed only with bows and arrows and a few old Spanish muskets, were mostly killed. The few survivors escaped into the trees and canyons and disappeared.

Along with many of California’s mountain ranges, the Santa Anas became the center of mining attention in the late 1800s. The rumor of silver began to spread throughout the area, and prospectors flocked to the canyons. In 1877, silver ore was discovered in Canyon de la Madera. Prospectors began calling the canyon Silverado, after the metal they found there. Within months, a town of thousands sprang up, and by 1879, the township of Silverado was established. At its peak, the mining town of Silverado ran a twice-daily coach to Los Angeles and a three times daily coach to Santa Ana. A post office was built—in the American West, a sign that a place had a spot on the national map. All the necessary jobs to support the mining industry followed; blacksmiths, general stores, furniture builders, brothels and the usual disproportionate array of tough saloons filled the forested dirt streets. Shortly after Silverado, coal added to the mining boom, and neighboring Black Star Canyon began to fill up in similar fashion, forming the community of Carbondale. The twin towns prospered for almost a decade, but by 1888, the post offices closed, the miners left, and the towns all but disappeared from history.

The end of mining in the region marked the end of an era. In the 1890s, the U.S. government began to survey the area and enact various measures to protect the resources of the Santa Anas, setting aside land that by 1899 would be a part of the new Cleveland National Forest. The mining boom brought massive devastation to the old-growth pine and oak forests that had filled the canyons, which had been cut and sold as firewood or used in the construction of the mining operations. The grizzly bears that once thrived in the mountains had been reduced to a few survivors, which were being hunted down individually and exterminated. Ranchos sat vacant on overgrazed land, having lost their labor force as the Indian population waned. It was as though the resources of the mountains had finally been exhausted. There was nothing left to fight over.

(conclusion on page 3 )