Nom de Plume

I showed Pete Gade the pictures from my great-grandmother’s photo album and he responded with the following:

I secured a spare moment to root around my (limited) resources on the Mexican-American War of 1846-48 for some possible mention of his tribe during the conflict. The following provides a quick appreciation of the accounts they contain.

As said, California enjoyed a sort of rogue status that suited its “Californio” population quite well. Although technically still under the aegis of Mexican rule, it operated more or less independently after 1834 when the acting president of Mexico secularized the Catholic missions. By the time of the war, two Californio bosses basically held sway over the region — Castro in Moneterey and Pico in Los Angeles. Castro made a fine living off the duties Monterey collected from trade, which provides a clear indication of the way things operated in California at the time.

As for the Santa Ysabel Indians, its possible that they were once associated with the Santa Ysabel Asistencia mission, which was founded just east of San Diego in 1818. An interesting effect of the aforementioned secularization was that the local tribes basically lost interest in their ties with the Californios. Up until that point, the missions made a point of providing socially-oriented lay functions. These ceased once the local forces took over, and over a period of ten years the Indian populations in their immediate proximity shrank from 30,000 to about 10,000.

In late 1846, the Americans assumed control of San Diego after being routed from LA by a single horse-drawn cannon (no fooling). Meanwhile, Kearny’s American “Army of the West” made the epic, and footsore, trek from Missouri to San Diego — in part through the aid of the legendary Kit Carson — but not before engaging in protracted standoff known as the Battle of San Pascual, just east of San Diego. One account mentions that the leader of the San Pascual Indians took pity on the American troops and presented the Californio forces with an ultimatum to leave the Gringos in peace “or else.”
This, apparently, provided the Americans their chance to break the showdown by sending a party to San Diego for naval and Marine reinforcements. One popular account contends that this party was lead by a Delaware Indian in the service of Kit Carson. Another, and perhaps more likely, account sets the credit on the shoulders of a San Pascual Indian.

In any event, my sources failed me here. Not surprisingly, many of them lend only passing and non-specific reference to Californian tribes. Wish I had something specific to Manuel, but all of this occured in the general region of San Diego and thus may be of some secondary interest to you.

-Pete