LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER LXII

      An historical review of the early times in Fresno County was published in a holiday number of the Expositor on New Year's day of 1879. It was up to that time the most comprehensive one printed and since the most quoted because of its authenticity, written as it was by one who treated of personal knowledge and recollections, inclined though he was to be biased because of that personal participation in the events of the times recorded. That review, a sketchy effort, of no literary merit, treats incidentally of the lawlessness of the times, and declares that "numerous other murders and homicides" than those enumerated "were committed in different parts of the county" up to the period of writing, nearly all of them, he said, still fresh in the minds of citizens. Writing thirty-nine years ago of the early deeds of violence and crime, he employed the following words as pertinent then as they were for years after:

      "Deeds of blood and violence were committed at lower and upper King's River, at the San Joaquin River near Temperance Flat, at Firebaugh's, at Buchanan, on the road leading from Crane Valley to Millerton, at or near the Tollhouse, at McKeown's old store on the Fresno, at Texas Flats, at Fresno Flats, and in fact human life has been sacrificed in almost every neighborhood in the county where a whisky mill has been established. . . . But we will turn aside from the nauseating spectacle; a sufficient number of murders and deeds of violence has already been mentioned to demonstrate the lawlessness which has prevailed heretofore, and the laxity and almost criminal indifference with which the law was formerly administered by juries; it is not necessary here to go into further detail of the sickening atrocities which were committed and which appear today and for all time to come as black stains upon the record of the county.

      "And if perhaps," said this writer in conclusion, "twenty-eight years hence someone should see fit to continue the 'Reminiscences of Fresno County' it is to be fervently hoped that the recital will contain less crime and deeds of blood and violence than is interwoven in the history of our county for the twenty-eight years last past."

      Some of these recalled deeds of blood were of a time before organization of Fresno County out of Mariposa with the district seat of justice at Mariposa and the Fresno territory a remote corner of it. The early treatment of the Indian was characteristic of the cruel roughness of the times. The aborigine had apparently no rights that the white man seriously respected. He was given little consideration as a human being. Force, cruelty and taking advantage of his ignorance characterized the general dealings with him. This was all the more remarkable, when it is recalled how many of the first whites, in the absence of women of their own race, readily took up relations with the young squaws and profited materially thereby. The California Indian, although classed low in the scale of humanity, was at least racially docile and amenable to kindness and fair treatment. The squaws were invariably loyal to their white protectors. When by way of reprisal according to his view point, the Indian rebelled against the barbarity and cruelty of the white man, there was a hue and cry, an excited round up and the Indian fighting in self-defense when pursued was massacred and done for by superior armed force.

      At this late day, it were vain to recall "the deeds of blood and violence" enumerated in the review of 1879. They have no bearing on the history of the times, save to emphasize the admitted lawless character of the period. Yet even in that respect, conditions were probably no more acute in the Fresno region than elsewhere in California in the pioneer days when there was little or no government, when human life was valued at so little and every one was a walking arsenal. Nor does one have to go back to the days of the pioneers to find warrant for the complaint of the almost criminal laxity with which justice was administered. Only once in the sixty-three years of county organization of Fresno has there been an execution of a murderer under the sentence of court. That was twenty-six years ago. And fearful murders were committed before and have been since. The wretch that was hanged in the courtyard of the old jail in rear of the courthouse was a dipsomaniac and a drug fiend. The others before and after him that cheated the hangman were given life sentences, or escaped altogether, though their crimes involved every legal element of fiendish deliberation, premeditation and preparation, with avarice as a motive for taking life.