Jack Powers: Lion Among Rats
2. Jack Comes to California
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2. Jack Comes to California
From “Remembering Jack Powers” by Bill Horace in the Los Angeles Star, 1876.
Back in 1847, it was easier to sail from the Atlantic States to Honolulu than to California. The passage round Cape Horn and up ten thousand miles of coast was only known to New Englanders who ventured out each year to buy up mountains of dried cowhides and raw beef fat used for candle wax and leather. One silver dollar bought the skin and fat of an entire cow, and even this small price was paid back to the shippers for the goods they'd brought along. A California lady sighed to find a mirror or a comb. Ranchers bid against their neighbors for good knives or metal tools.
Between these yearly visitations, there was little or no contact with the world abroad, even with Mexico, which was in principle the owner of the province. The Californians lived so far apart from anyone for generations that they'd created their own world. Life was slow and very peaceful, built on intermarried clans and the semi-feudal bonds that held large armies of retainers to their patrons, the rancheros. The holdings of these dons (as they were called despite their lack of ancestry) were on a ducal scale, such as astounded the rare visitor. And the boundaries between these vast estates were vague, as was natural for such a tiny population uninclined to argue with their neighbors and relations.
The Regiment of New York Volunteers disembarked at San Francisco, as the hamlet back of Yerba Buena Cove was starting to be called. But almost all of them were soon sent off to more important places. Jack Powers' company deployed to Santa Barbara. This coastal town affected a prestige above the wealthier, more populous Los Angeles. It had been founded as a Spanish military installation, a presidio, which meant that officers resided there, the only possible elite among the earliest of Californios. Los Angeles, by contrast, was a pueblo, or small incorporated town, composed originally of peasant farmers drawn from Sinaloa. In the two or three full generations since, the entire province had evolved from an establishment of Spanish missions dedicated to the hopeless fantasy of Christianizing Indios, into a country of enormous cattle ranches owned primarily by men retired from their military service. As the center of the finest, most expansive cattle lands, Los Angeles grew more important than the quainter, more attractive Santa Barbara.
There were a few substantial dons in Santa Barbara when Jack Powers' company arrived and raised the flag of the United States. Resistance to this action, wholly verbal, formal and nonviolent, was the duty of the honored, but retired, "Old Captain" of the now defunct presidio, the aging master of the de la Guerra clan. This gentleman of purest Spanish antecedents had sent his sons abroad for education, and was as much of an aristocrat as it was possible to be among the Californios. Thus he was not prepared to look with favor on the motley crew of New York Volunteers, mostly recent Irish immigrants, who were suddenly asserting their authority over those who'd pioneered the place.
But the ranchers knew resistance was impossible and would only draw more soldiers. The Volunteers were daily drilled for show, but most had no real duties and were free to spend their hours as they pleased. Jack immediately bonded with the de la Guerras, the father and two elder sons, who were esteemed the finest horsemen in the racing which then served for friendly competition between clans. When the family discovered that young Jack had been a jockey and a trainer in New York, they embraced him just as he'd been similarly welcomed earlier in life. Of course, his beauty played a part in his reception, but equally important was that Powers picked up fluent Spanish and all Californio customs. He soon became the toast of their fandangos, with his costumes and athletic grace, and adopted all the finer points of riding in the local style on California mustangs.
And although less than twenty years of age, Jack was shrewd enough to pose to Californians as an Irishman, as opposed to an American, even though a citizen and soldier of the States. The Californios preserved that strong Iberian distinction between the English and the Irish. Americans to them were but a species of the English race, their hereditary enemies. The Irish were good Catholics who posed little threat to Latin culture and could be welcomed unreservedly. In a province founded by Franciscan monks and where the Protestant heresy had been nonexistent, the Californios perceived the gringo conquest as largely a religious one.
Only a single Barbareño despised the beautiful Jack Powers. Nicholas Den, the physician of the village and a rancher, was an Irishman himself, married to a California woman. This Dr. Den was one of but a handful of non-Latin Californians who had stumbled on this coast years earlier. He was welcomed, as most outsiders were, because he brought in expertise the country lacked. And unlike most other early English-speaking immigrants, he was Catholic, which meant he didn't need conversion to be let to stay. In fact, the doctor, in his passionate devotion to the Church of Rome, had styled himself protector of the little that survived of the old missionary world.
Den was seized with uncontrollable resentment because the de la Guerras failed to recognize that Jack, for all his charms, was merely shanty Irish from the New York slums. He couldn't stomach their refusal to distinguish a true educated Irish gentleman from this peasant trash. Den couldn’t say this to the dons themselves, so he reserved his bitterness for Jack alone, and Powers only made him angrier by utterly ignoring him. Jack was barely an adult, fresh and gorgeous, popular, and a spectacular horseman who had won the hearts of everyone. He didn't even notice Den's hostility.
* * *
By Spring of '48, the gringo conquest settled in through all of California. A melodrama of resistance in Los Angeles by some leading dons, for honor more than practical success, subsided after minor fights and panics. The larger war with Mexico was ended with a treaty that assuaged the Californians of their greatest fears, assuring them their properties would be respected. In fact, the treaty made them legal U.S. citizens, remarkable considering their race and the first time that Latinos might believe themselves Americans. There seemed little worry for the present, as it would likely take some decades before gringos could arrive in any numbers that would trouble Californian life.
But this assumption shockingly collapsed when gold was found in mountain regions to the north that Californios had never penetrated. The New York Volunteers, in service all along the coast, instantly became the luckiest young men in human history, with the virgin placers almost entirely to themselves. Everywhere from San Diego to Sonoma, and from ships in San Francisco Bay, men shed their uniforms. No one stopped them because their officers fled, too, including their colonel-politician.
Jack’s company was slow in getting started because their Santa Barbara daydream was so pleasant, but they managed to set out shortly before summer. Jack Powers had more reason than the rest of them to linger. He was having some tremendous fun and had already developed that aversion to hard labor that evolved into his future as a gambler. But in the end he went along for the adventure. Like everyone in California, Californio or gringo, Jack knew nothing about prospecting for placer gold or washing it from sands. But at the very start the prize was so abundant, and so obvious in many places, that these first argonauts could simply bank on luck. With only minor effort, and basking in the mountain air and sunshine, Jack and his companions managed to uncover many pounds of yellow stuff. They felt like gods and, like all their fellows, they drifted down to San Francisco for the winter.
It seemed that all the gringos on the coast were packed there, sheltered mostly in crude canvas tents against the wind and sand that blew down from gigantic dunes. But the sheer amount of gold that had been brought to San Francisco was fantastic. Jack was present when Jim Savage, the blond mountain man so soon to find the valley of Yosemite, rolled a barrel filled with gold dust through a barroom. With prices for necessities astronomical, Jack's gold would only last through spring when he could get back to the diggings.
But word of gold had already arrived in the Atlantic States. Men, and some few enterprising women, dropped everything to pay for passage to the western coast. Steamships instantly appeared to sail them down to the equator, where they dragged through the mosquito-ridden swamps across the Isthmus to Old Panama. There they found new steamships that risked passage round the Horn to continue on to California. The first of many thousand pioneers, the legendary "49ers," flooded into California and the tone of tiny San Francisco changed at once.
Spring of '49 was much too early in the year to venture inland, so The City (for it became a great port city in an eye blink) was as jammed as the Pacific steamships. Few arrivals knew a single other human being and, as the rawest entrepot conceivable, San Francisco made no pretense of community whatever. The exploding population brought a chaos and congestion such as had never been imagined anywhere in peaceful California. Nor were Americans the only new arrivals. Chileans from the waterfront of Valparaiso zoomed the long Pacific Coast to beat the crowds from the Atlantic. There was nothing in the way of government beyond some empty Spanish titles of authority, now held loosely by Americans.
In this madness, Jack's old New York Volunteers saw opportunity. They were the only element in town that knew and trusted one another, and the only one that could pretend to military discipline. So by agreement with the only people with a stake in San Francisco -- the alcalde (a sort of mayor), the sheriff and a few top City merchants -- they styled themselves a volunteer police force, the Society of Regulators. Businessmen had debts requiring collection and the sheriff had his writs that needed serving. There was a pressing need for muscular authority.
The Regulators raised a circus tent on Kearny Street, a couple blocks below the Plaza, and topped it with a flag proclaiming "Tammany" in honor of their hometown. This would be their headquarters. On Sundays, they'd parade the street in uniform, concluding with a raucous bout of drinking lasting well into the morning. They began to own the embryonic City, and their insolence and swagger caused them to be called The Hounds, a name they didn't much resent.
By mid-spring of '49, even their employers began to tire of the Hounds, and perhaps to even fear them. The larger floating population, which until that time had not felt any civic interest, commenced to gel around resentment at the New York b'hoys. The breaking point was when the Hounds went out to raid the big Chilean settlement around the hill at Clark’s Point with the telegraph. When one Chileño wouldn't pay a debt, the Volunteers went crazy and destroyed the camp, killing men and raping women.
To the shock of everyone in San Francisco, large crowds gathered at the call of Samuel Brannan and some other merchants most committed to the place. The Hounds were all arrested by the mob and held for trial right in the Plaza. Proceedings were conducted by one Dr. Gwin, a Mississippi politician who'd come out among the very first arrivals, intent on seizing highest public office. Watching in the crowd was a New York politician, equally determined to make a great career in California.
Jack Powers was a follower among the Hounds, and not a leader. He was quickly left to go his way. As for the chiefs and others who'd been dangerously violent, the City found itself confused. It was impossible to hang young former U.S. servicemen who'd volunteered to conquer California, and there were no prisons to incarcerate them. The only option was expelling them from San Francisco, but even this was much beyond the powers of the popular tribunal. And so, satisfied at merely breaking up the Hounds, they let them go and all was rapidly forgotten in the flux of new events.
That New York politician who'd observed the public trial could recognize a handful of his hometown boys among the Hounds, but he particularly recalled Jack Powers. David Broderick started his political career as a volunteer fire captain, which was the only way a man born of the working class could make a public mark in those days. Although a powerful and stocky figure, he'd been beaten to near death in a contest with a firehouse Goliath. But Broderick was cheered for merely stumbling off without assistance and for his willingness to battle in the face of any odds. Jack Powers, then still in his teens, watched this famous New York City brawl and grasped at Broderick’s arm in admiration. The man was struck by Jack's sincerity, and now, some five years later, he recognized him in the public dock in San Francisco. When Powers was released, Broderick approached him and made friends. This was striking, as the future boss of San Francisco did not typically make friends with anyone in any sense of personal affection. He was Irish, although born in the United States. His father and then his mother died, and he was left, still in his early twenties, to care for his beloved younger brother. Then that brother died in an absurd explosion and Broderick was all alone. Though he'd already started his political career, he left New York the moment news of California gold hit town.
Jack was just about as old as Broderick's brother would have been, and the elder man (for thirty was an elder man in Gold Rush California) embraced him as a younger sibling. Jack found himself distinctly drawn to David Broderick because he sensed that he was going to be important here, and even more, because his proffered friendship wasn't driven by Jack's beauty, but only by a pressing need for kinship. And Jack was flattered because Broderick intuited a future in young Powers that Jack himself had not yet bothered to imagine.
* * *
Jack left the City for the diggings shortly after the implosion of the Hounds. His second summer in the Mother Lode paid handsomely, despite a lot more competition, because the placers were now better understood. Jack’s season ended with him packing out no less than 80 pounds, worth $20,000 at the standard rate of sixteen to the ounce. He thought of sailing home, as this could comfortably support his mother and himself for the remainder of their lives.
But loitering in Stockton, waiting for a steamboat down to San Francisco, Jack started gambling, triggering an epic run of luck. First he broke a bank at one place, then another that same night, a seemingly impossible achievement. When dawn arrived, Jack needed help to drag his 700 pounds, fully $175,000, aboard the steamer. A crowd of hangers-on encouraged him to run his stake up to a neat two hundred thousand, a sum so princely it would put him in the class of the most opulent of New York City sports. Of course, the money he'd already won would have sufficed as well, but Jack was already a gambler and couldn't publicly show caution with his luck.
By the time the steamer docked at San Francisco, he'd lost everything he'd won in Stockton and was back to his initial stake. And yet it was this monumental loss in front of such a pressing crowd of spectators that set him on the path that made him famous throughout California. Jack had learned from his old Irish patron, from the wealthy New York City sporting men, and especially from the Santa Barbara dons, that how a gentleman absorbs a gambling loss defines his character and reputation. Another gringo who had lost so much would have jumped overboard and drowned. Americans had left their homes and risked their lives to make their pile in California. The cavalier and gracious way with which Jack met his harsh reversal brought him permanent celebrity. His name spread everywhere in San Francisco as the hero who had triumphed over Luck herself, the naked goddess of Americans and California’s Golden Calf.
* * *
In those very early days, Mission Dolores, two miles south of town, was the resort of San Franciscans, especially on Sundays for the racing. Jack drifted down there, where his riding and appearance drew immediate attention, and everyone saluted him as one who'd laughed off dropping a stupendous fortune. This was where Jack first began to cultivate his image as the flower of young, manly California, a gorgeous Irishman with long black locks and beard, in costumes blended brilliantly from fashions of the Santa Barbara dons, the rustic duds of miners, and the most elegant of European dress. He was consciously seeking to define a beau ideal, something both the conquerors and conquered could celebrate.
His striking style, enhanced by fame, made him the classic figure of the Mission playground. Monte is a card game that's no longer understood. Americans had picked it up in Mexico, in the war, and it became the favorite of California gringos as it already was the native game of Californios. For rancho play, it needed no equipment, just a blanket on the ground. And its odds so favoring the dealer, in friendly games the deck was passed between the players at short intervals. Anyone who reckoned probabilities would not be quick to "buck" against a massive bank. But that much older and more primitive conception of a player's "luck" as some elusive spiritual power infected California generally. Everything depended on one's luck, from stumbling on a paying claim to buying something that might suddenly explode in value. And so men considered monte as a contest, very personal, between their own luck and the banker's. Players sought out major monte banks to buck at, as any challenger might seek to fight a champion. And the sheer amount of gold piled on a table for the taking was a tangible attraction.
It wasn't long before Jack Powers was approached by men of business. They'd back a bank if he would front it as the dealer. And just as they expected, men lined up to buck against the famed Jack Powers with his beauty and fantastic clothes. This arrangement was a cash machine that never faltered, more constant and reliable than the richest mining claims. And as success in this endeavor was fueled by Jack's celebrity, he started seeking out publicity. He cultivated editors at the papers sprouting up in San Francisco. The greater grew his fame, the more he made great copy, and he became the best known man in San Francisco. John Nugent, top man at The Herald, became a friend of Jack's to almost rival David Broderick, a man who also made great copy. California had grown up so fast that it was ready to become a state and had already passed a constitution. Broderick exploited all the street skills that he'd honed in New York City to win election to the California Senate and quickly took control as leader of the San Francisco Democratic Party. Jack's popularity and Broderick's rising power reinforced each other in the press, which loved to play upon their friendship. And Nugent at The Herald was a Irishman as well, born, like Jack, in Eire.
* * *
There was no reason for Jack Powers to return that summer to the diggings. He was a fixture at the Mission, making money, riding races, and glorying in his image as the toast of San Francisco. But as Autumn 1850 rolled around, the first large cattle drives arrived, and all were stunned to see what fresh beef sold for in a city eating dried salt pork. These herds were driven north from ranches down the coast, and Jack began to think about a trip to Santa Barbara. He still preserved romantic memories about the place and all of his good times there. He didn't need the money, but a cattle drive entranced him, a horseback ride of weeks through rolling landscapes, often bordering the ocean. Nor would he have to bother buying beef. It'd be effortless to grab some stock that wandered into distant valleys, cattle that would not be missed by anyone. Jack recalled a perfect spot near Mission Santa Ynez, at what was called the College Ranch, abandoned after Indian attacks.
When he arrived in Santa Barbara, he was welcomed with the greatest warmth, because his reputation, brought by word of mouth and even more by San Francisco papers, became the pride of that small town that knew him first. And Jack was pleasantly surprised to find that many former New York Volunteers had drifted back, men who'd rather play in Santa Barbara sunshine than pry boulders from the streambeds, regardless of financial gain. He recruited them to join his cattle drive, and they eagerly accepted. But when he brought the boys up to the College Ranch and started rounding up a herd, he was met by his old enemy. Dr. Den, the genteel Irishman, held a lease upon the worthless property, which he'd secured only as a service to the Church, to make certain that these mission lands had some protection. He got a writ for trespass and, because the sheriff couldn't raise a posse to eject Jack Powers, Den brought up his own retainers from his ranchlands.
The confrontation was unpleasant. Jack was furious because the property was vacant and he was merely taking strays that never had been mission property. Den's motive was sheer personal hostility to Powers, whose return to Santa Barbara as a hero made the blood boil in his brain. Shots were fired, although nobody was hurt, and words exchanged that couldn't be forgiven. Since the whole thing was for fun and not especially for profit, Jack decided to respect the law and yield. But he was bitter. And he was loath to travel back to San Francisco right away, as it looked like he'd been pushed from Santa Barbara or had even been a cattle thief, a crime more serious to gringo ears than California ones. So he dropped in on Los Angeles, a place he'd passed through once while in the Army.