Jack Powers: Race Against Time
1. Medicine Man
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1. Medicine Man
From “Remembering Jack Powers” by Bill Horace in the Los Angeles Star, 1876.
Once Jack Powers took control of the Sonoran gang of Raphael Herrera in Summer 1854, he gave up hosting private gambling in Los Angeles entirely, though the climate for it already expired. He transferred title to his Main Street residence to Francoise Barre, who’d always lived there anyway, and Jack could stay whenever he might visit. He formally resided on the little ranch he leased near Santa Barbara where he continued to breed horses, and his Sonorans stuck around the place to some extent, pretending that they worked there. But only Pio was employed and Powers trusted him in everything pertaining to his stock.
In the following two years, Jack Powers built an underworld in San Luis and Santa Barbara Counties. Its pillars were of elements he hadn't even thought of when he first commenced, or which he failed to properly appreciate.
Most important was the firm support (indeed the servile worship) of all common Californians. Jack knew when he began that he could count on their cooperation, but he didn't know how much. It's fair to say that he became a medicine man among these people, who already addressed him as patrón. His word was law throughout the countryside and everyone supplied him with intelligence and alibis, cached food and, especially, a stream of ready horses at all hours of the day or night. No pressure was required. The dons had lost allegiance and control of their own people for their yielding to the gringos, and Powers won their admiration as the leader of a last resistance to the conquest.
But it was more than just resentment that fired their support. The flush times in the Mother Lode were ending and, with cattle prices falling, the dons no longer had the means to subsidize vast armies of retainers. In the two years that we speak of, Jack Powers had become a major fount of income. The gold that Jack's gang stole in a continued string of robberies was shared with everyone relied on for assistance, which was nearly everyone there was in such a sparsely settled region. Jack was forced to kill more men and steal more money than would otherwise be needed for himself and his companions. The common Californios grew dependent on his liberal largesse, and he became a sort of feudal don, confronting rising expectations from his vassals. Powers learned that he could not produce the necessary funds from only drovers coming on their own initiative. He must drum up business on his own, and this became his most important function.
He went up to San Francisco often to lure victims, using a remarkably effective trick. He discretely spread the word about the chance to buy beef cattle cheaply close to San Luis, much more inexpensively than Santa Barbara. He also sang the virtues of the shorter cattle drive. When prospects came to him for information, he offered them outstanding terms on stock that he would broker or collect himself, on the very strict condition that it all be kept a secret. He told his victims, confidentially, that he could offer such low prices because his herds were packed with "strays," which were understood as stolen. The buyers therefore dare not share with anyone their plans to deal with him, or even to go down to San Luis, for drovers who were known to purchase stolen stock faced violent resentment. By luring them into purportedly illegal purchases, Jack won their silence, and when these men left San Francisco, never to return, no one thought too much about it because no one knew where they had gone.
This tactic made the thefts and killings easy. The drovers were identified and tracked the moment they passed Mission San Miguel, still quite far from San Luis and in remote, unsettled country. Jack would suddenly appear to guide the drovers to the site of the pretended sale, distant from all roads or settlements. As this made sense for handing off a herd of stolen stock it didn't prod suspicion. Once in a desolate, secluded spot, Jack or others in the waiting gang would kill them, dump their bodies and collect their gold. Then after riding fast and far away, like all of his companions, Jack showed up in San Luis or Santa Barbara, or even Monterey, staying for a little while before another trip to San Francisco.
* * *
Another aspect of Jack’s popular support was an important change that had occurred among the sentiments of Californians. The Sonoraños now had lived in California six or seven years. At first, the contrasts between Californians and themselves were obvious. Their cultures and their manners were in conflict. In the days before the Gold Rush they had no reason or occasion to communicate, divided as they were by deserts or by sailing round a thousand mile peninsula. And their very different circumstances made opposing breeds of men. The Californios were peaceful cattle ranchers living in a lush green land and gentle climate, among defeated, semi-Christian Indians performing all the meanest labor. The Sonorans lived among the last proud race of warriors among the Indios of Mexico. The Yaquis had not seriously adopted Christianity and were hostile to the Mexicans who'd come to settle. The Comanches and Apaches who still visited the borderland were even far more dangerous and savage, and were considered wild. Thus the Sonorans were, by both necessity and temperament, men of violence, even as among themselves.
But over those few years in which Sonorans had remained in California, a merger of two peoples had occurred. The Sonoraños, though initially resented, became admired by the common class of Californians for their resistance to the gringos. Joaquin Murrieta, not the wealthy California dons, led a war against Americans, and had instilled a basic pride in all the Spanish-speaking peoples. Now they were doing it again, under the leadership of Powers, a gringo renegade who had embraced the culture of the natives. Slowly the distinction between Sonoraños and the Californios dissolved into a broader new identity, not Mexican, but as Latino Americano, contrasted solely with Americans. All those people that the gringos lumped together as “the greasers” grew, by their own choice, into a single race.
The Sonorans, being mostly men, began to marry or cohabit with the Californias, producing children. Some Sonorans even partnered with the Indias because male Indios were perishing from hopelessness and drink. These women could at least survive by blending with the Latins, and thus was born the present Spanish-speaking race of California, from Indians, Sonorans and the native Californians.
Jack’s Sonoraños were no longer treated as outsiders. They were embraced by Californios in a common fight to save their language, culture and religion from American annihilation. Some California men, besides Pio Linares, began to ride in Powers’ gang as equals, and a capacity for violence, revenge and cruelty emerged among these formerly so placid people. This brought Jack strength that he’d not reckoned when he started.
* * *
The second pillar of Jack's underworld, beyond his absolute command among the common class, was the vague cooperation of the Barbareño dons. Six months or so into Jack's operation, with a dozen crimes accomplished, rumors started wafting down to Santa Barbara. Jack knew that his activities could not be long concealed from these rancheros, and when the whispers hardened into speech, he chose to take the matter on directly.
He visited the de la Guerras, the father and two elder sons who were the leading men in Santa Barbara politics. He told them openly what he was doing and why he started doing it, and they agreed (at least they took his point) that he was forced to take this action to protect his life from Den. They'd noticed, as did everyone in town, that some rugged Sonoreño hombres now accompanied him everywhere and resided, so it seemed, about his horse ranch. Jack assured them that his banditries were solely aimed at cattle sales in San Luis Obispo, and that life in Santa Barbara would continue undisturbed so long as he was in command. Were he to leave things to the gang itself, they’d ravage everyone without distinction.
The dons said nothing, but Jack read their minds. It was not bad business, in their silent view, that emerging competition to the north of them should be suppressed. They understood the threat to sales and prices if a cattle market opened up in San Luis. If Jack was offering protection, both from this competition and from banditry affecting them directly, there was something in his enterprise for them. And should they turn on him, he had the means to harm them. Thus they understood, without Jack saying it directly, that they must keep Nick Den from troubling him in any way, including by exposing his predations. The de la Guerras passed this word around the other ranchers, who all agreed and pressured Den to keep his wrath supressed. For Den was furious to find that, not only had Jack managed to remain in Santa Barbara, but also to engage his neighbors as his tacit partners and protectors.
There was another reason why the Barbareño ranchers made their peace with Jack. The Californio dons were quietly ashamed of their acceptance of the conquest. They felt the sting of condemnation from the lower classes, especially as they perceived that Jack had won their loyalty precisely for this reason. The wealthy Californios conceded their beloved Santa Barbara would be quickly (if it not already was) a place entirely controlled by the Americans. There was something to be said for keeping San Luis Obispo purely Californian as a refuge for their culture, race and faith. The place became the symbol for everything they'd lost as they’d let greed for gringo dollars overcome them.