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pense by having the stabber sentenced to the state prison, had a ball and chain put to
him and 'farmed him out' to the highest bidder for cash." A short time afterward:
"Since the opening of the new meat market, the Indians about town have gone
into the butchering business on quite an extensive scale, killing about one a week. An
Indian boy, belonging to Mrs. Evans, walked up to another Indian boy on Saturday night
last, and with a long knife ripped him open as quietly as if he were cutting a watermelon.
Who comes next?"
Sometimes the whites suffered. In August, 1857, John Minturn was severely cut
in the arm by an Indian, whom, however, he succeeded in "knocking out" with a stick of
stove-wood. On April 10, 1858, the Herald declares:
"There must be something done to "clean out" the cattle thieves in this county.
Whipping has got to be of small account in deterring the Indians from thieving, and we
have come to the conclusion that the delectable and efficacious remedy of hanging is
about the best, after all. One fellow whom they whipped out at Santa Ysabel, got so
mad about it that he just walked off a hundred yards and laid down and died!...It has
been ascertained that there have been 311 head of cattle stolen in this vicinity, Ramon
Carrillo alone, having lost 108 of that number."
That the citizens endured this state of affairs as long and patiently as they did,
may well excite wonder. Only one incident of vigilante work in San Diego proper has
come to light. There was a poor old tailor in the town who used to get drunk quite often.
One day, having borrowed a dollar from a friend, on the plea that he was suffering from
want of food, he was soon seen in an intoxicated condition. The next morning, his body
was found lying on the side of the hill just above the town. He had been beaten to death
with stones and the jawbone of
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a bullock, stripped naked, and left lying there. The manner of his death and the fact that
he was known to be poor and had evidently been killed for his clothes, gave rise to the
belief that it was the work of Indians. A search of the ground near the body resulted in
the finding of a knife which was known to belong to an Indian called Manteca [fat, or tallow],
and with this clew the names of a number of Indians who had been seen with the
tailor on the evening of his death, were soon discovered. The murderers had decamped,
but about six months afterward some of them ventured back to town, and with
the aid of other Indians, three of them were arrested and lodged in jail.
The citizens now thought it time to act, and also that it was just as well to save
the county the expense and trouble of legal proceedings. The vigilante party consisted
of Robert D. Israel, E. W. Morse, John Van Alst, and one other man whose name has
not been learned. These four men went to the jail and took the three Indians out with the
intention of hanging them. Israel, who was a veteran of the Mexican war and knew
something of military affairs, protested that the party was too small to handle the Indians
all at once, and suggested that they be dealt with one at a time. He was overruled,
however, and the result was that as soon as the Indians learned the intention of the
party, they began to fight hard and two of them succeeded in getting away. One of these
two escaped and was never recaptured, and the other would have done so had not Mr.
Morse shot him and broke his leg. They then hanged one of them in a vacant building
which had belonged to Agostin Haraszthy, and the other in an old adobe building built
by Crosthwaite near the American cemetery. Mrs. Carson says that on looking out the