doc241 - Schoenherr Home Page in Sunny Chula Vista

next morning, she saw the body hanging in the Haraszthy house, mistook it for an effigy
and called to her husband that the Spanish had been "hanging Judas" again.
Mrs. Carson tells many interesting stories about the Indians of San Diego in early
days. They kept an Indian servant who one day was missing, and after two days was
found in the bottom of a dry well. He was taken out, very much bruised, his wounds
dressed, and an Indian employed to nurse him. He improved and was thought to be out
of danger; but one day the nurse went away and left a blind Indian in charge of the patient,
who thereupon crawled out of bed and proceeded to treat himself by the Indian
method. This consisted of taking a brand from the fireplace and scorching himself on the
side with it, to set up a counter irritation by burning. He burned himself so severely that
he only lived a few hours afterward.
Thomas Whaley bought an Indian girl from her parents, giving them something
like $100 worth of goods from his store in
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[Robert D. Israel]
exchange for their consent for the girl to live in his family. The girl stayed about a month
and then disappeared and returned to her parents. When Mr. Whaley went after her
they were willing to let her go, but wanted to be paid over again, and this continued as
long as the kind-hearted merchant would allow himself to be "worked," the girl running
away as often as her parents felt the need of supplies from the store.
There was an Indian ranchería near the palm trees in Old Town where they were
accustomed to hold dances. "It was like old-fashioned spelling bee," says Mrs. Whaley;
"the Indians would stand up in two long rows and dance, and the one of each opposite
pair that could dance best won the other's clothes. I dressed this girl well, but she would
go to those dances and
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always came home in rags, having lost the clothes I gave her, at the dance."
On May 26, 1869, the Union contained this item: "We noticed a half dozen or
more of the Lo family parading the streets last week, dressed after the fashion of Adam
and Eve before they left the garden of Eden. If there is an old clothes society in this part
of the moral vineyard, we would suggest to its members that these children of the forest
receive a little of their attention."
This was a common occurrence for many years before and after. Mrs. Morse
speaks of "wild Indians, nude, with the exception of a cloth about the loins," who,
"stalked majestically across the plaza, their long hair streaming in the wind, or, if in
mourning, plastered up with paste made of grease and ashes. The rings in their noses
were equally as useful and ornamental as the rings in the ears of white ladies."
In 1873, the Indians about new San Diego made themselves so objectionable by
petty thieving and nightly brawls, that City Marshal Gassen and José Guadalupe
Estudillo were sent to notify them to move their camp out of town. Their old chief, El
Capitan, was found in the midst of a harangue, which he broke off to hear the message
of the alcaldes, and promised obedience. In the following month he entered an indig-