Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

In 1852, seven years after Fructuoso’s death,
Yginia sold some of the land to Joaquín Gutiérrez, an
emigrant from Chile who had been a soldier at the
presidio in Monterey. The contract carried the
agreement that Yginia and her adult daughter,
Estéfana, and presumably any of her surviving
underage children could continue to live on the land
until Yginia’s death. By 1853 Yginia had sold the
remainder of her husband’s rancho to Gutiérrez, and
around the same time, Estéfana married the Chilean.
After secularization, marriage to a non-Indian was
most likely the only way for Estéfana to secure what
was left of her inheritance: Mexico sometimes
honored Spanish land grants when the head of
household was European. Even though the United
States later challenged this land grant, Hackel notes,
“remarkably, the land claims commission upheld it”
and awarded the couple full title in 1862.
It was too late, however; Estéfana lost El Potrero
to an American who had made his fortune in the
goldfields, Bradley Sargent. Just how, I’m not
certain, but Sargent was (like many other Americans
in California at that time) well known for simply
occupying Indian land, or placing armed guards
there, until finally the Indians were forced to
abandon it. In another case, Isabel Meadows said
that the local community knew Sargent “ordered