Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/449

 Rh "I am but a plain and unassuming person," he said to me. "My father did not leave me a mule nor a vara of ground. I worked for the padres at the San Gabriel Mission when I was a boy, and I had little opportunity to learn book knowledge." He disclaimed being an authority even on the events of his own fall and the encroachments of the Americans. " There are many," he said, "who have a better head for those things than I, and who will tell you better' than I." . ..."I was a just man, however. I treated the rich no better than the poor. Hence when they asked who was lo mas justo y honrado the most just and honest man—for Governor, it was answered with one accord, 'Don Pio Pico.'" There are differences of opinion about those ancient officials. Some of them have been charged with a whole-sale issue of land-patents after the American occupation, which patents ostensibly belonged to their respective administrations. Edwin M. Stanton, sent out to look into these matters by the Attorney-general of the United States, reported at the time that "the making of false grants, with the subornation of false witnesses to prove them, has become a trade and a business."

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1847, by which the war with Mexico was concluded, made valid and of full force whatever had been done before the American occupation. Spanish governors were numerous in those last days, and went in and out of office with extraordinary frequency, by reason of plots, counterplots, and the inability of the home government to enforce its own will. Alvarado, Carillo, Micheltorena, and Pio Pico reigned separately, or together, or by turns, in a evolutionary, confused, and overlapping way, which furnished excellent opportunity for fraud. One prefers, however, not to lin-