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Free Soil, Unfree Labor [Cave Johnson Couts] (20 pages)
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Page: of 20
362 Pacific Historical Review
The Whipple expedition returned to San Diego in December,
and Couts resumed his own survey work for the town, helping to
map San Diego’s pueblo grant and name several of its new streets.
Throughout 1850 Couts invested heavily in local real estate and
rekindled his courtship of Ysidora Bandini. He also renewed his
quarrel with McKinstry, who eventually pulled rank and had Couts
hauled before a court martial. Although Couts won an acquittal in
February 1851, his days in the Army were numbered. On April 5,
1851, Couts married Ysidora Bandini and, determining to make his
future as a civilian in San Diego County, eventually resigned his
commission in October.’ .
It was a good move. Although his bride spoke no English and
he no Spanish, Couts’s marriage gave him an attractive wife, an
influential father-in-law, and entrée into California’s rancho aristocracy. Indeed, even more wealthy and powerful than Don Juan
Bandini was Couts’s new brother-in-law, Abel Stearns of Los Angeles, a Massachusetts-born ranchero who had married Bandini’s
daughter Arcadia in 1841. The owner of an enormous landed estate
centered upon Rancho Los Alamitos in present-day Long Beach,
Stearns welcomed Couts into the family by giving the newlyweds title
to Rancho Guajome, a 2,219-acre parcel just east of Mission San Luis
Rey. Before Dona Ysidora and “Don Cuevas” could move onto the
undeveloped property, however, an outbreak of war unexpectedly
detoured Couts into a second military career.
In November 1851 members of the tiny Cupeno Indian tribe of
central San Diego County rose up in a rebellion triggered by the
county’s attempt to impose taxes on them. Led by chief Antonio
Garra and his son, the Cupefo launched a successful initial raid
against the isolated rancho of J. J. Warner. The outnumbered Cupenio were soon routed, however, by the combined efforts of U.S.
Army troops, California state militiamen, and allied Cahuilla Indians. Garra was arrested by the Cahuilla and brought to trial before
a military court in January 1852.
Appointed judge advocate to prosecute Garra was state militia
Capt. Cave Couts, who had enlisted with the volunteer unit organized at San Diego by Maj. E. H. Fitzgerald.*‘ Ironically, Garra’s trial
23. Richard Coyer, “On Both Sides of the Law,” True West, 36 (Dec. 1989), 40-41.
24. Couts, who had only advanced from second to first lieutenant after eight years
in the Army, rose swiftly in the state militia from captain to colonel between November 1851 and January 1852.
Cave Couts and Indian Labor
pitted Couts against his recent nemesis, McKinstry, who was chosen
to direct the chief’s defense. Once again, Couts prevailed. Although
McKinstry secured an acquittal for Garra on the charge of treason,
the chief was convicted of murder on January 10 and condemned to
death. A ten-man firing squad carried out the sentencé at sundown
that same day. Couts, who witnessed the execution, wrote afterwards
to Stearns and reported with evident satisfaction that “Anto. Garra
now lies in his grave litterally [sic] riddled with balls.” Garra’s calm
defiance in the face of his executioners had outraged Couts, who
complained that
His obstinacy exceeded anything I ever witnessed. The old Padre asked him
not less than 20 times to ask pardon of all present for his manifold sins and
wickedness. He would not say a word, stood with his hat on, until they were
ready to blindfold him when he remarked that “he would ask pardon of all,
if they would pardon him.”?5
The suppression of the Cupeno Revolt enabled Couts to resume his business affairs in San Diego and to turn his attention to
the development of Rancho Guajome, where he finally settled in
March 1853. For the next two years, Couts supervised the construction of the elaborate ranch house in which he and Ysidora would
eventually raise their family of ten children. Make up of two enclosed courtyards and twenty rooms, including a schoolroom for
the children and a general store, or tienda, to serve the employees,
Couts’s sprawling adobe became one of the finest examples of hacienda architecture in California. With its four-feet-thick outer walls
and stylish red roof tiles appropriated from the ruins of Mission San
Luis Rey, the huge one-story home provided a fitting capitol for a
rapidly expanding domain.*°
In July 1853, almost a year prior to the commencement of work
on the adobe, Couts began stocking Guajome with cattle he drove
down from Los Angeles. Between 1854 and 1862 Couts dramatically
25. Couts to Abel Stearns, Jan. 11, 1852, box 18, Abel Stearns Papers, Huntington
Library. For accounts of the Cupeno Revolt, see George Harwood Phillips, Chiefs and Challengers: Indian Resistance and Cooperation in Southern California (Berkeley, 1975), 71-110,
and Brian McGinty, Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy (Stanford, Calif.,
1998), 215-225.
26. Iris W. Engstrand and Thomas Scharf, “Rancho Guajome: A California Legacy
Preserved,” Journal of San Diego History, 20 (Winter 1974), 1-14; Engstrand and Mary F.
Ward, “Rancho Guajome: An Architectural Legacy Preserved,” Journal of San Diego History,
41 (1995), 251-283; Susan M. Hector, “Mission Masonry at Rancho Guajome Adobe,”
Journal of San Diego History, 45 (1999), 246-259.
363