Bears Against Vallejo

The US Conquest of California in the small town of Sonoma, north of San Francisco. There, in the early morning of June 6, 1846, General Mariano G. Vallejo was rudely awakened in his home by thirty armed Americans. The Americans’ homemade flag displayed the image of a grizzly bear—the symbol of their Bear Flag Republic. To the Mexicans, the grizzly was a thief, a stealer of their cattle. They called the armed intruders Los Osos, “the bears.”

Vallejo represented Mexican authority, and even though he was no longer on active duty, the Americans had come to “arrest” him and carry him to Sacramento as their prisoner. They entered his home, with its handsome mahogany chairs, fine piano, and large library. Vallejo offered them wine before he went to his room to change clothes for the journey.

Unlike his captors, Vallejo had been born in California. He belonged to the elite, educated class and owned a vast estate, where he lived with his wife, the mother of sixteen children. Vallejo’s brother, sister, and Anglo brother-in-law also lived nearby. Los Osos took Vallejo’s brother and brother-in-law prisoner, too.

Two months later Vallejo was freed and allowed to return home. He wrote to a friend that more than a thousand cattle, six hundred horses, and many other valuable possessions had been stolen in his absence. Later, after California came firmly under US rule, Vallejo fought to keep his land. He lost the title to one land claim in court. He battled all the way to the US Supreme Court to keep the other claim, near Petaluma. Although Vallejo won the legal battle, squatters had settled on his land and refused to move. They also drove away his laborers and burned his crops.

Vallejo was forced to sell off pieces of his land. His estate, which had once covered more than 100,000 acres, shrank to 280 acres. Bitter over the loss of the land, he cursed the new order: “The language now spoken in our country, the laws which govern us, the faces we encounter daily are those of the master of the land, and of course antagonistic to our interests and rights, but what does that matter to the conqueror? He wishes his own well-being and not ours!”

While fighting for his land, Vallejo also took part in the politics of the new state. He was elected to the California legislature in 1850. That same year, he donated land to be used for the new state capital, although the land proved unsuitable and the capital was built elsewhere.