Pico Gavilán

 Pico Gavilán

Worked on this illustration for quite awhile. I needed a new tailgate wrap for my Tacoma. The old TwissArts wrap (see the rendering below) was getting kinda tired (I'd had it for five years or so), and quite frankly it was very hard to read. I knew I wanted to do something that would tie in to Old Alta California history, pre-statehood.

 

The first thought was to do a rendering of a favorite Californio pastime: a rousing bull and grizzly bear fight, common in the late 1700s and early 1800s. A bear was captured – this back in the days when grizzlies still roamed the area; the last one in California (and mind you, this is our state animal) was killed in the early 1910s – and thrown into a ring with a mad bull. Bets were taken to see which animal would make it away from the confrontation alive. Yeah, a pretty cruel and bloody sport... which is why my wife vetoed that idea. 

 

Hawks have always held a special interest for me. I love watching them soar, and it's a great treat to have one coast in past me on a walk and land within sight in a tree or on a lamp pole. They have adapted fairly well – maybe too well – to living in our urban areas and along our freeways. I see two or three almost every day on my walks with the crazy little dog. A trip to the Bay Area brings four or five sightings. From red tails, to kites, to sparrowhawks, I love seeing them all.

 

A way to honor both the hawks and some local history was literally in my sights daily. There's a peak in the Gabilan Range just east of my house. It was known as Hawk Peak, or Gavilán Peak, for all of the 1800s. It's been defaced in recent decades by the placement of several radio and TV broadcast towers. Its renaming in 1906 for famed (or infamous) explorer/surveyor John Charles Frémont also defaced it, in my opionion.

 

The Pathfinder, as he was known (mainly due to his wife's hugely popular published accounts of his travels with trusty scout – and Indian killer – Kit Carson), made his third excursion to the West Coast in 1846. He was under orders (presumably, as there is no written account of his evening meeting with President Polk before he departed) to rouse the U.S. citizens living in the Mexican principality into a revolt that would coincide with the military conflict over Texas, the Mexican American War, a move that would make the popular notion of our country's 'manifest destiny' a reality; something Polk campaigned on.

Not all folks in the country were in favor of the war. Abraham Lincoln, then a member of the House of Representatives, argued against it. And Ulysses Grant, in his later years, had this to say about the war:

 

"For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."

 

Anyway, Frémont disguising his foray as another surveying expedition, marched in with 60 or so armed men and set up camp in the Salinas Valley, not far from Monterey. General Castro, comandant of the Mexican presidio there, didn't take kindly to this armed campout and ordered the party out of Alta California.

 

The 'survey' party retreated to the hills on the east side of the valley and built a crude fort on one of the hilltops. Popular legend locates its site on Hawk Peak, but credible accounts put its location on a smaller nearby hill. Frémont's party was no match for the larger Mexican force, and he subsequently quit his position and headed for the Oregon territory, helping some U.S. ex-pats take out a Native American – Wintu – village on the way. After a bloody run-in with avenging Klamath Indians (some accounts call it a massacre on the part of the U.S. force), and upon hearing that the revolt was imminent, Frémont headed south again and pretty much acted like an ugly American, jailing Mariano Vallejo, a U.S. sympathizer. 

 

Much more information can be found on this 'hero' of the west; more than I care to relate. Suffice it for me to say that I wish that hill had not been named for this Frémont character.

 

And, yes, here I sit in present-day California, following in the steps of the Mexicans, who took it over from the Spanish, who enslaved the Ohlone, the Esselen, the Salinan, the Chumash, and so many more native people. 

 

Below is that tailgate wrap as installed on my Toyota...