Page 10 - delcastillo1980

California History

her bed until Blanca got married. Guadalupe was a Camulos for three million dollars to a Swiss albino,
mission Indian also given to the del Valles by a August Rubel, who hoped to explore for oil. The
Saboba Indian chief 29 A variation of this theme was Fantasy Heritage was thus cashed in for a handsome
the opinion that Ramona had been inspired by a love profit.
affair between an American girl and a local Indian Although Camulos was gone, the del Valles, and
named Ramon Corralez. Forbidden to marry they Reginaldo in particular, continued to act out the
had run off into the mountains where Ramon had drama of the past. Reginaldo gave countless speeches
been murdered for horse stealing. for local historical associations, chambers of com-
In the spring of 1884 Charles Fletcher Lummis merce and Rotary Clubs in Ventura, Los Angeles and
walked into Los Angeles after a cross country hike Riverside counties. He continued to meet with the
from Ohio, via the Southwest. He was to play a descendants of the Jayhawkers during their annual
major role in developing the Fantasy Heritage celebrations of their rescue by Ygnacio at Camulos in
beyond a sterile debate over places, names and dates. 1849. Reginaldo and his daughter, Lucretia, were im-
A Harvard educated son of a Methodist minister, he portant sponsors of John S. McGroarty's Mission
got a job with the Los Angeles Times and fell in love Play. This was a romantic dramatization of Ramona
with the California past. 30 He became a good friend performed yearly at Mission San Gabriel. A number
of the del Valles and entertained them frequently. of Californios, including the del Valles held stock in
When he discovered that Mission San Fernando was the Mission Play Association and loaned money for
being used as a hog farm, he enlisted Reginaldo and productions. 32 For years Lucretia played Ramona
the family to head a committee to restore it. Lummis and Reginaldo drove over visiting political digni-
and Reginaldo founded the Landmarks Club in 1887 taries to see her perform. 33 The Mission Play ran for
to preserve old California places. Lummis built his 20 years and won a commendation from the Pope
home, El Arisal, in Arroyo Seco, a structure that is a because it portrayed Franciscan missionaries in a
mixture of Eastern masonry with California shapes, good light.
and set about to preserve the fast fading California The Fantasy Heritage played no small part in
past. After a period of temporary blindness and Reginaldo 's long political career. When he first ran
nervous exhaustion he recuperated at Camulos where for Congress in 1884 the Democrats touted him as
he fell in love withJuventino del Valle's daughter. In a the noblest expression of the Spanish race. The San
gesture befitting the novel Ramona, the family forbid Francisco Golden Sun described him as ". . . born
the marriage, not because "Don Carlos" was an In- under a Southern Sun, tanned in Spanish hue by its
dian but because he was a divorced man. Lummis semi-tropic rays, with hair as black as a raven's wing,
later wrote, ". . . The old folks were like parents to with eyes dark and piercing, sparkling like an eagle's
me. The romance, the traditions, the customs of ... a true child of Southern California. The blood of
Camulos are all familiar and all dear to me - not Spaniards flows in his veins, royal blood, and he is
merely because they are Camulos but because that one of the descendants of the native Alta Californians
was the Last Stand of the patriarchal life of Spanish who achieved distinction. " 34 Reginaldo's defeat in
California, which was so beautiful to the world for this election proved that there were practical limits to
more than a century. " 31 romanticism. His opponent saw through the Spanish
In 1924 the del Valle corporation sold Rancho claptrap, called him a Mexican and maintained

IO The Santa Clara River Valley with Rancho Camulos in the foreground.