How the West (L.A., At Least) Was Really Won

Have you been watching “The West” on KCET? That’s the new, eight-part documentary by Ken Burns, the man who turned the American Civil War into a ratings bonanza.

Funny, but when I first channel surfed into “The West,” I thought it was a rerun. Turns out that what I’d already seen, just last year, was “The Way West,” by Ken Burns’ brother Ric. The Burns brothers collaborated on “The Civil War.” Maybe Ric got mad because Ken got all the credit.

Anyway, Allan E. Edwards figures that both Burnses could use some help. A recent past president of the Valley College Historical Museum Society, Edwards is an amateur historian who has written self-published “micro-histories” of Sherman Oaks, Encino and Franklin Canyon. The Burnses, he believes, have made the common American mistake of neglecting the importance of Mexican history--and especially the Battle of Cahuenga, fought on Feb. 20, 1845.

A Boy Scout monument in the Cahuenga Pass near Woodrow Wilson Drive suggests it was fought near there. Not true, Edwards says. The battle took place in what is now Sherman Oaks. And it was, he claims, “the most important single event to ever happen in Los Angeles.”

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Twain is a name that evokes the West, but that wasn’t the reason Edwards chose Twain’s coffee shop at Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue for this history lesson. The way he sees it, this intersection is where the armies organized by Californios ranchers prepared to do battle with the unlikely force that represented the Mexico City government.

The traffic was whizzing past. But up there by Hughes market, Edwards figures, is the high ground where the ranchers put their two small cannons. Back then, remember, Ventura Boulevard was known as El Camino Real, and it was just wide enough for a wagon.

If documentarists ever dare tackle the history of the San Fernando Valley, Edwards could serve among the sage authorities. He looks the part. He is, at 69, a tall, flinty fellow with intense brown eyes and a voice that betrays his Oklahoma roots.

He was just a boy when his family came to Los Angeles, settling near another intersection that would achieve a historic distinction--Florence and Normandie. Before settling in Sherman Oaks, he would serve in the infantry during the Korean War and earn a doctorate in psychology--experiences, he says, that have helped him in his investigation into the Battle of Cahuenga.

And this is his lesson:

First, the name. These days, people hear “the Battle of Cahuenga” and assume it happened near the pass. That’s just modern bias. Way back when the battle took place, this part of the Santa Monica Mountains was known as the Cahuengas, after native people who lived in the area.

Second, some political context. Spain had already established the mission system and provided land grants to major ranchers. Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, but California remained as remote to Mexico City’s authority as it had to Spain. The missions had become wealthy in land and holdings, which Mexico’s revolutionary government wanted to dispense to the native tribes. The Californios eyed the mission holdings for themselves.

In 1842, Mexico City dispatched Manuel Micheltorena to Monterey to serve as governor and keep tabs on the ranchers, including Juan B. Alvarado and Pio Pico in Southern California. Their resistance to Mexican authority ultimately prompted Micheltorena to march down with an army that numbered in the hundreds.

This wasn’t the most loyal or motivated fighting force ever assembled. Micheltorena’s men included “300 convicts released from prison on the condition that they soldier, 100 drilled Apache mercenaries and Johann Sutter (gold would be discovered on his land later) with perhaps 50 foreign, plunder-oriented gunfighters.”

Alvarado, meanwhile, marched his vaqueros and mercenaries up from the pueblo of Los Angeles to meet them. The night before they would meet, the Californios forces camped north of Cahuenga Pass and Micheltorena’s army bivouacked at Encino Springs. Scouts ensured there would be no surprises.

Micheltorena had three cannons to Alvarado’s two. He set his up in a defensive position about a mile west of Alvarado’s, about where the Ralphs supermarket is today.

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Cahuenga isn’t remembered alongside Waterloo and Gettysburg and Midway among the great, pivotal battles in the history of warfare. The prospect of death was real, but nobody thought they had a cause worth dying for. Soldiers hunkered down in the gulches and many fled into the hills. Americans shouting across the lines discovered that they were fighting friends. There was plenty of cannon and gun fire, but when the battle was over, the casualties amounted to one dead horse and perhaps a wounded mule.

To save his life, Micheltorena promised to go home to Mexico. The Californios won and Pico became governor.

At this point Edwards likes to do something that professional historians loathe. He likes to ask: “What if . . . ?”

What if Micheltorena’s cannons had cut down a couple of vaqueros? How quickly would the Californios have surrendered? What if the reports back to Washington, D.C., suggested that a strong Mexican army held California?

Maybe, just maybe, Edwards said, President James K. Polk wouldn’t have sent his forces into California. Maybe the Californios wouldn’t have capitulated to Cmdr. John C. Fremont at Campo de Cahuenga in 1847 and maybe there would have been no Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico after that. Maybe Lincoln wouldn’t have had the gold and silver that was needed to finance the Civil War. . . .

So maybe the course of world events was dictated on that extraordinary day in the Valley.

What’s even more extraordinary is the way Allan E. Edwards, with tongue in cheek, still manages to keep a straight face.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Please include a phone number.

Maybe the course of world events was dictated on that extraordinary day in the Valley.