Old records show that Eugenia Silvas, daughter of one of the first leather jacket soldiers, owned the land on which these adobes stood. Her grandfather Jose Miguel and her father Jose Manuel were an important part of San Diego's early growth and settlement, as were the native Americans who lived here when the soldiers first arrived. The early adobe remains that have been found near the McCoy site represent a time when Spanish soldiers and American Indians started a new community together. (2)

Long before James McCoy and Eugenia Silvas built their homes, Indians lived in San Diego. Tribes spoke individual dialects and lived a loosely connected lifestyle, trading, hunting and gathering, but never merging into heavily populated areas. (3) The Kumeyaay, who called themselves Ipai north of the San Diego River and Tipai in the southeast, later came to be known by the Spaniards as Diegueno. Southern Kumeyaay lived in the area from Torrey Pines to Jamul, Tecate and beyond. Kumeyaay villages extended eastward into Mission Gorge. One of the largest settlements was in the Old Town area, part of which was known as the village of Cosoy. With its trees and water from the San Diego River, the valley attracted large numbers of people to the area. (4) Figure 2. Figure 2 shows the San Diego River in San Carlos.

The natives fished in the bay. They gathered grunion on the beach. Coastal Indians apparently harvested grunion during spawning runs, as noted by fossil grunion otoliths (tiny, bonelike particles or stony platelike structures in the internal ear of lower vertebrates) found in various Indian campsites. Indians also hunted small game, such as rabbits, and gathered wild cherries, wheat, and oats. Tribes fought for possession of oak groves, (Figure 3) the source of acorns, an important part of the Indians' diet. Later the oak trees disappeared. Figure 3 shows oak trees in the Mission Dam Regional Park in San Carlos. (5) To build a house, the Kumeyaay set two posts deep in the ground, then tied a beam between them. They covered the beam with fibers stripped from yucca leaves and tied reeds or brush to the beam. Outside their shelter they placed four posts to make a square and constructed a covered area called a "ramada."

Indians had names for each part of their territory according to what they saw at that spot. For example, Otay means a kind of weed that grows in one particular area. Jamacha is the name of a wild gourd, and a lot of them grow in the place of that name. The Kumeyaay words for Point Loma, mat kun, mean "black earth," because that is how the point looked from a distance. Jamul comes from the word hamull , which means means "greens used for food." (6)

Early Spanish explorers first encountered Ipai Indians as far back as 1542 when Cabrillo charted the Pacific coast. Figure 4. The portrait of Cabrillo in Figure 4 appears in William E. Smythe's History of San Diego. In 1602-03, Sebastian Viscaino sailed up the Pacific coast and charted present day Monterey Bay. (7) Spain's Inspector General Jose de Galvez energized the founding of Alta California in 1768. Galvez and Catholic Father Junipero Serra agreed that more than forts and cannons were needed to capture and hold the new territory. Pioneers must be recruited--families to seed the land and set down roots which would grow into communities. (8) Galvez set the tone with his reform which modified existing conditions of land ownership. This decree created townships by giving land to soldiers stationed in presidios near Catholic missions. (9) Figure 5.Today the San Diego Mission as seen in Figure 5 is also the site of a museum.

One such soldier was Jose Miguel Silvas, born about 1734. He lived at a presidial outpost in Sinaloa, New Spain. Jose married Pascuala Lugo, and they had a son, Jose Manuel. Not much in the way of contact with the outside world came to Jose and Pascuala's pueblo. But stories did circulate about Jose's comandante, Juan Bautista de Anza, and his search for a trail through the Colorado desert to Alta California and the Pacific Ocean. (10) New Spain's Viceroy Bucareli, who oversaw the presidio where Jose Miguel lived with his family, ordered his officers to explore Alta California and claim the territory for the Crown. Spanish councilors had determined that conquest of the Californias served the interests of the Empire and funded Captain Gaspar de Portola and Father Junipero Serra, whose dedication and religious zeal pushed exploration forward. (11) Portola and his soldiers recognized Monterey on their second march north and established a presidio there in 1770, five years before Jose Miguel Silvas would march to Alta California with Juan Bautista de Anza on Spain's first colonization expedition. (12) Anza's even-handed transactions with the natives and his organizational skills helped dispel la leyenda negra, the Black Legend of Spaniards' cowardly, decadent, fanatical and authoritarian treatment of the Indians. (13)

After the first four expeditions to Alta California took hold, and Father Serra planted the Catholic cross on a hill overlooking San Diego Bay, Bucareli gave Juan Bautista de Anza the go-ahead to blaze a trail north through present day New Mexico. Anza hand-picked the soldiers he wanted to go with him, based on their performance and experience in other campaigns. Jose Miguel was one of the soldiers chosen to go. (14) Anza asked Viceroy Bucareli's permission for Franciscan Priest Francisco Garces to travel with him because of the priest's exceptional ability to get along with the Indians. Garces had scouted unharmed through potentially dangerous territory inhabited by hostile Yuma and Pima Indians. According to Franciscan monk Pedro Font, Garces "appears to be but an Indian himself." He could squat with Indians for hours, eat their food and survive alone in the wilderness for as long as three months. Anza emphasized the importance of cooperation between his soldiers and the natives they would meet along the way. (15) Jose took his young son Manuel with him to Alta California, as was customary in Spanish families, to teach him to be a soldier like his father. Early in the journey father and son heard that an Indian from one of the largest Baja California tribes had joined the expedition. Sebastian Tarabel, a Cochimi escapee from San Gabriel mission on the Pacific, would lead Anza and Garces back over the route Tarabel had tracked. The soldiers also met Olleyquotequiebe, a Yuma chieftain, called Salvador Palma by the Spaniards. Palma ordered his men to build rafts for Anza's pioneers and cattle in 1775 so they could cross the Colorado River at its junction with the Gila River.

Jose Miguel helped escort eight pregnant women along the way and witnessed three childbirths. The soldiers saved all three infants, but one mother died after giving birth. Two hundred forty colonists left Sinaloa in 1775 and 242 arrived at the San Gabriel mission in January 1776. (16) Jose Miguel and the colonization party marched into the San Gabriel Mission settlement just after the San Diego Mission had been burned to the ground by almost a thousand Indians from tribes all over the Kumeyaay territory. He was one of twenty-five soldiers to accompany Anza in a search party to track down the leaders of the attack. They combed the area in cold, foggy weather for over a week until some of the Indian leaders were caught. Then Jose marched back with Anza to rejoin the rest of the expedition at Mission San Gabriel. Young Jose Manuel remained in San Gabriel and worked at the mission of San Juan Capistrano. (17)

The Silvas family had been separated by great distances since father and son left the Culiacan presidio in 1775. While Jose Miguel and his son traveled from one settlement to another in Alta California, Jose Miguel's wife Pascuala and his daughters remained in New Spain. Baptismal records show that Pascuala gave birth to Ana Maria Gertrudis Silvas in 1779 in Sinaloa. Pascuala had another son, Teodoro, father unknown, in Sonora sometime in 1780. (18)

As early as 1777 pioneer families had established the first town in Alta California. Fourteen families who came with Anza on the first colonization expedition from Sinaloa settled in a fertile valley near the southern tip of San Francisco Bay and founded San Jose. Then in 1781 more than sixty soldiers, colonists and their familes were organized in Sonora and Sinaloa by Fernando Rivera y Moncada and divided into two groups. One group crossed the Gulf of California by boat and walked up the Baja California peninsula to Mission San Gabriel. Some of these pioneers received plots of land late that year at California's second civilian town, Los Angeles. The other section of the contingency set out across the Anza trail in 1781 with Lieutenant Fernando Rivera in charge. Rivera stayed in Yuma to defend two settlements, Purisima Concepcion and San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuner, against an impending Indian attack, and sent the pioneers on with two of Anza's trusted soldiers, Sergeants Gonzalez and Limon. Within three days of the settler's departure, the Yumas destroyed the tiny settlements, killed Rivera, beat four missionaries to death with war clubs, including Father Garces, and killed many Spanish soldiers. As a result of the Yuma revolt of 1781 the Anza trail was closed. Colonists would have to go north in crowded packet boats across the Sea of Cortez. Soldiers and their families who made it through Yuma with Sgts. Gonzales and Limon continued north to Santa Barbara and founded a presidio there by 1782. For the newcomers, Alta California remained a sparsely populated and hostile environment (19)

From mission to mission, outpost to outpost, Jose Miguel continued his military service. He was a founding member of the San Francisco presidio and served at San Gabriel, San Juan Capistrano and San Diego mission outposts. As with other soldiers in San Jose and Los Angeles, Jose Miguel sought to build a home and raise a family. He eventually settled in San Diego. (20) By December 1784 when Jose's name appeared on the garrison list, the population of San Diego was becoming relatively stable. Jose Miguel Silvas died in 1789 and was buried at the San Diego Presidio. Figure 6. The San Diego Archaeological Project has uncovered much of the presidio, as seen in Figure 6. (21) Meanwhile son Manuel had married Gertrudis Camacho at Rosario, Baja California. Their names were among those of 190 people listed in the San Diego Presidio census of 1790. (22) Woven into their lives together was the decline of the presidio and expansion of Pueblo San Diego. After Gertrudis died, Manuel would marry Tecla Regalado, a Kumeyaay neophyte from the San Diego Mission. Figure 7. Present day marriage ceremonies are held at the San Diego Mission in the chapel pictured in Figure 7.

By 1791, the presidio had two hundred settlers, a garrison of leatherjacket soldiers, and a public school where boys were taught to read and write. (23) As early as 1802, the year Manuel and Gertrudis's daughter Eugenia was born, there were huts outside the presidio. Pablo Vejar, one of the presidio school boys, recounted his run home outside the presidio walls. His classmates had accused him of saying bad words about the teacher. He was sent to a separate room where boys received azotes, or lashes, for travesuras, disobedience. Pablo said:

"Arranque para casa de mi padre que estaba fuera de las
murallas del presidio a pedirle socorro, porque ya
estaba causado de recibir tanto castigo..."

("I set off at a run toward my father's house which was
outside the walls of the presidio to beg him for help,
because already I was caused to receive so much
punishment...") (24 )

What Pablo was describing was the beginning of a process of steadily expanding development outside the presidio, down the slopes and into Mission Valley. Father Serra planted the first palm tree at the foot of presidio hill in 1769. Figure 8. (The date palm in today's Old Town San Diego pictured in Figure 8 stands southwest of the Robinson Rose building.) Spanish soldiers made the first gardens. The first house in pueblo San Diego was most likely a tule hut fashioned of willow branches and brush like those of Cosoy village Indians. Old Town resident Blas Aguilar remembered the Silvas family rancheria, one of the first gardens outside the presidio. Other soldiers--Andres Ybarra, Ignacio Lopez, Miguel Blanco and Pedro Garcia--also tended their vegetables along with Manuel. Each man plowed with a tool made from the fork of a tree with a flat piece of iron fastened to it. Short sickles were used to harvest grain. (25) (Corn and squash grow in an Old Town garden today, seen in Figure 9.) Figure 9.

One way or another Manuel and his fellow soldiers had to make ends meet. Food was scarce. The Spanish government stopped sending money to soldiers and missionaries after the Mexican war for independence broke out in 1810. In exchange for food, clothing and supplies for the soldiers, the monks sold cowhides and tallow to trading ships that stopped along the California coast with greater and greater frequency. With Spain no longer in control, the way was clear for ships from all over the world. The first ship to enter San Diego harbor was a small brig, Betsy, which anchored in 1800 to gather wood and water. (26)

The hide trade opened in 1822 with the arrival of the Boston merchant ship Sachem.. Boston merchant ships brought guns, hardware, toilet articles, cotton goods, boots and shoes to trade for hides. Russian, British and French vessels came too, creating quite an international atmosphere. Everyone wanted to see the ship's cargo, and ladies were taken out in boats to look over the silk sashes and shawls from China, and the perfumes and liquors from France. (27)

During these years from 1800 to 1822, the presidio declined. No soldier or officer received any pay. Missions supported the soldiers and their families with food and cloth. Burgeoning families filled every nook and cranny of the apartment-like quarters on the north and south sides of the plaza. Figure 10. Many such rooms have been revealed at the presidio archaeological site shown in Figure 10. Minimal furnishings and plank beds or adobe benches stood next to chests or recessed cabinets used for storage. Between apartments were yard areas used for outdoor cooking. (28) Shortage of space and lack of funds drove the soldiers outside the presidio walls. Sometime after 1802 the Silvas family owned a plot in Pueblo San Diego adjacent to Juan Maria Osuna's lot. Many pioneers of this period owned two properties, one in town, the other in the "suburbs." Ranchos were for raising cattle, an important part of the hide business which had its heyday in the 1820s, '30s and '40s. From July to October slaughtering of cattle went on. Workers skinned, then dipped hides from two to four days in large vats of brine. Next, hides were spread out on the beach, dried and hung on ropes to be beaten until all the dust and sand were removed. Finally the hides were stored in warehouses until ships arrived to load them. Cattlemen walked from residences near the bay down to La Playa where they oversaw each day's work. (29) With the rise of the hide trade came increasing demands for land. After the Mexican Revolution of 1821, government officials pushed for separation of church and state, and independent land ownership for retired soldiers. (30)

Pressures toward secularization squeezed Jose Manuel and other presidio soldiers in a conflict between missionaries and the government. Additional conflict arose between his family affiliation with Indians through intermarriage and his duty as a soldier to protect the Catholic fathers from Indian attack. Caught in the middle of the hurly burly between Franciscans and neophytes, government officials and missionaries, Jose Manuel continued to protect church officials after he retired. For example, in 1821 he escorted Father Mariano Payeras, a visiting Franciscan Prefect, through Indian territory on an inland excursion east of San Diego Mission. Father Payeras had heard that large numbers of "pagans" lived in the area, and he wanted to find suitable sites for another mission. Figure 11. (Figure 11 shows an area of Mission Dam Regional Park.) Yet chances of new missions opening at that point in time were slim to none, what with Governor Luis Arguello's first orders to secularize. (31) The Silvas family acquired the San Dieguito ranch in 1831 and built adobes on the property. This rancho was later transferred to the Osuna family, in-laws of Eugenia's sister Maria Augustine. The Silvas-Osuna spread lay adjacent to the Encinitas rancho of Andres Ybarra, Eugenia Silvas's brother-in-law by her marriage to her second husband, Calixto Ybarra, a retired presidio soldier who was of mixed Indian heritage from the village of Sinaloa. (32)

After Governor Figueroa ordered confiscation of the contents of Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1834, Manuel was one of four commissioners assigned to the Asistencia to help Father Zalvidea draw up an inventory of the mission's contents. Ex-presidio soldiers and their descendants, like members of the Silvas family, applied to the governor for sections of the San Juan Capistrano land. (33) Eugenia Silvas took part in major turning points of California history. She lived under Spanish Colonial, Mexican, and American rule. When she married presidio soldier Diego Lisalde in 1816, many soldiers had left the military outpost. With no annual pay from the Spanish government and minimal food and clothing from the missionaries, soldiers continued to protect the Franciscans and work the small lots granted to them near the San Diego River. Eugenia's second marriage to Calixto Ybarra in 1830 took place at the height of Pueblo San Diego's political independence. Later on, Indian attacks and decreases in military personnel caused a decline in the town's population, but life went on at the ranchos. (34) Eugenia's aunt Balbaneda married Francisco Serrano. Their son Leandro was majordomo at the San Juan Capistrano Mission in 1828. Leandro and his wife occupied Temescal Ranch, and their son Jose Antonio owned a house near the Estudillos in Pueblo San Diego. Jose Antonio later served under General Pico in the Mexican-Amerian War and fought in the battle of San Pasqual. (35)

In the prime of Eugenia's life, San Diego became a pueblo. In 1822 the Mexican flag was raised and the hide trade opened. By 1829 the town was prospering to the tune of $34,000 from all the commerce brought in through selling hides. Its citizens participated in self-government through the ayuntamiento, town council, western equivalent of the New England town meeting. Eugenia's father Manuel worked on municipal business (negocios subalternos) in 1836. (36) Eugenia managed two households, one in rancho San Dieguito, the other in Old Town. Pueblo San Diego became the hub of social life, commerce and politics. The Silvases, like other presidio families, graduated from cramped living quarters in tiny garrison apartments to spacious ranch living. They were landholders, craftsmen, and civil servants. They divided their time between the San Dieguito rancho and their adobes on the outskirts of pueblo San Diego. (37) Eugenia's grandson Nicasio shared the Machado y Silvas home with Juana Antonia Machado de Silvas in Old Town. Other Silvases went on to marry into the Alvarado and Sepulveda families, among others. (38)

Beneath a parking lot in Old Town today dwells a storehouse of information about the Silvas family history ( Figure 12 shows some of the artifacts discovered at the McCoy site, including pottery fragments from China). It tells us about a little-explored time of transition and social change in San Diego. (39) Since 1969, when Old Town became a state park, certain buildings around the central plaza have been reconstructed or rebuilt to appear as they did in the American period. However, many buildings from Old Town's earlier history remain hidden under the streets and parking lots on the edge of the state park. The recently discovered adobes of Eugenia Silvas represent this neglected history. The story of the Silvas family is an important chapter in the history of Old Town San Diego.