“Let’s just hang her and get it over with!”
Those aren’t words anyone would really want to hear, especially if you happened to be Josefa Segovia, the woman who had suddenly found herself surrounded by an angry mob of hundreds of hung-over Sierra Nevada miners and who was the target of the deadly venom with which the words were being shouted. “She killed a man, and she admits it!” Josefa had indeed killed a man. She had pulled a very large knife from beneath her skirt and plunged it into the man’s chest. She had done so deliberately, and with more than a little satisfaction. One might even say that there was a marked zeal in her attitude. And she freely admitted to doing so. “He was my friend, and he laid there bleeding out on the ground while that whore just stood and laughed!” This was only partly true. The man did indeed fall to the ground and bleed to death within minutes of Josefa giving him a taste of her blade. But Josefa wasn’t a whore, and she didn’t laugh. It was the fourth of July in the year 1851; the first Independence Day to be celebrated in California since the brief Bear Flag Revolt had forced a split with Mexico and an equally hasty vote had solidified California into a union with the United States. Californians were in a festive mood as they celebrated this special Fourth of July, and those who lived in the small towns of the Sierra Nevada Mountains had largely been making it a week-long festivity. Any excuse to drink and stay drunk was welcomed as a respite from the hard work of the mines and the logging camps. So that by the time the actual holiday itself rolled around it was all getting to be a bit of a blur for a lot of the revelers. Even the tiny mining community of Downieville high up in Sierra County had a dozen gambling halls and over two dozen saloons to serve its small population of miners, teamsters, and woodcutters, and those men had been busy working hard to maintain their inebriated state of mind for twenty-four hours a day, and for the past several days. Josefa Segovia was one of that small population of Downieville, although in this tiny community she was called not by her real name but rather known as the Mexican woman, Juanita. White people of European descent were almost always in the majority in the Sierra communities. They looked down with comfortable superiority on Chinese, Blacks, Mexicans, along with anyone else who didn’t look quite right, and often called these people whom they didn’t understand by a few common names which they had heard frequently. Juanita was such a case. As Josefa had made her way north from Sonora in Mexico and through the mountains and valleys of California she had matured quickly and had seen much that was wondrous – buckets full of gold; farms that stretched as far as the eye could see; trees so large that it took men weeks to cut just one of them down. She had already lived a lifetime in her brief twenty years and so she adapted to the patronizing sobriquet of Juanita with a dismissive shrug, not really caring what others called her. That, however, was soon to change. Juanita was often seen in one of the saloons in town, a place called Craycroft’s. She liked to sit and watch the flow of money and gold change hands as the man she loved – Jose – was employed there and dealt cards for a living. Jose was known as an honest gambler who steadily won money for the House but never cheated his fellow players at the table. It was generally believed that Juanita and Jose were not married, although they did live together in a small shack near the busy heart of Downieville. Juanita and Jose were following this usual pass-time of cards in Craycroft’s on the Fourth of July of 1851 when a group of rowdy men made their way into the crowded bar. One of those drunks was a man by the name Fred Cannon. He was from Scotland, and his friends called him Jock. Jock was one of those individuals whose celebratory excesses had probably extended by this time far beyond what could be called reasonable. Had he been alive in modern times his friends would probably have taken his keys from him, driven him home, and dumped him into bed long before they had found and explored this many saloons. But this was 1851, and those friends instead only urged him into further excessive and obnoxious behavior. So when Jock entered Craycroft’s and saw a pretty young Mexican woman who was apparently sitting all by herself he thought that he was just the man to alleviate her loneliness. So he walked up behind her and by way of introduction dropped one of his meaty paws onto her bare shoulder. Juanita, as has been observed, had seen a lot in her brief life, and she had learned when she was a very young girl not to suffer unruly behavior from anyone, not even from those Superior Gringos. So when that hand grabbed her from behind she bolted upright and spun to face the man with a knife in her hand. Her slender five foot body had seemed deceptively docile to Jock and he froze in surprise, staring at the blade which had appeared as if by magic in her hand, apparently wondering how things had gone so bad so quickly. His friends had enough sense to grab him and pull him away from Juanita, saving his life – for the time being, at least. Jock backed away, muttering under his breath at the (in his mind) unfriendly Mexican spitfire who he could straighten out if he only had the chance. But at the ensuing trial Jock’s friends remained loyal to his memory and swore that no bad language had ever passed Jock’s lips, nor were any inappropriate intentions ever on his mind. Their one-sided memories of the encounter were never called into question, despite the amount of alcohol they had obviously consumed and which may have perhaps influenced their judgment just a little. Later that night, in the small hours of the morning of July fifth, Jock and his friends finally left the saloon after drinking up their courage and stumbled down the street to the home of Juanita and Jose. Jock began to pound on the door and shout. He pounded so hard that he broke the door off its hinges and it fell to the floor and he stepped inside, shouting abuse at the woman who had spurned his advances and made him back down at knifepoint in front of hundreds of men. Once again Jock’s friends came to the rescue and dragged him away from Juanita, back out the door and down the street. And once again, at the trial, they stood by their dead friend by swearing under oath that Jock had merely knocked politely on the door and that it had fallen in all by itself. But a deputy sheriff who had investigated the incident testified that Jock did indeed beat down the door, after which Jock barged into the house and shouted abuse at Juanita before his friends could pull him away. Jock, according to his friends, was in reality a wonderful person but just sadly misunderstood. Later that morning of July fifth, after the sun was up and people were staggering about town with hangovers and splitting headaches, Jock and his group of loyal friends once again made their way to Juanita’s house. Jock’s friends swore that he went there to express his regret for his earlier behavior. This time Jose answered the door. ‘Answered the door’ is perhaps not quite accurate, as the door wasn’t there any more, Jock having pounded it into pieces a few hours before. Jose was angry and demanded an apology from Jock as well as payment for the door. Jock’s apology consisted of refusing to pay for anything. When Juanita then made her appearance Jock proceeded to shout at her and called her a whore. She told him where he could go and spun on her heel to head back into the house. Jock followed her in, pushing Jose aside, shouting abuse and obscenities at her as they both briefly disappeared from view. Just seconds later Jock stumbled back out, grasping at a gaping hole in his chest which was spurting blood. He fell to the ground and the life bled out of him in seconds. Jock’s friends quickly raised the cry of murder throughout the town and a crowd of several hundred agitated and hung over men soon gathered. Both Jose and Juanita were bound and then locked into a small cabin while the crowd loudly debated what should be done. As there was no judge or court in the town of Downieville the crowd quickly decided that Miner’s Law would henceforth be in effect, and they proceeded to prepare for a makeshift trial before justice was meted out. A judge was chosen from the crowd as was a jury of twelve men; men who had apparently sobered up to a reasonable extent. Prosecuting and defense attorneys were appointed and the trial got under way. Out of all these hundreds of men who gathered to watch the spectacle of instant justice taking its rapid yet erratic course there was only one man in the crowd who had the courage to speak up and say that Juanita should be brought to the county seat for a proper and legal trial with a real judge and a sober jury. The crowd paused only briefly to beat the man senseless before getting on with the (il)legal proceedings. As the trial proceeded the jury heard testimony both from Jock’s friends as well as from other witnesses regarding the initial encounter at Craycroft’s as well as the late night breaking down of the door, and the subsequent ‘apology’ which resulted in Jock’s sudden death. Juanita spoke in her own defense, saying that Jock had approached her on more than one occasion wanting sex and that she had each time rebuffed him. She said she was afraid of him and always kept a knife tucked in her garter or beneath her pillow for her defense. She freely admitted to plunging the knife into his heart, even though no one had actually seen her do it. Josefa had had enough – Jock had pawed her in a saloon; Jock had continually pursued her for sex; Jock had categorized and trivialized her as a generic Mexican woman by the name of Juanita. Jock had broken down the door of her house in the middle of the night and shouted abuse at her. And when he called her a whore and bullied his way into her home a second time she had simply had enough. She’d had too much. So she killed him. As court recessed the town’s population retired to the various drinking establishments to discuss the heinous crime of a lowly Mexican woman killing a popular white man and its probable outcome. Prodigious amounts of whiskey were hastily consumed as the men sought to collectively bolster their courage for the deed they all knew was soon to come. Then court was reconvened. Juanita’s defense attorney brought in a doctor to testify that he had examined Juanita and that she was pregnant, and that no punishment should be meted out to her lest the innocent baby suffer as well. When another doctor was brought in to counter that claim the court paused briefly as the first doctor was instantly and literally run out of town for trying to save the Mexican woman. At least he wasn’t beaten to a pulp as had been the earlier protestor who had tried to help her. Jock’s body was then put on display and everyone lined up to look at the bloody hole in his chest, and they angrily muttered about how this should not have happened to such a nice guy; a man who had innocently celebrated the birth of his country – a little too loudly, perhaps – but who had done his best to apologize for any inappropriate behavior on his part. Seeing the body was enough for the jury. Those twelve sober men of good moral character within minutes returned with a verdict of Guilty, and the judge concurred. Juanita was sentenced to be hung that same afternoon. Jose was found to be Not Guilty, but was told that he had to leave town anyway as they really didn’t want his kind of undesirable people in the upright and moral town of Downieville. While Juanita languished in a locked room awaiting her fate, men hastily nailed a beam across two posts that protruded from the top of a bridge that crossed the North Fork of the Yuba River in Downieville. From that beam they hung a hangman’s noose, then thoughtfully added a small set of steps so that Juanita would have easy access to it. About four o’clock on the afternoon of July fifth, 1851, the same day that she had stabbed and killed her abuser and a mere two hours after her trial had finished, Juanita stepped onto the bridge. She mounted those steps and obligingly put the noose over her own neck. Juanita then turned to the brave men who had sentenced her to death and said that, given the same circumstances, she would act in exactly the same manner again. Then she stepped out and died. They let Josefa Segovia hang from the bridge for twenty-two minutes. If her neck was broken by the fall, then death would have been instantaneous. If not and she had to strangle, then ninety seconds would have sufficed. Yet they extended her stay at the rope’s end for a far longer time, not so much making certain of her death as taking satisfaction in the sight of the woman they saw as Juanita the Mexican Whore receiving Miner’s Justice for the murder of a popular man who most likely richly deserved exactly what he had received from the flashing knife wielded by Juanita’s quick hand. But on that same afternoon someone else also died; a twenty year old woman from Sonora in Mexico named Josefa, a diminutive little woman whose only crime had been to show the courage to defend herself when threatened; a woman who nobody really knew except Jose, the man who loved her. Jose was allowed to stay long enough to watch Juanita hang for twenty-two minutes on that bridge. Then he was escorted out of town. In a final bit of irony, or Miner’s Humor, Juanita and Jock were buried side by side so that their spirits might torment each other throughout all of eternity.
1 Comment
Sam
6/2/2018 08:36:37 am
Great narrative! Do you view this interpretation as authoritative or partially fictionalized? I haven't seen many sources that place Josefa at the saloon on the night of the 4th and having an encounter with Fred/Jock/Joe Cannon prior to the door incident. I use her story with my students and would love to see sources you've used!
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AuthorWith a degree in Anthropology and an avid interest in history, Tim Christensen has lived in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for many years. He has no cell phone or television, but manages, when not chopping firewood or shoveling snow, to keep himself entertained with a library of several thousand books. Archives
July 2017
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