She was hanged in California 168 years ago
DOWNIEVILLE – The young Mexican woman walked to her death with a firm step.
Her face betrayed no fear as she climbed the ladder to a scaffold on a bridge overlooking the Yuba River. The afternoon sun sparkled on the waterway as it wound through pine-shrouded mountains.
The night before, hundreds had celebrated the Fourth of July. Now, they watched, silent, as the woman pushed back two plaits of black hair from her shoulders. She placed the noose around her neck.
When they called for her last words, she declared, fearless, “I would do the same again if I was so provoked.”
Here in this small town in the northern reaches of the Sierra Nevada, the legend of Josefa lives on more than 160 years after her death. Her saga, cobbled together through historical news articles, books and history buffs, is largely unknown even among California’s Mexican American population but has riveted young and old here in the middle of Trump country.
A neighboring town staged a play about Josefa’s trial; an opera in San Francisco gave her a spotlight. A psychic claims to converse with her. But much about her is unknown, including her last name. A plaque commemorating her death refers to her as “Juanita” – a slur people in this gold-mining community once used for any Mexican woman.
Downieville and the surrounding area’s fascination with the story of Josefa predates the era of #Metoo and modern-day hostility toward anyone and anything Mexican, before the El Paso mass shooting and a president conjuring up Mexican “rapists” and drug dealers to get elected. But in their own way, the town’s 200 residents have long debated the role Josefa’s gender and ethnicity played in her fate.
Only a couple of years had passed since the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought an end to the Mexican-american War and gave the modern-day American Southwest to the conquering Yanquis.
Downieville became a bustling Gold Rush town of thousands, most of them men _ Mexicans, Chileans, English, French and Chinese. The town had two saw mills and a theater. In letters to his sister, one miner described it as “one of the richest mining towns in the state.”
Josefa was one of the few women living among the miners. The town’s founder, William Downie, said she was known throughout the settlement.
“The lustre in her eyes shone in various degrees, from the soft dove-like expression of a love-sick maiden, to the fierce scowl of an infuriated lioness, according to her temper, which was the only thing not well balanced about her,” Downie wrote after her death.
In the summer of 1851, California celebrated the Fourth of July – the first since becoming a state. The streets of Downieville were filled with parades, bands and heavy drinking.
One of those celebrating was an Australian miner known in news articles and Downie’s book, “Hunting for Gold,” as Cannon. After the festivities, he stumbled down the street before reaching the home Josefa shared with a man named Jose, believed by some to be her husband.
Cannon crashed through the couple’s door. But no one agrees on what happened next.
As an 1851 Marysville Daily Herald newspaper article recounts it, Cannon entered the house and “created a riot and disturbance.” She was so outraged, the article said, that when he arrived the next morning to apologize, she stabbed him in the heart.
But the Steamer Pacific Star, a San Francisco newspaper, had a different version of the story. A doctor said Cannon came to his office about 7 a.m. the day of his death to ask for medicine. While in the doctor’s office, Jose, who lived next door, confronted Cannon about the door.
The two exited the house together, where they were met by Josefa. Soon after, Cannon and Josefa exchanged words in Spanish. The doctor said Cannon offered “pleasant” replies.
Jose later testified that Cannon called him and Josefa names, according to the Steamer Pacific Star account; when Cannon went to enter the house, Josefa stabbed him.
Both Josefa and Jose were taken into custody. Their trial took place the same day.
The Steamer Pacific Star reporter, who described Josefa as pretty, “so far as the style of swarthy Mexican beauty is so considered,” said she “presented more the appearance of one who would confer kindness than one who thirsted for blood.”
The jury found her guilty of murder, and she was ordered to die by hanging – two hours later. Jose was found not guilty but was warned to leave town within 24 hours. As Josefa prepared for her hanging, the Steamer Pacific Star reporter wrote, she extended her hand to those around her and to each said, “Adios, senor.”
On a Friday morning this fall, half a dozen students sit in a Downieville Elementary and JuniorSenior High School classroom. They’re taking Spanish online because their teacher is not fluent enough to instruct them himself.
They offer up their own theories.
“Wasn’t she assaulted by him or something and then she killed him out of defense?” a high school student asks.
“I thought she killed him because he cheated on her,” another volunteers.
Most of the students grew up either in the town – which is majority white – or surrounding area, and the versions of the story they’d heard throughout their lives have become muddled as if in a game of telephone.
“What I heard is that some guy grabbed her in the bar and out of defense she stabbed him,” says Esmeralda Nevarez, the school’s student body president.
Two years ago, Esmeralda, who was born in the Mexican state of Durango, wrote a paper for her
English class titled, “The Hanging of Juanita.” Esmeralda was drawn to the story of Josefa because of their shared background. The 16-year-old noted in her report – which earned her an A – that racial tension may have been a factor in Josefa’s death.
“The war had just ended and sentiments between Mexicans and all these white settlers that were coming in were pretty bad,” said Maythee Rojas, a professor of Chicano and Latino studies at Cal State Long Beach who has written about Josefa.
“Josefa’s story – how it unfolds and how it is remembered – suggests much about the ways in which Euro-americans viewed Mexican women in the 19th century,” Rojas wrote in one essay.
After Josefa’s hanging, a few California newspapers said they had hoped the story was fabricated and alluded to the treatment of foreigners.
“The violent proceedings of an indignant and excited mob, led on by the enemies of the unfortunate woman, are a blot upon the history of the State,” one news article stated.
The people responsible for her demise, the newspaper article said, had “shamed themselves and their race.”
Downieville, about 100 miles northeast of Sacramento, is gradually shrinking. The population of the Sierra County seat swells during the Downieville Classic Mountain Bike Festival, which draws thousands of riders every summer.
On a recent weekday morning, cyclists visiting for a work retreat zipped past 68-year-old David O’donnell on $1,000 mountain bikes as he walked along Main Street. He ambled toward a faded green truss bridge near the fork of the Downie and Yuba rivers, where a dozen roses have been strung up with wire since July in remembrance of Josefa. For the better part of 20 years, flowers _ or sometimes a noose _ have been left behind on this site on the anniversary of her death.
No one knows exactly where she was hanged. Her plaque is affixed to a brick building beside a nearby bridge, but she is believed to have been hanged a short distance downstream.
As some stories go, a local doctor, Cyrus D. Aikin, tried to save Josefa by telling the court that she was pregnant. The doctor was driven from the stand and fled, staying away for a few days for his own safety. Although the doctor died in 1879, at the age of 58, his story passed down among his relatives, eventually reaching his great grand nephew, Bill Reed, a former resident of Downieville.
“Ever since I can remember, I was exceedingly proud that somebody from my family had tried to do the right thing,” the 74-year-old said.
O’donnell, a lifelong resident of the town and a miner since the age of 12, has never visited the plaque. But he’s familiar with Josefa, that fateful day and its aftermath.
“It sort of put a curse on the town.”
Last year, the graduating class at the town’s K-12 school included just two students. Downieville’s only bank closed in September, and the gas pumps have been out of service for nearly a year. The local theater features about a dozen movies a year and cell service is almost nonexistent.
Every so often, a lumber truck rolls through town. But most of the timber industry died many years ago. Jobs are few, mostly in government. Housing is even more limited than before, ever since residents began renting out summer homes.
The town’s only museum displays a framed front page of a 1921 Mountain Messenger newspaper, which blares: “Come to Sierra County! – for – GOLD!”
An out-of-print book rests on the third shelf of a bookcase. Its cover reads, “The only woman lynched in the Gold Rush days. Juanita.” On a wall by the door, a small framed drawing shows a woman with a noose around her neck, arms outstretched and her face impassive. It is titled, “Juanita.”