Tim,
In thinking about the only brick burial vault I have seen in San Diego
County, I have some additional info to add. First, the people who built it came
from the American South. Second, the senior McCain had served in the
Confederate Army and he brought the whole family west after the war. The story
of their travel across Arizona includes several altercations in which he
killed people for minor infractions. They squatted in land now called McCain
Valley, east of a small town named Campo and raised cattle.
East of their ranch (lands not marked by fences or any identifier) was an
Indian village called Jacum (now the small town of Jacumba) and a hot
springs. Before the McCains arrived and before the Mexican War, Spanish
California ranchers allowed Native Americans to kill stray cattle as long as they
left the skins on a bush for the ranchers to collect for sale to British and
American merchants along the coast.
The Kumeyaay of Jacum did not know the McCains did not understand or even
agree to the tradition, so a group killed a McCain steer (not branded and
not in a fenced area) and stripped it of its hide. Sixteen year old William
McCain rode his horse on the scene of the carnage and began shooting. The
Kumeyaay returned fire and killed him. His family members found him, the
butchering site, and were outraged. They took the boy's body to Campo, then
rode en masse to Jacum, where they promptly killed sixteen Kumeyaay. Some
people believe the cattle "thieves" were not even from Jacum, but who can tell
now. James Mills published this as the McCain Massacre in the Journal of
San Diego History. I do not have the date on hand, but it is online.
The McCains then returned to Campo and buried the boy in an above ground
brick vault. I have seen the cemetery out in the fields. It is in a remote
area and there are a few other below ground graves at that location. I always
thought it odd that they would go to the trouble of making or buying
bricks from somewhere and erecting this unusual grave architecture, so I never
forgot it. The last time I visited the site was in 1986.
The reason I have added all this detail is that someone today mentioned
this kind of grave is common in the American South. That is where the McCain
family came from before arriving here. The other family members were not
buried in above ground graves. Now the feature does not seem so very odd.
As a post script, a few years after the massacre incident, the McCain
family found themselves in a legal quagmire over their so-called land. They left
their adobe house to drive the cattle herd north to greener pastures and
when they returned, someone squatted in their house. They had to go to court
to file a lawsuit to prove their rights to the adobe and land. I have read
the case, including letters from people who witnessed them farming,
growing crops, and raising animals at the house. The court finally awarded the
house, but denied most of the land. After that, the McCains checkerboarded
the remainder of the entire valley with 160-acre homesteads. In between are
squares of land inaccessible except by crossing their land. It was a clever
way of acquiring thousands of acres of land, but only owning half.
I met some of the McCain family members in 1974, when I did a survey of
part of the property for a land development project. They sold out at that
point in time, only to have the new buyers find insufficient water on the
land. Most of the property is in federal holding now and is under consideration
for a huge wind farm.
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
**************Hurry! April 15th is almost here. File your Federal taxes
FREE with TaxACT.
(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1221653545x1201423923/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fwww.taxact.com%2F08tax.asp%3Fsc%3D084102950004%26p%3D8
2)
|
