Two Lynchings for One Price - Martinez News-Gazette Martinez, California · Tuesday, January 18, 1977
This is the fourth installment of a thirty-part series of articles by Frederick J. "Monte" Monteagle for the Martinez News-Gazette, written January - February, 1977. I'll publish each one as an individual blog post. MF
Two Lynchings For One Price
[This outstanding series on the felling of a magnificent Bay Area redwood forest 1853-55 in what is now mostly Redwood Regional Park in appearing periodically in installments.]
During the frenetic period of about one year - August 1854, to July, 1855, -
three lynchings, one a
"double feature" - took place at the landing and
settlement of
San Antonio, a little below the intersection of what is now
East 12th Street and 14th Ave. (and then in Clinton)
and in every instance both
Lamson and
the San Francisco press gave full credit to the "redwood boys" as they were
sometimes called. A fourth hanging took place just across the bridge from
Oakland in Clinton.
There was a sort of homicidal gaiety about these impromptu affairs which originated in the East Bay Redwoods, and the newspapers heralded them with headlines liberally punctuated with exclamation points, such as: "Lynch Law in San Antonio!!! Two Men Hung!!!;" "Lynch Law in San Antonio. Two Cattle Thieves Hung;" "The Excitement in Oakland! Attack Upon the Jail!! One of the Horse Theives Hung!!!;" "Another Lynching at San Antonio. More of the 'Redwood Rangers';" and "Great Excitement in Oakland. Capture of Two horse Thieves. A Man Hung."
The newspapers did not always agree on the specifics of these sanguinary affairs and the spelling of the victims names, but these were, after all, mere details.
"Judge Lynch" was in full command at these "floorless jigs" and the participants were noticeably reticent when it came to interviews.
There was even talk of Grand Jury investigations and some Oaklanders were "highly exasperated," according to Lamson, "at the audacity of the 'redwood boys' and threatened to go and hang them from their own trees.
"The boys replied that they would be happy to see them at their earliest convenience."
Inevitably, nothing came these post-lynching threats and cheerful tumults.
The double lynching for cattle stealing - first in the series - occurred the "gray of the morning," as the Daily Alta California poetically phrased it, on Wednesday, August 23, 1854.
[The
August 23, 1854 issue
doesn't seem to mention it, but it's covered in the
August 24 issue. - MF]
The luckless victims according to a variety of newspapers spelling were two San Antonio area butchers named Amadee Canu, or, if you prefer, Amande Carcene, Amadere Carenne or Amedee (correct) Canu and Pierre Archambault, also referred to as Peter Auchimbault or Peter Aughambault.
Readers could take their pick.
There was the regrettable matter of a third man who was almost hanged by mistake and, according to Lamson, "was in an agony of fear and horror, begged most piteously for his life, protested his innocence. and promised to make important disclosures if they would but spare his life..."
Fortunately, the mob's mistake was detected in time, and "he was, therefore, led back again," Lamson recounted, "more dead than alive, having endured far more suffering than his hardened confederate, whom he saw hanging from the tree..." The "right man" thereupon, was "taken to the tree and suspended beside his dead comrade."
The hangman's tree was an oak at the rear of San Antonio's Mansion House, the
village's leading hostelry which had rather ornate steps running clear across
the front of the building.
It is reasonable to suppose that early
risers in the hotel with less desirable rooms at the rear of the establishment
may have had a fine view of impromptu and summary justice at work with the
exclamatory inevitable ending.
[Next: Stolen cattle in the abattoir. The "redwood boys" become impatient
with "due process" and summon a lynch a lynch posse from the redwoods for a
double hanging.]
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