May 9, 1889: Pio Pico is back in court.

Feb. 12, 1891: A Times editorial soliciting aid for Pico after his courtroom defeat.

Today's Nuestro Pueblo sent me in search of the story of Pio Pico. One of best things about ProQuest is that I don't need to turn to a  book in which the facts have been diluted, filtered through an author's viewpoint or mangled through shoddy research.  I can go back to the first draft of history.

To be sure, the newspapers have flaws and one must always be alert for them. But even so, the newspaper accounts have an immediacy, authenticity and comprehensiveness that books rarely match.

For that matter, the biases of the original reports constitute their own type of history. Coverage of Pico is rather typical in the attitude that the Spanish of early California were idlers who threw away their fortunes on grand fiestas and that the region would have been nothing but raw land had it not been for the influx of shrewd white businessmen.