The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

by David Treuer

  California

  Nearby, in California, a wholly different history unfolded. Among the most brutal and bloody treatment of any people anywhere on the globe played out in one of the most beautiful landscapes and Indian homelands ever to greet the eye.

  Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo left from Navidad, Mexico, in 1542, determined to round the Baja cape and explore what we now know is the west coast of North America. He, like other Spanish explorers before and after, was spurred to find “cities of gold,” a passage to the Indies, and the Northwest Passage.

  Cabrillo had served under Cortés in Mexico and had become one of the richest conquistadors in service when he discovered and mined gold in Honduras and Guatemala. He was also one of the cruelest and most bloodthirsty. While there he broke up Indian families, sending the men to work in the gold mines or to harvest timber for shipbuilding, and selling the children and women, or giving them to his soldiers for their pleasure.

  Cabrillo rounded Baja and landed in what is now San Diego Bay on September 28. He continued on to Catalina Island and then to Santa Monica Bay. In each place he stopped he was greeted by Indians. He noted that there was little material wealth among them—no large cities, not even any form of agriculture. He traveled the coast and engaged in an orgy of naming. San Miguel. San Salvador. Baya de los Fumos. Cabo de Pinos. His expedition made it to far northern California before turning back because of storms. Cabrillo decided to overwinter on Catalina Island (San Salvador). Around Christmas, while under attack by Tongva Indians, he slipped and fell, breaking his leg. The leg became infected, and gangrene set in. He died without really recognizing California for the paradise it was.

  At the time of contact, it is estimated, more Indians lived in California than in the rest of the United States combined. There were more than five hundred distinct tribes, who spoke three hundred dialects of one hundred different languages. From San Diego Bay inland to the Mohave and Colorado deserts, north through the Central Valley, the Sierras, and the timbered, rocky lands of northern California, the region was more densely settled than any area north of southern Mexico—more densely settled than most places in Europe at the time, for that matter. Indian people had called the place home for more than seventeen thousand years. Tribes themselves were small, rarely consisting of more than a hundred members. They made the most of the abundant aquatic food supply, evidenced by shell middens many meters deep on Catalina Island. Further inland, game was plentiful—elk, grizzly bear, deer, and bison. Food was so plentiful that once a tribe had carved out its own small territory it rarely left. Yet contrary to what Cabrillo and subsequent explorers noted, the Indians of California did practice agriculture by encouraging low-intensity fires, which in turn facilitated the loose rotation of crops such as nuts, berries, and yucca: a form of permaculture that suited the now unimaginable resources of the region. Basketry and canoe making were both high art and utilitarian endeavors.

  Change came, but not quickly: California was at the farthest point in North America from Spain. No sources of easily identifiable or exploitable wealth were discovered during the contact period. The eastern topography of California effectively isolated it from the rest of North America. Named after a mythical island in a Spanish novel said to be populated by beautiful black women who kept griffins as pets and fed any men who ventured there to them, California effectively was an island in terms of contact, utility, and exploration. It was a place apart until the late sixteenth century.

  By 1565 the Spanish had engaged in a lucrative trade with China. Spanish ships would sail from China loaded with spices and silk, stop over in the Philippines, and then aim east for northern California. Once there, they used coastal wind and water currents to move south down the coast until they reached Mexico. Reliance on this trade route introduced European invasive plant species, cattle, and pigs to the rich but fragile Mediterranean climate of California.

  It wasn’t until the late eighteenth century that the Spanish began trying to colonize and settle California in earnest—both by sailing around Baja and trekking overland from present-day Arizona. These early attempts were disastrous: the Portolá and Anza expeditions between 1769 and 1776 were chronically short of food. Many of the would-be colonists died at sea or along the trail. The survivors reached California only to suffer starvation and disease. Scurvy, in particular, hit them hard. The explorers and the expeditions they led did not, or could not, find a way to work with the Indian food cultures of the region, which did not have at their base intensive agriculture or reliance on staple crops. By comparison, expeditions in the Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest were able to buy, trade, or steal enough food to eat, usually in the form of corn. But the California climate did not support corn despite the availability of the seed from Mexico. Subsequent expeditions, which included Jesuit priests, remedied earlier errors by driving large herds of goats, cows, and sheep with them. This saved their lives but ruined California.

  European livestock quickly overgrazed the grasslands. Invasive species took root and displaced native plants. A million acres of land were seized for each mission; they were constructed, along with forts or “presidios,” within a day’s ride of one another along the Camino Real. Soon, Indians began flocking to them. They came not because they had heard the word of God or recognized the superiority of European ways, but because the ecological disaster that was settlement quickly became a cultural disaster for them. The missions, forts, and stolen land of the invaders became places of refuge from famine.

  The missions quickly put this circumstance to use. They forced conversions, conscripted labor, and evolved a system of patronage and control. The Jesuits, with their relatively gentler ways, were recalled to Spain and banned from mission work in the New World. They were replaced with Dominicans and Franciscans, who unleashed the same punitive policies they practiced in the Southwest. When California passed to Mexico as a possession in 1822, it disbanded and secularized the missions but essentially kept the mission system intact, administering it even more poorly than the Spanish had. For the Indians at the missions—now called “ranchos”—there was no other place to go. Often the missions and ranchos covered and controlled all of the Indians’ former homelands. Colonial neglect of colonial subjects made conditions even worse for the Indians, who were at the bottom of the social structure. Their working conditions were so poor and disease so rampant that deaths far exceeded births. It is estimated that in 1770 nearly 133,000 Californian Indians lived in and around the missions. In 1832 the number was 14,000. In response to this decline, the religious orders sent out militia to capture new labor, principally women.

  Some Indians did try to escape into the interior, away from the coast and away from the missions. But such escapes were the exception: with no food, no support network, no clothing or shelter, escape was most often found in death. Things only got worse after California passed into American control in 1847, and after gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill on January 24, 1848.

  When the Gold Rush started, there were about nine thousand non-Indian people in California: six thousand Spanish/Mexican settlers and three thousand Americans, most of whom were settled in the south, not in “Alta California,” as the northern portion of the state was known. In 1849 alone, ninety thousand new settlers arrived. The argonauts—as those who came in search of gold were known—came from all over the globe: Argentina, China, the United States, and Europe. Ships, having arrived in San Francisco, were abandoned there as entire crews headed inland. People dragged the ships onto mud flats and used them for saloons, brothels, warehouses, and homes. The Alta was filled with businessmen, prospectors, prostitutes, farmers, and gamblers. In order to support the new population, food was shipped in from Chile, Peru, Hawaii, and Mexico. But it wasn’t enough.

  The first wave of mining used a technique called “placer mining.” Water was sluiced away from streambeds, and these were dug up and sifted in order to catch the loose gold flake and nuggets that had been pri
ed free from ore over eons of erosion. More than 370 tons of gold was mined this way in California in the first five years of the rush. With gold harder and harder to find via placer mining, “hydraulicking,” or hydraulic mining, came into play. After that, dredging became the preferred method. The land, already stressed by overgrazing and overpopulation, was damaged further. High-pressure water cannons gouged streambeds and canyons. Streams, rivers, and lakes were stirred into a soup of mud, sediment, and sand. The paradise became a wasteland, and the Indians suffered for it most of all.

  In order to open up more land for mining, tribes in the interior were systematically and brutally exterminated. The state of California appropriated funds between 1850 and 1860 to hire militia to hunt down and kill Indians. The militia were reimbursed for the ammunition they used in this pursuit, and the state, in turn, was partially reimbursed by the federal government. The very first governor of California, Peter Burnett, speaking of the genocidal policies of the newest member of the Union, said that it “must be expected” that “a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct.”

  The degree of violence in the “Golden State” can’t be overemphasized. An instance: In 1847, near present-day Clear Lake, California, two Anglo settlers, Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone, had purchased cattle and grazing rights from one Salvador Vallejo. They captured and conscripted almost an entire band of Pomo Indians to work as cowboys on their ranch, forcing them to build their own shelter and promising rations in “compensation.” The rations amounted to four cups of wheat per family per day. When one man asked for more wheat to feed his sick mother, Kelsey killed him. In 1849, Kelsey conscripted fifty of the Pomo to accompany him to the placer fields to mine for gold. Kelsey got sick during the expedition and sold all the food to other miners. Of the fifty Pomo who accompanied him, only three made it back to the ranch. Once there Kelsey resumed his rule of terror. Pomo women and girls were brought to the ranch house and raped regularly. When they resisted they were whipped, many of them dying from the punishment.

  Facing starvation and systematic rape, torture, and enslavement, the Pomo revolted. One night the women poured water on Kelsey and Stone’s gunpowder, rendering it useless. The men attacked at dawn, killing Kelsey with an arrow. Stone ran for the woods, where he was chased down and killed with a rock. The surviving Pomo melted into the forests. A regiment of the U.S. Cavalry under the command of Nathaniel Lyon was sent out to bring the Pomo to “justice.” Instead of finding the offenders, the cavalry came upon an entirely different band of Pomo at Clear Lake on May 15, 1850. The men were off hunting. The cavalry attacked, killing more than a hundred Pomo women and children. A six-year-old girl survived by submerging herself in the lake and breathing through a reed for the duration of the massacre. The soldiers killed seventy-five more Pomo along the Russian River in the following weeks. This was only one of many such massacres.

  The violence that marked the Indian experience in California, from Spanish conquest on through the mission system, Mexican rule, and into the modern age of statehood, had an even more disastrous effect on the Indians of the region than it might have because of the size of most tribes. Unlike, for example, the Diné, whose numbers were such that they could survive even a brutal relocation and repatriation, in addition to the usual assaults and raids, many of the Californian tribes were too small to make it. Of the many hundreds of tribes extant in California at contact, as of the 1890 census fewer than fifty were counted. This number undoubtedly underrepresented the actual number of bands, reservations, mission groups, communities, and tribes. But it was a far cry from the densely settled multiethnic patchwork that had been the Indian paradise of the region upon discovery.

  The Pacific Northwest and Columbian Plateau

  Steep folded hills and mountain valleys dropping sharply into the sea. Rivers emptying the plateau and inlands in rapids after rapids, pooling and dropping into the North Pacific surf. Stands of fir, cedar, and, farther inland, oak and cottonwood, rising on every flat and incline. Nearly constant rain encourages rampant growth. The Pacific Northwest is a primeval landscape—fecund and raw, old and ever changing. It is also one of the richest ecosystems in the world, supplying abundant material for food and shelter.

  As in other wet places, the prehistory of the region is hard to trace. It is clear that prehistoric Indian people lived along the coast and the western side of the Rockies. The most ancient evidence of coastal settlement dates from around 8000 BCE. Farther inland, evidence is emerging from the Paisley Caves in Oregon that suggests robust settlement as early as 14,500 BCE. But the region was undoubtedly inhabited much earlier.

  Evidence of pit houses from 1500 BCE has been found in British Columbia. Stone adzes suggest that wooden structures were also built—the tools remain but the houses have long since vanished. And prehistoric fishing weirs are abundant. Tools made from stone quarried far inland have been found on the coast, which suggests a thriving trade between coastal and highland Indians. Middens and trash pits from this era contain remains of salmon, shellfish, halibut, herring, seal, otter, and beaver and the bones of large inland mammals such as moose, sheep, goat, deer, and bear. As elsewhere, rich food sources led to increased population, which in turn led to war. Skeletal remains of (mostly) young men killed by heavy blows to the upper body suggest warfare with clubs; also in evidence is slat armor made of wood and hide, like that found in the Shang Dynasty in China.

  By 500 CE, the cultures of the Northwest Coast were in full swing. The tribes of the region evolved crafts unmatched in beauty and expressiveness. Even the most utilitarian objects—bentwood baskets, boxes, and household items, hand tools, houses, and canoes—were works of art. Implements of war—more and more in number after 500 CE—were ornately carved of stone and whalebone. Villages were carefully constructed with an eye to defense. Perhaps, as with the Europeans who would be arriving shortly, for the tribes of the Northwest there was a direct correlation between art and violence.

  Northwest Coast wooden club (Tlingit)

  The Europeans came late and were greeted by tribal cultures unlike any others on the continent. In 1500, there was little to no agriculture in the Northwest; all the tribes were primarily hunter-gatherers. But unlike the true hunter-gatherers of the Great Basin, whose climate didn’t support or encourage agriculture, the tribes of the Northwest were almost completely sedentary. They lived in large villages with fantastically well-developed architectural traditions—cedar bark–covered longhouses, ornate carvings (including the misnamed “totem poles”)—and very well developed hierarchical societies. Kwakiutl culture, for instance, was organized around “houses.” These were led by chiefs who claimed descent from mythical personages. Lineages were recounted or sung in the manner of Norse sagas. The chiefs and their moieties owned large houses and also owned the right to use certain songs and display certain ceremonial objects. They also owned the rights to local resources such as fishing, berrying, and hunting grounds, a circumstance that directly contradicts the popular belief that Indians didn’t understand private ownership. As we will see, the rhetoric of ownership (Who can own the land? Who can own the air?) was meant to question the assumed rights of the invaders rather than the inherent rights of the dispossessed.

  Sir Francis Drake was the first European to reach the far Northwest, landing somewhere between northern California and Washington in 1579 and rashly naming the place New Albion before continuing his circumnavigation of the world. Juan de Fuca came next, in 1592, though it is not clear he actually discovered the strait that now bears his name. The major problem that confronted European missions of exploration (and subsequently colonization and settlement) was distance. The Pacific Northwest was just beyond the most attenuated range of ships. Supply and resupply were pretty much insurmountable problems until the late eighteenth century. The Russians, however, may have reached as far south as the Russian River in northern California by
the mid-1700s. Russian settlements and trading posts followed but never in great numbers. In the 1780s and early 1790s the Spanish and English—aided by better technology and closer ports—made inroads in the region, often running into each other in sheltered bays. One such meeting, between Esteban José Martinez and British captains near Nootka Sound in 1789, led to the “Nootka Crisis.” Both powers were keen to claim the area for themselves, and fierce negotiations took place back in Europe. These seemed to be going nowhere, and both sides were gearing up for war when a series of agreements were reached. The “Nootka Conventions” resolved the dispute, and afterward the Spanish were largely content to remain in the sphere of influence on the southern areas of the coast.

  This was a victory for the British. The Spanish were confined mainly to California, while the British had a secure hold on the Northwest from Oregon up to Alaska (as the region was known by Aleuts and, later, by Russian explorers; the word means “object to which the action of the sea is directed”). Shortly thereafter, from 1792 to 1794, George Vancouver traveled and mapped much of the area, from Puget Sound up through the Strait of Georgia and along the coast of what is now British Columbia. The tribes he would have met at the time were numerous, densely packed, and heterogeneous. Along the coast there were the Tlingit, Misga’a, Haida, Gitxsan, Tsimshian, Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka’wakw, Makah, Coast Salish, Quileute, Willapa, Tillamook, and Chinook, among others. The tribes of the Northwest Plateau, enjoying a different climate and topography, were as numerous: the Kathlamet, Clackamas, Clatsop, Multnomah, Wasco-Wishram, Watlata, Flathead, Nespelem, Okanagan, Coeur d’Alene, Wenatchi, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakama, Klickitat, Cayuse, Kootenai, Nisqually, Kalapuya, and Modoc, among others. The tribes of the plateau were less reliant on marine life, though the salmon runs were as important to them as to coastal people. When the horse spread across the Plains in the seventeenth century, tribes like the Nez Perce and Flathead adapted quickly and rode far after bison, elk, and deer.