The year 1851 was not a good one for California settlers either. Indians surprised and murdered 72 settlers near Rattlesnake Creek, according to the Daily Alta California.184 Seven ferrymen were killed by Indians at the Colorado River.185 A settler was murdered between the Mariposa and Merced rivers.186 Finally, at Four Creeks, 13 settlers were massacred and their entrails torn out.187
Cahuilla chief Juan Antonio and his men raided the J. J. Warner* ranch, killed a servant and burned him on the woodpile, destroyed his property, and drove off his stock. Later that day they killed 4 white invalids in Aguas Caliente. Antonio was caught, tried, and hanged.188 Colorado Indians killed 4 sheepherders near Gila in 1851.189 Not long after, Savage led another expedition against the Indians. With 28 men, he surprised an Indian camp and killed 10.190 In 1851, an Indian was called from his home by a settler. When he was outside, the settler put a knife in his heart, causing instant death.191 Seven whites were killed at the Red Banks on the Merced River in 1851.192
By this time, matters had degenerated to the extent that a settler wrote to the Daily Alta California in 1851 to say, “It cannot be disguised that there is an Indian war against Americans [settlers], solely. Almost the whole California population is disaffected with our institutions.”193
Finally, in 1851 the president appointed a commission to negotiate treaties of peace with the various tribes. The commission tried to assess what had happened:
In some of the difficulties which have recently occurred the Indians have been the aggressors—that the whites have had much provocation to justify the severity of their measures in retaliation, will not be denied…. [Since the gold rush] we are informed, the Indian has been by many considered and treated as an intruder, as a common enemy of the whites, and in many instances shot down with as little compunction as a deer or an antelope.194
The next year, Congress authorized the appointment of a superintendent of Indian affairs in California.195
In 1852 it was reported that miners met at the Orleans Bar and “after a meeting to discuss the Indian problem, voted to kill on sight all Indians having guns.”196 The same year some legislators wrote to Governor
Hupa Indian Jack Norton published through the Indian Historian Press a collection of oral histories taken from Indians about what happened in northern California in the 1850s. Norton charged that more than 600 Indians were murdered in separate encounters. One of them occurred in 1852 near Weaverville, where, Norton claimed, 153 Wintun Indians were killed in retaliation for some of them killing 5 cows.
The year 1853 saw many atrocities. Norton reported that at Yontoket several hundred Tolowa Indians were murdered during their harvest dance.198 Allen Penrod from Illinois was murdered by Indians while working his claim.199 The same year, an Indian chief tried to rectify a theft. A Cow Creek Indian stole some property from a rancher. When his chief, Numtarimon, learned about it, he pursued the Indian and started to take him back to the ranch. The Indian tried to escape, and the chief ordered him killed with arrows, which was done.200 Again that same year, a mule train was attacked in California by Indians and a man named Dick Owen killed. Thirteen mules, one horse, and all the cargo were lost.201
At the Carter ranch $3,000 worth of stock was stolen. A posse was formed, which captured the half-breed Battedou. He agreed to take them to a cave “where the Indians were concealed.” Rocks were thrown into the cave by the posse, and 13 Indians, including 3 women, were killed as they came out. The Sacramento News sanctimoniously said, “It is but doing justice to say, that the women who were killed were placed in front as a sort of breast-work and killed either by accident or mistake.”202
At Frenchtown, a mining settlement, an Indian chief threatened vengeance on the whites for the wrongs done the Indians. A party of 8 whites was immediately formed. They arrested the chief, and after “a short deliberation” it was unanimously decided he should be hanged at once. He was.203
Major E. D. Townsend at Fort Miller learned that a white woman was supposed to have been kidnapped by Indians. A party of 25 soldiers was sent to the Indian camp. They demanded the woman and were shown an old Indian woman. The soldiers went to the opposite side of the creek and spent the night. The next morning, 8 or 10 Indians visited them and were told they would be killed unless the woman was delivered. When they tried to escape, 6 were killed.204
Inevitably, intoxication became a problem. The Los Angeles Star complained that “each Sunday morning … our streets are filled with drunken Indians, male and female. It is within bounds to set down the number of filthy drooling beasts, in human shape, at one hundred.” The Star added that so far as it knew, no effort was being made to discover the people who were furnishing the liquor contrary to law.205
Captain H. W. Wessels reported to his superior that an inoffensive Indian had been barbarously murdered by a white man within a few hundred yards of the post. A warrant had been issued for the murderer’s arrest.206
The situation of the California Indians had worsened by 1854. During the Rouge River War that year, a newspaper article stated, “Abducting Indian children has become quite a common practice. Nearly all of the children belonging to some of the Indian tribes in the northern part of the state have been stolen. They are taken to the southern part of the state and there sold.”207
Some Indians of the Nason tribe in Oregon were killed in 1854. At a ferry house the Indians rode the horses of the whites without permission and constantly stole things. Their chief was fed at the ferry house, but upon leaving one day fired his gun at 4 settlers standing near the door. The chief was ordered in for a talk, and he declared he meant to kill all white men he could and burn their houses. The next day, about 20 settlers rode to the Indian ranches, killed 16 of them, and burned all their houses with one exception.208
This situation with variations was repeated all along the West Coast. The Sacramento Union in 1855 ran a report that tried to put the killings in perspective:
The intrusion of the white man upon the Indian’s hunting grounds has driven off the game and destroyed their fisheries. The consequence is, the Indians suffer every winter for sustenance. Hunger and starvation follows them wherever they go. Is it, then, a matter of wonder that they become desperate and resort to stealing and killing? They are driven to steal or starve, and the Indian mode is to kill and then plunder…. On the Klamath [River] the Indians have killed six white men, and I understand some stock. From the Salmon [River] down the whites are in arms, with determination I believe if possible, to destroy all the grownup males, notwithstanding this meets with the opposition of some few who have favorite Indians amongst them. I doubt whether this discrimination should be made, as some who have been considered good have proved the most treacherous.209
In 1857, in the vicinity of Round Valley, within a period of 3 weeks, it was reported that 300 to 400 Indians were massacred by settlers. The reason given was depredations by Indians on the settlers’ stock and resistance to moving onto reservations. If true, this was the third-largest reported settler massacre of Indians anywhere—and the greatest west of the Alleghenies—but some caution must be exercised. The story was printed in the California Farmer for March 27, 1861, and was based on an article in The Petaluma Journal dated April 15, 1857, almost 4 years earlier.210 Why the paper would wait such a long time before printing such a big story needs explaining.
In 1858, the Fresno Indians killed 6 or 8 of their medicine men because they could not cure the sick, and it was believed there would be no rain or green grass until they were exterminated. One of the medicine men, pursued by about 16 Indians, sought sanctuary at the Ridgway home. Sanctuary was given, but a few days later, the man went out and was killed.211
The San Francisco Bulletin reported that a young Indian boy (age 10 to 15) set fire to Colonel Stevenson’s house in 1859. The sheriff left him in a room adjoining the courtroom, from which he was taken by a mob and hanged. The Bulletin commented, “Why not let him be hung in a legal manner?”212
Citizens of Humboldt
and Trinity counties complained that too many settlers had been killed and property taken by Indians and that their lives were in danger. In response, Governor John B. Weller sent a company of 80 men to chastise the Indians, ordering that “the women and children must be spared.” A newspaper said the order had been “strictly obeyed whenever possible” but that “75 to 100 [Indians] were killed.”213
Another punitive expedition, a party of about 12 under John Breckenridge, encountered a group of 5 Indians and their white leader and killed them all. Breckenridge took the scalp of the white leader. The next day, the party found an Indian camp and killed 10 more.214
A letter to the Sacramento Union praised an army expedition that had killed 80 Indians and captured 400 more, adding that it “is worthy not only of repetition, but of much commendation. “215 According to Clifford Trafzer and Joel Hyer, a Captain Jarboe bragged that he and his men had killed 283 Indians.216
In 1860, Major G. J. Raines went to Indian Island between Eureka and Uniontown, where he reported that so-called volunteers had murdered all the women and children for no apparent reason. He found babies with brains oozing out of their skulls, babies cut and hacked with axes, and women with frightful wounds.217 This would appear to be the third Norton atrocity—the result of the murderous activity of 3 to 7 white men who rowed a mile to an island where Wiyot Indians were dancing. Sixty to 70 were killed.
The San Francisco Bulletin described how, during another atrocity, an aged and feeble chief collected the women around him, assuring them that white men did not kill women and that they would be safe, but they all perished together. The number of Indians slaughtered in one night was about 240.218 The Bulletin further reported that the Indians were particularly troublesome in Mendocino County. Stock had been stolen (Mr. Woodman lost 109 horses), and the settlers had formed a standing army. They attacked the Indians, killing another 32.219
The Eel River Rangers, under the command of Captain Jarboe, campaigned against the Indians in 1860. They battled with 90 Indians on the South Eel River, and about 30 were slain. The Bulletin called them “as thieving, marauding Indians as ever roamed the forests of California.” Later Jarboe’s men had a furious fight near Round Valley and killed 30.220 The fourth and last claimed Norton California atrocity was a massacre of 200 or more Indians killed on a spit at the mouth of the Eel River.221
In 1860, settlers in Humboldt County attacked Indian villages in retaliation for cattle and other property stolen in raids. The San Francisco Bulletin reported that “bands of white men, armed with hatchets … fell on the women and children, and deliberately slaughtered them, one and all.” A witness counted 26 such bodies in one camp.222
Not many months later, at the beginning of winter, the Bulletin ran a story about some settlers who had moved down from the mountains to protect their stock from the snow. When some returned to their houses to inspect them, they found “that the Indians had destroyed all that they had left.” They tracked down the band that committed the damage and killed 39 Digger Indians.223 The same week, the settlers in Upper Mattole also attacked the Diggers, slaying 7.224 When Indians robbed the Larabee house and killed the cook, Ann Quinn, settlers killed 2 of the Indians.225 And in 1862, Yahi Indians captured 3 white children and murdered 2 of them. One was found with 17 arrows in him, his throat slit, and scalped.226
Settlers in California were very unhappy about the inability of the army to stop claimed Indian misconduct. An editorial in the Yreka Semi-Weekly Union in 1864 took up the issue:
There is “A rottenness in Denmark” somewhere, in the management of our Indian affairs, and the citizens are now forming INDEPENDENT companies to follow the Indians into their mountain fastnesses and annihilate them.227
Near the Cottonwood River in 1865, 2 white men went to an Indian camp to abduct a 10-year-old girl. The mother and a crippled boy resisted. One of the men cut the throat of the boy, then stabbed him repeatedly until he died. The girl and her mother escaped. A few days later, the frustrated men returned and burned the camp.228
Some Indians concocted an extortion scheme called the Chinese Tax Collectors. Eight Indians visited Fairfield Bar on the Feather River in 1865 and requested that the Chinese owners produce their poll tax receipts. When they did, they were told the receipts were no good, and the Indians demanded cash. The Chinese had none, so the Indians beat them and stole all the valuables.229
Apparently in an attempt to make amends to some extent, both the California and federal governments belatedly enacted a claims statute in 1928 permitting Indians to sue the federal government for damages as a result of loss of land and resources. Thirty years later, the federal government gave land titles to all California Indians who asked for them, a program that remained in effect until the 1970s.230
There were many Indians killed by atrocities in California. In the 12-year period from 1849 to 1861, there were 2,017 California Indian deaths due to settler atrocities (see Appendix C); surely there were more never reported in that lawless time and place.
The great number of atrocities in California would seem to have resulted from a conflict between the characters of the criminal elements among the prospectors and miners and the poor and unwarlike Indians. These atrocities by whites represent the extreme point of atrocities throughout the war.
AROUND 1850, settlers chained the father of Modoc Scarface Charley to the back of a wagon and dragged him until he died.231 In 1851, the Oatman family along the Gila River was attacked by some Indians, perhaps Yavapais, perhaps Apache. Everyone in the family was killed except 12-year-old Olive and her younger sister Mary, who were sold into slavery to the Mohaves. Olive was rescued 5 years later by a Yuma Indian. The Mohaves had tattooed her and Mary (who later starved to death) about the chin to discourage them from trying to escape. Olive was a sensation and went on a lecture tour across the country.232
These were not the only Indians who practiced tattooing their prisoners. Fanny Kelly said she “narrowly escaped tatooing [at the hands of the Sioux] by pretending to faint away every time the implements for the marring operation were applied.”233 A female captive in the Mississippi Valley refused to return to the settler community when ransomed by her father because her face had been disfigured by Indian tattooing and because she thought she was pregnant by a man who had taken her for his wife and who treated her well.234
An ox owned by a Mormon was shot with an arrow and killed in 1854 by High Forehead, a Sioux boy. He and 2 other boys ate it. They claimed the animal had been abandoned and was lame. The Mormon complained to the soldiers at Fort Laramie about what had happened. The matter was reported to Lieutenant J. L. Grattan. Grattan, who had perhaps been drinking (some say it was his French-Canadian interpreter, Lucien Auguste, who had been drinking and who mistranslated),235 went to the Sioux camp with 30 men and 2 cannon and demanded either 25 dollars for the ox or the 3 Sioux boys. Grattan had no authority to make any such demand. There was an argument. Grattan barked an order, and the cannon fired on the Indians, killing Chief Bear That Scatters and several Sioux. The Indians beat and hacked the soldiers to death. Only one of the 30 escaped, but he died upon his return to Fort Laramie.236
This was the first time in the history of the army that a military unit had been completely wiped out. The event came to be known as Grattan’s Massacre, or the Mormon Cow War. The country demanded action.237 The next summer, Colonel William Harney and 1,300 soldiers marched out of Fort Leavenworth “to even the score.” They came to the camp of the Sioux band of Chief Little Thunder, which had nothing to do with the cow incident, opened fire with cannon, killed 86 Indians, and took 70 women and children prisoner. Meanwhile, 5 of the warriors of Bear That Scatters sought to avenge his death by killing 3 settlers. They gave themselves up and were taken to Fort Leavenworth singing their death chants, but President Franklin Pierce pardoned them.238
Atrocities by the Sioux began to occur with greater frequency. In the Black Hills of the Dakotas, Sioux caught a trapper of mixed blood, Hercules Levasseuer,
in 1855. They cut off his hands, then cut out his tongue. Three years earlier, 30 prospectors had gone there. Eight turned back after seeing Indians; the rest disappeared. A gold miner, Ezra Kind, scratched a last message on a rock indicating that all the others of his party of 7 had been killed by Indians. They got all the gold they could carry, and, Lazarus reported, “I have lost my gun and nothing to eat and Indians hunting me.”239
In Washington Territory the same year, the Yakima chief Kamiakin properly did not trust Governor Isaac Stevens and therefore would not sign a treaty proposed by Stevens. Instead, he made alliances preparing for war. “Even thus allied, he thought it best to bide his time, organize, and plan before confronting superior white forces. As often happened when Indians contemplated war, hot-headed young warriors acted independently and rashly.” Qualchin, who was Kamiakin’s nephew, led 5 warriors who attacked and killed 6 prospectors. A. J. Bolen, the Indian agent, was sent to investigate, and he was also killed. The army sent a force, and Kamiakin’s 500 warriors ambushed it, killing 5. Indians raided a settlement near Seattle, killing 9 more.240
Also that year, Colonel James Kelley led a unit of militia in Washington Territory, where Walla Walla chief Peo-Peo-Mox-Mox had just burned a fort. The colonel and the chief held a parley, and the chief sent a messenger back to the village purportedly to communicate the terms of Kelley’s offer to the Indians. Kelley held Peo-Peo-Mox-Mox and 6 other chiefs as voluntary hostages. The chief’s message no doubt was to attack the army, because Kelley’s force was soon under attack by many Indians. Kelley ordered the chiefs tied up. Peo-Peo-Mox-Mox resisted, there was a struggle, the chief drew a dagger, and he was hit on the head by a gun barrel. After a 4-day battle, the Indians withdrew, and the Oregon volunteers showed the settlers the chief’s ears and scalp. Kamiakin’s other allies, the Umatillas and Cayuses, were enraged. They raided settlements, killing 31.241
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