Oh What a Slaughter (7 page)

Frémont actually worked for the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers; he
was
a first-rate topographer. His orders on this occasion had been to survey rivers flowing
east
out of the Rockies, which, obviously, did not include the Sacramento, but Frémont, vain as a prince, at once delegated this tame assignment and made straight for California—he had been there once previously and suspected that the Mexican government, which was spread very thin, might soon collapse. If he could only manage to be in the right place at the right time, California—a major plum—might drop in his lap, in which case even more glory would be his. So he wandered up and down the state, more or less passively; when something
did
happen in the north—the Bear Flag Revolt—he postured a good deal but offered no real help.

Just before he headed north to the Sacramento River he decided, rather cavalierly, to challenge the Mexican authorities in Monterey. He and his men occupied a nearby hill—Gavilan Peak—threw up some breastworks, raised the American flag, and waited for the Mexicans to attack, which they declined to do. The flag fluttered in the breeze for three days; then the breeze became a gale and the flag blew down. The Pathfinder decided that honor had been satisfied, so he packed up his troop and went north. This strange retreat earned Frémont the undying contempt of the famous rather dandified mountain man Joseph Walker, who said Frémont was the worst coward, morally and physically, that he had ever known.

Frémont didn't know it, but his adventure in California was to end even less gloriously because of his refusal to recognize the authority of General Stephen Watts Kearny, who, after the Mexican defeat, took the Pathfinder back to Washington and court-martialed him.

Meanwhile, though, Frémont took his men far to the north, past Sutter's Fort, to bivouac for a time at the ranch of Peter Lassen, where the Sacramento River comes out of the mountains. Not long after Frémont's arrival, the Indians also arrived
and the locals began to get nervous. They asked Frémont for protection. What happened next is related by Thomas Martin, in a memoir that surfaced in 1878:

They asked Fremont to protect them. He replied that he had no right to fight Indians but he told us that those who wished to take part in the expedition against the Indians he would discharge and take us again afterward. … At the foot of the low hills where the Sacramento River comes out of the mountains…we found the Indians to the number of 4,000 to 5,000 on a tongue of land between the bends of the river, having a war dance preparatory to attacking the settlers. Our advance guard of 36 immediately charged and poured a volley into them killing 24. They then rushed them with sabres. The rest of the party came up and charged in among them and in less than 3 hours we had killed 175 of them. Most of the Indians escaped into the neighboring mountains.

His fellow writer Thomas Breckenridge, however, thought the war party, if it
was
a war party, consisted of “only 150 bucks and 250 women and children.”

Kit Carson's brief commentary agreed with neither of the above as to the number of Indians awaiting them:

During our stay at Lawson's [Lassen's] some Americans that were settled in the neighborhood came in stating that there were about 1,000 Indians in the vicinity making preparations to attack the settlements: requested assistance
of Fremont to drive them back. He and party and some Americans that lived near started for the Indians encampment, found them in great numbers, and war started.

“He and party” seems to have convinced various biographers that Frémont led the attack, an action that would have been, for John Charles Frémont, entirely out of character. Unlike Chivington, Frémont had no desire at all to wade in gore. He rarely (if ever) fought, preferring, as his biographer Andrew Rolle observed, to use Kit Carson as a hit man. Kit was a thorough hit man too.

Thomas Martin's account, if examined closely, seems rather startling. If the advance guard of thirty-six men thought there were four to five thousand waiting for them, then they were certainly bold to launch an attack: as bold as Custer was, thirty years later.

Even if the first volley killed twenty-four, that still left a lot of Indians; many would have thought twice before attacking this group with sabers. Even if we lower the count to Breckenridge's four hundred, a saber attack was still bold. And if twenty-four fell to a single volley, why would it take three hours to kill 175? Is it not rather odd that Thomas Martin could count the victims of the first volley when thousands of Indians were still ranged against them? A mere twenty-four killed would not have made much of a dent.

Of course if Breckenridge was right and there were only four hundred Indians there, twenty-four would have made a significant dent.

That the men immediately waded in with sabers seems odd too. If the first volley was so effective, why not keep shooting? Hand-to-hand combat would have seemed far more dangerous. Were the attackers in the grip of such a blood frenzy that they
couldn't stop, producing the “perfect butchery” that Kit Carson talks about?

The aloof John Charles Frémont, once the operation was seen to be a success, as usual makes it appear that he had been the prime mover, while getting no actual blood on his hands. The lesson administered, he says, “was rude but necessary, and had the desired effect.”

David Roberts deserves much credit for addressing the Sacramento River Massacre in
A Newer World
. His own suspicion, backed up by what anthropological studies there are, was that the Indians had gathered to celebrate a spring ritual, possibly the Bear Dance, which the whites, unfamiliar with this ritual, mistook for a war dance.

The Maidu and Wintu were fairly settled, sedentary tribes, acorn-gatherers, salmon-fishers. Their numbers shrank so precipitously during the second half of the nineteenth century that by the time the anthropologists got there there were few left to study.

Ishi

The much publicized Ishi, last of the Yana tribe,
was
studied, by the anthropologist Theodora Kroeber, but she knew nothing of this massacre and did not try to determine if some trace of it survived in Yana lore or memory.

In a sense the Sacramento River Massacre illustrates a problem that was to bedevil white-Indian relations from first to last: the inability, on the part of whites, to distinguish between Indians who were friendly and Indians who were hostile. Any big gathering of Indians, however well intentioned, made whites nervous—to a degree it still does.

One of the continuing sources of disagreement about the Sand Creek Massacre is that John Chivington led his troopers into the camp of Black Kettle, probably the single best known peace Indian of that day. Black Kettle was so sure that he enjoyed protection that he desperately waved an American flag even as the Coloradans were mowing down his people.

Black Kettle

Back row:
Bosse, a Cheyenne; Left Hand, an Arapaho; White Wolf, a Kiowa.

Front row:
White Antelope, brother of Black Kettle; Black Kettle, Cheyenne chief; Bull Bear, a Cheyenne; Neva, an Arapaho

From the first there were plenty of people in the West—indeed, in the country—who were frankly exterminationists. They wanted all the Indians gone. It may be that a disproportionate number of these genocidally minded settlers made their way to California. The deaths at the Sacramento River were merely a prelude to the rapid elimination of the California Indians.

For a good account of this grim slaughter the reader is directed to the “Far West” chapter of James Wilson's
The Earth Shall
Weep
. During the conflict with the Plains Indians, there were at least a few equal fights. In California, with the exception of the Modoc War, there were
no
equal fights. Men who believed that the only good Indian was a dead Indian overwhelmingly prevailed. During the Gold Rush particularly, exterminationists were thick on the ground. Indians were killed as casually as rabbits. I have reported elsewhere about a young vigilante who came to have qualms about killing Indian children with his rifle: the big bullets tore the small bodies so! The man was soon able to square his conscience by killing only adults with his rifle; the children he dispatched with his pistol.

It is only fair to say, though, that if one puts oneself in the position of an ill-trained and perhaps scrappily equipped young soldier, the distinction between friendly Indians and hostile Indians may seldom have been easy to make—or maintain—particularly in the frightening minutes just before a fight.

Similarly, most settlers, making their lonely way across the harsh distances of the West, might naturally have found all Indians a little frightening. By the end of the settlement period particularly, most settlers would have been well aware that the Indians had been pushed off their land. Why wouldn't they have been hostile?

Also, during the whole era of conquest and conflict, there was the constant problem of the young warriors—young men raised with a warrior ethic, in a warrior society. Raiding, for these boys, was not only a right: it was necessary training and, also, the source of self-esteem.

Many a well-planned Indian ambush was blown at the last minute by the impatient young warriors, who could not wait for the right moment to attack. The Fetterman Massacre in 1866 was one of the few ambushes in which the young warriors didn't spoil the plan.

Black Kettle himself, the most dedicated of peace Indians, had as much trouble with his young warriors as any other Indian, and he admitted it.

Quanah Parker