The Other Slavery (68 page)

38. Palmer,
History of Napa and Lake Counties,
54–55.

39. Chief Augustine’s testimony is included in its entirety in Palmer,
History of Napa and Lake Counties,
58–62. For other versions of the Kelsey and Stone massacre, see unidentified Pomo informants, 1903–1906, and William Benson (his Pomo name was Ralganal), an informant and interpreter for later American anthropologists who visited Lake County, both in Heizer,
The Collected Documents,
42–45 and 49–53, respectively.

40. Henry Clay Bailey,
Indians of the Sacramento Valley
(Bloomington, CA: San Bernardino County Museum Association, 1959), 3–4, 17–18. See also Cook,
The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization,
314.

41. For Captain John B. Montgomery’s proclamation and its context, see Madley, “American Genocide,” 167–169.

42. The quotes are from Madley, “American Genocide,” 169–171. For excellent analyses of the certificate and pass system, see also Hurtado,
Indian Survival on the California Frontier,
94–96; and Rawls,
Indians of California,
85.

43. J. Ross Browne,
Report of the Debates in the Convention of California on the Formation of the State Constitution
(Washington, DC: John T. Tower, 1850), 64–65, 70.

44. The Indian Act of 1850 has received considerable scholarly attention. See, for example, Richard Steven Street,
Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769–1913
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 119–121; Kimberly Johnston-Dodds, “Early California Laws and Policies Related to California Indians” (report prepared for the California Research Bureau, Sacramento, 2002), 5–15; Magliari, “Free Soil, Unfree Labor,” 349–390; Hurtado,
Indian Survival on the California Frontier,
129–131; Rawls,
Indians of California,
85–105; and Madley, “American Genocide,” 189–197.

45. In 1860 the state legislature expanded the “apprenticeship” component of the 1850 act, allowing male Indians younger than fourteen to be indentured until they turned twenty-five, and females younger than fourteen to be indentured until they turned twenty-one.

46. In 1855 section 6 of the 1850 act was amended to allow Indians to serve as competent witnesses in court. Yet even in the 1860s, California legal treatises continued to cite laws prohibiting Indians from being witnesses as valid law. Johnston-Dodds, “Early California Laws and Policies Related to California Indians,” 8. For slaving activities in the 1850s, see Bailey,
Indians of the Sacramento Valley,
17; and Michael F. Magliari, “Free State Slavery: Bound Indian Labor and Slave Trafficking in California’s Sacramento Valley, 1850–1864,”
Pacific Historical Review
81:2 (May 2012), 155–192. For how petitioners laying claim to Indian children got around the law, see Smith,
Freedom’s Frontier,
119–121.

11. A NEW ERA OF INDIAN BONDAGE

1. “Brigham Young’s Speech on Slavery, Blacks, and the Priesthood,” Salt Lake City, February 5, 1852,
http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/sermons_talks_interviews/brigham 1852feb5_priesthoodandblacks.htm
. Not only Mormons but also Protestants believed in Cain’s mark and its identification with black skin.

2. Andrew Love Neff,
History of Utah, 1847 to 1869
(Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1940), 364–365. The Woodruff quote is from Floyd A. O’Neil and Stanford J. Layton, “Of Pride and Politics: Brigham Young as Indian Superintendent,”
Utah Historical Quarterly
46:3 (1978), 239–241. For an excellent introduction to this subject, see Juanita Brooks, “Indian Relations on the Mormon Frontier,”
Utah State Historical Society
12:1–2 (January–April 1944), 2–4; and Michael K. Bennion, “Captivity, Adoption, Marriage and Identity: Native American Children in Mormon Homes, 1847–1900” (master’s thesis, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2012).

3. The story of Charles Decker and his captive is based on the 1847 journal of Mary Ellen Kimball and the recollections of John R. Young, both quoted in Peter Gottfredson,
History of Indian Depredations in Utah
(Salt Lake City: Press of Skeleton, 1919), 16–17. The details of the story vary from one source to another, but the general gist is the same. For the wider context, see Bailey,
Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest,
148–149; Malouf and Malouf, “The Effects of Spanish Slavery on the Indians of the Intermountain West,” 384–385; Knack,
Boundaries Between,
chap. 4; Jones,
The Trial of Don Pedro León Luján,
42–52; and Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
especially chap. 7.

4. The first quote is from Brigham Young’s testimony, cited in Jones,
The Trial of Don Pedro León Luján,
49–50. The second quote is from Solomon Nunes Carvalho,
Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West with Colonel Frémont’s Last Expedition,
in Kate B. Carter, ed.,
Heart Throbs of the West,
vol. 1 (Salt Lake City: Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, 1947), 147–148. See also Jones,
Forty Years Among the Indians,
53. Euro-Americans reported such selling techniques not only in Utah but also in New Mexico, Wyoming, and Idaho and at least since the eighteenth century. See Malouf and Malouf, “The Effects of Spanish Slavery on the Indians of the Intermountain West,” 384–385; and Jones,
The Trial of Don Pedro León Luján,
44–52. See also
chapter 7
of this book.

5. Quoted in Eugene E. Campbell,
Establishing Zion: The Mormon Church in the American West, 1847–1869
(Salt Lake City: Signature, 1988), 79.

6. The first quote is from ibid., n. 9. The second quote is from Orson Pratt, July 15, 1855,
Journal of Discourses,
cited in Jones,
The Trial of Don Pedro León Luján,
44. For an excellent discussion of Indian slavery among the Mormons, see Jennifer Lindell, “Mormons and Native Americans in the Antebellum West” (master’s thesis, San Diego State University, 2011).

7. See
Acts, Resolutions and Memorials, Passed at the Several Annual Sessions of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah
(Salt Lake City: Joseph Cain, 1855), 173–174.

8. Daniel W. Jones acted as interpreter. The quote is from Jones,
Forty Years Among the Indians,
151. On this episode, the best source by far is Jones,
The Trial of Don Pedro León Luján,
especially chaps. 4 and 5.

9. Jones,
The Trial of Don Pedro León Luján,
95.

10. The Frémont quote is from Jones,
The Trial of Don Pedro León Luján,
46. For a reasonable sketch of Walkara (also spelled Wakara), see Conway B. Sonne,
The World of Wakara
(San Antonio: Naylor, 1962), chap. 6. Peter Gottfredson claims that the cause of Chief Walkara’s raids in southern California was “bad treatment by certain ranchers.” Gottfredson,
History of Indian Depredations in Utah,
22. See also Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
139–141, 234–245; and Bailey,
Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest,
156–161.

11. Jones,
Forty Years Among the Indians,
31. The brewing conflict between the Mormons and Utes eventually exploded in the so-called Walker War of 1853. (Walker was the Mormons’ name for Walkara.)

12. See “Brigham Young’s Address to the Council and House of Representatives of the Legislature of Utah, Great Salt Lake City, Utah, January 5, 1852,” in Carter,
Heart Throbs of the West,
152–153. The most relevant parts of the Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners are sections 1 and 4. For a direct comparison of the terms in the Utah and California servitude laws, see Bennion, “Captivity, Adoption, Marriage and Identity,” 89–92. See also Bruce Q. Cannon, “Adopted or Indentured, 1850–1870: Native Children in Mormon Households,” in Ronald W. Walker and Doris R. Dant, eds.,
Nearly Everything Imaginable: The Everyday Life of Utah’s Mormon Pioneers
(Provo,
UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1999), 351. I want to thank Dale Topham for steering me toward this reference.

13. Richard D. Kitchen, “Mormon-Indian Relations in Deseret: Intermarriage and Indenture, 1847–1877” (Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University, 2002, apps. C and D); Bennion, “Captivity, Adoption, Marriage and Identity,” app. 4. For a discussion of Utah’s demography, see Pamela S. Perlich, “Utah Minorities: The Story Told by 150 Years of Census Data” (report, Bureau of Economic and Business Research, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 2002). See also Brooks, “Indian Relations on the Mormon Frontier,” 33–34; and Carter,
Heart Throbs of the West,
159–164. Indian slavery was not evenly distributed throughout Utah but was instead concentrated in certain districts. For example, according to Martha Knack each of the one hundred households in the town of Parowan had one or more Paiute children. Knack,
Boundaries Between,
57.

14. These vignettes and many others appear in Carter,
Heart Throbs of the West,
159–164. See also Brooks, “Indian Relations on the Mormon Frontier,” 33–34.

15. Carter,
Heart Throbs of the West,
159–164; Brooks, “Indian Relations on the Mormon Frontier,” 33–34; Bennion, “Captivity, Adoption, Marriage and Identity,” 80–81. For work as a central aspect of the Indians’ redemption, including the quotes, see O’Neil and Layton, “Of Pride and Politics,” 240; and Lindell, “Mormons and Native Americans in the Antebellum West,” 64. See also Sondra Jones, “‘Redeeming’ the Indian: The Enslavement of Indian Children in New Mexico and Utah,”
Utah Historical Quarterly
67:3 (Summer 1999), 220–241.

16. The first quote is from Brigham Young and Herbert C. Kimball, “Fourteenth General Epistle,”
Deseret News,
December 13, 1851, in Lindell, “Mormons and Native Americans in the Antebellum West,” 62–63. The second quote is from “Address of Elder E. T. Benson, Provo, July 13, 1855,” in Carter,
Heart Throbs of the West,
148.

17. See the discussion of marriage in Juanita Brooks, “Indian Relations on the Mormon Frontier,” 33–48; and Bennion, “Captivity, Adoption, Marriage and Identity,” 156–157 and app. 1, table 10.

18. Darlis A. Miller,
The California Column in New Mexico
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 4–11.

19. For a relevant biographical sketch, see Adam Kane, “James H. Carleton,” in Paul Andrew Hutton and Durwood Ball, eds.,
Soldiers West: Biographies from the Military Frontier
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 122–148. See also Gerald Thompson,
The Army and the Navajo: The Bosque Redondo Reservation Experiment, 1863–1868
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976), chap. 2. For antecedents, see William S. Kiser,
Dragoons in Apacheland: Conquest and Resistance in Southern New Mexico, 1846–1861
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), especially chaps. 8 and 9.

20. For a blow-by-blow account of the Navajo attack on Fort Defiance, see McNitt,
Navajo Wars,
382–384. See also Brugge,
Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico,
87–88. The newspaper is the
Santa Fe Gazette,
November 10, 1860, quoted in McNitt,
Navajo Wars,
385.

21. To correlate Navajo baptisms with events during the eighteenth century, I have relied primarily on J. Lee Correll,
Through White Men’s Eyes: A Contribution to Navajo History; A Chronological Record of the Navajo People from Earliest Times to the Treaty of June 1, 1868,
6 vols. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), 1:25–52; Hackett,
Historical Documents,
1:268; Frank D. Reeve, “Navaho-Spanish Wars, 1680–1720,”
New Mexico Historical Review
33:3 (1958), 20–33; and Frank D. Reeve, “The Navajo-Spanish Peace, 1720–1770,”
New Mexico Historical Review
34:1 (1959), 28–43.

22. “Exchange Between Armijo and Agent Greiner,” Santa Fe, January 1852, in Brugge,
Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico,
80–81. The exchange is also described in Brian DeLay, “Blood Talk: Violence and Belonging in the Navajo–New Mexican Borderland,” in Juliana Barr and Edward Countryman, eds.,
Contested Spaces of Early America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 229–256. For additional information about this dynamic, see McNitt,
Navajo Wars,
140–143; and Brugge,
Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico,
82.

23. Manuelito to General O. O. Howard, 1872, in Brugge,
Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico,
103–104. For a more extensive biographical sketch of Manuelito and his wife, Juanita, see Jennifer Nez Denetdale,
Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), passim.

24. Not everyone was in favor of this policy. New Mexico’s military commander, Colonel Thomas T. Fauntleroy, was reluctant to arm such groups, which, as he put it, “were the freebooting, plundering parties which I understood from hearsay.” Colonel Fauntleroy’s suspicions were well-founded. Article 38 of New Mexico’s Militia Law, July 10, 1851, and its later amendments are discussed in McNitt,
Navajo Wars,
385–386 n. 2.

25. Ibid., 388–389; Bailey,
Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest,
97; Brooks,
Captives and Cousins,
250–257.

26. A brief diary kept by Chaves’s adjutant general, the Marquis Lafayette Cotton, gives us a rare glimpse into the battalion’s activities. See McNitt,
Navajo Wars,
393–394. The campaign against the Navajos continued into the winter. The Diné had become so weakened by the pounding of these militias and by U.S. military forces (which eventually became involved as well) that they sued for peace and signed a treaty in February 1861. The American officers were quite satisfied with these results and decided to abandon Fort Defiance. Not so the militias. Once engaged, these volunteer forces remained a constant threat to the fragile peace. Less than a month after the peace treaty was signed, a unit from Taos was caught holding six Navajo women. They “openly avowed their intentions to disregard the treaty,” wrote the U.S. officer who apprehended them, “and on their return home, to organize a new expedition to capture Navajos and sell them [on the Rio Grande].” Edward Canby to A.A.G. [Assistant Adjutant General], Department of New Mexico, February 27, March 11, and March 18, 1861, cited in Bailey,
Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest,
98.