The Wild Frontier (34 page)

While California was still a territory, Captain Henry Naglee and his men, according to Clifford Trafzer and Joel Hyer, “indiscriminately murdered two chiefs.”
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Miner William M. Daylor took a group of his Indian employees to his mine in 1849. Six days later, a group of armed white men went there and killed an Indian while he was working on his knees. Another tried to escape and was shot through the arm, then the thigh, and finally his brains were beaten out with rocks and stones. The white men then followed the trail of the Indians who had escaped and slaughtered 14 more. The men camped near Daylor’s house, where a family member was about to be buried. Four Indians left the grave and passed by the camp. They were fired upon, and one was killed and one wounded. The white men told Daylor they had killed 27 Indians before getting to the house. Forty-nine Indians were missing at the time this atrocity was reported.
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Also in 1849, 2 white men, Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone, had Pomo Indians working on their ranch. They exploited and even murdered some of them. The Indians killed the 2 ranchers. Soldiers came to the area to retaliate. They surrounded 300 Indians on an island and shot all in sight, killing dozens, including women and children. The commander, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, described it as “a perfect slaughter house.”
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Dr. Able Lincoln from Tennessee built a ferryboat crossing the Colorado River in California at the mouth of the Gila in 1850. John Glanton from Texas, who had killed several men (the Mexican state of Chihuahua offered a reward of $8,000 for him), came along and became Dr. Lincoln’s partner. They charged extortionate fees. A General Anderson and his men came to the ferry, objected to the fee, and built their own ferryboat. When the soldiers were across, Anderson gave the boat to some Indians, who set up a competing business. Glanton and a group of men marched to the Indian ferry, destroyed the boat, tied the hands and heels of an Irishman named Callahan, whom the Indians had hired to help, and threw him into the Colorado. The “old chief” argued with Glanton about the matter to no avail, so the Indians decided to kill Glanton, Lincoln, and all their men. After Glanton returned from a trip to San Diego, and while the ferry operators were taking a nap, they were attacked and 11 were killed. “Their mangled remains were thrown into a pile of combustibles and burned.”
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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.
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Seven ferrymen were killed by
Indians at the Colorado River.
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A settler was murdered between the Mariposa and Merced rivers.
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Finally, at Four Creeks, 13 settlers were massacred and their entrails torn out.
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Cahuilla chief Juan Antonio and his men raided the J. J. Warner
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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.
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Colorado Indians killed 4 sheepherders near Gila in 1851.
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Not long after, Savage led another expedition against the Indians. With 28 men, he surprised an Indian camp and killed 10.
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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.
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Seven whites were killed at the Red Banks on the Merced River in 1851.
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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.”
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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:

The next year, Congress authorized the appointment of a superintendent of Indian affairs in California.
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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.”
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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.
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Allen Penrod from Illinois was murdered by Indians while working his claim.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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:

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.
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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.
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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?”
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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.”
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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.
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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. “
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According to Clifford Trafzer and Joel Hyer, a Captain Jarboe bragged that he and his men had killed 283 Indians.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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