Genocide on the North Coast —The Death Campaigns of 1858-1860
Kym Kemp / Feb. 25, 2010 @ 8:25 p.m. / Humboldt , Mendocino , Our Culture
William Marion Cole and his wife, Sarah (Mahurin) Cole
The door was blocked by white men as the people were asleep, not expecting anything to happen. They were not on the lookout. When they found out what was up they began to scatter and was struck down by clubs, knives, and axes, all met the same fate, children, women, and men. I got out and hid in a trash pile. That was how I was saved.
This week’s North Coast Journal uses gripping first person accounts to portray the massacres of Native Americans who lived around Humboldt Bay in February of 1860. This article mentions that a year earlier a group called the Trinity Rangers on Redwood Creek had responded to the reported deaths of white settlers with an organized militia. According to their commander, General Kibbe, this band of men ended up killing about 200 Native Americans and putting about 1200 more onto the Klamath Reservation.
What this article doesn’t talk about though is the wider genocide that occurred all over the North Coast during that blood soaked winter of 1859-1860. In fact, the depredations against the native population in the Round Valley area had been so egregious that the governor of California had sent a investigative commission to Mendocino only a few days before the massacre on Indian Island (see Frank H. Baumgardner’s Killing for Land in Early California)
I know about it because (as I wrote in an earlier post) my dad’s ancestors lived in Sanel (right by Hopland). They were some of the first European settlers there. Like Ernie, I’m really proud of that. I like having my roots so deep in the soil around here. But you might not want to ask me much about that first pioneer. I might pretend I don’t hear you. Or, education about local history being what it is, I’d probably just mumble his name and figure you wouldn’t know him. And you wouldn’t. And education on local history being what it is, you wouldn’t know about the group he joined in 1859 either.
I like the group’s name. Sounds like a Little League team—The Eel River Rangers. But if someone wanted to print that title on their kids’ t-shirts, I’d discourage them. See, the original holders of the name—they were a might unpleasant.
A Native American woman had, as was common at that time in Mendocino and Humboldt, been taken slave by a settler. She escaped to the reservation but, the man followed her and stole her again. The facts get a little muddled but the documents agree the man was killed and his death blamed on her people.
Ostensibly to avenge his ‘murder,’ but, as becomes apparent when reading the depositions of the settlers, really to rid the area of competitors, a militia of twenty men—those Eel River Rangers–rampaged for five months… and were paid for it by the government. They attacked Rancherias and killed any Native man and many of the women and children they found.
Here is a description of one of a militia’s raids as described at the time by the Alta Californian.
“The attacking party rushed upon [the Native Americans], blowing out their brains, and splitting their heads open with tomahawks. Little children in baskets, and even babes, had their heads smashed to pieces or cut open. Mothers and infants shared the same phenomenon … Many of the fugitives were chased and shot as they ran … The children scarcely able to run, toddled towards the squaw for protection, crying with fright, but were overtaken, slaughtered like wild animals, and thrown into piles. … One woman got into a pond hole, where she hid herself under the grass, with her head above water, and concealed her papoose on the bank in a basket. She was discovered and her head blown to pieces, the muzzle of the gun being placed against her skull and the child was drowned in the pond.”
Here is short description of another by one of the participants.
I probably wouldn’t mention that little piece of history to you. But, if your family roots go deep into the soil around here, you probably have your own ancestor that you don’t care to talk about.
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I wrote the above 2 years ago. My feelings have “matured” since then. But the stark evil that my ancestors were capable of still shocks me. Note though that I don’t say THEY were evil like Hank does here. I have come to realize that people are capable of a huge range of actions—both good and evil—and to label a person good or evil limits your understanding of them…and of yourself. Vilifying an act as evil is an important part of growing and understanding and judging right from wrong. Vilifying people as evil makes it too damn easy to pretend that we are never in danger of walking the dark paths ourselves…
More about today on Indian Island here
Related tags: eel-river-rangers, evil, family-history, genealogy, genocide, indian-island-massacre, round-valley-genocide, trinity-rangers, yuki
Like you, I can’t help but be proud of my ancestors. But, like you, I also carry the shame of what they did. I know that I’m the one that claims that it is unreasonable to make connections from the past to today, but I guess we just do those things, like it or not. Unlike many others, I would like to keep my mind open to the possibility that they had no other choices. That and they were in a different culture than we have today.
Those with no history, or those that refuse to admit their history, are at a great loss in not having to wonder who they really are, and what they might have done in similar circumstances. Most people can’t even envision what the north coast was like back in the hills of the 1850s. If I had the power, I would like to be able to drop one of our paragons of virtue into the middle of the South Fork of the Eel Valley in 1860, with nothing but his buckskin clothes and a muzzle loading rifle. I wonder how long he would last.
Jerry Rohde’s article fails to make the connection to the motivation of the Trinity Rangers, and the Eel River rangers, to the Indian Island Massacre. I believe that the circumstances were very different. I’ve seen the remains of some of the homesteaders cabins. It is plain that they led a simple life, and tried for the most part to get along with their neighbors and the Indian people. I’ve heard many stories that bear that out. I’m sure that they just wanted to live peacefully. I also know that they were the prey of white thugs. I’ve heard those stories also. To blame any one person, or for that matter group of persons for their actions, would be a mistake.
This all happened before anybody even knew about the Stockholm Syndrome, or post traumatic stress disorder. They though that they just had to tough it out. It must have been a hard life. I’m glad that your ancestors stayed alive long enough to be your ancestor. There must be some value in that.
I’m pretty optimistic, too. (With people like you around, who could avoid it? I love how your money advice columns seem to always include giving to non-profits. Somehow I just can’t see Suze Orman advocating the same track. Thank you for offering advice for real people who want to live kindly on the world.)
Maryellen,
Its only since I started writing for Grow that my blog has had such a cannabis color. Now that I have to be up on all things weed, I don’t have as much time to play in my other favorite subjects—history, genealogy, writing fiction…etc. But I’m a faithful reader of both Ernie’s and Lynette’s blogs. When Google Reader shows that they have posted my heart leaps a little.
Ernie,
I loved reading that our grandfather’s were acquaintances maybe even friends (even though I was sickened at their idea of a boys’ night out.) I’ve been trying for two years (when I had time) to research the Rangers and their activities. Partly it is a fascination with how ugly this research is going to get and partly a wanting to understand where my people came from and what they thought.
I, too, get frustrated when people want to lay the sins of the fathers on the sons. God, I hope my kids are blamed only for their own mistakes not mine, and certainly not their great great great grandfather’s. And as a genealogist, I’m pretty damn sure those people have a few skeletons in their own closets that they just haven’t researched enough to find.
People frequently advocate dropping bombs onto Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea—where ever—to ensure that the “bad guys” don’t do X Y or Z. Yet, the only thing I can see separating the actions of the bad guys from the good guys is which side our economic interest is on.
Indian Island was close to Eureka and became justly well known. Here, we had many raids which were never recorded. The conditions at the reservations are rarely discussed. This historic period has been suppressed until recent times.
I can say in my county (Mendocino County) there is a age gap of understanding about what occured in the Round Valley area, most people of a certain age of say 55 and older say that what occured was sad and then they go on to say but that happened a long time ago and the indians need to get over it and now they get everything for free. However, there is a growing number of people less than 55 who can see that the Round Valley people suffered from a cold blooded and nearly well thought out “Genocide”, of which was conducted by citizens of this area in additon to the state of califronia and the government of the united states.
There is a quote I will leave you with from Benjamin Madley “Unbraiding each tribe’s story from the tapestry of American Indian history, and bringing each into sharper relief, will create a clearer, more vivid portrait of American Indian experiences, and of United States history as a whole. Such investigations may be painful, but they will help both Indian and non-Indian Americans make sense of our past and our selves.”
I dig through old microfilm and have found some Yuki material transcribed in the ‘30’s by Frank Essene’s students, or Round Valley locals. One is a Ralph Moore story of a Yuki prophet who foresaw the coming of the whites. If you are interested, send Kym your email and she can forward it along for me to send you the story in a Word doc. If you wish.
It is wonderful work that you are doing,.