The plight of American Indians after the California gold rush
Three 1850s articles offer a sense of the horrific conditions for American Indians - and how frontier newspapers often distorted the truth to suit white readers.
Quintus Hopper of Nevada, published in January 2022, is a historical novel that follows the epic and peculiar life of a frontier newspaper typesetter. As part of my research I made extensive use of newspaper archives and, in this series, I’ll share some of my often surprising findings. Here are history, commentaries and contemporary newspaper articles as they relate to my latest novel. This time a look at life for American Indians in the wake of white man flooding their lands.
The boy Quintus Hopper becomes a printer’s devil (an apprentice) for booming San Francisco’s big paper, the Daily Alta California. From that moment on, he discovers all stories about American Indians in two ways: In the way they are reported in the newspapers, and in the way they are reported to him by the native people themselves. Below three newspaper articles to give a sense of what was reported - and commentary as to what really did happen.
The Bloody Island massacre, reported on in below article, was triggered by two white men, Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone. They had enslaved a tribe of Pomo Indians, starved and abused them, and confined them to a village surrounded by a stockade. When one of the Pomo men asked for more food, Kelsey killed him. The desperate remaining members of the band attacked, killed their tormentors, and fled. The US Cavalry then rode out, couldn’t find the attackers, but came across another group at Clear Lake. The soldiers killed every single man, woman or child. Newspapers offered different accounts of the massacre, or battle – and the military men vigorously defended their actions by claiming that the Pomo had fortifications on the island, that they were showered by arrows, that they most certainly did not kill women and children – that those women drowned trying to swim away, and that the children were probably put to death by their own mothers. Today there can be no question as to what really took place.
May 28, 1850
Daily Alta California, San Francisco
Horrible Slaughter of Indians.
We have just received particulars of the recent slaughter of a large body of Clear Lake Indians, by an expedition sent against them from the U. S. Garrisons at Sonoma and Benicia. The tribe that incurred this terrible punishment, comprises the natives of Sonoma and Napa valleys, and has maintained, in general, undisturbed peaceful relations with the white settlers of that section of California. Last summer, however, a stubborn family Indian offered an indignity to the wife of one Kelsey, who had resided in the country some nine years, for which he was taken before a magistrate and sentenced to receive one hundred lashes. After this punishment, on the same day, we are informed, Kelsey sought the wretched offender and laid him dead at his feet, shooting him in the presence of several gentlemen, who remonstrated with him on the barbarity of the deed. This man Kelsey was afterwards murdered, as was also a brother-in-law, by the Indians of the neighborhood. Since then repeated acts of violence have been visited upon the natives, and our readers will remember the accounts which we published a few months since, of outrages committed in Sonoma and Napa, by a party of desperate white men. The Indians were driven to the mountains, and subsequently made depredatory incursions upon their old masters, driving away cattle, and indulging their natural propensity to steal. Complaints were made – doubtless the accounts of their conduct highly colored – to the garrisons at Benicia and Sonoma, and on the 1st of the month an expedition was fitted out against them, composed of a detachment of Infantry, and a company of Dragoons, under command of Lieut. Davidson, (75 in all) with orders to proceed against the Clear Lake Indians, and exterminate if possible the tribe.
The troops arrived in the vicinity of the lake, and came unexpectedly upon a body of Indians numbering between two and three hundred. They immediately surrounded them and as the Indians raised a shout of defiance and attempted escape, poured in a destructive fire indiscriminately upon men, women and children. “They fell,” says our informant, “as grass before the sweep of the scythe.” Little or no resistance was encountered, and the work of butchery was of short duration. The shrieks of the slaughtered victims died away, the roar of muskets that ceased, and stretched lifeless upon the sod of their native valley were the bleeding bodies of these Indians — or sex, nor age was spared; it was the order of extermination fearfully obeyed. The troops returned to the stations, and quiet is for the present restored.
Another interesting article, published the same year by the Marysville Herald, contains a letter sent in by a John Van Vechten. These private correspondents were commonplace at the time. Most newspaper could not afford to pay for regional correspondents. They relied on a network of volunteers who would always be thrilled to find their letters, often printed verbatim, in the papers. The above story gives a good sense of what was going on, interactions between miners and American Indians. After white men had pushed the tribes from their lands and taken their game, the native people tried to sustain themselves in whichever way they could. Whenever they did, white men instantly brutalized indigenous people. Retaliation, on either side, inevitably led to more white man, and fewer Native Americans.
The correspondent also relays the challenges of miners, that they’re unable to find gold and beginning to leave and look elsewhere. This is just what happens with Quintus’ father in the novel, as he goes prospecting further and further north. Like so many others, he abandons everything in his quest for gold and eventually completely abandons wife and child.
September 13, 1850
Marysville Herald, Marysville
Murder by the Indians on North Fork Feather River.
BIDWELLS’S BAR, Sept. 11, 1850.
MR. EDITOR:—John Ferdinand Hollingreen and Horace Blanchard, (the latter from Boston,) were on the North Fork of Feather River about 12 miles above the junction, and 10 miles from this place. While they were at work on Friday, 23d August, some Indians stole from them $80 out of a box containing $100. Hollingreen went to their rancheria, but was told that the man who stole the money had “vamosed, far, far away.” It was afterwards discovered that he had gone to Long’s Bar, eight miles below here, and exchanged the stolen dust for blankets.
On Saturday, 31st August, Mr. Ruddick caught an Indian stealing his meat. The Indian was tied to a post and severely whipped.
On Thursday, 5th September, at 11 o’clock at night, Hollingreen and Blanchard were asleep at their camp, when Hollingreen, who was rather restless, was disturbed by what he supposed to be cayotes, and arose to shoot at them, when he saw five Indians, with their bows drawn, looking down upon him and his companion. Upon his starting, they instantly fired. An arrow pierced Blanchard in the stomach. Hollingreen fired his gun; they returned his fire and he received an arrow in his collar bone. Part of the barb remains in the bone, the surgeon having been unable to extract it.
Blanchard being badly wounded, requested Hollingreen to run for a surgeon, and help. H. then left, carrying his gun and ammunition; and whenever he heard a noise, or saw anything moving in the bushes, he fired. Twice the devils who were pursuing him to take his life, sung out most lustily as he fired. They pursued him about two miles. He arrived at Bidwell’s Bar about day light, and gathered a party of 12 armed men to go out and bring Blanchard in.
When they found him, he had crawled from his camp, to the water’s edge, and sat against a rock with a pistol in his hand, but too weak to raise or fire it; The Indians had returned about daylight, from the pursuit of Hollingreen, and had shot him twice in the back between the shoulders, and once just above the collar bone in the neck, the arrow piercing his lungs. He was brought on a litter to Doctor Flint’s Hospital, where he died on Saturday morning last, and was buried that afternoon.
He had told who the Indians were, from whom he had received his last wounds. They are well known to many of us, as he and we had fed them and given them clothes. The boy who shot him in the neck lived here with Mr. Morrel nearly two months.
No doubt the whipping of the thieving Indian was the moving cause of the outrage. A party of twenty persons, under command of Col. Bronck, left here last Sunday, well armed, determined to surround the Rancheria and kill each and every Indian they may fall in with. May they be successful, for poor Blanchard’s sufferings and death deserve to be bitterly atoned for.
Blanchard’s parents reside in Boston. His effects have been taken in charge, by Mr. Clark, who will see that the proceeds reach his relatives. As regards mining operations, I am sorry to say, the hopes of the great majority have been blasted. Hundreds have been laboring on their claims since December last, had packed provisions for six months to come, had been to heavy expense for packing, etc., had dug races, put in dams, turned the river from its bed, and tried their claims in many places, digging to the bed rock, but unable to find the color of gold.— Hundreds are leaving Feather River to find new or dry diggings, and the word is now, if they can only raise enough money to reach home, they intend to remove as soon as the rainy season sets in.
While writing, the rain is pouring down, and those of us who experienced the beauties and joys of the rainy season last year, are not much inclined to remain and pass four months amid mud and rain by day, and to sleep in wet blankets by night.
Yours,
JOHN VAN VECHTEN.
As mentioned, Quintus hears about the many stories of depredations by tribal messengers. The next article perfectly illustrates white men’s sentiments toward the people they often called ‘digger Indians.’ The correspondent from the Shasta paper casually mentions that, of course, parties are out on another ‘digger hunt’ and he expects that all of them will have wasted away within just a few years. The reason why American Indians shot and killed oxen and cattle belonging to white men, was because white men had taken both their land and game. For the tribes, it was simply fair that they should be able to claim back that which had been taken from them to begin with. It was the only way to survive.
August 28, 1856
Daily Alta California, San Francisco
Life and Farming at the North
A correspondent of a Shasta paper, writing from Cow Creek, one of the numerous tributaries of the upper Sacramento, watering a beautiful and fruitful valley of the same name, gives the following account of the condition, prospects, and pursuits of the people of that far inland district:
Thrashing in this valley is nearly completed, and the yield of barley and wheat is unprecedented. The aggregate will average about thirty bushels per acre, and some detached pieces fully fifty. There are something like 50,000 bushels raised on this side of the river within Shasta county. The potato crop is fine – some acres will yield rising 500 bushels per acre. Melons most delicious are rotting on the ground, not paying for hauling.
I am happy to say that the dusty, rusty, rough-clad, huge-pawed creatures, known as ranch-men, will not this season, as in former ones, be compelled to force their grain, &c., upon buyers, at the price their generous souls may see fit to pay; for their circumstances generally, thank God, will permit them to wait and demand remunerating prices.
The Indians on the creeks south of this have again commenced their depredations. Mr. Kern of Stillwater, whose team of six or eight oxen was engaged in hauling logs at the mill on the head of Oak Run, had four of them shot last week. One was killed and eaten by the savages, and one or two others mortally wounded. Horses on South Cow Creek have also been lately shot. Parties have been or are out, of course, on another “digger hunt.” A few years, and the like depredations and excursions will not be heard of. Neither will the Indians. They are fast wasting away. With them, stealing is as natural as breathing; and shooting them for the same, by the whites, equally so.