An American Genocide Read online

  AN AMERICAN GENOCIDE

  THE LAMAR SERIES IN WESTERN HISTORY

  The Lamar Series in Western History includes scholarly books of general public interest that enhance the understanding of human affairs in the American West and contribute to a wider understanding of the West’s significance in the political, social, and cultural life of America. Comprising works of the highest quality, the series aims to increase the range and vitality of Western American history, focusing on frontier places and people, Indian and ethnic communities, the urban West and the environment, and the art and illustrated history of the American West.

  Editorial Board

  HOWARD R. LAMAR, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus,

  Past President of Yale University

  WILLIAM J. CRONON, University of Wisconsin–Madison

  PHILIP J. DELORIA, University of Michigan

  JOHN MACK FARAGHER, Yale University

  JAY GITLIN, Yale University

  GEORGE A. MILES, Beinecke Library, Yale University

  MARTHA A. SANDWEISS, Princeton University

  VIRGINIA J. SCHARFF, University of New Mexico

  ROBERT M. UTLEY, Former Chief Historian, National Park Service

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  An American Genocide: The United States and the California

  Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873, by Benjamin Madley

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  AN AMERICAN GENOCIDE

  The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873

  Benjamin Madley

  This book was made possible in part through the generosity of the UCLA History Department and the Division of Social Sciences and was published with assistance from the income of the Frederick John Kingsbury Memorial Fund.

  Copyright © 2016 by Benjamin Logan Madley.

  All rights reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

  Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office).

  Set in Electra type by Westchester Publishing Services.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955528

  ISBN 978-0-300-18136-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For California Indians, past, present, and future

  White people want our land, want destroy us. . . . I hear people tell ’bout what Inyan do early days to white man. Nobody ever tell it what white man do to Inyan. That’s reason I tell it. That’s history. That’s truth.

  —Lucy Young (Lassik/Wailaki), 1939, eyewitness to genocide

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  List of Abbreviations

  Introduction

  1 California Indians before 1846

  2 Prelude to Genocide: March 1846–March 1848

  3 Gold, Immigrants, and Killers from Oregon: March 1848–May 1850

  4 Turning Point: The Killing Campaigns of December 1849–May 1850

  5 Legislating Exclusion and Vulnerability: 1846–1853

  6 Rise of the Killing Machine: Militias and Vigilantes, April 1850–December 1854

  7 Perfecting the Killing Machine: December 1854–March 1861

  8 The Civil War in California and Its Aftermath: March 1861–1871

  9 Conclusion

  Appendixes

  Appendix 1: Reports of Nonspecific Numbers of California Indians Killed, 1846–1873

  Appendix 2: Reports of Fewer Than Five California Indians Killed, 1846–1873

  Appendix 3: Reports of Five or More California Indians Killed, 1846–1873

  Appendix 4: Reports of Non-Indians Killed by California Indians, 1846–1873

  Appendix 5: Selected Massacres with Contested Death Tolls, 1846–1866

  Appendix 6: Major Volunteer California State Militia Expeditions, 1850–1861

  Appendix 7: Reports of California Indians Killed by US Army Soldiers and Their Auxiliaries, 1846–1873

  Appendix 8: The United Nations Genocide Convention

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  At a place called Indian Ferry, not far from where my family’s log cabin now stands, whites massacred at least thirty Shasta Indians in the spring of 1852. The victims had not attacked whites. Nor had they stolen from them. Whites killed them near the banks of the Klamath River merely because they were Indians. Few people have heard of this massacre or the many others like it. Yet there were scores of such atrocities. Hundreds of Indian-killing sites stain California from the fog-bound northwestern redwood coast to the searing southeastern deserts. Individuals, private groups, state militiamen, and US Army soldiers carried out these killings, ostensibly to protect non-Indians or to punish Indians for suspected crimes. In fact, the perpetrators often sought to annihilate California’s indigenous peoples between 1846 and 1873.

  The story of the California Indian catastrophe is almost unrelentingly grim, which helps to explain why relatively little has been written about it, at least compared to other genocides. Until now, no one has written a comprehensive, year-by-year history of the cataclysm. It is, nevertheless, important history, for both California Indians and non-Indians. In researching and writing this book, I received guidance and support from many people and institutions.

  Fellow scholars helped shape my ideas, methods, and writing. Gary Clayton Anderson, Ute Frevert, Albert Hurtado, Karl Jacoby, Adam Jones, Paul Kennedy, Howard Lamar, David Rich Lewis, Michael Magliari, Jeffrey Ostler, Russell Thornton, David Wrobel, and Natale Zappia provided crucial insights and direction. My fellow Yale graduate students Adam Arenson, Jens-Uwe Guettel, Gretchen Heefner, Michael Morgan, Aaron O’Connell, Ashley Sousa, Henry Trotter, Owen Williams, and others provided valuable encouragement and advice. Edward Melillo, in particular, devoted his keen editorial eye to every page, and I am grateful for his sage advice. To my dissertation committee I owe unrepayable debts. George Miles helped me to map out a research strategy and provided copies of rare documents. John Demos shaped my writing and encouraged me to address major problems in US history. John Faragher guided me through theoretical and historical problems while suggesting sources and sharing insights into the workings of nineteenth-century California and the western United States. Finally, Ben Kiernan tirelessly read and reread drafts, spent many hours discussing genocide with me, and enthusiastically supported this project at every turn.

  People from more than a dozen American Indian nations also informed my research, interpretations, and conclusions. Members of the Big Valley, Blue Lake, Elk Valley, Redding, and Smith River Rancherias, as well as the Round Valley and Yurok reservations, helped me to understand how genocide unfolded in northwestern California. Members of the Klamath Tribes of Oregon, the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma, and Redding Rancheria provided insights into events in northeastern California. Finally, the Big Pine Paiute Tribe of the Owens Valley, the Bishop Paiute Tribe, as well as members of the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone and Fort Independence reservations, guided me in understanding genocide in eastern California. During visits to these communities, members listened carefully to my presentations, pointed out errors and omissions, provided documents and photographs, shared insights, and explained the importance of documenting killings, as well as the reasons that so few oral histories of these events remain. Community members also shared oral histories of massacres and killing campaigns that I used to locate written nineteenth-century sources describing these events. For example, Tom Ball, tribal officer Taylor David, Chief Bill Follis, tribal officer Jack Shadwick, and author Cheewa James spent hours discussing Modoc history with me. Redding Rancheria
cultural resources manager James Hayward Sr. provided insights into Achumawi, Wintu, and Yana histories. Joseph Giovannetti provided Tolowa sources. William Bauer Jr. shared insights into Round Valley history and organized my visit there. To all of the American Indian people who guided this project—and whose names are too numerous to list here—I offer my deepest thanks. I am particularly grateful to Loren and Lena Bommelyn of Smith River Rancheria. For years they have acted as teachers, mentors, and friends while generously making important introductions. Finally, Amos Tripp kindly took the time to explain many of the legal issues associated with California Indian history, thus informing my emphasis on legal frameworks.

  This manuscript is built upon hundreds of journal entries, manuscripts, government documents, newspapers, books, and other sources buried in libraries, museums, and archives. In California, the staffs of the Autry National Center, California State Archives, California State Library, Chico State University libraries, Doris Foley Library, Fort Ross Conservancy, Held-Poage Library, Humboldt State University library, Huntington Library, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Napa County Historical Society Library, Nevada County Library, Oroville Pioneer History Museum, San Francisco Public Library, Trinity County Historical Society History Center, and University of California libraries facilitated my research. I am especially grateful for the help and friendship of Susan Snyder and the Bancroft Library staff. Their warmth, expertise, and camaraderie made research a pleasure. Peter Blodgett and the staff at the Huntington Library also provided extremely valuable help. Beyond California, the list of institutions that provided materials for this book is even longer: the Beinecke Library, Biblioteca comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Connecticut State Library, Dartmouth College libraries, International Museum of Photography and Film, John Carter Brown Library, Library of Congress, Missouri History Museum Archives, National Anthropological Archives, National Archives and Records Administration, Nevada State Library, New York Public Library, Oregon Historical Society Library, Sterling Memorial Library, Union League Club of Chicago, University of Missouri Western Historical Manuscripts Collection, and University of Oregon libraries. Finally, Max Flomen, Timothy Macholz, and Preston McBride played crucial roles. I relied on their expert research, technological skills, thoughtful insights, and enthusiastic belief in this project.

  Magnanimous grants from the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders at Yale University, the Huntington Library, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Western History Association, the Yale Genocide Studies Program, and Yale University made this monograph possible.

  Members of the History Department and Native American Studies Program at Dartmouth College, where I was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from 2010 to 2012, helped me to transform my dissertation into a book. Visiting scholars such as Christopher Parsons read my work and suggested ideas, while Robert Bonner, Sergei Kan, Margaret Darrow, Vera Palmer, Melanie Benson Taylor, and Dale Turner shared insights, input, and friendship. Finally, Colin Calloway and Bruce Duthu generously read my work and mentored my development as a scholar of the Native American experience.

  UCLA’s History Department and American Indian Studies Program then provided an exceptionally supportive environment for editing this manuscript. Stephen Aron, Paul Kroskrity, William Marotti, David Myers, Peter Nabokov, Angela Riley, Sarah Stein, Craig Yirush, and others read drafts and provided crucial guidance and support.

  Cartographer Bill Nelson patiently worked with me over many months to create a dozen detailed maps for this book. His artful cartographic works shed valuable light on the geography of California Indian history past and present.

  Meanwhile, my Yale University Press editor, Christopher Rogers, made crucial strategic suggestions, thoughtfully line edited every page twice, met with me repeatedly, and helped to shape my research into the pages you hold in your hands.

  Finally, I could not have completed this history without my family. My parents—Jesse Philips and Susan Madley—read and reread chapters, copyedited, commented, suggested sources, and helped me to wrestle with writing about genocide. Alice, Bill, Henry, and Laura Roe, as well as Cory and Lincoln Madley and Brian Peterson, provided emotional, intellectual, and material help. My children—Jacob and Eleanor—gave me both a more profound understanding of life’s value and smiles that energized and refreshed my soul. To my wife, Barbara, I can only say thank you, thank you, and thank you. I could not have done this without you.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  BANC

  Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

  BLYU

  Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

  CG

  Congressional Globe

  CSA

  California State Archives, Sacramento

  CSL

  California State Library, Sacramento

  DAC

  Daily Alta California (San Francisco)

  DEB

  Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco)

  HL

  Huntington Library

  HT

  Humboldt Times

  IWP

  California Adjutant General’s Office, Military Department, Adjutant General, Indian War Papers F3753

  LAS

  Los Angeles Star

  MLRV

  Martial Law in Round Valley, Mendocino Co., California, The Causes Which Led To That Measure, The Evidence, As Brought out by a Court of Investigation ordered by Brig. Gen. G. Wright, Commanding U.S. Forces on the Pacific (Ukiah City, 1863)

  MMR

  California, Majority and Minority Reports of the Special Joint Committee on the Mendocino War (Sacramento, 1860)

  NARA

  US National Archives and Records Administration

  RG75, M234

  US National Archives and Records Administration, “Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824–80”

  SDU

  Sacramento Daily Union

  USOIA

  US Office of Indian Affairs

  WOR

  US War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 4 series, 130 volumes. Series 1, volume 50, part 1 [WOR 1:50:1]; Series 1, volume 50, part 2 [WOR 1:50:2]; Series 1, volume 52, part 2 [WOR 1:52:2].

  INTRODUCTION

  As the sun rose on July 7, 1846, four US warships rode at anchor in Monterey Bay. Ashore, the Mexican tricolor cracked over the adobe walls and red-tiled roofs of California’s capitol for the last time. At 7:30 A.M., Commodore John Sloat sent Captain William Mervine ashore “to demand the immediate surrender of the place.” The Mexican commandant then fled, and some 250 sailors and marines assembled at the whitewashed customs house on the water’s edge. As residents, immigrants, seamen, and soldiers looked on, Mervine read Commodore Sloat’s proclamation: “I declare to the inhabitants of California, that although I come in arms. . . . I come as their best friend—as henceforth California will be a portion of the United States, and its peaceable inhabitants will enjoy the same rights and privileges as the citizens of any other portion of that nation.” As the USS Savannah’s sailors and marines hoisted the Stars and Stripes to a chorus of cheers, three ships of the US Pacific Squadron fired a sixty-three-gun salute. The cannons’ roar swept over the plaza to the pine-studded hills above the bay before echoing back over the harbor. The first hours of conquest were relatively peaceful, but a new order had come to California. The lives of perhaps 150,000 California Indians now hung in the balance.1

  The US military officers who took control of California that July under martial law had the opportunity to reinvent the existing Mexican framework within which colonists and California Indians interacted. Instead, these officers reinforced and intensified existing discriminatory Mexican policies toward these Indians. The elected civilian state legislators who followed them then radically transformed the relationship between colonists and California Indians. Together with federal officials, they created a catastrophe.