Murder State: California's Native American Genocide, 1846-1873

5. Democratic Death Squads of Northern California

5 Democratic Death Squads of Northern California The Indians have committed so many depredations in the North, of late, that the people are enraged against them, and are ready to knife them, shoot them, or inoculate them with smallpox—all of which have been done. “Exciting News from Tehama,” Daily Alta California (1853) As Euro-Americans flooded into, and then out of, the gold fields of California in the 1850s, they harnessed democracy to achieve a new dream of wealth and security based on landownership. Using new state laws and their rights as citizens, they quickly and bloodily transitioned California’s land base from one controlled mostly by Native peoples into one controlled almost completely by Euro-Americans.The development of the conflict over land was central to beginning the transfer . Euro-Americans placed themselves in close proximity to Native Americans, preventing them from gathering food, trading, and living in traditional ways. As conflicts evolved, Euro-Americans turned to traditional ways to take advantage of Indigenous populations.The process of doing so involved the clever manipulation of democracy and its various institutions: local and county governments, the press, and the state legislature, executive, and judiciary. Often failed miners and recent emigrants to California themselves, the men who worked in these institutions found it easy to identify with settlers and their interests. In most cases, governments were at least willing to turn their heads, 180 part 2 if not send help, when Native populations were being exterminated. Yet above all else, settlers, ranchers, and miners, like their brethren in the southern portion of the state, used voluntary, democratic associations to greatest effect in bringing about the genocide of California’s Indigenous people. Judge Serranus C. Hastings provides an example of how one operated within democracy to acquire and exploit Native American lands. Hastings had obtained school land warrants to purchase all of the Eden Valley, though he seldom went there and never lived there.1 Instead his purchase was the beginning of a stock-raising venture. Hastings sent hundreds of head of horses and cattle into the valley under the care of H. L. Hall, to whom Hastings and a partner promised one-third of the valley in exchange for his stewardship of the stock and the property. However, Hall would have no easy time getting his payment.The valley was home to several hundred Native people, the Yukis. The Yukis inhabited the areas in and around Eden Valley, Round Valley, and Long Valley, cut by the diverging courses of the Eel River and its tributaries in what became Mendocino County in 1850. Like other Indigenous populations in California, they had their own distinct language, traditions, and subsistence practices.They were not one people politically, but rather several autonomous groups, sharing a language and culture but each community having its own leadership. Other Native peoples, such as the Wailakis and Wintus, lived nearby.The Yukis traded, intermarried, and sometimes fought with these groups and other Yuki communities. But each village was autonomous.2 Settlers and ranchers began to graze stock and settle in these valleys . From time to time emigrants would pass through on their way elsewhere, and miners would periodically inspect the rivers, foothills, and mountains of the region, hoping to find a new source of gold.These intruders put a strain on the Yukis, as such incursions did all over the state. As Euro-Americans pushed deeper into these valleys, they attempted to push Native peoples out. Settlers and ranchers exhibited the same combination of hate and fear possessed by many other EuroAmericans , despite recent emigrant experiences that seemed to suggest Democratic Death Squads 181 that the Indians of childhood nightmares were not the “devils” portrayed in trail guides, newspapers, history books, and rumors and tall tales. Nevertheless over time the strain on the Yukis and other Native Americans living in proximity to white settlers and ranchers reached a breaking point, forcing normally peaceful Indigenous groups into the necessity of taking livestock, or more rarely violent action, in order to survive.This would give Euro-Americans confirmation that the savage Indians of their childhood fears were the same as the Indians of their adult reality in California. As would be repeated hundreds of times throughout California, the presence of settlers and ranchers and their domestic herds spelled disaster for local Indigenous populations.The oxen, horses, mules, cattle, sheep, pigs, and hogs brought by settlers and ranchers ruined...