Exterminate Them: Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Enslavement of Native Americans during the California Gold Rush

Chapter 3: Other Native Resistance

Chapter 3 ********************************** OTHER NATIVE RESISTANCE Truly, raiding white Americans during the Gold Rush was a significant and successful form of resistance. Yet the indigenous inhabitants of California did not limit their protest to this one strategy. Native Americans employed other methods to express their opposition to the non-Indian invasion of California. For instance, as a couple of documents demonstrate, Indians frequently directed their efforts at Chinese miners, demanding money and goods. Other newspaper articles in this section suggest a multitude of tactics. Besides stealing from Anglos and Chinese, Indians defended their homelands by attacking American settlements, burning ranches, and killing whites. They ambushed mail carriers, merchants, miners, and anyone else who trespassed on their lands. Native Americans working on ranches often left their jobs to join other indigenous peoples in coordinated strikes against whites. According to one report, Indians surprised and killed seventy-two Anglos near a small stream known as Rattlesnake Creek. Some fought American militia units, thereby dispelling earlier rumors among California's Anglo population that the region's native people never engaged in combat. After the establishment ofIndian reservations in the Golden State, Anglos sought to capture Native Americans and place them on these reserves. Indians manifested their disdain for this oppressive system by bolting the reservations at every possible opportunity. Anglos, in response, searched for Native Americans who left the reserves. Whites occasionally provided food and clothing to Indians in exchange for promises that they would cease stealing livestock belonging to American citizens. As one document implies, Indians in at least one instance defiantly broke their promises by stealing some items from their captors' camp and escaping into safer regions. 71 72 "EXTERMINATE THEM" One newspaper article reveals that even Indian youth refused to kowtow to Anglo demands. A Native American boy, perhaps only ten or twelve years old, attempted to burn down the house ofone Colonel Stevenson. Although he apparently did not succeed in completely destroying the home, he nonetheless publicly exhibited his aversion to the increasing presence offoreigners within his native land. Resistance knew no age limits. Daily Alta California. January 13. 1851 ANOTHER INDIAN SKIRMIsH.-On Friday last, some fifty Indians attacked a small party of men, some half dozen in number, while they were at work in the vicinity of Pleasant Valley, in locating a ranch. They were about five miles north-east of Johnson's ranch, in El Dorado county. We understand that the attack was made when the whites were not expecting any thing of the kind, but Major Wm. Graham had spent too much of his time in the Rocky Mountains to be totally unprepared and quick as the nature of the case would admit, his men were armed, and fought the Indians according to their own mode of warfare, from behind trees and rocks. The result ofthe fight was nine Indians killed and one white man wounded in the leg by a rifle ball. It is the intention of Maj. Graham to locate a ranch in Pleasant Valley, which will be the furthest outpost on our eastern frontier, and not far distant from the immigrant road.-Sacramento Transcript. Daily Alta California. January 14. 1851 FURTHER INDIAN TROUBLES.-It will be seen by reference to the letter of our correspondent at San Jose, that an express arrived on Sunday from the Mariposa region, representing that there had been further outrages committed by the Indians, and calling upon the Executive for men and arms to protect them from the incursions of their wild neighbors. Daily Alta California. January 20. 1851 INDIAN TROUBLES.-There was a rumor in town yesterday, that a severe fight had taken place between the Indians and whites, in the vicinity of Burns', in which fifty Indians were killed and wounded, and fiften [sic] whites. Another rumor was that a party of Indians made a descent upon a camp on the San Joaquin, killing and wounding all its inmates, some half a dozen in number; and sending a message to Savage, by one of the plains in the OTHER NATIVE RESISTANCE 73 vicinity of the San Joaquin, they would give him and his party a fair fight.Stockton paper. Daily Alta California, January 21. 1851 Indian Difficulties By reference to the letter of our special correspondent at the Capital, it will be seen that there is additional intelligence ofIndian disturbances. An express was received on Sunday evening from Mariposa county, announcing the fact that...