Race And Homicide In Nineteenth-Century California

Chapter One. Red Man: White Justice

13 Chapter One Red Man White Justice An awful mystery surrounds each of these murders. It is true that in the case of West,Vanhouse, and Fisk, Indians were supposed to be the murderers, and three or four who were believed to be the guilty parties were summarily executed by the people of that section of the county. —San Diego Union, March 27, 1872 This item in a local newspaper partially reveals the dilemma that legal authorities faced in California. How do you provide justice for American Indians when the majority population harbors such hostility? The conventional view sees homicide as a violent act between two people of the same cultural group. Recent historical scholarship has demonstrated that most people—at least in the twentieth century—do indeed kill within their own group.1 However, exceptions to this general pattern of intraracial homicide in the nineteenth century have been discovered.2 Interracial killings, a more common occurrence in nineteenth-century California than today, may have increased racial animosity toward American Indians and other minorities. By exploring the treatment of Indian defendants accused of murder in seven California counties, this case study will reveal how the criminal justice systems treated minorities, especially those whose victims were white.The main question to be considered is how the criminal justice systems—especially that of San Diego County, where most of the homicides involving Indians occurred—treated California Indian defendants. Were they accorded the same rights as other groups? Did that treatment differ if the victims were white? During the nineteenth century California Indian societies were inundated by large numbers of white miners and settlers. This influx of people brought about increased interracial contact and increased the opportunity for violent confrontations between these two groups. The data verify that California Indians had a marked tendency to kill outside their race, more so than any other group. By killing 39 white people (36.9 percent of the total 106) they opened themselves up to a heavier hand of justice by the dominant society (see Table 1.1). A dis- 14 Race and Homicide cussion of a variety of cases involving Indians’killing white victims may provide some insights on interracial homicide. California Indians were accused of killing 106 victims, and 71 percent of the interracial homicides with California Indian defendants occurred in San Diego County.3 Indians killed 18 of their 28 white victims (64 percent) during the 1870s. Most of these homicides occurred in isolated areas fairly close to Indian lands, with 7 in San Dieguito Valley, 3 in Jamul Valley, 2 each in Milquaty and Tecate, and 1 each in Julian and Campo. Since the 1870s were an era of economic and social disruption for Indians in San Diego County, it comes as no surprise that many of the whites were killed in this decade.4 Frustration and possibly a desire to protest white intrusion and domination may explain why Indian males turned to alcohol and violence in nineteenth-century California. The data suggest that unstable socioeconomic conditions for Indians in San Diego County provided fertile ground for violence, as illustrated by the numerous Indian homicides. These high interracial homicide rates can be explained by the change brought on by rapid and persistent white intrusion into San Diego Indian homeland, which hastened the disruption of the social controls usually exercised by the tribal leadership.5 In the historical literature on Native American culture compiled by contemporary authors, the California Indian has been relegated to the lowest echelon of human development and civilization. This perception has become mythologized in the epithet“digger”—a term that has persisted for more than two centuries .6 The expression“digger”has provided whites“with a handy rubric to suggest all the qualities of extreme primitiveness that European travelers had for decades attributed to California Indians.”7 The Spanish and Mexicans considtable 1.1 Indian Murderers by Victim’s Race, 1850–1900 Race Number Percentage White* 39 36.9 Hispanic 8 7.5 Indian 56 52.8 Asian 3 2.8 Totals 106 100.0 Sources: Coroners’ Inquests, Calaveras, Tuolumne, Sacramento, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and San Diego Counties, 1850–1900. *This use of “white”refers to anyone of European origin other than Hispanic. Red Man 15 ered themselves cultured, while perceiving the California Indian as an inferior who needed to be awarded the blessings of “civilization.” Religious conversion became the focal point for...