Round Valley Settler Massacres of 1856–1859 facts for kids

The Round Valley Settler Massacres of 1856–1859 were a series of massacres committed by early white settlers of California with cooperation and funding from the government of California and the support of prominent Californians against the Yuki people of Round Valley, Mendocino County, California. More than 1,000 Yuki are estimated to have been killed; many others were enslaved and only 300 survived. The intent of the massacres was to exterminate the Yuki and gain control of the land they inhabited. U.S. Army soldiers deployed to the valley stopped most of the killings and in 1862 the California legislature revoked a law which permitted the kidnapping and enslavement of Native Americans in the state.

History

Background

White immigrants flooded into Northern California in 1848 due to the California Gold Rush, increasing the settler population of California from 13,000 to well over 300,000 in little more than a decade. The sudden influx of miners and settlers on top of the nearly 300,000 Native Americans living in the area strained space and resources.

On April 22, 1850, the fledgling California state legislature passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, legalizing the kidnapping and forced servitude of Indians by White settlers. In 1851, the civilian governor of California declared, "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged … until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected." This expectation soon found its way into law. An 1851 legislative measure not only gave settlers the right to organize lynch mobs to kill Indians, but allowed them to submit their expenses to the government. By 1852 the state had authorized over a million dollars in such claims. In 1856, a San Francisco Bulletin editorial stated, "Extermination is the quickest and cheapest remedy, and effectually prevents all other difficulties when an outbreak [of Indian violence] occurs."

In 1854, when the first six White settlers arrived in Round Valley, somewhere between 6,000 and 20,000 Yuki Indians inhabited the valley and its surrounding area. Those first six settlers immediately attacked the Yuki without provocation, killing 40 of them (see Asbill Massacre).

By 1855–56 Yuki women were being kidnapped in large numbers and sold to the miners and settlers. Pierce Asbill, the instigator of the Asbill Massacre, stayed in the area and personally kidnapped at least 35 Yuki women over the next year. Indian Agent Simon Storms reported upon arriving in 1856 that the Yuki people feared White men due to the kidnapping of women and children and in 1857 Indian Agent Vincent Geiger stated that in Round Valley: "the Indians ... have very few children—most of them doubtless having been stolen and sold." By 1860, settler William Frazier reported that there were no longer any children among the Indians they encountered and blamed kidnapping by outsiders as the cause. Historians Sherburne Cooke and Benjamin Madley suggest that these abductions were one of several instigators of violent conflict in the valley. William Brewer, a member of the California Geological Survey in the early 1860s, directly blamed child-stealing of Indian children for the rise in Indian/settler conflict and the atrocities that followed.

A second instigator of conflict was competition for resources. The new settlers killed deer in large numbers and cut off Yuki access to fields where they had gathered plants and hunted small game. This threatened the Yuki with starvation, and at times Yuki men killed and ate grazing cattle to survive. Many cattle and horses also wandered off and died of natural causes, but these deaths were also blamed on the Indians and used to build animosity towards them. In fact, US Army Lieutenant Edward Dillon implicated California Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas Henley, current ranch owner and former California Supreme Court Judge Serranus Clinton Hastings, and Hastings's ranch manager H.L. Hall in a plot to build hatred towards the Indians by holding town-hall style public gatherings where settlers aired their grievances against them, real or imagined. In this manner they would be able to create community buy-in to their campaign of atrocities which could then drive the Indians off the land and allow them to have the valley entirely to themselves.

Incidents

A band of 20–30 men, a significant portion of the several dozen White settlers occupying the valley at that time, committed a series of attacks against the Yuki Indians between 1856 and the summer of 1859.

One Round Valley settler, Dryden Lacock, testified to the California State Legislature that he regularly took part in expeditions that would kill 50-60 Indians in a trip, as often as two to three a week at times, from 1856 to 1860. Settler William Scott testified before the legislature that H.L. Hall was a leader of vigilantes, killing all the Indians he could find whenever he encountered them and even poisoning their food and supplies. Hall’s culpability was verified by Army Lieutenant Edward Dillon, who referred to Hall as a "monster" who killed men, women, and children, regardless of any crimes committed and lamented that he had basically depopulated the county of Indians.

As early as September 1857, Superintendent Henley had stated that the campaign against the Yuki would continue until they were either exterminated or driven from the area entirely. Special Treasury agent J. Ross Browne in September 1858 called it a "war of extermination" against the Yuki with 20–30 armed White men engaging in months of constant attacks. By August 1859, after three years of a sustained campaign of atrocities, the Sacramento Union wrote that the local Indians appeared doomed to extirpation.

Due to the overwhelming number of killings, an exact death toll is unknowable. The estimates made by government agents and newspapers suggest well over 1,000 Yuki deaths at the hands of White settlers. (See Cook, Sherburne; "The California Indian and White Civilization" Part III, pg 7, for an argument in favor of the approximate reliability of figures of Indians killed at this time.) The White settler John Burgess testified that 10–15 Indians were killed for every beef that had been killed. Lieutenant Edward Dillon stated that many crimes were unknown as settlers "will not testify against each other, and in most cases of this nature, Indians are the only witnesses." Yuki Indian depositions were taken during the investigation of the murders by the California legislature in 1860, but all of these depositions have either been lost or destroyed.

Little retaliation or defense was possible from the Yuki. On 24 September 1857, over three years after the first massacre of Indians in Round Valley, Indian Agent Geiger reported that a White man had been killed by a Yuki for the first time. Another White man was killed in early 1858, and by the end of 1858 a total of four White men had been killed. Reports from the US Army suggest that at least two of the men killed were well known for grievous crimes against the Indians and that the Indians had been provoked in both instances.

Repercussions

Jarboe's War

In July 1859, a White settler named Walter S. Jarboe, already known for his brutal killings, formed an organized army of forty mercenaries to destroy the Round Valley Indians. He sought approval and payment from the state of California, and received an official appointment to kill Indians from the governor himself. With state government support Jarboe launched a new, organized campaign of atrocities on the valley, known as "Jarboe's War" or the "Mendocino War" by the settlers. In the middle of his campaign, Jarboe declared to the governor, "However cruel it may be ... nothing short of extermination will suffice to rid the Country of them [the Yuki]." Within six months Jarboe's mercenaries had killed 283 "warriors" in 23 attacks, along with hundreds of women and children as well, and captured nearly 300 Yuki Indians to be relocated to reservations. (See Mendocino War)

California Legislature Joint Special Committee

In 1860, a Joint Special Committee of the California Legislature was formed to investigate the "Mendocino Indian War" and complaints of Indian harassment from politically influential ranchers. The majority report of this committee (authored by four of the committee's five members) states:

"Accounts are daily coming in from the counties on the Coast Range, of sickening atrocities and wholesale slaughters of great numbers of defenseless Indians in that region of country. Within the last four months, more Indians have been killed by our people than during the century of Spanish and Mexican domination. For an evil of this magnitude, some one is responsible. Either our government, or our citizens, or both, are to blame.

"No provocation has been shown, if any could be, to justify such acts. We must admit that the wrong has been the portion of the Indian—the blame with his white brother. In relation to the recent difficulty between the whites and Indians in Mendocino County, your committee desire to say that no war, or a necessity for a war, has existed, or at the present time does exist. We are unwilling to attempt to dignify, by the term 'war' as slaughter of beings, who at least possess human form, and who make no resistance, and make no attacks, either on the person or residence of the citizen."

The majority report recommended that in order to save the Indians, it would be necessary to expand the size of the reservation by a factor of four to include nearly all of Round Valley, to buy out the White settlers with property in the valley, and to invest more money in ensuring that the Indians had protection and an adequate food supply.

The minority report, authored by dissenting California House member Joseph B. Lamar (Mendocino, Sonoma), suggested instead that the settlers had acted appropriately and that the only solution was to round up the Indians as slaves and have the government provide land for their upkeep to their White masters.

Despite the support of 4 out of 5 committee members, the California Legislature chose to ignore the majority report and it was never read to the full legislature. Instead, the Legislature generally took the route of Rep. Lamar in blaming the Indians for the conflict. Rep. Lamar helped to push through legislation broadening the Indians eligible to be forcibly enslaved by White settlers.

State sponsorship of slaughter

Despite such criticism, California legislators indeed continued state support for the ongoing slaughter. On 12 April 1860, legislators appropriated $9,347.39 for "payment of the indebtedness incurred by the expedition against the Indians in the county of Mendocino." They also passed a law expanding the age and condition of Indians available for forced slavery. A Sacramento Daily Union article of the time accused high-pressure lobbyists interested in profiting off enslaved Indians of pushing the law through, gave examples of how wealthy individuals had abused the law to acquire Indian slaves from the reservations, and stated, "The Act authorizes as complete a system of slavery, without any of the checks and wholesome restraints of slavery, as ever was devised."

Close of "war"

In 1861 the editor of the Mendocino Herald visited Round Valley and declared that there were no more than five or six hundred Yuki Indians left, out of an original population that had been more than ten times larger only five years earlier. A company-sized deployment of federal soldiers finally stopped the violence against the Indians in 1862. The law allowing the kidnapping and enslavement of Indians was revoked in 1863.

By 1864, only 300 Yuki Indians remained.