Pomo
survivors of the massacre on the island in Clear Lake were gunned down
by militia men as they swam to shore. The few who got away were hunted
along the Russian River and 50 more were killed over the next days.
May
15, 1850 was a very bad day for
the Pomo, a Native American people from northern
California that you have probably
never heard of. Because no one wants to
talk about them, or what happened that gruesome day when Lt. Nathaniel Lyon led troopers of the U.S.
First Dragoons Regiment, against a village
on an island in Clear Lake. Sketchy and contradictory accounts claim that
between 100 and 400 mostly women, children, and old men were killed and another
50 or more were run down and slaughtered as they tried to escape along the Russian River.
Of
course massacres of Native villages were not even then something new. They were, you should pardon the expression,
as American as apple pie. And before the first protest, let me
acknowledge that there were also massacres of white settlers committed by various tribes. What should probably be called the 400-year-long
War of the Conquest of North America
was brutal and terrible—a conquering people on one side and a desperate, doomed defense on the other, quarter not asked and
seldom given.
The
trouble is after all these years, even after school textbooks have taken a more sympathetic view of the native resistance, popular culture has kept the memories of hair-raising, bloody Red savages committing unspeakable
atrocities on nice settler women
in gingham and sunbonnets and their innocent, adorable blond
children alive and well. Burning
villages and troopers tossing papooses on their saber tips, not so much.
And
it is also important to remember that the cycle of massacre and mayhem
generally started with the invader/settlers.
Way back in 1637 in the Pequot
War, English colonists and Mohegan and Narragansett allies, launched a night attack on a large Pequot village
on the Mystic River in present-day Connecticut, where they burned the
inhabitants in their homes and killed all survivors, for total fatalities of
about 600–700. And the village that was
attacked had not even been involved in the minor depredations in Massachusetts
Bay which started the war.
That
also started a pattern. White militia and later regular troops could not tell “good
Indians” from “Bad Indians.” They all looked alike to them, and frankly they
did not give a damn. Time after time peaceful bands, even allies,
were attacked and brutalized because they were easy to find and at hand.
Notable instances include the massacre of the Praying Indians—a village of Lenape
(a/k/a Delaware) who had been
converted by pacifist Moravian missionaries—by Pennsylvania Militia in 1782 and the
infamous Sand Creek Massacre by the Colorado Volunteer Cavalry who attacked
and massacred Black Kettle’s
peaceful Cheyenne who were
flying an American flag in
1864. The Bloody River Massacre, as we
shall see, fit into the same familiar pattern.
Since
native warriors were notoriously
hard for militias or Army troops to engage in the field—they tended to break up into small groups after raids and melt into whatever wilderness was available—settler troops early on began seeking out
villages which, even if hostile
were usually empty of warriors. That became pretty much standard U.S. Army operational tactics
in the Indian warfare after General William Henry Harrison and his
troops pushed deep into Shawnee territory
to attack Prophetstown,
seat of Tecumseh’s
and the Shawnee Prophet Tenskwatawa’s confederacy. The idea was to disrupt the food
supply of the tribes and to force
them to come to the defense of
their homes. After destroying several impotent villages,
Harrison finally fell upon the main camp of hostiles defending Prophetstown and
decisively whooped them at the Battle of Tippecanoe. After that searches and attacks on
villages became standard operating procedure.
Again, the hapless Pomo fell victim to the same strategy.
The Pomo had one of the most unfortunate of histories. At the dawn of the 19th
Century it is estimated about 10,000 of the loosely related peoples now lumped together as Pomo lived in a broad
swath of northern California as hunter/gatherers and fishers who also traded with neighboring tribes for
items using the magnesium rich red clay of the region which was
used in making beads, dyes, and face
paint.
Not politically united, they lived in small bands or clans and spoke
7 related, but mutually
unintelligible languages.
They had largely escaped the slavery and misery of the Mission Indian further
south. But as Europeans pressed more
deeply into north, they came under pressure.
They were attacked by Russian fur traders who wanted to force them to abandon their
traditional hunting and fishing to trap for trade goods. Then the Dons of California began to
arrive with pieces of paper from
a far off king giving them huge land
grants.
Without central leadership and lacking a well-developed warrior culture the Pomo around the Big Valley Region and
Clear Lake, were easily turned into semi-enslaved peons on Salvador Vallejo’s vast 1844 grant from Mexico, Rancho
Lupyomi. The men were turned into vaqueros
as Vallejo and his brother
introduced beef cattle to the range.
Women were discouraged from traditional fishing and foraging and some
were turned into house servants. Life was hard, and punishments cruel, but it was about to get worse. Much
worse.
When engaging in seasonal fishing in Norther California lakes, Pomo
bands built tule reed structures like this. Elsewhere they built a
variety of crude huts out of whatever materials were available.
That same year American settlers aided by explorer and U.S. Army Captain John C.
Frémont acting on his own authority
established the Bear
Flag Republic. Meanwhile the United
States and Mexico went to war. Commodore
David Stockton and the Pacific Squadron arrived to claim California
and General Stephen Kearny led 150 Dragoons overland from Kansas
via Santa Fe, New Mexico. After several battles with the Californios,
California was secured and later ceded
by Mexico to the U.S. in the treaty of Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Under the circumstances American settlers Andrew
Kelsey and Charles Stone were able to force a purchase of a large number of Vallejo’s cattle and
established a ranchero of their own in 1847. With a handful of hired men, they raided Pomo villages, rounded up men women and
children, and made them build a stockade in which to imprison themselves. All arms, down to simple knives and hatchets, as well as fishing gear were
confiscated. With their wives and
children held hostage,
the men were once again used as vaqueros—and in back breaking
labor building the grand hacienda and
outbuildings, digging
wells, erecting fencing, and other work. Women and girls were called to the house as sex
slaves for the masters and beaten, sometimes to death if they resisted.
Rations
for the enslaved Pomo were four
cups of crudely milled flour a day—no
meat or protein. It was hardly enough
to survive on and soon many were dying of starvation and disease.
Then, things got even worse.
In 1849 Kelsey took 50 of the Pomo men as laborers
on expedition to the new gold
fields to try back-breaking placer
mining. Kelsey got sick.
His claim did not produce and in desperation he sold all of his slave’s
rations to other miners. Most of the
Pomo starved to death and only two made it back with Kelsey.
The remaining Pomo at the hacienda were becoming
desperate. Under the leadership of Chief
Augustine two of the men stole Stone’s horse in an attempt to kill a cow and smuggle
the meat back to the stockade. But in a thunderstorm, Stone’s horse ran off. Knowing that the enraged Stone would wreck
vengeance, horrible vengeance, Augustine had his wife, a maid in the hacienda, pour
water on all of Kelsey and Stone’s gunpowder
rendering it useless. At dawn the men armed only with a handful of hastily
made and crude
bows, cudgels, farm tools, and stones attacked
the house in force. Kelsey quickly fell
with an arrow and died. Stone tried to
escape by a window and to run for cover.
It is said that Augustine personally found him and crushed his head with a rock.
The Pomo knew there would be trouble. They hastily gathered all of the provisions they could carry, rounded up the families,
and fled north hoping to join up
with other Pomo bands.
Nathaniel Lyon as a Brigadier General and Commander of the Department of the West during the Civil War.
Word of the killing quickly reached a U.S. garrison and
Lt. Lyons set
out in pursuit. He got word of a large Pomo fishing camp on
an island known to the Indians as Badon-napo-ti (Island Village),
at the north end of Clear Lake. Lyons
assumed the fugitive Pomo had headed there.
He was wrong, those Pomo steered clear of the lake as they made a dash
north towards Oregon Territory. The
Pomo on the island did not even speak the same language and were, as far as
they knew, at peace with the United States. Most were Habematolel Pomo
of Upper Lake and from a band from the Robinson Rancheria. Most able bodied men were off hunting in the north leaving the
fishing and drying of the catch to their women and children.
When Lyon arrived on the scene he recognized that
the Island afforded the Indians some natural protection. He quickly sent to the Arsenal
at Benicia where he obtained two small brass field guns and two whale boats that
were hauled overland. Outfitting each boat with the cannon in the
prow, he launched them in secret from the southern shore of the lake. Meanwhile highly undisciplined mounted
militia joined his Dragoons.
On the morning of the attack Lyon opened fire on the village from the boats attacking the
south end of the island. That naturally
sent the inhabitants of the camp stampeding in a panic to the north of the
island where they were cut down by musket fire from the wooded shore. The cavalry then splashed across the shallow water and began cutting down everyone they
encountered with saber slashes.
Babies and small children were bayonetted by dismounted troops and their bodies thrown into the water.
The Army encountered virtually no resistance. Lyon
reported three light injuries. Almost every living person on the island was
killed. Many of those who tried to
escape in the water were shot as they swam or drowned. A
few made it to shore and a desperate run for safety.
One six year old girl, Ni’ka managed to escape the
slaughter by hiding under the water and breathing through tulle reed.
Later known as Lucy More she became a folk hero to her people and her descendants continue to work to memorialize the massacre.
Lyon ordered his men to pursue the escapees and as
noted over the next few days they hunted down and killed about 50
survivors. A general war against all native people in the north continued for month with members
of any and all tribes ruthlessly killed whenever they were encountered. Large numbers of usually drunken Militia did
most of this dirty work, but the Dragoons also participated.
Lyon, already cited for bravery in the Mexican War for capturing enemy cannon in the Battle for Mexico City,
was proclaimed a hero all over again and
his advancement in the
Army was assured. He was soon sent to Bloody
Kansas where conflicts with Missouri Border Ruffians made him an ardent
anti-slavery man and loyal Republican. In 1861 as commander of the St.
Louis Armory, he kept the
powder and weapons there out of the hands of the pro-Confederate state
government, secretly armed Republican Wide
Awake militia, and attacked Governor’s Jackson’s camp, marching his prisoners through St.
Louis. He also ordered his troops to fire
on rioting southern sympathizers killing 75.
For his ruthless efficiency, Lyon was promoted to Brigadier General and made Commander of
the Department of the West, relieving the incompetent but politically well-connected John C. Frémont. Lyon at the head of Federal regulars
and four quickly mustered and
armed regiments of loyal
Unionist Missouri Volunteers
pursued Jackson and his troops across the state. After forcing the Rebels out of the capital
of Jefferson City, he beat them at the Battle of Booneville,
forcing them to retreat to the
southwest.
On August 10, 1861 he caught up to the force of the
Missouri Militia and Confederate troops under the command of Ben McCulloch
near Springfield at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Lyon was killed during the battle while trying to rally his outnumbered
soldiers. Although the battle was a technical
Confederate victory, it broke
the power of the south to operate conventional
forces in the state and kept Missouri in the Union. That made Lyon one of the first great martyr
heroes of the Union.
Keeping the noble hero’s reputation
untarnished only partly explains how
the Massacre at Bloody Island was quickly stripped from California’s collective memory.
As for the scattered Pomo survivors of the nasty
little war, they lived on in small bands, many of them back in virtual slavery
to local rancheros. Later, despite pleas for a unified reservation with enough land to hunt and fish, the local
bands were assigned small Rancherias on marginal land. They were among the poorest of California Indians, and that is saying a
lot. They survived on the tiny plots
through much of the 20th Century but current policy aims to move them to urban
areas.
As
brief as it is, the original Bloody Island historical maker was riddled
with errors and glorified the massacre as a battle. Protesters have
smeared the marker with red paint in protest. A more historically
correct marker was erected near the passing highway in 2005 by the state
of California and the decedents of a Pomo girl who survived the
massacre by hiding in the lake and breathing through a tule reed.
As for the battle ground, Clear Lake was drained and “reclaimed” for agriculture in the 1930’s. The island is now a mound rising from the dusty lake bed. It is a California State Park. In 1942 an outfit called the Native Sons
of the Golden West erected a historical marker a third of a mile off of U.S.
Highway 20 noting that it was the
site of a Battle between Cavalry under “Captain” Lyon and Indians under Chief
Augustine. It attracted few
visitors as the entire episode goes unmentioned
in California history texts.
The new state marker.
Just to set matters straight, however, a second plaque was erected in 2005 by the Department of
Parks and Recreation and the Lucy Moore Foundation, telling the
story in greater, and more accurate detail.
