Bad Day on Bloody Island—Or Just Another Massacre

It is a testament to the obscurity of the the Massacre at Bloody Island that not a single illustration of the battle could be found.  It is almost as if it never happened.  All that could be found was a grainy photograph of the island--now a mound on a dried lake bed surrounded by crops--and this photo of the marker finally put in place in 2002 to commemorate the aromaticity.  And it still got Lt. Lyon's rank wrong and the fact he led only a portion of a company, not the entire Regiment in the action.

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 an 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 19^th 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.

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.

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 purchased 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.

Word of the killing quickly reached a U.S. garrison 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 the boats 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 drown.  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 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.

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.

When the Locals Almost Pushed the Pilgrims and Puritans into the Sea

The ambush and near massacre of 100 militia and farmers sent to retrieve crops and supplies from abandoned settlements in the Battle of Bloody Creek.

On June 24, 1675 King Philip’s War erupted in New England with the sudden attack on isolated farmsteads in the town Swansea of Plymouth Colony by a band of Pokanoket.  The raiders lay siege to the town for five days before capturing and burning it with several settlers killed, including some from other towns who had attempted to raise the siege. 

Alarm spread across the colonies.  Forces of Plymouth and Boston responded by raiding and burning a Wampanoag town at Mt. Hope (modern Bristol, Rhode Island).  The war quickly spread across the region with the Wampanoag, Pokanoket, Nipmunk,  Podunk, Narragansett, and Nashaway peoples rising up against the colonists and their native allies the Mohegan and Pequoit.

It was the bloodiest conflict between settlers and natives in the early colonial period and per-capita on both sides the bloodiest war ever fought in North America.  Out of a total English population of about 56,000 more than 800 were killed, about 1.5% of the total population.  Nearly half of all New England towns were attacked and more remote areas were swept of settlers. 

Losses were even worse for native tribes.  Out of about 20,000 people in the various tribes, 3,000 or so were killed outright, about 15% of the population and many more were injured.  Smaller tribes were nearly destroyed and many fled their homes to an uncertain fate in the territory of hostile tribes further inland. 

What stunned the settlers was that the war erupted after 50 years of general peace and was led by the Wampanoag, long time allies and trading partners.  The original peace had been made by Massasoit, Sachem of the tribe and Plymouth leaders shortly after their 1620 landing.  It had been Massasoit and his band that had helped the struggling colony survive the first brutal winter, taught them how to grow corn, and were the guests at the legendary First Thanksgiving.  The Wampanoag had prospered trading pelts, meat, and crafts with the colonists for knives, pots, and other desired iron goods.  And the alliance had protected them from their enemies including the Iroquoian Mohegans. 

But tensions had gradually been rising as first Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay colony centered at Boston had spread inland, north and south along the coast, and up the Connecticut River stabbing deep into tribal hunting grounds.  The rapid population growth of Colonists put pressure on game populations.  And an economic crisis of sorts arose as the friendly tribes began running out of trade goods and turned to bartering for land—often land that they shared with other tribes. 

Attempts to Christianize the tribes was also resented by most, although a few hundred did convert and moved to Praying Towns where they studied the Gospel and learned English crafts and trades.  These Praying Indians were resented by traditionalists, and, when push came to shove, distrusted by their White protectors. 

After the elderly Massasoit, who had crafted the alliance died in 1661, relations rapidly deteriorated.  His eldest son Wamsutta became Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag Confederacy.  Wamsutta himself died suddenly, and somewhat mysteriously, while visiting Plymouth Governor Josiah Winslow’s home for negotiations.  He was succeeded as Sachem by his younger brother Metacom, who would become known among the colonists as King Philip. 

In council Metacom had long advocated resistance to the English.  Now he circulated among the tribes, both members of the Wampanoag Confederacy and ancient tribal enemies urging them to unite and rise up.  An advisor to Metacom, Praying Indian John Sassamon and the first native educated at Harvard, became alarmed and warned Plymouth officials of a possible uprising.  His mutilated body was soon found frozen in a pond, likely assassinated by Metacom’s supporters. 

Plymouth authorities, acting on tips from other Praying Indians, arrested three warriors, tried them before a jury that included some natives, and hung them on June 8.  Two weeks later war broke out. 

Early in the war the natives were triumphant. During the summer the towns of  Middleborough, Dartmouth, Mendon, Brookfield, and Lancaster were attacked and survivors fled. In early September they attacked Deerfield, Hadley, and Northfield. 

The New England Confederation consisting of the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven, declared war on September 9 and began organizing a common defense.  Their first action was a disaster.  A column of about 100 militia and farmers was dispatched to the burned over areas to try to reap abandoned harvests and retrieve other supplies for the coming winter.  They were ambushed near Hadley and nearly massacred at the Battle of Bloody Bank.  More raids against the frontier towns of Springfield and Hatfield continued in the early fall. 

Led by Plymouth Governor Winslow the Colonists elected not to strike west into the Wamponoag heartland, but south against the Narragansett, who had tried to remain neutral in the war.  Winslow suspected them of harboring Wamponoag women and children and feared that they might join the general uprising.  With friendly Indians for guides the force moved into Rhode Island, not a member of the New England Confederacy and generally friendly to the tribe.  In December they found and destroyed several villages then located the Narragansett stronghold palisade fort near modern South Kinsgton.  Winslow attacked with about a thousand men across a frozen bog.  The Great Swamp Fight ended with the fort and most of the tribe’s winter’s provisions being burned.  The Narragansett lost at least 300 and the remnants of the tribe were forced away from their homes where many died of exposure or starvation and the surviving warriors joined the general uprising. 

The colonists also lost heavily in the fight with 70 killed, including many of their most experienced officers, and 150 wounded. 

Over the winter the tribal offensive intensified.  Twenty-three towns and villages were attacked.  And in reprisal for the Narragansett raid the Jireh Bull Garrison House near the site of the Great Swamp Fight was attacked, burned to the ground, and its 15 man garrison massacred.  It was a rare instance of a well fortified colonial post being taken by assault. 

Things got even worse that spring.  Plymouth Plantation itself, deep in the most settled and well defended area, was attacked on March 12.  Although the attack was repulsed it demoralized the colonists.  Three more towns were attacked within two weeks.  A sizable company of Massachusetts Militia under a Captain Pierce was ambushed between Pawtucket and Blackstone's settlement.  Most were killed outright and those taken captive were tortured and killed. 

The Rhode Island capital of Providence had to be abandoned and was later burned.  Across the region colonists were forced back on their most populous towns which were fortified to withstand repeated attacks.  Rhode Islanders were forced into a small defensive perimeter around Newport. 

But despite battlefield victories, the Indian offensive began to grind to a halt for lack of provisions.  The war had left their own crops neglected and a hunting season was lost to battle.  Hoped for aid from the English enemy the French in Canada did not materialize except for some arms and ammunition used in the northernmost battleground in Maine. 

The Wampanoag’s traditional enemies the Pequot and Mohegans joined the colonists in greater numbers and began raiding Wamponoag villages and burning crops.  They played a big roll in defending Connecticut from the kind of destruction faced elsewhere. 

Desperately Metacom traveled to the lands of his traditional enemies the Mohawks to secure an alliance but instead they launched attacks on his exposed villages and fields.  Hungry bands began leaving the area for safety in Maine, New Hampshire, New York and even Canada. 

In April 1676 the remnants of the Narragansett under Canonchet were defeated and the chief killed.  The next month Massachusetts Militia under Captain William Turner fell upon a large group of natives in a fishing camp at Peskeopscut on the Falls of the Connecticut River killing nearly 200 and forcing many survivors to jump into the river where they likely drown.  It was an expensive victory.  Turner and 40 of his men were also killed. 

Battles near Hadley and Marlborough scattered native survivors.  Colonial authorities offered an amnesty to those who would come in to surrender and who could show that they had not been combatants.  Hungry bands began to straggle in.  By early July over 400 had surrendered. 

Metacom went into hiding in the Assowamset Swamp near Providence and near where the war had started.  He was hunted my mixed teams of settlers and native allies.  He was found and killed by Praying Indian John Alderman.  He was beheaded, drawn and quartered. 

The severed head of “King Philip” was on display at Plymouth for the next twenty years.  Fighting in northern Maine dragged on another year, but the New England heartland was secure. 

Many of the tribes were essentially eliminated as organized bands or pushed beyond the frontier.  Hundreds of native captives were tried and executed or sold as slaves in Bermuda, where many residents today trace their lineage to exiled Indians. 

Although Plymouth and other colonies had gone deeply in debt and much capital was destroyed, the amazing population growth of the colonies recouped losses within a few years.  Western settlement was delayed by lingering fears of Indian attacks and by the growing threat of the French but that allowed the core settlements to grow into real cities and encouraged a move away from subsistence farming to trade and manufacture.  By the end of the century the income and standard of living in New England exceeded that of mother England.

Native American Player Takes the Fall for Team’s Racist Name and Logo

On March 9, 1897 the Cleveland Spiders of the National League signed a full blooded Penobscot, Louis Sockalexis to the team roster.  The speedy young outfielder had first gained fame as a collegiate at Holy Cross and briefly for Notre Dame before being expelled for alcohol use.  Within days, he was signed by the very needy Spiders.  Almost immediately sports writers and fans began to informally call the team the Indians. 

The team, which included legendary hurler Cy Young, had been dealt a blow when team owners the Robinson Brothers bought a controlling interest in the St. Louis Cardinal franchise and stripped the Ohio squad of their star players to fill the Red Bird roster.  Cleveland fell to the bottom of the league like a stone.  It has been called the worst Major League of all time.

In the first half of the season Sockalexis gave them some hope with solid hitting, four home runs in the dead ball era, and especially with his base stealing.   After an injury limited his playing time the team slid back into oblivion. Attendance plummeted so badly that they had to play most of their games on the road, earning another nickname the Wanderers. 

The National League put the team out of its misery after the 1899 season. 

The following year minor American League fielded a team in Cleveland playing in the Spiders’ old League Park.  In 1901 the American League broke the National Agreement by declaring itself a new Major League. 

The new club struggled to find a moniker that fit.  They tried on the Bluebirds, Blues, and Broncos without much success.  When star player Napoleon Lajoie joined the team in 1902 he was quickly named team captain and his squad dubbed the Naps.  Lajoie stayed with the team, part of the time as player/manager until as an aging star he was traded away in 1915 to Philadelphia. 

A newspaper contest was launched to find a new name.  The Indians won, reportedly in homage to the long departed Sockalexis, but also to play on the success of the Boston Braves who had won the Word Series the year before. 

There were still some tough years ahead, but things turned around with the arrival of Tris Speaker as player/manager in 1919 who led them to World Series victory against the Brooklyn Robins. 

Today, despite regular protests by Native Americans the team retains the name and a grinning Indian mascot, Chief Wahoo.  The memory of Sockalexis is regularly dredged up as an excuse to declare that the name is actually an honor.

Sockalexis, by the way, who was described by none other than John McGraw as the greatest natural talent he ever saw, had started out on an outstanding rookie season.  But the pressure of fame got to him and he drank heavily.  Midway through the season he drunkenly leapt from a brothel window smashing his ankle.  He could play only sporadically the next two years and was out of the big leagues by the time the Spiders folded in 1899.

On Christmas Eve, 1913, Sockalexis died in Burlington, Maine.  He had suffered from chronic heart disease, diabetes, and complications of alcoholism.