 |
| 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. |
|
Recent
headlines showing that the Navaho Nation is suffering the most extreme outbreak of Coronavirus cases in the United States and that the leaders of
two Sioux reservations in South Dakota have been threatened by the openly anti-Indian Governor for
taking precautions to limit travel into and out of their land
while the state is under some of the loosest restrictions in the country
illustrate that the more than 400 year war
of occupation against our native
peoples never really ended. A look
back at an egregious but little known atrocity reminds us of
that genocidal struggle.
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 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 the 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.
 |
| 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. |
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.
