Mr. Kelsey’s Brief History of the California Indians
The aboriginal population of California was large, possibly equal to that of all the rest of the United States. Powers, in his “Indians of California,” 1877, a work which has been liberally quoted by about everyone who has since written of the California Indians, estimates the number at 750,000. Barbour and Wozencraft, who traveled over the State in 1851 as members of the California Indian Commission, estimated the native population to be between 200,000 and 300,000. C. Hart Merriam[[60]] estimates the numbers at the beginning of the nineteenth century at 260,000. Dr. Kroeber estimates the number at not less than 150,000. The figures of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for 1913 shows a little less than 20,000, being slightly larger than the U. S. census for 1910. This decrease is certainly extraordinary, being nearly 90% of the most conservative estimate of former population, and nearly all taking place within the memories of persons now living. The causes are variously given as war, famine, whiskey, disease, etc., and all doubtless played their parts in the decrease. Dr. Merriam states the causes as follows:
LINGUISTIC STOCKS IN CALIFORNIA
From Handbook of American Indians.
“The principal cause of the appallingly great and rapid decrease in the Indians of California is not the number directly slain by the Whites, or the number directly killed by whiskey or disease, but a much more subtle and dreadful thing: it is the gradual but progressive and resistless confiscation of their lands and homes, in consequence of which they are forced to seek refuge in remote and barren localities, often far from water, usually with an impoverished supply of food, and not infrequently, in places where the winter climate is too severe for their enfeebled constitutions. Victims of the aggressive selfishness of the Whites, outcasts in the land of their fathers, outraged in their most sacred institutions, weakened in body, broken in spirit, and fully conscious of the hopelessness of their condition, must we wonder that the wail for the dead is often heard in their camps?”
The Special Investigating Agent, appointed under the Act of March 3, 1905, states it as largely due to the “progressive absorption by the white race of the Indians’ every means of existence.”[[61]] During the famines to which all Indian bands were subject after the American occupation, the old people and especially the children would die.
After California was fully American, the National Government at Washington, sent out a Commission of distinguished citizens, as it has done many times in other parts of the country, to make treaties with the California Indians. This commission consisted of the Honorable George W. Barbour, Honorable Redick McKee and Honorable O. M. Wozencraft. They traveled about with a military escort and made treaties with all Indians west of the Sierra Nevada, about 90% of all in the State at that time. Two treaties were made by the whole Commission. They then separated, each member taking a different part of the State. Four treaties were made by Redick McKee, four by George W. Barbour and eight by O. M. Wozencraft. John C. Fremont, E. D. Keyes, George Stoneman, and others afterward well known, signed as witnesses to some of these eighteen treaties. The treaties were much alike and were all definite and simple. In each treaty the Indians accepted the sovereignty of the United States, agreed to keep the peace with Whites and with other Indians, ceded to the United States their title to their lands and agreed to accept reservations, duly laid out by metes and bounds in the treaties. On its part the United States reserved for Indian use forever the specified reservations and agreed to pay for the lands ceded by the Indians, in goods, not cash. When these treaties went to Washington, they were accompanied by a statement calling attention to the extraordinary cheapness of the lands acquired and congratulating themselves and the country upon the fact that the Indians were too unsophisticated to demand annuities or money. The goods promised consisted of thousands of beeves, thousands of sacks of flour, thousands of blankets, suits of clothes, dresses, tools, work animals, cloth, iron, steel, etc., worth about $1,000,000 at that time. Teachers, schools, blacksmiths, farmers, etc., were also promised on a large scale. The reservations promised aggregate more than seven and a half million acres of land. The eighteen treaties were signed by 422 chiefs representing 180 tribes, or bands. Some of the reservations were laid out in the mining districts and there was much opposition to the treaties among the miners. At that time, 1851–’52, Indian treaties were submitted to the Senate of the United States for ratification. These eighteen California treaties were duly brought before the Senate and were not ratified. Nothing further was heard about them until, fifty-two years later, they were discovered in the secret archives of the Senate, the injunction of secrecy removed and the treaties published. The Government of the United States seems never to have made any attempt to make any other or further treaties. The Government nevertheless has taken the land and the reservations, as well, and every other benefit to be derived from the eighteen treaties, but has not on its part paid the price agreed or carried out any other engagement then made. It would seem that if the Government received the benefits of the treaties, it should pay the price agreed, whether the treaties were ratified or not, and that the Government should have taken some steps to acquire the Indian right of occupancy, a right which has not been legally terminated to this day. The failure of the treaties and the ensuing period of inaction by the National Government, were disastrous to the Indians of California. Not a foot of land remained which they could call their own. There was no source of aboriginal food supply which might not be appropriated by some white man any day, and most of the country was soon appropriated for mines or cattle or agriculture. The Indians were forced into a hand-to-mouth existence, interspersed with periods of famine, during which the rising generation perished. A great variety of diseases, previously unknown, were introduced among the Indians, against which they had no inherited immunity. Diseases which among white people are considered of little consequence, such as whooping-cough, measles, etc., are fatal to Indians, especially during periods of scarcity. The more virulent diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, etc., also took their toll from the Indian camps, and whiskey claimed its thousands of victims.
In any other part of the United States, the failure of the treaties would doubtless have resulted in a general Indian war. This was not possible in California. The extraordinary number of Indian dialects (over 135 are now known), belonging to some twenty diverse and antagonistic racial stocks, was enough in itself, to have prevented anything like united action. Within a year or so California was occupied by from 100,000 to 200,000 active, vigorous, masterful men, armed with the best weapons of the day. The Indians could not have mustered 30,000 warriors in the mining districts and possibly not in all California, and they were armed with bows and arrows and clubs.[[62]] The Indian cause was hopeless from the start. Nevertheless, there ensued a period of near war, with occasional clashes between Indians and Whites, which was fully as disastrous to the Indians as an open campaign would have been. The encounters are referred to, locally, as “battles”, of which quite a large number are recorded. The Indians were usually surrounded and shot down by posses of miners and citizens, in retaliation of some aggression by the Indians, or some alleged aggression. Some Indian bands are known to have been “wiped out” because their room was wanted by cattle men or settlers. No action by the Federal Government for the protection of the Indians is recorded. In one case the difficulties resulted in actual border warfare. The Hupa Indians, goaded into action by the influx of settlers into their valley, went on the warpath, during the sixties. They were joined by their neighbors, the Yurocs, or Lower Klamaths, and a sharp frontier war ensued for a couple of years. The Government finally bought out the squatters, restored the land to the Indians and gave the Hupas and Yurocs definite reservations. A similar trouble arose at Round Valley in the eighties, but war was averted by one of those compromises well known in the West, under which the Indians received one-quarter of their own land and the settlers received three-quarters.
Reports published from time to time at Washington show that the Indian Office was not wholly without knowledge of Indian conditions in California, but little was attempted and less accomplished for Indian relief. Several reservations were established, or attempted to be established by Executive order. One was invalidated by the Courts, which held the land to be within a Mexican land grant. One was raided and seized by settlers, who had sufficient political influence to hold the land and secure the cancellation of the Executive order. One was laid out with fine timber included and another was desired by cattlemen and sufficient influence was concentrated upon Congress to secure their “opening to settlement”. Only one small reservation of that period remains to this day, and this one, Tule River, was diminished in size more than half, without the knowledge or consent of the Indians. The few items appearing in the Indian Office reports, or in reports to the Board of Indian Commissioners, were rather more optimistic than the situation warranted, for the officers making those reports were at the same time giving an account of their own stewardship and doubtless mentioned as many favorable things as they could. The fact that favorable items were so few is eloquent of the conditions then existing. Dr. C. Hart Merriam estimates that the California Indians were decreasing at an average rate of 7,000 per annum[[63]], and this must have been under conditions involving an appalling amount of misery and suffering. It was well understood that the California Indians were “fading away” rapidly, yet it seems to have occurred to no one to look into the matter and see why the Indians were decreasing in numbers or what the physical steps were by which the Indians were being faded. Commissioner Wozencraft, in the early fifties, published an appeal to the people of California, but it met with no particular response. The process of ejecting Indians from the ownership or possession of anything considered of value to any white man went on without check, and the number of Indians who perished diminished each year, simply because there were fewer Indians left to die. It was hardly to be expected that the members of this savage race could at once readjust themselves to the fierce civilization under which they had been submerged so suddenly, and only a few Indians were able to do so. Nor could it be expected, doubtless, that the new white population, so largely from the Middle West, with 200 years’ traditions of Indian fighting behind them, should show any particular consideration for Indians who were unable to fight. The attitude of the great majority of white citizens was apathetic, rather than hostile, and the more active minority were allowed their will with the Indians. For years no local church seems to have made any efforts on behalf of Indians, and though there were not wanting distinguished instances where individuals braved local public opinion by standing out for the rights of Indians, the effect upon the times was small. The attitude of the Californians is reflected by the provisions of their early codes in regard to Indians. See Act of the Legislature of California approved April 22, 1850, Ch. 408, section 3650 et seq. of the California Code of that day. Indians were placed under justices of the peace. Originally an Indian could not sue or be sued, but this was altered in 1855. Cruel treatment of Indian minors was punishable by a fine of $10. Any Indian who had fallen into the clutches of the law upon a finable offense, had his labor sold to the highest bidder, until his fine was worked out, the purchaser giving a bond for the fine.[[64]] Any Indian could upon the complaint of any citizen, be haled into a justice court, adjudged an “able-bodied Indian vagrant” and his labor sold to the highest bidder for four months.[[65]] These laws were never enforced very oppressively and had become a dead letter long before they were finally repealed in 1883. Nor were State laws the only ones of which Indians might complain. After the American occupation, for some forty years, there was no practical way in which an Indian could in California acquire title to land from the public domain. The Indian was not a citizen and could not select land under the homestead or other land acts. He was not an alien and could not be naturalized as a citizen. There was no law under which a California Indian could become a citizen, until the passage of the general allotment Act in 1887.[[66]] The Indian homestead Acts of 1875 and 1883 were of little value, as the technical requirements were too onerous, no one was designated to see that Indians were assisted and few Indians ever heard of the Acts. Under the general allotment Act and subsequent to 1891, some 1800 Indian allotments were made in California. This allotting was done by Special Agents sent from Washington, who were unfamiliar with local conditions, hence water rights, soil qualities, timber, etc., were not looked after, and at least two-thirds of these allotments were of little or no value to the Indian allottees. About 1400 of the 1800 allotments were made in the five northeastern counties of the State and in these counties the few allotments that were inhabitable have proved of great value to the Indians. In the remainder of the State there was little land unappropriated and the allotment laws brought no relief to the larger number of Indians.[[67]]
The period of war, near war and oppression lasted rather less than twenty years and was succeeded by a period of eviction of somewhat longer duration. At first, when a white man filed on a tract of land and summarily ejected any Indians he might find living there, the Indians could move on to some adjoining tract, where the opportunities for starvation were equally good. But as time went on, land became much scarcer and fewer land owners were willing to allow Indians to occupy their ranches even in small part. The evictions continued and as those recently evicted could find no unoccupied tract to live on, they began to crowd into other settlements, which had not yet been summoned to move. The result was that in many parts of the State, the Indians gradually concentrated in small settlements, locally known as rancherias, where they lived upon the sufferance of some kindly-disposed land owner. A change in ownership of the land usually meant eviction for the Indians. In these rancherias the conditions were unspeakable, both as to sanitation and morals. The Indians felt they were in their last ditch and that there was nothing for them to look forward to but extinction. The Indians were surrounded by civilization, but not of it. They came in contact chiefly with the vices of civilization and the vicious white element. Forty years after the American occupation three-fourths of the California Indians had still to learn what a missionary might be and nine-tenths of them were still heathen. The priest and the Levite had passed by on the other side, and the good Samaritan had been unavoidably detained in Jerusalem.
The first general awakening as to conditions among the Indians of California came with the publication of Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Century of Dishonor” and “Ramona”, in the eighties, and by 1890 Congress had passed an act for the relief of the Indians of Southern California. This was much needed. The Smiley Commission appointed under this Act increased the number of small reservations in Southern California from about seventeen to thirty-four and enlarged most of those formerly in existence. They were able to give a fixed indefeasible title and these Indians were thenceforward secure in their homes. The Smiley Commission was not given funds sufficient to develop water upon the tracts reserved, a most important matter, for the Indians had been crowded into the mountains and on to barren tracts, which no white man at that time wanted. The Southern California Indians had to wait some fifteen to twenty years longer before an attempt was made to put their lands into habitable shape, where they could live with some approach to comfort. The Indians of Northern and Central California, numbering more than three-fourths of those in the State, received no benefit from the awakening as to Southern California. Their necessities were fully as great and they were as fully deserving, but interest in the California Indians died away largely before anything was accomplished north of Tehachipi. Two things did follow, first sending some allotting agents to Northern California, where they did some good, though they largely failed to live up to their opportunities, and second, a branch of the National Indian Association was established in Northern California and mission and school work was begun among the Indians. The policy of this Association has been to establish a school or a mission and when it is in good working order to turn it over to some church or society that will agree to carry on the work. Then the Association establishes another mission in the same manner. Some twenty missions and schools, reaching about 12,000 Indians, have been established in California, directly or indirectly through the efforts of the National Indian Association or of its Northern California branch. For some eight or ten years after the founding of the Northern California branch in 1894, their efforts were largely confined to the establishment of missions and schools among the Indians and to relieving such cases of distress as came to their knowledge. There were considerable difficulties. No church or other organization could afford to take over or begin work unless there was some fixity of tenure for the Indians. Where the Indians were subject to eviction at any time, as the majority were, no one could afford to begin work, for their work might be dissipated any day and the Indians scattered. Hence, for the first few years the efforts were confined to those places where Indians held land in some form.
The second awakening began about 1903, when the Northern California Indian Association, or as it is often called, the California Indian Association, began its campaign for the relief of the homeless Indians of California, then supposed to number about 8,000 souls. Every avenue of assistance proposed seemed to lead back to the land question. Without some security of tenure it seemed impossible to accomplish any lasting improvement in Indian conditions, and inasmuch as the landless condition of the Indians was due to the acts and omissions of the National Government, the Indian Association appealed to the Congress of the United States for relief, in so far as land was necessary. The Association did not ask for reservations, believing that more Indian reservations in California would be detrimental to all concerned. They did not ask that the Indians be given farms, or that they should be made rich; merely that they be given small allotments of land, where they would be secure. The California Indians have always been self-sustaining. That is, they have received no aid from the Government or from anyone else. They have often been below the starvation line and usually not far above it, but such as their living was, it was their own. Most of the California Indians have in some measure adjusted themselves to the industrial life about them and perform whatever labor they can get. The Indian Association planned not to interfere in any manner with their independence, or with their industrial position. Above all things they did not wish the Indians pauperized. Also, the Indian Association did not wish the Indians concentrated. Where too many Indians are concentrated in one place, there is not sufficient work and the Indians themselves have their own reasons for remaining within their ancestral districts, which we may call superstitious or sentimental. The old racial antagonism between the antagonistic racial stocks also renders it inadvisable to concentrate. The Indian Association therefore proposed that in places where no land for allotment could be secured from the public domain, small tracts should be purchased, in the immediate neighborhood of the Indians, where they have friends and employers.[[68]]
The Indian Association then, 1904, began a vigorous campaign in California, largely educational, for the purpose of securing from Congress the land necessary as a basis for further work on behalf of the California Indians. In this effort nearly all of the societies working for the benefit of Indians joined. In Southern California matters had been nearing a crisis, with the Indians there, owing to lack of water on most reservations, indefinite boundaries, etc., and they were also asking for relief. The Sequoya League, of which Charles F. Lummis, Esq., was the leading spirit, was the most active body in Southern California. In 1905 Congress directed an investigation of the whole Indian situation in California, and C. E. Kelsey, General Secretary of the Northern California Indian Association, was selected to make the investigation. The report of this investigation was published by the Indian Office March 21, 1906. Congress soon made an appropriation of $100,000 for the relief of the California Indians and $50,000 was further appropriated two years later. Some further sums were also given for fencing, surveying and other such items. The plan presented by the Indian Association met favor with the Board of Indian Commissioners and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and was adopted almost in toto. Mr. Kelsey was appointed to have charge of purchasing and allotting such lands as were required and served until the appropriations were exhausted. The need for water upon the Southern California reservations was met chiefly from direct appropriations for the Irrigation Service and a large share of this work is already completed. The vexing boundary questions in Southern California have all been settled and some considerable additions made to the reservations from the public domain and from purchase. In Northern California the work of getting all Indians on their own small fraction of land is not quite so far along, but is nearing completion. When, in 1903, the Northern California Indian Association began its movement to secure land for the landless Indians of California, the land situation of the California Indians was estimated about as follows:
| On reservations, So. Calif. | 3,500 |
| On reservations, No. Calif. | 1,700 |
| On allotments, So. Calif. | 250 |
| On allotments, No. Calif. | 2,800 |
| On land owned by churches, societies, etc., and by themselves | 1,100 |
| Estimated to be landless | 8,000 |
| 17,350 |
It was estimated that about 2,000 could be given homes from the public domain. The above estimates proved inadequate in some respects. There were some 2,000 more Indians in the State than had been estimated and fewer Indians had land of their own than was supposed. Still as it proved possible to take care of 4,200 from the public domain and within the National Forests, the number from whom land must be purchased was not increased.
Congress has recently appropriated $10,000 more for the purchase of land for these Indians, but this will not be enough to take care of one-half of those remaining. When this appropriation shall have been used, nearly 10,000 of the California Indians will have been given homes. The others should be provided for immediately. It should be understood that all this has been done without the establishment of reservations or agencies and with practically no expense for maintenance. In comparison with the magnitude of the work, the expense has been small and it must be conceded that the debt which the Government owes the California Indians is by no means extinguished.
The present land situation (1914) in California is about as follows:
| On reservations, No. Calif. | 1,944 |
| On reservations, So. Calif. | 3,416 |
| On allotments, No. Calif. (Old) | 2,800 |
| On allotments, So. Calif. (Old) | 250 |
| On allotments, No. Calif. (New) | 400 |
| On allotments, So. Calif. (New) | 238 |
| On National Forests | 3,000 |
| On newly purchased lands | 4,800 |
| Allotments arranged for | 600 |
| On land owned by Indians | 300 |
| On land owned by churches, societies, etc. | 250 |
| Not yet taken care of | 1,841 |
| 19,839 |
The awakening in regard to the California Indians was by no means confined to land. The Indian Association has been working upon public sentiment from the first. After the land purchases were under way, the Association began efforts to secure schools and school privileges and to urge religious and other organizations to take up various phases of Indian work. The Indian Office established some eight day schools and increased the capacity of others. Also an increased number of field matrons were appointed. In 1904 it was estimated that only 1000 Indian children of school age in Northern California were in any kind of a school, out of 2800. By 1914 it is estimated that less than 1000 were not in school. The increase in school attendance is largely in the public schools of the State. Racial prejudice against Indians in California in the earlier days was intense and the idea of allowing an Indian child in school was considered preposterous. As the Indians decreased in numbers all fear of them passed away, and in time a kindlier feeling arose. For many years this racial prejudice prevented the greater number of Indians from getting an adequate amount of work. With increased population and the increased development of California came an increased demand for labor with a diminished prejudice against Indians. The industrial position of the Indians has therefore improved. In some parts of the State the Indians are fairly well employed at fair pay. In others there is little work for anyone and in these portions of the State Indians have to go many miles for a little work. They cut wood, put up hay, cultivate and pick hops, pick grapes and other fruit and do all kinds of odd jobs. As their employment is still largely seasonal, it is not wholly satisfactory. One excellent thing about the more recent revival of interest in the California Indians is that it is largely in California itself.
In 1907 there were five Protestant missions to the Indians of Northern California and two or three Roman Catholic missions. By 1914 the Protestant missions have increased to seventeen, with twenty missionaries. The Catholic work has also been extended. There are now missionaries in the field for about 14,000 of the California Indians and quite a number of local churches have interested themselves in the Indians in their own neighborhoods. The number of converts probably does not exceed 4,000.
In California a considerable number of Indians, some 3,600, were found living within the National Forests, of whom some 600 had allotments made before the forests were established. Further legislation was necessary before the 3,000 could be given their own homes. This was accomplished in 1910. (36 Stat. L. 855)
The California Indian, often termed “Digger”, has been considerably maligned. Statements are not wanting that the California Indians were of deficient mentality, little above the brutes and about the lowest of all human beings. Such statements are entitled to no credence. Kroeber, Barrett, Goddard, Merriam, Powers, Lummis, and all writers having actual acquaintance with the California Indians, place them as equal to any of the other American tribes. Teachers in the California Indian schools say that the California Indian children are as intelligent and capable as any Indians they have ever taught. Nearly one thousand Indian children are in the public schools of California and their scholarship is in no wise inferior to that of the white children of the same age, though it must be admitted that few Indian children attend after adolescence. A few of those in better financial circumstances have graduated from high schools with honors. Employers of Indian labor, without exception, pronounce them honest, reliable and capable. They can be trusted to work alone, which cannot be done with Oriental labor or floating Whites. Conviction of an Indian for theft is almost unheard of. Statistics gathered in 1909 showed twenty-eight Indians in the prisons of California for crimes of violence, mostly committed when under the influence of liquor, and not one Indian for theft or robbery or crimes against property. This is remarkable when we consider the straits under which the Indians are often placed.
Present conditions look favorable for the California Indians. In Southern California the most harassing troubles have been settled, and water is being supplied wherever possible. Southern California is over-schooled. The Government schools have a capacity for about 1200 pupils and there are about 800 Indian children of school age in that district. In Northern California seven-eighths of the Indians have been supplied with minute amounts of land. The California white people seem aroused to the need for other forms of assistance and it seems unlikely that matters will ever revert to former conditions. The new appropriation will take care of a part of the Indians still homeless. More has been accomplished in this “spurt” than all others put together. This may be attributed to the fact that the external influences lasted longer. That is, an outsider from the Indian Association was in charge of the work for some eight years. The last one hundred years tend to show that the Indian Office has not within itself the power to initiate any movement for the relief of Indians. The spirit that compels redress has not resided in the Indian Office. The Indian Office has received at all times sufficient reports from the field and may be presumed to have had knowledge of conditions at all times and yet every movement for relief has come from the outside, from individuals, or more often from associations who have compelled an unwilling bureau to act, or, often an unwilling Congress to act. This is doubtless always the case with bureaucracy. I am inclined to think this results largely from the manner of organization. As it is, the authority to decide questions lies with persons who seldom or never see the field and are without personal knowledge of that they are doing. The men who know the field have no power and the men who have the power do not know the field.
Bureaucracy has one curious result and I am inclined to think more so in the Indian Service than in others. The employees seem to lose all power of initiative and all sense of individuality. They soon learn to resent any but routine work. This is probably why the reports of conditions in California and elsewhere have fallen into deaf pigeonholes.
My Brother’s Keeper.—Charles F. Lummis, 1899. Land of Sunshine. Vol. XI, pp. 139, 207, 263, 333.
My Brother’s Keeper.—Charles F. Lummis, 1900. Land of Sunshine. Vol. XII, pp. 28, 90.
The Story of Cyrus Hawk.—C. J. Crandall, 1900. Land of Sunshine. Vol. XII, pp. 352.
The Pity of It.—Bertha S. Wilkins, 1900. Land of Sunshine. Vol. XII, pp. 244.
The Sequoya League.—Charles F. Lummis, 1903. Out West. Vol. XVIII, pp. 81, 213, 355.
Turning a New Leaf. The Warner Ranch Indians, Out West, 1903. Vol. XVIII, pp. 441; Out West, Part II, Vol. XVIII, pp. 589.
The Sequoya League.—Charles F. Lummis, 1903. Out West. Vol. XVIII, pp. 477, 625.
Bullying the “Quaker Indians.”—Charles F. Lummis, 1903. Out West. Vol. XVIII, pp. 669.
The Sequoya League.—Charles F. Lummis, 1903. Out West. Vol. XVIII, pp. 743.
Reports of the Board of Indian Commissioners, and Interior Department, 1871–1908, for full descriptions of investigations, etc.