Crusoe's Island: A Ramble in the Footsteps of Alexander Selkirk / With Sketches of Adventure in California and Washoe

by J. Ross Browne

During the following year I made bold to pay my old friends a visit. A delegation of the Common Council met me on the wharf. There were no hacks yet introduced, but any number of horses were placed at my disposal. The greeting was cordial and impressive. A most complimentary address was read to me by the mayor of the city, in which it was fully and frankly acknowledged that I was the means of building up the fortunes of Port Townsend. After the address, the citizens with one accord rushed to me, and, grasping me warmly by the hand, at once retracted their injurious imputations. These gratifying public demonstrations over, we adjourned to the nearest saloon, and buried the hatchet forever in an ocean of the best Port Townsend whisky. It is due to the citizens to say that not one of them went beyond reasonable bounds on this joyous occasion, by which I do not mean to intimate that they were accustomed to the beverage referred to. At all events, I think it has been clearly demonstrated by these authentic documents that "whisky built a great city."

III.
THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA.

When the State of California was admitted into the Union, the number of Indians within its borders was estimated at one hundred thousand. Of these, some five or six thousand, residing in the vicinity of the Missions, were partially civilized, and subsisted chiefly by begging and stealing. A few of the better class contrived to avoid starvation by casual labor in the vineyards and on the farms of the settlers. They were very poor and very corrupt, given to gambling, drinking, and other vices prevailing among white men, and to which Indians have a natural inclination. As the country became more settled, it was considered profitable, owing to the high rate of compensation for white labor, to encourage these Christian tribes to adopt habits of industry, and they were employed very generally throughout the state. In the vine-growing districts they were usually paid in native brandy every Saturday night, put in jail next morning for getting drunk, and bailed out on Monday to work out the fine imposed upon them by the local authorities. This system still prevails in Los Angeles, where I have often seen a dozen of these miserable wretches carried to jail roaring drunk of a Sunday morning. The inhabitants of Los Angeles are a moral and intelligent people, and many of them disapprove of the custom on principle, and hope it will be abolished as soon as the Indians are all killed off. Practically, it is not a bad way of bettering their condition; for some of them die every week from the effects of debauchery, or kill one another in the nocturnal brawls which prevail in the outskirts of the Pueblo.

THE DIGGERS AT HOME.

The settlers in the northern portions of the state had a still more effectual method of encouraging the Indians to adopt habits of civilization. In general, they engaged them at a fixed rate of wages to cultivate the ground, and during the season of labor fed them on beans, and gave them a blanket or a shirt each; after which, when the harvest was secured, the account was considered squared, and the Indians were driven off to forage in the woods for themselves and families during the winter. Starvation usually wound up a considerable number of the old and decrepit ones every season; and of those that failed to perish from hunger or exposure, some were killed on the general principle that they must have subsisted by stealing cattle, for it was well known that cattle ranged in the vicinity, while others were not unfrequently slaughtered by their employers for helping themselves to the refuse portions of the crop which had been left in the ground. It may be said that these were exceptions to the general rule; but if ever an Indian was fully and honestly paid for his labor by a white settler, it was not my luck to hear of it; certainly it could not have been of frequent occurrence.

The wild Indians inhabiting the Coast Range, the valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, and the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, became troublesome at a very early period after the discovery of the gold mines. It was found convenient to take possession of their country without recompense, rob them of their wives and children, kill them in every cowardly and barbarous manner that could be devised, and when that was impracticable, drive them as far as possible out of the way. Such treatment was not consistent with their rude ideas of justice. At best they were an ignorant race of Diggers, wholly unacquainted with our enlightened institutions. They could not understand why they should be murdered, robbed, and hunted down in this way, without any other pretense of provocation than the color of their skin and the habits of life to which they had always been accustomed. In the traditionary researches of their most learned sages they had never heard of the snakes in Ireland that were exterminated for the public benefit by the great and good St. Patrick. They were utterly ignorant of the sublime doctrine of General Welfare. The idea, strange as it may appear, never occurred to them that they were suffering for the great cause of civilization, which, in the natural course of things, must exterminate Indians. Actuated by base motives of resentment, a few of them occasionally rallied, preferring rather to die than submit to these imaginary wrongs. White men were killed from time to time; cattle were driven off; horses were stolen, and various other iniquitous offenses were committed.

The federal government, as is usual in cases where the lives of valuable voters are at stake, was forced to interfere. Troops were sent out to aid the settlers in slaughtering the Indians. By means of mounted howitzers, muskets, Minié rifles, dragoon pistols, and sabres, a good many were cut to pieces. But, on the whole, the general policy of the government was pacific. It was not designed to kill any more Indians than might be necessary to secure the adhesion of the honest yeomanry of the state, and thus furnish an example of the practical working of our political system to the savages of the forest, by which it was hoped they might profit. Congress took the matter in hand at an early day, and appropriated large sums of money for the purchase of cattle and agricultural implements. From the wording of the law, it would appear that these useful articles were designed for the relief and maintenance of the Indians. Commissioners were appointed at handsome salaries to treat with them, and sub-agents employed to superintend the distribution of the purchases. In virtue of this munificent policy, treaties were made in which the various tribes were promised a great many valuable presents, which of course they never got. There was no reason to suppose they ever should; it being a fixed principle with strong powers never to ratify treaties made by their own agents with weaker ones, when there is money to pay and nothing to be had in return.