Hank Sims got us all.

Anon said;
"Who the f**k does Hank Sims think the hell he is??"
Thank you.


Honestly, I don't know him well, but I think Hank Sims is a lot like myself. He has a better sense of humor than the written word will support.(Notice that I give myself a lot of credit there) I think that all of us were taking him in the wrong way. He was just trying to have a little ironic fun with us, and we leaped at his lure like a trout to the fly. I hope that Hank would visit more often, I admire his wit.

I was suspicious from the start that he knows how to create interest. He admitted that it was his headline, not Jerry Rohde's, in the article in the North Coast Journal about; "The Genocidal Scum that Built Arcata”. Because of that headline, many more people read the issue than would have read it if it had been posted under “The Sonoma Gang”. I have to admit that when that issue came out, the headline caught my eye well enough to do a double-take on my way past the newspaper rack, then a double-back, and then a singular grab for the paper. Then, I immediately read the whole thing and came to a few conclusions of my own. Chances are, I would not have grabbed the Journal with a more milquetoast headline.

The newspaper, magazine, and media-like businesses are in decline, just like most businesses. They need people like Hank to keep their media out there. We don't all agree with his methods. Some wise person once said; “Never pick a fight with people that buy ink by the barrel”. So, I don’t intend to pick a fight, but I would like to give a little advice about what I like to see in a story. My BIG question has always been: WHY?

When I see a newspaper headline that says; “They Ate Kittens!” I want to know -Why- they ate them, not how they ate them, or how they cooked them. That is just wasting my time. My brain is screaming WHY! -Why did they eat kittens?- Was it part of their religion? Were they starving? Had they been attacked by wild kittens and they were getting even? Why!

When a respected historian like Jerry Rohde writes an article that is entitled; “The Genocidal Scum that built Arcata”. I don’t want to know that they killed Indians, I want to know -why- they killed Indians. Some of us, Like Jerry Rohde and myself, know that the Kelseys (the genocidal scum) were part of the Bidwell Kelsey party the made their way across the Nevada desert and the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California. Why did they do that? Maybe they had no opportunity to thrive where they were, or they wanted to live in a new and fertile land, form their own society, and live free, and do the things that we all want to do to succeed, and, take care of our families. Currently, we have many of those kind of people in Southern Humboldt. They were all very young people, and young people do stupid things. Whatever the reason, they did come to California.

On their way to California the small Bidwell/Kelsey group split off and headed directly to California, against sage advice. They hired Indian guides that led them into ambush traps. They eventually stopped trying to get guidance from the Indians, and made their own way into California. Kelsey had to leave his young bride, and very young child behind, while he scouted ahead. The wife and child hid from the Indians, while a raiding party took their provisions. They passed the remains of several immigrant attempts to make it to California, on thesame route that the Kelseys were taking. Immigrants that were looted and killed by Indians. The Indians followed and preyed on the Bidwell/Kelsey group the whole way to California. I don’t know how you would have fared in that same trip, but how would it make you feel to have people openly preying on you, your wife and child and the rest of your family? The whole time not really knowing where you were going… Worried sick about whether, or if, you could really get there…

The only thing that saved the group was their youthful energy, the fact that they were excellent marksmen, and most of all; they were wise enough to have taken more ammunition than they thought that they would ever need. In the end, having plenty of ammunition is all that saved the Kelseys. Otherwise they would have not have been even a footnote in California history. Do you ever wonder who was in the remains of those pioneer emigrants left dead with their bones bleaching in the sun? The ones that the Nevada Indians raided and killed. It could very well have been my ancestors that tried to make their way to the West, while their families waited back east for word from California that never came.

When they came out of the mountains, the Kelseys had an abiding and enduring hate of the Indian people that lasted the rest of their lives. Some of us would call that racism, other might call it post traumatic shock. Some people today just call them “Genocidal scum.” I think that the Journal story should have included some more of the “why”. Hank Sims grabbed our interest with his headline, but he failed to include a little understanding of the “Scum”. I think that he should have insisted upon that.

Footnote: Scum= That which rises to the top.