"Oh, the horror"

I promised myself that I wouldn't do this post. I wanted to ignore the annual shamefest that people seem to want to delve into.

Recently Jerry Rohde, a respected North Coast historian, wrote an article and published it in the North Coast Journal, a respected North Coast publication. The article was about what most of us already knew, the early settlers were scoundrels, thieves, murderers, and ne’er do wells. Much like we have here today.

I hate these revelations over what “really” happened in early California history. Certainly there was a genocide of the Indian people. If any of the young people, that advocate anarchy, would just look at California’s history from the 1800s, they could easily see what anarchy is like. Greed corruption, and yes, even genocide will occur. May-the-toughest-thug-win. Lawless conflict will turn even the meekest toward the lawless pursuit of survival.

Few understand the pressures placed upon people when they are put into a lawless environment with the challenge to survive. Many will bluster and act tough, with the hopes of scaring away any challengers. We see it all day long in Southern Humboldt. The people that don’t have law enforcement for protection will stockpile guns and ammunition. Many times, automatic weapon fire is heard echoing down the canyons. Most of the people that I know, that have those weapons, don’t really intend to use them on anybody, but they want anyone that might mess with them to think that they would. Beautiful-little-meek-but-rich-girl Patty Hearst readily grabbed an automatic weapon and helped her captors rob a bank. She did that out of trying to impress her captors that she had value, and to not kill her. It’s called Stockholm syndrome in psychology. But, the issue at hand is the pressure that the people of the 1800s found themselves in.

The “Murdering scum” that the North Coast Journal’s Hank Sims referred to were people like the Kelsey’s. The Kelseys that Kelseyville was named after. Their trip to California was to come over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Kelseys and a man by the name of Bidwell, (Maybe you have heard of him) had hired Indians on several occasions to guide them. The Indian guides that they hired invariably led them into ambush, where they would have been killed if they hadn’t been well armed. They finally abandoned the idea of hiring Indian guides and decided that they would have to make it over the mountains on their own. Mrs. Kelsey was only sixteen years old and had an infant child to care for. In trying to find a path over the mountain they left Mrs. Kelsey behind with their provisions. When they returned they discovered that Indians had stolen most of their provisions while Mrs. Kelsey hid. The Kelseys and Bidwell lived on wild game that they could find. Game was scarce in the high snow covered elevations. They finally made it to the Sacramento Valley in the area of Stockton. They almost starved, and they almost froze to death. On their trip to California they gained a deep and abiding hate of Indians that they kept up until the day that they died. Many more reasons for them to hate Indians came up during their lifespan. It is said that a Kelsey would shoot and Indian just to watch him jump.

These are the kinds of stories that I hate to tell because somebody will always say; “The Kelseys didn’t belong in California anyway”. Like it or not the Kelseys are an important part of California history. They were involved in the Bear Flag Revolt among other things. Mrs. Kelsey, who was the first white woman to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains, was also the one that made California’s first flag. The Bear Flag. Yet, there are people that want to change the name of Kelseyville because the Kelseys killed Indians. There are people that want to change the name of Larabee Valley because Larabee killed Indians. If that were the criteria for changing name of a town, they will have to change the name of all of the towns named after the California Missions, or the Franciscan Monks, including san Francisco, because they all ruthlessly used, and slaughtered, the Indian people.

Jerry Rohde hinted at some of the thuggery that can abound in the absence of law and order. He mentioned the rancher that was killing other ranchers and blaming it on the Indians. Many ranches became part of other ranches that way. It was hard to protect yourself against that kind of person. You had to be on his side, or some value to him, or you might be the next victim. To survive on the north coast you had to be tough as nails, or belong to a group of people that was. Clearly people feared for their lives. They conducted themselves in such a fashion to appear that nobody should mess with them. When the Indians on Indian Island were killed, it was well understood that it was the act of a conspiracy of a large, and tough as nails, group of people. Nobody gave any information about the murders out of fear. Those that said anything probably voiced approval. It wasn’t healthy to go up against the group of thugs. But, I’m also sure that not many in the group really liked what they were doing. Many felt they had no choice. It was clear that the law wasn’t going to help them. They had petitioned many people, many times, to no avail. Yet, many in the group probably didn’t even tell their wives what they had done.

I know many stories about how brutal and ruthless the Indian people could be, and I know many stories about how brutal and ruthless the white man was. The fact remains that it was a failure of law and order that allowed what happened to happen. To say that the Indian owned the west and that the white man was the interloper is ridiculous. The intrusion in the west by the white man wasn’t anymore stoppable than the recent intrusion of the “Newcomers”. The only difference was Law and order. The Newcomer came to the north coast, and law-and-order made him pay for the land. Never mind that the white man “stole it” from the Indian people.

Now, to get to my point of this whole manuscript. What pains me is the need to continually pick the scab of old wounds in the name of “history” or “getting it right”. Sadly, for the later-day-historians, they will never get it right, because there is too much that they don’t and never will know. There are too many stories that will never be told. Stories about rapes and murders and mayhem on both the Indian and white side. If the historians were smart they would listen to the very wise Indian people that say they have forgiven the white people. As indeed, I have forgiven the Indian people for the things that they did to my family. I take the blame and the credit as Hank Sims said that I should. The Indian people and the whites have, for the past 140 years, have lived in peace and harmony. Indeed, they went to the same schools, intermarried, hunted fished and worked together, and have become close friends.

It was the same white settlers, that the later-day-historians claim whipped up the hate against the Indian people, that actually petitioned the Governor, and indeed the President of the United States, to solve the Indian/white conflict. Little or no help came. The Government solution was tantamount to telling the settlers that the Government officials understood that they needed protection, but we're busy right now. The government and law enforcement came too little, too late. It was a failure of government and law-and-order that led to the inevitable chaos that settled the West.

The locals, both white and Indian learned to live together and respect each other long ago. In a lot of cases we are one family. I have many Indian relatives and friends. Usually when an Indian person is outraged about what happened and wants to drag up the past, pick open the scab, and bring back the pain, it is an outsider Indian. Not many locals want to start the fight over. They do not want to bring up who-did-what again.

I’m sick to death about “Oh, the horror” every time the horror is brought up. There was horror enough to go around on both the white and the Indian sides. What I would like to see more of is “Oh, the History” or “Oh, the culture”. I would like to see more of how the Indian people made baskets, or how and why they burned the land to manage the bush and provide new shoots for making baskets. I would like to see more of what Ben Schill recently did. He translated an Indian poem, "Abalone Woman" about how the flint came to the ridge behind Salmon Creek, and how the red marks came to be in the abalone shell. Why a man said “Women don’t like me, only squirrels I will eat”, and he became an eagle. Great and interesting stories, about how the north coast came about according to the Indian Legends. One thing that I’ve always wondered, is how did the Indian people know when to not eat mussels to avoid paralytic shellfish poisoning? So much has been lost and so much time has been wasted on, “Oh, the horror”

I want to see the tales of the horror ended. Too much has not been told, on both sides, to delve into “Oh the horror.”