Blessed are the peacemakers

I've moved another letter up here to the front page because I found it to be interesting and of some merit to be seen by all.
Olmanriver has left a new comment on your post "Nightfish, and surf-fish.":

Link to first people where many of these photos came from.

"In describing a trip along the coast north of San Francisco in 1861, J. Ross Browne remarked that near the mouth of Ten Mile River 'Along the beach, and at intervals of every few hundred yards, groups of Indians were engaged in catching and packing away in baskets a small species of fish resembling the sardine, which at particular periods during the summer, abound in vast numbers on this part of the coast. The Indians catch them by means of a small hand-net, which they use in a peculiar and very dexterous manner. Holding the pole of the net in both hands, they watch the breakers as they roll in, and when they see one of suitable force and magnitude coming, they plunge in the surf and turn their backs upon the incoming wave. The moment it breaks they set their nets down firmly in the sand, and the fish are forced into it by the velocity of the receding current. I have seen them take out at a single catch an ordinary-sized bucket full.


The old women of the different tribes take away the fish in large baskets to the rancherias, where they are dried in the sun or used as neccessity requires. The coast Indians carry on a small trade with those of the mountains and interior valleys, in fish, dried abalone, mussels, shells, and various marine productions, in exchange for which they receive dried berries, acorns, and different kinds of nuts and roots. Of late years, however, they have been harshly dealt with by the settlers that it is with great difficulty they can procure a scanty subsistence. They are in constant dread of being murdered, and even in the vicinity of the reservations have a startled and distrustful look whenever they are approached by white men.' Harper's Monthly Magazine, 315, August 1861"

This commentary speaks for itself, I can only imagine the fear that the Indian people suffered while trying to appease the evermore difficult to please white man. The early 1860's were the period where it was being decided whether to kill all of the Indian people, or just the renegade bands that were still killing livestock and declaring themselves at war with the white interloper. Fortunately there were "good white people" that were screaming for the Indian people's protection. I made the comment that I was going to "do a post about why we have so many Indians here today." So this is it.

I have a friend who is black, Hoy Kersh, she just wrote a book about her experiences growing up in the south. She made the comment that, if it weren't for "the good white people" in the south, she would have never survived. I was a little shocked, and a little surprised that a black person, from the south, would make a statement like that. My thoughts were that any black person would be filled with distain for the "white person" because of all of the hate and prejudiced that was sent the way of any black person in the south. I made the question: "There were good white people in the south"? Her answer was "Oh yes, there were many good white people." I knew that she was right, people are people, no matter where they are from. But, I found it surprising that she would describe the south as having "many good white people". I think that there are "good people” in any society, black, white, Indian, or whatever dividing line that we choose to observe.

I recently read an article by Bruce Brady, a school teacher from Laytonville, that skipped over the struggles of the early settlement period of Laytonville with the flippant remark about some the people of Long Valley being “the old Indian-killer families”. I thought that the comment was rather careless and thoughtless, especially in view of the fact that the “old Indian killer families" always spoke well of him. My thought was that this fellow wrote an article that was basically ego masturbation, about how he was able to make the students really “care” for a short time. “What remains today is an empty space where care eked out a life for a couple of years.” He did it with a state grant that came, in part, from the profits of the loggers that he roundly criticized for their "clear cuts." I don’t agree with clear cuts either, but the point is, the logging is one of the sources of the one-half million dollars, that he helped piss away in hardly any time at all. These are the people, Mr. Brady and some like him, that are teaching our children to hate our “old Indian killer family” ancestors, with comments like, "Bucks – so-called – especially were prized as targets out on what, decades later, would become the football field.” What’s wrong with making the children ponder, WHY, history happened the way it did, rather than just imply that evil was afoot? Too often the old “Indian Killer families” just remain silent, and realize that some people know not what they say, and never will know unless they educate themselves. Mr. Brady has a wonderful talent as a writer, he evoked the names of some of the most tedious writers in all of history to make his point. To bad he didn’t just talk to a few people in the valley that know some of the local history, instead of insulting them. Most people reading his essay don't know that the people like "Beva" are totally fictitious characters, but there are people that he could have talked to, that would have been willing to share the real stories with him. That way he could have quoted real people that are important to the school and the education of the Laytonville people.

Discrimination is a natural instinct. Those that failed to discriminate in history, failed to survive. If your people are being killed by lions, you soon learn to discriminate against lions. You stop trusting lions because it isn’t healthy to try to be friends with them. Same with many other predatory critters. You soon learn that some critters can’t be trusted, and you either kill them or stay away from them. When discrimination goes awry, when it is misplaced, it becomes prejudice. We discriminate against lions because they kill us. Dogs can be different, some kill us, but some befriend and protect us. Wise people can make the judgment that some dogs are friendly, and they can be trusted, but some people, that have had a bad experience with dogs, can never get past that fear and distrust. I feel that some prejudice comes from a persons experiences. Based on their experiences, wise people can know who to trust, and who may not be trusted.

The early white people, that came across the great plains and through the mountain passes, faced many Indian predations on their trip to California. The white people never knew what to expect from the Native Americans. Some tribes were friendly and some weren’t. Many of the pioneer whites were killed on their way to California. Many had family members killed by Indians. They were killed for reasons that some white people couldn’t understand. It was hard to accept that the Indian people may have had good reasons to kill the whites. It was especially hard for the white people to understand when the Indians had just killed your brother, wife, child, or other family member. Some whites arrived in California with a deep and abiding hate for the Indian people, and they did not care which was a “good Indian” and which was a “bad Indian”. The saying, by many whites of the day, was “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

Some, like the Kelsey’s, who were preyed upon by the Indians on their whole trip to California, hated the Indian people so intensely that they say "they would shoot an Indian just to watch him jump”. The Kelsey and Bidwell party was a small party and very temping prey for the Indians. The Kelseys claimed that the only reason that they were able to survive the Indians attacks, is that they had packed more than ample ammunition, and they were all deadly accurate with a rifle. They said that they passed many sites of past Indian massacres of white emigrants on their trip. Few people understand where the hate came from. I think that to be on the trip to California with the Kelsey’s would have, at least opened a few eyes, as to why they hated Indians.

Conversely, my Great, Great Grandparents John and Suzanna Middleton left Illinois in 1853. They made their trip to California in a covered wagon. They were Quakers and were peaceful people by nature. The family stories passed down to me, is that they made friends with the Indians along their way to California, and they hired many Indians as guides. Suzanna was pregnant on the trip to Salt Lake City, as ALL married women seemed to be back then. It is said that their daughter Mary was the first non-Mormon white child born in Salt Lake City. I don’t know how they made that distinction, but it is one of my family’s twice-told-tales.

The Middletons came through the Donner Pass and settled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada’s at a little mining town near Grass Valley by the name of “Timbuctoo”. My Great Grandfather Lafayette was born there. They soon discovered that the gold-fields were not for them, because of disease and violence. They moved to Mud Springs 13 miles west of Laytonville In the 1860’s, where they remained for the rest of their lives on the Mud Springs ranch. She died at 75 years, and he died at 81. They had 8 children.

During their whole lives the Middletons were friends of the Indian people. They protected and defended them from the people trying to kill them as much as they could. They survived a few Indian attacks, and still persisted in protecting the Indians. My grandfather Lafayette (Lafe) married Laura Lockhart, from another 1850’s family.

My great, great grandparents, the Lockharts came to California by sailing ship. Mary (Cull) Lockhart came to California from New York by train to the Mississippi River, down the river by riverboat, across the Gulf of Mexico by sailing ship, across Panama by mule, and finally into San Francisco by sailing ship. She came to California to seek her lost father and brother, who had disappeared in their trip overland to the California Gold fields.

My 3G grandfather, Captain Jonathon Alexander Lockhart, was the master of the sailing ship “The Hungarian” that shipped goods and emigrants around the Horn of South America and into San Francisco. His son knew Mary Cull in New York. They were surprised to find each other in a boarding house in San Francisco. They married and continued her quest to find her lost father and brother in the gold fields. Their search ended in the frustration that her father and brother had probably been killed by Indians on their way to California. The other theory was that they had lots of money with them, and they were killed for the money. At any rate, it was determined that they never made it to California. The Lockharts lived in Sacramento. My great Grandmother Laura (Lockhart) Middleton was born there. 2G Grandfather Lockhart got one of the diseases that was rampant in Sacramento at the time, and the family moved to the upper South Fork of the Eel River, just downstream of what is now known as the town of “Branscomb. Other than the remarkable exception that Mary (cull) Lockhart's father and brother were probably killed by Indians, neither of my great grandparents, the Lockharts, had any direct confrontations with the Indians, and they had no real fear or loathing of them, like did some of the overland pioneers. So, they were strong advocates for the protection of the Indian people.

The reason that I took the time to mention the Middletons and the Lockharts is because Lafe Middleton and Laura Lockhart were the parents of my Grandmother Ruby Branscomb, who was also good to the Indian people. Ruby worked hard her whole life, and freely shared her abundance with the people of the valley, including the Indian people. Not because they were Indians, but because they were friends. She shared her abundant vegetable garden with them, and often hauled them mill-ends for fire wood, from her son Ben's sawmill.

Ruby hauled Fox Burns his last load of wood. Fox was one of Laytonville’s most famous Indian people. A whole book could have been written about Fox Burns. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the Laytonville writing teacher, Bruce Brady, would have written a book about fox burns? Instead of using his immense talent to cast barbs at the “old Indian killer families”. One of Ruby’s twice told tales about Fox was that she had hauled him a load of wood and pronounced the she would bring more. Fox said, “no, when wood gone, Fox will be gone”. He was right, he died when his wood-pile was almost empty. I often listened to My grandmother Ruby tell that tale. She always had a look of nostalgia and wonder on her face when she would tell it. She genuinely missed Fox, and you could tell that she also genuinely wondered just how Fox knew when he was going to die.
Ruby married into the Branscomb family, My 2g grandfather Benjamin Franklin Branscomb was instrumental in funding and building many of the schools in The South Fork of the Eel drainage. Any school that my grandfather built was built for BOTH Indian and white, or Chinese for that matter. Their was no distinction made between those that wanted an education. I understand that was kind of unique to our little valley. All of my aunts, uncles, and both my mother and father were raised with the Indian people of Laytonville. They hunt fished and lived in the same little peaceful valley together. Many of my family is Indian. We have no quarrel with the Indian people. The only quarrel that we have is with the people that are often newcomers to our small valley, that come here and try to lay blame rather than try to understand the history and the reasons that things happened the way that they did.

Many of my family wrote letters to wherever they could to get adequate care for the Indian people. And, they stood their ground. They didn’t write a fancy letter then run like Brett Hart, who went on to become one of the more famous Indian advocates. But, he ran after it was found out that he wrote a letter about the “Indian Island Massacre” in Eureka. Also, Bret Hart was writing for notoriety and profit. He was a profession writer looking for sensation.

The Old Laytonville families have a long history of being, simply, friends with the Indian people. They hired, protected, adopted, conscripted, married, built housing, grew food, cut firewood, hunted fished, and many other things with the Indian people. They lived, for the most part, peacefully together, with a few remarkable exceptions. There will always be evil people that will cause problems, both Indian and white. It seems that if you look, just a little bit, into the history of those “evil people” you will find the reasons for their evil. Maybe not always understood by most people.

Hank Sims, a respected North Coast writer, who coincidently writes for the North Coast Journal, once said that “we shouldn’t take the credit for our ancestors, unless we are willing to also take the blame for them.” Fair enough, I’m here to take my credit. And I know full well that if it hadn’t been for the “good white people”, my family and other good people like them, there would no Indian people here today. Yes, there are good white people in Long Valley.