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.

A thought provoking blogpost on Laytonville.

I hope Robin Shelley is still out there to give us her thoughts on the essay printed at Sohum Parlance II. Ben emailed me this morning and made notice that one Bruce Brady wrote an interesting essay on the Laytonville school in particular and the community in general. I'm not going to reprint it here. Please go to Sohum Parlance for complete context.

Click below:
http://kunsoo1024.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/learning-curve/#more-9988




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Where do you fit?

     I know that I promised that I wouldn't post until Monday, but "Off Topic", who I suspect is Olmanriver, just included the following list in a comment. I have always identified with the working class person because most of what I own came from hard labor. There are some around here that were smarter, and perhaps braver, than me, and have made small fortunes. Some have made small fortunes, lost everything when they got busted by "the man", now they don't know how to earn a legitimate living. The chance to become wealthy through honest labor has gone away.

     Many of us are in the same boat. It's darn hard to create personal opportunity nowadays. The following list only points out that we need a revolution in America. We are all faced with the same problems of, where do we start the revolution, how much blood must be shed, if any, and how do we join and work together to bring about change? And, the really big one, what do we do if we win the revolution?

     Many people that I know have just plain said to heck with it. They have retired early, they don’t vote, They are just waiting to die, and feel sorry for our kids that are going to end up with the mess that we are in. What are you going to do? Do you think we need change???

THE LIST:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.

• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.

• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.

• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.

• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.

• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.



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Nothing says "Home" like tar weed...

Olmanriver, my most favorite Long Valley history researcher, just made a comment on an old post that I did about Tar Weed and other aromatic plants. He found and transcribed the poem so we can all enjoy it. I have never seen the poem before, but it rings so true to Laytonville and the Long Valley that it tugs at my heartstrings and brings back that far away feeling of being back home in Laytonville again.
 
This is what he placed in the comments:
olmanriver said...


"I am still not sure about which plant is tarweed. Maybe a local poet can help us with our tarweed identification...

Margaret S. Cobb Smith was a poet and painter who taught school all over northern Mendocino county. The daughter of Chilean royalty and one of the first settlers of Long Valley, William Smith, Margaret married Mr. Oliver Cobb who ranched beside the SF Eel by Sproul Creek. They married in 1904, and the property was left to her at the time of his passing in 1914.

The Cobbs hosted Jack London's 1911 visit when he toured up the coast with his wife Charmian, driving a four horse team. He wrote an account of this vacation expedition for Sunset Magazine. Andrew Genzoli wrote in the Redwood Country: "The Cobbs proved to be such good company that Charmian called them 'our people'. She tried her hand at fishing and caught up on correspondence while Jack set about writing his lasst Post story, 'The Feathers of the Sun', a rollicking comedy about a desreputable beachcomber with royal pretensions. Here was a South Seas version of Kipling's 'The Man who Would Be King,'..."

Margaret also had George Sterling as a close friend, and corresponded with Ambrose Bierce. She did get poems published, and was a good painter, but the work she is most known for was Blaxine, a story of mixed white and Indian families and a rare novelized glimpsed into what it was to be a half-breed. The poet Joaquim Miller touted the book highly. Lynette sagaciously sussed out that this was modeled on the AE Sherwood family situation of Sherwood valley, which I was able to confirm through an online reference to a teacher who had taught the Sherwood kids in Sherwood, and Margaret Smith in Long Valley. As this is Lynette's bailiwick I shant say to much here."


More after the poem.
 
 

 

Long Valley by Margaret S. Cobb

"We passed through Long Valley in September,
Facing its first gleam of level at Farley Creek,
Then from the little uplift at the old Talkington place,
The valley before us in a glory of browns, tans, and saffrons,
That dimmed and faded in the distance of mauves and gray.
It was late evening. the guarding prescence of old Farley Peak
Lifted itself against the sky in pale opaque blueness.
Cow Mountain and the Cahto hills lay black against the west,
Against a wash of pale green western sky, and across this sky
Floated thin lines of brilliant crimson clouds.
Yet so transient this cloud beauty that even while we watched,
And ere we reached the old Leonard place,
It had faded to a gray lavender and lay against
A paling sky.
And now the tar weed, sweet vagrant of the valley,
Useless, unloved, but offering its golden discs by millions
To waste places, filled the air with its poignant tang,
Bringing back childhood with a pang of pain--
Old dreams of childhood lived in this lovely valley.
Fences now lay as purple lines across the fields,
Straw from the threshing lay as beaten gold,
Willows become as gray and olive dreams against the low red hills, Unkempt old orchards glowed, painted with scarlet apples'
Pines lifted their delicately lined contours, oaks were purple massed,
Then came the friendly Lights of Laytonville,
And blue night settled broad and vast o'er all,
Only the tarweed, vagrant, unloved weed,
Still told of fields widespread beneath the night."

Well, the whole south end of Long Valley was named “Farley”. There was Farley Ranch, Farley Flat, Farley Peak, and the Farley School House. I guess that the newcomers decided that there were too many things named “Farley”, so they changed the name of Farley Creek to Long Valley Creek, otherwise everything is called much the same as it was a century ago.

There are two glorious times to be in Long Valley One in May, when all the grasses are just starting to dry up and turn brown, and all of the wildflowers are blooming in grand abundance, with the sweet smell of the drying grasses, and beauty of the flowers, waving in the last of winters windy grip.

And two, in September, when the gardens are ripe, the orchards are ready for the plucking, the berries are all turned into fragrant syrups and jams. The last of the grain straws are still laying in the fields, and… ah yes! The stinky little flower that most all of the Laytonville natives have learn to love.. Tarweed. The Tarweed grows in the clay soil of the valley bottom, where other plants have been grazed or mowed down. The tarweed takes over the fields after the harvest of the hay and grains. It is the sweetest, or strongest, depending on whether you like the smell or not, in the warm summer evenings about beer time.

There is nothing like eating a fried chicken dinner at Gramma’s house. With chickens fresh from the hen house, soda biscuits and gravy, and fresh corn and peas from the garden. Gramma always served the summer dinners on the back patio that was cooled by a large grape arbor built over it. One of the things that I remember about those dinners it the smell of the hot summer heated tar weed in the valley air.

My great grandmother Laura Middleton used to speak of “the Talkingtons” who she was friends with. So the name is familiar to me. My mother said that the Talkington’s place was at the south end of the valley just north and west of Jack Farley’s place.

My mother also said that she went on a plane ride with a fellow by the name of Lew Leonard in 1928 or 29. But she didn’t know if he was related to the Leonards in the poem.
Every homestead, everywhere, had a fruit orchard, with as many variety’s as possible. Albert Etter, from Ettersberg‘s, name was invoked whenever anybody wanted to speak about apples with any degree of authority.
Ah… but the tarweed… the sweet smell of home. Sweeter then the smell of all of my sweetest memories.

Okay, this is the plant below more commonly known as "Tarweed". The blue flowered plant above is "Vinegar weed". I call them both tar weeds. I know.... I'm wrong. But, I'm not the only one.

Ah, sweet summertime.

97 degrees today, 98 yesterday, and 99 the day before, so it's cooling off, have you noticed?

This is twizzle, she owns this vent in the winter when its cold, and in the summer when it's hot. If the chairs are in the way she will push them aside, as you can see. Twizzle is a very sweet dog, also as you can see, but if you try to push her away from her vent, she makes noises like a Tasmamian Devil eating a wasp nest.

Twizzle is a very feminine dog, so she doesn't like to pant or slobber. She loves to play "chase the ball". If she can't get anybody to play with her she will go outside and roll her ball down the hill, then run to catch it. When she gets hot or tired she comes inside and stands over her vent until she cools off. then, BOOM, out her doggie door for more ball. In the winter, her ball hides from her under the couch, but she is always able to get it. Then she plays doggie hockey with it until, sure enough, the ball hides under the couch again. I’ve never seen a dog so willing to play all by herself. She will certainly play with you if you show the slightest interest, but if you don’t, she plays ball anyway. I’ve been thinking about getting Twizzle a computer, so she can play real games like everybody else.

More Shelter Cove legends

Image of Shelter Cove from Google earth.

I recently had a long-time visitor / property owner of the Shelter Cove area e-mail me about the Shelter Cove Indian legends. The legend that he referred to is one that many of us have heard many times and I just wrote it off as something that probably happened, but the story went on to get better at each telling.


I'm going to print his letter here, but leave his name off, because I don't have his permission at this point to give it out. But, I love these old stories and I really like hearing all of the versions. Here is the question posed by the reader of this blog.

"Hello Ernie,

I just today tripped over your blog on the 'net and I wanted to thank you. To me, this sort of information is like a treasure chest full of priceless gems.

I live and work in Sunnyvale CA but my parents bought a lot in Shelter Cove in 1969 and we vacationed there every summer from 1969 to 1979 (I was born in '67). I have done a lot of tramping around that region myself as a young man and now middle aged adult and I can tell you it stole my heart long ago.

A lot of heavy vibes there, too, but that's a long story.

Anyway, along the way I remember hearing or reading a story about 'The Cove' being cursed by Indians who had escaped from' the res' or perpetrated some other offense, been recaptured and then buried up to their necks at low tide on the Big Black Sand beach and drowned as the tide came in. Before they died, they cursed (or their wives did) the white man and the cove, dooming it to never be a success in any way.

I heard this as a young boy and I can tell you it left quite an impression on me.

Later when I tried to find a written account of this story I could not.

I have a feeling many, many variations of this story exist and I am wondering which version your might have heard and if you have any other information about if this actually happened?

Many thanks and warm regards,"
(name not printed here)

Another Shelter Cove Legend is the one about the Spanish Galion that crashed near there. The Indians ended up with the Gold, they buried it on the slopes of Kings Peak and it was lost in a land slide. Many people have searched for the lost gold, but it has never been found. The local Indians had a few Spanish Gold coins that may have come from the Spanish presence along the Pacific coast of California....  or was it that the Indians had a treasure chest filled with Spanish Gold and they buried it.

Another Coastal Indian story with great truth and validity is the wreck of the Frolic at Point Cabrillo. Cloth and China from the wreck is found all over the north coast, also, many other items are found, traded and packed there by the Indians that swam out to the ship and salvaged what they could before it became completely destroyed in the rocks.

I know that each tale gets better at each telling, so I always welcome new stories with a healthy dose of skepticism. Do you really think that anybody would go to all the trouble to bury Indians up to their necks in sand? That sounds like a lot of work for nothing. I don't see that really happening. But, that's just me, being skeptical and practical.

Happy 4th of July!

My flag, on my porch, photo by me.

I was watching the news this morning. They were predictably talking about Independence Day. One of the questions that the moderator asked the panelists was: “What does the flag mean to you?” I got lost in my own thoughts and didn’t even hear their answers. I started thinking about all of the things that are wrong in America today, and how frustrating it is to not be able change them. I finally concluded that, for me, the flag means everything that is right about America. It is the symbol of the freedom that we enjoy, the friendships that we have, and the fact that we still have freedom of speech. I also like the fact that we have the right to bear arms and protect ourselves and our families. I know that there are people out there that fear guns, but they are the ones that should insist that the gun laws, that are already on the books, be enforced. Why aren’t they?


Why don’t our borders mean anything? I have heard that people cross the borders rather routinely. To ask if a person is a legal citizen should be okay. It should be a matter of great pride to show that indeed you are a citizen of the united states, or that you have a permit to be here. I’m serious, why shouldn’t we be proud of who we are? It isn’t racist to check for criminals. Yes, it’s a crime to enter this country without permission.

I know, I haven’t mentioned the two wars that we are fighting, or the several other “problem countries” that keep tweaking America’s nose. Some people can’t talk reasonably about the reasons that we are at war, and whether we should be, or shouldn’t be. So I want this to be about the reasons that we need to join together, not argue about things that we haven’t been able to change.

Then there is the Gulf Oil spill… If this isn’t a sign of failure of our whole government, ALL of them, there never will be. Corporations don’t have consciences, government oversight is necessary. Where were the regulators? that were supposed to be watching out for us? They were having an orgy with the oil drillers! Yes! A real orgy! You could look it up. Something is wrong, when instead of protecting the environment of the whole gulf, the regulators and oil drillers were in bed (literally) with each other. This spill isn’t over yet and I keep saying: “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Jobs:
I graduated high school in June of 1963. The major decision back then was, what should I do with my life? What career should I pursue? The sky was the limit, all careers were open to any young man with at least modest ambition and a little bit of talent. There was little thought about whether or not you could get a job and support a family. You could.

In 1967, Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film “The Graduate” was given the advice “plastics”. What advice should we give a graduate today? Get a PHD in business administration? … then try to pay-off your student loan while working at McDonalds. Most of what I am distressed about is not that our kids aren’t ambitious, they are, it’s that their jobs have been given away by the super-rich to countries who don’t play fair. Our politicians scold us for our selfishness by saying “it’s a world economy now. Your only hope is to get an education.” Some people worked hard for an education, and most are in the ranks of the under-employed or not employed at all.

My coffee group often talks about what needs to change about America. It is often mentioned that we had a quiet revolution while nobody was paying attention, the rich simply bought America. They own the corporations, they own the news services, and they most obviously own our election system. They didn’t even use guns.

You may say that you still have control, but when was the last time you were totally happy about who you voted for? When was the last time you wrote a letter to a congressman or senator that made any change.

The flag represents the hope that I have, that America can return to it’s former prosperity, and pride in who we are.

The flag represents the America that I see as Ideal. The America where we all stand under the flag, as one people, not Democrats or Republicans, not Tea Party or any other “party” but Americans. The Flag may be the last thing that we have in common, that we feel is important.

Smokin' Phone speed.

If you are a U. S. Cellular Phone customer, or if you bought your phone at the Branscomb Center / Radio Shack, you have the new 3G (Third Generation) phone speed. To "free upgrade" your phone simply dial the four digits, *228. ( Star two two eight ) Then push the green send button on your cell phone. It will automatically find the new towers and access the new speed.

Now I can finally blog from my cell phone at faster speed. Isn't science wonderful?

I'm not sure if this is a public service announcement or a flagrant advertisment, but if you have U.S. Cellular sevice, this is good news!  Dial-  Star, two, two, eight, send.

You should do that every now and again anyway, its like re-booting your computer.

Mendocino County. Laying-off Deputies to save Library????

Mendocino County is cutting the Sheriff’s budget to save the library, museum, and farm advisory office.

Yep, Gotta' have those Libaries. Without an edjucation we cud all grow up to be bloggers!

The Press-Democrat printed this story about Sheriff Tom Allman and his fight for funding for his office. It seems that the Sheriff will not be getting the funding that he needs for law enforcement patrols. The only thing that the sheriff’s department is required to do, by law, is serve court papers and supply a jail to the county. Wow, that simplifies things!

So, if your sister is being raped, or something, you can always check-out a library book on how to recover from being raped for her. Thank-God the library will be open! The aftermath of a rape must be horrendous to deal with without a good library book to deal with the consequences.

If you own a business, it might be wise to check out how a book on how to register to carry a concealed weapon. Or, how to place bars on your windows.

If your neighbor is shooting up the neighborhood, and scaring your cows, you can always file a noise compliant with the farm advisory office, then they can advise you were to go. A farm advisory board in Mendocino County is kinda’ laughable on the surface. Those Mendo’ Dudes know more about farming than most anybody in the whole-wide-world.

It looks like Mendocino County will be mooching off the California Highway Patrol... You say “What???” Aren’t they in charge of the highways??? Well, if you remember a few years ago, the California State Capitol had their own guards? Well, they decided that to save money they would get the California Highway Patrol to guard the state Capitol. So they made them "The State Police" and broadened their policing powers. It seemed like a great idea at the time. The Highway Patrol is already stationed there, and it would be a great cost saving measure. Talk about unintended consequences! Not that I have anything against the Highway Patrol. I have nothing but respect for them, and they do a great job of what they do. But now, instead of keeping the highway safe, they will be out doing neighborhood patrols, and babysitting what someone referred to as “chronological adults”. (you have to think about it.)

At what point does living in safety take priority over reading a book? It must be agonizing for our politicians the realize that they can’t steal the wages of a volunteer firefighter, or otherwise they would be stealing their wages also.

Well, one thing good is; now the people in Northern Mendocino won't have to worry about "where the hell is the deputy", there won't be any!

"Fight The Real Emeny!"

Okay, Okay, I’ve been ignoring you. You will be glad to know that while I have been gone, I’ve been having a busy, fulfilling life. I’ve been happily remodeling the store. As you know I like building things. I like that feeling of creating something tangible and useful. I occurred to me that my remodeling efforts had already passed the “hammer test”.

Refrigeration repair and installations have been good, also heating and air-conditioning. So, "LIG" (life is good)

I felt that I needed to emphasize that things are okay with me, in case you were worried. I have even been on some interesting fire/ emergency medical calls lately. One involving a vodka bottle beating and setting a motor home on fire. One involving a tasering, like in “don’t tase me bro”.

The local fire departments did a field day at the Tooby Park, where we burned the Harding Grass to try to kill it. They say that fire will kill the plant. The reason that they want to kill it is that there is an endangered specie of sparrow that lives there that doesn’t like to nest in Harding Grass. The endangered bird is called a “Grasshopper Sparrow”. It is a super-good feeling to be able to play with fire, and be helping the environment at the same time. It's funny, I thought that there were millions of Grasshopper Sparrows, but all wildlife is precious, no mater how large or small, endangered or not.

It is especially a good feeling to be helping the environment in view of the recent, worst destruction of the environment in the history of man, of course you know that I’m talking about, the Gulf oil spill. Where the hell is Al Gore when you need him? Oops, I forgot, Al is an “oilman”, and a big stockholder in oil companies. Not to mention a fraud, and cheat, a liar, and a crook. Gore makes Nixon look like a saint.

Before you get all pissed-off that I bad-mouthed your hero, I have that same opinion of MOST all of our higher echelon political leaders. Now, the real reason that I haven’t been blogging. I promised myself that I would not turn this blog into a political rant rag. But lately, I have been greatly preoccupied with what’s wrong with the politics of this country. Capitalism is an ideal system, I like the idea where if an honest person works hard, produces a good product, he should be able to succeed. If that person has a good idea about how to produce something, he can go to a “capitalist”, a person with a lot of money, present his good idea, borrow the money to go into business, and hopefully succeed. “Life is good.” But….. Something is wrong with the way we select leaders.

If the person with the money charges too much, the person with the good idea can go somewhere else to borrow their needed capital. It sounds like a great idea. Where it all turned to crap is, you guessed it, the system needs ultimate universal oversight by our elected officials. However, those officials are all bought and paid for by the capitalists with money. That can’t happen, in theory, because We The People elect the politicians, that appoint the regulators, and we should be in control, right? Wrong.

The Capitalist bought the elections, and politicians, and they have moved the jobs and investment offshore, where they get paid a portion of every dollar that they export by selling Americans cheap goods that should be fairly regulated, but they are NOT. The stock market fat-cats are doing great... thank-you! Too bad that Americans have no jobs... no-thank-you! AND, our politicians have finanaced this despicable bail-out of the Big-Money fat-cats on the backs of our children, who will have to pay for it. Thank God our parents didn't leave us with debt to pay. They knew the value of a dollar, the depresion taught them that.

There are a variety of reasons why we keep electing corrupt politicians.. too numerous to list here… but the largest reason is Big Money owns everything. Including the mainstream media, the TV stations, radio, AND newspapers. The allow us to rant at each other about who is the dirtiest word, Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, religious or sectarian. We all share the frustration of knowing something is wrong with our government, but we are all being led by disinformation that is fed to us in order keep us fighting each other, instead of “the real enemy’

There are few people that really try to think for themselves, and try to find solutions that can be “hit with a hammer”. Grass roots movements are always going to be easily divided because of their very nature, grass roots people have a variety of beliefs that allows divisions amongst the groups. The Big-Money owned media can easily drive a wedge between the groups. Also, grassroots groups are easily infiltrated by Big-Money plants. One racial remark, or one hate remark can be blown way out of proportion, and discredit the whole group’s message.

We really need to learn to close-out the political rhetoric, and listen to the voice inside that tells us what is real. Do you remember Sinead O’Conner on Saturday Night Live, where at the end of her performance, held up a photo of the Pope, then emotionally tore it in two, while saying: “Fight the real enemy!”? Remember how shocked and outraged that we were? I was personally offended by her behavior, and her disrespect for one of the worlds most respected leaders.

How many of us took the time to research Sinead a little bit? I finally found out that Sinead O’Conner is actually a devout Catholic. She was distressed with the direction that the Catholic church was heading. She already knew about all of the child molestation, and other corruption that was happening in the church. She was a strong enough Catholic that she felt that she needed to sacrifice her career to get the world to look at what was happening to her beloved church. To most people, she became the subject of much hate. After giving Sinead’s comment a little scrutiny, she has become one of my all-time heroes.

Sinead O'Conner (Please read here about the church abuse that Sinead O'Conner was trying to expose. Unfortunately, her message fell on deaf ears, and her career was ruined. She now is recognized, not only by the world, but by the Catholic Church as a hero.)



Now as Americans, we are all (most) wildly patriotic about America. We know that we are a great country, and that we were once the greatest country on the face of the Earth. We also all (most) know that our elections are bought-out and controlled by “Big Money”. What will it take to expose the corruption in American politics? What will it take to lead “We The People” into taking back the helm of the great ship of state.

Just as Sinead O’conner risked her career to expose the church, we need to put more of ourselves on the line, stop quibbling about our differences, start celebrating our commonality.

What piece of paper can we hold up, rip in two, and emotionally utter “Fight the real enemy”, and expose the corruption of our present political system of selling out to Big Money, or whatever TV tells us to do.

Where are the jobs that we were promised? Where is the oil company regulation that we are entitled to? Where is the border control? How many other things are wrong?

“Fight the real enemy”

Happy Summer Solstice

This is just a little more on "We are all the same". The last time I tried the "we are all the same", somebody that didn't even sign their name left me a hate rant. So, this time I will be more careful.


When I say that we are all the same, I mean that I see evidence of people today, possibly, celebrating the same thing that our ancestors celebrated.

35,000 people descended on Stonehenge, located on the Salisbury Plains of Southern England, to celebrate the Summer Solstice. This celebration has been happening in some form or another since the beginning of time. Just like we all seem to want to celebrate the warm weather arriving, people throughout the ages have looked forward to the abundance of food and the warm weather. Among other things, they celebrated the idea that they could gather less firewood, and they didn’t have to lug around their warm clothing everywhere they went. It must have been nice for the young people to be able to check each other out, with less clothes on, and decide who might make a good husband or wife.

It has long been my theory that every event takes on sophistication. When we were little kids, there was a tree on the ranch in Laytonville. Our ancestors had carved their initials on it as children. As each child grew old enough to carve, we all carved our initials on the tree. The tree became an object of great significance to the family. The tree became something that we protected, and there was an air of significance about the carving event when we put our initials on the tree. We would practice carving on other trees first. We would try to get very good at it, because when we put our initials on the tree, we wanted them to look as good as Dad’s or Grandpa’s.

We later figured out that we should have carved our initials on a rock, or something more permanent. The tree is dead and gone now. There is no record of the tree ever existing. The Indians were smarter than we were, they carved on rocks! The rocks are still here today. Is it possible that they considered the permanence of the record that they left on rocks? My other though is that “we are all the same”. If that is the case, can you imagine the history that the Indian people carved on trees that are no longer with us? I wonder what we would know about the past if we could have those records.

Now on to Stonehenge. When I first looked at the pictures of today’s event, I was shocked by what I saw. It appeared that it was a bunch of people playing “dress up” or “dress down” depending upon your opinion. They were drinking, using drugs and generally celebrating. I thought, “how sacrilegious”. It appeared to me that they were desecrating a most holy and sacred place, built by our ancestors. Slowly I realized that was what Stonehenge was built for. Throughout history man has celebrated the same as we do today, and it would have been the same kind of people in history performing the celebrations. The showmen, the charlatans, the extroverts, all leading the way. The person with the best rattle, or the best costume would end up with the most followers, just like today’s TV preachers, or the promoter with the best hippy event.

It also stuck me how much the event at Stonehenge is like the “Burning Man” festival at Black Rock Desert Nevada. The people at Burning Man try to out-do each other with their performance art. Each year they build “The Man”, then they burn it, in the significance that they are ridding the world of “The Man”. The Man may mean different things to different people. But, when The Man is gone, it is a sense of the end of the “bad” and the beginning of a new “good”, much like the summer solstice is the end of the cold season and the beginning of the warm season.

All people of the world, again, throughout all of history, have celebrated a renewal celebration.

Just like the people of Burning Man try to make a bigger, better, more significant “Man” every year, I think that must have been how Stonehenge was built. It probably all started with a bunch of people that were stone-age counterparts of today’s hippies. They had a conversation that went like this:
“Hey Trog…
Remember last year when we made the big ring out of logs at the “Renewal Celebration?”, then we burned them? Well, this year let’s do something better. Let’s do something that will last forever. Let’s get some of those huge blue rocks over in Wales, float them on barges as close as we can get to the Salisbury Plains, then we will skid them on ropes and rollers, stand them on end in a circle, then put cap stones on the top. I’ll bet that gets the girls!”

More evidence that "we are all the same" Man has littered since the beginning of time...

Stonehenge, original rave house
Stonehenge video

Rodeo Today!~

Look Ma, No hands!!!
Garberville Rodeo today, Saturday June 19th 2010
Parade starts at 11:00 AM Sharp! On Garberville main street.
Rodeo at Greycliff acres in Benbow folowing the parade.
Western barbecued Steak dinner will be served at the rodeo.

COME ONE COME Y'all!

Ol' Hairy

Click on photo for enlargement.

Remember all of the tears that were shed when they trimmed the Redwood in the center of town? Well nobody was killed by any falling redwood limbs this last winter. All is well in Garberville.

Now we have a fresh lush growth of new green limbs sprouting from the trunk. It looks almost like a redwood tree after a forest fire, except the trunk is not all black, and it doesn't smell like fire.

One wise guy that I know chimed in that they should trim it up like a chia-pet totem-pole.

Never doubt that I'm a redwood tree fan. They are undoubtedly the most impressive tree in the whole world. They are remarkably resilient. They actually thrive with complete limb removal. They can put out new roots at the same rate that they can grow limbs. It is difficult to damage a redwood tree. Watching this tree thrive should be a good study for our children.

The one thing that I would encourage, is to NEVER plant a redwood tree in an occupied neighborhood. Limbs shed off of them in even the slightest windstorm. The limbs fall like pointed arrows. Many houses have been damaged, and many people have been killed by falling limbs. To not plant one near your house will save you the grief of one day having to remove it as a danger to life and property.

Redwoods are a most beautiful wild tree, but they don’t belong in town. Leave them in the wild, where they belong!

Most overland 1850s era California settlers came past the Mormons. Revised, with addendum.

The history of the Mormons is something that I’ve tried to delve into many times. I know that the history of the Mormons, and the history of early California, is inextricably intertwined. The Mormons are as important to California history as the Franciscans, the settlers, or the Indians, but I’ve been unable to approach the subject from a position of delicacy and understanding. The following is an abreviated version of my orriginal post. I've removed much of MY opinion on the subject. My words are in red.


With my understanding about early California history comes the understanding that we all have the same opportunity to Judge the Mormon people of the past by our standards today. I know that won’t work, nor is it fair to judge the Mormons of today by the actions of those in the past. Hopefully we can rise above judgment and simply enjoy the history.


Most of the things that I write about here, are things that drop into my lap, and I post about it. As many of you know, I love the early history of California and the pioneers that settled here. None of the early history of California would be complete without the story of how the early “Californians” got here, whether by sea-going schooner or “prairie schooner”. It has often occurred to me that most of the people that came overland to California had some kind of a contact with the Mormons.


 The Mormons are somewhat puzzling, because they believe in everything. If a person is going to adopt a religion, it would seem that becoming a Mormon would make the most sense. They not only have The Old Testament, they have The New Testament, plus they have The Book of Mormon. They even have modern day prophets. Some fundamentalist branches of the church believe in multiple wives. Nowadays, the main church has moved away from multiple wives, but it was once a very important part of the Church.


The Mormons are a very important part of the history of this country. Indeed, the Mormon religion was born right here in the United states of America. A true red white and blue religion, so I feel it's an important part of history, that is offen left out. I have included some links below that give a lot of Mormon history, so if you enjoy reading, knock yourself out.

Joseph Smith Jr.

Joseph Smith Jr. was the founder of the Mormon Church. Smith was born December 23, 1805. In the late 1820s, probably 1827, Smith made an amazing announcement. He claimed that an Angel Moroni had led him to a spot in the woods of Manchester New York, where he found buried, a book filled with golden pages, upon which was written the religious history of the native American people. The mormons believe that the American Indian is one of the 10 tribes of Isreal.

"The Book of Mormon, one of the religious texts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), claims that early residents of the Americas included descendents from the tribe of Joseph, and particularly through Manasseh. Some sources such as Howshua Amariel and various researchers assert that DNA evidence, linguistic research, and other research indicates links between the Cherokee Nation and the Jewish people."(Wikipedia)

The book was written in a language that Smith had never seen before. Smith said that the Angel Moroni had also given him a pair of “Seer Stones”, that he called “Urim and Thummin”. The stones were able to help him understand the religious history of the ancient Americans. He would place the stones in a hat and place his face in the hat so all light was blocked out. then the stones would reveal to him what the Golden Tablets said. The tablets didn't even need to be near. Indeed they were buried away from other people most of the time. (According to Joeseph Smith). He transcribed the translation, and a fellow by the name of Martin Harris wrote it down, the book became “The Book of Mormon”.

The Book of Mormon was published March 26th 1830 in Palmyra New York. Joseph Smith started preaching from The Book of Mormon, and he baptized several people. He called his new church “The Church of Christ”. In late 1830 Smith moved his Church of Christ to Kirkland Ohio, were he joined up with other faithful people of common beliefs.


From here, I think that I'm just going to quote from Wikipedia, because the story just gets to bizarre for my simple brain to grasp. The Mormon story is filled with revelations, exorcisms, visitations by holy spirits and so forth.

From Wikipedia:
"Moving the church in 1831 to Kirtland, Ohio, Smith attracted hundreds of converts, who came to be called Latter Day Saints. Some of these he sent to establish a holy city of "Zion" in Jackson County, Missouri. In 1833, Missouri settlers expelled the Saints from Zion, and a paramilitary expedition Smith led to recover the land was unsuccessful. Fleeing an arrest warrant in the aftermath of a Kirtland financial crisis, Smith joined the remaining Saints in Far West, Missouri. However, tensions escalated into a violent conflict in 1838 with the old Missouri settlers. Believing the Saints to be in insurrection, the governor ordered their expulsion from Missouri, and Smith was imprisoned on capital charges."

After escaping state custody in 1839, Smith led the Saints to build the city of Nauvoo, Illinois on Mississippi River swampland, where he became mayor and commanded a large militia. In early 1844, he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. That summer, after the Nauvoo Expositor criticized his power and new doctrines, such as plural marriage, Smith and the Nauvoo city council ordered the destruction of the newspaper as a nuisance. In a futile attempt to check public outrage, Smith first declared martial law, then surrendered to the governor of Illinois. He was killed by a mob while awaiting trial in Carthage, Illinois.

Smith's followers believe he was a great prophet who saw God and angels, and they regard his revelations as scripture. His teachings include unique views on the nature of godhood, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His legacy includes several religious denominations, which collectively claim a growing membership of nearly 14 million worldwide.

With the death of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young became the most important person in the Church of Christ.

Brigham Young

From wikipedia: "Young was drawn to Mormonism after reading the Book of Mormon shortly after its publication in 1830. He officially joined the new church in 1832 and traveled to Upper Canada as a missionary. After his first wife died in 1832, Young joined many Mormons in establishing a community in Kirtland, Ohio. Young was ordained a member of the original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1835, and he assumed a leadership role within that organization in taking Mormonism to the United Kingdom and organizing the exodus of Latter Day Saints from Missouri in 1838."

"After three years of leading the church as the President of the Quorum of the Twelve, in 1847 Young reorganized a new First Presidency and was declared president of the church on December 27, 1847. Repeated conflict led Young to relocate his group of Latter-day Saints to a territory in what is now Utah, then part of Mexico. Young organized the journey that would take the faithful to Winter Quarters, Nebraska, in 1846 , then to the Salt Lake Valley. Young arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, a date now recognized as Pioneer Day in Utah."

Conflict with U.S. government:
"Shortly after the arrival of Young's pioneers, the new Mormon colonies were incorporated into the United States through Mexican Cession, Young petitioned the U.S. Congress to create the State of Deseret. The Compromise of 1850 instead carved out Utah Territory, and Young was installed as governor. As governor and church president, Young directed both religious and economic matters. He encouraged independence and self-sufficiency. Many cities and towns in Utah, and some in neighboring states, were founded under Young's direction. Young's leadership style has been viewed as autocratic.
When federal officials received reports of widespread and systematic obstruction of federal officials in Utah (most notably judges), U.S. President James Buchanan decided to install a non-Mormon governor. Buchanan accepted the reports of the judges without any further investigation, and the new non-sectarian governor was accompanied by troops sent to garrison forts in the new territory. The troops passed by the bloody Kansas–Missouri war without intervening in it, as it was not open warfare and only isolated sporadic incidents. When Young received word that federal troops were headed to Utah with his replacement, he called out his militia to ambush the federal column. During the defense of Deseret, now called the Utah War, Young held the U.S. Army at bay for a winter by taking their cattle and burning supply wagons. The Mormon forces were largely successful thanks to Lot Smith. Young made plans to burn Salt Lake City and move his followers to Mexico, but at the last minute he relented and agreed to step down as governor. He later received a pardon from Buchanan. Relations between Young and future governors and U.S. Presidents were mixed."


"Mountain Meadows massacre, which took place in Washington County in 1857. Leonard J. Arrington reports that Brigham Young received a rider at his office on the same day. When he learned what was contemplated by the members of the Mormon Church in Parowan and Cedar City, he sent back a letter that the Fancher party be allowed to pass through the territory unmolested. Young's letter supposedly arrived two days too late, on September 13, 1857. As governor, Young had promised the federal government he would protect immigrants passing through Utah Territory. But he had also allegedly told local Native American leaders that they had his permission to steal cattle from these wagon trains. Over 120 men, women and children were killed by the Mormons and their Native American allies. It is clear that local Mormons were the principal perpetrators. United States Army officer James Henry Carleton was sent to investigate the massacre and was convinced that the Mormons were the perpetrators. Only children survived, the murdered members of the wagon train (known as the Fancher Party) were left unburied, and the surviving children were cared for by local Mormon families. The remains of about forty people were found and buried and Carleton had a large cross made from local trees, the transverse beam bearing the engraving, "Vengeance Is Mine, Saith The Lord: I Will Repay" and erected a cairn of rocks at the site. A large slab of granite was put up on which he had the following words engraved: "HERE 120 MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN WERE MASSACRED IN COLD BLOOD EARLY IN SEPTEMBER, 1857. THEY WERE FROM ARKANSAS." For two years the monument stood as a warning to those travelling the Spanish Trail through Mountain Meadow. Some claim that, In 1861, Young brought an entourage to Mountain Meadows and had the cairn and cross destroyed, while exclaiming, "Vengeance is mine and I have taken a little". However, others claim it was torn down and then re-built in 1864 by the U.S. military."

Brigham Young and the Mormon church apparently had much control over the Indian people. They told the Indian people that the “Mormon Garment” would protect them. Many of the Indian people became fearless thinking that the garment would stop bullets. Many found out that was a false thought. The Mormons decided who would get “safe passage” and who wouldn’t. Getting past the Mormons must have been a challenge for the new west bound settlers.

Addendum: I added this story below because Jared Farmer told the story much better than I could have.
Displaced from Zion:

Mormons and Indians in the 19th Century
By Jared Farmer

Typical and exceptional at the same time, Utah's frontier past offers an illuminating perspective on U.S. history. The story of Utah's formation—settlers colonizing Indian land, organizing a territory, dispossessing natives, and achieving statehood—could not be more American. This typicality requires explanation. How is it that Mormons (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) managed to replicate a colonial pattern of Indian displacement when their ideas about Indians, not to mention their ideas about place, were so different from those of other American Protestants? Early Mormons saw Indians as spiritual kin with whom they would build a new Zion. But prophecies, dreams, and intentions did not become realities. Before they submitted to American conventions of marriage and the family, Latter-day Saints had freely absorbed the racist ideology of the nation.

The Mormon-Indian connection goes back to Joseph Smith's teenage imagination. "In the course of our [family's] evening conversations," his mother recalled, "Joseph would give us some of the most amusing recitals which could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent—their dress, their manner of traveling, the animals which they rode, the cities that were built by them, the structures of their buildings, with every particular of their mode of warfare, their religious worship as particularly as though he had spent his life with them." In 1830, as a serious adult, Smith produced the Book of Mormon. This 584-page scripture purports to be a record of North America's ancient inhabitants.
Among other things, the Book of Mormon narrates the emigration of an Israelite family out of Jerusalem around 600 B.C.E. With God's assistance, these Hebrews traveled by boat to America. Here in the (other) Promised Land, they fragmented into antagonistic groups—the Nephites and the Lamanites. The Lamanites lived as nomads and were cursed with dark skin, whereas the Nephites built great cities. Something like the two kingdoms of ancient Judaism, the groups repeatedly switched roles as the wicked and the righteous. Only for a brief period did harmony reign across the land. The righteousness came from Christ. The Redeemer himself appeared in the [End Page 40] New World during his absence from the tomb. The resurrected Savior repeated the Sermon on the Mount, performed the sacrament, and appointed twelve disciples. Ultimately, however, the Lamanites reverted to wickedness and idolatry. They eliminated all the fair-skinned Nephites and with them all the vestiges Christianity.

Moroni, the last of the Nephite scribes, buried the scriptural record in the Hill Cumorah before his death around 421 C.E. Much later, in angelic form, Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and showed him the location of the hill, which was not far from Smith's home in Palmyra, New York. After finding and translating the Book of Mormon, the new prophet published it.

On the original title page, Smith announced one of the main purposes of the Book of Mormon: "to shew unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever." Even in their degenerate state, the descendents of the Lamanites remained part of the covenant. In the Last Days, the "seed of Israel" would be redeemed. Many 19th-century Christians tried to convert the Indians, but only the Mormons had such lofty expectations. Once redeemed, the "remnant of Jacob" would take the lead in building the New Jerusalem, the site of the Second Coming. Repentant "Gentiles"—Mormon converts—would work with the Lamanites as assistants. The remaining Gentiles—the unconverted—would be annihilated in the apocalypse. Earthquakes and floods would wipe out the wicked. In addition, Mormons anticipated an army of Lamanites—the "strong arm of Jehovah," the "battle-ax of the Lord"—crushing their enemies like a lion among sheep. In the midst of this creative destruction, the Lamanites would reclaim their former glory, including fair skin.

In short, the religion of Joseph Smith reserved a paradoxical place for Indians. Knowing nothing of their lineage, these future Christian Israelites were destined to save the world, though they couldn't save themselves. Early Mormons saw themselves as "grafts" of Israel. Through conversion, Latter-day Saints acquired "believing blood." Later, influenced by British Israelism, the Saints would claim to possess literal Hebraic bloodlines. Either way, they had reason to regard Indians as extended family. Early church members sometimes referred to native peoples as "Cousin Laman" or "Cousin Lemuel" (after figures in the Book of Mormon).

Joseph Smith wasted no time trying to fulfill prophecy. In 1830, shortly after the publication of his scripture and the organization of his church, Smith announced the doctrine of the gathering. Nineteenth-century Mormons were essentially Christian Zionists. Their "center place"was supposed to be "on the borders of the Lamanites." Missouri fitted the description. It was located at the center of the continent and at the edge of the United States—right next to newly created Indian Territory. Before moving to Missouri himself, Smith dispatched four missionaries to Indian Territory. Although the Shawnees and the Delawares seemed receptive at first, the Mormons couldn't get beyond first impressions because the responsible U.S. Indian agent evicted the missionaries for not having a license. Reporting to his superintendent, the agent noted that the "the Men act very strange."

After the failure of the Indian mission, Joseph Smith turned his attention to other aspects of building his kingdom. Yet he did not lose faith in the destiny of Indians. In 1835, traveling from Ohio to Missouri with an ad hoc army meant to assist persecuted Mormon settlers, Smith rekindled the Lamanite enthusiasm. When some of his followers exhumed a skeleton from a burial mound, Smith received a vision. He identified the bones as the remains of Zelph, an uncursed "white Lamanite" warrior who had fallen in battle. Impressed by the vision, one of Smith's apostles carried Zelph's thighbone to Missouri to bury the relic at the envisaged temple site. Before the temple could be built, Missourians forcibly evicted Latter-day Saints from the state. Allegations of misconduct included "Indian tampering." Rumors of nefarious alliances with Indians would dog the Latter-day Saints for decades.

Displaced from Zion, Smith recognized that the day of prophecy—for Indians and Mormons—had been deferred. Hewent on to build the theocratic city of Nauvoo, Illinois, before running afoul of his neighbors again. In 1844, days before his martyrdom in a county jail in Carthage, Illinois, Smith looked forward to finding refuge in the Rocky Mountains, where the Lamanites would serve as a shield. In the tumult following the lynching of the Prophet, the Latter-day Saint movement splintered. As anti-Mormon violence spread in Illinois, various would-be prophets vied for control of the Saints. The majority faction, 12,000-15,000 strong, lined up behind the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Its president, Brigham Young, approved the idea that Zion could be relocated to the Rocky Mountains or beyond.

Planning the exodus took priority over everything else, but true believers did not forget that someday they would have to turn their attention to the Lamanites. In July 1847, immediately after arriving in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake with the vanguard emigrants, President Young reminded his flock of its moral duties. In a sermon on the roles of men and women, he exhorted wives to obey their husbands, and husbands to obey the will of the Lord—including the principle of plural marriage. This principle would be extended in time to Indians. Young envisioned that "the Elders would marry Wives of every tribe of Indians, and showed how the Lamanites would become a White&delight some people &how our descendants may live to the age of a tree & be visited & hold communion with the Angels; & bring in the Millennium."

One congregant pondered Young's words, especially his prophecy about Lamanites. "A part of [our] duty in this world is to bring the Indians from their benighted situation," wrote Levi Jackman. "In this place we finde a place and a people to commence with." Still, Jackman wondered how this could be achieved given the "brute" intelligence and "mean" existence of these "filthy, degrade[d] and miserable beings":

When I reflect and co[n]sider that thay are of the haus of Isreal, or the stick of Jacob, and the children of the covenent seed, unto who me belongs the priesthood and the oricals of God … I say to myself O Lord who is able to do all this—But the decree has gon foarth and it must be accomplished, and it will be marvilous, not onley to us but to generations yet to come.

This quote beautifully illustrates the tension in Mormon thought between Indian-as-brother and Indian as other; between sympathy and contempt, belief and doubt. Mormon Indian policy never transcended these contradictions. The first testing ground was the Ute stronghold in Utah Valley to the south of the new Mormon capital. Utah Valley centered on Utah Lake, a freshwater fishery with prodigious runs of cutthroat trout. Local bands of "Utahs" (Ute Indians) went by place- and food-specific names like Lake People and Fish Eaters. Utah Lake hosted large semi-permanent villages and larger seasonal gatherings.

In 1849 Mormons boldly established a lakeside settlement—today's Provo—next to the largest Indian village. The settlement's first year was disorderly. Mormons built a fort to keep out the Indians, yet invited Indians in anyhow. They traded and gambled and fished with Utes. But in autumn, after a few aggressive Mormons killed a native man and failed to make amends, certain Fish Eaters retaliated by killing Mormon cattle and threatening worse. By winter, local leaders convinced Brigham Young to send a military force to exterminate all of the hostile Indians. The "Indian war" was shockingly sanguinary, including the massacre of at least eleven unarmed male Ute prisoners in front of their families on the ice of Utah Lake. Strangely enough, by the time of the trout spawn in spring 1850, Mormons and Utes were once [End Page 41] again trading and gambling together.

Over the ensuing decade, as Mormons gradually displaced the Lake People from their fishing grounds, interethnic relations vacillated between segregation and neighborliness, disdain and respect, war and peace. This fluctuation puzzled U.S. Army Lieutenant John Gunnison, one of the earliest and best outside commentators on the Utah Saints. Gunnison's own view, one shared by most whites at mid-century, was harsh but simple: the "red devils" were part of a "doomed race" that deserved to be extinguished. By comparison, Mormons struggled to understand their relationship to natives. Concerning the "Indian war," Gunnison wrote:

It is a curious matter of reflection, that those whose mission it is to convert these aborigines by the sword of the spirit, should thus be obliged to destroy them—but they stoutly affirm that these people will yet, under their instruction, fulfil the prophecy that "a nation shall be born in a day"; and when they have completed the destined time, will listen to the truth and become "a fair and delight some people."

In actuality this belief varied from Saint to Saint and from year to year. The church laity generally cared less about the redemption of the Lamanites than did the hierarchy. As the lay population absorbed larger numbers of English and Scandinavian converts—people with no connection to Joseph Smith and no experience with Native Americans—this divide widened.

Even the authorities were neither united nor consistent. Brigham Young can be described as a skeptical or fair-weather believer. In 1849 he expressed his doubts that the "old Indians now alive" would enter "the new and ever lasting covenant." It would be "many years" before the Lamanites would be redeemed, he suggested. The current generation of Indians "will not do it, but they will die and be damned." A few days later he said that "this presant race of Indians will never be converted." If they were all killed off, "it mattereth not." In 1850 he argued for the removal of all Indians from Utah Territory. At other times he expressed faith that the Lamanites would soon "blossom as the rose." The "Mormon Chief " got to know many Ute leaders personally, even intimately: he baptized them; gave blessings to them; wrote letters to them; smoked with them; sang hymns to them; spoke in tongues to them; and ransomed slaves from them.

Ute chiefs were just as conflicted. They fought with each other as well as with Mormons. When it suited them, they made overtures to New Mexicans, Mormons, federal officials, and other natives. To Brigham Young's exasperation, they acted like neither true friends nor true enemies.

Young's faith in Indian solidarity increased during the "Mormon Reformation" of 1855-57. In the heat of this millenarian moment many Mormons anticipated the rise of an independent Latter-day Saint nation from the ashes of the United States. As foreseen by Joseph Smith, the apocalypse included a prominent role for the "remnant of Jacob." In preparation, Young established several Indian missions.

In 1857, adding fuel to a roaring fire, President James Buchanan ordered a large armed force—2,500 men—to install a non-Mormon appointee to the territorial governorship. Buchanan acted rashly on the exaggerated complaints of runaway officials—federal appointees who had left the territory frustrated by the LDS shadow government. Having been driven from their homes in Missouri and Illinois, the Mormons responded with defiance to the perceived federal invasion. Young bragged in public about his influence over the Indians and worked to shut down overland mail routes. His chief liaison to the Indians, Dimick Huntington, conducted negotiations with Shoshones, Utes, and Paiutes. Huntington hoped to get them to ally with the Mormons instead of "the Americans."

The cold war between the LDS Church and the federal government relaxed in 1858, but the episode had long-lasting consequences for Indians. The "Utah War" diverted attention and personnel away from the Utah Superintendency of Indian Affairs. In Utah Valley, a newly established Indian Farm—a quasi-reservation meant to compensate for the appropriated fishing grounds at Utah Lake—fell into disrepair. And so 1858 became another year of hunger and sickness for the Fish Eaters. Since the founding of Provo, the native population had been hit by measles, cholera, consumption, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and mumps. When Dimick Huntington went to the barren Indian Farm to give away food, a Ute leader asked "what it ment they was all sick & [asserted that] Brigham & I had talked to the Great Spirit to make them all sick & die. I told him it was not so for when B & all the good mormons prayed, they prayed for them. he sayed o shit you Lie."

Huntington actually spoke from his heart. Not long afterward he concluded his journal with a prayer: "may God turn away our enemies from us & all that are not of us & Gather Israel. wake up the sons of Laman[;] make them a defence to Zion&Let Zion be redeemd, the Jews be gatherd to Jerusalem&it be rebuilt [and] the tribes come from the North. Amen." In retrospect, this prayer was a coda to the reformation rather than a prelude to the millennium. After the détente of 1858, the U.S. government played a greater role in the prosecution of Indian affairs in Utah Territory. In 1865 Ute leaders met federal officials near Utah Lake to sign a reservation treaty. Brigham Young attended the treaty session and urged the Utes to sign. Lacking options, the starving remnants of the Fish Eaters agreed to relocate from Utah Valley to a distant, lakeless region. Banished from their Center Place, the displaced Utes lost their identity as Lake People.

In the 1860s Mormon millenarianism waned and Lamanite missions faded. Like successful colonizers throughout the nation, Mormons began to think of themselves as victimized survivors. "The early history of Provo, if written,would be devoted in the main to a recital of extreme hardships, resulting from bitter and almost incessant Indian wars," editorialized the Provo Chamber of Commerce in 1888. After overtures of peace, the "Indians soon began a characteristic and most violent warfare upon the hardy settlers." By the early 20th century, as the last of the pioneer generation passed away, Utah Mormons told pseudo-historical Indian stories indistinguishable from the fakelore told by post-frontier Americans everywhere. In collective memory, Lamanites and Lake People became generic "squaws," "bucks," "savages," and "princesses."

There are three main ways to interpret the 19th-century history of Mormon-Native interaction. The first, offered by sectarian apologists, highlights examples of magnanimity by individual Mormon pioneers. Not all Latter-day Saints carried out the teachings of Joseph Smith, but many tried, and generally Mormons practiced more charity than other American settlers in comparable frontier settings. The second interpretive viewpoint—common among historians of the U.S. West—asserts that Mormons were actually worse than other settler groups because they failed so miserably to live up to their exalted beliefs. Judged by their own standards, Mormons come across as hypocrites or transgressors—or both.

A third, less judgmental position argues that Mormon culture and theology existed in creative tension with American culture and politics. By studying the fringe we can better understand the core. While Latter-day Saints inherited from Joseph Smith an unusual racialist perspective on Native Americans, they also inherited a normative racist perspective from Euro-American culture. Interpreted as American history, Utah offers a sobering case study in Indian dispossession. Only here did a colonial U.S. population conceive of having a "homeland" in the Native American sense—an endemic spiritual geography. Mormonism, a religion indigenous to the United States, initially embraced American Indians as spiritual kin. Metaphysically and geographically, this religion reserved a privileged place for natives. What does it say about the limits of the racial imagination in 19th-century America that even Christian Israelites couldn't coexist for more than one generation with Hebraic Indians?

the ten lost tribes of Isreal
Joseph Smith and The Book of Mormon. (Wikipedia)
Joseph Smith Jr. Wikipedia
Brigham Young Biography
Brigham Young Wikipedia
Mormons and Indians in the 19th century

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