The years of conflict
As I continue my history of Ishi, I think it would be appropriate to remind you that my interest in him was because of his contribution to our knowledge of native american tool making. This blog posting will deal with the wars between the Yahi people and the settlers and militia who fought them. The conflict was precipitated by the discovery of gold at sutters mill.
The Gold Rush: On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter originally from New Jersey, found flakes of gold in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, California. When the news got out about the gold, people from all over the world headed for California During the next seven years, approximately 300,000 people came to California to seek their fortunes from either mining for gold or selling supplies like food, clothing, burros, lumber, picks, and shovels to the prospectors. Many ranches in indian territory were established. For the Native Americans living in the neighboring hills, this influx of people was devastating. By the time Ishi was born, about 1862, the slaughter of native americans was very wide-spread. There was killing on both sides, but it has been estimated that there were 30 to 50 indians killed for every white person.
Settlers around Deer Creek collected over $3000 as a beginning fund to be used to fight the Yahi (Mill Creek) indians. “By 1872...when Ishi was perhaps ten years old, there were no Southern Yana left; and only some twenty or thirty scattered individuals of the Northern and Central Yana remained alive. As for the fourth group, (of Yana indians) the Yahi, they were believed to have been entirely exterminated also, and so they were except for a handful, Ishi among them." (Ishi in two worlds p. 43)
After the capture and torture of several white children, the settlers hired professional indian hunters. Hiram Good and R. A. Anderson. These men were very experienced and could track and move through the canyons almost like the indians. Hi Good did not believe in killing women and children, but Anderson felt that the only solution to the indian problem was their extinction. Under Anderson’s and Good’s leadership many of the Yahi were killed. Sadly there were accounts where many friendly indians were massacred. Even dragging them out of the cabins of friendly settlers and shooting them dead in the yards.
In 1865 the most deadly attack against the Yahi occurred. The Workman ranch was attacked and Mrs. Workman, her hired man and another young woman were brutally killed. The Workman ranch was far below the normal Yahi range, but it was believed that the Yahi were to blame. Good and Anderson and seventeen armed men went after the Yahi. Anderson divided his men into two parties. Under cover of a moonless night Anderson’s group worked their way above one of the largest Yahi villages where they could cover any retreat in that upstream direction. Good’s men hid themselves close beside the downstream entrance to the village. Quoting from the Kroeber book: ”Before dawn of August sixteenth. Waiting only until there was light enough for his men to see where they were shooting, Anderson directed a continuous stream of gunfire down from above onto the sleeping village. As he had surmised, the Yahi ran downstream making for the open ford which brought them under Good’s fire from below. The terrified indians leapt into Mill Creek, but the rapid current was a sorry protection. They became targets there for Good’s guns, and Mill Creek ran red with the blood of its people.” ... A few Yahi escaped, the small child Ishi and his mother among them.” (Ishi in two worlds pp. 80-81)
There were many skirmishes, with the Yahi, but one other seems especially significant. In either 1867 or 1868 four ranch hands discovered a blood trail and following it, discovered a broken arrow and the remains of a steer carcass. Large chunks of meat had been hacked off and carried away. The ranchers returned to camp and then returned with dogs to track the indians. They followed the trail into Mill Creek and upstream to a large cave. More than thirty Yahi, including young children and babies were trapped in the cave. The four armed ranchers killed them all. Norman Kingsley, as he explained afterwards, changed guns during the slaughter, exchanging his .56-caliber Spencer rifle for his .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver, because the rifle “tore them up so bad.” (Ishi in two worlds pp. 84-85) It was thought that every last Yahi indian had been now been killed. Except all of the bodies of this massacre disappeared completely. We now know that the boy Ishi (8 or 9 years old) and a handful of others removed the bodies.
Some time after the cave incident 3 indian women were captured. Two weeks later 12 indians showed up at the ranch of W. S. Segraves to offer a trade for the three indians. But this incident may have been much more. It was possibly an effort by the Yahi to declare a truce with the white men. The 12 indians, seven women and five men, arrived with five bows to trade for the indian women. Segraves explained that the captives were at the Good ranch and so the group went there to make the trade. Good was not at home and so everyone sat to wait. In the mean time one of Good’s ranch hands decided to weigh himself on a set of steelyards. He threw a rope over a tree limb to attach the steelyards, but the indians thinking they were about to be hanged fled into the forest never to be seen again.
Steven Powers, a magazine correspondent in the 1870's, reports that one of the guards confided to him that their intent actually was to hang the five indian men. The lack of communication skills may have led to a missed opportunity to end this unparalleled conflict. As it turns out, five was a sacred number for the Yahi. And the offering of five fine bows may have been an offer to lay down their weapons of war. We will never know what may have happened. It may be of interest to some of you that the five bows left with Segraves were of such quality that this sturdy rancher lacked the strength to unstring the bows.
The Yahi tribe would now go into concealment. Kroeber described them as: “the smallest free nation in the world, which by an unexampled fortitude and stubbornness of character succeeded in holding out against the tide of civilization twenty five years longer even than Geronimo’s famous band of Apaches.” (Ishi in two worlds pp. 90-91)
Steven Powers wrote: “They (the Yahi) seem likely to present a spectacle which is without parallel in human history–that of a barbaric race resisting civilization with arms in their hands, to the last man, and the last squaw, and the last papoose. They were once a numerous and thrifty tribe...They cooked there their hasty evening repast, but they will sleep somewhere else, with no camp-fire to guide a lurking enemy within reach. For days and weeks together they never touch the earth, stepping always from one volcanic stone to another. They never leave a broken twig or a disturbed leaf behind them. Probably no day of the year ever passes over their heads but some one of their doomed nation...sits crouching on a hillock or in a tree-top within easy eye-shot of his fellows” (Ishi in two worlds p. 91) For many of the forty years of concealment there were as few as five Yahi survivors. In the next post we will discuss how these amazing people survived. It is an inspiring story of courage, skill and unbelievable patience.
