1860 — Whites attack/kill Yuki Natives near Round Valley, Mendocino County, CA — 250
Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 3-26-2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/
— 250 Agee, James K. Steward’s Fork: A Sustainable Future…Klamath Mountains. 2007, 119.
Narrative Information
Agee: “In 1860, hundreds of Wiyots were still living peacefully around Humboldt Bay, but white ranchers were upset about cattle thefts and attacked the tribe. On an isolated island in the bay, 55 Wiyots were killed, along with 130 others in surrounding settlements, mostly through slaughter by hatchet of women and children. At roughly the same time, 250 Yuki were killed near Round Valley, and between 120 and 250 Wailaki were killed along the North Fork of the Eel River. These and many other brutal massacres often began with the loss of a few head of stock or as efforts to prevent future livestock depredation.” (Agee, James K. Steward’s Fork: A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains. Berkeley/Los Angeles, Univ. of California Press, 2007, 119.)
Baumgardner: “For tens of thousands of years after their ancestors’ arrival on the North American continent from Asia and long before the Gold Rush in 1848, the Yuki[1] like other northern California tribes maintained its own distinct culture. In the Round Valley region [northern Mendocino County] the Yuki tribe consisted of five distinct subdivisions….” (Baumgardner 2006, 13.)
“Round Valley is located about twenty-five miles inland from the rugged northern coast of Mendocino County in California….Most of Round Valley consists of a huge bowl or a large, flat upland valley, measuring roughly six by eight miles. It contains fertile and generally moist top-soil, irrigated frequently by creeks and streams, which flow, in general, from south to north. Most of these streams eventually reach the Pacific by way of the Eel River….” (Baumgardner 2006, 19-20.)
“A brief but decisive frontier war throughout northern California and more specifically in Mendocino County occurred between 1858 and 1860. This bloody two-year period that the Euro-Americans originally termed the ‘War with the Win-toons’ or, in Mendocino County, ‘the Mendocino War,’ should be recognized for what it really was: a genocidal struggle between two people of vastly different cultures over control of the entire northern half of California.” (Baumgardner 2006, 18.)
“The initial phase of this bloody race war lasted for seven years, 1856-1863. The Yuki tribe possibly suffered more deaths, or at least more deaths proportionally, than any other tribe in Mendocino County. According to the great anthropologist A. L. Kroeber the Yuki originally numbered about two thousand. By the middle of the next century (1940), the Yuki were very close to extinction. By this time there were fewer than two hundred living Yuki Indians. By contrast the Euro-Americans lost fewer than ten settlers during the seven-year period in the Mendocino War, according to notes made by historian Estle Beard and left at Held Poage Library in Ukiah.” (Baumgardner 2006, 7-8.) (Baumgardner, Frank H. III. Killing for Land in Early California: Indian Blood at Round Valley 1856-1863. Algora Publishing, 2006.)
Sources
Agee, James K. Steward’s Fork: A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2007. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=Ob_K_EdXC_UC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Baumgardner, Frank H. III. Killing for Land in Early California: Indian Blood at Round Valley 1856-1863. Algora Publishing, 2006. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=QjDrJGHCC1YC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
[1] The name the Wintun tribe on the western side of the coastal range ascribed to them, meaning “enemy.” Their own name for themselves was U-kom-nom (meaning “in the valley.” (Baumgardner 2006, 21.)