1859 — late Mar-May, White genocide of Yuki Natives, Round Valley, Mendocino Co., CA–240-400

Last edit by Wayne Blanchard January 20, 2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/

–300-400  Hornellsville Tribune. “Wholesale Indian Slaughters in Round Valley.” 5-26-1859, 3.

       –240  Carranco and Beard. Genocide and Vendetta: The Round Valley Wars… 1981,

       –240  Madley, B. “Patterns of Frontier Genocide 1803-1910…Yuki of Cal…” 2004, p. 178.

—       240  Wikipedia. “Round Valley Settler Massacres of 1856-1859.” 12-24-2023 edit.

                  [Cited as a source for the March-May 1859 killings in the Wikipedia page is: Major

                  Edward Johnson, quoted in Tassin 1887, p. 25. The full citation in “Sources

Narrative Information

May 26, 1849, Hornellsville Tribune, NY: “The Petaluma Journal of April 15, says that extensive Indian killing has taken place and still is occurring in the vicinity of Round Valley. Information has been received in Petaluma, through a gentleman just from there, that within the past three weeks, from three to four hundred bucks, squaws and children, have been killed by the whites.  The cause of this wholesale killing is stated to be the continued depredations by the Indians upon the stock of the settlers, and a resistance to the Reservation officials in their attempts to collect the Indians upon the Reservation.” (Hornellsville Tribune, NY. “Wholesale Indian Slaughters in Round Valley.” 5-26-1859, p. 3.)

[Benjamin Madley, in “California’s Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native American History.” Western Historical Quarterly, Western History Association, Vol. 39, Autumn 2008, pp. 315-316, has this happening in 1857, stating: A 15 April 1857 Petaluma (California) Journal article reported: “within the past three weeks, from 300 to 400 bucks, squaws and children have been killed by [Round Valley] whites.” These killings initiated a campaign that soon embraced even more ominous designs.  He cites:  Petaluma (California) Journal, 15 April 1857, quoted in Robert Heizer, They Were Only Diggers: A Collection of Articles from California Newspapers, 1851–1866, on Indian and White Relations (Ramona, California, 1974), 47–8.  We cite, seemingly, the same article, but it is definitely in the May 26, 1859 Hornellsville Tribune. This genocidal  attempt to exterminate the Yuki was in “full-gear” from 1856 to 1859.]

Carranco: “In March, 1859, a grey stallion worth one thousand dollars was killed in Eden Valley [Mendocino County], and H. L. Hall came to Round Valley to report the incident to Lieutenant Dillon.[1] Dillon told him that he would try to bring in the guilty Indians if Hall would not organize a party to kill the Indians.  Unfortunately Dillon could not find the guilty Indians, but he later learned that Hall had lied to him and had taken a large group of settlers out along the Eel River, where for two weeks they hunted down and killed about 240 Indians.  When Hall later asked Dillon for help, the lieutenant replied that ‘after his recent exploit he could expect no sympathy if the Indians should kill every head of stock in the valley’.”[2]  (Carranco, Lynwood and Estle Beard. Genocide and Vendetta: The Round Valley Wars of Northern California.  Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 1981, p. 82.)

Madley: “An 1859 letter from the notorious Indian killer Walter Jarboe to the Governor of California sums up white racist sentiment towards the Yuki, describing them as “the most degraded, filthy, miserable thieving lot of any living thing that comes under the head and rank of human being” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p. 94[3]).” (Madley 2004, 169.)

“Like the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki came into conflict with settlers over natural resources, land, the abduction of their children, and the enslavement and mistreatment of their women. Likewise, the Yuki rose up only to be hunted nearly to extinction and incarcerated in lethal ethnic gulags.”  (Madley 2004, 177.)

“Between 1856 and 1859 the Yuki began attacking first livestock, and then both stock and a limited number of settlers.  The conflict was always asymmetrical.  California Indians were prohibited from owning guns and records suggest that the Yuki primarily relied on bows and arrows.  Despite the disparity in firepower and the fact that the Yuki rarely killed whites, settlers responded with massacres of increasing scale (Heizer, 1974, p. 11[4]).  (Madley 2004, 178.)

“In May 1859, Round Valley settlers avenged the killing of a single prize stallion with the slaughter of 240 Yuki (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 64–65, 82).  Responding to the increasing violence of the summer of 1859, the editor of the Sacramento Union wrote: “The aborigines are melting away as the snows of the mountains in June … they are doomed to steady extirpation” (Sacramento Union, August 22, 1859).

“On September 6, 1859 California Governor John Weller intervened to sanction genocide by granting a state commission to Walter Jarboe, a notorious Indian killer whose “Eel River Rangers” had already murdered 62 Yuki men, women and children that year (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 90–91, 89).  Despite these killings, Weller considered the Yuki a threat requiring even more extreme measures. A San Francisco Bulletin editorial even suggested, “Extermination is the quickest and cheapest remedy, and effectually prevents all other difficulties when an outbreak [of Indian violence] occurs” (San Francisco Bulletin, September 1, 1856). When US Army generals refused to order their troops to join the war against the Yuki, Weller hired Jarboe and his “Rangers.”

“Five months later, in January 1860, Weller disbanded the “Eel River Rangers” and Jarboe presented his final report to the new Governor of California, John Downey: “from … [September 20] to the 24th of January[1860], I have fought them twenty-three times, killed 283 warriors, the number of wounded was not known, took 292 prisoners, sent them to the Reservation” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 95–96).

“Jarboe then presented the state with a $11,143 bill for his expeditions (San Francisco Bulletin, February 24, 1860).  Given his previous record for killing scores of women and children, Jarboe’s official account cannot be trusted.  He lists only men killed. Yet, if his previous activities are any indicator, he and his death squad did not discriminate between men, women, and children. All were likely targeted.

“Governor Weller understood that Jarboe would kill women and children as well as the California press did.  By February 1860, despite its earlier editorial, the San Francisco Bulletin was shocked and criticized Jarboe’s actions as a “Deliberate, cowardly, brutal massacre of defenseless men, women, and children …” (San Francisco Bulletin, February 24, 1860). In March of the same year, San Francisco Herald editor John Nugent attacked the government’s

genocide with biting wit:

I propose to the legislature to create the office of Indian Butcher with the princely salary conferred upon the man who has killed the most Indians in a given time provided it is satisfactorily shown that the Indians were unarmed at the time and the greater of them were squaws and papooses [women and children]. (San Francisco Herald, March 5, 1860)

“Governor Weller had officially sanctioned genocide.  He understood that by commissioning Jarboe he would unleash a force with a proven record of killing women and children and that it would annihilate most, if not all, Yukis. The government of California sanctioned and paid for Weller’s genocide policy and Jarboe’s execution of it. On April 12, 1860 the California state legislature appropriated $9,347.39 for “payment of the indebtedness incurred by the expedition against the Indians in the county of Mendocino organized under the command of Captain W.S. Jarboe in the year 1859” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p. 97). Jarboe’s 292 prisoners then joined other Yuki at the Round Valley Reservation.”  (Madley 2004, 178-179.)

(Madley, Benjamin. “Patterns of Frontier Genocide 1803-1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia,” Journal of Genocide Research, June 2004, pp. 167-192.)

Tassin, A. G.: “During the summer of 1874, acting under instructions from my military superiors, I was engaged, among other duties, in scouting in Mendocino and Trinity Counties. The results of these scouts were embodied in a map of Round Valley and its vicinity, and in a report upon the peculiarities and resources of the country, its early history and probable future. From the material accumulated for this report have grown the following papers, upon the history and legends of the Round Valley Indians.

“This valley, elliptical in form, lies one hundred and ninety-three miles due north from San Francisco, about midway between the northern extremity of Sacramento Valley and the Pacific Ocean, and hidden among the spurs of the Coast Range at an altitude of eighteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. Its length, north and south, caries from seven to eight miles, and its width, east and west, from four to five; with an estimated area of twenty-five thousand acres….  

“Round Valley must have been, in times not very remote, densely populated with aborigines. Here the Yukas, (of whom a remnant still exists on the Reservation,) a tribe once powerful in numbers, who claimed the vast territory included between the South and North Forks of Eel River, and subsisted upon the acorns, wild oats, and clover of the valleys, and the abundant game roaming in the mountain fastnesses, lived in comfort and prosperity until the white man came – bringing with him a story of aggression, retaliation, and blood.

“From the most reliable data I can get, it appears that in the beginning of the year 1854, the merchants of Petaluma, with a view of increasing their commercial facilities, conceived the project of locating a trail to connect Petaluma with Weaverville, Trinity County, and Mr. Samuel Kelsey, with an efficient party, was charged with its execution.  (p. 24) At that date the immense territory between these two points was regarded very much in the light of a terra incognita, and the party under Mr. Kelsey’s orders may properly be called explorers. Looking down on Round Valley from one of the neighboring mountains, these explorers judging from the numerous camp fires dotting it in every direction, estimated its Indian population, together with that of the adjacent smaller valleys and surrounding mountains, at twenty thousand. Subsequent estimates made by the settlers who came with Mr. White’s party, reduce this number to five and even as low as three thousand.

“The Yuka, in common with nearly all the Indian tribes of Northern California, in erecting his abode or wigwam, first excavated a sufficient space to a depth varying from three to five feet, making with the displaced earth a circular wall or tumulus, upon which he erected a structure of poles, covered with bark or hides. Unlike the Indians of the plains, the Yukas were not migratory in their habits, and having once established a village or rancheria, it was of a permanent nature. The wigwam and its inhabitants have disappeared; the tumuli still remain – and from this evidence, and from that obtained by patient inquiry among the most intelligent of the remaining Indians, I approximated the Indian population of Round Valley, and of its immediate vicinity, at the date of the first white settlement, at twelve thousand. Of this number hardly four hundred remained in 1874; and in my endeavors to ascertain from the settlers what became of the rest, I invariably received the answer that it was hard to tell. A careful reading of the succeeding pages may possibly render the solution of the problem self-evident.

“The first white settlement in the valley dates from June 1856, when a party composed of Mr. George E. White and others, came across the mountains from Sacramento Valley and established a permanent location. At about the same time a man named Storms acting under instructions from Colonel Thomas J. Henley, then superintendent of Indian affairs for California, located an Indian farm in the Northwest part of the Valley. They farm, or station, was known as the Nome-cult Indian farm, and was a dependency or branch of the Nome-Lackee Indian Reservation, in the foothills of Sacramento Valley, in Tehama County….When the location of the Round Valley farm was determined upon, he came as agent, or supervisor, of the new establishment, with some forty Nevadas as a nucleus; in the course of time, nearly all the remaining Yukas were prevailed upon to come and live thereon, and in the spring of 1859, the Con-Con tribe was transferred to this farm from the Mendocino reservation.

“During the summer and fall of 1856, more whites arrived, and engaged in farming and stock raising; and Round Valley began to assume the appearance and characteristics of all white settlements in the Indian country in their early days.

“Up to this time the Yukas had lived contented and happy. Their manner of living was very primitive…they owned no horses or live stock of any kind, and the use of fire-arms was to them unknown. Practicing none of the arts of civilization, they were also exempt from its vices. They do not appear to have placed any impediments in the way of the establishment of a whit settlement in the midst of their native country. They regarded the white man as a superior being, endowed with many of the attributes of their Great Spirit, and they retained that opinion until the whites, by their own acts, made it impossible, even to the most absolute credulity, to retain it any longer; for the time was coming fast when hunted like [end of p.25] a wild beast among his native hills, starvation and death staring him in the face whichever way he turned, the poor Indian would come to the army officer, his only friend, and, as far as his power extended, his only protector, and pointing to his wounds would say, ‘You ask us to come on the Reservation, and tell us that we will not be molested. We have ben there, and our brothers, our wives, and our children have been killed. We do not know in whom to believe; we have lost faith in everything but death.’

“During the first and second year of the settlement, the number of white inhabitants was increased at different times by the arrival of a certain class of white men known in the vernacular of the country as ‘floaters’ – men without fixed occupation or abodes, who came, some as hunters, and others as stock-herders. Having no interest at stake, these men were not over scrupulous in their conduct toward the Indians, and their bad example appears to have contaminated some of the real settlers. From this time dates the beginning of aggression and outrages on the part of the whites, and of Indian retaliation in killing stock, and sometimes whites, culminating at last in a war of extermination waged by the whites upon the Indians.

“The first murders charged to the Indians were those of two white men. If what is related of one of these it true, the provocation certainly justified the deed. His favorite amusement is said to have been shooting at the Indians at long range, and he usually brought down his game. Goaded to desperation the Indians killed him. The shedding of the first white blood, however, gave an additional impetus to the already fast growing animosity of the whites; and matters began to assume a decidedly bad look for the poor Yukas…. [p. 26]

“Early in the year 1859, a memorial, signed by a number of the white inhabitants of Round Valley and the surrounding country, praying for protection against the Indians, was addressed to Governor Weller, and referred by him to the commanding general of the department; which, in turn, referred it to Major Johnson, commanding at Fort Weller. Major Johnson returned it under date of May 1, 1859, with an emphatic report denying the assertions of the memorial.

“ ‘The Yukas have not been,’ says the report, ‘for the last two years, nor are they now, at open war with the whites; but the whites have waged a relentless war of extermination against the Yukas, making no distinction between the innocent and the guilty. They have ruthlessly massacred men, women, and children. That the Indians in a few instances have retaliated by killing some stock is true; but so far from killing ‘twenty whites at least,’ as falsely represented, they have never, since the first settlement of the country, killed but two.’ The report here states the circumstances of their death, as given above, and goes on: ‘These were killed some two years ago, and not a man has been killed since. It is difficult to say how many Indians were killed by the whites within the time specified, but it is asserted and believed that some six hundred have been killed within the last year.

‘The statement that the Indians have, within two years, killed forth thousand dollars worth of stock in Round Valley is believed to be a gross exaggeration. One of the largest stock owners in the valley has within the last few days denied the statement, and says that he does not believe the Indians have ever killed a tenth part of the amount stated. Several other citizens of Round Valley have denied the statement and scouted it as ridiculous. The Indians have destroyed some on H___’s stock in Eden Valley. All the stock that is lost is charged to the Indians. His stock is not herded. The Indians have killed some, it is true, and the manner of killing has indicated plainly that it was done in retaliation for the gross outrages practiced on them….Some of the stock which the Indians were accused of having killed, has since been found. Persons traveling through the Indian country are not attacked ‘at sight.’ I have repeatedly sent single expressmen through the country who have encamped in the Indian country without molestation. Men go alone almost daily over and through the country, looking for stock and hunting, and I have not yet heard of one having been attacked. No man travels through this country without arms of some sort, but whether armed or unarmed, it is false that any men have been attacked by these Indians.

‘As to the statement that the citizens, having exhausted all means of defense against the depredations of the Indians, entertained the idea of abandoning the country unless speedily assisted by the State authorities, it is regarded by all as simply ridiculous. The object of the statement is palpable. The memorialists wish a company of volunteers called into the service for the purpose of exterminating the Indians. This work has been going on since the first settlement of the country, but not fast enough to suit the views of certain unscrupulous speculators and stock-owners, who would gladly see the last Indian sacrificed to their insatiable avarice and cupidity. The inhabitants are fully able to protect themselves without the aid of volunteers. The Indians, and not the whites, need protection. If the Indians were let alone, we should not hear so much of Indian depredations. If they were allowed, in common with the brutes, to eat the acorns, roots, and clover of the valley, instead of being killed and driven to the fastnesses of the mountain, and thus compelled to starve or steal, we should hear of no depredations at all.

‘I shall now proceed to mention some of the acts of the whites toward the Indians by way of showing clearly the ability of the former to protect themselves, and as constituting part of the history of the present condition of military affairs in this district.

‘The Yukas are now a miserable tribe of naked, starve, Digger Indians, inhabiting the country between the North and South Eel Rivers. They live upon and cultivate the reservation in Round Valley, and almost every farmer in the valley has a number of them, whom he employs as servants, and who have either been brought from the mountains or from the reservation. These Indians are worked and packed, and but scantily, if at all, clothed and fed….Many of them at the reservation have been officially reported to me as almost in a starving condition, and hardly able to get out to procure roots and clover, their usual diet.’

“The report goes on to narrate in full a case in which whites attacked an unarmed and unsuspecting settlement of Yukas, on the mere suspicion that they had taken some missing stock, and massacred some forty of them. Again, on the previous New Year’s, certain whites ‘armed with rifles and revolvers, went to the several farms upon which Yuka Indians were employed as servants, and in cold blood killed some forty or fifty of them. They directed the ranch owners to select such Indians as they did not wish killed, and they would kill the rest….I have not heard that any reason was assigned for the massacre, but have understood that it was a sort of New Year’s frolic.’ In another case some twenty Indians on the Reservation were shot upon suspicion of having killed stock. ‘The precaution had been taken in this last massacre to disarm the Indians and burn their bows and arrows.’ ‘The agent informed me that the citizens of Round Valley had threatened to wipe out the Indians on the Reservation; that they had come there armed for the purpose, and that he had been compelled to call in the employés to protect the Indians, and had serious notions of arming the Indians in their own defense.’ In still another case, an armed party looking for lost stock in the mountains, ‘attacked every village of Indians they came upon and massacred some two hundred or more,’ men, women and children.

“Several more massacres and personal atrocities practiced upon Indians, are related; and Major Johnson’s report closes as follows:

‘I have endeavored to put a stop to the aggressions of the whites against the Indians, but without effect. They seem bent upon their extermination, and so long as they continue their indiscriminate slaughter, the Indians will occasionally retaliate by killing some stock. Large numbers of the Indians have died. The combined effects of hard work, disease, starvation and the attacks of the whites, will soon cause them to disappear entirely, without the aid of a volunteer company, to expedite the work of destruction.

‘I also enclose two counter-memorials, numerously signed by persons known to be among the most reliable residents of Round Valley.’

“Colonel Henly, Superintendent of Indian affairs for California, took exception to this and to a subsequent report, made by Major Johnson, and published a refutal [rebuttal] in the columns of  the San Francisco National under date of February 5^th 1860. Colonel Henley having made, in his letter, certain aspersions on Major Johnson’s courage and veracity and others to the same effect to the discredit of Lieutenant Dillon, they were answered, in the absence of these two officers, by Lieutenant W. P. Carlin, 6^th United States Infantry, commanding at Fort Wells, who having first submitted his rejoinder to General Clarke, the Department Commander, for his inspection, published it in the San Francisco Herald in March 1860, assuming all the responsibility of its publication….

“Pending this controversy, however, the State authorities had decided in favor of employing a company of volunteers to operate against the Indians of the valley and its vicinity. The company was organized in July, 1859….” [Narrative goes on to note atrocities that commenced thereafter and into 1860, which we treat in separate documents, as well as atrocities committed against Natives in Round Valley and elsewhere in Northern California in 1862 and 1864.]

(Tassin, A. G. “Chronicles of Camp Wright, Part I. Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine. Vol. 10, Issue 55, July 1887, pp. 24-32.)

Wikipedia: “….Due to the overwhelming number of killings, an exact death toll is unknowable. The following estimates were made by government agents and newspapers at the time:

“1856: 300 total killed over the course of the year.

“Winter 1856–57: About 75 Yuki Indians killed over the course of the winter.

“March–April 1858: 300–400 male Yukis killed in three weeks.

“November 1858 – January 1859: 150+ or 170 Yuki Indians killed between November and January

“March–May 1859: 240 Yuki killed in assaults led by H.L. Hall in revenge for the slaughter of Judge Hasting’s horse and a total of 600 men, women, and children killed within the previous year.

Sources

Carranco, Lynwood and Estle Beard. Genocide and Vendetta: The Round Valley Wars of Northern California. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981.

Hornellsville Tribune, NY. “Wholesale Indian Slaughters in Round Valley.” 5-26-1859, p. 3. Accessed 8-27-2012 at: http://newspaperarchive.com/FullPagePdfViewer.aspx?img=2777690

Madley, Benjamin. “Patterns of Frontier Genocide 1803-1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia,” Journal of Genocide Research, June 2004, pp. 167-192. Accessed 8-28-2012 at: http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/Madley.pdf

Tassin, A. G. “Chronicles of Camp Wright, Part I. Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, San Francisco” Commercial Publishing Company, Vol. 10, Issue 55, July 1887, pp. 24-32. Accessed 1-19-2024 at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/ahj1472.2-10.055/33:5?page=root;rgn=full+text;size=100;view=image

Wikipedia. “Round Valley Settler Massacres of 1856-1859.” 12-24-2023 edit. Accessed 1-19-2024 at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_Valley_Settler_Massacres_of_1856%E2%80%931859#cite_note-47

Additional Reading

Heizer, William C. (ed.) Handbook of North American Indians, Volime 8: California. Smithsonian Institution, 1978. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=I6b6EEE1YlIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Heizer, Robert F. (ed.). The Destruction of California Indians; A collection of documents from the period 1847 to 1865 in which are described some of the things that happened to some of the Indians of California.  Bison Book Edition, 1993. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=d0aXNrxV2ZMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Heizer, Robert F. and Alan J. Almquist. The Other Californians: Prejudice and Discrimination under Spain, Mexico and the Unites States to 1920. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, Ltd., 1971. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=IA-C9T4ekAQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

[1] Lower Quarters of the Nome Cult Farm, Round Valley Indian Reservation. (Carranco and Beard, 1981, 80.)

[2] Cites: “Deposition of Lieutenant Dillon at Storm’s ranch in Round Valley, February 27, 1860, Indian War Files.”

[3] Lynwood Carranco and Estle Beard. Genocide and Vendetta: The Round Valley Wars in Northern California.  University of Oklahoma Press, 1981.

[4] Heizer, R., ed. (1974). The Destruction of California Indians: A Collection of Documents from the Period 1847–1865.  Santa Barbara:  University of California Press.