USA > California > San Joaquin County > An illustrated history of San Joaquin County, California. Containing a history of San Joaquin County from the earliest period of its occupancy to the present time, together with glimpses of its future prospects; > Part 3
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The Mokelumne river takes its name from a powerful tribe of Indians, the Mokelkos, who formerly inhabited its lower banks and adjacent country; or the tribe took its name from the river. The name has been variously spelled, as Mokuelnmne, Moquelmnos, etc. The lands of
the Mokelkos lay between the Mokelumne, lower Cosumnes and Dry creek on the north and a line within 300 yards of the center of Stockton on the south, the San Joaquin river on the west and Staples' Ferry on the east. They claini to have had at one time a member- ship of 3,000. Their youngest chief, Maximo, was still living but a few years ago, said to be about 100 years of age. They also claimed that. they were always successful in their wars with neighboring tribes, and these conflicts were nn- merous. They were indeed tall and stout, and of a physique superior to that of any other Cali- fornia Indian; and they felt proud of their new religion, Jesuitical Christianity, and on that account also felt superior to all other savages. In a contest with the Walla Wallas, a tribe of Oregon Indians who came to fight with guns ou horseback, the Mokelkos were assisted by other tribes as far south as Los Angeles; and they charged that the Walla Wallas poisoned the waters, causing the death of thousands. This probably was the scourge of 1833,-small-pox or fever.
The Digger Indians, more migratory, rarely exceeded five feet eight inches in height, .and though strong were seldom symmetrically built. Characterizing the prevailing types were a low, retreating forehead, black, deep-set eyes, thick, bushy eyebrows and hair, prominent cheek- bones, a nose depressed at the bridge and some- what wide-spreading at the nostrils, thick projecting lips, large, white teeth, and a nearly black complexion. In summer their only dwell- ings were a shed of brush to screen them from the sun, and in winter they dwelt in holes in the ground covered with brush and mud. They were too lazy to hunt, preferring rather to sub- sist upon acorns, berries, roots and grasshoppers. They had two ways of capturing these insects. One was to form themselves in a circle a half unile across and agitate the grass and weeds over theni with sticks, driving the grasshoppers into a small pond in the center made for the purpose; and the other was to make windrows of grass and burning them while they would chase the
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insects into the flames, which burnt off their wings.
In their personal habits these Indians were exceedingly filthy.
In 1845 the small-pox prevailed fearfully among the Indians in this vicinity. The white settlers fled to San Jose, leaving a man named Lindsay to guard their flocks. The savages mur- dered him, on the peninsula that bears his name, burned his buildings and fled to the Coast Range with the live-stock. After that they never re- appeared upon the plains.
None of the valley Indians used canoes or boats made from the trunks of trees, or of bark. Instead, they employed a kind of raft, pointed at both ends, ten feet long and three or four feet wide, mnade of tules tightly woven together with willow. They were propelled by a double- bladed oar, and were buoyant and serviceable. Their fish spears were made of bone.
The Indians were still in their aboriginal simplicity in 1850-'51. With the exception of a few of the wealthier chiefs, who at that time dressed and rode " a la Mexicana," the.costume for the men consisted of a simple shirt and sometimes even less, and a short skirt attached to the waist for the women. In their character they were as simple as in their habits. The valley Indians at first were inclined to look upon the Americans as trespassers; but the lessons learned by their conflicts with General Sutter, and the teaching by the " padres," had not been without effect, inspiring them with a salutary awe; and they accepted the situation as grace- fully as possible, believing that a masterly peace for the present was their best policy. It is among their traditions that the white man was to come, but would be expelled by the plague and their own prowess, and that they will again enjoy their former hunting grounds.
Although nominally Christianized, the few remaining Indians still keep up their monthly aboriginal feasts and dances. At these they invoke the spirits to crown the seasons with plentiful crops of ground-nuts and acorns, and abundance of game. If their hopes are realized,
they invite the neighboring tribes to a grand harvest feast, when feasting, dancing, gambling and athletic games are the order of the day. Their medicine men perform their incantations, to pacify the evil spirits, ward off pestilence and disease, and to heal the sick. Their prophets and seers orate on the traditions, past prowess and glories of the tribe, and forecast the lioro- scope of the future.
On the occurrence of a death, their lamenta- tions are touching in the extreme. The mourn- ers of the tribe sit in a circle, with bowed heads, and for hours, and through the long night pre- vious to a burial, give expression to their deep grief in dismal wailing, or the dolorous chant- ing of a death song. They bury their dead, bestrewing the graves with beads and shells. Some of their traditions are interesting and poetic, but in a brief sketch like this are inad- missible.
To explain, however, the condition of some of the tumuli, or mounds, built by the Indians, containing large quantities of human bones, found at varions Indian encampments on the Mokelumne river, they say that these tumuli are the burial places of the dead, referring to those who died of the plague already referred to.
It is also a tradition that these valleys, prior to the advent of the whites, had periodical showers of rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning, during the summer months, and that the Great Spirit, as a token of his displeasure at their coming, has withheld the rain, proposing to drive them out by the sterility of the soil which would necessarily follow the absence of rain; that when the whites leave the country the summer rains will come again. This change in the climate occurred about sixty years ago. They have another tradition which should be of some interest to the whites of the present and the future generations. It is, that a flood once filled the valley of the Mokelumne from bluff to bluff, and overflowed at a point near the Poland House, at the rancheria on the Megerle ranchi, and below Staples' ferry, the water running in the direction of Stockton, and that many thou-
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HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.
sands of Indians were drowned. The country indeed bears evidence of such a wash, at no very distant date; and the slope of the country is such that the sweep of the currents would be in that direction. Their legends and customs would make a paper of great value to those in- terested in the history of a rapidly vanishing race; but for the present work we must forego further inention.
In 1852 most of the Indians had removed to the mountains. There were four rancherias; first at the crossing of the Calaveras, at Davis' and Atherton's Ferry, containing about forty; second, on the Mokelumine, near Staples' Ferry, numbering fifty-five; third, at Dent and Van- tine's Ferry, on the Stanislaus river, number- ing 275; fourth, at Bonsell's Ferry, on the San Joaquin river, numbering twenty. The last remnant of the Indians of San Joaquin County, seeing the lands all passing under the control of the whites, sought to save a little piece for themselves, by purchasing it from the people who had taken it from them. They made a bar- gain with a man by the name of Thomas B. Parker, to take up for them a school section, for which they were to pay him in work $350. They worked uutil, by an agreed price, their la- bor amounted to $371, but they never received a title to the-land. Mr. Parker was killed in the mines before deeding the land to them, and they were turned off from the section by an order of the court.
Colonel J. J. Warner, now of Los Angeles, was a member of the Ewing Young trapping expedition of 1832-'33; and he relates concern- ing the scourge of the latter year the following:
" In the fall of 1832 there were a number of Indian villages on King's river, between its month and the mountains; also on the San Joa- quin river, from the base of the mountains down to, and some distance below, the great slough. On the Merced river, from the mnoun- tains to its junction with the San Joaquin, there were no Indian villages; but from about this point on the San Joaquin, as well as on all of its principal tributaries, the Indian villages
were numerous; and many of those villages contained from fifty to 100 dwellings, all of which were built with poles and thatched with rushes. With some few exceptions the Indians were peaceably disposed. On the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Calaveras rivers, there were In- dian villages above the mouthis, as also at, or near, their junction with the San Joaquin. The . mnost hostile-disposed Indians were those of the Calaveras river. The banks of the Sacramento river, in its whole course through its valley, were studded with Indian villages, the houses of which, in the spring, during the day-time, were red with the salmon the aborigines were curing.
" At this time there were not, upon the San Joaquin or Sacramento rivers, or any of their tributaries, nor within the valleys of the two rivers, any inhabitants but Indians, among whom we occasionally found one who had fled from some of the missions of California. On no part of the continent over which I had then, or have since traveled, was so numerous an Indian population subsisting upon the natural pro- duets of the soil and waters as in the valleys of the San Joaquin and Sacramento. There was no cultivation of the soil by them: game, fish, nuts of the forest and seeds of the fields, consti. tuted their entire food. They were experts in catching fish in many ways, and in snaring game in divers inodes.
"On our return, late in the summer of 1833, we found the valleys depopulated. From the head of the Sacramento to the great bend and slough of the San Joaquin, we did not see more than six or eight live Indians; while large numbers of their skulls and dead bodies were to be seen under almost every shade-tree near wa- ter, where the uninhabited and deserted villages had been converted into graveyards; and, on the San Joaquin river, in the immediate neighborhood of the larger class of villages, which, the preceding year, were the abodes of a large number of those Indians, we found not only many graves, but the vestiges of a funeral pyre. At the month of King's river we en-
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IIISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.
countered the first and only village of the stricken race that we had seen after entering the great valley ; this village contained a large nuni- ber of Indians, temporarily stopping at that place.
"We were encamped near the village one night only, and, during that time the death angel, passing over the camping ground of these plague-stricken fugitives, waved his wand, sum- moning from the little remnant of a once num - erous people, a score of victims, to muster in the land of the Manitou; and the cries of the dying, mingled with the wails of the bereaved, made the night hideous in that veritable ' valley of death.'
"This disease, which swept down the valley of the Sacramento, and up that of the San Joa- quin, appeared, so far as I conld judge (and I came near dying from it), to be a most acute and violent type of remittent fever. It attacked members of our party, when we were upon the San Joaquin, near the Merced river, and nearly every one of our party suffered from it. Two Indian boys, about fifteen or sixteen years of age, one a Columbia river or Oregon Indian, the other from New Mexico, both of our party, died of the fever. The disease presented none of the symptoms of cholera. Its fatality among the Indians was, in my opinion, in great meas- ure, owing to the treatment of the sick, which was to give them a hot-air bath in their sweat- houses, and then immerse them in water; the immersion was soon followed by death. Ex- cepting the Indians of our company that died, I was the most severely affected member of our party. In fact I was left, while on the march, the day following our encampment at the mnoutli of King's river, unable to ride, and, as was supposed, to die; but in the evening I revived, and was able to mount my mule and reach camp."
After the people of California heard of the ravages of the cholera in other parts of the world, many of those who had learned of the pestilence among the Indians of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys in 1833, erroneously assumed that it also was the cholera.
The "sweat-house" treatment Colonel War- ner refers to is thus more particularly described :
On the river bank they would dig holes large enough to contain a number of the afflicted and cover it over with dirt, leaving a small aperture at the top through which the sick were crowded. After building a hot fire within the aperture was closed and the sufferer left to roast. After being duly roasted or heated he was taken ont and at once plunged into the cold stream. Of course they all died who were taken sick.
FIRST "AMERICANS."
The first white citizen from the United States, according to all the accounts we have, to enter the San Joaquin valley, was Jedediah S. Smith, who in 1825 came through by way of Walker's Pass, or near it, at the head of a trapping party. He was a native of the State of New York, had been for a number of years engaged in the busi- ness of hunting beaver in the Rocky Mountains, and was at this time employed by General Ash- ley, of St. Louis, Missouri. On this expedition he was in partnership with Messrs. Jackson and Sublette, under the firm name of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Each of these part- ners led trapping parties during the early spring and autumn up and down known rivers, and in search of unknown ones, where beaver might be plentiful. Smith trapped the waters of this valley until 1827, when he went out of the Sac- ramento valley near its northern limits and was soon afterward attacked by Indians on the Ump- quah river, and nearly all his men massacred. With two men who had escaped, he reached Fort Vancouver, on foot, where he made an arrangement with the resident agent of the Hudson Bay Company to furnish a guide to conduct a trapping party to the beaver-stocked rivers of California, if the company would send a party to Umpquah and recover the large quan- tity of beaver skins, traps, etc., which he had at the time of his defeat.
This trapping party, under the command of John MeLeod, came in at the head of the Sacra- inento valley, in the latter part of 1827 or early
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HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.
in 1828, and trapped the waters of the Sacra- mento and San Joaquin valleys. Soon after- ward another party, under the lead of Mr. Ogden, a native of New York, who also had been in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, entered the San Joaquin valley by the route Smith had come or one near it.
Ewing Young, a native of Tennessee, who had been leading trapping parties in the West, came to the San Joaquin river and its tributaries in 1829 or 1830. In the spring or summer of 1832, another party from Fort Vancouver, under the lead of Michiel Laframboise, entered the Sacramento valley and trapped the waters of the two valleys until the spring of 1833. In the fall of 1832 Young entered the San Joaquin valley from Los Angeles by the Fort Tejon ronte, with a trapping party. Finding that the San Joaquin river and its tributaries had recently been trapped, he and his party hurried along to the Sacramento river, about eight or ten miles below the mouth of the American river and there found the Hudson Bay trappers. Young's ex- pedition, terminating in the winter of 1833-'34, was the last one passing through this valley, of which we have any account, that was independ- ent of the Hudson Bay Company; and its only survivor is Colonel J. J. Warner, of Los An- geles. J. Alexander Forbes, of Oakland, is probably the only survivor of the leading trap- pers of the Hudson Bay Company of that early period. In company with William G. Ray, in 1830, he took charge of the California depart- ment of that company, with headquarters at Yerba Buena, now San Francisco. The nearest outpost of the company was at French Camp, this county, which they occupied during the trapping portions of the year from 1828 to 1845. The trapping parties of the Hudson Bay Com- pany were so well experienced and well armed that the Indians, who had at that day no guns, had a wholesome fear of them and kept themselves at a very respectful distance. Hence there was no collision between the whites and the reds while the former were present. Their policy was to fulfill all promises to the red men, punish
them severely for any depredation, and never trust them to any considerable extent. An Indian was never allowed to enter their camps without permission, and they never gave op- portunities for surprise. It was on account of this policy that Captain Sutter was able to hold his position at New Helvetia; and it was also dne to the fact that he followed the advice of his intimate friend, Forbes, that he afterward became a tower of strength among the Indians.
In 1844 James Williams was a settler on the Stockton slougli.
In August, 1844, David Kelsey with his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, settled at Frenchi Camp, and built a tule house. Mr. Gulnac, who was stopping at the Cosnmnes river, had offered to give Mr. Kelsey a mile square of land if he would stop at that place, and live one year; he turned over to him tlie "swivel " that Sutter had given him. Every night Mr. Kelsey threw this piece of ordnance " into battery," and fired an evening gun, which he did to frighten the Indians, on the same principle tliat a boy sometimes whistles as lie is going through the woods after dark. At that time there was only one other house in the county, also constructed of tule, occupied by Thomas Lindsay, at Stockton. Mr. Kelsey re- mained for several months at that place, and after his family had been obliged to live for two inon this on boiled wheat, meat, milk and mint tea, gathered along the banks of the creek, he buried the swivel and removed temporarily to San Jose, where he first saw Captain Weber.
While at that place he unfortunately went to see a sick Indian who had the small-pox, just before returning to French Camp. After return- ing he was immediately taken sick, and Mrs. Kelsey desired to take him to Sutter's Fort, where he could have medical assistance, not knowing that he had the small-pox. When they reached Stockton, Mr. Lindsay induced them to stay over night, and while there a inan by the name of James Williams gave him some medicine that caused the disease to break ont. Lindsay immediately vacated the premises, giv-
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HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.
ing, as he felt, advice that had a twang of bar- barism in it; he told them if the old man died to leave his body where the coyotes would devonr it. In about six days the father died, the mother and boy were prostrated with the same disease, and little America, a girl eleven years of age, was left alone with her sick mother and brother, to administer to their wants, while her dead father lay unburied in a hut,-a sad introduc- tion to the first American girl who ever saw the place where Stockton stands, and a sadder one to the first white woman that visited the place; for the mother became blind froin the effects of the disease, beholding that delirious, weird scent of pestilence and death as the last, to haunt the memory through the coming years of darkness; a hidous phantom, a scene of dissolution, was that last look of the mother upon her surround- ings of that little child nurse. Some herders chanced to come that way, who, after consider- able hesitation, assisted little America in bury- ing her father, and was buried near the south- west corner of El Dorado and Fremont streets, Stockton. One of them, George F. Wyman, afterward became the husband of America.
There seemed to have been two reasons why they hesitated in coming to her assistance: first, they feared the sinall-pox, and secondly, Captain Sutter had said that he would have any man shot who brought the contagion to the Fort or went among the Indians who had it.
About two weeks after they left, Thomas Lindsay returned to his house on Lindsay's Point in Stockton, and was killed by the Luck- lumna Indians from Ione Valley in Amador County, who fired the Tulley House with their victim's body in it and drove off all the stock. A party of whites, Mexicans and friendly In- dians, went in pursuit of the band who had com- initted the depredations and overtook them at the place called the " Island," near the foot. hills, where a conflict occurred, resulting in the burn- ing of the Indian rancheria, with what provi- sions and property they had, the killing of a few of the warriors of the hostile tribe and the cap- ture of one Indian boy by William Daylor, of
Daylor's ranch in Sacramento County. One Mexican, by the name of Vaca, a member of the Vaca family who formerly lived in Solano County, was killed by the Indians in the fight. After this defeat they retreated into the moun- tains.
In 1845 came the Schmidt party, only to re- turn again, however, on hearing of the war news, as hostile demonstrations began a few months afterward between the United States and Mexico.
In November, 1846, the Isbel Brothers took up land on the Calaveras, Dr. I. C. Isbel occu- pying the north side of the river, and his brother James the south side, where Fremont had crossed it in 1844. The Doctor erected a log cabin near the river, which possibly is still standing, as one of the most ancient relics of white civili- zation in this county. The same year, Turner Elder erected a cabin at Dry creek, where the village of Liberty was afterward laid out. On the opposite or north side of the creek, a little further down, his father-in-law, Thomas Rhoads, located. Thomas Pyle settled at what is now known as Staples' Ferry the same year, with his family. It was during the month of November, 1846, that Samuel Brannan, of Sacramento, es- tablished his colony on the Stanislaus, about a inile and a half above its mouth, naming the place Stanislaus City. It will therefore be ob- served that during this year (1846), two dis- tinct colonies were established and four ranches taken up in San Joaquin County,-at the points where the old Spanishi trail between Sutter's Fort and San Jose crossed the several streams in the county. When warlike disturbances began, Weber's party first left, then Samnel Brannan's colony in the spring of 1847, and then all the rest except Buckland and the ranch- ers on the Spanish trail to dispute possession of the country with the Indians. Dr. Isbel re- tained his claim until 1848, and then sold it to the Hutchinson Brothers, and they in turn sold it to Mr. Dodge. Pyle abandoned his place in 1848, moving near San Jose, where he was killed by a young Spaniard abont 1855. A man named Smith took up the place, claiming a
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IIISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.
grant, and sold it to John F. Pyle (brother of Thomas), and John W. Laird, who had married one of his sisters. These parties sold to Staples, Nichols & Co. in February, and moved there in April, 1850. Elder lived at Dry creek about one year, and then moved upon the north bank of the Mokelumne river, to a place afterward known as Benedict ranch, and while there twins were born in his family, whom they named John and Nancy. These were the second children born of American parents in the county. Soon afterward Elder moved to the Daylor ranch in Sacramento County. Buckland moved from Stanislaus City to Stockton in the fall of 1847.
When in the fall of 1847 Turner Elder left his log house and claim at Dry creek, Mrs. Christena Patterson, his annt, moved into it, her husband having died while crossing the moun- tains in 1846. Soon afterward she married Ned Robinson,-the ceremony being the first wedding in the county. Mr. Robinson abandoned this place on the discovery of gold.
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In 1846 the Mexican war brought many to this coast, among them the famnous Stevenson's regiment of New York volunteers, -a body of men selected on account of their energetic char- acter and their ability as mechanics. Under Stevenson's command three vessels came from New York, ---- the Thomas H. Perkins, Susan Drew and the Loochoo. The Susan Drew en- tered at Monterey February 22, 1847, with 100 inen under the command of Captain Thomas E. Ketchum, of this county. The Thomas H. Perkins arrived March 6, 1847. Among her crew were John H. Webster and Samuel Catts, since then residents of Stockton. The Loochoo, arriving twenty days afterward, had on board Martin Cahill, also a resident of this county. Before the close of this year hundreds of immi- grants were arriving in the territory; and Weber succeeded in forming a settlement here, the nucleus of Stockton. Among these settlers were Eli Randall, Joseph Bussel, Andrew Ba- ker, John Sirey, R. B. Thompson, H. T. Fan- ning, Mr. McKee, George Frazer Fairchilds and a man named Pyle. Besides these there
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