USA > California > Lassen County > Fairfield's pioneer history of Lassen County, California to 1870 > Part 26
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The "Union" of March 22nd says that on the evening of the 21st a meeting was held in the assembly chamber of the capital to listen to the Nevada territorial commissioners on the subject of the western boundary line of Nevada. Mr. R. M. Ford read the Memorial. Ex-Governor Isaac Roop then spoke setting forth the advantages Nevada would derive if the strip of land east of
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the Sierras were ceded to her. He told nearly the same things that were said in the Memorial, excepting that Plumas and Shasta counties claimed each a portion of Honey Lake valley, fifteen miles of the western half of the said valley, the only spot where revenue could be collected. The citizens all wished that this strip of land should belong to Nevada, their trade and social relations were all with Nevada, they had refused to pay taxes although law-abiding citizens, and they were isolated and reaped none of the advantages of those who did pay taxes. He unrolled before the audience a petition from the citizens of Esmeralda praying for the cession. Governor James W. Nye was received with great applause. Among other things he said that three murderers had escaped conviction in Honey Lake valley on the plea that the territory of Nevada had no jurisdiction over their cases. A survey at an expense of $1000 was had when it was found that their crimes had not been committed in that territory. More than $50000 had already been expended in trying to find the meridian fixed upon by the constitutional convention of California.
F. and S. say : "In July, 1862, Associate Justice Gordon N. Mott came to Susanville to hold a term of the district court for the First Judicial District of Nevada Territory. The counties of Storey, Washoe, and Lake (changed that year to Roop) were all in one district, and Judge Mott, one of the three supreme judges, was assigned to this district."
September 3, 1862, a general election was held in Nevada Territory at which county officers, members of the state legis- lature, and a delegate to Congress were elected. Twenty-six territorial representatives and five members of the Council were elected. Gordon N. Mott was elected delegate to Congress. They held an election in Lake county this time and elected all the officers to be voted for. C. Adams (probably Charles Adams) was elected territorial representative.
When the Nevada legislature met at Carson City in the fall of 1862 Representative Adams did not take his seat, but Lake county was represented in the Council by Governor Roop who held over from the year before. He was the last member from this region to sit in the Nevada legislature.
For more than a year Nevada had tried, without success, to have California relinquish her claim to the territory east of the
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Sierras. They had even hired John F. Kidder to survey the boundary line both north and south from Lake Tahoe. (See Nevada Territory Polities, 1861.)
This session of the Nevada legislature "passed a joint resolu- tion asking the California legislature to cede to Nevada such territory as had been included in the original boundary descrip- tion by act of Congress." T. and W. say: "Beyond the election of officers the county (Lake) still remained unorganized until after the legislature assembled. Honey Lake valley in which the wealth and population of the county existed, was claimed by Plumas county, California, as being within its limits, and this had retarded the organization of Lake county. When the legis- lature met it was determined to fully organize the county, and maintain the jurisdiction of Nevada over the disputed seetion. Accordingly, the legislature changed the name from Lake to Roop, by act of December 2, 1862. The Governor, on the 14th and 15th of the same month, appointed and issued commissions to all the county officers that had been elected in September, also a commission to John S. Ward to act as Probate Judge. By aet of December 19, 1862, the legislature ordered a special term of the First District Court to be held in Roop county on the third Monday in January, 1863."
HONEY LAKE POLITICS. 1862
The Lake county people failed to hold their election in Janu- ary and nothing of importance took place until July when Judge Mott held court in Susanville. In regard to this F. and S. have the following: "There had never been any legal practice in this section, nor were there living here any regularly authorized attor- neys, nor any one who made any pretense to the profession of the law, except a young man named Israel Jones, who had read law for a brief period before coming here in 1862, but had never been admitted to practice in any court. The men who had acted the role of attorneys in the valley were Isaac N. Roop, John S. Ward, E. V. Spencer, Z. J. Brown, and A. D. McDonald, who had con- dueted causes before the various justice courts and boards of arbitration, at the request of their friends. The only law books in the valley were two volumes of Wood's California Digest, and the nearest lawyers were in Quincy, too far away to do much harm.
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"Judge Mott opened his court in the old Magnolia building, on the south side of Main street. The first business was the examination of a class of applicants to become members of the bar, which consisted of Messrs. Roop, Ward, Spencer, and Jones. The examination was brief, being confined more to plain, practical business propositions, such as any intelligent business man could answer, than to abstruse and technical points of law. The most difficult interrogation was to define the term corporation. Just before the court convened, an attorney from Carson City called Mr. Roop aside and instructed him on the proper answer to this question, telling him, 'A corporation is a creature of the law, having certain powers and duties of a natural person.' When the governor was called upon to answer the question, he said, 'A corporation is a band of fellows without any soul, of whom the law is a creature, who have some powers and take a great many more, and entirely ignore the statutory duties imposed upon them.' The whole class was admitted." The same history says that while Roop was serving as district attorney of Lassen county "the grand jury presented an indictment against a man who had stolen a horse. Roop drew up the document in a few minutes, and presented it to the foreman, who read it and remarked : ‘Gov- ernor, I'm afraid this is rather brief. That complaint would not hold in any court.' 'Why not ?' asked Roop; 'I've got whereas in three times.' " There is one mistake in the foregoing, though not an important one. T. N. Long says they did not commence to build the Magnolia until July, 1862, so Judge Mott must have held court in some other building or at a later date.
At the election of September 3, 1862, the following officers were elected for Lake county : Sheriff, William H. Naileigh (Cap. Hill) ; Clerk, V. J. Borrette ; Recorder, Dr. Z. N. Spalding; Treas- urer, Frank Drake; Assessor, E. A. Townsend; Collector, Henry E. Arnold; Surveyor, E. R. Nichols; School Superintendent, A. A. Holmes; Commissioners, Franklin Strong, Smith J. Hill, and Joseph C. Wemple.
Plumas county held an election in Honey Lake valley at the same time. Henry E. Lomas says that at Janesville the election was held in Blanchard's store, the election for the Plumas county officers being held in one corner of the room and the election for the Lake county officers in another corner. Lomas and A. G. Moon say the Never Sweats voted for both sets of officers. In
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some ways those same Never Sweats were a most accommodating bunch. B. F. Sheldon and William J. Young were elected jus- tices of the peace for Honey Lake township, Plumas county, and qualified at Quiney.
The usual trouble about paying taxes to Plumas county went on again this fall. The only notice that county took of this section was to send in the assessor and tax collector, and hold an election once in awhile. S. J. Hill says that about half the people of the valley paid taxes to Plumas county and the rest did not. Hill paid quite a large amount of taxes for a couple of years and Rough Elliott boasted to him that he paid no taxes at all. When Sheriff Pierce came to Hill this fall for his taxes the latter told him that he ought to collect taxes from other people, too, and if he could get out of paying them by saying he lived in Nevada, he was going to do it. He then refused to pay any tax and the Sheriff went away without making any trouble. James D. Byers, who was Pierce's deputy, told the writer that one fall, probably this one, Pierce and himself went with a posse to collect Elliott's taxes or take away some of his stock. Elliott had gathered a crowd of men from the lower end of the valley and was waiting for them at his place below Milford. When the Plumas officers asked for his taxes he refused to pay them or to give up any of his stock. Byers said that Pierce and Elliott did the talking and it was neither gentle nor refined. Pierce was a hard man and on some occasions Elliott showed plenty of nerve, and in those days such men were very careless about their language. While the talk was going on the other men sat on their horses as quietly as they could, for the first movement that looked like an attempt to reach for a weapon would have started a fight that might have resulted in the death of several men. Each party was expect- ing the other to shoot and neither side wanted to be very far behind when the trouble began. Some of the "old timers" say that just when the quarrel was the hottest Mrs. Elliott came out of the house and asked them all in to dinner. Finally they accepted her invitation and while they were eating their anger cooled and some sort of a compromise was effected. But they didn't get much out of Elliott and he came out ahead once more.
Only onee was any property taken from this valley by the authorities of Plumas county on account of the refusal to pay taxes. W. W. Kellogg, since 1873 an attorney of Quincy, who
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was a deputy sheriff under Pierce, says that this fall he and Pierce came to Susanville and stayed over night. The next morning they went to the ranch of Robert Johnston and Henry Hatch four miles below town. Kellogg went into the corral and yoked up an off ox and called to another one to come under the yoke. One near by came to him and was yoked up. No opposition was made to their taking the cattle and they drove them away. They took them to Taylorville and sold them after notice of the sale had been given. L. C. Stiles bought them and in after years used to joke Kellogg about getting a mis-mated yoke of cattle, for they were not mates. Fred Hines says that when they got up to his place Pierce stayed in the road with the oxen and Kellogg came to the house. He asked Hines to pay his taxes and was told by him that he paid no taxes to Plumas county. The deputy sheriff said "I can take your cattle if you don't pay." The other man said "All right. There the cattle are in plain sight and you can take them if you want to." Kellogg then told him that he had better pay up and save trouble and was again told by Hines that he paid no taxes to Plumas county. He then went back to Pierce and after talking a few minutes they went on their way without taking any of the cattle that belonged to Hines.
Byers told the writer that once while collecting taxes in this valley he went to Bankhead's and found twenty men gathered there. They told him that if he tried to collect any more taxes they would hang him. He had a six-shooter and a couple of der- ringers and while they were talking he climbed up on the fence and listened. When they got through he told them that there were enough of them to hang him, but he would take as many of them as he could along with him and they might start in as soon as they pleased. They were pretty well acquainted with him and didn't start in. During a visit to the valley, probably in 1857, he was told that a couple of men had threatened to kill him the first time they saw him. These men were living in a log house that still stands by the Parker creek about two miles below Janes- ville. He went to their place, walked into the house without knocking, and saw the two men sitting on a bench in front of the fireplace. He walked up behind them, pushed them apart, and sat down between them, managing to take the larger man's pistol out of its holster as he sat down. After some quarreling the man reached back for his pistol and found that it was gone.
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Byers told him that he had it, and the man asked him if he was a thief and was answered in the affirmative. They talked for some time and the two men made a good many threats, but fin- ally they quieted down and when Byers left them they didn't want to kill anybody and never molested him in the future.
Byers was sheriff of Plumas county from 1856 to 1858. For a while E. H. Pierce was his deputy, and when Pierce was elected sheriff of the county Byers was his deputy for a year or two. While he was an officer of Plumas county Byers came into this valley quite often and was well known to the Never Sweats. In 1858 he bought a ranch on Baxter creek two miles east of Bank- head's and commenced to raise cattle and horses, and this busi- ness he followed until his death in 1902. He was a tall, raw- boned man whose nerve was undisputed. He once came over here with a warrant for a man in Long valley. When he got to the Byrd ranch eight miles below Milford his horse gave out. Byrd had no riding horse at hand excepting a full-blooded Spanish stallion called "Joaquin"-a horse that would buck hard every time he was ridden as long as he lived. At that time it was cus- tomary for a man to go to one who had a big lot of horses and bor- row a wild one to ride for a short time. The breaking of the horse was considered pay for his use. Whenever a stranger who seemed to think that he could ride came along and asked Byrd to lend him a horse, he told him to take Joaquin. Of course the horse began to buck as soon as the man struck his back, and then "Old Jack" Byrd would yell "Stick to him, sir. Stick to him, sir. By - Almighty, stick to him. If you do, you are the first man that ever did!" As a rule, about that time the rider jumped a piece of ground in that vicinity. Byers was in a hurry, so they saddled up Joaquin and he climbed onto him. The horse bucked a ways up the hill south of the cabin and then Byrd man- aged to get ahead of him and turn him. He then bucked back down to the cabin and just as Byers had taken his feet out of the stirrups, thinking the horse was going against the building, he stopped and was all right. Byers resumed his journey and for a few miles all went well. He then noticed that the horse kept throwing his nose down between his fore legs. He leaned over carefully and saw that the cinch was very loose. If he had shown any signs of uneasiness, the animal would have bucked him off at once ; so he got his rope in readiness, slowly pulled his feet out of
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the stirrups, and threw himself from the horse's back, getting as far away from him as he could. He then cinched up his saddle and went on. He found his man in the house and nobody else was there but a woman. When he arrested the man he showed fight and the two had a rough and tumble battle around the room. Finally Byers got him down and told the woman to bring him a club or something of the kind. She brought him the rolling-pin and he hammered the fellow over the head with it until he gave up.
At another time he came into the valley in pursuit of a man and caught up with him about six miles and a half below Susan- ville on the Janesville road. He was on horseback and the man he was after was on foot. When he rode up beside the man and told him he was his prisoner the other reached back and drew his pistol. Byers had no time to get his gun so he pulled his foot out of the stirrup and kicked the man in the stomach. This doubled him up and he dropped his pistol and surrendered as soon as he could get his breath.
Generally speaking, there was no personal enmity between the officers of Plumas county and the people of this section. Mr. Kellogg says they always treated him well and in after years he had a friendly feeling for all of them. He and Byers were dep- uties for Pierce during the "Sage Brush War" and the people of Lassen county elected Byers for their first sheriff.
INDIAN TROUBLES. 1862
During this year the Indians made up for the peacefulness of the preceding year. From early in the spring until late in the year they were busy on the northern and eastern borders of the valley and along the emigrant road to the Humboldt river. Of course they committed depredations elsewhere, but at the places mentioned the people of Honey Lake valley suffered the most, and our story is about them. These depredations were commit- ted by the Pit river Indians, the renegade Piutes under Smoke Creek Sam, and other bands of Indians that lived along the emi- grant road and to the north of it. Possibly some of the mischief was done by the Pyramid lake Piutes, for their chiefs could not always keep them in sight and the sub-chiefs were not always "good Injuns."
Some time during the first part of March Thomas Bear, who was keeping a trading post and a station at Deep Hole springs
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about sixty miles east of Honey Lake valley, came to Susanville after supplies, leaving his hired man, Dave -, alone at the station. While he was in the valley a storm came on and delayed his return. A party came in from the Humboldt and told him that there was no one at his place when they came along. He and a man named John Williams at once started out on horseback and got to the station a little after noon on the second day. Bear began to get some dinner and the other man went to looking around the premises. Some say that nothing had been taken from the station but the guns and ammunition, others say that it had been plundered of a lot of flour, blankets, etc. It would be a queer thing if the Indians didn't take everything they could find that was of value to them, for they generally did that and burned the buildings, too. There was nothing about the house to show that the missing man had been harmed. After some hunting Williams found a little distance from the house a piece of matting that Dave used to spread down before the fire to lie upon, and this had blood stains on it. He soon found some moccasin tracks and these he followed until he got near one of the springs. When he got near enough to see into the spring he saw a human hand rising and falling in the water. The Indians had split his head open with an ax and then carried him to the spring and crowded him under the sod that fringed the edge of it. Some say he was scalped, too. After burying him Bear, or Bare (it is spelled both ways), Williams, and another man started for Honey Lake. When they got within five or six miles of Smoke creek they saw eight Indians coming down the hill toward them carrying a white rag on a stick. The white men stopped a few minutes to consult together and the Indians stopped, too. When the whites came on the Indians advanced to meet them and kept in a bunch in the road as if to prevent them from going on their way. Bear, who was a fearless man, took the lead, poked the Indian leader in the stomach with his gun, and thrust the others aside with it. Four of the Indians stood on each side of the road and the whites passed between them without being molested. After they had gone a little ways they looked back and saw the Indians bring their guns to their faces as if they were going to shoot at them. Bear immediately raised his gun and they lowered their weapons, and this was repeated several times before they got out of range. Then the Indians started out across the hills as if they were try-
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ing to reach the Smoke Creek canyon first and ambush the white men there. The latter rode as fast as they could and evidently out-stripped the Indians, for they got through the canyon in safety and reached the valley without further adventure. About this time some stock was stolen from the Granite creek station and some from Deep Hole.
V. J. Borrette had six horses running near the mouth of Wil- low creek and about the middle of March he concluded to hunt them up. He and a friend, Byron B. Gray, borrowed some rid- ing horses and saddles and started out after them. They thought they knew right where the horses were and that it would not take very long to find them, so they took neither food nor firearms. They hunted around all day, but didn't find them, and just at sundown they got up on the bluff above Willow creek where it comes out into this valley. Borrette told Gray that they were a long ways from home, that probably the horses were further up the creek where they would find them in the morning, so they would camp there that night. They made a bed out of their sad- dle blankets, picketed their horses just out of reach of it, and lay down and went to sleep. They were very tired and slept the next morning until the sun shone in Borrette's face and woke him up. He saw that the horses were gone and spoke to Gray who half woke up and said he could see them down on the creek. The other man told him to wake up and look again. They both got up, and after a little investigation, found from the tracks that five Indians had come up the canyon from the creek, cut the picket ropes close to the pins, and led the horses down the canyon. They followed the trail until it struck the rocks and there they lost it. Just then Borrette happened to think that neither one of them had a gun or a knife and it would do them no good if they over- took the Indians.
Henry Arnold was running some horses and cattle in that part of the country and had a camp between Willow creek and the Soldier bridge, so they took their out-fits on their backs and went down there for help. When they arrived at Arnold's camp he told them that he had no firearms excepting an old shotgun and that had been broken the day before. After trying in vain to get some one to help them they packed their saddles to Susanville and paid $75 apiece for the borrowed horses. Borrette after- wards found his horses where they had hunted for them.
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A few days after this Jack Byrd had several head of cattle run off by the Indians. He found some of them that they had killed. They had taken only the hearts and tongues and left the rest of the animal.
THE PURSUIT OF THE INDIANS WHO STOLE THE CATTLE OF WIL- LIAM B. LONG AND OTHERS
From the narratives of William Dow, A. L. Harper, William H. Hall, and A. G. Moon, the testimony of William B. Long, and the diary of A. L. Tunison.
Late in the fall of 1861 James Briden started from the Hon- cut with a large band of eattle for the Humboldt. On account of the weather he could get no further than Honey Lake valley with them, so that winter he ranged them in the country from Willow creek to the lower Hot Springs. The cattle of William B. Long and A. K. Wood, son of General Wood, the Neale Brothers, the Adams Brothers, J. D. Byers, Samuel Marriott, and Blood ranged this winter in the same locality. During the first part of the winter the Long and Wood stoek was looked after by Arthur K. Long, brother of William B., and a man named Thomas Williams, but some time in January A. L. Harper went there to help them. They had twenty-five head of mares running near the mouth of Willow creek and very early in the spring the herders missed them and sent word to Long. He went from Susanville down there and after some hunting found their trails going out of the valley, and the moccasin tracks among those of the horses showed that they had been driven off by the Indians. He never found the mares nor heard anything more about them. Some time after this Harper missed some steers and sent word to Long about it. In the course of two or three weeks Long sent a message to the herders and told them to gather up the steers and said he would be down there as soon as he could. In the meantime the herders found the eareass of a steer that had been shot to death with arrows and some others with arrows in their flesh. These they caught and pulled the arrows out of them.
About the middle of March William B. Long, Briden, Henry Sidorus, Harper, and probably some others whose cattle ranged there, began to gather them up and put them into the long can- yon that runs into the hills a little northwest of the Lathrop and Bradley place. In a week they had a large band of cattle there,
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estimates running from 200 to 1000 head. These cattle belonged to everybody who had any running around there and they in- tended to take them to Mt. Meadows for safety. On the morning of the 25th of March Long went over on foot to see the cattle and found them all gone excepting seven of Briden's Spanish steers. He followed their tracks for a while, but finding it was of no use to go on in that way, he went back and got his horse. He then took the trail and went ten or twelve miles toward Secret Valley. He found several cattle mired down but not injured and thought he saw the tracks of five or six Indians. He then came back and sent men to Janesville to raise a crowd to pursue the Indians and went himself to Susanville. Governor Roop called a meeting of the people who lived in that end of the valley and quite a number of the men agreed to go with Long.
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