USA > California > Napa County > Historical and descriptive sketch book of Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino : comprising sketches of their topography, productions, history, scenery, and peculiar attractions > Part 2
USA > California > Lake County > Historical and descriptive sketch book of Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino : comprising sketches of their topography, productions, history, scenery, and peculiar attractions > Part 2
USA > California > Sonoma County > Historical and descriptive sketch book of Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino : comprising sketches of their topography, productions, history, scenery, and peculiar attractions > Part 2
USA > California > Mendocino County > Historical and descriptive sketch book of Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino : comprising sketches of their topography, productions, history, scenery, and peculiar attractions > Part 2
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NAPA COUNTY AS IT WAS AND IS.
memorial. It became more and more difficult for the compara- tively few that remained to subsist under the new regime so unex- pectedly and so inexorably established.
It does not appear difficult to account for the rapid decrease in the number of these savages. We have already stated that the different tribes were almost continually at war. Besides this, the cholera broke out among them in the fall of 1833, and raged with terrible violence. So great was the mortality, they were unable either to bury or burn their dead, and the air was filled with the stench of pu- trefying bodies. A traveler who passed up the Sacramento Valley at this time, relates that on his way up he passed a place where about 300 Indians, with women and children, were encamped. When he returned, after an absence of three or four days, the ground was lit- erally strewn with their bodies-all having died except one little In- dian girl. She occupied the camp alone, while around her lay the festering bodies of her dead companions, and the air was rendered noxious by the horrid stench of decomposing dead bodies, which were found not alone in the camp, but for miles up and down the Valley. The disease does not appear to have been local, but gen- eral. As late as 1841, Mr. Charles Hopper, a most estimable citizen of this county, who is still living, in passing up the San Joaquin Val- ley, observed the skulls and other remains of great numbers of In- dians lying in heaps, and was told by the Indians of that region, that a pestilence had swept away vast numbers only a few years before. Dwight Spencer, Esq., in 1851, also saw upon Grand Island, in Co- lusa county, the remains of more than 500 Indians.
It must be confessed that to all the causes, which we have as- signed for the rapid disappearance of the Indians in this Valley, as elsewhere, we must add another, not creditable to civilization. The early Mexican settlers were not very chary of the lives of Indians, and their American successors have not unfrequently followed their example. While the Indians were yet comparatively numerous,. their means of subsistence, at some seasons of the year, must have been very scant and precarious. The grant holders had abundance. Their cattle swarmed by tens of thousands over the country, and of- fered a constant temptation to the hungry Diggers. Theft was easy, and detection difficult. The settlers were annoyed by repeated losses. It was impossible to trace the offense to individuals. They only
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23
THE INDIAN TRIBES.
knew in general that the Indians had stolen their cattle, and when possible, meted out to them cruel and indiscriminate punishment.
Only a few years before the American occupation, and within the memory of persons now living, a terrible instance of this kind occurred on the Bale Rancho, near Oakville. The settlers in Sono- ma had lost great numbers of cattle, and traced their losses to the Callajomanas tribe. A party came over one night and surrounded the "sweat house," in which about 300 Indians were assembled. The whole number were slaughtered, man by man, as they passed out, and the tribe thus almost exterminated at a blow. A similar instance occurred in Trinity County in the Fall of 1850. The Americans surrounded the rancheria at night, and destroyed the whole tribe, excepting a few children.
In 1850 a party of Americans came over from Sonoma to avenge upon the Indians in general the murder of Kelsey in Lake county, in which the Indians of Napa had no hand. This party were on their way to Soscol to attack the Indians there, but were turned back by another party of white men at Napa, who prevented them from crossing the ferry. They then returned to Calistoga, and murdered in cold blood eleven innocent Indians, young and old, as they came out of their "sweat house," and then burned their "wickeyups," to- gether with their bodies. The murderers (for they were nothing less) were arrested by authority of Governor Mason, and taken to San Francisco. However, the country was in such an unsettled and unorganized condition, that they were set free on habeas corpus, and never brought to trial.
The concurrent effects of savage warfare, pestilence, and such wholesale massacres as we have described, seem quite sufficient to account for the rapid decline of numbers among the Indians, long before the conquest.
In the excellent work of Mr. Cronise, entitled "The National Wealth of California," the influence of the Mission system is stated to be one of the causes of the degradation and consequent final ex- termination of the aboriginal inhabitants. The writer says: "There is no room to doubt that the degradation of the existing race is in some degree the result of the Mission system, which deprived them of the instincts that Nature had implanted, and left them no depen- dence but upon the will of the Fathers, which was impotent to save
24
NAPA COUNTY AS IT WAS AND IS.
them from extermination by the irresistible force of a higher civ- ilization, in which they are unfitted to participate."
We are not inclined to the opinion that any such sinister influence was ever exerted upon the Indians of this region, or at least, to such an extent as to have changed them from manly, dignified, peaceable and intelligent people into the squalid and wretched creatures that were found here by the early American settlers. The nearest Mis- sion was established at Sonoma, in 1820, and could not have done much towards the degradation of the Indians in this region. We think it pretty evident that the Napa tribes must have been a differ- ent race from those dwelling upon the coast, whose superiority seems to be fairly demonstrated. There must have been an original and radical difference between the Diggers and those tribes considered by Venegas as "equal to any race;" described by Captain Roberts as "tall, robust, and straight as pine trees;" and said by the great navi- gator, Capt. Beachy to be "generally above the standard of English- men in height." Nor could they have been the same race of men seen at San Francisco in 1824, and described by Langsdorf, the sur- geon of Admiral Kotzebue's ship, who had "full, flowing beards," or of whom La Prouse says: "About one half of the males had such splendid beards that they would have made a figure in Turkey, or in the vicinity of Moscow." It is simply impossible that any amount of Missionary oppression could have wrought such a physi - cal change as this. There must have been a vast original difference between the tribes inhabiting California. None of them dwelling in this county had beards, nor were they of great stature, and in point of skill and intelligence, it can only be said that very little ev- idence exists which indicates the possession of either, however much these attributes may have distinguished other tribes.
We have said that war and pestilence had thinned their ranks long before the conquest of the country, and it would seem that the pres- ence of civilized society, with the great change of condition attend- ing it, must necessarily have borne heavily upon them, and finally well-nigh completed the work of extermination. Indeed, no savage tribe thus far, has long survived the contact of civilization and its attendant vices. The California tribes will certainly not prove exceptions. Notwithstanding the eloquent plea which is made for the intelligence, benevolent disposition, and high physical develop-
25
THE INDIAN TRIBES.
ment of the Indian tribes on this coast, the savages in this region appear to have been lower in the scale of intelligence than any other upon the continent of America; so low, indeed, that since the secu- 'larization of the Missions, scarcely an attempt, by missionaries or others, has been made for their instruction or elevation. The hea- then of other lands have had millions of dollars and years of toil expended upon them by every Protestant denomination of Christians, while the heathen tribes of California, have perished like brutes, in our midst, without even an attempt to provide for their spiritual wel- fare. Indeed, the most zealous Christian, the most sanguine philanthro- pist, acquainted with their mental and moral condition, would despair of making any lasting good impression upon a being so utterly stupid and stolid as the Digger Indian. No argument or authority could have made the least impression upon a being so low in the scale of intellect.
Even the truly benevolent efforts of the United States Govern- ment to improve at least the physical condition of the California Indians, have generally been singularly barren of good results. Wretched as their mode of life seems to us, there appears to be for them, a charm in it, since nothing short of compulsion or absolute hunger will induce them to remain upon a Reservation. In the opinion of the writer, much of the clamor against the Superintend- ents of Indian Reservations has been without cause. It is simply impossible for any man, however enlightened or benevolent, to truly civilize a Digger Indian. He may be taught to plow, reap, split rails, and perform many kinds of out-door work. He may be fed to a goodly degree of fatness, and made to wash his face and wear decent clothing, but benevolence can go no farther. At the first im- pulse he returns to his vagabond life of idleness, his grasshopper diet and his wretched wigwam of boughs -- the same untamed and un- tameable savage.
If they were superior to the wretched natives of Tasmania, we have overlooked the evidence of the fact. Certainly their dwellings, their modes of life, their weapons and utensils afford no such indi -. cations. A wretched shelter of boughs, a rude bow and arrow of little avail for killing game at a distance, a stone pestle and mortar, a feather head covering-these were all. Their arrows and lance- heads were made of obsidian, great quantities of which are found
26
NAPA COUNTY AS IT WAS AND IS.
near Uncle Sam Mountain, in Lake county, and their mortars and pestles of the hardest bowlders to be found in the streams. They are found in considerable numbers all over the country. R. M. Swain, Esq., Under Sheriff of this county, has collected numerous specimens, some of which exhibit considerable skill. To chip out such a brittle and refractory material as obsidian into arrows and lance heads must have required much time and labor, but of the former the Indians had abundance, while the sharp spur of necessity com- pelled them to submit to the latter. For a great portion of the year they wore no clothing, and even in winter were only half-clad in the skins of beasts.
True, the climate is so mild in this part of the State that, except in the rainy season, they scarcely needed clothing, so far as bodily comfort was concerned, and habit seems to have inured them to ex- posure to cold. A Digger, perfectly naked, once met General Val- lejo on a very cold morning, at Sonoma. "Are you not cold ?" asked the General. "No," replied the Indian; "Is your face cold?" " No," replied the General. "Well," replied the Indian, "I am all - face !" After the introduction of sheep by the early Mexican set- tlers, they were enabled to obtain a coarse wool, which they con- verted into blankets without loom or spindles. They twisted the threads with their fingers, and stretched the warp, attaching the ends to wooden pegs driven into the ground, and the filling was put in place by hand, a thread at a time. These blankets, no doubt, must have added greatly to the comfort of the few who could obtain them; but the great mass of the Diggers never attained to such a luxury.
Of navigation they were almost wholly ignorant. Their only method of crossing streams was by means of rafts constructed of bundles of tule bound together, somewhat similar, but far inferior to the bolsas used by the Peruvian Indians upon Lake Titicaca, far up among the Andes.
Their knowledge of the proper treatment of disease was on a · level with their attainments in all the arts of life. Roots and herbs were sometimes used as remedies, but the "sweat-house" was the principal reliance in desperate cases. This great sanitary institu- tion, found in every rancheria, was a large circular excavation cov- ered with a roof of boughs, plastered with mud, having a hole on one side for entrance, and another in the roof to serve as a chim-
27
THE INDIAN TRIBES.
ney. A fire having been lighted in the center, the sick were placed there to undergo a sweat bath for many hours, to be succeeded by a plunge in cold water. This treatment was their cure-all, and whether it killed or relieved the patient, depended upon the nature of his disease and the vigor of his constitution. A gentleman who was tempted, some years ago, to enter one of these sanitary institutions, gives the following story of his experience : "A sweat-house is of the shape of an inverted bowl. It is generally about forty feet in diameter at the bottom, and is built of strong poles and branches of trees, covered with earth, to prevent the escape of heat. There is a small hole near the ground, large enough for the Diggers to creep in one at a time; and another at the top of the house, to give vent to the smoke. When a dance is to occur, a large fire is kindled in the center of the edifice, the crowd assembles, the white spectators crawl in and seat themselves anywhere out of the way. The aper- tures both above and below, are then closed, and the dancers take their positions.
"Four and twenty squaws, en deshabille, on one side of the fire; and as many hombres in puris naturalibus on the other. Simultane- ous with the commencement of the dancing, which is a kind of shuffling hobble-de-hoy, the "music" bursts forth. Yes, music fit to raise the dead. A whole legion of devils broke loose ! Such screaming, shrieking, yelling and roaring was never before heard since the foundation of the world. A thousand cross-cut saws, filed by steam power-a multitude of tom-cats lashed together and flung over a clothes line -- innumerable pigs under the gate, all combined, would produce a heavenly melody compared with it. Yet this up- roar, deafening as it is, might possibly be endured ; but another sense soon comes to be saluted. Talk of the thousand stinks of the City of Cologne ! Here are at least forty thousand combined in one grand overwhelming stench ; and yet every particular odor distinctly definable. Round about the roaring fire the Indians go capering, jumping and screaming, with the perspiration starting from every pore. The spectators look on until the air grows thick and heavy, and a sense of oppressing suffocation overcomes them ; when they make a simultaneous rush at the door, for self-protection. Judge of their astonishment, terror and dismay, to find it fastened securely ; bolted and barred on the outside. They rush frantically around the
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NAPA COUNTY AS IT WAS AND IS.
walls in hope to discover some weak point through which they may find egress ; but the house seems to have been constructed purposely to frustrate such attempts. More furious than caged lions, they rush bodily against the sides, but the stout poles resist every onset. Our army swore terribly in Flanders, but even My Uncle Toby him- self would stand aghast were he here now.
" There is no alternative, but to sit down in hopes that the troop of naked fiends will soon cease, from sheer exhaustion. Vain ex- pectation ! The uproar but increases in fury, the fire waxes hotter and hotter, and they seem to be preparing for fresh exhibitions of their powers. The combat deepens, on ye brave! See that wild Indian, a newly elected Captain, as with glaring eyes, blazing face and complexion like that of a boiled lobster, he tosses his arms wildly aloft, as in pursuit of imaginary devils, while rivers of per- spiration roll down his naked frame. Was ever the human body thrown into such contortions before ? Another effort of that kind, and his whole vertebral column must certainly come down with a crash. Another such a convulsion, and his limbs will assuredly be torn asunder, and the disjointed members fly to the four points of the compass. Can the human frame endure this much longer? The heat is equal to that of a bake oven. Temperature 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Pressure of steam 1,000 pounds to the square inch. The reeking atmosphere has become almost palpable, aud the vic- timized audience are absolutely gasping for life. Millions for a cubic inch of fresh air ; worlds for a drop of water to cool the parched tongue! This is terrible. To meet one's fate among the white caps of the Lake, in a swamped canoe, or to sink down on the Bald Moun- tain's brow, worn out by famine, fatigue and exposure, were glorious; but to die here, suffocating in a solution of human perspiration, carbonic acid gas and charcoal smoke, is horrible. The idea is ab- solutely appalling. But there is no avail. Assistance might as well be sought from a legion of unchained imps, as from a troop of Indi- ans, maddened by excitement.
"Death shows his visage, not more than five minutes distant. The fire glimmers away leagues off. The uproar dies into the subdued rumble of a remote cataract, and respiration becomes lower and more labored. The whole system is sinking into utter insensibility. and all hope of relief has departed, when suddenly with a grand
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THE INDIAN TRIBES.
triumphal crash, similar to that with which the ghosts closed their orgies, when they doused the lights, and started in pursuit of Tam O'Shanter and his old gray mare, the uproar ceases and the Indians vanish through an aperture, opened for the purpose. The half dead victims to their own curiosity, dash through it like an arrow, and, in a moment more, are drawing in whole buckets full of the cold, frosty air, every inhalation of which cuts the lungs like a knife, and thrills the system like an electric shock. They are in time to see the Indians plunge headlong into the ice cold waters of a neighbor- ing stream, and crawl out and sink down on the banks, utterly ex- hausted. This is the last act of the drama, the grand climax, and the fandango is over."
The sweat house also served as a council chamber and banquet hall. In it the bodies of the dead were sometimes burned, amid the howlings of the survivors. Generally, however, the cremation of the dead took place in the open air. The body before burning, was bound closely together, the legs and arms folded, and forced by binding, into as small a compass as possible. It was then placed upon a funeral pile of wood, which was set on fire by the mother, wife, or some near relative of the deceased, and the mourners, with their faces daubed with pitch, set up a fearful howling and weeping, accompanied with the most frantic gesticulations. The body being consumed, the ashes were carefully collected.
A portion of these were mingled with pitch, with which they daubed their faces and went into mourning. During the progress of the cremation, the friends and relatives of the deceased thrust sharp sticks into the burning corpse, and cast into the fire the ornaments, feather head-dresses, weapons, and everything known to have belonged to the departed. They had a superstitious dread of the consequences of keeping back any article pertaining to the defunct. An,old In- dian woman, whose husband was sick, was recently asked what ailed him. Her reply was that "he had kept some feathers belonging to a dead Indian that should have been burned with his body, and that he would be sick till he died."
'The idea of a future state was universal among the California Indians, and. they had a vague idea of rewards and punishments. As one expressed it: "Good Indian go big hill ; bad Indian go bad place." Others thought if the deceased had been good in
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NAPA COUNTY AS IT WAS AND IS.
his life-time, his spirit would travel west to where the earth and sky meet, and become a star; if bad, he would be changed into a griz- zly, or his spirit-wanderings would be continued for an indefinite period. They expressed the idea of the change from this life to an- other, by saying that, "as the moon died and came to life again, so man came to life after death;" and they believed that "the hearts of good chiefs went up to the sky, and were changed into stars to keep watch over their tribes on earth." Although exceedingly supersti- tious, they were evidently not destitute of some religious conceptions. Certain rocks and mountains were regarded as sacred. Uncle Sam, in Lake county, was one of these sacred mountains, and no one except the priest or wizard of his tribe dared to ascend it. Two huge bowl- ders between Napa City and Capel Valley, were also sacred, and no Indian would approach them. They also held the grizzly in super- stitious awe, and nothing could induce them to eat its flesh.
The Diggers, too, had their sorcerers, male and female, who had great influence over them. They pretended to foresee future events, and to exercise supernatural control over their bodies, and to cure diseases by curious incantations and ceremonies. Four times a year each tribe united in a great dance, having some religious purpose and signification. One of these was held by night at the Caymus Rancho, in 1841, about the time of the vernal equinox, and was ter- minated by a strange, inexplicable pantomime, accompanied with wild gestures and screams, the object of which the Indians said was "to scare the devil away from their rancherias." An old gentleman who witnessed the performance, says he has no doubt that their ob- ject must have been attained if the devil had the slightest ear for music. Superstition enveloped and wrapped these savages like a cloud, from which they never emerged. The phenomena of nature on every hand, indeed, taught them that there was some unseen cause of all things-some power which they could neither compre- hend nor resist. The volcano and the earthquake taught them this. and many accounts of these in past ages are preserved in their tra- ditions. But farther than this their minds could not penetrate.
It does not appear, that under the Mission system, they made the slightest advance in moral or religious culture, in spite of the most zealous efforts of the Fathers. They were taught to go through the forms of Christian worship, and did so, but without the least com-
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31
THE INDIAN TRIBES.
prehension of their significance. The whole subject of religion was beyond the reach of their untutored intellects, and it may be doubted whether a trace of their early teachings now remains in the mind of a single Indian in California. Heathen they were from the begin- ning, and heathen they will remain to the end.
Forming our judgment of their mode of life from our stand- point, as civilized men, we are apt to conclude that the Diggers were a most unhappy race, and they were so, according to all our ideas of happiness. But it is probably true, nevertheless, that they enjoyed life as well as the most civilized nations. They knew no other kind of life, and aspired to nothing better. Habit inured them to hardships, exposures and privations, which they considered as necessary and normal conditions of their existence. A kind Providence has so ordered that in whatsoever condition a man may find himself, not one can be found who would willingly exchange places with any other. Many might wish to change conditions in certain respects, but not one would lose his identity in another for any earthly con- sideration. The Esquimaux who dwell in the midst of the ice fields of the Polar regions, regard their country and their mode of life as preferable to any other, and after having visited civilized countries, return to their old haunts and rude life with joyful alacrity. Just so was it, doubtless, with the Digger Indians. They were as happy after their fashion as their civilized successors and extermina- tors, and would have so remained, but for the advent of a superior race. Probably the sum of human happiness was as great be- fore as after the settlement of the country by the whites. It was · simply a substitution of one race for another-of so many tame men for so many wild ones. In such changes might gives right, and will gives law, and the result was inevitable; but for the savages, savage life was unquestionably the happiest of which they were capable.
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NAPA COUNTY AS IT WAS AND IS.
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CHAPTER II.
NAPA COUNTY-GENERAL DESCRIPTION.
This county is relatively small, but one of the most salubrious and fertile in the State. Its total area is about 450,000 acres, (828 square miles before the recent addition of territory from Lake county) a . large portion of which consists of mountains, worthless for the pur- poses of agriculture. Many of the mountains and hills are, how- ever, of some value for grazing purposes, while a few are totally barren. The Assessor's returns show that in 1871, there were 107,- 650 acres enclosed, and in 1872, 48,000 acres under cultivation, of which 31, 500 were in wheat and 3,725 in barley. The county at the time of the conquest, formed part of the Northern Military De- partment, under the Mexican Government, of which the headquar- ters were at Sonoma. It was organized and its boundaries fixed by the Legislature, April 25th, 1851. The boundaries were afterwards changed by an act approved April 4th, 1855. A considerable por- tion of its area was cut off by an act approved May 20th, 1861,
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