USA > California > History of California, Volume V > Part 9
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Tribal divisions were even more numerous than tongues; but closer scrutiny reveals that in almost every case what were at first called tribes are in reality nothing more than villages, or "rancherías," as, following Spanish usage, they are still generally called.
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In the absence of any federative principles or higher organization, these independent rancherías were the ultimate political units, and in one sense the tribes, of the California Indians. Of such village communities, each with its own chief, and each free to conduct war or negotiate peace at the will of its own members only, there must have been about one thousand in California.
A number of tribes in the larger sense, that is, groups of villages linked by similar speech, identical customs, and generally a common purpose, can how- ever be distinguished; and of these, a mention of the more important may be worth while.
About San Diego, and named after its mission, were the San Diegueños, or, in Indian parlance, the Kamia, a group much less tractable than most others. To their east, on the Colorado river, dwelled their kinsmen the Cocopa, the Yuma, and the Mohave, even more renowned for a warlike spirit, and the only tribes in the state whose men today still wear their hair long. Following the coast northward, one encountered in the vicinity of the next three missions the San Luiseños, the San Juaneños, and the San Gabrielinos, the former still flourishing, the latter two virtually extinct. All of these were members of the great Shoshonean family, and distant relatives, in the remote past, of the re- nowned Aztecs of Mexico. In the Colorado desert were the Cahuillas, and north of them the Serranos, or "mountaineers." Still other Shoshonean tribes extended across the great Mohave desert past Death valley, and skirted the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada, in part occupying also the higher portions of this great range, as far north as Oregon. These
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included the Chemehuevi and other Southern Paiute offshoots; the Kawaiisu; the Tübatulabal of Kern River; the Panamint, Koso, and Mono, identifiable by their names; and the Northern Paiute.
The great Chumash group ranged from Ventura to San Luis Obispo, and from Santa Cruz Island to Tehachapi. The Spaniards spoke of them as the "Indians of the Channel" of Santa Barbara, and reckoned them as more intelligent, polished, and wealthy than the other tribes of California. Mission life was quickly fatal to them, however, and scarcely a dozen survive. A group of unknown name, usually called "Salinan" from their habitat, have vanished almost as completely, while the Esselen, a little tribe of the coast south of Monterey, became totally extinct forty or fifty years ago. Still farther north, from Monterey to San Francisco, and inland to Mount Diablo, were numerous squalid and interrelated bands, many of whose local village names have been preserved, but for whom there is no generic name beyond the Spanish "coast-men," Costaños, corrupted into Cos- tanoan in technical book English. A century and a third of contact with the superior race has proved fatal to this group also, and it is as good as gone.
In the interior the scythe of civilization began later to mow its harvest, and more numerous representatives remain. The great valley of the San Joaquin, from Stockton to Bakersfield, with much of the adjacent foot- hill territory, was the possession of the most widely spread of all the indigenous stocks, the Yokuts, whose name, like that of many other divisions, means nothing more than "people" in the original. Forty or fifty
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subdivisions were once comprised in this great group, the designations of some surviving in modern geo- graphical terms: Chowchilla, Kaweah, Tache, Yokohl. The Sierra foothills from the Merced to the Cosumnes river were occupied by the Miwok, a much broken family, offshoots from which were found also in Marin and Lake counties. North of them, from Eldorado to Plumas counties, were the Maidu-also "the people"-while Lake Tahoe and adjacent tracts east of the great watershed belonged to the Washoes, a tribe of Nevadan rather than Californian affiliations and outlook.
The entire west side of the Sacramento valley, from Suisun Bay to Mt. Shasta, was occupied by the Wintun, with their southern branch the Patwin, an intellectually superior tribe, it appears, for from them nearly all their neighbors seem to have borrowed many of their religious institutions. Across the river from them, in Tehama and Shasta counties, were the Yana or Nozi, a dreaded and vindictive little people, whose stubborn- ness caused them to suffer greatly at the hands of the whites, and who were distinctive in many of their habits, especially in the remarkable peculiarity of possessing different dialects for their men and women.
On Pit river roamed the Achomawi; on Hat creek the Atsugewi; to the north, from Tule Lake into Oregon, the Modoc, a small tribe whose temporarily successful resistance to the federal soldiery in 1873 has made them famous; and in Siskiyou county the Shasta, whose name is perpetuated by that of the snow clad peak.
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The Pomo were the dominant group of Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino counties, populous, renowned for their surpassingly fine basketry, and still in their old haunts. Their northern neighbors, the Yuki or "enemies," were ruder, warlike, and of peculiar interest because both their speech and their physical type are unique. In a broken chain from Mendocino to Del Norte counties dwelled the Kato, Wailaki, Mattole, Chilula, Hupa, Tolowa, and others, all members of the great Athabascan family-original relatives, as evi- denced by their language, of the far distant Apache and Navajo and of the still more remote Dene of Alaska.
In Humboldt county, finally, were three small but populous units, diverse in speech but similar in customs, and superior in the general level of their life and insti- tutions to probably all the other aborigines of the state, except the before-mentioned Chumash. These were the Wiyot, the Yurok, and the Karok.
"Diggers" is a name that has been indiscriminately applied to nearly all these groups, until today it is in the estimation of the public at large the specific tribal name of the California Indians. Nothing, however, is more meaningless, and even misleading than this term. It was used originally, more as a derogatory designation than anything else, of the Shoshoni, Bannock, and other tribes of the Great Basin region, who eked out a scanty living in a half desert habitat by digging roots. So expressive of contempt, however, was the name, that it was readily extended, in 1849 and the days following, to the rude and passive natives of California, whenever a more fortunate Caucasian felt himself called on to give way to his feelings toward a people who were "best
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dead, anyway." The multiplicity of Indian divisions in California, and the lack of proper tribal designations for most of them, made the term a convenient one, even for those who did not share such sentiments; and it soon established itself in usage. It is, however, as unspecific in denotation as "Indian" itself; resembling in this respect the familiar "Siwash" of farther north on the Pacific coast-another term which is frequently but erroneously thought to be tribal in its force.
The name "Digger" is moreover misleading, since roots formed only an insignificant element in the food of the California aborigines. The staple was nearly everywhere the acorn, which was not only obtained in abundance, but, when leached by warm water of its tannic acid, is thoroughly nourishing and palatable. Seeds of grasses, sages, and herbs probably came next; then, according to location, either fish or shell-fish, or rabbits, squirrels, and other small game. Deer, elk, or antelope provided food only irregularly; and roots and berries were no more important. Lizards, snakes, snails, slugs, honey, yellow-jacket larvae, grasshoppers, caterpillars, and angleworms, were all relished by some tribes; but others refrained from these delicacies, and added to the list of tabooed foods the flesh of certain animals, which, like the bear, were thought to be too human for consumption, or, like the coyote and eagle were reverenced for the part they were believed to have had in the creation of the world. Dog meat, a tid-bit among eastern tribes, was everywhere in California thought to be the deadliest of poisons. Agricultural products, mostly corn, beans, and squashes, were raised and used only by the Yumas and Mohaves of the Colorado river bottom lands.
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The food, and therefore the mode of life, of the prehistoric ancestors of our modern California Indians, was undoubtedly substantially the same for thousands of years past. This can be asserted confidently from the abundance of stone mortars and pestles-the typi- cal acorn and seed crushing implements-which have been found at all depths of the soil, and in all parts of the state in countless numbers; in fact, are the utensils characteristic of the archeology of California. Other types of stone ware, arrow-points, knives, charmstones, sinkers, and so forth, occur; but these also have sur- vived into the life of the modern natives in identical shapes; so that it is clear that there has been no sig- nificant evolution nor even retrogression in the customs and life of the indigenes during a long time past. Stone axes, for instance, stone war-club heads, and stone structures, all familiar to the antiquarian of the East or the Southwest, are completely wanting from the lowest as well as the highest relic-bearing strata of California; and are equally lacking from the life of the most recent generations.
Along the coast, especially on the ramified shores of San Francisco bay, numerous conspicuous landmarks of aboriginal occupation remain: the shell heaps. These moundlike deposits, representing the gradual accumu- lation of the food refuse of populations whose largest article of diet was shell-fish, are piled up, in some cases, to a height of thirty and thirty-five feet. Nearly all have their bases submerged from two to ten feet below present sea-level, proving a gradual submergence of the land-a deduction confirmed by geologists on other grounds-and, since such subsidence is normally very
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slow, indicating a long lapse of time since these sites first began to be occupied. Clam, mussel, and oyster shells, with an admixture of ash, pebbles, and earth, occasional lost or broken implements, and considerable numbers of human burials, make up the body of these "kitchen-midden" mounds; and it is interesting to note that each species of shell is most frequent in those deposits which were accumulated along the particular reaches of shore where the living mollusk of the same variety flourishes most abundantly today. The oyster beds of the immemorial past lay where they still lie.
The most careful computations of the size of the larger mounds as compared with the habits of life of their builders, and the geological subsidence, have led to an estimate of a lapse of at least three thousand years since these spots were first inhabited. This is not an antiquity so great as some parts of the world can boast. But it is interesting to reflect that San Francisco was inhabited, though but by primitive ancestors of Indians, when Solomon built his temple and Troy was sacked.
Shell beads have been discovered in many of these remains of the past, and indicate a use of money simi- lar to that of the more recent tribes. The California Indian was notably avaricious. Military glory meant little to him; but the rich man was chief. For so many strings of shell money, one could buy himself a wife; for double the amount a woman could be secured who was of high caste, that is, descended from a wealthy family; and her husband's children would be of equally lofty social reputation. At the same price a murder could be compensated for in blood money. And when no
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such practical uses were necessary, the strings of shells still gave eminent prestige by their mere possession.
The religion of the Indians was far more complex than might appear at first sight. Innumerable cere- monies filled their days. At birth, at puberty, and at death, rites were performed; marriage alone was no sacrament. Among many tribes the young men went through a long and formal initiation before they could participate in sacred matters; but once admitted, they were thenceforth members of secret societies which almost suggest our Masonic orders.
Mourning ceremonies were even more spectacular, because public, and were accompanied not only by endless wailing and by long preachments, but by wholesale destruction of property in memory of the deceased.
The souls or "hearts" of the dead were supposed to never perish utterly, though a disagreeable fate might be in store for them if some religious ritual remained unfulfilled. Wickedness, however, was not believed to be punished except in this life, so that good and bad together went to the same shadow land, where food furnished itself and eternity was spent in dancing and festivities.
The legends of the various tribes evince a higher power of primitive speculation than might be antici- pated in view of their being largely animal tales. Some of the traditions accounting for the origin of the world are not without a lofty strain in all their grotesqueness, and the solution of the ever-recurring problem of good and evil is at least attempted. The origin of death, for instance, is explained in many tribal legends in a form
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which lacks the moral element of the Biblical account, but resembles it in presupposing a time in the first beginning of the world when the ancestors of the human race were immortal, and in recounting that it was an error of some one that was responsible for the intro- duction of death into the scheme of things. In many legends the someone is stated to have been Coyote, who, not necessarily evil minded, but mischievous, heedless, and vain, is believed to have constantly tried to remodel the universe according to his own ideas. Sometimes, as when he stole fire, or sunlight, for the good of mankind, he was a benefactor; on other occa- sions, as when he released a flood, started a world conflagration, or chose perpetual death in place of the alternative of constantly renewed youth, his pranks and arrogance resulted as disastrously as the plottings of his Satanic counterpart, the Biblical serpent.
American contact has resulted in much the same status for the interior and northern tribes as Spanish influence had achieved for their brethren of the south- ern coast two generations earlier. The Indians lost their land, sickened, died like flies, and in the half-state between civilization and savagery in which they found themselves, were hard put to it to maintain themselves at all. The state government did nothing for them, except occasionally to authorize as militia such parties of settlers as might organize for the chastisement or wiping out of an obnoxious band of natives. Sometimes the settlers had ample provocation; sometimes the first just complaints came from the Indians, who, obtaining no hearing or redress, inflicted the retaliation which they thought called for, but which usually only brought
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still greater misery on their heads. The local history of California, in part still unwritten-and perhaps best so-is dotted with examples of individual and whole- sale outrages of this sort during the fifties and sixties. In most instances it is perhaps impossible to decide who was most to blame; but in the end it was inevitable that the Indians, as the weaker party, suffered most. The conquerors had no great glory to gain; the events themselves are half forgotten, the scars they struck nearly effaced; and it seems wisest to draw the veil over this chapter of the state's history.
The national government, however, possessed both precedent and machinery for handling the Indian situation in the days of the pioneers. That it did not do so was inexcusable. Had the local tribes been warlike and predatory, had they inflicted exemplary injury on those who deprived them of their lands and often of their sustenance, a cry would have gone up that would soon have been hearkened to in Washing- ton. But the settlers were schooled in self-reliance, and arranged difficulties to suit themselves; and the Indians had no spokesman before the great father.
Such attempts as the United States made to deal with the Indian problem were extraordinarily ineffi- cient, and more feeble than in any other portion of the country. Bands of the most diverse origin and speech, divided by age-long antipathies, were assembled by commissioners and persuaded to assent to treaties which they did not understand and to cessions of land to which they laid no claim. In many instances the treaties were never ratified by the Senate, with the result that the Indians were dispossessed and
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received not even a pretence of a return. Such reservations as were arranged for, were mostly estab- lished without consideration of the customs, abilities, and enmities of the various tribes, and without pro- vision for their support. The Indians kept running off; and finally most of these futile attempts were abandoned. In all California only four reservations continued to be maintained, counting the scattered little tracts of southern California hill land as one, as in effect they are; and these four contain arable land sufficient for the decent self support of possibly one-fourth of the shrunken present day population. With all the tremendous decrease of the last sixty years, California still ranks fifth in the number of its Indians-16,000; and yet no western state contains so little reservation land, in proportion to its area. A belated attempt was made in the last ten years to remedy the earlier oversights and neglect, congress voting some two hundred thousand dollars for the purchase of homes for homeless California Indians. This amount, wisely spent, has relieved some acute suffering; and has had the salutary moral effect of making the Indians feel that they were not being dealt only injustice.
In the main, however, they long ago solved their problem for themselves-by work. Not the steady, directed labor of the white man with an ambition and a future, it is true; but at least enough to show good intent and capacity, to keep themselves alive, and to earn a fair measure of respect from those of the dominant race who know them best. Hop-picking, fruit-gathering, haying, sheep-shearing, and general
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ranch work, more frequently for hire than on their own account, are their commonest occupations and in these they are sought. Such labors, performed in shabby civilized clothes, are not portrayed in cinema- tograph films and do not lend much color to romance. The California Indian therefore occupies a far less conspicuous place in the public mind than his showier and more imposing brother of the east. But he has made greater progress on the road to civilization; and substantially he already is, though but in an humble way, a useful, satisfactory, and willing member of the community and nation.
G. L. Kroeber
LAND TITLES IN CALIFORNIA
T O understand the land system of California it is necessary to go back to the colonization of the country. The establishment of missions in remote provinces was a part of the colonial system of Spain, and hence when the king ordered the military occupation of the province it was determined to establish three missions therein: one on the bay of San Diego, one on the bay of Monterey, and one at a point between to be selected by the expedition and to be named in honor of San Buenaventura, the good doctor serafico of Saint Francis and one of his successors as minister-general of the order. These missions were to be under the protection of presidios and others were to follow until the reduction of California was complete. The new establishments flourished and rap- idly augmented their number until they extended from San Diego on the south to Sonoma on the north, occu- pying the whole territory of the coast, except the presidios of San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco, and the three pueblos of Los Angeles, San José, and Branciforte; the limits of one mission forming the boundary of the next. After a time the governors began making grants of land to individuals- mainly retired soldiers, but these grants were made subject to the claims of the missionaries who held the land in trust for the use of their wards, the Indians. These grants were but few in number, and usually at a distance from the mission establishments within whose jurisdiction they fell. The consent of the priests was not always given. It was no part of their policy to promote colonization. In addition to the difficulty of obtaining land, trade with the colony was not permitted
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and the settler had no market for his product. There- fore it was that beyond a few retired soldiers California had practically no settlers. The missions grew and flourished but immigrants would not come notwith- standing the inducements of pay and rations offered. Colonel Costansó, the engineer who had come with Portolá in 1769, was sent to California in 1794 to inves- tigate conditions and ascertain the reason for the lack of progress in the settlement of the country, and re- ported that the mission plan of colonization was a fail- ure; that after many years the missions still remained in charge of the priests and mission guards; that there was a lack of population, and no ship owners on the coast. There were no inducements to the farmer and stock raiser, for no trade was permitted with either for- eign or Spanish ships other than the regular transports.
Notwithstanding the liberal gifts of land, pay, rations and privileges granted to settlers in the three pueblos founded, only about thirty families could be obtained, and the rest of the pobladors consisted of retired soldiers and the descendants of soldiers.
There has been much misunderstanding in regard to the title to lands occupied or claimed by the missions. These lands did not belong to the church nor to the mission establishments as corporations. The absolute title to the land was vested in the crown, and the Indians were recognized as the owners, under the crown, of all the land needed for their support. All the mis- sions in California were established under the direction and mainly at the expense of the government, and the missionaries there never had any other rights than to the occupation and use of the lands for the purpose
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of the missions, namely: to prepare the Indians that they might, in time, take possession of the land then held in common. This done, the missions were to be made pueblos and the missionaries returned to their convent. There never was any misunderstanding in regard to this principle, least of all on the part of the missionary priests, and it was understood that the mis- sions existed at the pleasure of the political authority. On the 17th of August, 1773, the viceroy, Bucareli, wrote to the comandante of California, as follows:
"When it shall happen that a mission is to be converted into a pueblo the comandante will proceed to reduce it to the civil and economical government, which, according to the laws, is observed by other pueblos of this kingdom; then giving it a name and declaring for its patron the saint under whose memory and protection the mission was founded."
The right, then, to remodel these establishments and convert them into towns and villages, subject to the known policies and laws which governed settle- ments of that description, we see was a principle of their foundation; the missions were disposable at the will of the crown or its representatives. This view of their purpose and destiny fully appears in the tenor of the decree of the Spanish cortes of the 13th of September, 1813, which provided: "That all the new reduciones y doctrinas of the provinces beyond sea which were in charge of missionary monks, and had been ten years subjected, should be delivered immediately to the respective ecclesiastical ordinaries, without resort to any excuse or pretext, conformably to the laws and cedulas in that respect." Also:
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"That the missionary monks should discontinue immediately the government and administration of the property of the Indians who should choose, by means of their ayuntamientos, with intervention of the superior political authority, persons among them- selves competent to administer it, the lands being distributed and reduced to private ownership in accor- dance with the decree of 4th January, 1813, on reducing vacant and other public lands to private property."
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