History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 10

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362

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Tenieya was a wily, voluble and rascally old fellow, who with one plea or another prevented or delayed the march to the valley. Had the rangers been left to themselves, they would have made short work of the campaign, but they were bound by the orders of the commissioners, and much time had been frittered away with powwows and procrastination. Patience at last ceased to be a virtue.

Volunteers were called for the "Deep Canyon" Party and Boling's and Dill's companies stepped out as if on parade, but the select were chosen after a footrace in the snow, the inspiration of Boling. A camp guard was left be- hind of the distanced. At last the start was made in the snow, trailing in single file, Savage leading, Tenieya an unwilling guide, and the party entered the valley on March 21, 1851, the first appearance of the white man.

This was the very thing that Tenieya had tried to prevent, because of a traditional prophecy. A great medicine man, a friend of his father, induced him to leave the Mono tribe of his mother, and as their chief establish him- self in the valley of his ancestors with a few descendants of the Ahwahnee- chees and other renegades, who had been living with the Monos and Paiutes. The patriarch, had prophesied that while in possession of the valley the tribe would increase and become powerful, he cast a protective spell upon it, but cautioned that, if ever the horsemen of the lowlands (the Spaniards) entered,

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

the tribe would be scattered and destroyed, his people taken captive and he be the last chief. The rangers' stay in the valley was limited to three days, because the provisions were exhausted, and the return to camp was taken up with some 350 Indians, including seventy-five surrendered Yosemites, all of whom save one, escaped from Boling and nine men, on the night before the last day's march to the reservation. Most of the runaways were retaken on pursuit.

But the Yosemites and Chowchillas refusing to leave their haunts, new campaigns were necessary against each, first against the Chowchillas en- camped on the north fork of the San Joaquin. The march was taken via Coarse Gold and a circuitous route on which Crane Valley was located and named. Savage was called away as interpreter to treat with Kaweahs sent in from the south by Kuykendall, who in season ended the campaign against the Tulare valleyites by vigorous operations in the valleys, foothills and mountains of the Kings and Kaweah Rivers, chasing them even into the high Sierras.

Boling in command headed for the Chowchillas' camp. They fled de- moralized, Rey, their chief, having died from his wounds. They surrendered, subdued by hunger and swift pursuit, and though after the Yosemites the most warlike they proved the most tractable and reliable of the mountain tribes.

For the second valley expedition some of Kuykendall's men at head- quarters volunteered with the supply train, Dill, with part of his company, was retained at headquarters as guard, while Gilbert with part of his, reported to Boling. Dr. Pfeiffer was placed in charge of a temporary battalion hospi- tal, Surgeon Bronson resigned to reap the returns of his negro slaves mining on Sherlock's Creek, Leach succeeded him and Dr. Black went with Boling, who marched on against the Yosemites into the valley, sending out scouting and searching parties, burning wigwams and acorn stores to starve out the band after it was evident temporizing had no results. This was the plan throughout the Mariposa Indian War, as it was called. Three sons of Tenieya were the first captured in the valley.

Escapes of individuals from camp left two captives, who were fastened to an oak tree, tied back to back, while scouts went out to surround and seize Tenieya. The captives loosened themselves, deliberately observed by the guards, and starting to run were fired upon, and one who was killed proved to be Tenieya's youngest and favorite son. Lieutenant Chandler and scouts returned with the captured chief, and the latter's first sight in camp was the body of his son. It broke the old chief's heart, and he manifested it in moody silence, or alternative laments and tirades, so that "hardly any one could help sympathize with him in his great sorrow."

Tenieya was "a greedy and filthy glutton" though, and it is related by Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell, M. D., volunteer surgeon of the battalion and its historian, that surfeited with fat pork and beans and soldier rations he became dyspeptic and begged to be put out to grass in the meadows. The novel sight was presented of the chief staked out at the end of a rope in the hand of his guard grazing upon young clover, sorrel, fresh ferns and bulbons roots.

The rangers remained in the valley for about one month, ever on the move to locate and bring in recalcitrants, and Bunnell as the most senti- mental one naming most of the valley points of interest. About June, and no more Yosemites to be located in the valley, Boling advanced higher into the mountains to a large lake on the north fork of the Merced ten miles northeast of the valley, observing which Tenieya employed every artifice to divert him and made several escape attempts. Here on June 5, the remainder of the tribe was found and made captive, half starved and in a miserable state from the privations of the close pursuit. There were thirty-five, nearly all part of Tenieya's family. Off to the reservation they were marched, and

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

the lake was named for the old chief. The "war" was ended. The com- missioners had gone to the Kings River Farm to treat with the bands col- lected there. There being no more hostiles from the Tuolumne to the Tejon, the battalion was mustered out on July 25. 1851, at Buckeye Creek, midway between Bridgeport and Mariposa. The reported last survivor of the battalion was Robert Eccleston, pioneer resident of Forbestown, Butte County, who died in Oakland, Cal., on February 1, 1914, at the age of eighty- one years. He came overland and was a cattle raiser near Forbestown. The muster roll shows that he was a private in Company C, enlisted as a New Yorker at the age of twenty-one.

At the reservation Tenieya was never much in favor. He was "set in his ways, obstinate and exacting"-"cranky" in other words-and the other Indians taunted him with his downfall. He chafed under the contemptuous treatment and asked for leave of absence, pleading that he could not endure the heat of the sun and preferred his acorn diet to the government rations. Nothing loath to be rid of him with the endless squabbling, he was released and trailed back to the valley with the remnant of his relatives. Others were allowed in time to go and early in May, 1852, some of these ticket of leave absentees ambushed Coarse Gold Gulch., French prospectors, who had en- tered the valley.

Rose and Charbon were killed and Tudor seriously wounded but escaped and arrived at Coarse Gold later in August. The news spread alarm and there was fear that the excited Indians at the reservation would desert and another outbreak would result. In fact those encamped outside hurried to the agencies for protection lest they be picked off in revenge for the latest murders. Lieutenant Moore from Fort Miller was sent with: soldiers to punish the Indians and entered the valley by night. One of his volunteer scouts was A. A. (Gus) Gray, who had been in Boling's company and after- wards was a captain in Walker's Nicaragua filibuster expedition. The party captured five of the murderers. Tenieya apprised by a scout of all that fol- lowed kept in seclusion. The murderers did not deny the accusation and wearing part of the apparel of the dead Moore did not bandy words but summarily pronounced judgment and ordered them shot, which was done.

To justify himself or to allay public curiosity, Moore published a letter in the Mariposa Chronicle descriptive of the expedition. In this letter the word "Yosemity" was for the first time written "Yosemite." It attracted attention and the changed orthography has continued since. The "autocratic power" assumed in shooting the Indians was at the time the subject of public criticism. To Moore attaches the credit of being the first to draw the attention of the scientific and literary world to the wonders of the Yosemite Valley, his position as an army officer establishing a reputation for the facts that another correspondent might not have commanded.

Tenieya had fled across the range to the Monos. He had nothing to do with the murders but Moore followed in close pursuit. . Tenieya knew the mountains better and escaped, skulking among the cliffs and chasms, driven from pillar to post. Moore finally gave up the pursuit and Tenieya returned, late in 1853, to the valley, followed by some of his veteran incor- rigibles. The Monos and Paiutes returned one day from a successful South- ern California foray, and the Yosemites ill repaid the hospitality of their former hosts by making off with some of their stolen horses. The Monos in revenge set upon the Yosemites with Tenieya as the principal object of at- tack, while at a horse meat banquet. One young Mono chief, having spent all his arrows, hurled a rock with such force as to crush in Tenieya's skull, and others cast rocks upon the prostrate body until in accord with; the Paiute custom he was literally stoned to death and buried under a pile of rocks. All but eight of Tenieya's young braves were killed.

Hittell describes the finale: "The Monos then pursued the other Indians and killed all, except some very old persons who were allowed to escape

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

and some young women and children, whom they carried into captivity across the mountains. There was no longer any Yosemite tribe, nor so far as known any living being of Tenieya's blood. He was in truth the last of the Yosemites." The Independent Order of Red Men tribe at Madera has taken for its name that of the Last of the Yosemites.

Success did not crown the labors of the commissioners in treaty making and establishing reservations. There was a lurking but strong suspicion that they knew little about the country and much less concerning Indians, that everything they did was a mistake and not infrequently in excess of their powers. They travelled in style like a circus caravan and at consid- erable public expense, with dragoon escort and accomplished little of im- portance or lasting benefit, while making presents and being lavish in prom- ises for little or no return value. Their treaties were disapproved and nearly all the debts contracted were repudiated as unauthorized. The established reservations were almost useless, and very unpopular. Governors McDougal and Bigler opposed them in the legislative messages, McDougal favoring removal of the Indians beyond the state, and Bigler denouncing the reserva- tion system as wrong, fraught with evil to whites and Indians, calculated to irritate collisions and imposing heavy burdens on the government.

The work and its results proved so unsatisfactory that the commission was abolished and Congress adopted a new system with Indian agents as managers, and the valley reservation Indians were liberated after about four years of restrictions. The Indian question was one which gave the legisla- tures of the 50's much concern, but the old state of affairs continued and the extermination went on.

During the summer of 1853, Dr. Bunnell and E. G. Barton traded and mined on the Merced on the north side, several miles above the north fork, but that winter the place was plundered, desolated and the two men in charge murdered. The body of one was pierced nine times with five arrows still quivering in the flesh when found. Boling was then sheriff of Mariposa County, but the case was beyond his jurisdiction, the supposition being that the crime was perpetrated by Tuolumne renegades once under Tenieya and that they were on the Upper Tuolumne.

The last serious Indian outbreak in the valley was in the summer of 1856, when the Four Creeks of Tulare went on the warpath. Volunteer com- panies ran them down in six weeks, and there has not been another uprising since. Fresno County contributed some fifty rangers for this campaign, the Millerton and vicinity company under Ira Stroud and the Coarse Gold and Fresno River company under John L. Hunt.

CHAPTER XII

SAVAGE A PICTURESQUE CHARACTER. THE MOST ABLE OF THE SQUAW MEN. CONSORTED WITH INDIANS NEARLY ALL HIS LIFE. HE HAD FIVE SQUAWS AS WIVES. WIELDED GREAT INFLUENCE AMONG THE MOUNTAIN TRIBES. A THUMBNAIL SKETCH OF HIM. WAGERED HIS WEIGHT IN GOLD ON TURN OF A CARD. INDIAN AFFAIRS IN HANDS OF A POLITICAL RING. SAVAGE COWARDLY MURDERED IN DEFENSE OF INDIANS. SLAYER RELEASED AFTER A FARCICAL INQUIRY.

This Major James D. Savage, so prominent in the Mariposa Indian War, was one of the remarkable and picturesque characters connected with the early days of the valley. His death was a violent one. It was said of him that he was of those "not unfrequently found upon the confines of civilization,

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

who combined great, though uncultivated, strength of intellect with great, though not unkindly, coarseness in the conduct of life."

Before the day of the white woman in California, some of the early residents took up relations with squaws, even to marrying them. Most of these men were described as "coarse in manners and low in character, but some were in various respects superior men," who had yielded to their environments. Savage, it is agreed, was "the most prominent and perhaps the most able" of all these so-called squaw men. The marriage of Indian women by white men involved the latter's degradation to the Indian's level, and never in a recorded instance elevated the woman to anything like social equality with the whites. It also meant for the white man racial and social ostracism.

Savage emigrated overland to California in 1846. The earliest mention of him is as a member of Company F, Fremont's California Battalion in the California insurrection. He is named in a directory of New Helvetia (Sut- ter's Fort), and also as one of the most troublesome malcontents in the bat- talion, necessitating a general courtmartial of them in December, 1846-47. He had been a trapper and mountaineer and consorted with Indians the greater part of his life. familiar with their customs, readily mastering their dialects, wielding wide influence among them, besides later acquiring wealth by his business methods. He was one of the Philadelphia party that located, with Rev. James Woods on the Tuolumne at Wood's Crossing or Wood's Creek in the early summer of 1848.

He also worked the Big Oak Flat diggings, fifteen or twenty miles south of the rich Sonora gold placers, so named on account of a big oak tree on one of the main travelled routes to the Yosemite and later so familiarly known. At the Flat mining in 1849, he employed Indians, whom he paid in blankets and provisions, constituting himself also protector of their interests against white encroachments. He developed a faculty for dealing with the Indians and contracting domestic relations with them. While doing a lucrative busi- ness as an employer and supplier, a quarrel arose at the rancheria and a Texan was arrowheaded to death. The whites rushed to arms, Indians were killed, strained relations resulted looking to a war, but Savage pacified the Indians and they moved higher up into the mountains.

Afterward, in 1850, he opened a trading post on the south fork of the Merced, employing Indians and marrying according to mountain men cus- tom the five daughters of as many capitanejos. By reason of the connections with as many tribes, he commanded general influence and strengthened his personal safety among the Mariposa Indians. His wealth was reported to be not less than $100,000. He was such a powerful agency that the governor hesitated not to commission him major of the ranger battalion. His services moreover were indispensable as interpreter in the treaty making negotiations with the surrendering or captured tribes. The lawless and predatory Yose- mites on the headwaters of the Merced alone were beyond his authority and persuasion.

At the Merced post he did business on the principle of hiring every Indian that would work, taking all the gold dust but scrupulously paying in hardware or whiskey, ounce for ounce, pound for pound. Not alone was he a man of mark, widely known in the district but throughout a consider- able part of the state. The Yosemites drove him from the Merced to Aqua Fria on the Mariposa in 1850, and he established a branch post on the Fresno as related. Galen Clark, who died in Oakland, Cal., March 24, 1910, at the age of ninety-six, said that Savage was perhaps the best friend of the Indians while in captivity.

A letter written from Hart's ranch on January 16, 1851, by T. G. Palmer of Newark, N. J., as a member of the battalion to his father gives this thumb- nail sketch of Savage:

"From his long acquaintance with the Indians, Mr. Savage had learned

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

their ways so thoroughly that they cannot deceive him. He has been one of their great chiefs and speaks their language as well as they can them- selves. No dog can follow a trail like he can. No horse can endure as much. He sleeps but little, can go days without food and can run 100 miles in a day and a night over the mountains, and then sit and laugh for hours over a campfire as fresh and lively as if he had just been taking a little walk for exercise. He pointed out their fires, could hear them sing and could smell them, but his eyes were the only ones that could see, his ears alone could hear and his nose smell anything unusual."

As illustrative of the ways of the man, it is related that at the Fresno branch he kept an electro magnetic battery and with its mysterious opera- tion worked upon the superstition of his Indian hangers on. Also that on the visit to San Francisco in October, 1850, when he took along 600 pounds Troy weight of gold to safe-deposit and to make purchases, the lure of the gaming table seized him, and presumably in the famous El Dorado tent at Washington and Kearney Streets he leaped on the table and setting foot on the card wagered his weight in gold on the turn of the wheel-and lost. He was an ignorant man, but naturally shrewd, unable to read or write, but one of such positivism that he made many warm friends as well as impla- cable foes. Though in directing command of the battalion. Savage gave most of his attention to the palavering commissioners. The business connections with the treaties were transacted principally through him as the medium. The mission interpreters translated the Indian dialects into Spanish, these were rendered into English by Spanish interpreters of the commission, while Savage conducted the preliminaries and acted as a check on the dialect translations.

After the war, Indian affairs fell into the hands of politicians and a ring, and the pot was kept simmering to influence congressional action, or the war department, for liberal estimates for the California Indian service. The excitement was largely local, the Indians remaining quietly on the reservations, as they did for about four years, under a loose supervision. They were envied for the possession of the Kings River Farm, and a few whites were ready to squat on the land whenever the redman was driven off. This element was headed by one Walter H. Harvey, who was the first county judge of Tulare. Handy hangers-on asserted claim to the reserva- tion, the Indians on the rancheria warned them off, they were fired upon and several squaws were killed.

Savage denounced the agitations and murders, asserting that Harvey was the responsible cause of them. Mariposans knew little concerning the affair as the Kings River was such a distant outpost. There had, however, been strong opposition against the commissioners' location of two reserva- tions in one county and the selection of the best farming land for them. It was openly declared that the reservation system, pretty in theory, was so mismanaged as to be one of neglect of the Indians and a fraud on the govern- ment. Bunnell asserts that while Tenieya and family were in the mountains subsisting on acorns the cost of their rations and support at the reservation was regularly charged up, and that estimates for appropriations were de- ceptive and "ten times more than the truth would warrant," so well estab- lished was the "California Indian Ring."

Savage successfully pursued his trade with the miners on the Fresno and surrounding territory and the Indians of the reservation. besides those of the Kings Farm, exciting jealous ire. Self interest prompted him to keep the Indians pacified, but nevertheless he denounced Harvey and his asso- ciates as deserving punishment, all of which came to their ears. Harvey and Sub-agent Campbell in common cause denounced Savage in return. Harvey assailed Savage's integrity and boasted that he would not dare visit Kings River while he (Harvey) was there. Savage rode over on the forenoon of August 16, 1852. He demanded a retraction of the offensive personal re-

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

marks. Harvey refused, saying that Savage had been talking about him. "Yes," replied Savage, "I have said that you are a murderer and a coward."

Harvey retreated a pace and passed the lie. Savage struck him in the face and his pistol fell out of his shirtwaist. Quartermaster John G. Marvin picked up the weapon and Harvey asserted that Marvin had disarmed him, but the latter corrected him. Instantly Harvey fired with his own pistol five times, and Savage fell mortally wounded at the first shot. Marvin stood by during the encounter with Savage's pistol in hand too scared or too cowardly to interfere.

Harvey was discharged after a farce of an examination by Joel H. Brooks as the justice, a personal friend of Harvey and a fellow who had fed on Savage's bounty. Brooks was specially appointed to conduct the examination. Afterward he fathered a series of articles assailing the Indian management, but was silenced with congenial employment at one of the agencies. Harvey left the country later in mortal fear that the Indians would avenge Savage's murder. According to Bunnell. "the ghost of Major Savage seemed to have haunted him, for ever after he was nervous and irritable and finally died of paralysis"-and drink.

The body of Savage was, in 1855, exhumed and removed to the Fresno near his old trading post on the J. G. Stitt Adobe Ranch, a few miles east of Madera. A ten-foot shaft on a pedestal was there erected to his memory by Dr. Leach, his successor in business. The shaft is of Connecticut marble, cost $800, and the monument weighing many tons was shipped from Connec- ticut by water to Stockton and from there transported overland on a speci- ally made truck, drawn by eight horses. It bears the simple inscription, "Maj. Jas. D. Savage."

Dr. Bunnell relates as a conversation had with Savage over a prospec- tive business connection this :

"Doc, while you study books. I study men. I am not often very much deceived, and I perfectly understand the present situation, but let those laugh who win. If I can make good my losses by the Indians out of the Indians, I am going to do it. I was the best friend the Indians had and they would have destroyed me. Now that they once more call me 'Chief' they shall build me up. I will be just to them, as I have been merciful, for after all they are but poor ignorant beings, but my losses must be made good."

Bunnell gives credit to Savage for many noble qualities-manly cour- age, generous hospitality, unyielding devotion to friends, and kindness to immigrant strangers, but admits that he had "serious defects butt such as would naturally result from a misdirected education and a strong will." He seemed to justify his course in using the opportunity to make himself whole again, while acting as a trader and in aiding others to secure "a good thing," by the sophism that he was not responsible for the action of the commis- sioners or of Congress.

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

CHAPTER XIII

PERMANENT SETTLING UP OF FRESNO A SLOW AND TEDIOUS PROCESS. EARLY RECORD OF LOCATORS IS SCANT. MILLERTON WAS AT ITS ZENITH IN 1853. FIRST LOCATIONS OF TRADING POSTS AND MINING CAMPS. CENTERVILLE A PIONEER FLOURISHING COM- MUNITY. A REMEMBERED OASIS IN THE DESERT. EARLIEST GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE COUNTY SEAT. ESTABLISHED INDI- VIDUALS AND PARTNERSHIPS ACCORDING TO FIRST ASSESSMENT ROLLS OF 1856-57.

Permanent settlement of Mariposa county's Fresno territory was slow and tedious. With only a narrow fringe of placer mines, confronting a great expanse of arid plains in the center and on the west, and backed by an equally uninviting ruggedness along the Sierra slopes, it was deemed to have few attractions for the white settler. The Indian troubles tended to hold back settlers, and so the few were restricted to the northeastern placers, with a light sprinkling of stockmen and farmers elsewhere.

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History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 10

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1362

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362