History of San Joaquin County, California : with biographical sketches of leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 5

Author: Tinkham, George H. (George Henry), b. 1849
Publication date: 1923
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif. : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1660

USA > California > San Joaquin County > History of San Joaquin County, California : with biographical sketches of leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 5

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The Indian Sweat House

Poor Lo had no cure for disease except in- cantations and the sweat house. The sweat house seems to have been the universal rem- edy for the cure of disease among all of the. Indians of the coast. One California writer in his book, "What we can learn from the In- dians," tells of his being nearly roasted in a Southern California sweat house. The tribes were located at all times in the vicinity of a stream of water, and the sweat house was built on the bank of the channel. Sometimes the house was made of willow poles placed in a circular shape and plastered with soft earth, and again they would make it by digging a large hole in the earth and making it air tight. When they wished to use the sweat house the Indians would build a large fire in it, and the patient or patients would enter the place, close

the entrance and there remain until they were perspiring freely, then running out they plunged into the cold water. It was a kill or cure remedy every time. If the patient was cured they praised the sweat house and if he died they said he was possessed of an evil spirit.

There came a time when no sweat house was large enough to hold those stricken with disease, for a pestilence swept over the land. De Mofras, the great French scientist and traveler, tells of a scourge, the cholera, that swept the valley in 1824, and it carried off 12,000 of the Indians of this valley and county. Two years later a fever broke out among the Indians of the Sacramento Valley and 8,000 died.

James J. Warner, the trapper, traveling over the county in 1832 said, "On no part of the continent on which I had then, or since traveled, was so numerous a population sub- sisting upon the natural products of the soil and waters as in the valleys of the San Joa- quin and Sacramento. On our return late in the summer of 1833 we found the valleys de- populated. From the head of the Sacramento River to the great bend of the San Joaquin we did not see more than six or eight live Indians; while large numbers of their skulls and dead bodies were to be seen under almost every shade tree, near water, where the unin- habited and deserted villages had been con- verted into graveyards; and, on the San Joa- quin River, in the immediate neighborhood of the larger class of villages, which the preced- ing year were the adobes of a large number of those Indians, we found not only many graves but the vestiges of funeral pyres."

Traveling on to Kings River, the trappers found a large number of live Indians but the plague was there, and Mr. Warner, continuing his account of that terrible period, said, "We were encamped near the village one night only and during that time the death angel passing over the camping ground of the plague-strick- en fugitives, waved his wand, summoning from the little remnant of a once numerous people, a score of victims to muster into the land of 'Manitou ;' and the cries of the dying, mingled with the wails of the bereaved, made the night hideous, in the veritable valley of death.

Disposal of Their Dead

According to authorities the Indians seemed to have practiced cremation, and also the bur- ial of bodies in mounds of the earth. Colonel F. T. Gilbert says, "The Indians bury their dead, bestrewing their graves with beads and shells. Along the Mokelumne River in 1879 there were a large number of mounds in which the Indians declared the dead were buried who

HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY

had died during the plague." .. On Roberts Island, at one time on the ranch of Joseph Hale, a large mound was discovered contain- ing a large number of skeletons. They were the bones of bucks, squaws and papooses to- gether mingled in one mound. In the burial, the body of a chief was placed in a sitting po- sition with his face to the east to await the rising sun. Their weapons, charms and tools, such as they possessed, were buried with the male Indians. Indian mounds were found in many places around Stockton, and on Febru- ary 8, 1862, the Stockton Independent said, "Captain Hayes and Ben Sanborn yesterday made a trip down the channel where an old Indian burial ground had been discovered, the flood having washed the earth from several of the graves The parties dug up several skulls and bones beads, arrow heads and ornaments and brought them to this city. The curiosities may be seen in the rooms of the Natural His- tory Society in the Agricultural Society rooms." Many years later, public school super- intendents, J. A. Barr and Edward Hughes, found many articles that told of the history of the Indians.

That it was the custom of some of the In- dians to burn their dead is undoubtedly true, as two such cremations were witnessed by James C. Carson and L. C. Branch. Mr. Car- son wrote, "The first of these funerals which I noticed was on the Cosumnes River. The rancheria, to which the deceased belonged, was a large one, situated in a beautiful valley from which arose tall pines, whose spear tops formed a canopy above; around it arose high and rugged hills that gradually rounded until their tops were topped by the everlasting snows, and through it moved the crystal wa- ters of a fine creek. The scene in all was beau- tiful. On a clear piece of ground a vast heap of dry wood was placed on which the dead was to be laid and consumed. The sun had set and night was drawing her sable mantle over the earth, when the entire tribe began chant- ing unearthly incantations around the fires of their huts, and they so continued until dark- ness had completely enveloped the scene. Then arose a hideous scream out of the hut of the departed that was answered by every one in the camp-torches were lighted and by their glare the corpse was borne to the funeral pyre. The body was placed on top of it and more dry wood heaped around. Then came the wild chant, an incantation for the dead. The chief applied the first torch to the pile and in a moment in blazed forth in a hundred places. The forked flames that enveloped the body shot up among the tall pines and lighted up the shadows. When the body had become charred by the fire the Indians with sharp pointed poles would stir up the body to aid

the fire in its work of destruction, and amidst the howling of the Indians the work was con- tinued until the body was consumed." The burial customs of the Indians did not change for Branch relates a funeral which he saw at Knights Ferry, when a boy, twenty years later than the one described by Carson. "The funeral of a chief," he says, "was attended with more ceremony than that of the common Indian and the whole village was thrown into mourning, which continued for several days. In preparing the body for burning it was dec- orated with feathers, beads and flowers, and after remaining in state a few days was con- veyed to the funeral pyre. The flowers, feath- ers and beads, in fact everything belonging to the dead chief was burned with him amidst the howls and lamentations of the tribe."

When a male Indian died there was howling and wailing in the rancheria for several days. "If the dead were a chief," says Miss Ellen C. Weber, "the marriageable maids daubed upon their foreheads and cheeks a kind of grease composed of ashes and pitch and day and night they howled the wailing cadence, hoo- ah-hoo, hoo-ah-whoo." Branch says the mourn- ing grease was composed of the ashes from the pyre and it was mixed with pitch brought from the mountains for mourning purposes. The stuff was permitted to remain until it wore off. During the period of mourning the widow's person was held sacred, and she was exempt from all manner of work or drudgery. Branch in boyhood lived near the Indian rancheria at Knights Ferry and he declares that the Indians held an annual dance of mourning, at which time the most lamentable groans and howls were kept up by the entire rancheria. "We heard them frequently clear across the river and it seems as if they kept it up all night."

' In the days of the Indian the Calaveras Riv- er was full of fish, and the beautiful oaks along its banks yielded an immense harvest of acorns, consequently it was a very desirable tract of land. At one period there was a scarcity of food and the Si-yak-um-na tribe, encroaching upon the territory claimed by the Ya-che-kos, a big battle took place in which many warriors were killed. Neither side made any attempt to bury their dead and the skeletons lay for many years bleaching in the sun. After a long period of time, a Spaniard named Jose Noriega, passing over the country, camped one night on the bank of the river, where the bloody battle had been fought. He was much surprised on arising the following morning to find that he had been resting among hundreds of human bones and skulls. Because of this fact he named it Calaveras, a Spanish word meaning "place of skulls." Some time previous to the naming of the place by

HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY

Noriega, the Hudson Bay Company, in mak- ing a map of the place for trapping purposes, gave it the name of Wine Creek, because of the wild grapevines growing along its banks.

At one time the sole owners of North Amer- ¿ca, the American Indian is practically extinct. Here in California, before the arrival of their white destroyers, they numbered, it was esti- mated, about one hundred thousand. Trappers said there were in this section about ten thou- sand papooses, squaws and bucks. Driven out of the county by the white settlers they retired to the mountains and a little directory pub- lished in 1852, said, "Soon after the white faces appeared on the river (the San Joaquin) their numbers were thinned, and the remnant of the tribe removed to the wild country of the coast range." It was the custom of the chiefs, however, after C. M. Weber settled upon this grant, to pay that gentleman an annual visit and to give and receive presents, and the reciprocation, on the part of that gen- tleman of kindnesses, generated a feeling of respect toward him. These visits had been discontinued for three years, but on January 10, 1852, the remnant of the tribe again ap- peared on the levee opposite Mr. Weber's res- idence. T'en families only were left of the Si- vak-um-nas. In that year a state census was taken by legislative law, and the Indians in San Joaquin County at that time numbered, male and female, 293, and 158 of them were over twenty-one years of age. According to this report 40 of the number located on a rancheria at Athearn's Ferry, and fifty-five at Staples Ferry on the Mokelumne River ; about twenty at Doak & Bonsell's Ferry, San Joa- quin River, and 275 at Dent and Valentine's Ferry, near Knights Ferry. The poor unfor- nate Indians were treated by the brutal white men as outcasts and unworthy even of hu- mane treatment. They were shot and killed upon the slightest provocation, and frequently used as targets, were shot down in cold boold. Their women and children were outraged and they had no redress, even in the courts.

A Brutal Law

To crown it all, the legislature of 1852, passed a law "for the protection and govern- ment of the Indians." It declared that no In- dian in a court of law could testify against a white man. An Indian convicted of stealing might be fined or punished by whipping not exceeding twenty-five lashes. In the light of today the reader may not see the sarcasm and brutality of that law. The whites took up all of the land and the Indians could obtain no food either from the land or water. If they stole food they were punished by fine or whip- ping, if they could not obtain money to pay a fine, and cruel brutes took great delight in lay-

ing on the lash. But that was not all of those humane laws passed by a pro-slavery legisla- ture. An Indian arrested as a "vagrant" was ptit up at auction by the justice of the peace and sold to the highest bidder, and he was compelled to work for his master for a term not exceeding four months.

The Barr Collection

The following paper gives a very interest- ing and exhaustive account of the implements of the California Indians. It was written by James A. Barr of Stockton, who is an expert pert on Indian relics, having made it a study for many years.

The Barr Collection comprises nearly 4000 pieces of "finds." It is the result of twenty-eight years' work in studying and exploring the archaeological field in that State. While the collection illustrates the various sections of the State, by far the greater part was secured in the great valleys of Central California.

In the northern part of the State the aborigines were modified by contact with tribes from Oregon while in Southern California they were modified in a more pronounced way by tribes from Nevada, Arizona and Mexico. In the great central region stretching for 150 miles from the Sierras to the Pacific and from the northern to the Southern points of the San Joaquin-Sacramento Valley (a distance of about 400 miles), the typical California Indian was developed. This large territory comprising about three-fourths of the State has been neglected for the most part by collectors. It is practically unknown in the literature of archaeology. Even the Govern- ment Reports devote themselves mainly to the Chan- nel Islands and to other parts of the southern Cali- fornia section.

Climate and environment combined to make the Central California region an ideal home for the In- dian. The many rivers and channels were filled with fish and mussels. Water fowl swarmed in countless thousands. Elk, antelope and deer were plentiful. The native California oak furnished a yearly supply of acorns. With such a varied and unfailing food supply, with a mild climate, and protected by moun- tain ranges for the most part from the incursions of the tribes to the north, east and south, the Indians of the great Central California region developed through generations a culture peculiarly their own. With a constant food supply and with little need for war, they had ample time for the manufacture of im- plements representing the highest type of Indian workmanship. Many distinctive forms in obsidian, stone, bone, shell and clay were developed in this favored region.

The Barr collection represents the exploration of more than 300 village and camp sites since 1878. It is the largest and most representative collection of Indian antiquities from the Central California region yet assembled, or that, in all probability, could be as- sembled at this late day. The collection has been carefully catalogued, the catalogue giving all available data for each "find." Something over a year of such time as could be spared was taken in reducing the field notes to catalogue form.

In the catalogue 2401 numbers are used. In many cases one number represents a large number of im- plements or ornaments. In many instances a "find"

20 50

537

1969

534

86cl

514

OBSIDIAN CUTTING, OR CEREMONIAL KNIVES-BARR'S COLLECTION, STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA

HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY

is given a catalogue number, the facts recorded and the implements and ornaments stored in boxes for a closer classification in the future. The collection includes fully 1,000 feet of beads or "wampum" (bone, shell and stone). With the exception of a few unique specimens, all beads are numbered by "finds." For instance No. 231 is a string of thirteen feet found with one skeleton.

The collection is rich in obsidian implements- curves, arrow-points, spear-heads, knives and drills. It is doubtful if any obsidian implements in the world exceed in beauty of workmanship the "Stockton curves." There are 158 of these curves in the collec- tion. The Smithsonian Collection has six. So far as known no other collection has a single specimen. Dr. W. H. Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution after studying the Barr Collection in Stockton said of these curves, "Implements of this class may have been used for cutting or sawing, but obsidian is so brittle and fragile that it hardly seems possible, unless used on comparatively soft material. These curves are peculiar to Central California."

These curves vary from 916 to 41/2 inches in length. A few are without serrations. Some are serrated on the convex edge; some on the concave edge; some on both edges. Most of them are notched as if for a handle. A few are double curves; in two the outer edges form a right angle and the inner the segment of a circle. Three are of soapstone while all others are of black obsidian.

Bone implements are especially numerous on the Pacific Coast. Those from Central California have a much better appearance than those from the Islands and other parts of the southern section of the State. The bleached and weathered appearance of the latter is replaced in the former by a smooth, finished surface, yellowed or browned with age. On some pieces a remarkable high polish remains. Among the bone im- plements in the Barr Collection are awls or perfora- tors, whistles from 11/4 to 93/8 inches in length, game bones, nose and hair pins, knives, daggers, spears or harpoons, scrapers, flakers, root-diggers, fish hooks or

fish-hook shaped ornaments, etc. A few of these implements are etched or engraved.

The aborigines of Central California were profuse in their use of shells for purposes of ornament. The number and variety of shell ornaments found in the burial places of this section are probably unequaled by any other part of America. Three varieties of shells were most in use-the mussel, the abalone and the olive. Besides fully a thousand feet of beads (mostly shell), the collection comprises every variety of shell ornament from the simple square bangle to the carved, etched and polished gorget.

A form peculiar to the Central California region is the so-called "pottery ball." With the exception of a brief reference in one of the later Smithsonian reports, they have never been figured or described. They were doubtless used to take the place of rocks (which were scarce in the valleys) in slings or in cooking. The collection shows these "pottery balls" in all shapes and sizes. Some are crudely fashioned from clay, in instances showing the imprint of the hands. Some are globular or cylindrical; others are bell- shaped, spool-shaped, pestle-shaped, cone-shaped, cup- shaped, etc., etc. Some are ornamented-one with triangles, others with lines or dots, thumb nail mark- ings, etc.

Among the stone implements in the collection are mortars, pestles, boat-shaped vessels, steatite jars and dishes, metates, grinders, rubbing stones, cup-stones, pipes, plummets of "medicine stones," perforated stones and discs, hammer-heads, grooved stones, labrets, etc., etc. Pipes are unusually scarce in the Central California district. In twenty-eight years but 21 have been found, varying in length from 11/4 to 83/4 inches. The collection includes one clay pipe, most of the 21, however, being made of steatite. The 57 "plummets" or "medicine-stones" in the collection in- clude many fine pieces, fine in workmanship, form and material. Among the 60 mortars and 194 pestles are all types found in the region. Among the pestles are 38 of the rare "phallic" form, representing many distinctive types.

CHAPTER III. THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION

The first white man to enter the San Joaquin Valley, so far as known, was Lieutenant Ga- briel Moraga, who left the Mission San Jose September 21, 1806, says Doris West Bepler, for the purpose of exploring the interior lands for suitable locations for missions, and to gain information about the Indians, and establish friendly relations with them. No missions were founded east of the Coast Range, and Moraga came no nearer to San Joaquin County than Dos Palos, near the junction of the Mer- ced and San Joaquin rivers. Our interest in the man lies in the fact that he named the San Joaquin River, although he was not the dis- coverer.

Cowper in one of his poems sings, "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform," and who would have ever dreamed that the little beaver, otter and raccoon would be the means by which the entire Pacific Coast would be discovered and explored. The in- terior was immensely rich in fur-bearing ani- mals, and twenty years after Moraga's dis- covery of the valley, English and American hunters and trappers were moving up and down the San Joaquin and the Sacramento rivers and their tributaries in search of these animals. The first of these trappers to cross the Sierras was Jedediah Smith. As early as 1825 he en- tered the San Joaquin Valley, in command of a company of hunters, trapping along the rivers during that season, he then traveled to Oregon. In the fall of 1832, Ewing Young led a company of men to this part of the valley. One of his party was James Warner, whom I have quoted in regard to the Indians. The trappers in which we are directly interested are those of the great English corporation ,the Hudson Bay Company. We are the most in- terested in them, for we know positively that they trapped beaver in this county at Castoria, the beaver settlement.

The Hudson Bay Company with their Cali- fornia headquarters at Yerba Buena, later called San Francisco, and their nearest outpost French Camp, trapped in this county during the seasons from 1828 until 1845, under the leadership of John McLeod. Later he became a warm friend of Captain Weber, and in his honor McLeod's Lake was named. Following McLeod, other trapping parties were sent down from Fort Vancouver led by Mr. Ogden, Michael La Framboise and John Ermientinger. The trappers were principally French Canadi- ans, and as many as 400 men have been located

at French Camp at one time. Hence the title which gave name to the locality-French Camp-and to the Weber land grant, "El campo de los Franceses"-the camp of the Frenchmen.

The Trail of John C. Fremont

While those Englishmen were located at French Camp, and their government had in view occupation and future possession of the western coast, John C. Fremont was sent out by the United States Government with the same ideas as those of England. This, how- ever, is state, not county, history and we will confine our record to Fremont's journey across the county and his description of it, in March, 1844. Then on his journey to the East he left Sutter's Fort, and traveling south, he wrote, March 25, in his diary, "We traveled for twenty-eight miles over the same delightful country as yesterday, and halted in a beautiful bottom at the ford of the Rio de los Moke- lumnes, receiving its name from another Indian tribe living on the river. The bottoms of the stream are broad, rich, and extremely fertile ; and the uplands are shades with oak groves. On the 26th we halted at the Arroyo de los Calaveras (skull creek), a tributary of the San Joaquin. The place is beautiful, with open groves of oaks, and a grassy sward beneath, with many plants in bloom, some varieties of which seem to love the shade of trees." After crossing the Calaveras at a point where now stands the Lockeford post road concrete bridge, he continues, "March 27, today we traveled steadily and rapidly up the valley making about four miles an hour." Arriving at the locality near the present city of Stockton he wrote, "During the earlier part of the day our ride had been over a very level part of prairie, separated by lines and groves of oak timber, growing along dry gullies, which are filled with water in seasons of rain; and perhaps also by the melting snows. Over much of this extent the vegetation was sparse, the surface show- ing plainly the action of water, which in the season of flood the San Joaquin spreads over the valley." Then leaving the adobe soil and entering the "sand plains," as it was called in early days, he says, "At one o'clock we came upon innumerable flowers, and a few miles further fields of the beautiful blue flowering lupin, which seems to love the neighborhood of water, indicating that we were approaching a stream. We continued our road for about

1 1

HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY

half a mile, interspersed by an open grove of live oaks, which in form were the most sym- metrical and beautiful we had ever seen in the country. The ends of the branches rested on the ground, forming somewhat more than a half sphere of regular figure with leaves ap- parently smaller than usual." Fremont at this time was at French Camp, as he describes the oaks as they were on the banks of that stream. "The California poppy of a rich orange color, was numerous. Today elk and several bands of antelope made their appearance." Fremont was not only a lover of flowers and plants, but he also had an appreciation of God's own coun- try, for riding on he wrote, "Our road was now one continued enjoyment, and it was pleasant riding among this assemblage of green pas- tures with varied flowers and scattered groves, and out of the warm green spring to look at the rocky and snowy peaks. Emerging from the timber we came suddenly upon the Stanis- laus River." As this river forms the southern boundary line between Stanislaus and San Joa- quin counties, we must bid good bye to Cap- tain Fremont, to meet him again in 1856 as the first Republican nominee for President.

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History of San Joaquin County, California : with biographical sketches of leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 5

Author: Tinkham, George H. (George Henry), b. 1849 Publication date: 1923 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif. : Historic Record Co. Number of Pages: 1660

Author: Tinkham, George H. (George Henry), b. 1849
Publication date: 1923
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif. : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1660