Unfortunately, what little is known about the indigenous populations of the Yuba-Bear River watersheds prior to the Gold Rush is limited to what can be learned from the analysis of stone tools – that’s not nearly enough to reflect the complexity and vitality of the people who were here first. Landscapes and resource patches managed by the Nisenan and Washoe were generally large enough to permit native populations to gather and harvest resources as a group. Usually such bulk harvesting required people to travel from their major villages to specific clusters of resources to collect large quantities of nuts, seeds, fruits, bulbs, roots, leaves, or stalks for basketry. This was not drudgery because it also offered opportunities for trade and social contact with neighboring groups. There is also the epicurian pleasure of camping near a meadow where favorite foods like yampa, wild plums or blackberries were abundant. Some foods, like acorns and sugar pine nuts, were transported back to winter villages where they could be stored.
Before the demographic wave of the gold rush, aboriginal trade and travel was possible because of what the late anthropologist Warren d’Azevedo called “corridors of tolerated access.” The corridor concept makes an important distinction between travel and trespass (d’Azevedo worked with the Washoe for over fifty years and founded the Anthropology Department at the University of Nevada, Reno). The Washoe were located at a nexus of trade routes. Among their trade routes: they traded eastward with the Paiute of the Great Basin, northerly with the people of the Columbia Plateau, westerly with the Nisenan of the Sierra Nevada foothills and Sacramento Valley and to the south and southeast with the Miwok, Mono Lake Paiute and Shoshone.
Spanish Explorers
ENTRADA
Explorers flatter themselves by positing that they are on the frontier and on unknown lands, but in reality, they are often in the homelands of people who have lived in a particular place for centuries, or thousands of years. The indigenous people lived in the center of their world and didn’t see themselves at the edge of someone else’s.
Between 1769 and 1823, twenty-one missions were built by the Spanish. You might assume that the indigenous people of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys and the people in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada wouldn’t have been affected by the missions, but this was not the case. Even though Spaniards seldom explored the interior their animals, plants and microbes escaped and spread inland. That didn’t go unnoticed by the native peoples who were very aware of the biosphere. Central Valley people were eating horses, cattle and new and unusual plants before they ever saw a white man.
While they generally stayed close to the coast, Spanish explorers ventured inland in the early 19th century. Gabriel Moraga traveled overland to the Sacramento Valley in 1806 and again in 1808. He was followed by the expeditions of Luis Arguello who, in 1817 and again in 1821, sailed far enough up the Feather River to see “Los Picachos” or “Tres Picos”, later named the Sutter Buttes. During their adventures they inadvertently introduced new plants, animals and diseases into the ecosystem. The indigenous people of the valley and foothills had a strong dependence on grass seeds and surely noticed the rapidly changing grasslands.
THE MISSIONS
A mission was more than a church; it was also an agricultural pueblo with hundreds, or even thousands, of Indians lured there with presents and kept there by soldiers. At first, the Indians were fascinated by the new and unusual trade goods and attentive to the new stories the Padres told, but they soon found themselves captives who were forced to abandon their traditional lifeways. Missions were seen as a way to pacify and convert the Indians and to include them, at the lowest level, into the encomienda system. The encomienda was simply a variation of the European feudal-manorial system. Once ensnared in this humiliating system they also experienced harsh treatment prompting many to attempt escape. Those who successfully made it to the San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevada foothills taught the Yokuts and Miwok to ride horses.
LIVESTOCK RAIDING
Even in the 18th century outlying “heathens” were running off livestock and reminding the mission inhabitants that they were vulnerable. In time inland Indians realized that, with proper techniques, horse and cattle raiding was fairly easy and it thoroughly irritated the white men. The continual acquisition of horses made them more mobile and efficient as trade opportunities continually increased until 1835, when stock raiding was widespread. Within two generations the Yokuts and Miwok showed that they could adapt from a semi-sedentary plant-based people to nomadic, meat-eating cavalrymen. Had it not been for the aggressive Indian-hating Americans arriving in the 1840s and provoking a war with Mexico they may have been able to drive out the invaders from the coast.
Indian Horseman in the Northern San Joaquin Valley
Charles Koppel 1854
As early as 1800 the Snake, Cayuse, Walla-Walla and others from the Columbian Plateau were trading in California for horses, Mexican blankets, vermillion and manufactured goods. When Yellow Bird from the Columbia River area led a trading expedition of 40 Nez Perce, Cayuse, and Walla Walla to Sutter’s Fort in California's Sacramento Valley in 1844 to trade for livestock he remembered that he was there on horse raids with his family about 1800. Among the major meeting places for trading were Yainax in southern Oregon, the Columbia River Plateau and the Humboldt Sink. By 1820, Surprise Valley, in northeastern California, had become a well-traveled section of a major north-south highway passing along the east face of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Ranges. This highway was heavily traversed by emergent predatory bands of horsemen.
Yellow Serpent
On the west side of the Sierra Nevada punitive raids by the colonial authorities became more common and pushed the horse-raiding California Indians into the foothills. The establishment of the horse-nomad pattern in east central California and western Nevada was a major and significant re-adaptive shift. Horse raiding flourished between 1833 and 1846.
What were mounted Indians from California and Idaho doing at the Humboldt Sink, Paiute territory, in 1829? It was its location as a central place on a river highway linking California with the Rockies and it was the only place with enough water and grass to support large numbers of horses. The Humboldt Sink was a site that could support the emerging predatory bands of the western Great Basin, with California and Idaho horsemen. Major commodities at the Humboldt rendezvous were probably horses and manufactured goods from California. On a least one occasion the California Indians brought salmon.
Rather than a frozen ethnographic present, the pattern that emerges is one of vitality and change during the protohistoric period characterized by relocations and adaptations of people on the northern and eastern peripheries of California. Encounters with these groups, were fortuitously recorded in the journals of Peter Ogden and Jedediah Smith. A peak seems to have been reached in 1846, when the Americans were struggling for power in California; after that there was a decline.
The Nisenan, too, may have become engaged in the horse and livestock trafficking were it not for the devastating epidemics of the 1830s followed by Sutter’s heavy-handed intimidation of the Nisenan.
MEXICAN CALIFORNIA – THE CALIFORNIOS
In 1821 Mexico gained its Independence but Alta California was considered a remote and undesirable outpost to most ambitious Mexicans. Most of today’s depictions of the rancho period are somewhat over-glamourized but there’s no denying they were excellent vaqueros. Both men and women of this era were proficient equestrians and gracious hosts who held splendid social gatherings with feasting, dancing, singing and displays of horsemanship and other skills associated with ranching.
When Hawaiian King Kamehameha I was gifted some cattle by English navigator George Vancouver in 1792 he protected them until they wreaked havoc on gardens and could not be restrained. The king sent a special envoy to Alta California to hire vaqueros to manage the cattle and to teach his own men about ranching and the specific skills needed. The ensuing generations of Hawaiian cowboys, still working, are called Paniolos. Among the original vaqueros were Joaquin Armas, Miguel Castro, and Frederico Ramon Baesa whose legacy endures with Paniolos inheriting a taste for braided lariats, adorned saddles, bright ponchos, long spurs, bandanas, and floppy wide-brimmed hats. The flair and fashion of Californio clothing and gear is an audacious blend of Spanish and Indian design where form and function merge beautifully. In my research I often come across comments from Americans of that era who criticize the expressiveness of Californio culture – do I detect a hint of envy?
Californio
Foreign trade was allowed when Mexico gained independence but hides and tallow were the only exports – for a good depiction of that era I recommend reading Richard Henry Dana’s, “Two Years Before the Mast.” In north central California Europeans wanted large tracts of land that could be turned to agriculture and ranching using local Indians as a workforce. Among those who obtained Mexican Land Grants in the lower regions of the Feather, Bear and Yuba Rivers were William Johnson, John Rose, Theodor Cordua, Theodore Sicard, Claude Chana and John Sutter who received Mexican citizenship, a grant of 11,000 square leagues (49,000 acres) and a position as regional official. The lingua franca in Alta California at the time was Spanish and most Indians, who were typically multilingual, spoke at least enough to conduct trade.
Map of Mexican Land Grants
TRAPPING / HUNTING
Meanwhile the Russians, British and Bostonians were voraciously trapping sea otter, and to a lesser degree northern fur seal, off the California coast until they were seriously depleted. Bostonians were trading with China, where a sea otter pelt, typically measuring 5 feet by 2 feet, was worth $300. The Russians, in addition to furs, also gathered and traded geese and duck down.
Trapper
Beaver trapping opened the interior of California. American Jedidiah Strong Smith and Michael Framboise of the Hudson’s Bay Company were trapping fur-bearing mammals in the Sacramento Valley as early as 1826. Smith and his trappers represented the United States’ fur interests giving Alta California even more of an international presence. He also introduced American fur and horse traders from the southwest, mostly independent mountain men and Indians collectively known as chaquanosos (adventurers of all nations) who came from as far away as New Mexico and Colorado.
John Work, in 1833, led the Southern Trapping Party of the Hudson’s Bay Company that included 63 people and 400 horses. They camped in what is now known as the Sutter Buttes just north of today’s Yuba City. His diary entry of February 22 is witness to their wanton killing of wildlife: “There is excellent feeding for the horses, and abundance of animals for the people to subsist on. 395 elk, 148 deer, 17 bears, and 8 antelopes have been killed in a month, which is certainly a great many more than was required.” Most of the Indian employees of the company were fugitives from the missions, while other Indian people came from the Columbia Plateau, and the San Joaquin Valley of Alta California, Aleuts came from the far north and Kanakas came from Hawaii and New Zealand. Trapping caused a rapid reduction in fur-bearing mammals while the Anglo trappers themselves introduced disease for which the indigenous people had no immunity.
One more thing, engagement in the trapping economy also made the Indians dependent on it. While trapping they neglected traditional practices like burning and various horticultural practices that were sustainable. Also, when the beaver were depleted the white trappers simply moved on leaving the natives with diminished resources.
THE EPIDEMICS OF THE 1830s
Trappers from the Columbian Plateau inadvertently brought malaria, followed by measles to the Sacramento Valley in 1833, with smallpox arriving in 1837. In less than a decade these diseases wiped out an estimated 75% of the valley Nisenan. Disease extended from the upper Sacramento Valley, south to the King’s River and east to the bordering foothills. Sexually transmitted diseases, introduced by the Spanish, were also commonplace with syphilis affecting 20% of the native population.
Derby's 1849 Map of the Sacramento Valley
Here is an eye-witness account of the epidemic by J.J. Warner, “From the head of the Sacramento to the great bend and slough 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 seen under almost every shade tree near the water, where the uninhabited and deserted villages had been converted into graveyards.” Many of the surviving Indians fled to the foothills where refugees presented new circumstances for their hosts such as an increased demand on resources, new ideas and charismatic leaders who emerged in the midst of ongoing crises.
Biologist and ethno-historian, Sherburne Cook, demonstrated that disease and hostility were the major causes of aboriginal population decline, closely followed by malnourishment and starvation. Former native habitat was fenced, with springs and meadows now off-limits. Streams were full of siltation and riparian habitat was destroyed. To eat well and enjoy the essential rhythm of Nisenan lifeways it takes seasonal access to hunt and gather in three ecosystems. Instead, the Nisenan found themselves competing with introduced livestock for food and fenced out of areas with springs and meadows. Naturally a starving person, family or band of people will steal a cow, pig or chicken, but when caught they were severely punished. When “chastising” the Indians it was a common practice to destroy stored foods and the implements used to produce food.
JOHN SUTTER
In northern California Sutter’s name is all over the place: there is Sutter’s Fort, Sutter Creek, Sutter County, the Sutter National Wildlife Refuge, Sutter Health, Sutterville Elementary School and Sutter Middle School, to name but a few. There is also a small but spectacular island of mountains, north of today’s Yuba City, called Sutter Buttes. Shelly Covert, spokesperson for the Nisenan Nevada City Rancheria, remembers her grandfather telling her it is impolite to refer to these mountains, known as Histum Yani to the Nisenan, by using Sutter’s name.
Mission fugitives were moving upstream on the Sacramento river about the time that Sutter arrived. Sutter, his eight Kanaka laborers, and a handful of white settlers reached the juncture of the American and Sacramento Rivers in August of 1839. At first, he told the Miwok, Nisenan and other Indians that he came in peace and he offered them employment. Later, he showed the Indians the three cannons he had, thus warning the Indians that he would not hesitate to use force if necessary.
Sutter's Fort
Gleason' Drawing Room Companion
It was in Sutter’s best interests to stop livestock raiding. To protect New Helvetia he put together a force of 150 Indian infantrymen and 50 cavalrymen supervised by a few whites. They wore blue and green uniforms with red trim bought from the Russians at Fort Ross in 1841. This must have been an intimidating (or bewildering) sight.
Sutter was all about business. He hoped to profit from every settler who ventured into the region, and he did all he could to welcome newcomers. It’s not far-fetched to compare Sutter’s fort with Ellis Island – he even issued passports to newcomers much to the chagrin of Governor Alvarado. Sutter played a pivotal role in opening California for American settlement. Sutter's story combines myth with reality and reminds us that settlement in California was often based on corruption, lies and luck.
Sutter treated “his Indians” as slaves and managed them with favors and punishment, including whippings and murder. He used bells to teach punctuality and introduce new work rhythms and tried to teach the Indians the value of monogamy and the tenants of patriarchy. Sutter routinely engaged in human trafficking, he kept a harem of Indian girls and even gave Indian girls to his white trading partners. Sutter saw himself as king and did as he liked. In his Reminisciences (1876), he reaffirms this by proclaiming, “I, Sutter, am the law!” Furthermore, “The Indians I did not marry or bury I was everything [to]: patriarch, priest, father and judge.” This is not hyperbole – it’s all in the historical record.
Sketch of a Nisenan Settlement near Yuba City (Sutter's Hock Farm)
The drying cotton shirts cost the Indian workers two-weeks labor per shirt.
When gold was discovered at a sawmill on Sutter’s land grant, most of his workers deserted and the Americans he so admired swarmed his land with total disregard for Sutter’s kingdom.
AMERICAN SETTLERS
In 1840 there were approximately 400, mostly American, emigrants in California. The overland Bidwell-Bartleson Party arrived in 1841 and in 1844 the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party were the first wagons to cross the summit at what would later be named Donner Pass. The ill-fated Donner Party attempted a crossing of the summit in 1846.
For the most part they came as families. They were American citizens who aimed to stay that way, as proud Protestants they weren’t about to convert to Catholicism. Americans were less pastoral than Californios and were more interested in retail sales. To top it all off they disliked Californios and found miscegenation repugnant. President Polk, in 1844, proclaimed that the move westward was America’s manifest destiny, that is to say, that their takeover was ordained by (their) god. Frustrated by Californio corruption and innately impatient they declared the California Republic in Monterrey in 1846. In the same year war was declared on Mexico.
GOLD
In 1848, only nine days after gold was discovered on the American River the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed and Mexico surrendered Alta California to the Americans. Jonas Spect, led by an Indian guide, discovered gold on the Yuba River at Rose Bar on June 2, 1848. Within a year traditional Nisenan territory was overrun by rude strangers.
The Spaniards and Mexicans had a place for the indigenous people in their economic and social order, but the Americans did not. The American solution to the “Indian problem” was to establish a permanent farming population. After the gold rush was over the labor market was flooded with whites leaving only domestic work and subsistence labor available to the Indians.
Before the gold rush, the foothill Nisenan were absorbing refugees from the missions – terrified and shocked people fleeing malaria, measles, cholera, kidnapping and violence. This disarray resulted in readjustments of territories, alliances, constituencies, political structures and traditional practices. A few leaders appeared but futile attempts at resistance showed them that they were hopelessly outnumbered.
In 1848 the local Indians were willing to help the people obsessed with gold in exchange for exotic trade goods like beads, cloth, tools, sugar and alcohol. In 1848 and early 1849 they were laborers on mining claims where they constituted half of the gold miners in California. But in 1849 they mined for themselves while some whites set up trading posts for their trade. Among them were Bovyer’s, Empire Ranch, Jones Bar, White Oak Springs, Storms Ranch and Findley’s. In 1850 California became a state and the Indians were no longer allowed to mine, but they continued to supplement their subsistence by sniping for gold.
This brief synopsis of a dynamic half century is barely adequate but hopefully introduces some people to a seldom addressed era before the gold rush. History is complex and there are always versions of what happened. But history is no one version. As the late Ursula LeGuin put it, “… stories co-exist as facets of an agreed upon truth, a composite of points of view.”
• • •
