Today marks 150 years since the massacre of Wiyot people at Indian Island, just off the Eureka waterfront. The brutal event, in which mostly women and children were killed by white men from Eureka with hatchets and clubs, is the most well-known of a series of other genocidal acts that happened that day and surrounding days.
Above is a 1950 aerial photo of Indian Island and the city of Eureka from the Shuster collection at HSU.
New information about the massacre and the motives behind it are revealed in this week’s Journal in an article written by local historian Jerry Rohde.
The Redheaded Blackbelt has some thoughts on today’s (and that era’s) sad historical significance.
A candlelight vigil to mark the anniversary will take place Saturday February 27, 2010 at Woodley Island with Brush Dance demonstrations starting at 1:00. Candlelight vigil starts at 5pm followed by a 6:30 potluck at the Manila Community Center.
Previous Humboldt Herald posts on the massacre:
- Toward a Full Disclosure of the Names of the Men Responsible for the Indian Island Massacre
- Hank Larrabee – Humboldt County Honors a Murderer
- More on Hank Larrabee
The whole state is built on the blood of the innocent and rightful owners of the land. Nothing has changed. We are killing the Afgans, Pakistanis, Iraq’s and a whole host of others. Their crime? They’re standing in the way of greedy acquisition. So many native people’s have died in vain if our government and corps can continue with the same policies today.
The innocent and rightful owners of the land never pushed anybody else off the land? That seems unlikely. I’ve been told that the local tribes hate each other and have hated each other for hundreds if not thousands of years. With emotions running so high, it seems unlikely that no land disputes ever arose at any time during the last 15,000 years upon this soil.
Rohde has done us a great service by setting the record straight. I also appreciate Sims’ admonition in that same issue of the NCJ that those of us alive today should neither take credit for, nor take blame for, the actions of those who were here generations before us. If we unburden ourselves as individuals from responsibility for the sins of our great great grandfathers, we also remove our blinders and shine the light of truth on our history, the first step in a shared understanding.
Totally, 2:42. I’ve been watching the Olympics and that Vancouver land looks pretty sweet. I think we should go push those Canadians off that land because I’m sure they pushed some tribes off of it back in the day.
Hmmn, come to think of it, my neighbor has a really big lot. I may go do some pushin’ on that.
zeno is right, we should go back to europe. at least the caucasiona. Amerindians can go to asia.
caucasion
caucasian
white fuckers
Sad to see such flippant comments about such a sad topic. Reality is that throughout human history we’ve excelled at brutalizing each other. Study any period in history and you’ll be appalled at the cruelty we’re capable of. Regardless of whether we’re Native Americans or later arrivals, we should remember the victims of the Indian Genocide locally and take a lesson from this. To some degree, as trite as it sounds, we’re all family. Damned dysfunctional-but still family.
Zeno – I could not agree more!
7:01 am, don’t cast-off the “white skinned folks” that don’t act “white, nor supreme”. In other words, “Dances with Wolves” does exist in reality. Many “whites” can relate! It would be humane to actually connect with folks who live through similarities of their souls.
Again, please don’t consider all “whites” to be elitist, money mongoring pigs – for their are many diverse converts too!
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
Isn’t your aerial of Woodley Island and not Indian Island? Looks that way to me…
Yep, wrong island. Nice article NCJ.
yeah, I believe heraldo deserves credit for the incorrect photograph. Use this link for correct photo;
http://library.humboldt.edu/humco/holdings/photodetail.php?R=52&S=Indian%20Island&CS=All%20Collections&RS=ALL%20Regions&PS=Any%20Photographer&ST=ALL%20words&SW=&C=73
here’s the best pre samoa bridge
http://dscholar.humboldt.edu/humco/holdings/shuster/Access_Jpg/2001011940.jpg
The HSU collection page labels the photo “Downtown Eureka and part of Indian Island.”
label is wrong heraldo, see photo I posted at 8:26 and 8:29
Photo corrected.
I think the only valid lesson to learn here is that, unless they are confronted, the powerful will use their power to destroy the powerless or to convince the powerless to destroy one another. The chattering classes will amuse themselves by looking on with “great objectivity,” while scooping up their paychecks from the powerful. Then, the chattering classes will wonder what the fuss was about.
Most reporters won’t report. Most politicians won’t lead. Lots of so-called leaders will talk about maintaining good relations because “it’s a small town.” They’ll frown upon the non-cooperators, and congratulate themselves on their public-spiritedness.
That’s history and that’s current events.
nice crop job!
So the lesson here is get powerful or get screwed?
The lesson here is not to assume that the chattering classes are allies.
That is mostly Indian Island. Woodly Island is on the very right of the pic.
…and to confront, and to expect the chattering classes to tut-tut when you do, in-between their self-congratulatory messages to themselves.
By “chattering classes” you mean the blogs right?
I learn that if animals perceive a threat they will act in brutal and merciless ways to preserve themselves. Witness territorial battles between chimpanzee, where the victors eat a body of the slain enemy clan. It is good to remember the atrocities of the past to prevent its repeat, but to use as a tool of revenge and political name smearing only serves to deepen the divides.
There are more important lessons:
1) Much of what you read in newspapers is crap, but it will only be identified as such once 150 years have passed.
2) If you think people who have wealth are better than others, you’re facing precisely 180 degrees in the wrong direction. They may be just as good, but think about how they came to their wealth.
3) If you think that people deserve respect for their high positions in society, you really ought to examine what it is that the society is all about.
How do you think “they” came by their wealth? Do people “deserve” anything, do they earn it or do we give it?
Your scare quotes around “they” are precisely right. There are infinite ways in which any given wealthy person might have come to their wealth, and when their wealth is reduced to an ahistorical number, it becomes meaningless as a statement of their “deservingness”. It still may be worthwhile as a measure of their power in today’s society.
Perhaps someone got wealth because they or their ancestors took it from someone else by force. Perhaps they or their ancestors were exceptional at swindling or dealmaking. Perhaps they lucked out in the stock market. Perhaps they invented a life-saving drug. Perhaps their father happened to be exceptional at football, or they themselves have a talent for making people laugh.
Brutality is something that humans are easily capable of. It is not just a long ago one time occurrence.
It seems reasons are collected and agreed upon to justify brutality or genocide. There was momentum to the thought that the natives of this land were ‘less’ or ‘in the way’ or, a big favorite is ‘heathen’. Heathens can be killed, or as stated above, “They fought withe each other so we have the right to fight with them”. Even now this ‘agreement’ that they are ‘less’ stands.
From SF Gate: August 19, 2009|By Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer
State lawmakers have called upon the University of California to immediately return to Japan the skulls and bones of Japanese war victims from World War II’s Battle of Saipan that are being stored in an anthropology museum on the UC Berkeley campus.
They also asked UC officials to issue a formal apology to the Japanese government for not only keeping the Saipan remains in the museum’s vast collection of skulls and bones, but also for using the remains in scientific research.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has also voiced concern and made inquiries about the remains.”
And so while there is conversation to return the remains of Japanese warriors there is none to return the remains of the Native Americans held in our scientific drawers.
yeah, and we’ll apologize after they do for the estimated 25 million people they killed in their Asian campaign. They slaughtered between 7-16 million Chinese. Mostly civilians.
don’t forget your history.
One thing that history says, unanonymous, is that when you stop seeing individuals as individuals, when you reach the point that you can talk about “their” killing 25 million people, because all you can see is a national group, you lose the ability to respond to individuals individually.
When you look at 25 million killed in an Asian campaign, it seems to blind you to the question of whether some Japanese (or Native Americans / Indians) are entitled to be treated as humans rather than museum exhibits.
Isn’t brutality or force always the eventual outcome? Laws must be enforced, resources acquired and defended. Isn’t our social order, political structure, economic and legal system etc. just a highly evolved form of mock conflict (like you find among other animal species) to try and avoid actual violence? In the end, isn’t violence the bottom line?
desecration of warrior remains was a time honored tactic to demoralize the enemy. At what age do remains become artifacts worthy of scientific research and cataloging for prosperity? I do not know. I personally think the remains of japanese soldiers should be returned, with no apology other than we shouldn’t have held onto them for so long. It is, I believe, a rule under the Geneva Convention to return remains of combat casualties to country of origin or perform burial.
QE,
The “eventual outcome,” at least from my point of view, is irrelevant. Eventually, we’re all dead, so if the “eventual outcome” is to be used to justify current behavior and attitudes, we should all just kill ourselves so that the “eventual outcome” comes more quickly.
Each of us alive today has a life to do something with. It’s what I do with my life that matters to me, not “eventual outcome.”
well said, the ends do not justify the means.
Not a statement, just a question. I don’t think anyone wants to race for the bottom line. But isn’t that the point? What does it say about the giving of respect? Not only to individuals and groups (regardless of status or power) but to the institutions we have constructed to protect us from ourselves.
Flawed as they may be that is.
The “eventual outcome” is speculation, unless it is directly meant to be defined as “generally death”. Yet, knowing that death exists after birth; and, knowing that generations shall be created that draw the bloodlines from their ancestors, heritages, history, evolution, survival of the fittest, etc, the “eventual outcome” does become relevant for many “points and views. Does society leave a better or worse situation for the next generations to follow? This seems to be an issue.
Many people don’t believe in the “whatever it takes mentality” just to get somewhere in life. Many folks actually have a consciousness that goes opposite of personal greeds. So, from a different p.o.v., does society fail as a whole because the 4 D’s in life were not followed in a positive manner – Desire, Determination, Dedication and Discipline. We will see I suppose.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
Well, QE, I think there’s a bizarre-to-me form of Capitalist-christianism in this country that suggests that wealth is an indicator of god’s favor. How that is reconciled with Christ’s words in the bible, or with his own historical life, is a mystery to me, answerable only with the explanation that Capitalist-christianists are dumb, non-introspective, and perhaps have never actually read the New Testament.
As for the giving of respect, I think that’s where evolutionary explanations come in. We’re programmed to follow the alpha-dog, and in a capitalist society, the alpha-dog is the one with the most money. I think for most people, we automatically respect the people we follow.
But in addition to being evolutionary results, we’re also sentient, conscious beings, and we can recognize that, while we may be evolutionary programmed to follow the alpha dog, they might well violate our own personal value system. In other words, as thinking beings we are perfectly capable of identifying ways in which evolution’s results might be morally repugnant.
The “law of evolution,” basically says genes with an enhanced probability of spreading will spread. I think it offers very good predictions about human and animal behavior. But I think it says absolutely nothing about desirable behavior.
I am uncertain of how to hold this history that is so close to me. What is asked that this history becomes usable in creating healthy future? What is proper to do or learn or say or request next? This is complex beyond what I know how to respond to.
Where is Capdiamont on this one?
http://capdiamont.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/save-richardsons-grove-indian-opposition-is-due-to-deep-seated-racism/
Dear Kathy,
In my opinion, you’re asking the right question. I think many great novelists have offered their answers.
The answers sure don’t come easily.
Is it capitalist christianism or human nature? I would suspect these tendencies predate either concept. Dont we also dislike people for their success?
QE,
You can compare societies to determine how much it’s human nature and how much it might be specific to our own society. Could be the instincts are in human nature but the degree to which they are expressed or suppressed is highly related to the particular culture.
There are cultures today in which the behavior and attitudes are very different than those of mainstream America.
Kathy, to me, what’s most shocking (now) about commemorating the massacre is the so-called monument where the commemorations occur. It’s a bronze plaque on a rock, near the cartoon-fisherman statue on Woodley Island. It says something like “State Historic Site # 615.”
That’s it. No acknowledgment whatsoever of what it’s the historic site of. None. And that’s traditional Humboldt history in a snapshot.
Here’s the problem, as explained to me by a retired librarian in the Humboldt Room of the library: founders of some of Humboldt’s finest families organized and conducted the butchery. It was a secret even within the families (her family had partipated, and she didn’t know until middle age–it wasn’t a point of pride to later generations).
We’re used to a settlement meta-narrative that low-class, violent men performed outrages that soldiers and respectable people abhorred and tried to prevent. No doubt there’s some truth in that story–but not much.
I should also note that the perps’ identities were secrets kept even at the time, not out of any sense of shame I don’t think, but because the soldiers at Fort Humboldt were bivouacked for the express purpose of preventing and punishing such activities. As we know from General Grant’s biography, they preferred to mope around the fort drinking, but still, soldiers’ occasional enforcement of treaties and laws incensed the good citizens of Humboldt Bay, and the West generally. I do believe this is a seed of the anti-gummint Western culture we’ve enjoyed ever since.
Have you ever hiked Trinidad Head or the south side of the Klamath?
Two very beautiful and sacred native spots.
Both with unsightly and foreign white crosses.
I’d love to see both crosses come down. Not for my personal reasons of being apprehensive to imposed religion, but at least in respect for local Native cultures and rights.
Let’s not forget who sold many of the remaining Native peoples into slavery. For the Church, in Christ’s name. How offensive and ignorant!
I absolutely agree with you for the first time ever Jeff.
No doubt many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, it is almost universal once a religion reaches a certain size. Is this a result of religion, or rather a function of large groups? Plenty of terrible things have been done in the name of race, nation, ideology, even social justice. There is power in numbers and power corrupts right?
Custer had it coming.
Religion, politics,greed-all symptomatic of the meglomaniacal, euro-centric mindset.
A review of the U.S. foreign and domestic policy from the the colonial period through to the present are the brainchld of a Hannibal Lechter mentality.
Is sacredness a first come-first served proposition? Would removing the crosses deprive future generations of an important perspective or is it better to edit history based on a pesent day point of view? Do we step on a slipery slope when we start tearing down everything that someone finds offensive?
The Indian Island massacre was a terrible event, a terrible injustice.
However, it was 150 years ago. I don’t know anybody that was involved in any way. I feel no guilt whatsoever at all.
And, despite the Disney movies, indians were no saints in tune with mother nature & living peacefully. Long before the white man ever showed up the indian tribes were fighting & killing each other over land, women & material wealth. They were no better than our ancestors, it was a brutal time on earth.
The indians in colonial America were committing as many atrocities against whites as whites were against them.
How wildly different would each of our opinions be if we were here 150 years ago?
For me, the lesson is to always question and resist groupthink.
The indians in colonial America were committing as many atrocities against whites as whites were against them.
Nothing better than reading HiFi opine on a history he hasn’t read, has never understood but is willing to make idiotic statements like that one anyway. I bet HiFi still makes a stovepipe hat for Thanksgiving and believes the “pilgrims” were just good, honest working folks looking to get ahead.
QE,
I guess it also depends on what one finds offensive about the offensive actions that created something offensive – like displacing one for another.
One thing locally is that the community does not have to go back tens of thousand of years or even thousands of years, imo. Maybe say 100-200 years, kinda like this article seems to focus on.
Folks may not be able to immediately repair all damage and lost human rights from generations past, but society has the ability to slowly heal with the more recent descendents of those victimized previous generations who most likely will be more forgiving for whatever abuses occured back whence most of us were not even alive.
It is still a human responsibility to understand history and to acknowledge the “rights from the wrongs” so as to prepare a better future for the next generations to come, imo.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
What is more disturbing: the idea that a depraved white culture malisciously wiped out an indigenous people or that good, honest, hard working people can commit terrible acts given the right circumstances?
Oh Jesus “Watch out”, have you read no history at all?
Can you possibly be that misinformed?
You might want to read “King Philip’s War” by Eric Schultz & Michael Tougias. It is a scholarly & objective book about the great chief Philip.
Wow! I’m impressed! Actually informative and healthy attitudes here! Respect; according to Webster, includes “refraining from interfering with…”. There is not respect when one interferes in the life of another. The ruling class is respected, period. This for even those who think that “might is right”. Humans, in my 60 years of experience, have an animal nature that can be subdued with their spiritual nature, without it we are beasts. We all know that killing a human being is sacred and fearful business. Our rational mind, rather than accept guilt, will minimize the victim and hunt a human as an animal. With awareness that we are a created being there is more opportunity and impulse to be accepting of other humans. The ancients, ignorant of modern medical facts that show the black and red races are just different colors of Human evolved into white tribes believing that Dark skinned Heathen was meant to describe an animal. It has taken education to root this out of our consciousness and we haven’t educated everyone yet. The idea that someone who is different to me is a threat is running rampant in our society. Some historians are calling this generation the Age of Narcissists because we are so afraid and isolated in our individual thoughts. Personally, I believe compassion is a spiritual fruit.
So,hifi has your obtained knowledge led to you to conclude that the Natives would have just eventually invaded Europe anyways?
Out of all the people on here waxing philosophical and talking about the ignorance and evil of the people of the past (specifically white capitalist society), what will history say about you? Do you drive cars and pollute the earth? Do you eat meat? Do participate in this “evil capitalist society” that so many of you are referencing? It’s easy to look back on history and talk about the evil white man. What will history say about you and me? Is writing the occassional liberal rant on Heraldo’s joke website really making a difference or are we all just following the path society has paved for us?
There are a lot of stones being thrown and I doubt many of us really have the right to throw those stones. Indian Island should be contemplated, mourned, and learned from and not ridiculed, second guessed, and used to reguritate what your HSU professor once said in a History class.
You are right on Kate!
This mentality continues to this day, such as same sex couples being morally inferior to opposite sex couples.
Why do people work so hard at separating and devaluing each other by our differences instead of realizing(and living) the fact that we are all human, we are all equal.
For me, I will do the smallest of things. I will write and request the remains of the ancestors to be returned. One small voice. For me, I will take the time to put kind remarks in the Times-Standard when something occurs that stirs up the easy degrading hatred in the comments section. For me, I will hold that I am capable of slipping into the group of brutality, of that frame of mind. It is in fact more comfortable to see others as less than me. For me, I will try not to be that comfortable. Smallest of things. I can only do the smallest of things.
To put it in a short sentence, “Mean People Suck”. It’s so hard to understand such barbaric behavior, or mob mentality in general.
I looked back on previous posts about this and saw the one about “full disclosure”. I am sure many of us have relatives who were guilty of this and other unknown crimes. Those of us today who think this was an unspeakably cruel tragedy are not responsible for our ancestors. Today we need to move forward and make sure this sort of thing never happens again, another example being what happened in the Holocaust.
Some comments here about local people bloggers don’t even know are incredibly cruel, in my eyes, and yet you pretend with your holier-than-thou attitude that you represent the ultimate in compassion.
Is it the same thing when we steriotipify (if that is a word) rich people, or “elites” or are they really inferior?
Explain your(anon)self.
For me, it’s deeper than mean people suck. It’s about the inherent nature of humans and our willingness to ridicule those from the past instead of looking at our own shortcomings and our place in history.
People were slaughtered this year in the Sudan. I’m guessing nobody on this website did anything. I have the financial means to fly to the Sudan to help. Instead I drank beer and smoked weed, hung with friends, and lived my life. I think most of us did the same thing. My point is that to critique the past is silly. To talk about the evils of the white man and capitalism while living and benefitting from it (i.e. everyone on this website) seems extremely hypocritical. Kateascot is dropping philosophical knowledge and I for one appreciate that. I could do without the condemnations of my forefathers. It’s easy to act like we would have done better but how many of us are doing better now and that is the only thing that matters.
Oh, you know, cruel comments about public figures that I know really do hurt. Ones that are not objective or about the public figure’s political stance, but about things like their appearance that have nothing to do with their position or job for the public. This blogsite is filled with ugliness and sniping back and forth at each other as well.
Dear QE,
You really do live up to your handle, QE, and I hope it’s not condescending of me to say “hooray!”
“Is this a result of religion, or rather a function of large groups?”
My opinion is that it’s a result of ideology, which may come in the form of religion or other “isms”. People can be selfish for no reason at all, but the worst atrocities tend to occur when people are (or one person is) convinced they are doing god’s work, or the secular equivalent. Religion is an awfully broad category. I doubt there’s any religion that doesn’t have atrocities in its past, but there are plenty of atrocities committed in the name of non-religious ideologies as well.
“Is sacredness a first come-first served proposition?”
What a great question w/r/t the suggestion that the crosses be taken down. It does seem especially jarring to put up your own religious symbols after you’ve removed the prior inhabitants, especially if you’ve removed them via violence, and claim that your country does not have a state religion. No answer, not even an opinion.
“What is more disturbing: the idea that a depraved white culture malisciously wiped out an indigenous people or that good, honest, hard working people can commit terrible acts given the right circumstances?”
Solzhenitsyn: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
“Is it the same thing when we steriotipify (if that is a word) rich people, or “elites” or are they really inferior?”
QE,
It depends, doesn’t it? I think it’s perfectly reasonable to admit to having “default” assumptions about people based on their presence in certain categories. It becomes foolish only when you fail to let evidence override the defaults.
When I look at a classification of people and notice common tendencies, I form a “default” view of the category. That only becomes a problem when I can no longer distinguish individuals, or when I allow one classification (race, job, religion, nationality or region) to win out over all the hundreds or thousands of other classifications.
Unfortunately, there’s a ton of psychological evidence now hitting the popular book circuit that shows that we have a nasty tendency to let neutral evidence confirm our beliefs. That’s why my favorite bumper sticker isn’t “Question Authority,” but “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.”
Truth Speaker,
“People were slaughtered this year in the Sudan.”
Yes, you are right, we should be more concerned. But failing to respond to the needs of those a half a world away is not exactly the same as slaughtering a group of people you don’t like. If you want to make the comparison, I think you’d do a lot better criticizing the US behavior in Iraq.
And even there, we said we were trying to avoid hurting civilians. (Whether it’s true is another story, but we obviously felt the need to say it.) That’s not the same as sneaking up on a group of defenseless people and slaughtering them.
Well put Mitch. Are some of these characteristics a function of the group’s dynamics and is that why they sometimes don’t hold up on an individual level?
I don’t understand your need to include the words “defenseless” or “sneaking up” in your condemnation. As if murder is more or less justified based on the victims having weapons or based on the age or gender of the victims or based upon the victims having foreknowledge of their impending death. Eureka’s streets are adorned with the names of murderers and bigots.
I’m not really sure what you’re asking, QE.
If you’re asking if people can behave one way in one group, another way in another group, and still another way when they are interacting with only one person, then sure. But I think it’s also completely common for individuals in any group to differ from the group’s norm in some but not all characteristics.
Just wondering if some of what is percieved as a steriotype is the result of group behavior as opposed to characteristics that are inate to the individual. Like you, I can see the divisions from a distance but they seem to dissapear once you get outside the group. Is it because of the group or are we all just much more alike than we think?
Well, QE, I think we’re all desperately more alike than any of us, especially me, wants to believe. But the clear fact that we generate our own load of bullshit (or, as the Buddhists say, “karma”) doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility to respond to the bullshit of others.
4:16,
You’re right.
Oh, by the way, before y’all get carried away with sniping at each other, y’all should THANK Jerry Rohde for doing the research and having the guts to put his name on the article. The last guy who wrote about Indian Island(a guy named Brett Harte)was run out of town. Also, the title is a reference to a book entitled “Genocide and Vendetta” written by Lynwood Carranco and Estle Beard that named names of the folks involved in the Round Valley massacre. A few copies were published before it was taken out of print. Sprinkle some kudos on Hank, too.
Genocide and Vendetta really is an informative and interesting book. You can only get it from the library, but not (as many people think) because of family pressures from Round Valley. There was a falling-out over something like crediting of student work that caused the book to be pulled from publication for charges of plagiarism.
It’s an awful shame. Genocide and Vendetta brings the late 19th century rural North Coast to life like ‘Shane’ did the Wyoming range wars. It’s really worth visiting the library for, if not paying $800 at Abebooks.
And kudos duly sprinkled, Hank.
“Eureka’s streets are adorned with the names of murderers and bigots”
As are San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Omaha, Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Scranton, Long Beach, Carmel, San Diego, Portland, Fort Wayne, Walnut Creek, Boise, Scottsdale, Saginaw, Cedar Rapids, Springfield, Tacoma, Osh Kosh, Roanoke, Pensacola, Spartanburg, Miami, Reno, Cheyenne, Missoula, Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Nashville, Bowling Green, Bangor, Hartford, Sante Fe, Bismark, Greenville, Asheville, Telluride, Buffalo, Mobile, Salt Lake City, New Bedford, Muncie, Providence, Madison, Biloxi, Gary, Detroit, Wheeling, Dodge City and yes, your hometown too.
Some background…
news of a horrible massacre of Indians at several villages around Humboldt Bay by a party of 40 white men
The Humboldt Butchery of Indian Infants
Walt is right about crediting Jerry Rhode with the courage to write this article. And Walt goes on to say that the last guy who wrote about Indian Island was run out of town. But really, no, not true.
Lynette Mullen, one of many women researchers and writers of our history has been writing of the treatment of Natives in this area for awhile now.
To quote from her blog today:
This week marks the 150th anniversary of the Indian Island Massacre.
While I know this anniversary is being recognized by tribal members and others , I think it is most important to remember that that those killed were people, and not just “Indians”.
John Grisham wrote the book, A Time to Kill, about a black father in the deep south who kills two white men that raped his daughter.
Through much of the book, race is the overarching issue. The death of two white men at the hands of a negro. Two of “us” killed by one of “them”, and it is only when the jurors are urged to imagine the victim as a little white girl and her father as a father, instead of a black man, that they are able to sympathize. They are finally able to recognize a family who suffered a great injustice they simply could not abide.
If one hundred and fifty school children and their mothers were brutally murdered during a school event, everyone in the community would recognize the loss years later. This massacre, one of too many that happened in this area during the settlement period, should be no different.
http://lynette707.wordpress.com/
Per Walt, 5:06,
Thank you Jerry Rhode, for your courage in researching and writing and attaching your name to the article. Thank you, Hank Sims, for having the courage to print it.
Mitch, Did you happen to catch the name of the woman who left the only witness account of the Indian Island Massacre?
I am amazed at some of the people responding to a calamity like this one. Do you ever stop joking long enough to make a thoughtful and reasoned comment on any subject? I’ll bet that if you were an American caught by the Japanese in the Philippines during WWII, you would be singing a different tune.
Brett Harte was probably the first person the write about the massacre, and was run out of town because of it. Early whites in Humboldt County have done this sort of thing more than once. Take for instance, rounding up all the Chinese residents and loaded them on ships, and sent them all packing. That sense of privilege still has strong roots here.
“The indians in colonial America were committing as many atrocities against whites as whites were against them.”
Yet more troglodytic musings from the neanderthal intellect of High Finance.
You must be very entertaining to your knucklescraping neighbors on Bullshit Avenue.
d’herbois, how old are you?
An excellent discussion of white – Indian conflicts and killings is Ch 9 of the book “Two Peoples, One Place” by Ray Raphael and Freeman House (Humboldt County Historical Society,2007.) It includes a description and discussion of the Indian Island and related massacres on p. 164-170. There is a partial list of massacres of Indians by whites in the Humboldt region, 1850-1864 on p. 172 – 178. There were at least 56.
This book, which discusses Humboldt history up to 1882, present both white and native American perspectives. It is a great read for anyone interested in the history of our region.
Fantastic discussion on this thread; I’ve particularly enjoyed all of Mitch’s comments and responses.
One thought: yes, it’s true that the Native Americans did commit atrocities – and fight over land use and women – but nothing on the level of what Europeans and people of European descent did once they arrived in the “New World.” It is a point of historical interest to me that white women taken into captivity by Native Americans rarely chose to return to white society once they had assimilated and married into Native societies. In some cases, “rescued” women returned to the tribe rather than live the circumvented, you-can-be-a-wife-or-you-can-be-a-whore life available to women, especially in the West. The same often went for children; “The Unredeemed Captive” is an interesting book about a case in New England in the late 1700′s.
Such a thoughtful thread, thanks everyone. And most of all Jerry Rohde for his incredible effort condensing many months of research into a short, but hard hitting article.
Yes, Cristina, but the “you should have killed yourself rather than submit” attitude from whites undoubtedly played a role in their choices.
We’re drifting into themes from the first great literary genre of American history: ‘captivity narratives’ of women abducted from the frontier and redeemed, or not. Often they had to be abducted back; one of the great ironies of the frontier, freely discussed by Ben Franklin among others, was that everyone knew Indians had easier lives than whites, and that people taken captive very often went so native that they refused to return to civilization. This may have been a major meta-bummer influencing our rage against the heathen.
Here’s a capsule of a late captivity narrative, concerning probably the single most demonized tribe of the Republic:
Cynthia Ann Parker – abducted in 1836 in Texas by Indians, she was part of the Comanche community for almost 25 years until abducted again — by Texas Rangers. Her son, Quanah Parker, was the last Comanche chief. She died of starvation, apparently from grief at being separated from the Comanche people which whom she identified.
Well the Europeans certainly were well practiced in slaughtering each other long before they came over to the New world and started slaughtering the natives.
Plus a lot of people who came over here from Europe had been people who had been recently displaced by someone else’s violent land grab. I’m sure that played no small part in thier hardassed world view
In those days, everywhere the Europeans went they found tribal conflicts and also Natives who were only too happy to cooperate with Whitey in an effort to fuck over their tribal enemies.
So the real story, while no less horrible, is a good deal more complicated than just bad Euro/Good Native.
Thanks for mentioning that, Robash. But don’t expect to become popular with such a message. The simple-minded and self-righteous hordes still hold sway in the court of publio opinion.
The U.S. Constitution was modeled upon the governing structure practiced by the Iroquois nation for millennium, as referenced by the Founders.
Attempts to diminishing regional atrocities by virtue of humanity’s brutal tendencies is pure folly.
Historic self-censorship that downplays genocide benefits its continuation against the weaker, darker-skinned people of the world…to this day…
We could call it “imperialism” but that word has been effectively censored too.
I appreciate Jerry’s article as much as everyone else, but I find it interesting that simply sharing what he researched makes him “courageous” to so many of you. Why this presumption that sharing the truth is/was so difficult and required “courage”?
Bret Harte was courageous.
Jerry Rhode was simply doing a good job.
I first learned about the Indian Island massacre back in high school, Jack Norton’s US history class. He covered stuff that wasn’t in the text books, much to the displeasure of some parents.
THAT was courageous. :)
Well I’m certainly not trying to minimize or excuse the cowardly perps of this dreadful terrible act. It depresses me that these cowardly villans never faced justice in this world.
Instead of being deservedly treated like murderous sociopathic scum, they instead were allowed to live out thier lives, some as respected pillars of the community .
I believe that only a small percentage of the settlers were murderous thugs.As usual, however the thug mindset seems to have a disproportionate influence.
It’s more interesting to me to find out why otherwise good people go along with this when they probably knew it was wrong . That’s an important question no one is asking
I think that’s what causes some people so much embarrasment when this subject is mentioned.
It’s appeant this community has never really come to terms with this tragedy.
Looking at it from just one really narrow dogmatic perspective is certainly not going to help achieve that goal
Don’t ya hate it when people say: “It was a different time…”?
The Declaration of Independence lists among its grievances the failure of King George III to protect Americans from, and I quote, “the merciless Indian savages.”
You won’t find that in “Little Big Man.”
History is not a simple morality play. It takes courage to face the harsh and complicated truth.
It wasn’t just individual thugs who stole land from Native Americans and it wasn’t just against “savages” whom whites feared. “While Rivers Flow,” by Glen Fleischman, chronicles the forced resettlement of Cherokees from towns and farms in Georgia using government documents, judicial records, private and military diaries, and contemporaneous newspaper accounts to tell the story of how political pressure was brought to bear due to the greed of whites who wanted the rich Cherokee lands.
To partially answer:
robash141:
February 28, 2010 at 11:07 am
An old classic is “The Lucifer Effect” by Philip Zimbardo documenting the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, among others, showing how “good people” can easily do bad things when subjected to abusive authority and power.
Also shocking is the book “Plutonium Files” documenting hundreds of cases of America’s poor minorities used by the U.S. government to be injected with plutonium by licensed “doctors”. So much for oaths.
Prejudice and bigotry necessarily follow as a “justification” to historic disenfranchisement and eminent domain over a group and their resources, even simply an individual’s labor or experimental value.
“When a poor and ignorant people possess something desired by an enlightened and powerful people, it is to be offered up peaceably”.
Mark Twain
Hopefully, after decades of romance with bipartisanship and “being nice”, “building bridges”, “buttering our bread on both sides”, “not hammering the nail too far through the wood”, “keeping the peace”, being “team players” or what Ralph Nader calls “harmony ideology”, will once again fade into righteous, patriotic anger over the growing and thriving abuses in our community and nation.
Humboldt Times May 14(?), 1861:
“The California Spirit of the Times recently published an article in which it boldly advocates extermination as the only security against the Indians on the coast. We do not indorse the plan suggested, but the article contains much good sense and presents a great contrast to the sentimental trash and mock sympathy for the ‘poor Indian’ which characterize the style of most of the city papers in their treatment of this subject.
We believe that if the government will take hold of the matter in earnest, the Indians can be removed to Reservations and kept there. But that the country at present is infested by them must be relieved of their prescence, by some means, admits of no doubt.
It is a present neccessity and cannot be altered nor avoided by discussion of abstract questions of right or wrong as between two races. We must take things as they are not as they should be, according to our standard, if we would have a correct basis on which to predicate public measures.
It is as impossible for the white man and the wild Indian to live quietly together as it is to unite oil and water, and if the country is ever to be settled and developed by our race the Indians must give way.
Which condition of things do our city friends prefer? If you want the country to remain in its wild condition and continue the abode only of this miserable race of diggers, come out boldly and advocate it. On the contrary, if you want to see the country improved–that towns and villages should spring up, and fields of glorious grain and luscious fruit deck the face of the land, and that the herds and flocks of the husbandman should feed on our hills and in our valleys unmolested: in fact if you desire to see the trade and business of your own city prosper and whole State increase in wealth and importance, then you must advocate our side of this question. Temporizing will no longer do. In our present extremity you must take sides, and be either for us and against our enemy, or the opposite. Which do you choose? That is the question.”
History Troll has his the mother load. It was open to public discussion and intimidation. “Are you with us or agin’ us”. Bledsoe’s, Indian Wars of the Northwest, is one of the best reads on the subject. They have copies at the Library. Genocide was part of the underlying plan almost from the very beginning of the euro-american invasion. No wonder the local natives were pissed off.
I agree, History Troll’s got one hell of a smoking gun here, which expresses the direction things went perfectly clearly. While Jerry Rohde’s interpretation of the letter to the governor (“Pay us for killing these diggers or we’ll kill some more of them.”) is a harder logical leap for me, much as I’ve learned from his history too.
Above all, these history conversations affirm that it rewards a lot more of our attention and concern. Remember Faulkner’s great quote? “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
lynette77,
In answer to your question (Feb 27 1:43), I would invite you to examine the newspapers here, weekly and daily.
Go find me some honest, blunt reporting about people in power. I can think of the North Coast Journal’s article about the airport manager, if you’re willing to stretch and call that a position of power.
For someone to attach their name to research about the clear, vicious criminality of the ancestors of some of this community’s muckymucks does strike me as courageous and worthy of note, if only in comparison to the toadying-to-wealth more typical of the local media.
I just spent five more hours going through the last half of the 1861 Humboldt Times on microfilm at HSU, as I am sure Jerry did. The task of condensing down his many months, years?, of research into a short article is an enormous task that requires severe severe editing, and I am sure he would have loved to have said more, and have people pursue his footnote path.
From what I have read in the 1861-62 Humboldt Times editorials supports Jerry’s thesis, and I think if one would read them one would agree. The local “corporate press” of the day was clearly and articulately, pro-business, and white-supremacist. Every derogatory term suitable to print was used to demonize the enemy, Indians, or Chinese. I saw two articles discussing what to do with “pet” Indians. The editor Wiley often sarcastically protested the more sympathetic treatment given to Northcoast news by the SF Bulletin and East Coast papers and their “Lo, the poor Indian” sentiments. Wiley mentioned that one man sent him a 24 page letter with a different account of an Indian battle than was told in the Times, but that he would not print it due to size concerns. I got the impression that if people wanted to get a different truth out in print they would have to send the news elsewhere.
Looking through the window of the Humboldt Times into that era suggests that 150 years before the reporting of O’Reilly…there was “O’Wiley”.
What are the chances that letter still exists?
History Troll, I think I love you.
H- I will ask around, but I doubt it.
Given Wiley’s prejudice it likely went out with the trash.
I didn’t read all the comments about this act of malice. Tish Wilburn before she died, often told
me Eureka was cursed because of this dastardly act.
I alwas disagreed. I told her the problem with
the native born Eurekians is that they did not
evolve.
Using that logic, the entire world has curses resulting from atrocities committed everywhere at some point in history. Hopefully most humans learn from the cruelty of others and work to prevent it from happening again. There were many good Eurekans at the time of the massacre who were not part of this sickening event, and why would anyone blame the descendants of those bigoted monsters who took part in the massacre?
So, Anony.Miss, I take it you’ve spoken out against the “shock and awe” approach we took in Iraq under the leadership of Mr. Bush? Remember, Iraq had done nothing to us, and the civilian casualties there were extensive.
What most people seem to learn from “the cruelty of others” is zip.
Ah, Mitch,
I see even you using the euphemism “civilian casualties” which sounds much nicer than “devastating loss of thousands of lives” or “deaths” or, this, which could be considered accurate because all those civilians did die at the hands of others (including ours), “murder”.
Our invasion of Iraq lead to the deaths of so many people… yet I have to hold onto the hope that you’re wrong about not learning from past cruelties. The alternative is simply unimaginable.
lynette77,
As for the euphemism, I stand corrected. And as for the “learning,” I join you in hoping I’m wrong.
I write a blog about local history and forgot I’d done a post on this very topic.
http://lynette707.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/no-happy-little-story/
It touches on the history here, but also the holocaust, and our seeming inability to learn…
Yet I know we aren’t all bad. And ignorant. And too stubborn to learn. It just takes time…
Whether Eureka is cursed or not, would it not be a good thing if the Wiyot People were able to perform the World Renewal Ceremony once again? It couldn’t hurt.
have a peaceful day,
Bill
Thank you Bill.
I seem to remember a few years (or decades) ago reading an indepth article by an HSU geologist on the BIG quakes up the north coast and the subduction zone, whose wife had been collecting local Native American myths for years. I think the Indian Island massacre was mentioned because they were gathered for their (?) stomp dance to prevent earthquakes at the time they were attacked. Is this the same ceremony as World Renewal?
The HSU geologist was Gary Carver. His wife, Deborah, did a lot of the collecting & collation of Native American oral traditions & myths. Very interesting stuff.
Gary retired in 1998 and he & Deborah now live on Kodiak Island. He’s still actively doing geology & working on geo-archaeological projects with some of Aleut peoples.
YES, Filibuster! Did I remember the rest of it about why the Wiyot’s were gathered on Indian Island correctly?