Queens of the Mines

Mary Ellen Pleasant - FROM THE VAULT

Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. She was one of the richest and most powerful people in California, and she was a black woman.  Known as the “mother of civil rights in California”, one of San Francisco’s most notorious madams, a savior of the downtrodden, an exploiter of the wealthy and the “Queen of Intuition”, while breaking racial taboos she played a remarkable role in the early years of San Francisco, and I want you to know her name.
 
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Intuition
In a San Francisco courtroom trial, William Sharon’s lawyers were painting Mary Ellen as a sinister crone. They accused her of using dark forces to manipulate her friend, Sarah Hill, into wrongfully seducing Sharoon, the former Nevada senator. The legend was that late one dark night, Mary Ellen and Sarah Althea buried the Senator’s coat in a cemetery, and that the two sprinkled love potion on his underwear, spells that would renew the senator’s forgotten love for Hill. In the trial, The newspapers fixated on Mary Ellen’s voodoo practice, it was obsessed over, and reported on, across the nation. Rather than rejecting the rumors that day in court, Mary Ellen encouraged them, carrying a voodoo doll into court, claiming she would use it to bring the Senator to his death, and to his death he went, before the trial was even over. It was deeply rooted that survival meant that you don’t tell, that you keep secrets. From the beginning, Mary Ellen had deception, concealment and skullduggery inside her armory.
 
Mary Ellen arrived alone in San Francisco on April 7, 1852. It was an unsafe place for a woman to be by herself. There were six men to every woman among the population of 40,000, and at least 700 places to drink and gamble and at least 5 murders every week. She was up to the challenge that stood before her. In a matching black dress and bonnet she stood on the muddy and smelly embarcadero in front of the large group of wealthy men who had gathered at the docks awaiting her arrival. The men all wanted the same thing, to gain Mary Ellen as their employee. She had one contingency for the highest bidder, she would not be doing anyones dishes. As the men bargained, Mary Ellen noticed how many men there were. The need for domestic care and housing was obvious. Their wives were not  here. The grown men needed a mother. She looked to the sea, just in time to see a bald eagle dive and snatch a fish from the water. She quickly changed her mind. She announced to the men that she would open her own restaurant, and the first boarding house in San Francisco, and she hoped to see them there. In the heart of today’s Chinatown, Mary Ellen was filling the ice  bucket, eavesdropping on the men’s after dinner chat. Back in her room, she took notes. Her boarding house at 920 Washington Street had become the meeting place of some of the city’s most prominent politicians. Senators, judges, financiers and the governor moved in. Mary Ellen hosted luxurious balls and elegant dinners, and brought in beautiful, classy women to attend her parties and keep the wealthy men company.The Governor took his oath of office in her establishment. At the parties, Mary Ellen poured brandy for guests, she eavesdropped on the insider information on stock investments, and gained the insight revealed by powerful men. Mary Ellen had trained the young women in her establishments to do the same. They were told to listen in on the men's dinner conversations and report back the financial gossip of the businessmen to their boss. Mary Ellen would take notes, then use the information gathered in deciding her own investments. Mary Ellen used her money to invest in property, businesses and playing in the stock and money markets. Mary Ellen, on loaning money at ten percent interest and trading in gold and silver had said, “My custom was to deposit silver and draw out gold, by which means I was able to turn my money over rapidly.” Mary Ellen won the trust of the elite. She was making a massive fortune, and her accumulation of wealth allowed her to assist former slaves arriving in San Francisco with job placement. She was determined to make it big and bring her people with her, and made it popular for high society to hire black people. She planted maids and servants throughout the prominent homes in San Francisco and procured the men of the house with the services of mistresses. Through her network, Mary Ellen knew the gossip of each cream of the crop family and the skeletons in every closet of the city. High Society never understood how. Those in the know made sure to not antagonize her. You never knew what Mary Ellen might know about you. Mary Ellen fought for young women under stress, both black and white. 
 
Many women found themselves easy prey for exploitative men of frontier San Francisco. She found homes for unwanted babies, got them housing, jobs, loans, and their legal charges dropped. “All that African Americans knew was that if they wanted something, they could go to her and somehow she would use her influence and she would get it. Her kitchen became known as the “Black City Hall.” The wealthy men assumed from her light-skin that Mary Ellen was white had and her business dealings had been made easier for it. Although Mary Ellen was in fact, not. Not a drop. Born in the south, without a last name, Mary Ellen was a descendent of a long line of "Voodoo" Queens in Santo Domingo. She remembered her mother and grandmother with fondness. Both were Haitian voodoo priestesses. Six months before Mary Ellen’s birth, her mother was captured in one of the Caribbean’s oldest cities and brought to the States where she was sold into slavery. Mary Ellen was four years old when she witnessed the murder of her mother at the hand of the overseer at the plantation where her and her mother were both enslaved. Without another female slave to raise the child, the owner of the plantation eventually decided to send her to New Orleans. Arranging for her to recieve an education and to work as a linen worker for his friend Louis Alexander Williams, an importer of silks from the Sandwich Islands. The agreement was that Mary Ellen would serve Williams without pay while her education was attained, and she would be freed upon completion. Years passed, and when Williams went into debt, he broke the deal, keeping the money for the schooling and placing seven year old Mary Ellen into nine years of indentured servitude. Her new owner was an aging Quaker merchant they called Grandma Hussey in Nantucket, MA. Mary Ellen learned about business while working in the Hussey mercantile on Union Street, it was so far the only education she had received. Indentured servants could be of any race, and the light skinned black child was told not to reveal her own. That was a heavy burden for an eleven year old. That was, until the summer she met Mary Hussey's granddaughter Phoebe and her husband Captain Edward Gardner. The couple encouraged Mary Ellen to be proud of her heritage and they introduced her to the ideas of Anti-Slavery.
 
When Grandma Hussey passed, Mary Ellen was sold to Americus Price, a man in New Orleans, who placed her in a convent when he was old; it was there that Mary Ellen was finally freed. The first thing she did was make her way to Boston, where she found a  position apprenticing as a bootmaker. At her new church, Mary Ellen was hired as a paid soloist. At service each week, Mary Ellen got to know James W. Smith, a wealthy Cuban-American who owned a plantation in Virginia. He was an abolitionist who would use his wealth to purchase slaves and set them free. Smith, like Mary Ellen, passed for white, which helped him serve the cause with that much more ease. Mary Ellen was fascinated and quickly married James W. Smith. Well-known abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips would frequently meet at the Smith home to discuss all of their ongoing efforts. Together they would do great things. Smith and Mary Ellen smuggled hundreds of slaves to Canada along the Underground Railroad via James Smith's "track". The track was made up of a series of homes and volunteers. From Canada, they lead the slaves from Nova Scotia to the Smith plantation in Virginia. There, he would fairly employ the slaves whose freedom he had helped secure. Suddenly, and without warning, Smith’s health took a bad turn. On his deathbed, he told his wife to use his estate, $45,000 in gold, to continue their work for abolition. Mary Ellen told her husband, “You know my cause well, freedom and equality for myself and for my people, my love, I’d rather be a corpse than a coward.” Mary Ellen moved back to New Orleans and relied on John J. Pleasant, the foreman of Smith’s property as she settled Smith’s estate. Back in Virginia, when Smith had died suddenly, some felt that it was by Mary's hand, yet nothing ever came of this accusation. Mary Ellen and Smith’s foreman JJ Pleasant were united in the cause to end slavery, and soon united, in other ways, and the two quickly married in New Orleans. Marrying JJ had increased the suspicion tenfold.
 
News of the Gold Rush in California swept the nation and JJ Pleasant decided to leave to scout a safer life for them in the gold-rush country, and procure a position as a shipboard cook on the route to San Francisco. Mary Ellen had met Marie Laveau in the social circles in New Orleans.  
The social activist and voodoo queen Marie Laveau had been intrigued by Mary Ellen, and invited her to stay with her for a few months and learn about the practice of voodoo. The granddaughter of Levaux later told reporters, "She was teaching Mrs. Pleasant Voodoo, so she could use it in some way." 
Two months had passed and it was said that the Louisiana planters had been urgently searching for Mary Ellen Pleasant, and JJ had sent for her, and her money from California. Mary Ellen had now found a way to mentor her people. Holding her new secrets, she boarded a steamship in New Orleans and left for San Francisco. California's Fugitive Slave Act stated that anyone without freedom papers could be sent into slavery. Mary Ellen did not have such papers when she had first arrived in San Francisco. She used two identities to avoid capture. "Mrs. Pleasant" was the abolitionist/entrepreneur, and "Mrs. Ellen Smith” was the white boarding house madame who was serving the wealthiest and most influential men in San Francisco. As Smith, Mary Ellen was leveraging the secrets of men such as Mills, Ralston, and Sharon, for favors, procuring jobs and privileges for the black people in San Francisco. While Mary Ellen was in San Francisco, she stayed in touch with her abolitionists friends and subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator. Never attending school, she had taught herself to read and write. 
 
After hearing the whispers of an uprising back in Harper’s Ferry, Mary Ellen wrote a $30,000 bank draft for the organizer, John Brown, a national figure of the anti-slavery fight. Brown   had led  the raid with 21 other men. Mary Ellen and JJ then traveled East with the bank draft, where Captain Gardner, her old friend, met the couple in Boston, and arranged for the couple to travel to meet John Brown in Ontario. Mary Ellen bought land while in Canada on Campbell St. to house the slaves that John Brown had planned to free, providing more money for arms. Mary Ellen returned the following fall, and in disguise as a jockey she rode in advance of Brown, alerting the slaves of his coming. It was a risky plan, but Mary would have “rather been a corpse, than a coward.”
During his attempt, John Brown was caught and hanged on Dec. 2, 1859, for murder and treason. A famed note was found in his pocket that read, “The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help.” Signed WEP. The officials believed it was written by a wealthy Northerner, and not a single person suspected the note was written by a black woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant. She had intentionally written her first initial upside down. Mary Ellen Pleasant, unscathed, returned to California. The Emancipation Proclamation passed in 1863, and two later, Mary Ellen finally decided it was safe to reveal her truth. For the first time in 1865, she checked “black” on the census. Three years later, she tried to get on a streetcar and was clearly told that the company did not accept Blacks. Almost one hundred years before Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus, Mary Ellen filed a suit against the North Beach and Mission Railroad Company. She won the right for blacks to ride the trolley, leaving lasting effects on legal justice for the Black citizens of San Francisco. White witnesses spoke in the courtroom on Mary Ellen’s behalf, for she was unable to testify in court. This was due to the ban on Black testimony against white persons. The witnesses confessed, the conductor had loudly stated the racial policies of the company. This case restated the fact that California had no laws that allowed public carriers, which included streetcars, to exclude anyone based on race. She waited outside, a golden poppy in her hair. 
 
On Mary Ellen’s first journey to California, on the ship from New Orleans, halfway to California on the journey around Cape Horn, a Scotsman named Thomas Bell sat down to introduce himself to Mary Ellen, the beautiful woman who was roaming down the hallway. “What have you done to arrange such a high class ticket?” he asked the woman, who was traveling alone. She smirked. The two became fast friends, they were both on their way to San Francisco. Thomas Bell was headed to find fortune, and Mary Ellen was arriving in California with $45,000 in gold. The equivalent of nearly 1.6 million in 2021. Thomas Bell had since become a director of the Bank of California. All of these years, Mary Ellen had been his closest friend and his undercover financial advisor. To avoid issues with her race and gender, Mary Ellen made her investments through Mr. Bell. Her businesses had grown and her investment in quicksilver mining and silver/gold exchanges amassed to now a $30 million fortune for her and her silent partner. $30 million is the equivalent of 106 million dollar fortune in 2021. The people in San Francisco whispered that Mary Ellen had been using magic to control Thomas Bell and the 30-room Octavia Street Italianate mansion, known as the Thomas Bell mansion that she had designed, funded, and furnished. When she moved in, so did Teresa, his wife whom Mary Ellen had found for him. It was said that Mary Ellen held hypnotic powers over the ladies in the city and brewed and sold love potions to the wealthy women. For this reason, the odd living arrangement, and rumors of events and underground passages in the home, the Mansion became known as the “house of mystery.” Thomas Bell died when he fell down the staircase in 1892. The people of San Francisco were quick to accuse Mary Ellen Pleasant of murder through the practice of voodoo. However, the coroner ruled it an accidental death, and no charges were filed. Bell’s widow Teresa then collaborated on a full-page smear piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. On the front page, the headline read “The Queen of the Voodoos” and the story revealed Mary Ellen’s secret life. The article spilled that “her connection with the ‘underground railway’ was an established fact and that the planters whose slaves she had helped cross the border to the free North demanded her life.” Loyalty was one of the woman’s virtues, and it was proven when she had nothing, yet refused an offer of $50,000 for a tell all on the Bell Story after Mary Ellen found her entire portfolio, including the 30 room mansion she designed and had built, was held only in Bell’s name. Teresa was able to then sue Mary Ellen, and won control of Mary Ellen’s estate. Mary Ellen Pleasant was declared bankrupt. After a heated argument with Teresa, Mary Ellen left the Bell Manion forever.
 
Mary Ellen Pleasant was demonized for playing a game against a system that was loaded against black women and men in late 19th century San Francisco. Mary Ellen had once written in an unpublished memoir, “I don’t want to be carried up to victory on flower beds of ease, I would like to go through the bloody scenes.”
 
Mary Ellen died of old age on January 11, 1904, penniless. Her request for the inscription on her gravestone was fulfilled, it reads, “A friend of John Brown”. She was finally admitting who wrote the famed note. Mary Ellen was a protector of newly freed blacks and was a promoter of the greater rights for the black people of California. In the 1890 census, under profession, Mary Ellen wrote, “capitalist”. Her legacy, although not well known, remains. Mary Ellen Pleasant Day is February 10th in San Francisco, and there, you can visit Mary Ellen Pleasant Park. Where six huge eucalyptus trees that Mary Ellen had planted herself over one hundred years ago tower above the corner of Octavia and Bush. This is where the Thomas Bell mansion once stood, before it burned down in 1925. The sudden appearance of a crow seems to herald Mary’s presence, and she has even taken her ghostly human form and walked among the trees and bushes. She is known to still summon chills, terrify dogs and throw nuts from the nearby eucalyptus trees at passers-by. “Negative People in the park have had objects dropped on their head, or fallen suddenly as if pushed. Legend has it, if you find favor with Mary, and make a respectful request of the voodoo priestess on that corner, it is said that your request will come true.” It’s telling who gets a legend — and who gets a ghost story. 
 

Flo, The Ghost of The Jamestown National Hotel FROM THE VAULT

“We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.”― Liam Callanan, The Cloud Atlas
This bonus episode is based on the true story and occurrences from The National Hotel, that began with a love story, and ended in murder, over 120 years ago. 
This Story was Created From the Links Below. 
http://weekinweird.com/2016/12/12/meet-flo-resident-ghost-californias-historic-national-hotel/
https://www.national-hotel.com
https://sacramentopress.com/2009/03/26/a-haunting-night-to-remember-the-historic-national-hotel-jamestown/
https://tchistory.org/TCHISTORY/Jamestown.htm
https://www.railtown1897.org
http://www.parks.ca.gov/railtown/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_No._3#Movie_appearances
 
 

Jennie Curry & Yosemite Firefalls

In Yosemite, for thousands of years before the discovery of gold, Native Americans traveled through and inhabited the area that the Sierra Nevada’s melting snow spills dramatically over rocky cliffs on the walls into the Valley. Waterfalls that sit over three thousand feet above its floor. The treasures the park holds are unduplicated, each wonder differing from the next, each overwhelmingly spectacular.  
From 1850 to 1851 Native Americans and Euro-American miners in the area were at war, the Mariposa War. Some Euro-American men had formed a militia known as the Mariposa Battalion. Their purpose - drive the native Ahwahneechee people onto reservations. The Mariposa Battalion were the first non-natives to enter Yosemite. When this war ended, Yosemite was then open to settlement and speculation. 
 
Today we are going to talk about Jennie Curry, half of the curry couple who founded Camp Curry in Yosemite, and the history of the Yosemite Firefall. 
Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West.  Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. 
Between 1855 and 1864, the Yosemite Valley had 653 visitors.After the completion of stage roads into the valley,  the number rose to 2,700 visitors annually within its first decade.  Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant on June 30, 1864 and Yosemite Valley was placed under the protection of the state of California. The act preserved the valley for public use and recreation for all time. Some of the earliest visitors were artists, authors, painters, illustrators and photographers who came to publicize the Valley. Hotels were built and stagecoach companies started bringing tourists on the long journey in.
Six years later, James McCauley, an Irish sailor and miner, arrived in Yosemite Valley. McCauley took a job in a sawmill, working alongside John Muir. McCauley soon built a horse trail from the base of Sentinel Rock up to Glacier Point. It was over a four-mile route which climbed 3,200 feet. At Glacier Point, he built a small shack which he named the Mountain House. McCauley charged a toll for the trail and the Mountain House provided concessions and lodging to its travelers.
One night in 1872, McCauley and his school-aged sons kicked a campfire over the ledge at Glacier Point. The act quite literally sparked the idea of a money-making venture. A firefall. They would collect a fee from tourists in the valley during the day to build a modest fire and push it off the cliff that night. He experimented with versions of fireworks that he lowered on wires from Overhanging Rock nearby. The attempts seemed comparatively insignificant from the Valley floor. Finally he returned to the idea of pushing over the embers. 
McCauley bought both of his 8 year old boys' mules and the young McCauley twins attended school by riding them down the Four Mile Trail to the Valley. It took ninety minutes. 
While in the valley, they would collect $1.50 from tourists who wanted to see a Firefall, and then would ride the trail back up to Glacier Point, with a pack mule, packing wood and carrying the provisions for the hotel. On the Fourth of July, a collection often amounted to ten or twenty dollars. Busy days like that required hauling wood up for at least two days. 
McCauley soon leased Mountain House to others to manage, that was when the state of California took possession of all Yosemite claims in 1874. In 1880, he leased Mountain House back from the state. Fifteen years later, the facility was described as “almost uninhabitable”. The couple was evicted by the state in 1897 for failure to maintain.  McCauley was killed accidently in an accident with a runaway horse, and the firefalls stopped. For years they were almost forgotten. 
In 1899, David and Jennie Etta Curry and their children took the wild ride down the old Coulterville Road with Driver Eddie Webb, to their new home in Yosemite Valley. Both had studied under Dr. David Starr Jordan at Indiana University, where they had both graduated from in 1883. It was unusual at the time for a woman to be a college graduate. Back east, both were Hoosier school teachers.
The Curry’s had a unique love for nature. Their previous work involved taking parties through Yellowstone with a movable camp. 
David and Jennie saw an opportunity. They received permission from the Guardian of the Valley, which was the state park at the time, to use the site of its camp. With seven tents, they opened a family campground at the base of Glacier Point, and they called Camp Curry. 
It is wild if you think about it, furnishing a business in a location like that, before means of modern transportation. Bare tents, burlap for the floors, mattresses, bed springs on wooden legs, clean bedding, chairs, and tables were brought in by wagon from Merced, which was one hundred miles away. Oilcloth covered cracker boxes’ that were used for wash stands.  There was a dining tent that seated twenty people. Camp Curry opened in June of 1899, charging $2 per night. The first affordable accommodation in the Park. Accommodations at the Sentinel Hotel were $4 a night. 
She was fondly known throughout the Valley as "Mother Curry". The power behind the throne. Her personality would truly contribute to their success.  She was big in mind, soul and body and interested in people and in life. Of course, women's domestic skills were highly valued in the West, but like many pioneering women, Jennie had to find a way to broaden the roles beyond the Cult of True Womanhood, as mentioned in the book and previous episodes. 
Jennie helped plan additional guest services, made the beds, and packed the box lunches for adventurers. She would say that she had done every job around camp, from  baking dozens of pies or loaves of bread to making lye soap from wood-ashes in a huge open kettle. All but the duties of the porter. The Curry’s in fact, did do all of the work around camp. With the exception of one paid employee, the cook and two or three students from Stanford, who worked for a designated time in exchange for a week's room and board. 
During the first season, the camp expanded to twenty-five tents, with almost 300 guests in the season, of the 4,500 people who visited Yosemite Valley that year. Many of the guests came from Curry's educational network. It was a pretty good start. The crowds predicted Camp Curry would fail. It was cold, and isolated. 
The Curry’s were determined. They had ideas. The memory of the firefall was eventually brought up, and Mr. Curry decided to revive the tradition on holidays, or when prominent guests were in the Valley.
Men would gather wood on the Ledge Trail, and build a 12 foot wide, four foot tall mound of firewood. At four, they would light the fire, allowing the pile to burn down until it was a hill of glowing embers, for 5 hours until 9 o clock. Nine o’clock in Yosemite meant Fire Fall. It was an unwritten law that everything and everyone in the valley STOPPED at 9pm. 
David Curry would cup his hands to his mouth, raise his face toward Glacier Point and bellow: “Hello, Glacier Point!” without the aid of a sound system or even a megaphone. This is how Mr. Curry earned the nickname “The Stentor.” Stentor was that famous Greek of antiquity who could command 10,000 troops without a megaphone." The fire tender at the point would reply: “Hello, Camp Curry!” The rest of the exchange followed: “Is the fire ready?” “The fire is ready!” followed by Curry’s roaring command “Let ‘er go Gallagher!” “Let the fire fall!” “THE FIRE-ER IS-SSS FALLING!” I am guessing that Gallagher was the regular fire tender.
The two men at the top, using extra long-handled wide steel rakes, would alternate strokes to maintain a steady stream of cinders, plunging over the cliffs, to their resting place on a ledge 1,700 feet below. It was a skill. It took practice to be able to push blazing hot coals for an extended period of time, over a cliff in a steady stream down the granite wall. Simulating a continuously flowing waterfall. It was a blazing stream of thousands and thousands  of individually discernible red and gold sparks floating down the cliff in complete silence, the sparks flying away like shooting stars. Fifteen minutes later, the fall would grow smaller until it became a mere thread of gold which drew the curtain of night, before darkness descends. 
Break
The railroad reaching El Portal in 1907 made travel to the gold rush in California much more accessible. For the park, it skyrocketed the ability of making improvements in equipment and efficiency. Jennie no longer needed to bring in furniture, food, in fact everything by wagon from Merced. The train ended only fifteen miles away, and the road there was easy. She was able to raise the comfort level of the camp for her ever increasing number of guests with better kitchen equipment, dressers, bed frames and rugs. 
The firefall continued each night and held 20 minutes of enchantment, where thousands of onlookers felt something in common for that short period of time. Yosemite’s grandeur was on full display, how unspeakably tall were its cliffs and how quiet its forest. The act, performed every night for many years, etched the surface of the granite, leaving a 1000 ft white strip. 
From 1913 to 1916 the Yosemite Firefall tradition was halted by the park service over a disagreement between David Curry and the Assistant Secretary of the Interior. David Curry  died in 1917, just before the Firefall was reinstated. Jennie, with the help of her children, carried on with running and expanding Camp Curry, on lease from the government.
The tradition carried on for decades, the song “Indian Love Call,” popularized by Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in the 1936 film “Rose Marie,” was eventually performed while the fire cascaded down the rock face. So much for the silence I guess. The firefall was halted during World War II, when park facilities were used by the military.
Jennie Curry died in October of 1948. The original purpose of the fire fall was to draw visitors to the park. Five years after Jennie’s death, Yosemite received 1 million visitors for the first time. 
In 1960, President John F. Kennedy visited Yosemite and was, according to various sources, either held up by an important phone call or was still eating his dinner at 9 p.m. The firefall was held for half an hour so he could see it — much to the displeasure of the rest of the visitors.  By 1965, annual visitation had reached 2 million. 
The firefall continued on for nearly two-thirds of the 20th century, the firefall occurred each summer night. Luckily, it  never caused any forest fires, but other environmental impacts were mounting: Thousands of visitors were tramping through the meadows, driving their cars off the park roads, trying to get the best view, leaving litter everywhere. There were  thefts from the hotels and campgrounds, when visitors would be absent or distracted and lastly, nearly every dead red fir tree accessible by road had been stripped of its bark for use as fuel. Rangers worked late nights untangling traffic jams, while idling vehicles spit out exhaust into the park. There were simply too many people. The park canceled the firefall. About 50 people gathered to mark the end of the tradition, on Jan. 25, 1968. 55 years ago from the recording of this episode. 
 Although the Glacier Point firefall is a thing of the past, a natural, even more awe-inspiring, phenomenon that goes by the same name at Horsetail Falls remains. The organic illusion appears for a few weeks each February. Light from the setting sun hits the eastside of El Capitan at Horsetail Falls at a precise angle seems to be molten lava rushing  1,570 feet to the valley floor, creating a natural "firefall."  Ansel Adams captured it on film for the first time, in 1940. 
The natural Yosemite Firefall can be finicky. Several factors must converge to trigger the Firefall to glow. First, there has to be an adequate amount of snowpack for Horsetail Falls to be flowing and the temperatures must be warm enough to melt the snow. The sky also needs to be clear at sunset. If conditions are cloudy the sun’s rays will be blocked, and Horsetail Fall will not light up. If everything comes together and conditions are just right, the Yosemite Firefall will light up for about ten minutes. To see Horsetail Fall glowing blood red is an almost supernatural experience. The sun hits Yosemite Valley at roughly the same angle in October, but the lack of runoff prevents the same phenomenon. 
  The discovery of Horsetail Falls is not well documented. There is no doubt that the Awahneechee Indians who lived in Yosemite Valley for hundreds of years, most likely knew of its existence, but there is no evidence that they passed the knowledge to the white settlers. Love that.  Makes perfect sense. 
The local lore of “elmer”  is linked to the Fire Falls. In the 1930’s, a child by the name of Elmer would drift off with his friends or something to their own place to watch the Firefall and every night. It was a common thing in Yosemite to hear after the Firefall, his mother calling him back to camp: EL-MER- EL-MER- EL-MER.
 
It all leads me to wonder, what is the most spectacular thing i nature that you have ever seen?
  
 
 

The Occupation of Alcatraz - FROM THE VAULT

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The famed Alcatraz prison on Alcatraz Island was in operation from 1934 to 1963. For most, the thought of Alcatraz may bring up a Hollywood film or some of the most notorious criminals in America. But the island carries a different symbolism to the native coastal peoples of California. The California Ohlone Mewuk which translates to coastal people, passed down an oral history that tells us that Alcatraz was used by their Native population long before  anyone else “discovered” the San Francisco Bay. Trips would be made to the island in tule boats for gathering foods, such as bird eggs and sea-life. It was also used as a place of isolation, or for punishment for naughty members of the tribe. The island was also a camping spot and hiding place for many native Americans attempting to escape the California Mission system. In 1895, the island was being used as a US fort and military prison and 19 Hopi men served time on Alcatraz for trying to protect their children from being sent to federal Indian boarding schools, which we discussed last week. 
 
“This is Queens of the Mines, where we discuss untold stories from the twisted roots of California. This week’s episode is coming out a few days early in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day. Today we will talk about The Occupation of Alcatraz and the Red Power Movement which demanded self-determination for Native Americans to better the lives of all Indian people. To make it known to the world that they have a right to use their land for their own benefit by right of discovery. We are in a time where historians and the public are no longer dismissing the “conflict history” that has been minimized or blotted out. 
 
In 1953, U.S. Congress established a policy towards American Indians: termination. This policy eliminated most government support for indigenous tribes and ended the protected trust status of all indigenous-owned lands. It wiped out the reservations and natives had the choice to assimilate or die out. So the BIA began a voluntary urban relocation program where American Indians could move from their rural tribes to metropolitan areas, and they would give them assistance with locating housing and employment. Numerous American Indians made the move to cities, lured by the hope of a better life. It was a struggle for them. Many struggled to adjust to life in a city with these low-end jobs, they faced discrimination, they were homesickn and they totally lost their cultural identity. Giving a person a home and a job, yet taking away everything that they are, that is defining a human only in economic terms. So, after they relocated and got job and housing placement, as soon as they received their first paycheck, the assistance was done. Termination. 
 
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When Rosebud Sioux Belva Cottier heard the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was closing in 1963 and that the property was going to be given to the City of San Francisco, she thought of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Treaty that allowed Native Americans to appropriate surplus federal land. So, she and her cousin Richard McKenzie retrieved a copy of the treaty and thought, if the property was surplus land of the government, the Sioux could claim it. 
 
Belva organized a demonstration to raise awareness and planned to take court action to obtain the title to the island. On March 8, 1964 her group of Sioux activists, photographers, reporters and her lawyer landed on Alcatraz. About 40 people. The demonstration lasted only four hours. It was "peaceful and in accordance with Sioux treaty rights” but the demonstrators left under the threat of felony charges. The idea of reclaiming “the Rock” became a rallying cry for the indigenous population.
 
Five years later, on October 10, 1969, there was a fire that destroyed the San Francisco American Indian Center. It was a detrimental loss for the native community because the center provided Native Americans with jobs, health care, aid in legal affairs, and social opportunities. 
 
An activist group formed, known as “Indians of All Tribes” with Pipestone Indian Boarding School graduate Adam Fortunate Eagle and the handsome, Mohawk college student Richard Oakes.  Richard had co-founded the American Indian Studies Dept at SF State and worked as a bartender in the Mission District of San Francisco which brought him in contact with the local Native American communities. 
 
The goal was to take immediate action towards claiming space for the local Indian community and they set their sights on the unused federal land at Alcatraz, which would soon be sold to a billionaire developer.
 
Adam and Oakes planned a takeover of the island as a symbolic act. They agreed on November 9, 1969. Richard would gather approximately 75 indigenous people and Adam would arrange transportation to the island. The boats did not show up.
 
Nearby, a sailor was watching the natives waiting, some wearing traditional ceremony dress and Adam Fortunate Eagle convinced him, the owner of a three-masted yacht to pass by the island with him and 4 friends on board. As the boat passed by Alcatraz, Oates and two men jumped overboard, swam to shore, and claimed the island by right of discovery. At this moment, Richard became the leader of the movement. The five men were quickly removed by the Coast Guard. 
 
Later that night, Adam, Richard and others hired a boat, making their way back to the island again, some students stayed overnight before they were again made to leave. Richard Oakes told the San Francisco Chronicle, “If a one day occupation by white men on Indian land years ago established squatter’s rights, then the one day occupation of Alcatraz should establish Indian rights to the island.”
 
Eleven days later on November 20, 1969, Richard and Adam met 87 native men, women and children, 50 of whom California State University students at the No Name bar in Sausalito just after closing at 2, met with some free-spirited boat owners and sailed through San Francisco Bay towards Alcatraz, not knowing if they’d be killed, ignoring warnings that the occupation of the island was illegal. Indians of All Tribes made one last attempt to seize Alcatraz and claim the island for all the tribes of North America using unarmed, body and spirit politics. As they disembarked onto the island an Alcatraz security guard yelled out, may day! May day! The Indians have landed! Three days in, it became clear - this wasn't going to be a short demonstration. 
 
Richard Oates soon addressed the media with a manifesto titled “The Great White Father and All His People.” In it, he stated the intention was to use the island for an Indian school, cultural center and museum. Oates claimed Alcatraz belonged to the Native Americans “by right of discovery”. He sarcastically offered to buy the island back for “$24 in glass beads and red cloth”, the same price that Natives received for the island of Manhattan. 
 
Now I’ll read the manifesto
 
“We feel that this so-called Alcatraz Island is more than suitable as an Indian Reservation, as determined by the white man's own standards. By this we mean that this place resembles most Indian reservations, in that:
It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of transportation.
It has no fresh running water.
The sanitation facilities are inadequate.
There are no oil or mineral rights.
There is no industry and so unemployment is very great.
There are no health care facilities.
The soil is rocky and non-productive and the land does not support game.
There are no educational facilities.
The population has always been held as prisoners and kept dependent upon others.
Further, it would be fitting and symbolic that ships from all over the world, entering the Golden Gate, would first see Indian land, and thus be reminded of the true history of this nation. This tiny island would be a symbol of the great lands once ruled by free and noble Indians.
 
“We hold the Rock”
 
The Nixon administration sent out a negotiator, and as the two sides debated, the natives continued to settle onto their new land. Native American college students and activists flocked to join the protest, and the population of Alcatraz often swelled to more than 600 people. They moved into the old warden’s house and guards’ quarters and began personalizing the island with graffiti. Buildings were tagged with slogans like Home of the Free, Indian Land, Peace and Freedom, Red Power and Custer Had It Coming.
 
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This episode was also brought to you by our main Sponsor Columbia Mercantile 1855, Columbia Historic Park’s Main street grocery store. Teresa, the owner, carries a mix of quality international and local products that replicate diverse provisions of when Columbia was California's second largest city after San Francisco. I love the selection of hard kombucha, my favorite. It is common to hear, "Wow! I didn't expect to find that here in Columbia". The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is located in Columbia State Historic Park at 11245 Jackson Street and is a great place to keep our local economy moving. At a time like this, it is so important to shop local, and The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is friendly, welcoming, fairly priced and accepts EBT. Open Daily! Now, back to Alcatraz
 
The occupation sought to unify indigenous peoples from more than 500 nations across America, the Western Hemisphere and Pacific. Everyone on the island had a job. The island soon had its own clinic, kitchen, public relations department and even a nursery and grade school for its children. A security force sarcastically dubbed the “Bureau of Caucasian Affairs” patrolled the shoreline to watch for intruders. All decisions were made by unanimous consent of the people. A Sioux named John Trudell hopped behind the mic to broadcast radio updates from Alcatraz under the banner of “Radio Free Alcatraz.” “ We all had things to offer each other,” resident Luwana Quitquit later remembered. “Brotherhood. Sisterhood.” 
 
The federal government initially insisted that the protestors leave the island and they placed an inadequate barricade around the island. The demonstration was a media frenzy and the protestors received an enormous amount of support. There was a call for contributions  and a mainland base was set up at San Francisco’s Pier 40, near Fisherman’s Wharf. Supplies such as canned goods and clothes were shipped in. Visitors and volunteers were sailing in, and thousands of dollars in cash were pouring in from donors across the country. The Black Panther Party had volunteered to help provide security and celebrities like Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda and Merv Griffin visited the island in support. The band Creedence Clearwater Revival gave the Indians of All Tribes a boat, which was christened the “Clearwater.” 
 
Things started to change in early 1970, there was a leadership crisis.  The organizers and a majority of the college students had to return to school. Many vagrants who were not interested in fighting for the cause moved in, taking advantage of the rent free living and drugs and alcohol, which were originally banned on the island, started to move freely among a select crowd.  
 
Then tragically, Richard and Annie Oakes’s daughter Yvonne fell 5 stories to her death from one of the prison’s stairwells in the guards quarters. Oakes and his wife left Alcatraz in the wake of the accident, leaving groups of warring activists to fight it out for control of the island. 
 
In May of 1970, the Nixon administration cut the electricity to Alcatraz, hoping to force the demonstrators out. Let's face it, the government was never going to meet the demands of the Indians of All Tribes. Next, they removed the water barge which had been providing fresh water to the occupiers. Three days following the removal of the water barge, a fire was started on the island, destroying the warden’s house, the inside of the lighthouse which was important for SF bay navigation and several of Alcatraz’s historic buildings. No one knows who started the fire. It could have come from either side. Was it - Burn it down? Or get them out?
 
Two months later, President Richard Nixon gave a speech saying, “The time has come…for a new era in which the Indian future is determined by Indian acts and Indian decisions.” The U.S. government later returned millions of acres of ancestral Indian land and passed more than 50 legislative proposals supporting tribal self rule. The termination policy was terminated.
 
In the meantime, the FBI, Coast Guard and the Government Services Administration stayed clear of the island. While it appeared to those on the island that negotiations were actually taking place, in fact, the federal government was playing a waiting game, hoping that support for the occupation would subside and those on the island would elect to end the occupation. At one point, secret negotiations were held where the occupiers were offered a portion of Fort Miley, a 15 minute walk from the Sutro Baths, as an alternative site to Alcatraz Island. 
 
The occupation continued into 1971. Support for the cause had diminished after the press turned against them and began publishing stories of alleged beatings and assaults; one case of assault was prosecuted. In an attempt to raise money to buy food, they allegedly began stripping copper wiring and copper tubing from the buildings and selling it as scrap metal. Three of the occupiers were arrested, tried and found guilty of selling some 600lbs of copper. In January 1971, two oil tankers collided in the entrance to the San Francisco Bay. Though it was acknowledged that the lack of an Alcatraz light or fog horn played no part in the collision, it was enough to push the federal government into action. A few holdouts continued to live on the Rock for another year. “I don’t want to say Alcatraz is done with,” former occupier Adam Fortunate Eagle lamented to The San Francisco Chronicle in April 1971, “but no organized Indian groups are active there. It has turned from an Indian movement to a personality thing.” 
 
Citing a need to restore Alcatraz’s foghorn and lighthouse, President Nixon gave the go-ahead to develop a removal plan to be acted upon with as little force as possible, when the smallest number of people were on the island. The government told the remaining occupiers they would have news on the deed the following Monday morning. They were told no action would be taken until the negotiations were settled. That was a lie. On June 10, 1971 armed federal marshals, FBI agents, and special forces police descended on the island and removed five women, four children, and six unarmed men. the last of the indigenous residents. The occupation was over.
 
An island ledger entry reads “We are about to leave for Alcatraz, maybe for the last time, To this beautiful little Island, which means a little something, which no one will ever understand my feelings.”  It is signed by Marie B. Quitiquit of Stockton. Beneath Quitiquit’s words someone wrote in capital letters “I SHALL NEVER FORGET, MY PEOPLE, MY LAND ALCATRAZ”.
 
Oakes, who had once proclaimed that “Alcatraz was not an island, it was an idea”, never left the idea behind and continued his resistance. As a result of his activism, he endured tear gas, billy clubs, and brief stints in jail. He helped the Pit River Tribe in their attempts to regain nearly 3 million acres of land that had been seized by Pacific Gas & Electric and had plans to create a "mobile university" dedicated to creating opportunities for Native Americans. 
Soon after he left the occupation, Oates was in Sonoma where Michael Morgan, a YMCA camp manager was being accussesd as a white supremacist, and being tough with Native American children. 30 year old Oakes reportedly confronted Michael Morgan. Morgan said he was in fear for his life, when he drew a handgun and fatally shot Richard Oakes. Oakes was unarmed. Morgan was charged with voluntary manslaughter, but was acquitted by a jury that agreed with Morgan that the killing was an act of self-defense, even though Oakes was unarmed. Oakes supporters contend the shooting was an act of murder, and that Morgan received support from a racially motivated jury and district attorney. 
So, over the course of the 19-month occupation, more than 10,000 indigenous people visited the island to offer support. Alcatraz may have been lost, but the occupation gave birth to political movements which continue today as injustices inflicted on indigenous people is an ongoing problem. The Rock has also continued to serve as a focal point of Native American social campaigns  and it left the demonstrators with big ideas. Indian rights organizations, many of them staffed by Alcatraz veterans, later staged occupations and protests at Plymouth Rock, Mount Rushmore, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and dozens of other sites across the country. Federal officials also started listening to calls for Indian self-determination.
The occupation of Alcatraz was the first demonstration of its kind for the American Indians. It was a spiritual reawakening for the indigenous peoples and renewed interest in tribal communities. Many natives did not know what it meant to be native, and they learned of and about their heritage in light of the media attention the occupation received. It was the first chance they were able to feel proud of their indigenous background. A beginning for Native pride, the kickstarter for a move back to a traditional identity. A revival of language, traditions. Awakening the native people, the tribes, the media, the government and Americans. The “return of the buffalo”.
Dr LaNada War Jack, Shoshone Bannock Tribe, one of UC Berkeley's first native students & demonstration leader tells us, “We wanted to bring to the forefront that every single one of (more than 500) treaties were broken by the fed government.” The boarding schools, genocide, relocation, termination, , everything that historically happened to American Indians — continues to impact them today. They are still here.  Now, that is a real theft of freedom. A theft of freedom from the ones who were here first. So, I do not want to hear a damn word about your loss of rights for having to wear a damn mask. You want to fight for freedom? Stand up for your local indigenous people. 
 
Alright, love you all, be safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask, stay positive and act kind. Thank you for taking the time to listen today, subscribe to the show so we can meet again weekly, on Queens of the Mines. Queens of the Mines is a product of the “Youreka! Podcast Network” and was written, produced and narrated by Andrea Anderson. Go to queensofthemines.com for the book and more. 
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-11-19/alcatraz-occupation-indigenous-tribes-autry-museum
https://www.history.com/news/native-american-activists-occupy-alcatraz-island-45-years-ago
The Alcatraz Indian Occupation by Dr. Troy Johnson, Cal State Long Beach
https://www.nps.gov/alca/learn/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=ALCATRAZ_Proclamation
 

Freda Ehmann

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Olives, technically classified as a fruit, is a powerful fruit. It would benefit most people to eat around 5-10 olives a day. A rich source of powerful stuff,antioxidants, minerals and vitamins and 80 percent of the calories in an olive come from healthy fats. They are a great way to prevent cancers in today's toxic world, and Bonus! Eating olives improves the appearance of wrinkles by a whole twenty percent! When it comes to the history of olive groves in California, you need to know about Freda Ehmann, the human responsible for the perfect black rings we eat on our pizza today, the ‘Mother’ of the California ripe olive industry. 
 
Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West.  Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. 
 
Our story takes place in California, where nowadays olive trees are abundant, but fun fact, olive trees are not native to California. It was at the San Diego Mission in 1769, where the first olive cuttings were planted in California. Many of the olive groves in California are up to 150 years old, but olive trees have an average lifespan of 300 to 600 years. Average, some can live as long as 2000 years. The oldest known cultivated olive trees in the world were grown before the written language was even invented.
 

International Women’s Day - FROM THE VAULT

Happy International Women's Day! Here is a bonus episode, last minute! Thanks wikipedia! 
Opening song by Snakes snakesband.bandcamp.com
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The Ghost of Chinese Camp - FROM THE VAULT

 
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Chineses Camp is terror ridden by the queerest ghost on record. From the SF Chronicle September 1904. 

Cathay Williams

In 1843, Cathay Williams was born to an enslaved woman and a free black man, ironically in Independence, Missouri. It is hard to know an exact day, because records were not kept for the birth of slaves, and if you were born to an enslaved woman, you were born property. Cathay’s childhood was spent on the outskirts of Jefferson City, Missouri, working for years as a house slave on the plantation of a wealthy planter by the name of Johnson. 
 Union forces took over Jefferson City in the early stages of the Civil War. Slaves were released and persuaded to serve in voluntary military support roles. 
 Captured slaves within Union lines were officially designated as contraband. When we say contraband today, usually the first thought would be illicit drugs, or something else forbidden. But back then, humans were labeled Illegal goods, “contraband.” 
Over 400 women served in the Civil War posing as male soldiers. Today we are talking about  Cathay Williams, the only known female Buffalo Soldier. Williams was not only the first black woman to enlist, but the only documented woman to serve in the United States Army, while disguised as a man, during the Indian Wars. She was a pioneer for the thousands of American women serving in armed forces in the United States today.  
Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West.  Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three.
  As contraband, Cathay was taken to Little Rock by Col. Benton of the 13th army corps and “pressed” into serving. She did not want to go. Benton wanted her to cook for the officers, so Cathay learned the skill. At 17, her role as an Army cook and washerwoman under the service of Union General Philip Sheridan took her all over the country. She saw the soldiers burn lots of cotton. During these travels, Williams was at Shreveport when the rebel gunboats were captured and burned on Red River, and witnessed Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes relocated to reservations during the Red River campaign in Texas. She was there for the  Shenandoah Valley raids in Virginia, and saw the union defeat the Confederates, despite being outnumbered at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Fayetteville Ar. The work brought her to Iowa, Louisiana, Georgia and back home to her home state of Missouri.
The lure of independence was undeniably attractive to a female young, unmarried former slave. So, in St. Louis, Missouri, she voluntarily enlisted for a three-year engagement in the U.S. army on November 15, 1866, this time to fight. Despite the prohibition against women serving in the military. The recruiter described her as William Cathay, a 5′ 9″ tall male with black eyes, black hair and black complexion. But in actuality, she was the first black female soldier to enlist with the Army. Only 4 months after Congress passed a law authorizing the formation of six all-black army units, after the Union Army had seen the value of black soldiers in the military and thought they should have the opportunity to join the peacetime army. 
You would think an Army surgeon should have been able to identify Williams as a woman during the cursory examination, but the Army didn’t require full medical exams then.
    Williams said, “The regiment I joined wore the Zouave uniform,” which was  a distinctive jacket, vest, sash, baggy trousers, and fez. She continued to say that “only two persons, a cousin and a particular friend, members of the regiment, knew that I was a woman. They never ‘blowed on me. These particular friends were partly the reason Williams joined the Army.
She could shoot, march and stand guard with the best of them and performed regular garrison duties. A garrison is a group of soldiers whose task is to guard the town or building where they live. Soon, orders transferred the new recruits out west to protect pioneers traveling through one of the most dangerous routes to California, called Cooke’s Canyon.  In April of 1867, her troop marched to Fort Riley, Kansas, by July they had made it to Fort Union Mexico and arrived at Fort Cummings NM on October 1, 1867. They would remain stationed here for the next 8 months.  Williams had joined the army’s fight against the Indigenous people.
Health struggles began to plague Cathay.  She became feeble both physically and mentally, and much of the time quite unfit for duty. Smallpox was the most debilitating, but the back-to-back hospitalizations during eight months off sick leave were the most devastating. At Fort Cummings in New Mexico,  her body really began to show signs of strain. Maybe it was the heat, maybe  the effects of smallpox, or the years of marching. But the biggest blow came when the post surgeon discovered Cathay Williams, or William Cathay, was a woman. The surgeon informed the post commander. She said, “the men all wanted to get rid of me after they found out I was a woman. Some of them acted real bad to me.” Williams was honorably discharged by her commanding officer, Captain Charles E. Clarke on October 14, 1868 at at Fort Bayard, New Mexico,
It was the end of her tenure in the Army, but her adventure as William Cathay had just gotten started. Again, dressed as a man, Cathay signed up for the 38th U.S. Infantry, an emerging, segregated all-black regiment. The 38th U.S. Infantry would eventually become part of the Buffalo Soldiers. Cathay and her fellow black comrades were named Buffalo Soldiers by the Plains Indians because they were fierce fighters, and they had short curly hair like the buffalo. The Buffalo Soldiers fought in skirmishes with Native Americans, escorted vulnerable wagon trains, built forts, mapped the territory, and protected white settlers – all with sub-par equipment. They showed tremendous skill. She is the only known black female soldier a part of the Buffalo Soldiers.
Williams was adrift after the war but wanted to remain independent and self-sufficient.  She was accustomed to the Military providing shelter, education and medical care. She saw it as far superior to the uncertainties of civilian life as a liberated slave. As a newly freed slave, post-war job opportunities were practically nonexistent. The inequality and lack of access was smothering, particularly in the southern states. Most had no choice but to turn to military service to survive. 
She went back to living under her original name and headed to Pueblo, Colorado, where her mother ran an orphanage and she was able to secure work as a cook. She was married there, but it ended fast after her husband was arrested for stealing her watch and chain, a hundred dollars and her team of horses and wagon. She had him arrested and put in jail. She moved to Trinidad, Colorado, and took on jobs as a seamstress, laundress and part time nurse under the name Kate Williams. But only after first passing as a male by the name of James Cady upon arrival.   The kids in town were afraid of her, she  was tall and dark with a masculine appearance. He walk had a limp due to her amputated toes. 
She liked Trinidad. She knew good people there and had dreams of success. She hoped to take land near the depot when the railroad finally came in. She said, “Grant owns all this land around here, and it won't cost me anything. I shall never live in the states again.” 
Trinidad had its own lil rush in the early 1870's when gold was discovered in the Spanish Peaks. In 1876, Trinidad was officially incorporated only a few months before Colorado became a state. There were about 50 to 60 mine shafts operating there, and one of them was owned and operated by one of Abraham Lincoln's sons. 
 
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Her life story went public while Williams was in Trinidad. A reporter from her home state of Missouri heard rumors of the black woman who faked her way into the army, and came to Trinidad from St Louis to meet her. She told the reporter,  “I wanted to make my own living and not be dependent on relations or friends. Cathay Williams' adventures were breaking news when it was published in the St. Louis Daily Times on January 2, 1876. She became well-known to most Trinidad residents, especially the older ones. 
In 1891, Williams applied for a disability pension through the Army. She was now 49 years old.  At 52, she was suffering from neuralgia, loss of hearing, rheumatism and diabetes. She walked with a crutch, for all of her toes had been amputated. Her pension was denied. She had lied, and posed as a man to serve the country that had enslaved her. But women would not be allowed to serve in the army until 1948. 
Historians argue about the time and location of her death but  most signs point to  Cathat Williams passing away in Trinidad in 1924 at the age of 82. It was said that she was very sick and had been without fire or food for several days. 
Something else that I find fascinating about Trinidad. Trinidad is dubbed the Gender Reassignment Capital of the World. Dr Stanley Biber was a veteran surgeon returning from Korea in the 1960s. He moved to Trinidad, to be the town surgeon. In 1969, he performed his first Gender Reassignment for a local social worker, did a good job and earned a good reputation at a time when very few doctors were performing the surgery.  He was performing 4 gender reassignment surgeries a day in his peak years. 
Haskell Hooks of Trinidad, Co wants to erect a local statue to honor Cathay Williams.  If you want to donate to the gofundme you can search Memorial Statue for Ms Cathay Williams, on the gofundme site. Its important to note Cathay is spelled Cathay. He has spent several years researching her story and is attempting to raise $50,000 to have the statue created by a New Mexico sculptor. He has organized several fund-raising events to cover the cost, including T-shirt sales and activities at Flo-Jo's Tavern & BBQ in downtown Trinidad and a gofundme page. I found this quite interesting, considering I just spent two days in Trinidad in November. While I was there, I had no idea who Cathay was, but I managed to stay right next to the location of her old house anyways. She lived at the corner of Second and Animas streets, and on West First Street ; the original homes no longer stand.
It all leads me to wonder how far will you go to get what you want ?
 
_____________
 
 

The Murderous Mail Order Bride of Tuttletown

This is Queens of the Mines. Today I am going to tell you the story of the Murderous Mail Order Bride of Tuttletown from 1929. The preceding episode may feature foul language and or adult content including violence which may be disturbing some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised.
 
On a ranch on blanket creek, near the current Kress Ranch Road, lived  Carroll and his parents Stephen Rablen and Corrine Brown. They were a well known family in Sonora who were pioneers there during the gold rush. Corrine was the daughter of the late C.C. Brown, a prominent lawyer of Sonora. 
 
Carroll had been married twice, first to Martha Copeland and second to Eva Young. Neither marriage lasted. While serving during WW 1 in France, a German shell exploded in Carroll’s dugout, causing him to lose his hearing. The thirty-four year old veteran returned to Tuttletown to live with his widower father. The hearing impairment made Carroll too shy to meet a local girl. Yet he was lonely.
 
So lonely that, in June of 1928, Carroll placed an ad in a San Francisco matrimonial paper in search of a bride. He stated that he was looking for a woman who would enjoy a life with him hiking and enjoying the natural wonders of the Sierra Nevadas. The ad was printed in matrimonial papers across the nation and a thirty-three year old waitress in Texas responded to Rablen’s request. They wrote back and forth. She told him she was a heavy boned blond with a twin sister who she called Effie and a son, Albert. About Albert, Eva wrote to Rablan, he has had no father since he was a month old. The father left her. She hasn't seen him and if a man left her she wouldn't want to see them again and she would make sure she didn't.” It was an odd thing to say during courtship. They continued to write back and forth and it was decided that Eva would leave Texas, come to California and the two would be married. 
 
Carroll met Eva at the station in San Francisco, and together they traveled to Nevada where they were married in Reno. Her twin sister Effie and son Albert soon followed her out to California. Stephen Rablen was not keen on the idea of his son’s previously divorced “mail order bride”. Steven questioned her motives. The town was curious. 
 
One year after the wedding, the gossiping had died off. Carroll had found a job as a clerk with Standard City Lumber, which was being acquired and would soon be named Pickering Lumber and the couple was living on a chicken ranch in Standard City. The two of them quarreled often and shared a toxic and unhealthy relationship. When Eva transferred herself as the beneficiary on the $3,500 life insurance policy Carroll had purchased for himself, his father Stephen was alarmed. 
 
Stephen Rablen played the fiddle and a local wedding or party seldom went without Stephen and his brother John providing the music. The brothers had been asked to play at a community dance at the Tuttletown school house on the 29th of April in 1929. Carroll and Eva joined them for the party. Well, Eva did.  Carroll’s insecurities with his hearing impairment kept him from fully enjoying the festivities and as per usual, Carroll waited out the night in the car while his wife danced the night away with the people from town. 
Halfway through the night, Stephen was playing “Turkey in the Straw” on his fiddle when Eva went to the refreshment table to make up a sandwich and a cup of coffee for Carroll. She would bring him a refreshment to the car. With her hands full, Eva made her way across the dance floor towards the front door. Alice Shea, a local woman who was dancing, jostled her arm, and some of the coffee spilled on Alice’s pink dress. Oops. 
 
Eva made her way outside with the sandwich and cup of coffee to her husband who was still in the car. “Here dear, here is something to eat.” Carroll thanked his bride, she waved and returned to the dance floor. He had a few bites of his sandwich while he waited for the hot coffee to cool down. He blew into it, and took a sip. He made a strange face. He took another drink and then another. Then, he dropped the cup.
 
This episode was brought to you by our main Sponsor Columbia Mercantile 1855, Columbia Historic Park’s Main street grocery store. Teresa, the owner carries a mix of quality international and local products that replicate diverse provisions of when Columbia was California's second largest city after San Francisco. I love the selection of hard kombucha, my favorite. It is common to hear, "Wow! I didn't expect to find that here in Columbia". The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is located in Columbia State Historic Park at 11245 Jackson Street and is a great place to keep our local economy moving. At a time like this, it is so important to shop local, and The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is friendly, welcoming, fairly priced and accepts EBT. Open Daily!
Now, back to Tuttletown- 
 
A few minutes after midnight, Rancher Frank Shell and a group of his friends were smoking in front of the schoolhouse on the night of the dance. 
The men stopped mid conversation when they began to hear groans of distress. Frank Shell realized it was coming from a nearby parked car and followed the sound. He found Carroll doubled over and shouted to him. “What’s the matter, are you sick?” Carroll mumbled to Shell, “That coffee - bitter - get  - my - father.” 
 
Frank Shell opened the car door, picked the vet up and carried him into the schoolhouse. Shell was yelling as he burst through the door,  “Steve - Steve Rablen- Your boy is sick!” The music in the Tuttletown schoolhouse stopped and everyone heard Carroll cry out in pain. Stephen threw his fiddle down, jumped off the platform and rushed through the crowd towards his son. Eva had rushed out from the kitchen where she had been helping clean up. She stood and watched the action play out around her, seemingly terrified. She finally attempted to hold her husband down as he thrashed around but Frank Shell carried Carrol outside and placed him on the ground.
 
Carroll reached out for his father’s hand and told him one last time, “ Papa, that coffee was awfully bitter.” His words faded as he slipped into an unconscious state. Emergency services arrived 45 minutes later with Tuolumne County Sheriff Jack H. Dambacher, who pronounced Carroll B. Rablen dead at the scene. Eva rode along quietly as the ambulance took her husband’s body to Coroner Josie Terzich. 
 
Dr. Bromley also built a two-story hospital called the Bromley Sanitarium, which we talked about in the Open Mic episode, it later became known as Sonora Hospital. It was situated at the current Yosemite Title parking lot.
 
Dr. Bromley performed an autopsy on Carrol Rablen’s body and sent Rablen’s stomach contents to the University of California for analysis. Foul play was not obvious, and it was assumed Carroll had died of natural causes but Steven Rablen did not buy it. He stormed Dambacher’s headquarters, demanding that the search continued. 
 
Sheriff Dambacher returned to the Tuttletown schoolhouse on May 1, 1929, the day of Carroll Rablen’s funeral. After an hour of searching which turned up nothing, he placed his hat on his head and turned to leave the scene, he paused. On the ground in a bush, near where the Rablen’s car had been parked, was a small medicinal bottle from Bigelow’s drugstore. He picked up the bottle and read the label. STRYCHNINE. The poison used to kill rodents.
 
We want to welcome this month’s featured sponsor, Sonora Florist. SONORA FLORIST has been providing our community with beautiful flower arrangements for whatever the occasion since the early 1950s. You can visit sonoraflorist.com, or search Sonora Florist on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. There is a special website for wedding florals, visit sincerelysonoraflorist.com to see their wedding work, read reviews, or to book a consultation with one of their designers if you are getting married in the area. Thank you Sonora Florist. And if you have not checked out the mural on the side of the shop, on the corner of Washington and Bradford in downtown Sonora, in honor of the local Chinese history, do so! It was a fight to get it up, and it was worth it!
 
This Episode is brought to you by the Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH. Are you facing criminal charges in California? The most important thing you can do is obtain legal counsel from an aggressive Criminal Defense Lawyer you can trust. The Law Office of Charles B. Smith has effectively handled thousands of cases. The Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH do not just defend cases, they represent people. Charles is intimately familiar with the investigative techniques the police and prosecutors use and is able to look at your case and see defenses that others can, and do, miss. Visit cbsattorney.com for more information.  Even during the gold rush, no one liked attorneys, and Chrles, you will love. 
 
After finding the empty bottle of strychnine at the scene of the crime, Dambacher headed to Bigelow’s Drug Store to question the clerk about the recent purchases of the poison. There had been only one purchase of the substance that week, to a Mrs. Joe Williams, who lived on a chicken ranch near the junction of the Sonora Mono road and the road to Soulsbyville, at about 10 o'clock on the morning of Crroll’s death. The purchase was under the pretext of the need for poisoning gophers. When the drugstore clerk described the appearance of Mrs. Joe Williams, it was an exact description of Eva Brandon. 
 
Eva had been staying with Mrs. Jasper Shell after the accident, and Dambacher headed to the Shell’s Hale Ranch. Eva came outside, and the Sheriff told her they were going on a ride with Constable Hoskins to the drugstore. The employees that were present when she bought the poison for 50 cents were Walter Ronten and Mrs Warren Sahey. They told the officers that Eva was the woman who bought the bottle. Dambacher made the clerks aware that their certainty would end in a murder charge for Eva, they took a second look but were positive. Eva was immediately accused of murder. She vigorously denied the charges, saying her husband was broken-hearted over his health problems and had surely poisoned himself. She demanded the Sheriff bring her home but Jack Dambacher told Eva she was not going home for a long time.
 
At the sheriff headquarters, Carrol’s father Stephen insisted that he suspected his daughter-in-law had killed his son over a $3,500 insurance policy. For reference, $3500 would be the equivalent of $56k in 2021. Stephen Rablen told the deputies he believed that Eva found her victims through mail-order bride advertisements. He suggested she surely killed her last husband, a mail-order groom named Hubert Brandon. Eva was formally charged with premeditated murder the following day in a complaint signed by Stephen Rablan. Her twin sister Effie had been working night and day to prove someone else bought the poison. Effie insisted that the two were deeply in love and that Eva was miles away when the poison was bought.
 
Sonora’s Dr. Bromley conducted the autopsy and sent Carroll’s stomach to western laboratories in Oakland to be tested for poison by the famed scientist Edward O. Heinrich. Local Coroner Jesie Terzzich attended the testing. Heinrich was a famous American criminologist in the 20’s known as the Wizard of Berkeley, America’s Sherlock Holmes and the Edison of Crime Detection. He was an extraordinarily skilled criminologist who, almost single-handedly, helped to instill a systematic and scientific level of criminal investigation in the 20s and 30s. Heinrich is still held in the highest esteem by those who are familiar with his methodologies. 
 
The Mother Lode was seething with controversy, everyone had their own opinion on whether it was murder, suicide or natural causes. Eva sat calmly in jail for a week proclaiming “why would I kill my husband? I never poisoned him!” The San Joaquin attorney Charles H. Vance, offered to defend Eva, telling her that “No hick sheriff or county prosecutor would ever be able to convict her”. The entire case was heavily covered in extreme detail in the papers as front page news. 
 
The trial for the murder of Crroll Rablan was so largely attended on June 10 1929, the hearing was held outside in an open-air dance pavilion, where there was no shortage of space. Eva arrived on the arm of her attorney and quickly pleaded not guilty. Her defense focused on the mental state of the husband and wife. Carroll, they claimed, was suicidal. His first wife was there to testify that she had heard him make suicidal remarks in the past. The defense stated that Eva was manic depressive with developmental disabilities leaving her with an IQ equal to her eleven year old son. 
 
Then, the opposition took the stage. An insurance agent from Oakdale  was called on as a witness, testifying that he had called on Carroll the day before he died to let him know his insurance would soon expire, and he had refused to renew the policy under Eva’s name. Next, a handwriting expert proved the signature on a drugstore’s registry with Eva’s handwriting and they were a perfect match. It wasn't looking good for Eva.
 
Now, forensic science was still new, and forensic science using DNA would not be used to solve a crime until 1984, but it was forensics and chemical analysis that cracked this case in 1929. Edward O. Heinrich was called to the stand. Heinrich proved to the judge, and the curious audience, that there was strychnine in Carroll’s stomach, on the coffee cup, and on the coffee stain that was left on Alice Shea's dress. 
 
Eva and her team’s mood changed when they realized the strong case against her and the crowd was shocked when suddenly, Eva took the stand and changed her plea to guilty. 
 
She told the judge the war had left horrific effects on her husband. He constantly victimised himself and complained about his ailments. 
 
“Quarrels, quarrels, I was sick and tired of them. We talked things over. It was decided we should both commit suicide. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was exhausted by my husband’s suicidal tendencies, he constantly talked about self-harm and asked me to kill him. Finally I decided to poison him. It was the best way out, I thought. Now they want to hang me? I could only put him out of the way because I felt it was the only way to get my freedom.”
 
  Her confession eliminated the need for the trial and Eva Brandon-Rablen was sentenced to life in prison at San Quentin for Murder, without the possibility of parole. By pleading guilty, Eva evaded the death penalty. 
Sheriff Jack Dambacher and his wife escorted Eva to the ferry that would take her to the penitentiary. Eva was all smiles as she told the couple “I feel fine,  not a bit tired. I’m not at all downhearted or discouraged.” Effie was there with Eva’s son, eleven year old Albert Lee so he could say farewell to his mother. She held her son in a cold embrace. “I will be alright,” she told him. “I’m going to study Spanish. I’ve always been crazy to learn Spanish. Then if I get along well with that I can take on other subjects.”
Reporters on hand at the ferry dock asked her why she killed Carroll. “I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell you why I confessed to putting strychnine in my husband’s coffee. I told the court all and I want to tell.” 
Eva boarded the ferry that would transport her to San Quentin and looked to the distance as the ferry left the shore. She disappeared behind the prison walls to spend the rest of her life; she would never again be free. Well, never say never. 
 
Nine years later, on Jan 27th 1938, against the recommendations of the Tuolumne County Superior Court and officials at prison, she applied for parole.    
 
You see, Eva was one of the original prisoners transferred from San Quentin to the California Institute for Women at Tehachapi. Eva had served longer than most of the other criminals incarcerated there. Parole was granted. The forgotten woman left the prison walls and was whisked away in a car that was waiting for her outside. 
 
I guess we will never know what Eva’s true motive was. Was she insane, as her lawyers would have argued? Did Carroll poison himself and she took the blame? Did he ask her to do it? Was it for $3,500, as her father-in-law believed? Or is there a story, still untold? What do you think?  
John Henry “Jack” Dambacher, whose tenure as sheriff from 1922 to 1946 is the longest in county history. Dambacher was known by his nickname “The Black Hat”, apparently after his iconic headwear. The new county jail was named the JH Dambacher detention center. He was originally buried in Sonora's Mountain View Catholic Cemetery but he was dis-interred and moved to the Casa Bonita Mausoleum in Stockton. Carroll Burdette Rablen, his mother and his father Stephen are buried in the Sonora City Cemetery. Heinnrich was buried at Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium and Mausoleum at hot - topic on QOTM Mountain View Oakland.
 
Alright, love you all, be safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask, stay positive and act kind. Thank you for taking the time to listen today, subscribe to the show so we can meet again weekly, on Queens of the Mines. Queens of the Mines is a product of the “Youreka! Podcast Network” and was written, produced and narrated by Andrea Anderson. Go to queensofthemines.com for the book and more. 
 
Primary sources:
Oakland Tribune Tue May 14, 1929
The Ogden Standard Examiner Sun Jul 14, 1929
www.murderpedia.org/female.R/images/rablen_eva/eva-rablen.pdf
https://oldspirituals.com/2019/06/16/from-the-end-eva-rablen-mail-order-bride/
THE MAIL ORDER BRIDE MURDER- C.A. Asbrey 
Object: Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the … By Chris Enss

The Murder at Dragoon’s Gulch FROM THE VAULT

Today, we are talking about a murder at Dragoon’s Gulch, in Sonora, Ca. No evidence of the gulch’s murderous past remains on the Dragoon Gulch walking trail area in Sonora.  The trail begins at the top of Woods Creek Rotary Park across from the Mother Lode Fairgrounds. When you cross Wood’s Creek you reach the bottom of Dragoon Gulch.  It is free to walk the trail, and dogs are welcome. 
Correction:
$1,000 in 1851 is worth $37,338.18 today. 1849 it was $38,799.46. $38,385.05 in 1853.
 
one ounce of gold was valued at $20.67 and is worth around $2000 an ounce today. 
Sources:
https://www.sonoraca.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/dragoon-trail-history.pdf
http://mygoldrushtales.com/murder-at-dragoon-gulch/
the journal of william perkins
the history of california - sonora murders 282
the century vol 63
 
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Are you looking for something magical for your sacred space this spring? Sisters of the Moon in Sonora, Ca, and online, carries witchy antiques, vintage, handmade items, metaphysical items and organic, farm to jar handmade self care products. So if you are looking for some super awesome gals to support, choose Jenn and Julie for your next shopping spree for mugs, besoms, wreaths, crystals, tarot, incense and more. Sisters of the Moon has two booths in Mountain Treasures at 13643 Tuolumne Road, Sonora CA. You can also shop with Sisters of the Moon online at www.sistersofthemoon31.com and they  will ship anywhere in the US. Use the code sisters13 for 13% off online purchases. Find them on social media at sistersofthemoon3.You know, anything can be magical
We are seeing a lot of cool ventures pop up that truly serve a purpose. I am super excited to tell you about these new sponsors of the podcast. Jenn and Rosie met while homeschooling during the Pandemic.Together they are walking the road of business owners and single moms who support one another.  Soulful Mountain Homestead and Farm is an organic/permaculture/regenerative homestead. A dream rooted in reality after the pressure Jenn endured from shelter in place and the horrific Santa Cruz Mountain fire of 2020. Jenn had a desire to help other single parents get sustainable with their food source and  change the way people farm, help the environment, and help parents feed their kids healthy homegrown food. Rosie, the owner or micROWgreenZ, offers highly nutritious microgreens in an array of flavors and species. She has dedication to the quality of microgreens that is unmatched. Roosie founded MicROWgreenZ out of a desire to be able to spend more time with her kids, while helping friends and family heal from sickness and disease through Whole Foods. Both businesses will be available at farmers markets across Tuolumne county, as well as home delivery and pick up from Soulful Mountain Homestead in Soulsbyville.  The mission is to heal people through food while healing the earth. Proudly serving Tuolumne County and the San Jose and Bay Area.
The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is a friendly, reimagined mid-19th century style full-service grocery store supporting the needs of regional residents of Tuolumne County and the visitors of the living history town of Columbia, California. Experience “Eureka!” moments of discovery and delight shopping for great food and more. You can find quality staples and imported specialties, local meats/poultry, vegan, dairy-free, and GF options craft beer, local wines, OTC pharmaceuticals, hardware, garden, home goods, antiques, and fine art at fair prices, You'll find yourself saying, “Wow! I didn’t expect to find THAT in Columbia!” The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is open DAILY from 9 AM – 6 PM, 11245 Jackson Street, CA 95310 USA and they accept SNAP/EBT benefits, cash, all major credit cards and  Apple pay. Follow them on FB and Instagram for updates and occasional closures or changes to hours.

Hattie McDaniel - Black History Month

Support the podcast by tipping via Venmo to @queensofthemines, buying the book on Amazon, or becoming a patron at www.partreon.com/queensofthemines
Today we talk about the incredible life of Hattie McDaniel. She was the First African-American to Win an Oscar, but also, so much more. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West.  Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be, disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. 
From the early 19th to the early 20th century, minstrelsy was a popular form of American theater. Minstrel shows were based on the comic enactment of racial stereotypes. This tradition hit its peak between 1850 and 1870. The earliest shows were staged by white male traveling musicians mimicking the singing and dancing of slaves, with their faces painted black. Minstrel troupes did not welcome actual black performers until after the Civil War. And then, these minstrel shows were the only theatrical medium in which gifted Black performers of the period could support themselves. By the 20th century, women were also appearing in minstrel shows. On June 10 of 1893, Susan had their thirteenth child, a daughter. They named her Hattie. On the account of the family being so poor, Hattie was malnourished, weighing only three and a half pounds at birth. Although the McDaniel family often went hungry, they were tight-knit and creative.
 

The First Cinco de Mayo

Over the years, there has always been confusion about the orgin of Cinco de Mayo in the non-mexican communities, and today I hope to clarify a few things on that subject. The history of Cinco De Mayo unviels the importance of the landscape of North America as a whole, and, did you know, it was very first celebrated in our very own Gold Rush town of Historic Columbia?
Sources 
History of Cinco De Mayo
MyMotherLode - Birthplace of Cinco De Mayo
Where Cinco De Mayo Started
Nevada Appeal
 

Ni’ka - Part 3 of 3 FROM THE VAULT

Wherever you are in this hemisphere, you are on Native land.  Never forget, that before the Spanish arrived in California, for thousands of years, from sea to shining sea, this was indian country, with more than 300,000 Natives living here, representing more than 100 tribes, each with its individual traditions and cultures, most completely lost by the arrival of settlers. Write that down, and burn it into your brain. 
 
 “The history of genocide casts a shadow over California. It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.”  This was said by my hero, Benjamin Madley, he is an associate professor of history at UCLA and has been on a more than decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide.
 
The Youreka Podcast Network is literally days away from launch. You will be able to download a free app, and have all of the Network podcasts at your fingertips! Including my new shows, Here Lies, an audio tour of historic cemeteries, Rustic Rituals, affirmations and meditations for country folk, Queens of the Mines Two and MORE! Find us on Libsyn and instagram now to keep up @yourekapodcasts. That is YOUREKA, because this network is yours.
 
https://sarahannegraham.com
 
 
Surrender
Wherever you are in this hemisphere, you are on Native land.  Never forget that before the Spanish arrived in California, for thousands of years, from sea to shining sea, this was Indian country. More than 300,000 Natives lived here, representing more than 100 tribes, each with its individual traditions and cultures, most completely lost by the arrival of settlers. Never forget that the Russians, European-American colonists, and Spanish missionaries' arrival on the Pacific coastline forever changed the native people’s way of life. Write that down, and burn it into your brain. The first known interaction with the Natives in California was in the Monterey area in 1602, when Sebastián de Vizcaíno’s Spanish expedition was searching for a safe harbor for their ships.  Well over 100 years then passed with little attention paid to Alta California. Then, Gaspar de Portola’s expedition of Spanish missionaries arrived in the Monterey area in 1769 and Spain began colonizing. Erasing the identities of the California indigenous people who entered the missions. The San Rafael Mission was established, removing Pomo people from their lands, bringing them to the new mission. They were given a wool shirt with long sleeves called a cotón, and a wool blanket. The women were also given a wool petticoat and men received a breechclout to cover their groin area. They were then forcibly baptized into the Catholic faith, and thrown into labor camps that were filthy and disease ridden. Five years down the road, California became part of the Mexican Republic, and the Mexican government gave out large tracts of Pomo land to its settlers. The foreign white colonists brought deadly diseases and epidemics. 
In one instance, a Russian ship brought a case of smallpox, the indigenous people did not have immunity to such diseases, the tribe populations heavily decreased. The bones of thousands “left unburied, bleached the hills” of Sonoma and Napa counties. As all this happened, the domestic stock animals brought by the foreigners damaged the gathering areas while they grazed and consumed all of the native foods. Stream channels were disturbed and often re-routed, land was blasted away and huge amounts of soil entered streams and rivers, destroying the habitat of fish and other aquatic species that the indigenous people depended on for survival. Ten years later there was a massive malaria outbreak. The following year the missions were authorized by the crown to “convert” all of the Natives within a ten-year period. They had until 1844. They were to surrender their control over the mission’s livestock, fields, orchards and buildings to the Indians in 1844. The padres never achieved their goal and the lands and wealth were then stolen from the Natives. The California Mission System was not the sugar cube fantasy we were fed in fourth grade. Debunked. Unpack that. Accept it. My hero, Benjamin Madley, is an associate professor of history at UCLA and has been on a more than decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide. He said, “The history of genocide casts a shadow over California. It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.”  
Survival
The wilderness holds an abundance of power. Power that is manifested in the rocks, the springs, the animals, and the trees. A Power that is sought after and/or found when stumbled upon.  The indigineous people of the Americas are familiar with this power. The foreigners who came to this land usually did  not refer to the natural beauty and the magic it held, but the wealth it retained. 
 
An Eastern Pomo woman ponders over petroglyphs on the face of boulders near her village of Danoha in ClearLake California. Her family had lived here for thousands of years. The petroglyphs, at the entrance of a natural tunnel in a collection of boulders, were known as the baby rocks. She has fasted for four days, and she has come alone, seeking to move through the rocks, in an altered state of consciousness. The baby rocks held the spirits of the future children to be born to the parents who followed this Pomo ritual. There was a power affecting fertility there. The carved petroglyphs allowed her entrance, where she negotiated with Mother Earth. Nine months later, Ni’ka was born in the village of Danoha, under the sod roof of her family's dome-shaped home made of tule and earth covered wooden poles. It was 1849. Ni’ka sat with her mother, watching her making a basket with great care, weaving in the Dau, or Spirit Door. This Spirit Door would allow good spirits to come and circulate inside of the basket while the good or bad spirits were released. The base of the basket was completely covered in vivid red feathers of the pileated woodpecker, the surface so smooth, it resembled the breast of the bird itself. Her mother had a sacred gift in making the baskets the family used for cooking, storing food, their religious ceremonies, and daily life. Her technique was exquisite. Together, they collected basket materials annually, swamp canes, rye grass, black ash, willow shoots, sedge roots, the bark of redbud, the root of bulrush, and the root of the gray pine. Nika’s mother taught the five year old girl everything she knew when it came to drying, cleaning, splitting, soaking, and dying the materials. It would be many weeks before the basket was finished. In the coming weeks, she would be taught to fasten beads to the basket's border and the pendants of abalone shell Ni’ka had worked to polish would be attached. In the distance, she could see the fellow children in her tribe arriving home from their gathering expeditions on the outside. The community and culture was the “inside” of their home, and the wilderness and wild areas to which they went for hunting and gathering wild foods was the “outside.” A dualism, a contrast of community and wilderness, domestic and wild, culture and nature. Surely their baskets would be filled with bulbs, roots, clover, pinole seeds, gooseberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, wild greens, gnats, mushrooms, acorns, nuts, caterpillars, grasshoppers and Yerba Buena. The men in the tribe were away on a hunt with bows and harpoons, in search of deer, elk, antelope, rabbit, sea lions, rats, squirrels, waterfowl, and birds. They would periodically burn the land to remove hiding places for the game. They would also fish for salmon, carp, blackfish, clams and mussels. Women gave life, and because the giving of life was a woman's most important role, she did not participate in the taking of life, which included coming in contact with weapons. Instead, the women worked at home, gathering food and materials and preparing the plant based foods. They would shell the acorns, crushing and watering them till they were easy to work with. Next, they would ground the acorns into a paste or to make mush, bread, and soup. Pies would be made with the acorn meal and gathered berries and nuts. Ni’ka enjoyed her life on the inside and was unaware of the struggles of the nearby Pomo tribes, and Ni’ka was unaware of what this meant for her, her family, her tribe, and her cherished land. 
 
Ninety miles north of San Francisco in Clearlake, 15,000 cattle and 2,500 horses lived on Big Valley Ranch. Salvador Vallejo had sold the property in 1847 to Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone, the first Anglo-American colonists in the Clear Lake region. Andrew Kelsey and his three brothers had hoisted the Bear Flag with the Bear Flag Party in Sonoma in 1846. They were rough and often in trouble with the authorities. On their ranch, they made the rules. Raiding the surrounding Eastern Pomo and Wapo villages, Stone and Kelsey and Co. captured several hundred Native Pomo and Wapo people. They forced their slaves to construct and operate their empire. Everything was taken from the natives, including fishing supplies, and simple knives. The men were used as vaqueros, which in English translates to cattle drivers or cowboys. The vaqueros were forced into back breaking labor as they dug wells and built the grand hacienda, outbuildings and a barrier in which they would remain inside, along with their wives and children. Imprisoned. Behind the high fence, for their own entertainment, Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone brutally mistreated the Natives. Disrespectfully, they called them “Diggers”. The often drunken white men shot at the Wapo and Pomo for the fun of seeing them jump. Kelsey and Stone had taken local Pomo Chief Augustine’s wife as a sex slave and constantly ordered Pomo fathers to bring them their daughters to be sexually used and abused, and the men who resisted were whipped, lashed and hung by the hands or toes. This was a usual punishment and it occurred at least two or three times a week. If a worker broke any rule, they would be hung “up by his thumbs, so that his toes just touched the floor, and keep him there for two or three days, sometimes with nothing to eat.” Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone ruled over the Eastern Pomo and Clear Lake Wapo people using fear, torture, sadism, and murderous force for many years. The enslaved Pomo people were nearly starved. Kelsey and Stone hardly provided food and had banned them from foraging, hunting and fishing on their land. Eighteen of the main herdsmen and their two foreman were the only Slaves being fed. The men would receive about 6 pints of boiled wheat each for a day’s work, and the men would share the wheat back at home, so these herders were also starving. The people were getting restless. Twenty elders had died from starvation over winter and four of the Native slaves had been killed by severe whipping in the early months of 1849. “The inside” was no longer safe. Da-Pi-Tauo was sick and starving. She was the wife of Big Jim, a native Pomo slave at Big Valley Ranch. Da-Pi-Tauo’s sister who was the wife of Shuk, an 18 year old Pomo man. Shuk would later become the Hoolanapo Pomo chief Augustine. She was now Stone’s personal slave. Da-Pi-Tauo sent her son to her sister. “Tell your aunt that I am starving and sick, ask for a handful of wheat.” He hurried to Stone’s house and told his aunt just what his mother had said. His aunt, fearful for her sister’s health, gave her nephew 5 cups of wheat that she tied it up in an apron of hers. The young man started for the camp with the precious gift in a hurry to help his sick mother. Charles Stone spotted the boy running from the house and called him back. Stone approached the boy and swatted the wheat from his hands. The apron fell to the ground, wind blowing the grains away. The young boy tried to gather the life saving substance but was captured by Stone and taken to a nearby tree, where he was tied up and given 100 lashes. When Stone had enough, he shot the young boy.  Da-Pi-Tauo’s son suffered for two whole days before he died, his punishment  for attempting to feed his starving mother. Action had to be taken by the natives or all would be lost. It was decided that Shuk and Xasis, the headriders of the eighteen herdsmen, would be secretly hired to kill a cow and bring it back to the village. The people had to eat. The foreman debated the plan all night, night or day, and the order of action, deciding by the end, to do the job at night. They would take the best lasso horses in the barn. The best lasso horses in the barn, of course, belonged to Stone and Kelsey. Shuk promised, “somebody is going to get killed on this job.” Under the moonlight from a cloudy sky, Shuk and Xasis crept to the house to see if Kelsey and Stone had gone to bed. They had. It was drizzling on them as they went to the barn and took their horses and saddles. The plan was to round up the band that was feeding out west. Shuk would make the first lasso and Xasis would do the foot lassing. 
 
Under the stars, Shuk called out, “I see a big one here, hurry and come on!” Shuk saw his chance and threw the rope on a hefty ox. As Xasis rushed over, the stampede began. The ox joined in. Shuk’s horse was pulled to the wet, slippery ground, he was knocked off, and the horse and the ox got away. Xasis attempted to get his rope on, but was too far away, and eventually, he gave up the chase. Defeated, Xasis returned Kelsey’s horse to the barn. The bad news was reported to the men of the tribe who had gathered in Xasis’s house. They all knew death was in the pot for Shuk and Xasis. The men faced another night of debate. It seemed obvious to Shuk and Xasis that the solution was to kill the white men. No one agreed. A Wapo man offered the suggestion of the tribe giving Stone and Kelsey forty sticks of beads, the equivalent of 16,000 beads or $100. Thirty five hundred dollars in 2021. No one agreed. One of the men thought they could tell Stone or Kelsey the horse was stolen. No one agreed. Another man suggested that the other horse should be turned out and that they tell Stone and Kelsey both horses were stolen. No one agreed. It was not looking good for Shuk and Xasis, and the men decided murder was the only option. Starvation was the main reason the slaves at Big Valley Ranch wanted Stone and Kelsey dead, but hardly the only motive. They set out together, that early December morning of 1849 to save their people. To do right and fear no man. A man known as Busi decided to join the men as daylight was approaching. The boys and girls of the village worked inside the household as servants. Kra-nas and Ma-Laxa-Qe-Tu joined the band when, in the wee hours, the children worked together to remove every gun, knife, bow and arrow and anything that could be used as a weapon from the home. Da-Pi-Tauo’s sister poured water onto the two men's gunpowder, rendering it useless. Kelsey and Stone would be helpless in defense. Charles Stone would start each morning all alone, boiling wheat for the 18 herdsmen and their two foremen. This morning, when Stone showed up carrying a pot from the fireplace, he was shocked to see five of the men already waiting for him. He was curious. “What’s the matter, boys? You came early this morning. Something wrong?” Busi responded, “Oh nothing, me hungry that’s all.” Kra-nas looked confused and said to Shuk, “I thought we came to kill this man? Give me these arrows and bows.” Kra-nas pulled the bow and the arrow from Shuk’s hands and pointed right at Stone. Stone whispered “What are you trying to do?” as the arrow was cut loose, striking him in the stomach. Stone pulled the arrow out of his torso and attempted to take off running towards the house. The men surrounded him and they began to throw blows. Busi’s arm was broken after Stone struck him with the fire pot, and he succeeded in getting into the house, locking the door behind him. Kelsey soon arrived, noticing blood on the doorstep of Stone’s home. The men jumped out to ambush him and a fight ensued, Kelsey said to the men. “don’t kill Kelsey, Kelsey good man for you”  Kanas [Kra-nas] replied, “Yes, you are such a good man that you have killed many of us.” Kelsey broke free and ran for the creek, but not before he was shot in the back with two arrows. As he approached the creek, Kelsey managed to pull the arrows out before he dove into the water, staying out of sight until approaching the opposite shore. Where, surprise, several Native men were waiting for him. One of the men was Ju-Luh, a man Kelsey knew well. He begged Ju-Luh for his life, as he lost blood, and became weak. Ju-Luh said, ”It’s too late Kelsey; if I attempt to save you. I also will be killed. I cannot save you.” Ju-Luh and Big Jim held Kelsey by the arms and took him to his wife, Da-Pi-Tauo. “This is a man who killed our son, take this spear.” Da-Pi-Tauo stabbed the white man in the heart and his body was left for the coyotes. At the house, Xasis and Qra-Nas were chasing a breathless Stone, following the drops of blood. The trail led the men to a door, where Stone’s foot revealed his location, crawling up the stairs. Qra-Nas drew his arrow across the bow and Xasis swung the door open but Stone did not move. He had bled to death, or so they thought. They took his body, and threw it out the window. Somehow, Stone got back up and ran to the forest, where Da-Pi-Tauo’s sister found him and used a rock to end his life for good. The woman who was taken from her home and forced to be the sex slave to the men, was the final hand in both their fates. The group reunited at the house, and immediately gathered food to bring home to their families. The men who were able to ride, took a horse and left for the valleys and upper lake to hunt. There were thousands of cattle and they would eat well. The women of the tribes went to the house and gathered all the corn and wheat they could pack up. The plan was for the women, children and elders to flee to hiding places at Scotts Valley and Fishels Point. The men would stay behind to keep watch.
 
John W. Davidson, Virginian, was preparing himself to sit down for a Christmas dinner with his family. On the table, oyster and chestnut stuffing and a large wild turkey were waiting on the table, filling the home with the most delicious scent. His children rushed to the table, excited to eat the beautiful meal. There was a knock at the door, the Davidson’s were not expecting any visitors on this holiday evening. At the door, stood a rider carrying a post for the First Lieutenant. The post carried the news that Charles Stone and Andrew Kelsey of Clear Lake had been murdered by some of the Native Pomo men that they were holding in captivity. John Davidson sat down at the table, staring at the letter, forgetting about the turkey and oyster and chestnut stuffing. Davidson knew Andrew Kelsey from his association with the US Army Captain John C. Frémont during the initial US invasion of the territory that would soon be called California. General Smith of the First Dragoons believed in collective punishment. Smith declared that, “As soon as troops can move in the spring, the California Indians who committed the murder on Clear Lake must be chastised.” Someone would pay for this. On the afternoon of the day after Christmas, twelve hours had passed since Davidson had received the news of Kelsey and Stone’s passing. Lieutenant Nathaniel Lyon was getting ready to begin a seventy mile journey north. Lieutenant Lyon led a detachment of 22 men from a regiment of the U.S. Army’s First Dragoons. For three long days, the militia of determined white meen moved through dense brush and grasses that were nearly as tall as them. The men were rowdy and often drunk as they rode through hills of towering oak trees, making their way to Clear Lake. The mission-  retaliation against the Native Pomo People, and the white men’s hearts were set on extermination.  
 
Just south of Calistoga, Clear Lake Wappo women and men were going about their daily life inside their large village. When they woke up that morning, they had no reason to think that it was not just another typical day, unsuspecting of an approaching cavalry. On a typical day of battle for brave Wappo men, Wappo warriors would have painted themselves with black, red, and white paint. Large bird wings would be worn in their hair. Yet they were left surprised, when Lyon and his men bombarded the village, killing thirty-five Wappo people with their open fire. Eleven Natives of all ages were murdered as they innocently walked out of their sweat house, their bodies then burned in their homes. Then they just left. The posse headed for the Cyrus family ranch to recruit more men to join in on the battle ahead. At the Cyrus ranch, the soldiers attempted to convince the settlers there to help them rid the area of Natives. The locals absolutely refused. The labor of the California Indians was depended on by the farmers. One man declared, “if we treat them kindly and pay them fairly, they are quite pleasant.” Defeated, the band of vigilantes left, they would handle the job by themselves. For weeks, the posse chased after and promised to kill every California Indian they found as they passed through Sonoma. Simultaneously Benjamin Kelsey, was burning more Rancherias and chasing men to their death. The Napa locals were combative to the posse’s violence and requested help from the Governor. As they waited, they banded together to turn back the cavalry in Napa, crushing the plans to cross on the ferry. North of St. Helena, there was a large Rancheria belonging to more men of the Bear Flag Revolt, Henry Fowler and William Hargrave. The militia intruded upon the Rancheria, and burned their lodges and sacred spaces. They shot at least 15 of the local Wappo people and before they abandoned the scene, they sabotaged the survivors' supply of barley and wheat. Leaving the bodies of the slain children, women and men in their wake. The rancheria is now known as “Human Flesh Ranch”.
 
“Ever since the murder of Andrew Kelsey, a party of men have caused much excitement among the peaceful inhabitants of this place and Napa.” - March 2, 1850.
 
Shuk and Xasis patrolled the trail on the west side of the valley. Qra-Nas and Ma-Laq-Qe-Tou were chosen to watch the trail that came in from the lower lake, and Yom-mey-nah and Ge-we-leh were watching the trail that came from Eight Mile Valley. For two weeks, no white person was seen on the trail until two on horseback coming over the hill from the lower lake were spotted by Qra-nas and Ma-Laq-Qe-Tou. The men, even from a far distance, noticed the camp was deserted. The white men noticed Qra-nas and Ma-Laq-Qe-Tou coming towards them and they took off. Another three days passed, and no one was seen. Two Pomo men were camped at the top of the north peak of Uncle Sam mountain, watching for danger for four days, when early one morning, a long boat with a pole on the bow with red cloth was seen, and it was followed by several more, and each boat held ten to fifteen men. Watching the trail from Ash Hill, the two men saw the infantrys coming over the hill. The men were marching, firing shots with their threatening guns. A smoke signal was sent and a tule canoe was spotted by the lake watchers, “Some news coming.” They needed to hide. They retreated to leave for  Oregon.
 
Kelsey had a brother, Benjamin, and he was looking for revenge. Benjamin Kelsey rounded up a posse. The posse was a militia led by Lieutenant Nathaniel Lyon and Lieutenant John W. Davidson including the Cavalry detachment of the U.S. First Dragoons Regiment. They made a plan. A random campaign of violence against all Clear Lake Pomo had been waged. They men went to Stone and Kelsey’s house, and then down towards the lake. They moved across the valley near the lake port, Scotts Valley, to the upper lake to set up camp on Emerson Hill. It was there they saw the Pomo camp on the island Bo-no-po-ti. The cavalry was told that six hundred Pomo armed warriors were stationed on the island. In fact, the Pomo at Bo-no-po-ti never worked on Stone and Kelsey’s ranch, and had nothing to do with their murders. The island was mostly populated with women and children, and it was where Ni’ka, and her mother were finishing up their basket. It had been a cold winter. Staying warm inside her tule kotka by the small fire, Nika learned to make clothing from the tule, and spent hours assembling jewelry made of what was left of last season’s collected abalone and clamshells. Ni’ka’s mother was also teaching her daughter to sew. They were using the skin from rabbits her father had hunted, to make a blanket. The tribe members would travel to the coast to fish and gather more materials this coming summer, and Ni’kas father promised he would take her along. Soon, he would go on a long seasonal hunting expedition with the men of the tribe and Nika would go fishing with her mother and the women and other children. Nika ran her fingers over the smooth abalone, thinking of the wonderful gifts nature bestowed on her family, anything they could ever need was right there, surrounding them in the wilderness. The now six year old Nika could not wait for the adventures to come, playing in the poppies. 
“We had hoped to hear no more of Indian butcheries in California. We hope and trust the U.S. troops in California will prevent further violence.” -Daily Alta California March 11, 1850 
“Hundreds of the Indians are in the mountains in a starving condition, afraid to return to the Ranchos.”  - Daily Alta California - March 19, 1850
 
 In the chilly water that spring afternoon, the children were challenging one another in a game. With hollow tule reeds, they would lie on their backs in the shallow water, and breathe through the reed, to see who could remain underwater the longest. Ni’ka’s mother took a break from her fishing to check on Ni’ka and the other children. She scanned the island for Nika and the other children, and did not see them. She looked closer, and noticed, near the tule, a collection of misplaced reeds, bobbing in the water, she giggled to herself. This woman was incredibly pleased with her life as a parent to this young adventurous spirit. In only a few days of being on “Bo-no-po-ti”, Ni’ka was learning the landscape, and the power associated with it’s shores, hills, rocks, it’s owl and raven calls. The clouds, the fog, and the angles of the sun and the ways of the moon in the night sky, and all the many uses of tule. 
 
The killings of the California Indians continued on the road to Bo-no-po-ti. The militia men marked their trail by hanging the men, and built large fires underneath their hanging bodies as a warning of what was still yet to come. General Smith had instructed Lyon to negotiate neither for custody of those who had killed Stone and Kelsey nor for a general surrender. Lyon, with his detachment of the Dragoons, detachment M of the 3rd Artillery, and detachments A, E, and G of the 2nd Infantry, arrived in Clear Lake. Lyon and some of his men went to observe the tribe. Lyon saw on the island, the Natives had some natural protection on the island from the waters of Clear Lake and he sent for two small brass field guns and two whale boats from the U.S. Army Arsenal at Benicia. The boats were to be hauled overland, and would take some time to arrive. As they waited, locals began to volunteer themselves for the murderous expedition. When the artillery arrived, the white men moved in just two and a half miles from Bo-no-por-ti. They set up camp at Rodman Slough on the night of May 14th. Watching from across the lake, the troops saw the people gathered on Bo-no-po-ti about 300 yards from shore of the island. The Pomo women and a few of the men were performing in a ceremony, giving thanks for the creation of the world and for the continuation of each day. The women wore their Clam shell necklaces and dresses, and the few elder men that had stayed on the island rather than join the seasonal hunt, were in fox and deer regalia, they played the cocoon rattle, double-boned whistle, flute, plank drum, and rattle. It was a feather dance.To the white men, who witnessed this ceremony, the rhythm of the drums had so far only meant one thing to them. It sounded like a march to war. The white men assumed the tribe were harboring those who had slain Stone and Kelsey and preparing for an epic battle. A silly assumption, at the time, for three separate languages were spoken in the four different California Indian groups lived around Clear Lake, and The Pomo from the Big Valley ranch, and the Pomo at Bo-no-po-ti, were not familiar with each other, nor did they even speak the same language. The song ended, and the Pomo people let out a loud ohhh of release at the end of their dance, startling the men who watched them. In the dark hours of the following morning of May 15, 1850, Lyon’s infantrymen loaded themselves into the whale boats. Packing alongside them, cannons, their weapons, and ammunition, and they quietly crossed the water. They moved towards the northern rim of the lake, and then split and covered the north, east, and west shores of the island, positioning themselves in a crescent, patrolling the shores and closing off any route of escape in every direction. At the break of dawn, from the south end of the island, from his boat, Lyon opened fire on the village, followed by shots fired from the northern shore. Six year old Ni’ka and her mother were tending to the fire when they heard the first shot ring out. Nika looked at her mother with a sheer look of terror. They started to run away from the sound, to the southern shore and as they did, a cannon was fired from that direction. Panic set in, they realized they were trapped. Ge-Wi-Lih threw up his hands and tried to approach the men. “no harm me good man” without hesitation, Lyon shot him to death as well as the man standing next to him, the posse took the bodies to be hanged. There would be no negotiating. Women and children ran to hide and the soldiers gunned them down. Captain Lyon ordered his soldiers to follow the escaping Pomo into the thick reeds surrounding the marshy waters and “pursue and destroy as far as possible.” The few elder men that remained on the island while the others were away hunting, fought back courageously, but did not last long. The brave men were captured and killed with sabers, baronettes, hatchets, rocks and bare hands, one Pomo man was tied to a tree and burned alive.  
 
When Nika and her mother approached the shore, she saw her friend with her father,one of the men who had not gone hunting. Her father was digging a large hole in a bank of the river for the two to hide in. Another friend of Nika’s was also escaping to the water with her own mother and Nika saw them both shot and killed as they started to swim. In the shallow waters, the hunters were using sabers to take down anyone they found hiding in the tule. Captain Nathaniel Lyon said, “the island was a perfect slaughtering pen.” On the shore, Nikas mother was nearly hit by a bullet, it came so close and with a mother's instinct she dove for the water, as if hit, taking Nika down with her. She laid in the water, with Nika underneath her. For a short series of miraculous moments that played out for Nika as if in slow motion, her mother moved her hand under the water, picked a tule reed from the lake floor, and put it in Nikas hands, below the surface of the water. She whispered to her daughter. “How long can you go Ni’ka? You are good at this game. Show me.” Nika put the reed in her mouth, and went underwater. On the island, the massacre continued. Infants were being murdered by a practice used by the US soldiers and militia men of the 19th century. It was called “braining”, the babies' heads smashed against tree trunks or under the boots of the white men. An elder woman hid under a bank covering herself with the overhanging tules. From her hiding spot, she gasped as she witnessed two white men approaching the shore, guns high in the air, on the end of their guns, a little girl hung. They threw the child's body in the water and walked away. This continued, more men approaching in the same manner, young children hanging at the ends of their weapons, their small innocent bodies, thrown into the creek. 
 
Nika was still hidden tucked under the breast of her mother under the bloody waters. Crouching beneath the water beside the bank she sipped air through a reed to maintain her life. Her mother, acting as if she was shot dead, remained still. An eagle watched from above, then dived at a snake, ripping it to shreds. A young boy who was a friend of Nika’s ran with his mother and siblings. Right in front of his eyes, the soldiers shot his mother and the woman fell to the ground, her tiny baby in her arms. The boy stood over his mother, shocked and scared, and his mother shooed him away, telling him in Pomo, to climb up into a tree and wait. He did. From the high branches, he watched in disbelief, soldiers running about the camp and shooting the men and women and stabbing boys and girls. His mother was on the ground below him, dying but still not dead, continuing to tell her son to stay quiet. She laid there, holding her little baby in her arms moaning in Pomo, O my babies. She was not quiet enough in her cries, and two white men heard her, came running toward the mother and baby, the young boy watched as his mother and sibling were stabbed, their bodies thrown over the bank into the water. From the tree, he then saw a man dying, a young boy in his arms. A soldier then approached the man, finishing him off with his bayonet, and kidnapped the child. It would be known as the Bloody Island Massacre. Benjamin Madley said in his book, “An American Genocide” that “There were not less than four hundred warriors killed and drowned at Clear Lake and as many more of squaws and children who plunged into the lake and drowned, through fear, committing suicide. So in all, about eight hundred Indians found a watery grave in Clear Lake.” Hours and hours passed since the last gunshot, and eventually, everything went quiet. No more footsteps of the soldiers, no more cries, no more gunshots. It was silent. Nika’s mother opened her eyes and looked around, seeing it was all clear, she lifted Nika from under the red water. Blood was everywhere, and everyone was dead or gone.
 
Barefoot and bleeding, two teenage boys made the gruesome climb over Sonoma’s bottlerock mountain, led by two US soldiers. The rocks shred the soles of their feet while the man ahead walked swiftly in his boots, and the boys tried to keep us as the man behind them stabbed at their backs with the sharp knife fixed on the end of his gun. The soldier in front noticed the native teens wincing in pain, attempting to step carefully, and stopped, instructing them to sit down. The soldier opened his pack, and took a handful of something out of a box. As he approached the boys he instructed them to put their feet up on a log in front of them, and began to rub the substance into the boys feet tying a cloth around. It was salt. The soldiers stood there laughing and the boys cried in pain. For two hours, the men rubbed salt into the wounds where the boys had been stabbed in the back. Lieutenant Lyon's forces of US soldiers and militia men had continued throughout the area, hunting down escapees and killing any Natives they came into contact with. After three more days of captivity, the head soldier released the boys at the Lower Lake, leaving them some meat and hard bread, which the boys mostly abandoned as they ran for dear life under the impression they were being followed. The teenage boys side tracked, and climbed high peaks to scan the surrounding area for stalkers, only to run again, all the way home. The boys arrived home in hopes to see their mother and sister only to find their blood scattered over the ground like water and their bodies left for coyotes to devour. They sat under a tree and cried until dark.
 
A month had passed since the massacre, and Nika and mother had been surviving alone in the wilderness, in the rock crevices, caves and mountain top pools. Seeking protection from the supernatural world that surrounded them. Gathering food and medicinal plants from the holy mountains where supernatural power dwelled and visited them. Among the Coyote, their ancestor and creator god and the culture hero of the Pomo tribe. During that time, the Pomo land around the lake and beyond were taken over and homesteaded by the members of the militia, some of them prominent members of society. The Pomo survivors lived on in small bands, most living as slaves to local rancheros. The orphaned children of the murdered natives were hidden from the settlers looking for slaves. Good money was paid for such. 
 
On April 22, 1850, just weeks before the massacre, The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians was passed. This allowed settlers to continue the California practice of capturing and using Native people as bound laborers. It provided the foundation for enslavement and trafficking within the Native American laborers, and deemed it legal to enslave and traffick young women and children. The law allowed loitering or orphaned Native Americans found without means of support, to be claimed, and forced into labor. The Natives and Anglo Americans had opposing ideas of what were indeed “means of support”. The Natives lived off the land, and had for thousands of years, and if you lived off and with the land, you did not need or want like these new foreigners. A Native person held no rights and could not testify in court, nearly every Indian in California suddenly became a candidate for slavery. California’s first governor, Peter Burnett announced that “California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extinction or removal, The only way we will be able to mine in security, if all of these people are exterminated." Villages were raided, supplies were stolen and women and children were kidnapped. Natives would be snatched up and charged as vagrants. When they faced the justice of the peace, they would be sold off at public auction to labor without pay for the next four months. Compensation was paid to the men who brought the Natives in for captivity, as well as payment for heads, scalps, or ears of Natives. At one time, they would earn up to $25 for turning in a Native male body part, and $5 for a woman or child. Millions of dollars were paid to private militias by State officials in bounties. 
 
Legislation in California passed granting over one million dollars for the reimbursement of additional expenses that the hunters of the Natives would incur. The same legislation followed in the federal Congress allowing federal funds for the same purpose. The purpose? Genocide. Retired Sonoma State University Native American Studies Professor Edward Castillo who has written of the initial years of the California Gold Rush said "Nothing in American Indian history is even remotely comparable to this massive orgy of theft and mass murder."
 
The California gold rush led Americans to rape the land and exploit it’s provisions and then used them towards the efforts of the extermination of those who lived here for thousands of years. It did not stop there. They exploited their women, they mistreated Asians, they exploited the Mexicans and the blacks.  Sowing seeds that became the roots of a new California. “Gold's a devilish sort of thing. You lose your sense of values and character changes entirely. Your soul stops being the same as it was before.”
 
In the six years after the massacre, the remaining Pomo were moved onto small rancherias by the US Federal Government. This relocation was known as "Marches to Round Valley". Pomo men, women, infants and children were captured from the foothills and forced by gun and whip through the valley, crossing the Sacramento River and over by the Sutter Butte. Many had drowned in the march while crossing the river. Some escaped and remained hidden for some time, most taking on Mexican names and blending into the Mexican American communities. 
 
Two years later in 1858, it was common to read in the newspapers the opinions and promises made by California’s US Senator Jon Weller. Weller said to his colleagues that the Natives “will be exterminated before the onward march of the white man” and insisted that the “interest of white man demands their extinction”.
 
Lieutenants Lyon and Davidson were both later promoted to Army Brigadier Generals during the Civil War, with the approval of Abraham Lincoln. Lyon became the Commander of the Department of the West, the position was previously held by John C. Frémont.
 
Benjamin Madley will teach you that by 1873, the number of Natives in California went from 150,000 to 30,000 due to the murders, the disease, the starvation and the dislocation. This was not a battle lost after two civilizations met and disagreed. This was genocide sanctioned and paid for by state and federal officials. There is a list of over 100 Genocidal Massacres by the United States against Indigenous Peoples of the Western Continent where accountability has never been claimed by the United States government or its military forces. Why? Because: EXTERMINATION WAS POLICY.
 
Archaeologists believe that the Clear Lake basin has been occupied by Native Americans for at least 11,000 years. Bloody Island now stands as a hilltop rising from the dusty lake bed. The Upper Lake Basin, drained and “reclaimed” for agricultural use in the 1930’s. On May 20 1942, 92 years and 5 days after the Bloody Island massacre, the Native Sons of the Golden West installed a historical marker one third of a mile off of U.S. Highway 20. The Native Sons were an Anglo-American organization responsible for many of the placards and historical landmarks scattered throughout California. The plaque notes the site of a Battle between Cavalry under “Captain” Lyon and Indians under Chief Augustine. Right off the bat we know THAT is bullshit. It was no battle. It was a massacre. This memorial, once again, whitewashed genocide with the old “Cowboys and Indians.” bit. There are not many visitors, as this event was unmentioned in our California history textbooks. It also states the wrong date, placing the massacre on April 15, 1850, which was a month prior. The marker was desecrated in 2002, red paint was poured all over and around it. The red paint remains, left to resemble spilled blood. If you travel a quarter mile down a street called Reclamation Road, you can see the massacre site close-up. A new plaque went up in 2005, erected by the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Lucy Moore Foundation. It gives a much more accurate history, noting it was in fact, not a battle, but rather the location where “a regiment of the 1st Dragoons of the U.S. Cavalry, Commanded by Capt. Nathaniel Lyon and Lt. J.W. Davidson, massacred nearly the entire native population of the island.” The full text of the plaque goes on to state: “Most were women and children. This act was in reprisal for the killing of Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone who had long enslaved, brutalized, and starved indigenous people in the area.” In 2020, monuments started coming down and both sides of history are coming to light. The 1942 plaque is left up, to represent how alternate, and incorrect, versions of the past had long been told. A reminder for us as individuals, to be responsible as listeners, caretakers and creators of a shared and global historical narrative.
 
Every May 20th, since 1999, an annual sunrise forgiveness ceremony is held at the 1942 marker in honor, remembrance and forgiveness on behalf of the Pomo Indian People that perished and those that survived the Bloody Island Massacre. The ceremony is held not the date of the massacre, but the anniversary of when the 1942 marker was installed. According to Nika’s great-grandson, Clayton Duncan, “the ceremony is also to say we’re sorry to our ancestors whose bones and ashes were shown such disrespect.” It is to honor her, her prayer and all who died at Bloody Island. Candles are burned and tobacco offerings are made to the Pomo ancestors whose bodies were cremated and buried, only later to be used in the construction of dams around the Upper Lake basin. "If we can know and learn from each other, to accept the truths of the old world and the new, perhaps our children will not see the colors of skin, the manners of our worship, our cultural heritages as characteristics that divide us,” said Duncan. “Perhaps they will see them as the attributes that unite us so we can all work together to fix, mend and heal the Earth, our mother. “Doing this, we know in our hearts and from the wishes of our ancestors that it will bring back the balance, using the Lucy Moore prayer of forgiveness.” 
 
"At 6 years old, she weighed not much more than one of the cannon balls that tore through the people like a boulder through willows. Crouching beneath the water beside the bank she sipped air through a reed to maintain her life. Above her, an old world was ending, washed in blood.” Those are the words Clayton Duncan uses to tell the story of his great-grandmother, Lucy Moore, and her survival of the events of Bloody Island. 
 
Ni’ka, who is now better known as Lucy More, is now a hero to the Pomo people. Nika became a mother, a grandmother and great-grandmother. As an elder, her husband would play old native songs as Nika cried, telling the story to her grandchildren. She never stopped praying for her cousins, her aunts and uncles, her people. She lived to be 110 years old, and in her old age prayed every day to forgive America.

Ni’ka - Part 2 of 3 FROM THE VAULT

Wherever you are in this hemisphere, you are on Native land.  Never forget, that before the Spanish arrived in California, for thousands of years, from sea to shining sea, this was indian country, with more than 300,000 Natives living here, representing more than 100 tribes, each with its individual traditions and cultures, most completely lost by the arrival of settlers. Write that down, and burn it into your brain. 
 
 “The history of genocide casts a shadow over California. It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.”  This was said by my hero, Benjamin Madley, he is an associate professor of history at UCLA and has been on a more than decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide.
 
The Youreka Podcast Network is literally days away from launch. You will be able to download a free app, and have all of the Network podcasts at your fingertips! Including my new shows, Here Lies, an audio tour of historic cemeteries, Rustic Rituals, affirmations and meditations for country folk, Queens of the Mines Two and MORE! Find us on Libsyn and instagram now to keep up @yourekapodcasts. That is YOUREKA, because this network is yours.
 
 
Surrender
Wherever you are in this hemisphere, you are on Native land.  Never forget that before the Spanish arrived in California, for thousands of years, from sea to shining sea, this was Indian country. More than 300,000 Natives lived here, representing more than 100 tribes, each with its individual traditions and cultures, most completely lost by the arrival of settlers. Never forget that the Russians, European-American colonists, and Spanish missionaries' arrival on the Pacific coastline forever changed the native people’s way of life. Write that down, and burn it into your brain. The first known interaction with the Natives in California was in the Monterey area in 1602, when Sebastián de Vizcaíno’s Spanish expedition was searching for a safe harbor for their ships.  Well over 100 years then passed with little attention paid to Alta California. Then, Gaspar de Portola’s expedition of Spanish missionaries arrived in the Monterey area in 1769 and Spain began colonizing. Erasing the identities of the California indigenous people who entered the missions. The San Rafael Mission was established, removing Pomo people from their lands, bringing them to the new mission. They were given a wool shirt with long sleeves called a cotón, and a wool blanket. The women were also given a wool petticoat and men received a breechclout to cover their groin area. They were then forcibly baptized into the Catholic faith, and thrown into labor camps that were filthy and disease ridden. Five years down the road, California became part of the Mexican Republic, and the Mexican government gave out large tracts of Pomo land to its settlers. The foreign white colonists brought deadly diseases and epidemics. 
In one instance, a Russian ship brought a case of smallpox, the indigenous people did not have immunity to such diseases, the tribe populations heavily decreased. The bones of thousands “left unburied, bleached the hills” of Sonoma and Napa counties. As all this happened, the domestic stock animals brought by the foreigners damaged the gathering areas while they grazed and consumed all of the native foods. Stream channels were disturbed and often re-routed, land was blasted away and huge amounts of soil entered streams and rivers, destroying the habitat of fish and other aquatic species that the indigenous people depended on for survival. Ten years later there was a massive malaria outbreak. The following year the missions were authorized by the crown to “convert” all of the Natives within a ten-year period. They had until 1844. They were to surrender their control over the mission’s livestock, fields, orchards and buildings to the Indians in 1844. The padres never achieved their goal and the lands and wealth were then stolen from the Natives. The California Mission System was not the sugar cube fantasy we were fed in fourth grade. Debunked. Unpack that. Accept it. My hero, Benjamin Madley, is an associate professor of history at UCLA and has been on a more than decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide. He said, “The history of genocide casts a shadow over California. It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.”  
Survival
The wilderness holds an abundance of power. Power that is manifested in the rocks, the springs, the animals, and the trees. A Power that is sought after and/or found when stumbled upon.  The indigineous people of the Americas are familiar with this power. The foreigners who came to this land usually did  not refer to the natural beauty and the magic it held, but the wealth it retained. 
 
An Eastern Pomo woman ponders over petroglyphs on the face of boulders near her village of Danoha in ClearLake California. Her family had lived here for thousands of years. The petroglyphs, at the entrance of a natural tunnel in a collection of boulders, were known as the baby rocks. She has fasted for four days, and she has come alone, seeking to move through the rocks, in an altered state of consciousness. The baby rocks held the spirits of the future children to be born to the parents who followed this Pomo ritual. There was a power affecting fertility there. The carved petroglyphs allowed her entrance, where she negotiated with Mother Earth. Nine months later, Ni’ka was born in the village of Danoha, under the sod roof of her family's dome-shaped home made of tule and earth covered wooden poles. It was 1849. Ni’ka sat with her mother, watching her making a basket with great care, weaving in the Dau, or Spirit Door. This Spirit Door would allow good spirits to come and circulate inside of the basket while the good or bad spirits were released. The base of the basket was completely covered in vivid red feathers of the pileated woodpecker, the surface so smooth, it resembled the breast of the bird itself. Her mother had a sacred gift in making the baskets the family used for cooking, storing food, their religious ceremonies, and daily life. Her technique was exquisite. Together, they collected basket materials annually, swamp canes, rye grass, black ash, willow shoots, sedge roots, the bark of redbud, the root of bulrush, and the root of the gray pine. Nika’s mother taught the five year old girl everything she knew when it came to drying, cleaning, splitting, soaking, and dying the materials. It would be many weeks before the basket was finished. In the coming weeks, she would be taught to fasten beads to the basket's border and the pendants of abalone shell Ni’ka had worked to polish would be attached. In the distance, she could see the fellow children in her tribe arriving home from their gathering expeditions on the outside. The community and culture was the “inside” of their home, and the wilderness and wild areas to which they went for hunting and gathering wild foods was the “outside.” A dualism, a contrast of community and wilderness, domestic and wild, culture and nature. Surely their baskets would be filled with bulbs, roots, clover, pinole seeds, gooseberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, wild greens, gnats, mushrooms, acorns, nuts, caterpillars, grasshoppers and Yerba Buena. The men in the tribe were away on a hunt with bows and harpoons, in search of deer, elk, antelope, rabbit, sea lions, rats, squirrels, waterfowl, and birds. They would periodically burn the land to remove hiding places for the game. They would also fish for salmon, carp, blackfish, clams and mussels. Women gave life, and because the giving of life was a woman's most important role, she did not participate in the taking of life, which included coming in contact with weapons. Instead, the women worked at home, gathering food and materials and preparing the plant based foods. They would shell the acorns, crushing and watering them till they were easy to work with. Next, they would ground the acorns into a paste or to make mush, bread, and soup. Pies would be made with the acorn meal and gathered berries and nuts. Ni’ka enjoyed her life on the inside and was unaware of the struggles of the nearby Pomo tribes, and Ni’ka was unaware of what this meant for her, her family, her tribe, and her cherished land. 
 
Ninety miles north of San Francisco in Clearlake, 15,000 cattle and 2,500 horses lived on Big Valley Ranch. Salvador Vallejo had sold the property in 1847 to Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone, the first Anglo-American colonists in the Clear Lake region. Andrew Kelsey and his three brothers had hoisted the Bear Flag with the Bear Flag Party in Sonoma in 1846. They were rough and often in trouble with the authorities. On their ranch, they made the rules. Raiding the surrounding Eastern Pomo and Wapo villages, Stone and Kelsey and Co. captured several hundred Native Pomo and Wapo people. They forced their slaves to construct and operate their empire. Everything was taken from the natives, including fishing supplies, and simple knives. The men were used as vaqueros, which in English translates to cattle drivers or cowboys. The vaqueros were forced into back breaking labor as they dug wells and built the grand hacienda, outbuildings and a barrier in which they would remain inside, along with their wives and children. Imprisoned. Behind the high fence, for their own entertainment, Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone brutally mistreated the Natives. Disrespectfully, they called them “Diggers”. The often drunken white men shot at the Wapo and Pomo for the fun of seeing them jump. Kelsey and Stone had taken local Pomo Chief Augustine’s wife as a sex slave and constantly ordered Pomo fathers to bring them their daughters to be sexually used and abused, and the men who resisted were whipped, lashed and hung by the hands or toes. This was a usual punishment and it occurred at least two or three times a week. If a worker broke any rule, they would be hung “up by his thumbs, so that his toes just touched the floor, and keep him there for two or three days, sometimes with nothing to eat.” Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone ruled over the Eastern Pomo and Clear Lake Wapo people using fear, torture, sadism, and murderous force for many years. The enslaved Pomo people were nearly starved. Kelsey and Stone hardly provided food and had banned them from foraging, hunting and fishing on their land. Eighteen of the main herdsmen and their two foreman were the only Slaves being fed. The men would receive about 6 pints of boiled wheat each for a day’s work, and the men would share the wheat back at home, so these herders were also starving. The people were getting restless. Twenty elders had died from starvation over winter and four of the Native slaves had been killed by severe whipping in the early months of 1849. “The inside” was no longer safe. Da-Pi-Tauo was sick and starving. She was the wife of Big Jim, a native Pomo slave at Big Valley Ranch. Da-Pi-Tauo’s sister who was the wife of Shuk, an 18 year old Pomo man. Shuk would later become the Hoolanapo Pomo chief Augustine. She was now Stone’s personal slave. Da-Pi-Tauo sent her son to her sister. “Tell your aunt that I am starving and sick, ask for a handful of wheat.” He hurried to Stone’s house and told his aunt just what his mother had said. His aunt, fearful for her sister’s health, gave her nephew 5 cups of wheat that she tied it up in an apron of hers. The young man started for the camp with the precious gift in a hurry to help his sick mother. Charles Stone spotted the boy running from the house and called him back. Stone approached the boy and swatted the wheat from his hands. The apron fell to the ground, wind blowing the grains away. The young boy tried to gather the life saving substance but was captured by Stone and taken to a nearby tree, where he was tied up and given 100 lashes. When Stone had enough, he shot the young boy.  Da-Pi-Tauo’s son suffered for two whole days before he died, his punishment  for attempting to feed his starving mother. Action had to be taken by the natives or all would be lost. It was decided that Shuk and Xasis, the headriders of the eighteen herdsmen, would be secretly hired to kill a cow and bring it back to the village. The people had to eat. The foreman debated the plan all night, night or day, and the order of action, deciding by the end, to do the job at night. They would take the best lasso horses in the barn. The best lasso horses in the barn, of course, belonged to Stone and Kelsey. Shuk promised, “somebody is going to get killed on this job.” Under the moonlight from a cloudy sky, Shuk and Xasis crept to the house to see if Kelsey and Stone had gone to bed. They had. It was drizzling on them as they went to the barn and took their horses and saddles. The plan was to round up the band that was feeding out west. Shuk would make the first lasso and Xasis would do the foot lassing. 
 
Under the stars, Shuk called out, “I see a big one here, hurry and come on!” Shuk saw his chance and threw the rope on a hefty ox. As Xasis rushed over, the stampede began. The ox joined in. Shuk’s horse was pulled to the wet, slippery ground, he was knocked off, and the horse and the ox got away. Xasis attempted to get his rope on, but was too far away, and eventually, he gave up the chase. Defeated, Xasis returned Kelsey’s horse to the barn. The bad news was reported to the men of the tribe who had gathered in Xasis’s house. They all knew death was in the pot for Shuk and Xasis. The men faced another night of debate. It seemed obvious to Shuk and Xasis that the solution was to kill the white men. No one agreed. A Wapo man offered the suggestion of the tribe giving Stone and Kelsey forty sticks of beads, the equivalent of 16,000 beads or $100. Thirty five hundred dollars in 2021. No one agreed. One of the men thought they could tell Stone or Kelsey the horse was stolen. No one agreed. Another man suggested that the other horse should be turned out and that they tell Stone and Kelsey both horses were stolen. No one agreed. It was not looking good for Shuk and Xasis, and the men decided murder was the only option. Starvation was the main reason the slaves at Big Valley Ranch wanted Stone and Kelsey dead, but hardly the only motive. They set out together, that early December morning of 1849 to save their people. To do right and fear no man. A man known as Busi decided to join the men as daylight was approaching. The boys and girls of the village worked inside the household as servants. Kra-nas and Ma-Laxa-Qe-Tu joined the band when, in the wee hours, the children worked together to remove every gun, knife, bow and arrow and anything that could be used as a weapon from the home. Da-Pi-Tauo’s sister poured water onto the two men's gunpowder, rendering it useless. Kelsey and Stone would be helpless in defense. Charles Stone would start each morning all alone, boiling wheat for the 18 herdsmen and their two foremen. This morning, when Stone showed up carrying a pot from the fireplace, he was shocked to see five of the men already waiting for him. He was curious. “What’s the matter, boys? You came early this morning. Something wrong?” Busi responded, “Oh nothing, me hungry that’s all.” Kra-nas looked confused and said to Shuk, “I thought we came to kill this man? Give me these arrows and bows.” Kra-nas pulled the bow and the arrow from Shuk’s hands and pointed right at Stone. Stone whispered “What are you trying to do?” as the arrow was cut loose, striking him in the stomach. Stone pulled the arrow out of his torso and attempted to take off running towards the house. The men surrounded him and they began to throw blows. Busi’s arm was broken after Stone struck him with the fire pot, and he succeeded in getting into the house, locking the door behind him. Kelsey soon arrived, noticing blood on the doorstep of Stone’s home. The men jumped out to ambush him and a fight ensued, Kelsey said to the men. “don’t kill Kelsey, Kelsey good man for you”  Kanas [Kra-nas] replied, “Yes, you are such a good man that you have killed many of us.” Kelsey broke free and ran for the creek, but not before he was shot in the back with two arrows. As he approached the creek, Kelsey managed to pull the arrows out before he dove into the water, staying out of sight until approaching the opposite shore. Where, surprise, several Native men were waiting for him. One of the men was Ju-Luh, a man Kelsey knew well. He begged Ju-Luh for his life, as he lost blood, and became weak. Ju-Luh said, ”It’s too late Kelsey; if I attempt to save you. I also will be killed. I cannot save you.” Ju-Luh and Big Jim held Kelsey by the arms and took him to his wife, Da-Pi-Tauo. “This is a man who killed our son, take this spear.” Da-Pi-Tauo stabbed the white man in the heart and his body was left for the coyotes. At the house, Xasis and Qra-Nas were chasing a breathless Stone, following the drops of blood. The trail led the men to a door, where Stone’s foot revealed his location, crawling up the stairs. Qra-Nas drew his arrow across the bow and Xasis swung the door open but Stone did not move. He had bled to death, or so they thought. They took his body, and threw it out the window. Somehow, Stone got back up and ran to the forest, where Da-Pi-Tauo’s sister found him and used a rock to end his life for good. The woman who was taken from her home and forced to be the sex slave to the men, was the final hand in both their fates. The group reunited at the house, and immediately gathered food to bring home to their families. The men who were able to ride, took a horse and left for the valleys and upper lake to hunt. There were thousands of cattle and they would eat well. The women of the tribes went to the house and gathered all the corn and wheat they could pack up. The plan was for the women, children and elders to flee to hiding places at Scotts Valley and Fishels Point. The men would stay behind to keep watch.
 
John W. Davidson, Virginian, was preparing himself to sit down for a Christmas dinner with his family. On the table, oyster and chestnut stuffing and a large wild turkey were waiting on the table, filling the home with the most delicious scent. His children rushed to the table, excited to eat the beautiful meal. There was a knock at the door, the Davidson’s were not expecting any visitors on this holiday evening. At the door, stood a rider carrying a post for the First Lieutenant. The post carried the news that Charles Stone and Andrew Kelsey of Clear Lake had been murdered by some of the Native Pomo men that they were holding in captivity. John Davidson sat down at the table, staring at the letter, forgetting about the turkey and oyster and chestnut stuffing. Davidson knew Andrew Kelsey from his association with the US Army Captain John C. Frémont during the initial US invasion of the territory that would soon be called California. General Smith of the First Dragoons believed in collective punishment. Smith declared that, “As soon as troops can move in the spring, the California Indians who committed the murder on Clear Lake must be chastised.” Someone would pay for this. On the afternoon of the day after Christmas, twelve hours had passed since Davidson had received the news of Kelsey and Stone’s passing. Lieutenant Nathaniel Lyon was getting ready to begin a seventy mile journey north. Lieutenant Lyon led a detachment of 22 men from a regiment of the U.S. Army’s First Dragoons. For three long days, the militia of determined white meen moved through dense brush and grasses that were nearly as tall as them. The men were rowdy and often drunk as they rode through hills of towering oak trees, making their way to Clear Lake. The mission-  retaliation against the Native Pomo People, and the white men’s hearts were set on extermination.  
 
Just south of Calistoga, Clear Lake Wappo women and men were going about their daily life inside their large village. When they woke up that morning, they had no reason to think that it was not just another typical day, unsuspecting of an approaching cavalry. On a typical day of battle for brave Wappo men, Wappo warriors would have painted themselves with black, red, and white paint. Large bird wings would be worn in their hair. Yet they were left surprised, when Lyon and his men bombarded the village, killing thirty-five Wappo people with their open fire. Eleven Natives of all ages were murdered as they innocently walked out of their sweat house, their bodies then burned in their homes. Then they just left. The posse headed for the Cyrus family ranch to recruit more men to join in on the battle ahead. At the Cyrus ranch, the soldiers attempted to convince the settlers there to help them rid the area of Natives. The locals absolutely refused. The labor of the California Indians was depended on by the farmers. One man declared, “if we treat them kindly and pay them fairly, they are quite pleasant.” Defeated, the band of vigilantes left, they would handle the job by themselves. For weeks, the posse chased after and promised to kill every California Indian they found as they passed through Sonoma. Simultaneously Benjamin Kelsey, was burning more Rancherias and chasing men to their death. The Napa locals were combative to the posse’s violence and requested help from the Governor. As they waited, they banded together to turn back the cavalry in Napa, crushing the plans to cross on the ferry. North of St. Helena, there was a large Rancheria belonging to more men of the Bear Flag Revolt, Henry Fowler and William Hargrave. The militia intruded upon the Rancheria, and burned their lodges and sacred spaces. They shot at least 15 of the local Wappo people and before they abandoned the scene, they sabotaged the survivors' supply of barley and wheat. Leaving the bodies of the slain children, women and men in their wake. The rancheria is now known as “Human Flesh Ranch”.
 
“Ever since the murder of Andrew Kelsey, a party of men have caused much excitement among the peaceful inhabitants of this place and Napa.” - March 2, 1850.
 
Shuk and Xasis patrolled the trail on the west side of the valley. Qra-Nas and Ma-Laq-Qe-Tou were chosen to watch the trail that came in from the lower lake, and Yom-mey-nah and Ge-we-leh were watching the trail that came from Eight Mile Valley. For two weeks, no white person was seen on the trail until two on horseback coming over the hill from the lower lake were spotted by Qra-nas and Ma-Laq-Qe-Tou. The men, even from a far distance, noticed the camp was deserted. The white men noticed Qra-nas and Ma-Laq-Qe-Tou coming towards them and they took off. Another three days passed, and no one was seen. Two Pomo men were camped at the top of the north peak of Uncle Sam mountain, watching for danger for four days, when early one morning, a long boat with a pole on the bow with red cloth was seen, and it was followed by several more, and each boat held ten to fifteen men. Watching the trail from Ash Hill, the two men saw the infantrys coming over the hill. The men were marching, firing shots with their threatening guns. A smoke signal was sent and a tule canoe was spotted by the lake watchers, “Some news coming.” They needed to hide. They retreated to leave for  Oregon.
 
Kelsey had a brother, Benjamin, and he was looking for revenge. Benjamin Kelsey rounded up a posse. The posse was a militia led by Lieutenant Nathaniel Lyon and Lieutenant John W. Davidson including the Cavalry detachment of the U.S. First Dragoons Regiment. They made a plan. A random campaign of violence against all Clear Lake Pomo had been waged. They men went to Stone and Kelsey’s house, and then down towards the lake. They moved across the valley near the lake port, Scotts Valley, to the upper lake to set up camp on Emerson Hill. It was there they saw the Pomo camp on the island Bo-no-po-ti. The cavalry was told that six hundred Pomo armed warriors were stationed on the island. In fact, the Pomo at Bo-no-po-ti never worked on Stone and Kelsey’s ranch, and had nothing to do with their murders. The island was mostly populated with women and children, and it was where Ni’ka, and her mother were finishing up their basket. It had been a cold winter. Staying warm inside her tule kotka by the small fire, Nika learned to make clothing from the tule, and spent hours assembling jewelry made of what was left of last season’s collected abalone and clamshells. Ni’ka’s mother was also teaching her daughter to sew. They were using the skin from rabbits her father had hunted, to make a blanket. The tribe members would travel to the coast to fish and gather more materials this coming summer, and Ni’kas father promised he would take her along. Soon, he would go on a long seasonal hunting expedition with the men of the tribe and Nika would go fishing with her mother and the women and other children. Nika ran her fingers over the smooth abalone, thinking of the wonderful gifts nature bestowed on her family, anything they could ever need was right there, surrounding them in the wilderness. The now six year old Nika could not wait for the adventures to come, playing in the poppies. 
“We had hoped to hear no more of Indian butcheries in California. We hope and trust the U.S. troops in California will prevent further violence.” -Daily Alta California March 11, 1850 
“Hundreds of the Indians are in the mountains in a starving condition, afraid to return to the Ranchos.”  - Daily Alta California - March 19, 1850
 
 In the chilly water that spring afternoon, the children were challenging one another in a game. With hollow tule reeds, they would lie on their backs in the shallow water, and breathe through the reed, to see who could remain underwater the longest. Ni’ka’s mother took a break from her fishing to check on Ni’ka and the other children. She scanned the island for Nika and the other children, and did not see them. She looked closer, and noticed, near the tule, a collection of misplaced reeds, bobbing in the water, she giggled to herself. This woman was incredibly pleased with her life as a parent to this young adventurous spirit. In only a few days of being on “Bo-no-po-ti”, Ni’ka was learning the landscape, and the power associated with it’s shores, hills, rocks, it’s owl and raven calls. The clouds, the fog, and the angles of the sun and the ways of the moon in the night sky, and all the many uses of tule. 
 
The killings of the California Indians continued on the road to Bo-no-po-ti. The militia men marked their trail by hanging the men, and built large fires underneath their hanging bodies as a warning of what was still yet to come. General Smith had instructed Lyon to negotiate neither for custody of those who had killed Stone and Kelsey nor for a general surrender. Lyon, with his detachment of the Dragoons, detachment M of the 3rd Artillery, and detachments A, E, and G of the 2nd Infantry, arrived in Clear Lake. Lyon and some of his men went to observe the tribe. Lyon saw on the island, the Natives had some natural protection on the island from the waters of Clear Lake and he sent for two small brass field guns and two whale boats from the U.S. Army Arsenal at Benicia. The boats were to be hauled overland, and would take some time to arrive. As they waited, locals began to volunteer themselves for the murderous expedition. When the artillery arrived, the white men moved in just two and a half miles from Bo-no-por-ti. They set up camp at Rodman Slough on the night of May 14th. Watching from across the lake, the troops saw the people gathered on Bo-no-po-ti about 300 yards from shore of the island. The Pomo women and a few of the men were performing in a ceremony, giving thanks for the creation of the world and for the continuation of each day. The women wore their Clam shell necklaces and dresses, and the few elder men that had stayed on the island rather than join the seasonal hunt, were in fox and deer regalia, they played the cocoon rattle, double-boned whistle, flute, plank drum, and rattle. It was a feather dance.To the white men, who witnessed this ceremony, the rhythm of the drums had so far only meant one thing to them. It sounded like a march to war. The white men assumed the tribe were harboring those who had slain Stone and Kelsey and preparing for an epic battle. A silly assumption, at the time, for three separate languages were spoken in the four different California Indian groups lived around Clear Lake, and The Pomo from the Big Valley ranch, and the Pomo at Bo-no-po-ti, were not familiar with each other, nor did they even speak the same language. The song ended, and the Pomo people let out a loud ohhh of release at the end of their dance, startling the men who watched them. In the dark hours of the following morning of May 15, 1850, Lyon’s infantrymen loaded themselves into the whale boats. Packing alongside them, cannons, their weapons, and ammunition, and they quietly crossed the water. They moved towards the northern rim of the lake, and then split and covered the north, east, and west shores of the island, positioning themselves in a crescent, patrolling the shores and closing off any route of escape in every direction. At the break of dawn, from the south end of the island, from his boat, Lyon opened fire on the village, followed by shots fired from the northern shore. Six year old Ni’ka and her mother were tending to the fire when they heard the first shot ring out. Nika looked at her mother with a sheer look of terror. They started to run away from the sound, to the southern shore and as they did, a cannon was fired from that direction. Panic set in, they realized they were trapped. Ge-Wi-Lih threw up his hands and tried to approach the men. “no harm me good man” without hesitation, Lyon shot him to death as well as the man standing next to him, the posse took the bodies to be hanged. There would be no negotiating. Women and children ran to hide and the soldiers gunned them down. Captain Lyon ordered his soldiers to follow the escaping Pomo into the thick reeds surrounding the marshy waters and “pursue and destroy as far as possible.” The few elder men that remained on the island while the others were away hunting, fought back courageously, but did not last long. The brave men were captured and killed with sabers, baronettes, hatchets, rocks and bare hands, one Pomo man was tied to a tree and burned alive.  
 
When Nika and her mother approached the shore, she saw her friend with her father,one of the men who had not gone hunting. Her father was digging a large hole in a bank of the river for the two to hide in. Another friend of Nika’s was also escaping to the water with her own mother and Nika saw them both shot and killed as they started to swim. In the shallow waters, the hunters were using sabers to take down anyone they found hiding in the tule. Captain Nathaniel Lyon said, “the island was a perfect slaughtering pen.” On the shore, Nikas mother was nearly hit by a bullet, it came so close and with a mother's instinct she dove for the water, as if hit, taking Nika down with her. She laid in the water, with Nika underneath her. For a short series of miraculous moments that played out for Nika as if in slow motion, her mother moved her hand under the water, picked a tule reed from the lake floor, and put it in Nikas hands, below the surface of the water. She whispered to her daughter. “How long can you go Ni’ka? You are good at this game. Show me.” Nika put the reed in her mouth, and went underwater. On the island, the massacre continued. Infants were being murdered by a practice used by the US soldiers and militia men of the 19th century. It was called “braining”, the babies' heads smashed against tree trunks or under the boots of the white men. An elder woman hid under a bank covering herself with the overhanging tules. From her hiding spot, she gasped as she witnessed two white men approaching the shore, guns high in the air, on the end of their guns, a little girl hung. They threw the child's body in the water and walked away. This continued, more men approaching in the same manner, young children hanging at the ends of their weapons, their small innocent bodies, thrown into the creek. 
 
Nika was still hidden tucked under the breast of her mother under the bloody waters. Crouching beneath the water beside the bank she sipped air through a reed to maintain her life. Her mother, acting as if she was shot dead, remained still. An eagle watched from above, then dived at a snake, ripping it to shreds. A young boy who was a friend of Nika’s ran with his mother and siblings. Right in front of his eyes, the soldiers shot his mother and the woman fell to the ground, her tiny baby in her arms. The boy stood over his mother, shocked and scared, and his mother shooed him away, telling him in Pomo, to climb up into a tree and wait. He did. From the high branches, he watched in disbelief, soldiers running about the camp and shooting the men and women and stabbing boys and girls. His mother was on the ground below him, dying but still not dead, continuing to tell her son to stay quiet. She laid there, holding her little baby in her arms moaning in Pomo, O my babies. She was not quiet enough in her cries, and two white men heard her, came running toward the mother and baby, the young boy watched as his mother and sibling were stabbed, their bodies thrown over the bank into the water. From the tree, he then saw a man dying, a young boy in his arms. A soldier then approached the man, finishing him off with his bayonet, and kidnapped the child. It would be known as the Bloody Island Massacre. Benjamin Madley said in his book, “An American Genocide” that “There were not less than four hundred warriors killed and drowned at Clear Lake and as many more of squaws and children who plunged into the lake and drowned, through fear, committing suicide. So in all, about eight hundred Indians found a watery grave in Clear Lake.” Hours and hours passed since the last gunshot, and eventually, everything went quiet. No more footsteps of the soldiers, no more cries, no more gunshots. It was silent. Nika’s mother opened her eyes and looked around, seeing it was all clear, she lifted Nika from under the red water. Blood was everywhere, and everyone was dead or gone.
 
Barefoot and bleeding, two teenage boys made the gruesome climb over Sonoma’s bottlerock mountain, led by two US soldiers. The rocks shred the soles of their feet while the man ahead walked swiftly in his boots, and the boys tried to keep us as the man behind them stabbed at their backs with the sharp knife fixed on the end of his gun. The soldier in front noticed the native teens wincing in pain, attempting to step carefully, and stopped, instructing them to sit down. The soldier opened his pack, and took a handful of something out of a box. As he approached the boys he instructed them to put their feet up on a log in front of them, and began to rub the substance into the boys feet tying a cloth around. It was salt. The soldiers stood there laughing and the boys cried in pain. For two hours, the men rubbed salt into the wounds where the boys had been stabbed in the back. Lieutenant Lyon's forces of US soldiers and militia men had continued throughout the area, hunting down escapees and killing any Natives they came into contact with. After three more days of captivity, the head soldier released the boys at the Lower Lake, leaving them some meat and hard bread, which the boys mostly abandoned as they ran for dear life under the impression they were being followed. The teenage boys side tracked, and climbed high peaks to scan the surrounding area for stalkers, only to run again, all the way home. The boys arrived home in hopes to see their mother and sister only to find their blood scattered over the ground like water and their bodies left for coyotes to devour. They sat under a tree and cried until dark.
 
A month had passed since the massacre, and Nika and mother had been surviving alone in the wilderness, in the rock crevices, caves and mountain top pools. Seeking protection from the supernatural world that surrounded them. Gathering food and medicinal plants from the holy mountains where supernatural power dwelled and visited them. Among the Coyote, their ancestor and creator god and the culture hero of the Pomo tribe. During that time, the Pomo land around the lake and beyond were taken over and homesteaded by the members of the militia, some of them prominent members of society. The Pomo survivors lived on in small bands, most living as slaves to local rancheros. The orphaned children of the murdered natives were hidden from the settlers looking for slaves. Good money was paid for such. 
 
On April 22, 1850, just weeks before the massacre, The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians was passed. This allowed settlers to continue the California practice of capturing and using Native people as bound laborers. It provided the foundation for enslavement and trafficking within the Native American laborers, and deemed it legal to enslave and traffick young women and children. The law allowed loitering or orphaned Native Americans found without means of support, to be claimed, and forced into labor. The Natives and Anglo Americans had opposing ideas of what were indeed “means of support”. The Natives lived off the land, and had for thousands of years, and if you lived off and with the land, you did not need or want like these new foreigners. A Native person held no rights and could not testify in court, nearly every Indian in California suddenly became a candidate for slavery. California’s first governor, Peter Burnett announced that “California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extinction or removal, The only way we will be able to mine in security, if all of these people are exterminated." Villages were raided, supplies were stolen and women and children were kidnapped. Natives would be snatched up and charged as vagrants. When they faced the justice of the peace, they would be sold off at public auction to labor without pay for the next four months. Compensation was paid to the men who brought the Natives in for captivity, as well as payment for heads, scalps, or ears of Natives. At one time, they would earn up to $25 for turning in a Native male body part, and $5 for a woman or child. Millions of dollars were paid to private militias by State officials in bounties. 
 
Legislation in California passed granting over one million dollars for the reimbursement of additional expenses that the hunters of the Natives would incur. The same legislation followed in the federal Congress allowing federal funds for the same purpose. The purpose? Genocide. Retired Sonoma State University Native American Studies Professor Edward Castillo who has written of the initial years of the California Gold Rush said "Nothing in American Indian history is even remotely comparable to this massive orgy of theft and mass murder."
 
The California gold rush led Americans to rape the land and exploit it’s provisions and then used them towards the efforts of the extermination of those who lived here for thousands of years. It did not stop there. They exploited their women, they mistreated Asians, they exploited the Mexicans and the blacks.  Sowing seeds that became the roots of a new California. “Gold's a devilish sort of thing. You lose your sense of values and character changes entirely. Your soul stops being the same as it was before.”
 
In the six years after the massacre, the remaining Pomo were moved onto small rancherias by the US Federal Government. This relocation was known as "Marches to Round Valley". Pomo men, women, infants and children were captured from the foothills and forced by gun and whip through the valley, crossing the Sacramento River and over by the Sutter Butte. Many had drowned in the march while crossing the river. Some escaped and remained hidden for some time, most taking on Mexican names and blending into the Mexican American communities. 
 
Two years later in 1858, it was common to read in the newspapers the opinions and promises made by California’s US Senator Jon Weller. Weller said to his colleagues that the Natives “will be exterminated before the onward march of the white man” and insisted that the “interest of white man demands their extinction”.
 
Lieutenants Lyon and Davidson were both later promoted to Army Brigadier Generals during the Civil War, with the approval of Abraham Lincoln. Lyon became the Commander of the Department of the West, the position was previously held by John C. Frémont.
 
Benjamin Madley will teach you that by 1873, the number of Natives in California went from 150,000 to 30,000 due to the murders, the disease, the starvation and the dislocation. This was not a battle lost after two civilizations met and disagreed. This was genocide sanctioned and paid for by state and federal officials. There is a list of over 100 Genocidal Massacres by the United States against Indigenous Peoples of the Western Continent where accountability has never been claimed by the United States government or its military forces. Why? Because: EXTERMINATION WAS POLICY.
 
Archaeologists believe that the Clear Lake basin has been occupied by Native Americans for at least 11,000 years. Bloody Island now stands as a hilltop rising from the dusty lake bed. The Upper Lake Basin, drained and “reclaimed” for agricultural use in the 1930’s. On May 20 1942, 92 years and 5 days after the Bloody Island massacre, the Native Sons of the Golden West installed a historical marker one third of a mile off of U.S. Highway 20. The Native Sons were an Anglo-American organization responsible for many of the placards and historical landmarks scattered throughout California. The plaque notes the site of a Battle between Cavalry under “Captain” Lyon and Indians under Chief Augustine. Right off the bat we know THAT is bullshit. It was no battle. It was a massacre. This memorial, once again, whitewashed genocide with the old “Cowboys and Indians.” bit. There are not many visitors, as this event was unmentioned in our California history textbooks. It also states the wrong date, placing the massacre on April 15, 1850, which was a month prior. The marker was desecrated in 2002, red paint was poured all over and around it. The red paint remains, left to resemble spilled blood. If you travel a quarter mile down a street called Reclamation Road, you can see the massacre site close-up. A new plaque went up in 2005, erected by the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Lucy Moore Foundation. It gives a much more accurate history, noting it was in fact, not a battle, but rather the location where “a regiment of the 1st Dragoons of the U.S. Cavalry, Commanded by Capt. Nathaniel Lyon and Lt. J.W. Davidson, massacred nearly the entire native population of the island.” The full text of the plaque goes on to state: “Most were women and children. This act was in reprisal for the killing of Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone who had long enslaved, brutalized, and starved indigenous people in the area.” In 2020, monuments started coming down and both sides of history are coming to light. The 1942 plaque is left up, to represent how alternate, and incorrect, versions of the past had long been told. A reminder for us as individuals, to be responsible as listeners, caretakers and creators of a shared and global historical narrative.
 
Every May 20th, since 1999, an annual sunrise forgiveness ceremony is held at the 1942 marker in honor, remembrance and forgiveness on behalf of the Pomo Indian People that perished and those that survived the Bloody Island Massacre. The ceremony is held not the date of the massacre, but the anniversary of when the 1942 marker was installed. According to Nika’s great-grandson, Clayton Duncan, “the ceremony is also to say we’re sorry to our ancestors whose bones and ashes were shown such disrespect.” It is to honor her, her prayer and all who died at Bloody Island. Candles are burned and tobacco offerings are made to the Pomo ancestors whose bodies were cremated and buried, only later to be used in the construction of dams around the Upper Lake basin. "If we can know and learn from each other, to accept the truths of the old world and the new, perhaps our children will not see the colors of skin, the manners of our worship, our cultural heritages as characteristics that divide us,” said Duncan. “Perhaps they will see them as the attributes that unite us so we can all work together to fix, mend and heal the Earth, our mother. “Doing this, we know in our hearts and from the wishes of our ancestors that it will bring back the balance, using the Lucy Moore prayer of forgiveness.” 
 
"At 6 years old, she weighed not much more than one of the cannon balls that tore through the people like a boulder through willows. Crouching beneath the water beside the bank she sipped air through a reed to maintain her life. Above her, an old world was ending, washed in blood.” Those are the words Clayton Duncan uses to tell the story of his great-grandmother, Lucy Moore, and her survival of the events of Bloody Island. 
 
Ni’ka, who is now better known as Lucy More, is now a hero to the Pomo people. Nika became a mother, a grandmother and great-grandmother. As an elder, her husband would play old native songs as Nika cried, telling the story to her grandchildren. She never stopped praying for her cousins, her aunts and uncles, her people. She lived to be 110 years old, and in her old age prayed every day to forgive America.
 
 

Ni‘ka - Part 1 of 3 - FROM THE VAULT

Wherever you are in this hemisphere, you are on Native land.  Never forget, that before the Spanish arrived in California, for thousands of years, from sea to shining sea, this was indian country, with more than 300,000 Natives living here, representing more than 100 tribes, each with its individual traditions and cultures, most completely lost by the arrival of settlers. Write that down, and burn it into your brain. 
Never forget that the Russians, European-American colonists, and  Spanish missionaries' arrival on the Pacific coastline forever changed the native people’s way of life. The first known interaction with the Natives  in California was in the Monterey area in 1602, when Sebastián de Vizcaíno’s Spanish expedition was searching for a safe harbor for their  ships.  Well over 100 years then passed with little attention paid to Alta California. Then, Gaspar de Portola’s expedition of Spanish missionaries arrived in the Monterey area in 1769 and Spain began colonizing. Erasing the identities of the California indigenous people who entered the mission, in exchange, they were given a wool shirt with long sleeves called a cotón, and a wool blanket. The women were also given a wool petticoat and men received a breechclout to cover their groin area. They were then forcibly baptized into the Catholic faith, and thrown into labor camps that were filthy and disease ridden. 
The San Rafael Mission was established where Luis Arguello, later the first provisional governor of California and his band of Spanish soldiers led expeditions, removing Pomo people from their lands, bringing them to the new mission.  Five years down the road, California became part of the Mexican Republic, and the Mexican government gave out large tracts of Pomo land to its settlers, the  foreigner/white colonists brought deadly disease and epidemic. 
In one instance, a Russian ship brought a case of smallpox, the indigenous people did not have immunity to such diseases, the tribe populations heavily decreased, and the  bones of thousands “ left unburied, bleached the hills” of Sonoma and Napa counties. As all this happened, the domestic stock animals brought by the foreigners consumed all of the native foods and damaged the gathering areas while they grazed. Foods the locals depended on for survival. Stream channels were disturbed and often  re-routed, land was blasted away and huge amounts of soil entered streams and rivers, destroying the habitat of fish and other aquatic species that once were food for the indigenous people.
Ten years later there was  a massive malaria outbreak, and the following year the missions were authorized by the crown to “convert” the Natives in a ten-year period. They had until 1844. They were to surrender their control over the mission’s livestock, fields, orchards and buildings to the Indians in 1844. The padres never achieved their goal and the lands and wealth were then stolen from the Natives. The California Mission System was not the romanticized fantasy we were fed in fourth grade. Debunked. Unpack that. Accept it. 
 “The history of genocide casts a shadow over California. It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.”  This was said by my hero, Benjamin Madley, he is an associate professor of history at UCLA and has been on a more than decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide.
 Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. This is the final Chapter of Season One, and this is Part One of three in the chapter,  Today, we will meet the Queen of Preservation. I am Andrea Anderson, This is a true story from America’s Largest Migration, The Gold Rush. This is Queens of the Mines. The preceding program features stories that contain adult content including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised.
 
Surrender
Wherever you are in this hemisphere, you are on Native land.  Never forget that before the Spanish arrived in California, for thousands of years, from sea to shining sea, this was Indian country. More than 300,000 Natives lived here, representing more than 100 tribes, each with its individual traditions and cultures, most completely lost by the arrival of settlers. Never forget that the Russians, European-American colonists, and Spanish missionaries' arrival on the Pacific coastline forever changed the native people’s way of life. Write that down, and burn it into your brain. The first known interaction with the Natives in California was in the Monterey area in 1602, when Sebastián de Vizcaíno’s Spanish expedition was searching for a safe harbor for their ships.  Well over 100 years then passed with little attention paid to Alta California. Then, Gaspar de Portola’s expedition of Spanish missionaries arrived in the Monterey area in 1769 and Spain began colonizing. Erasing the identities of the California indigenous people who entered the missions. The San Rafael Mission was established, removing Pomo people from their lands, bringing them to the new mission. They were given a wool shirt with long sleeves called a cotón, and a wool blanket. The women were also given a wool petticoat and men received a breechclout to cover their groin area. They were then forcibly baptized into the Catholic faith, and thrown into labor camps that were filthy and disease ridden. Five years down the road, California became part of the Mexican Republic, and the Mexican government gave out large tracts of Pomo land to its settlers. The foreign white colonists brought deadly diseases and epidemics. 
In one instance, a Russian ship brought a case of smallpox, the indigenous people did not have immunity to such diseases, the tribe populations heavily decreased. The bones of thousands “left unburied, bleached the hills” of Sonoma and Napa counties. As all this happened, the domestic stock animals brought by the foreigners damaged the gathering areas while they grazed and consumed all of the native foods. Stream channels were disturbed and often re-routed, land was blasted away and huge amounts of soil entered streams and rivers, destroying the habitat of fish and other aquatic species that the indigenous people depended on for survival. Ten years later there was a massive malaria outbreak. The following year the missions were authorized by the crown to “convert” all of the Natives within a ten-year period. They had until 1844. They were to surrender their control over the mission’s livestock, fields, orchards and buildings to the Indians in 1844. The padres never achieved their goal and the lands and wealth were then stolen from the Natives. The California Mission System was not the sugar cube fantasy we were fed in fourth grade. Debunked. Unpack that. Accept it. My hero, Benjamin Madley, is an associate professor of history at UCLA and has been on a more than decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide. He said, “The history of genocide casts a shadow over California. It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.”  
Survival
The wilderness holds an abundance of power. Power that is manifested in the rocks, the springs, the animals, and the trees. A Power that is sought after and/or found when stumbled upon.  The indigineous people of the Americas are familiar with this power. The foreigners who came to this land usually did  not refer to the natural beauty and the magic it held, but the wealth it retained. 
 
An Eastern Pomo woman ponders over petroglyphs on the face of boulders near her village of Danoha in ClearLake California. Her family had lived here for thousands of years. The petroglyphs, at the entrance of a natural tunnel in a collection of boulders, were known as the baby rocks. She has fasted for four days, and she has come alone, seeking to move through the rocks, in an altered state of consciousness. The baby rocks held the spirits of the future children to be born to the parents who followed this Pomo ritual. There was a power affecting fertility there. The carved petroglyphs allowed her entrance, where she negotiated with Mother Earth. Nine months later, Ni’ka was born in the village of Danoha, under the sod roof of her family's dome-shaped home made of tule and earth covered wooden poles. It was 1849. Ni’ka sat with her mother, watching her making a basket with great care, weaving in the Dau, or Spirit Door. This Spirit Door would allow good spirits to come and circulate inside of the basket while the good or bad spirits were released. The base of the basket was completely covered in vivid red feathers of the pileated woodpecker, the surface so smooth, it resembled the breast of the bird itself. Her mother had a sacred gift in making the baskets the family used for cooking, storing food, their religious ceremonies, and daily life. Her technique was exquisite. Together, they collected basket materials annually, swamp canes, rye grass, black ash, willow shoots, sedge roots, the bark of redbud, the root of bulrush, and the root of the gray pine. Nika’s mother taught the five year old girl everything she knew when it came to drying, cleaning, splitting, soaking, and dying the materials. It would be many weeks before the basket was finished. In the coming weeks, she would be taught to fasten beads to the basket's border and the pendants of abalone shell Ni’ka had worked to polish would be attached. In the distance, she could see the fellow children in her tribe arriving home from their gathering expeditions on the outside. The community and culture was the “inside” of their home, and the wilderness and wild areas to which they went for hunting and gathering wild foods was the “outside.” A dualism, a contrast of community and wilderness, domestic and wild, culture and nature. Surely their baskets would be filled with bulbs, roots, clover, pinole seeds, gooseberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, wild greens, gnats, mushrooms, acorns, nuts, caterpillars, grasshoppers and Yerba Buena. The men in the tribe were away on a hunt with bows and harpoons, in search of deer, elk, antelope, rabbit, sea lions, rats, squirrels, waterfowl, and birds. They would periodically burn the land to remove hiding places for the game. They would also fish for salmon, carp, blackfish, clams and mussels. Women gave life, and because the giving of life was a woman's most important role, she did not participate in the taking of life, which included coming in contact with weapons. Instead, the women worked at home, gathering food and materials and preparing the plant based foods. They would shell the acorns, crushing and watering them till they were easy to work with. Next, they would ground the acorns into a paste or to make mush, bread, and soup. Pies would be made with the acorn meal and gathered berries and nuts. Ni’ka enjoyed her life on the inside and was unaware of the struggles of the nearby Pomo tribes, and Ni’ka was unaware of what this meant for her, her family, her tribe, and her cherished land. 
 
Ninety miles north of San Francisco in Clearlake, 15,000 cattle and 2,500 horses lived on Big Valley Ranch. Salvador Vallejo had sold the property in 1847 to Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone, the first Anglo-American colonists in the Clear Lake region. Andrew Kelsey and his three brothers had hoisted the Bear Flag with the Bear Flag Party in Sonoma in 1846. They were rough and often in trouble with the authorities. On their ranch, they made the rules. Raiding the surrounding Eastern Pomo and Wapo villages, Stone and Kelsey and Co. captured several hundred Native Pomo and Wapo people. They forced their slaves to construct and operate their empire. Everything was taken from the natives, including fishing supplies, and simple knives. The men were used as vaqueros, which in English translates to cattle drivers or cowboys. The vaqueros were forced into back breaking labor as they dug wells and built the grand hacienda, outbuildings and a barrier in which they would remain inside, along with their wives and children. Imprisoned. Behind the high fence, for their own entertainment, Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone brutally mistreated the Natives. Disrespectfully, they called them “Diggers”. The often drunken white men shot at the Wapo and Pomo for the fun of seeing them jump. Kelsey and Stone had taken local Pomo Chief Augustine’s wife as a sex slave and constantly ordered Pomo fathers to bring them their daughters to be sexually used and abused, and the men who resisted were whipped, lashed and hung by the hands or toes. This was a usual punishment and it occurred at least two or three times a week. If a worker broke any rule, they would be hung “up by his thumbs, so that his toes just touched the floor, and keep him there for two or three days, sometimes with nothing to eat.” Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone ruled over the Eastern Pomo and Clear Lake Wapo people using fear, torture, sadism, and murderous force for many years. The enslaved Pomo people were nearly starved. Kelsey and Stone hardly provided food and had banned them from foraging, hunting and fishing on their land. Eighteen of the main herdsmen and their two foreman were the only Slaves being fed. The men would receive about 6 pints of boiled wheat each for a day’s work, and the men would share the wheat back at home, so these herders were also starving. The people were getting restless. Twenty elders had died from starvation over winter and four of the Native slaves had been killed by severe whipping in the early months of 1849. “The inside” was no longer safe. Da-Pi-Tauo was sick and starving. She was the wife of Big Jim, a native Pomo slave at Big Valley Ranch. Da-Pi-Tauo’s sister who was the wife of Shuk, an 18 year old Pomo man. Shuk would later become the Hoolanapo Pomo chief Augustine. She was now Stone’s personal slave. Da-Pi-Tauo sent her son to her sister. “Tell your aunt that I am starving and sick, ask for a handful of wheat.” He hurried to Stone’s house and told his aunt just what his mother had said. His aunt, fearful for her sister’s health, gave her nephew 5 cups of wheat that she tied it up in an apron of hers. The young man started for the camp with the precious gift in a hurry to help his sick mother. Charles Stone spotted the boy running from the house and called him back. Stone approached the boy and swatted the wheat from his hands. The apron fell to the ground, wind blowing the grains away. The young boy tried to gather the life saving substance but was captured by Stone and taken to a nearby tree, where he was tied up and given 100 lashes. When Stone had enough, he shot the young boy.  Da-Pi-Tauo’s son suffered for two whole days before he died, his punishment  for attempting to feed his starving mother. Action had to be taken by the natives or all would be lost. It was decided that Shuk and Xasis, the headriders of the eighteen herdsmen, would be secretly hired to kill a cow and bring it back to the village. The people had to eat. The foreman debated the plan all night, night or day, and the order of action, deciding by the end, to do the job at night. They would take the best lasso horses in the barn. The best lasso horses in the barn, of course, belonged to Stone and Kelsey. Shuk promised, “somebody is going to get killed on this job.” Under the moonlight from a cloudy sky, Shuk and Xasis crept to the house to see if Kelsey and Stone had gone to bed. They had. It was drizzling on them as they went to the barn and took their horses and saddles. The plan was to round up the band that was feeding out west. Shuk would make the first lasso and Xasis would do the foot lassing. 
 
Under the stars, Shuk called out, “I see a big one here, hurry and come on!” Shuk saw his chance and threw the rope on a hefty ox. As Xasis rushed over, the stampede began. The ox joined in. Shuk’s horse was pulled to the wet, slippery ground, he was knocked off, and the horse and the ox got away. Xasis attempted to get his rope on, but was too far away, and eventually, he gave up the chase. Defeated, Xasis returned Kelsey’s horse to the barn. The bad news was reported to the men of the tribe who had gathered in Xasis’s house. They all knew death was in the pot for Shuk and Xasis. The men faced another night of debate. It seemed obvious to Shuk and Xasis that the solution was to kill the white men. No one agreed. A Wapo man offered the suggestion of the tribe giving Stone and Kelsey forty sticks of beads, the equivalent of 16,000 beads or $100. Thirty five hundred dollars in 2021. No one agreed. One of the men thought they could tell Stone or Kelsey the horse was stolen. No one agreed. Another man suggested that the other horse should be turned out and that they tell Stone and Kelsey both horses were stolen. No one agreed. It was not looking good for Shuk and Xasis, and the men decided murder was the only option. Starvation was the main reason the slaves at Big Valley Ranch wanted Stone and Kelsey dead, but hardly the only motive. They set out together, that early December morning of 1849 to save their people. To do right and fear no man. A man known as Busi decided to join the men as daylight was approaching. The boys and girls of the village worked inside the household as servants. Kra-nas and Ma-Laxa-Qe-Tu joined the band when, in the wee hours, the children worked together to remove every gun, knife, bow and arrow and anything that could be used as a weapon from the home. Da-Pi-Tauo’s sister poured water onto the two men's gunpowder, rendering it useless. Kelsey and Stone would be helpless in defense. Charles Stone would start each morning all alone, boiling wheat for the 18 herdsmen and their two foremen. This morning, when Stone showed up carrying a pot from the fireplace, he was shocked to see five of the men already waiting for him. He was curious. “What’s the matter, boys? You came early this morning. Something wrong?” Busi responded, “Oh nothing, me hungry that’s all.” Kra-nas looked confused and said to Shuk, “I thought we came to kill this man? Give me these arrows and bows.” Kra-nas pulled the bow and the arrow from Shuk’s hands and pointed right at Stone. Stone whispered “What are you trying to do?” as the arrow was cut loose, striking him in the stomach. Stone pulled the arrow out of his torso and attempted to take off running towards the house. The men surrounded him and they began to throw blows. Busi’s arm was broken after Stone struck him with the fire pot, and he succeeded in getting into the house, locking the door behind him. Kelsey soon arrived, noticing blood on the doorstep of Stone’s home. The men jumped out to ambush him and a fight ensued, Kelsey said to the men. “don’t kill Kelsey, Kelsey good man for you”  Kanas [Kra-nas] replied, “Yes, you are such a good man that you have killed many of us.” Kelsey broke free and ran for the creek, but not before he was shot in the back with two arrows. As he approached the creek, Kelsey managed to pull the arrows out before he dove into the water, staying out of sight until approaching the opposite shore. Where, surprise, several Native men were waiting for him. One of the men was Ju-Luh, a man Kelsey knew well. He begged Ju-Luh for his life, as he lost blood, and became weak. Ju-Luh said, ”It’s too late Kelsey; if I attempt to save you. I also will be killed. I cannot save you.” Ju-Luh and Big Jim held Kelsey by the arms and took him to his wife, Da-Pi-Tauo. “This is a man who killed our son, take this spear.” Da-Pi-Tauo stabbed the white man in the heart and his body was left for the coyotes. At the house, Xasis and Qra-Nas were chasing a breathless Stone, following the drops of blood. The trail led the men to a door, where Stone’s foot revealed his location, crawling up the stairs. Qra-Nas drew his arrow across the bow and Xasis swung the door open but Stone did not move. He had bled to death, or so they thought. They took his body, and threw it out the window. Somehow, Stone got back up and ran to the forest, where Da-Pi-Tauo’s sister found him and used a rock to end his life for good. The woman who was taken from her home and forced to be the sex slave to the men, was the final hand in both their fates. The group reunited at the house, and immediately gathered food to bring home to their families. The men who were able to ride, took a horse and left for the valleys and upper lake to hunt. There were thousands of cattle and they would eat well. The women of the tribes went to the house and gathered all the corn and wheat they could pack up. The plan was for the women, children and elders to flee to hiding places at Scotts Valley and Fishels Point. The men would stay behind to keep watch.
 
John W. Davidson, Virginian, was preparing himself to sit down for a Christmas dinner with his family. On the table, oyster and chestnut stuffing and a large wild turkey were waiting on the table, filling the home with the most delicious scent. His children rushed to the table, excited to eat the beautiful meal. There was a knock at the door, the Davidson’s were not expecting any visitors on this holiday evening. At the door, stood a rider carrying a post for the First Lieutenant. The post carried the news that Charles Stone and Andrew Kelsey of Clear Lake had been murdered by some of the Native Pomo men that they were holding in captivity. John Davidson sat down at the table, staring at the letter, forgetting about the turkey and oyster and chestnut stuffing. Davidson knew Andrew Kelsey from his association with the US Army Captain John C. Frémont during the initial US invasion of the territory that would soon be called California. General Smith of the First Dragoons believed in collective punishment. Smith declared that, “As soon as troops can move in the spring, the California Indians who committed the murder on Clear Lake must be chastised.” Someone would pay for this. On the afternoon of the day after Christmas, twelve hours had passed since Davidson had received the news of Kelsey and Stone’s passing. Lieutenant Nathaniel Lyon was getting ready to begin a seventy mile journey north. Lieutenant Lyon led a detachment of 22 men from a regiment of the U.S. Army’s First Dragoons. For three long days, the militia of determined white meen moved through dense brush and grasses that were nearly as tall as them. The men were rowdy and often drunk as they rode through hills of towering oak trees, making their way to Clear Lake. The mission-  retaliation against the Native Pomo People, and the white men’s hearts were set on extermination.  
 
Just south of Calistoga, Clear Lake Wappo women and men were going about their daily life inside their large village. When they woke up that morning, they had no reason to think that it was not just another typical day, unsuspecting of an approaching cavalry. On a typical day of battle for brave Wappo men, Wappo warriors would have painted themselves with black, red, and white paint. Large bird wings would be worn in their hair. Yet they were left surprised, when Lyon and his men bombarded the village, killing thirty-five Wappo people with their open fire. Eleven Natives of all ages were murdered as they innocently walked out of their sweat house, their bodies then burned in their homes. Then they just left. The posse headed for the Cyrus family ranch to recruit more men to join in on the battle ahead. At the Cyrus ranch, the soldiers attempted to convince the settlers there to help them rid the area of Natives. The locals absolutely refused. The labor of the California Indians was depended on by the farmers. One man declared, “if we treat them kindly and pay them fairly, they are quite pleasant.” Defeated, the band of vigilantes left, they would handle the job by themselves. For weeks, the posse chased after and promised to kill every California Indian they found as they passed through Sonoma. Simultaneously Benjamin Kelsey, was burning more Rancherias and chasing men to their death. The Napa locals were combative to the posse’s violence and requested help from the Governor. As they waited, they banded together to turn back the cavalry in Napa, crushing the plans to cross on the ferry. North of St. Helena, there was a large Rancheria belonging to more men of the Bear Flag Revolt, Henry Fowler and William Hargrave. The militia intruded upon the Rancheria, and burned their lodges and sacred spaces. They shot at least 15 of the local Wappo people and before they abandoned the scene, they sabotaged the survivors' supply of barley and wheat. Leaving the bodies of the slain children, women and men in their wake. The rancheria is now known as “Human Flesh Ranch”.
 
“Ever since the murder of Andrew Kelsey, a party of men have caused much excitement among the peaceful inhabitants of this place and Napa.” - March 2, 1850.
 
Shuk and Xasis patrolled the trail on the west side of the valley. Qra-Nas and Ma-Laq-Qe-Tou were chosen to watch the trail that came in from the lower lake, and Yom-mey-nah and Ge-we-leh were watching the trail that came from Eight Mile Valley. For two weeks, no white person was seen on the trail until two on horseback coming over the hill from the lower lake were spotted by Qra-nas and Ma-Laq-Qe-Tou. The men, even from a far distance, noticed the camp was deserted. The white men noticed Qra-nas and Ma-Laq-Qe-Tou coming towards them and they took off. Another three days passed, and no one was seen. Two Pomo men were camped at the top of the north peak of Uncle Sam mountain, watching for danger for four days, when early one morning, a long boat with a pole on the bow with red cloth was seen, and it was followed by several more, and each boat held ten to fifteen men. Watching the trail from Ash Hill, the two men saw the infantrys coming over the hill. The men were marching, firing shots with their threatening guns. A smoke signal was sent and a tule canoe was spotted by the lake watchers, “Some news coming.” They needed to hide. They retreated to leave for  Oregon.
 
Kelsey had a brother, Benjamin, and he was looking for revenge. Benjamin Kelsey rounded up a posse. The posse was a militia led by Lieutenant Nathaniel Lyon and Lieutenant John W. Davidson including the Cavalry detachment of the U.S. First Dragoons Regiment. They made a plan. A random campaign of violence against all Clear Lake Pomo had been waged. They men went to Stone and Kelsey’s house, and then down towards the lake. They moved across the valley near the lake port, Scotts Valley, to the upper lake to set up camp on Emerson Hill. It was there they saw the Pomo camp on the island Bo-no-po-ti. The cavalry was told that six hundred Pomo armed warriors were stationed on the island. In fact, the Pomo at Bo-no-po-ti never worked on Stone and Kelsey’s ranch, and had nothing to do with their murders. The island was mostly populated with women and children, and it was where Ni’ka, and her mother were finishing up their basket. It had been a cold winter. Staying warm inside her tule kotka by the small fire, Nika learned to make clothing from the tule, and spent hours assembling jewelry made of what was left of last season’s collected abalone and clamshells. Ni’ka’s mother was also teaching her daughter to sew. They were using the skin from rabbits her father had hunted, to make a blanket. The tribe members would travel to the coast to fish and gather more materials this coming summer, and Ni’kas father promised he would take her along. Soon, he would go on a long seasonal hunting expedition with the men of the tribe and Nika would go fishing with her mother and the women and other children. Nika ran her fingers over the smooth abalone, thinking of the wonderful gifts nature bestowed on her family, anything they could ever need was right there, surrounding them in the wilderness. The now six year old Nika could not wait for the adventures to come, playing in the poppies. 
“We had hoped to hear no more of Indian butcheries in California. We hope and trust the U.S. troops in California will prevent further violence.” -Daily Alta California March 11, 1850 
“Hundreds of the Indians are in the mountains in a starving condition, afraid to return to the Ranchos.”  - Daily Alta California - March 19, 1850
 
 In the chilly water that spring afternoon, the children were challenging one another in a game. With hollow tule reeds, they would lie on their backs in the shallow water, and breathe through the reed, to see who could remain underwater the longest. Ni’ka’s mother took a break from her fishing to check on Ni’ka and the other children. She scanned the island for Nika and the other children, and did not see them. She looked closer, and noticed, near the tule, a collection of misplaced reeds, bobbing in the water, she giggled to herself. This woman was incredibly pleased with her life as a parent to this young adventurous spirit. In only a few days of being on “Bo-no-po-ti”, Ni’ka was learning the landscape, and the power associated with it’s shores, hills, rocks, it’s owl and raven calls. The clouds, the fog, and the angles of the sun and the ways of the moon in the night sky, and all the many uses of tule. 
 
The killings of the California Indians continued on the road to Bo-no-po-ti. The militia men marked their trail by hanging the men, and built large fires underneath their hanging bodies as a warning of what was still yet to come. General Smith had instructed Lyon to negotiate neither for custody of those who had killed Stone and Kelsey nor for a general surrender. Lyon, with his detachment of the Dragoons, detachment M of the 3rd Artillery, and detachments A, E, and G of the 2nd Infantry, arrived in Clear Lake. Lyon and some of his men went to observe the tribe. Lyon saw on the island, the Natives had some natural protection on the island from the waters of Clear Lake and he sent for two small brass field guns and two whale boats from the U.S. Army Arsenal at Benicia. The boats were to be hauled overland, and would take some time to arrive. As they waited, locals began to volunteer themselves for the murderous expedition. When the artillery arrived, the white men moved in just two and a half miles from Bo-no-por-ti. They set up camp at Rodman Slough on the night of May 14th. Watching from across the lake, the troops saw the people gathered on Bo-no-po-ti about 300 yards from shore of the island. The Pomo women and a few of the men were performing in a ceremony, giving thanks for the creation of the world and for the continuation of each day. The women wore their Clam shell necklaces and dresses, and the few elder men that had stayed on the island rather than join the seasonal hunt, were in fox and deer regalia, they played the cocoon rattle, double-boned whistle, flute, plank drum, and rattle. It was a feather dance.To the white men, who witnessed this ceremony, the rhythm of the drums had so far only meant one thing to them. It sounded like a march to war. The white men assumed the tribe were harboring those who had slain Stone and Kelsey and preparing for an epic battle. A silly assumption, at the time, for three separate languages were spoken in the four different California Indian groups lived around Clear Lake, and The Pomo from the Big Valley ranch, and the Pomo at Bo-no-po-ti, were not familiar with each other, nor did they even speak the same language. The song ended, and the Pomo people let out a loud ohhh of release at the end of their dance, startling the men who watched them. In the dark hours of the following morning of May 15, 1850, Lyon’s infantrymen loaded themselves into the whale boats. Packing alongside them, cannons, their weapons, and ammunition, and they quietly crossed the water. They moved towards the northern rim of the lake, and then split and covered the north, east, and west shores of the island, positioning themselves in a crescent, patrolling the shores and closing off any route of escape in every direction. At the break of dawn, from the south end of the island, from his boat, Lyon opened fire on the village, followed by shots fired from the northern shore. Six year old Ni’ka and her mother were tending to the fire when they heard the first shot ring out. Nika looked at her mother with a sheer look of terror. They started to run away from the sound, to the southern shore and as they did, a cannon was fired from that direction. Panic set in, they realized they were trapped. Ge-Wi-Lih threw up his hands and tried to approach the men. “no harm me good man” without hesitation, Lyon shot him to death as well as the man standing next to him, the posse took the bodies to be hanged. There would be no negotiating. Women and children ran to hide and the soldiers gunned them down. Captain Lyon ordered his soldiers to follow the escaping Pomo into the thick reeds surrounding the marshy waters and “pursue and destroy as far as possible.” The few elder men that remained on the island while the others were away hunting, fought back courageously, but did not last long. The brave men were captured and killed with sabers, baronettes, hatchets, rocks and bare hands, one Pomo man was tied to a tree and burned alive.  
 
When Nika and her mother approached the shore, she saw her friend with her father,one of the men who had not gone hunting. Her father was digging a large hole in a bank of the river for the two to hide in. Another friend of Nika’s was also escaping to the water with her own mother and Nika saw them both shot and killed as they started to swim. In the shallow waters, the hunters were using sabers to take down anyone they found hiding in the tule. Captain Nathaniel Lyon said, “the island was a perfect slaughtering pen.” On the shore, Nikas mother was nearly hit by a bullet, it came so close and with a mother's instinct she dove for the water, as if hit, taking Nika down with her. She laid in the water, with Nika underneath her. For a short series of miraculous moments that played out for Nika as if in slow motion, her mother moved her hand under the water, picked a tule reed from the lake floor, and put it in Nikas hands, below the surface of the water. She whispered to her daughter. “How long can you go Ni’ka? You are good at this game. Show me.” Nika put the reed in her mouth, and went underwater. On the island, the massacre continued. Infants were being murdered by a practice used by the US soldiers and militia men of the 19th century. It was called “braining”, the babies' heads smashed against tree trunks or under the boots of the white men. An elder woman hid under a bank covering herself with the overhanging tules. From her hiding spot, she gasped as she witnessed two white men approaching the shore, guns high in the air, on the end of their guns, a little girl hung. They threw the child's body in the water and walked away. This continued, more men approaching in the same manner, young children hanging at the ends of their weapons, their small innocent bodies, thrown into the creek. 
 
Nika was still hidden tucked under the breast of her mother under the bloody waters. Crouching beneath the water beside the bank she sipped air through a reed to maintain her life. Her mother, acting as if she was shot dead, remained still. An eagle watched from above, then dived at a snake, ripping it to shreds. A young boy who was a friend of Nika’s ran with his mother and siblings. Right in front of his eyes, the soldiers shot his mother and the woman fell to the ground, her tiny baby in her arms. The boy stood over his mother, shocked and scared, and his mother shooed him away, telling him in Pomo, to climb up into a tree and wait. He did. From the high branches, he watched in disbelief, soldiers running about the camp and shooting the men and women and stabbing boys and girls. His mother was on the ground below him, dying but still not dead, continuing to tell her son to stay quiet. She laid there, holding her little baby in her arms moaning in Pomo, O my babies. She was not quiet enough in her cries, and two white men heard her, came running toward the mother and baby, the young boy watched as his mother and sibling were stabbed, their bodies thrown over the bank into the water. From the tree, he then saw a man dying, a young boy in his arms. A soldier then approached the man, finishing him off with his bayonet, and kidnapped the child. It would be known as the Bloody Island Massacre. Benjamin Madley said in his book, “An American Genocide” that “There were not less than four hundred warriors killed and drowned at Clear Lake and as many more of squaws and children who plunged into the lake and drowned, through fear, committing suicide. So in all, about eight hundred Indians found a watery grave in Clear Lake.” Hours and hours passed since the last gunshot, and eventually, everything went quiet. No more footsteps of the soldiers, no more cries, no more gunshots. It was silent. Nika’s mother opened her eyes and looked around, seeing it was all clear, she lifted Nika from under the red water. Blood was everywhere, and everyone was dead or gone.
 
Barefoot and bleeding, two teenage boys made the gruesome climb over Sonoma’s bottlerock mountain, led by two US soldiers. The rocks shred the soles of their feet while the man ahead walked swiftly in his boots, and the boys tried to keep us as the man behind them stabbed at their backs with the sharp knife fixed on the end of his gun. The soldier in front noticed the native teens wincing in pain, attempting to step carefully, and stopped, instructing them to sit down. The soldier opened his pack, and took a handful of something out of a box. As he approached the boys he instructed them to put their feet up on a log in front of them, and began to rub the substance into the boys feet tying a cloth around. It was salt. The soldiers stood there laughing and the boys cried in pain. For two hours, the men rubbed salt into the wounds where the boys had been stabbed in the back. Lieutenant Lyon's forces of US soldiers and militia men had continued throughout the area, hunting down escapees and killing any Natives they came into contact with. After three more days of captivity, the head soldier released the boys at the Lower Lake, leaving them some meat and hard bread, which the boys mostly abandoned as they ran for dear life under the impression they were being followed. The teenage boys side tracked, and climbed high peaks to scan the surrounding area for stalkers, only to run again, all the way home. The boys arrived home in hopes to see their mother and sister only to find their blood scattered over the ground like water and their bodies left for coyotes to devour. They sat under a tree and cried until dark.
 
A month had passed since the massacre, and Nika and mother had been surviving alone in the wilderness, in the rock crevices, caves and mountain top pools. Seeking protection from the supernatural world that surrounded them. Gathering food and medicinal plants from the holy mountains where supernatural power dwelled and visited them. Among the Coyote, their ancestor and creator god and the culture hero of the Pomo tribe. During that time, the Pomo land around the lake and beyond were taken over and homesteaded by the members of the militia, some of them prominent members of society. The Pomo survivors lived on in small bands, most living as slaves to local rancheros. The orphaned children of the murdered natives were hidden from the settlers looking for slaves. Good money was paid for such. 
 
On April 22, 1850, just weeks before the massacre, The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians was passed. This allowed settlers to continue the California practice of capturing and using Native people as bound laborers. It provided the foundation for enslavement and trafficking within the Native American laborers, and deemed it legal to enslave and traffick young women and children. The law allowed loitering or orphaned Native Americans found without means of support, to be claimed, and forced into labor. The Natives and Anglo Americans had opposing ideas of what were indeed “means of support”. The Natives lived off the land, and had for thousands of years, and if you lived off and with the land, you did not need or want like these new foreigners. A Native person held no rights and could not testify in court, nearly every Indian in California suddenly became a candidate for slavery. California’s first governor, Peter Burnett announced that “California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extinction or removal, The only way we will be able to mine in security, if all of these people are exterminated." Villages were raided, supplies were stolen and women and children were kidnapped. Natives would be snatched up and charged as vagrants. When they faced the justice of the peace, they would be sold off at public auction to labor without pay for the next four months. Compensation was paid to the men who brought the Natives in for captivity, as well as payment for heads, scalps, or ears of Natives. At one time, they would earn up to $25 for turning in a Native male body part, and $5 for a woman or child. Millions of dollars were paid to private militias by State officials in bounties. 
 
Legislation in California passed granting over one million dollars for the reimbursement of additional expenses that the hunters of the Natives would incur. The same legislation followed in the federal Congress allowing federal funds for the same purpose. The purpose? Genocide. Retired Sonoma State University Native American Studies Professor Edward Castillo who has written of the initial years of the California Gold Rush said "Nothing in American Indian history is even remotely comparable to this massive orgy of theft and mass murder."
 
The California gold rush led Americans to rape the land and exploit it’s provisions and then used them towards the efforts of the extermination of those who lived here for thousands of years. It did not stop there. They exploited their women, they mistreated Asians, they exploited the Mexicans and the blacks.  Sowing seeds that became the roots of a new California. “Gold's a devilish sort of thing. You lose your sense of values and character changes entirely. Your soul stops being the same as it was before.”
 
In the six years after the massacre, the remaining Pomo were moved onto small rancherias by the US Federal Government. This relocation was known as "Marches to Round Valley". Pomo men, women, infants and children were captured from the foothills and forced by gun and whip through the valley, crossing the Sacramento River and over by the Sutter Butte. Many had drowned in the march while crossing the river. Some escaped and remained hidden for some time, most taking on Mexican names and blending into the Mexican American communities. 
 
Two years later in 1858, it was common to read in the newspapers the opinions and promises made by California’s US Senator Jon Weller. Weller said to his colleagues that the Natives “will be exterminated before the onward march of the white man” and insisted that the “interest of white man demands their extinction”.
 
Lieutenants Lyon and Davidson were both later promoted to Army Brigadier Generals during the Civil War, with the approval of Abraham Lincoln. Lyon became the Commander of the Department of the West, the position was previously held by John C. Frémont.
 
Benjamin Madley will teach you that by 1873, the number of Natives in California went from 150,000 to 30,000 due to the murders, the disease, the starvation and the dislocation. This was not a battle lost after two civilizations met and disagreed. This was genocide sanctioned and paid for by state and federal officials. There is a list of over 100 Genocidal Massacres by the United States against Indigenous Peoples of the Western Continent where accountability has never been claimed by the United States government or its military forces. Why? Because: EXTERMINATION WAS POLICY.
 
Archaeologists believe that the Clear Lake basin has been occupied by Native Americans for at least 11,000 years. Bloody Island now stands as a hilltop rising from the dusty lake bed. The Upper Lake Basin, drained and “reclaimed” for agricultural use in the 1930’s. On May 20 1942, 92 years and 5 days after the Bloody Island massacre, the Native Sons of the Golden West installed a historical marker one third of a mile off of U.S. Highway 20. The Native Sons were an Anglo-American organization responsible for many of the placards and historical landmarks scattered throughout California. The plaque notes the site of a Battle between Cavalry under “Captain” Lyon and Indians under Chief Augustine. Right off the bat we know THAT is bullshit. It was no battle. It was a massacre. This memorial, once again, whitewashed genocide with the old “Cowboys and Indians.” bit. There are not many visitors, as this event was unmentioned in our California history textbooks. It also states the wrong date, placing the massacre on April 15, 1850, which was a month prior. The marker was desecrated in 2002, red paint was poured all over and around it. The red paint remains, left to resemble spilled blood. If you travel a quarter mile down a street called Reclamation Road, you can see the massacre site close-up. A new plaque went up in 2005, erected by the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Lucy Moore Foundation. It gives a much more accurate history, noting it was in fact, not a battle, but rather the location where “a regiment of the 1st Dragoons of the U.S. Cavalry, Commanded by Capt. Nathaniel Lyon and Lt. J.W. Davidson, massacred nearly the entire native population of the island.” The full text of the plaque goes on to state: “Most were women and children. This act was in reprisal for the killing of Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone who had long enslaved, brutalized, and starved indigenous people in the area.” In 2020, monuments started coming down and both sides of history are coming to light. The 1942 plaque is left up, to represent how alternate, and incorrect, versions of the past had long been told. A reminder for us as individuals, to be responsible as listeners, caretakers and creators of a shared and global historical narrative.
 
Every May 20th, since 1999, an annual sunrise forgiveness ceremony is held at the 1942 marker in honor, remembrance and forgiveness on behalf of the Pomo Indian People that perished and those that survived the Bloody Island Massacre. The ceremony is held not the date of the massacre, but the anniversary of when the 1942 marker was installed. According to Nika’s great-grandson, Clayton Duncan, “the ceremony is also to say we’re sorry to our ancestors whose bones and ashes were shown such disrespect.” It is to honor her, her prayer and all who died at Bloody Island. Candles are burned and tobacco offerings are made to the Pomo ancestors whose bodies were cremated and buried, only later to be used in the construction of dams around the Upper Lake basin. "If we can know and learn from each other, to accept the truths of the old world and the new, perhaps our children will not see the colors of skin, the manners of our worship, our cultural heritages as characteristics that divide us,” said Duncan. “Perhaps they will see them as the attributes that unite us so we can all work together to fix, mend and heal the Earth, our mother. “Doing this, we know in our hearts and from the wishes of our ancestors that it will bring back the balance, using the Lucy Moore prayer of forgiveness.” 
 
"At 6 years old, she weighed not much more than one of the cannon balls that tore through the people like a boulder through willows. Crouching beneath the water beside the bank she sipped air through a reed to maintain her life. Above her, an old world was ending, washed in blood.” Those are the words Clayton Duncan uses to tell the story of his great-grandmother, Lucy Moore, and her survival of the events of Bloody Island. 
 
Ni’ka, who is now better known as Lucy More, is now a hero to the Pomo people. Nika became a mother, a grandmother and great-grandmother. As an elder, her husband would play old native songs as Nika cried, telling the story to her grandchildren. She never stopped praying for her cousins, her aunts and uncles, her people. She lived to be 110 years old, and in her old age prayed every day to forgive America.

A Quick Word for my Listeners

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The Last Brothel in Calaveras County - FROM THE VAULT

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Samuel Clemens arrived in Angels Camp in 1865 in the middle of a rainstorm so intense that it left Clemens stranded in Calaveras County for the next two weeks. Many local townspeople gathered at the Angels Hotel at the corner of Main at Birds Way to pass the time. While local residents were  sharing stories, a local man told the tale of his friend who possessed a frog that he had trained. Clemens found the story amusing and took notes in the corner. Later that year he embellished the story when he wrote “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” under his new pen name, Mark Twain. It was his first published short story. 
Sixty-three years later in honor of the legend, a frog jumping contest was held on the Main St of Angels Camp. Over 15,000 people swarmed the streets for the tournament on the sloping street. In the coming years, the event grew in attendance so much, that the frog jumping contest was moved to the county fairgrounds they called Frogtown in 1928. But we are not here to talk about the Frog Jumps in Calaveras County. We are here to talk about the brothel that operated was across the street and down the road from Frogtown.
 
After America’s largest migration, the gold rush, brothels thrived in the California foothills for over 100 years. In my book Queens of the Mines, I wrote about Belle Cora, who ran the Sonora Club, one of the many bawdy houses that were in operation in Sonora, Ca during the gold rush. The Sonora Club, which was somewhere along Woods Creek, accumulated a profit of over one hundred and twenty six thousand dollars in less than a year. That would equal the spending power of 4.4 million dollars in 2021. To buy that book, visit queensofthemines.com. 14 miles away, Vallecito was the home to over eighty ladies of the night in 1855. Some of these so-called houses of ill repute continued operation until the 1950’s. But none were as famous as the last brothel in Calaveras County. 
This is Queens of the Mines, where we discuss untold stories from the twisted roots of California. We are in a time where historians and the public are no longer dismissing the “conflict history” that has been minimized or blotted out. I’m Andrea Anderson. The preceding episode may feature foul language and adult content including violence which may be disturbing some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised.

The Starrs

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Today's episode features the lives of mother - daughter outlaws, Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen and her daughter, Pearl. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th century women from the Wild West. These stories sometimes contain adult content which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. 
 
Carthage, Missouri is America’s Maple Leaf City, and the site of the first official engagement of the American Civil War, which took place July 5, 1861. Thirteen years earlier,  Myra Maybelle Shirley, was born there on Feb. 5, 1848. They called her Belle.  In an attempt to raise her to be a lady, the Shirley’s sent their daughter to be educated at the Carthage Female Academy. Belle was intelligent but she was also hot tempered and if unchecked, her mouth could turn a mule skinner’s face scarlet. As a result, she got into fights with girls and boys alike at the academy. She would carry this attitude throughout her whole life. 

Ina Coolbrith

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When Agnes Moulton Coolbrith joined the Mormon Church in Boston in 1832, she met and married Prophet Don Carlos Smith, the brother of Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There, at the first Mormon settlement, Agnes gave birth to three daughters. The youngest was Josephine Donna Smith, born 1841. Only four months after Josephine Donna Smith’s birth, Don Carlos Smith died of malaria.  In spite of Don Carlos being a bitter opposer of the ‘spiritual wife’ doctrine, Agnes was almost immediately remarried to her late husband’s brother, Joseph Smith in 1842, making her his probably seventh wife.
Today we will talk about Josephine Donna Smith’s, who’s life in California spanned the pioneer American occupation, to the first renaissance of the 19thcentury feminist movement. an American poet, writer, librarian, and a legend in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West.  Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be, disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. 
 
They called her Ina.
But Sharing your partner with that many people may leave you lonely at times. Not surprisingly, during the marriage, Agnes felt neglected. Two years later, Smith was killed at the hands of an anti-Mormon and anti-polygamy mob. Agnes, scared for her life, moved to Saint Louis, Missouri with Ina and her siblings. Agnes reverted to using her maiden name, Coolbrith, to avoid identification with Mormonism and her former family. She did not speak of their Mormon past. 
She married again, in Missouri, to William Pickett. Pickett had also converted to Mormonism, and had a second wife. He was an LDS Church member, a printer, a lawyer and an alcoholic. Agnes had twin sons with Pickett. They left the church and headed west, leaving his second wife behind.  
 Ina had never been in a school, but Pickett had brought along a well-worn copy of Byron’s poetry, a set of Shakespeare, and the Bible. As they traveled, the family passed time reading. Inspired, Ina made up poetry in her head as she walked alongside her family’s wagon. Somewhere in the Nevada sands, the children of the wagon train gathered as Ina buried her doll after it took a tumble and split its head. 
Ina’s life in California started at her arrival in front of the wagon train  through Beckwourth Pass in 1851. Her sister and her riding bareback on the horse of famous mountain man, explorer and scout Jim Beckwourth. He had guided the caravan and called Ina his “Little Princess.” In Virgina, Beckwourth was born as a slave. His father, who was his owner, later freed him. As the wagon train crossed into California, he said, “Here, little girls, is your kingdom.” The trail would later be known as Beckwourth Pass. Ina was the first white child to cross through the Sierra Nevadas on Beckwourth Pass. 
The family settled in San Bernardino and then in Los Angeles which still had largely a Mormon and Mexican population. Flat adobe homes with courtyards filled with pepper trees, vineyards, and peach and pomegranate orchards. In Los Angeles, Agnes’s new husband Pickett established a law practice. Lawyers became the greatest beneficiaries, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, acquiring Mexican land in exchange for representation in court contests. Pickett was one of those lawyers.
Ina began writing poetry at age 11 and started school for the first time at 14. Attending  Los Angeles’s first public school on Street and Second. She published her poetry in the local newspaper and she was published in The Los Angeles Star/Estrella when she was just fifteen years old. 
At 17, she met Robert Bruce Carsley, a part-time actor and a full time iron-worker for Salamander Ironworks.  Salamander Ironworks.built jails, iron doors, and balconies. Ina and Robert married in a doctor's home near the San Gabriel Mission. They lived behind the iron works and had a son. But Robert Carsley revealed himself to be an abusive man. Returning from a minstrel show in San Francisco, Carsley became obsessed with the idea that his new wife had been unfaithful to him. Carsley arrived at Pickett’s adobe, where Ina was for the evening,  screaming that Ina was a whore in that very tiny quiet pueblo. Pickett gathered up his rifle and shot his son in law's hand off. 
The next few months proved to be rough for Ina. She got an uncontested divorce within three months in a sensational public trial, but then, tragically, her infant son died. And although divorce was legal, her former friends crossed the street to avoid meeting her. Ina fell into a deep depression. She legally took her mothers maiden name Coolbrith and moved to San Francisco with her mother, stepfather and their twins. 
In San Francisco, Ina continued to write and publish her poetry and found work as an English teacher. Her poems were published in the literary newspaperThe Californian. The editor of The Californian was author Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Also known as, Mark Twain. Ina made friends with Mark Twain, John Muir, Bret Harte and Charles Warren Stoddard, Twain’s queer drinking companion. Coolbrith, renowned for her beauty, was called a “dark-eyed Sapphic divinity” and the "sweetest note in California literature” by Bret Harte. John Muir attempted to introduce her to eligible men. 
Coolbrith, Harte and Stoddard formed what became known as the Golden Gate Trinity. The Golden Gate Trinity was closely associated with the literary journal, Overland Monthly, which published short stories written by the 28-year old Mark Twain. Ina became the editorial assistant and for a decade, she supplied one poem for each new issue. Her poems also appeared in Harper’s, Scribner’s, and other popular national magazines.  
At her home on Russian Hill, Ina hosted literary gatherings where writers and publishers rubbed shoulders and shared their vision of a new way of writing – writing that was different from East Coast writing. There were  readings of poetry and topical discussions, in the tradition of European salons and Ina danced the fandango and  played the guitar, singing American and Spanish songs. 
Actress and poet Adah Menken was a frequent visitor to her parties. We know Adah Menken from earlier episodes and the Queens of the Mines episode and she is in the book, as she was a past fling of the famous Lotta Crabtree.  The friendship between Coolbrith and Menken gave Menken credibility as an intellectual although Ina was never able to impress Harte of Menken's worth at the gatherings.  
  Another friend of Ina’s was the eccentric poet Cincinnatus H. Miller. Ina introduced Miller to the San Francisco literary circle and when she learned of his adoration of the heroic, tragic life of Joaquin Murrieta, Ina suggested that he take the name Joaquin Miller as his pen name. She insisted he dress the part with longer hair and a more pronounced mountain man style. 
Coolbrith and Miller planned a tour of the East Coast and Europe, but when Ina’s mother Agnes and Ina’s sister both became seriously ill, Ina decided to stay in San Francisco and take care of them and her nieces and nephews. Ina agreed to raise Miller’s daughter, Calla Shasta, a beautiful half indigenous girl, as he traveled around Europe brandishing himself a poet.
Coolbrith and Miller had shared an admiration for the poet Lord Byron, and they decided Miller should lay a wreath on his tomb in England. They collected laurel branches in Sausalito, Ina made the wreath. A stir came across the English clergy when Miller placed the wreath on the tomb at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Hucknall. They did not understand the connection between the late lord and a couple of California poets. Not to be outdone, the clergy sent to the King of Greece for another laurel wreath from the country of Byron's heroic death. The two wreaths were hung side by side over Byron's tomb. After this, Miller was nicknamed "The Byron of the West." Coolbrith wrote of the excursion in her poem "With a Wreath of Laurel". 
Coolbrith was the primary earner for her extended family and they needed a bigger home. So, while Miller was in Europe, she moved her family to Oakland, where she was elected honorary member of the Bohemian Club. When her mother and sister soon died and she became the guardian of her orphaned niece and nephew, The Bohemian Club members discreetly assisted Ina in her finances. 
Ina soon took a full-time job as Oakland’s first public librarian. She worked 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, earning  $80 per month. Much less than a man would have received in that position at the time. Her poetry suffered as a result of the long work hours and for nearly twenty years, Ina only published sporadically. 
Instead, Ina became a mentor for a generation of young readers. She hand chose books for her patrons based on their interests. In 1886, Ina mentored the 10-year-old Jack London. She guided his reading and London called her his "literary mother". London grew up to be an American novelist, journalist and social activist. Twenty years later, London wrote to Coolbrith to thank her he said “I named you Noble. That is what you were to me, noble. That was the feeling I got from you. Oh, yes, I got, also, the feeling of sorrow and suffering, but dominating them, always riding above all, was noble. No woman has so affected me to the extent you did. I was only a little lad. I knew absolutely nothing about you. Yet in all the years that have passed I have met no woman so noble as you."
One young reader was another woman featured in a previous Queens of the Mines episode, Isadora Duncan, “the creator of modern dance”. Duncan described Coolbrith as "a very wonderful" woman, with beautiful eyes that glowed with burning fire and passion. Isadora was the daughter of a man that Ina had dazzled, enough to cause the breakup of his marriage. 
The library patrons of Oakland called for reorganization in 1892 and after 18 years of service, a vindictive board of directors fired Ina, giving her three days' notice to clear her desk. One library trustee was quoted as saying "we need a librarian not a poet." She was replaced by her nephew Henry Frank Peterson.
Coolbrith's literary friends were outraged, and worried that Ina would move away, becoming alien to California. They published a lengthy opinion piece to that effect in the San Francisco Examiner. John Muir, who often sent letters and the occasional box of freshly picked fruit,  also preferred to keep her in the area, and in one package, a letter suggested that she fill the newly opened position of the librarian of San Francisco. In Coolbrith’s response to Muir, she thanked him for "the fruit of your land, and the fruit of your brain" but said, "No, I cannot have Mr. Cheney's place. I am disqualified by sex." San Francisco required that their librarian be a man.
Ina returned to her beloved Russian Hill. In 1899, the artist William Keith and poet Charles Keeler offered Coolbrith the position as the Bohemian Club’s part-time librarian. Her first assignment was to edit Songs from Bohemia, a book of poems by journalist and the Bohemian Club co-founder, Daniel O'Connell. Her salary in Oakland was $50 each month. The equivalent of $1740 in 2022. She then signed on as staff of Charles Fletcher Lummis's magazine, The Land of Sunshine. Her duties were light enough that she was able to devote a greater proportion of her time to writing. 
Coolbrith was often sick in bed with rheumatism. Even as her health began to show signs of deterioration, she did not stop her work at the Bohemian Club. She began to work on a history of California literature as a personal project. Songs from the Golden Gate, was published in 1895; it contained "The Captive of the White City" which detailed the cruelty dealt to Native Americans in the late 19th century. 
Coolbrith kept in touch with her first cousin Joseph F. Smith to whom and for whom she frequently expressed her love and regard. In 1916, she sent copies of her poetry collections to him. He publicized them, identifying as a niece of Joseph Smith. This greatly upset Coolbrith. She told him that "To be crucified for a faith in which you believe is to be blessed. To be crucified for one in which you do not believe is to be crucified indeed."
Coolbrith fled from her home at Broadway and Taylor with her Angora cats, her student boarder Robert Norman and her friend Josephine Zeller when the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake hit. Her friends took a few small bundles of letters from colleagues and Coolbrith's scrapbook filled with press clippings about her and her poems. Across the bay, Joaquin Miller spotted heavy smoke and took a ferry from Oakland to San Francisco to help Coolbrith in saving her valuables from encroaching fire. Miller was prevented from doing so by soldiers who had orders to use deadly force against looters. Coolbrith's home burned to the ground.
Soldiers evacuated Russian Hill, leaving Ina and Josie, two refugees, among many, wandering San Francisco’s tangled streets. Coolbrith lost 3,000 books, row upon row of priceless signed first editions, rare original artwork, and many personal letters in the disaster. Above all, her nearly complete manuscript Part memoir, part history of California's early literary scene, including personal stories about her friends Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and John Muir, were lost.
Coolbrith spent a few years in temporary residences after the blaze and her friends rallied to raise money to build her a house. Mark Twain sent three autographed photographs of himself from New York that sold for $10 a piece. He then sat for 17 more studio photographs to further the fund. She received a discreet grant from her Bohemian friends and a trust fund from a colleague in 1910. She set up again in a new house at 1067 Broadway on Russian Hill. Coolbrith got back to business writing and holding literary salons.
Coolbrith traveled by train to New York City several times for several years, greatly increasing her poetry output. In those years she produced more than she had produced in the preceding 25 years. 
Her style was more than the usual themes expected of women. Her sensuous descriptions of natural scenes advanced the art of Victorian poetry to incorporate greater accuracy without trite sentiment, foreshadowing the Imagist school and the work of Robert Frost.
Coolbrith was named President of the Congress of Authors and Journalists in preparation for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. That year, Coolbrith was also named California's first poet   , and the first poet laureate of any American state on June 30, 1915. A poet laureate composed poems for special events and occasions. Then, it was a position for the state that was held for life. The Overland Monthly reported that eyes were wet throughout the large audience when Coolbrith was crowned with a laurel wreath by Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California, who called her the "loved, laurel-crowned poet of California." After several more speeches were made in her honor, and bouquets brought in abundance to the podium,  74-year old Coolbrith accepted the honor, wearing a black robe with a sash bearing a garland of bright orange California poppies, saying: "There is one woman here with whom I want to share these honors: Josephine Clifford McCracken. For we are linked together, the last two living members of Bret Harte's staff of Overland writers. In a life of unremitting labor, time and opportunity have been denied. So my meager output of verse is the result of odd moments, and only done at all because so wholly a labor of love.”
Coolbrith continued to write and work to support herself until her final publication in 1917. Six years later, in May of 1923, Coolbrith's friend Edwin Markham found her at the Hotel Latham in New York very old, disabled, ill and broke.  Markham asked Lotta Crabtree to gather help for her.  Coolbrith was brought back to California where she settled in Berkeley to be cared for by her niece. 
The next year, Mills College conferred upon her an honorary Master of Arts degree. In spring of 1926, she received visitors such as her old friend, art patron Albert M. Bender, who brought young Ansel Adams to meet her. Adams made a photographic portrait of Coolbrith seated near one of her white Persian cats and wearing a large white mantilla on her head. 
A group of writers began meeting at the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco, naming their group the Ina Coolbrith Circle. When Ina returned to Berkeley she never missed a Sunday meeting until her death at 87-years-old.
Ina Coolbrith died on Leap Day, February 29, 1928. The New York Times wrote, “Miss Coolbrith is one of the real poets among the many poetic masqueraders in the volume.” She is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. My fave. Her grave was unmarked until 1986 when the literary society The Ina Coolbrith Circle placed a headstone. 
It was only upon Coolbrith's death that her literary friends discovered she had ever been a mother. Her poem, "The Mother's Grief", was a eulogy to a lost son, but she never publicly explained its meaning. Most people didn’t even know that she was a divorced woman. She didn’t talk about her marriage except through her poetry.
 Ina Coolbrith Park was established in 1947 near her Russian Hill home, by the San Francisco parlors of the Native Daughters of the Golden Westmas. The park is known for its "meditative setting and spectacular bay views". The house she had built near Chinatown is still there, as is the house on Wheeler in Berkeley where she died. Byways in the Berkeley hills were named after Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Mark Twain, and other literati in her circle but women were not initially included. In 2016, the name of a stairway in the hills that connects Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Miller Avenue in Berkeley was changed from Bret Harte Lane to Ina Coolbrith Path. At the bottom of the stairway, there is a plaque to commemorate Coolbrith. Her name is also commemorated at the 7,900 foot peak near Beckwourth Pass on Mount Ina Coolbrith in the Sierra Nevada mountains near State Route 70. In 2003, the City of Berkeley installed the Addison Street Poetry Walk,  a series of 120 poem imprinted cast-iron plates flanking one block of a downtown street. A 55-pound plate bearing Coolbrith's poem "Copa De Oro (The California Poppy)" is  raised porcelain enamel text, set into the sidewalk at the high-traffic northwest corner of Addison and Shattuck Avenues
Her life in California spanned the pioneer American occupation, the end of the Gold Rush, the end of the Rancho Era in Southern California, the arrival of the intercontinental train, and the first renaissance of the 19th century feminist movement.  The American Civil War played no evident part in her consciousness but her life and her writing revealed acceptance of everyone from all classes and all races.  Everyone whose life she touched wrote about her kindness.  She wrote by hand, a hand painfully crippled by arthritis after she moved to the wetter climate of San Francisco.  Her handwriting was crabbed as a result — full of strikeouts.  She earned her own living and supported three children and her mother. She was the Sweet Singer of California, an American poet, writer, librarian, and a legend in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community, known as the pearl of our tribe. 
Now this all leads me to wonder, what will your legacy be?
 
 
Queens of the Mines was created and produced by me, Andrea Anderson. You can  support Queens of the Mines on Patreon or by purchasing the paperback Queens of the Mines. Available on Amazon.  This season’s Theme Song is by This Lonesome Paradise. Find their music anywhere but you can Support the band by buying their music and merch at thislonesomeparadise@bandcamp.com
 
 
 
 

Queens of the Mines Season 3 Trailer

Are you ready for more stories of  inspiring, gallant, even audacious REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West?
Queens of the Mines is returning Jan 15 2023 with it’s third Season! 
You can expect 10 new episodes, coming out every other Sunday. 
Get early access to episodes and bonus content on patreon.com/queensofthemines.
As always, you can still purchase my paperback book on Amazon, and follow us on Instagram @queensofthemines.
This season’s Theme Song is by This Lonesome Paradise.
Find their music anywhere but you can support the band by buying their music and merch at thislonesomeparadise.bandcamp.com.