Before Ishi: The Life and Death of the Yahi

Introduction: Beyond the myth: Explains the process that led me to write this book. I became annoyed that the history of the Yahi was full of fairly obvious errors and omissions that were ignored because the story was all about promoting the myths of Ishi. WITH: Photos of Black Rock.

Chapter 1: The Yahi way: Presents a theory of the Yahi way of life, which was intertwined with a deer herd that migrated between up to the high meadows of Deer and Mill creeks in summer, and retreated into the canyons in the foothills to ride out the winter. WITH: Aerial photo of Iron Mountain and map showing the annual Yahi and deer herd migration.

Chapter 2: One split too many: Presents a theory that there were just three Yana dialects rather than four. This stems from the nature of the migration patterns and information from linguists who studied the Yana languages. WITH: Aerial photo of the Yahi high meadows, and map of the three Yana areas.

Chapter 3: Ishi’s villages: Tries to link the villages Ishi drew on a map for the anthropologists, with the basins along Mill and Deer creek which might each have housed a village. Archaeological sites are not mapped; just the areas where the canyon walls open up for a ways, and might have provided places to hunker down down for winter. WITH: photos of Lower Deer Creek Falls and Wilson Lake and map of the basins.

Chapter 4: Newcomers: Goes through the intrusions of Europeans into California, up until 1849; intrusions that largely missed the Yahi. WITH: Photo of Laura and I walking into a Yahi village site.

Chapter 5: 1849: The Gold Rush. Focus is on the near disaster on the Lassen Trail, which ran right through the middle of Yahi country. Contacts between the Forty-Niners and the Yahi appear to have been minimal, and since the route was so miserable, it was largely abandoned after that first year. Although the Gold Rush was a disaster for California Indians, it may have been a short-term boon for the Yahi. There was no gold in Yahi country, and tons of materials useful to them were dumped at a difficult part of the trail in the midst of their country. WITH: Aerial photo of The Narrows, photos of the Bruff Camp marker and Steep Hollow artifacts. Map showing the Lassen and other trails to California. 

Chapter 6: Conflict finds the Yahi: Recounts increasing conflicts involving the Yahi between 1850 and 1858. The Yahi would have learned early that raiding the newcomers’ homes and ranches would draw a murderous response, but they kept coming down to the valley more and more frequently to steal animals and other food. They might not have had a choice. They depended on the salmon runs to get them through late winter and spring, and they started raiding about the same time flour mills were built on Deer, Mill and Antelope creeks. The mill dams could easily have interfered with the salmon migration. WITH: Photo of a thunderhead building up over Mill Creek Canyon, and a historical photo of the Sesma Mill on Mill Creek.

Chapter 7: 1859: A particularly active year, with three Indian hunts through Yahi country. The year began with Yahi raids on valley ranches. A plea was made to the government, and a company of federal troops arrived. They found the Indians needed protection from the settlers, more than the other way around. Later a scalp hunt was mounted by Robert Anderson Hi Good and others that rambled all over the place, and finally ended up killing a number of Indians in what’s now Forest Ranch. Then the commander of the state militia, William Kibbe, organized a force of 75 men and swept over another wide swath of country, killing dozens from various tribe and taking hundreds prisoner. They were taken to the Mendocino Reservation, where Fort Bragg is now. None of these actions appear to have made any contact with the Yahi. WITH: Couple of photos of Yahi country, printout of the ad Kibbe put in the Red Bluff paper seeking his force. Map of Kibbe’s campaign.

Chapter 8: 1860: Black Rock: This is about a little-known attack at Black Rock that apparently crippled the Yahi. You won’t find it in any of the histories, but in a scrapbook in the Tehama County Library, I found an account written a few years after the fact by one of the participants. C.F.Kauffman. He wrote that a group formed up that winter, marched to Black Rock and attacked the Yahi who had gathered there. An Indian boy was taken prisoner, and later told Kauffman that the tribe had gathered there to surrender, after hearing somehow about Kibbe’s campaign the previous year. A number of interesting tidbits make it sound authentic. WITH: Photo of Black Rock.

Chapter 8 Appendix: C.F. Kauffman’s account: The Black Rock Massacre: Verbatim reprinting of the newspaper article. WITH: Aerial photo of Black Rock.

Chapter 9: ‘The Indian Problem’: The people who were in North America first, were in the way of those who followed. The solution had always been to force the first peoples farther west. That didn’t work in California because the Pacific Ocean was in the way. So after a failed attempt to divide the land between the tribes and the newcomers through 18 treaties, the state passed laws allowing the enslavement of Indians, and the federal government approved five reservations. These were modeled on the Spanish mission, which in those days were much romanticized into places where Indians learned how to be proper white people. The reservation system was rank with corruption and incompetence, but it was just one leg of a tripod of authority over the Indians. The others were the federal military and the state militia. The were independent of each other back then. The feds were generally protective of the Indians while the state soldiers wanted them out of the way, one way or another. It all fell apart in 1861 when the Civil War broke out. All the federal regulars were shipped back east, replaced by California volunteer units. They were under federal command, but the same old mindset was in play.  And the next year, trouble began. WITH: Picture of the plaque at the North Lackee Reservation that I don’t like. Tried to get the OK to use a pix of Round Valley from the Meriam Library, but I guess with the pandemic, they aren’t dealing with those kinds of requests.

Chapter 10: The Yahi are not the Mill Creeks: Presents the argument that the Yahi were not the “Mill Creeks” who terrorized Northern California in the 1860s. The “Mill Creeks” instead were groups of renegades from several tribes who fled Nome Cult Farm — now the Round Valley Reservation — returned to their homelands and were understandably angry about what they found. Some of the raiders took shelter in Yahi country, because much of it was empty with the Yahi so depleted after Black Rock. WITH: Photo of the Mill Creek Rim.

Chapter 11: 1862: The next several chapters cover the “Mill Creek War,” year by year. 1862 — the year after the regular army troops left to fight in the Civil War — charts several flights from Nome Cult, and the violence that ensued. First is Eagle Peak, with a raid on the west side of the Sacramento Valley that ended with a battle near Paskenta. That’s followed by the appearance of an Indian group near Chico and Butte Meadows that was blamed for the killings of several white guys. The residents of Forks of Butte assembled, and sent a party into the hills to attack the Indians. It’s unclear what happened with that effort, but it looks like some of the Indians moved to the Cohasset Ridge, where the Hickok girls and a teamster were killed. This triggered a number of raids by settlers into Yahi Country, several led by Hi Good. Then in September, the settlers around Nome Cult released their cattle into the grain fields cultivated by the Indians, destroying their wither food supply. Recognizing they would starve unless they poached their neighbors cattle, and would be killed if they did so, 350-400 Indians left the reservation enroute to the Yuba River country. They were gathered up, and with no other options, put in the care of a reluctant John Bidwell in Chico. WITH: Picture of the ruins of Keefer’s Mill off Rock Creek, where settlers gathered for safety in the wake of the Hickok killings.

Chapter 12: 1863: Several hundred Indians from Nome Cult are camped on Bidwell’s ranch, many of them angry over the treatment they had suffered. And some miners in Butte Creek Canyon lynch five Indians for stealing a mule that turned out to not be stolen at all. After the criminal justice system did nothing, a group of Indians launched a raid that culminated with the killing of two of the Lewis children near present-day Butte College. White folks went crazy, murdering a number of Butte County Indians outright, and ordering the rest to be removed from the county. Several hundred were gathered up and put in a camp with the Nome Cult refugees. Unfortunately, malaria had broken out at the camp, and the residents were dying in droves. Despite that, they were marched out of Chico and toward Nome Cult. Many of the sick died along the way. Bidwell was also a target of the white people’s hostility, but was able to secure a couple of companies of cavalry to protect his ranch and most of the Mechoopda. WITH: A picture of the bridge to Helltown.

Chapter 13: 1864: A shorter chapter because it isn’t about the Yahi. It involves the killings of two white women in Shasta County. These were blamed on the “Antelope Indians,” the northern impression of the Mill Creeks. The killings resulted in some extensive bloodshed against the Central and Northern Yana, and the Wintun. WITH:  Picture of Antelope Creek Canyon.

Chapters 14, 15 and two appendixes: It is my belief that there were two massacres in 1865. These are the Three Knolls Massacre and the massacre incorrectly placed at Kingley Cave The common accounts put the death toll in each at roughly 30 “Yahi” killed. 

However there are accounts of the Three Knolls written shortly after it happened that put the death toll at lest than 10. And it clearly happened downstream from Black Rock rather that the location upstream where it has been mapped. And the victims likely weren’t Yahi.

There is also evidence that there was no massacre at Kingsley Cave. When the site was excavated in the 1950s, no bullets were found. There are other flaws in the story as it is told. However there is another version — by Eva Marie Apperson — that puts the massacre at the spot where the Three Knolls Massacre had been mapped. This, I believe, was the fatal blow against the Yahi.

Here’s the breakdown:

Chapter 14: 1865: The misplaced massacres: This is about the three knolls. Recounts the Concow raid that killed Mrs. Workman and others, and the pursuit that followed that led to an attack of a bunch of Indians stretched out for the night on a sandbar. WITH: A picture of the Three Knolls from the north, a picture of CDF archaeologist Richard Jenkins running a metal detector over the site, and a map of the path of the raiders.

Chapter 14 appendix: Klauber’s account: This is an first-person account of the attack, written six days afterward and published in the Butte Record. WITH: An aerial pix of the Three Knolls.

Chapter 15: The end of the Yahi: All the arguments why the Kingsley Cave massacre actually happened where the Three Knolls Massacre was placed. Includes the story of Mariah/Phoebe who was at the location during the attack. WITH: Pixs of Kingsley Cave, and the gap in the Mill Creek Rim the attackers would have used.

Chapter 15 appendix: Norm Kingsley’s fate: About the guy to whom the quote that he switched from his .56-caliber Spenser rifle to a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson pistol because the bigger bullets tore them up, especially the babies. Kingley was long dead when the “quote” was recorded, and he’d been committed to a sanatorium in Stockton for dementia, probably in 1867. I don’t even get into the fact Smith and Wesson didn’t make a .38-caliber pistol until several years after the massacre supposedly happened.

Chapter 16: 1866-67: The completion of the genocide against the Northern and Central Yana. A white woman, Marie Dersch was killed up in Shasta County and the people who when on a massacre spree in 1864, resumed it in 1866-67. Includes my belief that the Campo Seco massacre happened during this bloodbath. In addition, there was a raid out of Butte County by Robert Anderson and the Moaks after an Indian raid into Little Chico Creek Canyon. WITH: Pixs of the Campo Seco Bluff, Laura sitting beneath the bluff, and the plaque at the Dersch homestead.

Chapter 17: Delaying the inevitable: Talks about the period between 1867 and the breakup of the last Yahi camp. WITH: A pix of Laura beside a penstock in Deer Creek Canyon that seems to be attached to the Occidential Mine, that the Yahi raided to survive.

Chapter 18: Lost in the discussion: It’s about personal mythologies. Those are the beliefs we base our decisions on. And Ishi is a big part of a lot of people’s personal mythologies. The Yahi are ignored, and most of the tribes in America are too. I’m curious how many people know who the First People of their homes were. It’s also a warning that this is not a travel guide. Yahi country is very dangerous. WITH: Pixs of laura at the Savercool Place, the urn Ishi’s ashes were placed in at Colma, the Ishi monument at The Narrows on the Lassen Trail, and me trying to start a fire at a place the ghosts of the Yahi didn’t want me to start a fire.