That next year, at the urging of Edward Fitzgerald Beale, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in California, the US established an outpost at Fort Tejon in California. It was located in the southwestern corner of the San Joaquin Valley in the Tejon Canyon (known as Grapevine Canyon; La Cañada de las Uvas) between the Tehachapi Mountains and the Los Angeles Basin to the south and the Mojave Desert to the southeast. A year earlier, in September 1853, Beale had established the Sebastian Indian Reservation 25 miles away from the Fort Tejon site, and by the time of the founding of the Fort over 2,500 Indians, mostly Chumash (the original inhabitants of Tejon Canyon), were living there. Fort Tejon itself was launched to protect travelers along El Camino Real Viejo as well as settlers from attack by discontented Californios and angry Paiutes and Mojaves. The army was also to protect reservation Indians from their white attackers.36
One of the first contacts between the Owens Valley and Fort Tejon came in August 1858 when a delegation of Paiutes visited the Sebastian Indian Reservation. As the Indian Agent J. R. Vineyard reported, “The people of that region [Owens Lake], so far as I can learn, number about 1500. The delegation asked assistance to put in crops next season, also someone to instruct them in agriculture, etc … . I gave them presents of clothing and useful implements, and sent them back to their people, with the promise of transmitting their request to the great chief [President Buchanan?].”37 The promise evidently was not enough to preserve the peace as violence continued the next year, perhaps augmented in part by the participation of fugitive Indians from the Tule River who supposedly joined their Paiute cousins in the Owens Valley.
Apparently, the loss of stock in the Santa Clara and San Fernando Valleys was large enough that, for unknown reasons, it was believed that the Paiutes and California refugees at Owens Lake were responsible. In any case, the horse thieving in southern California was significant enough that Captain John “Blackjack” Davidson wrote to his commanding officer on May 1, 1859, that “… I have ascertained conclusively that these marauding Indians are from Owen’s [sic] Lake, about 200 miles above here, on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, and I most respectfully recommend an expedition against them into their homes.” The Post Adjutant at Fort Tejon agreed with him and Davidson soon after led a punitive expedition which was sent out from Fort Tejon to Owens Valley on July 21 of that year.38
Davidson’s troops left Fort Tejon and traveled along the south fork of the Kern River through Walker Pass to Owens Lake. From there he journeyed north along the Owens River as far as Owens Gorge. From there he backtracked to Fort Tejon. The entire trip was more than 600 miles (see Figure 2.4). Davidson did not find any pilfered horses, so his venture was a failure in terms of recovering stolen property. Instead, he spent his time studying the land and its people. His glowing report described a peaceful people (“an inoffensive, gentle race”)39 living in a Valley characterized by mild climate, fertile soil, and abundant water. He even proposed that the government set aside a major portion of the Valley as an Indian reservation. His favorable report probably facilitated the overrunning of the Valley by miners and settlers within a few years, which, in turn, led to clashes with the native population, and then, the establishment of Camp Independence in 1862.40
Figure 2.4 Route of Davidson Expedition (1859) Likely Followed by Owen’s Valley Paiutes in the Relocation of 1863. Reconfigured by Geraldine Raat from information found in Philip J. Wilkie and Harry W. Lawton, eds., The Expedition of Capt. J. W. Davidson from Fort Tejon to the Owens Valley in 1859, published in 1926 (Socorro, N.M.: Ballena Press).
In the same month that Davidson left for Owens Valley a Dogtown prospector discovered large quantities of gold in Mono Gulch, the same site where Jedediah Smith had found gold 30 years before. Within a few months the first township on the eastern side of the Sierra was established. By 1860 the town of Monoville, California (immediately north of Mono Lake), was the largest settlement between Salt Lake and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, peaking at about 700 residents and 22 liquor shops in that year.41 Soon after the town of Aurora in far western Nevada was founded, with a population of 1,400 in April 1861, which would grow to over 6,000 people by 1864. With a majority of males as its base population, the most popular forms of entertainment were Chinese brothels, female prostitutes, gambling houses, badger fights, and violence.42
Owens Valley became the thoroughfare for travel to Aurora and other camps. As the Los Angeles Star noted: “Within 60 or 80 miles of Owens Lake there is an immigration of about 50 huge wagons going to Aurora, loaded with valuable goods and machinery, which can reach their destination by no other route than Owens Valley; besides which there are on the road a great many thousand head of cattle, sheep and hogs for above destination.” Eventually, a new road was built that connected Aurora to San Francisco through Carson City, allowing Aurora to receive supplies from San Francisco that added to its growth. When the area was mined out the town was deserted after 1870.43
The winter of 1861–1862 was the spark that ignited the Owens Valley Indian War of 1862–1863. The weather was cold and wet. Sacramento reported a rainfall of over 15 inches for the month of January. Owens Valley residents said that the mountains were filled with snow, while the hills were soaked, and most of the streams became impassable. The whites could only subsist on their beef, while the extreme weather had driven off most of the game the Paiutes needed for survival. Collecting and foraging of plants became impossible.44
So it was that the herds of the white settlers became the only means of preventing starvation. As the native population gathered food from the ranges and ranches of the whites, violence against the Indian started. In retaliation cabins were burned and lone prospectors were killed by the Paiutes. In the spring of 1862 the settlers raided an Indian camp north of Owens Lake, resulting in 11 poorly armed Indians being killed and their dried meat destroyed. Before the war was over at least 60 whites and 250 Indians were dead. While most of the Owens Valley Paiutes sought peace in early 1861, Joaquin Jim, the leader of the southern Mono Paiutes, went on the warpath. He kept up his attacks on ranchers, miners, and the cavalry until 1864 and was never captured.45
Because the violence ebbed and flowed throughout 1862 and the spring of 1863, volunteer troops were sent from California to the Valley. Colonel James Henry Carleton, commander of the District of Southern California, in March 1862 ordered a calvary unit of volunteers under the command of Lt. Colonel George S. Evans to the “Owen’s Lake Valley,” acknowledging that the recent violence may be due to the action of the settlers and that “It is very possible … that the whites are to blame.”46 A month later Carleton was promoted to Brigadier General of volunteers during a march to Arizona to face Confederates and Indians (see Chapter 4).
The conflict did not end until the arrival of Captain Moses McLaughlin at Camp Independence who came from Fort Tejon in April 1863. Following the trail of the Davidson expedition of 1859, the not-so-biblical Moses stopped first at an Indian camp upon the Kern River about 10 miles from Keysville.
There he lined up 35 male Indians and had them either shot or sabered. While ordinarily this kind of wholesale slaughter would not have been approved by the officers of the Department of the Army of the Pacific, as one writer has noted, “no doubt, they were tired of the continual petitions from settlers and the constant rumors of Indian outbreaks and depredations. The problems of the war between the North and the South weighed too heavily upon them to worry about the cold-blooded murder of 35 Indians.”47 With the Indian wars of the West siphoning off too many soldiers who were needed by the Union Army, perhaps the commanders believed the harsh measures were necessary.
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