The Indians are said to be good laborers, reliable, better than the Japanese, willing and docile but the squaw must hold the purse string, because strong drink is an allurement that the buck cannot resist. The county provision out of the public fund, small as it is, was made on the theory that the Indians are indigents to be aided as are the other poor of the county, and thus on a small scale a work as a mission charity effort was initiated for fees that little more than defray automobile mileage charges, while improving the general health and living conditions of the Indians. The surviving aborigines in the county are assembled on rancherias on Sycamore Creek, at Indian Mission, Table Mountain and in the foothill sections near and about Auberry.
The Indian population of California in 1915 was returned at 15,034. Indians are located in fifty-five of the fifty-eight counties of the state. In dealing with the California tribes, the government did not follow the policy pursued with the wild tribes of the plains in making treaties or giving them remuneration for lands acquired by whites. Allotments number 2,592 of 82,162 acres with 430,136 unallotted. The California Indians are of at least fourteen different linguistic stocks. They are located on twenty-six reservations, twenty-two of these mission reservations. Most of the mission tribes of different tribes are located on scattered small reservations over Riverside and San Diego Counties. The Tule River reservation of seventy-six square miles in Tulare County shelters the survivors of the one-time warlike Tulares that were once monarchs over all they surveyed on the San Joaquin plains.
The last and most remarkable and also the most formidable uprising in California was the 1872-73 Modoc war. That tribe defied and resisted government troops for months from their lava beds near the Oregon state line and treacherously assassinated at a peace council on April 11, 1873, Gen. E. R. S. Canby and Rev. Eleazor Thomas of Petaluma, Cal., one of the commissioners. The tribe was finally subjugated, four of the ringleaders in the murders hanged on October 3, 1873, two sentenced to life imprisonment at Alcatraz Island and the others — thirty-nine men, fifty-four women and sixty children — deported to Quapaw agency in Indian Territory.
CHAPTER X
There was none of the heroic and much of the inhuman on the part of the whites, with some of the pathetic on the side of the red men in the Mariposa Indian War, which footed up a bill of $300,000 as the cost of the extermination of the valley mountain tribe of the Yosemites (estimated at some 200) with incidental discovery of the famous scenic valley on the Merced River.
During the year 1850, the Indians of Mariposa County, which then included all the territory south of the Tuolumne and Merced divide within the San Joaquin Valley proper, greatly harassed the miners and few settlers. Their depredations and assaults continued until U. S. commissioners came in 18.51 to exercise control over them. Treaties were made in the end with sixteen small local tribes and all were placed on reservations. Among the settlers was James D. Savage, of whom more anon, who in 1849-50 had located in the mountains near the south fork of the Merced, about fifteen miles below the Yosemite Valley. He employed Indians to dig gold for him and early in 1850 the Yosemites, a band of mountain tribe outlaws and fugitives, attacked his trading post and mining camp, claiming the territory and attempting to drive Savage off, though plunder was probably the real object.
The assault was repelled, but the location was no longer deemed a safe one and Savage removed to Mariposa Creek, twenty miles southwest of Aqua Fria, near the site of an old stone fort. He also established a branch post on the Fresno, above what was known later as Leach's old store, where the mining prospects were better with subsidence of the water. Here a prosperous traffic was built up, the miners and prospectors dealing with him rather than spend the time on the journey to and from Mariposa village, exacting though his prices were. In the midst of prosperity, one of his squaw wives disclosed a conspiracy-hatching among the mountain tribes to kill or drive off all the whites and plunder them, the Yosemites leading in the plot. He pretended to disregard the report but gave general warning against a surprise.
Savage gave out that he was going to San Francisco for a stock of goods and ordering strict caution, he started, accompanied by two squaws and an Indian chief, Jose Juarez, really one of the leading plotters, to impress him with the sights at Stockton and San Francisco of the futility of an uprising in view of the superior numbers and resources of the whites. Juarez, being liberally supplied with gold, was stupidly drunk while in San Francisco, and being reproved by Savage retorted in abuse, disclosing the secret of the war. Savage lost his self-control and knocked him down. After remaining to witness the celebration on October 20, 1850, of California's admission and arranging for the forwarding of goods as he might order. Savage started back for Mariposa. On arrival at Quartzburg, he learned that the Kaweahs were exacting tribute from immigrants passing through their territory, and that one Moore had been killed not far from his station. Savage "scented danger to himself."
Learning that Indians were numerous at Cassady's Bar on the San Joaquin and not far from his Fresno River station, he hurried to the latter point, found everything quiet apparently, and the Indians congregated only for barter, among them two chiefs of tribes from which he had taken wives. Pretending indifference. Savage sought to assure himself of the progress of the conspiracy, and calling an impromptu council, passed the pipe of peace and speechified on the damaging results of a war and the advantages of peaceful intercourse, being familiar with the dialects. He referred to Juarez to confirm his statements.
The cunning Juarez answered, but to the surprise of Savage advocated a united war for their self-preservation, the speech evincing "a keenness of observation inconsistent with his apparent drunken stupidity," while at the bay city. His speech met with approval, others joined him, and an appeal to cupidity in a common plot to plunder had its effect. Savage was outgeneraled and withdrew to prepare for the hostilities he felt certain would follow. The miners and settlers ridiculed and belittled his warnings.
Soon settlers at Indian Gulch and at Quartzburg learned that Savage's Fresno post had been looted on Christmas night 1850 and two men killed, and that his squaw wives, who had refused to abandon his interests when importuned, were carried off by their tribespeople. "Long Haired" Brown, the courier, had been warned by a friendly, carried by him across the Fresno and escaped barefooted and in his night clothes, dodged arrows in the pursuit and outdistanced his pursuers, being a man of strength and agility. On the heels of this report came another from the miners' camp at Mariposa Creek that Savage's establishment there had been plundered and burned and all save the trader killed.
Another murderous assault was reported January 15, 1851, by Frank W. Boden, whose arrival at Cassady's post with shattered right arm and on panting horse excited general sympathy. A party at once started for Four Creeks to aid his companions, whom he had left fighting the Kaweahs. Boden's arm was amputated by Dr. Lewis Leach of St. Louis, Mo., who had come in with him. Boden and companions had halted at Four Creeks to rest and graze their horses, and while there Kaweahs demanded tribute, banter followed and all at once there was firing. In the melee Boden was four times arrowed in the arm. He fired his last shot, resting rifle on broken arm, and then with bridle rein in teeth, and carrying broken arm in the other hand sped at top speed for Cassady's. The attack was made near the site of the present Visalia — Dr. Thos. Payne's place. The mangled bodies of Boden's mates were found, one of the four by unmistakable signs having been flayed alive.
Cassady & Lane kept in January, 1851, a trading post several miles below Rootville (Millerton), and were engaged above the fort site in mining at Cassady's Bar, employing about thirty men. The camp was protected by a stone fence, the post by ditches. Indian hostilities hereabout included the murder of two teamsters at Fine Gold Gulch and the driving off of stock, and