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Bill McGarvey and the Klamath River Indians (25 pages)
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Page: of 25
REA GiE 1t4 THE CAL TF OF ReNavA NS MAY/JUNE 1992
an effective man on the trail, and Work
now appreciated the strength of the extra
men Michel had brought.
That April, Work and his expanded party
of 163 men, women and children, along
with some 450 horses and mules, camped
by the mouth of the Russian River and
awaited the arrival of Peter Kostromitinov,
the commandant of Fort Ross. Don Pedro,
as the Californians called him, didn’t care
much for the idea of such a sizable armed
force in such close proximity to Fort Ross
and now informed Work that he himself
had traveled a hundred miles north of Fort
Ross and seen no sign of beaver. Work, of
course, knew that John McLoughlin, chief
factor at Fort Vancouver, would never accept as factual any such disclaimer from
Kostromitinov; it was necessary for Work
to travel through the region and see for
himself. Unfortunately, the narrow space of
the coastal terrace meant that the Hudson’s
Bay expedition had to pass very close to
Fort Ross, a fact Kostromitinov found as
distasteful as it was unavoidable. In the
end, however, Work prevailed and eventually Kostromitinov agreed to allow the brigade passage, although he stipulated that
Work’s main force move well beyond Fort
Ross before stopping.
The year 1833 had already been a peculiar one for the inhabitants of Colony Ross.
Only a month before Work’s arrival, seven
American fur trappers headed by Ewing
Young had come to the fort from the north
to leave 199 river otter skins for his agent,
William E.P. Hartnell. Traders to the core,
the Russians then advanced Young 160 piasters [Spanish dollars] worth of supplies for
his main party of 25 waiting for him up the
coast. Young’s visit was not disturbing to
the Russians, having been arranged by merchants Hartnell and John B. Rogers Cooper
the previous January, when Kostromitinov
was visiting San Francisco aboard the Russian sloop Urup. Work’s Hudson’s Bay
Company group, however, was quite a different kettle of fish.
The morning of April 19th dawned raw
and cold. The Hudson’s Bay brigade
climbed the steep coastal hills leading up
from the Russian River and followed the
ridgetops along the road established by the
Russians, until they saw Fort Ross below.
Descending the ridge over a series of
benches, the contingent stretched out in
single file and thus became a long, sinuous
body of humans and animals coming down
slowly past both the Kashaya village of
Metini and that of the Kodiak hunters built
outside the walls of the fort. The Kashaya
were the indigenous Pomo language-speaking people who had established friendly
relations with the Russians, and particularly with the Kodiak natives brought from
Alaska by the Russian American Company, who the California Indians called the
Undersea People. A number of Kashaya
In 1833, when the Work party
came through, the spectacle
amazed the 35 Indian men, 37
women and uncounted children
who lived outside the walls of
Fort Ross, including Kodiak fur
hunters (left), Kashaya Pomo
(right, drawn by Voznesenski in
1841) who worked (voluntarily
or involuntarily) for the Russians,
as well as Bodega Costanoans
(below, rendered by Tikhinov ca.
1816-17) who had run away from
the Spanish missions and Pomos
who were displaced after repeated
attacks by the Christian Indian
allies of General Mariano Vallejo.
Woes RN,
es are
“Nae