Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: Changes in Indian Life in the Clear Lake Area Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection # of Pages: 4 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-09-03 13:18:00 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 03:11:53 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 03:11:53

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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104 . América Indigena mineros chinos que trabajaron en al extraccién de mercurio; y, finalmente, a principios de 1930, los labradores filipinos y mexicanos. El autor sefala que, en la actualidad, a los ancianos del grupo les preocupa la continua preferencia que por los mexicanos tienen algunas muchachas jévenes del grupo y se lamentan del hecho deque sus mozos no puedan encontrar facilmente novias. Por otra parte, se quejan también de que les mexicanos intentan fomentar las tradicionales costumbres espafiolas de seriedad y recato femeninos en las muchachas indias que. son amantes de una frivola alegria. El Sr. Simoons finaliza su articulo afirmando que los indios de la zona de Clear Lake viven hoy en dia apifiades en pequefias rancherias proporcionadas por el gobierno de los Estados Unidos y situadas cerca de los valles agricolas de los que obtienen su trabajo. Es asi como, después de mas de un siglo de contacto con la civilizacién occidental, la mayoria de los cuatrocientes nativos que aproximadamente quedan en la regién, han realizado un ajuste parcial y aparentemente inadecuado a nuestro modo de vida como simples peones de cuanto pequeiio oficio y quehacer haya que realizar. Clear Lake, largest lake altogether within California, was in aboriginal times a center of attraction for the hunting-gathering-fishing peoples of the northern Coast Ranges. Here, only eigthy miles north of San Francisco Bay, numerous villages clustered along the twenty mile long lake (1325 feet elevation) subsisting on its abundant fish and fowl, as well as on the acorns, wild plants, and numerous game of the bordering park-like valleys. Such an idyllic situation, coupled with the protection offered by chaparral and pine-covered ridges that rise 1,500 feet or more above the lakeside valleys, served to create a secure position, one in which the natives were peaceful and prosperous by California Indian standards.2 Altogether, the Indians in the Clear Lake country numbered about 2,500 in 1850, though there is evidence that they were far more numerous before the ravages of the smallpox, which decimated California’s aboriginal population. Surprisingly, the lakeside peoples were not of one linguistic stock, but of three: Pomo, Wappo. and Miwok. In the highlands to the east and north of the Jake were rancherias of Wintun and Yuki-speaking peoples, too. Despite the language barrier, the natives carried on their hunting, gathering, fishing, and trade with 1 For detailed information on early Indian life in this area see: Barrett, S. A.. “The Ethno-Geography of the Pomo and Neighboring Indians”, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 6 (1908), 1-332: Gifford, Edward W., “Clear Lake Pomo Society”, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 18 (1926), 287-300; Kniffen. Fred. B., “Pomo Geography”, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 36 (1939), 353-400; and Loch, Edwin M., “Pomo Folkways”. 0 C. Pubs, in Am. Arch, and Ethnol., 19 (1926), 149-405. a nee Rae en a eee pipe emt ee Changes in indian life 105 litle friction. Indeed, food was so plentiful that outlying groups were welcomed by the lake people to share in the seasonal surpluses highly valued clement in the northern California native monetary system than clam shells, were both mined in. significant amounts near Clear Lake and furnished the basis for an important: long-distance trade which extended westward to the Pacific and eastward into the Sacramento Valley. There is no evidence that the early Spanish explorers ever reached Clear Lake. though they travelled far north in the Sacramento Valley. Nor does. it appear that the Russians, who had established themselves in 1811 along the coast forty miles to the west at Fort Ross, penetrated any farther into the Clear Lake country than the crest of Mt. St. Helena on its southwestern border before they voluntarily abandoned California in 1840. However. the influence of the Sonoma Mission, founded in 1823 by the Spanish, perhaps as a check on Russian expansion in the area north of San Francisco Bay, reached at least as far as Coyote Valley southwest of Clear Lake. Before 1830 converts from Coyote Valley rancherias joined the mission group at Sonoma where they not only received Christian instruction, but were first taught the elements of farming and ranching. Within a few years, however, the missions were disbanded by the Mexican government, converts returned to their former homes, and apparently soon lost the habits they had learned at the mission. The mexican government in the ‘thirties made vigorous efforts to settle the valleys to the north and northwest of the newly established was occupied hy Mexican ranchers and newly arrived American settlers. The first historical record of Mexican visits to Clear Lake dates from 1836 and a few years later Mexican ranchers drove in cattle and took possession of much of the best lakeside valley land. These Mexican ranchers were joined in the early ‘forties by American settlers who occupied Coyote and Loconomi Valleys to the southwest. These settlers and their successors disrupted the established native patterns, and in Big Valley, largest valley along Clear Lake, they so mistreated the Indians that in 1849 the natives reacted by murdering two American settlers, Stone and Kelsey. This rash act was repaid the following year by United States troops who slaughtered a large group of Indians who took refuge on an island, subsequently named Bloody Island, located near the northern tip of Clear Lake. Permanent white settlers, farmers from the humid East, moved into the Clear Lake country we aoa ome Serres ay fron mepwarsert ht