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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106 América Indigena in 1854, but in 1856, before the Indians could fully adjust to this new event, they were removed to the newly founded Mendocino Reser‘ation which was established along the Mendocino Coast to the northwest in 1856, an act which largely depopulated the Clear Lake upland of natives. A decade later, in 1867, the Mendocino Reservation was abandoned and the majority of the Clear Lake Indians gradually made their way back to their old homes. Here the Indians found that more than a thousand whites had settled on their land and developed an agricultural economy based on the raising of sheep, cattle, and hogs as wheat.2 The Indians found it necessary either to squat on unoccupied land or on ranches where they were given intermittent work. Resumption of the old pattern of life was impossible. The oaks and other food plants so important to Indian self-sufficiency had greatly decreased in numbers, because of the land clearing activities of the American farmers. Moreover, the aborigines could no longer freely over the countryside in their hunting activities. As white settlers continued to arrive, the wild food supplies became still scarcer and the Indians increasingly dependent on the whiteman’s food and on his way of life. The demoralized Indians, together with natives from surrounding areas, joined in one big nativistic revival in the expectation that somehow the white settlers would be removed and their lands returned to them. This hope failed and the Indians settled back making the best possible adjustment to the situation as itinerant laborers. Indians provided the settlers with important help in the grain and hop harvests, as wood choppers, in sheep shearing, in driving animals to the lowland markets, and in other odd jobs around the ranches. A few enterprising Indians tried farming on leased or purchased land, but generally these efforts failed. Wild products, such as berries and medicinal plants, were gathered by natives and bartered to the general storekeepers in exchange for tobacco and other goods. In general, the Indians had a miserable time in adjusting to the newenvironment and could sustain themselves as dependants only by meek compliance with the new order of things. Not only the morale, but the numbers of Indians decreased rapidly following the reduction of native nutritional standards and the attacks of smallpox, measles, diphtheria and tuberculosis. In the early days of settlement massacres of Indians were carried out on slight pretexts by ranchers who occasiona'ly Jost cattle to Indian hunters. White raiders entered the Clear Lake country in these times, too, stealing 2 For a discussion of the economic history of the region see: Simoons, Frederick J., The Settlement of the Clear Lake Upland of California, Unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1952. Changes in indian life 107 small Indian children from their parents to be trained as “servants” in the labor-short, lowland farming areas of the state. Catholic missionaries, who were active in the Clear Lake area about 1867, made the first efforts at creating a more secure position for the Indians. In 1875 the church purchased 160 acres of land in Big Valley, the largest lakeside valley, and established a mission. Many of the Big Val‘ey Indians were gathered at the place and soon a rancheria, barns, and other buildings were constructed. Moreover, a school was established for the Indian children, and adults were taught how to farm. Farming was apparently done on a cooperative basis, but the Indians were paid according to the amount of work they did. Provisions were distributed annually among the Indians, especially to the old and sick. By 1880, there were a hundred Indians at the mission, but activities were abandoned at the place about 1912. In the earliest days of settlement there was considerable cohabitation between Indian women and white men and today at least a few white families claim Indian blood. In a few cases white men had both an Indian wife and a white wife, and in one known instance a man maintained two wives and households at the same time. After 1870, with the arrival of bachelor Chinese miners who worked in the many quicksilver mines that sprang up nearby, there was further racial mixing and in at least one case a Chinese married an Indian woman and reared a family. Starting in the ‘thirties of the present century Filipino and Mexican itinerant laborers, who provide an important labor force in the harvest season, began to live with Indian women. Even though formal marriages were sometimes consumated, these unions proved to be unstable affairs with the man often leaving their families after a year two. Some of the older Indian men are concerned today over the continuing preference for Mexicans by many Indian girls and lament the fact that their young men cannot find brides readily and that the Mexicans attempt to force traditional Spanish customs of feminine propriety on the fun-loving Indian girls. Nevertheless, there is little overt opposition to this miscegenation. Today then, the Indians of the Clear Lake country are far from racially pure after these infusions of American, Chinese, Filipino, and Mexican blood. Today the Indians are clustered on small rancherias provided by the United States government and located near the agricultural valleys in which they obtain work. Only a few Indians practice commercial agriculture and most of them do not even take advantage of the opportunity to plant vegetable gardens, but instead work for the white farmers in the pear, prune, and walnut orchards that now dot the landscape, as well as on the cattle ranches and in the hop harvests. Thus,