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A Case Study of a Northern California Indian Tribe - Cultural Change to 1860 (1977) (109 pages)
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Page: of 109
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The Federal Government continued to appropriate large sums of money for
the maintenance and development of the military reservation system in California based
on reports from Superintendent Henley and his staff. However, in the winter of 1858,
the Federal Government appointed E. G. Bailey to investigate the validity of these
reports. Bailey discovered that the prosperity of the Nome Cult and Nome Lackee
reserves had been exaggerated.
At present the reservations are simply government almshouses,
where an inconsiderable number of Indians are insufficiently
fed and scantily clothed, at an expense wholly disproportionate
to the benefits conferred. There is nothing in this system, as now
practiced, looking to the permanent improvement of the Indian, or
tending in any way to his social, intellectual or moral elevation.
Indians do their work mechanically and are no more improved by.
it than the oxen they drive. Indians were in point of fact slaves;
but slaves under a patriarchal rule.221
As a result of Bailey's report, the Congress of the United States virtually
abandoned the Indian reservation system in California. Superintendent Henley was fired
from his office and congressional appropriations for the removal and subsistence of
California Indians were reduced. The quality of Indian life continued to deteriorate
on the Nome Cult and Nome Lackee reserves as immigrants encroached on the remaining:
reservation land. By the fall of 1859, no Nisenan remained on the Nome Cult reserve
and agent Geiger explained why they were escaping from the Nome Lackee reserve.
To bring to this reserve (Nome Lackee) the Indians of the
Sacramento Valley....from the Sierra Nevada mountains, and
the Sierra foothills, east of the Sacramento River is now an
almost useless expenditure of public money. Since the Nome
Lackee reserve is situated only about 20 miles from the
Sacramento River it is almost impossible to prevent them
from escaping. It takes but a few hours to reach the river,
where they are aided in their flight by the river Indians
(probably river Patwin and valley Nisenan tribes), if not
by the whites. They can reach home in two days and resume
their annoyance of white settlements.222
In December 1859, Nome Lackee was declared "nearly worthless as a reserve." 223 t+ had
been inundated by immigrants and abandoned by Indians. The reservation policy of the
Federal Government had failed to promote the welfare of California Indians, expedite
their acculturation to the immigrants' society or make them self-supporting. Nisenan
who had relocated in good faith to Nome Lackee and Nome Cult reserves were betrayed
49