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Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin (Volume 73, No. 4)(2019) (6 pages)
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Page: of 6
The Grand Council
at Storms’s Ranch in 1854
By Tanis C. Thorne
In the fall of 1854 the English traveler and writer
James M. Hutchings learned that the “great men of
California” planned to meet in a grand Indian council
in Nevada County in early October. Those expected
to attend included California’s most powerful Democrats: sitting U.S. Senators William M. Gwin and John
B. Weller, Secretary of State James Denver (a former
Senator and future California governor), U.S. Army
General John E. Wool (commander of the Department
of the Pacific), and California Indian Superintendent
Thomas Henley.' A prominent Nisenan leader, Weymeh—mockingly referred to as the “Digger King,”—
and an estimated 500 Indians were also to attend. The
removal of Yuba and Nevada County Indians to Nome
Lackee Reservation in Colusa (later Tehama) County
was “contemplated.” Hutchings and other journalists
such as Aaron A. Sargent? were eager to witness and
document this momentous historical event.
Weymeh & Son, by Henry B. Brown, July 1851, at the Camp
Union Treaty, courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library.
Whether to remove Indians from within state boundaries or to concentrate them inside California on federally-supervised reserves— both viewed as alternatives to
extinction— was a long-standing partisan debate. State
C "
Nevada County Historical Society
Bulletin
eee 73 NUMBER 4 OCTOBER 7,
Democrats endorsed the former following a precedent
set by President Andrew Jackson two decades earlier when he ignored the U.S. Supreme Court decision
Worcester v. Georgia (1832) and removed the Cherokee
from Georgia. The Whigs favored the Cherokee argument that the Cherokee were a sovereign people with
inviolable U.S. treaties. Many of California’s Democrats were Southerners who identified with the pro-slavery (or “Chivalry”’) wing of the Party. They resented
federal interference in state affairs and were disposed to
seeing Indians as inferior beings, not sovereign peoples
with aboriginal land rights with whom the U.S should
make treaties. Gwin (Chivalry Democrat), a Tennessean
by birth raised on the pap of Jacksonian states’ rights
philosophy, was the chief advocate for Indian Removal. No sooner had Gwin taken his seat in the Senate in
December 1849 than he introduced “A Bill to preserve
peace among the Indian Tribes in California, by providing for the extinction of their territorial claims in
the gold mining districts.”? A contemporary newspaper
reported: “As to Mr. Gwin, he belongs as much to the
mines as to San Francisco, and certainly spent more
time in that region than among us.”* Democratic Senators Gwin and Denver opposed negotiating treaties with
California Indians in 1851-1852 and were instrumental
in having these treaties rejected in the Senate once they
were. By 1852, the California Indians were left in a
state of legal limbo with shrinking resources on which
to survive, raising fears that they would turn to violence
and theft in their desperation.
Ironically, the Democrats insisted the state maintain
jurisdiction over Indian affairs, but the federal government shoulder the costs, a position tenable only
in the polarized political climate of the pre-civil war
years. Senator Weller, a pro-slavery Democrat, hinted
at secession if the federal government did not pay the
state’s Indian war debt.> California’s gold filled the U.S.
treasury and fueled American industrialization. This
gave California a powerful voice in national affairs. In
1852, Congress created California Superintendency and