Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

About This Item:

Title: Volume 073-4 - October 2019 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2023-12-30 11:49:10 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:34 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:34

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

Page: of 6  

NCHS Bulletin October 2019 Reservation), and Weymeh and other Nisenan transferred there as well. After Henley was removed from office in 1859, Storms resigned. Weymeh and the Nisenan over whom he held sway left also. When the new agent ordered Storms to return these valuable workers back to the reservation, Storms claimed he had only “his own Indians,” most of whom had lived with him at his ranch in Nevada County, a revealing statement for a pro-slavery Democrat.” Henley’s removal from office followed on the heels of scandalous reports of mismanagement, abuse, and rapidly accelerating violence at Nome Lackee and Nome Cult. In the mid-1850s, Henley continued to receive large Congressional appropriations for the California reservations and to exaggerate their prosperity and success. The “powerful Democratic majority” silenced critiAaron A. Sargent, c. 1859, courtesy of the Searls Historical Library. epidemic at Nome Cult in the late 1850s and early 1860s. An unknown number of Nisenan remained at Nome Cult; many—though not all—may have filtered back to Nevada County. Possibly a majority, 500 or more Nisenan, had escaped the net of removal. The promise of protection was illusory. The historical record suggests that at best, the reservations were a well-intended experiment that failed; at worst, the reservations increased Indian misery, vulnerability, and victimization. If the Indian appropriations in the 1850s were expended within Nevada County to feed Indians, one wonders, would the course of history have changed? Indians continued to have a strong presence in Nevada County during the 1850s and 1860s, living resiliently on a landscape transformed by mining activity. Many resided in cisms. By 1858, investigations were underway, and the California reservations were being called “lamentable” failures. In 1860, whistle-blower J. Ross Browne described California reservations in Coast Rangers as places where “A very large amount of money was annually expended in feeding white men and starving Indians.” Among his findings, Browne charged Nome Lackee’s sub-agent Vincent Geiger (who had attended the 1854 council) with transferring reservation property to private parties and indenturing Indians. In 1861 the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret southern secessionist society that frequented the reservation with the knowledge of Geiger, attacked Nome Lackee and left it in ruins.” Violence against Indians became scattered camps, called rancherias or “campoodies.” They survived by collecting gold, doing wage labor and gathering and sharing native foods. The size and number of the identifiably Indian communities steadily declined from starvation and other causes. By 1900, only a handful of Nisenan Indian groups remained. In the 20th century, the Colfax and Nevada City Indians received land bases and federal recognition, if only for a half century. Since 1999, the descendants of Nevada County’s Nisenan survivors, organized as the revived Nevada City Rancheria, have been advocating for restoration of their legal standing as a federally-recognized entity. 7! Endnotes 1 Others in attendance were Sacramento’s mayor James R. Hardenberg, Sam Brannan (Mormon merchant, and the state’s richest citizen), Sam Norris (wealthy landowner and trader), Vincent Geiger and Benjamin Washington (former editors of the Democratic State Journal and active Chivalry Democrats. Weymeh was a Grass Valley Nisenan leader, who signed the Bear River Treaty (1850) and the Camp Union Treaty (July 1851). ) There are many spellings of this regional chief’s name, including “Weimer”.) Denver (Dem.) was later also a Congressman and Commissioner of Indian Affairs; Weller (Dem.) was California’s governor in the late 1850s. Henley (Dem.) served several terms in Congress representing Indiana before coming to California and narrowly missed election as U.S. Senator. The host for the council was Simmon Pefia Storms: a trader, hotelier, a gifted linguist, and important liaison to the local Nisenan community and later an Indian service agent. His ranch/ hotel was 6 1/2 miles from Nevada City along the Illinoistown Road (later Chicago Park along Highway 174). Pat Jones, “The Forgotten Pioneer: Simmon Pefia Storms, NCHS Bulletin, 37:4 (Oct. 1983), p. 29. 2 James Hutchings, a California argonaut gained fame as the author of “Miner’s Ten Commandments” (1853) and later Hutchings Illustrated Magazine. A Whig and editor of the Nevada Journal, Sargent was later a U.S. Senator and an ambassador. 3 Gwin Memoirs, 1878. Bancroft C-D California Biographical Mss 92100 microfilm. Reel 14, p. 41. Bancroft Library, Berkeley, CA. 4 Unnamed newspaper, Jan. 14, 1852. Hayes Scrapbook, F 851 H4 R130 item #61, Bancroft Library. 5 William Ellison, California and the Nation, 1850-1869. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969. pp. 95-98.