Saw-MillSaw-MillClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
Some of the most picturesque country in California lies on or near the coast north of San Francisco. The coast counties, Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, Klamath, and Del Norte, are the least visited by strangers, and yet with Napa, Lake, and Trinity, they make up a region which contains a very great deal of wild and fine scenery, and which abounds with game, and shows to the traveler many varieties of life and several of the peculiar industries of California.
Those who have passed through the lovely Napa Valley, by way of Calistoga, to the Geysers, or who have visited the same place by way of Healdsburg and the pretty Russian River Valley, have no more than a faint idea of what a tourist may see and enjoy who will devote two weeks to a journey along the sea-coast of Marin and Mendocino counties, returning by way of Clear Lake—a fine sheet of water, whose borders contain some remarkable volcanic features.
The northern coast counties are made up largely of mountains, but imbosomed in these lie many charming little, and several quite spacious, valleys, in which you are surprised to find a multitude of farmers living, isolated from the world, that life of careless and easy prosperity which is the lot of farmers in the fat valleys of California.
In such a journey the traveler will see the famous redwood forests of this State, whose trees are unequaled in size except by the gigantic sequoias; he will see those dairy-farms of Marin County whose butter supplies not only the Western coast, but is sent East, and competes in the markets of New York and Boston with the product of Eastern dairies, while, sealed hermetically in glass jars, it is transported to the most distant military posts, and used on long sea-voyages, keeping sweet in any climate for at least a year; he will see, in Mendocino County, one of the most remarkable coasts in the world, eaten by the ocean into the most singular and fantastic shapes; and on this coast saw-mills and logging camps, where the immense redwood forests are reduced to useful lumber with a prodigious waste of wood.
He will see, besides the larger Napa, Petaluma, Bereyessa, and Russian River valleys, which are already connected by railroad with San Francisco, a number of quiet, sunny little vales, some of them undiscoverable on any but the most recent maps, nestled among the mountains, unconnected as yet with the world either by railroad or telegraph, but fertile, rich in cattle, sheep, and grain, where live a people peculiarly Californian in their habits, language, and customs, great horsemen, famous rifle-shots, keen fishermen, for the mountains abound in deer and bear, and the streams are alive with trout.
He may see an Indian reservation—one of the most curious examples of mismanaged philanthropy which our Government can show. And finally, the traveler will come to, and, if he is wise, spend some days on, Clear Lake—a strikingly lovely piece of water, which would be famous if it were not American.
For such a journey one needs a heavy pair of colored blankets and an overcoat rolled up together, and a leather bag or valise to contain the necessary change of clothing. A couple of rough crash towels and a piece of soap also should be put into the bag; for you may want to camp out, and you may not always find any but the public towel at the inn where you dine or sleep. Traveling in spring, summer, or fall, you need no umbrella or other protection against rain, and may confidently reckon on uninterrupted fine weather.
The coast is always cool. The interior valleys are warm, and during the summer quite hot, and yet the dry heat does not exhaust or distress one, and cool nights refresh you. In the valleys and on much-traveled roads there is a good deal of dust, but it is, as they say, "clean dirt," and there is water enough in the country to wash it off. You need not ride on horseback unless you penetrate into Humboldt County, which has as yet but few miles of wagon-road. In Mendocino, Lake, and Marin, the roads are excellent, and either a public stage, or, what is pleasanter and but little dearer, a private team, with a driver familiar with the country, is always obtainable. In such a journey one element of pleasure is its somewhat hap-hazard nature. You do not travel over beaten ground, and on routes laid out for you; you do not know beforehand what you are to see, nor even how you are to see it; you may sleep in a house to-day, in the woods to-morrow, and in a sail-boat the day after; you dine one day in a logging camp, and another in a farm-house. With the barometer at "set fair," and in a country where every body is civil and obliging, and where all you see is novel to an Eastern person, the sense of adventure adds a keen zest to a journey which is in itself not only amusing and healthful, but instructive.
Wood-Chopper at WorkWood-Chopper at WorkClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
Marin County, which lies across the bay from San Francisco, and of which the pretty village of San Rafael is the county town, contains the most productive dairy-farms in the State. When one has long read of California as a dry State, he wonders to find that it produces butter at all; and still more to discover that the dairy business is extensive and profitable enough—with butter at thirty-five cents a pound at the dairy—to warrant the employment of several millions of capital, and to enable the dairy-men to send their product to New York and Boston for sale.
For the coast journey the best route, because it shows you much fine scenery on your way, is by way of Soucelito, which is reached by a ferry from San Francisco. From Soucelito either a stage or a private conveyance carries you to Olema, whence you should visit Point Reyes, one of the most rugged capes on the coast, where a light-house and fog-signal are placed to warn and guide mariners. It is a wild spot, often enveloped in fogs, and where it blows at least half a gale of wind three hundred days in the year.
Returning from Point Reyes to Olema, your road bears you past Tomales Bay, and back to the coast of Mendocino County; and by the time you reach the mouth of Russian River you are in the saw-mill country. Here the road runs for the most part close to the coast, and gives you a long succession of wild and strange views. You pass Point Arena, where is another light-house; and finally land at Mendocino City.
Before the stage sets you down at Mendocino, or "Big River," you will have noticed that the coast-line is broken at frequent intervals by the mouths of small streams, and at the available points at the mouths of these streams saw-mills are placed. This continues up the coast, wherever a river-mouth offers the slightest shelter to vessels loading; for the redwood forests line the coast up to and beyond Humboldt Bay.
When you leave the coast for the interior, you ride through mile after mile of redwood forest. Unlike the firs of Oregon and Puget Sound, this tree does not occupy the whole land. It rears its tall head from a jungle of laurel, madrone, oak, and other trees; and I doubt if so many as fifty large redwoods often stand upon a single acre. I was told that an average tree would turn out about fifteen thousand feet of lumber, and thus even thirty such trees to the acre would yield nearly half a million feet.
The topography of California, like its climate, has decided features. As there are but two seasons, so there are apt to be sharply-drawn differences in natural features, and you descend from what appears to you an interminable mass of mountains suddenly into a plain, and pass from deep forests shading the mountain road at once into a prairie valley, which nature made ready to the farmer's hands, taking care even to beautify it for him with stately and umbrageous oaks. There are a number of such valleys on the way which I took from the coast at Mendocino City to the Nome Cult Indian Reservation, in Round Valley. The principal of these, Little Lake, Potter, and Eden valleys, contain from five to twelve thousand acres; but there are a number of smaller vales, little gems, big enough for one or two farmers, fertile and easily cultivated.
A good many Missourians and other Southern people have settled in this part of the State. The better class of these make good farmers; but the person called "Pike" in this State has here bloomed out until, at times, he becomes, as a Californian said to me about an earthquake, "a little monotonous."
The Pike in Mendocino County regards himself as a laboring-man, and in that capacity he has undertaken to drive out the Indians, just as a still lower class in San Francisco has undertaken to drive out the laboring Chinese. These Little Lake and Potter Valley Pikes were ruined by Indian cheap labor; so they got up a mob and expelled the Indians, and the result is that the work which these poor people formerly performed is now left undone.
As for the Indians, they are gathered at the Round Valley Reservation to the number of about twelve hundred, where they stand an excellent chance to lose such habits of industry and thrift as they had learned while supporting themselves. At least half the men on the reservation, the superintendent told me, are competent farmers, and many of the women are excellent and competent house-servants. No one disputes that while they supported themselves by useful industry in the valleys where were their homes they were peaceable and harmless, and that the whites stood in no danger from them. Why, then, should the United States Government forcibly make paupers of them? Why should this class of Indians be compelled to live on reservations?
Under the best management which we have ever had in the Indian Bureau—let us say under its present management—a reservation containing tame or peaceable Indians is only a pauper asylum and prison combined, a nuisance to the respectable farmers, whom it deprives of useful and necessary laborers, an injury to the morals of the community in whose midst it is placed, an injury to the Indian, whom it demoralizes, and a benefit only to the members of the Indian ring.
Round Valley is occupied in part by the Nome Cult Reservation, and in part by farmers and graziers. In the middle of the valley stands Covelo, one of the roughest little villages I have seen in California, the gathering-place for a rude population, which inhabits not only the valley, but the mountains within fifty miles around, and which rides into Covelo on mustang ponies whenever it gets out of whisky at home or wants a spree.
The bar-rooms of Covelo sell more strong drink in a day than any I have ever seen elsewhere; and the sheep-herder, the vaquero, the hunter, and the wandering rough, descending from their lonely mountain camps, make up as rude a crowd as one could find even in Nevada. Being almost without exception Americans, they are not quarrelsome in their cups. I was told, indeed, by an old resident, that shooting was formerly common, but it has gone out of fashion, mainly, perhaps, because most of the men are excellent shots, and the amusement was dangerous. At any rate, I saw not a single fight or disturbance, though I spent the Fourth of July at Covelo; and it was, on the whole, a surprisingly well-conducted crowd, in spite of a document which I picked up there, and whose directions were but too faithfully observed by a large majority of the transient population. This was called a "toddy time-table," and I transcribe it here from a neat gilt-edged card for the warning and instruction of Eastern topers.
T O D D Y T I M E - T A B L E.6 A.M. Eye-opener.3 P.M. Cobbler.7 " Appetizer.4 " Social Drink.8 " Digester.5 " Invigorator.9 " Big Reposer.6 " Solid Straight.10 " Refresher.7 " Chit-chat.11 " Stimulant.8 " Fancy Smile.12 M. Ante-lunch.9 " Entire Acte(sic).1 P.M. Settler.10 " Sparkler.2 " A la Smythe.11 " Rouser.12 P.M. Night-cap.G O O D - N I G H T .
My impression is that this time-table was not made for the latitude of Covelo, for they began to drink much earlier than 6 A.M. at the bar, near which I slept, and they left off later than midnight. It would be unjust for me not to add that, for the amount of liquor consumed, it was the soberest and the best-natured crowd I ever saw. I would like to write "respectable" also, but it would be ridiculous to apply that term to men whose every word almost is an oath, and whose language in many cases corresponds too accurately with their clothes and persons.
From Round Valley there is a "good enough" horseback trail, as they call it, over a steep mountain into the Sacramento Valley; but a pleasanter journey, and one, besides, having more novelty, is by way of Potter Valley to Lakeport, on Clear Lake. The road is excellent; the scenery is peculiarly Californian. Potter Valley is one of the richest and also one of the prettiest of the minor valleys of this State, and your way to Lakeport carries you along the shores of two pleasant mountain lakelets—the Blue Lakes, which are probably ancient craters.
Two days' easy driving, stopping overnight in Potter Valley, brings you to Lakeport, the capital of Lake County, and the only town I have seen in California where dogs in the square worry strangers as they are entering the place. As the only hotel in the town occupies one corner of this square, and as in Californian fashion the loungers usually sit in the evening on the sidewalk before the hotel, the combined attack of these dogs occurs in their view, and perhaps affords them a pleasing and beneficial excitement. The placid and impartial manner with which the landlord himself regards the contest between the stranger and the town dogs will lead you to doubt whether his house is not too full to accommodate another guest, and whether he is not benevolently letting the dogs spare him the pain of refusing you a night's lodging; but it is gratifying to be assured, when you at last reach the door, that the dogs "scarcely ever bite any body."
Clear Lake is a large and picturesque sheet of water, twenty-five miles long by about seven wide, surrounded by mountains, which in many places rise from the water's edge. At Lakeport you can hire a boat at a very reasonable price, and I advise the traveler to take his blankets on board, and make this boat his home for two or three days. He will get food at different farm-houses on the shore; and as there are substantial, good-sized sail-boats, he can sleep on board very enjoyably. Aside from its fine scenery, and one or two good specimens of small Californian farms, the valley is remarkable for two borax lakes and a considerable deposit of sulphur, all of which lie close to the shore.
At one of the farm-houses, whose owner, a Pennsylvanian, has made himself a most beautiful place in a little valley hidden by the mountains which butt on the lake, I saw the culture of silk going on in that way in which only, as I believe, it can be made successful in California. He had planted about twenty-five hundred mulberry-trees, built himself an inexpensive but quite sufficient little cocoonery, bought an ounce and a half of eggs for fifteen dollars, and when I visited him had already a considerable quantity of cocoons, and had several thousand worms then feeding.
It was his first attempt; he had never seen a cocoonery, but had read all the books he could buy about the management of the silk-worm; and, as his grain harvest was over, he found in the slight labor attending the management of these worms a source of interest and delight which was alone worth the cost of his experiment. But he is successful besides; and his wife expressed great delight at the new employment her husband had found, which, as she said, had kept him close at home for about two months. She remarked that all wives ought to favor the silk culture for their husbands; but the old man added that some husbands might recommend it to their wives.
Certainly I had no idea how slight and pleasant is the labor attending this industry up to the point of getting cocoons. If, however, you mean to raise eggs, the work is less pleasant.
This farmer, Mr. Alter, had chosen his field of operations with considerable shrewdness. He planted his mulberry-trees on a dry side-hill, and found that it did not hurt his worms to feed to them, under this condition, even leaves from the little shrubs growing in his nursery rows. His cocoonery was sheltered from rude winds by a hill and a wood, and thus the temperature was very equal. He had no stove in his house, the shelves were quite rough, and the whole management might have been called careless if it were not successful.
I believe that the country about Clear Lake and in the Napa and Sonoma valleys will be found very favorable to the culture of the silk-worm; but I believe also that this industry will not succeed except where it is carried on by farmers and their families in a small way.
Mount Hood, OregonMount Hood, OregonClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
Boat life on Clear Lake is as delightful an experience as a traveler or lounger can get anywhere. The lake is placid; there is usually breeze enough to sail about; and you need not fear storms or rainy weather in the dry season. If it should fall calm, and you do not wish to be delayed, you can always hire an Indian to row the boat, and there is sufficient to see on the lake to pleasantly detain a tourist several days, besides fine fishing and hunting in the season, and lovely views all the time.
Going to the Sulphur Banks on a calm morning, I hired an Indian from a rancheria upon Mr. Alter's farm to row for us, and my Indian proved to be a prize. His name was Napoleon, and he was a philosopher. Like his greater namesake, he had had two wives. Of the first one he reported that "Jim catchee him," by which I was to understand that he had tired of her, and had sold her to "Jim;" and he had now taken number two, a moderately pretty Digger girl, of whom he seemed to be uncommonly fond. As he rowed he began to speak of his former life, when he had served a white farmer.
"Him die now," said Napoleon; adding, in a musing tone, "he very good man, plenty money; give Injun money all time. Him very good white man, that man; plenty money all a time."
Napoleon dwelt upon the wealth of his favorite white man so persistently that presently it occurred to me to inquire a little further.
"Suppose a white man had no money," said I, "what sort of a man would you think him?"
My philosopher's countenance took on a fine expression of contempt. "Suppose white man no got money?" he asked. "Eh! suppose he no got money—him dam fool!" And Napoleon glared upon us, his passengers, as though he wondered if either of us would venture to contradict so plain a proposition.
The sulphur bank is a remarkable deposit of decomposed volcanic rock and ashes, containing so large a quantity of sulphur that I am told that at the refining-works, which lie on the bank of the lake, the mass yields eighty per cent. of pure sulphur. The works were not in operation when I was there.
Several large hot springs burst out from the bank, and gas and steam escape with some violence from numerous fissures. The deposit looks very much like a similar one on the edge of the Kilauea crater, on the island of Hawaii, but is, I should think, richer in sulphur. Near the sulphur bank, on the edge of the lake, is a hot borate spring, which is supposed to yield at times three hundred gallons per minute, and which Professor Whitney, the State Geologist, declares remarkable for the extraordinary amount of ammoniacal salts its waters contain—more than any natural spring water that has ever been analyzed.
There is abundant evidence of volcanic action in all the country about Clear Lake. A dozen miles from Lakeport, not far from the shore of the lake, the whole mountain side along which the stage-road runs is covered for several miles with splinters and fragments of obsidian or volcanic glass, so that it looks as though millions of bottles had been broken there in some prodigious revelry; and where the road cuts into the side of the mountain you see the osidian lying in huge masses and in boulders. Joining this, and at one point interrupting it, is a tract of volcanic ashes stratified, and the strata thrown up vertically in some places, as though after the volcano had flung out the ashes there had come a terrific upheaval of the earth.
The two borax lakes lie also near the shore of Clear Lake; the largest one, which is not now worked, has an area of about three hundred acres. Little Borax Lake covers only about thirty acres, and this is now worked. The efflorescing matter is composed of carbonate of soda, chloride of sodium, and biborate of soda. The object of the works is, of course, to separate the borax, and this is accomplished by crystallizing the borax, which, being the least soluble of the salts, is the first to crystallize.
The bottom of the lake was dry when I was there; it was covered all over with a white crust, which workmen scrape up and carry to the works, where it is treated very successfully. My nose was offended by the fetid stench which came from the earth when it was first put in the vats with hot water; and I was told by the foreman of the works that this arose from the immense number of flies and other insects which fly upon the lake and perish in it. Chinese are employed as laborers here, and give great satisfaction; and about eight days are required to complete the operation of extracting the borax in crystals.
Earth containing biborate of lime is brought to this place all the way from Wadsworth, in the State of Nevada—a very great distance, with several transhipments—to be reduced at these works; and it seems that this can be more cheaply done here than there, where they have neither wood for the fires nor soda for the operation.
Clear Lake is but twelve hours distant from San Francisco; the journey thither is full of interest, and the lake itself, with the natural wonders on its shores, is one of the most interesting and enjoyable spots in California to a tourist who wishes to breathe fresh mountain air and enjoy some days of free, open-air life.
The visitor to Clear Lake should go by way of the Napa Valley, taking stage for Lakeport at Calistoga, and return by way of the Russian River Valley, taking the railroad at Cloverdale. Thus he will see on his journey two of the richest and most fertile of the minor valleys of California, both abounding in fruit and vines as well as in grain.
As there are two sides to Broadway, so there are two sides to the Bay of San Francisco. On the one side lies the fine and highly-cultivated Santa Clara Valley, filling up fast with costly residences and carefully-kept country places. Opposite, on the other side of the bay, lies the Russian River Valley, as beautiful naturally as that of the Santa Clara, and of which Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, and Cloverdale are the chief towns. It is a considerable plain, bounded by fine hills and distant mountains, which open up, as you pass by on the railroad, numerous pretty reaches of subsidiary vales, where farmers live protected by the projecting hills from all harsh sea-breezes, and where frost is seldom if ever felt.
As you ascend the valley, the madrone, one of the most striking trees of California, becomes abundant and of larger growth, and its dark-green foliage and bright cinnamon-colored bark ornament the landscape. The laurel, too, or California bay-tree, grows thriftily among the hills, and the plain and foot-hills are dotted with oak and redwood. This valley is as yet somewhat thinly peopled, but it has the promise of a growth which will make it the equal some day of the Santa Clara, and the superior, perhaps, of the Napa Valley.
Indians Spearing Salmon, Columbia RiverIndians Spearing Salmon, Columbia RiverClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
A part of Round Valley, in Mendocino County, is set apart and used for an Indian reservation; and, under the present policy of the Government, an attempt has been made to gather and keep all the Indians of the northern coast of California upon this reserve. In point of fact they are not nearly all there. One thousand and eighty-one men, women, and children, according to a census recently taken, or nearly one thousand two hundred according to the Rev. Mr. Burchard, the Indian agent, are actually within the reservation lines; and about four hundred are absent, at work for themselves or for white men, but have the right to come in at any time to be clothed and fed.
Round Valley is a plain surrounded by high mountains. The plain is mostly excellent agricultural land; the mountain slopes are valuable for grazing. The reservation contains, it is said, sixty thousand acres; but only a small part of this is plain, and the reservation occupies about one-third or perhaps only a quarter of the whole valley. The remainder is held by white farmers; and there is a rude little town, Covelo, in the centre of the valley, about a mile and a half from the reservation house.
The reservation has a mill, store-houses, the houses of the agent and his subordinates, two school-houses, and the huts of the Indians; the latter are either rough board one-roomed shanties, or mere wigwams built by the owners of brush, with peculiar low entrances, into which you must creep on all-fours. These they prefer for summer use, and I found that a number of the board-shanties were empty and the doors nailed up, their owners sensibly preferring to live in brush houses during the hot weather.
When I arrived at the agency the Indians were receiving their ration of flour, and, as they gathered in a great court-yard, I had an opportunity to examine them. They are short, dark-skinned, generally ugly, stout, and were dressed in various styles, but always in such clothing as they get from the Government; not in their native costume. Among several hundred women I saw not one even tolerably comely or conspicuously clean or neat; but I saw several men very well dressed. They carried off their rations in baskets which they make, and which are water-tight. The agent or superintendent, Mr. Burchard, very obligingly showed me through the camp, and answered my questions, and what follows of information I gained in this way.
The Indian shanties contain a fire-place, a bed-place, and sometimes a table; once I saw a small store-room; and on the walls hung dresses, shoes, fishing-nets, and other property of the occupants. The agent pointed out to me that in most of the houses there were bags of flour and meal stowed away, and remarked, "Whatever they may say against the President, no one can say that he does not make the Indians comfortable;" and it is true that I saw everywhere in the camp the evidence of abundant supplies of food and sufficient clothing in the possession of the Indians. The superintendent said to me, "They have plenty of every thing; they have often several bags of flour in the house at once; no man can say they are wronged."
The earthen floors of the houses were usually cleanly swept; there are wells at which the people get water; the school-houses are well furnished, and as good as the average country-school, and the Indians seem to suffer no hardship of the merely physical kind. The agent, Mr. Burchard, seems to be a genuinely kind person, simple-hearted, and, I should think, honest; and his assistants, whom I saw, struck me as respectable men. Indeed, several persons in the valley, unconnected with the reservation, told me that under Mr. Burchard's rule the Indians were much better treated than by his predecessor. I suppose, therefore, that I saw one of the most favorable examples of the reservation system.
In what follows, then, I criticise the reservation system, so far, at least, as it applies to the Indians of California, and not the management at Round Valley; and I say that it is a piece of cruel and stupid mismanagement and waste for which there is no excuse except in the ignorance of the President who continues it.
Most of the Indians of these northern coast counties, as well as those of Southern California, have for some years been a valuable laboring force for the farmers. They were employed to clear land, to make hay, and in many other avocations about the farm; they lived usually in little rancherias, or collections of huts, near the farm-houses; the women washed and did chores for the whites about the houses; and there has been, for at least half a dozen years, no pretense even that their presence among the whites was dangerous to these. Mr. Burchard told me himself that more than half the Indian men at Round Valley were competent farmers, and that the Indian women were used at the agency houses as servants, and made excellent and competent house-help.
Scattered through Potter, Little Lake, Ukiah, and other valleys, they were earning their living, and a number of farmers of that region have assured me that it was a serious disadvantage to them to lose the help of these Indians. Nor was it even necessary to speak their language in order to use their labor, for the agent told me that, of the Potter Valley tribe, nine-tenths speak English; of the Pitt Rivers, four-fifths; of the Little Lakes, two-thirds; of the Redwoods, three-quarters; of the Concows and Capellos, two-thirds. The Wylackies and Ukies speak less; they have been, I believe, longer on the reservation. As I walked through the Indian camp, English was as often spoken in my hearing as Indian.
The removal of the useful and self-supporting part of the Indian population to the reservation was brought about by means which are a disgrace to the United States Government. There is in all this northern country a class of mean whites, ignorant, easily led to evil, and extremely jealous of what they imagine to be their rights. Among these somebody fomented a jealousy of the Indians. It was said that they took the bread out of white men's mouths, that their labor interfered with the white men, and so forth. In fact, I suspect that the Indians were too respectable for these mean whites; and you can easily find people in California who say that it is to the interest of the Indian Bureau to make the whites hate the Indians.
The Indians were an industrious and harmless people; even the squaws worked; the Indian men had learned to take contracts for clearing land, weeding fields, and so forth; and many of them were so trustworthy that the farmers made them small advances where it was necessary. They were not turbulent, and I was surprised to be told that drunkenness was rare among them.
After secret deliberations among the mean whites, incited by no one knows who, and headed by the demagogues who are never found wanting when dirty work is to be done, a petition was sent to the State Superintendent of Indian Affairs at San Francisco for the removal of the Indians; but the more decent people immediately prepared and sent up a counter-petition, stating the whole case. This was in the spring of 1872.
I do not know the State Indian agent, but I am told that he hesitated, did not act, and, in May of the same year, a mob, without authority from him or from any body else, without notice to the Indians, and without even giving these poor creatures time to gather up their household goods or to arrange their little affairs, drove them out of their houses, and sixty miles, over a cruel road, to the reservation.
Chistook Woman and ChildChistook Woman and ChildClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
Against this act of lawless violence toward peaceable and self-supporting men and women, who are, I notice, officially called "the nation's unfortunate wards," the proper officer of the United States Government, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, did not protest, and for it no one has ever been punished.
But this was not all. The Indians being thus driven out, a meeting was called, at which it was announced that if they dared to return they would be killed; and, in fact, three unfortunates, who ventured back after some months to see their old homes, were shot down in cold blood; and, though the men are known who did this, for it no one has ever been punished. Why should they be? The mob was only carrying out the prevailing "Indian policy," and the United States Government looked on with its hands folded.
It happens that the Indians of these little valleys are a mild race, not prone to war. When the white settlers first came to this region they lived unmolested by the Indians, who were numerous then, and might easily have "wiped out," to use a California phrase, the intruding white men. It happens that the Indians of the interior are braver and more warlike; and, accordingly, among them there were forty-five resolute Modocs, unwilling to be driven to a reservation, defying the United States for half a year. But from what I have written one can see how the Modoc war came about; for it arose from an attempt to force Captain Jack on to the Klamath Reservation—an attempt made, not by United States troops, as it ought to have been if it was to be done, but in their absence, and by men who purposely and carefully kept the military ignorant of what they intended to do; for there exists the utmost jealousy on the part of the Indian agents, of the War Department and the military authorities; and I repeat that the removal of the Modocs was planned and attempted to be carried out by the Indian Bureau officers, they keeping the military in careful ignorance of their designs.
I do not say too much when I say that if General Schofield had been informed and consulted beforehand, there would have been no Modoc war, and General Canby and Mr. Thomas might have been alive to-day.
Accordingly, these "unfortunate wards of the nation" are driven on the reservation. If their agent happens to be honest and kindly, like Mr. Burchard, they get enough to eat and to wear. If he is not, they do not fare quite so well. Captain Jack said he was "tired of eating horse-meat."
But if you are a guardian, and have a ward, you are not satisfied if your ward, presumedly an ignorant person in a state of pupilage, merely has enough to eat and to wear. You endeavor to form his manners and morals. Well, the Indian camp at Round Valley is in a deplorable state of disorder. No attempt is made to teach our wards to be clean or orderly, or to form in them those habits which might elevate, at least, their children. The plain around the shanties is full of litter, and overgrown with dog-fennel. As Mr. Burchard, the superintendent, walked about with me, half-grown boys sat on the grass, and even on the school-house steps, gambling with cards for tobacco, and they had not been taught manners enough to rise or move aside at the superintendent's approach. As we sat in the school-house, one, two, three Indian men came in to prefer a request, but not one of them took off his hat. We entered a cabin and found a big he-Indian lying on his bed. "Are you sick?" inquired Mr. Burchard, and the lazy hound, without offering to rise, muttered "No; me lying down."
The agent, in reply to my questions, said that they gambled a good deal for money and beads during the week, but he had forbidden it on Sundays; and he would not allow them to gamble away their clothing, as they formerly did.
There are about eighty scholars on the school-list, and about fifty attend school. Was there any compulsion used? I asked, and he said No. Now surely here, if anywhere, one might begin with a compulsory school-law.
Did he attempt to regulate the conduct of the growing boys and girls? No.
Do the Indians marry on the reservation? No. One chief has two wives; men leave their wives, or change them as they please.
What if children are born irregularly? Well, the reservation feeds and supports all who are on it. Nobody suffers.
Are the women often diseased? Yes, nearly all of them.
Have you a hospital, or do you attempt to isolate those who are diseased? No; the families all take care of their sick. The doctor visits them in their shanties. (Bear in mind this reservation was established, and has had Indians on it since 1860.)
Do the Indians have to ask permission to go to the town? No; they go when they please.
Is there much drunkenness? No; singularly little.
Do you attempt to make them rise at any specified hour in the morning? No.
Have you a list or roster of the Indians who belong on the reservation? No.
How many Indians own horses? I do not know.
On Sunday there is preaching; the audience varies; and those who do not come to church—where the preaching is in English—play shinny.
Is not all this deplorable? Here is a company of ignorant and semi-barbarous people, forcibly gathered together by the United States Government (with the help of a mob), under the pretense that they are the "unfortunate wards of the nation;" and the Government does not require the officers it sets over them to control them in any single direction where a conscientious guardian would feel bound to control his ward. How can habits of decency, energy, order, thrift, virtue, grow up—nay, how can they continue, if in the beginning they existed, with such management? Captain Jack and his forty-five Modocs were at least brave and energetic men. Can any one blame them, if they were bored to desperation by such a life as this, and preferred death to remaining on the reservation?
Nor is this all. Of the two thousand acres of arable land on the reservation, about five hundred are kept for grazing, and one thousand acres are in actual cultivation this year—seven hundred in grain and hay, one hundred and ninety-five in corn, and one hundred and nine in vegetables. A farmer, assistant-farmer, and gardener manage this considerable piece of land. When they need laborers they detail such men or women as they require, and these go out to work. They seldom refuse; if they do, they are sent to the military post, where they are made to saw wood. Not one of the cabins has about it a garden spot; all cultivation is in common; and thus the Indian is deprived of the main incentive to industry and thrift—the possession of the actual fruits of his own toil; and, unless he were a deep-thinking philosopher, who had studied out for himself the problems of socialism, he must, in the nature of things, be made a confirmed pauper and shirk by such a system, in which he sees no direct reward for his toil, and neither receives wages nor consciously eats that which his own hands have planted.
In the whole system of management, as I have described it, you will see that there is no reward for, or incentive to, excellence; it is all debauching and demoralizing; it is a disgrace to the Government, which consents to maintain at the public cost what is, in fact, nothing else but a pauper shop and house of prostitution.
And what is true of this reservation is equally true of that on the Tule River, in Southern California, which I saw in 1872. In both, to sum up the story, the Government has deprived the farmers of an important laboring force by creating a pauper asylum, called a reservation; and, having thus injured the community, it further injures the Indian by a system of treatment which ingeniously takes away every incentive to better living, and abstains from controlling him on those very points wherein an upright guardian would most rigidly and faithfully control and guide his ward.
To force a population of laboring and peaceable Indians on a reservation is a monstrous blunder. For wild and predatory or unsettled Indians, like the Apaches, or many tribes of the plains, the reservation is doubtless the best place; but even then the Government, acting as guardian, ought to control and train its wards; it ought to treat them like children, or at least like beasts; it ought not only to feed and clothe them, but also to teach them, and enforce upon them order, neatness, good manners, and habits of discipline and steady labor. This seems plain enough, but it will never be done by "Indian agents," selected from civil life, be these ministers or laymen.
An army officer, methodical, orderly, and having the habit of command, is the proper person for superintendent of a reservation; for drill and discipline, regular hours, regular duties, respectful manners, cleanliness, method—these are the elements of civilization that are needed, and which an army officer knows how to impress without harshness, because they are the essence of his own life. But under our present Indian policy the army is the mere servant of the Indian agent. If it were not for the small military force at Camp Wright, Mr. Burchard, the agent, could not keep an Indian on his reservation. But the intelligent, thoroughly-trained, and highly-educated soldier who commands there has neither authority nor influence at the reservation. He is a mere policeman, to whom an unruly Indian is sent for punishment, and who goes out at the command of the superintendent, a person in every way his inferior except in authority, to catch Indians when no mob is at hand to drive them in.
A true and humane Indian policy would be to require all peaceable Indians to support themselves as individuals and families among the whites, which would at once abolish the Round Valley and Tule River reservations; to place all the nomads on reservations, under the control of picked and intelligent army officers, and to require these to ignore, except for expediency's sake, all tribal distinctions and the authority of chiefs; to form every reservation into a military camp, adopting and maintaining military discipline, though not the drill, of course; to give to every Indian family an acre of ground around its hut, and require it to cultivate that, demanding of the male Indians at the same time two or three days of labor every week in the common fields, or on roads and other public improvements within the reservation during the season when no agricultural labor is required; to curb their vices, as a parent would those of his children; to compel the young to attend schools; to insist upon a daily morning muster, and a daily inspection of the houses and grounds; to establish a hospital for the sick; and thus gradually to introduce the Indian to civilization by the only avenue open to savages—by military discipline.
Under such a system a reserve like that of Round Valley would not to-day, after thirteen years of occupation, be a mass of weeds and litter, with bad roads, poor fences, and an almost impassable corduroy bridge over a little ditch. On the contrary, in half the time it would be a model of cleanliness and order; it would have the best roads, the neatest cottages, the cleanest grounds, the most thorough culture; and when the Indians had produced this effect, they would not fail to be in love with it.
Nor is it impossible to do all this with Indians. But it needs men used to command, well educated, and with habits of discipline—the picked men of the army. At present, an Indian reservation differs from an Indian rancheria or village only in that it contains more food, more vice, and more lazy people.
View on the Columbia RiverView on the Columbia RiverClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
Some years ago, before there was a wagon-road between Cloverdale and Mendocino City, or Big River, as it is more commonly called up here on the northern coast, the mail was carried on horse—or, more usually, on mule—back; and the mail-rider was caught, on one stormy and dark night, upon the road, and found himself unable to go farther. In this dilemma he took refuge, with his mule and the United States mails, in a hollow redwood, and man and mule lay down comfortably within its shelter. They had room to spare indeed, as I saw when the stage-driver pointed out the tree to me and kindly stopped until I examined it.
At a road-side inn I found they had roofed over a hollow stump, and used it as a capacious store-room.
All these were large trees, of course; but there is no reason to believe that they were the biggest of their kind; and when you have traveled for two or three days through the redwood forests of the northern coast of California you will scarcely be surprised at any story of big trees.
The redwood seems to be found only near the coast of California; it needs the damp air which comes from the sea and which blows against the mountain slopes, which the tree loves. The coast, from fifty miles north of San Francisco to the northern border of Humboldt County, is a dense redwood forest; it is a mountainous and broken country, and the mountains are cut at frequent intervals by streams, some but a few miles in length, others penetrating into the interior by narrow cañons forty or fifty miles, and dividing in their upper waters into several branches.
The man who wondered at the wisdom of Providence in causing great rivers to flow past large cities would be struck with admiration at the convenient outflow of these streams; for upon them depends the accessibility of the redwood forests to the loggers and saw-mill men who are busily turning these forests into lumber. At the mouth of every stream is placed a saw-mill; and up these little rivers, many of which would hardly aspire to the dignity of creeks in Missouri or Mississippi, loggers are busy chopping down huge trees, sawing them into lengths, and floating them down to the mills.
The redwood has the color of cedar, but not its fragrance; it is a soft wood, unfit for ship-building, but easily worked and extraordinarily durable. It is often used in California for water-pipes, and makes the best fence posts, for it never rots below ground. Moreover, it is excellent material for houses. When varnished, it keeps its fine red color, but without this protection it slowly turns black with exposure to the air. It is a most useful lumber, and forms a not unimportant part of the natural wealth of California.
The saw-mills are mostly on so large a scale that about every one grows up a village or town, which usually contains several saloons or grog-shops, one or two billiard-rooms, a rude tavern or two, a doctor or two, several stores, and, in some cases, a church. There are, besides, the houses of those mill-men who have families, shanties for the bachelors, and usually one or two houses of greater pretensions, inhabited by the owners or local superintendents.
Not easily accessible, these little saw-mill ports are rarely visited by strangers, and the accommodations are somewhat rude; but the people are kindly, and the country is wonderfully picturesque, and well repays a visit.
The absolute coast is almost barren, by reason of the harsh, strong winds which prevail during the greater part of the year. The redwood forests begin a mile or two back from the sea. The climate of this part of the coast is remarkably equal, cool but not cold, all the year round; they have fires in the evening in July, and don't shut their doors, except in a storm, in December. They wear the same clothing all the year round, and seldom have frost. But when you get out of the reach of the sea, only a mile back, you find hot weather in July; and in winter they have snow, quite deep sometimes, in the redwoods.
Where the little saw-mill rivers enter the sea, there is usually a sort of roadstead—a curve of the shore, not enough to make a harbor, but sufficient to give anchorage and a lee from the prevailing north-west wind, which makes it possible, by different devices, to load vessels. There are rivers in Humboldt County where nature has not provided even this slight convenience, and there—it being impossible to ship the lumber—no saw-mills have been established.
Vessels are frequently lost, in spite of all precautions; for, when the wind changes to south-west, the whole Pacific Ocean rolls into these roadsteads; and, when a gale is seen approaching, the crews anchor their ships as securely as they can, and then go ashore. It has happened in Mendocino harbor, that a schooner has been capsized at her anchorage by a monstrous sea; and Captain Lansing told me that in the last twenty years he had seen over a hundred persons drowned in that port alone, in spite of all precautions.
The waves have cut up the coast in the most fantastic manner. It is rock-bound, and the rock seems to be of varying hardness, so that the ocean, trying every square inch every minute of the day for thousands of years, has eaten out the softer parts, and worked out the strangest caverns and passages. You scarcely see a headland or projecting point through which the sea has not forced a passage, whose top exceeds a little the mark of high tide; and there are caves innumerable, some with extensive ramifications. I was shown one such cave at Mendocino City, into which a schooner, drifting from her anchors, was sucked during a heavy sea. As she broke from her anchors the men hoisted sail, and the vessel was borne into the cave with all sail set. Her masts were snapped off like pipe-stems, and the hull was jammed into the great hole in the rock, where it began to thump with the swell so vehemently that two of the frightened crew were at once crushed on the deck by the overhanging ceiling of the cave. Five others hurriedly climbed out over the stern, and there hung on until ropes were lowered to them by men on the cliff above, who drew them up safely. It was a narrow escape; and a more terrifying situation than that of this crew, as they saw their vessel sucked into a cave whose depth they did not know, can hardly be imagined outside of a hasheesh dream. The next morning the vessel was so completely broken to pieces that not a piece the size of a man's arm was ever found of her hull.