The Mendocino War of 1859-1860, California and the Indian Wars
California and the Indian WarsThe Mendocino War of 1859-1860
Lucy Young, a Lassik-Wailaki woman who survived the so-called “Indian War” period (late 1850s thru about 1865). Photo was taken after Lucy married Sam Young, a Round Valley small farmer. Lucy’s grandfather was Chief Lassik who was shot and killed by white militia in 1862. Lucy’s story will be included in “Yanks in the Redwoods.”
White Man’s Cattle, Red Man‘s Game: Issues in the Mendocino War
By Ed Bigelow
The following article originally appeared in the the November 24, 1952 issue of the Paul Bunyon News of Fort Bragg. It has not been edited to take into account modern sensitivities to California’s Native American population.
As the white man’s civilization rolled westward, the American Indian was pushed further toward the setting sun until the Pacific Ocean ended further retreat. When the white men came into the state of California, either in covered wagon across the plains, or around the Horn, the California Indian was herded onto reservations. One of these was the Mendocino reservation on which the Nome Cult farm was located. At this time, about 1858, there were 10,000 Indians in the country, of which only 3,200 consented to live as the white man directed. The remainder tried to continue life as it was before their conquerors came. The settlers erected fences and brought in cattle which caused the wild life to diminish, thus working a hardship on the Indian. Mostly as a means of subsistence, the Indian began killing the settlers’ cattle. In many instances they killed for revenge against the usurpers. Each time the settlers came upon a dead cow, they blamed the Indians for the deed and would promptly raid an Indian rancheria, killing men, women and children, indiscriminately. A private army of 40 men was organized under the command of Captain W.W. Jarboe of Ukiah, to punish the Indians. At this time there was a unit of the U.S. Army –the 6th Infantry–composed of 23 men and commanded by Lt. Edward Dillon, a 25 year old soldier. The unit was stationed in Round Valley. The settlers complained that the regular army protected the Indians and not the settlers. A bitter animosity existed between Dillon and the settlers. Open warfare broke out between the settlers and the Indians. The redmen raided the white’s cattle and the whites killed any and Indians they suspected of killing cattle.
A special California house and senate committee was finally sent to Mendocino in 1860 to investigate what they called the “Mendocino War.” The committee under the chairmanship of J.B. Lamar, met in February 1860 at Storm’s Ranch in Round Valley to hear the settlers tell their story and to take depositions. William Frazier, a 38 year old farmer of Long Valley, told the committee he and others raided an Indian village after hearing of cattle killing and that the redmen had some fresh killed beef at their rancheria. “All the Indians fled when we came, but one,” he said. “We shot his head off.” “Last December (1859) we organized a company of 40 men. I was elected Lieutenant. Two days later I led an expedition across Eel River between Long and Round Valleys and saw a fire of an Indian rancheria. We waited until sun up before attacking and killed 20 of them, including bucks, squaws and children and took two women and one child prisoner. “A week later,” he continued, “we found two wounded bucks and one old squaw, all of whom we killed,” and on the way home saw more Indians, Charles S. Bournes, Round Valley rancher, continued the tale. He said: “The regular troops here were just a nuisance and never accomplished any good; they protected the Indians and not the settlers.” William T. Scott of Scott Valley, told the committee he had never had any trouble with the Indians. He said that Jarboe’s orders were to kill all Indians seen. “I went with Jarboe once and came across two bucks collecting acorns in Eden Valley. We killed one, but the other got away.” In the statement Scott made, March 2, 1860 he said he had always treated the Indians kindly and never had any cattle killed by them.” An employee of the Nome Cult farm, Lawrence Battaile, 36, testified that S.P. Storms and other settlers one day came out to the farm on the reservation on suspicion that some of the reservation Indians had been killing cattle. The settlers, said Battaile, picked out 20 redmen, accused them of killing and started shooting them. Eight redmen were shot and five hung the rest managed to escape. Storms, 29, a rancher of Round Valley said over 500 Indians had been killed in the county in the three and a half years preceding. When he was asked if many squaws were killed by the settlers, H.L. Hall, 25, refused to answer the committee’s question. “I think one squaw died from a bullet and all the squaws in one particular incident were killed before they would not travel. The infants were put out of their misery and one 10 year old girl was killed for being stubborn,” he said. “I consider it dangerous for any white man to travel along the roads in this area,” William Patterson, 31, of Ukiah Valley, said. “I know of 10 or 15 white men who have been killed by Indians.” The special joint committee on the Mendocino War heard over 45 witnesses and made their report. Jasper O’Farrell, W.B. Dickinson and W.B. Maxson of the committee made the majority report of the hearing. They said the white men were to blame for the Indian troubles and that in four months of 1860, more Indians of Mendocino county had been killed than in a century of Spanish and Mexican rule. In the minority report, J.B. Lamar said the Indians were a cowardly lot and proposed a system of peonage. The Indians, under this proposal would be assigned as servants to the local ranchers and laws would be passed to prevent any third party from interfering between “master and servant.” It is not known what good came of this committee’s investigation or what solution finally developed, if any. The committee’s report and depositions of the local settlers are believed to be the only record of the little known Mendocino Indian War.
The Yuki Case, 1851–1910
Extracted from Patterns of frontier genocide 1803–1910: the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia; Journal of Genocide Research, June 2004
by Benjamin Madley
On February 2, 1848 the United States took possession of California from Mexico. Ten months later, news of the gold found at Sutter’s Mill triggered a tidal wave of immigration into the new state. Between 1849 and 1851 alone nearly 250,000 settlers arrived (Cook, 1970, p 28). These immigrants needed food and triggered an agricultural explosion that in turn created shock waves of land grabbing. In 1851 the first white explorers visited the Yuki homeland, in northern California, and in 1854 settlers arrived to farm and ranch the area’s fertile valleys. Before whites arrived, the Yuki numbered between 5,000 and 20,000. By 1864, settlement policies and a war of genocide had reduced them to “85 male[s] and 215 female[s]” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 126). Genocidal policies then continued into the twentieth century, further reducing the population.
Like the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki came into conflict with settlers over natural resources, land, the abduction of their children, and the enslavement and mistreatment of their women. Likewise, the Yuki rose up only to be hunted nearly to extinction and incarcerated in lethal ethnic gulags. Indeed, these genocides demonstrate remarkable similarities.
Soon after white settlers arrived in 1854, their pastoral activities began to threaten the Yuki hunter/gatherer economy. The Yuki depended on hunting deer and birds, fishing for steelhead and salmon, and gathering insects, nuts, seeds, tubers, and wild plants for survival (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 18–19). The lush meadows and river valleys where these Yuki staples thrived were also the best places for building houses, tilling the earth, and grazing livestock. Settlers’ hogs, cattle, and horses set out to pasture in these areas consumed the core of the Yuki diet. Further, the settlers’ domesticated animals drove wild game away from prime grazing areas thus depriving the Yuki of meat.
As in Tasmania, competition for natural resources generated conflict. Settlers occupied traditional Yuki hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds, denying them to the Yuki and forcing the Yuki to the point of starvation. According to settler John Burgess, who lived in the Yuki homeland:
I saw a man driving some squaws from a clover field… they were picking clover or digging roots; he said he would be damned if he would allow them to dig roots or pick clover, as he wanted it for hay. (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 68)
In the face of the sudden and intense competition for access to natural resources, many Yuki radically changed their lives in order to eat. They retreated into mountain areas where they faced the twin challenges of fewer food sources and violent encounters with hostile tribes.
Without access to productive land and fearful of the dangers associated with hunting and gathering on neighboring tribes’ lands, Yuki began killing settlers’ stock to survive (Miller, 1978, pp 249–254). The San Francisco Bulletin noted on January 21, 1860 that due to their “condition bordering on starvation … [the Yuki] are committing serious depredations on the stock” (San Francisco Bulletin, January 21, 1860).
A dearth of written records obscures Yuki thinking, but their attacks on settlers’ livestock were also likely intended to exact revenge for dispossession, loss of food, the enslavement of children and the abduction and mistreatment of women. As one settler noted, “the treatment received by the Indians from some of the white settlers has tended to exasperate them and cause them to destroy stock in a spirit of revenge” (Heizer and Almquist, 1971, p 39).
Forcibly indenturing Indians was legal in California from 1850 to 1863. On April 22, 1850, the state legislature passed “An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians” into law, providing for the indenture or apprenticeship of California Indians (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 40; Castillo, 1978, p 109; Hurtado, 1988, pp 129–131). This legislation led to widespread kidnapping of Yuki children. When Indian Agent Simon Storms visited a Round Valley Yuki encampment in 1856 he found that “a number of squaws and children had been taken away by white men, which was the principal reason they were so much afraid of whites” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 40). Indian Agent Vincent Geiger reported in 1857 that “the Indians … have very few children, most of them doubtless having been stolen and sold” while in 1858 a settler noted what appeared to be kidnappings: “In coming into the valley, on the first occasion, I met a man with two Indian boys taking them off, and the third time I came on the trail, I met a man taking off a girl” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 61). There are no written records of stolen Yuki children ever returning to the tribe.
Few white women migrated to California with the Gold Rush. To obtain sex and labor, white settlers abducted and enslaved Indian women, including the Yuki. According to genocide scholars Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, stolen Yuki women became “temporary harvest hands, household servants, and camp wives” (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990, p 197). Written evidence of Yuki reactions to these kidnappings are not extant, but Sherburne Cook suggests that abduction and abuse of Yuki women were causes of violent conflict between the Yuki and settlers (Cooke, 1976, p 278).
Between 1856 and 1859 the Yuki began attacking first livestock, and then both stock and a limited number of settlers. The conflict was always asymmetrical. California Indians were prohibited from owning guns and records suggest that the Yuki primarily relied on bows and arrows. Despite the disparity in firepower and the fact that the Yuki rarely killed whites, settlers responded with massacres of increasing scale (Heizer, 1974, p 11). Farmer John Lawson explained, in 1856, that when “I lost twenty hogs … [I] went after the Indians … shot three [and] five … were tried at the reservation, found guilty and hanged” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 59). Settler Dryden Lawson stated in 1860 that:
… in 1856 the first expedition by the whites against the Indians was made … these expeditions were formed by gathering together a few white men whenever the Indians committed depredations on their stock; there were so many expeditions that I cannot recollect the number…we would kill on average fifty or sixty Indians on a trip …frequently we would have to turn out two or three times a week. (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 40)
Between 1857 and 1858 the Yuki killed four white men in attacks that appear to have motivated settlers to perpetrate increasingly large massacres. In May 1859, Round Valley settlers avenged the killing of a single prize stallion with the slaughter of 240 Yuki (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 64–65, 82). Responding to the increasing violence of the summer of 1859, the editor of the Sacramento Union wrote: “The aborigines are melting away as the snows of the mountains in June … they are doomed to steady extirpation” (Sacramento Union, August 22, 1859).
On September 6, 1859 California Governor John Weller intervened to sanction genocide by granting a state commission to Walter Jarboe, a notorious Indian killer whose “Eel River Rangers” had already murdered 62 Yuki men, women and children that year (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 90–91, 89). Despite these killings, Weller considered the Yuki a threat requiring even more extreme measures. A San Francisco Bulletin editorial even suggested, “Extermination is the quickest and cheapest remedy, and effectually prevents all other difficulties when an outbreak [of Indian violence] occurs” (San Francisco Bulletin, September 1, 1856). When US Army generals refused to order their troops to join the war against the Yuki, Weller hired Jarboe and his “Rangers.”
Five months later, in January 1860, Weller disbanded the “Eel River Rangers” and Jarboe presented his final report to the new Governor of California, John Downey: “from … [September 20] to the 24th of January[1860], I have fought them twenty-three times, killed 283 warriors, the number of wounded was not known, took 292 prisoners, sent them to the Reservation” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 95–96). Jarboe then presented the state with a $11,143 bill for his expeditions (San Francisco Bulletin, February 24, 1860). Given his previous record for killing scores of women and children, Jarboe’s official account cannot be trusted. He lists only men killed. Yet, if his previous activities are any indicator, he and his death squad did not discriminate between men, women, and children. All were likely targeted.
Governor Weller understood that Jarboe would kill women and children as well as the California press did. By February 1860, despite its earlier editorial, the San Francisco Bulletin was shocked and criticized Jarboe’s actions as a “Deliberate, cowardly, brutal massacre of defenseless men, women, and children …” (San Francisco Bulletin, February 24, 1860). In March of the same year, San Francisco Herald editor John Nugent attacked the government’s genocide with biting wit:
I propose to the legislature to create the office of Indian Butcher with the princely salary conferred upon the man who has killed the most Indians in a given time provided it is
satisfactorily shown that the Indians were unarmed at the time and the greater of them were squaws and papooses [women and children]. (San Francisco Herald, March 5, 1860)
Governor Weller had officially sanctioned genocide. He understood that by commissioning Jarboe he would unleash a force with a proven record of killing women and children and that it would annihilate most, if not all, Yukis. The government of California sanctioned and paid for Weller’s genocide policy and Jarboe’s execution of it. On April 12, 1860 the California state legislature appropriated $9,347.39 for “payment of the indebtedness incurred by the expedition against the Indians in the county of Mendocino organized under the
command of Captain W.S. Jarboe in the year 1859” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 97). Jarboe’s 292 prisoners then joined other Yuki at the Round Valley Reservation.
The Round Valley Reservation was established in 1854 as a collection point for the Yuki as well as a number of other northern California tribes. In 1857 Special Indian Agent Browne reported that “some 3,000 Indians” were living on the reservation (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 58). No records exist to show exactly how many Yuki died there. However, it is clear that even as Indians were continually brought to the reservation in the hundreds, the population steadily declined as a result of malnutrition, the abduction of women and children, rape and consequent venereal disease, and constant settler attacks. Although ostensibly created to protect the Yuki, in practice Round Valley bore striking resemblances to the Tasmanian ethnic gulag on Flinders Island. Inadequate rations led to malnutrition, disease, and subsequent death. In 1858 a reporter from the San Francisco Alta California visited the reservation and gushed:
There is …an abundance of food …to supply the immediate wants of a vast multitude of Indians, and in a short time, their labor might produce an adequate supply of grain and vegetables for the entire aboriginal population of this State. (Steamer Edition, San Francisco Alta California, May 27, p 1858)
But those Yuki working on the reservation farm were provided only a starvation diet. Rations consisted of six ears of corn per worker per day or flour with which to bake bread; those who did not work were not given food (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 68; Heizer, 1974, p 106). To supplement these insufficient rations, the Yuki turned to foraging and hunting on the reservation (Heizer, 1974, p 106). Here too they confronted a penal system designed to destroy them: ranchers were allowed to graze their livestock on the reservation, thus destroying the seeds, plants, tubers, and acorns the Yuki were foraging for. Without sufficient nutrition immune systems weakened and many Yuki succumbed to disease.
The abduction and rape of Yuki women increased the reservation mortality rate. Despite US Army soldiers stationed on the reservation to protect the Yuki, Round Valley was no safe haven. Lieutenant Edward Dillon, based on the reservation, reported “It is a common occurrence to have squaws taken by force from the place” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 61). Frequent rapes brought death by spreading venereal diseases through the Yuki reservation community. According to an 1859 petition sent by Tehama County settlers to the US Secretary of the Interior, the agent in charge of the reservation was “compelling the squaws, even in the presence of their Indian husbands to submit to (he and his cronies’) lecherous and beastly desires,” thus introducing “among them diseases of the most loathsome character” (Heizer, 1974, p 139). When Simon Storms entered Round Valley in June 1856 he noted that not a single Indian was “affected with the venereal,” but by August 1858 he reported “about one-fifth are now diseased” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 61).
The reservation even became a shooting gallery for white settlers. Without the authority to arrest white men beyond the reservation, US Army soldiers had little ability to pursue and punish whites that attacked the Yuki. Settlers would commit a crime on the reservation and slip over the line of safety. Moreover, because the California legislature excluded Indians from serving as witnesses “for or against any white” in the California court system, it was virtually impossible to charge those suspected of victimizing Yuki on the reservation (Heizer, 1974, p 5). With little fear of consequences, whites killed those incarcerated on the reservation with impunity. As Captain Johnson, charged with protecting the reservation, explained of the Yuki, “they had always been told by the white man ‘come on the reservation; we do not want to kill you,’ but they had been invariably deceived and killed, and now they did not know whom to believe” (Tassin, 1887, p 29). In 1859 Captain Johnson warned, “I believe it to be the settled determination of many of the [white] inhabitants to exterminate the Indians,” but given the laws he could “see no way of preventing it …” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 90).
Long after the war was over, reservation policies continued to destroy the Yuki. According to Sherburne Cook, starvation and sickness combined with settler encroachment and attacks to destroy 80% of the Yuki on the reservation between 1873 and 1910 (Cook, 1976, p 238). Thus, the reservation system continued the genocide into the twentieth century. As on Flinders Island, there was a clearly discernible record of steadily declining population at Round Valley. The US and California governments may not have set out to destroy the
Yuki at Round Valley, but they, like the colonial government of Tasmania, did little or nothing to correct this process despite years of evidence indicating that extermination was under way and that official policies contributed to it.
Today approximately 100 Yuki live in Mendocino County on the Round Valley Indian Reservation together with members of five other California Indian nations. Fewer than a dozen native Yuki speakers remain.
The Legislature’s Majority and Minority Reports on the Mendocino War (1860)
Extracted from Early California Laws and Policies Related to California Indians
By Kimberly Johnston-Dodds, California Research Bureau, California State Library, September 2002
In 1860, the California Legislature created a Joint Special Committee on the Mendocino Indian War to investigate incidents of Indian stealing and killing of settlers’ stock, and alleged atrocities committed by whites against the Indians.[1]
The Joint Special Committee traveled throughout Mendocino County and adjacent locations taking depositions and testimony of prominent settlers in the region. This testimony is part of the official public record, along with the committee’s majority and minority reports about the events.
The Majority Report of the Joint Special Committee
O’Farrell, Dickinson, Maxon and Phelps were authors of the Majority Report. The following are excerpts of the majority’s findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
In Mendocino County…the Indians have committed extensive depredations on the stock of the settlers…The result has been that the citizens, for the purpose of protection to their property, have pursued the tribes supposed to be guilty to their mountain retreats, and in most cases have punished them severely. Repeated stealing and killing of stock, and an occasional murder of a white man, has caused a repetition of the attacks upon the offenders with the same results. The conflict still exists; Indians continue to kill cattle as a means of subsistence, and the settlers in retaliation punish with death. Many of the most respectable citizens of Mendocino County have testified before your committee that they kill Indians, found in what they consider the hostile districts, whenever they lose cattle or horses; nor do they attempt to conceal or deny this fact. Those citizens do not admit, nor does it appear by the evidence, that it is or has been their practice or intention to kill women or children, although some have fallen in the indiscriminate attacks of the Indian rancherias. The testimony shows that in the recent authorized expedition against the Indians in said county, the women and children were taken to the reservations, and also establishes the fact that in the private expeditions this rule was not observed, but that in one instance, an expedition was marked by the most horrid atrocity; but in justice to the citizens of Mendocino County, your committee say that the mass of the settlers look upon such act with the utmost abhorrence…
Accounts are daily coming in from the counties on the Coast Range, of sickening atrocities and wholesale slaughters of great numbers of defenseless Indians in that region of country. Within the last four months, more Indians have been killed by our people than during the century of Spanish and Mexican domination. For an evil of this magnitude, some one is responsible. Either our government, or our citizens, or both, are to blame…
The pre-existing laws and policy of Mexico, as to the status of the Indian, need not have interfered with the views to be taken by our government. Mexico protected the Indian, in her own way, much more effectually than we have done. The very land upon which the aborigines of this State have dwelt, as far back as traditions reach, has been allowed by our government to be occupied by settlers, who thus have the authority of law for a forced occupation of the Indian country. A natural, humane, and proper policy would have protected the Indian in his undeniable rights to the hunting grounds of his forefathers, and would have prevented our border men from entering into a conflict which has cost both lives and property… Your committee do [sic] not think that the wrongs committed upon the Indians of California are chargeable alone to the Federal Government. The evidence appended to this report, disclose facts, from the contemplation of which the mind of peaceful citizens recoil with horror, and prompts the inquiry, if such outrages upon the defenseless are permitted by the proper authorities to go unpunished?
No provocation has been shown, if any could be, to justify such acts. We must admit that the wrong has been the portion of the Indian – the blame with his white brother.
The question resolves itself to this: Shall the Indians be exterminated, or shall they be protected? If the latter, that protection must come from the Federal Government, in the form of adequate appropriations of money and land; and secondly, from this State, by strictly enforcing penal statutes for any infringement upon the rights of Indians. In relation to the recent difficulty between the whites and Indians in Mendocino County, your committee desire to say that no war, or a necessity for a war, has existed, or at the present time does exist. We are unwilling to attempt to dignify, by the term “war” as slaughter of beings, who at least possess human form, and who make no resistance, and make no attacks, either on the person or residence of the citizen. [2]
The authors of the Majority Report recommended that the California Legislature pass “a law for the better protection of the Indians of California.” [3]
The Minority Report of the Special Joint Committee
Lamar authored the Minority Report and dissented fundamentally from the majority’s view of the events, and their recommendations. Lamar stated, “the testimony will disclose the guilty parties, and from the just indignation of outraged humanity I have no desire to screen them; but for the mass of citizens engaged in this Indian warfare, I claim that they have acted from the strongest motives that govern human action, the defense of life and property.” [4]
Lamar further stated that certain tribes living outside of reservations in the region were “domesticated Indians,” a great number of whom were employed by settlers, receiving “liberal compensation for their labor.” [5] Lamar proposed the following general Indian policy that the State should pursue.
The General Government should first cede to the State of California the entire jurisdiction over Indians and Indian affairs within our borders, and make such donations of land and other property and appropriations of money as would be adequate to make proper provision for the necessities of a proper management.
The State should, then, adopt a general system of peonage or apprenticeship, for the proper disposition and distribution of the Indians by families among responsible citizens. General laws should be passed regulating the relations between the master and servant, and providing for the punishment of any meddlesome interference on the part of third parties. In this manner the whites might be provided with profitable and convenient servants, and the Indians with the best protection and all the necessaries of life in permanent and comfortable homes. [6]
The Mendocino War Reports and the 1860 Amendment to “An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians”
On January 19, 1860, the first version of Assembly Bill No. 65, entitled “An Act amendatory of an Act for the Government and Protection of Indians” was introduced in the California Legislature. [7] Assembly Bill No. 65 proposed broader apprenticeship laws than those contained in the 1850 Act. Various amendments and substitute versions of the bill found in the California State Archives Original Bill File appear to reflect the degree of debate surrounding Indian prisoners of war from expeditions, Lamar’s proposed Indian policies, and more expansive Indian apprenticeship laws. Transcriptions of the proposed versions of of the bill, and the original enrolled version are contained in the Appendix.
Appendix. Original Bill Material Pertaining to California Statutes 1860, Chapter 231
This Appendix contains a verbatim transcription of the Original Bill Materials, located in the California State Archives, that are related to the 1860 amendment of the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians passed April 22, 1850. The first document is the initial Assembly Bill No. 65 introduced for consideration on January 19, 1860. The second document is a “substitute” Assembly Bill No. 65, introduced for consideration on February 17, 1860. The third document is the engrossed bill that was enrolled on April 6, 1860.
The first page of each transcribed document in this Appendix contains the legislative history of the bill. This information is handwritten and originally signed by each legislative officer on the front page of the original documents. The language originally contained in the proposed bills, but subsequently deleted from the text during the course of the legislative process is noted in brackets.
Assembly Bill No. 65In Assembly January 19, 1860 Read first & second time Referred to Com. on Indian Affairs Weston Asst Clerk February 11, 1860, Reported with amendt & passage Recommended as amended Weston Asst Clk Feb. 13, 1860 Taken from file & referred to Jud[iciary] Com[mittee] Weston Asst Clk Feb 17, 1860, Substitute reported & recommended Weston Asst Clk Feb 27, 1860: Substituted adopted & ordered printed Weston Ass’t Clk The People of the State of California represented in Senate and Assembly do enact as follows: Section 1st , Section third of said Act is hereby amended so as to read as follows Section 3d Any person having or hereafter obtaining any Indian child or children male or female from the parents or relations of such child or children [stricken from text: with their] and wishing to domesticate said child or children and any person desiring to obtain any Indian or Indians either children or grown persons that may have been taken prisoner or prisoners [stricken from text: and wishing to domesticate either children or grown persons in any expedit] of war [stricken from text: in any] and wishing to domesticate said Indians, such person shall go before a Justice of the Peace of the County in which such Indians may [stricken from text: be] reside at the time and if the Justice of the Peace becomes satisfied that no compulsory means have been used to obtain the said child or children from its parents or friends or that the said child or children or other Indian or indians of either sex have been taken and are held as a prisoner or prisoners of war, he shall enter on record, in a book kept for that purpose the sex and probable age of the child or children or other indians, and shall give to such person a certificate authorizing him or her to have the care custody control and earnings of such child or children or other Indians, for and during the following term of years, such children as are under twelve years of age, until they attain the age of twenty five years, such children as are over twelve and under eighteen years of age until they attain the age of thirty years, and such indians as may be over the age of eighteen years, for and during the term of ten years then next following the date of said certificate, any person or persons [stricken: being] having any indian or indians in his or their possession as such prisoners shall have the preference to domesticate as many of such indians as he or they may desire for their own use, every indian either male or female in the possession or under the control of any person under the provisions of this act shall be taken and deemed to be a minor Indian, [stricken from text: for such] Sec. 2nd Section seventh of said act is hereby amended so as to read as follows, Except as provided in this act, he or they may be upon conviction fined in any sum not less than fifty dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars, at the discretion of the Court |
Substitute for Assembly Bill No. 65An act amendatory of an act entitled An Act for the Government & Protection of Indians passed April 22, 1850 Feb 17, 1860. Reported as substitute for Assembly Bill No. 65 & passage recommended Weston Ass’t Clk Feb. 27, 1860, adopted & ordered printed. Weston Ass’t Clk Mch 10, 1860, amended, ___ suspended, considered engrossed read third time and passed Weston Asst Clk Judiciary Committee An Act amendatory of An Act Entitled “An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians passed April 22 1850 The People of the State of California represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: Section 1st Section third of said Act is hereby amended so as to read as follows: Section 3: County and District Judges in the respective counties of this State shall by virtue of this Act have full power and authority, at the instance and request of any person having or hereafter obtaining any Indian child or children male or female under the age of fifteen years from the parents or person or persons having the care or charge of such child or children with the consent of such parents or person or persons having the care or charge of any such child or children, or at the instance and request of any person desirous of obtaining any indian or Indians whether children or grown persons that may be held as prisoners of war, or at the instance and request of any person desirous of obtaining any vagrant Indian or Indians as have no settled habitation or means of livelihood and have not placed themselves under the protection of any white person, to bind and put out such Indians as apprentices to trades — husbandry or other employments as shall to them appear proper, and for this purpose shall execute duplicate Articles of Indenture of Apprenticeship on behalf of such Indians, which Indentures shall also be executed by the person to whom such Indian or Indians are to be indentured: one copy of which shall be filed by the County Judge [stricken from text: with the] in the Recorders Office of the County and one copy retained by the person to whom such Indian or Indians may be indentured; such Indenture shall authorise [sic] such person to have the care custody control and earnings of such Indian or Indians and shall require such person to clothe and suitably provide the necessaries of life, for such Indian or Indians for and during the term for which such Indian or Indians shall be apprenticed, and shall contain the sex name and probable age of such Indian or Indians, Such Indentures may be for the following terms of years, such children as are under fourteen years of age, if males until they attain the age of twenty five years; if females until they attain the age of twenty one years; such as are over fourteen and under twenty years of age if males until they attain the age of thirty years; if females until they attain the age of twenty five years; and such Indians as may be over the age of twenty years for and during the term of ten years then next following the date of such Indenture at the discretion of such Judge. Such Indians as may be indentured under the provisions of this section shall be deemed within such provisions of this act as are applicable to minor Indians Section 2d Section seventh of said act is hereby amended so as to read as follows, Section 7 If any person shall forcibly convey any Indian from any place without this State to any place within this State or from his or her home within this State, or compel him or her to work or perform any service against his or her will except as provided in this Act he or they shall upon conviction thereof be fined in any sum not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars before any court having jurisdiction at the discretion of the Court, and the collection of such fine shall be enforced as provided by law in other criminal cases, one half to be paid to the prosecutor and one have [sic] to the County in which such conviction is had |
Substitute for Assembly Bill No. 65Feb 17, 1860 reported as substitute for assembly Bill No. 65 & passage recommended Weston Asst Clk Feb 27, 1860, adopted and ordered printed Weston Asst. Clk March 10, 1860 Amended rules suspended, considered Engrossed read third time and passed Weston Asst Clk E.W. Casey Engrossing Clerk 231 [in pencil] Judiciary Committee March 13th 1860 Read first and second times and refd to the Committee on Federal Relations Williamson Asst Secty March 23rd 1860 Reported back and passage recommended & placed on file April 6th Taken up read a third time & passed Enrolled April 6th 1860 H.C. Kibbe Enrolling Clerk Chap 231 [in pencil]
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