Massacre in America: A way of life

Anyone surprised at the frequency and severity of massacre in modern American history doesn’t know much older American history. Since the time of the Pilgrims in New England and the tobacco pioneers of Virginia, massacre has been the brutal subtext of westward expansion and consolidation. The Pequod were among the first victims of this apparently unplanned and spontaneous method of dealing with the fact that the North American paradise Europeans discovered was already fully populated, but they were far from the last.

Nathaniel Bacon, the Virginia malcontent who stirred rebellion against the grandees in Virginia, and actually, with his mob of “bobtails”, burned the city of Jamestown to the ground in 1676, was far more vicious to the natives than he was to his British-born rivals, becoming one of the first to practice the deceit which quickly became synonymous with frontier dealings between Europeans and natives. In other words, he first practiced blandishments and promises, to disarm and reassure his intended victims, then shot them in cold blood and did everything he could think of to eliminate all those closest to him, without regard to earlier promises and guarantees of safety, and with no thought at all of the assistance those natives had rendered to previous generations of white Virginians.

Indeed, Bacon set a tone that rang loud and clear. After disease crept silently across the Americas, wiping out entire nations and disrupting long-standing relationships between nations, violence was used repeatedly and without apology whenever a native nation or village appeared to be in the way of progress.

The history of North American settlement could easily be told as a series of massacres. Prince Philip’s War was hardly a war in the classic European sense, since only one side understood that a war was being fought. In general, massacres followed initial contact within a generation, when settlement began to fill previously “opened” lands while immigrants continued to stream in, creating a semi-permanent situation where more land than easily available was needed for people to continue living out their “dreams”.

By the time American history reached California, this process had reached maximum efficiency. The Gold Rush is famous for a few success stories and widespread hard luck, but the effect it had on natives of the Mother Lode is among the most shameful stories in the entire history of American settlement. Miners, with no law to control them and no moral compass nearby, formed volunteer companies with the express intent of killing every native they could find. A few were enslaved to work the mines, but they were expendable to say the least.

Ishi, probably the most famous native Californian, was the lone survivor of the Yahi people, who were annihilated without ever hearing of the US Army or General Custer. Gold miners took it upon themselves to clear the way, and thousands if not millions of California natives were hunted down and killed, often in scenes of mass murder with firearms that would seem familiar to modern Americans.

Ishi spent forty years living alone, clearly understanding the threat posed by the strange people who had taken over his land and shot all his friends and relatives to death while he was out of sight. He lived with his mother and sister in a cave until they passed away, then spent years by himself before finally giving up and heading downriver to Oroville, expecting no doubt to be shot on sight but unable to bear the awful loneliness any longer.

That his life was preserved was nothing short of miraculous, and required the assistance of whatever law enforcement was available at the time.

The shameful story of the Indian Island massacre, which occurred on Humboldt Bay on Feb. 25, 1860, is a fitting symbol for the story of California’s settlement. After a tense decade of settlement, a small group of white men decided not to wait for a long-term solution to the problem of where the Wiyot should be allowed to live while the cities of Eureka and Union grew around the shores of the bay. Every idea proposed was either too expensive or otherwise impractical. What they finally did was to row out to the island on a night when it was not defended, and murder everyone in sight—something like 300 people killed in one night. In this case, the brutality comes into clearer focus since they murderers used hand tools instead of firearms, to help disguise their act.

This story is well known because it occurred under the noses of the army post, which meant the bodies were counted and a record made of the event. For the great majority of California natives who had somehow managed to evade the mission fathers and European diseases, death came in the form of anonymous massacre at the hands of persons unknown, far from newspaper reporters or army scouts.

The effect of all this bloodshed on the natives was obvious. Survivors suffered trauma difficult to imagine, which has affected all subsequent generations in many ways. The effect it has had on white Americans seems more difficult to spot, but, clearly, the idea that one’s personal problems can be solved by shooting everyone is sight is deeply embedded in the American psyche. It is a sickness that thoughts and prayers do little to alleviate.

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