Talk:Pitt River Expedition

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tate of California's Pitt River Expedition (1859)[edit]

This section suggests by omission that all the Pit River people who were marched from their land through the snow were taken to the Tule River Reservation. This is incorrect. The cited document (a 1940 WPA account) says:

On August 16, 1859, in Red Bluff, Tehama County, General Kibbe mustered into service for the period of three months one of his newly organized military companies known as the Kibbe Rangers; under the command of Captain William Byrnes. This company was composed of ninety-three volunteer members anxious to aid in suppressing the Indian hostilities in the northern counties. In the following months the Kibbe Rangers had many minor conflicts with roving bands of Indians. On October tenth of the same year, while scouting in the vicinity of Eagle Lake, the Rangers came upon a band of five Indians who on being observed started running but were shot. Captain Byrnes who was on the opposite shore killed another Indian who attempted to get away.[2] On November eleventh the Kibbe Rangers captured one hundred and fifty Indians from the mountains in the Pitt River Country. They were brought to Red Bluff and then taken by water to the Tejon Reservation. The snow was so deep on the trails that it was impossible to take them to Mendocino where the Federal Reservation was located.[3] The Rangers captured thirty-three members of the Shave Head Tribes on December 11, 1859, but nine of the warriors escaped and returned to the hills.[4] General Kibbe, together with the various volunteer military companies left Red Bluff on December twelfth, with nearly five hundred hostile Indians bound for the Reservation. The citizens of the northern counties were then able to live in peace and security. The cost of General Kibbe's expedition it was estimated, would not exceed the loss in property sustained by the people of Tehama County for any one year since 1855. [5]

The footnotes refer to 1859 issues of a newspaper, The Sacramento Union, to which I have not found access.

As an indication how far they ranged, Eagle Lake is far east toward the Nevada border, north of Susanville. Shave Head was a leader of the Hat Creek community of the Atsugewi, on the south side of Pit River. The first 150 Pit River people captured were taken to Red Bluff, and then from Red Bluff to the Tejon Reservation. The later 500 or so are not accounted for in this document. There were many Pit River people in Round Valley Reservation in Mendocino (which had previously been home to the Yuki before they were massacred). Oral history from their children and grandchildren describe them being taken on larger boats from Red Bluff to San Francisco. There exist accounts in a San Francisco newspaper, with a photograph. Thence, according to their accounts, they were taken by sea, put ashore, and marched inland to Round Valley. Some of this could be documented from RS, and certainly the presence of Pit River people in Round Valley can be, e.g. in Jeremiah Curtin's Memoirs. I don't have the bandwidth to do this, at least not this year, so I'm just raising a flag that this section is misleading.

The Tejon Reservation was soon abandoned, and the indigenous people there were caused to go to the Tule River Reservation. Pit River people (Achumawi or Atsugewi) are not among those inmates enumerated in the article about the Tule River Reservation, but it is possible that this may be the route by which some Pit River people ended up in Oklahoma, where their descendants now live.