Colusa County

History

Indians of Colusa County.

CHAPTER II.

        IN regard to the Indians who occupied Colusa County prior to the occupation by the white men, we have very little knowledge either from record or tradition. From what is known of them, they appear to have been a race of mild-mannered, ignorant, and generally inoffensive Indians. They numbered, according to an estimate of General John Bidwell in 1844, not less than ten thousand. If their earliest history is obscure, there was nothing in their customs, language, or mode of life at this later period that can prove to be of absorbing interest to the general reader. The greatest interest we have in them is that they were the immediate predecessors of the white race in this magnificent valley. They were called the Colus or Corü Indians, and subsisted on the spontaneous products of the soil, such as clover and berries in the spring and summer, and seeds, acorns, and nuts in the autumn and winter, together with the salmon that were caught by them in the fall of the year in the dams, or weirs, stretched across the Sacramento River. Like nearly all the natives of the Pacific Coast, both of North and South America, their religion was tinctured more or less with a worship of the sun, but this was about the only point in which they resembled their Southern brethern. While Cortez and Pizarro found in Mexico and Peru a sort of civilization, the aborigines of California had nothing that redeemed them from absolute barbarism. They believed in an evil spirit to be propitiated, and their religious rites and ceremonies were principally devoted to this end, rather than to the adoration of a supreme being with power to protect them from the anger of the evil god. In this they seem to have resembled the Chinese.

        The tradition of a flood was strong among them. In some great cataclysm the whole earth had been submerged, drowning every living thing except a mud-turtle and a hawk. These two survivors of the flood met and kept together in strange comradeship, when the hawk tied a cord to the turtle, who, descending beneath the abyss of waters, brought up mud. It continued this diving process for a long period of time, bringing up the mud and piling it on the tules, or swamp reeds, till the land soared high above their light vegetable raft, forming what is now known as Butte Mountain. Here a few alders grew, and out of pieces thereof these dual powers of creative omnipotence formed the first pair of Indians, male and female, from whom were descended the afterwards numerous "Diggers," who lived in primitive abundance and contentment before the advent of the pale-face.

        Their religious ideas of rewards and punishments appertained to their material existence. If they had any belief in a future state, it was as a material and not as a spiritual condition of existence. They had nothing to indicate even this, except, perhaps, in their funeral ceremonies, in which they sometimes decorated the corpse with feathers, flowers, and beads, and, placing his bows and arrows beside the remains, they burned them, while grass, seeds, acorns, and sometimes slices of salmon, were thrown into the place of burial. He was prepared for burial by doubling him up with his head between his legs, rolled into a ball-like shape, and wrapped round with twine to keep him in that form. When once the corpse was interred, the mourning began, the females dancing around in a circle, stopping occasionally to cry in a low, monotonous, dismal wail. The mourners covered their faces with tar and strewed their hair with ashes. These ceremonies at an end, the dead was forgotten as quickly as possible. His name was never afterwards mentioned, unless sometimes in a whisper.

        They had one custom which was common to all the Indians along the coast, particularly, but whether it was a religious ceremony, a species of recreation, or a sanitary measure, most likely the latter, we are not informed. A house in the shape of a cone was built near the river. It had a hole in the top for the escape of the smoke, while an aperture in the side served the purposes of a door. The ceremony, if it can properly be called such, consisted in packing the interior of the hut with people, and raising the temperature by means of fires to as high a degree of heat as possible. When the heat became unendurable, they would rush, naked, from the hut, streaming with perspiration, and, with cries and shrieks, plunge into the waters of the river, only to return again shortly afterwards to renew the operation. These huts were termed "sweat-houses" by the early settlers, who were frequently invited to be present at the hot dance of naked aborigines. These "sweat-houses" are known among the Indians in other parts of the State as temescales.

        Various attempts have been made to classify and divide the Indians of the coast into distinct groups, but they have proved of no use except to give names to the natives of particular localities. There were no governments, laws, or customs aggregating them into great nations or large tribes, as on the Atlantic Coast; there were no kings or even chiefs exercising sway beyond their own immediate neighborhoods. It seemed to have been seldom, indeed, that there was anything like combination or conjoint action of any kind. The Indians of Colusa County and neighboring regions lived in general in rancherias, or villages of small extent, more or less numerously populated, and as close together as the means of sustaining life were more or less abundant. Those inhabiting the same valley, or portion of a valley if large, were more or less nearly related to one another, and more or less friendly; and sometimes, on account of the proximity and relationship, neighboring rancherias might unite in a common raid for a common purpose. But, as a rule, each rancheria was independent, had its own section of country in which to gather seeds, or hunt, or fish, and had to defend itself when invaded or attacked; yet, politically speaking, they recognized the authority of a principal chief. In early times in the territory now comprised in what is known as Colusa County, there were several tribes of Indians, those of the Colus tribe predominating in numbers and surviving in small numbers the utter extinction of other tribes.

        "There were, perhaps," writes Will S. Green, an eminent and observant local authority, "a thousand or more of the Colus Indians in 1850. There were a number of camps of the Colus, the names of which I can remember, as follows: The Loch Loch, signifying big red-tailed hawk, was at the head of Sycamore Slough, and now the lowest down the river of any of the Cora or Colus tribe. The Doc-doc was just below the town (Colusa), and Coo-coo-a was the next below. Colusa is built on the ruins of Cora, the capital of the nation. The Cow-peck was opposite Colusa, on Colonel Wilkins' farm. The Tat-no is now occupied, and is on Colonel Hagar's land, some four miles above Colusa. The Si-cope was in the bend of the river east of the Five-mile House. The Cah-cheal was at the old Seven-mile House. The Si-ee (view) was at the bend at the upper end of Judge Hastings' land, and was so called because there was no timber to obstruct the view of the plains. The Wy-terre (turn to the north) is now inhabited, and is on the upper end of the Jimeno grant. The Cha was at Senator Boggs. The Ket-tee (Indian for wild wormwood) was at Princeton; and Tu-tu, the tipper village of the Cora tribe, was some two miles above Princeton."

        These Indians did not cultivate the soil, though in a land of extreme fertility, rich in well-watered plains and luxuriant valleys, but lived upon what they could dig out (hence their appellation of "Diggers" by the early white settlers) or gather on top of the ground, and ate everything and anything within easy reach that would support human life, not excepting grasshoppers and grub-worms. Acorns were crushed in a mortar and soaked in water for a short time till the bitterness had been modified, and rendered more palatable. When the salmon were ascending the Sacramento River in the spring, they were caught in large quantities and dried for consumption during the year. In all these household duties the labor thereof devolved upon the squaws, the bucks, in their indolence and barbarous contempt for domestic occupations, scorning to be purveyors for their families, unless sometimes to kill an antelope or other kind of game, where the effort would not prove too exacting on their breath and perspiration. They were so habitually indolent or apathetic that the most zealous efforts to convince them of the benefits of industry would have been thrown away. They had no ambition of any kind, and seemed to care for or take lively interest in nothing. All of the operations of their minds and bodies seemed to be carried on with a mechanical, lifeless, careless indifference, which was so general and apparently ineradicable that it seemed to be inherent in their very natures. Hunger alone compelled them to make some exertion in search of food, but they labored no further than was necessary to secure a supply of anything that would sustain life, without much reference to its quality.

        In dress they were Edenic in its primitiveness. Upon the coming of the white men among them, the males of the Colus tribe were naked, only arrayed in that climate, concerning which the modern Californian has to endure so much good-natured badinage. Among the females there was an effort, and, literally, it might well be termed a transparent one, at hiding their shame with a rude netting made of wild hemp and sometimes of a bunch of tule hanging down in front. Beads were worn around the necks by both sexes, and were much coveted. Shells also were esteemed in making up their costumes. A head-piece made of woodpeckers' feathers, set off with small shells, made its wearer a perfect beau in swell aboriginal circles, while with her ears dangling black and white checkered bones the squaw took on the airs of an irresistible flirt.

        As for a circulating medium of exchange or barter, it can scarcely be said that these Colus Indians had any. It was hardly to be expected, in their uncivilized condition, with their wants almost spontaneously supplied by an indulgent Mother Nature, that they required any particular standard of value or means for outside negotiations. Still they placed great value upon shells and beads, which were used both as a sort of money and for ornaments. Beside the river shells, there were found among them those of the abalone shell, a large species of clam, and these were evidently brought from the coast and were used as currency among the numerous tribes and rancherias who occupied the intervening country between the ocean and the Sacramento Valley. Beads were likewise made from a spiral shell. It is impossible at this date to learn or conceive what these indolent, poverty-nourishing "Diggers" had to give in return for these ornaments or wampum, for they possessed nothing scarcely which the other tribes around did not enjoy in a greater or less degree.

        In their domestic life they all recognized a species of marriage, but it was hardly what is generally understood among civilized nations by that term. Practically, the Colus are regarded by those who observed them in the latest decline of their tribe as monogamists. If a young man felt a particular desire for a young woman, he expressed it to her parents, and, loading himself down with shells, beads, or scarce and dainty articles of food, he laid siege for her hand. If other suitors presented themselves, the girl's choice nearly always fell upon him who possessed the most with which to endow her, in which commercial estimate of the value of her heart and charms the aboriginal American maiden of the foot-hills and toles seems to have been the prototype of her fairer-hued civilized American sister who came after her. Chastity was most highly prized and protected, and adultery was punished with death. If marriage was easily contracted, it was just as easily dissolved. Husband and wife could separate by mutual consent as easily as they united. But as long as the woman toiled and labored for her idle lord, and supplied him with means of living an indolent, animal life, she was secure of his indulgence. If, then, the marriage state was merely a domestic modus vivendi, and unhallowed with any particular sanctity, it had its compensation in the absence of lasciviousness, and the continence which it inculcated and observed.

        As has been before remarked, it is difficult to ascertain just what the religious belief of the Indians in their savage state was. They had no writings, letters, hieroglyphics, pictures, or characters of any description from which information can be obtained; nor have there been any writers who have had sufficient opportunities of acquaintance with their language and practices, and who at the same time were well enough versed in investigations of this character, to gauge with discrimination the nature and extent of their religious ideas. The tribe was in its decline and on its way to hasty extinction when the early white adventurer or settler appeared among them. And as few of these had the time or inclination to study them, their ways, domestic polity, language, or religion, all that survives of the record of these Indians is chiefly reminiscential. But if their creed be obscurely traced, the medicine-men, or malleumpties, of the Colus have firmly fastened themselves in the memories of the "old-timers." Sorcery was an adjunct of their vague religious belief, for sorcerers or medicine-men were their priests. They pretended to exercise supernatural control over the bodies of the Indians, claiming to cure disease by incantations and curious rites and ceremonies. Their teachings, and particularly the account they gave of the origin and sanction of their supernatural claims, embraced, in the main, all the ideas that were current as to superior powers and supernatural existences. The medicine-man was reverenced and feared by all, for not only could he cure disease, but he could cause rain, produce harvests, and foretell events. But it must be said that the attributes with which he was endowed and the respect and fear in which he was held, depended largely upon his success. If an epidemic attacked the tribe proving more or less fatal among its members, especially in the family of the chief; were acorns scarce, or a protracted drought unbearable, the poor medicine-man was held responsible for these calamities, and not unfrequently was he sacrificed both as an atonement and a remedy.

        Besides his arts of incantation, he used few material remedies When he failed to cure by sucking the blood of some diseased part (a custom peculiar to nearly all the Indians of Northern California), the "sweat-house" was resorted to. It was both a religious sanctuary and a sanitarium. It was regarded as the never-failing remedy for the Indian, whether his ailments were little or great. And into it they went, whether afflicted with typhus or toothache, a fit of indigestion or the small-pox. There were, doubtless, cases in which these hot-air and cold-water baths were beneficial, and perhaps in many instances were not hurtful, but in cases of small-pox and other kindred diseases which sometimes swept over the country, as occurred in the years 1829, 1833, and 1856, the "sweat-house" panacea proved dreadfully fatal.

        In his treatment of the white people, the Colus Indian cannot be complained of. With a lethargy and irresolution born of natural contentment with his surroundings, he was as indifferent to the advent of the pale-faces as he was powerless to resist them. He was passive and submissive in the new order of things, and by no means unfriendly to the early white men. Their chief, Sioc, is still remembered by many, as much for his kindness, love of his tribe, honesty, and fair treatment of the new-corners, as for his great stature and noble bearing. He was reverenced and obeyed by his people. He felt that oblivion would soon cover them, and was conscious of his inability to prevent it. If he meekly succumbed to the inevitable, the bitterest drop in his chalice of misfortunes was the fatal change in the morality of his people. Little by little his people broke loose from the restraints which tribal injunction or custom had imposed upon them concerning the purity of their women. Their contact with white men served to degrade them, and robbed them of the only virtue which had made them superior to some of the early white adventurers who tarried among them. Their unchastity smote heavily on the feelings of old Sioc. It broke his heart, and he died in 1852.

        An interesting narrative concerning the habits of these Indians in 1851, as well as a brief description of the efforts made by a few early settlers to utilize their labor, is given by Judge Wm. B. Hyde in a letter written at this period to a relative on the Atlantic Coast. He writes: "I have a few Indians to employ and to clothe, and one-half of them are now unemployed. Their labor is to cultivate the soil, to ditch, fence, build, and improve the same lands over which their fathers have spent their lives in idleness and nakedness for thousands of years. They have hitherto increased beyond the ability of the country by its natural productions to support them. They have apparently never cultivated the smallest plant, tree, or shrub. They have subsisted on fish, acorns, roots, clover, and many other kinds of grass, on berries and the flesh of the antelope, elk, deer, rabbit, and smaller quadrupeds, as also on quails, which are very numerous.

        "They live in the rainy season in conical tents, about ten feet in diameter, covered with a thatched mass of leaves, sticks, reeds, or rushes. They make floats or rafts (balsas) of bull‑rushes (tule). The women wear an apron or bunch of willow bark, like a mop, which is made fast above the waist by a cord of the same material, and extends downwards from a foot to eighteen inches in a profuse pile of strings before and behind.
        "The men are entirely naked, except they sometimes throw an antelope skin over their shoulders. They still exist, as in former times, in small tribes, or rancherias, of from one hundred to four hundred men, speaking different dialects, and are frequently enemies to each other. They look to the white man who owns their land as the "Great Chief," and expect him to defend them from the attacks of their neighbors, and also from their natural enemy, the grizzly bear, whose flesh they refuse to eat, for the reason, as they believe, that he was once human, but became beastly in consequence of his disposition to eat human flesh.

        "In the time of the year for clover (of which California produces spontaneously twelve different kinds), they resort to the most favored spots and dwell in booths made of bushes. In the season for fish they dwell in thick willow groves, on the low banks of the rivers, and sleep in beds of sand. In time of oats harvest, the squaws gather large quantities by swinging a basket made of the bark of roots, against the tops of the ripe grain, a part of which falls into the basket; in time of acorns, the squaws gather immense quantities, which they put in store-houses, made of small sticks interwoven with willow bark, which they keep for winter use. These acorns are their corn, which is pounded, sifted, and made into various kinds of bread.

        "These Indians are required by a law of California to clothe themselves, and their services belong to the man who furnishes them with the means of clothing, till all arrears are paid. We generally employ the boys, and when they prove faithful we clothe their fathers, who only work in the wheat harvest. The word of the land-holder is the Indian's law, but the owner is not to do him any injustice. He is the Indian's governor, and may punish him according to certain rules, but he cannot sell him or take away his children without his consent. These Indians are voracious eaters. They have nothing to sell that will command spirituous liquors, and consequently they are not drunkards, but they are slaves of tobacco."

        Little more need be said, or can be said, of the few scattered remnants of the Colusa tribe who survive. But a few remain, perhaps not over one hundred and fifty, and are found in various parts of the country. They have become thoroughly domesticated, are quiet and inoffensive unless, maddened by liquor, have brief intervals of even laborious industry, but longer periods of inglorious indolence. They work for the most part on the larger ranches as teamsters, or in cultivating the soil. They are susceptible to kind treatment, and repay it often with strong attachment.

        The most implacable Indian-hater must contemplate with awe, not unmixed with remorse, the rapid destruction that has overtaken not only the Colus but all the other aborigines of this valley. While they were not remarkable for being either brave and bold, generous or spirited, possessing none of those characteristics that, with a coloring of romance, have made heroes of the red men of the Atlantic States, it will ever be a blot upon our civilization, disfiguring the early annals of the settlement of this State, that their almost complete obliteration followed so hard upon the introduction of civilization. It will not do to charge all this to the epidemics, which, during brief intervals of this period, proved so fatal among the red men. Doubtless these were as insignificant factors in their destruction. The silly reason of "white wheat bread " and white man's food as proving necessarily fatal to the Indian who suddenly abandons his acorns, grasshoppers, and salmon is unworthy of the dietary precepts of even an Indian "medicine-man." There are other reasons resting on indisputable facts. Whisky, and its concomitant vices, tainting whole villages and tribes in an incredibly short space of time, after the advent of many dissolute white men, have quickly assassinated these aborigines. There is no disputing this. It cannot be gainsaid that intercourse with some white men, and aping of their worst habits, a voluntary or enforced participation in the degrading vices, not only served to further debase these Indians, but hastened, by their very introduction, the extinction of these indolent, ignorant, docile creatures; they really extirpated what slow decay and the unconscious sympathies of time would have dealt more charitably with.

SOURCE:  "Colusa County", Justus H. Rogers, Orland, CA, 1891