Europeans who colonized America held sharply different views about how best to deal with displaced native peoples: Anglo-Americans believed in removal far away from white settlements - extermination if necessary. The Spanish-Americans preferred to convert the natives into useful laborers by whatever means necessary. While many Humboldt citizens during the 1850's believed that annihilation of the indigenous peoples was the only practical solution to the problems of Indian-white relations, the farmers and farmer-fishermen who settled along the Eel River estuary seemed to have leaned toward the Spanish way, often utilizing Wiyot Indian labor in their enterprises.

The unwarlike Wiyot were an Algonquin people numbering perhaps one thousand individuals prior to contact with whites; they lived in isolated villages and family groups along the coast from the Bear River mountains to Little River, and inland twelve to fifteen miles. Their hostile relationships with Athapascan tribes living in the surrounding hills south and east of them furthered their isolation. Their nearest friendly neighbors were the Yurok on the north, who were also Algonquins. The Wiyot were less robust than their mountain neighbors: scrofula and other physical maladies were endemic among them. Federal commissioners of Indian Affairs who studied California tribes during the 1850's attributed these health problems to an excessive amount of fish and other aquatic foods in their diet, and inbreeding resulting from isolation.

The Wiyot's predisposition toward peaceful coexistance with whites was apparent from their first contacts in late December 1849, when tribal memebers helped the exploring Gregg-Wood party find its way south around Humboldt Bay. Shortly afterward, two elderly Wiyot men met the explorers near the junction of the Eel and Van Duzan rivers, and fell to the ground in terror, but upon recovering offered eels to the starving whites. (Hence the name, Eel River; the native people called it "Weeott Lolla," which meant "Many Eels" or "River of Plenty," according to mapmaker Doolittle.)

Although great numbers of Wiyot were killed by the encroaching whites during the 1850's, many of the lower Eel River Wiyot - numbering perhaps 400 individuals before contact with the whites - seemed to have established a mutually beneficial relationship with the settlers on the Eel River estuary. Some quickly learned to speak English. They helped in homes and in the fields. They guided pack trains to the Trinity mines and provided the settlers with food from the river and the sea. In return, white settlers often provided clothing and shelter to Indians, and offered protection from the avowed Indian- killers who also settled in the area. Jesse Dungan, the pioneer farmer-fisherman, for example, more than once interceded when trouble erupted between whites and Indians; he was highly respected by both groups for his fair-mindedness.

Salmon fishermen found the Indians particularly useful in clearing the river bottom of net-clogging snags. The natives were able to dive into the cold estuarine waters to tie lines around sunken trees and roots and hoist them out.

Also, intermarrige between Indians and white settlers was common in Humboldt County, and according to Llewellen L. Loud, who studied the Wiyot tribe under the aegis of the anthropologist A.L. Kroeber, such unions "appear to have been quite satisfactory....", although some white men's quests for Indian women sometimes led to murdurous confrontations between the races.

Despite this relatively peaceful relationship with whites along the lower Eel River, the Humboldt Wiyot population declined dramatically during the 1850's. County-wide, the tribe was almost totally extinguished during the Indian Island massacre of February 26, 1860, and the subsequent removal of Indians to the Klamath, Smith River, and Hoopa reservations. After a few years, surviving Eel River Indians - a small fraction of the original numbers sent to the reservations (by one account forty of two hundred) - were permitted to return to their home territory. (Small bands who had tried to return earlier were met by a few white protectors, but a far larger group wished to murder them.)

Legal Aspects of Indian/White Relations

The Fact that the Wiyot remained peaceful even after destructive contacts with whites may be explained also by broader political and legal realities of the time. Indians were denied citizenship by the state Constitution, and until 1855, Indian testimony was inadmissable in court. In 1850, the legislature passed "An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians," the so-called "indenture law" that sanctioned white seizure of Indians for forced labor for a varying number of years. This section of the law remained in effect until 1863, but some parts were still "on the books" as late as 1926. An 1860 amendment, initiated by Humboldt assemblyman Lewis M. Burson, and Mendocino state senator J.B. Lamar, made possible the buying and selling of Indian children by whites. Public records show that during the years the indenture law was in effect many Humboldt citizens, including many Eel River farmers and fishermen, obtained Indians as laborers and household servants.

The indenture law also specified that whites employing Indians must feed them, clothe them, and treat them humanely. It is not known how this provision affected farmer-fishermen treatment of indentured Eel River Indians, but the 1857 report of a federal investigator, J. Ross Browne, offers possible clues. In his book, Indians of California, Browne detailed how north coast settlers hired Indians for field work at a fixed wage, provided beans, "gave them a blanket or a shirt each," and considered the accounts squared when the crops had been harvested. He summarized his experience in these words: "If ever an Indian was fully and honestly paid for his labor by a white settler, it was not my luck to hear of it....."

As indicated above, some Indians were indentured to serve white fishermen; it seems likely that others - accepting their vanquished condition - would have continued in a subordinate working relationship with whites independently of the indenture law.

Other laws were crafted with the expressed intent (questioned by prominant historians) to protect the Indians' fisheries. The state's first salmon statute in 1852, for instance, required "all good citizens and officers of justice" to destroy man-made obstructions to salmon migration, except those erected by Indians. Later laws included similar exemptions. An element of the 1850 "indenture law" provided that Indians could remain on their ancestral lands, "unmolested in the pursuit of their usual avocations for the maintenance of themselves and families....", and that whites in possession of such land could set off a portion on which Indians could reside, "unless otherwise provided for." Perhaps in keeping with this provision of the law, or by outright purchase of the land in 1869, about forty Indians who survived their enforced stay at northern reservations remained on part of Cock Robin Island near the river's mouth, where they lived until at least the turn of the century. During that time many were employed in the white fishery as before, and did subsistance fishing with traps and gillnets when the regular season was closed. But relations between Indian and white fishermen were probably rarely cordial, and deteriorated in subsequent years.

In the 1880's, when salmon abundance had declined markedly, all obstructions to salmon migration, including those built by Indians, were banned by state law. In early fall, 1888, the Ferndale Enterprise reported that when Indians had built a fish trap near Singley's Ferry, and the deputy fish commissioner ordered the obstruction removed, the Indians refused to comply "unless the county would board them for three months." The deputy had warrants sworn out for their arrest, but apparently never served them, because at 11:00 o'clock one night "unknown parties placed a couple of charges of powder" in the trap and "blew it to smithereens."

Later, in 1915, when fish buyers Ray Davidson and Peter Ferrara - who employed Indians to gillnet salmon for them - sought to establish longer fishing seasons, they protested to Humboldt legislators that the Indians had to be provided with boats and nets, even in years of low salmon abundance, and that this created economic hardships for the whites.

Epilogue

During the preparation of this article, the author talked with Irving James, a Wiyot Indian living on Table Bluff who at age 95 is surely the last surviving Eel River commercial salmon fisherman. He had fished commercially for salmon as a youth until 1920, when "there just didn't seem to be any salmon left in the river." But fishing is still in his blood. Mr. James has the strong voice of one whose hearing is failing, and as he told about his best day of fishing, he exclaimed loudly: "I didn't even have half the net in the water, and the floats started sinking, and by the time I picked the last fish out of the net I had two thousand pounds! I sold five hundred pounds and gave five hundred to a relative who was fishing upriver from me and not catching any. We kept the remaining thousand pounds and sold it the next day; we got one cent a pound for the lot. I'll always remember that day. There weren't any more like it, ever."