The Bloody Island Massacre (also called the Clear Lake Massacre) occurred on an island called in the Pomo language, Bo-no-po-ti or Badon-napo-ti (Old Island), at the north end of Clear Lake, Lake County, California on May 15, 1850.[1][2] It was a place where the Pomo had traditionally gathered for ceremonies. After this event, it became known as Bloody Island.
Contents |
A number of Pomo, primarily members of the Hoolanapo clan, had been nearly enslaved and severely abused by settlers Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone. (The town of Kelseyville, California was named after the former man.) Kelsey and Stone purchased a cattle ranch from Salvador Vallejo in 1847. They captured and impressed local Pomo to work as vaqueros on the ranch. Their treatment of the Pomo was more brutal than had been Vallejo's. Families starved on the meager rations they provided, only four cups of wheat a day for a family. When one young man asked for more wheat, Stone reportedly killed him.[3] In the fall of 1849, Kelsey forced 50 Pomo men to work as laborers on a gold-seeking expedition. After he sold their rations to miners, the Pomo starved, and only one or two men returned alive.[4]
Stone and Kelsey beat and shot Pomo men, and raped their women. After they raped the wife of Chief Augustine, the tribe attacked their house. Augustine's wife poured water onto the two men's gun powder, rendering it useless; Pomo warriors, including Suk and Xasis, attacked the house at dawn, immediately killing Kelsey with an arrow. Stone jumped out a window and tried to hide in a stand of willow trees, but Augustine found him and killed him with a rock. The Pomo men took food back to their families.[4]
On May 15, 1850, a 1st Dragoons Regiment of the United States Cavalry contingent under Nathaniel Lyon, then still a lieutenant, and Lieutenant J. W. Davison[2] tried to locate Augustine's band to punish them. When they instead came upon a group of Pomo on Bonopoti (later called Bloody Island), they slaughtered many[2] including women and children. The National Park Service has estimated the army killed 60 of 400 Pomo; other accounts say 100 were killed. Some of the dead were relatives of Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake[1] and Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California. Estimates of the number of people killed on the island vary between 60 and 400. The army killed 75 more Indians along the Russian River.[3]
One of the few Pomo survivors of the massacre was a 6-year-old girl named Ni'ka, or Lucy Moore. She hid underwater and breathed through a tule reed. Her descendants have formed the Lucy Moore Foundation to work for better relations between the Pomo and residents of California.[3]
Later, the Pomo were forced to live in small rancherias set aside by the federal government. For most of the 20th century, the Pomo, reduced in number, survived on such tiny reservations in poverty. Few textbooks on California history mentioned the Bloody Island incident or abuse of the native Californians.
Two separate historical markers record the site. The first, placed by the Native Sons of the Golden West on 20 May 1942 on Reclamation Road 0.3 miles off Highway 20, simply noted the location as the scene of a "battle" between US soldiers under "Captain" Lyons and Indians under Chief Augustine.[5] California Historical Landmark No. 427, describing the location as the scene of a "massacre" mostly of women and children, was placed on Highway 20 at the Reclamation Road intersection on 15 May 2005 by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the Lucy Moore Foundation,[2] a non-profit organization founded to educate the California public about the massacre.[6]
Currently, the local band of Pomo operate the Robinson Rancheria Casino, approximately five miles from the site of the Bloody Island Massacre.