A $700 million Indian casino plan that would have a major impact on Vallejo hasn’t made any headlines lately. But proponents are still trying to prove in federal court that they have a right to move ahead with the project – because of the historical ties of a little-known Pomo chief to our area.
Chief Augustine, whose Pomo name was Shuk, was born in the early 1830s near Clear Lake and as a child was brought to Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma. By the mid-1840s he was head vaquero for Gen. Mariano Vallejo and his brother Salvador, herding cattle on vast stretches of land that included the future site of the city of Vallejo. Augustine also lived in Napa in the 1870s, working as a ranch hand for Cayetano Juarez.
Many other Pomos followed a similar path in the 1800s, from the Clear Lake area to Sonoma, Napa and even farther south. That movement is important to the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians, whose lawyers argue it established a significant historical link to their proposed casino and housing project on tribal land on the north side of Vallejo. The attorneys also produced a letter from an early-day landowner complaining about Pomos living in what’s now Vallejo.
The Pomos’ 128-acre project site is on the flank of Hunters Hill overlooking Vallejo. It’s on the northeast side of the busy Interstate 80-State Route 37 interchange — about 10 miles from Chief Augustine’s adobe in Napa which was next door to the still-standing Cayetano Juarez home.
The case is pending before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C. The Scotts Valley Pomos appealed after the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs refused three years ago to allow the site to become restored tribal lands for gaming purposes. The BIA said a “significant historical connection” had to exist, and Augustine’s “on-again, off-again presence” in the Vallejo-Napa-Sonoma area doesn’t cut it.
Backers of the BIA ruling include the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, which operates the Cache Creek resort in Brooks, west of Woodland, and doesn’t want a competing Indian casino – in this case one that would be about 60 miles away.
“We sure would like a place for us to live,” Jesse Gonzalez, Scotts Valley Band vice-chairman, historian and great-great-great grandson of Chief Augustine, said in a phone interview. “We’re a federally recognized tribe but we’re landless. We have no place to call our home even though we are original inhabitants of this area.” There are about 300 members of the Pomo band now, with most living in Lake and Mendocino counties.
Whatever the outcome of the legal dispute, Chief Augustine’s story deserves a retelling. He managed to survive as a Pomo leader during a time of genocide committed by vigilantes and U.S. Army soldiers against thousands of California Indians.
Between late 1847 and late 1849, Augustine herded cattle for Benjamin and Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone on land near Clear Lake. In his award-winning 2016 book An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, author Benjamin Madley described the Kelsey brothers and Stone as ruthless brutes who routinely kidnapped and enslaved Native Americans. Madley said captives were beaten, starved and shot at for sport, and there were murders as well as rapes of women, including Augustine’s wife.
Augustine, considered the orginator of plans to kill Stone and Andrew Kelsey, said in an 1880 oral interview that their abuses were getting worse and worse “and the Indians thought that they might as well die one way as another, so they decided to take the final and fatal step.” Augustine said that Stone, his throat cut, managed to run into the main ranch house but bled to death. Kelsey, shot in the back with an arrow, ran but was caught by a Pomo who hit him in the head with a rock, killing him. Madley has another version: Kelsey ran but was grabbed and held by two men. The mother of a Pomo he had killed then killed him by spearing him in the heart.
Madley wrote that the plotters “could not envision the scope of retaliatory mass murder that killing Stone and Kelsey would provoke.” The worst reprisal occurred in mid-May 1850, as a regiment of the 1st Dragoons of the U.S. Cavalry, commanded by Capt. Nathaniel Lyon and Lt. J.W. Davidson, arrived at Clear Lake. The soldiers, joined by Benjamin Kelsey and other vigilantes, launched an all-out attack on trapped Pomos who had fled to an island at the north end of the lake. Several hundred men, women and children died in what’s known as the Bloody Island Massacre. The attackers had no casualties.
Army Maj. Edwin Allen Sherman went to Clear Lake two months after the massacre to help locate the missing livestock of Stone and the Kelsey brothers. Years later, he said at least 400 Pomo men were killed or drowned during the attack and an equal number of women and children died. “If Sherman’s estimate is correct, the May 15, 1850, attack may rank among the most lethal of all Native American massacres in the history of the United States and its colonial antecedents,” Madley stated.
Augustine descendant Gonzalez said his family stories of the massacre are similar to Maj. Sherman’s account. He also said Chief Augustine was one of the survivors of the attack. After his time in Napa in the 1870s, Augustine was back in the Clear Lake area by 1880, working as a laborer. He remained an important Pomo leader until his death in 1903.
— Vallejo and other Solano County communities are treasure troves of California history. The “Solano Chronicles” column, running every other Sunday, highlights various aspects of that history. My source references are available upon request. If you have local stories or photos to share, email me at genoans@hotmail.com. You can also send any material care of the Times-Herald, 420 Virginia St.; or the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, 734 Marin St., Vallejo 94590.
The Link LonkJanuary 14, 2022 at 07:32AM
https://www.timesheraldonline.com/2022/01/13/brendan-rileys-solano-chronicles-indian-casino-dispute
Brendan Riley’s Solano Chronicles: Indian casino dispute focuses on little-known chief - Vallejo Times-Herald
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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