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Traders and Raiders: Aspects of Trans-Basin and California-Plateau Commerce, 1800-1830

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Traders and Raiders: Aspects of Trans-Basin and California-Plateau Commerce, 1800-1830 Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 127-137 (1981). Traders and Raiders: Aspects of Trans-Basin and California-Plateau Commerce, 1800-1830 THOMAS N. LAYTON OLLOWING introduction of the horse predatory bands of horse nomads between Finto the northern Rockies in the late 1800 and 1830. It is argued that concurrent seventeenth century, Indians there became settlement shifts occurred during this period mobile middlemen linking the Pacific-Plateau as pedestrian Indians moved to more pro­ and Middle-Missouri trade systems (Wood tected, less vulnerable locations away from 1972). By the end of the eighteenth century, the major trade routes frequented by Cahforniahad become integrated into this net­ mounted traders and raiders. work by a northern and an eastern route. The northern slave route hnked with The Dalles THE KLAMATH SLAVE TRADE on the Columbia River and incorporated an intermediate node at Yainax Butte near the In 1826, Peter Skene Ogden, an employee California-Oregon border. The eastern trans- of the Hudson's Bay Company and the leader Great Basin route linked California with the of a brigade of fur trappers, became the first Rockies via the Humboldt River and incor­ European to visit and describe the Klamath; porated an intermediate node at the Hum­ he counted one horse. But the Klamath were boldt Sink. Cahfornia horses and manufac­ already practicing a frankly defensive hfestyle tured goods may have been the major because of predation by mounted raiders commodities on this route. The documen­ from the north. Ogden (Elhott 1910:210) tation for long-distance commerce by horse­ recorded a hidden village in the Klamath men in Cahfornia and the Great Basin is Marsh less than 30 miles from the California- scattered, fragmentary, and of mixed quality. Oregon border as follows: However, when the pieces are juxtaposed, a It was composed of 20 tents built on the definite pattern can be discerned. water approachable only by canoes, the This paper examines the emergence of tents built of large logs shaped Uke block horse-facihtated commerce and the develop­ houses, the foundation stone or gravel made sohd by piles sunk 6 ft. deep. Their tents are ment of trade centers and of composite constantly guarded. They regretted we had opened a communication from the moun­ Thomas N. Layton, Dept. of Anthropology, San Jose tains. They said "The Nez Perces have made State Univ., San Jose, CA 951 92. different attempts to reach our village but [127] 128 JOURNAL OF CALIFORNIA AND GREAT BASIN ANTHROPOLOGY could not succeed. Even last summer we ... the objectives of their trading expedi­ discovered a war party of Cayuse and Nez tions were Warm Springs as well as The Perces in search of us; but they did not find Dalles. Slaves, Pit River bows and beads, and us. Now they will have yr. road to foUow. lily seed were taken there to exchange for We have no fire arms. StiU we fear them horses, blankets, buffalo skins, parfleches, not." beads (probably dentalium shells), dried salmon, and lamprey eels. Occasionally they If Ogden saw one Klamath horse in 1826 stayed the winter on the Columbia, some­ there were probably others well hidden. The times for a number of years. sophisticated defensive architecture and set­ tlement placement he described were hardly Of this commerce, slaves stand out as the new either, for the Klamath had become primary commodity. Sapir (1930:43) noted indirectly articulated into the Pacific-Plateau that slaves seem to have been numerous and trading system before 1800. Evidence of slaving expeditions frequent. Slaves, horses, travel south through Klamath country to and beads (in that order) were the most Califomia by Columbia River Indians for the highly rated forms of wealth in Klamath purpose of trading and horse stealing may be values. Perhaps the most detailed account of traced back to the beginning of the nine­ the Klamath slave trade is that of Gatschet teenth century. Heizer (1942) described a (1890:ix-x) who described annual slave raids well-documented trading expedition of forty against the Pit Rivers: Nez Perce, Cayuse, and Walla Walla Indians under the leadership of Yellow Serpent, who In April and May the Klamath Lakes and the traveled from the Columbia River to Sutter's Modocs would surround the camps, Idll the Fort in California's Sacramento Valley in men, and abduct the women and children to 1844, but intermittent visits by Columbia their homes, or sell them into slavery at the international bartering place at The Dalles. River peoples to California for trade and . Some of the eastern Pit Rivers seem to securing horses probably occurred much have lived on friendly terms with the earlier. The same scholar cited evidence that Modocs; but the banks farther south, especi­ Yellow Serpent himself may have witnessed ally the Hot Springs and the Big VaUey California horse raids organized by his father Indians, were the principal sufferers of these as early as 1800. These long-distance expedi­ incursions. In a raid of 1857 fifty-six of their women and children were enslaved and sold tions by Columbia River Indians passed south on the Columbia River for Cayuse ponies, through Oregon and undoubtedly impacted one squaw being rated at five or six horses the Klamath long before Ogden's 1826 and a boy, one horse. description. We may speculate that the Klamath were at first preyed upon by mounted parties from THE TRADE FAIR AT YAINAX BUTTE the north, but that they, in turn, learned to prey upon their Cahfornia neighbors to the The Pacific-Plateau trade system was char­ south. Possibly by 1800 the Klamath were acterized by major trade centers and a scatter­ already becoming middlemen passing Cahfor­ ing of less important nodes. There is strong nia goods in ever increasing amounts north to evidence that the Klamath middlemen may The Dalles, the international trading center on have controlled at least one such node within the Columbia River. Summarizing early nine­ their own territory at Yainax Butte, 30 miles teenth century long-distance Klamath com­ east of Klamath Lake. The evidence for this merce, Sapir (1909:104) reported that: trade center is entirely from one source: TRADERS AND RAIDERS 129 Samuel A. Clarke, a pioneer Oregon news­ on a slave hunting raid. The Yahooskin or paperman and historian. In 1873, Clarke Summer Lake Snakes did not hesitate to covered the Modoc War as a New York Times take part in these gatherings, for, though neutral as to their fellow Snakes, they liked correspondent. At the cessation of hostihties to take a hand in the games, make good he was invited to visit the Yainax Indian trades, and swap horses—when they could do Agency. Clarke was later to publish three so to advantage. There was pleasure and colorful accounts of this trip (Clarke 1873, honor, as well as plenty of business, here at 1879, 1905) from which I have excerpted the Yainax on those gala days in October [Clarke 1905:1920]. following description of the Yainax Butte trade fair. Although in popular magazine articles Within sight of that butte I have held long Clarke did engage in Victorian romantic talks with Modoc and Klamath chieftains, hyperbole, frankly imagining the sounds, the who have woven the tradition of their tribes odors, and the excitement of the Yainax trade into form for my satisfaction [Clarke fair, I am inclined to beheve that the account 1879)... To this mountain's base came the above is accurate in its essentials. In his Columbia River Indians to exchange fleet cayuse coursers for slaves, to barter the authoratative, two-volume Pioneer Days of blankets and nicknacks furnished by the Fur Oregon History, Clarke (1905:115-118) cited Company traders for the furs gathered by and quoted extensively from Alexander Modocs and KJamaths, and the bows and Ross's account of the Yakima Trade Fair in arrows so deftly made and so skillfully 1814 and acknowledged a discussion with fashioned by the Pit Rivers. Yainax was a William McKay (1869) who published a des­ great slave mart in the long ago, for Kla- maths and Modocs, being first cousins, and cription of the Dalles trade fair. Clarke seems as kind and unkind as near relatives are apt to have done his homework. to be, made war indiscriminately on weaker If, as seems likely, Clarke interviewed men tribes and took captives to swell the impor­ approaching 65 years of age in 1873, they tance of the Yainax fairs. Woe to Snakes and Pit Rivers, Shastas and Rogue Rivers, when would have given him eyewitness descriptions Klamaths took the war-path, more hungry of Yainax Trade Fairs of their early adult for captives than for scalps. [Clarke years circa 1820-30. Clarke's informant testi­ 1873:550] . Yainax was a convenient mony of mounted Great Basin "Snakes" in meeting place for tribes within hundred of attendance at Yainax finds strong indirect miles in all directions. .. Klamaths, support in the 1827 journal of Ogden. On Modocs, Summer Lake Snakes, to the east; Warm Springs people, from the north; May 27th of that year, Ogden recorded a Shastas and Pitt Rivers, from Northern band of mounted horsemen living a scant 70 CaUfomia; all those fraternized, and each miles due east of Yainax Butte near the north October, when the earth had yielded its end of Warner Valley. Here he had to send fruits at command of the summer sun, they thirteen men in pursuit of Indians (probably met here in grand conclave, with the Nez Northern Paiutes) who had stolen fifty-six of Perces and Cayuses, and others of the Columbia River tribes.
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