A History of the Kashaya Indians, 1812-2012
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THEY GAMBLED SKILLFULLY FOR SURIVAL: A HISTORY OF THE KASHAYA INDIANS, 1812-2012 __________________ A University Thesis Presented to the Faculty Of California State University, East Bay __________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History __________________ By Jared White September, 2012 Jared White © 2012 ii THEY GAMBLED SKILLFULLY FOR SURIVAL: A HISTORY OF THE KASHAYA INDIANS, 1812-2012 By Jared White Approved: Date: D!£-leider k:1 ~ iii I would like to thank my wife and family for all of their love and support during my educational pursuits, without which I would not have been able to finish this thesis. I would also like to express my appreciation to my thesis advisor, Professor Khal Schneider, for the indispensible insights and guidance offered in American Indian history and to Professor Dee Andrews for reading my paper and availing her historical and writing expertise. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………. iv Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: The Kashayas’ Pre-contact Cultural Foundation……………………………...7 Chapter 2: A Gamble on the Russians…………………………………………………...17 Signs of Change……………………………………………………………...18 Learning to Play by the Indians’ Rules………………………………………23 The Relationship’s Beginning (1812-1820s)…………………………………28 The Agricultural Years (1820s-1841)………………………………………...39 The Gamble’s Outcome………………………………………………………43 Chapter 3: Maintaining Community against All Odds…………………………………..47 Stolen Territory……………………………………………………………….47 The Benitz Era………………………………………………………………..54 Legacy of the Benitz Era……………………………………………………..67 At Haupt’s Place……………………………………………………………...74 Introduction to the Earth Lodge Cult and Bole Maru………………………...78 Capitalistic Transformation of Community…………………………………..84 Family Legacies and Living History…………………………...…………….90 Chapter 4: Annie Jarvis and the Revival of Indian Religion………………………….....98 Moving to a Permanent Home………………………………………………107 Conservationism versus Indian Rights………………………………………104 Schools, Churches, and Assimilation……………………………………......115 Jobs, the Great Depression, and the Indian New Deal………………………127 Annie Jarvis’ Legacy………………………………………………...………134 Chapter 5: Risky Cultural Adaptations and Political Sovereignty...……………………137 Leveraging Academia and Education for Cultural Survival……...…………157 The Kashayas’ Part in Red Power…………………………………..………164 The Kashayas’ Ongoing Opponents……………………………..………….172 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..……179 Bibliography………………………………..…………………………………………..183 v 1 Introduction “Now the bear is going to start to play. That bear had been claiming that he was an expert gambler. Now he started to play while they were laughing and shouting, expecting to win – ‘Under a Manzanita, swoosh, swoosh, grunt’ – he was saying while playing. They (his opponents), unexpectedly, guessed him too. The next to play is the mussel – the one that is going to win. […] He played, singing while playing. Unexpectedly, he got more sticks than anyone.”1 Long before people existed, powerful animal-people ruled the earth. Of these, the most intelligent, craftiest, and powerful of all was Coyote. According to “The People from on Top of the Land,” or “Kashayas” as they are more commonly known, Coyote created the ocean, food, and the first people. In one of the Kashayas’ creation stories, Coyote gathers a great number of tail feathers from various birds, then arranges them in a circle on the floor of a sweathouse and turns them into people. “’Let there be people!’ he said four times. Suddenly, on the fourth time, Coyote heard people talking and laughing in the sweathouse. When he went down there to see the people he had created, amazingly there were people dwelling inside.”2 These were the first people, the first Kashayas. While Kashayas refer to themselves as “The People from the Top of the Land,” a neighboring band of Pomo Indians gave them the name “Kashaya,” which means “expert gamblers.” This is an appropriate name, as gambling was an important part of Kashaya culture for eons. Beginning approximately two hundred fifty years ago, however, 1 Herman James, “The Animal Gamblers,” Kashaya Texts, Robert Oswalt, ed., In University of California Publications in Linguistics, Vol. 33, Bull, W.E. Bull, C.D. Chretien, M. B. Emeneau, M. R. Hass, Harry Hoijer, D.L. Olmsted, R.P. Stockwell, eds. (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1963), 123. 2 Herman James, “The Creation of People and the Ocean,” Kashaya Texts, 43. 2 Kashayas were forced to use their expert gambling skills in a competition for the highest stakes they had ever known, their existence as a people. While the Kashayas’ struggle against brutal oppression was anything but fun and games, traditional gambling provides a useful metaphor to describe the strategies Kashayas’ used to survive Spanish, Russian, and American colonization. For the Kashayas, as for other California and American Indians, the realm of possibilities in the face of colonial power was narrow, yet their historical trajectory was not one of inevitable assimilation or destruction. Instead, by maintaining and adapting their cultural traditions, taking calculated risks, and carefully reading their opponents, Kashayas contested, and continue to contest, the dictates of capitalism, white supremacy, and colonization. Kashayas created their own path from the past into the present by leveraging whatever space they could find in a world crowded by destructive agendas. In one Kashaya story, a bear claims that he is an expert gambler and is going to win; in the end, however, it is a small mussel from the coast that is declared to be “the one that is going to win.”3 Like the mussel, Kashayas challenged the narratives of power with their own expectations. From 1812 through 2012 the Kashayas lived through four distinguishable periods of colonization – the Russian era, the Gold Rush, the Ranching era, and post-WWII America – which roughly correspond with the chapters in this paper. In order to overcome European and American assaults on their existence, the Kashayas used a number of cultural tools to adapt to and contest the colonial expectations of the different 3 Herman James, “The Animal Gamblers,” Kashaya Texts, 123. 3 opponents that accompanied each period. By drawing on some of the major themes of American Indian history, this paper focuses on one important facet of California Indian history in connection to the Kashayas’ survival strategies against each opponent. The use of the word “opponent” is fitting, not only because it is consistent with the gambling analogy, but because, while the colonists the Kashayas faced were not always literal enemies, they sought to take land and possessions that had historically been part of the Kashayas’ lifeways. These opponents found a people who were not about to give up their cultural inheritance or material possessions without a struggle. The thematic outline of the paper is as follows: In Chapter 1, I outline the Kashayas’ pre-contact culture in order to help the reader recognize the cultural elements that would remain central to the Kashayas’ identity under the pressures of colonization. In their gamble for survival, traditional land, language, religion, and community would be consistently prioritized for risk-taking. These elements would also be used as tools for Indian agency and, when re-asserted in the twentieth century, would form the basis for re-making cultural identity and establishing political sovereignty. In Chapter 2, I describe how the Kashayas subverted the expectations of powerful European colonists through the use of careful diplomacy and by taking calculated risks. By the time the Russians arrived in 1812, the Kashayas, along with Indians across the West Coast, faced the threat of becoming forced laborers or new converts at the hands of Spanish soldiers and Franciscan friars. While the Russian American Company (RAC), like the Spanish, sought to benefit from Indian labor, the Kashayas accomplished on the 4 Sonoma Coast what Indians in other fur trading societies were able to accomplish – they leveraged one colonial power (the Russians) against another (the Spanish), in combination with other pre-established cultural strategies, to assert their own expectations for their labor and living patterns. The Kashayas would continue to face colonial demands for Indian labor into the modern era, but from their first contact with the Russians, they established a pattern of resistance that would help them preserve their efforts for the continuance of their own culture. In Chapter 3, I explain how the Kashayas re-created traditional communities despite the violence that accompanied American colonization. Early European colonists were quickly displaced by American gold miners and ranchers who hoped to make their fortunes in the West, albeit at the expense of those not selected for “manifest destiny.” After California became a state, and with the passage of the Act for the Government and Protection of the Indians in 1850, Indians were exploited for their land and labor beyond anything experienced during Spanish or Russian colonization. While the Kashayas and other Indians continued to resist forced labor, the heightened violence and disease of the period increased the difficulty and importance of maintaining traditional communities and kinship networks. Though displaced from most of their land and forced to work for white ranchers, the Kashayas preserved and recreated communities, on what had become white land, through the use of traditional