Timeline of Genocide Incidents in the Clear Lake Region

CONTENT WARNING: Many of the primary sources linked on this timeline contain racist language or sentiment and graphic accounts of settler-colonial violence against indigenous people.

Appx.* Date Number killed

 

Location Source Source files
II Before December, 1849 1 Big Valley Ranch, near Clear Lake Benson, “Stone and Kelsey ‘Massacre’,” 268 http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0107a.pdf
II Before December, 1849 4 Big Valley Ranch, near Clear Lake Benson, “Stone and Kelsey “Massacre’,” 268 http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0108a.pdf
II After December 28, 1849 3 Big Valley Ranch (Kelseyville) Davidson to Canby, January 6, 1850, 31st Cong., 1st sess., 1850, S. Exec. Doc. 52, serial 561, 65 http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0110a.pdf
II Probably May 14, 1850 3 Clear Lake Lyon to Canby, May 22, 1850, 31st Cong., 2nd sess., S. Exec. Doc. 1, Part 2, 1850, serial 587, 82 http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0126a.pdf
II May 14 or 15, 1850 2 Near Clear Lake Augustine, in Palmer, History, 2:62. http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i1061a.jpg
III May 15, 1850 16 – 800 Bloody Island in upper Clear Lake (this island no longer exists) Augustine in Palmer, History of Napa and Lake Counties, 2:62; Lyon to Canby, May 22, 1850, S. Exec. Doc. 1, Part 2, 31st Cong., 2nd Sess., 1850, serial 587, 81-83; Sherman, “Sherman Was There [Part III],” 54 http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0681a.pdf

 

http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0681b.pdf

II After May 15, 1850, Probably May 16 3 Emerson Island and Emerson Hill near Clear Lake Gibbs, August 23, 1851, journal entry, in Schoolcraft, Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge, 3:113-114; Benson, “Stone and Kelsey ‘Massacre’,” 272 http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0127a.pdf

 

http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0127b.pdf

II July, 1850 2 Near Clear Lake Sherman, “Sherman Was There, Part III,” 55-56 http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0130a.pdf
I Late 1852 or early January, 1853 3 “in the mountains near Clear lake” Woods in Jenkins to Superintendent Beale, January 13, 1853 in S. Exec. Doc. 57, 32 Cong., 2d Sess., 1853, serial 665, 10 http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0040a.pdf
II Before March 27, 1858 1 Bloody Island on Clear Lake Napa Reporter, March 27, 1858 in SDU, March 31, 1858, 2 http://nahc.ca.gov/webmaster/atlas/evidence/i0381.pdf

 

TOTAL ESTIMATED NUMBER KILLED IN REGION: 39-823

*Appendix (Appx.) refers to the reference’s location in:

Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016.

For full bibliographical references please refer to the text or Atlas credits & references

Abbreviations used in timeline:

SDU Sacramento Daily Union newspaper

 

For full bibliographical references please refer to the text or Atlas credits & references