Mariposa
"In some counties, laws
legalizing the murder and scalping of Indians were passed. In the Mariposa
region, for example, miners drew up a petition demanding that Indians be
outlawed; then the sheriff, sole civil and judiciary authority in Mariposa,
rendered his decree: "I pronounce the Indian outlawed. Consequently,
everyone is permitted to kill the Indians he encounters anywhere in the county
of Mariposa, on the sole condition of burying them and of letting the sheriff
know where and how many of them he has killed." Even in California
counties where homicide was illegal, few whites were brought to court to answer
for killing Indians." ~M Kat Anderson, Tending the Wild
Mariposa is the name of a grove of sequoia trees in an area where humans and animals native to there are not seen. The name is a Spanish butterfly and arrived when the Missions moved inland and set up ranching and agriculture on a scale that pushed native populations to the fringes. The name stayed after America fought a war to take California, a struggle which culminated in a treaty that would cede California from Mexican rule, which had been after Spanish rule, and to what would now be under American rule, each group doing a better job than their predecessors in thrashing the land with cattle and sheep, while starving and brutalizing the initial inhabitants. If this confuses you, you are not alone. The name stayed when, a fortnight before the signing of this particular treaty, gold was discovered in the hills, which led émigrés from as far as New Zealand to fell the massive trees of the hillsides and to sluice the major rivers, the Klammath, Sacramento & Toulomne, perhaps permanently wrecking some of the most fertile feeding grounds on the planet, and to enact a curse from a chief of the Yalesummy tribe, who considered themselves part of the Nisenan tribe, concerning the ownership of the shiny flakes in the river. Their peoples had been pushed around for 9 generations or more by that point. The chief's curse was that the gold, 'belonged to a demon who devoured all who search for it.'
Mariposa is the name of a grove of sequoia trees in an area where humans and animals native to there are not seen. The name is a Spanish butterfly and arrived when the Missions moved inland and set up ranching and agriculture on a scale that pushed native populations to the fringes. The name stayed after America fought a war to take California, a struggle which culminated in a treaty that would cede California from Mexican rule, which had been after Spanish rule, and to what would now be under American rule, each group doing a better job than their predecessors in thrashing the land with cattle and sheep, while starving and brutalizing the initial inhabitants. If this confuses you, you are not alone. The name stayed when, a fortnight before the signing of this particular treaty, gold was discovered in the hills, which led émigrés from as far as New Zealand to fell the massive trees of the hillsides and to sluice the major rivers, the Klammath, Sacramento & Toulomne, perhaps permanently wrecking some of the most fertile feeding grounds on the planet, and to enact a curse from a chief of the Yalesummy tribe, who considered themselves part of the Nisenan tribe, concerning the ownership of the shiny flakes in the river. Their peoples had been pushed around for 9 generations or more by that point. The chief's curse was that the gold, 'belonged to a demon who devoured all who search for it.'
Chilling, my friend. I've been reading Gary Snyder's Turtle Island, which also plunges deep into human and prehistoric history in order to make partial sense of beautiful, troubled California landscapes. The savagely institutionalized violence you write about here is a story that needs telling and retelling. Thank you.
ReplyDelete