Viewing page 20 of 110

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

The Pit River Story: A century of genocide

If we ever owned the land we own it still, we never sold it.
-Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces 1876

[[image - sketch of an American Indian]]

By JOHN HURST
R-S Staff Writer

High in the northwest corner of Pit River country is a castle hidden in what's left of a forest.

The Hearst Wyntoon castle is only a fraction of that corporation's empire. 

The Hearst Corp. owns 39,000 acres of land in Shasta County alone. It also publishes a chain of newspapers and magazines, among other endeavors.

The Hearst Corp. is among 12 companies, which along with the United States Forest Service, own a total of at least 1.4 million acres in Shasta County.

There are 2.4 million acres in all of Shasta County.

Here is a breakdown of the biggest landholders:

Hearst - 39,000 acres; Fruit Growers Supply Co. - 81,000 acres; Diamond International - 12,000 acres; Latour State Forest (a state-run timber company) - 9,000 acres; U.S. Plywood - 33,000 acres; Kimberly-Clark - 93,000 acres; Publishers Forest Products - 27,000 acres, Shasta Forest Co. - 107,000 acres; Southern Pacific Land Co. - 166,000 acres; K.R. Walker (Paul Bunyan Lumber Co.) - 30,000 acres; R.G. Watt and Assoc. - 23,000 acres; Pacific Gas & Electric Co. - 53,000 acres; United States Forest Service (which sells its timber to private companies) - 687,000 acres.

The Pit River Indians, like the Nez Perces to the north, never sold their land. Logic and American law, it seems then, would dictate that they own it still. 

But in June of this year, some 50 Pit River Indians and supporters were arrested for trespassing on ancestral lands at the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. campground near Big Bend.

In 1850 Congress authorized a commission to make treaties with California Indian tribes. The purpose was to open California to settlement by purchasing most of the Indians' land and reserving certain (the least desirable) areas of land for the tribes.

By 1852 the commission had made 18 treaties with the Indians. The deals were fairly typical of transactions with American Indians:

"Blankets for land is a bargain indeed."

But not enough of a bargain to suit the California Legislature. A special committee of Legislature recommended in 1852 that Congress not only reject the treaties but "remove the Indians of this State beyond its jurisdiction."

The United States Senate rejected the treaties in July, 1852 upon the insistance [[insistence]] of California.

Congress had recognized the Indians title to their lands in creating a commission to make treaties with them. The treaties were not ratified. Logically, then, the land still belonged to the Indians in 1852.

On March 3. 1853, Congress arbitrarily and unilaterally denied all Indian land public domain. This sanctioned the theft and murder that was already going on.

One thing is certain:

If the Pit River Indians sold their land, they were never paid for it. Not a Penny.

Redding (Calif.) Record-Searchlight

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - June 10, 1970
Pacific Gas Mans Wall To Guard Commander From Raid by Indians
Utility Hears Tribe Is Planning Citizen's Arrest Because of 'Trespass' on Native Lands

By JAMES E. BYLIN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
SAN FRANCISCO-Pacific Gas & Electric Co. couldn't be blamed too much if it felt like moving all its heavy equipment into a big circle about this time.

The nation's biggest power utility in terms of revenue has seen one of its isolated Northern California campsites invaded by Indians vowing to win back their ancestral lands. And now the company hears that an Indian party may be on the warpath, heading to San Francisco to make a citizen's arrest of Shermer L. Sibley PG&E president. The possible charge: Trespassing on Indian land.

Pacific Gas has alerted its security personnel to head off any party at the door of the company's headquarters here, though a spokesman says no other special precautions are being taken to protect Mr. Sibley, who's conducting business as usual. "Besides," the official reasons, "there's some question about the legality of a citizen's arrest under these circumstances. He's not actually on the land."

The company has found itself in the center of the newest eruption of Indian militancy here in California. While Indians still occupy tiny Alcatraz Island, in San Francisco Bay, their brethren in northeastern California are fashioning an uprising on a much grander scale. They are the Pit River Indians, the last Indians to be subjugated in 1868, by the white man. They now number 1,000 members, who are about as militant as their ancestors were in the last century. 

Their target is to reclaim about 3.5 million acres of onetime Indian land.

As the first step, an Indian scouting party moved to the six-acre Pacific Gas campsite in Shasta County near Redding and "occupied" it at about 3 a.m. last Friday. At the company's request, sheriff's deputies laid down an ultimatum: Leave by Saturday morning or face arrest. It was ignored, and the deputies swooped down in a breakfast-time raid, arresting 34 Indians. The 18-building campsite, it seemed, was maintained for use by Pacific Gas' employes [[employees]]; two employe families were staying at the camp at the time of the Indian invasion. They beat a hasty retreat.

"We had to be fair to our employes [[employees]]," explains a company official. "Beginning next weekend, we would have had full occupancy, which would have continued all summer. They applied for those accommodations weeks ago."

However, if the Indians had selected one of 49 other campsites, they could have stayed two weeks-and then been thrown out. These are sites Pacific Gas maintains for the public, with the two-week limit for each stay. Some 1.5 million pepole [[people]] visited these camps last year.

(In mapping the Indians' strategy, Pacific Gas is a logical foe. With 176,000 acres, containing 150 lakes and 225 miles of streams, the utility is one of the largest private landowners in Northern California.)

Pacific Gas decided to drop the charges against the Indians but later decided to press them after Richard Oakes, 28-year old Mohawk who had joined forces with the Pit River Indians announced the Indians would just return "to our land." Mr. Oakes also spearheaded the original Alcatraz invasion. As 10 more Indians were being arrested Monday at the campsite, the 34 others arrested were being arraigned on the trespassing charges in Redding.

They were ordered to reappear June 22 after their San Francisco lawyer, Aubrey Grossman, had moved for their dismissal on the basis of the "ungrounded assumption that Pacific Gas is the owner of the land in question." The land, he argued, had illegally been taken from the Indians, and their claim was upheld in 1959 by the Federal Indian Claims Commission.

A company official retorts: "We have clear title to the land. The company has occupied it and paid taxes on it for many, many years. It came into our possession through the purchase of predecessor companies."

In 1959 the Indian Claims Commission decided that more than 60 million acres in tribal lands, more than 60% of what now is California, was wrongly seized by white men a century ago. Congress in 1964 appropriated $29.1 million as payment to some 80,000 Indians with the stipulation the three main Indian groups in California ratify the settlement separately. Rejection by one group would tangle the agreement for all.

The two biggest groups, the Mission Indians in Southern California and the Indians of California, a loose term for Indians living in central and coastal areas, approved it easily. The third and by far the smallest group was the Pit River Indians, who, in their first vote in 1964, rejected the pact for the 3.5 million acres by 105 to 85. The commission, however, ruled there had been insufficient participation and mailed out absentee ballots. Those responding reversed the earlier poll and made the final vote 212 to 188 in favor of the proposal.

Thus the Government contends the Indians gave up their claims to the land, a contention that never has set well with many of the Pit River Indians, who were known as the most militant Indian group then and have become increasingly more so over the years.

The $29.1 million—it now totals $35 million with interest—hasn't been distributed because of delays by Congress in delineating the eligible groups. 

Meanwhile Pacific Gas officials and others who may oppose the Pit River Indians might be advised to step lightly. The tribe received its Anglicized name for its method of trapping animals and people. They would simply pace a flimsy covering over some of the many lava pits dotting their region and wait for something to drop in.

Donations
P.O. Box 52
MONTGOMERY CREEK, CALIF
916-336-5198

The U.S. Indian Claims Commission conceded in 1959 that the 3.5 million acres belonging to the Pt [[Pit]] River Indians was part of some 64 million acres taken "without compensation" in 1953 from numerous California Indian tribes.

[[image of arrow pointing left]]