09/28/2026
Pogrom & Genocide in Northern California, Part 1: Bloody Island. In 1847, two white colonists from America, Charles Stone and Andrew Kelsey, established themselves in Alta California, then part of the newly formed nation of Mexico. They were in Big Valley, near modern Kelseyville, on land associated with Salvador Vallejo's Mexican-era holdings. Like many Spanish California ranches, they used Native forced labor. People were compelled to build their own adobe houses, herd cattle, and perform other labor while being inadequately fed. Surviving accounts unequivocally describe Stone and Kelsey as monsters, beating, killing, and ra**ng with impunity.
Things only got worse when the USA took the area after the Treaty of Guadalupe. One particularly disastrous episode came during the Gold Rush. Pomo men were taken east to work for the Kelsey interests in the mining country. Accounts differ on the exact number, but many never came home, assumed to have died slowly of starvation and disease after being abandoned.
Pomo oral accounts associate Chief Augustine and several other men with the retaliation. Some versions say Augustine's wife had herself been taken by Stone and Kelsey and that she helped disable their fi****ms. The precise details vary among nineteenth- and twentieth-century accounts, but Stone and Kelsey were killed and their ranch effectively collapsed.
The killing of Stone and Kelsey are best understood as an act of heroism, but that’s not how the US Army felt. In May 1850, the Army assembled an expedition under Brevet Captain Nathaniel Lyon, with Lieutenant John Wynn Davidson commanding the dragoon element. Lyon would later become famous as the first Union general killed in the Civil War. His 1850 command included infantry, mounted dragoons, boats and a mountain howitzer.
The approaching troops caused Pomo people to gather or seek refuge at the island at the northern end of a marsh that is now Upper Lake. On May 14, Davidson and Lieutenant Haynes attacked another rancheria, killing four people and capturing a Native leader. By the afternoon the Army had effectively converged on the island.
Early on May 15, Lyon sent infantry across the water toward Badon-napo-ti while mounted troops guarded surrounding shorelines. The Pomo account recorded by William Ralganal Benson, based on survivor testimony, says that the people initially attempted to receive the soldiers peacefully. According to Benson, they believed they could meet the newcomers and explain themselves. Instead, the troops opened fire. Once the soldiers gained the island, the Pomo fled into the water and dense tule marsh surrounding it. Lyon ordered his men to “pursue and destroy as far as possible.”
One particularly well-known survivor story concerns Ni'ka, later called Lucy Moore, who according to her family's oral history was about six years old. She survived concealed in the water and tule, breathing through a hollow reed while soldiers searched the area. Her descendants eventually helped establish the Lucy Moore Foundation and the modern Bloody Island remembrance ceremonies.
Lyon believed the number killed exceeded 100 and estimated only 400 had been present at the time. A quarter of the entire village was killed. These were innocent tribal members, not the people who committed the murder. Everything conducted here was illegal under US law, even at the time. There is no other way to describe what commenced as anything other than sanctioned killings by death squads.
The Daily Alta California initially reported on May 28 that the soldiers had been ordered to proceed against the Clear Lake Indians and “exterminate if possible the tribe.” This is no different than what happened in Rwanda. The only reason it wasn’t called a genocide it the word hadn’t been invented yet. And it was just the beginning. It took the colonists on the east coast a hundred years to do this kind of damage.
The troops continued west into Pomo country along the Russian River. On May 19, only four days after Bloody Island, Lyon's force attacked the Pomo village of Cokadjal, south of modern Ukiah. Lyon reported at least seventy-five people killed there and believed the number might have reached roughly 150. Other smaller killings occurred during the campaign as well.
In 1851, federal commissioners negotiated treaties with California Native nations, including people around Clear Lake, promising reservations and federal protection. The United States Senate refused to ratify the California treaties and kept them secret for decades. In 1856, many Lake County Pomo were forcibly removed to the Nome Cult Indian Farm at Round Valley, beginning another disastrous chapter of displacement. The ancestors of the modern Habematolel community eventually pooled their own money and purchased land near Upper Lake in 1878.
Although the communities were not connected yet, settlers had only just erected the city of Union a few weeks earlier, on April 21st. And the worst had yet to come.
“Australia may have gotten all England’s criminals, but America got their psychopaths.” -Julian Assange
Picture: Clayton Duncan (who's great-grandmother was Lucy Moore), his 4-year-old grandson Misuenculla, Lisa Peake, and Rudy Alvarez at the California Historical Landmark commemorating the massacre at Bloody Island. (Credit: Suzie Racho/KQED)
