Talk:Sacramento River massacre

More depressing details

• Review of An American Genocide, by the UCLA historian Benjamin Madley at NYRB. Reviewed by Peter Nabokov

His chronicle opens with accounts by Thomas Martin and Thomas Breckenridge, members of John C. Frémont’s early expedition, which invaded what was still Mexican-held territory. In April 1846, along the Sacramento River near the present-day city of Redding, Frémont’s troops encountered a large group of local Wintu Indians. With the command “to ask no quarter and to give none,” his troops encircled the Indians and began firing at everyone in sight. Breckenridge wrote: “Some escaped but as near as I could learn from those that were engaged in the butchery, I can’t call it anything else, there was from 120 to 150 Indians killed that day.” Martin estimated that “in less than 3 hours we had killed over 175 of them.” A third eyewitness account found by Madley raised that estimate to between six hundred and seven hundred dead on land, not counting those, possibly an additional three hundred, slaughtered in the river. “The Sacramento River Massacre,” he writes, may have been one of the least-reported mass killings in US history, and “was the prelude to hundreds of similar massacres.”

Cheerful reading. Pete Tillman (talk) 22:00, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Tabloid style sensationalist history

Like recovered memories, some of the narratives seem more like self-glorifying accounts which betray clues of exaggeration and embellishment. For example, Kit Carson's published account. "Carson’s memoirs (which were dictated to others to write due to his illiteracy) were full of bloody battles. These and reports of his courage and fighting ability helped elevate Kit Carson’s reputation far beyond what was likely true. Everyone likes a good story, right?"

Even the account of the massacre at Reading's Ranch. The soldiers were each armed with a rifle, two pistols and a knife. Yet in the slaughter, the story-teller says they were "tomahawked" (not shot) and that soldiers took "potshots" at those who had apparenly jumped into Cottonwood Creek.

So sixty soldiers and the handful of Indians with them slaughtered multiple thousands? Was Frémont running for Office? Come to think of it, yes, he was. He was the first Republican to run for president. He lost for president but later won for the Senate.

Historian Marshall Trimble writes: "Frémont's glowing reports and lavish praise for his guide made Carson a national hero. Soon, it was Carson who captured the fancy of the American public. Some 70 pulp novels featured Carson, without compensation nor his permission. Sensationalized stories portrayed him as a blood and guts, rip-snorting, giant of a man who slaughtered Indians by the dozen. There wasn’t a grain of truth in the action-packed thrillers but easterners devoured them."

Far more credible are the biographies of Pierson B. Reading, who was not motivated by the desire to write best-selling "memoirs" full of titillating stories of confrontations with Native Americans. After the local Dersch incident, in which aggrieved Indians had killed Mrs. Dersch, a mob of white men descended on the Reading ranch intent on arresting the Indians responsible. Reading questioned his (Wintu) who indicated that the "eastern" or Yana Indians had done it. (Nosa Nozi) Reading told the men, "My Indians had nothing to do with it. Go away." And they did, because he had added, "Over my dead body, gentlemen." page 42. Shasta County California : A History, by Rosena A. Giles.

Pierson B. Reading would not have permitted injustice to be done to "his" Wintu, whom he regarded as a peaceful and peace-loving people. Tetaarulachem (talk) 13:23, 13 August 2022 (UTC) Tetaarulachem (talk) 13:24, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

References