Battle at Wau-Kell Reservation

Managing the histories between Native peoples and the settlers is much like walking a tight rope in a gale-force wind. I want to avoid the politics, the right and wrong of the incident and get down to telling the story of what happened.

During  the years, 1851 and 1852, the California Legislature authorized payment of $1.1 million for the “suppression of Indian hostilities.” This revenue came from the gold fields — the high financiers and not the struggling miner.

But this was not enough. In 1853; the Yreka Herald called on the government to provide assistance to “enable the citizens of the north to carry on a war of extermination until the last redskin of these tribes has been killed. Extermination is no longer a question of time – the time has arrived, the work has commenced and let the first man who that (sic) treaty or peace be regarded as a traitor.”

The State Legislature would appropriate money for this activity through 1857, which is about the time when the financing from the gold fields dried up due to a lack of new strikes and claims. So towns started offering bounty hunters cash for every head or scalp obtained — man, woman, or child.

These laws would lead to the deaths of several Tolowa from the Smith River area. However, it’s generally understood that the Tolowa had administered the first blow, which was repulsed by the Army’s superior firepower.

During autumn 1857, troops under the command of Lt. George Crook killed 10 Tolowa and captured more than two dozen others when the Indians refused to stay on a reservation far from their Smith River home. Afterword the lieutenant ordered all Tolowa to return to the reservation.

Indian Agent and U.S. Army Major H. P. Heintzelman agreed with Crook that pursuit of the Indians was necessary. With Tolowa and Chetco Indians in the mountains, and reports the two might fight together against the settlers, Heintzelman wanted them brought to the Wau-Kell Reservation, four and a quarter miles inland along the banks of the Klamath River. 

But Superintendent Thomas J. Henley concluded that the lack of food and dissatisfaction with housing at Wau-Kell had sparked the fight. Furthermore he blamed Heintzelman for the discord claiming he had put the “service before the needs” of the Indians.

In reality though the trouble was being caused by a number of whites living within the Native community who were not only spreading rumors but planning  to murder both Heintzelman and Crook.  As for the Indians they were being told these same white , called “squawmen,” they would continue to be harassed by the Yurok.

Relaying the information about a planned assassination to department headquarters, Henley warned if the Tolowa were allowed to remain on the Smith, these “squawmen,” would cause a war. He also warned that the Tolowa had not laid in a winter’s supply of food, and would either end up stealing or starving.

Higher federal authorities disagreed with Henley and the Tolowa  were allowed to return to Smith River. In the meantime, Crook turned his attention to building a new Army outpost further down river at a places called Ter-Waw Flats.