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During the first California state legislative session, lawmakers voted to eliminate the right of Indians to vote because they feared the control the Indian peoples might exercise. The Legislature also enacted the “Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.”

This law set the tone of Indian-white relations for many years. The act provided the following:

• The Justice of the Peace exercised jurisdiction over all complaints between Indians and whites, “But in no case shall a white man be convicted of any offense upon the testimony of an Indian or Indians.”
• Landowners would permit Indians who were peaceably residing on their land to continue to do so.
• Whites could obtain control of Indian children.
• If any Indian was convicted of a crime, any white person could come before the court and contract for the Indian’s services and in return pay the Indian’s fine.
• It was illegal to sell or administer alcohol to Indians.
• Indians convicted of stealing a horse, mule, cow, or any other valuable could receive any number of lashes up to 25, and a fine not to exceed $200.
• The law also provided that the abuse of an Indian child was to be punished by no more than a $10 fine.
• An Indian found strolling or loitering where alcohol was sold, begging or leading a profligate life was liable to be arrested.
• After the justice of the peace, mayor or recorder would make out a warrant and within 24 hours the services of the Indian could be sold to the highest bidder.
• The term of service would not exceed four months.

This law was widely abused with regard to the use of Indians as laborers. It eventually was used to justify and provide for what would later be coined as Indian slavery.

Mail service was begun between Salt Lake City and San Bernardino in 1852. This led to stations being built at natural springs along the ‘Old Spanish Trail’ where fodder for horses grew without cultivation.

One of these was built-in meadows about 55 miles away from the nearest neighbor to its northeast, which was one of the longest stretches between stations.

In 1855, Mormon settlers arrived at the distant station and planted a settlement. They cultivated about 500 acres of farmland.

When the Mormons anticipated battle with the US Army in 1857, the settlers abandoned their development and returned to Utah. Not long after the Mormon departure, Octavius Decatur Gass moved to the station and expanded the farmland under cultivation.

He sold fruits, vegetables, and beef to miners on the Colorado River and in the Potosi Mountains. Gass preserved the common name by which the area was already known.

He called his little place, “Las Vegas Rancho.”

In October 1879, former U.S. President Ulysses Grant paid a visit to Virginia City. A parade was held in his honor, at which passed in display several volunteer guard units that had been formed during the Civil War and were still organized.

None of these military companies had ever fought a battle. Membership in them had become a social obligation of rising young men.

Their shiny, satin uniforms had been designed with the thought that the best and brightest got the most applause, and perhaps the most attention from women. The decorations and frills added to their uniforms would have shamed hotel doormen and Admirals, everywhere.

When Wells Drury of the Sarsfield Guard was introduced to President Grant, the ex-soldier looked at the newspaper editor’s get-up and remarked, ‘Young fellow, I never had as fine a uniform as that all the time I was General of the Armies!’

Furthermore, Grant toured the area’s many mines with John MacKay, one of the co-owner’s of the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company, considered the richest mine on the Comstock. He was so moved by the rough working conditions that he exclaimed to MacKay, “That’s a close to Hell as I ever want to get.”

I was talking with my boss, Dan. He told me he’d been so busy the last few weeks that he’d gotten none of his Christmas shopping done.

The first recorded contact between Indians who lived in what is now known as Del Norte County and white men was June 9, 1828. On that day, the Jedediah Smith party met the Tolowa.

However they were not the first as there had been some previous contact with Russian and Hudson Bay fur traders. But sustained contact between white men and the Indians of present day Del Norte County was very limited until 1852.

The events leading to that extensive contact have their roots grounded five years before as on May 13, 1847, the United States declared war on Mexico. And the following year on January 13, California was militarily taken from Mexico and by February 2, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, officially giving title of California to the United States.

Coinciding with the takeover of California from Mexico was the California Gold Rush which began in 1848. Northern California was not immune to “gold fever,” with the discovery of gold by Major Pierson B. Redding in the upper Trinity River.

The discovery of gold triggered a mass immigration of miners and traders into Northern California. This would change life drastically for the Indian peoples of the area.

Then in September 1850 California was admitted to the Union. That same year the first State Constitutional Convention was held.

At that convention the California Legislature was formed. The new Legislature established Trinity County, which encompassed present day Del Norte County.

Here’s a salute to the passing of the Silver State’s many abandoned mining camps. And while not standing anymore in their original glory, they will still be remembered in another hundred years.

In 1862, Prebel
In 1863, Buster Falls and Lucky Jim Camp
In 1864, Guadalajara
In 1865, Morey
In 1866, Old Camp and Reveille
In 1868, Arabia
In 1870, Alleghany’s Camp
In 1871, Pinto City
In 1872, Yankee Blade
In 1874, Gouge Eye and Hardscrabble
In 1879, Northumberland

Also a hat tip to the miners who lived in those long forgotten shacks, bought supplies in the general stores, and drank in the town’s saloons. And every once in a while those same miners found a ledge or vein that made them rich – and Nevada famous.

Chinese laborers were hired to dig a canal from the Carson River to Gold Canyon to provide a year round source of water for mining in 1856. The’ Reese ditch’ was a $10,000 failure, though.

The northern end of it, where the water was supposed to go, was 43 feet higher than the southern end of it, from which the water was supposed to come.

White American miners resented the ‘Celestials’ because the latter would work for lower daily wages. This made them an economic threat to those Whites who temporarily hired themselves out to other miners.

This had led to hostility and forced segregation in the California goldfields, and the same situation developed in western Utah Territory.

When the Chinese built homes at a trading post on the Carson River and started panning for gold in the river, the Whites referred to their settlement as ‘China Town.’ It was a descriptive name, but it was not intended to be a pleasant one.

By this time next year we’ll know if all the apocalyptic information we’ve been fed through TV shows, movies, news articles, books and the Internet is true or not. This is because according to the Mayan calendar, the world is supposed to come to an end on this date in 2012.

“For two thousand years, the Mayan Calendar has prophesied the end of mankind on a date equating to December 21st, 2012, says Steve Alten, author of Phobos: Mayan Fear, “As that day approaches, greed, corruption, economic collapse, and violence seem to be pushing our species to the predicted brink of disaster.”

Alten’s book is listed as a fiction publication, but in radio interviews he claims it to be based on extensive study and research into the subject. Either way it’s a good read.

And for years we’ve heard rhetoric regarding Global Warming and whether it’s real or merely propaganda to push some other agenda. Lately though, it seems to be at the forefront of apocryphal dialogue.

“Forget global warming. The next ice age could begin any day,” that’s what Not by Fire, but by Ice, author Robert Felix says.

Felix claims we’re looking at another ice age and a possible geomagnetic reversal in the earth’s mantle, meaning what considered north will soon be south. He roots his argument in juxtaposition to those who say the world’s coming to an end through man-caused heat related events.

Then there’s author’s such as John Michael Greer, who proposes in his book, “Apocalypse Not,” the world isn’t going to end anytime soon. In his publication he dispels various “end of the world,” prophecies.

“For almost 3,000 years apocalypse prophecies have convinced people all over the world that the future is about to give them the world they want instead of the world they’ve got,” Greer writes, “All the end time prophecies splashed across the media in every age have had something else in common: every one of them has been wrong.”

Who knows – maybe Jesus is coming and he really IS pissed.

There were a number of newspaper editorials in January 1897, written in favor of the State Legislature permitting boxing. It would do Nevada good, they said.

The 20,000 people, who would come to see a big bout, two or three times a year, would spend lots of money and put new life into hotels and lodging. While they were here, they would see the wonder of nature that is Nevada and investigate our resources.

What’s more —  they might decide to stay.

Times were tough for Nevada. People were hard up.

Mining was in decline and would never again be the driving economic force it once was. Farming and ranching were on thin margins.

The State Legislature quickly forgot that boxing is a brutal sport. They ignored thundering from the church pulpits and they legalized it.

In the first championship fight, held in Carson City on March 17, 1897, Robert Fitzsimmons knocked out Jim Corbett in the 13th round with a right punch and a left uppercut.

From a tribe that was estimated in 1857 to number 500-600 people, the Chilula Indians have been reduced to “two or three families and a few persons incorporated with the Hupa” within a few short years of contacting white settlers. The Chilula are connected with the Hupa and Whilkut Indians.

While they called themselves the Tsulu-la, the “people of Tsulu,” after the name of their home, locally, they were known as the Bald Hills Indians. They lived on and Redwood Creek to a few miles above Minor Creek.

The whites’ trails from Trinidad and Humboldt Bay to the gold camps on the Klamath and Trinity crossed the Bald Hills. And like the other tribes, the Bald Hills Indians suffered harsh treatment at the hands of the incoming migration.

Finally the tribe was rounded up and moved to the Hoopa Reservation and to Fort Bragg. But blood feuds took their toll, and by 1919 the Chilula were nearly decimated.