Tolowa vigil reflects on massacre

Loren Bommelyn of Smith River Rancheria tells the tale of Tolowa killed at the Yontocket site in 1853 during a candlelight vigil Wednesday. Del Norte Triplicate/Adam Spencer

On Wednesday night, the third annual Candlelight Vigil honoring the Tolowa Dee-ni’ (people) killed at Yan’-daa-kivt (Yontocket) in the 19th century attempted to move past the pain by acknowledging the massacre.

The vigil offered a time to reflect on the more than 450 Tolowa  killed in 1853 by white settlers pushing into the area, but it’s also a time to give thanks to the surviving ancestors who kept the Tolowa people in existence.

“The people that went through this horrible massacre,  the second largest in United States history, they did not die in vain,” said Smith River Tribal Chairwoman Kara Brundin-Miller. “They made us stronger for it, and I feel like it has brought us all together again.”

Under a star-soaked sky, with the sound of waves crashing in the background, almost 50 people gathered around a bonfire, electric candles in hand, to remember the Tolowa people that lived at Yontocket.

Tribal council member and resident historian Loren Bommelyn told the tale of the Tolowa massacre and the Tolowa’s relationship with Yontocket, located within present-day Tolowa Dunes State Park, a place the Tolowa believe to be the center of their spiritual world.

“All people have a story of genesis,” Bommelyn said. “This is our genesis place.”

The Tolowa believe that Yontocket is the site where the Creators made the first redwood and the first people.

For thousands of years, the Tolowa Indians on the North Coast, numbering at least 10,000 people, gathered annually at the Yontocket village to celebrate Nee-dash, a world renewal ceremony, Bommelyn said.

The 10-day ceremony is held during winter solstice, because that’s when days start growing longer, Bommelyn said.  Tolowa people would come from as far as present-day Humboldt Bay and Port Orford for the ceremony, Bommelyn said.

During the Nee-dash festival of 1853, white settlers set fire to the plank homes of Yontocket, then shot at the Tolowa while they ran from the flames, Bommelyn said.

In 1851 the California legislature allocated at least $1 million  for militias that hunted down Indians, Bommelyn said.

That same year, the first governor of the state of California, Peter H. Burnett, announced to the state legislature “That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected.”

The state would reimburse militia men for every Indian scalp they brought back. Smith River Rancheria has 11 receipts showing reimbursement for Indian scalps, Bommelyn said.

“They were paid to execute the Indians and than they could turn around and buy the land with the money they made,” Bommelyn said in a phone interview.

The Smith River Rancheria and some other anthropologists have declared the destruction of  native populations in this region a holocaust because it was organized under a government, Bommelyn said.

After the Yontocket massacre and destruction of the village, the Tolowa founded a new village between present-day Lake Earl and Lake Tolowa called Etchulet, meaning large land peninsula.  The 1854 Nee-dash ceremony was held there, but once again white settlers came for Indian scalps, this time killing around 100 people, Bommelyn said.

From 1851 to 1856, around 8,000 Tolowa people were killed, then another 1,834 were marched to a reservation, which was more like a concentration camp, in Oregon, Bommelyn said. The few hundred that remained were eventually sent to reservations at present-day Klamath and Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, Bommelyn said.

“The fact that the Tolowa people somehow managed to survive such a catastrophic destruction of our people is really a miracle,” Bommelyn said.

The vigil honoring the Yontocket victims and survivors was started to help the tribe overcome feelings about the slaughter.

“We believe that if you hold something in the darkness, it grows, but if you bring it to the light, it diminishes,” Bommelyn said.

Bommelyn and others shared the pain of knowing about the massacre and the marginalization experienced from growing up Indian — all part of the healing process.

“I’m a firm believer that the wounds of our past will never heal if we can’t talk about it or address them,” said Suntayea Steinruck, Tribal Heritage Preservation Officer.

After the vigil at Yontocket, attendants met at the Lake Earl Grange to share a meal, stories and watch a documentary made in the 1970s about the Tolowa people.

The tribe expressed optimism about the shift towards acknowledging their ancestors’ past, and hopes to continue to spread knowledge of the massacre.

“The difference between our holocaust and the holocaust of World War II is that people were taken to trial, people were hung, people committed suicide for it, history was written to protect what occurred there,” Bommelyn said at the vigil. “But our story has never been told, has never been brought to justice.”

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