Schoonover’s dogged investigation of the historical record challenges claims made in books about Ishi, and paints a nuanced picture of gruesome violence against native populations in the mid-1800s in Butte, Tehama, and Shasta counties.
“Before Ishi: The Life And Death Of The Yahi” ($24.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) is available at Made in Chico, the Bookstore downtown, at the Chico History Museum, and at beforeishi.online.
Schoonover bursts the “Ishi myth,” that he was starving, that he and the Yahi were part of the Mill Creek Indians, “the last survivor of a tribe that had terrorized Northern California for years.” Wrong.
The book focuses on the life of the Yahi and surrounding tribes, and the coming of white settlers. California, Schoonover writes, “wanted the natives out of the way and had the authority to use gunpowder….” By contrast, federal troops called in to “protect the settlers from Indian depredations” often “discovered it was the Indians who needed the protection more than the settlers.”
By 1867 “the organized carnage” in the three counties ended. Some fifteen whites died in the preceding six years; the Indian death toll was more than a thousand “if you add in those who died of malaria in 1863 at the camp on John Bidwell’s ranch in Chico, and on the forced march from there to Nome Cult.” Most of the Yahi had been killed.
“It’s important to understand,” Schoonover concludes, “what your predecessors and ours did to those who lived where you and I now live, in order to claim the land for ourselves.” His is the most piercing book you will ever read about the ghosts that haunt us still.
Schoonover will present at the Chico History Museum, at 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., on Saturday, May 25. For ticket availability visit chicohistorymuseum.org/event-5737721.
