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Discover the Rich History of Noyo Bida
Welcome to the official website of Noyo Bida Truth Project. Our organization is dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of our town. Join us on a journey through time and explore the fascinating stories of our past.
Excerpted from.. The Mendocino Indian Reservation
by Robert Winn
In 1855, following a year of famine and freezing weather, white settlers complained indigenous people, Pomo and Yuki, were stealing their crops and property. They threatened a war of “extermination” (pg. 10) in response.
A reservation was established in 1856 on the Mendocino Coast and thousands of indigenous people were driven to and held on 25,000 acres between the Noyo and Ten Mile Rivers. The land was farmed and buildings erected. The corrupt white administration of the reservation stole funds allocated for the indigenous and allowed the construction of a private white owned saw mill at the mouth of the Noyo, on government land, disrupting fishing grounds. Indigenous people were pressed into labor. Sexual abuse by Whites was common and venereal disease an epidemic (pg. 24)
20 US soldiers arrived in 1857 to establish an Army post. At first they protected the indigenous people from the worst depredations but by 1861, accord to the Superintendent’s report they were “worse than useless.” (pg. 27). Most troops were withdrawn to fight in the east when the Civil War began, White settlers as vigilantes replaced them.
The government abandoned the Reservation in 1866 and opened it to public sale. Vigilantes began “a campaign of extermination” (pg. 28) in what became known as “The Mendocino War.” William Frazier of Long Valley testified of one massacre: “we attacked and killed twenty, consisting of bucks, squaws, and children . . .” (pg. 29)
“Between 1858 and 1873 the population of the Yuki decreased from 3000 to 500, while the population of the Pomo fell from 3600 to 1800.” (pg. 31)
“White slave traders . . . had been stealing Indian children and selling them to settlers as ‘apprentices’ for 50 to 100 dollars apiece.” (pg. 34) Finally the indigenous were removed from the Coast and forced inland.
Braxton Bragg
A few historical facts regarding Fort Bragg’s namesake, Braxton Bragg..
The City is named for Braxton Bragg, a North Carolinian born into a slave owning family who had a slave accompany and serve him while at West Point and when he served in the Union Army in the Mexican War
- While pregnant with Braxton, Mrs. Bragg killed a free Black man for “impertinence.” (McWhiney)
- While in the US Army he fought to displace the Seminoles from Florida to parts west
- Bragg married a wealthy woman in Louisiana, resigned his commission and established his own plantation of 1,600 acres with 105 enslaved men women and children to labor for him. He joined “the elite ranks of the slave owning aristocracy.” earning “a net profit of $30,000” in 1859 (equivalent to $1 million dollars today).
- Bragg wrote of slavery: “We have a large class of our population in subordination [which is] just and necessary.” (McWhiney, pg. 143)
- When a Southern Senator beat the abolitionist leader of Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate with a metal tipped cane, leaving him bleeding and unconscious, Bragg wrote approvingly: “You can reach the sensibilities of such dogs only through . . . their heads and a big stick.” (McWhiney pg. 144)
- Braxton Bragg, who had sworn an oath to defend the Constitution of the US took up arms against his country as a traitor and became a Major General in the Confederate Army saying of secession: “Our course is just and we must triumph.”
- As an individual Bragg was known to his contemporaries as a terrible bungler as a General, as well as a raging alcoholic.
- When the Fort here was named for Bragg he was not yet a secessionist but he was, and had been all his life, a slave master.
- A Union officer Colonel F. J. Lippitt, in Humboldt County in 1862 during the civil war suggested to his superiors in Washington renaming the Fort and removing Bragg’s name as a traitor writing “for it has too long borne the name of a traitor.” The idea of changing the name of the fort therefore is 150 years old and predates the naming of the town.
[Above quotes are from two biographies of Bragg: (1) “Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man in the Confederacy” by Earl J. Hess, available at The Fort Bragg Library, and (2) “Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat” by Grady McWhiney.]
‘Defend Against All Enemies’
When Nativism and Moral Panic Fueled the Rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Mendocino County. By Matt LaFev
The Mendocino Beacon reported in their July 4, 1925 issue that a number of residents had received an invitation to a Ku Klux Klan Boonville initiation ceremony scheduled that evening.
“It was reported that a large number of members of the order from outside districts will be present,” the brief article explained.
On December 17, 1924 the Fort Bragg Advocate published a small article entitled “K.K.K. Organized at County Seat”. Reportedly a “branch of the Ku-Klux Klan was organized in Ukiah” the previous Monday and the attendees were “sworn to secrecy” leaving “definite details of the meeting” difficult to obtain. Of the fifty to sixty attendees, twenty-five to thirty attended resulting in an initiation ceremony that would be held in the upcoming days.
On July 7, 1926, the Fort Bragg Advocate wrote of a five-day celebration in the town describing it as the “most eventful celebrations that the city of Fort Bragg has ever held.”
The celebration was hosted by the town’s American Legion, a civically-minded organization made up of veterans of American wars.
Attendees of the celebration would have seen carnival rides, sideshows, and a boxing match. A dance was held and a parade was replete with floats and decorated automobiles.
Embedded in a surprisingly long and detailed narrative of the celebration was evidence of the Second Klan’s successful integration with the civic life of Mendocino County.
A flag-raising ceremony brought attendees together on Sunday in front of Fort Bragg’s City hall. The city was presented with a new silk flag donated by the Sequoia Post of the American Legion.
At one o’clock residents gathered around while a patriotic oath was read.
Looking up at the new Stars and Stripes, the attendees pledged to “support its constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.”
Some attendees might have had drifting eyes during the recitation of the “American’s Creed”, and they might have taken note of the flagpole Old Glory was raised upon. They might have remembered that it was the local chapter of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan that had erected it.
Despite the public’s misgivings H.G. Grannis had attempted to disprove in his press release, it was clear the Klan had successfully integrated itself into Fort Bragg’s civic life. Working in tandem with the American Legion and the City of Fort Bragg, the Klan became part of a civically-minded infrastructure despite a history wrought with violence.
Living at Kah-la-deh-mun
BY CHRIS CALDER ON NOVEMBER 21, 2021
Harriet Campbell Stanley Rhoades lives on the north bluffs overlooking Noyo Bay. Even in this region of beautiful vistas and peaceful spots, few places can compare with Harriet's. Her back door opens onto an infinity of sea and sky. Wonderfully serene on a clear summer day, in winter it stands full in the face of the mighty gales that can sweep out of the southwest.
Harriet grew up on this spot, as did her children and grandson. For that reason alone, her attachment to the place is unbreakable. Even so, travel takes her far and wide these days. In August, it was to Milwaukee, where she was elected treasurer of the National Indian Council on Aging. In September and again in October, it was Albuquerque, where she served on the selection committee for a new NICOA executive director. In between her longer trips, she heads to Sacramento, where she chairs the Native American Advisory Council for the California Department of Forestry, protecting sacred and archaeological sites and cultural resources affected by logging and forest fire-fighting.
“My philosophy is that you are only on this good old Mother Earth for a breath of time,” she says, “so being involved in issues that will help a group of people is the way I want to do it, and that's how I've structured my life.”
An American Genocide
"The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe" by Ben Madley
Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, Indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.
Madley describes pre-contact California and precursors to the genocide before explaining how the Gold Rush stirred vigilante violence against California Indians. He narrates the rise of a state-sanctioned killing machine and the broad societal, judicial, and political support for genocide. Many participated: vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. congressmen, California governors, and others. The state and federal governments spent at least $1.7 million on campaigns against California Indians. Besides evaluating government officials' culpability, Madley considers why the slaughter constituted genocide and how other possible genocides within and beyond the Americas might be investigated using the methods presented in this groundbreaking book
