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Understanding 9/11tv Nome Cult Trail CSPAN April 2, 2017 12:00pm-12:08pm EDT
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long, american history tv is joining our comcast cable partners to showcase the history of chico, california. to learn more about the cities on our current tour, visit c-span.org. we are standing at a place that holds profound significance for the indigenous people in this part of what we now call butte county. asy regard this very place the particular location where in ,y the creator had human beings born into the world. with the discovery of gold not far south of here and an ability inability to--
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keep that secret, the ratio of settlers to need of people begin to radically shift. prior to the gold rush, there would have been on the order of under 5000 settlers in all of california, by 1855 that would toe skyrocketed above 40,000 50,000 settlers. fraught,ions were not for every group at every moment, but there was a profound sense of racism toward native people. the general epithet used was bigger indians. subhuman,regarded as fauna because
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they did not have the technological accoutrements that european settlers considered standard. it is because those things were irrelevant to their daily lives. on the coast when the tie went out, their table was set. in this part of the north central valley, the crops of importantvided very calorie rich food source for them. wild game, dear and small animals and insects were a staple of their regular diet, and fish. there were abundant salmon runs and steelhead, in some cases two different runs of the same species of the same river. there was no need to have complicated technology. the critical issue became access
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to subsistence resources. with the huge influx of merchantsminers, and the word my name the miners, ame began to be scarce. resources were completely upended. as food sources began to disappear for native people, they naturally looked to stock. one of the main industries was the hide and tallow trade. the idea was to raise a lot of cattle to sell the skins and me. these cattle were critical resources for the settlers and viewed as food sources for the
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natives. se over thects aro fact that hungry native people would poach the cattle here. and 1852, these kinds of depredations began to rankle deeper and deeper into the white settlement community and begin to be punished more systematically, and ultimately the rationale for outright murder if not genocide of indigenous groups was held to be like, we are going to teach them a lesson. here the attitude was these people cannot be trusted. we need to exterminate them for their own good. this was rhetoric that existed in the popular press. thesefort to minimize kinds of results was the move
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california indians to reservations. in this area the idea was to move local people to a reservation 100 miles west of here on the other side of what is now the mendocino national forest in round valley. people, tribes70 in the area, were essentially corralled west of chico and marched over the course of two weeks in mid-september of 1863 100 miles to their new home over the mountains. valley forest location as the is remembered gnome called walk -- cult walk.
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that was the name of the reservation created. this is a not very well known aspect of american history in general and california history in particular. is notmight imagine, it a pleasant chapter. it is a very brutal and violent series of events that took place between 1850 and 1875 and resulted in radically reduced population of indigenous people in california, not zeroed out by any means. definitely dramatically reduced outright genocidal methods. ago thatout 18 years folks from the cheap debt in chico and round valley decided
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to organize a memorial walk. they decided in september they would retrace the steps their ancestors were forced to face. for the last 18 years or so, every september folks gathered here in chico to take a week to walk the 100 miles. it is a meaningful, profound ceremony. it is regarded as spiritually healing to not just commemorate the fact that there ancestors survived this journey and they are here today, but also to think deeply about why this happened and to try to instill values of mutual respect and tolerance. are cities
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