Chag Lowry spoke with his grandmother, Evelina Hoffman, about her people's history of the Gold Rush era. Evelina is a basketweaver, and a respected elder in the Yurok tribe. (Chag asks if there was a gallows built by the military in Humboldt). Yes, the soldiers came and built it. It was down here on a flat, near a little village in Terwer Valley. The old ones I heard talking, about how they (soldiers) made the thing across a stand, and for whatever reason, they hung them (Yuroks). I guess they were fighting back, and trying to defend themselves, and they were just outnumbered. The soldiers just kept coming, they sent one troop in, then another. Pretty soon they were overpowered. They didn't know what to do. (Evelina speaks about events that happened in Trinidad). I believe they were soldiers that came there, too. Yes, the old people talked and this lady related her story about witnessing where they (soldiers) took children and dragged the ladies by the hair. The reason this lady could live to tell about it is because she hid in the bushes and berry vines. She was covered up, and she witnessed all of that. Some of the people got scalped for whatever reason, as the story always goes And further on towards Crescent City, they (soldiers) just came in there just like that, and no matter how you tried to help yourselves, it was never good for the Indian people. I always heard the stories about when the Indians first saw the white man (near Klamath). The white man didn't know that the Indians saw them as they passed by. They came on horses and when they arrived they were panning for gold in small creeks. The Yurok story is that "the white man did not see us but we saw them." And yet they (white people) say today that we weren't here, when we really were. The old ones said the same thing, we were here for ages and ages, and as they talked I listened. I can remember when the old people used to talk about when they (miners) had the ferry, to ferry people across from the south to go to the north. We walked every place we went, the old people. It was our way of doing things. Or we used a boat. The boat was our car, the river was our highway. But they try to say we were never here to do all that, and that Jedediah Smith came through here and discovered everything, when we were already here. According to the book Ethnology and Archeology of the Wiyot Territory, Congress passed several acts reimbursing the military for "excursions" onto Indian lands. "In 1854 Congress passed an act appropriating $924,259.65 to reimburse the State of California for the alleged 'expense incurred and now actually paid, by the State of California, in the suppression of Indian hostilities within the said State, prior to January 1, 1854. Again in 1861 another act appropriated $400,000 to quiet the claims for nine 'Indian wars' conducted in California during the years 1854 to 1859."11
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