When We Are Isis

Once or twice a year the  Chaucer Boys, a bicycle club, pedals the northern end of  Clear Lake. Our route takes us by the site of the Bloody Island Massacre in 1850. This is the site of a battle between dragoons of the American Army and 400 unarmed Pomos, old men, women and children, many of whom ended up dead. At least one girl, Lucy Moore, as we call her, survived by hiding under water.

This genocidal engagement was an attempt to punish the wrong Indians for the murder of a sadistic hero named Kelsey, for whom Kelseyville is still named. Kelsey kept Pomos as slaves, starved them to death to save money, and regularly forced Pomo parents to supply him with daughters to be sexually abused (or whipped to death). Finally some parent put an arrow in him.

The massacre at Bloody Island was not an isolated incident in Northern California, where a bounty was set on Indians, a bounty collected by any hunter who turned in severed body parts to verify his kill.

Next we might look at Carson City, named for Kit Carson, but that would be redundant.  

We are, quite rightly, shocked by the barbarities of ISIS, but how would you prefer to be executed? Would you like to have your head cut off in 30 seconds in Iraq or to writhe in agony for an hour as drugs ate you to death in a Texas prison?  Which approach is more humane?