The Old Ones of Anderson Valley

Compiled by David Severn and presented in a Community Gathering on June 8, 2025

While I jokingly refer to myself as a full blooded wannabe Tabate Pomo Indian, underneath any patina of tan, I am just the right shade of pink to be called White. My great grandfather and grandmother came across the Oregon Trail in 1852, so I am indeed a descendant of the intruders responsible for the demise of 80-90 percent of those California original peoples that anthropologists claim to have been amongst the most peaceful people in the world.

EARLY TIMES AND ENCOUNTERS

Through archaeological undertakings we have been shown that Native peoples have lived in Anderson Valley for some thousands of years. An archeological exploration on Mill Creek in Philo claims the site was under continual occupancy from just under 5000 years ago until a point sometime before Europeans showed up - there was no metal, glass or ceramic found in the dig. On Fish Rock Road, beyond Ornbaun Valley an archaeological exploration on the Zeni Ranch claims it to be a village on an important trading route to the Coast that dates back 3000 years.

One account has the first contact from outside coming with a troop of Russian explorers, who traveled through Anderson Valley to the ocean before establishing a fort on the coast in 1812. It seems one Indian was wounded in the encounter.

In 1836 Spanish troops made their way to what is now called Ornbaun Valley not far above and a part of the Yorkville Indian community.  Later that same year they returned, this time pushing on to Anderson Valley.  They seized several young Indian men and took them, presumably to use as slaves.  The following year in 1837, they returned, capturing young men as they went.  But this time the story has it that the local Native inhabitants knew what to expect and were hiding in the brush as the Spanish troops made their way out of the Valley. They picked off a couple from the rear. A Spanish sword found, I believe somewhere around Boonville, might well be evidence of that encounter.  It seems that put a stop to the Spanish forays into Anderson Valley looking for slaves, but other Spaniards came and stayed, picking tracts of land here and there to build their houses.  Some brought families but many didn’t.  They raised some sheep, but mostly horses, for which they had an easy market to the south. 

There are mixed reports on how the Indians got along with the Spanish settlers. Most White people claimed having a good and friendly relationship, while the Indians told of many brutal encounters. Young Indian women were often seized for sexual purposes. Effie Santiago, a “Rancheria” Indian we will hear more about later, told her granddaughter, Violet Rennick, that the Indian people continued their cultural practice of tattooing the faces of their girls in part because this seemed to revile the Spanish men and keep them away.

NATIVE VILLAGES AND PEOPLE OF ANDERSON VALLEY

A map in the back of Barrett’s book shows that the Indians of Yorkville spoke the Central Pomo language dialect while the Natives of Anderson Valley proper – Boonville, Philo, Navarro - spoke Northern Pomo. Maps by Kroeber, Heizer, Brown et.al. either supported by or based on the 1908 Ethno-geographic work of S.A. Barrett indicate the following major village sites in Anderson Valley.

• Late - on the west bank of Rancheria Creek about one mile from Yorkville.

• Lemkolil - on the northeast bank of Anderson Creek, 1 mile downstream from Boonville.

• Tabate - near the northeast bank of the Navarro River, 2 miles west of Philo.

• Katuuli - 50 yards south of the pioneer village known as Christine, close to what we now call Navarro.

  The Russian River Indians referred to the coast Indians as westerners or “Boya”. The people of AndersonValley were known as “Bokeya” or people of the west. The Katuuli, Tabate, and Lemkolil people were called Pda-teya or down-streamers by the Boya. The Rancheria Indians were called Dano-keya or up-streamers.

  The Navarro River got its name from the Indians. They called it Noba’da adding bida their word for creek or river. This naming of the Navarro might have applied all the way up to Yorkville at the time and included what we now call Rancheria Creek. Today the Navarro River starts in Philo at the confluence of the Anderson and Rancheria Creeks.

An old story tells how the ancient people of Lemkolil ate the flesh of a monster and turned into deer. Two people only, a brother and a sister, did not eat the monster and remained human. They lived over the mountain southwest of Boonville, west of Rancheria Creek. They were wild people, but did ordinary people (deer) no harm. They taught others the proper and respectful way to hunt and would capture any who hunted improperly.

There is also a story about a little pond that was once found below a spring not far from Katuuli. It is said that the Coyote made this pond because Frog Woman would not allow him access to the spring.

Some later ethnographers referred to Anderson Valley Indians as Commancha Pomo after the headman of the Rancheria Indians. One even suggests Comptche, a small town some 20 miles north of the lower reaches of the Navarro River, as being named after Commancha. Often the names take on different spelling and pronunciation as they pass around between English, Pomo and Spanish speakers. Such reckoning probably came after the Northern speaking Pomo of Anderson Valley died or were moved off to reservations and the lingering Yorkville Indians migrated west as they found work amongst the growing European settlers.

Beside the above-mentioned villages there is evidence that there were many others throughout Anderson Valley. The Indian people probably moved as roads or houses were built too close. But they never moved far, unless it was to another Indian community. Personal experience, as I have hiked the Valley has shown me evidence of many villages that aren’t recorded anywhere. The evidence is in the form of mortars, matates, pestles, areas of massive amounts of obsidian and chert chips, arrowheads and other cutting and scraping tools and the most telling, the house and sweat lodge pits with the surrounding rings of earth.

In 1953, Bobby Glover an old time valley stalwart, counted 13 house pits on a flat above the upper reaches of Indian Creek. Each pit had been scattered with shells. The site sat just below a large rock covered with deposits from a soda spring. The site was later leveled by loggers for a log landing.

Other members of early White settler families have shared their memories of valley Native peoples. Charlotte Gowan remembered a village that was most likely Tabate, a short distance from Philo. She remembered Indians from Ukiah passing through on their way to the Coast. Beth Tuttle remembered a community on the north side of Anderson Creek just west of old Boonville. She also remembered seeing a slab bark house on the side of a knoll above Indian Creek near Philo. Based on the works of S.A. Barrett, this was probably a remnant of a settlement called Comda. Both of these women shared that their most lasting memories were the constant wailing women who were part of the Indian funerals.

RANCHERIA IN YORKVILLE

The name Rancheria was given to all Indian communities by the early Spanish and for whatever reason the name stuck with those of what we now call the Yorkville area. Most of what we know about this area comes from a singularly alluring book titled Indian Summer, written by Effie McAbee Hulbert. Effie, born in 1878, was the daughter of Charlotte Louise Clounts and John Watson McAbee, who settled in the Yorkville area in 1859. Effie was their first child. She grew up in the Yorkville Rancheria area and had a close relationship with the Indian people there. Her book includes many stories she was told, in addition to first hand knowledge and memories. Much of what follows was prodded by Indian Summer.

In her book, Effie McAbee Hulbert referred to the Indian community in Yorkville as Rancheria and the Native People as the Ma-Cum-muks. Kroebber et. al refer to the principle village of Yorkville as Late, but Effie never mentions this name in her book.

The headman of the Yorkville Rancheria was named Commancha by the Spanish. His Indian name was Bah-Kae-ah, which appears to have been abandoned, even by the Indians themselves. The Native people of the Rancheria called the author, Effie McAbee Hulbert Muchacha.

Rancheria and the adjoining Ornbaun Valley was not only a separate area from Anderson Valley proper, but was also a separate Indian community and as documented by the early White ethnographers they spoke different dialects of the Pomo language. Central Pomo was spoken in the Rancheria area, while Northern Pomo was spoken throughout Anderson Valley - Boonville, Philo and Navarro.

Because what we refer to as the South Coast falls into the Central Pomo language group, Rancheria interaction and trade was much more prevalent with those neighbors than with the Northern Pomo speaking neighbors of Anderson Valley. There was much intermingling, even marriage between them. One family of Coast Kashia Indians, referred to as Bushy Ridge, were especially friendly. Two sons of their headman Santiago married two daughters of Commancha, headman of the Rancheria Ma-Cum-muks and they moved to the Rancheria. Effie Santiago, mentioned earlier, was the daughter of one of those unions. She was named Effie after Effie McAbee Hulbert, the author of Indian Summer. Sometime in the early 1880’s, Charles Haupt, a coast rancher, died and the Bushy Ridge Natives living on his ranch were asked to leave by his heirs. It was decided they too would move to Rancheria.

In her book, Effie shared that there were about 100 Indians in the Rancheria in the mid 1880’s. One may assume that the 1850’s slave raids out of Sonoma County greatly affected the Ma-Cum-Muk Indians because government documents list 180 Indians from one or two Mendocino County Rancheria communities were taken to the Mendocino reservation for the “their own protection”.

The official 1880 census of the U.S. puts the number at 67 for the entire Anderson Valley, which I assume included those residing on the Yorkville Rancheria as well as those in the Boonville, Philo and Navarro areas. Many of the names in the census match the ones given by Effie, but there are also many others she talks about that are not on the census, so one can assume the census is a low count. Effie mentions that many of the young were dying and most of those remaining were old. The census shows 23 of the 67 were 50 years or older, so maybe it was the older ones that kept themselves from being counted.

The old life style continually dwindled as did the people themselves. By 1900, the Anderson Township census lists a total of 30 Indians, though again certainly some went uncounted. The sadness of this figure is compounded by listings such as: Suse Santiago mother of 4, still living 2, Mary Calti mother of 5 still living 1, Molley Comach (Commancha), mother of 5, still living 0. One outbreak alone of apparent measles recorded in Indian Summer took the lives of 75 young Ma-Cum-Muk Indians.

The 1910 census lists only 16 native people living in Anderson Township. In all three of the censuses, the names found on the census documents are consistent with the names used in Indian Summer, so it is possible to trust their veracity.

In 1883 a deed was filed in the Mendocino County Recorder’s office, which transferred a tract of land from Dick York to “Commancha”, chief of the Rancheria Valley Indians and Santiago, chief of the Bushy Ridge Indians”. Effie McAbee Hulbert’s account says her grandfather, Dick York, gave the land to the Indians to keep them from being forcefully removed to a reservation.

Violet Rennick, the oldest living Pomo that lived in Anderson Valley was told by her Grandmother Effie Santiago that a fire had destroyed some of the records of the deeded property. She asked me what I might know.

At the Mendocino County Recorders Office I found the original 1883 deed from York to Commancha and Santiago, which was followed by several other transfers of the property.

• In 1900 Santiago sold his half interest to his son, Jonny Santiago referred to in the recording as sub-chief of the Bushy Ridge Indians for $5.

• On July 14, 1903 the County of Mendocino sold the property to the State of California for taxes due in the year 1887 in the amount of $1.12. The County apparently valued the property at $55 at the time of the sale. A hand-written note in the margin of the deed says the property was redeemed on January 16, 1909, by I.L. Preston. The meaning of this notation is unknown, as that name didn’t appear on any of the deeds I located.

• On the 23rd of April, 1909 the property was transferred from W.W. Irish to Billy Dock, Captain of the Yorkville Indians for the amount of $10. Again, there is a gap, as nothing shows when W. W. Irish obtained the property.

• On November 15, 1928, the property transferred from W.M. Dock, also known as Billy and his wife Belle Dock to A.N. Burger for $10.

• On November 23, 1928 a court judgment showing Billy Dock as plaintiff and Charles Kasch et al as defendants, stated “defendants have not, nor have either of them, nor have the estate of Comancho and Johnney Santiago or either of them any right, title, lien, estate or interest in, or to, said real property”.

• In 1930 A.N. Burger and his wife, Wanda Burger sold the property to James A. Sager and Bertha Mae Sager for $10. I believe the property is still owned by the

  The following excerpt found on the final pages of Indian Summer further sheds light on why Billy Dock decided to sell the property. “During Muchacha’s mother’s last illness Bill (Billy Dock) came to see her about selling the Yorkville land that Grandfather York had deeded to the Indians for their lifetime.

‘I know Dick York say in deed for the land he want it back when we done with it. But maybe you let me sell it. We need money to fix our house in Hopland. I come to tell you we can’t live at Rancheria no more. No work here.’

Muchacha’s mother told him he could not sell the place, as all the heirs of the York estate would have to be consulted first. She reminded him that half of the land belonged to the Sandiagos, of whom Jonnie’s daughter, Effie was the only one left. She might not want to sell her share.

Until after her mother died Muchacha did not know that Bill had visited her; when she learned that he had sold the Yorkville land. She still had the deed to it, and intended taking the matter up with Bill. But before she had an opportunity to see Bill he had passed away and she would not make trouble for Bell and Little Joe.”

It was exciting to find that most of the remarkable Pomo basket weavers listed in the book Remember Your Relations - The Elsie Allen Baskets, Family and Friends, coauthored by Susan Billy, whose grandmother was named Susan Santiago Billy. The list includes: Elsie Commanche Allen, Agnes Commanche Santana, Susie Santiago Billy and Susan Billy. Other names on the basket weaver list with ancestry from Yorkville Rancheria include Rhoda Somersal Knight and Ethel Knight Burke. Friends with ancestry include Annie Burke Lake and Laura Fish Somersal. While these world renowned basket weavers didn’t live in Rancheria themselves, their ancestors did and thus lives a wondrous legacy of a much unnoticed segment of Mendocino County.

In conclusion I would like to say that while Indian Summer is a remarkable peek at early Anderson Valley Native history, acknowledged as such by Malcolm Margolin, creator of Heyday Books and News From Native California. While he was quite effusive upon reading the copy I gave him, it was agreed it is not without shortcomings. After all it was authored by a White European as were the other works I’ve referenced today. Those works don’t reflect the feelings, the emotions, the reality of day to day life as experienced by the native peoples of Anderson Valley

Book Note: Indian Summer, written by Effie Hulbert tells the story of the Ma-cum-muk Indians in Yorkville as seen through the eyes of a young white girl. This intriguing book is available through the Historical Society.

Bibliography

The Ethno Geography of the Pomo and Neighboring Indians; S.A. Barrett, 1908
Handbook of the Indians of California; A.L. Kroeber
The Pomo Indians of California and Their Neighbors; Vinson Brown & Douglas Andrews