Trip to Humboldt County, California

Hi: I just got back from a trip to Eureka where I was born. Found lots of information for the book I am writing about my childhood in Whitethorn, California. I bought a book called, two Peoples, One Place, by Ray Raphael and Freeman House. It is a historical account of the Indians and the white folks in the area.

When I was a child at Whitethorn, my mother told me about a terrible attack on the Indians by the local people in Eureka. She said the indians lived on an island in Humboldt Bay and the locals sneaked out to the island at night carrying hatchets and knives and killed every Indian on the island. They did not carry guns because they didn't want to make noise. Most of the indians were women and children. Hearing this from my mother only, I did not have the facts to back it up. Ray and Freeman document the event in their book describing a partial list of Massacres.
Date: February 1860 on Indian Island (Humboldt Bay). Fifty five Wiyot women and children were killed.

I find it interesting that my mother, born in 1916, knew about this awful event that took place decades after she was born.