Resources
Books | Links | Task-Force Documents Notable Persons
Books
Books
An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873
The first full account of the government-sanctioned genocide of California Indians under United States rule.
Winner of the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Award for History and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “Gruesomely thorough. . . . Others have described some of these campaigns, but never in such strong terms and with so much blame placed directly on the United States government.”—Alexander Nazaryan,Newsweek
Between 1846 and 1873, California’s Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, Indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.
Books
The Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery
The Doctrine of Discovery - a set of laws rooted in the Papal decrees of the fifteenth center gave Christian governments the moral and legal right to seize lands they "discovered" despite those lands already being populated by Indigenous Peoples. The laws were legitimized by the church and justified by misreading the Scriptures. This prophetic book reframes the colonization of North America, investigating the ways that the Doctrine of Discovery continues to devastate Indigenous cultures, and even the planet itself, as it justifies exploitation of both natural resources and peoples.
Books
We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope
​From the moment European settlers reached these shores, the American apocalypse began. But Native Americans did not vanish. Apocalypse did not fully destroy them, and it doesn't have to destroy us.
Pandemics and war, social turmoil and corrupt governments, natural disasters and environmental collapse--it's hard not to watch the signs of the times and feel afraid. But we can journey through that fear to find hope. With the warnings of a prophet and the lively voice of a storyteller, Choctaw elder and author of Ladder to the Light Steven Charleston speaks to all who sense apocalyptic dread rising around and within.
You'd be hard pressed to find an apocalypse more total than the one Native America has confronted for more than four hundred years. Yet Charleston's ancestors are a case study in the liberating and hopeful survival of a spiritual community. How did Indigenous communities achieve the miracle of their own survival and live to tell the tale? What strategies did America's Indigenous people rely on that may help us to endure an apocalypse--or perhaps even prevent one from happening?
Books
Conflict Resolution for Holy People Poems
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Conflict Resolution for
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Winner of the 2023 John C. Ewers Award from the Western History Association
2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
By examining historical records and drawing on oral histories and the work of anthropologists, archaeologists, ecologists, and psychologists, We Are Not Animals sets out to answer questions regarding who the Indigenous people in the Santa Cruz region were and how they survived through the nineteenth century. Between 1770 and 1900 the linguistically and culturally diverse Ohlone and Yokuts tribes adapted to and expressed themselves politically and culturally through three distinct colonial encounters with Spain, Mexico, and the United States. In We Are Not Animals Martin Rizzo-Martinez traces tribal, familial, and kinship networks through the missions’ chancery registry records to reveal stories of individuals and families and shows how ethnic and tribal differences and politics shaped strategies of survival within the diverse population that came to live at Mission Santa Cruz.
Books
A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769-1810
(Ballena Press Anthropological Papers ; No) Paperback – July 31, 1995
"In 1770 the political landscape of the San Francisco Bay region was a mosaic of tiny tribal territories, each some eight to twelve miles in diameter, each containing a population of some two hundred to four hundred individuals. By the year 1810, only forty years later, the tribal territories in all but the most northerly reaches of the San Francisco Bay region were empty. The change began when Spanish colonial explorers passed through the region in the year 1769. Soon after, in 1776 and 1777, the Spanish invaders founded the missions of San Francisco de Asis and Santa Clara, respectively.
"Over the succeeding decades people from one local tribe after another left their villages and moved to the missions. The story of tribal disintegration in the Bay Area is a complex one. No two tribal groups were confronted by the choice to join the missions under exactly the same set of circumstances. There was, however, a common experiential thread over the forty years; each tribe left its homeland for the missions when a significant portion of its members came to believe that the move was the only reasonable alternative in a transformed world. They were not marched to the baptismal font by soldiers with guns (cf. Cook 1943:74).
Books
We Are the Land: A History of Native California
Hardcover – April 20, 2021
Before there was such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians,
We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today’s casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.
Books
We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Ninetheenth-Century California
Winner of the 2023 John C. Ewers Award from the Western History Association
2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
By examining historical records and drawing on oral histories and the work of anthropologists, archaeologists, ecologists, and psychologists, We Are Not Animals sets out to answer questions regarding who the Indigenous people in the Santa Cruz region were and how they survived through the nineteenth century. Between 1770 and 1900 the linguistically and culturally diverse Ohlone and Yokuts tribes adapted to and expressed themselves politically and culturally through three distinct colonial encounters with Spain, Mexico, and the United States. In We Are Not Animals Martin Rizzo-Martinez traces tribal, familial, and kinship networks through the missions’ chancery registry records to reveal stories of individuals and families and shows how ethnic and tribal differences and politics shaped strategies of survival within the diverse population that came to live at Mission Santa Cruz.
Resources for Exploration
Content
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Ask First! - A Better Practices Guide for Indigenous Engagement
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A Synoptic Historic View of Regional Tribes and the Diocese of El Camino Real
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Social Cost of Structural Violence: One Native California Family's Experience
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Ask First! ~ A Better Practices Guide for Indigenous Engagement
Offered by Kanyon Coyote Woman Sayers-Roods
Chairwoman of Indian Canyon Amah Mutsum
For Full Document go to: https://voicesofamerikua.net/askfirst/
Note from an author:
Hello all,
This document was written in response to missteps and harmful impacts that festivals and various other events are making particularly by not honoring the consultation process of local Indigenous Peoples of whose territory that an event is held.
Unfortunately due to a sad chain of events it ended up not getting full input as anticipated so as a result it has sadly been sitting ‘collecting dust’ in the interwebs. People keep asking me about it so I’m opening it up to the public!
This document is a DRAFT and is being offered up for change – the flow and even the approach. It lays a strong foundation but it needs peer-reviewed as I feel it is incomplete in its analysis, editing, and format. For example, on State Government-to-Government Tribal Consultation Procedures, the California Native American Heritage Commission carries a most up-to-date Native Nation Contact List. Information like this is crucial. What else is there to consider? Indigenous representatives working in this field could be consulted. Perhaps a kickstarter or fundraising can happen to pay for peoples services- either someone who works with the commission or an independent body? Peoples insights are welcome. Does anyone have energy for this? Is this Guide useful?
As it is now this guide is geared towards event producers, mainly non-indigenous people but it could be more inclusive in many ways – shifted to locate event participants within these suggested guidelines so all are more educated about these types of Better Practices and event standards.
Acknowledgement and deep gratitude to the friends and comrades who participated in editing it, without whom this would not have been gotten nearly as far. Please do not use this document without crediting it or it’s writers. Permissions: This document is a work in progress and we imagine that it will grow. Your questions, comments, and concerns are welcomed however please know that we may not be equipped to get back with you in a timely manner. It’s why we’ve made it open source, but give credit where it’s due..
“Permissions Users may copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format under the following terms: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
If you transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material**.” Via: ‘Whose Land Is It Anyway? A Manual for Decolonization’.
** = We just ask that you contact the writers. Email: askfirstguide@gmail.com. The document is posted below in full and it can also be found in google docs here for reading it on a white backdrop, along with some suggested edits.
With humility and gratitude. ~ Dixie Pauline
Truth Telling Task Force Resources
As a result of the Truth-Telling work done at the General Convention in 2022, our Diocese created its own Truth-Telling Task Force to examine our church’s history, especially with groups or peoples who may have been harmed by our Church. We began this work by looking at the history of our Episcopal Church with native and indigenous peoples in our part of the land that is now known as California.
That report on our Church’s history will be available in October 2024.
We offer these other resources as we consider our Church’s history:
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The Office of Indigenous Ministries
The Office of Indigenous Ministries celebrates the longstanding presence and influence of Native Americans throughout the history of The Episcopal Church. Exercising a deep spirituality grounded in respect for and care of creation and others, Indigenous Episcopalians enrich the church through myriad roles in lay and ordained ministry, modeling wisdom, resilience, and forbearance.
Indigenous Ministries works for the full inclusion of Indigenous people in the life and leadership of the church.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/indigenous-ministries/
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Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery
As an institution, The Episcopal Church recognizes and repents of its harmful treatment of Native Americans. In 1997, the church signed a new covenant of faith and reconciliation almost 400 years after Jamestown colonization, apologizing for its past actions and launching a decade of “remembrance, recognition and reconciliation.” In 2009, the church’s General Convention passed a resolution repudiating the 15th century-based Doctrine of Discovery, which “held that Christian sovereigns and their representative explorers could assert dominion and title over non-Christian lands with the full blessing and sanction of the Church.”
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/category/doctrine-of-discovery/
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Land Acknowledgements
A Land Acknowledgement is a statement about the native and indigenous peoples who were on church land long before we were.
In response to two resolutions passed at the 80th General Convention (2022), many congregations, dioceses, and other church groups and organizations have begun the practice of making land acknowledgements regarding the Indigenous tribal people who used to live on the land they currently occupy, and in some cases still do.
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When implementing a land acknowledgement, it is important to be aware of their purpose. In short, a land acknowledgement is the start of a process that is intended to lead to something more. This could result in any number of possibilities, with the overall objectives being a deepening of the awareness of Indigenous peoples and living in right relationship with humanity and all of creation.
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Land Acknowledgement Resource Document
Who Was On the Land Before Us?
We are not the first people to be on the land on which our churches currently reside. Use this online resource to discover who has gone before us. https://native-land.ca
If you have any questions about the El Camino Real Truth Telling Task Force, please contact Jerry Drino.
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What is a land acknowledgement statement? -from Cal Poly University
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A Land Acknowledgement is a formal statement that recognizes the unique and enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories.
Why do we recognize the land?
Examples;
St. Dunstan’s (Carmel Valley) acknowledges that the land on which we gather, and which we steward, is the historic territory of the Rumsen and Esselen peoples, who cared for this land throughout the generations. We give thanks for their strength and resilience in protecting this land, and aspire to uphold our responsibilities according to their example
California Polytechnic University of California aims to provide students with resources and access to the nature across California. The land in California is inextricably linked to the Indigenous Peoples. Expressing gratitude and appreciation to the Indigenous Peoples is a step to recognizing those who were living and working on the land across California long before Europeans arrived.
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Northwestern University:
“It is important to understand the longstanding history that has brought you to reside on the o understand your place within that history. Land acknowledgements do not exist in a past tense, or historical context: colonialism is a current ongoing process, and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation.”
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Research Methodology
Summary
The Task Force has been unable to find any transactions or official relations between what is now the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real (the Diocese) or its individual parishes with Indigenous peoples.
The Spanish colonial period (1769–1821), the Mexican period (1821 to 1848) including the Secularization of the mission system (1933), and the American period, particularly the Gold Rush (1848 to 1855) and the California Bounty (1851 to 1869) mostly pre-date the formation of the first congregation in the Diocese, which is Trinity Cathedral in San José formed in 1863. It was during those periods that the indigenous populations were greatly reduced, and the majority of remaining indigenous persons were removed to reservations by the Federal government.
The first congregations that are now in our diocese are:
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Trinity Cathedral (1861)
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St. Philip's Mission to Colored People and Academy (1863)
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Calvary Santa Cruz (1864),
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St Stephen’s San Luis Obispo (1867),
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All Saint's (Cristo Rey), Wattsonville (1874)
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St Paul's (San Pablo), Salinas (1875
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St. Stephen's, Gilroy (1875)
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St. Luke's, Hollister (1875)
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St. James', Monterey (1876)
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St. Luke's, Jolon (1878)
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St. Luke's, Los Gatos (1883)
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Christ Church, San Ardo (1885)
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St. John the Baptist, Capitola-Aptos (1889)
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St John’s Chapel Monterey (1891)
The formation of these congregations is distanced by at least three prior periods, and up to almost 100 years of prior interactions with the native tribes. The land owned by legacy families of these and later congregations and the land for the parishes would have been gained from Spain or Mexico during the Rancho period, at the earliest, and by typical land sales after the distribution of the ranchos. In effect, Episcopalians were “third generation” of land title changes, so did not directly dispossess native people from their land.
This is not to say that the founders and members of the parishes in what is now the Diocese of El Camino Real did not have interactions, positive or negative, with Indigenous peoples. The difficulty is finding documented occurrences of interactions such as land acquisition, slave ownership, bounty activity, marriages, actions taken by Episcopalians in positions of authority (judges, legislators, law enforcement, community leaders, etc.) etc. The Task Force believes that either the custom of the time or a deliberate silence meant that such interactions were not documented. There is simply not enough evidence of any collaborative, positive, negative or destructive interactions between Episcopalians and the Indigenous peoples of this area.
Current interactions between Episcopalians in the Diocese and Indigenous peoples include St. James, Monterey, and St. Stephen’s, Gilroy, who have formed space use agreements with the Rumsien- Esselen and Amah Mutson, respectively.
Research Methodology
In February 2024 the TTTF held a research seminar in which we shared best practices and tools that might be used by parishes to investigate their own history with Indigenous peoples. The practices focus on research of individuals. These practices include:
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Ancestry.com – This online resource contains census records from the nineteenth century that show the ethnicity of households and individual. For example, the census records for Arroyo Grande in 1860 showed 47 indigenous people of which 55 were servants (often a form of slavery), 1 was a rancher, and 1 was a carpenter. By 1870 census records of Arroyo Grande showed only one Indigenous person. As another example the 1860 census records for San Jose showed only 15 indigenous people of which four were identified as servants (often a form of slavery). This tool was used to research the founders of the earlier parishes that are now part of our dioceses. No data was shown linking the founders of the early parishes to Indigenous people.
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Newspapers.com – This online resource was used to look up references to the earlier parishes that are now part of our diocese. This resource was also used to look up the founders and prominent members of the earlier parishes. Many articles from the 1850-80 show a pervasive culture of racism and hostility towards Indigenous People. They also show vigilante justice against Latino gangs that could have also included Indigenous People. In addition Indigenous People were often stereotyped as dumb and made fun of. Finally, one of the founders of St. Stephen’s, SLO, Benjamin Brooks, was the longtime editor of the San Luis Obispo Morning Tribune. In the 1890 issues--the time of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee--and the news columns were typically bigoted but they were more than likely the work of wire services rather than Brooks or his reporters. However, a review of newspapers revealed no articles that link early Episcopalians with Indigenous People.
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Legislative records for the State of California – This resource is now online, and it was used to see if the founders or prominent members of the early parishes participated in legislation that was for or against Indigenous Peoples. A search of these records was inconclusive. We know that Episcopalians were part of the State legislative process in the 1850s, and there is good documentation about the earlier anti-Indigenous People’s legislation. However, we found no records that showed which individual legislators voted for or against a piece of legislation.
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Judicial records in the State of California - ???
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Property records – This resource is now online, and it was used to see if any of the early parishes or their founders received or purchased land that was taken from Indigenous People. Our research showed that the taking of land from Indigenous People happened well before the creation of the State of California. Furthermore, we found no linkages between the land grants done in the Mexican era and the individuals in the earlier Episcopal parishes.
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Various books on local history and local historical societies – Of note, Jim Gregory, a member of St. Barnabas, has researched and written about local history in San Luis Obispo County. He writes, “We have one settler in Arroyo Grande who, as a soldier, witnessed the execution of 38 Dakota in Mankato, Minnesota in 1862 (the mayor lives in his house), and two who participated in the 1865 Powder River Expedition against the Lakota and Cheyenne. Their commanding officer promised to kill "every male Indian over the age of twelve." His men wound up instead having to eat their own mounts to survive. And we have one more, a cavalryman, who, by sheer luck of the draw, was left behind with his company at a fort while John Chivington carried out one of the most brutal attacks on native people, the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. But I think they were all Presbyterians or Catholics.”
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Boarding School records – No linkage was found between “Indian” schools and the clergy of our area. Several members of the Santa Ynez band of Chumash were sent to an Indian school in Riverside, but this was nonsecular.
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A Synoptic Historic View of Regional Tribes
and the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real, 1848-Present
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The Historic Overview has given us the “optics” of over a ten-thousand year human history in the land which precedes the founding of the Episcopal Church in California. The survey constructed a framework to locate the context in which Episcopalians entered the State, in what the Federal Government labeled the Frontier Era.1 We now turn to our church’s history under the theme a beginning is not a beginning, something else has gone before. “Optic” is used intentionally. The Truth-Telling mandate by the Diocese needs to be seen through synoptic lenses, as is suggested in looking at the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The history of the Episcopal Church must be seen together with the history of the tribes on whose ancestral lands the churches of the Diocese of El Camino were founded. The Historic Overview gives the “optics” of the tribes, the events of impact of contact with the Spanish (1769), moving into the Mexican Era (1832-1846) and bringing us into the threshold of the Frontier Era (1846-1890) where Episcopal congregations begin to be formed. Consider the optics of the Episcopal Church. Our tradition is rooted in the English colony of Jamestown, founded in 1607. Its polity/organization has always been congregational. The overlay of bishops and dioceses does not appear for a hundred and seventy-eight years after Jamestown, over twice the Spanish-Mexican period of California.2
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In the Historic Overview Episcopalians were starting to gather in worshiping communities in the late 1840s and early 1850s, replicating the pattern initiated in 1607. Eventually a diocese for the whole state would be established in 1857, even though there were only a handful of congregations. In the subsequent unfolding century it would divide four times, subsequently with the Diocese of El Camino Real being formed in 1979.
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Audit
An audit requires a starting point, a baseline. In a financial audit you begin with a budget, periodically ledgers are updated with a full review at the end of the term of the the income and disbursements. From there adjustments and recommendations may be made for the future The budget is the initial threshold to a road map which the institution intends to travel into the future.
Applying the metaphor, the audit discovery by Truth-Telling Task Force found that there was no line-item in any of the budgets of the dioceses in California in relationship to Indigenous people from the point where Episcopal congregations began to be formed.3 There was no initial mission stategy - or framed more appropriately today - partnership objectives. The only marginal ministry interaction starts appearing in the early 1960s, some hundred and twelve years after the Episcopal Church planting itself along El Camino Real. Today only three parishes in the last fifty years have had any covenant relationship with Indigenous peoples and groups. The formation of the Truth-Telling Task Force (2023) and this report is the first official act of recognition by the Diocese of El Camino Real since its founding.
Only two contact references in the second half of the 19th could be found with Indigenous peoples in the diaries of Episcopal clergy Century.4 From 1850 into the 1880s historians call this time in California a period of unparalleled genocide only surpassed by Nazi Germany.5 However, no reference could be found in the minutes or documents of any of the parishes founded in that period in the region that is now our diocese.6
The Education Committee of the Task-Force considered the implication of the silence, the empty space on Episcopal side of the ledger and the experience of Indigenous peoples from 1848 to 1967. This set in motion the synoptic project of an interactive website, A Beginning Is Not A Beginning, There Is Always Something That Has Gone Before. The intention is to gather a wealth of resources that include documents supporting this report, essays, sermons and links to other websites of the tribes upon whose lands we exist. Included are links to our historic parishes’ websites and access to their history archives.
Frontier Era 1848-1890 – Episcopal Optics
Impact on Tribes - California Statehood and Continuing Displacement
The State’s first governor, Peter Burnett of San Jose, declares a “continuation of a war of extermination of all tribes.” 7 The first displacement of Indigenous peoples had been during the Mission Period (1771-1732). No tribes survived as discrete functioning societies. The culture was carried by individuals and family units, often “disappearing” or being absorbed if possible into “Mexican” identity in order to survived. The 1850s were extremely harsh on Native peoples with bounties for scalps offered to militia organized to clear the land.
As noted in the Overview, the US Senate failed to ratify anyl of the California tribal treaties mandated by President Lincoln.
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The Episcopal Optics
Founding in 1848 and Moving Forward to 1890
In the words of Bishop Kip: The “Mexicans” (including Indians) belong to the ’Romanish’ church. 8
A Chronology of the First Episcopal Congregations form 1848 – 1890
1853 William Ingraham Kip elected by the House of Bishops to be Missionary Bishop to California.
1854 an Episcopal worshiping community is formed at Colton Hall, Monterey
1856 Diocese of California is formed, Kip elected Bishop of California.
1861, Trinity Church, San Jose is formed, followed by St. Philip’s Colored Mission and Academy
The Homestead Act,(see Impact on Tribal Lands) signed by President Lincoln in 1862, allowed citizens and immigrants alike to claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. The land rush became the context of massive migration, including Episcopalians and the subsequent founding of congregations. (1863), Calvary, Santa Cruz (1864), St. Stephen’s, San Luis Obispo (1873), All Saints /Christo Rey, Wattsonville (1874), St. Paul’s/San Pablo, Salinas (1875), St. Stephen’s, Gilroy (1875) which was yoked with St. Luke’s, Hollister (1876) St, Luke’s, Jolon, (1878), St. James, Monterey (1876), St, Luke’s, Los Gatos (1883), Christ Church, San Ardo (1885), St. John the Baptist, Capitola, now Aptos (1889)
Cultural Context – the Initial Conditions Consider the importance of initial condition which are manifested in attitudes, values, goals and objectives which will continue to form and repeat in succeeding generation growth, developments and mission identity. Episcopalians were like other migrants streaming into California. At first the road the tide of the Gold Rush. Close by was the greed for “empty” land legitimized by the symbolic power Manifest Destiny. (See Dawes Act 1862)Both these currants opened up economic opportunities in agriculture, trade, and transportation. Not the least of motivations was adventure and exploration. Episcopalians arrived influenced by one or more of these motivations. When the Task-Forced viewed these conditions impacting Indigenous tribes, it searched for commentary and we find only two brief moral observation from any Episcopalians.9
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1900-1979
Impact on Tribes
1900-1960 Land Loss and Cultural Suppression starting with the Dawes Act (1887 - See Below) to erode tribal lands and culture. While many of the treaties were finally ratified in the early 1900s, the recognition was short lived. In the 1930s, the Federal Government ruled that all the tribes in the diocesan area “extinct” because that had fewer than 300 members.
1960-1990 Reaction and cultural revival and activism. By the 1960s there was a major move by the Federal Government at “relocation” of all the Indigenous from reservation across the country. With massive urbanization of Indigenous peoples had begun resulting in the continuing disconnection from culture and further jeopardizing the claim of tribal autonomy when the people no longer were living on ancestral lands. .Tribal reaction coalesced with the Civil Rights Movement, include the national American Indian Movement among whose leaders would form the future ministry at St. Philip’s and out of St. Luke’s, Hollister. The various Ohlone, Xolon, Salinian and Chumash tribes begin to reclaim their cultural heritage and seek Federal recognition. This continues to be their major struggle.
Expansion of the Diocese of Californian
Relationship with Indigenous Peoples
Cultural Context: In this period the organization of the diocese becomes more centralized in the episcopate as parishes multiplied in the state. The Diocese of California would divide five times and saw a series of socially and liberal bishops. Construction of Grace Cathedral stopped when wealthy donors opposed Edward L. Parsons (Bishop 1924-1940) standing with the Longshoreman's Strike (1934). James Albert Pike (Bishop 1858-1966) lead in the turbulent Civil Rights Era as well as feeding the theological turbulence of the “Death of God” era the broke open the Church
The Indian Center at St. John’s in the Mission District of San Francisco was founded during this period, along with diocesan support in the Black Power and Chicano Movements. The Vicar and Deacon at St. Philip’s, San Jose in the late 50’s and into the 60’s were active in the Civil Rights Movement in the South and the Farmer Workers Movement in California.
In 1967 the Lakota Student Opportunity Program (LSOP) was established by the Rev. Jerry Drino, Associate at St. Andrew’s, Saratoga in partnership with the Episcopal Church on the Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota. 36 teenagers came to live in parish homes and attended school for at least a semester. In 1970 – Drino celebrated a Christmas Eucharist on Alcatraz Island during its occupation by the American Indian Movement.
Again, for most of the 20th Century there is silence on the side of the ledger of the Episcopal Church until the 1960s. In this time of Federal relocation, all the “Indian Work” in the church can be attributed to leadership of Episcopal Lakota, Paiute, Navajo, Shoshone, Ute and Native Alaskan Episcopalians who were being relocated into our urban areas and wanted to be a part of “their” church in these places. Often, they found that they were considered “outsiders” and at best were treated with indifference. Only two Indigenous Ministries were established in the Bay Area: St. John the Evangelist, San Francisco during the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s and in 1989 at St. Philip’s, San Jose. The later followed a long winding trail walked by Lakota Episcopalians who arrived in the e Lakota Student Opportunity Program (1967-1972) at St. Andrew’s. In 1971, Drino becames Vicar of St. Philip’s, San Jose. 1978, Paul Willard (Tlingit) was appointed by the Vestry of St. Philip’s to be Indian Missioner to the Indian Center located nearby. When he sought access to the ordination process the door was closed.
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1979-Present
Impact and Resurgence of Tribes
Land Reclamation continues to be a struggle with a few successes among Chumash and Esselen/Rumsen-Costanoan. Federal recognition and legal battles continue to grow with intensity with some successes among the Mutsun, Chumash and Esselen. Language revitalization grows with cultural and education programs. Environmental advocacy is primary with all eight tribes in our diocesan area, several of which have established nonprofit land trust. More conversations are developing with County and State Parks systems to work with tribes in land and resource management.
Cultural Preservation is an ongoing effort for all local tribes and Indigenous peoples in our areas, focusing on preserving and revitalizing language, traditions and cultural practices, crucial for maintaining their heritage. The establishment of a new nonprofit, Indigenous Nations Diversity Network seeks to engage Ingenuous from throughout the Americas in the celebration, preservation and evolving of culture and spirituality as was experienced in the Second Annual Indian Gathering in Hollister last September. Half of the board of directors are Episcopalian.
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A New Diocese of El Camino Real – InterCultural Relationships
In 1979 Diocese of El Camino Real was formed, and C. Shannon Mallory elected its first bishop. Inter-cultural foundations were already established in the diocese with San Pablo, Salinas, founded in the 1960s and the first Laotian ministry in the country was founded in 1980 at St. Philip’s. However, when aspirants for ordination were put forward from the community, like Paul Willard, they found no way forward through the Commission on Ministry.
In 1988, Ethan Dupris and Garry Haskell, both students in the St. Andrew’s Lakota Student Opportunity Program, introduced Hank Swift Cloud LeBeau, his wife Sherrie and other Urban Indians to Drino, now Rector of St. Philip’s, San Jose. Hank, a counselor at the Indian Health Center of Santa Clara County, was looking for a safe place to hold Indian gatherings. Drino said that he had been waiting for him for seventeen years when a Harvest Feast that November saw over 300 gathered around tables enjoying a feat of turkey and “fixin’s”. The urban Indian population in the County at that point was around 9,000.
In 1990 the sweat lodge is built at St. Philip’s to serve the needs of the Indian community, especially the services of the Indian Health Center where Hank was a staff recovery counselor.
This ministry joined the already established Laotian (1990-), Central American (1988) and Filipino (1989) ministries of the parish. 1991 Hank began studying in the Native Ministry MDiv Program of Vancouver School of Theology (BC) with Drino serving as tutor along with Dr. Andrew Kille and Dr. Jacob Ennolikara, both on the staff of St. Philip’s. He was ordained a Deacon in 1996 and a Priest in 1998
The Indian (or soon called) First Nations Ministry continued until 2006 with Hank’s retirement. During that time St. Philip’s became the center for many activities of the Province 8 region of the Episcopal Church’s Indigenous Ministries. The only Native Hawaiian (Kanaka Maoli) Eucharists outside the Hawaiian Islands was started in 1992 and continued until 2006 with visiting Hawaiian clergy gathering the community for luau and Hawaiian Liturgy.
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The Present
The 21st Century is marked by challenges and innovations which has provided opportunities for intersection with Indigenous peoples. Our diocesan area leads the nation in technological innovation. The Great Recession of 2008 recovery has focused on green technology and sustainability, both of which provide common ground for working inter-culturally. The whole state continues to grapple with issues of housing affordability, homelessness, and climate change, again, all areas of common concern that potentially could be the intersection with concerned Episcopalians and tribal people. The accelerating cost of housing has forced many parishes to provide for only part-time clergy support, with several parishes either merging into a new parish or closing.
The Social Justice Commission hosted a diocesan conference on the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023, inviting local and national Indigenous leaders to explore this foundational proclamation, the Papal Bull of 1452.10 which defined the attitude of “Christian Nations” in their conquest of “heathen lands.”
Several movements have arisen tangentially from the work of the Truth-Telling Tasks Force:
The partnership with the Indian Health Services of Santa Clara County continues to be a part of the inter-cultural ministry of (now) Holy Family Parish (blending of St. Philip’s, Holy Child and St. Joseph’s, Milpitas). A new cooperative venture with Mandala Children’s House (preschool at Holy Family, established 1975) is Common Ground: a Native Garden of Healing Plants. Expanding the area around the sweat lodge, plans are underway to develop a garden of native California plants, especially those which are used in healing. The garden will include an open-air classroom and space for additional ceremonies and family gatherings. The partnership is growing with interests from community colleges and universities as well as various Indigenous Groups. A Federal Grant has been awarded to the Health Center for this project and they seek a Mission Partnership Grant from the diocese, which will be the first investment by the diocese in Indigenous work.
During the time of the Task-Force mandate parishes were encouraged to develop local History Research Teams, to investigate the history of the local tribes, the relationship, if any, with the parish and the tribes and to assess how this history and potential future relationships might be developed. Research resources were suggested by the Task Force with the aid of the Diocesan Archivist, Bill Whobry, Curator of Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. Among those congregations engage in this effort have been Calvary (Santa Cruz), St. James (Monterey), St. Stephen’s (Gilroy) – hosting the meetings of the Amah Mutsum, St. James, Monterey - hosting meeting of the Rumsen and Esselen. St. Dunstan’s (Carmel Valley), St. Philip’s (Scotts Valley), St. Jude’s (Cupertino), St. Luke’s (Hollister), St. Stephen’s (San Luis Obispo), and St. Barnabas (Arroyo Grande). In several parishes there have been forums and sermons, book discussion groups and initial conversations with local tribal groups exploring ways to become allies and advocates for their efforts.
In 2024, St. Jude's, the Rev. Annalise Deal (Curate) helped organize a Forum with Indigenous leaders as continuation of a discussion about changing the name of de Anza. The Rev. Jerry Drino preached on Land Acknowledgements at the Eucharist and was a part of the panel discussion. In the summer St. Jude’s yuth went to the Cheyenne River Reservation for a work camp. This was the reservation with the thirty-six Lakota youth came from in 1967-1971 to participate in the St. Andrew’s Indian Opportunity Program.
In the spring of 2024, the Indigenous Nations Diversity Network was formed as a new nonprofit coming out of St. Luke’s, Hollister, initiated by its Senior Warden, James Whitebear (Assiniboine), and other Indigenous leaders in San Benito County. This network is inclusive of Indigenous throughout the Americas, not just the US but Latin America. [https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php/?story_fbid=122099419022401614&id=61562048435000
Footnotes
1 In the 1890 Census declared “the Frontier Era is over.” That is because the last Lakota were rounded up on reservations, many of whom were already Episcopalians.
2 Samuel Seabury was elected the first bishop in the newly organized Diocese of Connecticut in 1784. The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America was formed the next year with eleven dioceses.
3 The now-Dioceses of California, Northern California, San Joaquin and Los Angeles have and/or continue to have line-items in their financial budgets, with the Diocese of California going back to the 1960s and the Indian Center at St. John’s in the Mission District. The Diocese of El Camino Real has never had any official initiative.
4 See in "Notable Persons" below
5 Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe.
6 Go to Notable Persons (below) and see diary entries from Bishop Kip and the Rev. James McGowan
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Social Coast of Structural Violence: One Native California Family's Experience
https://www.csueastbay.edu/museum/files/docs/vm/aao-social-cost-of-violence.pdf
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​Nancy H Olsen, Ph. D., Anthropology Department, De Anza College
Ruth Orta, Elder, Confederated Villages of Lisjan, Oakland, CA
Abstract
Structural violence embedded in the colonial experience of Native Californians effectively changed the way Indigenous people thought about themselves, while their identity and allegiance to each other remained constant. This study presents the effects
of structural violence one family experienced using ethnographic tools and oral history. It is an example of preservation, endurance and resilience to re-establish Indigenous public agency and engage in public policy. The goal for themselves is re-education about Ohlone culture; the goal for the general public is re-education of continued Ohlone presence in the Bay Area and their connections to ancestral spaces
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Notable Persons
Key Clergy
William Ingraham Kip
James McGowan
Episcopal Legislators and Enacted Law Impacting Tribes
Elisha Oscar Crosby
Dr. Benjamin Cory
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​Early life
Kip was born in New York City, of Breton ancestry, the son of Leonard Kip and Maria (Ingraham) Kip.[1] He graduated at Yale in 1831.[2] After briefly studying law, Kip turned to a clerical calling and graduated from the General Theological Seminary in 1835.[2] He was ordained deacon in June 1835 and ordained priest in October of the same year.[1]
Kip became rector of St. Peter's Church in Morristown, New Jersey in 1835, moved to become assistant minister of Grace Church in New York City in 1836, and moved again to become rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Albany, where he remained from 1838 to 1853.[2]
​Episcopate
On October 28, 1853, Kip was chosen to be the missionary bishop to California.[3][4] He was the 59th bishop in the ECUSA, and was consecrated by Bishops Jackson Kemper, Alfred Lee, and William Jones Boone.[3] He arrived in California after a journey by steamship and transit of the Panamanian isthmus, which in those days could be a dangerous journey.[5] Kip's brother, Leonard, had already moved to California during the Gold Rush, but returned to New York by the time Kip arrived in San Francisco. On arriving in San Francisco, Kip had only two congregations under his charge, but the Episcopal population soon began to grow as immigrants from the East streamed into California.[6] When California became a diocese in its own right in 1856, Kip was elected as its first bishop.[7] He continued to serve as Bishop of California until his death in 1893.[8] His last act in office was the ordination of his grandson, William Ingraham Kip, III. Kip was noted for his Episcopalian Catholicism, which he considered as a means of raising the spiritual sights of California's urban centers.[9] He also promoted the idea of "Grace Cathedral" for San Francisco, which was also advanced by his successor, William F. Nichols.[10]
Among his works are:
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Early Jesuit Missions in North America (1846)
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The Catacombs of Rome (1854)
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The Olden Time in New York (1872)
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The Church and the Apostles (1877)
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Double Witness of the Church (twenty-second edition, 1904)
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The Rev. James McGowan - First Missionary
The Rt. Rev. William Ingraham Kip, D.D., Missionary of the Episcopal Diocese of California, held the first Anglican service in Monterey. On July 30, 1854, Eucharist was celebrated in the upstairs Court Room of Colton Hall. This was five years after the meetings of the Constitutional Convention that drafted the first California State Constitution in Colton Hall, 1849*.
After the Rev. James Shannon McGowan had established St James Church, Bishop Kip returned to Monterey in 1878 to consecrate the completed church structure. At the time, Bishop Kip spoke of St James “…as a beacon upon the hill… May its light spread and its life abound with good work.”
McGowan also gathered communities in the founding of churches in Jolon, San Ardo, San Miguel, King City and Salinas
—Susan Burns Wright, Parish Historian
https://saintjamesmonterey.org/our-story/
Obituary: Monterey Daily Cypress, Wednesday May 19, 1915, page 2
Pioneer Clergyman Crosses The Great divide
Rev. J. S. McGowan will Be Missed By Many People
In the passing of the Rev. J. S. McGowan at his home in this city last night the close of one the longest ministerial car¬es in the state is marked. For two score years he has lived in this section, and until the past few years he s been engaged in ministerial work. Many of the smaller churches of the Episcopal denomination in this section, were established by the Rev. Mr. McGowan, notable, among these being the churches at Salinas, Monterey, King City, Jolon, San Miguel, Raymond and Fresno Flats, in Madera County. The last fourteen years of his life were spent here. Previous to that he had been located at Watsonville and later Salinas. He was nearly eighty-two years of age at the time of his death, having been born in Ireland, but coming to is county at the age of sixteen years.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/66222931/james-shannon-mcgowan
https://www.mayohayeslibrary.org/uploads/2/5/3/9/25392173/st._james_church_and_its_builder.pdf
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Peter and Anna Cassey, Early African-American Church Leaders in California
Sermon by the Rev. Canon Jerry Drino, Trinity Cathedral, San Jose - February 16, 2011 on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Founding of the Parish
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O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and poor into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love. (Collect for Epiphany 7)
With so many options, how do we celebrate our 150th anniversary as a parish? Step back with me to the 1850s and 60s. Dozens of people were involved in founding this congregation whose names and lives will unfold in the weeks ahead. This morning I’ve chosen five to help us focus the historic events which start on Tuesday. In the psalm for this morning we read: “Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end.” (119.33). These five people who kept the statutes of the Lord in their own generation: Sylvester Etheridge, our first rector, Peter Williams Cassey and Annie Bessant Cassey, founders of St. Philip’s Academy and Mission for African Americans at Third Street and San Antonio, and Jacob and Sarah Overton, Superintendent of St. Philip’s Sunday School, popular caterer, and an early sexton of Trinity Church.
Etheridge, the son of a Wisconsin state senator, had been ordained in 1857 before coming to San Jose. Peter, Annie and Sarah came to California as free African Americans. Jacob Overton arrived as a youth in California, but as a slave. Their portraits are before us this morning. (We are grateful for their loan from Mary Parks Washington, the artist, who graciously loaned these wonderful works of art to be a part of our 150th anniversary celebration.)
With their bishop these five helped lay the foundation of the ministries of this parish. Their efforts were the seeds of a pattern of inclusiveness and justices that has woven itself down through the decades. Their witness, against great odds in frontier California, was that this Church, our Church, would be for all people. These remarkable five persons kept the statutes of the Lord in their own generation and whose friendship, mutual respect and support encouraged each other to persevere.
Let us consider the context in which they labored. California woke up in 1848 to discover that they were no longer part of Mexico but had been annexed to the United States through the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.1 In less than a year, the 1849 discovery of gold saw the on-set of a massive invasion of Americans and treasure seekers from around the world. Over night the slow, pastoral life of the Californios was swept away, their ranchos stolen or thrown into legal disarray. The gradual process to make California a part of the US had started in 1846. The immense wealth released in ’49 accelerated the progress and in one year we became a state.2
We entered the Union as a free state but with restriction on African Americans and other people of color. The constitution was drawn up in both Spanish and English in the new capitol of 3 blocks from where we sit this morning. Peter Burnett, the first governor and a Southerner, however, was determined that California would be a white state. He set in motion the formal policy of genocide against all the native peoples and laid the foundations for the Fugitive Slavery Act of 1852.
Even though 90% of the first Legislators were from the South they failed at making California a slave state. Hundreds of slaves had been brought into California by Southerners before and after the formation of the new state. Among them was Jacob Overton. Free African Americans had been arriving in the gold fields in 1850 and 1851. By 1852 there were over one thousand freemen mostly in northern California. The Fugitive Slavery Act that year greatly limited their lives. But in the general population there was a spirit of anti-slavery and civil rights that was persistent in the face of frontier white chauvinism.
Into this environment Peter Williams Cassey and Jacob Overton arrived in 1853, one free and one a slave. This was the same year as William Ingraham Kip was elected Missionary Bishop for California.
Cassey came from a most distinguished family. His great grandfather, Peter Williams bought his freedom in 1785 from the Methodist church in Manhattan that owned him and founded the first Methodist African-American church in New York. His son, Peter Williams, Jr. became an Episcopalian and was ordained as the first Black deacon in the Diocese of New York in 1820 and the first Black priest in 1826, founding St. Philip’s church which celebrated its 200th anniversary last year. His daughter, Amy, married Joseph Cassey, a free West Indian in Philadelphia and together they became leaders of the abolitionist movement. They moved in the close knit circle of Frederick Douglass, Lucy Stone, and William Lloyd Garrison. Our Peter Williams Cassey was born in 1831 and raised in a family where a rigorous classical education was expected of the children. Frequent visits by prominent abolitionist to his home shaped Peter in ways that would unfold in California. The Cassey house in Philadelphia now sits on the National Registry of Historical sites.
At age 22, bearing the names of three generations of visionary and courageous forbearers, Peter came to San Francisco probably in the company of other free African Americans from Philadelphia seeking to share in the gold rush but also in the promise of greater freedom. He was a part of a significant educated number of Blacks who established news papers, businesses, schools, churches and other institutions to protect and promote the African American population that grew each year.
Jacob accompanied Dr. Charles Overton, who gave him his surname, and Dr. William Knox by ox team from Kentucky into the Gold Country. When Dr. Knox became ill, he asked Jacob to accompanied him and his family to San Francisco where Dr. Knox died. Jacob brought his body back to San Jose and after the funeral he was hired by the widow, Sarah Knox to work at the newly constructed Knox Block at the northwest corner of First and Santa Clara Streets. Jacob married Sarah Massey at Trinity on the 30 of December 1869 with Peter Cassey and Ebenezer Steele Peaks, the fourth Rector of the parish.
In the early 1850s the world has probably never seen the multicultural collision that was taking place with men (primarily) arriving in California from the four corners of the earth who sought their fortune.
If it was a land of promise, Peter, Annie, Jacob and Sarah faced the reality of slavery that had been grandfathered into the new state constitution. The human property of existing slave owners was legally secure until 1858. Peter might have been looking for gold but the voice of his parents, grandparents and great grandparents were loud in his ears and heart. He worked as a barber which was a strategic place to gather intelligence for the Black community. He banned together with several African American women to work at gaining freedom for fugitive slaves. He was one of the architects of the first Convention of Colored Citizens which met in Sacramento in 1855 to champion the civil rights of African Americans and other peoples of color. https://www.aclunc.org/sites/goldchains/explore/colored-conventions.html
In 1858 a massive anti-Black movements crystallized around the case of Archy Lee, a fugitive slave in Sacramento. When he won the right to his freedom vengeance against Blacks flooded the land. So hostile was the environment that nearly all African Americans fled the state for Canada.
https://www.aclunc.org/sites/goldchains/explore/archy-lee.html
It was probably around that time that Peter and Annie, who had become his wife, moved to the “quieter” pueblo of San Jose. “Quieter” is in quotes. As the decade closed and thanks to the testosterone level of a dominant male San Jose, the pueblo was experiencing a very high homicide rate. The small, but tight-knit educated Black community of San Jose stuck together. The Casseys saw the glaring need to provide education for African American, Mexican and Chinese children who were bared from public education. As 1861 approached the light of the informal school and faith community began to grow brighter.
Bishop Kip sailed through the Golden Gates in February 1854. He visited San Jose the following May which he described in his journals as a place with a balmy climate of “perpetual spring.” He found a sleepy pueblo where English was seldom heard on the street. Other denominations like to take jabs at Episcopalians who, they say, waited until the invention of the Pullman Car to come West. This is not true. The Episcopal Church in California was not founded by missionaries like the Roman Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptism, but by lay women and men who were faithful in gathering to read Morning Prayer from the Prayer Book in their homes.
When Bishop Kip arrived in San Jose he was met by enthusiastic “Churchmen,” as he called them. This was their Church, the gathering faithful. The earliest known Anglican in San Jose, was Major Samuel Hensley who came 1841 while it was still a part of Mexico. He eventually owned two blocks where we now worship.
The band of faithful who met and prayed with the bishop that May, 1855, implored him to send a priest so that they could establish a formal congregation. As much as Kip tried, he could not coax a priest to cross the Hudson, let alone the Mississippi or the Sacramento Rivers to come to California. Finally, he heard of a priest who, although frail and failing in health, had three years earlier graduated from the wilderness seminary of Nashotah House in Wisconsin who might be open to coming to the Pacific Coast.
Sylvester Etheridge left the north in the fall of 1860 to come to the milder climes of San Jose. The Bishop instructed him to see if the handful of Episcopal families would warrant establishing a parish, although he had his doubts. On the first Sunday in Advent they gathered for Morning Prayer in the Fire House on Market Street which housed the City Hall on the second flour. Subsequent Sundays made it clear that there was great enthusiasm for the founding of a new parish. So on February 22, 1861, Washington’s birthday, an organizational meeting was held, a Vestry with Wardens elected and the Parish of Trinity came into being - encompassing all of Santa Clara County.
Among those founding members were two other educators and church planters, Peter Williams and Annie Cassey. Their daughter, Amy was among the first to be baptized in the new congregation. As Trinity was taking shape so was a new school and companion congregation: St. Philip Academy and Mission to Colored People, as it was called. Support for a state wide subscription was responded to by African Americans and whites alike. A boarding school was rented near where San Jose State University stands today. The Overtons were directly involved in the school and Sarah traveled through out the state and Nevada to raise funds. Sarah Massey Overton was an outstanding speaker, born in Lenox, Massachusetts. Her family first moved to Gilroy in the 1850s but relocated to San Jose because of the Casseys’ school.
Bishop Kip ordained Peter in this church in 1866 as the first person of color to be ordained west of the Mississippi. By 1870 the Bishop had assigned Cassey to found Christ Church in San Francisco for African Americans which would grow and divide and St. Cyprians Church would be the off spring. By 1874 the case of Ward vs. Flood saw that all schools were integrated by state law and so St. Philip’s closed its doors. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/5views/5views2b.htm
Annie died the next year and Peter moved to Oakland where he gathered the community that would eventually become St. Augustine’s. (Note: She and her mother, Henrietta Lockwood the first black nurse in San Jose, along with the Overton's and leaders of St. Philip's Academy are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, San Jose, and are included in the calendar of saints, Lesser Feasts and Fasts of the Episcopal Church, February 16)
What are the common components of the lights which burned in these five pioneers and friends?
- a deep faith shaped in the long Anglican tradition;
- a passion to gather people into a worshiping communities of this tradition;
- a clear vision for the needs of children who had no other means to gain an education unless they provided for them;
- and finally a profound sense of justice and of our common humanity.
I am stunned by the accomplishments of Peter and Annie Cassey, Jacob and Sarah, and Sylvester on the eve of the Civil War. Against the racists community, whose members were undoubtedly counted among the membership of the newly founded Trinity Church, they stood together to establish two companion ministries. Etheridge was too ill in early 1864 to participate in the dedication of the new church building he helped to design. He died on February 18, without knowing that his father had died in Wisconsin the same day. Peter, after founding three congregations in our diocese went on to be the first African American vicar in North Carolina and then to be a trail blazer in Florida where he died in 1917. Peter said of St. Philip’s “We have striven to make this mission a blessing.” Sarah Overton died in 1914 and the Rector of Trinity, Halsey Werlein, said “we have lost an invaluable worker.” Jacob was a renowned caterer and it was noted that in 1917 he was cooking bar-b-que at a celebration in St. James Park for returning service men. He died in 1922.
They lived to be blessings which continue to impact us today. To remember them is to be reminded that we have the same commission in our own generation. We are called to keep God’s statutes and be lights that will shine into the darkness and transform the times and places where we are called to live. To these five we say “Thank you!”
1 The. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo in Spanish) is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States[1][2] to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico City, that ended the Mexican-American War (1846 – 48)
2 Bear Flag Revolt, June 14, 1846 and the attempt to establish the Bear Flag Republic at Sonoma.
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Early Episcopal Legislators and Enacted Laws Impacting Tribes
At the Political Beginning: Two Episcopalian Legislators
Had Roles Making the State’s First Laws Against Indigenous Californians
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Elisha Oscar Crosby (1818-1895) and Dr. Benjamin F. Cory (1822-1896) were early American migrants to California with strong family ties to prominent members of Trinity (now Cathedral) Church in San Jose. Undoubtedly, these were distinguished men of impressive achievement. But, being humans, they were morally ambiguous. They were capable of doing both good and bad, of exhibiting moral clarity sometimes and, at other times, cultural blindness. On the positive side, in over a hundred cases in the 1850s Crosby’s law practice defended Spanish-speaking Californios whose land grant titles were being challenged. In all these cases, including one before the U.S. Supreme Court, he argued that the title challenges were unjust and in blatant violation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1850) which guaranteed the state’s former Mexican citizens equal rights in California. Also, when Minister to Guatemala during the 1860s, Crosby married an Indigenous woman.
However, for purposes of this Truth-Telling Task Force, we note that Crosby and Cory served in the first session of the California State Legislature of 1850-52 that enacted laws and policies highly detrimental to the state’s Indigenous people. [For fuller explanation of early state measures damaging to Native Californians, see Kimberly Johnston-Dodds, Early California Laws and Policies Related to California Indians at https://library.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/crb-reports/02-014.pdf ].
Denial of Indians’ Voting Rights and Legal Protection in Courts
In the initial legislative session, Cory served in the Assembly house while Crosby was a Senator. Of the two men, Crosby’s role was greater in setting the state’s formative policies towards Indigenous peoples, as he was also a delegate to the 1849-50 California Constitutional Convention that decided against granting voting rights to Native Californians. This was the first of several acts by California’s government leading to Indigenous people having virtually no rights and protection by government or law, leaving them vulnerable to mistreatment by whites. [The only individual whose vote on Indian suffrage is recorded was Kimball Dimmick, the convention’s chairman, who broke a tie by voting against Article V on Suffrage to include Indians. Report of the Debates of the Convention of California, on the Formation of the State Constitution, In September and October,1849, by J. Ross Browne (Washington, D.C.: John T. Tower, 1850, p. 73. Generally, early California legislative proceedings records stated only if a measure passed and gave no record of individuals’ votes].
Elisha O. Crosby served in the Senate of the first California Legislature from 1850 to 1852. He chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, so was likely influential in passing the 1850 statutes banning Indians from testifying in California courts.
Punitive Indian Expeditions
The state’s first Constitution empowered the Governor to call out the Militia to enforce the law, suppress insurrection, or repel invasion. Twice in 1850, Governor William Barnett called on the Militia to mount Indian “Expeditions” to punish Indians for reputed attacks or crimes against Whites. The first legislature responded to both of Governor Burnett’s requests by authorizing and financing the punitive expeditions. Indian Expeditions, it must be noted, were not conventional military campaigns or battles. Rather, they were hunts that usually culminated in unrestrained massacres, with any survivors sold into servitude. This was the start, during the 1850s and 1860s at the state, federal and local vigilante levels, of what the leading historian of genocide in California has labeled the state sponsored “Killing Machine.” [See Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the Californian Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2016), especially Chapter 6, “Rise of the Killing Machine.”]
The most frequent reason cited for forming punitive expeditions was alleged theft by Indigenous persons of Whites’ horses, cattle or other livestock. Relatedly, from Spanish colonization to the American period, the greatest cause of the decimation of Indigenous Californian populations was the rapid destruction, upon introduction of European livestock and crop field crops, of local ecosystems and Native peoples’ traditional food sources such as seed plants and wild game. Ironically, once European and Euro-Americans’ livestock had destroyed Native Californians’ ability to feed themselves, facing starvation, they often turned to that livestock for food—which then often led to genocidal anti-Indian expeditions being launched against them.
Moreover, any Indians charged by Whites with theft or other crimes were presumed guilty--and if the specific Indians accused proved elusive, then any Indigenous people at hand would do on whom to unleash lethal punishment. Almost all contemporary White voices (political leaders, military authorities, newspaper editorials, etc.) agreed on the “pedagogical” value of Indian killing-- that it would teach surviving Indigenous peoples not to tamper with whites' animals, property, or lives. [On White Californians’ notion of “pedagogic killing” see Madley, American Genocide, pages, 48, 95, 128, 137, 180, 181 and 216.]
Act for the Protection and Governance of Indians (1850)
This law was another enormously harmful act of the first legislature in that it created the legal foundation allowing for the continuation and expansion of coerced Indigenous labor in California.
That bill was assigned in the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Crosby. According to a recent state government report, the “1850 Act for the Protection and Governance of Indians facilitated removing California Indians from their traditional lands, separating at least a generation of children and adults from their families, languages, and cultures. . . This California law provided for ‘apprenticing’ or indenturing Indian children and adults to Whites, and punished ‘vagrant’ Indians by ‘hiring’ them out to the highest bidder at a public auction. . .” [FN 5: Johnston-Dodds, Early California Laws, p. 1.] From passage of this Indian Act in 1850 until 1863, between ten-to-twenty thousand Indigenous Californians were kidnapped, indentured, and forced into bondage. By 1852, “one-third of the Native boys in California were indentured and 65 percent of Native females were bound over before they were fifteen years old.” [Jean Pfaelzer, California, A Slave State (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2023) p. 175.]
If legislators such as Crosby and Cory created this law, it was enforced and implemented by judges at the county and township levels. For examples, County Courts of Sessions and township Justices of the Peace determined which Indigenous adults were indentured or children “apprenticed” to White persons. (Bearing in mind that Californian Indians could not testify), any white person could bring an Indian or Indians before a Justice of the Peace and -- on such grounds as that the Indian lived on the White’s land, owed him money, could not provide for themself, were orphaned, or followed an immoral lifestyle—the Justice could legally bind the Indigenous person(s) to the applicant.
Given that numerous Episcopalians were judges, it is likely that some early local Episcopalians played parts in imposing this Act’s unjust measures on Native Californians.