Northern Humboldt Indians
Northern Humboldt Indians
A long-awaited book has arrived on the shelves of the Historical Society bookstore: Northern Humboldt Indians by renowned local historian, Jerry Rohde. In it, Rohde begins by giving the background of the area's seven tribes, their languages that developed from three distinct language families, and the geographical areas they settled in. He describes how the rumpled nature of the landscape and the abundance of natural resources enabled these tribes to flourish in relative harmony with each other and the land.
Much of the book, however, deals with how all this changed with the arrival of the white settlers. It is a story which Rohde admits was difficult to write but which needs to be told after some 150 years of obscurity, so that healing and redress can fully begin.
Painstakingly researched, Rohde makes use of official records, newspaper stories and recorded personal interviews and accounts to tell the story of how each of the seven tribes weathered the whites' occupation of their land, military confrontations, mass slaughter, cultural humiliation and forced assimilation. We are shown how rapacious seekers of gold, timber and farmland brought some tribes to near extinction and obliterated millennia-old ways of life.
Amply illustrated with maps and photographs, colorized by the author, the book takes over 400 pages including extensive end notes. A whole chapter is devoted to each of the area's seven tribes, and despite the cultural and human tragedy depicted, the book makes for fascinating detailed reading. It admirably completes Rohde's five book series, making us Humboldters again grateful to have in our midst such a thorough and humane historian.
Rohde rightly concludes his book by saying "Nothing can change what happened in the past, but perhaps by telling as truthfully as possible what actually did happen, this book may, in some small way, help light the way to a better future."
The creed of a true historian.
