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“California is full of crazy people.”
This is a statement which we hear quite frequently, and one which we generally know it to be true. It’s a statement everyone has heard more than once, and is usually followed by; 1) “They ought to build more mental institutions.” Or; 2) “The whole state should be designated an insane asylum and a fence put up around it!” In fact, these very same things were being said one hundred and sixty-five years ago, in 1851, and there were felt to be so many mentally ill people in this state, primarily due to the influx of crazed miners, that the California state legislature decided that they had to do something about it – and quickly. That’s a pretty impressive crisis, as California had been a state for only a few months - since September of 1850 - and was scarcely three years into the Gold Rush. But all those crazy prospectors were coming to California and apparently bringing several forms of mental illness with them. Insanity, the doctors warned, was not only running rampant throughout the newest state in the Union but was actually getting worse every day because the hospitals were not equipped to deal with it. And the miners just kept on coming. So the state legislature, after a brief but vocal consideration, decided to go with Option Number One above and build more mental institutions. Or rather, to build the state’s first official mental institution and fill it with the multitude of crazy miners of which the doctors had warned. Public support for the new legislation was strong, and Captain Charles Weber of Stockton even donated one hundred acres of his own land for the project. This was thought to be an ideal location as Stockton was close to the gold fields and could act as something of a buffer, keeping the lunatics out of San Francisco. So the legislation was passed, the governor signed it, the money was spent, and the Insane Asylum of the State of California proudly opened its doors to tenants. Over the next ten years over two thousand people deemed to be mentally ill would pass through those doors, and more than half of those were confined for treatment in excess of six months. Over the next century tens of thousands of individuals designated by doctors to be mentally aberrant would come to call it home. But how, you ask yourself, just how were those thousands of people deemed to be mentally ill? Certainly there were quite a few somewhat disorderly people in the state – miners were young, boisterous, energetic men, and it was common for them to act loud and obnoxious. So just where were medical doctors going to draw the line? Without such bastions of the psychiatric profession such as Freud and Jung to rely upon for guidance, who was going to set the guidelines? Well, here the doctors of California might be considered to have been ahead of their time, because they composed a Top Ten List; a list of acts or symptoms which would qualify you for residency in the State’s newest hotel. They didn’t actually call it a Top Ten List, but it was what they decided upon to use for a guideline. And what was actually on that list might make you more than a little frightened. So, counting down to Number One, at the bottom of the list there was: 10) Fright. If reading this list makes you feel a little scared of medical care in the 1850’s, then that legitimate fear would have qualified you for a visit to the brand new Insane Asylum of the State of California. Fright was not considered to be a sane response to a situation, and the longer that response lasted, the more insane you were. Never mind the fact that there were plenty of things in California of which to be frightened, such as frequently collapsing mine shafts, frequent shootings, frequent stage robberies, frequent altercations with Native Californians, frequent earthquakes, frequent deaths by accident, and wild predators everywhere – Get Over It! If you felt a little nervous about such things and happened to impart that fear to a doctor, then that Esteemed Man of Medicine might well pack you off to the insane asylum so that you could calm down - because being locked up in an asylum always makes you feel better, right? Next was: 9) Epilepsy. No, they weren’t kidding. Epilepsy can cause seizures, and those seizures usually happen somewhat randomly. There are some common things which can trigger those seizures, but those were not necessarily recognized as such back in the 1850’s. So when a seizure occurred and the individual collapsed to the ground the common symptoms in evidence could be twitching, kicking, moaning, effusive drooling, grinding of teeth, losing control of one’s bladder, and eyes rolling back into the head. If an individual happened to display those symptoms back in the 1600’s they probably would have been thought to be either a witch or possessed by a devil. But the more enlightened medical community of the 1850’s saw it for what the medical community was certain it really was – mental illness. So, if while working in the perpetual darkness of a mine you behaved normally but once the bright light of day triggered a seizure then you were to be viewed with suspicion, and preferably confined. Yet at least instead of being executed you were merely locked up for your own good. Thank god for progress. Speaking of god, the next most popular cause of insanity was: 8) Religious and Spiritualistic Excitement. Have you ever heard of Speaking in Tongues, been to a séance, or thought you heard a voice when no one else was near? These would have gotten you locked up in 1850’s California. As would have communicating with any kind of spirit. In this guideline the doctors apparently sought to walk a fine line. They did not disavow the validity of believing in god yet felt that actually hearing god’s voice was just a bit over the line, kind of on the level of having conversations with your dead Aunt Flo. Native dances where the participants seemed to enter a trance, altered states of consciousness, and just about any foreign religion at all qualified under this quideline. So by all means talk to Aunt Flo when her spirit comes to visit; just don’t do so out loud. 7) Disappointment in Love. In California of the early 1850’s the proportion of men to women was greater than ten to one. Brothels were often infrequent and most women usually only took up residence in the larger cities. Trapped in the mines or working the sluices with only hundreds of other males for companionship meant that a man would often go for months without even seeing a woman, only dreaming of her. When a miner finally got enough gold to go to town a woman would be one of the first three things he would want (the others being whiskey and gambling). And when that lonely miner did finally lay his eyes on a real woman he would inevitably be enamored. Going back to the mines he would then think of her for the next several months until he again got to town and would spend those long days in the mines feeling even more lonely than ever. Disappointment in Love was part of the definition of being a gold miner in California. It came with the territory. But the doctors decided that unrequited love was a mental illness in the Golden State, unable to fathom that perhaps there were valid reasons why tens of thousands of men who spent their days digging in the dirt and their nights drinking and gambling were unable to form lasting relationships with women who had yet to arrive on this edge of the continent. Another symptom common to the gold miner was: 6) Loss of Property. Most of the men who came to California in the Gold Rush brought little to nothing with them, nor did most leave much property behind in their former homes. That’s because they didn’t have any property. That was why most of them came here – to get some gold so they could acquire some property. Few actually managed to do that because most of the flakes and the nuggets that made it into their leather pouches never got saved for any length of time. It instead got spent on the three forms of entertainment mentioned above. But many miners were consistent losers at poker and faro – the two most common games of chance in California. Instead of just accepting the fact that they were bad gamblers they would instead get depressed and go on a drinking binge. That demonstrated Weak Character. So by all means, Mr. Miner, gamble and lose your stake. But don’t let others see that it got you down, because that shows mental deficiency. And then you’re just going to be taking up space in the Insane Asylum, space really need by those who have: 5) A Physical Disability. It would seem that the population of miners in California in the 1850’s was not really all that pleasing to the eye, apparently resembling something out of a Mary Shelley novel with physical deformities parading through the unpaved lanes like failed scientific experiments. Men with missing legs, arms, and fingers; men with crushed and useless limbs that trailed along behind them; men with less than the usual allotment of two eyes, two ears, a nose, and other various yet important appendages. Apparently such physical deformity was a common side effect of working in the mines and was rampant in California, making many men despondent over their Frankenstein-like appearance and inability to attract the ladies (which would then have led to Unrequited Love and left them with a whole different set of problems). Unable to just Take It Like A Man, many such men turned to drink or begging, or both. This was a red flag for mental illness. Mining companies weren’t about to pay for rehabilitation – a policy shared by the logging companies and railroads in later years. And since doctors couldn’t cure them they instead watched for signs that might indicate they were becoming social parasites so they could be locked up. It was enough to make a man pee in his pants – which, coincidently, was the next symptom of insanity: 4) Incontinence. Have you ever laughed so hard that maybe you lost just a bit of muscle control? Off to the Insane Asylum with you! Yes, peeing and pooping in your pants were definite signs of mental illness, although the connection was a bit tenuous. Apparently a loss of control over such basic bodily functions indicated a loss of mental control as well. After all, if you were just sitting around the campfire having a plate of beans with your fellow miners and suddenly those fine fellows saw (or smelled) a puddle forming beneath your seat, you could hardly blame them if they either quickly excused themselves and walked away or politely coughed and said something like, “Uh, had a check-up lately, Jim Bob?” Once Jim Bob explained his predicament to the doctor then it was off to the asylum with him. And if he happened to have been experiencing a religious fervor while losing control, then he was really up the creek. This brings us (finally) to the Top Three Reasons for Being Declared Insane in California in the 1850’s, and with baited breath we can only hope that they manage to meet the high standards set by all of those previous guidelines. Don’t worry – they will. 3) Inappropriate Sexual Activity with Others. Prostitution was legal in California yet demonized by the religious profession and frowned upon by the medical profession. It was Evil, and only insane men do evil things. There were millions of men in California who were thousands of miles from home and these men were mostly in their twenties; the prime of life, just bursting with energy and enthusiasm. And frustration. By comparison there were only a handful of women available to those men. A miner’s chances of getting married were substantially less than that of his simultaneously undergoing a spiritual fervor and peeing in his pants while getting hit by a meteor. Yet if a miner did seek to ease his frustration in the company of a woman he’d never before met and would never see again, it still did not seem like the actions of a reasonable and sane man to the doctors, and seeking erotic activity without the sanctity of matrimony was deemed the third most common cause of insanity in California. It was enough to drive a man to drink. So it's not surprising that the second most common symptom of insanity was: 2)Alcoholism. At last! This is the only one on the Top Ten list of symptoms which had some basis in reality, as alcohol could form a mental as well as a physical addiction. But the docs didn’t limit their definition to those who were falling-down drunk in the streets. No, this criteria included also those who might display any sign of intemperance, which included ingesting spirits at an inappropriate time, in an inappropriate place, or in inappropriate company, as any of which could be deemed aberrant behavior. But life in California in those days was hard. Men worked hard, and they wanted to play hard. Yet it was now official that gambling could cause mental illness; drinking could tip you over the mental cliff; sex with others outside of marriage could make you insane. What else was left? What’s that – you think you’ve thought of something? Well, you’re wrong. What you just thought of is Number One on the list. 1 ) Erotic Activity With Yourself If the boys in the mines thought Number Three (above) was bad, hearing about this one just about caused them to explode. Literally. Did you have a hard day in the mine, Big Fella? Well, get used to it; it’s gonna get even harder. Because seeking any type of relief from that stress might just land you in the Looney Bin. You already knew that you couldn’t gamble with the boys or pray too loudly with the pastor. You can’t talk to your dead relatives. You can’t feel fear over just how damn hard life is. You can’t seek relief with women, and now you can’t even seek relief with yourself with that one lonely activity made so famous by Onan in the bible, because that has been deemed to be - by far - the Number One Major Cause of Insanity in California. If you go off into the woods with a woman, then you’ll go to hell. If you go off into the woods alone – to do the Miner’s Handshake, as one popular euphemism puts it - then you could go to the insane asylum. Life just wasn’t fair. One has to wonder – did these doctors really take themselves seriously? The answer would be – Yes, indeed they did. They took themselves just as seriously as doctors do today; they were quite as certain that they were always making the right diagnoses just as are modern doctors. Which makes one also wonder – what kind of list will be made about modern doctors a hundred years from today? Since miners were the group which was specifically targeted by the doctors they had to adapt, and do so rapidly. The moral to all of this, as was quickly learned by any intelligent miner, was to do exactly as you wanted to do as long as you stayed high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and stayed away from doctors. There were, of course, some people who did seem to be genuinely insane by any standard – not counting the individuals who drafted the above criteria, of course. If someone was violent or totally irrational then they were usually locked up in the basement of the insane asylum where they couldn’t hurt anyone. Nothing like having a few dozen screamers in the dungeon to lend a little atmosphere to the place. One Last Insane Postscript: In April of 1856 the Superintendent of the Insane Asylum, a man by the name of Doctor Samuel Langdon, got into a bit of an argument with one of his fellow care givers, Doctor William Ryer. Unable to resolve the dispute with a quiet discussion of the issues - as would have, say, any sane professional doctor might have done - Doctor Langdon instead lost control and challenged Ryer to a duel. In the exchange of gunfire which followed Doctor Langdon lost both the argument and the duel, taking a bullet in the knee. He was quickly and quietly retired from office and away from the embarrassing public spotlight which shone upon him. However, since he had not been observed to gamble, drink, drool, have a conversation with god, become incontinent, or engage in erotic behavior while alone or with invisible entities, he was not deemed quite crazy enough to be locked up in his own institution, and no doubt went on to offer his friendly professional services to many others while in private practice in the ensuing years. Yet rumor had it that he always remained somewhat reluctant to shake hands with a miner from the mountains.
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When one thinks of the eminent Josiah Whitney, that noble and esteemed
scientist of the eighteen hundreds, it is fairly safe to assume that the mental image of Cave Men dressed in animal skins wielding clubs and hunting giant extinct mammals would probably not spring to your mind as a part of your vision of that great man. Yet you probably didn’t know that this now forgotten link between Whitney’s World of Geology and that Primitive World of Cave Men does indeed exist, which just goes to show how little you know about history. If one were to ask anyone in contemporary California what the name Josiah Whitney means to them, they would probably answer with something regarding the mountain peak which bears his name - Mount Whitney – the highest point in the continental United States which is now surrounded by Sequoia National Park. And they would be correct. But if one were to have asked this question to a Californian of a century and a half ago the answer would probably also have included something about the Geological Survey which Whitney headed; the one which mapped and named much of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range during the mid to late eighteen hundreds. Yet the odds are that almost no one, be it in 1866 or in 2016, would respond by telling you a story about Whitney in which Early Man inhabited California tens of millions of years ago; that humans at that time shared this Golden State with giant and long extinct creatures; and that, based on his geological research and recognized historical expertise, Josiah Whitney was a leading proponent of this controversial view of North American History. And yet he was just that, and – according to him - he had the evidence to prove it. If, at this point in the story, your mind is leaping back to the no doubt historically accurate vision of Raquel Welch in the movie One Million Years B.C., then you have at last made the leap to the link which I inferred, and one which would have been a most valid leap from Whitney’s point of view. However, poor Josiah Whitney did not have the benefit of the Hollywood Imagination Machine to help him conjure images of primitive men and women in California. What he did have was somewhat less attractive yet nevertheless even more intriguing – he had the skull of an early hominid creature found deep in a mine shaft in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; a skull found in geological strata so old that it proved that its human-like owner had walked this land with the long extinct creatures millions of years ago. So Whitney set out with determination and gusto on the difficult path of trying to convince the scientific establishment of this newly discovered fact. The scientific establishment was not impressed. The story begins in February of 1866 when a man named Mattison who was partial owner of a gold mine near Angels uncovered some bones buried in the mine, in a layer of gravel about 130 feet below the surface. The bones were lying between volcanic material above them and bedrock below. Volcanic activity in this area had occurred five to forty million years ago, and since the skull had most of the volcanic material on top of it and had lain undisturbed until the time of its discovery, this indicated that it would have been from the older end of that age spectrum. Mattison removed the bones, which he could see formed a skull, and brought the bones to a friend of his at the Wells, Fargo & Company office in Angel’s. There they cleaned up the bones and reassembled them, and they clearly saw that it was a human skull. So the skull was then sent to a Doctor Jones at the nearby mining camp of Murphy’s, in the hopes of a determination being made as to its age and manner of death. Besides being a medical doctor Jones was also a collector of all things antiquarian and recognized the skull as definitely being of antiquarian origin. He wrote a letter to the Geological Survey, whose office was in San Francisco, informing them of the find. And who happened to be opening the office mail that day? None other than Josiah Whitney. After reading the letter describing the find, Whitney immediately set out to Murphy’s and Angel’s to speak face to face with all of the individuals involved in the discovery. He was already acquainted with Doctor Jones and knew him as an individual whose testimony he thought could be trusted as both accurate and reliable. Whitney then returned to San Francisco and wrote a paper on the bones, which became known as the Calaveras Skull, and presented that paper to the California Academy of Sciences in July of 1866, a mere four months after its discovery. Unlike today, apparently such dissertations weren’t subject to months of delay and peer review, yet Whitney was prestigious enough to have avoided such things anyway. In his paper he firmly stated that the skull had been unearthed within geological strata from the Pliocene Era, making its age probably between five and twenty-five million years old. This paper caused quite a stir, because then as now current belief held that Native Americans had only been in this area for a few thousand years – perhaps ten thousand at most. So a lot of coughing, winking, and elbow-nudging was no doubt going on in that audience as Whitney’s fellow scientists felt that he had probably crossed the line which demarked the scientific from the incredulous. Nevertheless, Whitney stuck to his guns. But Christian church pastors and the Christian press – both very vocal and influential groups - immediately jumped on the story and angrily argued that it simply was not credible. They claimed it was a hoax and, in a thin attempt to acknowledge Whitney’s scientific prestige, they claimed that the hoax had been perpetrated upon him as a joke by rowdy mountain miners. Whitney was, after all, a man of considerable scientific achievement, and there was a much stronger chance of discrediting the evidence if they excluded him from the charge of fraud – even if that was what many of them privately believed. The western writer Bret Harte also got into the spirit of the controversy and wrote a humorous poem titled ‘The Pliocene Skull’. Whitney acknowledged that many were opposed to his views and replied that the age of the skull was being primarily disparaged by religious critics, not scientific ones. In response to this Doctor William Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution decided that he should investigate the matter. He made the trip to California and interviewed everyone he could find who had been involved in the story, some of whom propounded the idea that the whole thing had just been a joke that had gotten out of control. On the other hand Mr. Mattison, who had found the skull, swore that it was genuine, as did Mr. Scribner of the Wells, Fargo & Company who had assisted in cleaning and reassembling it. Yet now there came a hint that there was also some indication that the skull of which Whitney took possession may not have been the original skull found in the mine shaft; that there may have been a switch which took place either at the Wells, Fargo station or at Doctor Jones’ office. Doctor Jones was a collector of such artifacts, and some assumed that when he’d received the original older skull from Mattison he had surreptitiously replaced it with another, keeping the original for his private collection. Yet there was never any direct evidence that this had actually happened. After countless interviews of conflicting testimonies, Doctor Holmes of the Smithsonian gave up and returned to Washington, unable to reach a definite conclusion about the origin or age of the skull. The Calaveras Skull (or one of the Calaveras Skulls, if a switch had indeed taken place) then got shipped to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and there at the Peabody Museum Doctor Holmes finally got to examine it. He concluded that it was in fact the skull of a more modern human and did not show the evolutionary characteristics of Early Man, and that it probably wasn’t more than a thousand years in age. This presented a quandary for the religious protestors: on the one hand Holmes was supporting their position by saying it wasn’t as old as stated; on the other hand he was basing that decision on supposed evolutionary characteristics which were in direct opposition to the basic beliefs of Christianity. Should the pastors support this statement by Holmes, or should they decry it instead? No one seemed to know. It was a ‘Damned if we do or damned if we don’t’ situation. In the meantime the director of the Peabody Museum – Doctor F. Putnam – expressed his view that the skull was indeed the Real Deal, and that it presented proof – albeit controversial proof – that humans had existed in California for millions of years longer than previously believed. So he came out in direct opposition to Doctor Holmes of the Smithsonian. Also offering his support to Whitney was Clarence King, a famous geologist in California scientific circles and destined to become the first director of the United States Geological Survey; a man whose professional accomplishments came to be overshadowed by details of his personal life after his death but who nevertheless had impeccable scientific credentials. Another heavyweight weighing in on Whitney’s side was Doctor O. Marsh, a well-known paleontologist who was the President of the National Academy of Sciences. On both sides of the issue men (yes - always men, no women) were adamant. The scientists cloaked their fiery opinions with the pretense of professional behavior, while those whose opinions were based in religion were just fiery; often openly contemptuous. Actually, it was surprising that Whitney got as much support from the scientific community as he did. Scientists are notoriously conservative and generally unaccepting of any ideas which challenge their traditional values. In the instance of humans abiding in California millions of years ago this same prejudice continues to this day, with the Accepted Doctrine being that this area had no human presence until Early Man (and woman) migrated to North America across the Bering Land Bridge about ten thousand years ago and then spread south; that Modern Man evolved only in one place – that being the so-called Cradle of Civilization in Africa - and then expanded from there to populate the world. This insular attitude is jealously and tenaciously guarded, and evidence to the contrary demonstrating that the story of human development is perhaps much more varied and convoluted is often ridiculed or summarily dismissed. So the skepticism faced by Whitney was not surprising to him, for the evolution of humans into creatures with more intelligent minds than Early Man does not necessarily include that those modern men have also developed more open minds. And in support of Whitney’s stand there is other archaeological evidence contrary to accepted scientific doctrine, one instance of which was found a bit farther to the north yet still in California. In a mine shaft in Placer County known as the Missouri Tunnel a human leg bone was discovered, and studies of samples from the surrounding soil revealed an age of almost nine million years. In the mining camp of Cherokee several stone mortars were unearthed in deep mining shafts in 1853, also in levels dating back millions of years. In 1860 and again in 1869 stone mortars, in conjunction with other human tools, were dug up near the town of San Andreas – again dating back well before humans were supposed to be walking those hills. Another instance of discovery took place about ten years before the Calaveras Skull was discovered and yet not too far away. In 1856 Dr. C. Winslow of California submitted a deposition to the Boston Society of Natural History of an amazing discovery in a mine located near Table Mountain. He stated that miners digging tunnels beneath Table Mountain had, at a depth of about two hundred feet below the surface, unearthed a complete human skeleton. The gravel and volcanic deposits within which it lay were estimated to be of an age from thirty-three to fifty-five million years old. From this same mine at Table Mountain, and at the same level of those human remains, numerous other bones from Mastodons were also discovered. This later discovery wasn’t exactly earth-shaking in itself because mastodons were known to have existed in California until about ten thousand years ago when they then became extinct, presumably due to over-hunting by humans. Yet that raised another question – if humans had only arrived here about ten thousand years ago, then how did they manage to kill off the entire population of North American Mastodons almost immediately upon their arrival, and do it with only roughly cut spears? To many this discrepancy supported the thesis that humans had indeed been here for far longer than rigid scientific thought would admit, and that they had evolved systems of hunting, and perhaps even of civilization, which were far in advance of the accepted views. Then again in 1868, also beneath Table Mountain, two skull fragments were discovered at a depth of 180 feet in a horizontal side-shaft leading off of a deep vertical hole known as the Valentine Shaft, which angled off steeply into the mountain. It was found amongst gold-bearing gravel and also in association with mastodon bones. Also found near the skull was a large stone mortar, an obvious early human artifact; a tool which supposedly had not been developed in this area until relatively recent eras of history. Yet the strata in which the skull fragments and mortar were found dated from ten to fifty million years ago. From those same mine shafts beneath Table Mountain a jaw bone was also found in that same strata of ten to fifty million years of age. Table Mountain appears to have been a popular gathering place for Early Man and perhaps it is ironic that what today attracts crowds of humans to Table Mountain is the gambling casino run there by Native Americans, local descendants of those who once walked that mountain on those old bones found from millions of years ago. If you were to do research on the Calaveras Skull today you will find that most scientific sources would still immediately dismiss it as a hoax; a gag perpetrated upon an eager and gullible scientist by miners with a sense of humor as coarse and creative as their homemade alcoholic brew. And perhaps that might be the case. Critics would state this opinion now just as they said it when the skull was discovered; claiming that tests were not accurate, witnesses were unreliable, bone fragments were carelessly catalogued, or perhaps even that the original skull disappeared into a private collection almost as soon as it had been discovered to be replaced by an obvious pretender. Yet it would seem that there is strong evidence that humans have indeed thrived in what is now California for many millions of years; for far longer than the scientific community would acknowledge to Josiah Whitney a hundred and fifty years ago or that they would even grudgingly acknowledge today. Ironically those two opposing forces - those who adhere to a strict interpretation of the bible have this in common with those who adhere to a narrow interpretation of the scientific data – they both deny the evidence of the presence of humans in the Sierra Nevada Mountains dating back into antiquity. Interestingly, in Spanish the word ‘Calaveras’ means skull, and this part of California had that prescient name long before Josiah Whitney stood before the California Academy of Sciences and showed the scientists there assembled the skull of his ancient friend. Perhaps there is an older, as yet unknown reason why this area of the Sierra Nevada Mountains had this name. Perhaps skulls have populated this part of the mountains for a very, very long time, and they occasionally rise to the surface to whisper to us a bit of ancient history. Instead of turning away with deaf ears, perhaps we should choose to listen to what they have to tell us. A deep mine shaft when once excavated may contain more than one type of treasure; but a closed mind which refuses to open to the evidence of the past contains nothing of value whatsoever. |
AuthorWith a degree in Anthropology and an avid interest in history, Tim Christensen has lived in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for many years. He has no cell phone or television, but manages, when not chopping firewood or shoveling snow, to keep himself entertained with a library of several thousand books. Archives
July 2017
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