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“Let’s just hang her and get it over with!”
Those aren’t words anyone would really want to hear, especially if you happened to be Josefa Segovia, the woman who had suddenly found herself surrounded by an angry mob of hundreds of hung-over Sierra Nevada miners and who was the target of the deadly venom with which the words were being shouted. “She killed a man, and she admits it!” Josefa had indeed killed a man. She had pulled a very large knife from beneath her skirt and plunged it into the man’s chest. She had done so deliberately, and with more than a little satisfaction. One might even say that there was a marked zeal in her attitude. And she freely admitted to doing so. “He was my friend, and he laid there bleeding out on the ground while that whore just stood and laughed!” This was only partly true. The man did indeed fall to the ground and bleed to death within minutes of Josefa giving him a taste of her blade. But Josefa wasn’t a whore, and she didn’t laugh. It was the fourth of July in the year 1851; the first Independence Day to be celebrated in California since the brief Bear Flag Revolt had forced a split with Mexico and an equally hasty vote had solidified California into a union with the United States. Californians were in a festive mood as they celebrated this special Fourth of July, and those who lived in the small towns of the Sierra Nevada Mountains had largely been making it a week-long festivity. Any excuse to drink and stay drunk was welcomed as a respite from the hard work of the mines and the logging camps. So that by the time the actual holiday itself rolled around it was all getting to be a bit of a blur for a lot of the revelers. Even the tiny mining community of Downieville high up in Sierra County had a dozen gambling halls and over two dozen saloons to serve its small population of miners, teamsters, and woodcutters, and those men had been busy working hard to maintain their inebriated state of mind for twenty-four hours a day, and for the past several days. Josefa Segovia was one of that small population of Downieville, although in this tiny community she was called not by her real name but rather known as the Mexican woman, Juanita. White people of European descent were almost always in the majority in the Sierra communities. They looked down with comfortable superiority on Chinese, Blacks, Mexicans, along with anyone else who didn’t look quite right, and often called these people whom they didn’t understand by a few common names which they had heard frequently. Juanita was such a case. As Josefa had made her way north from Sonora in Mexico and through the mountains and valleys of California she had matured quickly and had seen much that was wondrous – buckets full of gold; farms that stretched as far as the eye could see; trees so large that it took men weeks to cut just one of them down. She had already lived a lifetime in her brief twenty years and so she adapted to the patronizing sobriquet of Juanita with a dismissive shrug, not really caring what others called her. That, however, was soon to change. Juanita was often seen in one of the saloons in town, a place called Craycroft’s. She liked to sit and watch the flow of money and gold change hands as the man she loved – Jose – was employed there and dealt cards for a living. Jose was known as an honest gambler who steadily won money for the House but never cheated his fellow players at the table. It was generally believed that Juanita and Jose were not married, although they did live together in a small shack near the busy heart of Downieville. Juanita and Jose were following this usual pass-time of cards in Craycroft’s on the Fourth of July of 1851 when a group of rowdy men made their way into the crowded bar. One of those drunks was a man by the name Fred Cannon. He was from Scotland, and his friends called him Jock. Jock was one of those individuals whose celebratory excesses had probably extended by this time far beyond what could be called reasonable. Had he been alive in modern times his friends would probably have taken his keys from him, driven him home, and dumped him into bed long before they had found and explored this many saloons. But this was 1851, and those friends instead only urged him into further excessive and obnoxious behavior. So when Jock entered Craycroft’s and saw a pretty young Mexican woman who was apparently sitting all by herself he thought that he was just the man to alleviate her loneliness. So he walked up behind her and by way of introduction dropped one of his meaty paws onto her bare shoulder. Juanita, as has been observed, had seen a lot in her brief life, and she had learned when she was a very young girl not to suffer unruly behavior from anyone, not even from those Superior Gringos. So when that hand grabbed her from behind she bolted upright and spun to face the man with a knife in her hand. Her slender five foot body had seemed deceptively docile to Jock and he froze in surprise, staring at the blade which had appeared as if by magic in her hand, apparently wondering how things had gone so bad so quickly. His friends had enough sense to grab him and pull him away from Juanita, saving his life – for the time being, at least. Jock backed away, muttering under his breath at the (in his mind) unfriendly Mexican spitfire who he could straighten out if he only had the chance. But at the ensuing trial Jock’s friends remained loyal to his memory and swore that no bad language had ever passed Jock’s lips, nor were any inappropriate intentions ever on his mind. Their one-sided memories of the encounter were never called into question, despite the amount of alcohol they had obviously consumed and which may have perhaps influenced their judgment just a little. Later that night, in the small hours of the morning of July fifth, Jock and his friends finally left the saloon after drinking up their courage and stumbled down the street to the home of Juanita and Jose. Jock began to pound on the door and shout. He pounded so hard that he broke the door off its hinges and it fell to the floor and he stepped inside, shouting abuse at the woman who had spurned his advances and made him back down at knifepoint in front of hundreds of men. Once again Jock’s friends came to the rescue and dragged him away from Juanita, back out the door and down the street. And once again, at the trial, they stood by their dead friend by swearing under oath that Jock had merely knocked politely on the door and that it had fallen in all by itself. But a deputy sheriff who had investigated the incident testified that Jock did indeed beat down the door, after which Jock barged into the house and shouted abuse at Juanita before his friends could pull him away. Jock, according to his friends, was in reality a wonderful person but just sadly misunderstood. Later that morning of July fifth, after the sun was up and people were staggering about town with hangovers and splitting headaches, Jock and his group of loyal friends once again made their way to Juanita’s house. Jock’s friends swore that he went there to express his regret for his earlier behavior. This time Jose answered the door. ‘Answered the door’ is perhaps not quite accurate, as the door wasn’t there any more, Jock having pounded it into pieces a few hours before. Jose was angry and demanded an apology from Jock as well as payment for the door. Jock’s apology consisted of refusing to pay for anything. When Juanita then made her appearance Jock proceeded to shout at her and called her a whore. She told him where he could go and spun on her heel to head back into the house. Jock followed her in, pushing Jose aside, shouting abuse and obscenities at her as they both briefly disappeared from view. Just seconds later Jock stumbled back out, grasping at a gaping hole in his chest which was spurting blood. He fell to the ground and the life bled out of him in seconds. Jock’s friends quickly raised the cry of murder throughout the town and a crowd of several hundred agitated and hung over men soon gathered. Both Jose and Juanita were bound and then locked into a small cabin while the crowd loudly debated what should be done. As there was no judge or court in the town of Downieville the crowd quickly decided that Miner’s Law would henceforth be in effect, and they proceeded to prepare for a makeshift trial before justice was meted out. A judge was chosen from the crowd as was a jury of twelve men; men who had apparently sobered up to a reasonable extent. Prosecuting and defense attorneys were appointed and the trial got under way. Out of all these hundreds of men who gathered to watch the spectacle of instant justice taking its rapid yet erratic course there was only one man in the crowd who had the courage to speak up and say that Juanita should be brought to the county seat for a proper and legal trial with a real judge and a sober jury. The crowd paused only briefly to beat the man senseless before getting on with the (il)legal proceedings. As the trial proceeded the jury heard testimony both from Jock’s friends as well as from other witnesses regarding the initial encounter at Craycroft’s as well as the late night breaking down of the door, and the subsequent ‘apology’ which resulted in Jock’s sudden death. Juanita spoke in her own defense, saying that Jock had approached her on more than one occasion wanting sex and that she had each time rebuffed him. She said she was afraid of him and always kept a knife tucked in her garter or beneath her pillow for her defense. She freely admitted to plunging the knife into his heart, even though no one had actually seen her do it. Josefa had had enough – Jock had pawed her in a saloon; Jock had continually pursued her for sex; Jock had categorized and trivialized her as a generic Mexican woman by the name of Juanita. Jock had broken down the door of her house in the middle of the night and shouted abuse at her. And when he called her a whore and bullied his way into her home a second time she had simply had enough. She’d had too much. So she killed him. As court recessed the town’s population retired to the various drinking establishments to discuss the heinous crime of a lowly Mexican woman killing a popular white man and its probable outcome. Prodigious amounts of whiskey were hastily consumed as the men sought to collectively bolster their courage for the deed they all knew was soon to come. Then court was reconvened. Juanita’s defense attorney brought in a doctor to testify that he had examined Juanita and that she was pregnant, and that no punishment should be meted out to her lest the innocent baby suffer as well. When another doctor was brought in to counter that claim the court paused briefly as the first doctor was instantly and literally run out of town for trying to save the Mexican woman. At least he wasn’t beaten to a pulp as had been the earlier protestor who had tried to help her. Jock’s body was then put on display and everyone lined up to look at the bloody hole in his chest, and they angrily muttered about how this should not have happened to such a nice guy; a man who had innocently celebrated the birth of his country – a little too loudly, perhaps – but who had done his best to apologize for any inappropriate behavior on his part. Seeing the body was enough for the jury. Those twelve sober men of good moral character within minutes returned with a verdict of Guilty, and the judge concurred. Juanita was sentenced to be hung that same afternoon. Jose was found to be Not Guilty, but was told that he had to leave town anyway as they really didn’t want his kind of undesirable people in the upright and moral town of Downieville. While Juanita languished in a locked room awaiting her fate, men hastily nailed a beam across two posts that protruded from the top of a bridge that crossed the North Fork of the Yuba River in Downieville. From that beam they hung a hangman’s noose, then thoughtfully added a small set of steps so that Juanita would have easy access to it. About four o’clock on the afternoon of July fifth, 1851, the same day that she had stabbed and killed her abuser and a mere two hours after her trial had finished, Juanita stepped onto the bridge. She mounted those steps and obligingly put the noose over her own neck. Juanita then turned to the brave men who had sentenced her to death and said that, given the same circumstances, she would act in exactly the same manner again. Then she stepped out and died. They let Josefa Segovia hang from the bridge for twenty-two minutes. If her neck was broken by the fall, then death would have been instantaneous. If not and she had to strangle, then ninety seconds would have sufficed. Yet they extended her stay at the rope’s end for a far longer time, not so much making certain of her death as taking satisfaction in the sight of the woman they saw as Juanita the Mexican Whore receiving Miner’s Justice for the murder of a popular man who most likely richly deserved exactly what he had received from the flashing knife wielded by Juanita’s quick hand. But on that same afternoon someone else also died; a twenty year old woman from Sonora in Mexico named Josefa, a diminutive little woman whose only crime had been to show the courage to defend herself when threatened; a woman who nobody really knew except Jose, the man who loved her. Jose was allowed to stay long enough to watch Juanita hang for twenty-two minutes on that bridge. Then he was escorted out of town. In a final bit of irony, or Miner’s Humor, Juanita and Jock were buried side by side so that their spirits might torment each other throughout all of eternity.
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About the year 1765 the lands of the Cherokee Nation brought forth a
remarkable man into this world; a man who was destined to alter the historic path which the Cherokee had walked for centuries; a man who came to be both known and respected far beyond the domain of the Cherokee into both the mountains of California as well as the universities of Europe, even though he never came near to either of those places while he was alive. George Gist was born in what is now known as Tennessee in or about the year 1765. His mother, a full-blooded member of the Red Paint Clan, was called Wut-teh. His father, a man who was said to be half white, bestowed upon him the name of George Gist before he moved on and disappeared forever from his son’s life. It was rumored, but not proven, that the father was Nathaniel Gist, a friend of George Washington’s; a man who fought valiantly in the American Revolution and who later went on to become ancestor to other offspring of whom he was apparently more proud, the famous Blair family of Washington DC. Yet this was just rumor, and although young George never knew his father he nevertheless grew up to use both the name his father had given him as well as one chosen from his Cherokee heritage; S-si-qua-ya. As a child young George developed lameness at an early age due to a bad knee, and this was an affliction which went on to plague him for his entire life. With his physical activity being thus restricted George was forced to seek skills other than those which were necessarily traditional to the Cherokee, such as hunting and trapping, and as a young adult he taught himself the art of a silversmith, quickly becoming not only adept but actually quite talented at his chosen profession. George’s mother, Wut-teh, had never married (or remarried) after the disappearance of George’s father, so to make ends meet she ran a trading post on Cherokee lands which provided her with sufficient income to raise her son alone. Young George learned that he could sell necessary items from the store to hunters and trappers and sometimes receive silver coins in return, and these coins he learned to melt and craft into jewelry which he then re-sold for even more money. It is unfortunate that he never signed any of his creations, as they would be of remarkable historical value today. Around the turn of the century – 1800 - when he was about thirty-five years old, George’s mother passed away, leaving George alone in the world. He took over the running of the trading post and under his management it soon became a popular meeting and drinking place for men of the tribe. George, too, fell into the drinking habit and soon turned into an alcoholic, now craving the dizzying liquid which the White Man had introduced into the Native American culture as a means of neutralizing – or neutering – them. For months at a time he was said to stay drunk, ignoring both his craft and his business. But George was a highly intelligent man and soon forced himself to snap out of it, not only quitting his drinking but also banning the sale and use of alcohol from his trading post. With a renewed interest in life George took up the craft of blacksmithing, again teaching himself the art from scratch as he had done with becoming a silversmith, and he built his own blacksmith shop including bellows and a forge. Soon he was not only repairing metal tools but also fashioning new ones of his own design, and even decorating them with silver. Around the year 1810 George packed up and moved to the area of what is now Alabama, seeking to find new challenges. He soon enlisted in the United States Army under the name of George Gist at the ripe old age of about forty-five. He was assigned to the Cherokee Regiment and fought against the British and their tribal allies in the War of 1812, serving most notably in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. After the war George returned home and in 1815 married Sally, his first wife, and began a family. They would eventually have four children together. During George’s years as a silversmith, blacksmith, and trading post owner, he had continuous dealings with the White Man and had become interested - even fascinated - with how they managed to communicate with each other without speaking; simply by making symbols on paper which they then passed around to each other, often over long distances. He referred to these pages as “the talking leaves”. Many of the Cherokee thought this was sorcery, and therefore something evil which should be avoided. But George’s intelligent mind instead saw an opportunity, not only for himself but for the entire Cherokee Nation. So shortly before his stint in the army George began to experiment with developing a written language for the Cherokee; a unique writing system, one not based upon that of the White man. And after George’s discharge he threw himself into the effort with his usual energy. George was a highly intelligent man, and as such he could see the danger the White Man posed not only in the present but also the looming clouds of danger in the future. Seeing this he sought to give his people a tool which would not only help them communicate but which might also be instrumental in preserving their culture, for in his mind cultural assimilation into the World of the Whites would be a fate as reprehensible as eradication. Not wishing to merely replicate the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet, George’s first thought was to create a unique symbol for each word in the Cherokee spoken language. After several months he gave up on assigning each word a symbol as too cumbersome of a system and moved on to instead creating symbols for each of the unique sounds of syllables in Cherokee words. That brought him a list of eight-five characters which could be formed into words, and he soon embarked upon teaching the system to his first pupil – his daughter, A-Yo-Ka. But the tribal elders suspected that witchcraft was at work within the family home and he quickly found himself put on trial, facing the serious charge of sorcery and also facing the possible penalty of death. George managed to convince them that no sorcery was involved by getting the elders involved in the reading and writing of notes to each other. However, his efforts still being given a mostly unwelcome response near home, he travelled to Arkansas to teach the Cherokee tribes living there. Eventually his patience was rewarded as at first a few, then dozens of Cherokee became his pupils and quickly absorbed the new system of communication. Word of his success spread, so when George returned home he found that his fellow tribesmen there were now also willing to learn. He was so successful that in 1824 the Council of Eastern Cherokees had a large silver medal made in his honor and gave it to him as a token of their gratitude for this gift to The People, and the following year the entire Cherokee Nation embraced this new system of communication. This proved to be a double-edged sword – the Cherokee could now begin to write their own cultural history, but the missionaries could now print bibles in Cherokee to try to change that culture. The translation of other books soon followed, and in 1828 there was born a Cherokee language newspaper. A Cherokee named George had created a whole new language from scratch, something which had been done by a man perhaps only one other time in all of recorded history. The silver medal he was awarded is said to have borne the likeness of George on one side with the reverse illustrating two long pipes. Both sides bore an inscription reading (roughly) “To George Gist from the Cherokee Council for His Invention of the Cherokee Syllabary”. On one side this inscription was written in English; on the other it was written in the new language George had invented. And now George also finally felt appreciated by the very people who had accused him of sorcery – so much so, in fact, that it was said that he went on to wear this silver medal around his neck every day of his life. He cared so much for it that it was buried with him. In 1828 George left home again to travel to Washington DC. By now he had married a second time to a woman named U-ti-yu, and over the years he would have three more children with her. On this trip to Washington, George was part of a delegation sent to help negotiate land treaties with the United States Government. The negotiations went about the same as all treaty negotiations between the government and Native Americans, and consisted primarily of false promises and empty words on the part of the government and the eventual forced evacuation of the Cherokee from their historic homelands. But while in Washington George, at least, was honored by the government when they requested that he pose while his portrait was painted; a portrait of him holding a copy of the Cherokee Syllabary. The government also sought to recognize his accomplishments by granting him an award of five hundred dollars for the educational contributions he had made to his people. However, in typical government fashion, it was said that he received only about three hundred dollars of that award, the rest disappearing into some dark bureaucratic hole, or pocket. While in Washington George was also fortunate enough to meet members of other Native American tribes who praised him for his work. This inspired him to try to create a universal written language for all Native Americans. When he returned home it was to move on to Oklahoma, where he built a cabin for his family. But the Cherokee Nation had become divided, not just geographically but also politically and philosophically. Seeing that his new written language had at least partially brought the arguing groups closer together, the decade of the 1830’s saw George set about trying to heal the differences between the divergent factions, especially over the thorny issue of relocation, which had many warriors on the verge of violence. He began travelling extensively to speak at council meetings, where he tried to logically discuss the issues while at the same time trying to avoid pushing the emotional buttons of the extremists. Everyone knew of his accomplishments, and he was treated with respect because of them. In the early 1840’s George heard of a tribe of Cherokee who had completely given up on negotiating with the United States Government and who had left the country to settle in Mexico, and in 1842 he set off with a small group of companions to try to find them and persuade them to return and again become part of the Cherokee Nation. George passed away in August of 1843 while still on that journey, and his companions interred his remains in a cave somewhere near the Texas–Mexico border, with the silver medal resting upon his chest. George Gist never made it as far west as California in his travels, but his fame eventually brought him here in spirit. That fame of having developed an entirely new and unique written language, and doing so from no previous resource, led to George becoming known and admired in academic institutions around the world, and his linguistic abilities were readily acknowledged as equal to or even greater than the professors who taught that discipline. This attitude of academic respect was the particular case in Austria with a scientist by the name of Stephan Endlicher. Endlicher was a botanist, not a linguist. But his life in Austria in the early eighteen hundreds had brought him into close contact with scientists of all disciplines, and from places all over the world. The native peoples of North America were often a subject of fascination to the European intellectual community of the early eighteen hundreds; a fascination which often straddled the line between surprise and curiosity. So Endlicher, too, both knew of and was impressed by the accomplishments of George Gist. So when Endlicher was presented with a sample of a new species of tree brought to Austria from that New World of North America, a tree which turned out to be previously unknown and uncategorized, the Austrian botanist chose to honor George’s intellect and accomplishments and to immortalize him in history by naming this new species of tree after him. And in doing so he decided not to use the White Man’s name which had been hung upon the lame native boy by his disappearing father, but decided instead to use the Cherokee name of the linguist chosen by his mother – the native name of S-si-qua-ya. And so the S-si-qua-ya tree was named; the Sequoia gigantea; the largest tree in the world, proudly bearing the name of a man who had never seen it; a man who had never even walked these high Sierra Mountains. There were those who later insisted – and who still insist – that Stephan Endlicher did not in fact name this new species of tree after a distant native of a tribe of indigenous North Americans, but instead that he misspelled a Latin word and that mistake got misinterpreted. This explanation, although it serves to satisfy the insular minds of small men who feel that scientific Latin is more appropriate nomenclature for trees than is Cherokee, is simply not provable as it was raised long after Endlicher’s death in 1849, and is nothing more than the attempts of those men of lesser abilities putting their own self-serving words onto the lips of a dead man. It’s also a sadly ironic claim – S-si-qua-ya was honored for inventing a written Cherokee language, yet they argue that same Cherokee language is not suitable as a name. One doesn’t have to be Cherokee to laugh at the irony. Or to cry. John Muir once said, after visiting a grove of Sequoia gigantea, that in all of his travels he had never seen a Sequoia which had died a natural death; that, barring an extreme act of nature or the violent hand of man, it appeared to him that the trees were immortal. And now, so too, is the memory of a remarkable man; a man who changed the course of history for his people and urged them onto a path where they might more equally deal with the white invaders who were taking their lands. The Cherokee did indeed eventually lose their lands, but because of George Gist, because of S-si-qua-ya, they were at least able to preserve more of their culture and their history than would otherwise have been possible. And now as you stand in awe and admiration before the Giant Sequoia you, too, will also hopefully remember and admire this remarkable man as the breeze blows through the branches and the Talking Leaves whisper his name to you, a Cherokee man named S-si-qua-ya whose remains rest beneath the ground in an undiscovered cave with a silver medal around his neck, and whose trees are the jewels of the Sierra. |
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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Sequoia Parks Conservancy, the official 501(c)(3) nonprofit partner of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (National Park Service) and Lake Kaweah (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), uses tax-deductible contributions to support these parks.
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