Source K

Preface to Lucy’s story in “Out of the Past”: “Lucy Young, a Wailaki Wailaki Indian from the vicinity of Alderpoint and now living on Round Valley Reservation in Mendocino County, wishing to present to the world the Indians’ side of the story, in 1939 dictated the following recollections of her childhood. . . . The major part of the narrative, as far as we can judge, took place in the summer of 1862. No attempt has been made to dress up the story. The words are Lucy’s own.”

Lucy’s Account: “I go on to house. Everybody crying. Mother tell me: ‘All our men killed now.’ She say white men there, others come from Round Valley, Humboldt County too, kill our old uncle, Chief Lassik, and all our men.

“Stood up about forty Inyan in a row with a rope around neck. ‘What this for?’ Chief Lassik aksum. ‘To hang you, dirty dogs,’ white men tell it. ‘Hanging, that’s dog’s death,’ Chief Lassik say. ‘We done nothing, be hung for. Must we die, shoot us.’

“So they shoot. All our men. Then build fire with wood and brush Inyan men been cut for days, never know their own funeral fire they fix. Build big fire, burn all them bodies.”