Enthralled with the legend of General Marino Vallejo, at the age of ten I set off with a friend on a pilgrimage to the Petaluma Adobe. I had attended Old Adobe Fiesta Days with my parents and seen the square dancing, Indian dances, and the whiskerino contests, but after reading a short biography of the general, my friend and I became determined to ride our sting-ray bikes up Casa Grande Road, the route Vallejo used for hauling cattle hides and tallow to his dock on the Petaluma slough, our own Yellow Brick Road to the local Land of Oz.
Fifty years later, I struggle to reconcile my early admiration of Vallejo with what I’ve since come to learn about the man. While September 27th each year is intended as a day to honor the historic and cultural contributions of California Native Americans, it’s difficult to do so without also acknowledging the tragic losses they incurred at the hands of colonists like Vallejo.
State parks archaeologist Breck Parkman touches upon some of that legacy in his recent studies of the trade relationship between Vallejo and the Russian mercantile colony at Fort Ross. Citing new English translations of archival Russian documents, Parkman highlights the different approaches Vallejo and the Russians took with the native community, particularly during the smallpox epidemic of 1837-39. Spread by one of Vallejo’s soldiers after he returned from a cargo-run to Fort Ross with the disease, the epidemic decimated most of the natives in the Sonoma-Napa region. Their bones, often left unburied, “bleached the hills.”
Parkman began exploring the epidemic back in 2006, after the New Year’s Eve Storm that flooded parts of Petaluma. Concerned about an earlier excavation of a native camp along Adobe Creek, Parkman went to the site and found that a good part of the creekbank had collapsed during the flood, exposing the “New Year Feature”— a long trench into which burned native homes and their contents had been buried. No body remains were found, but along with his colleague Susan Alvarez, Parkman determined that the trench (since destroyed) was most likely used by Vallejo in trying to contain the smallpox epidemic.
In the Vallejo biography I read as a boy, the epidemic was depicted as a natural tragedy, one the general was helpless to prevent. Except that he wasn’t. Vaccine for smallpox had been available in California since the early 1800s. According to historian S.F. Cook, after a smallpox (or perhaps measles) outbreak in 1828, the Mexican government had inoculated an estimated 12,000-16,000 clerics, soldiers, and native mission acolytes from San Diego to Sonoma.
When smallpox first appeared in 1837, the Russians quickly vaccinated their native workers at Fort Ross, suffering only a few deaths. Vallejo did not. Except for inoculating a few allies like Chief Solano, he reserved the vaccine for fellow Californios. As a result, most of Vallejo’s 2,000 workers at the Adobe died. The Petaluma Adobe, which Vallejo operated more as a factory than a military fort, exporting grain, livestock, and woolen textiles, never fully recovered.
Vallejo’s reasons for not providing natives with the vaccine are unknown. As one of the most powerful men in California, it’s doubtful he lacked the clout to obtain it (the Russians had reportedly supplied Mexicans the vaccine for the 1828 epidemic). But while revered as one of California’s most enlightened men, Vallejo was also at times egotistical, autocratic, and Machiavellian. An admirer of the Romans, he saw echoes of their empire building in the Spanish-Mexican conquest of California’s native “barbarians” by a small group of “civilized men.”
That was evident at times in his treatment of the natives. After Vallejo converted the Petaluma Valley into a vast ranch of 12,000 to 15,000 cattle, eliminating much of its wild game, natives who had resisted indentured servitude at his factory resorted to killing cattle to feed themselves. In one case, after 35 cattle went missing, Vallejo ordered 35 natives indiscriminately rounded up and shot. Other acts of cruelty—murder, rape, and abduction—were carried out by his brother Salvador and main enforcer Chief Solano.
On our personal sojourn to the Petaluma Adobe some fifty years ago, my friend and I only made it as far as Casa Grande Road, then a rural lane, before being stopped by falling darkness. A deputy sheriff found us and drove us home. In retrospect, that was probably best, given what Dorothy found when she reached the Land of Oz and pulled back the curtain on the wizard.
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A version of this article previously appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier.