Hero to whom?

The 2024 election is hurtling toward us like a runaway train. The far-right has launched a full-scale attack on alleged “indoctrination” of political correctness that they claim to find throughout public education, from kindergarten through high school and especially in colleges.

I’m a retired history teacher with 20 years’ experience in our local secondary schools, at Cal Poly, and at Allan Hancock College. I resent the insinuation that our public schools and colleges are indoctrinating any of our students.

If anything, for too long our public schools have been teaching a sanitized view of the American Pageant. That’s the actual title of my U.S. history textbook in high school, first published in 1956; the 17th edition is still in use today.

For many minorities, especially Native Americans, our history is hardly a pageant; it’s a danse macabre. That’s especially the case for those unfortunate Indians who encountered John C. Frémont, that daring adventurer/soldier/statesman who holds a vaunted place as a great hero in our American history textbooks.

American public school textbooks generally applaud him as the intrepid “pathfinder of the West,” a reputation earned from several well-publicized explorations of the American West from 1842 to 1854.

In 1846, Frémont served as a lieutenant colonel in our war with Mexico and played an outsized role in bringing California into the Union. He was elected as California’s first U.S. Senator and was the first presidential nominee of the anti-slavery Republican Party in 1856.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, President Lincoln appointed Frémont a major general with command of Union forces in Missouri.

It should come as no surprise that Frémont’s name is applied to no fewer than four counties, four cities, and about 100 other place names throughout the nation. The famed SLO cinema bears his name on its iconic art deco marquee. (Side note: On April 25 the SLO International Film Festival kicks off its opening night at the Fremont).

What’s not to like about this dashing hero who had earned so much public acclaim for his daring adventures on both sides of the 100th Meridian?

As any teacher or student of U.S. history should know, the man perpetrated a mass murder. It was during his third expedition to the West in 1845-46 that Frémont bears responsibility for the dreadful massacre of Wintu Indians—the little-known Sacramento River massacre, at a site that lies within a few miles of my childhood home.

I grew up just south of Redding, the Shasta County seat. It’s amazing to me that teachers in our public schools never mentioned this massacre. In all my years in Redding schools, I can’t recall even a single reference to the diabolical activities of Frémont and his companion Kit Carson in this region.

California was seething with tension in the spring of 1846. Although Congress wouldn’t officially declare war with Mexico until May 13, for months Frémont and his “surveying” crew had been playing a cat-and-mouse game with Mexican authorities throughout California. By late March, they had gathered a party of about 75 American settlers in Northern California. These men had been agitating for years to convince the U.S. to seize California from Mexico by force; they were spoiling for a fight.

On April 5, Frémont arrived along the banks of the Sacramento River somewhere near the border of present-day Shasta and Tehama counties. For generations, Native Americans had gathered there to harvest salmon from the river and to conduct traditional dances and feasts.

To those settlers riding with Frémont and Carson, the Indians appeared to be preparing for war. More likely, of course, the Wintu were simply honoring their natural deities and preparing the bounty of fish for storage.

Almost as soon as they encountered the Wintu camp, Frémont and his men launched a surprise attack and proceeded to murder hundreds of the defenseless Wintu. Most were “shot down like sheep.” Those who tried to escape were pursued on horseback with sabers and guns. Estimates of the casualties vary, but one witness claimed that at least 600 to 700 were killed on land, with another 200 drowning in the river. Kit Carson later wrote that “it was perfect butchery.”

Frémont’s forces then went to southern Oregon where they destroyed entire villages of the Klamath people. After learning that war had been declared against Mexico, they turned back south where Frémont helped to organize the Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma. That action, together with U.S. forces occupying Monterey, effectively ended Mexican authority in central and northern California.

He soon received orders to form a new battalion and move south to suppress a Mexican counterattack in Los Angeles. On a stormy December evening, Frémont and his California Battalion stormed over Cuesta Grade into San Luis Obispo. A more complicated story ensues here, portraying Frémont in a better light.

But that’s the topic for next month’s column. As a battleground in the Mexican War, would California endure even more bloodshed? Would Frémont be redeemed? How is Frémont’s verdict written in our history books? Stay tuned. Δ

John Ashbaugh still wants to think of Frémont as the hero of his innocent childhood—but that image has dimmed in the harsh reality of truth. Contact him through the editor at clanham@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Apr 18-28, 2024.