The Blonde King

Imagine being born in 1817, your mom dies when you are just 10 years old. You spend the majority of your time growing up doing chores and learning languages eventually being able to speak a few tribal languages as well as French and German. Imagine then at 28 years old you decide to head west with your new wife who is pregnant. The wagon train you are a part of is a mixture of a few different parties including the Donner Party. Along the way, your wife gives birth but dies from the freezing temperatures, and without a mother your newborn slowly dies from the elements.

Let me introduce you to a man named James Savage. A very interesting man to say the least.

What I just told you is the majority of James' life. 29 years old he arrives in California not knowing he too would be dead in just a few years.

In 1846 he finds himself at the famous Sutter's Fort, He quickly volunteers to fight in the Mexican-American war as part of the California Battalion led by Freemont. Most people didn't like him all too much he was even described as "the worst malcontence in the battalion"

While in this battalion he learned from some of the Indians about this nice area known as the San Joaquin Valley. So when the battalion was disbanded he moved down there, flirting with the different tribes, learning their language, and pretty much assimilating into their culture with his own little flair and secrets which were pretty messed up

James' last name wasn't just Savage, he himself was Savage.

He knew the tribes were pagan and believed all kinds of mystical and occult things and he played the part of the white witch doctor. He had a Galvanic Battery. Yes a battery, you can check me on this, I was skeptical myself. That he hid inside a bear's skin and would shock the hell out of people and things to demonstrate his supernatural power. one time he shocked a boy so badly that he stopped his heart and then did some big hoohah and shocked him again restarting his heart and bringing him back to life.

This instilled great fear into the Indians seeing as he had the power to kill with a touch. Nobody would cross him and he was made chief in a bunch of different tribes and would have at least one wife from each tribe ending up having about 33 wives whose ages ranged from 10 years old to 22 years old...

He was eventually given a nickname which I found two versions, El Rey Tularenos or  El Rey Huero which meant The Blonde King. Even though he wasn't even blonde, he had brown hair but anyway, that was his new name and he pretty much went by that instead of James from then on around the Indians.

He set up a few trading posts basically 7/11's of the 1800s and he had a bunch of Indian servants who worked as gold miners for him, making him tons of money.

As the Blonde King, he was entrusted to be the banker of a bunch of different tribes, so one day he went to San Francisco to deposit some gold. Literally a barrel of gold that he just rolled around town. He brought with him one of his wives and a Miwok Chief named Jose Juarez. He wanted to show up Jose to teach him a lesson on White superiority which sounds bad but he intended to scare Jose. because there were talks of an uprising of the tribes against the white man. So if he could show Jose there was no hope in a war against the whites he could essentially keep the peace.

It didn't work. The Blonde King got drunk and gambled away all the money he was entrusted by the tribal leaders. Jose tried to get Savage to stop but this embarrassed him, being talked to like that by an Indian in front of other white people was just not okay. So Savage knocked him down with a punch.

On the way back to their home they came across a group of Indians who were talking about an uprising. The Blonde king got up and delivered a great speech about the need for peace and so on then let Jose have a chance to back him up. But instead of backing him up, he got back at him.

Announcing to the crowd that Savage was a charlatan who gambled away all their money, beat him up, and was using his influence for personal gain. That the Blonde King was not a friend but a fiend and they must kill the white man with rocks and arrows.

So we have the California Indian Wars, which began essentially right after California became a state. There were a bunch of little wars going on around California and the Indians around Mariposa, which is where Savage mainly lived wanted to get back at him for what he had done.

One night at his Mariposa camp he noticed all of his tribal servants were gone. He viewed this as an omen of an attack to come. He quickly grabbed 16 men and searched for the missing Indians who likely were heading to join some larger force.

Eventually, he saw a big group of warriors from the Kaweah tribe. He demanded to speak to the chief who not long ago was his good friend. The chief came out and hardly let the dethroned Blonde King speak. Then simply told him they just killed all of his workers up at his Fresno trading post, plundered all the supplies, and left it unrecognizable and that this was just the beginning.

Savage begged and pleaded but they marched on. Letting him live and suffer knowing this was all his fault.

He ran back to his camp where there was a bloodied man telling of the horrors at the Fresno post. Turns out there was one survivor.

Savage got 30 men and they went to the Fresno post to see what was left of it.

There wasn't much left but horror in the hearts of any that should view what was.

A man lay skinned alive, another with 20 arrows stuck in him, trash blowing in the wind, the sound of animals still running out in the distance surely to be eaten by mountain lions, flames continuing to consume the shack that once was a great business. Savage looked on and blamed himself, now he had to get revenge.

At first, local militias were given the all-clear to quell the uprising but it didn't work. The Indians were too organized. Governor McDougal appointed Savage as the Leader of the Mariposa Battalion and he set his sights on the fiercest tribe who was leading in terms of rampages, The Ahwahneechee tribe which is a type of Miwok led by Chief Tenaya.

He chased them out to the mountains where he and his men came upon a place you may have heard of called Inspiration Point which overlooks the Yosemite Valley.

Savage and his men were in awe, nobody had ever seen this place before. Its beauty brought tears to the eyes of these men. But they had to get back to business and set up camp at the foot of Bridalveil Falls and eventually named this beautiful area Yosemite after the Indians they were going after. In Miwok, the word Yosemite means "Those Who Kill"

The battalion was able to corner the Ahwahneechee and herded them off to the Kings River Reservation

And that was the end of the Mariposa War.

After all this, Savage went back to his old business of running some trading posts.

The Justice of the Peace in Mariposa County, a guy named Harvey decided to lead a squat on the reservation because he viewed the idea of giving away land to the Indians as unfair. While squatting they ended up killing a bunch of Indians in a massacre.

Savage, was against this and publicly made it known that Judge Harvey was a coward and a murderer. Harvey then made it known that if he ever saw Savage he'd kill him.

So Savage went after him to kill him first. They cussed each other out and had a fist fight which ended with Savage having  Harvey pinned on the ground. But his gun slipped out of its holster, Harvey grabbed it quickly and shot Savage 4 times, ran away, and lived a long life never being charged with any crime and of course, Savage died.