Did Yale doctoral theses unfairly put Serranus Hastings in the middle of the Yuki massacre?

On May 19, AB 1936, to change the name of University of California, Hastings College of the Law, was again amended, which brought it into partial conformity with the competing Senate bill, SB 1288. The name of the College in both is now to be “the College of the Law.”

That amendment also stipulates that the seat reserved on UC Hastings’ Board of Directors for a descendant of S.C. Hastings be eliminated, an annual apology will emanate from the College to “attest to and acknowledge the social justice components achieved and ongoing efforts,” and that any future name change shall require the College’s Board of Directors to fully consult with designated Native American groups before making its recommendation to the Legislature, which shall only become operative if the Legislature appropriates funds in the Budget Act of 2022 to the University of California “for the purpose of designating a name for the law college founded in the City of San Francisco in 1878.”

On May 25, UC Hastings’ Chancellor and Dean, David Faigman, sent out an email stating that he, the Tribes and the Legislature are continuing to negotiate about the final name change, which he says will be concluded by the end of the legislative term at the end of August 2022. “Then the bill goes to the Governor for his consideration.”

As so amended, AB 1936 continues to include unsupportable findings, among which are: “S.C. Hastings, founder of the Hastings College of the Law, promoted and financed Native American hunting expeditions in the Eden and Round Valleys, funding bounties resulting in the massacre of hundreds of Yuki men, women and children;” “S.C. Hastings enriched himself through the seizure of large parts of these lands and financed the college of law bearing his namesake with a $100,000 donation;” and “S.C. Hastings and the state bear significant responsibility for the irreparable harm caused to the Yuki people and the Native American people of the state.”

These charges were adopted from the sensational claims made in an October 28, 2021 New York Times front-page article that was animated by the writings of UCLA Associate History Professor Benjamin Madley, and Sacramento State University Associate History Professor Brendan Lindsey.

However, as a result of the horrific tragedy that befell people in the Eden and Round Valleys, in 1860 the California Legislature conducted an extensive investigation, accumulating much sworn testimony and other evidence. The competent evidence among that collected does not show that Serranus Hastings participated in the crimes with which he is being charged.

Instead, the evidence from that legislative investigation supports the conclusions that Serranus Hastings did not massacre any group of people, did not commit genocide, nor did he kill or knowingly participate in the killing of any Native Americans.

Madley and Lindsay conflate the despicable action of a relatively few settlers acting under state authority with Hastings’ use of state law to help settlers put together a petition to the Governor to form a local police force (then called a “militia”) for their protection, and his offer to advance salary to militia members if necessary until they received their pay from the State, since they could not otherwise serve because of the long time it often took to get paid by the state.

Serranus Hastings swore under oath in the 1860 legislative investigation that he did not know about the killings before they happened, and that he planned to “subdue” the Native people by feeding them and giving them work. Referring to this testimony in his whitepaper written about Serranus Hastings for the College, and citing no other evidence, Lindsay concludes: “Clearly, he not only intended to take their land, but also use them as slave labor.” Such pejorative and unsupported comments about Serranus Hastings permeate the whitepaper.

When he was a doctoral student at Yale, in his 2008 thesis entitled “California’s Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native American History, Madley starts off by recounting a grim and dramatic event on May 15, 1854 told about “six Missourian explorers” who swooped down on three thousand Yuki Indians in the Round Valley; “‘lay[ing] over the horses’ necks and shot . . . They just rode them down . . . It was not difficult to get an Indian with every shot. . .’ The massacre was a prelude to an American genocide.” This account had nothing to do with Serranus Hastings or existing settlers, but it set a sensational tone for the thesis.

Describing in considerable detail the horror suffered by the Yuki, Madley refers to “The monster” H.L. Hall as a “vigilante leader,” and notes that Hall also “managed a neighboring Eden Valley ranch of former California Supreme Court Chief Justice and Attorney General Serranus Hastings.” Then two pages later he refers to the fact that the settler’s petition requesting that a local militia be formed was delivered to the Governor “by the powerful landowner and former Supreme Court Chief Justice Hastings,” concluding with an unsupported accusation that Hastings was the “wealthy mastermind” of the militia’s actions. Those are the only references to Serranus Hastings in the 2008 thesis.

Fast forward to 2016, and graduate student turned UCLA Assistant Professor Madley publishes his 498-page book “An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873.” It was described by Stanford University history professor Richard White as “call[ing] 19th-century elected officials ‘the primary architects of annihilation’ against Native Americans in the state. Reading it is like watching bodies being piled on a pyre.” Richard White, Naming America’s Own Genocide, The Nation (August 17, 2016) Thus, the horror depicted in its presentation does not focus the reader’s attention on the reality that essential facts necessary to connect Serranus Hastings to the narrative are completely missing.

On page 277 Madley repeats that “the powerful local ranch owner and former California state Supreme Court chief justice Serranus C. Hastings gave Governor Weller a petition drawn up by Round Valley colonists,” and that “[Walter] Jarboe engaged men to hunt Indians, promising payment to them from the state, or if Sacramento failed to pay, from the operation’s extremely wealthy mastermind, Judge Hastings, who owned an Eden Valley ranch and may have wanted to eliminate the Yuki in order to protect his stock.” (Emphasis added).

The use of the word “may” in that sentence by a professor who is advertised by his university to the media as an “expert” in “American Indians” and “genocide” gives the lie to his attempted suggestion that Hastings “wanted to eliminate the Yuki.” And the addition to that sentence of the self-evident fact that he wanted to “protect his stock,” only adds to its counterfeit ring.

On page 348 Madley says: “In 1878 Serranus Hastings donated $100,000 to found Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.” He continues, again alleging that: “California’s oldest law school is thus named after a man who helped to lead the assembly, financing, and state-sponsorship drive for Walter Jarboe’s genocidal Eel River Rangers militia expedition in 1879,” and on page 350 he says: “Both Hastings and [Leland] Stanford built their colossal fortunes, in part, on California real estate,” and that:” Both men thus profited from the theft of California Indian land.” But not even Madley or Lindsay can dispute that Hastings bought his land from the State, after the State acquired it from the United States. He did not steal it!

These are the only times that Serranus Hastings is named, except to say further down on page 350 that Hastings and Stanford “create[d] institutions that have benefited many people,” immediately followed by the fact that certain government properties have been renamed because of their namesakes’ despicable actions.

Thus, was born the suggestion to rename Hastings College of the Law, which began in earnest with UC Hastings adjunct professor John Briscoe’s July 9, 2017 Op-Ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “The Moral Case for Renaming Hastings College of the Law.” Those statements in Briscoe’s short article sound strikingly similar to those in Madley’s book, and are similarly contradicted by direct evidence including Serranus Hastings’ sworn testimony. On such record a court would (and the 1860 Legislature did) direct a verdict in favor of Serranus Hastings.

But sadly, this sensational media-driven narrative is the basis of the Assembly’s false claims. At the April 26, 2022 hearing on AB 1936 the Chair of its Higher Education Committee said that he is convinced that what the New York Times wrote about Serranus Hastings was true, because the Times only prints “news that’s fit to print.” “I do not doubt the facts,” he said.

And Assemblymember Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, effectively denied what is documented in the Legislature’s own 1860 records with: “I was really offended to hear an alternative version of history. You can love the name Hastings all you want, but don’t come here and try to tell us that history is something besides what was documented.” What is in the 1860 testimony is documented and it is under oath.

In the New York Times article, Madley is quoted as saying: “It’s not an exaggeration to say that California state Legislators established a state-sponsored killing machine.” At the April 6, 2022 hearing on SB 1288 before the Senate Education Committee, Senator Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) confirmed that is true when he said that the Yuki people were massacred and “it was our government that did it.” That’s why the Legislature is so anxious to rush through legislation making Serranus Hastings a scapegoat, to avoid taking responsibility as the perpetrator.

And as the artist and social critic John Ruskin is quoted as saying: “The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.” Serranus Hastings founded Hastings College of the Law in 1878, and its graduates have done much good for California and beyond. If this legislation passes it will “cease to exist.” See Cal. Ed. Code §§ 92200-92212.