Vincennes, Indiana was the birthplace of one of the most ruthless characters of California’s early days. Born in 1833, John D. Wathen came to California in the 1850s and settled in the northern portion of the state. When he was involved in some trouble in the Sacramento Valley, he fled to the Mendocino mountains to avoid arrest. He lived with the Wylacki Indians for several years, acquiring a wife and several children. By 1855 he was working on the Nome Lackee reservation as an interpreter and later was transferred to the new Indian reservation in Round Valley in Mendocino County.
Wathen probably went to work for George E. White sometime in the 1860s. One of the earliest settlers in Round Valley, White eventually acquired over 35,000 acres of the best rangeland in Mendocino, Trinity and southern Humboldt Counties. As foreman and henchman for the powerful rancher, Wathen displayed a penchant for murder, theft and intrigue which made him a feared and legendary figure in the Yolla Bolly country.
The San Francisco Call, in October of 1895, reported:
“Wylackie John was a remarkable man… He had no small vices; he did not dissipate, he did not smoke or chew tobacco, he dressed well…kept himself neat and was always suave and polite…With these graces he was wholly without honor, entirely unscrupulous, a robber, a murderer, a poisoner, a perjurer, having an absolute genius for planning evil.”
A contemporary described him well a few years earlier: “He did not wear a cowboy rig, and he was not adorned with knives and six-shooters. He was a man of medium size, mild mannered and extremely suave, and had the appearance of a prosperous stockman. He would touch his hat politely, inquire solicitously about a man’s health, talk pleasantly with him and shoot him in the back on his way home along a lonely trail…”
Wylackie John’s story reads like a movie script. White wanted all the rich rangeland for himself and it was Wathen’s job to acquire land and run off any new settlers. His men would dress up like Indians and burn homesteader’s cabins and kill their cattle. He would hire his own cowboys or others to either kill newcomers or make life so miserable for them they would be forced to leave. Others would be framed and sent to prison. A typical case was an unlucky settler whose property White wanted. The man had a colt that looked almost exactly like one of White’s animals. Wathen stole the colt and put it in White’s pasture and when the settler had him charged with stealing the animal, the case was taken to court in Covelo. During the trial the stolen horse was tied in front of the court room, but Wathen switched the animal for White’s colt while the trial was in progress. When the colt was examined and found to be actually White’s animal instead of the stolen one, the case was thrown out of court.
Wathen and his gang of tough cowboys would steal a band of sheep and drive them to Round Valley. Along the way he would have other bands of sheep driven across his trail so as to confuse the tracks. By the time the stolen mutton was in the valley, mixed with other bands of sheep and the earmarks changed, the crime was almost completely indiscernible.
When Wylackie directed the killing of a man named Packwood in 1873, he and one of his men took credit for the killing, but perjured “self-defense” testimony easily freed them. When a settler named Grieves testified for the prosecution, Wathen had him killed also. A principal witness in the case was paid to leave the county, but when he did so Wylackie was close behind and reportedly ambushed him on the trail.
On October 13, 1879 Constable William Host found evidence of a rustled steer in the woods near Mendocino City. Securing aid, the investigating posse was ambushed by four outlaws who had planned to rob the sheriff after a tax-collecting trip. Two of the posse were killed and others wounded, but other posses were quickly formed on the trail. The manhunt, one of the longest in California history, resulted in the capture or killing of all the outlaws after a chase lasting some eight weeks. In a curious exhibition of civic virtue, Wathen was a member of the posse, as was a young man named Clarence White, a relative of Wylackie’s employer.
Wathen soon discarded his Indian family and had affairs with several settler’s wives. He sought to make his liaison with Mrs.. Thomas McPherson more convenient and talked her husband into moving closer to Wathen’s home ranch in which he and George White were partners. When he began courting Ellen Anthony he discarded Mrs. McPherson, but he had already destroyed her marriage. The couple separated and their two children were sent off to live with McPherson’s brother. Later when he tried to talk to his wife, she pulled a pistol on him and in the resulting struggle McPherson shot and killed her. The rancher fled, threatening to kill Wathen and several others whom he blamed for ruining his home. He was later killed by some of Wylackie’s henchmen.
In 1880 Wathen married Ellen Anthony and began raising another family. By 1885 the couple had four children, all of whom were mentioned in George White’s will.
In 1881 the two Van brothers took up sheep ranching in George White’s section of Trinity County. One night Wylackie John gathered together a group of his men and surrounded the newcomer’s cabin. Whooping and yelling like Indians, they opened fire and drove the frightened sheepmen from the area. A nearby rancher named Nowlin had refused to come along on the expedition and had talked so vehemently against the raid that Wylackie decided he must be done away with. When Nowlin still wouldn’t leave after his home was burned and his property stolen or scattered, a gunman was sent to kill him. Nowlin killed the gunman instead, but Wylackie’s men made the killing look like murder and Nowlin was sent to prison. He was later released when new evidence was brought out.
Sheepman George Ericson also got in White’s way. When Ericson began acquiring more land in 1882 and ‘83, Wathen was directed to run him out of the area. Ericson’s stock was rustled and chased away, his fences were torn down and various false charges were filed against him. The financial strain of all this nearly ruined the rancher, but he stayed and defied the brutal White. When a killer was sent to murder him, Ericson ran him off in a hail of bullets only to find himself charged with assault. In September of 1886 Ericson was finally ambushed and killed. His murderer actually sold his family the lumber with which to construct his casket!
When George White decided to get rid of his third wife, a second cousin named Frankie White, she countersued and the case dragged on for five years. Wylackie John trumped up a variety of adultery charges and perjured testimony to bolster his boss’s case and incurred the enmity of his wife’s family. Clarence White, a local rancher who had ridden with Wathen’s posse in 1879, was a brother of Frankie’s and was outraged at the charges being leveled at his sister. Threats were exchanged between Clarence and Wathen and on the afternoon of January 2, 1888, the trouble reached a boiling point.
Wylackie was escorting a woman of questionable reputation into the courtroom as a witness when he met Clarence White in a hallway. The two men exchanged angry words and reached for their pistols. Wathen’s hung up in his heavy overcoat and White swiftly drilled him with one well-placed shot in the head. The coroner’s report was published in the Ukiah Dispatch Democrat of January 27, 1888:
The ball that killed John D. Wathen entered about an inch posterior and one and a half inches above the outer point of the left eye, and lodged in the skull on the opposite side, whence it was then taken. He lived about an hour…
Clarence White was easily acquitted of any blame in the killing, while the settlers of the area were delighted that one of the worst of the local gunmen was gone. Even the judge celebrated the verdict in one of the local saloons and was nearly arrested for his intemperance. George White later stated that a doctor had testified that Wylackie’s head wound indicated he could not have seen his slayer when he was shot. Clarence White responded angrily to the charge:
George White knows that to be a lie. There was no such testimony adduced, as anyone can see who takes the trouble to examine it. If there had been do you suppose the jury would have returned within eight minutes with a verdict of not guilty?
…I might call to mind a certain time when he (George White) offered great inducements to me to kill D.T. Woodman so that he could take his stock. Also another time when he offered me $1,000 to kill Ben Arthur. Another time he proposed to me to kill George Geary…and Tom Hayden… I asked him why he did not do it himself, and he said that if he killed a man it would cost him $100,000 to get out of it, but that if he got someone else to do it he could get the person cleared for a trifle…
Wylackie John Wathen was buried in the Covelo cemetery. It was the beginning of the end of George White’s ranching empire as his many divorce cases and other trials brought out so much testimony against him that he never regained the hold he once held on his vast ranching domain. He died in 1902, bringing an end to one of the most murderous episodes of California history.
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(Principle Sources — Carranco, Lynwood and Beard, Estle, Genocide and Vendetta. Norman, Okla., Univ. of Okla. Press, 1981; Keller, John, The Saga of Round Valley, Last of the West. Ukiah, Mendocino Co. Hist. Soc., 1976; Keller, John, The Mendocino Outlaws, Fort Bragg, Mendocino Co. Hist. Soc., 1974; Lynn, Rena, The Stolen Valley. Willits, L&S Pub., 1977; Palmer, Lyman, History of Mendocino County, California. San Francisco, Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880; San Francisco Daily Morning Call. Oct. 21, Nov. 4, 1895; Ukiah Dispatch Democrat, Jan. 27, June 3, 1888: San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 5, 19, Mar. 22, 1888; Correspondence and research materials from the late Estle Beard, Covelo.)
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