In April of the next year, one Captain Moses A. McLaughlin and 70 troops found a large band of Indians camped about two miles from Whiskey Flat. Unfortunately (local lore has it), McLaughlin was a bad tempered whiskey drinker who disliked Indians from the get-go. He was hard on his troops, too, making them live in caves instead of directing them to construct proper housing - and winters in the Sierra Nevada's can be brutal - just ask the Donner Party!
This is what their housing might have looked like.
McLaughlin later reported that he sent the old men and boys off to other villages, but there were 35 Indians that their compatriots wouldn't vouch for - so he shot or sabered them! Within a few months McLaughlin and his troops had captured nearly 1,000 more Indians and marched them 200 miles over the next six months to Ft. Tejon and finally to the San Sebastian Indian Reservation in the southeastern corner of the San Joaquin Valley (now central California.) This reservation had been set up for coastal and interior California Native American. Only 850 Indians survived the trek to Ft. Tejon.
In no time at all over 600 of those Indians had slipped off that reservation and returned to the Kern River valley and Mt. Whitney. Quietly, peacefully they returned.
McLaughlin's troops abandoned him - for a multitude of reasons. They just walked off without food, clothing, or pay for months served. McLaughlin was later court-martialed over the mean-spirited way (to put it mildly!) that he handled the whole Whiskey Flat episode, was discharged from the Army and later committed suicide.
Today you will find three memorial crosses on the site where he slaughtered those 35 Indians.
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