Henry P. Larrabee

Henry P. Larrabee (1830 – 19 December 1906), also known as Hank Larrabee, was a 49er and a rancher in the Eel River Valley of Humboldt County, California notorious for his treatment of Indians. Subsequently he was a sheriff in Montana, a family man, businessman and school board member in Kansas.

History

He was born in Marion County, Ohio, son of Joseph and Lucy Larrabee and lived there until leaving for California during the 1849 California Gold Rush. He established a ranch at "Larrabee" in Humboldt County in 1859. He also owned the land around Blocksburg from the Eel River to Larabee Valley to the east.[1] The town of Blocksburg was originally called "Larabee" or its other spelling "Laribee"[1][2] Several landmarks – including Larrabee Creek, Little Larrabee Creek, and Larrabee Valley[2] - are named for him,[3] although old maps and writings may use the alternate spelling "Laribee."[2]

He was notorious as a killer of Indians, having once bragged that he killed more than 60 Indian children with a hatchet, and served as a corporal in the Volunteer Guides during the Bald Hills War.[1] He is widely believed to have been an instigator and among the killers in the Indian Island Massacre,[3] who, besides Corporal Henry P. Larrabee include Sergeant Charles A.D. Huestis, Private George W. Huestis, Private Wallace M. Hagan and James D. Henry Brown.[4][5]

United States Army Lieutenant Daniel Lynn, sent to Larrabee Valley with a detachment in March 1861, described Larrabee to his superior, Captain Charles Lovell:

"Here in this apparently lovely valley lived a man about whose qualities I feel myself impelled to speak. I heard no man speak in his favor, nor even intimate one redeeming trait in his character. The universal cry was against him. At the Thousand Acre Field and Iaqua Ranch even the woman who was shot and burned to death was condemned for living with such a man. Of most enormities of which he stands accused you are aware. An accomplice and actor in the massacre at Indian Island and South Bay; the murderer of Yo-keel-la-bah; recently engaged in killing unoffending Indians, his party, according to their own story, having killed eighteen at one time (eight bucks and ten squaws and children), and now at work imbruing his hands in the blood of slaughtered innocence. I do not think Mr. Larrabee can be too emphatically condemned."[6]

An anonymous letter writer called attention to some of the abuses: "Larrabee, for his part, took offense at an Indian boy who worked for him but who would periodically run off to visit his relatives. Larrabee 'went down one morning and slaughtered the whole family of about six persons, boy and all. He then made a rude raft of logs, put the victims on it… and started the bodies down the river.'"[7][8]

Leaving Humboldt County, Larrabee followed another gold rush to the Salmon River in 1862, ending up in Hellgate, Montana, where he was elected sheriff of Missoula County under the name "Henry P. Larrabie" in 1865, serving only about one year.[9] Larrabee left Missoula in 1868 to return to Ohio at about the time his father died.[3]

Larrabee married Catherine Linn Phillips (1849-1940) on 14 February 1869 in Indiana, with whom he had five children and moved from Indiana to Joplin, Missouri, then to Wellington, Kansas and finally to Wichita, Kansas where he ran an artificial stone business.[3] Later he was a homesteader, cattle rancher, deputy sheriff and on the school board in Liberal, Seward County, Kansas until he died on 17 December 1906 of cancer under the name "Henry Pierre Larrabee."[3]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Windbigler, Beverley. "Explore Blocksburg’s Rich History". Blocksburg Community Blog. Retrieved 11 January 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 Durham, David L. (1998). California's Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State. Quill Driver Books. p. 91. ISBN 978-1-884995-14-9.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Russel-Wilson, Joetta. "Henry P. Larrabee". Biographies/Family Histories. Blocksburg Community Blog. Retrieved 11 January 2013.
  4. ↑ Rohde, Jerry (25 February 2010). "Genocide and Extortion: 150 years later, the hidden motive behind the Indian Island Massacre". North Coast Journal. Retrieved 11 January 2013. A stream of letters flooded the San Francisco newspapers expressing outrage at the killings and, more significantly, naming names. One, written the day of the Indian Island attack, stated that "the… massacre was headed (as reported by an Indian, and believed by a majority of the people,) by a white man named Brown, and four other savages of the same hue." Later investigation by local historian Martha Roscoe determined that the reference was to James D. Henry Brown, who, when ranching in the Kneeland area, reportedly “tried to run everyone out and was said to have scalped people in order to blame it on the Indians.
  5. ↑ Lowrey, Chag; Rebecca Lowry (1999). "Interview with Cheryl Seidner". Original Voices. Ink People Center for the Arts, Eureka, California. Retrieved 11 January 2013.
  6. ↑ Carranco, Lynwood; Estle Beard (November 1981). Genocide and Vendetta: The Round Valley Wars of Northern California. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. p. 384. 978-0806115498.
  7. ↑ "Atrocities by White Men on Indians in Humboldt County—Record of a Baby-Killer," San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 1 June 1860; Reprinted in the Sacramento Daily Union, 4 June 1860. The writer uses “L–—“ instead of the perpetrator’s full name, but other information in the letter, linking him to Hagans and the killing of Yo-kill-la-bah, makes it clear that “L–-“ is the Larrabee referred to in Captain Lovell’s dispatch.
  8. ↑ Lovell, Captain Chas., Report to Major W. W. Mackall, 23 March 1861. Quoted in Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 32, 379
  9. ↑ Woody, Frank H. (1896). "A Sketch by Judge Frank H. Woody: written in 1876 and 1877". Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana (Historical Society of Montana, Rocky Mountain Publishing Co.) 2: 103.

Additional reading

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