Old Newspaper Articles

Mar 5, 2012 by editor

Protestant Cemetery’s Murderers Row

Calaveras Chronicle July 30, 1904

There is a bow and arrow now on exhibition at the Oasis Saloon in this place, which was once the property of the first chief [Jesus/Cassus]…. Shortly after the chief met his death the bow and arrows were purchased from one of the tribe, who had charge of the chief’s effects, by a gambler who went by the name of “Long Pete,” two ounces of gold being the price paid, he intending to send it home to his relatives in the East. In less than three days after he had purchased the bow and arrows “Long Pete” was killed in a dispute over a game of cards in what was known as the “John Shear’s Dance House,” located on the very spot where the warehouse of C. J. Nuner now stands on Center Street. ” Long Pete’s” body was placed in a rough pine box and buried in what is known as “Murderer’s Row” on the west side of the Protestant Cemetery. It was the custom in the early days of Mokelumne Hill to bury all those who met a violent death side by side on the west end of the cemetery, and it was called “murderer’s row.” And now after a lapse of over fifty-five years there are still visible twenty-five mounds of earth that mark the resting place where were deposited the remains of some poor unfortunate who was killed in the saloons and dance houses in the early days of Mokelumne Hill.

From the article “The Last of The Digger Tribe. An Indian Pow-Wow Brings Up Old Recollections” reproduced in East Belt Mines and Others: Moke Hill to West Point: 1881-1908. Compiled by Lloyd Donald Ames, p. 103.