The Kelsey Brothers: A California Disaster

Historical researcher Dr. John Parker has plowed through the written and oral history surrounding the early European settlement in Lake County and the effect it had on the people who had already been living here for at least 14,500 years. Probably the most well-known, but least understood, were the events that led up to the Bloody Island Massacre at the Upper Lake village of Badonnapati in the Spring of 1850. During his research, he uncovers an even earlier massacre that General Vallejo conducted at the Southeastern Pomo village of Kamdot in the 1840s. Parker follows the move west of the Kelsey brothers into California, the establishment of their ranch in Big Valley, their relationship with the Big Valley Pomo, and the events that led to and followed their murder.