During the early morning hours of December 11, a fire swept through the historic Bidwell Mansion in downtown Chico.
Nearly one week after the fire, a California State Park official announced in a December 17 press conference that the fire was believed to have resulted from arson. However, officials declined to provide further details in order to protect the integrity of the investigation.
State Park officials are working to see if what is left of the Bidwell Mansion can be saved, or if the landmark structure is a total loss. Numerous items of historical significance stored in the home were destroyed during the fire.
On the same day of the fire, after the inferno was extinguished, the nonprofit group North Valley Community Foundation received a seed donation of $50,000 from Tri Counties Bank to start the Bidwell Mansion Fund. The fund's stated goal is to rebuild or memorialize and commemorate Bidwell Mansion.
The 26-room, three-story Bidwell Mansion was built 150 years ago in 1868 by laborers hired by John Bidwell. Bidwell was born in 1819 in Western New York. He lived in Ohio before relocating to California in 1841 at the age of 22 when California was still part of Mexico.
Bidwell, like other white Americans, headed west to California in search of new opportunities. Bidwell, in fact, helped lead the first party of immigrants who traveled to California from Missouri by wagon.
After working for John Sutter for a few years in present-day Sacramento and making some money as a gold miner, Bidwell ventured north to the present-day Chico area in around 1850 and purchased a large land grant named Rancho del Arroyo Chico.
The land purchased by Bidwell was, and still is, the ancestral homeland of the Mechoopda branch of the Maidu peoples.
Bidwell served as a member of the California senate between 1849 and 1851 before founding Chico in 1860. He also served as Brigadier General of the California Militia in 1863 and 1864, and as a U.S. Representative for California's 3 District between 1865 and 1867.
On the morning of the Bidwell Mansion fire, Robyn Engle, an amateur Chico actor who has performed at living history events for the last eight years as Annie Bidwell, John Bidwell's wife, joined a small group that gathered to see for themselves the fire's aftermath. Engle wept in the arms of another onlooker as she saw what remained of the charred mansion.
As Engle stood and looked and the mansion, she said, "People are going to say that he killed the Indians, but he saved them!"
In a subsequent conversation via private social media, Engle acknowledged that although the Bidwells weren't perfect, she believed they should be honored for their love and respect for each other, and for their respect for all people.
Engle, who described herself as "left leaning" when it comes to politics, said that the Bidwells saved the lives of Mechoopda people by letting members of the Mechoopda tribe live near the Bidwell Mansion on the property occupied by Bidwell.
"Yes, they were part of a ruling elite," said Engle, "but they were far from evil murders."
Engle vehemently stated that "some shadiness" surrounds the fact that "General Bidwell," as Engle called him, fathered Native American children. Engle, however, insisted that Bidwell should be honored because he did not personally kill any Native Americans, as many other white men did in 19 century California.
"Historically, there's evidence that they saved versus took lives," said Engle, "But a strong segment of Chico insists on believing otherwise."
Part of that "strong segment" about whom Engle referred includes Ali Meders-Knight, a Mechoopda Tribal Member, social justice activist, traditional basket weaver, artist, and self-described expert in local traditional ecological knowledge.
Meders-Knight, who spoke with A News Café for this story, says she and others have protested at Bidwell Mansion Association living history re-enactment events where Engle performed as Annie Bidwell. These events, says Meders-Knight, celebrate colonial settlers who should not be honored.
Engle, who says she's been "hit with a lot of hate" for performing as Annie Bidwell, refers to attacks against her as the result of "cancel culture." Engle also discounts the verbal criticism, saying people of Mechoopda descent who attack her for performing as Bidwell "do so to affirm their narrative as victims of white supremacy" and to gain esteem and power.
"Perhaps there's a way to honor the Mechoopda Tribe and the Bidwells when/if ever the Mansion is restored, or something is put in its place," Engle said. "That's the only thing I can think of that might help. I have my doubts."
Nick Anderson, a former radio DJ and current member of the Bidwell Mansion Association, is an amateur actor who has performed as John Bidwell at events for the last 12 years. He agreed with Engle's belief that John Bidwell deserves to be honored.
"During the 19 century, a lot of men did atrocious things, but John Bidwell wasn't one of them," Anderson said.
The night before the Bidwell Mansion fire, Anderson performed as John Bidwell at the Stansbury House, another historical Chico home.
Anderson said he enjoys performing as "the general," as he calls it, especially when he gets the chance to teach young children at local events about the heroic greatness, as he sees it, of Bidwell.
Nowhere in the vast number of pictures shared on social media by the Bidwell Mansion Association are the Mechoopda people represented at living history events worked by Engle and Anderson.
According to Anderson, the Bidwell family does not acknowledge the Bidwell/Native American lineage because it would dramatically change the narrative about Bidwell.
Anderson said "it has not been corroborated" regarding the widely held belief and evidence that supports the plausible fact that John Bidwell married a Mechoopda woman named Nuppani before he married Annie Bidwell in 1868. Many disagree with Anderson, and some, in fact, claim Nupanni was a child when she and Bidwell married.
A News Café contacted the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico Rancheria by phone for this story. The individual who answered the phone said the Mechoopda Indian Tribe media relations person would return a call to A News Café if anyone was interested in discussing the Bidwell Mansion Fire or the relationship between the Bidwells and Mechoopda peoples. A News Café did not hear back from the Mechoopda Indian Tribe.
A News Café also tried to reach the Mechoopda Indian Tribe by email, following the phone call, but did not receive a response.
Regarding Nupanni, however, the Mechoopda Indian Tribe webpage says "Bidwell's relationship with Nupanni appears to have been recognized as a marriage."
The mostly positive assessment of Bidwell held by Engle and Anderson is echoed in the 2003 book John Bidwell and California: The Life and Writings of a Pioneer, 1841-1900 coauthored by Chico State History Professor Michael Magliari and former Chico State historian Michael Gillis.
"When viewed against the incredibly racist and violent backdrop of Gold Rush California, Bidwell's interactions with Indian people appear remarkably tolerant, compassionate, and enlightened," wrote Magliari and Gillis.
Magliari and Gillis also described Bidwell as "an unusually fair-minded man, quite out of step with the majority of his white contemporaries."
On the afternoon of Dec. 11, Magliari shared a public statement on Facebook regarding his thoughts on the destruction of the Bidwell Mansion by fire.
"Chico has lost its defining landmark" and "its symbolic heart," wrote Magliari.
"The mansion was not merely one of California's most historically and architecturally significant buildings, it was also the single most important material expression of Chico's identity as both a place and a community."
Magliari added that many Chico residents are mourning the loss of Bidwell Mansion as they might the death of a close friend or family member.
Chico History Museum representatives agree, and went even further in a social media post that said the fire "strikes at the heart of the city's history and identity."
"The mansion, once home to John and Annie Bidwell, stands as a symbol of Chico's founding and its cultural heritage," said the Chico History Museum social media post.
Some commenters took exception to information released by the Chico History Museum post.
"It's really concerning to me that a 'history' museum is telling the lie that the Bidwells 'founded' Chico," said one responder to the Chico History Museum post, "when you KNOW the Mechoopda were here long before the Bidwells."
Those who strive for a more complete and nuanced view of John Bidwell point to a series of troubling historical facts.
Browning Neddeau, an enrolled member of the Potawatomi Nation and an Associate Professor of Elementary Teacher Education and American Indian Studies at Chico State, like numerous others, does not share the perspective that the Bidwell Mansion was the "heart" of Chico.
"On the contrary," Neddeau said. "I think the Bidwell Mansion fire elevated a lack of knowledge about the relationship the Bidwells had with the territory and its people they wished to colonize."
One piece of potentially damning information is the fact that Bidwell was friends with and a former employee of John Sutter, a well-known enslaver of Native Americans who also immigrated to California in the Mexican period, and occupied Nisenan lands located in the present-day Sacramento area.
Sutter was once accused by a source close to him of trafficking Native American women and children, and of allegedly raping Native American women and girls.
According to Mechoopda Tribal Member , Bidwell exploited the Mechoopda peoples and other Native Americans. Meders-Knight said in order for Native Americans to survive genocidal attacks by white vigilantes, the California State Militia, and the U.S. military, Native Americans were forced to come to Bidwell's ranch and work as laborers.
"Anyone who moved away from the Bidwell Mansion was getting knocked off," said Meders-Knight - meaning that Mechoopda peoples were vulnerable to being killed or attacked by whites if they left the ranch.
"We were sitting ducks."
"The Mechoopda wanted a sovereign nation," said Meders-Knight, not to serve as Bidwell's labor force.
Meders-Knight said his statements did not represent the views of all Mechoopda peoples, or the Mechoopda Indian Tribe.
Likewise, Bidwell is credited by some historians for not supporting the state-sanctioned forced removal and marching of 461 Concow Maidu to the Round Valley Reservation from Bidwell's property in 1863 that came to be known as the Concow Trail of Tears. Around 150 Concow Maidu were too ill to make the march, which is also known as the Nome Cult Walk, were 32 died along the way.
However, in 1865, while serving as a Senator for California's 3 District, Bidwell provided resources to Hiram "Hi" Good, an infamous Tehama County-based vigilante "Indian hunter" to support a massacre led by Good on Yana Yahi peoples in eastern Tehama County. The attack led by Good and supported by Bidwell, which came to be known as the Three Knolls Massacre, led to the murder of 40 Yahi men, women, and children.
While some argue that Bidwell "saved" Native Americans, Bidwell also provided money, food, ammunition, and other resources to various state militia and extralegal vigilante groups to support attacks on Native American communities that led to the massacre of dozens of Native American men, women, and children.
Bidwell was a member of the state committee that passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians in 1850 - a policy that brutalized native peoples.
The final draft of the 1850 act allowed for, among other things, employers to make Native American women and children indentured servants. It also prevented Native Americans from testifying against whites in court. It allowed for a Native American convict leasing system, and legalized the lashing of Native Americans convicted of certain crimes. Finally, it created a racist anti-vagrancy law that targeted and criminalized Native Americans.
Magliari and Gillis argue in their book that Bidwells' original draft of the 1850 act, which was different from the policy enacted by the state, supported a peaceful existence and shared governance between Native Americans and white Americans in California.
For instance, in Bidwell's original proposal for the 1850 Act, Bidwell laid out a plan to require all labor contracts and the indenturing of Native American children to be regulated by a judge elected by white voters and Native American male voters.
Bidwell's original draft of the 1850 Act also recognized the right of Native Americans to remain in their villages, and have the right to continue to hunt, fish, and gather resources, even if the villages existed on lands occupied by whites.
However, according to Magliari and Gillis, Bidwell also expected Native Americans "to accept the inevitability of American conquest and to respond accordingly by gradually taking up farming and animal husbandry."
"In the meantime," continued Magliari and Gillis, "Indians would compensate for lost resources by seeking gainful and instructive employment from whites and thereby provide California with a reliable and badly needed supply of wage labor."
Taken together, when it came to his relations with Native Americans, these aspects of Bidwell don't exactly paint the picture of an enlightened, tolerant, compassionate man.
In a 2011 talk at Chico State University by Michele Shover, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science, Shover explained that even though Bidwell signed an 1851 treaty that would have allowed all Maidu peoples the right to gain status as a sovereign nation on a reservation in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Chico, Bidwell sent a letter to the federal government pressuring government officials to not ratify the treaty.
Shover said Bidwell didn't support the treaty because he wanted the Mechoopda to continue to serve as his labor force on his ranch, rather than be recognized as a sovereign nation on a reservation.
Published in 2017, Shover's most recent book is titled California Standoff: Miners, Indians, and Farmers at War, 1850-1865.
Shover said that a Bidwell letter sent to the federal government to convince the government to not ratify the treaty, Bidwell described Native Americans as child-like peoples who needed to be taken care of by benevolent white men like himself
Shover compared Bidwell's racist written comments about Native Americans to how Southern slaveholders spoke about enslaved African Americans in the 19 century.
Shover conceded that Bidwell was not the only reason that the treaty between Bidwell and the Maidu -- and more than one dozen other treaties signed in California in 1851 and 1852 -were not ratified. However, Shover believes that that Bidwell's influence in California and Washington D.C. politics likely played a significant role.
Brendan Lindsay, a California historian and an Associate Professor of History at Sacramento State, and author of the 2012 text Murder State: California's Native American Genocide, 1846-1873, told A News Café that if Bidwell is only compared to the widespread hatred and violence directed at Native Americans in the 1850s and 1860s, Bidwell can easily be framed as a champion for Native Americans.
"John Bidwell and other men in control of Indian labor forces might also be viewed as little more than self-interested feudal lords, attempting to keep their labor forces alive during a time when white Americans were murdering Native peoples in the region on sight and without cause," Lindsay said.
According to Lindsay, Bidwell's highly problematic vision of the future had Native Americans living in a dependent relationship with white colonial settlers.
Meders-Knight recalled how she and other school children who attended public schools in the Chico Unified School District in the 1980s and '90s were "groomed" to believe "racist lies" that Annie Bidwell, John Bidwell's wife, worked to "civilize" the local Mechoopda people.
Meders-Knight said she was taught as a schoolchild that Annie Bidwell taught the Mechoopda how to cook, sew clothing, and, essentially, live as if they had not existed and thrived in the present-day Chico area for thousands of years.
Meders-Knight said she encountered racist stories about the Bidwells in Chico public school curriculum as recently as the early 2000s while she worked with schools to lead workshops on Mechoopda history and traditional ecological knowledge.
Annie Bidwell did indeed work toward eliminating Mechoopda culture, even if she did so with polite colonizing etiquette.
In 1869, Annie Bidwell successfully pushed for the removal of a Mechoopda village that had existed near the mansion to a new location one mile west of the mansion. She was reportedly disturbed by loud wailing that accompanied some Mechoopda cultural traditions.
Annie Bidwell then set out with religious zeal to attempt to assimilate Mechoopda peoples into mainstream white U.S. American culture by encouraging Mechoopda people to adopt Christianity and by offering sewing classes.
With this, Annie Bidwell was a local embodiment of the nationwide cultural genocide that took place in the late 19 century with Indian Boarding Schools, the Dawes Allotment Act, and the policies of the Friends of the Indian organization.
Since the Bidwell Mansion fire, there are many perspectives regarding what should happen with the property.
Magliari believes that the first priority should be working with the structural ruins to see if the mansion can be rebuilt. However, if the mansion cannot be rebuilt, Magliari believes a public debate should take place regarding the future of the Bidwell Mansion property.
"Whatever it is, I hope it's something that can't be too politicized," Magliari said.
The major challenge to this line of wishful thinking is that the history of the Bidwells and the mansion is already political. Recent social media chatter shows that some are concerned that calls for the need for a "rational discussion" that doesn't involve "politics" is an attempt to control the conversation and steer the conversation away from Bidwells' troubling past.
From Meders-Knight's viewpoint, the Bidwell Mansion land should be returned to the Mechoopda and restored to its native habitat so people can learn about native plants and traditional Mechoopda ecological knowledge. Meders-Knight also hopes the site can be turned into a place that recognizes Mechoopda voices and history, something lacking in the history displayed inside the pre-fire Bidwell Mansion.
Neddeau's opinion is that first, the land should be leveled. Next the California State Park system and the City of Chico should consult with the Mechoopda Indian Tribe to decide how the land should be used.
Neddeau said that together, the California State Park system and the city of Chico have an opportunity to align with the Land Back movement by possibly placing the property into a trust for the Mechoopda Indian Tribe.
Either way, one thing is certain: The conversation about what should be done with the Bidwell Mansion property is just beginning. It will require many conversations where the study of history intersects with discussions of nostalgia, memory, settler colonialism, genocide, and the founding of Chico on Mechoopda land.
On the morning of the Bidwell Mansion fire, mere feet from where Engle -- the woman who performs as Annie Bidwell -- cried out that Bidwell had saved Native Americans, another woman drove near the Bidwell Mansion and shouted, "Hurray for Indian County! Hurray for Indian Country!"
Therein lies the massive gap between differing views of the Bidwells and the now-destroyed Bidwell Mansion. Some believe that the Bidwells were heroes who treated Native Americans in a compassionate manner. Others, however, push through the sugar-coated, more easily digestible narratives and point to facts that frame the Bidwells as elitist white colonial settlers who contributed to the decline and displacement of Native Americans in Northern California.