One of the first things you’ll see along the roadside driving into the small town of Kelseyville is a big stone marker. It’s the site of the area’s first adobe home, and also where the settler Andrew Kelsey and his business partner Charles Stone are buried.
An inscription on the landmark’s plaque tells a hurried version of the story of the adobe home and the duo’s deaths. It says the home was built “by forced Indian labor, causing much resentment and culminating in murder by Indians of Stone and Kelsey in the fall of 1849.” It then said their remains are buried under the monument.
Lorna Sides lives only a few minutes walk from the site. She’s passed by it countless times. She finds the story on the plaque frustrating.
“It sounds like it’s a labor dispute,” she said. “There’s no personalization.”
Sides is a member of Citizens for Healing, or C4H. It’s a group of locals who launched an effort in 2020 to change Kelseyvillle’s name to Konocti. They argue it takes its namesake from the settler Kelsey, whose violent history expands beyond the story told in the plaque. He had a history of murdering, raping and enslaving Pomo people, who are Indigenous to the area, when he lived there in the 1800s.
Tribal members killed Kelsey and Stone as a way to stop the abuse. After that, Kelsey’s brother and the U.S. military retaliated and murdered hundreds of Indigenous people in the area, an event now known as the Bloody Island Massacre.
Late last year, C4H launched the process to change the town’s name. It began with submitting a proposal to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, asking that Kelseyville’s name be changed to Konocti, which is a Pomo word and the name of a nearby volcanic mountain.
Sides sees changing the town’s name as a step away from honoring Kelsey’s legacy.
“Now we’re going to tell this story again, with more knowledge and compassion,” she said.
Lorna Sides, a member of Citizens for Healing, showcases one of the group’s flyers translated into Spanish on October 10, 2024. The group wants Kelseyville to change its name to Konocti.Manola Secaira/CapRadio
A divisive question
The Board on Geographic Names has the power to change Kelseyville’s name if it deems its current one sufficiently offensive. But before making a decision, the federal entity needs to have input from interested parties, which includes tribes and Lake County’s Board of Supervisors.
But as conversations around the possible change became locally divisive, the county’s board stalled on giving that input. They eventually decided to put the issue on the November ballot and give their recommendation after seeing the results.
The advisory measure asks the question simply: Shall the Board of Supervisors recommend approval of the proposal to change the name of the town of “Kelseyville” to “Konocti”?
Walking through Kelseyvillle, it’s easy to find evidence of the topic’s divisiveness. Signs from a group opposing the name change — Save Kelseyville — are installed by roads and under signs of local businesses. The group declined to be interviewed for this story.
On their website, they outline a variety of concerns: One argument says the platform to discuss the past could disappear if the name changes. Another says it would be a financial burden for local businesses.
Signs from a group opposing the proposed name change — Save Kelseyville — are installed by roads and under signs of local businesses throughout town.Manola Secaira/CapRadio
Save Kelseyville supporters also spoke about their concerns at a Lake County board meeting in July.
“What Kelsey did in the 1800s was horrible and we can’t change that,” said Barabra Hollenkamp, a Kelseyville local who spoke against the change. “I think the hurt from everything that happened then isn't going to go away … and we just need to try to make things better on our own. This is not the first time something like this has happened in other parts of the United States or the country, the world.”
Flaman McCloud Jr., the chairman of the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians, said he initially felt more neutral about the need to change the town’s name. But after hearing opposing arguments at the July meeting — including one where a Save Kelseyville supporter claimed Indigenous people are victimizing themselves — he changed his mind.
“Honestly, it was terrible,” McCloud said. “The feeling of not being seen or that what our people went through was nothing, right? So just dismissing what we went through.”
He said members of his Tribe differ in their opinions on the name change. Some want to see it change, while others say they aren’t bothered by it. But McCloud said he’s come to see the value of the change, especially when he thinks of what it could mean to future generations of Native kids. He said it’s one way to show that their stories, and their pain, matter.
“Years down the road, I won’t even be here, but that man’s name will no longer be honored for what he did to our people,” he said. “We’re not trying to take, we’re just trying to be seen.”
History lives on
The idea to change the town’s name preceded the creation of C4H. Clayton Duncan, an elder of the Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians, had come up with the idea some years prior, although the movement didn’t gain traction at the time.
For the last 25 years, he’s also led an annual ceremony honoring the victims of the Bloody Island Massacre and tells the story of his great-grandmother, who survived it. The story of his great-grandmother is one that he grew up hearing from family members who were dedicated to passing it down.
He supports the current movement to change Kelseyville’s name.
“It'll show us a little respect … as Native people that they're not honoring their people that kill us and murdered us and raped us,” he said.
Clayton Duncan, an elder of the Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians, hosts a ceremony each year to honor the victims of the Bloody Island Massacre.Manola Secaira/CapRadio
Discussions about derogatory place names extend beyond Kelseyville. Both federal and California officials have moved to scrub slurs for Indigenous people from place names. In some cases, history must also be reckoned with, like in the case of the Sutter Buttes. The area is named after settler John Sutter, who, like Kelsey, committed acts of violence against Indigenous people.
Lewis Lawyer, a linguist with UC Davis’s Native American Studies, said changing the name of places like the Sutter Butters or Kelseyville doesn’t erase history.
But it can help create new understanding.
“Mostly, it's educational for the settler community, who is, generally speaking, profoundly ignorant of the Indigenous history of places and certainly at this place in particular,” Lawyer said.
Lorna Sides expects Lake County’s Board of Supervisors to give their recommendation to the federal board sometime in December, after votes have been certified. The announcement from the federal board could come any time after that.
If the name is changed, she says she doesn’t expect it to be as dramatic as some might think. No businesses would be required to change their names, even if “Kelseyville” is a part of it, for example.
“It's going to be a slow change,” she said. “But we’ll start hearing it less, seeing it less, saying it less.”
But if it happens, she thinks it would still be a meaningful message to those who’ve been hurt by Kelsey’s legacy.
“We can't make it right and we can't erase it, and we're not trying to erase it,” she said. “But we understand the pain.”
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