"Buffalo Heart"-Grand Counselor of the
Mission Indians of Southern California

Jonathan Tibbet Jr. was born January 5, 1856 on his father's ranch in the vicinity of San Gabriel. Tibbet Sr. is credited with being one of the first Americans to establish a ranch in the San Gabriel Valley. Tibbet Sr. and his wife had come to California across the Mohave Desert arriving in 1848. He was the captain of an immigrant train. Initially, the Tibbets spent little time in southern California. Touched with the gold fever, they journeyed north to a mining camp named Hangtown (today's Placerville) in northern California's El Dorado County. The demise of Hangtown led the Tibbets to return east before again returning to California and finally settling in the San Gabriel area around 1851. Tibbet's youth was spent tending cattle and horses and learning from the Indians of the area. He was taught their languages and eventually came to speak 11 dialects along with fluent Spanish. As a young man he served as a scout and chief of scouts for the U.S. army; much of that time in Arizona territory.

Years later Tibbet Jr. described his mother as " a brunette, with large, expressive eyes, heavy coal-black tresses, small hands and feet, and a gentle kindly manner." His father, he said, "was tall, fine looking with unwavering blue eyes and with dark hair and light complexion. He was straight as an arrow, erect, . . . having a firm mouth showing decision, he was a man born to command, yet gentle and kind and quick in action. He was born in Michigan of pioneer Revolutionary stock, with a restless adventurous spirit which longed for new fields to conquer and yearned for the great undeveloped West. His disposition was genial, and he readily made friends."

Those friends, according to his son, included the Native Americans he encountered. "They loved him," said Tibbet, Jr. "There was not a trail in this whole west discovered by a white man, Tibbet once told an audience, "Every white explorer was lead by an Indian guide, it was their country and we took it from them without ever paying them for it. "Lewis and Clark were guided to Oregon by an Indian woman. My old friend, John Fremont, my very good friend who advertised himself as the trail blazer, was guided by an old Indian, 'Fig Tree John.'"

Jonathan Tibbet Jr.'s early life was one of work as a stockman, trader and merchant in Arizona and around the Southwest. He moved to the Riverside area in 1881 and operated as a broker, buying and selling real estate and mines. In 1892 he married Emma Baumann in Riverside. By 1912, Tibbet closed his Riverside office to devote full time to his extensive personal holdings which included three ranches in Riverside County along with property in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. He reportedly attributed a great deal of success to the fact that he did not drink alcohol, gamble and remained out of debt. He credited his wife Emma with convincing him to retire and spend more time on Indian affairs.

We know little else of Jonathan Tibbet Jr. except for this legacy as a founder of the Mission Indian Federation. His renown as a collector of Western Americana is well documented but none has survived for viewing by the interested of the 21st century. He donated his Native American and Western collections to Pomona College just months before he died. Tibbet suddenly took ill during the Federation spring conference in 1930. He passed away at the age of 74 on April 22, 1930. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Riverside, California. His home had been the site of the Federation's semi-annual meetings beginning in 1919. While his widow continued to offer the grounds of their Prospect Avenue home for future Federation conferences, attendance began to fall off. Emma Tibbet lived for 17 more years. She died January 3, 1947 and was interred, as well, in Evergreen Cemetery. The Tibbets had no children.

- RICHARD A. HANKS