First Sikhs Face Major Problems:
The History of the Sikhs

Bruce La Brack. Sikh Sansar. June 1974.

They arrived almost unnoticed at first. Coming mainly through Canada just after the turn of the century, the Sikhs of the Punjab could hardly have foreseen the place they and their children would earn in American life. In fact, few of the early Sikhs actually set out to immigrate to the United States.

Most of the “old timers,” as these pioneers are known, were initially recruited by British agents for railroad labor or for jobs in Canada's important lumber industry, but many found the conditions and pay less than promised and the climate a bit too Himalayan. Moving southward along the Washington and Oregon coastal valleys, the Sikhs eventually found their way into the northern Sacramento Valley, the San Joaquin Valley and, by 1908, were near El Centro in the Imperial Valley of extreme Southern California.

These first Sikh groups faced tremendous odds. They were generally without any working capital, had little formal education, and were entering a new society at a time when racial prejudice and economic sanctions against “Orientals” were rising.

However, several things were clear to these hardy farmers: the land was rich, water was ample, and the climate was very much like that of Hoshiarpur, Jullunder, Ludhiana and Amritsar. Above all, there was an opportunity to earn money for themselves and for those they had left behind.

Learned to Adapt

As elsewhere in the world, the Sikhs began immediately to adapt themselves to the new circumstances and formed cooperative labor “gangs” following the seasonal migrant rounds of clearing, planting, and harvest. Their needs were few and the desire to save great. Even at wages as low as ten cents an hour, some men were not only able to support themselves and begin to acquire land, but they often sent as much as half of their earnings back to their villages in India.

By the early 1920's, individuals were leasing up to 100 acres of land even though they could not yet own California property. Within a 15-year period many Sikh laborers from Northern California all the way to the Mexican border became landlords.

The situation in the Sacramento Valley, however, was not idyllic by any means. The ground temperatures often reached 115 deg. to 120 deg.(?) In the long, dry summers many older Sikh gentlemen recall that “the tops of the peach trees would turn brown and the fruit shrivel up from the heat.” The work remained hard, the hours long, and the diversions few.

Few Women

In this early period, and continuing up to the 1940's, there were few East Indian women in California. Although this absence of wives created a fragmented social situation, the Sikhs coped as best they could. There were, in fact, fewer than a half dozen Sikh families in the entire Sacramento Valley.

After 1917 the “Hindu” was denied U.S. citizenship and naturalization and by 1924 the immigration of Indian peoples had been stopped. In one sense, the Sikh became a “man without a country”: life in India under British rule was considered intolerable, yet they were simultaneously ineligible for American citizenship.

Of course those who came illegally from 1923 to 1946 were literally stateless and without legal rights in either the United States, Canada, England, or India.

Stockton Center

During these trying years, the “gurdwara” (church) in Stockton was the religious and social center for the East Indian people generally. Here, Sikhs, Hindus, Mexican Catholics and even Moslems met, worshipped and socialized together. Built by the Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society in 1915, the temple played an undercover role as the last stop in an “underground railroad” which brought immigrants the last 800 miles from Mexican border towns to the Sacramento Valley area.

Many journeys that began in the Punjab and sometimes meandered through Ceylon, Arabia, Eastern and Northern Europe, Trinidad, Panama, Guatemala and even Africa ended in the “langur” (church dining hall) at Stockton.

After a few days' rest and some good Punjabi food, the Sikh would slip away to a nearby ranch or farm where members of the Khalsa brotherhood would help him find a place to stay and work in one of the hundreds of “camps” attached to local farming operations.

Between honest labors and dodging immigration officials, an increasing number of Sikhs began to intermarry with women of Mexican, European, American and even American Indian and African decent.

Even here great obstacles stood in their way. California law prohibited “interracial marriages” and local governmental clerks declined to issue marriage licenses to “mixed couples.” One enterprising and ingenious young man overcame such problems in a rather novel way. A Sutter County newspaper reported in May 1924:

…a marriage took place at sea outside of the three-mile limit near San Francisco, this method being resorted to after a marriage license had been refused. The groom was Sandar Din, aged 31, and the bride, Berilla M. Nutter, aged 32, both of Sutter County. Din is engaged in the rice business and his bride was a cook at that place. Learning that they could not get a license here they went to Martinez where the County Clerk of Contra Costa… also refused the necessary documents. The Hindu took the prospective bride to San Francisco where he hired a launch with Luis Alberta as captain when the boat reached the three-mile limit the captain performed the marriage ceremony and the party returned.

Until after World War II, the actual center of agricultural Punjabi society was Stockton, but a post-war combination of high land prices and returning soldiers needing employment in the Stockton area's farms compelled the Sikhs to look further north for cheaper land which was available in the Yuba City–Marysville location.

1946 was also the year the Luce-Celler Bill was passed. This was a momentous legislative act for the Sikhs of California because it opened the way for the reunion of families separated for as long as 23 years. That began the steady and increasing influx of South Asian Sikhs into the Sacramento Valley area.

Land Ownership

This also meant that the right to legally own property had been established for all East Indians. Some Sikhs continued to manage and lease property throughout the prior period through “dummy corporations” and “holding companies” under the names of American friends or in the names of their non-Indian wives or American-born children. After 1946, 29 years since they were denied such rights, a Sikh could hold title to the land his hard-earned money had purchased.

Restoration of family ties and the independence of India itself set off a second period of immigration which is still underway.

Gradually, the Sikhs settled in Sutter County and the surrounding areas, purchased land, brought family and relatives over, and began to earn a living.

Between 1946 and 1970 the small number of Sikhs in this area grew at a rate of some 50-100 people a year so that the settlement became less of an isolated curiosity and took on the character of a “scattered community.”

A few Sikhs were so enthusiastic about America that they sponsored dozens of people, some of whom they knew only as acquaintances of friends. One man informed me that he sponsored 27 people of whom only five were relatives (six were Pakistanis or “post-Partition Punjabis”), one person from England, two from Fiji and the remainder from India.

Fijian Sikhs

In the early 1960's a number of Fijian East Indian began to move to California, a few families settling in the Sacramento Valley. There are now an estimated 50 local Fijian Sikhs in Sutter County, although most Fijian immigrants seem to prefer the urban San Francisco Bay area to the rural nature of the Yuba City area.

From the late 1940's to the mid-1970's the population in the Sacramento Valley has expanded seven times over, the current population estimated at 3,000-3,500.

The Sikhs in this area have become one of the area's most important peach-raising groups and have recently formed a Punjabi Peach Growers Association of 50-55 members. Other crops grown by Sikh farmers include almonds, prunes, grapes, walnuts, and (they have) some holdings in rice, wheat and alfalfa.

The old jest: “the only culture the Sikhs have is agriculture” surely must be revised to read “agri-business” when the most recent statistics are examined.

In 1947, 34 Sikhs owned a total of 995.2 acres in Sutter Country with an assessed value of $185,774. Presently, 260 Sacramento Valley Sikhs hold title to 7,145 prime orchard acres worth an estimated $15,339,412!

Orchard Lands

On a percentage basis, the Sikhs own roughly 12.5 per cent of the 43,945 orchard acres in Sutter County and 5 per cent of the 19,997 acres of orchard land in Yuba County.

Since over 90 per cent of the Sikhs in this area are engaged in agriculturally oriented work and prefer to live on or adjacent to their land, Sikh demography in the Sacramento Valley has an interesting configuration. In a figurative and literal sense they live in a “fertile crescent” which begins north of Live Oak, curves down and widens at Yuba City-Marysville, and narrows again, extending just south of Tudor. In other words, the Sikh lands generally border the flat alluvial valleys of the Feather River.

Orchards, in addition to providing a good financial return, offer the Sikhs of the Sacramento Valley other things.

First, it is a labor-intensive type of activity in which family and friends can periodically participate, effectively lowering production costs in a way not possible in larger-scale agricultural operations.

Secondly, it is the type of crop which allows a man to initially support his family with relatively few acres. Orchard crops are therefore a good way to gain some measure of economic and personal independence even though there are constant strenuous physical demands.

Hard work, however, has never seemed to bother the Sikhs.

Religion Key

Their religion, Sikhism, encourages hard work and self-sufficiency. The life of the recluse or the beggar is strongly disapproved and a man is expected to marry and support his family by honest labor. It is ultimately practical because there is no idea of a “day of rest” and a seven-day week is not unusual for the Sikh farmer. As they say, “I can say my prayers on my tractor.”

About the author:

Bruce La Brack, is currently (1974) living in the Sacramento Valley conducting research among the Sikhs of California for his Ph. D. dissertation from Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y. A former Instructor in Anthropology at the University of Nebraska and Visiting Assistant Professor of History at the University of Northern Iowa, La Brack studied Hindi and urban Hindu ritual in New Delhi under the sponsorship of the American Institute of Indian Studies.

He holds an M.A. degree from the university of Arizona in Oriental Studies where his thesis topic concerned the interrelationship of Hinduism, village art and ritual, and the marriage networks of Northern India.

An anthropologist, La Brack has published material on American Indians as well as South Asian history and culture. His most recent publication is “The Concept of Caste: Cross-Cultural Applications.” His work in California is part of a much larger projected study of Sikhism and Punjabi migration around the world.