As Ammon Bundy and a band of armed protesters occupy an empty federal building on Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon, the term “militia” has been getting tossed around.
Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who instigated at standoff with federal authorities in April 2014 in protest of unpaid grazing fees imposed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
What is a militia? The word is a component of the Second Amendment. They are essentially highly trained civilian paramilitary organizations. Some are endorsed by the state, some aren’t. They were crucial to winning battles against the British during the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, at times augmenting the Continental Army. One such example is the Minutemen.
The term “militia” also carries an ominous reminder of the infamous Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents of the 1990s.
The Sun wanted to get a little history on militias in Santa Barbara County, so we called one military historian, who was able to give his take on local militia history.
The Central Coast doesn’t have a rich history of militia activity but there is some, according to Dan Sebby, a retired California National Guard Sergeant Major who’s a state historian for the National Guard. He’s also a fourth generation San Luis Obispo resident.
According to Sebby, there was a regiment that came out of Santa Barbara in the 1800s known as First California Native Cavalry and it was raised by the de la Guerra Family.
The regiment was one of several units of a federal force known as the California Volunteers, which fought with the Union Army during the Civil War. They were Spanish-speaking horse riders armed with lances who primarily fought battles against the Confederate Army in Arizona.
Then there was the formation of two groups in 1854: the Santa Barbara Guard commanded by William W. Twist and the Santa Barbara Mounted Riflemen commanded by Capt. Henry Carnes, according to militarymuseum.org.
A little further up the coast, according to Sebby, there was a group by the name of the Avila Rifles that ranged in size from a couple dozen to several hundred men.
These were state organized militias, but there were also “independent military companies,” Sebby said, that were arranged according to ethnicity in many cases and functioned like drinking clubs, although they included some professional organizations.
“They were legal, but they weren’t under the control of the governor and usually had some agreement with the sheriff for local protection,” Sebby told the Sun, adding that there is no record of them being used for self-defense.
There was also the California Militia that existed from 1850 to 1866, at which point it officially became the California National Guard, according to Sebby. So, technically California’s own official state militia is the National Guard.
Militia activity as a whole in the state dropped off the radar since the formation of the National Guard. It wasn’t until the bombing of Pearl Harbor that then-Gov. Culbert Olsen activated a force called the California State Guard, according to Sebby.
They were organized by local sheriffs and had the purpose of defending the homeland against a Japanese invasion, but that never came.
Nowadays, you’d be hard-pressed to find an actual militia in California, although several branches of the so-called Oath Keepers maintain chapters in the state, including in Orange County and the northern part of the state.
There’s a Facebook page for a Central Coast chapter, although the chapter itself doesn’t appear to be official or active.
According to its website, some Oath Keepers members include current and former military and police officers who vow not to obey orders that violate the U.S. Constitution.
The organization formed in 2009 and is headed by Yale Law School graduate Stewart Rhodes. Members include past and current members of the military and the police (both state and federal) who refuse to obey any order that is unconstitutional.
Staff Writer David Minsky can be reached at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 14-21, 2016.