The California genocide was a series of genocidal massacres of the Indigenous peoples of California by United States governments, soldiers and settlers during the 19th century. It began following the American conquest of California in the Mexican–American War and the subsequent influx of American settlers to the region as a result of the California gold rush. Between 1846 and 1873, it is estimated that settlers killed between 9,492 and 16,094 Californian Natives; up to several thousand were also starved to death or worked to death. Forced labor, kidnapping, rape, child separation, and forced displacement were widespread during the genocide, and were encouraged, tolerated, and even carried out by California government officials, American government officials, and military commanders.
Prior to the Spanish arrival, California's Indigenous population was estimated as high as 300,000. It decreased further from roughly 150,000 in 1848 to 30,000 in 1870 and 16,000 by 1900 as a result of disease, low birth rates, starvation, and genocide. Between 10,000 and 27,000 were also subject to forced labor by U.S. settlers, with California officials repeatedly passing legislation which disenfranchised Californian Indians.
Since the 2000s, historians have characterized the period immediately following the conquest of California as one in which U.S. miners, farmers, and ranchers on the American frontier engaged in the systematic genocide of Californian Indians. In 2019, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, described the events as "genocide", adding, "...that's the way it needs to be described in the history books." He also apologized for the "violence, discrimination and exploitation sanctioned by state government throughout its history". In a 2019 executive order, Newsom announced the formation of a "Truth and Healing Council" to better understand the genocide and inform future generations of what occurred.
Background
Indigenous Californians
Prior to Spanish arrival, California was home to an American Indian population thought to have been as high as 300,000. The largest group were the Chumash people, with a population around 10,000. The region was highly diverse, with numerous distinct languages spoken. While there was great diversity in the area, archeological findings show little evidence of intertribal conflicts.
The various tribal groups appear to have adapted to particular areas and territories. According to journalist Nathan Gilles, because of traditions practiced by the Native people of Northern California, they were able to "manage the threat of wildfires and cultivate traditional plants". For example, traditional use of fire by Californian and Pacific Northwest tribes, allowed them to "cultivate plants and fungi" that "adapted to regular burning. The list runs from fiber sources, such as bear-grass and willow, to foodstuffs, such as berries, mushrooms, and acorns from oak trees that once made up sprawling orchards". Many practices were used to manage the land without tremendous destruction in other ways including "tillage, pruning, seed broadcasting, transplanting, weeding, irrigation, and fertilizing". These groups worked to stimulate the growth and diversity of botanical resources across landscapes. Traditional practices allowed for the "extraordinarily successful management of natural resources available to Native Californian tribes". Because of traditional practices of Native Californian tribes, they were able to support habitats and climates that would then support an abundance of wildlife, including rabbits, deer, varieties of fish, fruit, roots, and acorns. The Native people largely followed a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, moving around their area through the seasons as different types of food were available.
The American Indian people of California, according to sociologist Kari Norgaard, were "hunting and fishing for their food, weaving baskets using traditional techniques" and "carrying out important ceremonies to keep the world intact". It was also recorded that the American Indian people in California and across the continent had used "fire to enhance specific plant species, optimize hunting conditions, maintain open travel routes, and generally support the flourishing of the species upon which they depend, according to scholars like the United States Forest Service ecologist and Karuk descendent Frank Lake".
California was one of the last regions in the Americas to be colonized by European colonists. Spanish Catholic missionaries, led by Franciscan administrator Junípero Serra and military forces under the command of officer Gaspar de Portolá, did not reach this area until 1769. The mission was intended to spread the Catholic faith among the region's American Indian population and establish and expand the reach of the Spanish Empire. The Spanish built San Diego de Alcalá, the first of 21 missions standing in modern-day California, at what developed as present-day San Diego in the southern part of the state along the Pacific. (The Spanish also built 30 missions and 11 visitas in Baja California.) Military outposts were constructed to house the soldiers sent to protect the missions.
Before American rule, Spanish and Mexican rule were devastating for the American Indian populations, and "as the missions grew, California's Native population of Indians began a catastrophic decline." Gregory Orfalea estimates that pre-contact population was reduced by 33% during the Spanish and Mexican regimes. Most of the decline stemmed from imported diseases, low birth rates, and the disruption of traditional ways of life, but violence was common, and some historians have charged that life in the missions was close to slavery. According to George Tinker, an American Indian scholar, "the Native American population of coastal population was reduced by some 90 percent during seventy years under the sole proprietorship of Serra's mission system".
According to journalist Ed Castillo, member of the Native American Caucus of the California Democratic Party, Serra spread the Christian faith among the Native population in a destructive way that caused their population to decline rapidly while he was in power. Castillo writes that "The Franciscans took it upon themselves to brutalize the Indians, and to rejoice in their death...They simply wanted the souls of these Indians, so they baptized them, and when they died, from disease or beatings... they were going to heaven, which was a cause of celebration". According to Castillo, the Native American population were forced to abandon their "sustainable and complex civilization" as well as "their beliefs, their faith, and their way of life". However, artifacts found at an archaeological site on San Clemente Island suggested that a group of Indigenous people were practicing traditional ways after the arrival of Europeans and Americans in other parts of California, and until potentially the 1850s. The artifacts included subsistence remains, middens, and flaked stone tools.
Timeline
The following is a rough timeline of some of the key events and policies that contributed to the genocide. It is by no means comprehensive.
- 1542: California is discovered by Spain. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese explorer sailing under the Spanish flag, explores the California coast and lands in San Diego Harbor, naming it San Miguel. His crew peacefully interacts with Kumeyaay people for six days trading goods and discussing cultural differences. The larger California area is named from a fictional paradise described in the early 16th-century novel "Las Sergas de Esplandián" by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo.
- 1769: Spanish colonizers extended the Mexican Catholic mission system into the mission system in California, which led to the forced conversion and enslavement of California area Native Americans.
- 1821–1823: Mexico gained independence from Spain and took control of California, continuing the Spanish government's policies of forced labor and conversion of Indigenous peoples.
- 1845–1846: John C. Frémont leads US Attacks against Native Americans in California and Oregon Country. Frémont is employed by US Senator Thomas Hart Benton and US President Andrew Jackson to explore land routes to California and prepare to conquer the territory from Mexico. Frémont travels Northern California, committing several Native massacres along the way.
- 1846–1848: The Mexican–American War led to the annexation of California by the United States. The settlers and U.S. military formed an alliance and were joined by some Indigenous people, although the military had "murdered many Natives". After the war Commodore Robert F. Stockton appointed John C. Frémont military governor of the Territory of California.
- 1848: The discovery of gold in California led to the influx of a massive horde of settlers, who formed militias to kill and displace Indigenous peoples.
- 1850: The California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians was passed, legalizing the enslavement of Native Americans and allowing settlers to capture and force them into labor.
- 1851–1852: The Mariposa War broke out between white settlers and the Ahwahnechee, resulting in the displacement and killing of Native Americans by the Mariposa Battalion in the Sierra Nevada region.
- 1851–1866: Shasta city and the communities of Marysville and Honey Lake paid bounties for the killing of Native Americans.
- 1860s: The federal government began a policy of forced removal of Native Americans peoples to reservations, which led to violence and displacement.
- Late 1800s–early 1900s: Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families by the California government and placed in boarding schools, where they were subjected to abuse and forced assimilation.
- 1909: The California state government established the California Eugenics Record Office, which promoted the forced sterilization of people declared by the government to be "unfit", including "Black, Latino and Indigenous women who were incarcerated or in state institutions for disabilities".
History
1846–1850
Starting with the conquest of California in 1846, early US incursions into Alta California, then a part of Mexico, saw several massacres take place. Military expeditions led by John C. Fremont saw the earliest massacres of California Indigenous peoples orchestrated by US forces. In April 1846, the first of these massacres occurred on the Sacramento River against the Wintu, which killed anywhere from 150 to 1000 people. Later that month, Fremont's contingent was attacked by the Klamath leading to two or three deaths. As a result, massacres took place against the Klamath. A total of 14 people were killed. More massacres would be perpetrated by Fremont throughout his campaign in California. At that time, non-Indigenous settlers were outnumbered 15 to 1 in California.
In 1847, John Sutter was appointed the first federal Indian Subagent in California. As Subagent, Sutter was known to participate extensively in the human trafficking of Indigenous Californians. Sutter had kidnapped over two thousand people to work at his ranch in near slave like conditions. The workers were often from the Pomo and Nisenan tribes. Sutter had ordered those around him to keep the Natives under fear. The conditions at the Sutter Ranch were very poor.
Over the course of 1848, gold miners poured into California from other parts of the US, bringing further violence. The Whitman massacre in Oregon spurred revenge killings against Indigenous communities in California. As violence escalated, more settlers arrived 1849. This wave of immigration popularized the term "forty niners" for gold miners in California. That year, Pomo, and Wappo laborers killed rancher Andrew Kelsey, a man known for selling indentured Native people.
Quechan war
In late 1849, the Quechan people came into conflict with white outlaws known as the Glanton gang in Southern California, who ran competing ferrying businesses. The gang committed numerous crimes on local Natives and Mexicans living in the area. In part due to the brutality of these outlaws, some settlers reached a deal with the Quechan to run a ferrying business for a quarter of the price that the gang charged. The outlaws killed an Irish ferryman named Callaghan who was ferrying people on behalf of the Quechan and had threatened the tribe. The Quechan attempted to negotiate a compromise, but were beaten by the outlaws in response.
In 1850, the gang's leader, John Glanton, and 10 others were killed by the Quechan. Soon afterwards the government of California would respond, organizing the first state supported militia campaign against California Natives. The Gila Expedition would lead to a massacre of Quechan people and would be used as a model for later operations. Other massacres would take place that year in places such as Clear Lake, Mendocino, and other areas in the northern regions of California.
1851–1855
In 1851, numerous treaties were negotiated with California tribes, though none were ratified. Tribes were required to sign and acknowledge such agreements. Resistance to the treaty process was often met with violence, as happened to the Yokuts, who refused to attend treaty negotiations.
The 1850 "Act for the Government and Protection of the Indian" legalized the indentured servitude of Indigenous children in California, as well as Indigenous people who had committed "Indian crimes." The act intensified the kidnapping and forced labor of Indigenous Californians. As conditions worsened, calls were made for a "war of extermination" by governor Peter Burnett in 1851; Burnett had argued the extinction of Natives was inevitable and nearing.