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| In 1850, around 400 Pomo people, including women and children, were slaughtered by the U.S. Cavalry and local volunteers at Clear Lake north of San Francisco. |
“Gold! Gold from the American River!” Samuel Brannan
walked up and down the streets of San Francisco, holding up a bottle of pure
gold dust. His triumphantannouncement,
and the discovery of gold at nearby Sutter’s Mill in 1848, ushered in a new era
for California—one in which millions of settlers rushed to the little-known
frontier in a wild race for riches.
But though gold spelled prosperity and power for the
white settlers who arrived in California in 1849 and after, it meant disaster
for the state’s peaceful indigenous population.
In just 20 years, 80 percent of California’s Native
Americans were wiped out. And though some died because of the seizure of their
land or diseases caught from new settlers, between 9,000 and 16,000 were
murdered in cold blood—the victims of a policy of genocide sponsored by the
state of California and gleefully assisted by its newest citizens.
Today, California’s genocide is one of the most heinous chapters
in the state’s troubled racial history, which also includes forced
sterilizations of people of Mexican
descent and discrimination and internment of up to
120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II. But
before any of that, one of the new state’s first priorities was to rid itself
of its sizeable Native American population, and it did so with a vengeance.
California’s native peoples had a long and rich history;
hundreds of thousands of Native Americans speaking up to 80 languages populated
the area for thousands of years. In 1848, California became the property of the
United States as one of the spoils of the Mexican-American War. Then, in 1850,
it became a state. For the state and federal government, it was imperative both
to make room for new settlers and to lay claim to gold on traditional tribal
lands. And settlers themselves—motivated by bigotry and fear of Native
peoples—were intent on removing the approximately 150,000 Native Americans who
remained.
“Whites are becoming impressed with the belief that it
will be absolutely necessary to exterminate the savages before they can labor
much longer in the mines with security,” wrote the Daily Alta
California in 1849, reflecting the prejudices of the day.
They were assisted by the government, which considered
the so-called “Indian Problem” to be one of the biggest threats to its
sovereignty. The legal basis for enslaving California’s native people was
effectively enshrined into law at
the first session of the state legislature, where officials gave white settlers
the right to take custody of Native American children. The law also gave white
people the right to arrest Native people for minor offenses like loitering or
possessing alcohol and made it possible for whites to put Native Americans
convicted of crimes to work to pay off the fines they incurred. The law was
widely abused and ultimately led to the enslavement of tens of thousands of
Native Americans in the name of their “protection.”
This was just the beginning. Peter Hardenman Burnett, the
state’s first governor, saw indigenous Californians as lazy, savage and
dangerous. Though he acknowledged that white settlers were taking their
territory and bringing disease, he felt that it was the inevitable outcome of
the meeting of two races.
“That a war of extermination will continue to be waged
between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected,” he
told legislators in the second state of the state address in
1851. “While we cannot anticipate this result but with painful regret, the
inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert.”
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