California genocide

For the conflicts during the settling of California by the United States, see California Indian Wars. For the system of forced labor for Indigenous people during the California genocide, see Forced labor in California.

The California genocide was a series of genocidal massacres of the indigenous peoples of California by United States 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 U.S. settlers to the region as a result of the California gold rush. Between 1846 and 1873, it is estimated that U.S. colonizers killed between 9,492 and 16,094 indigenous Californians; up to several thousand were also starved 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 American officials and military commanders.

California genocide
Part of the California Indian Wars and Native American genocide in the United States
"Protecting The Settlers", illustration by J. R. Browne in The Indians Of California, 1864
Location	California
Date	1846–1873
Target	Indigenous Californians
Attack type	Genocide, ethnic cleansing, human hunting, slavery, rape, Indian removal
Deaths	No more than 2,000 (per Anderson) 4,300 (per Cook) 4,500 (per California Secretary of State) 9,492–16,094 (per Madley) 100,000+ (per Castillo/California Native American Heritage Commission)
Injured	10,000–27,000 taken as forced laborers by white settlers; 4,000–7,000 of them children
Perpetrators	United States Army, California Militia, American pioneers

The 1925 book Handbook of the Indians of California estimated that California's indigenous population decreased roughly 150,000 in 1848 to 30,000 in 1870 and 16,000 by 1900. This decline was caused by a mixture of disease, low birth rates, starvation and the genocide. Between 10,000 and 27,000 were also subject to forced labor by U.S. settlers, with California officials repeatedly passing legislation to dispossessing indigenous people.

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 indigenous Californians. In 2019, the governor of California Gavin Newsom described the events as "genocide. That's what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And 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 peoples

Indigenous ethnic and (inset) linguistic groups of California prior to European arrival

Prior to Spanish arrival, California was home to an Indigenous 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 floral 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 natives largely followed a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, moving around their area through the seasons as different types of food were available.

The Native 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 Indigenous people in California and across the continent had, and continue to, use "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".

Contact

California was one of the last regions in the Americas to be colonized by Europeans. Catholic Spanish missionaries, led by Franciscan administrator Junípero Serra and military forces under the command of Gaspar de Portolá, did not reach this area until 1769. The mission was intended to spread the Catholic faith among the region's Native peoples 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 alongside the missions to house the soldiers sent to protect the missionaries.

Spanish and Mexican rule were devastating for native populations. "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. However, according to George Tinker, a Native 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, 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.

• 1769: Spanish colonizers established a mission system in California, which led to the forced conversion and enslavement of 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.
• 1846–48: 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".
• 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.
• 1851–52: 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.
• 1851–66: Some local communities 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".

Response following statehood

Map of California from Indian Land Cessions in the United States

Following the American Conquest of California from Mexico, the influx of settlers due to the California Gold Rush in 1849, and the statehood of California in 1850, state and federal authorities incited, aided, and financed the violence against the Native Americans. The California Natives were also sometimes contemptuously referred to as "Diggers", for their practice of digging up roots to eat. On January 6, 1851, at his State of the State address to the California Senate, 1st Governor Peter Burnett said: "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected. 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." During the California genocide, reports of the decimation of Native Americans in California were made to the rest of the United States and internationally.

The California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians was enacted in 1850 (amended 1860, repealed 1863). This law provided for "apprenticing" or indenturing Indian children to white settlers, and also punished "vagrant" Indians by "hiring" them out to the highest bidder at a public auction if the Indian could not provide sufficient bond or bail. This legalized a form of slavery in California. White settlers took 10,000 to 27,000 California Native Americans as forced laborers, including 4,000 to 7,000 children.

I have the honor to report to the general commanding the Department of the Pacific that I have been in this valley fifteen days, carrying out my instructions to chastise these Indians, or the Indians of Owens River; that I have killed several, taken eleven prisoners, and destroyed a great many rancherias and a large quantity of seeds, worms, &c., that the Indians had gathered for food.

— George S. Evans, Lieutenant-Colonel Second Cavalry California Volunteers, Commanding Owens River Expedition (1862), War of the Rebellion: Operations on the Pacific Coast. Chapter LXII.

A notable early eyewitness testimony and account: "The Indians of California" (1864) is from John Ross Browne, Customs official and Inspector of Indian Affairs on the Pacific Coast. He systematically described the fraud, corruption, land theft, slavery, rape, and massacre perpetrated on a substantial portion of the aboriginal population. This was confirmed by a contemporary, Superintendent Dorcas J. Spencer.

Violence statistics

In 1943, a study by demographer Sherburne Cook, estimated that there were 4,556 killings of California Indians between 1847 and 1865. Contemporary historian Benjamin Madley has documented the numbers of Californian Indians killed between 1846 and 1873; he estimates that during this period at least 9,492 to 16,092 Californian Indians were killed by non-Indians, including between 1,680 and 3,741 killed by the U.S. Army. Most of the deaths took place in what he defined as more than 370 massacres (defined as the "intentional killing of five or more disarmed combatants or largely unarmed noncombatants, including women, children, and prisoners, whether in the context of a battle or otherwise"). Madley also estimates that fewer than 1,400 non-Indians were killed by Indians during this period. The Native American activist and former Sonoma State University Professor Ed Castillo was asked by The State of California's Native American Heritage Commission to write the state's official history of the genocide; he wrote that "well-armed death squads combined with the widespread random killing of Indians by individual miners resulted in the death of 100,000 Indians in [1848 and 1849]." Another contemporary historian, Gary Clayton Anderson, estimated that no more than 2,000 Native Americans were killed in California. Jeffrey Ostler has critiqued Anderson's estimate, calling it "unsubstantiated" and "at least five times too low".

Archaeological evidence of violence and refugeeism in California

Research made in 2015 on native burial mounds in the San Francisco Bay area found that natives would move to different places in order to avoid genocide. The movement can be traced by the dating of the burial mounds since multiple native tribes found these burial mound spaces as places of religious and cultural freedom.

The Amah Mutsun are a group of Indigenous peoples who were reported to be unable to pass on their traditions during this time, their practices remained untold for a number of years. People of this group, descendants, and archaeologists participate in conducting collaborative, ethnographic research to bring light to previous practices like burial practices and vegetation patterns.

List of recorded massacres

Year	Date	Name	Current location	Description	Reported casualties	References
1846	April 6	Sacramento River massacre	Sacramento River in Shasta County, Northern California	Captain John C. Frémont's men attacked a band of Indians (probably Wintun) on the Sacramento River in California, killing between 120 and 200 Indians.	120–200	Madley, 2016 p.49–50
1846	June	Sutter Buttes massacre	Sutter Buttes in Sutter County, Northern California	Captain John C. Frémont's men attacked a rancheria on the banks of the Sacramento River near Sutter Buttes, killing several Patwin people.	14+
1846	December	Pauma massacre	Pauma Valley in San Diego County, Southern California	11 Californios captured at Rancho Pauma were killed as horse thieves by Indians at Warner Springs, California, leading to the Temecula massacre.	11 (settlers)
1846	December	Temecula massacre	Temecula in Riverside County, Southern California	33 to 40 Luiseño Indians killed in an ambush in revenge for the Pauma Massacre east of Temecula, California.	33–40
1847	March	Rancheria Tulea massacre	Napa Valley in Napa County, Northern California	White slavers retaliate to a slave escape by massacring five Indians in Rancheria Tulea.	5
1847	March 29	Kern and Sutter massacres	Mill Creek in Tehama County, Northern California	In response to a plea from white settlers to put an end to raids, U.S. Army Captain Edward Kern and rancher John Sutter led 50 men in attacks on three Indian villages.	20	Madley, 2016 p.62
1847	late June/early July	Konkow Maidu slaver massacre	Chico in Butte County, Northern California	Slavers kill 12–20 Konkow Maidu Indians in the process of capturing 30 members of the tribe for the purpose of forced slavery.	12–20	Madley, 2016 p.64
1850	May 15	Bloody Island massacre	Clear Lake in Lake County, Northern California	Nathaniel Lyon and his U.S. Army detachment of cavalry killed 60–100 Pomo people (possibly more, by other accounts) on Bo-no-po-ti island near Upper Lake; they believed the tribe had killed Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone, two Clear Lake settlers who had been abusing and murdering Pomo and Wappo people. (The Island Pomo had no connections to the enslaved Pomo.) This incident led to a general outbreak of settler attacks against and mass killing of native people all over Northern California. The site is now California Registered Historical Landmark #427.	60–100
1851	January 11	Mariposa War	Various sites in Mariposa County, Northern California	The gold rush increased pressure on the Native Americans of California, because miners forced Native Americans off their gold-rich lands. Many were pressed into service in the mines; others had their villages raided by the army and volunteer militia. Some Native American tribes fought back, beginning with the Ahwahnechees and the Chowchilla in the Sierra Nevada and San Joaquin Valley leading a raid on the Fresno River post of James D. Savage, in December 1850. In retaliation Mariposa County Sheriff James Burney led local militia in an indecisive clash with the natives on January 11, 1851, on a mountainside near present-day Oakhurst, California.	40+
1851		Old Shasta Town Massacre	Shasta in Shasta County, Northern California	Miners killed 300 Wintu Indians near Old Shasta, California and burned down their tribal council meeting house.	300
1852	April 23	Bridge Gulch massacre	Hayfork Creek in Trinity County, Northern California	70 American men led by Trinity County sheriff William H. Dixon killed more than 150 Wintu people in the Hayfork Valley of California, in retaliation for the killing of Col. John Anderson.	150
1853		Howonquet massacre	Smith River in Del Norte County, Northern California	Californian settlers attacked and burned the Tolowa village of Howonquet, massacring 70 people.	70
1853		Yontoket Massacre	Yontocket in Del Norte County, Northern California	A posse of settlers attacked and burned a Tolowa rancheria at Yontocket, California, killing 450 Tolowa during a prayer ceremony.	450
1853		Achulet Massacre	Lake Earl in Del Norte County, Northern California	White settlers launched an attack on a Tolowa village near Lake Earl in California, killing between 65 and 150 Indians at dawn.	65–150
1853	Before December 31	"Ox" incident	Visalia in Tulare County, Central Valley	U.S. forces attacked and killed an unreported number of Indians in the Four Creeks area (Tulare County, California) in what was referred to by officers as "our little difficulty" and "the chastisement they have received".
1855	January 22	Klamath River massacres	Klamath River in Del Norte County, Northern California	In retaliation for the murder of six settlers and the theft of some cattle, whites commenced a "war of extermination against the Indians" in Humboldt County, California.
1856	March	Shingletown	Shingleton in Shasta County, Northern California	In reprisal for Indian stock theft, white settlers massacred at least 20 Yana men, women, and children near Shingletown, California.	20
1856–1859		Round Valley Settler Massacres	Round Valley in Mendocino County, Northern California	White settlers killed over a thousand Yuki Indians in Round Valley over the course of three years in an uncountable number of separate massacres.	1,000+
1859–1860		Mendocino War	Various sites in Mendocino County, Northern California	White settlers calling themselves the "Eel River Rangers", led by Walter Jarboe, killed at least 283 Indian men and countless women and children in 23 engagements over the course of six months. They were reimbursed by the U.S. government for their campaign.	283+
1859	September	Pit River	Pit River in Northern California	White settlers massacred 70 Achomawi Indians (10 men and 60 women and children) in their village on the Pit River in California.	70
1859		Chico Creek	Big Chico Creek in Butte County, Northern California	White settlers attacked a Maidu camp near Chico Creek in California, killing indiscriminately 40 Indians.	40
1860	Exact date unknown	Massacre at Bloody Rock	Mendocino National Forest in Mendocino County, Northern California	A group of 65 Yuki Indians were surrounded and massacred by white settlers at Bloody Rock, in Mendocino County, California.	65
1860	February 26	1860 Wiyot massacre	Tuluwat Island in Humboldt County, Northern California	In three nearly simultaneous assaults on the Wiyot, at Indian Island, Eureka, Rio Dell, and near Hydesville, California, white settlers killed between 80 and 250 Wiyot in Humboldt County, California. Victims were mostly women, children, and elders, as reported by Bret Harte at Arcata newspaper. Other villages were massacred within two days. The main site is National Register of Historic Places in the United States #66000208.	80–250
1863	April 19	Keyesville massacre	Keyesville in Kern County, Central Valley	American militia and members of the California Volunteers cavalry killed 35 Tübatulabal men in Kern County, California.	35
1863	August 28	Konkow Trail of Tears	Chico in Butte County to Covelo in Mendocino County, Northern California	In August 1863 all Konkow Maidu were to be sent to the Bidwell Ranch in Chico and then be taken to the Round Valley Reservation at Covelo in Mendocino County. Any Indians remaining in the area were to be shot. Maidu were rounded up and marched under guard west out of the Sacramento Valley and through to the Coastal Range. 461 Native Americans started the trek, 277 finished. They reached the Round Valley on September 18, 1863.	184
1864		Oak Run massacre	Oak Run in Shasta County, Northern California	California settlers massacred 300 Yana Indians who had gathered near the head of Oak Run, California, for a spiritual ceremony.	300
1865		Owens Lake massacre	Owens Lake in Inyo County, Northern California	To avenge the killing of a woman and child at Haiwai Meadows, white vigilantes attacked a Paiute camp on Owens Lake in California, killing about 40 men, women, and children.	40
1865		Three Knolls massacre	Mill Creek in Tehama County, Northern California	White settlers massacred a Yana community at Three Knolls on the Mill Creek, California.
1868		Campo Seco	Mill Creek in Tehama County, Northern California	A posse of white settlers massacred 33 Yahis in a cave north of Mill Creek, California.	33
1871		Kingsley Cave massacre	Ishi Wilderness in Tehama County, Northern California	4 settlers killed 30 Yahi Indians in Tehama County, California about two miles from Wild Horse Corral in the Ishi Wilderness. It is estimated that this massacre left only 15 members of the Yahi tribe alive.	30

Population decline

Further information: Population history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas

Estimated native California population based on Handbook of the Indians of California (1925) (Cook 1978)

Groups	Population by year All minimum sources below cite:
	1770	1910
Yurok	2,500 (up to 3,100)	700
Karok	1,500 (up to 2,000 to 2,700 )	800
Wiyot	1,000	100
Tolowa	1,000	150
Hupa	1,000	500
Chilula, Whilkut	1,000	(*)
Mattole	500 (up to 2,476)	(*)
Nongatl, Sinkyone, Lassik	2,000 (up to 7,957)	100
Wailaki	1,000 (up to 2,760)	200
Kato	500 (up to 1,100)	(*)
Yuki	2,000 (up to 6,000 to 20,000)	100
Huchnom	500	(*)
Coast Yuki	500	(*)
Wappo	1,000 (up to 1,650)	(*)
Pomo	8,000 (up to 10,000 to 18,000)	1,200
Lake Miwok	500	(*)
Coast Miwok	1,500	(*)
Shasta	2,000 (up to 5,600 to 10,000)	100
Chimariko, New River, Konomihu, Oakwanuchu	1,000	(*)
Achomawi, Atsugawi	3,000	1,100
Modoc in California	500	(*)
Yana/Yahi	1,500	(*)
Wintun	12,000	1,000
Maidu	9,000 (up to 9,500)	1,100
Miwok (Plains and Sierra)	9,000	700
Yokuts	18,000 (up to 70,000)	600
Costanoan	7,000 (up 10,000 to 26,000 combined with Salinan)	(*)
Esselen	500	(*)
Salinan	3,000	(*)
Chumash	10,000 (up to 13,650 to 20,400)	(*)
Washo in California	500	300
Northern Paiute in California	500	300
Eastern and Western Mono	4,000	1,500
Tübatulabal	1,000	150
Koso, Chemehuevi, Kawaiisu	1,500	500
Serrano, Vanyume, Kitanemuk, Alliklik	3,500	150
Gabrielino, Fernandeño, San Nicoleño	5,000	(*)
Luiseño	4,000 (up to 10,000)	500
Juaneño	1,000 (up 3,340)	(*)
Cupeño	500 (up to 750)	150
Cahuilla	2,500 (up to 6,000 to 15,000)	800
Diegueño, Kamia	3,000 (up to 6,000 to 19,000)	800
Mohave (total)	3,000	1,050
Halchidhoma (emigrated since 1800)	1,000 (up to 2,500)	........
Yuma (Total)	2,500	750
Total of groups marked (*)	..........	450
		15,850
Less river Yumans in Arizona	3,000 (up to 4,000)	850
Non-Californian Indians now in California	..........	350
Affiliation doubtful or not reported	..........	1,000
Total	133,000 (up to 230,407 to 301,233)	16,350

Select ethnic groups targeted

While many groups were targeted in the genocide the circumstances of individual groups can be illustrative of the on the ground happenings of the killings.

Yuki

The Yuki people experienced catastrophe by the events of 1847–1853. The United States took possession of California from Mexico in January 1847, with the Gold Rush arriving swiftly in 1848. Hundreds of thousands came in the search of wealth, placing pressure on Indigenous Californians. More than 1,000 Yuki are estimated to have been killed in the Round Valley Settler Massacres of 1856–1859 and 400 in the Mendocino War; many others were enslaved and only 300 survived. The intent of the massacres was to exterminate the Yuki and gain control of the land they inhabited. U.S. Army soldiers deployed to the valley stopped further killings and in 1862 the California legislature revoked a law which permitted the kidnapping and enslavement of Native Americans in the state.

A few specific attacks of which there is witness testimony are:

• A local paper reported 55 Indians killed in Clinton Valley on October 8, 1856.
• A white farmer, John Lawson, admitted an attack killing eight Indians, three by shooting and five by hanging, after some of his hogs were stolen. He stated that these killings were a common practice.
• A white farmer, Isaac Shanon, testified to killing 14 Indians in a revenge attack after a white man was killed in early 1858.
• White persons from the Sacramento Valley came into Round Valley and killed four Yuki Indians with the help of locals in June 1858, despite having been warned against it by Indian Agents.
• White settlers attacked and killed nine Indians in the mountains edging the valley in November 1858.
• Former Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Thomas Henley (fired two months earlier for embezzling funds), led a massacre of 11 Yuki Indians in August 1859.

Due to the overwhelming number of killings, an exact death toll is unknowable. The following estimates were made by government agents and newspapers at the time:

• 1856: 300 total killed over the course of the year.
• Winter 1856–57: About 75 Yuki Indians killed over the course of the winter.
• March–April 1858: 300–400 male Yukis killed in three weeks.
• November 1858 – January 1859: 150+ or 170 Yuki Indians killed between November and January
• March–May 1859: 240 Yuki killed in assaults led by H.L. Hall in revenge for the slaughter of Judge Hastings's horse and a total of 600 men, women, and children killed within the previous year.

These estimates suggest well over 1,000 Yuki deaths at the hands of white settlers. (See Cook, Sherburne; "The California Indian and White Civilization" Part III, pg 7, for an argument in favor of the approximate reliability of figures of Indians killed at this time.)

Yahi

The Yahi were the first of the Yana people to suffer from the Californian Gold Rush, for their lands were the closest to the gold fields. Prior to the Gold Rush that began with the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in January 1848, the U.S military had been involved in the destruction of California Natives which included the Yana people. The processes included removals of people from ancestral land, massacres, confinement to small reservations, and the separation of families. In California, miners, ranchers, farmers, and businessmen engaged in acts outlined in the Genocide Convention. They suffered great population losses from the loss of their traditional food supplies and fought with the settlers over territory. They lacked firearms, and armed white settlers intentionally committed genocide against them in multiple raids. These raids took place as part of the California genocide, during which the U.S. Army and vigilante militias carried out killings as well as the relocation of thousands of indigenous peoples in California. The massacre reduced the Yahi, who were already suffering from starvation, to a population of less than 100.

On August 6, 1865, seventeen settlers raided a Yahi village at dawn. In 1866, more Yahis were massacred when they were caught by surprise in a ravine. Circa 1867, 33 Yahis were killed after being tracked to a cave north of Mill Creek. Circa 1871, four cowboys trapped and killed about 30 Yahis in Kingsley cave.

The last known survivor of the Yahi was named Ishi by American anthropologists. Ishi had spent most of his life hiding with his tribe members in the Sierra wilderness, emerging at the age of about 49, after the deaths of his mother and remaining relatives. He was the only Yahi known to Americans.

Tolowa

In 1770 the Tolowa had a population of 1,000; their population soon dropped to 150 in 1910; this was almost entirely due to deliberate mass murder in what has been called genocide which has been recognized by the state of California. In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide. Newsom said, "That's what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that's the way it needs to be described in the history books." Among these killings the Yontoket Massacre left 150 to 500 Tolowa people recorded dead. Because their homes had burned down, the place received the name "Burnt Ranch". The Tolowa themselves date the first massacre at 1853, stating that between 450 and 600 people were killed. The second dated massacre at 1854 stating that about 150 people were killed. The Yontoket massacre decimated the cultural center of the Tolowa peoples. The natives from the surrounding areas would gather there for their celebrations and discussions. The survivors of the massacre were forced to move to the village north of Smith's River called Howonquet. The slaughtering of the Tolowa people continued for some years. They were seemingly always caught at their Needash celebrations. These massacres caused some unrest which led in part to the Rogue River Indian war. Many Tolowa people were incarcerated at Battery Point in 1855 to withhold them from joining an uprising led by their chief. In 1860, after the Chetco/Rogue River War, 600 Tolowa were forcibly relocated to Indian reservations in Oregon, including what is now known as the Siletz Reservation in the Central Coastal Range. Later, some were moved to the Hoopa Valley Reservation in California. Adding to the number of dead from the Yontoket Massacre and the Battery Point Attack are many more in the following years. These massacres included the Chetko Massacre with 24 dead, the Smith creek massacre with 7 dead, the Howonquet Massacre with 70 dead, the Achulet massacre with 65 dead (not including those whose bodies were left in the lake) and the Stundossun Massacre with 300 dead. In total, 902 Tolowa Native Americans were killed in 7 years. There are no records that any of the perpetrators were ever held accountable. This means over 90% of the entire Tolowa population was killed in deliberate massacres.

Economic aspects of genocide in Southern California

At the outset, the Euro-American population of Los Angeles County identified a practical application for the utilization of Native labor within an economy that was experiencing a shortage of laborers due to the mass migration of individuals to the gold fields. During the 1850s, white people in the United States depended on individuals of Native American descent to cultivate vast areas of land in return for minimal or non-existent monetary compensation. During the period of the Gold Rush, numerous rancho owners were able to reap significant benefits by driving their livestock into the Central Valley and Sierra foothills, thereby capitalizing on the relatively prosperous years of gold mining. Due to Economic expansion because of the increased need for mining, even Indigenous groups in remote locations, such as those in the Coso Range, were incorporated into the economy.

Legacy

Land theft and value

According to M. Kat Anderson, an ecologist and lecturer at University of California, Davis, and Jon Keeley, a fire ecologist and research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, after decades of being disconnected from the land and their culture, due to Spanish and U.S. settler violence, Native peoples are slowly starting to be able to practice traditions that enhance the environment around them, by directly taking care of the land. Anderson and Keeley write, "The outcomes that Indigenous people were aiming for when burning chaparral, such as increased water flow, enhanced wildlife habitat, and the maintenance of many kinds of flowering plants and animals, are congruent and dovetail with the values that public land agencies, non-profit organizations, and private landowners wish to preserve and enhance through wildland management". Through these returned practices, they are able to commit and practice their culture, while also helping the other people in the area that will benefit from the ecological differences.

California Landmark 427, built in 2005 represents the Bloody Island Massacre of the Pomo people that took place on May 15, 1850. The monument is used as a center point of an annual festival beginning in 1999 held by Pomo descendants. Candles and tobacco are burned in honor of their ancestors.

Call for tribunals

Native American scholar Gerald Vizenor has argued in the early 21st century for universities to be authorized to assemble tribunals to investigate these events. He notes that United States federal law contains no statute of limitations on war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide. He says:

Genocide tribunals would provide venues of judicial reason and equity that reveal continental ethnic cleansing, mass murder, torture, and religious persecution, past and present, and would justly expose, in the context of legal competition for evidence, the inciters, falsifiers, and deniers of genocide and state crimes against Native American Indians. Genocide tribunals would surely enhance the moot court programs in law schools and provide more serious consideration of human rights and international criminal cases by substantive testimony, motivated historical depositions, documentary evidence, contentious narratives, and ethical accountability.

Vizenor believes that, in accordance with international law, the universities of South Dakota, Minnesota, and California Berkeley ought to establish tribunals to hear evidence and adjudicate crimes against humanity alleged to have taken place in their individual states. Attorney Lindsay Glauner has also argued for such tribunals.

Apologies and name changes

In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June, 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide. Newsom referring to the proposed California Truth and Healing Council said, "California must reckon with our dark history. California Native American peoples suffered violence, discrimination and exploitation sanctioned by state government throughout its history .... It's called genocide. That's what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that's the way it needs to be described in the history books. We can never undo the wrongs inflicted on the peoples who have lived on this land that we now call California since time immemorial, but we can work together to build bridges, tell the truth about our past and begin to heal deep wounds." After hearing testimony, a Truth and Healing Council will clarify the historical record on the relationship between the state and California Native Americans.

In November 2021, the board of directors of the former "University of California Hastings College of Law" voted to change the name of the institution because of namesake S. C. Hastings's involvement in the killing and dispossessing of Yuki people in the 1850s. The name change was approved via an act of the California Legislature (California Assembly Bill 1936, 2021–2022 regular session) and was signed into law by the governor on 23 September 2022. The name change took effect on 1 January 2023. The institution is now known as the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.

Academic debate on the term "genocide"

There is vigorous debate over the scale of Native American losses after the discovery of gold in California and whether to characterize them as genocide. The application of the term "genocide", in particular, has been controversial. According to historian Jeffrey Ostler, the debate mostly rests on disagreements regarding the definition of the term. He writes that by a strict ("intentionalist") definition, genocide "requir[es] a federal or state government intention to kill all California Indians and an outcome in which the majority of deaths were from direct killing", while by a less strict ("structuralist") definition, it "requir[es] only settler intention to destroy a substantial portion of California Indians using a variety of means ranging from dispossession to systematic killing". Under the former definition, Ostler argues that "genocide does not seem applicable," whereas under the latter definition, "genocide seems apt."

In 1948, Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined genocide as

... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2

For use of the term

National Park Service information sign at the Presidio of San Francisco describing the California genocide.

Historians who argue the term "genocide" is appropriate point out that the Indian population of California fell quickly and argue that extreme violence was integral to this process. Benjamin Madley, a UCLA historian, is one of the most prominent historians espousing this view, writing that "[i]t was genocide, sanctioned and facilitated by California officials" who, according to him, "established a state-sponsored killing machine". Historian Brendan C. Lindsay, argued that "rather than a government orchestrating a population to bring about the genocide of a group, [in California] the population orchestrated a government to destroy a group", while William T. Hagen wrote that "[genocide] is a term of awful significance, but one which has application to the story of California's Native Americans". James J. Rawls argued that Californian whites "advocated and carried out a program of genocide that was popularly called 'extermination'". Militias were called out by the governors of California for "expeditions against the Indians" on a number of occasions.

Supporters of the use of the term "genocide" stress the involvement and complicity of federal and state authorities in perpetrating atrocities against the indigenous Californians, and point to their statements and policies as evidence of direct genocidal intent. For example, historian Richard White, in a review of Madley's An American Genocide, argues that "no reader of his book can seriously contend that what happened in California doesn't meet the current definition of "genocide"," citing the "relentless attacks by federal troops, state militia, vigilantes, and mercenaries [that] made the enslavement of Indians possible and starvation and disease inevitable". White continues, "in California, what Americans have often called "war" was nothing of the sort. For every American who died, 100 Indians perished. They died horribly—men, women, and children. The men who killed them were brutal. Nor did the killings result from a moment of rage; they were systematic." White stresses the complicity of the US federal government, noting that "the funding that the US government provided for California's militia expeditions made attacking Indians possible and profitable". Writing about the experience of indigenous Californian women during this period, Women's studies scholar Gail Ukockis argues that "government officials were quite explicit about their genocidal intent," citing the 1851 State of the State address given by the 1st Governor of California, Peter Burnett, in which he said: "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected."

Jeffrey Ostler, too, endorsed the usage of the term, writing that it "rests on a substantial body of scholarship". Ostler argues that there is a "general consensus" that genocide took place in at least "some times and places in the state's early history". Responding to critics of the "genocide" charge that have argued that epidemics were the primary cause of Native mortality, Ostler writes that "depopulation from disease more often resulted from conditions created by colonialism—in California, loss of land, destruction of resources and food stores, lack of clean water, captive taking, sexual violence, and massacre—that encouraged the spread of pathogens and increased communities' vulnerability through malnutrition, exposure, social stress, and destruction of sources of medicine and capacities for palliative care". He continues, "since the United States' colonization of California was intended to dispossess Indigenous peoples and since that intention had the predictable consequence of making communities vulnerable to multiple diseases which led to massive population loss, disease in this case qualifies as a crucial factor contributing to genocide".

Karl Jacoby, in his review of An American Genocide, argues that the book removes "any doubt that genocide against Native people took place in the most populous and prosperous state in the US" and that it establishes "conclusively the reality of genocide in the Golden State". He also notes that Madley "illuminates the ways that federal and state policies facilitated popular violence against Indians". William Bauer Jr. argues that Benjamin Madley "has settled the issue on whether or not genocide occurred in California". He writes also that "federal and state governments, those bodies that could or should have protected California Indians from the devastating violence, condoned and perpetrated genocides" and that "civilian leaders in California passed legislation that enabled genocide". Margaret Jacobs writes that Madley has made it "nearly impossible to deny that a genocide took place against Native peoples in at least one location and one time period in American history" and that he shows how "the genocide started out as the work of vigilante groups but soon gained state funding and federal support". Jacobs points out, for example, that "in 1854, Congress agreed to pay off California's war debt, and by the end of 1856, the federal government had given California more than $800,000 to distribute to bond holders who had financed the genocidal killing in the state."

In his book The Rediscovery of America, historian Ned Blackhawk argues that "historians have located genocide across Native American history" and cites California as a specific example. Blackhawk writes that in California, "settlers used informal and state-sanctioned violence to shatter Native worlds and legitimate their own" and also notes that "in February 1852, for example, the state legislature appropriated $500,000 to fund anti-Indian state militias". Regarding the role of the federal government, he writes that they had "earlier attempted an alternate scenario to the genocide at hand. In 1851 and 1852, officials negotiated eighteen treaties across the state; however, bowing to California representatives, the Senate rejected these treaties, essentially authorizing the continued use of settler violence to aid colonization."

Against the use of the term

Other scholars and historians dispute the accuracy of the term "genocide" to describe what occurred in California, as well as the blame which has been placed directly on the federal government and the state government of California, pointing to the fact that disease was the primary factor in the depopulation of California Indians and arguing that mass violence was undertaken primarily by settlers and that the state and federal governments did not establish a policy of physically killing all Indians. One of the most prominent historians espousing such a view is Gary Clayton Anderson, a University of Oklahoma professor of history who describes the events in California as "ethnic cleansing", arguing that "If we get to the point where the mass murder of 50 Indians in California is considered genocide, then genocide has no more meaning". Historian William Henry Hutchinson, wrote that "the record of history disproves these charges [of genocide]", while historian Tom Henry Watkins stated that "it is a poor use of the term" since the killings were not systematic or planned. In a critical review of Brendan Lindsay's Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846–1873, Michael F. Magliari notes that "[Sherburne] Cook never described the terrible events of 1846–1873 as a genocide, and neither had any of his leading successors in California Indian history". While acknowledging that actions against some tribes native to California were genocidal, he opts for the term ethnocidal for actions against other tribes, considering the former term's application to all cases "highly problematic". (He rejects the UN Genocide Convention's "sweeping definition" of genocide, whereas Lindsay embraces it.) In a subsequent review of Benjamin Madley's An American Genocide, he says that some scholars may find Madley's use of the UN Genocide Convention as an "overly broad and elastic definition", that the evidence of genocide "varies considerably from place to place and is far stronger in some cases", and that Madley's case against the federal government is "not nearly so strong" as that against "frontier miners, farmers, and ranchers". Magliari also argues that "epidemics, not violence, still remained by far the greater factor in Native mortality". He nevertheless concludes : "Beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt (and by the standards of any reasonable definition), genocide did in fact play a significant role in the US conquest and subjugation of Native California."

See also

• Bibliography of California history
• List of genocides committed by the United States
• American Indian Wars
• California Indian Reservations and Cessions
• California Indian Wars
• California mission clash of cultures
• Comanche campaign
• Cupeño trail of tears
• Genocides in history
• Genocide of Indigenous peoples
• 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic
• History of California
• List of genocides
• List of Indian massacres
• Long Walk of the Navajo
• Northern Cheyenne Exodus
• Serranus Clinton Hastings
• Trail of Tears
• Yavapai Wars

References

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