"Exterminate Them"

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"Exterminate Them"
Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Slavery of Native Americans During the California Gold Rush, 1848-1868

Edited by Clifford E. Trafzer and Joel R. Hyer

Michigan State University Press

East Lansing

Foreword

In the early winter of 1848, Johann August Sutter, a former Mexican governmental official, local caudillo (warlord), and Indian slave owner, hastily convened a meeting with the chief of the Colma Nissenan Indians. Appointed by the military governor as the new United States Indian subagent and now apparently a rehabilitated ex-Mexican Patriot, Sutter shouldered the task of establishing official relations with the local tribesmen that he had until recently terrorized and enslaved. His first order of business was to negotiate a "treaty" with Coloma tribesmen that would lease the entire watershed of the American River to Sutter personally. After all, gold had recently been discovered at a sawmill he had commissioned to be constructed nearby. During the negotiations, Sutter was warned by the chief that the yellow metal he so eagerly sought "belonged to a demon who devoured all who searched for it." In a moment of clarity, the military governor of Alta California denied Sutter's self-serving actions. Nevertheless, the chief's dire predictions proved to be devastatingly on target.

In popular literature and school textbooks the events that followed the discovery of gold have for too long been portrayed as a great adventure, luring American males to the far west in search of personal fortunes and validating the hysterically popular doctrine of Manifest Destiny. The predominate theme in these representations has been the personal sacrifices, hardships, and ultimate disappointment in the great enterprise. The fate of the California Indians was, like Indian futures everywhere, doomed and dismissed into the waste bin of history. After all, these writers reasoned, the Indians were a stone-age people who, in social Darwinistic dogma, must inevitably yield to the overpowering force of a technologically "superior people." This book is about the human cost of that adventure.


Preface

Gold and Gold Rush! The words bring forth romantic images of sourdough miners clad in bright flannel shirts, wearing worn-out Levis, scuffed boots, and floppy felt hats. Bending over the rocky shore of roaring rivers, these white miners pannned for gold with the diligence and perseverance that made America what it is today. American history texts, particularly those designed for young readers, are filled with positive images glorifying the Forty-Niners and the California Gold Rush. The Gold Rush in California is part of the "Mining Frontier" that opened the American West to white civdization, economic development, social advancement, and statehood. What is generally missing from these accounts are California's Indians and the holocaust brought by miners to the First Nations of California.

California's Indians survived the holocaust, but they are not celebrating the Sesquicentennial of the gold discovery at Coloma in 1848. They are lamenting the rape, murder, and enslavement of their people that began with the discovery of gold by Indians and whites at Sutter's Mill on the American River. Native Americans throughout California are remembering that white miners murdered thousands of Indians, raped hundreds of native women and children, and sold thousands of people into slavery. Population figures vary depending on the source, but scholars generally feel that in 1846 the California Indian population was at least 120,000--if not more--but had plummeted by the 1860s to somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000. The most dramatic era of population reduction came between 1848 and 1868, when approximately 100,000 Indians died from disease, malnutrition, enslavement, and murder. In spite of the continued decline of the native population to roughly 17,000 in 1900, California's Indian population has recovered and survived.

Introduction

Holocaust is an excellent word to use to describe the terror, death, and destruction brought to Native Americans in California during the era of the Gold Rush. One might also use the words extermination, debasement, or genocide to depict Indian-white relations from 1848-68. The Chico Courant of July 28, 1866 offered the position that "It is a mercy to the red devils to exterminate them, and a saving of many white lives Treaties are played out-there is one kind of treaty that is effective--cold lead." This was a point of view expressed by other editors in California, one that resonates throughout California's dark and hidden past--one that does not appear in popular literature of the Gold Rush era. This was not the view of all non-Indians of California, but one that helped stir a bloody killing field in California and cost the native population thousands of lives.

It had not started out that way. In 1848 a group of Maidu, Nissinan, and other California Indians joined James Marshall in his task to build a saw mill on the American River for John Sutter. Indians led Marshall to a Maidu village called Coloma where the white man decided to build the mill. In order for the mill to operate, Marshall ordered his Indian employees to dig a mill race. Native California Indians dug the mill race and found gold nuggets in the process, showing them to whites, including James Marshall. The Indians had lived in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains for generations, and they had seen gold before. However, they placed no value on the metal. But the gold found on January 24, 1848 had great meaning to the white men working at Coloma, and the gold discovery would have significant meaning to thousands of California Indians and peoples throughout the world.

When the Gold Rush began in 1848, Californios who ran extensive ranches in California packed up their Indian cowboys, Indian families, and children, and the enslavement of their family members who helped build the Golden State. For California's First Nations, the era of the Gold Rush was truly a holocaust, a watershed in their history that they remember through their oral histories and numerous written accounts left by non-natives who watched and recorded the horror.

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Chapter 1.- White American Perceptions of California Indians

This chapter includes a series of documents that offer superb insight into the attitudes of whites toward the Native Americans of California. As Anglos moved rapidly into the Gold Rush, they brought with them racial prejudices regarding North American Indians. Over two hundred years of interaction between whites and Native Americans shaped and influenced these views. By the time of the Gold Rush, most whites despised Indians. They considered the indigenous inhabitants of North America to be godless, barbaric, and savage. To a majority of whites, Native Americans had no redeeming value and stood as barriers to American "civilization" and progress. In California, whites referred to Indians as Diggers, a pejorative term closely related to "nigger." Anglos wanted Indians pushed out of the way or exterminated. Only enlightened whites favored reservations where Indians could be civilized.

Many of the following newspaper articles echo these negative sentiments about Indians. Some of the reports recount murders. A few journalists assume that Native Americans committed the heinous acts, yet the writers provide no concrete evidence to support their claims. They suppose that only Indians kill people in California. These accounts portray native peoples of the Golden State as bloodthirsty, ruthless barbarians.

Other documents incorporate divergent views regarding Native Americans. Some Americans during this period advocated a so-called Christian solution to the supposed "Indian problem." A few more sympathetic--yet still highly paternalistic--treatments depict Indians as being immoral, depraved heathens who must move to reservations so that they can learn Christianity and become "civilized." However, a few reports actually attempt to view Anglo hostilities from the Indians' perspectives. These outline the loss of indigenous homelands and hunting-gathering-fishing territories and acknowledge the necessity for Native Americans to steal food and supplies in order to survive. Still other reports propose that Indians are primitive people destined to become extinct. White perceptions and preconceived notions of native Californians made it...


Chapter 2.- Native American Reaction to the Invasion

With the coming of the Gold Rush, thousands of non-Indians converged on California in hope of becoming wealthy. They established mining camps in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and erected communities throughout what became the Golden State. This constituted an invasion, for these outsiders entered the homelands of numerous Native American peoples without their consent. Anglos, Englishmen, Germans, Chileans, Chinese, Mexicans, and others moved into areas already occupied by Indians. Foreigners came to take, to rob the region of its mineral wealth. They viewed the indigenous inhabitants of California as obstructing their ability to mine gold.

Miners likely did not reflect on the impact of their incursion into California. They polluted rivers and streams, killed local game, destroyed plant habitats, and upset the lives of thousands of Native Americans. Prospectors frequently attempted to force Indians off their native lands so that they could search for gold. During the 1850s and 1860s, the United States government sought to place some indigenous peoples of California onto reservations and teach them Christianity and American farming techniques. Others the government ignored, allowing state officials and local law informants to establish rule over Indians. Miners, immigrants, and government officials oppressed the original inhabitants of the Golden State.

Despite overwhelming numbers of invaders, Native Americans in California resisted. They strived to continue their traditional lifestyles, yet expediency demanded that they also mobilize. After the Spanish intrusion, California Indians became increasingly warlike in order to preserve and protect themselves, their families, and their cultures. By the Gold Rush era, some Native Americans in California were adroit raiders. They successfully

seized horses, livestock, and supplies from miners, ranchers, and immigrants in order to survive. With the depletion of traditional game, Indians had no other alternative but to steal from non-Indians.

The following documents reveal the effectiveness of native raids on Americans and other foreigners. Indians from all...

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Chapter 3.- Other Native Resistance

Truly, raiding white Americans during the Gold Rush was a significant and successful form of resistance. Yet the indigenous inhabitants of California did not limit their protest to this one strategy. Native Americans employed other methods to express their opposition to the non-Indian invasion of California. For instance, as a couple of documents demonstrate, Indians frequently directed their efforts at Chinese miners, demanding money and goods.

Other newspaper articles in this section suggest a multitude of tactics. Besides stealing from Anglos and Chinese, Indians defended their homelands by attacking American settlements, burning ranches, and killing whites. They ambushed mail carriers, merchants, miners, and anyone else who trespassed on their lands. Native Americans working on ranches often left their jobs to join other indigenous peoples in coordinated strikes against whites. According to one report, Indians surprised and killed seventy-two Anglos near a small stream known as Rattlesnake Creek. Some fought American militia units, thereby dispelling earlier rumors among California's Anglo population that the region's native people never engaged in combat.

After the establishment of Indian reservations in the Golden State, Anglos sought to capture Native Americans and place them on these reserves. Indians manifested their disdain for this oppressive system by bolting the reservations at every possible opportunity. Anglos, in response, searched for Native Americans who left the reserves. Whites occasionally provided food and clothing to Indians in exchange for promises that they would cease stealing livestock belonging to American citizens. As one document implies, Indians in at least one instance defiantly broke their promises by stealing some items from their captors' camp and escaping into safer regions.

One newspaper article reveals that even Indian youth refused to kowtow to Anglo demands. A Native American boy, perhaps only ten or twelve years old, attempted to burn down the house of one Colonel Stevenson. Although he apparently did not...


Chapter 4.- The Gold Rush and Native Americans of Southern California

The Gold Rush certainly brought about a significant amount of change in the lives of Native Americans living in or near the mines. Yet the invasion of non-Indians into California directly affected indigenous peoples throughout the entire region. Soon, thousands of Anglos converged on Southern California, upsetting the traditional lifestyles of the Chumash, Quechans, Luisenos, Kumeyaay, Chemehuevos, Cupenos, Cahuillas, Gabrilenos, Juanenos, and others. Whites suddenly--and sometimes gradually--seized the prized homelands of these peoples because they assumed that Indians had no right to retain such extensive property.

Native Americans responded to this incursion in various ways. For instance, Antonio Garra and the Cupenos sought to ally with other native societies and expel the American invaders from the area. However, Garra's approach conflicted sharply with the views of Juan Antonio and the Cahuillas, who generally and pragmatically befriended the whites of Southern California. Ironically, Juan Antonio and the Cahuillas captured Antonio Garra, thus ending Garra's plan for a major pan-Indian uprising in 1851.

The following documents focus on the Garra Revolt as well as on relations between the Cahuillas and whites. Some newspaper articles particularly reflect the panic and excitement that abounded during Garra's attempt to organize a large-scale assault against Anglos and Californians. Americans in northern California avidly read these reports. This information only confirmed their prejudices regarding the indigenous peoples of California and likely exacerbated tensions in the gold fields. A few articles discuss the alliance between the Cahuillas and the Lugo family of San Bernadino, which resulted in a violent encounter between Juan Antonio's men and American thieves in May 1851. Subsequent documents relate the tenuous relations

that prevailed between load Americans and the Cahuillas over the next few months.

Los Angeles Star, May 31, 1851 Terrible Tragedy

"About two months since, a party of men, some 25 in number, arrived at the place and encamped a short...

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Chapter 5.- Anglo Depredations against California Indians

The Gold Rush brought a tide of people from all over the world to California. Thousands from the United States--mostly men--soon arrived in the region. Anglos carried with them dangerous attitudes toward North American Indians. For centuries, the English and their American descendants drove Indian peoples from their indigenous homelands. Whites indiscriminately killed Native Americans, considering native people to be less than human. This legacy of hatred and murder continued in California during the Gold Rush.

Many whites viewed the indigenous inhabitants of the Golden State obstacles to their economic well-being. Beginning in 1849, with the attack on a Maidu village, American military units, militia groups, and vigilantes fought Indians in what essentially became a war of extermination. For instance, whites organized the Mariposa Battalion for the sole purpose of killing Indians in the Southern Mines. Many Anglos preferred to kill Native Americans rather than remove them to federal reservations. They hunted down and mercilessly murdered Indian men, women, and children--sometimes hundreds at a time. At least one newspaper correctly described the murders as "wholesale killing." Another document relates how white men brutally slit the throat of a crippled Indian boy. The courageous lad had attempted to defend a little girl from the Anglo intruders. Miners raped Indian women and enslaved children, forcing young girls into prostitution or selling them outright to the highest bidder.

Several newspaper articles in this chapter seek to justify the abundant Indian murders committed by whites. Many journalists first detail Indian raids on "innocent" American communities and then recount how whites "retaliated" only as a defensive measure. Anglos assumed that they could kill any Indians, even those not involved in raids against whites. In the eyes of Americans, murdering Indians became a crusade--a righteous, noble act. The press thereby strives to convince readers that these killings are just and Native Americans simply got what they deserved. In fact, these accounts attempt to blame...


Chapter 6.- Indian Relations with the State and Federal Governments

The Gold Rush attracted tens of thousands of American citizens to California. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, California formally fell under the jurisdiction of the United States. California soon became a state under the Compromise of 1850. The new state government, dominated by whites, quickly passed a statute that specifically discriminated against Native Americans and sought to place them in a subservient position within Anglo society. This law, known as "An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians," is reprinted in this section. Like the Jim Crow laws of the South, these laws sought to discriminate, but California's laws targeted Native Americans, not African Americans.

In addition to this legalized bigotry and assumption of federal power in Indian relations, the state of California set aside $1.5 million to reimburse volunteer militia units that hunted down and killed so-called hostile Indians. Thus, the state of California paid men to murder Native Californians. One of these vigilante groups--the Mariposa Battalion--tormented and disrupted indigenous societies in a region known as the Southern Mines. These ruffians sought to murder as many Native Americans as possible and then coerce survivors to sign treaties with federal agents.

As some of the following documents demonstrate, the federal government dispatched three commissioners--Redick McKee, George Barbour, and O. M. Wozencraft--to negotiate agreements with the indigenous inhabitants of California. They negotiated eighteen treaties with California's tribes, which the United States Senate rejected. At one time, California's tribes controlled all of the land, water, minerals, and other resources of the region, but under the treaties of the 1850s, they would have lost most of their estate. However, they would have retained for themselves approximately one-seventh of the state as Indian reservations. Even this was too much for whites in California, and the California delegation worked feverishly to scuttle the treaties so that the native people had little formal relationship with the federal government, so that the state could assert its powers over the...