Americans only had to bring in the scalp to get paid: $25 for a Native
body parts, whether it was a scalp, a hand, or the whole body; and $5
for a Native child or a woman
The American Experience (PBS)
November 6, 2006
The Gold Rush
The Genocide of 270,000 Natives by the Anglo-Americans
"So what we have here in California during the Gold Rush, quite
clearly, was a case of genocide, mass murder that was legalized and
publicly subsidized" -- Dr. James J. Rawls, historian.
For millennia a diverse population of Native American tribes thrived on
the abundant lands of California. Before European settlers arrived, an
estimated 300,000 native people lived in small villages throughout the
area.
Contact with the new settlers brought about serious disruptions to the
native way of life. The Gold Rush of 1848 brought still more
devastation. Violence, disease and loss overwhelmed the tribes. By
1870, an estimated 30,000 native people remained in the state of
California, most on reservations without access to their homelands.
Two native descendants of these tribes, April Moore and Professor Frank
LaPena, and historian James Rawls tell us about what happened to Native
Americans in the period of the Gold Rush.
Native Americans in the Gold Rush
Violence and Sanctuary
The U.S. policies of removal of native people as Europeans pioneered
further west was bound to the tragic cry of extermination as the
settlements reached the west coast. Sanctuary of a sort was provided
through reservations, which gave the natives refuge from the threats of
the new invaders. However, the conditions at reservations were less
than satisfactory.
There was what we called a roundup. It's a very sad story. They went
along the foothill areas, especially above Sacramento and all along
this ridge, gathering up all these native peoples, mostly Maidu people,
and forcing them to march down through the valley, over by the Sutter
Butte, but first they had to cross the Sacramento River.
And very few native people knew how to swim, because they had no need
to swim. They didn't take those chances by crossing rivers. If they
knew how, they would do it in reed boats. But they were forced to cross
the river, so there was a large percentage of these Maidu people who
actually drowned, including the children and the infants.
And then whoever survived the crossing of the Sacramento River were
taken over to the Round Valley Reservation and forced to live there.
Those that escaped, hid. And they stayed hidden for quite some time.
They took on Hispanic or Mexican surnames and melted into the community
not as natives, but as Mexican Americans. They could pass. They'd just
say they were, and most people didn't pay attention and believed them.
An elderly Pomo woman said her village was attacked somewhere along the
Navarro River, by a group of white raiders. She thought perhaps they
were trying to seize children for the Native Slave Trade at the time.
She wasn't sure. But she knew that they were under attack.
And so a native woman fled with her family, trying to get her children
away. She left her smallest child, which was still in a cradleboard,
under some brush, and got away across the river. After the whites had
left, she returned, trying to find her family. And she could see that
her smallest child was still apparently safely there, under this brush.
But when she lifted it up, she found that the child had been pinned to
the earth with a knife, that the raiders apparently had regarded that
child as too small to worry with, but they managed to kill the child
instead.
In one occasion U.S. soldiers on horses who were taking people and
killing them, slamming children against rocks and trees, and just
running down men and shooting them. And they were violating the bodies
by cutting them up.
Laws against Native Americans
In 1850 the California legislature passed an Act for the Government and
Protection of Indians (
http://www.indiancanyon.org/ACTof1850.html) that
essentially forced many Native Americans into servitude. The law
provided for the forced labor of loitering or orphaned Native
Americans, regulated their employment, and defined a special class of
Indian crimes with punishments.
The name of the law sounds benign, but the effect was malign in the
extreme degree. Any white person under this law could declare Natives
who were simply strolling about, who were not gainfully employed, to be
vagrants, and take that charge before a justice of the peace, and a
justice of the peace would then have those Indians seized and sold at
public auction. And the person who bought them would have their labor
for four months without compensation.
By the time that the Gold Rush and events afterwards had occurred, so
much had happened, not just Sutter enslaving and terrorizing the native
peoples, but an epidemic had erupted previous to this: smallpox,
chicken pox, unusual diseases that they had no defenses. So their
population had been decimated.
Then it became decimated again after the Gold Rush: because of their
Aboriginal rights as landowners they needed to be eradicated and
removed. So a process went into motion to make it legal to kill Indian
people.
And at one point it was something in the neighborhood of $25 for a male
body part, whether it was a scalp, a hand, or the whole body; and then
$5 for a child or a woman. In many cases, they only had to bring in the
scalp. And in other cases, the whole body was brought in to prove that
they had this individual, they'd killed this person, and receive their
reward.
And it was well after 1900 when the law was repealed, that bounty
hunting, or whatever you may want to call it, on the California Indians
was repealed. It was shortly after the discovery of Ishi that the
nation, or I should say the state, became aware of the fact that it was
still legal to kill Indians. So that the law had to be changed.
There was an American-European settler, up in Humboldt County, who was
found with a small child, a young Native child. And they ask him, "What
are you doing with this child?" He said, "I am protecting him. He's an
orphan". And they say, "Well, how do you know he's orphan?" He said, "I
killed his parents".
In the early days of the Gold Rush, from the very beginning,
Anglo-American settlers banded together to form groups of essentially
vigilante or volunteer militia groups. They were ad hoc organizations,
and their stated objective was to exterminate the "red devils", to
eliminate the obstacles that the native Californians had become in
their minds. And their modus operandi was to attack native villages
wherever they might find them in the vicinity of their mining
activities, to eliminate their presence utterly, killing the men, the
women, and the children. And this was considered to be a necessity.
"The only way we will be able to mine in security, if all of these
people are exterminated". And the language that they used at the time,
"extermination", was precisely describing what they were attempting to
do.
The Native Americans in California of course attempted to resist the
onslaughts onto their villages. They would fight back with whatever
weapons they had at hand. But they were vastly outgunned and vastly
outnumbered, and were very infrequently able to mount an effective
defense. Usually it was more a matter of fleeing, trying to get away.
We have accounts of the white vigilantes or rangers simply firing into
the creek or going into the woods and using hatchets or other weapons,
guns, to kill those. We have many descriptions of those when they're
attacking on a stream or a river, and the natives are being shot as
they're floating down, trying to escape from this terrible onslaught.
But we should also remember that those Anglo-Americans of "Native
Hunters" could receive local compensation for their actions. Many
communities through Gold Rush California offered bounties for "Native
Heads", "Native Scalps", or "Native Ears". And so the Anglo-American
Native Raiders could bring the evidence of their kill in, and receive
direct local compensation.
Furthermore, the state of California passed legislation authorizing
more than a million dollars for the reimbursement of additional
expenses that the Indian Hunters (Native Hunters) may have incurred.
And then that was passed on eventually to the Federal Congress, where
Congress passed legislation also authorizing additional federal funds
for this purpose. So what we have here in California during the Gold
Rush, quite clearly, was a case of genocide, mass murder that was
legalized and publicly subsidized.
The White Man's View
By 1850 the idea that the extermination of the native population of
California was inevitable had been firmly settled in the minds of many
white Californians. Through this lens, many of the newcomers judged the
native people harshly.
Anglo-Americans, record in their diaries how anxious they are to shoot
natives. And sometimes finding one to shoot just for the fun of it, so
they can write back a letter that they had done so. How could this be?
And how could men engage in these acts of mass extermination? The sense
of utter dehumanization, of regarding these people (natives) as being
barely human beings, or in some cases not human beings at all.
Anglo-American diaries are filled with references to the Indians of
California as snakes and toads and skunks and lice and vermin, always
trying to communicate -- to convince themselves, perhaps -- that these
were not truly humans.
The utter disregard that the average Anglo American miner or settler or
interloper in California had for the native people of California. The
term that was used was: These are digger Indians. And the term "digger"
was a term of great insult. It implied that these people were living
lives of no value, of no worth whatsoever. They were the lowest of the
low, in the eyes of the Anglo miners who were coming into California.
So there was this utter contempt or dehumanization of the native people
in the minds of these outsiders who were coming in. They (natives) are
worthless creatures. They should be exterminated. And that was the cry
of the day: Exterminate the diggers.
Regards Bruun