In the early winter of 1848, Johann August Sutter, a former Mexican governmental official, localcaudillo(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,...

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. TheChico Courantof 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.”¹ This was a point of view expressed by other editors in California,...

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...

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...

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,...

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, Cup enos, 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,...

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 as obstacles to their economic well-being. Beginning in 1849, with the attack...

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...