Genocide, Slavery, and L.A. s Role in the Decimation of Native Californians

Our American experience has demonstrated the fact, that the two races cannot live in the same vicinity in peace The white man, to whom time is money, and who labors hard all day to create the comforts of life, cannot sit up all night to watch his property; and after being robbed a few times, he becomes desperate, and resolves upon a war of extermination...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. - Gov. Peter Burnett, State of the State address, 1851

Peter Burnett, American Californias first civilian governor. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

In 1851, Peter Burnett, California's first American governor, stood before the state legislature and declared the genocide of Native Californians a sad inevitability. This shocking admission was couched in a language of excuses that blindly ignored many facts - facts we can rediscover in the collections of the American Indian Resource Center in Huntington Park.

I think it is very telling that Burnett links Indians [to] stealing livestock, says the center's librarian, and member of the Winnebago Nation, Michael McLaughlin, which did happen because their usual means of subsistence were overrun by gold-seekers, and because federal government rations to the Indians seldom reached them.

Indeed, this desperate state of affairs was noticed by clear-thinking people all over the state. In a letter to President Zachary Taylor, Presbyterian preacher Sylvester Woodbridge Jr. detailed the Native people's plight:

The Indians in the Sierra Nevada are driven in large numbers from their usual haunts, and are consequently deprived of their customary food- acorns, and hence are exposed to starvation they are often killed, because when urged by hunger, they have attempted to seize the horses or cattle of American emigrants.

California tribes were forced by the Spanish and later Americans into ways of life they had no understanding of, nor desire to be part of...Their ancient lifeways were interrupted, disrupted, and largely destroyed by the Spanish, then Mexicans, then Americans.

Colonizers had been victimizing - and victim blaming - Native Californians since the arrival of the Spanish missionaries in 1769. California tribes were forced by the Spanish and later Americans into ways of life they had no understanding of, nor desire to be part of, says McLaughlin. By all early European accounts they were peaceful and welcoming. Because their environments provided much abundance to them for thousands of years, there was no need for hostilities or wars as Europeans were well practiced in. But their ancient lifeways were interrupted, disrupted, and largely destroyed by the Spanish, then Mexicans, then Americans.

Mission San Gabriel as it appeared in 1828, painted in 1832 by Ferdinand Deppe.

In Los Angeles County, native people like the Tongva and Chumash were forced to convert to Christianity, change their names, and labor under missions. During the Mexican era, powerful ranchos turned many Native Californians into indentured servants. Southern California's economy and infrastructure were largely built on the backs of those Native Americans who had managed to survive disease and starvation at the missions. But the worst was yet to come. With the discovery of gold in 1848, Americans rushed into California, California rushed into statehood, and newcomers eager to find gold and raise cattle suspended the established practice of making treaties with and assigning reservations to Indian nations.

California Indians became landless, homeless, with no legal standing in the U.S. as citizens. They werent recognized as Indians because they had no treaty, and they were excluded from California government systems.

That left California's Indians in legal limbo, McLaughlin explains. The U.S. Senate was persuaded by California officials and wealthy East Coast industrial interests not to ratify the California Indian treaties, he said. It meant California Indians became landless, homeless, with no legal standing in the U.S. as citizens. They werent recognized as Indians because they had no treaty, and they were excluded from California government systems - educational, healthcare, unable to buy property, unable to vote, unable to testify against a white person in court, etc. This didnt really change for the next 40 years.

Attitudes toward Native Californians were no different in Los Angeles. In an 1856 editorial for the Los Angeles Star, one writer bemoaned:

Cannot some plan be devised to remove the [Indians] from our midst? Could they not be removed to reservations or to a plantation in the vicinity of our city, and put under the control of an overseer, and not be permitted to enter the city, except by special permit of the Superintendent? Our citizens who are in want of their labor could apply direct to the Superintendent for such help as they might want, and when their work was finished, permit them to return home.

Angelinos' disturbing, dissonant annoyance with the Native Californian's and the need for Native labor resulted in what was essentially a slave market in downtown Los Angeles during the 1850s and 60s. According to historian Brendan C. Lindsay:

Employers used liquor as a low-cost means of maintaining access to cheap Native American labor by connecting the labor and justice systems. Indians found drunk or vagrant were arrested on Sunday, imprisoned overnight in a corral and convicted on Monday. Because few could afford to pay the fine, the jail was kept stock full of potential laborers Unable to pay the fines for their convictions, the prisoners were auctioned off in the slave mark

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