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AN AMERICAN GENOCIDE

THE LAMAR SERIES IN WESTERN HISTORY

The Lamar Series in Western History includes scholarly books of general public interest that enhance the understanding of human affairs in the American West and contribute to a wider understanding of the West’s signifi cance in the po liti cal, social, and cultural life of Amer i ca. Comprising works of the highest quality, the series aims to increase the range and vitality of Western American history, focusing on frontier places and people, Indian and ethnic communities, the urban West and the environment, and the art and illustrated history of the American West.

Editorial Board HOWARD R. LAMAR, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus,

Past President of Yale University WILLIAM J. CRONON, University of Wisconsin– Madison

PHILIP J. DELORIA, University of Michigan JOHN MACK FARAGHER, Yale University

JAY GITLIN, Yale University GEORGE A. MILES, Beinecke Library, Yale University

MARTHA A. SANDWEISS, Prince ton University VIRGINIA J. SCHARFF, University of New Mexico

ROBERT M. UTLEY, Former Chief Historian, National Park Ser vice

Recent Titles Sovereignty for Survival: American Energy Development and

Indian Self- Determination, by James Robert Allison III George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration,

by Carlos Kevin Blanton The Yaquis and the Empire: Vio lence, Spanish Imperial Power, and Native

Resilience in Colonial Mexico, by Raphael Brewster Folsom Gathering Together: The Shawnee People through Diaspora and

Nationhood, 1600–1870, by Sami Lakomäki An American Genocide: The United States and the California

Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873, by Benjamin Madley Nature’s Noblemen: Transatlantic Masculinities and the

Nineteenth- Century American West, by Monica Rico Rush to Gold: The French and the California Gold Rush,

1848–1854, by Malcolm J. Rohrbough Home Rule: House holds, Manhood, and National Expansion on

the Eighteenth- Century Kentucky Frontier, by Honor Sachs The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration,

Resettlement, and Identity, by Gregory D. Smithers Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian, by Don C. Talayesva,

edited by Leo W. Simmons, Second Edition Before L.A.: Race, Space, and Municipal Power in Los Angeles,

1781–1894, by David Samuel Torres- Rouff Wanted: The Outlaw Lives of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly,

by Robert M. Utley

New Haven & London

An American Genocide

The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873

Benjamin Madley

This book was made possible in part through the generosity of the UCLA History Department and the Division of Social Sciences and was published with assistance

from the income of the Frederick John Kingsbury Memorial Fund.

Copyright © 2016 by Benjamin Logan Madley. All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108

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For California Indians, past, present, and future

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White people want our land, want destroy us. . . . I hear people tell ’bout what Inyan do early days to white man. Nobody ever tell it what white man do to Inyan. That’s reason I tell it. That’s history. That’s truth.

— Lucy Young (Lassik/Wailaki), 1939, eyewitness to genocide

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CONTENTS

Acknowl edgments xi

List of Abbreviations xv

Introduction 1

1 California Indians before 1846 16

2 Prelude to Genocide: March 1846– March 1848 42

3 Gold, Immigrants, and Killers from Oregon: March 1848– May 1850 67

4 Turning Point: The Killing Campaigns of December 1849– May 1850 103

5 Legislating Exclusion and Vulnerability: 1846–1853 145

6 Rise of the Killing Machine: Militias and Vigilantes,

April 1850– December 1854 173

7 Perfecting the Killing Machine: December 1854– March 1861 231

8 The Civil War in California and Its Aftermath: March 1861–1871 289

9 Conclusion 336

x Contents

Appendixes

Appendix 1: Reports of Nonspecifi c Numbers of California

Indians Killed, 1846–1873 363

Appendix 2: Reports of Fewer Than Five California

Indians Killed, 1846–1873 375

Appendix 3: Reports of Five or More California

Indians Killed, 1846–1873 427

Appendix 4: Reports of Non- Indians Killed by

California Indians, 1846–1873 481

Appendix 5: Selected Massacres with Contested Death Tolls, 1846–1866 523

Appendix 6: Major Volunteer California State

Militia Expeditions, 1850–1861 529

Appendix 7: Reports of California Indians Killed by US Army

Soldiers and Their Auxiliaries, 1846–1873 534

Appendix 8: The United Nations Genocide Convention 551

Notes 555

Bibliography 629

Index 667

xi

ACKNOWL EDGMENTS

At a place called Indian Ferry, not far from where my family’s log cabin now stands, whites massacred at least thirty Shasta Indians in the spring of 1852. The victims had not attacked whites. Nor had they stolen from them. Whites killed them near the banks of the Klamath River merely because they were Indians. Few people have heard of this massacre or the many others like it. Yet there were scores of such atrocities. Hundreds of Indian- killing sites stain California from the fog- bound northwestern redwood coast to the searing southeastern deserts. Individuals, private groups, state militiamen, and US Army soldiers car- ried out these killings, ostensibly to protect non- Indians or to punish Indians for suspected crimes. In fact, the perpetrators often sought to annihilate Califor- nia’s indigenous peoples between 1846 and 1873.

The story of the California Indian catastrophe is almost unrelentingly grim, which helps to explain why relatively little has been written about it, at least compared to other genocides. Until now, no one has written a comprehensive, year- by- year history of the cataclysm. It is, nevertheless, impor tant history, for both California Indians and non- Indians. In researching and writing this book, I received guidance and support from many people and institutions.

Fellow scholars helped shape my ideas, methods, and writing. Gary Clayton Anderson, Ute Frevert, Albert Hurtado, Karl Jacoby, Adam Jones, Paul Kennedy, Howard Lamar, David Rich Lewis, Michael Magliari, Jeffrey Ostler, Russell Thornton, David Wrobel, and Natale Zappia provided crucial insights and direction. My fellow Yale gradu ate students Adam Arenson, Jens- Uwe Guettel, Gretchen Heefner, Michael Morgan, Aaron O’Connell, Ashley Sousa, Henry Trotter, Owen Williams, and others provided valuable encouragement and advice. Edward Melillo, in par tic u lar, devoted his keen editorial eye to every page, and I am grateful for his sage advice. To my dissertation committee I owe

xii Acknowl edgments

unrepayable debts. George Miles helped me to map out a research strategy and provided copies of rare documents. John Demos shaped my writing and en- couraged me to address major problems in US history. John Faragher guided me through theoretical and historical problems while suggesting sources and sharing insights into the workings of nineteenth- century California and the western United States. Fi nally, Ben Kiernan tirelessly read and reread drafts, spent many hours discussing genocide with me, and enthusiastically supported this proj ect at every turn.

People from more than a dozen American Indian nations also informed my research, interpretations, and conclusions. Members of the Big Valley, Blue Lake, Elk Valley, Redding, and Smith River Rancherias, as well as the Round Valley and Yurok reservations, helped me to understand how genocide unfolded in northwestern California. Members of the Klamath Tribes of Oregon, the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma, and Redding Rancheria provided insights into events in northeastern California. Fi nally, the Big Pine Paiute Tribe of the Owens Valley, the Bishop Paiute Tribe, as well as members of the Lone Pine Paiute- Shoshone and Fort In de pen dence reservations, guided me in understanding genocide in eastern California. During visits to these communities, members listened carefully to my pre sen ta tions, pointed out errors and omissions, pro- vided documents and photographs, shared insights, and explained the impor- tance of documenting killings, as well as the reasons that so few oral histories of these events remain. Community members also shared oral histories of mas- sacres and killing campaigns that I used to locate written nineteenth- century sources describing these events. For example, Tom Ball, tribal offi cer Taylor David, Chief Bill Follis, tribal offi cer Jack Shadwick, and author Cheewa James spent hours discussing Modoc history with me. Redding Rancheria cultural resources man ag er James Hayward Sr. provided insights into Achumawi, Wintu, and Yana histories. Joseph Giovannetti provided Tolowa sources. William Bauer Jr. shared insights into Round Valley history and or ga nized my visit there. To all of the American Indian people who guided this proj ect— and whose names are too numerous to list here— I offer my deepest thanks. I am particularly grate- ful to Loren and Lena Bommelyn of Smith River Rancheria. For years they have acted as teachers, mentors, and friends while generously making impor tant intro- ductions. Fi nally, Amos Tripp kindly took the time to explain many of the legal issues associated with California Indian history, thus informing my emphasis on legal frameworks.

This manuscript is built upon hundreds of journal entries, manuscripts, gov- ernment documents, newspapers, books, and other sources buried in libraries, museums, and archives. In California, the staffs of the Autry National Center,

Acknowl edgments xiii

California State Archives, California State Library, Chico State University librar- ies, Doris Foley Library, Fort Ross Conservancy, Held- Poage Library, Humboldt State University library, Huntington Library, Los Angeles County Museum of Natu ral History, Napa County Historical Society Library, Nevada County Library, Oroville Pioneer History Museum, San Francisco Public Library, Trinity County Historical Society History Center, and University of California libraries facili- tated my research. I am especially grateful for the help and friendship of Susan Snyder and the Bancroft Library staff. Their warmth, expertise, and camarade- rie made research a plea sure. Peter Blodgett and the staff at the Huntington Li- brary also provided extremely valuable help. Beyond California, the list of institutions that provided materials for this book is even longer: the Beinecke Library, Biblioteca comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Connecticut State Library, Dartmouth College libraries, International Museum of Photography and Film, John Car ter Brown Library, Library of Congress, Missouri History Museum Ar- chives, National Anthropological Archives, National Archives and Rec ords Ad- ministration, Nevada State Library, New York Public Library, Oregon Historical Society Library, Sterling Memorial Library, Union League Club of Chicago, University of Missouri Western Historical Manuscripts Collection, and Univer- sity of Oregon libraries. Fi nally, Max Flomen, Timothy Macholz, and Preston McBride played crucial roles. I relied on their expert research, technological skills, thoughtful insights, and enthusiastic belief in this proj ect.

Magnanimous grants from the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders at Yale University, the Huntington Library, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Western History Association, the Yale Genocide Studies Program, and Yale University made this monograph pos si ble.

Members of the History Department and Native American Studies Program at Dartmouth College, where I was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from 2010 to 2012, helped me to transform my dissertation into a book. Visiting scholars such as Christopher Parsons read my work and suggested ideas, while Robert Bonner, Sergei Kan, Margaret Darrow, Vera Palmer, Melanie Benson Taylor, and Dale Turner shared insights, input, and friendship. Fi nally, Colin Calloway and Bruce Duthu generously read my work and mentored my develop- ment as a scholar of the Native American experience.

UCLA’s History Department and American Indian Studies Program then provided an exceptionally supportive environment for editing this manuscript. Stephen Aron, Paul Kroskrity, William Marotti, David Myers, Peter Nabokov, An- gela Riley, Sarah Stein, Craig Yirush, and others read drafts and provided cru- cial guidance and support.

xiv Acknowl edgments

Cartographer Bill Nelson patiently worked with me over many months to create a dozen detailed maps for this book. His artful cartographic works shed valuable light on the geography of California Indian history past and present.

Meanwhile, my Yale University Press editor, Christopher Rogers, made cru- cial strategic suggestions, thoughtfully line edited every page twice, met with me repeatedly, and helped to shape my research into the pages you hold in your hands.

Fi nally, I could not have completed this history without my family. My parents— Jesse Philips and Susan Madley— read and reread chapters, copyedited, commented, suggested sources, and helped me to wrestle with writing about genocide. Alice, Bill, Henry, and Laura Roe, as well as Cory and Lincoln Madley and Brian Peterson, provided emotional, intellectual, and material help. My children— Jacob and Eleanor— gave me both a more profound understanding of life’s value and smiles that energized and refreshed my soul. To my wife, Bar- bara, I can only say thank you, thank you, and thank you. I could not have done this without you.

xv

ABBREVIATIONS

BANC Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley BLYU Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut CG Congressional Globe CSA California State Archives, Sacramento CSL California State Library, Sacramento DAC Daily Alta California (San Francisco) DEB Daily Eve ning Bulletin (San Francisco) HL Huntington Library HT Humboldt Times IWP California Adjutant General’s Offi ce, Military Department, Adjutant

General, Indian War Papers F3753 LAS Los Angeles Star MLRV Martial Law in Round Valley, Mendocino Co., California, The

Causes Which Led To That Mea sure, The Evidence, As Brought out by a Court of Investigation ordered by Brig. Gen. G. Wright, Commanding U.S. Forces on the Pacifi c (Ukiah City, 1863)

MMR California, Majority and Minority Reports of the Special Joint Committee on the Mendocino War (Sacramento, 1860)

NARA US National Archives and Rec ords Administration RG75, M234 US National Archives and Rec ords Administration, “Letters

Received by the Offi ce of Indian Affairs, 1824–80” SDU Sacramento Daily Union USOIA US Offi ce of Indian Affairs WOR US War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of

the Offi cial Rec ords of the Union and Confederate Armies. 4 series, 130 volumes. Series 1, volume 50, part 1 [WOR 1:50:1]; Series 1, volume 50, part 2 [WOR 1:50:2]; Series 1, volume 52, part 2 [WOR 1:52:2].

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1

INTRODUCTION

As the sun rose on July 7, 1846, four US warships rode at anchor in Monterey Bay. Ashore, the Mexican tricolor cracked over the adobe walls and red- tiled roofs of California’s capitol for the last time. At 7:30 a.m., Commodore John Sloat sent Captain William Mervine ashore “to demand the immediate surren- der of the place.” The Mexican commandant then fl ed, and some 250 sailors and marines assembled at the whitewashed customs house on the water’s edge. As residents, immigrants, seamen, and soldiers looked on, Mervine read Com- modore Sloat’s proclamation: “I declare to the inhabitants of California, that although I come in arms. . . . I come as their best friend—as henceforth Cali- fornia will be a portion of the United States, and its peaceable inhabitants will enjoy the same rights and privileges as the citizens of any other portion of that nation.” As the USS Savannah’s sailors and marines hoisted the Stars and Stripes to a chorus of cheers, three ships of the US Pacifi c Squadron fi red a sixty- three- gun salute. The cannons’ roar swept over the plaza to the pine- studded hills above the bay before echoing back over the harbor. The fi rst hours of con- quest were relatively peaceful, but a new order had come to California. The lives of perhaps 150,000 California Indians now hung in the balance.1

The US military offi cers who took control of California that July under mar- tial law had the opportunity to reinvent the existing Mexican framework within which colonists and California Indians interacted. Instead, these offi cers rein- forced and intensifi ed existing discriminatory Mexican policies toward these Indians. The elected civilian state legislators who followed them then radi- cally transformed the relationship between colonists and California Indians. Together with federal offi cials, they created a catastrophe.

Yet, the California Indian population cataclysm of 1846–1873 continued a pre- existing trajectory. During California’s seventy- seven- year- long Russo- Hispanic

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CrescentCrescent CityCity

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Fort RossFort Ross Santa RosaSanta Rosa

San FranciscoSan Francisco

Santa CruzSanta Cruz

YosemiteYosemite

MontereyMonterey

San Luis ObispoSan Luis Obispo

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San DiegoSan Diego

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Lassen Lassen Peakeak

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San Francisco

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TRANSVERSE RANGE TRANSVERSE RANGE

Nineteenth- century California

Introduction 3

Period (1769–1846) its Indians had already suffered a devastating demographic decline. During the era when Spaniards, Rus sians, and Mexicans colonized the coastal region between San Diego and Fort Ross, California’s Indian popula- tion fell from perhaps 310,000 to 150,000. Some 62,600 of these deaths occurred at or near California’s coastal region missions, and, in 1946, journalist Carey McWilliams initiated a long debate over the nature of these institutions when he compared the Franciscan missionaries, who had held large numbers of Cal- ifornia Indians there, to “Nazis operating concentration camps.” Today, a wide spectrum of scholarly opinion exists, with the extreme poles represented by mis- sion defenders Father Francis Guest and Father Maynard Geiger, on the one hand, and mission critics Rupert and Jeannette Costo— who called the missions genocidal—on the other. However one judges the missions, Russo- Hispanic colonization caused the deaths of tens of thousands of California Indian people.2

Under US rule, California Indians died at an even more astonishing rate. Be- tween 1846 and 1870, California’s Native American population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. By 1880, census takers recorded just 16,277 Califor- nia Indians. Diseases, dislocation, and starvation were impor tant causes of these many deaths. However, abduction, de jure and de facto unfree labor, mass death in forced confi nement on reservations, hom i cides, battles, and massacres also took thousands of lives and hindered reproduction. According to historical demographer Sherburne Cook, an often- quoted authority on California Indian demographic decline, a “complete lack of any legal control” helped create the context in which these phenomena were pos si ble. Was the California Indian catastrophe just another western US tragedy in which unscrupulous individu- als exploited the opportunities provided in a lawless frontier?3

The or ga nized destruction of California’s Indian peoples under US rule was not a closely guarded secret. Mid- nineteenth- century California newspapers frequently addressed, and often encouraged, what we would now call genocide, as did some state and federal employees. Historians began using these and other sources to address the topic as early as 1890. That year, historian Hubert Howe Bancroft summed up the California Indian catastrophe under US rule: “The savages were in the way; the miners and settlers were arrogant and impatient; there were no missionaries or others present with even the poor pretense of soul- saving or civilizing. It was one of the last human hunts of civilization, and the basest and most brutal of them all.” In 1935, US Indian Affairs commissioner John Collier added, “The world’s annals contain few comparable instances of swift depopulation— practically, of racial massacre—at the hands of a conquer- ing race.” In 1940, historian John Walton Caughey titled a chapter of his Cali- fornia history “Liquidating the Indians: ‘Wars’ and Massacres.” Three years

4 Introduction

later, Cook wrote the fi rst major study on the topic. He quantifi ed the violent killing of 4,556 California Indians between 1847 and 1865, concluding that, “since the quickest and easiest way to get rid of [the Northern California Indian] was to kill him off, this procedure was adopted as standard for some years.” 4

In the same year that Cook published his groundbreaking article, Nazi mass murder in Eu rope catalyzed the development of a new theoretical and legal framework for discussing such events. In 1943, legal scholar Raphaël Lemkin coined a new word for an ancient crime. Defi ning the concept in 1944, he combined “the Greek word genos (tribe, race) and the Latin cide,” or killing, to describe genocide as any attempt to physically or culturally annihilate an ethnic, national, religious, or po liti cal group. The 1948 United Nations Con- vention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (see Appendix 8) more narrowly defi ned genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” including:

(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately infl icting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring

about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing mea sures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Genocide Convention thus provides an internationally recognized and rather restrictive rubric for evaluating pos si ble instances of genocide. First, perpe- trators must evince “intent to destroy” a group “as such.” Second, perpetrators must commit at least one of the fi ve genocidal acts against “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” The Genocide Convention criminalizes the fi ve directly genocidal acts defi ned above and also other acts connected to genocide. The Convention stipulates that “the following acts shall be punish- able,” including:

(a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide.

Fi nally, the Convention specifi es that “persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated . . . shall be punished, whether they are constitution- ally responsible rulers, public offi cials or private individuals.”5

Introduction 5

In US criminal law, intent is present if an act is intentional, not accidental. The international crime of genocide involves more, comprising “acts commit- ted with intent to destroy” a group “as such.” International criminal lawyers call this specifi c intent, meaning destruction must be consciously desired, or pur- poseful. Yet, specifi c intent does not require a specifi c motive, a term absent from the Genocide Convention. Under the Convention’s defi nition, genocide can be committed even without a motive like racial hatred. The motive behind genocidal acts does not need to be an explicit desire to destroy a group; it may be, but the motive can also be territorial, economic, ideological, po liti cal, or military. Moreover, the Convention declares that “genocide, whether commit- ted in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law.” If the action is deliberate, and the group’s partial or total destruction a desired out- come, the motive behind that intent is irrelevant. Yet, how does a twentieth- century international treaty apply to nineteenth- century events?6

The Genocide Convention does not allow for the retroactive prosecution of crimes committed before 1948, but it does provide a power ful analytical tool: a frame for evaluating the past and comparing similar events across time. Lem- kin himself asserted that, “genocide has always existed in history,” and he wrote two manuscripts addressing instances of genocide in periods ranging from “Antiquity” to “Modern Times.” Genocide is a twentieth- century word, but it describes an ancient phenomenon and can therefore be used to analyze the past, in much the way that historians routinely use other new terms to under- stand historical events. Indeed, Lemkin planned chapters titled “Genocide against the American Indians” and “The Indians in North Amer i ca (in part),” but he died before he could complete either proj ect.7

Many scholars have employed genocide as a concept with which to evaluate the past, including events that took place in the nineteenth century, but some scholars have rejected the UN Genocide Convention defi nition. Some pro- pose expanding, contracting, or modifying the list of protected groups. Others want to enlarge, reduce, or alter the scope of genocidal acts. Still others call for dif fer ent defi nitions of intent.8

Genocide, however, is more than an academic concept. It is a crime defi ned by an international legal treaty and subsequent case law. On December 9, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the UN Genocide Convention and its geno- cide defi nition “unanimously and without abstentions.” It remains the only au- thoritative international legal defi nition. Moreover, unlike at least twenty- two alternative defi nitions proffered since 1959, it has teeth. Now in its seventh de- cade, the Genocide Convention has been signed or acceded to by 147 nations and is supported and further defi ned as a legal instrument by a growing body of

6 Introduction

international case law. Since 1993, the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugo slavia and Rwanda have tried genocide cases using the Genocide Convention. The International Criminal Court at The Hague, established in 2002, and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, which began its fi rst trial in 2009, are also empowered to try suspects using the Genocide Convention. The UN Genocide Convention defi nition is part of an inter- national legal regime of growing importance and is both the most widely accepted defi nition and the most judicially effective one. The Genocide Convention provides a power ful, though possibly imperfect, defi nition for investigating the question of genocide in California. Still, it took de cades for scholars to begin using the term in connection with California under US rule. Caughey and Cook, for instance, used terms like liquidating, military casualties, and social hom i cide, which fail to capture the full meaning of genocidal events.9

Most Americans knew little about the concept of genocide or the Holocaust until the late 1950s. A turning point came in 1961. That year, the media glare illuminating the trial of SS lieutenant col o nel Adolf Eichmann—in combina- tion with the release of the Acad emy Award– winning legal thriller Judgment at Nuremberg and the publication of po liti cal scientist Raul Hilberg’s monumen- tal The Destruction of the Eu ro pean Jews— introduced the scope and horrors of the Holocaust to many in the United States. Holocaust- related art, lit er a ture, media, and scholarship proliferated during the late 1960s and 1970s. Those tur- bulent de cades also saw continuing civil rights activism, New Left historians’ assault on triumphal US history narratives, rising American Indian po liti cal ac- tivism, emerging Native American studies departments, and a new American Indian history that emphasized the role of vio lence against indigenous people.10

Twenty- fi ve years after the formulation of the new international legal treaty, scholars began reexamining the nineteenth- century conquest and colonization of California under US rule. In 1968, author Theodora Kroeber and anthropol- ogist Robert F. Heizer wrote a brief but pathbreaking description of “the geno- cide of Californians.” In 1977, William Coffer mentioned “Genocide among the California Indians,” and two years later, ethnic studies scholar Jack Norton ar- gued that, according to the Genocide Convention, certain northwestern Cali- fornia Indians suffered genocide under US rule. In 1982, scholar Van H. Garner added that “Federal Indian policy in California . . . was genocidal in practice.” Historian James Rawls next made a crucial intervention. He argued that some California whites openly “advocated and carried out a program of genocide that was popularly called ‘extermination.’ ” Following Rawls’s impor tant equation of the nineteenth- century word extermination with the twentieth- century term genocide, anthropologist Russell Thornton went further. In his landmark book

Introduction 7

addressing genocide in the continental United States as a whole, Thornton ar- gued that “the largest, most blatant, deliberate killings of North American Indi- ans by non- Indians surely occurred in California.” Historian Albert Hurtado later described an “atmosphere of impending genocide” in gold rush Califor- nia, while historian William T. Hagen asserted, “Genocide is a term of awful signifi cance, but one which has application to the story of California’s Native Americans.”11

Meanwhile, the fi eld of genocide studies began taking shape. The Holocaust remains “for many, the paradigm case of genocide,” but the fi eld’s founding publications were emphatically diverse, and some touched on questions of geno- cide in North Amer i ca. In 1986, scholars founded the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and in the fi rst issue included an article addressing the ques- tion of genocide and Native Americans. Historian Frank Chalk and sociologist Kurt Jonassohn included essays on Native Americans in colonial New England and in the nineteenth- century United States in their edited 1990 book address- ing The History and Sociology of Genocide. They argued that American Indians had suffered genocide, primarily through famine, massacres, and “criminal ne- glect,” and mentioned California’s Yuki Indian genocide. That same year, soci- ologist Helen Fein also touched on the issue of “genocide in North Amer i ca.”12

Genocide studies now cross- pollinated with new works on the question of genocide in the Americas, such as American studies scholar David Stannard’s American Holocaust, and controversial ethnic studies scholar Ward Churchill’s A Little Matter of Genocide— both of which mentioned genocide in California. During the 1990s, a growing chorus of voices also mentioned genocide in Cali- fornia. By the year 2000, historians Robert Hine and John Faragher had con- cluded that California was the site of “the clearest case of genocide in the history of the American frontier.” Other twenty- fi rst- century scholars agreed that Cali- fornia Indians had indeed suffered genocide.13

Still, even though more than twenty scholars have touched on the geno- cide of California Indians under US rule, little has been written on the topic compared to what has been written on some other genocides. Four scholars— anthropologists Robert Heizer and Allan Almquist, and historians Clifford Trafzer and Joel Hyer— have assembled impor tant edited primary- source vol- umes highlighting nineteenth- century racism and anti– California Indian vio- lence, some of it genocidal. Others have described the genocides endured by par tic u lar California tribes. Only a handful of works, however, analyze the mul- tiple genocides of vari ous California Indian peoples under US rule, and most of these refer to the genocides briefl y and incompletely. Only two twenty- fi rst- century monographs have addressed the topic more broadly. Author William

8 Introduction

Secrest’s When the Great Spirit Died provided a general description of anti- Indian racism and vio lence between 1850 and 1860, but it did not address geno- cide or the entire 1846 to 1873 period. Historian Brendan Lindsay’s Murder State then focused on “California’s Native American Genocide” as a phenomenon motivated by preexisting racism, facilitated by democracy, and advertised by the press.14

Building on previous scholarship, An American Genocide is the fi rst year- by- year recounting of genocide in California under US rule between 1846 and 1873. Although newcomers imposed California’s po liti cal and administrative bound- aries on indigenous peoples, these borders form a cohesive unit of analy sis with real meaning and repercussions for scholars, California Indians, and non- Indians both past and present. Within and sometimes slightly beyond these bound aries, An American Genocide carefully describes the broad societal, judicial, and po liti cal support for the genocide as well as how it unfolded. It addresses the causes of the genocide, state and federal government decision- makers’ roles, the organ ization and funding of the killing, and the vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, and US soldiers who did the killing and how they did it. Further, it details public support for the genocide, the number of California Indians killed, the nature of indigenous re sis tance, the changes in genocidal patterns over time, and the end of the genocide. These topics call for meticulous analy sis and con- sistent use of an internationally recognized defi nition such as that of the 1948 Genocide Convention, because the stakes are high for scholars, California Indi- ans, and all US citizens.

If US citizens colonized some regions of California, if not the state as a whole, in conjunction with deliberate attempts to annihilate California Indians, scholars will need to reevaluate current interpretive axioms and address new questions. Scholars could, for example, reexamine the assumption that indirect effects of colonization, like the unwitting spread of diseases, were the only leading causes of death in most or all encounters between whites and California Indians— rather than mass murder or other deliberate acts like forced incarceration under lethal conditions. Exceptionalist interpretations of US history— which suggest that the United States is fundamentally unlike other countries— lose validity when researchers compare the California experience to other genocides and place it within global frameworks. A careful study of genocide in California will also assist scholars in reexamining the larger, hemispheric indigenous popula- tion catastrophe and the question of genocide in other regions. Where scholars document a genocide, it will be necessary to evaluate what roles colonial, fed- eral, state, or territorial governments (or private individuals or groups) played, as well as whether or not the event was part of a recurring regional or national

Introduction 9

pattern. Larger questions follow. What tended to catalyze genocide? Who ordered and carried out the killing? Why do we not know more about these events? Did democracy drive mass murder, and, ultimately, did genocide play a role in making modern Canada, Mexico, the United States, or other Western Hemi sphere countries?15

Given the po liti cal, economic, psychological, and health ramifi cations of the genocide question, it is urgent for California’s approximately 150,000 citizens of California Indian ancestry. Should they press for offi cial government apologies, reparations, and control of land where genocidal events took place? Should tribes marshal evidence of genocide in cases involving tribal sovereignty and federal recognition? How should California Indian communities commemorate victims of mass murder while also emphasizing successful accommodation, re sis tance, survival, and cultural renewal? The psychological issues related to genocide are also fraught. What happens if a tribal member learns that she or he is a descendant of both perpetrators and victims? How might California Indian people reconcile increased knowledge of genocide— sometimes at the hands of the United States— with their often intense patriotism? Fi nally, what role might acknowl edgment of genocide have on the “intergenerational/historical trauma” prevalent in many California Indian communities and that trauma’s connection to present- day physical illnesses, substance abuse, domestic vio- lence, and suicide?16

The question of genocide in California under US rule also poses explosive po liti cal, economic, educational, and psychological questions for all US citi- zens. Ac know ledg ment and reparations are central issues. Should elected government offi cials tender public apologies, as presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did in the 1980s for the relocation and internment of some 120,000 Japa nese Americans— many of them Californians— during World War II? Reparations constitute an impor tant subordinate issue. Should federal offi - cials offer compensation, along the lines of the more than $1.6 billion Congress paid to 82,210 Japa nese Americans and their heirs? Might California offi cials decrease their cut of California Indians’ $7 billion in annual gaming revenues (2013) as a way of paying reparations for the state government’s past involvement in genocide? Might Californians reevaluate their relationship with California Indian gaming in light of increased awareness of the California genocide? A better understanding of the genocide that took place in California might also affect the federal government’s dealings with the scores of California Indian communities currently seeking formal federal recognition. The question of commemoration is closely linked. Will non- Indian citizens support or tolerate the public commemoration of mass murders committed by some of the state’s

10 Introduction

forefathers with the same kinds of monuments, museums, and state- legislated days of remembrance that today commemorate the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust? Will genocides against California Indians be included in public school curricula and public discourse along with these other systematic mass murders? All of these questions have impor tant ramifi cations, but can be ad- dressed only in limited ways without a comprehensive understanding of rela- tions between California Indians and newcomers during the California Indian catastrophe of 1846 to 1873.17

Depending on availability, four kinds of evidence can be used to document a pos si ble crime: perpetrators’ assertions and admissions, bystanders’ reports, victims’ testimonies, and forensic evidence. All four kinds of evidence are impor- tant. This book relies primarily on non- Indian perpetrator and bystander accounts because in establishing the case for genocide it is crucial to highlight the voices of killers and witnesses and because there are relatively few written Califor- nia Indian voices describing the genocide. A host of factors contributed to this dearth of written California Indian accounts. First and foremost, there were not many survivors. Between 1846 and 1873, perhaps 80 percent of all California Indians died, and many massacres left no survivors or only small children. Mass death silenced thousands of California Indian voices, but so did California laws and judges: mid- nineteenth- century California courts usually barred and rarely recorded Indian testimony against whites. Outside the legal system, few nineteenth- century writers recorded California Indians’ words either. Moreover, in the face of ongoing discrimination, vio lence, and intimidation, those who sur- vived often hid their Indian identities— and their traumatic memories— from outsiders. A host of factors further limited the transmission of oral histories within California Indian communities. These included traditional taboos against speaking of the dead, loss of connection to the land where genocidal events took place due to forced removal, systematic government suppression of indig- enous languages, the placement of large numbers of California Indian minors in non- Indian homes, and compulsory federal Indian boarding schools’ sever- ance of intergenerational oral history conduits. Fi nally, legal prohibitions against many California Indian religious and cultural gatherings also limited the trans- mission of oral histories and only abated with the passage of the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act and the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Despite these obstacles, some written California Indian recollections of these events do remain as testaments to both horrifi c atrocities and heroic defi ance.18

This book draws on printed California Indian eyewitness testimonials and printed oral histories. Although I interviewed California Indian people