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Sample
Excerpt
from the Introduction
At first glance, there appears to be little
justification for telling the story of California's early Indian wars.
Aside from the brief Modoc conflict of 1873, and possibly the Mariposa
war of 1851, few people are aware that California had any Indian
troubles during the Gold Rush days of the 1850s. Certainly the Far West
never had a Custer's Last Stand or a grand retreat such as that made by
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. There were no Sitting Bull or Geronimo;
no spectacular uprisings, like Adobe Walls or Beecher's Islands. On the
contrary, many California tribes were generally peaceful by nature, few
having even a war club or a tomahawk as part of their culture.
Yet in California, the bloodiest drama in the settlement of the West
took place, a brutal disruption and destruction so devastating that by
the 1870s many native groups were extinct.
The term "Indian Wars" does not apply to this book. The conflicts
described here.were not truly "wars." They were merely the ongoing
disputes between the native inhabitants and the miners and settlers who
swarmed over their lands. The historian Bancroft said it well: "The
California valley cannot grace her annals with a single Indian war
bordering on respectability. It can boast, however, a hundred or two of
as brutal butcherings on the part of our honest miners and brave
pioneers, as any area of equal extent in our republic."
"Root Diggers" was the epithet used by the early pioneers to
describe the California Indians, and they were, in truth, a simple
people living close to the earth. They did not build spectacular
dwellings as did the Hopi, nor did they have the elaborate traditions
and ceremonies of the Plains and Eastern tribes. "Saw some Indians at a
distance," wrote David Cosad in his 1849, diary, "…Root diggers, a
thieving, filthy race." Yet those few who knew well the California
Indians and their traditions came to appreciate their honesty, their
culture, and their reverence for the land. "In the loss of the Indians,"
wrote early pioneer William Meek, "we have lost the best foresters we
had." There were roughly 100,000 Indians in California at the advent of
the Gold Rush in 1848. By 1870, this figure had been cut in
half—primarily by disease and violent means. These are conservative
figures; some casualty estimates run even higher.
In assessing this particular period of our history, it must be
remembered that the generation rushing for California’s gold had been
brought up on Indian tales. Fighting "savages" was a way of life and had
been since the Pilgrims landed. Indians were barbarians who killed,
scalped, and tortured their victims. Indians were "bad." Ergo, to kill
an Indian was a civilized act and there are many accounts of Easterners
crossing the plains who actually shot the first Indian they came across.
This type of thinking was deeply inculcated in large segments of
American society.
This story of our California Indian troubles is, I believe, an
important and neglected aspect of our Gold Rush history. Not being an
Indian historian or anthropologist, I have tried to let the pioneers
tell their own stories where possible and have quoted liberally from
their diaries, letters, and memoirs, and from government reports of the
period. In recording tragedy of such magnitude, the unvarnished impact
of their actual words seemed important. Although a balance of native
viewpoints is lacking, the words of the white man tell us all we need to
know about the terrible fate of the California Indian. |
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