The Tragic Collapse of Native American Life in California
The population of California dramatically increased after 1849. At the end of the Mexican War, there were about 150,000 Native Americans and 12,000 non-Native Americans, with a majority of the latter, Californios, ranching and farming what was once considered a distant and quiet province of Mexico. After admittance to the US, the US census records the following (See Table 2.2.1.1):
Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): Population Growth in California
|
Census Year
|
Population of California
|
|
1850
|
92,597
|
|
1860
|
379,994
|
|
1870
|
560,247
|
|
1880
|
864,694
|
Source: US Census
During this time, Native American tribes suffered steep declines in populations through murder, starvation, disease, and displacement. By 1870, only about 30,000 survived (Madley 659). Essentially, as the non-Native population increased by 600%, the Native American population decreased by 80%. Coercive labor practices often exploited California Indians.
We are accustomed to thinking in terms of freedom and slavery, free states and slave states. California is a free state, according to the Compromise of 1850. The reality of labor relations is historically quite a bit more nuanced. The variety of legal and informal ways that California coerced Native Americans shows that forms of forced labor and indentured servitude that resemble formal slavery were still very much present during this period.
Historically, the Spanish and then Mexican law forced many Native Americans to work as agricultural labor, often using a “debt peonage” system; they had no choice but to work to pay what they owed to the rancheros (Madley). The US military governors continued Mexican practices while awaiting constitutional change. Rancheros could hold Native Americans as labor unless they chose to release them to another employer: “All Indians must be required to obtain employment and not permitted to wander about an idle and dissolute manner, if found so doing, they will be liable to arrest and punishment, by labor on the Public Works, at the discretion of the Magistrate” (Madley 633).
White militias supplied more agricultural labor by attacking Native American villages and pressing prisoners into servitude. Authorities usually paid no heed to the atrocities of kidnappers and killers. The murder of parents to sell their children into slavery was commonly reported in the early 1860s.
In 1847, California instituted a statewide pass system for employed Native Americans. Those who objected, such as the United States Indian Affairs Commissioner Edward Beale, could do little without support from local authorities. Every Native American had to show a certificate regarding who was employing him, and an unemployed Native American needed to acquire a passport. The New York Herald recounted a correspondent sent to report on the gold rush in 1848 describing an Ohlone Indian “...kept in a kind of slavery and bondage by the rancheros, and often flogged and punished. Their {sic} performing all the drudgery and heavy labor, leaves but little demand for laborers of white complexion” (Madley 638).
Upon statehood, the California legislature denied Native Americans the right to vote and legalized Native American convict labor. When convicted of minor crimes such as vagrancy, Native Americans would be forced into the service of a white employer. Impressment was usually around harvest time. “Los Angeles had its slave mart,” attorney Horace Bell wrote. A Native American could not testify against a white man if he questioned his servitude.
In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution banned slavery and indentured servitude. When Governor Henry Haight persuaded the legislator in 1867 to allow Native Americans to testify in court, they could now testify against kidnappers, giving them more protection from forced servitude. California did not formally abolish convict leasing until 1937 (Madley 661).
In 1850, the US government negotiated eighteen treaties in which Native Americans relinquished claims to land in exchange for 8.5 million acres of reservation land. The California legislature attacked the treaties as taking good land from whites, and they were defeated in the US Senate in 1852. Although much smaller reservations were set aside by the federal government over the next several decades, they were far too small to sustain large numbers of people. In summary, one of the foundational acts of this state was Native American genocide (McWilliams 53).
For Your Consideration
History is both a record of what happened in the past and a subjective understanding of our heritage, a story we tell ourselves about who we are and how we came to arrive at the present. Much of history-telling is explicitly told to students from a young age. History is also taught to the public in the form of government memorialization. We explicitly or implicitly ennoble, ignore, or villainize historical figures with the names of our streets, schools, and public buildings, the monuments we commission, with state and local holidays, and with parades, festivities, and commemorations.
Since the beginning of the modern-day civil rights movements of the 1960s, there has been a more significant effort to teach honest history. Our textbooks are much more inclusive than they were in earlier periods. However, public history has often lagged behind these efforts. In the last few years, monuments to historical figures that elicited widespread admiration, such as to Father Junipero Serra, are now more controversial as the actions of the people that they memorialize are being questioned for their ethics (See, for example, this analysis of Father Serra.)
With regard to Father Serra, he is, on the one hand, a Catholic saint; on the other hand, as the one who is most often credited with spreading Catholicism in eighteenth-century Spanish California with the mission system, he is criticized for helping to conquer, enslave, and decimate Native American tribes up and down the coast of California. There are monuments to Father Serra in many places in California. What would you do if you were on a city council and residents came to you asking for his monument to be removed? How would you decide?
