very bad medicine. It belonged to a demon who devoured all who searched for it”.
Gold Rush and Genocide
“A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct.”
- California Governor Peter H. Burnett, January 1851
Peter H. Burnett
“We hope that the Government will render such aid as will enable the citizens of the north to carry on a war of extermination until the last redskin of these tribes has been killed. Extermination is no longer a question of time–the time has arrived, the work has commenced and let the first man who says treaty or peace be regarded as a traitor.”
- Yreka Herald, 1853
In 1840 only about 4,000 Europeans lived in California, only 400 of them were Americans. Now a hoard of 100,000 adventurers, gold-seekers, and murderous thugs descended on California. The authorities were completely overwhelmed. The indians faced a catastrophe of biblical proportions.
California ends to be really silent about this part of the grat gold rush...
Gold Rush and Genocide
“A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct.”
- California Governor Peter H. Burnett, January 1851
“We hope that the Government will render such aid as will enable the citizens of the north to carry on a war of extermination until the last redskin of these tribes has been killed. Extermination is no longer a question of time–the time has arrived, the work has commenced and let the first man who says treaty or peace be regarded as a traitor.”
- Yreka Herald, 1853
In 1840 only about 4,000 Europeans lived in California, only 400 of them were Americans. Now a hoard of 100,000 adventurers, gold-seekers, and murderous thugs descended on California. The authorities were completely overwhelmed. The indians faced a catastrophe of biblical proportions.
Numerous vigilante type paramilitary troops were established whose principal occupation seems to have been to kill Indians and kidnap their children. Groups such as the Humbolt Home Guard, the Eel River Minutemen and the Placer Blades among others terrorized local Indians and caused the premier 19th century historian Hubert Howe Bancroft to describe them as follows.
“The California valley cannot grace her annals with a single Indian war bordering on respectability. It can, however, boast a hundred or two of as brutal butchering, on the part of our honest miners and brave pioneers, as any area of equal extent in our republic……”
The handiwork of these well armed death squads combined with the widespread random killing of Indians by individual miners resulted in the death of 100,000 Indians in the first two years of the gold rush. A staggering loss of two thirds of the population. Nothing in American Indian history is even remotely comparable to this massive orgy of theft and mass murder. Stunned survivors now perhaps numbering fewer than 70,000 teetered near the brink of total annihilation.
The local authorities not only ignored the genocide in their midst, they encouraged it.“The California valley cannot grace her annals with a single Indian war bordering on respectability. It can, however, boast a hundred or two of as brutal butchering, on the part of our honest miners and brave pioneers, as any area of equal extent in our republic……”
The handiwork of these well armed death squads combined with the widespread random killing of Indians by individual miners resulted in the death of 100,000 Indians in the first two years of the gold rush. A staggering loss of two thirds of the population. Nothing in American Indian history is even remotely comparable to this massive orgy of theft and mass murder. Stunned survivors now perhaps numbering fewer than 70,000 teetered near the brink of total annihilation.
California ends to be really silent about this part of the grat gold rush...
