Caroline Ward-Holland, second from right, and her son, Kagen Holland, are seen at a stop at the Mission Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California, on September 20, 2015. Last fall, the duo led a 780-mile pilgrimage to all 21 Indian missions in California to raise awareness of the atrocities suffered by tribal ancestors. Photo by James Tensuan / Walk for the Ancestors / Facebook
Professor Benjamin Madley, the author of the forthcoming An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873, calls on the state of California to acknowledge its role in the genocide of Native peoples:
California’s Legislature first convened in 1850, and one of its initial orders of business was banning all Indians from voting, barring those with “one-half of Indian blood” or more from giving evidence for or against whites in criminal cases, and denying Indians the right to serve as jurors. California legislators later banned Indians from serving as attorneys. In combination, these laws largely shut Indians out of participation in and protection by the state legal system. This amounted to a virtual grant of impunity to those who attacked them.Get the Story:That same year, state legislators endorsed unfree Indian labor by legalizing white custody of Indian minors and Indian prisoner leasing. In 1860, they extended the 1850 act to legalize “indenture” of “any Indian.” These laws triggered a boom in violent kidnappings while separating men and women during peak reproductive years, both of which accelerated the decline of the California Indian population. Some Indians were treated as disposable laborers. One lawyer recalled: “Los Angeles had its slave mart [and] thousands of honest, useful people were absolutely destroyed in this way.” Between 1850 and 1870, L.A.’s Indian population fell from 3,693 to 219.
It is not an exaggeration to say that California legislators also established a state-sponsored killing machine. California governors called out or authorized no fewer than 24 state militia expeditions between 1850 and 1861, which killed at least 1,340 California Indians. State legislators also passed three bills in the 1850s that raised up to $1.51 million to fund these operations — a great deal of money at the time — for past and future anti-Indian militia operations. By demonstrating that the state would not punish Indian killers, but instead reward them, militia expeditions helped inspire vigilantes to kill at least 6,460 California Indians between 1846 and 1873.
Benjamin Madley: It's time to acknowledge the genocide of California's Indians (The Los Angeles Times 5/22)
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