California genocide
Part of the California Indian Wars and Native American genocide in the United States
"Protecting The Settlers", illustration by J. R. Browne in The Indians Of California, 1864
Location	California
Date	1846–1873
Target	Indigenous Californians
Attack type	Genocide, ethnic cleansing, human hunting, slavery, rape, Indian removal
Deaths	No more than 2,000 (per Anderson)[1] 4,300 (per Cook)[2] 4,500 (per California Secretary of State)[3] 9,492–16,094 (per Madley)[4] 100,000+ (per Castillo/California Native American Heritage Commission)[5]
Injured	10,000–27,000[6][7] taken as forced laborers by white settlers; 4,000–7,000 of them children[7]
Perpetrators	United States Army, California State Militia, White American settlers

The California genocide was a series of systematized killings of thousands of Indigenous peoples of California by United States government agents and private citizens in the 19th century. It began following the American Conquest of California from Mexico, and the influx of settlers due to the California Gold Rush, which accelerated the decline of the Indigenous population of California. Between 1846 and 1873, it is estimated that non-Natives killed between 9,492 and 16,094 California Natives. In addition, between several hundred and several thousand California Natives were starved or worked to death.^[4] Acts of enslavement, kidnapping, rape, child separation and forced displacement were widespread. These acts were encouraged, tolerated, and carried out by state authorities and militias.^[8]

The 1925 book Handbook of the Indians of California estimated that the Indigenous population of California decreased from perhaps as many as 150,000 in 1848 to 30,000 in 1870 and fell further to 16,000 in 1900. The decline was caused by disease, low birth rates, starvation, killings, and massacres. California Natives, particularly during the Gold Rush, were targeted in killings.^[9][10][11] Between 10,000^[6] and 27,000^[7] were also taken as forced labor by settlers. The state of California used its institutions to favor white settlers' rights over Indigenous rights, dispossessing natives.^[12]

Since the 2000s several American academics and activist organizations, both Native American and European American, have characterized the period immediately following the U.S. Conquest of California as one in which the state and federal governments waged genocide against the Native Americans in the territory. In 2019, California's governor Gavin Newsom stated, "It's called genocide. That's what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that's the way it needs to be described in the history books." and apologized for the "violence, discrimination and exploitation sanctioned by state government throughout its history"^[13] and called for a research group to be formed to better understand the topic and inform future generations.^[14]

Background

Indigenous peoples

Prior to Spanish arrival, California was home to an Indigenous population thought to have been as high as 300,000.^[15] The largest group were the Chumash people, with a population around 10,000.^[16] The region was highly diverse, with numerous distinct languages spoken. While there was great diversity in the area, archeological findings show little evidence of intertribal conflicts.^[11]

The various tribal groups appear to have adapted to particular areas and territories. According to journalist Nathan Gilles, because of traditions practiced by the Native people of Northern California, they were able to "manage the threat of wildfires and cultivate traditional plants".^[17] For example, traditional use of fire by Californian and Pacific Northwest tribes, allowed them to "cultivate plants and fungi" that "adapted to regular burning. The list runs from fiber sources, such as bear-grass and willow, to foodstuffs, such as berries, mushrooms, and acorns from oak trees that once made up sprawling orchards".^[17] Because of traditional practices of Native Californian tribes, they were able to support habitats and climates that would then support an abundance of wildlife, including rabbits, deer, varieties of fish, fruit, roots, and acorns. The natives largely followed a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, moving around their area through the seasons as different types of food were available.^[18]

The Native people of California, according to sociologist Kari Norgaard, were "hunting and fishing for their food, weaving baskets using traditional techniques" and "carrying out important ceremonies to keep the world intact".^[19] It was also recorded that the Indigenous people in California and across the continent had, and continue to, use "fire to enhance specific plant species, optimize hunting conditions, maintain open travel routes, and generally support the flourishing of the species upon which they depend, according to scholars^[20] like the United States Forest Service ecologist and Karuk descendent Frank Lake".^[19]

Contact

California was one of the last regions in the Americas to be colonized by Europeans. Catholic Spanish missionaries, led by Franciscan administrator Junípero Serra and military forces under the command of Gaspar de Portolá, did not reach this area until 1769. The mission was intended to spread the Catholic faith among the region's Native peoples and establish and expand the reach of the Spanish Empire.^[18] The Spanish built San Diego de Alcalá, the first of 21 missions standing in modern-day California, at what developed as present-day San Diego in the southern part of the state along the Pacific. (The Spanish also build 30 missions and 11 visitas in Baja California.) Military outposts were constructed alongside the missions to house the soldiers sent to protect the missionaries.^{[citation needed]}

Spanish and Mexican rule were devastating for native populations. "As the missions grew, California's native population of Indians began a catastrophic decline."^[21] Gregory Orfalea estimates that pre-contact population was reduced by 33% during the Spanish and Mexican regimes. Most of the decline stemmed from imported diseases, low birth rates, and the disruption of traditional ways of life, but violence was common, and some historians have charged that life in the missions was close to slavery.^[10][22] However, according to George Tinker, a Native scholar, "The Native American population of coastal population was reduced by some 90 percent during seventy years under the sole proprietorship of Serra's mission system".^[23]

According to journalist Ed Castillo, Serra spread the Christian faith among the Native population in a destructive way that caused their population to decline rapidly while he was in power. Castillo writes that "The Franciscans took it upon themselves to brutalize the Indians, and to rejoice in their death...They simply wanted the souls of these Indians, so they baptized them, and when they died, from disease or beatings... they were going to heaven, which was a cause of celebration".^[18] According to Castillo, the Native American population were forced to abandon their "sustainable and complex civilization" as well as "their beliefs, their faith, and their way of life".^[18]

Timeline

The following is a rough timeline of some of the key events and policies that contributed to the genocide. It is by no means comprehensive.

• 1769: Spanish colonizers establish a mission system in California, which leads to the forced conversion and enslavement of Native Americans.^[24][25][26]
• 1821–1823: Mexico gains independence from Spain and takes control of California, continuing the Spanish government's policies of forced labor and conversion of Indigenous peoples.^[27][26]
• 1846–48: The Mexican–American War led to the annexation of California by the United States. The settlers and U.S. military formed an alliance and were joined by some Indigenous people, although the military had "murdered many natives".^[28][26]
• 1848: The discovery of gold in California leads to the influx of a massive horde of settlers, who form militias to kill and displace Indigenous peoples.^[29][30][26]
• 1850: The California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians is passed, legalizing the enslavement of Native Americans and allowing settlers to capture and force them into labor.^[31][32]
• 1851–52: The Mariposa War breaks out between white settlers and the Mariposa Battalion, resulting in the displacement and killing of Native Americans in the Sierra Nevada region.^[33]
• 1851–69: California pays bounties for the killing of Native Americans.^[34][35]
• 1860s: The federal government begins a policy of forced removal of Native Americans peoples to reservations, which leads to violence and displacement.^[36]
• Late 1800s–early 1900s: Indigenous children are forcibly removed from their families by the California government and placed in boarding schools, where they are subjected to abuse and forced assimilation.^[37][38][39]
• 1909: The California state government establishes the California Eugenics Record Office, which promotes the forced sterilization of people declared by the government to be "unfit", including "Black, Latino and Indigenous women who were incarcerated or in state institutions for disabilities".^[40][41][42]

Response following statehood

Following the American Conquest of California from Mexico, and the influx of settlers due to the California Gold Rush in 1849, California state and federal authorities incited, aided, and financed the violence against the Native Americans. The California Natives were also sometimes contemptuously referred to as "Diggers", for their practice of digging up roots to eat.^{[43][44][45][46][47][48][49]} On January 6, 1851, at his State of the State address to the California Senate, 1st Governor Peter Burnett said: "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected. While we cannot anticipate this result but with painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert."^[50][51][52] During the California genocide, reports of the decimation of Native Americans in California were made to the rest of the United States and internationally.^{[note 1]}

The California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians was enacted in 1850 (amended 1860, repealed 1863). This law provided for "apprenticing" or indenturing Indian children to Whites, and also punished "vagrant" Indians by "hiring" them out to the highest bidder at a public auction if the Indian could not provide sufficient bond or bail. This legalized a form of slavery in California.^[53] White settlers took 10,000 to 27,000 California Native Americans as forced laborers, including 4,000 to 7,000 children.^[6][7]

I have the honor to report to the general commanding the Department of the Pacific that I have been in this valley fifteen days, carrying out my instructions to chastise these Indians, or the Indians of Owens River; that I have killed several, taken eleven prisoners, and destroyed a great many rancherias and a large quantity of seeds, worms, &c., that the Indians had gathered for food.

— George S. Evans, Lieutenant-Colonel Second Cavalry California Volunteers, Commanding Owens River Expedition (1862), War of the Rebellion: OPERATIONS ON THE PACIFIC COAST. Chapter LXII.^[54]

A notable early eyewitness testimony and account: "The Indians of California" (1864) is from John Ross Browne, Customs official and Inspector of Indian Affairs on the Pacific Coast. He systematically described the fraud, corruption, land theft, slavery, rape, and massacre perpetrated on a substantial portion of the aboriginal population.^[55][56] This was confirmed by a contemporary, Superintendent Dorcas J. Spencer.^[57]

Violence statistics

In 1943, a study by demographer Sherburne Cook, estimated that there were 4,556 killings of California Indians between 1847 and 1865.^[4][3] Contemporary historian Benjamin Madley has documented the numbers of Californian Indians killed between 1846 and 1873; he estimates that during this period at least 9,492 to 16,092 Californian Indians were killed by non-Indians, including between 1,680 and 3,741 killed by the U.S. Army. Most of the deaths took place in what he defined as more than 370 massacres (defined as the "intentional killing of five or more disarmed combatants or largely unarmed noncombatants, including women, children, and prisoners, whether in the context of a battle or otherwise"). Madley also estimates that fewer than 1,400 non-Indians were killed by Indians during this period.^[4] The Native American activist and former Sonoma State University Professor Ed Castillo was asked by The State of California's Native American Heritage Commission to write the state's official history of the genocide; he wrote that "well-armed death squads combined with the widespread random killing of Indians by individual miners resulted in the death of 100,000 Indians in [1848 and 1849]."^[5] Another contemporary historian, Gary Clayton Anderson, estimated that no more than 2,000 Native Americans were killed in California.^[1] Jeffrey Ostler has critiqued Anderson's estimate, calling it "unsubstantiated" and "at least five times too low".^[58]

Archaeological evidence of violence and refugeeism in California

Research made in 2015 on native burial mounds in the San Francisco Bay area found that natives would move to different places in order to avoid genocide. The movement can be traced by the dating of the burial mounds since multiple native tribes found these burial mound spaces as places of religious and cultural freedom.^[59]

The Amah Mutsun are a group of Indigenous peoples who were reported to be unable to pass on their traditions during this time, their practices remained untold for a number of years. People of this group, descendants, and archaeologists participate in conducting collaborative, ethnographic research to bring light to previous practices like burial practices and vegetation patterns.^[60]

List of recorded massacres

Population decline

Select ethnic groups targeted

While many groups were targeted in the genocide the circumstances of individual groups can be illustrative of the on the ground happenings of the killings.

Yuki

More than 1,000 Yuki are estimated to have been killed in the Round Valley Settler Massacres of 1856–1859 and 400 in the Mendocino War; many others were enslaved and only 300 survived. The intent of the massacres was to exterminate the Yuki and gain control of the land they inhabited. U.S. Army soldiers deployed to the valley stopped further killings and in 1862 the California legislature revoked a law which permitted the kidnapping and enslavement of Native Americans in the state.

A few specific attacks of which there is witness testimony are:

• A local paper reported 55 Indians killed in Clinton Valley on October 8, 1856.^[115]
• A White farmer, John Lawson, admitted an attack killing eight Indians, three by shooting and five by hanging, after some of his hogs were stolen. He stated that these killings were a common practice.^[116]
• A White farmer, Isaac Shanon, testified to killing 14 Indians in a revenge attack after a White man was killed in early 1858.^[117]
• White persons from the Sacramento Valley came into Round Valley and killed four Yuki Indians with the help of locals in June 1858, despite having been warned against it by Indian Agents.^[118]
• White settlers attacked and killed nine Indians in the mountains edging the valley on November 1858.^[119]
• Former Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Thomas Henley (fired two months earlier for embezzling funds), led a massacre of 11 Yuki Indians in August 1859.^[120]

Due to the overwhelming number of killings, an exact death toll is unknowable. The following estimates were made by government agents and newspapers at the time:

• 1856: 300 total killed over the course of the year.^[115]
• Winter 1856–57: About 75 Yuki Indians killed over the course of the winter.^[121]
• March–April 1858: 300–400 male Yukis killed in three weeks.^[122]
• November 1858 – January 1859: 150+^[123] or 170^[124] Yuki Indians killed between November and January
• March–May 1859: 240 Yuki killed in assaults led by H.L. Hall in revenge for the slaughter of Judge Hasting's horse^[125][126] and a total of 600 men, women, and children killed within the previous year.^[127]

These estimates suggest well over 1,000 Yuki deaths at the hands of White settlers. (See Cook, Sherburne; "The California Indian and White Civilization" Part III, pg 7, for an argument in favor of the approximate reliability of figures of Indians killed at this time.)

Yahi

The Yahi were the first of the Yana people to suffer from the Californian Gold Rush, for their lands were the closest to the gold fields.^[128] They suffered great population losses from the loss of their traditional food supplies and fought with the settlers over territory. They lacked firearms, and armed white settlers intentionally committed genocide against them in multiple raids.^[129] These raids took place as part of the California genocide, during which the U.S. Army and vigilante militias carried out killings as well as the relocation of thousands of indigenous peoples in California.^[130] The massacre reduced the Yahi, who were already suffering from starvation, to a population of less than 100.^[128]

On August 6, 1865, seventeen settlers raided a Yahi village at dawn. In 1866, more Yahis were massacred when they were caught by surprise in a ravine. Circa 1867, 33 Yahis were killed after being tracked to a cave north of Mill Creek. Circa 1871, four cowboys trapped and killed about 30 Yahis in Kingsley cave.^[129]

The last known survivor of the Yahi was named Ishi by American anthropologists. Ishi had spent most of his life hiding with his tribe members in the Sierra wilderness, emerging at the age of about 49, after the deaths of his mother and remaining relatives. He was the only Yahi known to Americans.

Tolowa

In 1770 the Tolowa had a population of 1,000;^[16] their population soon dropped to 150^[16] in 1910; this was almost entirely due to deliberate mass murder in what has been called genocide^[131] which has been recognized by the state of California.^[132] In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide. Newsom said, "That's what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that's the way it needs to be described in the history books."^[132] Among these killings the Yontoket Massacre left 150^[131] to 500^[131] Tolowa people recorded dead. Because their homes had burned down, the place received the name "Burnt Ranch". The Yontoket massacre decimated the cultural center of the Tolowa peoples. The natives from the surrounding areas would gather there for their celebrations and discussions. The survivors of the massacre were forced to move to the village north of Smith's River called Howonquet. The slaughtering of the Tolowa people continued for some years. They were seemingly always caught at their Needash celebrations. These massacres caused some unrest which led in part to the Rogue River Indian war. Many Tolowa people were incarcerated at Battery Point in 1855 to withhold them from joining an uprising led by their chief. In 1860, after the Chetco/Rogue River War, 600 Tolowa were forcibly relocated to Indian reservations in Oregon, including what is now known as the Siletz Reservation in the Central Coastal Range. Later, some were moved to the Hoopa Valley Reservation in California. Adding to the number of dead from the Yontoket Massacre and the Battery Point Attack are many more in the following years. These massacres included the Chetko Massacre with 24^[131] dead, the Smith creek massacre with 7^[131] dead, the Howonquet Massacre with 70^[131] dead, the Achulet massacre with 65 dead^[133] (not including those whose bodies were left in the lake) and the Stundossun Massacre with 300^[131] dead. In total, 902 Tolowa Native Americans were killed in 7 years. There are no records that any of the perpetrators were ever held accountable.^[131] This means over 90% of the entire Tolowa population was killed in deliberate massacres.

Economic aspects of genocide in Southern California

At the outset, the Euro-American population of Los Angeles County identified a practical application for the utilization of Native labor within an economy that was experiencing a shortage of laborers due to the mass migration of individuals to the gold fields. During the 1850s, Caucasians in the United States of America depended on individuals of Native American descent to cultivate vast areas of land in return for minimal or non-existent monetary compensation. During the period of the Gold Rush, numerous rancho owners were able to reap significant benefits by driving their livestock into the Central Valley and Sierra foothills, thereby capitalizing on the relatively prosperous years of gold mining.^[134]

Legacy

Land theft and value

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According to M. Kat Anderson, an ecologist and lecturer at University of California, Davis, and Jon Keeley, a fire ecologist and research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, after decades of being disconnected from the land and their culture, due to Spanish and U.S. colonial violence, Native peoples are slowly starting to be able to practice traditions that enhance the environment around them, by directly taking care of the land. Anderson and Keeley write, "The outcomes that Indigenous people were aiming for when burning chaparral, such as increased water flow, enhanced wildlife habitat, and the maintenance of many kinds of flowering plants and animals, are congruent and dovetail with the values that public land agencies, non-profit organizations, and private landowners wish to preserve and enhance through wildland management".^[135] Through these returned practices, they are able to commit and practice their culture, while also helping the other people in the area that will benefit from the ecological differences.

California Landmark 427, built in 2005 represents the Bloody Island Massacre of the Pomo people that took place on May 15, 1850.^[136] The monument is used as a center point of an annual festival beginning in 1999 held by Pomo descendants. Candles and tobacco are burned in honor of their ancestors.

Call for tribunals

Native American scholar Gerald Vizenor has argued in the early 21st century for universities to be authorized to assemble tribunals to investigate these events. He notes that United States federal law contains no statute of limitations on war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide. He says:

Genocide tribunals would provide venues of judicial reason and equity that reveal continental ethnic cleansing, mass murder, torture, and religious persecution, past and present, and would justly expose, in the context of legal competition for evidence, the inciters, falsifiers, and deniers of genocide and state crimes against Native American Indians. Genocide tribunals would surely enhance the moot court programs in law schools and provide more serious consideration of human rights and international criminal cases by substantive testimony, motivated historical depositions, documentary evidence, contentious narratives, and ethical accountability.^[137]

Vizenor believes that, in accordance with international law, the universities of South Dakota, Minnesota, and California Berkeley ought to establish tribunals to hear evidence and adjudicate crimes against humanity alleged to have taken place in their individual states.^[138] Attorney Lindsay Glauner has also argued for such tribunals.^[139]

Apologies and name changes

In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June, 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide. Newsom referring to the proposed California Truth and Healing Council said, "California must reckon with our dark history. California Native American peoples suffered violence, discrimination and exploitation sanctioned by state government throughout its history .... It's called genocide. That's what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that's the way it needs to be described in the history books. We can never undo the wrongs inflicted on the peoples who have lived on this land that we now call California since time immemorial, but we can work together to build bridges, tell the truth about our past and begin to heal deep wounds."^[140][141] After hearing testimony, a Truth and Healing Council will clarify the historical record on the relationship between the state and California Native Americans.^[142]

In November 2021, the board of directors of the University of California Hastings College of Law voted to change the name of the institution because of namesake S. C. Hastings' involvement in the killing and dispossessing of Yuki people in the 1850s.^[143][144]

Academic debate on the term "genocide"

There is vigorous debate over the scale of Native American losses after the discovery of gold in California and whether to characterize them as genocide.^[145][146] The application of the term "genocide", in particular, has been controversial.^[147] According to historian Jeffrey Ostler, the debate mostly rests on disagreements regarding the definition of the term.^[148] He writes that by a strict ("intentionalist"^[58]) definition, genocide "requir[es] a federal or state government intention to kill all California Indians and an outcome in which the majority of deaths were from direct killing", while by a less strict ("structuralist"^[58]) definition, it "requir[es] only settler intention to destroy a substantial portion of California Indians using a variety of means ranging from dispossession to systematic killing".^[148] Under the former definition, Ostler argues that "genocide does not seem applicable," whereas under the latter definition, "genocide seems apt."

In 1948, Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined genocide as

... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2^[149]

For use of the term

Historians who argue the term "genocide" is appropriate point out that the Indian population of California fell quickly and argue that extreme violence was integral to this process.^[148] Benjamin Madley, a UCLA historian, is one of the most prominent historians espousing this view, writing that "[i]t was genocide, sanctioned and facilitated by California officials" who, according to him, "established a state-sponsored killing machine".^[150] Historian Brendan C. Lindsay, argued that "rather than a government orchestrating a population to bring about the genocide of a group, [in California] the population orchestrated a government to destroy a group",^[151] while William T. Hagen wrote that "[genocide] is a term of awful significance, but one which has application to the story of California's Native Americans".^[152] James J. Rawls argued that Californian whites "advocated and carried out a program of genocide that was popularly called 'extermination'".^[153] Militias were called out by the governors of California for "expeditions against the Indians" on a number of occasions.^[154]: 18

Supporters of the use of the term "genocide" stress the involvement and complicity of federal and state authorities in perpetrating atrocities against the indigenous Californians, and point to their statements and policies as evidence of direct genocidal intent. For example, historian Richard White, in a review of Madley's An American Genocide, argues that "no reader of his book can seriously contend that what happened in California doesn't meet the current definition of "genocide"," citing the "relentless attacks by federal troops, state militia, vigilantes, and mercenaries [that] made the enslavement of Indians possible and starvation and disease inevitable".^[155] White continues, "in California, what Americans have often called "war" was nothing of the sort. For every American who died, 100 Indians perished. They died horribly—men, women, and children. The men who killed them were brutal. Nor did the killings result from a moment of rage; they were systematic." White stresses the complicity of the US federal government, noting that "the funding that the US government provided for California's militia expeditions made attacking Indians possible and profitable".^[155] Writing about the experience of indigenous Californian women during this period, Women's studies scholar Gail Ukockis argues that "government officials were quite explicit about their genocidal intent,"^[156] citing the 1851 State of the State address given by the 1st Governor of California, Peter Burnett, in which he said: "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected."^[157]

Jeffrey Ostler, too, endorsed the usage of the term, writing that it "rests on a substantial body of scholarship".^[58] Ostler argues that there is a "general consensus" that genocide took place in at least "some times and places in the state's early history".^[58] Responding to critics of the "genocide" charge that have argued that epidemics were the primary cause of Native mortality,^[158] Ostler writes that "depopulation from disease more often resulted from conditions created by colonialism—in California, loss of land, destruction of resources and food stores, lack of clean water, captive taking, sexual violence, and massacre—that encouraged the spread of pathogens and increased communities' vulnerability through malnutrition, exposure, social stress, and destruction of sources of medicine and capacities for palliative care".^[58] He continues, "since the United States' colonization of California was intended to dispossess Indigenous peoples and since that intention had the predictable consequence of making communities vulnerable to multiple diseases which led to massive population loss, disease in this case qualifies as a crucial factor contributing to genocide".^[58]

Karl Jacoby, in his review of An American Genocide, argues that the book removes "any doubt that genocide against Native people took place in the most populous and prosperous state in the US" and that it establishes "conclusively the reality of genocide in the Golden State".^[159] He also notes that Madley "illuminates the ways that federal and state policies facilitated popular violence against Indians".^[159] William Bauer Jr. argues that Benjamin Madley "has settled the issue on whether or not genocide occurred in California".^[160] He writes also that "federal and state governments, those bodies that could or should have protected California Indians from the devastating violence, condoned and perpetrated genocides" and that "civilian leaders in California passed legislation that enabled genocide".^[160] Margaret Jacobs writes that Madley has made it "nearly impossible to deny that a genocide took place against Native peoples in at least one location and one time period in American history" and that he shows how "the genocide started out as the work of vigilante groups but soon gained state funding and federal support".^[161] Jacobs points out, for example, that "in 1854, Congress agreed to pay off California's war debt, and by the end of 1856, the federal government had given California more than $800,000 to distribute to bond holders who had financed the genocidal killing in the state."^[161]

In his book The Rediscovery of America, historian Ned Blackhawk argues that "historians have located genocide across Native American history" and cites California as a specific example.^[162] Blackhawk writes that in California, "settlers used informal and state-sanctioned violence to shatter Native worlds and legitimate their own" and also notes that "in February 1852, for example, the state legislature appropriated $500,000 to fund anti-Indian state militias".^[163] Regarding the role of the federal government, he writes that they had "earlier attempted an alternate scenario to the genocide at hand. In 1851 and 1852, officials negotiated eighteen treaties across the state; however, bowing to California representatives, the Senate rejected these treaties, essentially authorizing the continued use of settler violence to aid colonization."^[164]

Against the use of the term

Other scholars and historians dispute the accuracy of the term "genocide" to describe what occurred in California, as well as the blame which has been placed directly on the federal government and the state government of California,^[1] pointing to the fact that disease was the primary factor in the depopulation of California Indians and arguing that mass violence was undertaken primarily by settlers and that the state and federal governments did not establish a policy of physically killing all Indians.^[146] One of the most prominent historians espousing such a view is Gary Clayton Anderson,^[165] a University of Oklahoma professor of history who describes the events in California as "ethnic cleansing",^[1][166] arguing that "If we get to the point where the mass murder of 50 Indians in California is considered genocide, then genocide has no more meaning".^[1] Historian William Henry Hutchinson, wrote that "the record of history disproves these charges [of genocide]",^[167] while historian Tom Henry Watkins stated that "it is a poor use of the term" since the killings were not systematic or planned.^[168] In a critical review of Brendan Lindsay's Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846–1873, Michael F. Magliari notes that "[Sherburne] Cook never described the terrible events of 1846–1873 as a genocide, and neither had any of his leading successors in California Indian history". While acknowledging that actions against some tribes native to California were genocidal, he opts for the term ethnocidal for actions against other tribes, considering the former term's application to all cases "highly problematic". (He rejects the UN Genocide Convention's "sweeping definiton" of genocide, whereas Lindsay embraces it.)^[2] In a subsequent review of Benjamin Madley's An American Genocide, he says that some scholars may find Madley's use of the UN Genocide Convention as an "overly broad and elastic definition", that the evidence of genocide "varies considerably from place to place and is far stronger in some cases", and that Madley's case against the federal government is "not nearly so strong" as that against "frontier miners, farmers, and ranchers".^[158] Magliari also argues that "epidemics, not violence, still remained by far the greater factor in Native mortality".^[158] He nevertheless concludes : "Beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt (and by the standards of any reasonable definition), genocide did in fact play a significant role in the US conquest and subjugation of Native California."^[158]