The United States acquired California in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the war with Mexico. In the treaty, the United States agreed to recognize Indian land holdings, and to allow Indian people to continue their customs and languages. During Spanish and Mexican rule, California Indians were seen as an economic asset, intermarriage was encouraged, and Indians were allowed to testify in courts of law.
In 1850, California became a U.S. state. The American system, unlike the Spanish and Mexican systems, viewed Indians not as an economic asset but as an impediment to civilization, to the ability to acquire individual wealth. Sherburne Cook, in a 1943 essay reprinted in The California Indians: A Source Book, reports:
“The Anglo-American system, on the other hand, had no place for the Indian.”
Under the U.S. Constitution, dealings with Indian tribes, which are seen as domestic dependent nations, are to be federal. In California, the newly created American government established a viewpoint that destiny had given them California to develop, and that Indians should be pushed aside or exterminated. Writing in his 1881 book Reminiscences of a Ranger, Horace Bell expressed the California attitude toward Indians this way:
“We will let those rascally redskins know that they have no longer to deal with the Spaniard or the Mexican, but with the invincible race of American backwoodsmen, which has driven the savage from Plymouth Rock to the Rocky Mountains, and has headed him off here on the western shore of the continent, and will drive him back to meet his kindred fleeing westward, all to be drowned in the great Salt Lake.”
Sherburne Cook summarizes the California American attitudes toward Indians this way:
“All Indians were vermin, to be treated as such. It is therefore not surprising that physical violence was the rule rather than the exception. The native’s life was worthless, for no American could even be brought to trial for killing an Indian. What little property the Indian possessed could be taken or destroyed at the slightest provocation. He had no civil or legal rights whatever.”
In 1850, Congress authorized the President to appoint negotiators to make treaties with the California Indians. In an article in The Indian Historian, Van Hastings Garner reports:
“These treaties were to set up reservations for Indians into which they could retreat from the encroachment of white settlers. The price for this security, however, was the surrender of all claims to land not included in the reservations.”
In other words, the Indians were to give up all the rights which had been reserved to them in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico.
In 1851, the United States negotiated 18 treaties with California Indian nations which were intended to secure legal title to public land, and which would guarantee reserved lands for Indians. The treaties were signed by about 400 Indian chiefs and leaders representing 150 tribes (about half the tribes in California). The Indian commissioners explained to the non-Indian residents of the state that the government had two options: to exterminate the Indians or to “domesticate” them. They argued that “domesticating” them was more practical than exterminating them.
None of the commissioners who arranged the California treaties knew anything about California Indians. According to anthropologist Robert Heizer, in his chapter on treaties in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 8: California:
“Their procedure was to travel about until they could collect enough natives, meet with them, and effect the treaty explanation and signing. One wonders how clearly many Indians understood what the whole matter was about.”
In the treaty council with the Karok, Yurok, and Hupa tribes, the government promised to give the Indians a protected reservation and gifts if they would agree to wear clothes, live in houses, and become farmers. The government was apparently unaware that these groups had been living in plank houses far longer than had people of European heritage.
Signing the treaty for the Hupa were what the Americans call the “head chief” and “under chiefs.” In his book Our Home Forever: A Hupa Tribal History, Byron Nelson notes that these men:
“…were probably the tribe’s spiritual leader and the leaders of Takimildiñ and Medildiñ. While none of these men had formal authority over all the villages, they were men of great influence in the tribe.”
Non-Indians in California fiercely opposed the ratification of the treaties.
Under the guidelines of the Constitution, once a treaty is agreed upon, it must be ratified by the Senate and signed by the President. While the California treaties were signed by both Indian and U.S. government leaders, they were not debated in the Senate, thus did not appear in the Congressional Record. They stayed hidden for more than 50 years. The ratification of the treaties was opposed by the California legislature. In her chapter on the Pit River Indian land claim dispute in Critical Issues in Native North America -- Volume II, M. Annette Jaimes writes:
“It is rumored that state representatives even succeeded in having the treaties hidden in the archives of the Government Room in Washington, D.C.”
Despite the assurances given to Mexico by the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ensuing legislation deprived California Indians of the rights to their land. The impact on the Indians was immense: many lost their homes and were persecuted and hunted by non-Indians. In his book After Columbus: The Smithsonian Chronology of the North American Indians, Herman Viola writes:
“Bereft of homes, unprotected by treaties, the Indians became wanderers, hounded and persecuted by whites.”
Anthropologist Omer Stewart, in his chapter on litigation in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 8: California. writes:
“The failure to ratify the treaties left the federal government without explicit legal obligation toward the Indians of California.”
In her introduction to Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations, Suzan Shown Harjo writes:
“One of the worst cases of dishonor by the U.S. government in regard to its treaties took place in California, where the California legislature asked the U.S. Senate not to ratify eighteen treaties that had been made in 1851-1852 between tribal representatives and federal commissioners.”
During the next 50 years, California Indian population decreased by 80%.
More American Indian histories
Indians 101: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Indians 201: First U.S. treaties with the Navajo
Indians 201: The 1854-1855 Western Washington Treaties
Indians 101: The 1837 Winnebago Treaty
Indians 101: The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty
Indians 101: Treaty Rock and the Coeur d'Alene Indians
Indians 101: The 1863 Nez Perce treaty
Indians 101: Chehalis Treaties and Reservations