The Dark History of California’s Gold Rush

The Spanish colonized the territory of California from 1769 until 1821, when it became part of an independent Mexico before the United States seized it in 1847 during the Mexican-American War. The “gold rush” hastened California becoming a state of the union in 1850. The frenzy for quick riches also led to the massacre of thousands of Indigenous people in the area by colonists who wished to remove the inhabitants from their lands to build towns, farms and ranches—and dig for gold. The state government encouraged these land grabs, putting bounties on the heads and scalps of Native men, women and children. In 1851, California’s first Governor, Peter Burnett, addressed the state Legislature, declaring “that a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races, until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected.”

Still, the slaughter of Native people that resulted from the California gold rush is rarely mentioned nor rarely discussed in most history textbooks or classrooms. To help bridge this gap, the National Museum of the American Indian’s Native Knowledge 360º (NK360°) education program has created an in-depth look at “The Impact of the Gold Rush on Native Americans of California.” This online resource designed for 8th through 12th grade students poses the question, “Do American actions against California Native Americans during the gold rush meet the United Nations’ (UN) definition of genocide?” The UN defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” including killing members of that group and transferring its children to another group. An estimated 150,000 Native Americans lived in California in 1848. These culturally diverse peoples from as many as 500 self-governing tribal societies spoke more than 100 different languages. By 1900, fewer than 20,000 Indigenous people had survived the massacres, rapes, starvation, disease, child enslavement and displacement caused or carried out by California state officials, U.S. Army soldiers and various death squad militias.

In June 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged the state’s role in the atrocities in an executive order he announced at a gathering of the survivors' descendants. “That’s what it was, a genocide,” he said. “And so, I’m here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.”

Christina Snider-Astari (Mhilikawna Makahmo), the governor’s tribal affairs secretary, is leading a statewide Truth and Healing Council created through that executive order to provide a platform for California’s Native people to clarify the historical record as part of the healing process. She said Newsom’s apology was “a highlight of my career, when the 40th governor of California takes steps to meet with the descendants of that genocide.”

The NK360° resource includes a video of Governor Newsom’s meeting with the descendants following testimonials from survivors of the massacres, historic illustrations, newspaper articles, transcriptions of speeches from former Governor Burnett and others, and maps of the state showing locations of California tribes and former gold mines. It also showcases Nisenan Maidu artist Harry Fonseca’s interpretation of the gold rush’s impacts as “an explosion on all levels. … The damage inflicted during that chaotic time was extensive. It injured the land and the living things that were there, Native Americans and other peoples.” His multimedia artworks are created with earth mica and splashes of gold and red paint.

In one of the lesson’s online sources, students can read the testimony of Lucy Young. She talks about how after she escaped forced labor under a white settler, she witnessed militiamen massacring 40 men from her Wailaki village in 1862. She recalled, “So they shoot. All our men. Then build fire with wood and brush Inyan [sic] men been cut for days, never know their own funeral fire they fix.”

“My tribe is dead center in the motherlode of the gold rush,” noted Taylor Pennewell (Tyme Maidu, Berry Creek Rancheria), executive director of the advocacy and education organization Redbud Resource Group. She is one of several California Native American reviewers of the online resource and helped lead the first in-person teacher training about it at Graton Rancheria. “I know with California’s genocide and Native studies in general there are lots of excuses on why it can’t be taught, so I wanted to make sure the lesson was ready to go. I was looking at acceptability of the material for different reading levels, from students with special needs to advanced accelerated students, and NK360° did a good job. It’s also important teachers learn the material from Native people who can say, we exist, this happened to my family.”

The educational resource received support from the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria, which is made up of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people in Marin and Sonoma Counties. The tribes once had some 20,000 people in the area. Today’s 1,537 Rancheria citizens can trace their ancestry back to one of just 14 women who survived the gold rush era as the wives or concubines of miners.

“When you talk about the gold rush, it was at the cost of the most diverse Indigenous people,” noted Greg Sarris, who serves as chair of the NMAI’s Board of Trustees and tribal chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and is also an author and former literature professor. “I have a chip on my shoulder as a California Indian with so many language families represented and 110 federally recognized tribes in this state and yet there’s been this rich history that has really been overlooked.”

NMAI Education Product Developer and former middle-school teacher Catherine Mason Hammer said, “We saw this as a unique opportunity to partner with California Native communities and educators to build an educational resource with the potential to reach large numbers of teachers in California and across the nation.”

In his introductory essay to the lesson, Khal Schneider, a member of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, quotes Pomo historian William Benson, who interviewed survivors of an 1850 massacre during the 1930s. Benson wrote, “After the attack, when one man realized that he was ‘not to see my mother and sister but to see their blood scattered over the ground like water,’ he was overwhelmed and ‘sat down under a tree and cryed [sic] all day.’”

“I think the challenge for this lesson for 8th to 12th graders is not to make people feel guilty or punish people but to say what are some of the bigger issues and lessons we can learn from this history when greed or blindness or ethnocentrism don’t let you see other people as people,” said Sarris. “I hope this is an opportunity to teach how we might have solutions and that Indian people have agency—and not just in telling our stories but also in overseeing how they are discussed and talked about in the world.”

Snider-Astari said this resource has “been a long time coming.” And, she added, “having it led by California Native Americans … means we’re centering our people in our narratives.”