A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN GENOCIDE

Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Catastrophe (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2016) (From the book jacket: "Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000 [that is, 80 percent]. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter. He reveals the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, and who did the killing and why the killing ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide." "Madley describes pre-contact California and precursors to the genocide before explaining how the gold rush stirred vigilante violence against California Indians. He narrates the rise of a state-sanctioned killing machine and broad societal, judicial, and political support for genocide. Many participated: vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. congressmen, California governors, and others. Ultimately, the state and federal governments spent more than $1,700,000 on campaigns against California Indians. Besides evaluating government officials' culpability, Madley considers why the slaughter constituted genocide and how other possible genocides within and beyond the Americas might be investigated using the methods presented in this groundbreaking book." From the text: "It is difficult to know what to call the hundreds of thousands of people who flooded into California before, during, and after California's gold rush. Many saw themselves as 'settlers,' transforming chaos into order, and savagery into civilization. California Indians, of course, saw things differently. To them, the immigrants were invaders who transformed order into chaos, and civilization into savagery. Thus, the term settler--with its implications of settling unsettled land, settling a dispute, and creating a legal settlement--is problematic at best. . . .  Most US citizens are unused to thinking of 'pioneers' and 'settlers' as invaders, but in California between 1846 and 1873, they often were." Id. at 15.).