A gift from a Professor friend at UC Riverside.

Offered up during round 8 of the Nonfiction VBB.

Offered up and picked during round 8 of our Nonfiction VBB.

Thanks for sending this book from the VBB. I just recently moved back to the Sacramento area and this looks like it will be of interest...

This book, originally published in 1979, makes a very compelling case against the United States and its white citizens for systematically destroying or committing genocide against the native peoples of California. The author of the book, Jack Norton, is of Hupa-Cherokee ancestry and is a native of Northern California. He is Emeritus Professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University. Norton draws from local newspapers, historical publications, and memories of surviving people to show the atrocities committed against the Native American tribes of Northern California. These atrocities are little known when compared to the injustices committed against the Indians of the Plains, Eastern Seaboard, and Southwest, but are some of the most brutal and inhumane crimes ever committed against a race of people. Norton makes a very valid comparison to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.

The white settlers that came into Northern California in the mid 19th century came primarily to make their fortunes. To do this, they exploited the land and its resources. This included the wildlife, timber, and minerals. Many came because of the gold rush in 1848. The miners tore up and diverted streams, turning them into mud. Thousands of salmon were killed. There were also the timber-men who destroyed large tracts of the ancient redwood forests. The early whites in the region were described as generally illiterate, disease-ridden, lice infected, and lawless murderers.

The biggest impediment to these early settlers were the Native Americans who had lived on the land for thousands of years. There are numerous accounts of the brutality against these peoples in the local newspapers. This included records of rapes and kidnapping of young Indians who were put into indentured service (basically made slaves). One article from a San Francisco newspaper in 1856 stated "one of the reservations are daily and nightly engaged in kidnapping the portion of the females for the vilest of purposes. The wives and daughters of the defenseless Diggers are prostituted before the very eyes of their husbands and fathers..." Indians were treated as animals with little regard to their humanity. Groups of men would go out hunting them. Some would kill an Indian just to test out his new gun!

There were many large scale massacres where hundreds of Indians were killed. In 1853 at Yontoket, over 400 were killed. An eyewitness to this massacre stated: "The whites attacked and the bullets were everywhere. Over 450 of our people were murdered or lay dying on the ground. Then the whitemen built a huge fire and threw in our sacred regalia... They then threw in the babies, many of them still alive. Some tied weights around the necks of the dead and threw them into the nearby water." Another massacre occurred in 1860 near Eureka, California on Indian Island. Out of some sixty or seventy killed on the island, at least fifty or sixty were women and children. "Little children and old women were mercilessly stabbed and their skulls crushed with axes."

This genocide of the Native peoples in California drastically affected their population. Scholars estimate that from 300,000 to 1 million Indians populated California before the European invasion. Just before the gold rush, there were approximately 250,000 natives but by 1870 there were only about 30,000 living in the entire state. By 1910, only 17,000 were recorded in the national census.

This was overall a very compelling and shocking study of the destruction of the Native Americans in Northern California. In addition to the horrors the book points out, it also provided some interesting information about the California tribes and their lifestyle before the coming of the Europeans. Some of this read like a text book and included a lot of statistical information but the message it provided was clear and very hard to stomach.

Adding to the Indigenous Peoples bookbox.

Received in the Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples everywhere bookbox

I will release this back into the box.

Released into the Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples everywhere bookbox

Please enjoy!

Taken from the box. This sounds like a hard read, but from perryfran's review, it sounds as if it is worth it.

Added to the Little Free Library.

I was looking forward to reading this, but need to get books out urgently. Hopefully the next reader will have a better place for it!