California Native Ethnocide: California Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Extermination

From the founding of the United States to the establishment of the state of California, the culture of ethnocentrism of European settlers and colonizers has been a defining force, manifesting in policies, violence, and the attempted systematic ethnocide of Indigenous peoples. From the time of first contact by the Spanish, to Mexican rule, to the conquest of California by the United States, Native peoples have been viewed as savages, as peoples who needed to be civilized, to be assimilated into White settler society. Policies of ethnocide have been present since this first contact to “Kill the Indian and save the man.” These ethnocidal polices were put forth by both the state of California as well as by the federal government. The Spanish brought the mission era to California with the aim of Christianizing the Native population, forcing them to live and labor at the missions so they could adopt the “civilized” ways of the European man. The Mexicans continued this policy under their rule starting in 1821. Once the Americans conquered the land in 1846, they began policies of genocide, outright murder, to eradicate the Native population. When genocide failed, the US turned to ethnocidal policies such as reservations and Indian Boarding Schools as tools of assimilation. The White man saw reservations as places where Native peoples could learn the ways of civilization, such as farming and agriculture. Schools were ways to assimilate Native children, while they were young, to make them into White, settler society. As a result of Euro-American contact and settlement in California, from the first European contact by the Spanish to 1900, under US rule, Indigenous peoples of California experienced ethnocide through federal and state policies, boarding schools, dispossession of their lands, and cultural dislocation, leading to the attempted loss of their culture, languages, laws, governance, traditional dietary intake, and spiritual traditions, all designed to force assimilation into White society.