Excerpts from Exterminate Them: Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Slavery of Native Americans

During the California Gold Rush, 1848–1868

Edited by Clifford E. Trafzer and Joel R. Hyer

Published in 1999

With its mild climate, its vast and fertile interior valleys, and an abundance of game, the region we now know as California once supported a large native population. Historians estimate that before contact with the Europeans some three hundred thousand native people lived in the territory known as California. These Indians organized themselves into more than one hundred different tribes. Each of these groups had distinct cultures and traditions, and all benefited from an environment that provided them with the best diet of any native population.

Blessed with ample land and food, California's indigenous peoples found little reason to come into conflict with one another...