CW: This post talks about the genocide of the people of California as well as slavery.

Today, while researching about this, I came across a speech by California’s first U.S. governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett. I think the speech is worth reading to see the mentality of settler-colonialism.

A basic background about the California genocide can be read here. In just 20 years, 80 percent of California’s indigenous population had perished, “And though some died because of the seizure of their land or diseases caught from new settlers, between 9,000 and 16,000 were murdered in cold blood—the victims of a policy of genocide sponsored by the state of California and gleefully assisted by its newest citizens.” In addition to this, the California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians provided for “apprenticing” or indenturing Indian children to Whites, and also punished “vagrant” Indians by “hiring” them out to the highest bidder at a public auction if the Indian could not provide sufficient bond or bail, effectively legalizing a form of slavery targeting Native Californians. (Source).

Below are some quotes from the governor’s speech.

Since the adjournment of the Legislature repeated calls have been made upon the Executive for the aid of the Militia, to resist and punish the attacks of the Indians upon our frontier. With a wild and mountainous frontier of more than eight hundred miles in extent, affording the most inaccessible retreats to our Indian foe, so well accustomed to these mountain fastnesses, California is peculiarly exposed to depredations from this quarter.

We have suddenly spread ourselves over the country in every direction, and appropriated whatever portion of it we pleased to ourselves, without their consent and without compensation. Although these small and scattered tribes have among them no regular government, they have some ideas of existence as a separate and independent people, and some conception of their right to the country acquired by long, uninterrupted, and exclusive possession. They have not only seen their country taken from them, but they see their ranks rapidly thinning from the effects of our diseases. They instinctively consider themselves a doomed race […] Our American experience has demonstrated the fact, that the two races cannot live in the same vicinity in peace.

The love of fame, as well as the love of property, are common to all men; and war and theft are established customs among the Indian races generally, as they are among all poor and savage tribes of men, as a means to attain to the one, and to procure a supply of the other. When brought into contact with a civilized race of men, they readily learn the use of their implements and manufactures, but they do not readily learn the art of making them.

The white man, to whom time is money, and who labors hard all day to create the comforts of life, cannot sit up all night to watch his property; and after being robbed a few times, he becomes desperate, and resolves upon a war of extermination. This is the common feeling of our people who have lived upon the Indian frontier. […] That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected. While we cannot anticipate this result but with painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert.

Governor Burnett set aside state money to arm local militias against Native Americans. The state, with the help of the U.S. Army, started assembling a massive arsenal. These weapons were then given to local militias, who were tasked with killing native people. State militias raided tribal outposts, shooting and sometimes scalping Native Americans. Soon, local settlers began to do the killing themselves. Local governments put bounties on Native American heads and paid settlers for stealing the horses of the people they murdered. Large massacres wiped out entire tribal populations. In 1850, for example, around 400 Pomo people, including women and children, were slaughtered by the U.S. Cavalry and local volunteers at Clear Lake north of San Francisco.

More from Governor Burnett’s speech, on race. Note: “Though Burnett himself had enslaved two people, he opposed calls to make California a slave state, instead pushing for the total exclusion of African-Americans in California.” (Wikipedia) His reasoning is detailed below:

Additional quotes from Burnett

In my former message to the Legislature I recommended the necessity and propriety of excluding free persons of color from the State.

That there are excellent and intelligent person of color is doubtless true; but our legislation must regard them as a class, and not as individuals.

The practical question then arises whether it is not better for humanity, and for the mutual benefit of both classes, that they should be separated? Is it not better for the colored man himself? I am sure, that were the question put to the more intelligent portion of this class, they would unhesitatingly say at once: “Either give us all the privileges you claim for yourselves, or give us none. Make us equal, or keep us separate.” As all experience has demonstrated that it is for the mutual benefit of the parties to separate even husband and wife when they cannot live happily together, so it is the best humanity to separate two races of men whose prejudices are so inveterate that they never mingle in social intercourse, and never contract any ties of marriage.

That this class is rapidly increasing in our State is very certain. If this increase is permitted to continue for some years to come, we may readily anticipate what will then be the state of things here, from what we see now occurring in some of the free States. We shall have our people divided and distracted by those distressing domestic controversies respecting the abolition of slavery which have already produced so much bitterness between different portions of the Union. When those who come after us shall witness a war in California between two races, and all the disgraces and disasters following in its train, they will have as much cause to reproach us for not taking timely steps, when they were practicable, to prevent this state of things, as we now have for reproaching our ancestors for the evils entailed upon us by the original introduction of slavery into the colonies.

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