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.
You make mission dioramas in California still in like 4th grade (our class made our little concentration camps outta noodles!) and they teach how it was a good thing for the indigenous. Mission bells everywhere in cali too
Where in Cali? I moved from redwood city school to rural white California when I was in 3/4rth grade and it was a gross shock. That’s why my respect for the settler here generally runs very shallow.
I feel bad about my brother 2/3 years younger. I think he got it worse.
Strange picture of him… I wish there was testament from the indigenous mentioned at that time. So we don’t have to just take history just from this colonizer gaze.
As I look more into what happened in California at that time, I will definitely look for such testament. Thanks for calling attention to that.
My reason for sharing this particular speech is because I feel it demonstrates the attitude of “regret” that settlers express over the “inevitability” of their colonizing, and the lengths that will be gone to in their minds to rationalize that it is unavoidable and even humane to do so. I feel that some people today echo this speech when they speak “sympathetically” against the concept of land back and how it is regrettably “too late” to implement, and yet in this speech we can see settlers have been speaking that exact same way at all points in the process, regardless of how much land was or was not secured by them at any given time.
It’s not their land still… There should be a new arrangement imo whatever their feelings may be.
I’m having trouble understanding which party you are referring to in this comment when you say “their”. Could you please clarify?
The colonizers. crudely I think pondering about the morality of the colonizer is like the ‘why does a dog lick his own balls?’ thing some say about the free market.
Not that there isn’t some value in analyzing it…
The colonizers.
Ah, alright. I agree. I ask because I have seen some people on Lemmygrad who have expressed some negative or doubtful sentiments around decolonization and specifically about land back.
As for analyzing things like this, I want to investigate the characteristics of the aspects of a contradiction in order to contribute to resolving it with less setbacks and errors. I’m not taking a tour of settler mentality to horrify myself out of curiosity, but because I’m trying to be thorough in understanding all aspects of the problem, in order to contribute to resolving it well.
I am more or less trying to follow these words from Mao, “To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly, for example, to understand only China but not Japan, only the Communist Party but not the Kuomintang, only the proletariat but not the bourgeoisie, only the peasants but not the landlords […] To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). This way of doing things is bound to lead to trouble.”
I don’t think everyone needs to be focused on this same thing, but as I tend to do history research, I am looking into it.
it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). This way of doing things is bound to lead to trouble.
goes deep.
how do you think the contradictions should be addressed so far?
Well, my own individual answer regarding restoring indigenous land is not going to be as good or thorough as the answer coming from an org who is and has been working on these questions. As for what the demands of land back are (in the US), reinstatement of treaty rights is a major demand (as described for example in this document on p. 4), among several other demands of justice surrounding land and sovereignty questions. I think it would be better to hear about land back from such orgs (in person or by reading) than from me.
Strengthening the connection and flow between ML orgs and between indigenous rights and sovereignty orgs is a key task, as indigenous sovereignty and decolonization are what is happening and what must happen in this world, MLs who do not get behind it are going to become more and more reactionary and fail in their tasks if they do not regard decolonization as a primary task rather than regarding it as some side issue. Any indigenous orgs who are stuck on a reformist treadmill are understandably doing what they can but will of course be bolstered and strengthened as ML thought further permeates their movements. These things are all being worked on. It just needs to continue gaining strength and speed and connections. Same goes for environmental orgs.
To be more specific, what am I trying to learn and what have I learned by looking at old and new writings of settlers making excuses for themselves? I am trying to get a handle on the history of and “reasoning” behind such excuse-making so that I can point it out succinctly, in a convincing way, to well-meaning Marxists who are making settler excuses and who are squeamish and doubtful about land back because they think of it in vague terms rather than in specific terms. I want to improve my ability to struggle with such people, the ones who can be struggled with, and become better and faster at discerning who is not going to listen and who is (as the kind of work I do is education-related), and become better and faster at getting points across. Reading things like this is one element of my process in arming myself for that goal.
