When the Great Spirit Died: The Destruction of the California Indians 1850-1860 Book

This book chronicles ten years (1850-1860) of California history with respect to Indian-white relations. Chapter 1 relates information as to how the Indians and the Spanish interacted, with the Spanish driving Indians to enslavement on ranchos, while also converting them to Christianity. Mostly, the Spanish effort focused on the southern portion of the State. The remaining chapters focus on either tribes, areas, reservations, specific Indian wars, or personalities involved in the disaster, such as Indian superintendents, or Indian fighters. The book wraps up with a particularly elegiac chapter describing the massacre of a peaceful group of Indians at Humboldt Bay over a misunderstanding.

The author states that perhaps 60% of the Indian population losses were due to disease. However, the Indians became increasingly susceptible to disease as their way of life was disrupted. As settlers moved in, they brought herds of cattle, horses, and pigs. These animals ate the foods the Indians had depended on - as they lived off the land - grasses, roots, and acorns. The settlers frightened off the game, or killed them. Thus, another food source disappeared. Indians on the coast could still fish and gather shellfish, but those that lived inland suffered, unless they lived in particularly isolated areas. Once their food supply was disrupted, and they began to starve, they would turn to stealing cattle, horses, pigs. This enraged the settlers who began to hunt the Indians, usually killing only the "bucks" although many times there were massacres that included squaws and papooses, as well as elderly Indians. Families were broken apart as Indian children were stolen and sold into slavery, also Indian girls. Prostitution was rampant - was accepted out of necessity by squaws as soon as the settlers arrived, as a way to survive. Venereal disease ravaged the Indians. Whites intermarried with Indian women, and abortion was widespread as Indian women refused to bring up children in a world of pain and suffering.

Although the Indian population has rebounded, it consists of an amalgamation of remnants of surviving tribe members, and it's impossible to know exactly to what extent the Indians of California today really are actually descendants of the original or native Indians, since they have intermarried with whites and other ethnic groups (Spanish, black, etc) since the 1850s.

One interesting piece of information given in the book is that the reservation system originated in the 1850s in California - because of the cultural and physical destruction of the Indians, who were totally corrupted/compromised by some of the worst element, the low-class, brutal whites, who had no compunction in selling them alcohol, raping their wives, and so forth, it was deemed that separation from the baleful effect of white culture was the only way to save what remained of the Indian population.

The reservations were guarded by Federal troops given the blood lust of many of the settlers, who would repeatedly take the law into their own hands, form posses and lynch mobs, and relentlessly hunt down the natives even on foot into the mountains, through lava hills, track them through thick snow - the savagery of the whites was exactly equal to that of the Indians by the time rage/warfare had reached a fever pitch, in the first half of the 1860s. The Indians were seen as inhuman and unable to coexist with the white man - thus, many of the whites felt extermination was the only way to deal with the Indians.

Obviously, money/business/property rights was the underlying consideration. Most of the leaders of the posses were also land-owners/ranchers and owners of various other businesses. Having thousands of Indians roaming land they owned, upon which they were trying to grow crops or run livestock, did not make sense - given that the Indians would always end up starving since the food they depended on (wild grasses, roots, and acorns) would be eaten by the livestock. Their habitat, their culture, their families, and their lives were destroyed, as the land was domesticated. The starving Indians would then turn to stealing cattle to survive, but the ranchers wouldn't countenance cattle rustling.

The Indians probably didn't understand what it meant to develop land either by means of a business such as a hotel, restaurant, bar, mill, mining operation, and so forth, or as a farm. They had no concept of land ownership as they had a home tribal range. Dwellings were temporary wickiups - thrown together with wood slabs - which they would simply abandon if they became infested with vermin, and move on to a new campsite. They did not grow crops, instead were hunter-gatherers. They were more backward than the Indians elsewhere in North America for some reason. California must have been a paradise for them since the lakes teemed with fish, there was plenty of game, and the State was covered with acorns, which they had figured out how to render palatable, and could be stored for the winter. The Indians throughout the State gathered vast amounts of acorns to subsist on over the winter. They lived simple lives - until the arrival of the Europeans, which almost completely destroyed them.

The Indians sometimes labored on various construction projects and farms to help build the State, but they were often cheated even when they did adjust to working. At first, they were whipped and enslaved, and told they had to work. There were slave markets wherein Indians were bought and sold. When Indian slavery was abolished, they became indentured workers, another form of slavery. Of course they would flee back to their homes in the hills when they could. But things were usually no better in the hills, than on the farms, or on the reservations. Things were bad everywhere for the California Indians.

Graft and corruption was widespread in California after the Gold Rush was over and the Indians were often starving on reservations while the money or cattle that was supposed to have fed them was diverted into the pockets of corrupt officials at every level of California government. There was no place for the Indian - even at the reservation, he faced starvation. Many times the Indians would try to return to their old homes in the mountains but this would not last for long. They would always have to be brought in and returned to the small reservations, to try to acclimate or adjust to living in a white world - or, the world devised by the whites - while being totally cut off from the world of the whites, a paradox that did not seem to occur to those who had to deal with the Indians. Also, they could no longer make it in the mountains - since they had been catastrophically reduced in number, and they were malnourished, they could no longer survive in the mountains. Some refused to come in, and some fought to the end, others stayed in the mountains and starved or froze to death.

The book is not badly written, but the chapters are the same thing over and over again: Massacres and killings of Indians, the Indians too eventually taking their revenge on whites, Indian wars resulting in the deaths of Indians who may have been peaceful, the country eventually emptied out of Indians living on the land and forced into reservations, where they could be protected by the Federal troops, although cheated by the Indian bureau officials, in areas far from their homes.

Some whites were sympathetic and tried to help the Indians, employed them, shielded them, and so forth. Thousands of whites took Indian women as wives. However, by and large, despite the hand-wringing of the press, the only good actor in the sad story is the army, in that they were more often than not protecting the Indians from the whites, not the other way around, as the whites would have it. And underlying the entire tragedy was the obvious wish to evict what we might call today "squatters" - although actually the land was the tribal land of the Indians.

Eventually, a doctrine was developed which invalidated native land claims altogether since it was deemed that undeveloped land - that is, land without actual structures, farms, businesses, and so forth - did not belong to anyone, even if the Indians had actually lived off that land without farming it or building permanent structures for millenniums. Thus, with the elimination of almost all the Indians, all Indian land claims were eliminated and the whites were free to survey and sell land, without any competing claims. This was probably the underlying reason for the warfare/terror/destruction/undermining of Indian culture by liquor, and occasionally the outright poisoning of Indians - a wish to get rid of competing land claims by getting rid of the Indians.

There was also the white man's "greed:" It wasn't enough to live a subsistence life and just take as much as was needed from the land to live on. No - the whole point of a business - agriculture, ranching, etc. - was to produce excess value, so that more land could be purchased, and the cycle of development repeated, so more and more money could be accumulated, and more social status accrued. The Indians had no idea of any of this - Indian men wore no clothing and women only wore grass skirts when they first were contacted by Europeans although they quickly adopted to European clothing. There was no concept of accumulating money or possessions. The Indians did not have a way of counting to more than ten, and their concept of time/seasons was sketchy/non-existent - totally unlike that of the white man. Tribes probably did think they owned or belonged on the tribal land they ranged on, but they did not feel they owned a particular campsite since they moved from campsite to campsite. Still, they must have considered their tribal lands their territory. The fixed, labor-intensive, way of life of the whites must have mystified them - since the Indians could survive without too much effort. Why couldn't the whites?

Indian culture was destroyed - their existence in the State was largely finished once the settlers began pouring in. What had occurred throughout the New World over the course of the preceding 400 years or so, occurred very rapidly in California in the second half of the 19th Century, as the population of the tribes collapsed, ravaged by disease, massacres, starvation. Some were exterminated, some simply died out, the remnants then were forced into reservations where they often did not fare much better as there were also raids on the reservations to steal Indian woemen and children. It is incredible that any Indians survived their wholesale killing and destruction at the hands of the settlers - but some did.

Obviously, the history books do not tell much of this story as it is by and large nothing for the whites to be proud of - it is something that maybe is not taught in school because it is shameful. It was murder - genocide - prompted by greed. The land was too valuable to allow competing land claims and so the issue was settled in blood, with the whites easily dispatching the Indians because of their superior weaponry (guns/revolvers/howitzers vs. spears, tomahawks, rocks, bow-and-arrow). The whites terrorized the Indians by scalping and lynching them - the low-class brutal Indian fighters were as savage as the so-called savages.

This is an interesting though sad book to read if anyone is interested in finding out about a chapter of American history that is not usually mentioned in the history books: How California, in the space of about ten years, went from a paradise of peaceful Indians, to a land covered in mostly Indian blood, with the Indians mostly vanished from the earth. There were Indian wars throughout the US, but the abruptness of the almost total destruction of the Indians of California was likely not duplicated with the native Americans in other areas.

The book contains many illustrations, 19 & early 20 C prints and woodcuts, reproductions of newspaper articles, and photos of the characters and Indians of the era. The text makes the photos all the more poignant.

The book is not easy to read since every chapter is another story of the destruction of another tribe of California Indians, with the same story repeated time and time again: The Indians lose their food (grasses, roots, acorns, game) they resort to stealing cattle when they have nothing to eat. The ranchers then hunt the Indians to punish them, but the posses often massacre those who had nothing to do with the theft. A cycle of revenge then sets in, with the Indians taking revenge, then the whites cracking down even more, until the Indians are mostly destroyed or herded onto reservations.

Meanwhile, in areas where they might get along with the whites and even work on projects, the Indians would be corrupted - their women turned into prostitutes, and the men and women plied with liquor. Their culture was destroyed. This was all a deliberate effort by the whites to undermine and destroy the Indians so that they could claim their land with no interference, once the Indians were eliminated. Had the Indians actually adopted to the world of the whites, and become acclimated to white "civilization" they could have claimed the land. Thus, it was a race with time to simply eliminate the Indians, and not actually uplift or educate them, before the whites could file their land claims. By the time the Indians would have been "domesticated" or "educated" their land would have already been sold, developed, with its price no doubt out of reach of the Indians. This was how the settlers dealt with the Indians living on the vast and rich lands of California - they simply destroyed them, so they could claim or steal their land with no interference and no chance of counter-claims. No wonder coastal tribes between SF and LA were exterminated or totally died off of disease, or were sold off into slavery. Only their names remain as place names.

The Indians meanwhile had no concept of land ownership - the California Indians didn't even use money, since they had no need for many possessions. Even if the land had been bought from them, it would have been a meaningless transaction, since they did not have a concept or idea that they owned the land (the way the whites had a concept of land ownership). What use had they for money - since they did not accumulate possessions? The contrast between the two ways of life could not have been more extreme. The only thing the Indians needed was the very thing the whites wanted to take from them: Land, and their undisturbed way of life (hunting-gathering). The conflict could not have been more acute - and the result was predictable as there was no way a compromise could have been reached. The Indians were terrorized and destroyed, so that the whites could develop and grow rich from their land. The Indians died so the whites could live their European lifestyle. There was no compromise possible and no doubt the Indians that survived probably could not fully process what had happened to their world, their people, which vanished so suddenly.