Forced labor in California

When the Spanish first invaded and conquered California they essentially laid the groundwork for a labor stratification that was present in California for years to come. The Spanish utilized Indians, through baptizing them and then using them as the labor force to do nearly every job on the mission. This carried into the Mexican rule of California when the California Indians became essentially indentured servants to the wealthy Mexican landowners who needed the labor force. Then California was admitted into the United States as a free state, however due to the required labor to operate the ranches and farms and the need for miners during the gold rush white immigrants found ways to acquire virtually cost free labor. This history is filled with displacement, massacre \disease eradicating the native population.

Spanish Conquest

Pre-European contact, native Californian Indians population was estimated to be nearly one million. In 1540 the Spanish conquest of California occurred but they did not actually invade and conquer California until 1769. In 1769, Father Serra founded the first Spanish mission in California Mission San Diego. Through the padres soliciting soldiers to capture California Indians, entire villages were baptized as a whole and forced to remain on the mission in imprisonment, speak Spanish and complete all the labor. There were four military installations set up by the Spanish throughout California in San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Barbara and San Diego. They housed soldiers whose job was to search for runaway Indians. Indians became cobblers, carpenters, masons, planters, harvesters and cattle slaughterers. Essentially, the missions became economic institutions with poor living conditions, spreading disease and forcing all Indians into labor. Soldiers and priests often raped the women of the villages. To the Spanish, the Indians were neophytes who fulfilled a role as solely a source of manpower, an expendable resource that cost little to acquire and maintain. Reportedly, after ten years some of the missions planned on handing them over to Indians however this never occurred.

There were several recorded uprisings of Indians resisting Spanish rule, one of the earliest was the attack on the Mission San Diego on November 4, 1775. The Ipai-Tipai organized nine villages into a force of around 800 to entirely destroy the mission and kill three of the Spanish, one of them being Padre Jaime. However not every California Indian uprising was violent, in September of 1795 over two hundred natives, including many old neophytes, simply deserted San Francisco all in different directions. When uprisings occurred, the natives did not go unpunished. Some Indians were put to death as a punishment but many were imprisoned and forced to do hard labor. They were required to live in cabins with overcrowding and with food and weather conditions to which they were often not acclimatized. During this time disease was a major cause of death for Indians due to 3 large epidemics. In 1777, a respiratory epidemic occurred, in 1802 a pneumonia and diphtheria outbreak and in 1806 a measles epidemic. Poor diet also negatively impacted native populations. In 1818 Governor Vicente de Sola reported that 64,000 Indians were baptized and 41,000 were dead.

Mexican Rule

From 1821-1846, after Mexico gained its independence from Spain, California was under Mexican rule. In 1824, the Mexican constitution guaranteed citizenship to all persons, providing natives with the right to continue to occupy their villages. Additionally, the Mexican National Congress passed the Colonization Act of 1824 in which large sections of unoccupied land was granted to individuals. This act enforced the class division in which Native Americans were treated like slaves because the California Indians became the labor force for these ranchos. In 1833 the government secularized missions, saying that the missions needed to give their land to catholic Indians. However instead of doing that, many civil authorities confiscated most of the land for themselves. Often Californios gained prominence through conducting military attacks on indigenous settlements. By 1846, Mexico’s Assembly had passed resolutions that called for funds to locate and destroy Indian villages.

While they had more rights than they had under Spanish rule, the native population still was the labor force for ranchos or in developing towns. Essentially, the entire economy shifted from work on the missions to work on large land estates of wealthy Mexicans. These large land estates, ranchos, required a large labor force so the Mexican landowners then devised a system where it was virtually cost free for them to utilize Indian labor. The labor force was acquired through a system of exchanging workers between ranchos and requiring the Indians to bring in other Indians to also work. Often if they would agree to labor then the ranchos would provide the native communities with goods. Most males worked on the ranchos, doing physical labor like tending the livestock and the women and children were used for domestic work within the houses such as grinding corn, washing clothes and spinning cloth. The number of Indians working a rancho could range anywhere from a few to several hundred.

Gold Rush and United States

In 1848, Mexico ceded California to the United States and 1845-1855 brought a flood of white immigrants into California because of the gold rush. The Euro-Americans came in with an initial dislike of the Native Americans, both hating and fearing them for no historical reason. The confrontation between Anglos and Indians was often brutal, resulting in the murder, burn and rape of Indians and kidnapping and selling of women and children into slavery. In those 10 years the Indian population of the central valley and adjacent hills and mountains decreased from around 150,000 to 50,000. Many hostile interactions began to occur such as the Clear Lake Massacre of 1849. At Clear Lake Massacre, local Pomo killed two white men who had been exploiting local Indians, enslaving them and abusing them and sexually assaulting Indian women. As a result, the whites created a massive military campaign of savagery and brutality.

Legally, to “craft its own code of compulsory labor”, on April 22 of 1850 “An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians” was passed which “legally” curtailed rights of Indians. It provided that:

• “White persons or proprietors could apply to the Justice of Peace for the removal of Indians from lands in the white person’s possession”
• “Any person could go before a Justice of Peace to obtain Indian children for indenture. The Justice determined whether or not compulsory means were used to obtain the child. If the Justice was satisfied that no coercion occurred, the person obtain a certificate that authorized him to have the care, custody, control and earnings of an Indian until their age of majority (for males, eighteen years, for females, fifteen years).” In actual practice this section lead to a trade system of kidnapped Indian children, either stolen from their parents or taken from the results of militia attacks during the 1850s and 1860s. Frontier whites often eagerly paid $50-$100 for Indian children to apprentice and so groups of kidnappers would often raid isolated Indian villages, snatching up children in the chaos of battle.

• “If a convicted Indian was punished by paying a fine, any white person, with the consent of the Justice, could give bond for the Indian’s fine and costs. In return, the Indian was “compelled to work until his fine was discharged or cancelled.” The person bailing was supposed to “treat the Indian humanely, and clothe and feed him properly.” The Court decided “the allowance given for such labor.”” Local authorities were often required to hire out the “convicts” within the next 24 hours to the highest bidder essentially creating a system of selling slaves out of jail.
• Also it was established in 1850, that Indians could not testify for or against whites. It was illegal to sell or administer alcohol to Indians also and if Indians were convicted of stealing any valuable or livestock, they could receive any number of lashes as long as it was less than 25 and a fine up to $200.

In general Californians interpreted these 1850 laws in a way that all Indians could face indentured servitude through the procedure of arrest and “hiring out”. Once the Indians had entered into this servitude, the term limit was often ignored, thus resulting in essentially slavery. It was what Californians used to “satisfy the states high demand for domestic servants and agricultural laborers” . Acting Governor Richard B. Mason reported, “over half the miners in California were Indians”. The enforcement of the Act of 1850 was left with the local justice of peace that meant that they became crucial links in all interracial interactions. This meant that many justices took advantage of the vague language and the power left with them in order to continue the kidnapping of Indian children through 1860. Also because the implementation of the Act of 1850 was left with the local justices of peace, that mean that the application of the law and the extent of exploitation was extremely uneven throughout the state of California.

Between 1851 and 1852, the federal government appointed three Indian commissioners - Redick McKee, George W. Barbour, and O. M. Wozencraft - to negotiate treaties with the California Indians because Native American tribes were recognized as foreign nations, making treaties the legal way to make negotiations. None of the commissioners knew anything about the California Indians or their cultures making the process very difficult. Eventually, 18 treaties were written up, allocating 7.5% of the state of California to Indians in reservations, but forcing the Indians to give up the rest of their land. However in June of 1852, all the treaties were rejected by the Senate and then put into secret files, not to be found again until 1905. Also in 1851 in Los Angeles, some Euro-Americans petitioned the Governor at the time, John McDougal for the protection against Native Americans in the area even though only one man had been killed. The commander of the state militia at the time, General Bean recommended that a company of citizens of no less than fifty men be organized to protect themselves from the Native Americans. Military campaigns against these Indians often led to the indiscriminate murders of Indians, essentially with the goals to exterminate the Indians. Often monetary rewards were offered for the heads and scalps of Indian people. In 1853, five military reservations were created in areas of the state uninhabited by whites in which Indians were supplied with supplies of inferior condition, for example the food that was often rancid. Also it was a stark change in life for the Indians who were used to freedom to be confined. They had to choose whether they would starve to death or leave to live as their ancestors had or raid non-native communities. According to the The San Diego Herald, Native people risked their lives by even walking the streets of San Diego because shooting Native people for sport was common enough.

However it should be noted that there were many whites who did deeply lament the “oppression” that was placed upon the Indians. In 1860 the Act was amended to allow any Indians who were not already indentured, to be kidnapped under the guise of apprenticeship. Also in 1860, an army officer at Fort Humboldt observed, "Cold-blooded Indian killing being considered honorable, shooting Indians and murdering even squaws and children that have been domesticated for months and years, without a moment's warning and with as little compunction as they would rid themselves of a dog." On February 16, the Indian Island Massacre occurred where the newly created Humboldt Volunteer Militia paddled to Indian Island where the Wiyot men and women slept after a week of ceremonial dancing. With hatchets, clubs and knives 80-100 Wiyot men and women were killed. Two other raids occurred that night, killing 200-600 Wiyot in the raids.

In 1867 in an analysis done for the Secretary of War it was noted that the rapid advancement of white settlements has greatly limited the sources of fish, wild fowl, game, nuts and roots. At that point the Indians were forced into collisions with the whites and often needed to choose to rob or starve. By 1870, the population had declined from 40,000 at the time of the United States acquisition of California, to 20,000, At that point, thousands of Indians had been murdered, raped or sold into slavery. Also at this point, the non-native California had jumped from 15,000 in 1845 to 530,000 and the number of farms rose from 872 in 1850 to nearly 24,000 in 1870. The dwindling Indian population could not support the dramatic surge in productivity and so the need for Indian laborers in the mine was not reflected at this point and low wage labor jobs began to fill with other workers.