Silencing California Indian Genocide in Social Studies Texts

Genocide Defined

Writing in 1944, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as the mass murder of national and ethnic groups by a central government. Living in the era of the Jewish Holocaust, Lemkin focused on the state-sponsored extermination of Jews, communists, gypsies, and homosexuals (Lemkin, 2002, pp. 27-35). He and others defined genocide differently than the United Nations of 1948, limiting genocide to state-sponsored acts against mankind. Other works do not so narrowly construct genocide. In 1979, Hupa-Cherokee scholar Jack Norton first applied the term genocide to the militia acts against the Indians of Northern California, and his work stood alone in recognizing the genocide. Since World War II, numerous scholarly works emerged detailing and analyzing genocide throughout the world. The works of Bruce Wilshire, Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley, and Arne Vetlesen are instructive to the study of California’s genocide, as these scholars examine topics integrally tied to genocide, including the righteousness of perpetrators, justifications for violent actions, racism, and bigotry against the “other,” and deep-seated hatred associated with genocide. Vetlesen also explored the role of bystanders in genocides, like federal troops, government leaders, and many settlers in California who stood by and allowed the genocide to take place. In most historical cases of genocide, a minority of people perpetrated the actual killing, kidnapping, and rape (Lindsay, 2012, pp. 8-21). In his recent study of genocide among California Indians, Lindsay employed the genocide literature, but unlike Lemkin, he argued that small groups of settlers used their tradition of democratic meeting and decision making to execute genocide against California Indians. Thus, volunteer militia units usually—but not always—committed genocide against California Indians, not operatives of federal, state, or local governments. Nevertheless, the attempted extermination of California Indians falls under the definition of genocide as provided by the United Nations.

School Curriculum, Indian Genocide

Lindsay wrote that “mainstream U.S. history texts and courses experienced by most students in primary and secondary education” present the early era of the United States in California “as only slightly tarnished by the neglect of Native Americans and other nonwhite peoples . . . during and after the Gold Rush” (Lindsay, 2012, pp. 8-21). He adds that unfortunately, California’s “history is covered as little more than the rip-roaring good times of gold miners or the triumphal joining of east and west via the Transcontinental Railroad” (Lindsay, 2012, p. 9). Textbooks, however, “ignore the outright violence, punitive murders, rapes, and legalized slavery.” Norton pointed out that California’s Model Curriculum for Human Rights and Genocide, published by the California State Board of Education (1988), required social studies texts to deal frankly and honestly about genocide. For many years, the board required social studies programs to present genocides in honest, intellectual, moral, and courageous ways since “no nation or society in human history has been totally innocent of human rights abuses.” The curriculum required publishers “to acknowledge unflinchingly the instances in United States history when our own best ideals were betrayed by the systematic mistreatment of group members because of their race, religion, culture, language, gender, or political views” (Norton, 1979, p. 140).

While elementary and high school textbooks in the past addressed human rights abuses related to African Americans, Jews, Chileans, and other around the world, the texts ignored the genocide of California Indians. The state Board of Education has been contradictory of its own stated goals of identifying and analyzing genocides. As of 2012, the board has continued to deny the genocide of California Indians, and from 1948 the board approved numerous textbook programs that silenced the genocide of California Indians, a direct and obvious contradiction to its own statements about insisting that textbook companies and text authors address genocide.

State leaders, teachers, authors, administrators, and publishers have silenced and denied genocide of California’s native people. Federal, state, county, and local officials working in the field of elementary and high school education appear to know little or nothing about the genocide of California’s first people. The general public knows little or nothing of the California genocide, in large part because textbooks silence genocide of California Indians. Indeed, outside the academy, few people—including schoolteachers—know of the Indian genocide, in large part because major publishers of children’s social studies textbooks deny the genocide and will not allow authors to address the subject. This is in marked contrast to the Jewish Holocaust or the inhumane treatment of African American slaves, which publishers do not deny or silence and include in their texts. The statement is not intended to downplay the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust or African American slavery. The authors make no attempt in the present essay to compare those atrocities with that of California Indians. Africans, Americans, and Europeans participated in African American slavery.

Nazis perpetrated the unthinkable genocide, but it occurred away from the United States, thus making the subject easier for publishers and authors to address. Frontier settlers, with the support of federal, state, and county officials, committed the genocide of California Indians. Publishers, politicians, and officials of the California state Department of Education do not want to disclose the historical reality of Indian genocide. Publishers worry that to do so might harm the sale of social studies programs, especially those for fifth and eighth grades and those for high school that they sell in multiple states. Some program authors, including internationally acclaimed scholars, have knowledge of genocide against California Indians, and many historians listed as textbook consultants, including Clifford Trafzer and others, know of the genocide. But publishers will not allow the word genocide or any deep discussion of genocide within the pages of any school text and know that review committees within the states and school districts would never approve a text addressing the genocide of Native Americans. To do so would harm the companies economically and brand them un-American.

Authors and consultants of social studies textbooks have argued for the inclusion of California’s genocide, but to no avail. Publishers allow them to give advice, but publishers make the final decisions about topics included within the texts. Publishers are not obligated to follow suggestions by authors or consultants, but publishers have knowingly chosen not to expand their presentation to acknowledge the shootings, killings, and kidnappings. State boards of education do not want to recognize the genocide, and state and federal officials have no desire to pay reparations for past genocide. Neither the authors nor historical consultants of school textbooks have been able to convince major school publishers to address the historical record regarding California Indians or include a few details of the tragedy—even if they choose not to label the actions genocide. Conservative publishers, eager to sell their textbooks throughout the United States, especially in the big market states of Texas, New York, and California, refuse to include historically documented acts of genocide against Native Californians. As a result, the subject remains a silence, a deafening silence, decried by Native Americans of California whose families felt the full and long-term effects genocide.

In 1970, Cahuilla Indian community scholar Rupert Costo wrote that there is not one Indian living today “who does not cringe in anguish and frustration because of these textbooks” (Costo & Henry, 1970, p. 9). The portrayal of California Indians in school texts as “dirty, animal-like, something less than human beings” has led to “shame” and “tears.” Norton criticized the “demeaning distortions and gross misrepresentations,” which continue to be presented today. And Ajumawi (Pit River) Indian scholar Darryl Wilson stated, “Presenting half-truths or mis-information . . . is a crime against the Native students, a crime against . . . society.” Dr. Wilson claimed that doing “nothing about the errors” brings “shame upon the Native student,” (Wilson, 1990, p. 1). Jennifer Lorenz, another young scholar, wrote that textbooks were biased and incomplete. “Acts that were purposeful and strategic are often portrayed as accidental, as if there was no motive or intention to harm [Indians] or eliminate.” Such characterization “ignores the agency of the United States” and settlers to kill Native Americans and take their resources,” (Lorenz, 2011, p. 3).

Lindsay stated that “many Americans today are hesitant to accept that our state or our nation has a genocidal past” (Lindsay, 2012, p. 9). The accusation that the state and nation had committed genocide against Native Americans runs “contrary to the narrow, often saccharine versions of the U.S. or Californian history we have been taught. As a result of inadequate textbooks “a person without any detailed knowledge on the subject of Native American genocide would refuse to accept such a conclusion from a scholar having studied the matter for many years” (Lindsay, 2012, p. 9). The product of poor textbooks and silencing of genocide has resulted in national and state ignorance of the tragedies during the Gold Rush era of American history. Most egregious, textbooks and major corporate publishers deny and silence Native American genocide, thereby depriving the American public and school children an historical examination of the deadly consequences of pioneer mining and resettlement of the Golden State. They have also denied the voices of thousands of California Indians who know their family history and the slaughter and enslavement of their relatives during the mid-19th century.

Evidence of Genocide Against California Indians

Frontiersmen responsible for the genocide, newspaper editors, and government officials left a great deal of historical evidence documenting inhumane acts against the first people of California. The purpose of this essay is not to recount the many examples of genocide found in published and primary sources but to argue that scholars have disclosed, examined, and analyzed the genocide. Yet publishers of elementary textbooks silence the historical record of non-Indians against Native Americans. Below are a few examples of evidence that speak to genocide. On January 17, 1863, the editor of the Humboldt Times of Eureka, California, provided a headline, “Good Haul of Diggers—Band Exterminated!” and on April 11, 1863, the same newspaper quipped, “Good Haul of Diggers—One White Man Killed—Thirty-Eight Bucks Killed, Forty Squaws and Children Taken.” Non-Indians used the term Digger as a denigrating way to identify California Indians, a term akin to the N-word used to denigrate African Americans. On May 12, 1849, the Placer Times reported (as reported in the Daily Alta California, June 2, 1849) that on April 26 “a party of armed White men came to their camp, or where they were at work, and killed an Indian while working with a crow-bar, and on his knees; they then shot another through the arm, who tried to escape.” The White men shot the Indian in the thigh, and while trying to hide, the group beat his brains out with rocks (Trafzer & Hyer, 1999, p. 114).

On January 29, 1851, the Daily Alta California reported that James Savage and his volunteer soldiers “killed three hundred, and taken one hundred and fifty squaws” rocks (Trafzer & Hyer, 1999, p. 118). One of the worst acts of “Indian Butcheries in California,” occurred in Humboldt County May 1860 during “a deliberate design to exterminate the Indian race” when a party of White men attacked an Indian village on an island in Humboldt Bay in an attempt to kill “women and children, the men being absent at the time” (Trafzer & Hyer, 1999, pp. 128-129). Editors labeled the people one of “the Digger tribes, known as friendly Indians.” At the time, the Wiyot people had conducted a multiday ceremony when the men left the island to hunt and gather food. In their absence, White militiamen attacked women and children. “Flying on the approach of the human bloodhounds,” the White pioneer force attacked, killing the women and children. According to the editor, “they all perished.” According to this newspaper account, “about two hundred and forty” Indians died. “Some of them were infants at the breast, whose skulls had been cleft again and again” (Trafzer & Hyer, 1999, p. 129).

On February 29, 1860, famed Western writer Francis Bret Harte wrote about the massacre with the title “Indiscriminate Massacred of Indians, Women and Children Butchered” (Lindsay, 2012, p. 327). The volunteers hacked to death the women and children. “Little children and old women,” Harte wrote, “were mercilessly stabbed and their skulls crushed with axes.” The militiamen beat the brains out of old women and used axes and hatches to drive a wedge into the faces of small babies. Women and children could not resist but “huddled together for protection like sheep.” Soldiers saved their shot and simply smashed in the heads and faces of women and children, killing all of them. The murderers went unpunished, the common result of the murder, rape, and kidnapping of Indian men, women, and children (Lindsay, 2012, p. 327).

Over the years, some scholars have published on the topic of California Indian genocide, but primary and secondary textbook publishers refuse to use the work of past scholars. Jack Forbes, Robert Heizer, Sherburne Cook, Albert Hurtado, James Rawls, and Alan Almquist have examined elements of genocide against California Indians in Northern California. George Harwood Phillips provided many details associated with genocide among Southern California Indians, a topic also explored by Clifford Trafzer and Joel Hyer (1999) in “Exterminate Them!”. Chad Hoopes offered the first major study of the 18 federal treaties negotiated by commissioners of the United States, all of which the Senate refused to ratify (Hoopes, 1975). In 1977, William Coffer used the term genocide in his article, “Genocide of the California Indians,” which appeared in Indian Historian. Jack Norton followed up the article with a lengthy book, Genocide in Northwestern California: When Our Worlds Cried (1979), a book that used the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as his means of interpreting the murder, rape, enslavement, and kidnapping of California Indians. Estle Beard and Lynwood Carranco discussed genocide in their book on Round Valley, a genocide also examined by Benjamin Madley and Frank Baumgardner. To date, Brendan Lindsay (2012) has provided the most detailed interpretive work on genocide of California Indians in his landmark volume Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846-1873. No doubt, the study of genocide in California will expand in the near future as scholars provide more details about the genocide. However, there is no way of knowing if major publishers of social studies textbooks or programs will acknowledge the genocide and end their silence of the unsavory events.

Glorifying Westward Expansionism

The romanticized mythology of Manifest Destiny and western conquest commonly associated with the California Gold Rush has been perpetuated throughout time in texts for students of all ages. Beginning in primary education, young Californians learn a truncated version of gold discovery history. Few texts even hint at the role Native Californians played in the gold rush and mining history of the West. Rather students learn about routes taken by Argonauts on their journeys into the West, land claims, mining techniques, life in mining camps, and growth of American California. These texts conceal the death and genocide of thousands of California Indians as a result of violence brought by American settlers. Between 1848 and 1868, generations of Native Californians experienced a genocide that reduced their population from approximately 100,000 to 150,000 in 1848 to approximately 30,000 in the 1860s. Thus, by the end of the 1860s, the California Indian population wavered somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 people (Trafzer & Hyer, 1999, pp. xiii-4).

Unfortunately, few if any texts address the drastic and shocking genocide that occurred in California against Native Americans. In comparison, primary texts address the Jewish Holocaust that took place under Nazi Germany in the 1940s. Why is there a silencing in texts of the genocide of California Indians during the Gold Rush but a discussion of genocide under Nazi Germany? There are varying answers to this question. It may be difficult for textbook authors to reconcile the mythology of westward expansion in the United States within the context of the Gold Rush, with organized campaigns to murder California’s first people. Conversely, textbook authors can more easily point to genocide campaigns undertaken by Nazi Germany, a foreign nation vilified without difficulty because it does not call into question glorified accounts of American settlement in the West. Moreover, the United States emerged heroic during World War II by fighting oppression and ending the Nazi campaign of horrific genocide. On the other hand, the newly formed state government in California in 1850 often supported campaigns by small militia groups against Native Californians through financial support and legal silence. And the state has contributed to the silencing of the genocide by allowing social studies texts and their authors to ignore the killings, kidnappings, and enslavement effectuated against the tribes of California. This silence continues today.

Social studies textbooks and school programs use the California Gold Rush as a landmark event that symbolizes the shift from a Spanish–Mexican California into a solidly “American” state. Depictions of the Gold Rush examine the era as a progressive time when American society and culture developed the Golden State. Rather than focus on the multicultural layers of the Gold Rush, social studies texts and authors take a solidly White American perspective. Textbooks glorify White immigration to the state and ignore the negative impact of the Gold Rush on California Indians and other immigrant populations, especially Latinos and African Americans. During the Gold Rush, California Indians initially played key roles as laborers and miners. As James J. Rawls noted, large landowning Spanish-speaking population of the region, known as Californios, used Native Californians as an “easily exploitable supply of labor” on their vast ranches (Rawls, 1984, pp. 116-117). Once news of the gold strike spread, Californios brought hundreds of their Native employees into the gold fields to work the placer (or surface) mines. Few Indian miners received actual wages. Rather their employers reimbursed them by providing clothing, shelter, and food. However, by the early 1850s surface gold deposits quickly became depleted. Despite the decrease in easily minable gold, the flood of overwhelmingly young White American men continued to move into the region to compete for fewer productive claims.

Newcomers knew little about the Mexican–California system of labor. Prejudice and discrimination toward Native people accompanied many American gold seekers. Incoming gold seekers, or argonauts as they were called, heard greatly embellished tales of violent encounters between settlers and Native people along the trail west. Settlers brought their fears, racism, and violent inclinations to California, often fed by the literature found in immigrant guidebooks (Lindsay, 2012, pp. 70-123). Unfounded tales of Indian cruelty, violence, and theft shaped the attitudes of many Americans who, in actuality, had little, if any, contact with Native people along the immigrant trails through the trans-Mississippi West. On the trails and in California settlements, rumors of Indian danger often spread without fact or foundations, creating a charged atmosphere the led to violence initiated by settlers, not Indians. At the same time, violent encounters between Native people and Americans in Oregon created a growing atmosphere of fear and brutality that many Oregonians brought with them to California during the Gold Rush. Within this context of fear, prejudice, and shrinking available gold, many Americans considered California Indian miners as threats to their financial and physical well-being. Moreover, Americans viewed the use of Indian labor as unfair and worked to break down the system through intimidation and violence. Small militia groups organized meetings and decided to go to war by the democratic manner of majority rule. Local groups of settlers, not a central government, organized and executed the genocide, but it brought death, destruction, and havoc to the Native American communities of California (Rawls, 1984, pp. 126-128).

Many of the Americans who sought to create a solidly “American” California also viewed Native people as obstacles to civilization and progress. Some American settlers turned to wars of extermination in an effort to solve the so-called Indian problem. American men created volunteer militia groups that attacked Indian communities under the guise of retribution for theft and killing of livestock or the killing of American settlers. Volunteer groups killed California Indian women and men indiscriminately. These murders intimidated many Native people from working or living near the gold fields and rich agricultural lands of the Sierra Nevada mountains and central valley. Some municipal governments offered bounties for the scalps and/or heads of Native people collected by these volunteer groups. The state treasury then reimbursed these municipal governments—in essence supporting the extermination campaigns and scalping of men, women, and children (Rawls, 1984, p. 185). Despite the availability of published primary sources that validate the existence of extermination campaigns, no textbooks addressed in this essay examined this component of the Gold Rush, which affected the lives of thousands of Native Californians. Rather than learn about complicated interactions between communities in the early history of their state, students learn an edited version of history that glorifies American progress in California. Textbooks ignore the campaigns to exterminate California’s first inhabitants.

Curriculum and Textbooks

As a part of the elementary school education in California, students learn about shared components of the world around them. Starting in kindergarten, teachers introduce young Californians to attributes that make a responsible citizen, and teachers explain how past events relate to the present (California State Board of Education, 2009). After establishing this groundwork, students in first grade explore how their local community fits into the nation and larger world. Students continue to learn about what it means to be an American citizen including examining changes in social roles and work over time. In second grade, students explore more concrete components of government institutions and the economy and learn the relevance of historical figures through studying biographies of important figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Sitting Bull, and Albert Einstein.

Textbook programs designed for students in third grade focus on events and people close to home, including Native Americans in a particular area. However, textbooks often ignore the tribal peoples of particular areas and provide information only on a few tribes in areas of the United States outside of California. Students in third grade develop an understanding of historical events and figures who have had a significant impact on local, regional, and national levels. Under the heading of “Continuity and Change,” children also learn about American Indian nations—their cultures and interactions with settlers that moved into the region. Students examine the changes brought by new waves of settlers. The social studies programs often rely on teachers to introduce local tribes to children in third grade. Children in fourth grade focus heavily on California state history, with some emphasis on the history of California Indians. Unfortunately, information found in fourth grade textbooks about California’s first nations center primarily on the past, not contemporary people. Thus, the texts often fail to portray Native Americans as contemporary people still living in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students in the classrooms of California receive some historical treatment about California Indians. The texts sometimes deal with the Gold Rush era, but they usually pass over the violence of the period, and not one program identifies the genocide perpetrated by violent, democratic militia groups bent on killing, kidnapping, and enslaving Native Americans.

Specific Examples of Textbooks

In 2006, Dr. Jesus Garcia et al. published Creating America: A History of the United States, an eighth grade text that offered a brief but honest presentation of the violent killings of Native Americans during the California Gold Rush. Under the subtitle, “The Impact of the Gold Rush,” Garcia wrote, “Native Americans suffered. . . . Thousands of them died from diseases brought by newcomers. The miners hunted down and killed thousands more.” Garcia provided a simple explanation, saying “Native Americans stood in the way of progress,” but noted a population decline from 150,000 to 58,000—with no dates attached to these figures. Most scholars believe the Indian population had declined to roughly 30,000 by 1870 (Garcia et al., 2006, p. 417). Still, Garcia and his coauthors offer the most historically accurate presentation of the Gold Rush without directly mentioning genocide. In spite of its shortcomings, the text offers some information about the national tragedy. Although most school texts deal with the Gold Rush, the fourth grade programs center on California history, which always mentions the Gold Rush to some degree.

In recent years, the state of California approved a handful of texts for school districts to select from as part of their adoption process. Harcourt’s Reflections series, titled California: A Changing State, is one of the more popular texts (Porter, 2007a). The text opens with a discussion of California geography, climate, and early populations Native to the region. The authors provide very brief introductions to select groups of Native communities, including the Tongva-Gabrielino, Yurok, Chumash, Cahuilla, Yokut, and Maidu. Children learn how each of these groups interacted with the distinct geographical and environmental region of their homelands in the desert, central valley, coast, and mountains. In this discussion, the authors describe components of such things as oral traditions, religion, shamanism, tribal organizations, and trading between groups. The lesson concludes by briefly touching on concerns of modern Native Californians, especially retaining access to their traditional homelands—alluding to issues of displacement not yet discussed.

From this point, Harcourt’s California progresses through the Spanish, Mexican, and American eras. In each period, the text layers the experience of the newest arrivals over the experiences of the previous inhabitants—Native Californians give way to the Spanish, the Spanish fade into Mexican California, and American settlement overshadowed the remnants of the three previous groups. The authors acknowledge the Spanish drastically altered the economic, religious, and cultural life of Native Californians (Porter, 2007a, p. 135). They mention disease as a cause of death, but do not specifically target venereal diseases brought by the Spanish as the major culprit. “The missionaries had believed they were bringing a better way of life to the Indians of Alta California. Instead their diseases had brought death to many Indians. After the first 75 years of life at the missions, only about one-third of California Indians remained” (Porter, 2007a, p. 139). The text fails to develop disease and unhealthy conditions brought on by herding several young women into unsanitary and unventilated dormitories.

In the missions, priests and soldiers punished Indian neophytes “for any fault, however slight” (as cited in Porter, 2007a, p. 140), because they were “people of vicious and ferocious habits who know no law but force” (as cited in Porter, 2007a, p. 141). This statement characterizes the negative and biased approach taken by these authors in their examination of California Indians, using words to denigrate Indians and providing false information. Seemingly, Indians caused the violence against them because they were, by nature, “vicious and ferocious.” Porter offers pejorative, loaded, and unfounded adjectives to portray Indian people. The authors recognize that many Native people lost any semblance of control they had over the land in 1834, following the end of the mission system or secularization under the Mexican government. The text openly addresses violence and conflict between Native communities and newcomers during the Spanish and Mexican eras. However, their discussion of violence, abuses, and death becomes much more mediated once the American period begins. The authors silence genocide of California Indians during the Gold Rush era.

The authors of Harcourt’s California text note that many Native people could not return to their traditional ways of life because, over time, the Spanish mission system had transformed the lives of Californian Indians too drastically. As a result, Native people became a major source of labor under Mexican California and the socioeconomic system of large-scale ranching. In general, California: A Changing State does not provide varied perspectives, especially in addressing the American era. Even before the Gold Rush, the text highlights the experiences of early American settlers, or pioneers, who embarked on the overland journey to the West. Before 1846, the discussion focuses on tensions between Mexicans and Americans in California leading up to the Mexican-American War and California statehood.

The textbook focuses heavily on the mythology of the era and the thrilling life of American pioneers moving West. Within the Harcourt text for fourth grade students, California Indians fall out of the historical narrative. Rather, the text focuses heavily on the day-to-day experiences of miners and the environmental effects of the Gold Rush on the California landscape. Interestingly, earlier in the text, the authors noted that the largest California Indian populations occupied the central valley and mountains region—the same region affected by the Gold Rush—but the text does not address the dramatic impact of the Gold Rush to Native populations. The text addressed the discrimination many groups faced in California at the hands of Americans. The authors note that American miners threatened and legally discriminated against Californios, California Indians, migrants from China and Central/South America, as well as African Americans. But the text fails to mention the genocide of 100,000 to 150,000 Indian men, women, and children who fell victim to genocide.

The Harcourt text does not address the intentional slaughter of Native Californians. Rather, it points to deforestation, the destruction of inland waterways, and intrusion of Americans on Native lands as sources of conflict between Americans and California Indians (Porter, 2007a, p. 242). While students are not provided with more detailed information, the teachers edition provides instructors with some information on the decrease of the California Indian population from an estimated population of 150,000 people in 1848 to only about 30,000 people by 1870. The text for teachers does not ensure that teachers will read these facts or share them with students. Authors of the text ask teachers to explain to students that “scientists believe more than 70,000 Indians died from diseases brought unknowingly by the miners” (Porter, 2007a, p. 242), although the authors offer no sources or evidence to support their assertion. Most scholars would disagree that disease primarily caused the population decline, unless the authors count “lead poisoning” from bullets as a disease. The California Indian population declined as a result of shootings, stabbings, hackings, kidnappings, and burnings, not disease. The explanation found in the text does not account for the violent deaths suffered by thousands of Native Californians during the era and removed accountability from American settlers who murdered thousands of Indian people. The text briefly addressed vigilantism—as a vocabulary term for students—but does not critically examine the impact of vigilantism on California populations, especially Native Americans. These negative components of history do not fit into the image that the text supports—“the pride that Californians have for their state and its natural beauty” (Porter, 2007a, p. 257). It is easier for the authors of the text to reconcile Spanish (Catholic) violence against Native populations than to tarnish the image of pioneers (primarily Protestants), Manifest Destiny, and the Gold Rush era. The Harcourt book participates in the silencing of genocide.

Students receive a similar perspective in Harcourt’s fifth grade social studies text, Reflections—United States History: Making a New Nation (2007). The same authors of the program describe clashes between the Spanish and Native populations in different regions of the United States. Yet they provide a much more positive presentation of American colonization of Indian territories (Porter, 2007b, p. 132). The text even notes that the Spanish enslaved Native people throughout the Americas, where thousands died from overwork, starvation, and disease (Porter, 2007b, p. 156). Students learn about conflicts between Native people and other European colonizing powers, but most of the discussion focuses on American Indians and their relationship with settlers from the East. Students in junior high school receive much of the same information from textbooks, but they are more contextualized within national history.

Authors of Harcourt’s fifth grade program delve more deeply into difficult histories including clashes between Indians and Americans, Indian removal, and establishment of the reservation system. Despite this more detailed focus, the text still brushes over the impact of American settlement among California Indians. The Holt text, United States History: Independence to 1914 (Deverell & Gray White, 2006), totally silences Native Americans in its discussion of the Gold Rush, ignoring the contributions of California Indians and the genocide perpetrated against them. The Holt social studies program fails totally when addressing violence toward Native people during the Gold Rush (Deverell & Gray White, 2006, p. 330). The volume does not examine Native American population decline, but it focuses convincingly on the boom and economic growth of Americans in California.

Unlike the Harcourt textbook, the fourth grade program published by Macmillan McGraw-Hill, California Vistas: Our Golden State (2007), addressed the participation of Native people as miners during the Gold Rush. The text noted that California Indians served as some of the first miners in the state (Banks, 2007, p. 241). The book provides a discussion of the costs of the Gold Rush. Students learn that Native Californians died from disease, starvation, and “were killed by miners, ranchers, and settlers who wanted to take their land” (Banks, 2007, p. 256). However, the book does not address the genocide of California Indians. James A. Banks offers a weak presentation of the Gold Rush era. The text focuses a great deal of attention on routes taken by the gold seekers and their methods of mining once they arrived in California (Banks, 2007, pp. 231-233, 238). Authors of Harcourt’s fifth grade textbook fail to use the published scholarship on the gold discovery at Coloma, giving all the credit to James Marshall rather than the California Indians who dug the mill race from the American River to the mill and out again to the river.

Given the scholarship of James Rawls, the evidence is clear and readily available that California Indians found the gold and showed it to Marshall. In his own account, Marshall acknowledged the role of California Indians in the gold discovery but neither this text nor any of the others recognize this historical fact. Thus, the program published by Macmillan McGraw-Hill silences the contribution of California Indians, just as it silences the genocide of California Indians during the 1850s through the 1870s.

However, the Macmillan McGraw-Hill text recognizes that “many Native Americans worked in mines,” but the authors provide neither context nor development, moving the narrative on to taxation issues and the development of blue jeans by Levi Strauss (Banks, 2007, pp. 241, 243). To its credit, the book addresses the creation of 18 treaties and 18 reservations by the United States, but fails to develop the fact that the Senate refused to recognize these treaties and White settlers stole millions of acres of Indian land as a result. However, California Vistas discusses issues of Native displacement and land disputes through the context of the Modoc War (1872-1873), wherein the Modoc fought to return to their ancestral homeland in Northern California. Moreover, the text offers teachers the activity option by asking students to weigh the many ways Native people suffered as settlers moved in to California (Banks, 2007). On the other hand, the fifth grade text by Macmillan-McGraw Hill, which examines history of the United States on a national level, does not address the impact of the Gold Rush. The text simply lists California Indians along with other groups that American newcomers discriminated against. But the text fails to acknowledge the violence against Native people during the Gold Rush. In essence, the Macmillan McGraw-Hill texts for grades four and five fails to develop the place of California Indians during the Gold Rush era and silences the killings, rapes, murders, and kidnappings of the first people of the Golden State.

The Houghton Mifflin series of elementary social studies texts are generally better written and more engaging than other textbooks, but when addressing the Gold Rush era or the genocide of California’s first peoples, Houghton Mifflin fails. In Oh, California!, the fourth-grade text, the authors depict the California Gold Rush as a glorious event. Rather than developing the killings and kidnapping of California Indians, the text points out the negative effects of inflation and how this economic issue ravaged the miners. The text focuses on economic issues affecting miners but not Indian people who lost their homelands, resources, and lives to greed and aggression. The book points out, “One man reported paying 43 dollars just for breakfast for two” (Armento, Cordova, & Klor De Alva, 1991, p. 125). In addition to the high price for breakfast, students learn about the mining claims, methods of extracting gold, and life in the mining camps. These are easier and less controversial topics to present than death, rape, and rapid population decline resulting from American and foreign miners murdering Indians. Under the subtitle, “Fights at the Mining Camps,” students learn that miners “did not like Indians and did not care that Indians had lived on the land for thousands of years.” The text suggests “Indians raided mining camps using bows and arrows.” The authors report the newcomers “fought back,” and in passing, they mention, “By the mid-1800s over 100,000 Indians had been killed” (Armento et al., 1991, p. 129). Although this is a revealing statement, the authors provide no context that the deaths resulted from murders, not disease.

Authors of the Houghton Mifflin series of elementary social studies texts do no better when presenting information about the Gold Rush era in A More Perfect Union (eighth grade text) or America Will Be (fifth grade text). The eighth grade text, reportedly for advanced elementary students ignores the California Indian contribution in the discovery of gold at the Indian village of Coloma or the violence committed against Indian families. Instead, the text honors James Marshall who reportedly discovered the gold and deals with life in mining camps, hardships on the overland trails, life on the frontier, tales of riches, and the growth of the Chinese population (Armento et al., 1991, pp. 242-245). Students, however, learn that apparently “Indian peoples of the West grew increasingly alarmed as the waves of pioneers flooded through the hunting lands. They attacked some wagon trains and an occasional settlement” (Armento et al., 1991, pp. 242-245). Thus, the major focus on Native Americans centers on a few Indian troubles pioneers encountered crossing the Great Plains, rather than the horrendous killings pioneers perpetrated against California’s Indians. In this way, the authors and publisher of the Houghton Mifflin series silence a crime against the first people of California and perpetuate the silencing of historical evidence and professional scholarship found in secondary and primary sources.

By writing in the passive voice, the authors of textbooks for children often conceal participants of the genocide of California Indians in all the gold fields or the kidnapping, raping, and sale of Indian women and children into slavery. Authors suggest to impressionable children that Indians had caused their own demise by attacking miners. Authors often fail to mention that miners from Oregon, eager to reduce the number of Indian miners working for Californios, had murdered Maidu and Nissenan Indians at the gold discovery site of Coloma, a former Indian village that become the site of Sutter’s Saw Mill, and other Indians working in the gold fields. Thus, in passing, authors might mention the dramatic population decline among California’s first people, but this is rare.

Recommendations to California’s Social Studies Teachers

Teacher resources created by a division of the California Department of Education to assist instructors in their presentation of fourth grade course content addresses the need to expose students to sensitive topics in a thoughtful manner (California Department of Education, 2011, pp. 4.34-4.35). For instance, the authors recognize that Native people died at a very high rate during Spanish colonization of California. Unlike the authors of many textbooks, the authors recognize that harsh labor regiments, disease, and drastic changes to the culture, family lives, and existences of Native people as a result of foreign settlement—especially the Spanish mission system. They recommend that teachers use creativity and careful planning to introduce these difficult topics to students through literature, use of primary source documents, journaling, and small group activities. The authors endorse small group activities as one method of choice for teachers to use, especially when examining the conflict of cultures in California following the Gold Rush. Students in different groups take the perspective of one ethnic group, read about their experiences, and document their roles in the gold rush to understand the “causes and effects of conflicts in the camps” (California Department of Education, 2011, p. 4.35). While this would be an ideal time for students to learn about the genocide of California Indians, few, if any, textbook resources provide students with sufficient background and knowledge to examine the Gold Rush from an honest historical perspective.

High school level texts also leave much to be desired in their discussion of the treatment of Native people during the gold rush. The text American Pageant: A History of the Republic (Kennedy, Cohen, & Piehl, 2008), often used in advanced placement history courses, deals minimally with the California Gold Rush. The text has a more broad national perspective, thus the Gold Rush is placed in the context of President James K. Polk’s expansionist policies, Manifest Destiny, and the role California played in the tensions leading to the Civil War (Kennedy et al., 2008, pp. 261, 265, 267). Similarly, The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877 follows a similar narrative as found in American Pageant and many elementary texts. The American Nation briefly describes the Gold Rush—observing that the Native Californian population dropped from 150,000 in the mid-1840s to about 35,000 by 1860. Just as in the fourth and fifth grade texts, The American Nation does not provide an explanation for the population decline—only noting, “it was almost wiped out” as a result of “ethnic conflict” and discrimination (Carnes & Garraty, 2003, pp. 331-332). High school level texts do not address state history. As a result, authors provide little content surrounding genocide.

College texts provide multiple perspectives from both state and national levels. Major histories found in texts produced for California History courses provide the most detailed history of the Gold Rush era in the state. The Elusive Eden: A New History of California (Rice, Bullough, & Orsi, 2002, p. 202) examines the Gold Rush from multiple perspectives, including the perspective of Native people in the region. The authors note that California Indians worked as some of the first miners at the outset of the Gold Rush as independent miners and as paid laborers for Whites and Californios. However, the authors note that Oregonians and other settlers who moved to California brought with them prejudices and stereotypes conjured from “violent encounters [between Americans and Indian people] or sensationalized tales of slaughter and savagery,” passed along on the trail to California (Rice et al., 2002, p. 202). The authors explain that Americans clashed with Native people who worked productive claims. Americans attacked Indian villages and developed organized Indian-fighting units. They explain that some Americans in California attacked Indian people because they did not like non-Americans working productive claims. They disagreed with other Americans using Indians as cheap laborers, or, most regrettably, “a vicious few simply enjoyed the killing” (Rice et al., 2002, p. 203). This perspective brings students closer to understanding the intentional killing of Native people that took place in California during the Gold Rush era, but still falls short of labeling the pioneer actions against Indians causing “genocide.”

Conclusion

In California, the curriculum for primary grades require schools to teach social studies in third, fourth, fifth, and eighth grades. The standards for the state of California require teachers and publishers to present honest, empathetic, and historically accurate accounts, including the topic of genocide. Since the 1970s, scholars have researched and written on the genocide of California men, women, and children during the Gold Rush era, a genocide perpetrated primarily by small democratically constituted militia groups determined to exterminate California Indians. Beginning with the research of Jack Norton and continuing with the seminal work of Brendan Lindsay, scholars use the United Nations definitions of genocide when addressing the gross actions taken against California’s first people constitute a clear genocide. Newspapers, militia documents, and documents left by government and civilian people document the genocide.

However, as of 2012, the state Department of Education denies the genocide, and so do many residents of California. The general public of California is unaware of the genocide of Indian people because the state of California, major publishers of social studies programs for children, and authors of textbooks refuse to write about the murders, kidnappings, rapes, and slavery. For over 100 years, state officials, authors, and publishers have silenced the American Indian genocide by denying the historical record in spite of overwhelming evidence. Special interest groups oppose the formal recognition of the genocide. Textbook publishers would lose sales if they presented the genocide. Politicians and government staff would have to acknowledge their shortcomings and might be forced to recognize that California Indians have legitimate claims against federal, state, and local governments. And authors would have to admit their errors and revise the way they present genocide at home and abroad.

The authors of this short essay urge readers to examine the articles found in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of the United Nations that was passed unanimously by the Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, and published in Jack Norton, Genocide in Northwestern California: When Our Worlds Cried. People might also read the historical literature and documents of the Gold Rush era found in the sources provided in this essay and new forthcoming scholarly works. Readers could also read the current and past social studies texts provided by the major publishers, comparing their presentations with details offered by university scholars. Readers would see for themselves that textbook publishers of social studies programs have silenced genocide within the boundaries of California and the United States.

In sum, university scholars would find most social studies textbooks created for elementary school children unacceptable as they are presented. The texts may mention killings but universally do not provide details of the genocide committed against California Indians during the Gold Rush era. White pioneers documented the California genocide. Scholars have detailed the acts of genocide. Scholarly works record the killing of Indian men, women, and children by White pioneers. Scholars had documented that pioneers separated children from their parents and tried to end the birthing of future generations by targeting women in murder, kidnap, and rape. Pioneers destroyed Indian economies, disrupted families, burned Indian communities, stole Indian lands, and exploited Native resources. But the pioneers could not destroy all Indians or their cultures. California Indians survived the attempted extermination of their people and lived to share their family and tribal stories about the genocide of the Gold Rush era. These oral accounts, mixed with the written documents left by non-Indians, provide a wealth of evidence ignored by the California state Department of Education and the major textbook publishers of the United States, both of which have successfully silenced the genocide of Californian Indians for far too long.