Humor and Dissonance in California’s Native American Genocide

A Brief History of Native American Genocide in 19th-Century California

As I have recently argued in Murder State (2012), Native Americans in California were subjected to a peripherally organized, popularly approved campaign of genocide that commenced with the discovery of gold and persisted in its overt, most bloody form into the 1870s. ³ Rather than the centrally organized, state-sponsored genocides that have been the norm in the history of genocide, in California one finds a grassroots effort from the Euro-American citizenry of the state engaged in attempts to exterminate the Indigenous population. A state-supported rather than state-sponsored genocidal enterprise was the net result. Yet this genocide had its roots in the East, in Western Civilization, in the Judeo-Christian beliefs of those coming to California, rather than a product of something they encountered once there.

Euro-American settlers arriving in California came from a variety of places in the United States, held diverse social and political views, were of many religions, and were born of many ethnic groups. Nonetheless they often exhibited some unity of opinion where Indians were concerned: savage, heathen members of a dying race (Dippe, 1973; 1982) never to be trusted, always to be feared, and posing an obstacle to the racially essentialized vision of Manifest Destiny so many Euro-Americans subscribed to in the mid-19th century (Horsman, 1981). This accord about the Indian character was one that posited Indian people as both inhuman obstacles and threats to White civilization. With this jaundiced context for viewing Indian–White relations, Euro-Americans headed to California following the announcement of the discovery of gold in California. The would-be miners who went overland had a hard trail to travel, but not due to the savage Indians they feared. In fact, they experienced little negative contact with Native Americans (Tate, 2005) and suffered rather from disease, privation, and conflict among themselves. Nonetheless they arrived in California still hating and fearing Indians, not contextualizing the lack of Indian troubles as much other than luck or the results of the armed vigilance of those making the crossing.

In California, Euro-American emigrants encountered a population of perhaps 150,000 Native Americans living in a multitude of small, autonomous villages (Rawls, 1984). Some were former missionized Indians who spoke some Spanish, others, indeed most of them, had never lived among Whites or ever seen a White person before. And, of course, the reverse was true: Euro-Americans entering California knew little, if anything, of California’s Indigenous population beyond the loose talk about Spanish mission Indians in the few accounts of California published in the United States at the time (Dana, 1845/1956; Frémont, 1845/2002). But Euro-Americans took their viewpoint not from the reality of this new interaction, but from their previous, negative frame of reference brought with them. Savages were savages.

Once in California, Euro-Americans set about dispossessing Native Americans by murdering them, driving them off, or having them rounded up by federal Indian agents, U.S. Army troops, state militiamen, and volunteer and vigilante forces formed by the settlers, miners, and ranchers, themselves. In mining camps miners used the camp vote, held among the claimants living in the camp, to create frontier democracies that operated with a mob rule mentality and exacted the type of justice known as lynch law, which they applied to, among others, any Indians who interfered with their claims or prospects in California. As the California Gold Rush proved a bust for those actually prospecting (Holliday, 1981), it was some of these frustrated miners who turned to ranching, farming, logging, and other land-intensive pursuits that created additional frictions with the Indigenous population. Ranchers, farmers, and settlers were not much different in their manner of dealing with the presence of Indians. They held meetings in town halls, courthouses, or taverns or on homesteads and ranches, where they voted on petitions demanding forced removal of Indians, the punishment of those who refused to move, and the extermination of those who fought back or dared take the cattle or lives of the members of the Euro-American communities that had sprung up so quickly in the 1850s. These petitions produced, through operation of California’s Militia Law of 1850, the ability of the White citizenry to demand of the state governor the right to form into volunteer companies that, in practice, operated as legal death squads.

These volunteer companies were authorized by successive governors throughout the 1850s and 1860s in California to go out and “chastise” the Indians, a euphemism that mainly connoted extermination. Some of the key evidence as to the nature and source of the genocide flows from these gubernatorial authorizations. Governor Peter H. Burnett, the state of California’s first governor, remarked in an address to the state legislature “that a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected; while we cannot anticipate this result with but painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power and wisdom of man to avert” (Burnett, 1852, p. 714). Those waging this “war of extermination” were his constituents. In fact this type of acknowledgment of campaigns of extermination oftentimes flowed from various state and federal officials: Indian agents, army officers, and special investigators for the state or federal government often made note of the case and seemed to lament it, even as they gave in to the demands for aid, support, or authorization of the extermination from those who had elected them or paid their salaries by way of taxes or had claim on them as servants of the people.

In terms of public opinion, genocidal “wars of extermination” were popular, as evidenced in expressions of support found in public records, newspaper accounts, and the letters and memoirs of those who stood witness or participated. In these, one can sense the high opinion the agents of genocide were held in by local communities. Men composing the membership of a volunteer company in a region were not outsiders, but local residents. These men had not only signed the petitions to form the companies, but also volunteered to serve as the executors of the community’s will. This is a key point to reiterate: those who did the actual killing were the instruments of the community, as expressed by the will of a democratic process and a majority vote. These majorities were made up of petitioners—sometimes dozens or into the hundreds on a given petition—who had voted their will in a democratic forum, a town hall meeting we might call it, to activate their elected representatives at the state capital to support them in their need. Such was the duty of those who served in republican institutions. ⁴ And these elected representatives, be they legislators or governors, typically responded in concert with the electorate’s wishes, even with the foreknowledge of what was to come.

The generally positive opinion of California’s Euro-American population toward Indian extermination was echoed in the pages of the numerous newspapers published in California in this era. In fact many of the publishers involved were themselves members of these settler communities, also only recently arrived to California. These newspapers not only pushed for the acquiescence of the government to the demands by the population for extermination or removal, they may also have enhanced the effort by way of the glorification of those involved. Whether coming together to cast their sacred ballot as a citizen or by doing one’s manly duty to protect the community from animal-like savages, the newspapers of California contextualized those engaged in the workings of genocide as worthy of the company of the historically aggrandized pioneers who had pushed westward from Atlantic shores for generations. At the same time newspapers all over the United States reminded readers of the savage character of Indians (Coward, 1999) and the constant threat they posed and encouraged vigilance and violence against them. This was the case in California, perhaps even more so given the magnitude of settlement and the brief lapse of time it occurred within. California newspapers gave clear and concise instructions as to how to handle Indians; many as succinct as “exterminate them” (Chico Courant, July 28, 1866) appeared in the pages of California newspapers with a shocking regularity. Some even went so far as to suggest using poisoned watermelons left about in abundance as a way of killing Indians (Chico Courant, September 15, 1866). The Courant was not the only paper: both the California Farmer (March 27, 1861) and the Sacramento Union (March 18, 1857) offered recipes for the right mix of poison and tactics to deliver it to Indians. Newspapers expressing positive ideas in support of genocide were not censured by the people of the communities they served; indeed, these papers persisted and maintained readership, as evidenced by their many years of operation. When condemnations did occur in the press, it was typically confined to the Bay Area or to newspapers in the East, places where the Native American population had been removed, exterminated, or so dwarfed as to pose no threat in the imaginations of Euro-Americans. And even these press outlets were not above carrying trivializing humor to destroy Indian’s value as human beings.

Whether by tacit support, by head-in-the-sand bystandership, or in direct support through voting, petition signing, letter writing, monetary support, or armed volunteerism, evidence suggests the Euro-American population engaged in the workings of a democratically organized campaign of genocide. The evidence also indicates that the participants—of both the indirect and direct varieties—seem to have engaged in dissonance reduction through trivialization as part of carrying out this genocide, suggesting to us both connections to other historical cases of genocide and contemporary studies of cognitive dissonance, despite a cultural, racial, and spiritual milieu not quite the same as we have today.

Cognitive Dissonance, Dissonance Reduction, and Trivialization

Over the past 50 years, behavioral scientists have examined the various facets of dissonance theory, conducted studies with human test subjects, and ultimately have agreed with Leon Festinger in his theory, at least in its essentials. Human beings do not always engage in behaviors that are consonant with the beliefs they hold. Festinger (1957) proposed that when human beings hold beliefs or take actions that seem to conflict with other beliefs they hold, the resulting psychological tension drives them to attempt to reduce this dissonance and restore cognitive harmony. Coverage of cognitive dissonance today is a staple of psychology courses in colleges and universities. Basic examples include that individuals who smoke know smoking is bad for them and people who believe in the sanctity of life take lives deliberately. Behavioral theorists continue to examine new case studies, such as persons who hold religious beliefs sometimes engage in actions or hold social or political views in conflict with these sacred principles (Ross, Lelkes, & Russell, 2012). Examples of dissonance and dissonance reduction are memorable, relatively simple to understand in basic structure, and possessed of a kind of verisimilitude—one can see in oneself or in those around one at least an appearance of truth in these theories—and an easy verifiability: what human being has not engaged in a bit of self-deception? Perhaps the better example, these days, is found in persons who talk on cell phones or text while driving, knowing that distracted driving is responsible for a growing number of traffic accidents and fatalities. How can people, or could people in the case of a historical case study, in great numbers engage in self-deceptive, even self-destructive behaviors? One of several possible answers is the drive for dissonance reduction that behavioral scientists have identified at work in the human psyche in cases of cognitive dissonance.

Dissonance reduction is putting one’s psyche back into a state of consonance, either consonance of action with action, action with cognition, cognition with cognition, or some combination of these in the case of complex sets of multiple actions and/or cognitions. This involves the individual finding a way to reduce psychic tensions. The smoker of the earlier example might, for instance, decide that the data on the negative effects of smoking were collected by biased or unreliable science to resolve discord. Or the smoker might point to that person of extreme old age who still smokes to deny it has any ill effect on longevity to achieve resolution. The smoker might also only reduce rather than resolve the tension completely. One might, for example, admit that smoking is unhealthy, but convince oneself that the physical and mental stress that smoking a cigarette relieves is an even surer killer, and so smoking is actually a kind of healthy alternative. Or one might acknowledge quitting is necessary, and convince oneself that moment is fast approaching but not quite here, and so one can still smoke a bit more with some reduction of dissonance (Johnson, 1968). To step away from the mundane, and toward the case of genocide, one might ask how one can resolve to kill or allow to be killed, an entire population, when Western society and religion hold such behavior as unlawful, immoral, and sinful. How does one resolve the tension created by humanity in nexus with inhumanity?

While one cannot argue with certainty that the attitudes and behaviors described in this article were solely determined by the drive for dissonance reduction, it seems clear that the pattern of behavior in these historical actors matches with what dissonance-reduction theories describe in the strategies of contemporary human beings in their efforts to reduce or resolve cognitive dissonance; this, then, suggests that there is some value in examining these patterns as a way of increasing our depth of understanding in historical cases of genocide and how human beings were able to seemingly naturalize atrocity against another population of human beings. Trivialization seems to be one way it was done. One way dissonance reduction is accomplished is by trivializing the dissonant cognition or behavior, rather than changing attitudes or behaviors or rationalizing them (Festinger, 1957; Simon et al., 1995). And since one of the fundamental questions to answer in any study of genocide is always how could they do it?—as well as why would they do it?—it seems a particularly valuable exercise to explore trivialization through humor as a mode of dissonance reduction. How else might one explain the ability of human beings to flippantly laugh at the privation and death of other human beings?

Case Study: Humor and Dissonance Reduction in Genocide

There seems little comic value in the death of a deformed child. ⁵ Not so for some in California in the second half of the 19th century, including the editors of the Plumas National, who thought to print a comic piece in 1878 regarding the demise of a well-known Indian boy in the region who had been born with birth defects:

“Gone to Hell”—Sadly we chronicle it—tearfully we enter upon the painful subject—but the mournful story must be told—the Plumas County Bear Indian is no more. A pair of our friends who were enjoying a ride the other day, concluded to take a look at this greatest of American curiosities, and stopped at the Indian Campooda for that purpose, but to their inquiries the answer was given by an aged buck—“Gone to Hell.” The Society for the “Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” at San Francisco, can now sleep quietly. The Bear Boy will no longer enliven the village with his presence. His growl will never again be heard on Montgomery street. He has eaten his last acorn, folded himself in his robe, passed in his checks—“Gone to Hell.” (Plumas National, November 24, 1878)

Sadly, sarcastic and sadistic humor of this type was not unique as applied to California’s Indigenous population. The anthropologist Robert F. Heizer (1974) published a collection of documents pertaining to the treatment and experiences of California Indians in the 19th century. ⁶ The last of the book’s dozen chapters was “Indians as the Butt of Jokes,” which with only four primary source entries formed the briefest section of the work. Heizer’s interest in including such a short section to conclude his collection may have rested in a desire to make some comment on the disturbingly indifferent, even insouciant attitudes of those who had destroyed or allowed to be destroyed the majority of the Native population during the 50 years following the conquest of California by the United States. Whatever Heizer’s motive, the section inspired this investigation of the deeper meanings of such humor within the context of atrocity and genocide in California, and to apply the findings of behavioral scientists, historians, and genocide scholars to his examples and others. Ultimately, Heizer’s four examples of appalling humor proved to be just a few of the many examples of an oft-repeated practice of dehumanizing, demeaning, and marginalizing Native peoples in jokes. These efforts at wit were deployed in a variety of ways: in published articles and humor sections; in cartoons and illustrations; in practical jokes played upon Native Americans, and later recounted in memoirs; and, one must surmise, in the Indian jokes that circulated word of mouth during the 19th century that yet have staying power today, as evidenced by popular culture and Indian jokes told on elementary school playgrounds and elsewhere. In retrospect, the topic deserves significant consideration.

In terms of historiography, historians have devoted little attention to the study of humor in general, and less still where Indian–White relations are concerned. Perhaps the reason for the dearth of scholarship is the conflicting notion of the serious scholar studying what might be perceived as frivolous subject matter. Exceptions do exist, however. In his presidential address at the 1989 meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, James Axtell took up the subject of humor in the history of Indian–White relations that held something amusing for one or both groups, as well as those moments that appear now comic to us, sometimes with tongue in cheek and at other times with keen scholarly insight and purpose. In his address, he offered valuable insight to anyone thinking about humor in the past: “Intentional humor usually and situational humor always carry a serious message. It behooves us to pay attention to it, and to the spirit in which it was conveyed” (Axtell, 1990, p. 110-111). What Axtell was reminding his audience of, both explicitly and implicitly, is that humor, as much as any other historical source, tells us something valuable about those who wrote or uttered the words—and one hastens to add, what they thought their audience would find amusing. Axtell did not, however, consider the nefarious uses of humor, in particular in cases of genocide. Indeed, few have, and those have been scholars outside of the discipline of history, working elsewhere in the social sciences, and those interested in humor as it relates to its use by the targets of genocide, including those in North America (Perry, 2000) and Europe (Lipman, 1991).

Based on an examination of cognitive dissonance and dissonance-reduction theories in conjunction with the historical record, one finds important connections between genocide and the use of humor, particularly those to be found in the Native American genocide in California. Humor was used to help relieve cognitive dissonance within the perpetrators of and bystanders to the genocide. By making Native American humanity a joke and trivializing their demise as something to be laughed away, genocide could proceed with fewer misgivings associated with brutalizing and killing human beings. Such humor belittled Indian humanity and instead showed them as animals or at best laughable caricatures of humans rather than humans, not to be lamented but snickered at in their extinction. Evidence of this pattern abounds.

One of the primary outlets for humor directed against Native Americans was the popular press; and since we cannot access the jokes told in bars, while panning for gold, out riding a range, or in any of the other oral transmissions of the day, it is the central form of evidence considered in this essay. Luckily for the historian, the number of newspapers operating in California alone was remarkable. The forces of conquest and the subsequent gold rush that created the state of California unleashed conditions ripe for the spread of newspapers. Hundreds of thousands of new Californians hungered for news from home, as well as coverage of the nascent state. Indian affairs were of particular interest to many. The area admitted as the state of California on September 9, 1850, was populated by approximately 150,000 Native people, numbers that made the threat of savage Indians a primary concern for many Euro-Americans. Newspapers in California carried many stories associated with Indian affairs. ⁷ Stories of Indian depredations against Whites and repeated calls for the government to do something were commonplace in the 1850s and 1860s. Many papers counseled the government and citizenry to undertake a permanent solution to the problem in the form of outright extermination. Other editors defined the way the extermination might best be handled: “[We] hope the government will render such aid as will enable the citizens of the North to carry on a war of extermination until the last red skin of these tribes has been killed” (Marysville Daily Evening Herald, August 12, 1853). The informal plan was not for a centrally executed, state-directed genocide, but one carried out by the citizenry at large with the support of the government. And humor was a peripheral but important part of the way Indians and their extermination were conceived of by the Euro-American population.

The forms of trivializing humor used fall broadly into five categories: sardonic comparisons of Native Americans to Whites to show Indian inhumanity and uncivilized nature; trivialization of the mistreatment, suffering, and murder of Native peoples; presenting racist stereotypes of Indians in association with other racist stereotypes applied to non-White, non-Native peoples; dehumanizing Indians through euphemism and dysphemism; and entertainment, sport, and practical jokes targeting Native Americans. As one will note in the examples that follow, oftentimes the attempts at wit or humor fell into more than one of these categories.

One type of humor often employed was founded in showing how ridiculous the notion of Indian humanity was, usually through the use of sarcasm and anecdotal “proof” of the inability of Indians ever to be the equal of White men in morals, language, dress, diet, or general civility. Perhaps the most common expression of this sort of humor directed at Native Americans was the funny story or joke predicated on the use of Pidgin English. ⁸ The use of Pidgin English seems, at its core, designed to make fun of the idea of Indians as being incapable of equality with Whites, and being instead capable of only a kind of imperfect mimicry or parroting of civilized language. According to a Sacramento newspaper, Indians constituted a gibbering horde that sometimes descended on the town. The paper shared an example of the “broken English” spoken: “Injun lub whisky” and “Injun get drunk—bad—me no lub whisky—no get drunk—ugh—you sabe—there my wife” (Sacramento Union, February 27, 1855). This was a common practice, it being common in print to the point it almost seems as if it was obligatory that any communication between Indians and Whites be recounted in this form. Did Native Americans speak in broken English? Undoubtedly many did. Yet others, even White men, did not speak with perfect diction, and the papers carried no coverage of this, except when one runs across the same type of racist humor being directed at African Americans, Asian immigrants, and Hispanics in California. Similarly, popular culture perpetuated and continues to perpetuate this stereotype. It is clear that Euro-Americans were mimicking and mocking what they thought Indians spoke like, not actually how Native Americans spoke English. Nonetheless, this mockery of language pattern was a central feature of making Native people the butt of jokes; certainly, this type of humor, more so than any other, often crossed into one or more of the other categories of derogatory humor under discussion here.

Sometimes humor predicated on the inability of Indians to speak a civil tongue was combined in attempts at wit using claims about their general incivility. In an example from Quincy, California, an author combined the use of Pidgin English with a claim about the silly, surreal world Indians lived in:

A “big Injun” having strayed from the camp, found himself lost on trying to return to it. After looking about, he drew himself up and exclaimed, “Injun lost!” but recovering himself, and feeling unwilling to acknowledge such shortsightedness, continued, “No, Injun not lost—wigwam lost”; (striking his breast) “Injun here!” (Quincy Union, February 20, 1864)

In this example, it is clear that both the cadence and word choice employed are meant to be funny, as is the recalcitrance of the Indian in question to recognize reality. The author of the anecdote implies that if an Indian speaks English, it is a poor rendition of it, a cheap copy of sorts. Other examples exist. In an anecdote meant to be funny published in the San Andreas Independent and reprinted in a Sacramento newspaper, another author described “Four Digger Indians” who had been given nearly a month in jail for trespassing and the destruction of a fence. The Indians, following their release, were asked about the experience. One of the Indians summed up the experience, saying, “[Jail] mucha bueno, heap like ’im, me!” (Sacramento Union, September 27, 1860). Who would be happy to be in or have been in jail? Again the use of this type of perspective was designed to show the laughable difference between civilized men and uncivilized Indians. To encourage anyone to think otherwise might suggest a connectedness between human beings, which would create dissonance and stand in the way of the marginalization or even the killing of Indians. This type of humor was also employed in mockery of Indian appearance almost as much as speech.

How Indians dressed, particularly when they wore articles of non-Native clothing, was a source of derogatory humor that helped relieve any worries that Indians and non-Indians shared much in common on any human or civilizational level. In “A Fancy Digger,” an author exhibited surprise when “one of the young aborigine ladies” appeared in fashionable clothing that was both “new” and “clean” (San Joaquin Republican, 1858). The tone of the article was one of incredulity, verging on the implication that the girl would have to have been seen to be believed. This type of story was not unique for the time, or limited to females. According to one Sacramento newspaper, there were many opportunities for Euro-Americans to realize how different Indians were just by observing them, as evidenced in this story called “A Dressed Indian”:

To one who has crossed the plains, or been much among the Indians, there is something extremely ludicrous in seeing one of them sporting the cast-off toggery of a White man. Our city is visited daily by the remnants of a Digger tribe, whose sole occupation appears to be the eating of watermelons and searching closely in the vicinity of the curbs, to pick up such articles as may chance to have been cast there by the purchaser of a new suit. After one of these perambulating excursions, they repair to the shade of a large sycamore on the levee, where they dress themselves, after the most ornamental fashion permitted by the quality of the goods in their possession; and again repair to the public thoroughfares to make an exhibition of their spoils. A muchacho, for instance, whose age embraces the cycle of 15 or 16 years, puts on the coat of a man six feet in height, deficient a sleeve, having lost its buttons, and genteel in nothing but the length of its skirts, which reach to the ground, and in its collar, which covers the ears. Now imagine one of the old hats thrown from the store of Steph. White, covering the boy’s head—the brim resting upon his shoulders, and in front upon his eyebrows, his feet bare, so much of his countenance as is visible suffused by a broad grin, his hands scaled with dirt, his pantaloons of a dubious character, and the picture is complete. The squaws and old men walk behind this portable figure, to form its perspective, and in the excess of their parental admiration, preserve a stoicism of feature which comports highly with the nature of the great triumph achieved in setting the Digger fashions! (Sacramento Union, September 6, 1863)

This author would have his readers believe that the comicality of the anecdote rests in “Diggers”— the derogatory, racist term often used to describe Indians in California and west of the Rockies in the Great Basin—wearing clothes when they cannot know how or why one would wear them. For the author the manner in which they are worn, not the reason why they are being worn, is everything. The case that Indigenous populations often wore European-style clothing in Native ways and in the context of their cultures perhaps did not cross Euro-American minds. ⁹ The implicit message is that an Indian wearing European-style clothing does so in foolish mimicry of a civilized person, and not for any creditable reason beyond emulating his or her civilized betters. While this may seem a little thing in the scheme of genocide, it is rather a key point: the mass extermination of a population necessitates that the perpetrators see nothing of themselves in their victims—not their language, not their dress. If an Indian is wearing a White man’s clothing, he is doing so only in the most literal sense. He is not in his true Indian form as he does so, but rather is an Indian in White man’s clothing as in the story of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. As one will note, the author is careful to state by way of the collecting done, none of the clothing being worn was made or bought by Indians, but obtained solely through sorting through leavings. Again, to encourage anyone to think otherwise might create dissonance and impede the work of dispossession, marginalization, or killing. Stories such as this one attempted to use humor to instruct readers not to be misled by the way clothing obscured what was really underneath—a “Digger.” Even diet was something to mock, offering yet another opportunity to create dissonance-reducing distinctions between civilized White humanity and uncivilized Indian inhumanity.

Diets varied for California’s Indigenous populations by virtue of geography. In the northwest there was great opportunity for fishing, in the great Central Valley elk and grasshopper abounded, in the south mesquite pods, coastal peoples used both sea and land to feed themselves, and in the southeast, corn grown along the Colorado River was harvested. Acorns and pine nuts, though, were typically the staple that tied the dietary landscape of California’s Native population together. Pine trees and oak trees and scrub offered Native Americans stable sources of sustenance almost everywhere in what became the state of California. Acorns, in particular, were a reliable food source and lasted in storage for long periods if they remained in husk. Native Americans obtained their foods using a variety of strategies: hunting, gathering, fishing, and agriculture (Anderson, 2006), including varieties of irrigated agriculture, transplantation, and dry farming. In these ways, Indigenous peoples in California had survived for thousands of years (Fagan, 2004). Yet Euro-Americans would hardly credit this as evidence of civilization in California, or indeed along the Pacific Coast (Duer & Turner, 2005) or elsewhere in North America when Native Americans were in question. In fact the diet of Indians was another subject of humor designed to show them as inhuman and uncivilized.

According to an article appearing in a San Francisco newspaper, “the funniest performance imaginable” was the sight of “Root Digger Indians” gathering food in the form of grasshoppers. Indians, they pointed out, were convinced grasshoppers were a delicacy they consumed with “exquisite gusto” (San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, March 23, 1858). The Placer Index printed a similar story, this time mocking the consumption of clover. Opening with a disparaging witticism comparing Indians with pigs, the correspondent reported, “At this season of the year these savages chiefly subsist on wild clover.” He then compared the manner of consumption to that of animals grazing in the field, concluding with an anecdote he intended to be witty by way of mocking both Indian speech and their animal nature: “The other day a gentleman who resides in Placerville saw some Indian squaws gathering clover; he inquired of one of them what she intended to do ‘with those weeds?’ Said she in reply—‘Injin mahala heep cow—me heap eat him clover’” (San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, March 31, 1858). The ubiquitous acorn, a staple of diet for many Native people in California, was also the subject of derisive humor. In “‘Acorn Dance’ by the Diggers,” the Marysville Express mixed actual reportage of events with mockery of the Indians gathering for an acorn harvest, attired in “Digger splendor.” The paper ridiculed the ceremony at times, describing its singing as “grunts” and the comic misfortunes of one participant losing his clothing (Marysville Express, March 11, 1861). Encoded in the fabric of these comic anecdotes was something much more sinister than laughing at difference for its own sake: Indians could not speak right, sing correctly, or even eat like human beings. Perhaps worse still, and certainly the great irony here, was the way Euro-Americans participated in creating these conditions.

What newspapers typically failed to mention were the ways non-Native presence had changed the subsistence practices and sources of the Indigenous population. Herds of elk had been exterminated to make way for cattle. Grizzly bears had been hunted to extinction to protect domesticated animals. Freshwater fish populations in rivers had been wiped out by the runoff and discharge of land and riverine mining operations. Native people mocked for always being hungry were starving for a reason beyond their control. They were forced off of their land and away from their regular sources of nourishment, not because of an inherent defect of race or civilization. And starvation, too, was funny. According to the Los Angeles Times, the worst mistake one could make where starving Indians were concerned was to feed them much. This made them “swelled out like a toad” and would make them essentially a pest thereafter, who would eat until sick and then hang around for more. The trick with starving Indians, the Times advised, was to feed them only enough to keep them from actually starving to death, but no more (Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1889). Mocking the misery and suffering related to starvation introduces a connection to yet another discrete category of humor operating in relief of dissonance during the era of genocide, trivializing through humor the outright mistreatment of Native Americans.

Trivializing the mistreatment, suffering, and murder of Native peoples with humor was also routine practice, particularly in the way such humor denied the humanity of Native Americans—and therefore mitigating or eliminating any sense of wrongdoing. Oftentimes, quite serious injustices were dismissed out of hand with a wisecrack or a droll remark. For instance, in a story called “Selling Diggers at Auction” in the Napa Reporter, an author wisecracked about the auction system that was at the heart of an Indian slave system running in northern and southern parts of California in the 1850s and 1860s:

It is said that when a Digger Indian gets drunk in Fresno county, and is fined for it, and happened not to be able to pay the amount (which must generally be the case) he is put up for the auction and sold to the highest bidder—we presume to pay his fine. One was recently sold for $1.25. If this article were marketable, somebody might make a fortune selling drunken Diggers in Napa City; they are plenty enough, but the Digger market is dull. (Napa Reporter, December 20, 1858, as quoted in Heizer & Almquist, 1971, pp. 48-49)

This is flippant language to describe a system of apprenticeship, community service chain gangs, kidnappings, and public auctions of convict labor that created a system of slavery that harnessed the labor of thousands of Native Americans in service of Euro-American health, wealth, and security. An eyewitness, Horace Bell, later recalled of the system in Southern California, “Los Angeles had its slave mart, as well as New Orleans and Constantinople—only the slave at Los Angeles was sold fifty-two times a year as long as he lived.” Bell reported that Indians might be lucky to live for three years if caught up in the system (Bell, 1999, p. 35-36). And if some of these slaves or shiftless savages were to die, they would die unlamented by their non-Indian neighbors, who did not want them, as much as they needed them. As federal agent J. Ross Browne noted sarcastically of Angelinos, “The inhabitants of Los Angeles are a moral and intelligent people, and many of them disapprove of the custom [of auctioning off prisoners] on principle, and hope that it will be abolished as soon as the Indians are all killed off” (J. Ross Browne, quoted in Heizer & Almquist, 1971, p. 49). Clearly, Browne saw the example as a paradox born of dissonance: the belief that slavery was wrong, but allowing the system to exist, even deriving some benefits from it.

The way Native Americans were conceived of as nonhuman is at the heart of this ability to see death as other than tragedy, and murder as something other than illegal or immoral. In an example from the Plumas National, one can see how language describing the death of a Native person lacks any remorse at his passing and, undeniably, makes fun of the case and associates it with the 19th-century Euro-American maxim that “the only good Indian was a dead Indian”: ¹⁰

Another Good Indian—One of the Central Pacific freight cars smashed another Indian on Friday last, and started his soul on its journey to the “home of the fat grasshoppers.” It is said that about two Piutes [sic] per week are killed by the cars in the neighborhood of Truckee and Reno. (Plumas National, June 22, 1872)

As the insouciant tone suggests, the story means to suggest that this death was something to laugh at, and also to commend as a positive development: one less Indian to worry about. And the idea of the locomotive being the engine of change for the fortunes of Indians was not limited to the literal example above. According to one San Francisco newspaper, “The locomotive, the symbol of an all-conquering civilization,” would soon transport Indians to the “happy hunting grounds” if they did not get off the figurative tracks and onto reservations where their last chance to survive resided (San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, May 20, 1868). Moreover, those human beings who had been killed or would be killed in similar instances never entered into these discussions—Indians were not seen as human. By setting aside the humanity of the Native person or persons killed, and instead treating them as inferior or subordinated Other (Said, 1979), this wit may have helped some of those involved in the extermination of Native Americans see them as something other than human. In terms of cognitive dissonance, this type of humor helped to relieve dissonance among Euro-Americans by resolving the tension between the sanctity of human life and the taking of human lives: if Indians were not really humans, there would be nothing to lament in their loss. Moreover, in the way the story was structured, an Indian’s death was a “good” occurrence to report. In fact a newspaper might run a mock poetic epic in celebration of such a theme, as did one Los Angeles paper (Los Angeles Weekly Mirror, October 20, 1885) in “Lo! the Bad Indian”:

Lo, the bad Indian! All the learning fine

Can’t show him what is his and what is mine

He steals the serious cow, the festive mule,

With total disregard of law or rule

Pope called him “poor,” but there are actions which,

If long continued ought to make him rich.

Lo, the bad Indian! Vigor yet he hath

To paint his features for the martial path

To murder children, mother, maid and wife

And cut their scalp locks with the gory knife

Pope called him “poor,” but then the poet had

But little knowledge or he’d called him “bad.”

Lo, the bad Indian! Long his murderous raid

Hath been condoned by Boston’s learned maid,

And, every year, to spoil the maiden’s plea,

He murders age and youth and infancy.

Pope called the Indian “poor,” but doubtless would

Agree that death alone can make him good.

Such humor was a salve to the psychological tensions of dissonance. The author of this doggerel wit intended to dispel “Lo! the Poor Indian” as error. He mockingly criticizes “Boston’s learned maid”—Helen Hunt Jackson—for writing in defense of Indians in books such as Ramona, and English poet Alexander Pope for writing lines such as “Lo! The poor Indian,” as naïve fools. ¹¹ No White man, he implies, who knew an Indian would ever really think he was anything but bad, anything but a murderer, and would not shy from his duty to convert him to goodness by the only means effective: killing him. Phrases such as the “home of the fat grasshoppers” and the sarcasm offered in response to those suggesting Indians were nothing more than savages to be exterminated also suggests to us the importance of euphemism and dysphemism in the trivialization efforts of some 19th-century Euro-Americans to convince their fellows of Indian inhumanity in entertaining ways—ways that also served as dissonance reducers.

In California, name calling where Native Americans were concerned was the norm. At the core of name calling were dysphemistic—derogatory names substituted in place of terms that were neutral or even positive—and euphemistic—understatements or complimentary terms to substitute for an offensive but more accurate expression—terms applied to Native Americans to degrade them or to disguise the disturbing nature of acts perpetrated against them, respectively. In terms of dysphemism, setting aside the word Indian itself as a misnomer, California’s Indigenous people were called many other names, most of them derogatory: “bucks” (males), “squaws” (females), “savages,” “Lo,” “Red Devils,” and “Diggers”—a term related to “Nigger” in its connotation according to some scholars (Trafzer & Hyer, 1999), or perhaps related to root-digging animals according to others (Rawls, 1984)—were used with regularity as part of dehumanizing Native Americans. Newspapers helped reinforce the notions of Indian savagery, depravity, and, ultimately, the doomed nature of the race in both the editorial slant of the story—one will find no 19th-century California newspapers interviewing Native peoples or offering a true account of their cultural perspective—and the casual use of dysphemistic terms. This was done, in particular, through dysphemism mixed with attempts at humor.

Euro-Americans applied dysphemism to Native Americans to deprive them of any semblance of humanity to those contemplating or engaging in their extermination. Affixing an animalized nature to Native peoples in California and elsewhere in the United States was commonplace in the 19th century. Not only was this practice widespread, but the reductive levels of it are astounding. For instance, in a letter, James Brownlow used an appellation assigned to Native Americans that was the epitome of the reductive nature of dysphemism and the ways in which many non-Natives worked to strip Indians of any appearance of humanity, calling them simply, “Lo.” The origin of the term seems to come from cynical wits in the country who believed that “Lo! The poor Indian” had appeared in print to the point that one might just abbreviate it, sarcastically, to “Lo,” without loss of meaning. Brownlow’s letter, which achieved approbation in California by virtue of its reprinting in the Lassen Sage Brush, was originally written by him to teach readers back in Tennessee about “Lo” in California:

I think I have become pretty well acquainted with that poor Indian generally known as Lo. I think if J. Fennimore Cooper could spend two or three weeks with me in the Sacramento Mountains he would cease writing the life of Lo in the shape of cheap novels, or, if he could only see his “lovely Indian maid” wading through the entrails of a coyote or lizard as long as one’s arm, and winding up with a glandered horse head for dessert, he would come to the conclusion that there was more hyena than romance in her nature. (Lassen Sage Brush, June 13, 1868)

Brownlow’s mocking tone and explicit message to readers in California and Tennessee was clear: Indians were filthy animals not to be romanticized, and not to be lamented by the naïve under the spell of authors such as James Fennimore Cooper.

There was little interest in acknowledging the actual names of the Native groups resident in California or the individual Native people described in stories. At best, one might find some efforts to associate Indigenous populations in proximity to geographical locales (e.g., Mill Creek Indians; Deer Creek Indians) as the nearest attempt at accuracy. Mostly, however, how and what spirit to address an Indian in was the product of racist disdain. To wit, the Los Angeles Times, as part of a comedic story about a starving Indian man published in 1889, offered this advice: “You should always call an Indian Jim if you have not been formally introduced, and if you want to jump into his affections with both feet prefix that little word ‘Captain,’ and Mr. Injun is yours for keeps.” Apparently even the hint of respect represented by such an appellation earned from an Indian—whom the Times variably described in the article as “poor as a snake,” the “very embodiment of laziness,” a “hideous creature,” “copper-colored rascal,” and “the child of the forest”—a kind of steadfast affection (Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1889). As this piece illustrates, sometimes this name calling was done in an explicit attempt at humor. As the reference to snakes and creatures attests, Native people were compared to animals in their appearance, behaviors, and lifestyles. This effort at dehumanization of Indians was commonplace, and present from the very beginning of the U.S. occupation of California. Samuel Upham, in his Notes on a Voyage (1849), for example, described California’s “Digger” Indians as living in “burrows in the earth like a prairie dog, and emerges from his den in the spring as fat as a grizzly” (Samuel Upham, quoted in Rawls, 1984, p. 188). Certainly, in the popularization of such ideas, some of the foundational work leading to genocide was accomplished by distilling Native identity into single words or familiar phrases, whether through dysphemism used to degrade the identity and humanity of Native people, helping to lessen or eliminate cognitive dissonance in the Euro-American population engaged in exterminating Indians, or euphemism to take away the ring of evil and immorality of deeds committed against human beings.

Euphemism played a central role in the construction of dissonance-reducing humor. In the aforementioned Plumas National story, by making light of a trip to the “home of the fat grasshoppers” as a way of euphemistically talking about death, tension over the loss of human life is reduced or even avoided altogether as readers begin to think of Indians as something other than human, as through language and humor they are stripped of their humanity. Another oft-repeated euphemism is still remembered by many today: the “happy hunting grounds.” Although we would hardly contextualize it as such today, in the 19th century it was another way of saying something about Indian death without ascribing any kind of humanity to them. Indians were not dying, they were going to the “happy hunting grounds”—where they belonged, being the implicit or even explicit message. An example from the Chico Weekly Courant is instructive: “There is only one effective reservation to send these red devils to, and that is the ‘happy hunting grounds’” (Chico Weekly Courant, October 6, 1866). Not only were Indians not people—dysphemistically being “red devils” instead—but they were to be killed, in print, using a euphemism so as to avoid any dissonant feelings that might arise out a sense of humanity. The depths of inhumanity encouraged in humorous form one finds is horrifying. A case in point is this piece of disturbing wit, deployed in the pages of the always bloodthirsty Chico Weekly Courant: “A Hint—The small pox has killed more Indians in the Humboldt Valley this season, than General Sherman’s troops. . . . Let us take the hint and promote Gen. Small Pox to the head of the Indian Bureau” (Chico Weekly Courant, December 13, 1867). It is likely that to many Euro-Americans of the day this advice was practical rather than diabolical, given the trope of the Indian as member of a dying race (Dippie, 1973; 1982). The Truckee Republican was even more direct; perhaps the best thing Indians could do was to get busy dying:

The Indians hereabouts are a pitiable race of beings. As winter approaches and the frosts pinch, these miserable wretches pick up all the rags and old skins they can find and hang them about their persons. They seem to care little about building fires for their comfort, or are too lazy to make them. All day long [they] may be seen huddled together in groups about town. The colder it is the less they seem to exercise. If there is anything in these Washoe Indians that looks as if they took kindly to civilization, we fail to see it. The sooner they pass away to their “happy hunting grounds” the better. (Truckee Republican, November 16, 1872, reprinted in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, November 22, 1872)

With all the “Diggers” or “red devils” or “Lo”—whether they were “bucks” or “squaws”—traveling to the “happy hunting grounds” or the “home of the fat grasshoppers” after being “chastised” by the White citizenry, one might miss all the blood spilt, bodies mutilated, and rotting human corpses littering the Golden State, hidden in racist euphemism and dysphemism.

Sometimes humor associated with Indians by Whites was overtly racist in ways not limited to solely racially essentializing Native Americans. It was at times bound up in other negative conceptions of race held by Euro-Americans in the 19th century. Since in the 19th century even educated people saw race as something scientific and immutable, rather than the social construction we know it as today, this is perhaps unsurprising to us. A case in point is the racist humor to be found in this bantering exchange published by the Quincy Union, whose editors objected to the progressive attitudes about race expressed in the pages of the San Francisco Tribune on occasion:

Unburied—The two Washoe Indians, who were killed in Beckwourth Valley by a party of American Valley Diggers, are still lying where they were shot. None of the tribe to which they belonged would bury them. (Quincy Union)

Are there no White men in the neighborhood White enough to go and bury them? The Quincy Union is a “conservative” concern. (SF Tribune)

If somebody would black the faces of the dead diggers, and send word to the late editor of the defunct Tribune, we presume that he would, as he is now at leisure, come up from San Francisco for the express purpose of burying them, believing that they were negroes. The Tribune was a howling, shrieking, none-so-good-as-I-am negro-worshipping concern.(Quincy Union, August 4, 1866)

Clearly the widespread racism directed toward African Americans was easily tethered to that directed at Native Americans. In the San Francisco Call, in its children’s section no less, a story titled “Nigger Bill’s Christmas” shows that even in San Francisco—painted as a “none-so-good-as-I-am negro-worshipping concern” above—was far from being an actual promoter of racial toleration and equality. The story revolves around a main character, “Nigger Bill,” who is a dark-skinned Digger Indian who apparently wants to pass himself off as Black so as to avoid association with Indianness. In the end his salvation comes with his rechristening as Willie and his introduction to the story of Jesus by a kindly, presumably White woman (San Francisco Call, December 18, 1898). This type of humor extended beyond fictional farces linking African Americans and Native Americans.

Sometimes factual stories were reported in mock serious or would-be comic tones where non-Whites were involved. The Mariposa Gazette, for instance, ran a story in 1858 concerning the depredations of a bloodthirsty “Mexican” on an “Italian” shopkeeper, and an Indian “buck” and his “squaw.” The Mexican having wronged the Italian and the Indian, the latter tracked the Mexican down and killed him. By the end of the story, written in mock heroic tone, the hapless non-Whites mentioned were dead, on the run, or in jail (San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, March 23, 1858). The implication of the piece was this is what one could expect from non-Whites. In another illustration of racist wit, the Plumas National used bigoted comparisons to argue that keeping California’s Indigenous population alive on reservations was a misguided waste of time. The National asked rhetorically whether or not the White race, if it was going to support inferior Indians, should not then prop up other inferior races. Why not Irish reservations, replete with “whiskey and blankets”? What about Chinese immigrants on reservations stocked with “stale fish and opium”? According to the National, the answer to such propositions and for dealing with the current reality of Indian reservations should be the same, an emphatic no; inferior peoples would either sink and perish or swim up to the level of Whites. According to their view, “lazy, drunken Indians” were kept alive on valuable public lands in defiance of divine providence (Plumas National, September 13, 1873). One paper—perhaps moved by Christmas spirit—even posed the question as to whether or not the Chinese should join Indians in being exterminated as a race in North America, given the “immutable law that seems to demand the destruction of inferior races on this continent” (Wide West, December 25, 1854). This type of rhetorical wit put Euro-Americans at ease, in that it brought attitudes about Indians into consonance with thinking about other non-White races, as well as in allowing them to dehumanize non-Whites in general and allow for their removal or extermination. By making light of the issues to do with race, by associating them with the pseudo-scientific racism of the day, the dissonance created by treating people with inequality in a society allegedly founded on the equality of all men was reduced. It is with the notion of reduction in mind that a final way for reducing dissonance through trivialization can be detected.

Practical jokes and humorous sport with Native Americans as victims were played on the way to California and once there. Both practical jokes and these so-called sports seem to be, in part, efforts at trivializing their existence, showing Indians to be inhuman, comic figures, unworthy of respect. Really, what would be or is more trivializing of humanity than to use a person as a plaything? Ezra M. Hamilton illustrates the way some Euro-Americans used practical jokes, perhaps to dispel their fears of Indians by showing them to be laughable rather than fearsome creatures. Hamilton played practical jokes he later recounted in his memoirs on the way to California, via Fort Laramie, and once in the state. One of Hamilton’s pranks on Native people was predicated on how much they seemed to be attracted by the smell of bacon frying in his camp, located at Fort Laramie. He encouraged the Indians he and his fellows so feared along the trail westward, close to his fire and pan of bacon. Once the Indians had become focused on the sizzling bacon, he held a piece high over the skillet and then let it fall, purposely burning those gathered with hot bacon fat. Hamilton noted the, for him, hilarious result: Indians scattering and hollering, spattered with hot bacon fat (Hamilton, n.d., p. 106). Hamilton did not limit his practical jokes to the trail to California. In 1854, Hamilton played another prank on Indians, this time a Native woman and her companions. Hamilton recalled in his memoir, “One day as I was handling quicksilver there come along about a dozen Indians and squaws. They saw the quicksilver [and] they wanted [it].” Hamilton decided to spoon-feed eight-ounces of quicksilver—liquid mercury—to an old woman squatting next to him. He recalled the comic result of the swallow, saying, “She clapped her hand on her stomach and looked around. The quicksilver had went through her [and now] lay on the sand [below]” (Hamilton, n.d., pp. 158-159, 165). Perhaps the most satisfying outcome for Hamilton and others like him was the relief born of the boogeyman of his nightmares revealed as gullible and ultimately conquerable in the context of his prank. While this might seem to suggest that in some respects this would reveal Indians to men like Hamilton as human beings, rather it revealed Indians to men like Hamilton as defective versions of real Indians, to be detested more, even while being feared less. This is not supposition, though: as early as the accounts of Richard Henry Dana and continuing into the era of the Gold Rush, many had offered up this vision of the wretched California Indian. In this conception of the Indian, the “Digger” of California was primitive and pathetic to the point of being incapable of the savagery of the other American Indian groups on the continent. As the historian James Rawls (1984) has pointed out, “The California Indians, when perceived as obstacles, could be eliminated by savage means because Whites regarded them as creatures of little worth. The Indians’ inferiority seemed so marked that Whites questioned their very humanity” (p. 186).

Hamilton was not the only practical joker showing his disdain for Indians. Another American, an unnamed blacksmith, was working with Hamilton and enlisted him in the role of accomplice:

We had some sport while building this mill. When the blacksmith set up his forge and commenced to work the Indians collected to the number of about fifty or sixty to see him work. He had a large bar of iron to a White heat and laid it on the anvil [with the tongs] and winked to me. I hit it a furious blow with the sledge [hammer]. The sparks flew in every direction. In less time than it takes to write it there was not an Indian to be seen.

Hamilton joked that the ignorant Indians probably thought some “devil or some other evil spirit” attacking them (Hamilton, n.d., p. 152). This “sport” of burning Native Americans bears some resemblance to Hamilton’s earlier bacon fat prank, showing some connections in the ways that Euro-Americans confirmed the lack of humanity and civility in Indians by confirming their view that they were worthy of only scorn. Other versions of “sport” used to degrade or discount Indian humanity were even more disturbing, sometimes even deadly.

According to an account in George Harter’s overland trail diary, while bound for California he and his traveling companions discovered a Native American funerary site. As they passed the body, which was wrapped up and suspended on a platform by poles, one of Harter’s companions used it for target practice. Harter joked about the incident, saying, “The boys were carrying their guns to shoot Indians and one of them tried his hand on this one, but I did not think it hurt him” (Harter, 1864/2003, p. 26). On the surface this seems a terrible desecration of a sacred place; yet on a deeper level it is an example of the ways White men fearing red savages released psychic tensions and coped with dissonance.

Euro-Americans did not limit the games and sport they made of Native Americans to the deceased. In Coulterville, California, a correspondent to the Marysville Gazette reported in an article titled “Killing Off the Diggers—Sport at Coulterville” that they “occasionally have a killing match to otherwise enliven the dull monotony of these times.” The “matches” involved Indians killing Indians, and Whites killing Indians. The correspondent noted the death of a “Digger” in a fight with another Indian, making a quip about how they fought like the Kilkenny Cats—the mythical cats in a funny old Irish story who fought until only their tales were left. In the other “match,” a White man hunted down and shot dead a drunken Indian who had threatened him (San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, September 24, 1858). Based on other accounts, these scenarios were not isolated. In Placerville, two Indians fought to the death, with non-Natives looking on. The Placerville Register flippantly described the contest, noting that following the victory achieved by smashing in his opponent’s head, which sent the deceased to “that favored land where the Indians expects to find muck-a-muck plenty,” the survivor was arrested and thrown in jail—called the “city’s reception room” (San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, August 17, 1858). It is also clear that some form of provocation was not always necessary to get an Indian hunt up: miners sometimes used Native American villages for target practice (Meek, n.d.). And such violence was not limited to or seemingly only a result of gold fever or proximity to the gold fields of central and northern California. Such violence existed far to the south, in communities such as San Diego. According to the San Diego Herald, shooting Indians for sport was common enough that one might think men were taking target practice for duels using Indians in the city’s streets (San Diego Herald, October 7, 1853). Three years later, little had changed in San Diego; indeed, things had degenerated to the point that stoning rather than shooting was taking place. In 1856, a group of men turned on a Native American man in the streets and stoned him to death, apparently without direct provocation and for sport. The Herald noted that similar atrocities would likely “be repeated.” This was undoubtedly because it was “considered fine sport” to kill Indians and that “magistrates don’t trouble themselves about such matters” (San Diego Herald, December 13, 1856). Nor was it necessary for these sports to involve only humans.

According to a story originally appearing in the Shasta Republican, for example, a fight between a grizzly and some Indians was funny yet ultimately unsatisfying: “The Diggers were badly, though not mortally wounded, by the infuriated beast. They saved their lives by playing possum, thus leading Madam Grizzly to believe that her work of death was complete, when in fact it was but half finished” (San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, July 9, 1857). Apparently the bear stopped short of what would have earned it full approbation by the newspaper. As brutal as this may seem, still worse examples exist. In another case, a settler in Marysville set ferocious dogs on a peaceful Native American man and woman who were gathering food. Frank Harrington, seeing an old Indian man and his woman out gathering clover decided to set three dogs on them “for fun” owing to the fact “they were only Diggers.” The man was badly bitten but escaped with his life. The Native woman was ripped to pieces, including the dogs having “torn her breasts off,” and died. Even in its condemnation, the paper admitted that while there was some talk of an arrest, “no doubt it is all talk” (San Francisco Bulletin, May 12, 1859). Perhaps the editors of the Mariposa Gazette might argue that the dogs should be forgiven their part in the murder, as with an 1862 story they ran. A local man was thrown from a horse, landing headfirst in deep mud. Rising from the mud, head covered in it, he was otherwise unscathed. But when he returned to his workplace, his own dog attacked his darkened visage. Perhaps the dog thought he was a “Digger or Chinaman,” quipped the author (Mariposa Gazette, January 14, 1862).

In perhaps what is a unique example, there is some indication that the fun Euro-Americans derived from sports targeting Indians took a gruesome final step: a Native person used as a playing surface. In an 1879 story carried in the Los Angeles Herald, the paper reported that the San Francisco Post had either invented what they thought was a funny story or embellished a true account concerning the murder of an Indian man for the purposes of his body being used as a cribbage board by a group of miners in Utah. When a newspaper in Birmingham, England, printed a story based on it, including an illustration based on the Post’s description of events, the Herald admitted to being heartily perplexed as to why the English paper would take the story seriously (Los Angeles Herald, January 7, 1879). Perhaps the publishers and editors of the Birmingham paper had simply seen the way Native Americans were treated by Americans, and did not put it past them. Or, since the Herald never denied the story, perhaps it was indeed true.

As one reviews the evidence from the 19th century of the ways humor and forms of practical joking were deployed to relieve or reduce dissonance through trivialization, it leaves one with an uncomfortable feeling. This discomfort becomes more acute when one realizes it likely aroused an opposite reaction in those contemporary to the events discussed in this essay: the sense of harmony in Euro-American lives was increased by the relief and release provided by humor. Communities committing genocide or allowing it to be committed had their consciences salved with a good laugh, a smile at a witty remark, or a smirk at an incredulous quip about some softhearted fool proposing Indian humanity. The inhumanities represented in the examples above perhaps seem insignificant in the scheme of genocide. Thinking about the mind-set of 19th-century Euro-Americans and how conflicting notions of morality were brought into consonance with evil acts through trivialization, helps us understand genocide in new ways, and offers us a chance to ask questions about what seem unthinkable acts from a new perspective. How have members of humanity committed inhuman acts in genocides? At least in part, we can say, sometimes they laughed about it.