Excerpt by Pamela Nagler
Published 11/17/2021 6:00am
Even though California entered the Union as a ‘free soil state’ rather than as a ‘slave state,’ California’s state legislators immediately set to work to install Native American slavery in such a way as to not arouse dissension from the abolitionists back East. Simply stated, Native American slavery in the U.S. was simply not viewed in the same way as Transatlantic African slavery.
Under California’s vagrancy and indentureship laws, the Anglo-Americans kidnapped, bought, sold and received ‘proprietorship’ over men, women and children. Children were the easiest target - more malleable, and less likely to run away. After a massacre (and there were plenty in those days), ruthless white men would scoop up the orphans for sale, trade or personal use. Women were sought after as well - as one observer stated, “for reasons of labor and lust.” Often, the men were simply slaughtered.(However, that said, there is plenty of evidence of captive men laboring on ranches for no pay.)
For sure, Los Angeles had its auction block, where Native labors were bought and sold 52 weeks a year, but the slavery enacted under California’s so-called ‘apprenticeship’ or ‘indentureship’ laws was closer to what we would today call human trafficking rather than the chattel slavery of the South - not exactly slavery de jure, but certainly slavery de facto.
Though California’s slave trade is little known and rarely discussed, it was was enormous, and its effects can only be roughly estimated. Contemporary historian Andrés Reséndez in his ground-breaking book, The Other Slavery, wrote that according to one estimate: “this act may have affected as many as twenty thousand California Indians, including four thousand children kidnapped from their parents and employed primarily as domestic servants and farm laborers.”
However, not all children were ‘kidnapped’ - ruthless men often slaughtered their parents, their families, their people and took them captive.
Much went unreported - slavery belongs in a shadow world of its own - however, there are plenty of newspaper and court reports, Native testimony and official documents submitted by Indian agents to substantiate the magnitude of it:
“Ready Gain”
Northern California Colusa County pioneer Henry Clay Bailey wrote in 1897 about what happened in his region in the early years just after U.S. takeover. He explained that the ‘kidnappings’ often began with slaughtering the men, and sometimes the women in a Native encampment:
“Not many of the present generation of Californians know that in the early ’50’s a regular slave trade was carried on in the mountains bordering the upper Sacramento Valley, from Clear Lake to Stony Creek.
Vicious and desperate characters, for the ready gain to be obtained by the trade, would locate a small band of Indians, make a sudden dash upon the camp, revolvers in hand, shoot as many of the men as possible, and sometimes the women, too, and scatter the rest of the band. The raiders would then catch all the boys and girls between eight and fourteen years of age who had remained near the camp.
Then they would start out for a market, perhaps to fill orders they had already obtained. These men would stop at nothing in their greed for gain, and in their eyes their captives were legitimate merchandise.”
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”A Charitable Act”
Ranchers and cattlemen hired men to kill the adults in a Native rancheria or village, before dispersing the children among themselves, which they declared an ‘act of charity.’ Sacramento Times, March 5, 1853, Exciting News from Tehama – Indian Thefts - Terrible Vengeance of the Whites:
“In Colusa County, local stockmen Thomas and Toombs hired men for $100 a month to ‘hunt down and [k]ill the Diggers, like other beasts of prey…Captain Rose took one child. Mr. Lattimer another, and the others were disposed of in the same charitable manner among the party.’”
Note that the editors likened the Native to “beasts of prey” and used the derogatory racial epithet, “digger.” By dehumanizing California’s indigenous people, it made it that much easier to justify their slaughter and enslavement.
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“Stealing and Selling young Indian boys and girls”
Often, these men who killed the adults, killed them in order to obtain their children for sale. The Daily Alta, San Francisco, 1855:
“One of the most infamous practices known to modern times has been carried on for several months past against the aborigines of California. It has been the custom of certain disreputable persons to steal away young Indian boys and girls, and carry them off and sell them to white folks for whatever they could get.
In order to do this, they are obliged in many cases to kill the parents, for low as they are on the scale of humanity, they [the Indians] have that instinctive love of their offspring which prompts them to defend them at the sacrifice of their lives.”
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”Abduction Attempt”
Kidnappings often occurred as a result of warfare, but this article revealed that the attempted abduction of a Native woman or child could happen at any time. Sacramento Daily Union, 1857:
“some white men near Yreka attempted to carry off the squaw of one of the Indians in the vicinity. Her husband interfered, and was knocked down and beaten by the abductors.”
Note the pejorative use of the epithet, “squaw.”
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“Bright Little Specimens”
This newspaper article reads like an advertisement for native children. Sacramento Daily Union, 1857:
“The Pitt River volunteers have returned to Yreka. carrying with them a number of native children who were given to different families in that place. The Union says some were bright little specimens and no doubt will be of much benefit to those who raise and care for them.”
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“To the Highest Bidder”
This article spoke admiringly of the system that delivered ‘delinquent’ Indians to the highest bidder. Marysville Weekly Express, 1859:
“They have a singular way of dispensing justice to Indians in Fresno County. An Indian sentenced for any delinquency, to be imprisoned for a certain time, to labor, to the highest bidder. The system, naively remarks a paper in Mariposa, works admirably, though we do not know, of its being practiced in any other county.”
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“Indians [were] being hunted for their children”
News of this shameless trade in children reached the East Coast, and was brought to the Senate floor in 1860. The Senate officially condemned California for allowing this practice. However, distracted by the looming secession of the Southern states over African-American slavery, the US Senate took no direct action.
The Boston Transcript in 1860 printed a scathing expose on the child slave trade written by one of their newspaper correspondents. The author noted that in order to capture these children, who sold for between $50 to $100, the slavers had to ‘‘make war on the Indians.’’ He reported that he ‘‘stopped at one house on the trail in the deep gorges of the mountains, and saw six poor naked urchins who had been recently captured.’’
Further, he reported that the man who held these children was a ‘‘brutal rascal [who] pointed to one boy and said, with the greatest coolness imaginable, that he ‘had killed his daddy yesterday, and thought he was not quite big enough to kill, so he brought him in,’ and showed us a huge knife with which he had slaughtered the unresisting native.’’
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“Loathe to Part with their Offspring”
In an article in the March 1, 1860 Humboldt Times, the author lamented that there were not more indigenous children to work in the homes of the settlers, "but the Indians have been hitherto loath to part with their offspring at such ages as would make them most susceptible of training.”
As if it were a stretch of the imagination that parents would not want to part with their children.
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Sexual Captivity
An editorial in the Sacramento Union, 1860, decried the sex slave trade:
“The most disgusting phase of this species of slavery is the concubinage of creatures calling themselves white men with squaws throughout various portions of the State. The details of this portion of the ‘apprenticeship’ system are unfit to commit to paper.”
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“For Purposes of Labor and Lust”
This editorial made it explicit that Indians were not just traded as servants, but also for sex. Marysville Appeal, 1861:
“it is from these mountain tribes that white settlers draw their supplies of kidnapped children, educated as servants, and women for purposes of labor and lust…
there are parties in the northern portion of the state whose sole occupation has been to steal young children and squaws from the poor Diggers who inhabit the mountains, and dispose of them at handsome prices to the settlers who, being in the majority of cases unmarried but at housekeeping, willingly pay $50 or $60 for a young Digger to cook or wait upon them, or $100 for a likely young girl.”
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For the Children’s “Protection”
George H. Woodman was arrested for kidnapping thirteen (or sixteen, by some reports) young Indians, with the intent to sell them. However, he was both discharged and exonerated because he made the case that if he didn’t ‘employ’ them - others would, and that he ‘protected’ the children from unscrupulous dealers. The Sacramento Union and Mendocino Herald, 1863 stated that Woodman claimed that living next to an Indian rancheria, he often “employed several of the natives and protected their children and has thus interfered with the speculating purposes of other parties.”
“When they find a rancheria well stocked with young Indians, [they] murder in cold blood all the old ones”
In 1862, the Alta California republished an article from the Ukiah Herald:
“Here is well known there are a number of men in this county, who have for years made it their profession to capture and sell Indians, the price ranging from $30 to $150, according to quality. Some hard stories are told of those engaged in the trade, in regard to the manner of the capture of the children. It is even asserted that there are men engaged in it who do not hesitate, when they find a rancheria well stocked with young Indians, to murder in cold blood all the old ones, in order that they may safely possess themselves of all the offspring.”
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Runaway Captives
Captive slaves escaped, or attempted to escape. After disclosing that one young captive who had been held against her will by a US military officer and his family had managed to escape, the article explained that the captives were not always the perfect slaves that the white settlers had hoped for. Humboldt Times and Maysville Appeal 1861:
“Several instances have occurred lately of Indian apprentices absconding from the parties to whom they have been indentured. One young Squaw that been in service for some months in the family of Capt. Tomlinson, ran away a few days ago, taking wearing apparel, some forty dollars in money and and other valuables which she had stolen from other members of the family. Experience teaches that the natives do not, as a general rule, become reliable servants. Each individual who has one, will of course insist theirs is trustworthy, until the contrary is proven.”
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Reward Offered for Runaway Slaves
When children ran away, their captors would sometimes run a public notice in the newspaper, offering a reward. Marsyville Daily Appeal, 1861:
$50
REWARD
LOST
TWO INDIAN GIRLS, ONE ABOUT
Ten, the other fourteen years old. The oldest
Is tattooed on her cheeks and chin. Both had on dark
Calico dresses, and the hair of each was cut close.
Any Information that will lead to their recovery will be
Liberally rewarded: and any person returning them to
Me shall receive the reward above named.
J.H. WRIGT
Plaza, Marysville
Pamela Casey Nagler, Pomona-born, is an independent scholar, currently conducting research on California’s indigenous people, focusing on the Spanish, Russian, Mexican and US invasions between 1769 and the 1860s. The point of studying this history is to tell us how we got here from there.
