Exterminate Them: Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Enslavement of Native Americans during the California Gold Rush by Clifford E. Trafzer


Exterminate Them: Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Enslavement of Native Americans during the California Gold Rush
Title : Exterminate Them: Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Enslavement of Native Americans during the California Gold Rush
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0870135015
ISBN-10 : 9780870135019
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 177
Publication : First published January 31, 1999

Popular media depict miners as a rough-and-tumble lot who diligently worked the placers along scenic rushing rivers while living in roaring mining camps in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Trafzer and Hyer destroy this mythic image by offering a collection of original newspaper articles that describe in detail the murder, rape, and enslavement perpetrated by those who participated in the infamous gold rush. "It is a mercy to the Red Devils," wrote an editor of the Chico Courier, "to exterminate them." Newspaper accounts of the era depict both the barbarity and the nobility in human nature, but while some protested the inhumane treatment of Native Americans, they were not able to end the violence. Native Americans fought back, resisting the invasion, but they could not stop the tide of white miners and settlers. They became "strangers in a stolen land."

Exterminate Them: Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Enslavement of Native Americans during the California Gold Rush Reviews

  • Harry Allagree

    Suggestion: don't read this book when you feel depressed! In the Preface at the beginning of the book, the editors clearly give the statistics about the indigenous inhabitants of California, whom started coming here in 10,000 B.C. The population by 1846 was c. 120,000. By 1900 -- a little over 50 years -- Native Americans in California numbered about 17,000. That pretty much hints as to what this book is about, along with title. It's a collection of actual newspaper article/notices regarding the treatment of California Indians. It's a horrendous history, not only whites' treatment of them, but the utterly inefficient, negligent, outrageous and illegal non-action of state & federal "leaders", from the beginning of the state in 1850 on, with regard to the indigenous peoples. This is not a history which Californians can be proud of.

  • Jan

    the authors touch upon the complexities and show how Indians and new (European) immigrants arrive or are born in a situation of enduring conflict, coming to see either red or white skin as evil, not understanding the history of their moment. Indian raiders on horseback? Not the original thing, more a mirror of European culture. Yet at times this more deserving story gives way to a new myth, that of the good and ultimately victorious Indian, seemingly unscathed.

    I really like the sort of study it is: low to the ground, casualties with names rather than mere numbers... more of a cultural analysis than another history saying "how it really was", although we only get the white man's view - which is the one that interests me the least