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Domesticate or Exterminate - California Indian Treaties Unratified & Made Secret in 1852 (1975) (8 pages)
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Page: of 8
1egion, living according to the demands of various climates
and food supplies. Living styles differed from one triblet
to another. Although many Indians had common characteristics, their cultures were distinct.
As time passed, and as Johnston increased his travels,
he changed his recommendation from establishing depots
to establishing military reserves, upon which the Indians
would live, receiving protection and subsistence from the
federal government The sub-agent influenced the nature
of the O.I.A.’s instructions to the California Indian Commissioners. His reports also contained the problems which
new Indian Commissioners would eventually confront: the
impossibility of treating with all the Indians sincethey were
part of scattered, nomadic, family groups or triblets.
There was no Single tribe with a political structure that
governed all the Indians, or a charismatic leader who
influenced the behavior of all the California Indians. There
were language barriers--over one hundred dialects spoken.
Furthermore, there were degrees of ‘‘civilization’’--mission
Indians and ‘‘wild Indians.’’ The white population was
chaotic, and the new government was inefficient and ineffective, other than exterminating Indians. Most miners
and many short-term emigrants were not committed to
building communities, nor did they believe the Indians
had rights. The Indians were non-people, thus the situation of aggressions and hostilities against them.
A primary reason for the conflicts between the Indians
and whites was cultural comparisions or ethnocentrism.
According to native-American historian, Jack Forbes,
the Indian culture in California represented ‘*15,000 years
of effort to create a value system of dignity and self-rule of
each individual person in a true community that embraced
the beauty and harmony of a universal God.’’ (30) However, the Indians’ values and spiritual qualities were not
visible to the white settlers who believed that they had a
conspicuous culture that emulated their value system and
spiritual qualities; the Indians displayed no tangible evidence. The result of comparison of cultures, in the sense of
always strengthening one’s own civilization, was the destruction of the Indian.
A French journalist, Etienne Derbec, who traveled .
throughout most of California between 1850 and 1897, ob.
served in 1850 what he believed to be cultural nihilism.
Aware to the point of self-consciousness, he concluded
-12( .at the ‘‘natives were savages’’ who lived in a manner (
most repulsive to civilized man. He used communism as
his reference point but without the benefit of an absorbing
life among the California Indians:
The Indians practice communism in its entirety, in
most rigorous application. Everything belongs to everyone, nothing belongs to each. It is this principle
which encourages them to steal what they like, not
believing that they are doing wrong, but, to the contrary, acting properly, constantly driven by the only
law which they recognize--the satisfaction of their
desires. Communism places the Indian under the exclusive dominion of the stomach, making him today
what he was the day after creation. The Indian belongs to himself, he is his own, he possesses himself, he governs himself; if he acts like an animal,
he at least acts as a free animal; he has the right to
have a wish and carry it out. He is unprincipled,
without religion, without morals. (31)
Derbec’s comparison was superficial and, like other comparisons, was the rationalization for destroying ‘‘worthless Indians.”’
Living by the law of necessity, survival of the fittest,
and capricious whims, many settlers used two standards
when they observed Indians: white man’s culture and Eastern Indian culture. The result was the ‘‘DIGGER INDIAN
SYNDROME,”’ According to emigrant letters and journals,
the Eastern Indians were ‘“‘stately, tall, handsome people
wearing their hair short and being exceptionally clean.
There were many pretty brunettes, chiefs, kings, and religious leaders.’? These Indians lived in well constructed
and permanent houses, depended on agriculture and livestock. They also exhibited excellent craft and enterprise
in attacking their enemies, and they possessed an ‘‘ability to transmit from one generation to another a strong,
national blood.’” (32)
In comparison, the California Indians were a lewd,
dirty, and non-productive people who represented ‘ devolution from the noble savage to the digger brute. ’ This
view, which produced an emotional response like Indian
extermination or removal, appears in many journals and
letters:
-13-