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Early California Laws and Policies Related to California Indians (2002) (51 pages)
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Page: of 51
Petitioner therefore prays that Indentures may be made in accordance with
said act and the said boy forthwith apprenticed to petitioner until he shall
attain the age of thirty years.”
The County Judge, Robert Robinson, approved and signed the document with the
notation: “Boy indentured as provided by law.”””’
In 1971, Robert Heizer and Alan Almquist published the findings of their review of 114
indentures dated from 1860 to 1863, located in old county court files in Eureka,
California. In addition to publishing the name, probable age, period of indenture and/or
age indentured to, Heizer and Almquist summarize the data:
Ages of 110 persons indentured range from two to fifty, with a
concentration of 49 persons between the ages of seven and twelve. Seven
are listed as “taken in war” or prisoners of war’—this notation refers to
children five, seven, nine, ten, and twelve years of age. Four children of
ages eight, nine ten, and eleven are listed as “bought” or “given.” Ten
married couples were indentured, some of them with children. Three
individuals seem almost too young to have been so treated—Perry,
indentured in September 1860 at the age of three; George, indentured in
January 1861 at the age of four; and Kitty (November 1861), also four
years of age.”
Some of the indentures cited by Heizer and Almquist were made after the 1863
amendment that repealed Section 3 of the 1850 Act.”
Appendix 4 of this report is a copy of an article of indenture, located in the records of
Humboldt County, published in the Sacramento Daily Union on February 4, 1861.
Accounts of Kidnapping and Selling of Indians
The following are accounts published in California newspapers as legal notices and
articles from 1855 to 1864. These articles document incidents of kidnapping and selling
of California Indian children.
Alta California 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.’
10 California Research Bureau, California State Library