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Free Soil, Unfree Labor [Cave Johnson Couts] (20 pages)
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Page: of 20
Free Soil, Unfree Labor:
Cave Johnson Couts and the
Binding of Indian Workers in
California, 1850-1867
MICHAEL MAGLIARI
The author is a member of the history department at California State University, Chico.
Although it prohibited chattel slavery, California permitted the virtual enslavement of
Native Americans under the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.
Scholars have described some of the key components of the Indian Act, but none has
provided a systematic examination of the law's labor provisions or examined how individual employers actually used the law. This article does both by offering a careful
survey of the Indian Act, followed by a detailed case study focusing on Cave Couts,
the owner of Rancho Guajome in San Diego County. The Couts example reveals that
the 1850 Act did not simply legalize the exploitation of Indians as prisoners and indentured “apprentices.” Perhaps more importantly, it also preserved the system of debt
peonage that had flourished in California under Mexican rule. Not until after the
Civil War did California become a truly free state.
In the celebrated gold rush year of 1849, California reignited the nation’s smoldering sectional dispute over slavery by applying for admission to the Union as a free state. The ensuing
firestorm was brought under control only after Congress successfully patched together the elaborate and controversial Compromise
of 1850. Ironically, by the time Congress and President Millard Fillmore finally granted California’s troublesome request in September 1850, the newly admitted Golden State had already established
its own racially based system of unfree labor. Although it had forthrightly rejected the South’s “peculiar institution,” the new “free
state” of California did not hesitate to craft its own code of compulsory labor under the notorious 1850 Act for the Government and
Protection of Indians. For most of the next two decades, the Indian
Act made a mockery of California’s free state credentials by legalizing an array of unfree labor forms with which employers could bind
Native American workers. Primarily used to satisfy the state’s high
Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 73, No. 3, pages 349-389. ISSN 0030-8684
©2004 by the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association. All rights reserved.
Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions,
University of California Press, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. 349