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Free Soil, Unfree Labor [Cave Johnson Couts] (20 pages)
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Page: of 20
354 Pacific Historical Review
islature in 1860 voted instead to enlarge its scope and effectively sanction many of its excesses. Introduced by assemblyman
Jonathan T. “Juan Jose” Warner, a wealthy ranchero from Southern
California, the amended version of Section 3 transformed the custodial arrangement for Indian minors into a system of indentured
servitude that, under the guise of “apprenticeship,” included not
only Native American children but also adult Indians “held as prisoners of war” or determined by the courts to be vagrants. Transferring supervisory powers to county and district judges rather than local justices of the peace, the revised statute now required that
employers train their Indian charges as apprentices “to trades, husbandry, or other employments.” In the case of apprenticed minors,
indentures now could be obtained by employers without the actual
presence of “the parents or friends of the child” in court. Instead,
employers had only to convince the courts that they already had obtained “the consent of such parents or person or persons having the care
or charge” of the child [emphasis added]. This significant weakening
of the original consent language permitted whites who somehow
had Indian children in their possession to present themselves before the courts as legal guardians with the right to indenture their
charges either to themselves or to others, usually for a price.®
Warner’s amendment also enabled employers to retain Indian
minors beyond their age of majority. In the cases of those indentured before the age of fourteen, terms of service were extended to
the ages of twenty-five for males and twenty-one for females. For
those indentured between the ages of fourteen and twenty, the respective limits were set at ages thirty and twenty-five. Finally, for
adult Indians entering into an “indenture of apprenticeship,” the
8. The Statutes of California Passed at the Eleventh Session of the Legislature, 1860 (Sacramento, Calif., 1860), 196-197; Lillian A. Williamson, “New Light on J. J. Warner,” Historical Society of Southern California, Annual Publications, 13 (1924), 21. J. J. Warner's bill was
adopted as a substitute for a previous assembly bill introduced by Lewis Burson of Humboldt County. See Journal of the Assembly of California, Eleventh Session, 1860 (Sacramento,
Calif., 1860), 196, 469, 631, 702; Rawls, Indians of California, 91; and Pamela A. Conners,
The Chico to Round Valley Trail of Tears (Willows, Calif., 1993), 8. Beginning in 1858, California permitted the binding of non-Indian minors as apprentices, clerks, and servants.
With the consent of their parents or legal guardians, non-Indian boys and girls could be
contractually bound to employers until they reached the respective ages of twenty-one
and eighteen. In terms of servant protections and employer obligations, however, the
non-Indian apprenticeship law contrasted dramatically with Warner’s amendment to the
Indian Act. See The Statutes of California Passed at the Ninth Session of the Legislature, 1858
(Sacramento, Calif., 1858), 134-137.
Cave Couts and Indian Labor
law established a fixed term of ten years. As in the case of the original Indian Act of 1850, employers controlled all the earnings of
their charges and were not required to provide them with any compensation upon the completion of their service.°
Meanwhile, the original Indian Act provided another important means to obtain involuntary labor: the leasing of prisoners convicted of petty crimes or arrested for vagrancy. Under Section 14,
white employers could secure the custody of any Indian found guilty
of a crime “punishable by fine” simply by paying the prisoner’s penalty and court costs. The employer then retained his prisoner’s services for a term fixed by the local justice of the peace. Prisoners received no earnings from their keepers, who were obligated only to
provide food, clothing, and humane treatment. Similarly, Section 20
decreed that any unemployed Native American “found loitering
and strolling about, or frequenting public places where liquors are
sold, begging, or leading an immoral or profligate course of life,
shall be liable to be arrested on the complaint of any resident citizen” and brought before either a rural justice of the peace or the
mayor or recorder of an incorporated city. If the Indian was found
to be a vagrant, local authorities were required “to hire out such vagrant within twenty-four hours to the best bidder” for “the highest
price that can be had, for any term not exceeding four months.” Under Section 20, public auctions of Indian workers became: common
spectacles in some parts of gold rush California.'®
While the Indian Act of 1850 thus gave explicit approval to Indian convict leasing and indentured servitude, some of its other
provisions granted tacit legalization to debt peonage and slavery.
For example, the ability to track down, seize, and discipline absconding debtors, so essential to the enforcement of peonage, was
effectively granted by sections 11 and 16. The former permitted
whites to redress any “unlawful offence” committed against them by
an Indian. Although whites were legally barred from taking justice
into their own hands, they nevertheless had the right to arrest offending Indians “without process” [emphasis added] and bring them
before a justice of the peace for trial and punishment. Under Sec9. The Statutes of California, 1860, pp. 196-197.
10. The Statutes of California, 1849-1850, pp. 409-410; Horace Bell, Reminiscences
of a Ranger: Early Times in Southern California (1881; Norman, Okla., 1999), 34-36; and
J. Ross Browne, “The Coast Rangers: A Chronicle of Events in California, Part 2: The Indian Reservations,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 23 (Aug. 1861), 306-307.
355