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Hawaiian History in Northern California (April 2004) (24 pages)
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Page: of 24
sense they were very much alike. Both
the California Indians and the
Hawaiians lived in accordance with
nature as opposed to the EuroAmerican notion that the frontier was
an inexhaustible resource to be
manipulated at a profit.
Indians along the Sacramento
and Feather Rivers were excellent
fishermen and so were the Kanakas.
Steven Powers, one of California’s first
ethnographers, observed that the
indigenous people of northern
California, “were almost amphibious
and rival the Kanakas in their capacity
to endure prolonged submergence.”
Racial prejudice was also a
factor that isolated Indians and
Kanakas, particularly during the gold
rush and the years that followed.
Indians, Chinese, Kanakas, Hispanics,
Blacks, Jews and others were
considered exotic and therefore
treated differently by Whites. In
response to the large Hispanic
population in the mines of the San
Joaquin River watershed (the Southern
Mines) the California legislature
approved a Foreign Miners Tax in April
of 1850. In 1856 the tax was
readjusted to $4 a month where it
remained until 1870 when it was
determined to be unconstitutional.
Between 1854 and 1870 “foreigners”
paid $4,919,536 in Foreign Miners Taxthe Chinese paid an estimated 98% of
that amount.
From the Indian perspective they
were all foreigners, but by 1850
California was already part of the
United States. Most of the foreigners
(non-Americans) in the mines were
from the British Isles but it is unlikely
that they ever paid the Foreign Miners
Tax it was the miners with the darker
skin who paid it. Furthermore, the tax
Sutter County Historical Society 10
News Bulletin
was collected by often corrupt local
lawmen working on a commission basis.
On September 21, 1850 the Sacramento
Transcript reported an incident at
Kanaka Dam, on the Yuba River, in
which the collector refused the money
offered but instead took the claim,
then “the claims taken from the
Kanakas were given to these other
foreigners.”
During 1851 and 1852 Indian
agents who represented the U. S.
Government made eighteen treaties
with the Indians of California for
reservations that comprised 1/14 of the
total land in the state (8.5 million
acres). None of those treaties were
ever ratified.
Instead the government chose a
policy of Indian Removal to regional
reservations. In the summer of 1863,
hundreds of Indians from Yuba and
Butte counties were gathered together
for relocation by the U. S. government.
Captain Augustus W. Starr and 23
cavalrymen of Company F, Second
Infantry, California Volunteers,
marched the Indians from Camp Bidwell
to Nome Cult farm in Round Valley,
Mendocino County. In his journal,
Captain Starr described some of the
difficulties:
From Sept. 4-18 four hundred
and sixty-one hapless people
were forced to march one
hundred miles, some of it over
terrain so steep that horses
could not pull wagons along.
Many of them could not stand
the pace, and at Mountain House
on Sept. 14, one hundred fifty
two of them collapsed and could
go no further.
April 2004