Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

About This Item:

Title: Native American Experience [California] Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection # of Pages: 5 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-09-03 23:19:46 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 03:38:07 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 03:38:07

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 5  

CHQ 50 (197) Jack D. Forbes Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California at Davis and author of several books in the field. Native American Experience alifornia History to say that Pocahontas “discovered” Britain as to elatt that Cabrillo “discovered” California. The heritage of becttian experience in California goes back thousands of years before Cabri? $ waite it 1542, yet the people who established that heritage, the Ca for me have become the state’s most oppressed and (until recently) mos It is as accurate gotten ethnic group. Jack Forbes not only discusses the plight of en fornia Indians since 1769, but also identifies the sources of een psychological strength in traditional Indian culture awhic : ; ave helpe. the original native Californians to survive against great odas. HE NATIVE American or Indian experience in California divides self naturally into three major eras, one long and two . ative : brief. The first era, that of exclusive Indian occupancy, endure. . . 1 throusand years or more. The second, that of European invasion a ; iry conquest, lasted about one hundred years (1769-1873) hin f colonialism and non-violent Indian resistance, has thus far enc : century, from 1874 to 1971. Comparing the length of these ane a great deal about California’s native experience. The greater pa “ sxperience was wholly pre-European, and the last two me er bhuca brief, although profoundly influential, period in native tere ¥. 1 uite obviously, the nature of the Indian experience was istine’ it ne ese eras. In the first the native people were alone, free to deve op re ty in their own way. The second era saw the Indian people ov en he horror of imperialism and war, and reduced in numbers ou 200,000-300,000 to a mere 20,000. The third period saw t rer ine es climb slowly upward in population to about 501000 att los or part-Indians), but at the same time suffer from rea “ ‘tty, and dominance by a colonial agency (the Bureau ° , nn ; ‘ .). During this period, however, the native experience in 4 worn we idened by the in-migration and birth of at least 7 ac ee‘r parts of the United States and more than 2,000,000 Mexicans ancestry. a The Native American Experience 235 Ironically, then, the changes set off by the European invasion have had the net effect of increasing the numbers of persons of Indian “blood” in California by ten-fold, although almost eliminating, for a time, the native Californians. In any case, it is clear that a summary of the total native American experience in California must encompass, although briefly perhaps, the total Indian expericnce of North America. The first 15,000 years of California’s past can be known and understood only through the medium of the Indian experience and only through the “eves” provided by a profound insight into native American civilization. Archacology, although a very useful science, can provide no more than a grasp of the residue of material culture and skeletal characteristics lefr behind by ancient California. The “flesh,” the “feel” of a living, functioning way of life, can only come by means of knowing Indian people and their socio-political-religious-philosophical systems. Tragic indecd is the fact thar the white invaders tried so hard to destroy the Indian and his civilization that by 1900-1920 (when scientific ethnology really appeared in California) it was exceedingly difficult to know exactl how the people thought and lived a century or a century and a half earlier. Many native societics were literally wiped off the face of the earth and others were represented by only a few deeply shocked, often hostile and distrustful individuals, Nonetheless, in spite of the loss of detailed information for many areas, the broad nature of California civilization can be sketched with a knowledge of general Indian value systems serving to explain otherwise mysterious behavior, Native Californian civilization was of sucha nature that at least five hundred autonomous republics could exist within the present boundarics of California in relative harmony and without imperialism, More significantly, i these republics the fundamental dignity and self-rule of cach individual person was virtually universal. Can we imagine today numcrous republics ‘without armies, living largely at peace with cach other, each without police or other formal instrument of societal coercion? Can we imagine socicties hound together into leagues covering large areas, the links consisting pri‘marily or solely in religion (ceremony-sharing) and kinship, with no formal “international” machinery or “peace-keeping” armies? Can we understand political systems where chicfs and leaders are powerless in a formal sense, depending upon the agreement of the people for all major enterprises? {"1n we imagine systems of decision making where all of the people are in‘olved and where everyone has a right to be heard even if it means that mecet‘ngs drag on and on until consensus is achieved? There can be little question that native Californians (and many other "ative Americans) were profoundly successful society builders, for almost ll of the individual republics were utopias from the perspective of much of