There is some evidence of Paleo-Indian habitation in select locations of California, 12000 to 8000 years before the present. Approximately 8000 years ago, as the large game animals associated with the Ice Age disappeared, people responded gradually by adopting a more complex pattern of hunting-and-gathering based on more numerous vegetable resources and smaller game animals. Rather than being generally nomadic, as Paleo-Indians had been, these Archaic people moved systematically within smaller geographical regions in order to appropriate plants and animals at just the right times of seasonal production. These were called "annual rounds." The Archaic Period was eventually replaced, in many parts of California by what some anthropologists have called the Pacific Period. This transition occured in the neighborhood of 4000 years ago and was made possible by the development of technologies for harvesting, processessing, and preserving specific food resources which became staple foods. The existence of staple foods allowed people to remain in place and, hence, encouraged the development of more substantial communities with stronger cultural attributes. Europeans who entered California encountered both cultural forms. In our own region, the Great Basin remained archaic well into the 19th Century while the Klamath-Trinity Drainage was a well established and sophisticated Pacific culture.
The Spanish may have set foot in southeastern California as early as 1540 as part of the Coronado land exploration of the Southwest. It is certain, however, that Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo visited several areas along the southern coast of California in 1542. Spanish settlement of Alta California, beginning in 1769 with the founding of the Mission San Diego de Alcala, eventually moved as far north as Sonoma County. By 1776 they had extended missions all the way north to San Francisco, and the last mission to be filled into this continuous chain was Santa Ines in 1804.
The Russians had expanded eastward across the Ural Mountains into Siberia, from 1578 through 1706. Driven by the goal of a lucrative fir trapping and trading economy, they began to move off the eastern coast of Siberia and into the Aleutian Islands, settling on Kodiak Island in 1784. The Russian-American Company was founded in 1799 and given sole rights to control Russian enterprises in America. Sitka was founded the same year and became a base for fur hunting along the coast as far south as California. There is some evidence indicating that Spanish missionization of Alta California was motivated by the threat that Russia might eventually claim rights of settlement in that territory. Indeed, in 1812, the Russians did establish a fortified outpost at Fort Ross, on the coast just north of San Francisco Bay. They were the first to settle north of the Bay, though Francis Drake had visited several areas along the northern coastline as early as 1579, and American fur hunters had begun working up-and-down the northern coastline within the same timeframe.The Spanish were uncooperative with the Russian attempts to encourage trade and proceeded to build two new missions north of the Bay --- San Rafael Arcangel (1817) and San Francisco Solano de Sonoma (1823). The Russians eventually pulled out of Fort Ross, selling the residue of the colony to John Sutter. During this period of time, the English Hudson Bay Company was already in complete control of the middle ground between Southeastern Alaska and California, Washington and Oregon in particular.
The Spanish and Russians had quite different interests in the New World; hence, their occupation had quite different influences on the indigenous populations. In particular, the Spanish were truly interested in colonization and consistently followed a colonization plan that had been used as early as the 1600s in the construction of colonies among the Pueblo people in New Mexico and Arizona. While the Spanish "accepted" indigenous people into their society freely (in contrast to the behavior of other Europeans), the Spanish form of feudalism was extremely harsh and promptly dropped native people into the lowest stratum of that society. Those in authority in the Spanish colonies not only did not anticipate having to work themselves but, in fact, expected that all those of lower class would provide resources and perfom all labors. It is easy to see these expectations in their materialized forms in the structure of mission society, where the natives were expected to make the adobe bricks and construct the buildings as well as cultivate the fields and harvest food supplies. They were, in that sense, the sole labor force that drove the Spanish economy. Needless to say, natives frequently decided to return home to their own communities; but this was not taken lightly by the Spanish and often led to brutal punishment if not death. Many native people died from disease or punishment. As native population declined precipitously in the immediate neighborhoods of the missions, the Spanish military was forced to seek conscripts further and further inland. Thus, Spain's penetration of the state and impact on indigenous people was truly great. In contrast, the Russian penetration inland was insignificant.
In 1821, Mexico acquired independence from Spain and by 1823 the Republic of Mexico had been established. Little by little, the Mexican governments made land grants to individuals in Alta California and the Ranchero society began to develop and replace the mission society. Alta California was far from the center of Mexican attention, however, and it was not until 1834-6 that missions were secularized and Catholic property confiscated. Over the next decade, increasing numbers of Americans visited, explored, and occasionally settled in California. Settlement was especially heavy in that portion of Northern California encompassing the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento areas. Tension between American settlers and the Mexican Ranchero society mounted and reflected the national tension between the United States and Mexico. In the Treaty of Gradalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848), ending the Mexican American War, Mexico ceded all of its territories in the Southwest, including Alta California. California, for all practical purposes, had already been seized by Americans as early as 1846, and California Statehood was achieved by 1850.
An important condition of the treaty was that Mexican citizens who chose to remain in the ceded territories would become American citizens and their rights would be respected. Since Mexican citizenship had been granted to indigenous people under Ranchero society, this should have included all indigenous people in California. The Federal attitude, however, was to consider indigenous people as wards of the US rather than as true citizens. The State of California scarcely went that far and, instead, acted quickly to pass "An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians" which, ironically, came closer to making them indentured servants or slaves.
By 1850, however, all of this had already begun to change in the most dramatic of ways. On January 24, 1848, Henry William Bigler noted the presence of a gold-like metal in the tail race of John Marshall's sawmill on the American River. In only a few years, the Gold Rush would have far more impact on native Californians than the previous century of Spanish occupation. And the impact would largely fall on native people who had not been affected by previous European intrusions. All the people of our travel area were now affected in profound ways.
The Federal Government continued to accept responsibility for indigenous people and began to realize the necessity of protecting them from American and European settlers. In 1851, Federal agents were sent to make treaties with the Indians. Three agents were selected for California; these were Redick McKee, George W. Barbour, and O. M. Wozencraft. Unfortunately, there was no appreciation, in the East, for the number of tribes and tribelets resident in California or for the multitude of languages spoken there; little of the previous Federal experience with Indians was relevant to making treaties in California. And furthermore, the treaties attempted an innovation in Federal Indian policy. Rather than being "peace treaties" that attempted to guarantee safe and non-hostile removal to other lands, these treaties attempted to locate reservations of land within the State itself. While the three agents "successfully" negotiated eighteen treaties with groups of California Indians, including substantial reservation lands for their occupation and more substantial surrender of traditional lands for white settlement, later studies have shown that their lack of experience with California Indians was telling. Heizer and Kroeber, a century later, reported that of the 139 signatory groups, 67 are identifiable as tribelets, 45 are merely village names, 14 are duplicates of names heard and spelled somewhat differently without the commissioners being aware of the fact, and 13 are either unidentifiable or personal names.
Completed early in 1852, the treaties went to the United States Senate for ratification in July and ratification was denied, based on the overwhelming strength of opposition coming from the State of California itself. The treaties had set aside eighteen reserves of land for the exclusive use of the Indian groups (a total of 11,700 square miles) and had promised various kinds of Federal aid (school, farming instruction and equipment, seed, cloth, etc.) as well as specific rights to maintain traditional hunting and fishing practices. In proportion, the amount of land surrendered to White occupation and use was huge; but Californians were quick to argue that the land reserved was too much and too good for use of indigenous people. The persistent view of Californians was that indigenous people possessed no culture worthy of any claim to habitable land and that they should be disposed of in any convenient way. Since removal-to-the-west (the device used elsewhere in the United States) was impossible in California, most settlers argued for extermination. "It is a mercy to the red devils to exterminate them, and a saving of many white lives. Treaties are played out --- there is only one kind of treaty that is effective --- cold lead" (Chico Courant, 1866).
The pre-mission population of Alta California is estimated as 310,000 indigenous people. During the mission period, this population had dropped to 200,000; and during the Mexican period it dropped to 150,000 or fewer. In the twenty years following the Gold Rush, however, the population of indigeous people plummeted to less than 30,000. Meanwhile, the population of non-indigenous people, still a minority in 1848, had shot to 700,000 by 1870. The leading causes of population decline were disease, starvation (because of the loss of habitat), and murder, in that order. In the aftermath, many California tribes were declared extinct and almost none had successfully preserved their cultural ways of life. For most, even the retention of a cultural memory, for traditional purposes and social order, was close to impossible, especially since these were oral histories, completely dependent upon survival of old masters and systematic training of young people who would maintain the traditions. Even the languages (originally more than one hundred languages in California) were being lost at an astonishing rate of speed.
In the last half of the Nineteenth Century, thousands of American, European, and Asian people moved into Northern California and occupied the Sierra, the Central Valley, and portions of the Klammath Mountains. As gold diggings proved unprofitable to many of these immigrants, they simply turned to farming and settled the Sacramento Valley and lower foothills. Domesticated livestock and American settlement practices quickly began degrading natural environments to the point where indigenous people could not survive in traditional ways. An immediate cultural transformation was required, and few were able to achieve this. Indians who attempted to work in White employment were quickly devastated by disease or alcoholism. Those who tried to remain in native habitats often turned to raiding White livestock for food to replace their game animals. In turn, Whites sent out hunting parties to exterminate Indians. The story of Ishi documents the life and troubles of the last Yahi (one of four Yana tribelets) Indian. Ishi was captured in 1911, sick and trying to steal food; subsequently, and luckily, he was adopted by two of California's first anthropologists, Thomas Waterman and Alfred Kroeber, and taken to the University of California Anthropology Museum, where he lived until his death in 1916.
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