“The Savages Were in the Way”: California’s History of Genocide
NOVANEWS
By Benjamin Madley
Headmen of the Maidu nation of California are photographed with the US Treaty Commissioners in 1851. None of the 18 California treaties was ratified by the US Senate. (Photo: George Eastman House)
Today, California is the most populous state in the US. But its history includes the deliberate mass murder of Indigenous people in the 1800s. In this excerpt from An American Genocide, Benjamin Madley argues that this organized catastrophe qualifies as genocide.
[Editors' note: In his introduction, the author states "Where sources create uncertainty as to tribal identity, I follow the twenty-first-century California Indian practice of using the term Indian or California Indians." Truthout's policy is to use the terms Indigenous or Native for articles by non-Na...