In 1850 California was admitted to the United States as its 31st state. As with some other states, Native Americans were not seen as desirable inhabitants of the state.
For the first decade of its existence, the State of California carried on a series of privatized wars of extermination against the Native American population. California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, openly called for the extermination of Indian tribes.
The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, April 22, 1850. Passed by the legislature of California, it allowed settlers to continue the Californio practice of capturing and using Native people as forced workers.
It also provided the basis for the enslavement and trafficking in Native American Native labor, particularly that of young women and children, which was carried on as a legal business enterprise. Raids on villages were made to supply the demand, the young women and children were carried off to be sold, the men and remaining people often being killed. This practice did much to destroy Native tribes during the California Gold Rush.
The California Indian Wars were a series of massacres, wars, and battles between the United States Army (or often the California State Militia, especially during the early 1850s), and the Indigenous peoples of California. The wars lasted from 1850, immediately after the acquisition of Alta California during the Mexican–American War became the state of California, to 1880 when the last minor military operation on the Colorado River that ended the Calloway Affair of 1880.
Source: California Indian Wars
Indians 101: California’s War on Indians, 1850-1851
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