Editing California (section)

===Early American period===
{{See also|California gold rush|Interim government of California}}
[[File:Treaty of Cahuenga.jpg|thumb|right|The [[Treaty of Cahuenga]], signed in 1847 by Californio [[Andrés Pico]] and American [[John C. Frémont]], was a ceasefire that ended the U.S. [[conquest of California]].]]
Following the [[Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo]] (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, [[Colorado]] and [[Utah]]. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.<ref name="Osborne2012">{{Cite book |last=Osborne |first=Thomas J. |url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=FvA3jL4CFCMC}} |title=Pacific Eldorado: A History of Greater California |date=November 29, 2012 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-29217-4}}</ref>

In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Middle Easterns, Chinese and other immigrants during the great [[California gold rush]]. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come.<ref>{{Cite web |title=California Gold Rush, 1848–1864 |url=http://www.learncalifornia.org/doc.asp?id=118 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727033216/http://www.learncalifornia.org/doc.asp?id=118 |archive-date=July 27, 2011 |access-date=July 22, 2008 |website=Learn California.org, a site designed for the [[California Secretary of State]]}}</ref> Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.<ref>{{Cite web |title=1870 Fast Facts |url=https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/fast_facts/1870_fast_facts.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190305053406/https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/fast_facts/1870_fast_facts.html |archive-date=March 5, 2019 |access-date=March 5, 2019 |website=United States Census Bureau}}</ref> 
{{multiple image
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| header            = [[California Gold Rush]]
| image1            = California Clipper 500.jpg
| caption1          = An ad to sail to California, {{circa|1850}}
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| caption2          = [[San Francisco]] harbor, {{circa|1850–51}}
| image3            = Mining_on_the_American_River_near_Sacramento,_circa_1852.jpg
| caption3          = Mining near [[Sacramento, California|Sacramento]], {{circa|1852}}
}}
The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in [[Monterey, California|Monterey]] from 1777 until 1845.<ref name="nps">{{Cite web |title=Introduction |url=http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/ca/intro.htm |access-date=August 26, 2012 |website=Early History of the California Coast |publisher=National Park Service}}</ref> Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States [[consulate]] had also been located in Monterey, under consul [[Thomas O. Larkin]].

In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included [[Vallejo, California|Vallejo]] (1852–1853), and nearby [[Benicia, California|Benicia]] (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in [[Sacramento, California|Sacramento]] since 1854<ref name="Wilson 2006">{{Cite book |last1=Wilson |first1=Dotson |url=http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pdf/caleg11.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pdf/caleg11.pdf |archive-date=October 9, 2022 |url-status=live |title=California's Legislature |last2=Ebbert |first2=Brian S. |date=2006 |publisher=California State Assembly |edition=2006 |location=Sacramento |oclc=70700867}}</ref> with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to [[Great Flood of 1862|flooding in Sacramento]].
Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for [[Admission to the Union|admission to statehood]]. On September 9, 1850, as part of the [[Compromise of 1850]], California became a [[Slave states and free states|free state]] and September{{spaces}}9 a [[California Admission Day|state holiday]].

During the [[American Civil War]] (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington [[California in the American Civil War|in support of the Union]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/10-facts-california-during-civil-war |title=10 Facts: California during the Civil War |work=American Battlefield Trust |date=August 13, 2013 |access-date=September 9, 2017}}</ref> However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army, such as the [[2nd Regiment of Cavalry, Massachusetts Volunteers|"California 100 Company"]], were unofficially associated with the state of California due to a majority of their members being from California.

At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the [[first transcontinental railroad]] was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.

Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.

In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the [[Gold Rush]] or to seek work.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Chinese Experience in 19th Century America |url=http://teachingresources.atlas.illinois.edu/chinese_exp/introduction04.html |website=teachingresources.atlas.illinois.edu}}</ref> Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 [[Chinese Exclusion Act]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Immigration to the United States, 1851-1900 {{!}} Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 {{!}} U.S. History Primary Source Timeline {{!}} Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress {{!}} Library of Congress |url=https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/rise-of-industrial-america-1876-1900/immigration-to-united-states-1851-1900/ |website=Library of Congress}}</ref>

====California genocide====
{{Main|California genocide}}
[[File:"Protecting The Settlers" Illustration by JR Browne for his work "The Indians Of California" 1864 (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|Between 1846 and 1873, U.S. government agents and private settlers perpetrated many massacres against [[Indigenous Californians]], known as the [[California genocide]]. At least 9,456 were killed with estimates as high as 100,000 deaths.<ref name=Madley/>]]

Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the [[Indigenous peoples of California|Indigenous people of California]] had not yet developed a natural immunity.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Destruction of the California Indians |url=http://www.learncalifornia.org/doc.asp?id=1617 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111207115225/http://www.learncalifornia.org/doc.asp?id=1617 |archive-date=December 7, 2011 |access-date=April 15, 2012 |publisher=[[California Secretary of State]]}}</ref> Under its new American administration, California's first governor [[Peter Hardeman Burnett]] instituted policies that have been described as a state-sanctioned policy of elimination of California's indigenous people.<ref name=":15">{{Cite book |last=Risling Baldy |first=Cutcha |title=We are dancing for you: native feminisms and the revitalization of women's coming-of-age ceremonies |date=2018 |isbn=978-0-295-74345-5 |location=Seattle |pages=61–63 |oclc=1032289446}}</ref> Burnett announced in 1851 in his Second Annual Message to the Legislature: "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected. While we cannot anticipate the result with but painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power and wisdom of man to avert."<ref name=":14">{{Cite book |last=Senate |first=California Legislature |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XV1BAQAAMAAJ |title=The Journal of the Senate ... of the Legislature of the State of California ... |date=1851 |publisher=Sup't State Printing |page=792 |language=en}}</ref>

As in other American states, indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from their lands by American [[settler]]s, like miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians", were ''[[de facto]]'' enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1850 ''[[Act for the Government and Protection of Indians]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Act for the Government and Protection of Indians {{!}} American Experience {{!}} PBS |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-act-for-government-and-protection-of-indians/ |access-date=March 3, 2021 |website=www.pbs.org}}</ref> One of these ''de facto'' [[Slave-auction|slave auctions]] was approved by the [[Los Angeles City Council]] and occurred for nearly twenty years.<ref name=":5">{{Cite web |date=2016-09-02 |title=Los Angeles' 1850s Slave Market Is Now the Site of a Federal Courthouse |url=https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/los-angeles-1850s-slave-market-is-now-the-site-of-a-federal-courthouse |access-date=2022-12-28 |website=KCET |language=en}}</ref> There were many massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed by settlers for their land.<ref name="Baumgardner 2005 171">{{Cite book |last=Baumgardner |first=Frank H. |title=Killing for Land in Early California: Indian Blood at Round Valley: Founding the Nome Cult Indian Farm |date=2005 |publisher=Algora |isbn=978-0-87586-803-5 |location=New York |page=171 |oclc=693780699}}</ref>

Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5{{spaces}}million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government)<ref>{{Cite web |title=California Militia and Expeditions Against the Indians, 1850–1859 |url=http://www.militarymuseum.org/MilitiaandIndians.html |access-date=March 21, 2012 |publisher=Militarymuseum.org}}</ref> to hire militias with the stated purpose of protecting settlers, however these militias perpetrated numerous massacres of indigenous people.<ref name="Baumgardner 2005 171"/> Indigenous people were also forcibly moved to reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to adequately sustain the populations living on them. As a result, [[settler colonialism]] was a calamity for indigenous people. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and [[Ed Castillo]], have described the actions of the California government [[California Genocide|as a genocide]],<ref name=Madley>{{cite book|last=Madley |first=Benjamin |title=An American Genocide, The United States and the California Catastrophe, 1846–1873 |publisher= Yale University Press|year=2016|isbn=978-0-300-18136-4|pages=11, 351}}</ref> as well as the 40th governor of California [[Gavin Newsom]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-08-13 |title=California governor calls Native American treatment genocide |url=https://apnews.com/article/california-native-americans-982b507a846a4ad6bc184b3e7f99ec70 |access-date=2022-12-29 |website=AP NEWS |language=en}}</ref> Benjamin Madley estimates that from 1846 to 1873, between 9,492 and 16,092 indigenous people were killed, including between 1,680 and 3,741 killed by the U.S. Army.<ref name=Madley/>