Editing California (section)

====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/>