Indigenous peoples and the California gold rush: labour, violence and contention in the formation of a settler colonial state

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe California gold rush era is most often remembered for the thousands of immigrants who traversed oceans and continents for a chance at quick wealth. Often lost in these narratives are the rich and diverse histories of Indigenous people who actively participated in, and were deeply affected by, the events of the gold rush. California’s tribal peoples adapted and endured as thousands of non-Native prospectors travelled over and occupied their ancestral territories, devastating their traditional sources of subsistence. As these settlers targeted their communities with genocidal violence, Native people in California actively responded with organised armed resistance, peaceful negotiation and other adaptations. Meanwhile, California Indians were not the only Indigenous peoples to navigate the violent fabric of California’s gold country. Cherokees and Wyandots from the American Midwest, Yaquis from northern Mexico, and Aboriginal Australians – to name only a few – all converged on California Indian lands in the gold rush era from a wide variety of historical contexts. The California gold country thus represented a site of Indigenous diaspora and confluence, where a highly diverse population of Native people laboured and mined the placers, often straddling the spheres of the settler and Indigenous in complex ways.