As a result of the Gold Rush, very few Native Americans remained in California. Forbes, Jack D. (1965). Historians estimate that about sixty percent of this enormous population decline was due to the great amount of Native Americans that died from epidemic diseases during the Gold Rush. Warriors of the Colorado: The Yumas of the Quechan Nation and Their Neighbors. The Population of the California Indians, 1769–1970. “As the missions grew, California’s native population of Indians began a catastrophic decline.” In the latter half of the 19th century Californian state and federal authorities incited,Simultaneous to the ongoing extermination, reports of the decimation of Native Americans were made to the rest of the United States and internationally.A notable early eyewitness testimony and account: "The Indians of California" 1864, is from By one estimate, at least 4,500 Californian Indians were killed between 1849 and 1870.Genocide tribunals would provide venues of judicial reason and equity that reveal continental ethnic cleansing, mass murder, torture, and religious persecution, past and present, and would justly expose, in the context of legal competition for evidence, the inciters, falsifiers, and deniers of genocide and state crimes against Native American Indians. Since the 2000s several American academics and activist organizations, both Native American and European American, have characterized the period immediately following the U.S. This social studies lesson is appropriate for students in 4th and 5th grades, and it takes approximately 30 minutes of class time to complete. CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH 1848-1855. A print of a bird’s eye view of the town of Columbia, California surrounded by images of the town’s major buildings, 1855. Overall, it can be concluded that the Gold Rush was devastating for the Native Americans in this area (Part II, Gold, Greed, & Genocide). This is the first part of a two-part lesson. The great CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH 1848-1855 is historically paramount to Native American Indian history in California — it was estimated that some 300,000 immigrants poured into California during this seven-year period effectively tripling California's population.. "California Athabascan Groups". By the end of summer, the first gold seekers were arriving from outside California. University of California, Berkeley.Cook, Sherburne F. 1976b. Slavery in the Gold Rush. California habitats and climate supported an abundance of wildlife, including rabbits, deer, varieties of fish, fruit, roots, and acorns. The land had been ruined, as miners had dug up twelve billion tons of earth from it. The wildlife had been driven out. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Create your own unique website with customizable templates. Heizer, Robert F., volume ed. The natives largely followed a California was one of the last regions in the Americas to be colonized. The environment that they had once thrived off of had become a disaster as a result of the mining. [5] [6] 24,000 [4] to 27,000 [4] Native Americans were also taken as forced labor by settlers. The first immigrants were probably from Oregon, where American farmers had been settling since the early 1840s.Next came men from the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii). Most Native Americans were left to decide whether they wanted to remain in this area and live a life of poverty and poor health, or abandon their home, and the home of their ancestors. Anthropological Records 16:81-130. While the gold rush offered these new foreigners the promise of great wealth and security it inversely created great turmoil for the Native Americans, who were the original, indigenous inhabitants of California. "The Aboriginal Population of the North Coast of California". The state of California used its institutions to favor white settlers' rights over indigenous rights and was responsible for dispossession of the natives.