While researching my next book, I wanted to know about the effect of the Gold Rush on the indigenous people who lived in California.
In 2019, the governor of California said it was “Genocide. No other way to describe it, and that’s the way it ought to be described in the history books.”
As recently as 20 years ago, it wasn’t described as genocide. The Age of Gold is a comprehensive historical account by H.W. Brands, published in 2002. I wonder if, when you look closely, history books tell us about the time when they were written, as well as the period they are about.
Take this section about John Sutter, the man who built the sawmill where gold was first found: “Sutter hired Indians [on his land]…Although the natives required stern guidance, supplied by soldiers Sutter employed, they worked cheaply—which was why they required such stern guidance.”
Based on contemporary accounts, historians today describe Sutter’s practices as slavery, not work under stern guidance.
Later, Brands writes: “Violence against Indians was a regular aspect of life in California, but…disease and displacement claimed a larger toll…A lopsided skirmish ensued [in 1852] in which more than two dozen Indians were killed or wounded, against a single white man hurt.”
Consider the language about this attack (one of many). A lopsided skirmish.
Brand describes the people who lived in the area where Sutter first found gold: “The indigenous Nisenan were not especially warlike, but neither were they notably friendly to interlopers…[Sutter’s sawmill] would be prey to pilfering.”
That language: interloper to describe the settlers. People who had their ancient livelihoods taken from them were pilfering. I dare say that HW Brands would think about things differently, if he were writing today.
I needed to know more about the Nisenan People. For over 10,000 years, they lived in prosperous harmony with the land and its animals. They were “a vibrant, sophisticated nation of people.” Click here to find out more.
I then discovered a connection to my older daughter that amazed me.
Some of my readers know that I wrote my debut novel Under A Gilded Sky in the year after my daughter’s death, aged 27.
During her gap year, when she was 18, she was the first international student to attend the Woolman Semester at the John Woolman School in Nevada City, Northern California. The semester focussed on the practicalities of peace, social justice and sustainability. (The school was named after the extraordinary John Woolman, an early environmentalist and advocate against slavery, who died in 1772. Find out more here)
The 232-acre Woolman School was built on the historic Nisenan village site called Yulića. Today there are only about 150 Nisenan people left. This year the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe launched its ‘Homeland Return’ campaign to raise funds to purchase the former John Woolman School.
The Nisenan Tribe has a time-limited opportunity to buy the land from Sierra Nevada Friends (Quakers). They had to raise $2.4m by the end of July and I’m delighted to say, reached their target!
The Woolman Semester was hugely influential on my daughter, helping to form the non-violent activism of her short life. I know she would have been cheering on this restoration of the land to the indigenous Tribe. It feels deeply appropriate. And is an unexpected connection between my next book and my daughter.
Hi Imogen,
I do have an objection to one of your comments. You say of the Nisenan People, “For over 10,000 years, they lived in prosperous harmony with the land and its animals. They were “a vibrant, sophisticated nation of people.””
I’m afraid there is little,or no, evidence for this.
Firstly, it is doubtful the “Nisenan People” have been around for 10,000 years. I will accept the people living in the same area may have been their ancestors, but it is just as likely that someone else was.
Secondly, there is no evidence at all that the inhabitants of Northern California lived in harmony with the land and its animals. It would be more accurate to say that they systematically eroded both the environment and the species living within it. If we compare what the indigenous people did to the land, flora and fauna compared to the Europeans, I will agree, their impact was dwarfed by later damage, but they were not what we would regard as environmentalists and called untold damage.
Notwithstanding my criticism, I am delighted the Nisenan People achieved their objective as regards their land purchase, and would have wished they had been gifted the land.
My best wishes,
Mark
Hi Mark
Thank you for taking the time to read my post and to respond. It’s much appreciated.
I took the section about the Nisenan People from their CHIRP website: California Heritage Indigenous Research Project. It is hard to get evidence about societies who don’t have written records and history shows us that groups of people change over the centuries. So I can see your point that it could be misleading to suggest that a tradition that is recognizable as Nisenan today or from the past century, may not have existed in that way, going back over the centuries. Perhaps, as you say, more a sense of a connection with long-standing ancestors.
From my research, I think the Nisenan people acknowledge that there was a relationship with the land, flora and fauna; that they didn’t leave these things untouched but would make use of the animals and plants. This would have left a ‘footprint’. I’m sorry if my post is misleading.
I have enjoyed reading your thoughtful comments giving another perspective.
Best wishes
Imogen