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Strangers in a Stolen Land: American Indians in San Diego 1850-1880
The history of Indians in San Diego County from the earliest times through the 1930s; the story of native peoples including Kumeyaay (Ipai/Tipai) Luiseno and Cahuilla. Includes rare photos, maps, and illustrations.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
113 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 11, 2017
"In the beginning earth was woman and sky was man. The first people came from Wikamee. It is said that the place can be seen still but Wikamee is a place of darkness and mist. It is to the east and is hard to find because of the darkness. All of the Indians came from Wikamee. When Tu-cha-pai and Yo-ko-mat-is made the world, it was only for Indians." pg. 1
"As they had been doing since 1769, the local Indians played a significant role in the history that was about to unfold. Never the passive people on the side lines, as they have sometimes been portrayed, some local Indians acted out an important part in the saga of Mexican versus American." pg. 44
"The Indians of San Diego County were ill-prepared for the transfer of power from the Mexican government to federal, state, and local governments under the United States. Portions of California became a blend of Mexican and non-Mexican people reflecting the multi-racial, multi-ethnic diversity that began with Spanish colonization." pg. 51
"With the passage of early California state laws, legal statues became official legal sanctions for abuse of native people." pg. 52} Unfortunately, as we have seen this past winter (in the United sates) with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the dilemma of the DAPL, this issue is far from over. It is still a very prominent ugly thing that has reared its head again and again in the face of Native American rights, whether for land, minerals, water, federal recognition or tribal sovereignty.
"Any assessment of legal systems and Indian policies requires an understanding of the ability or inability of government to maintain and enforce those laws. The enforcement, interpretation, and ultimate value of laws or governmental edicts were only visible as the law enforcement agency behind the law. Federal and state law officers in California during the period 1850 to 1880 exerted a minimal amount of control and influence over the lives of Indians and non-Indians alike.
Ironically, the native people of California, whose land the new immigrants were taking, soon came to be regarded with the same loathing as foreigners from afar...it is instructive to read and compare the Black Codes of the American South with the various California Indian Acts to understand the malevolent nature of early California law in a broader historical-legal context.
The state regulations that ultimately became "An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians" resulted from several months and debate and legislation. As with most of the first state laws, the "Indian Act" as it was known reflected the divisiveness that existed between northern and southern California, between the entrenched but increasingly disenfranchised Hispanic population, and between commercial interests and the ranching interests." pp. 52-53
"Consistent with the paternalism of the era, indenturing of Indian children was also allowed under the Bidwell bill but with restrictions and safeguards. The final Indian Act that passed the legislature bore some semblance to the Bidwell bill but it was stripped of most of the safeguards, made no mention of Indian suffrage, and eliminated the special justice of the peace to adjudicate Indian issues." pg. 54
"Indentured servitude was not limited to Indian minors. Section 5 of the 1850 acts provided for binding Indians to labor contracts upon approval of justices of the peace. Ostensibly, this law provided native Californians a chance to gain experience and trade skills. In application, this law served as a means to legally bind Indians to contracts that they seldom desired or understood. The intent and effect of Section 5 is perhaps better understood when one realizes that the same California legislators adopted Fugitive Slave Laws for blacks in keeping with the Black Codes practiced in the South...
The direct consequence of Section 14 was that thousands of California Indians were legally made wards of non-Indian individuals, including Hispanic Californios and white rancheros who sought a cheap and steady labor supply... This method of acquiring Indian labor was, unfortunately, neither unusual nor short-lived in southern California...Michael Magliari conclude that, "the Indian Act made a mockery of southern California's free state credentials bye legalizing an array of unfree labor forms with which employers could bind Native Americans workers. The following year, the CA legislature excluded Indians from applying for admission to the CA bar. Unable to testify and barred from having native legal counsel, Indians were totally dependent upon whatever legal assistance, usually poor to none, came their way...Fifteen years after its enactment, the Supreme Court of California declared that flogging was a form of cruel and unusual punishment and, as such, ruled the act unconstitutional." pp.55-56
"Even laws and decrees that appear to lessen control over Indians, or extend rights to them, frequently had an opposite effect if not intent...in essence, while punishment of so-called "civilized" Indians was left to local jurisdictions, the protections of such Indians was eliminated. In addition to laws that sought to punish Indians for specific crimes against the white community, the CA legislature also passed laws that limited the ability of natives to assert themselves, educate themselves, or defend themselves." pg. 57
The "Common School Act" was part of colonization; yet another tool used by the government to force natives to assimilate, to destroy their societies, tearing apart the fabric of their cultures to ensure that they would become "civilized".
"With few exceptions for the state government...repeatedly passed acts and regulations that aided in the extermination of the CA Indian culture and of the natives themselves...Indenturement, public humiliation, harsh punishment, inequity, and racism characterized various state and local laws governing the CA natives." pg. 62
"Most traditional historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth century believed that conquering the wilderness and taming the occupants of the wilderness were concomitant evils necessary to further the advancement of the American republic. Less nationalistic historians and anthropologists have noted that, in general, the natives of California were subjected to whims of racist, dehumanizing, and ruthless white intruders." pp. 65-66
"For the Indians, this era was one of increased loss of land, a weakening in their traditional values because of increased sexual abuse, increased alcoholism, recurring violence and forced abandonment of their traditional villages.
Acts of violence against Indians in San Diego took many forms. Perhaps one of the most violent acts, and the one with the farthest reaching implications, was the rape of native girls and women." pg. 66
"As time progressed and the influx of unmarried white males continued, the incidence of white-Indian marriage, both legal and common law, increased. As a result of these short-lived marriages, the rapes and growing blight of prostitution, Kumeyaay and Luiseño males...were reportedly hard-pressed to find chaste brides. Prostitution among native women posed a serious problem, especially as economic conditions worsened and white settlements sprung up...Local documents seem to imply that prostitution was carried out on a large scale but not in an organized sense...Some of what was perceived by Americans to be the sale of young native women could also have been a misunderstanding of the acceptance of a bride price by the Indian father of the bride.
The effects of sexual abuse through rape, prostitution and short term marriages are very difficult to assess. Cook suggests that the affected American Indian cultures were devastated." pp. 67-68
"The violence was, however, certainly not one-sided; young, disenfranchised Indian males wreaked their own terror on local ranchers and settlers, and on each other. Most of the violence was either alcohol fueled or associated with robberies, which was probably the motive behind the Banner stabbing." pg. 72
"Robert Heizer concluded that "Taken all together, one cannot imagine a more poorly conceived more inaccurate, less informed, and less democratic process than the making of the eighteen treaties in 1851-1852 with the California Indians. It was a farce from the beginning to the end." pg. 93
"Clearly the California legislators believed that the federal government had no right to force treaties on the state and that to the extent that the national government had power, it should be used to remove Indians from the state." pg. 95
"Having been propelled from a prehistoric hunting and gathering economy into and industrial-agricultural system, Indians were increasingly cut off from traditional means of support; denied basic land rights, and unable to participate in the dominant economy." pg. 108
"In the decades after Spanish contact with the local Indian people, strong leadership helped ensure the persistence of native people and cultural continuity....traditional power within the Kumeyaay and Luiseño tribes was decentralized and operated at many levels: politically, militarily, socially, and medically." pp. 117-118
"Ames specifically stated that the United States had not lived up to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and, as a result of the government's inaction, Indians were falling into a state of increased degradation including widespread prostitution, alcoholic abuse, and the loss of will." pg. 130
"As seems to have often been the case with federal government/Indian relations during the latter half of the nineteenth century, the government waited too long to offer too little after asking so much." pg. 147
"When God made them He gave us this place. We have always been here, We do not care for any other place. It may be good, but it is not ours. We have always lived here. We would rather died here. Our fathers did. If you will not buy this place, we will go into the mountains like quail and die there, the old people and the women and children."
--Cecilio Blacktooth to Charles Lummis when asked where his Cupeño people would like to live if they are removed from the ancestral lands. pg. 149
"Under the guise of reform the Dawes Act, known as the Allotment At of 1887, was yet another attempt to Americanize the Indians and speed up the process of detribalization." pg. 150
"By the end of the 1930s the Indians of San Diego settled into a life of increased federal government intervention in their lives, continued dependency on a system that had never served their needs, and increased isolation from the non-Indian communities...the federal government began yet another assault on tribalism with the Termination Act...The battle to have their own land and to retain their culture had been fought for too long to sign away their land tenure and rights." pg. 178
"As they had been doing since 1769, the local Indians played a significant role in the history that was about to unfold. Never the passive people on the side lines, as they have sometimes been portrayed, some local Indians acted out an important part in the saga of Mexican versus American." pg. 44
"The Indians of San Diego County were ill-prepared for the transfer of power from the Mexican government to federal, state, and local governments under the United States. Portions of California became a blend of Mexican and non-Mexican people reflecting the multi-racial, multi-ethnic diversity that began with Spanish colonization." pg. 51
"With the passage of early California state laws, legal statues became official legal sanctions for abuse of native people." pg. 52} Unfortunately, as we have seen this past winter (in the United sates) with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the dilemma of the DAPL, this issue is far from over. It is still a very prominent ugly thing that has reared its head again and again in the face of Native American rights, whether for land, minerals, water, federal recognition or tribal sovereignty.
"Any assessment of legal systems and Indian policies requires an understanding of the ability or inability of government to maintain and enforce those laws. The enforcement, interpretation, and ultimate value of laws or governmental edicts were only visible as the law enforcement agency behind the law. Federal and state law officers in California during the period 1850 to 1880 exerted a minimal amount of control and influence over the lives of Indians and non-Indians alike.
Ironically, the native people of California, whose land the new immigrants were taking, soon came to be regarded with the same loathing as foreigners from afar...it is instructive to read and compare the Black Codes of the American South with the various California Indian Acts to understand the malevolent nature of early California law in a broader historical-legal context.
The state regulations that ultimately became "An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians" resulted from several months and debate and legislation. As with most of the first state laws, the "Indian Act" as it was known reflected the divisiveness that existed between northern and southern California, between the entrenched but increasingly disenfranchised Hispanic population, and between commercial interests and the ranching interests." pp. 52-53
"Consistent with the paternalism of the era, indenturing of Indian children was also allowed under the Bidwell bill but with restrictions and safeguards. The final Indian Act that passed the legislature bore some semblance to the Bidwell bill but it was stripped of most of the safeguards, made no mention of Indian suffrage, and eliminated the special justice of the peace to adjudicate Indian issues." pg. 54
"Indentured servitude was not limited to Indian minors. Section 5 of the 1850 acts provided for binding Indians to labor contracts upon approval of justices of the peace. Ostensibly, this law provided native Californians a chance to gain experience and trade skills. In application, this law served as a means to legally bind Indians to contracts that they seldom desired or understood. The intent and effect of Section 5 is perhaps better understood when one realizes that the same California legislators adopted Fugitive Slave Laws for blacks in keeping with the Black Codes practiced in the South...
The direct consequence of Section 14 was that thousands of California Indians were legally made wards of non-Indian individuals, including Hispanic Californios and white rancheros who sought a cheap and steady labor supply... This method of acquiring Indian labor was, unfortunately, neither unusual nor short-lived in southern California...Michael Magliari conclude that, "the Indian Act made a mockery of southern California's free state credentials bye legalizing an array of unfree labor forms with which employers could bind Native Americans workers. The following year, the CA legislature excluded Indians from applying for admission to the CA bar. Unable to testify and barred from having native legal counsel, Indians were totally dependent upon whatever legal assistance, usually poor to none, came their way...Fifteen years after its enactment, the Supreme Court of California declared that flogging was a form of cruel and unusual punishment and, as such, ruled the act unconstitutional." pp.55-56
"Even laws and decrees that appear to lessen control over Indians, or extend rights to them, frequently had an opposite effect if not intent...in essence, while punishment of so-called "civilized" Indians was left to local jurisdictions, the protections of such Indians was eliminated. In addition to laws that sought to punish Indians for specific crimes against the white community, the CA legislature also passed laws that limited the ability of natives to assert themselves, educate themselves, or defend themselves." pg. 57
The "Common School Act" was part of colonization; yet another tool used by the government to force natives to assimilate, to destroy their societies, tearing apart the fabric of their cultures to ensure that they would become "civilized".
"With few exceptions for the state government...repeatedly passed acts and regulations that aided in the extermination of the CA Indian culture and of the natives themselves...Indenturement, public humiliation, harsh punishment, inequity, and racism characterized various state and local laws governing the CA natives." pg. 62
"Most traditional historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth century believed that conquering the wilderness and taming the occupants of the wilderness were concomitant evils necessary to further the advancement of the American republic. Less nationalistic historians and anthropologists have noted that, in general, the natives of California were subjected to whims of racist, dehumanizing, and ruthless white intruders." pp. 65-66
"For the Indians, this era was one of increased loss of land, a weakening in their traditional values because of increased sexual abuse, increased alcoholism, recurring violence and forced abandonment of their traditional villages.
Acts of violence against Indians in San Diego took many forms. Perhaps one of the most violent acts, and the one with the farthest reaching implications, was the rape of native girls and women." pg. 66
"As time progressed and the influx of unmarried white males continued, the incidence of white-Indian marriage, both legal and common law, increased. As a result of these short-lived marriages, the rapes and growing blight of prostitution, Kumeyaay and Luiseño males...were reportedly hard-pressed to find chaste brides. Prostitution among native women posed a serious problem, especially as economic conditions worsened and white settlements sprung up...Local documents seem to imply that prostitution was carried out on a large scale but not in an organized sense...Some of what was perceived by Americans to be the sale of young native women could also have been a misunderstanding of the acceptance of a bride price by the Indian father of the bride.
The effects of sexual abuse through rape, prostitution and short term marriages are very difficult to assess. Cook suggests that the affected American Indian cultures were devastated." pp. 67-68
"The violence was, however, certainly not one-sided; young, disenfranchised Indian males wreaked their own terror on local ranchers and settlers, and on each other. Most of the violence was either alcohol fueled or associated with robberies, which was probably the motive behind the Banner stabbing." pg. 72
"Robert Heizer concluded that "Taken all together, one cannot imagine a more poorly conceived more inaccurate, less informed, and less democratic process than the making of the eighteen treaties in 1851-1852 with the California Indians. It was a farce from the beginning to the end." pg. 93
"Clearly the California legislators believed that the federal government had no right to force treaties on the state and that to the extent that the national government had power, it should be used to remove Indians from the state." pg. 95
"Having been propelled from a prehistoric hunting and gathering economy into and industrial-agricultural system, Indians were increasingly cut off from traditional means of support; denied basic land rights, and unable to participate in the dominant economy." pg. 108
"In the decades after Spanish contact with the local Indian people, strong leadership helped ensure the persistence of native people and cultural continuity....traditional power within the Kumeyaay and Luiseño tribes was decentralized and operated at many levels: politically, militarily, socially, and medically." pp. 117-118
"Ames specifically stated that the United States had not lived up to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and, as a result of the government's inaction, Indians were falling into a state of increased degradation including widespread prostitution, alcoholic abuse, and the loss of will." pg. 130
"As seems to have often been the case with federal government/Indian relations during the latter half of the nineteenth century, the government waited too long to offer too little after asking so much." pg. 147
"When God made them He gave us this place. We have always been here, We do not care for any other place. It may be good, but it is not ours. We have always lived here. We would rather died here. Our fathers did. If you will not buy this place, we will go into the mountains like quail and die there, the old people and the women and children."
--Cecilio Blacktooth to Charles Lummis when asked where his Cupeño people would like to live if they are removed from the ancestral lands. pg. 149
"Under the guise of reform the Dawes Act, known as the Allotment At of 1887, was yet another attempt to Americanize the Indians and speed up the process of detribalization." pg. 150
"By the end of the 1930s the Indians of San Diego settled into a life of increased federal government intervention in their lives, continued dependency on a system that had never served their needs, and increased isolation from the non-Indian communities...the federal government began yet another assault on tribalism with the Termination Act...The battle to have their own land and to retain their culture had been fought for too long to sign away their land tenure and rights." pg. 178
August 5, 2016
An excellent history of the Indians of the San Diego region. The author, a professor at SDSU who focuses on the prehistory and archaeology of SD county presents what is known of the history and culture of the first inhabitants of the region and traces their civilization through the Spanish, Mexican and American periods.
March 15, 2023
Harrowing and excellent history of the Indians of California.
Thank you to the author.
Thank you to the author.
February 28, 2013
My grandmother purchased this book at a talk Carrico gave at the Alpine library. I found it tucked away in their TV room last weekend and promptly sucked it down. There is a ton of fascinating San Diego history here, and it is well described in relation to the larger context of Southern California and United States history.
My only disappointment is that there isn't more! There were so many points mentioned in passing that I would have loved further development on. However for a survey/intro text it does a great job, and the references included are ample. This text is definitely a great starting point for any further research into the region and/or local native history.
My only disappointment is that there isn't more! There were so many points mentioned in passing that I would have loved further development on. However for a survey/intro text it does a great job, and the references included are ample. This text is definitely a great starting point for any further research into the region and/or local native history.
June 8, 2011
A very interesting and balanced book about San Diego County's Indians. If you live in San Diego you must read this book. You will find out why we have a Pala and Barona Reservation as well as learn about some influential local chiefs or headmen. The San Diego Union Tribune was no friend of the Indian and did a lot to undermine President Grant's liberal and humane policies towards the scattered bands of Indians.
February 26, 2010
Richard Carrico is a great writer. This book is a great source for anyone interested in the Kumeyaay culture as well as the history of San Diego.
October 19, 2013
A very valuable book which not only reveals mostly hidden history but also delves into explaining what we can all learn about a sustainable way of life.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews