Free State Slavery: Bound Indian Labor and Slave Trafficking in California's Sacramento Valley, 1850–1864

2012 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael F. Magliari

Although it outlawed chattel slavery, antebellum California permitted the virtual enslavement of Native Americans under the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. Drawing data from a rare and valuable cache of Indian indenture records at the Colusa County courthouse and interpreting them through the lens of Henry Bailey's candid pioneer memoir, this article offers a detailed case study of bound Native American labor and Indian slave trafficking in Northern California's Sacramento Valley. While never comprising a majority of the state's rural work force, bound Indian laborers proved essential to California's rise as a major agricultural producer. Compensating for the dearth of white women and children in male-dominated Gold Rush society and providing a vital alternative source of labor in an expensive free wage market, captive Indian farm hands and domestic servants enabled pioneer farm operations and communities to flourish throughout the formative 1850s and 1860s.

Blood ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 106 (11) ◽  
pp. 3712-3712
Author(s):  
James C. Barton ◽  
Ronald T. Acton ◽  
Laura Lovato ◽  
Mark R. Speechley ◽  
Christine E. McLaren ◽  
...  

Abstract There are few reports of transferrin saturation (TfSat) and serum ferritin (SF) phenotypes and HFE C282Y and H63D genotypes in native Americans. We compared initial screening data of 645 native American and 43,453 white HEIRS Study participants who reported a single race/ethnicity and who did not report a previous diagnosis of hemochromatosis or iron overload. Each underwent TfSat and SF measurements without regard to fasting, and HFE C282Y and H63D genotyping. Elevated measurements were defined as: TfSat >50% (men), >45% (women); and SF >300 ng/mL (men), >200 ng/mL (women). Mean TfSat was lower in native American men than in white men (31% vs. 32%, respectively; p = 0.0337), and lower in native American women than in white women (25% vs. 27%, respectively; p <0.0001). Mean SF was similar in native American and white men (153 μg/L vs. 151 μg/L; p = 0.8256); mean SF was lower in native American women than in white women (55 μg/L vs. 63 μg/L, respectively; p = 0.0015). The respective percentages of native American men and women with elevated TfSat or elevated SF were similar to those of white men and women. The respective mean TfSat and SF values of native American and white participants with genotype HFE wt/wt were similar. The C282Y allele frequency was 0.0340 in native Americans and 0.0683 in whites (p <0.0001). The H63D allele frequency was 0.1150 in native Americans and 0.1532 in whites (p = 0.0001). We conclude that the screening TfSat and SF phenotypes of native Americans do not differ greatly from those of whites. The respective allele frequencies of HFE C282Y and H63D are significantly lower in native Americans than in whites.


Author(s):  
Maureen Ly

The Occupation of Alcatraz was a movement in 1969, which sparked National Debate in the United States. The Occupation lasted from 20, November 1969 till June 1971 when 15 last occupiers were peacefully escorted off the island. The protest did not end with a change in government policy but inspired other protests and an activist group to be created for Native American rights. Reflecting on why the occupation at Alcatraz was ineffective, Vine Deloria, Jr. argued in 1994, “we want change, but we do not know what change.” Deloria was a well-known activist during the 1960s and was invited to the island of Alcatraz during its occupation. The Occupation of Alcatraz was seen as an unsuccessful protest because it did not spur government action to address Native American grievances. The occupation occurred at a time when tensions between minority groups and the government were rising due to the civil rights movement. Native Americans were forcibly removed from reserves due to relocation and assimilation programs, and land was being taken away for resources as well. The Occupation was a response to what seemed to be the continuous cycle of abuse from the American government. Termination and assimilation policies divided and separated families and tribes, which created disconnections among Native Americans, making it hard to unify against the American government. Though the Occupation did not end with government action or policy change, it started a collaboration of Native American protests, which revived Native American identities for many people. Native Americans’ reactions to federal suppression at the Occupation of Alcatraz led to a legacy of protests that changed Native American life.


2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh

In the late nineteenth century, while advocates garnered support for a law protecting America's archaeological resources, the U.S. government was seeking to dispossess Native Americans of traditional lands and eradicate native languages and cultural practices. That the government should safeguard Indian heritage in one way while simultaneously enacting policies of cultural obliteration deserves close scrutiny and provides insight into the ways in which archaeology is drawn into complex sociopolitical developments. Focusing on the American Southwest, this article argues that the Antiquities Act was fundamentally linked to the process of incorporating Native Americans into the web of national politics and markets. Whereas government programs such as boarding schools and missions sought to integrate living indigenous communities, the Antiquities Act served to place the Native American past under the explicit control of the American government and its agents of science. This story of archaeology is vital, because it helps explain the contemporary environment in which debates continue about the ownership and management of heritage.


Stroke ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul Guisado ◽  
Linda Catalli ◽  
Karen de la Cuesta

INTRODUCTION: Santa Clara County, California is a multi-racial community with a large Asian and Hispanic representation (30.6% Asian, 31.8% White and 31.9% Hispanics). The annual incidence of non-traumatic intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) in our population is higher than the national average (29.2% vs. 13%) and the proportion of Asian patients with ICH is higher than expected (46.5% vs. 30.6% ). The reasons for the higher incidence of ICH in Asian populations are not known. We conducted a retrospective review of all cases of ICH in two Primary Stroke Centers in Santa Clara County, California to test the hypothesis that certain co-morbidities may explain the higher incidence of ICH in our community. METHODS: All cases of ICH admitted to two PSCs were abstracted from the Get With The Guidelines database. Data abstracted included racial and ethnic distribution (White, African American, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American and Hispanic), age, sex, and selected co-morbidities (diabetes mellitus, hypertension and warfarin use. FINDINGS: There were a total of 260 patients. The total number of Pacific Islanders (4), Native Americans (1) and African Americans (13) was too small for further analysis and was not included. The age and sex distribution was similar between White, Asian and Hispanic patients but White women were significantly older (p = 0.018) than males. The rate of warfarin use was similar in all three groups. There was a higher incidence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus in Asian and Hispanics compared to White subjects ( Table ). Asian and Hispanic patients with hypertension and/or diabetes mellitus were at higher risk for ICH compared to White ( Table ). CONCLUSION: In our population, the incidence of ICH is disproportionately high in Asian subjects compared to Whites and Hispanics. This increase is only partially explained by higher incidence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus in Asians. Other factors, not included in the available databases, may include the geographic origin of Asian and Hispanic subjects (East vs. South Asian, North, Central or South American) and a generational effect on co-morbidities. Future epidemiological studies should include geographic and generational, as well as racial and ethnic data.


2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Weiss

Kennewick Man, an early Holocene (9,000 years old) skeleton found in Washington State in 1996, has been a lightening rod for political discussion. Due to his alleged Caucasoid features, Kennewick Man controversially called into question who first peopled the Americas. A projectile point lodged in his hip also catapulted him to celebrity status. Spared the quick (within ninety days after an inquiry) repatriation typically required under the 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Kennewick Man was fully examined by a team of scientists chosen by the government who were forbidden to discuss their findings. Although the team concluded that Kennewick Man has cranial features associated with both Caucasoids and modern Native Americans, he is considered mainly to resemble modern Japanese Ainu, Polynesians, and Southeast Asians, as are other early Amerindian finds. Despite the resolution of early controversies, Kennewick Man continues as a symbol of the ideology of repatriation. In this article, I review the evidence for my belief that, taken to an extreme, the demand to bury aboriginal skeletons, not only in America but also around the world, poses a potentially serious impediment to scientific enquiry.


2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
pp. 2-26
Author(s):  
Michael F. Magliari

Although it was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1850, labor-starved gold-rush California permitted employers to bind Native Americans as unfree leased convicts, minor custodial wards, debt peons, and, between 1860 and 1863, indentured servants or “apprentices.” As a key component of California's elaborate system of unfree Native American labor, Indian apprenticeship flourished for three years until its abolition during the Civil War in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation. Little remembered today, much remains obscure regarding the essential details of Indian apprenticeship and the illegal slave trade that emerged to supply the considerable market demand for bound labor. This essay focuses on Humboldt County in northwestern California, where significant numbers of white residents made extensive use of Native American apprentices at the same time that many of their neighbors demanded—and began carrying out—the forced removal and outright extermination of local Indian peoples. Building on valuable data that the anthropologist Robert Heizer extracted in 1971 from the unique but now missing cache of over a hundred surviving indentures discovered in 1915 by the historian Owen C. Coy, this study offers two detailed group profiles of Humboldt County's white employers and their legally bound Native American workers. These collective portraits reveal the social, economic, and demographic compositions of frontier California's master and servant classes while simultaneously tracing both the rise and the fall of Indian apprenticeship within the violent racial context of Humboldt County during the gold rush and the Civil War.


Author(s):  
Sumi Hoshiko ◽  
Michelle Pearl ◽  
Juan Yang ◽  
Kenneth Aldous ◽  
April Roeseler ◽  
...  

Prenatal tobacco exposure is a significant, preventable cause of childhood morbidity, yet little is known about exposure risks for many race/ethnic subpopulations. We studied active smoking and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure in a population-based cohort of 13 racially/ethnically diverse pregnant women: white, African American, Hispanic, Native American, including nine Asian/Pacific Islander subgroups: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian, Samoan, and Asian Indians (N = 3329). Using the major nicotine metabolite, cotinine, as an objective biomarker, we analyzed mid-pregnancy serum from prenatal screening banked in 1999–2002 from Southern California in an effort to understand differences in tobacco exposure patterns by race/ethnicity, as well as provide a baseline for future work to assess secular changes and longer-term health outcomes. Prevalence of active smoking (based on age- and race-specific cotinine cutpoints) was highest among African American, Samoan, Native Americans and whites (6.8–14.1%); and lowest among Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese and Asian Indians (0.3–1.0%). ETS exposure among non-smokers was highest among African Americans and Samoans, followed by Cambodians, Native Americans, Vietnamese and Koreans, and lowest among Filipinos, Japanese, whites, and Chinese. At least 75% of women had detectable cotinine. While for most groups, levels of active smoking corresponded with levels of ETS, divergent patterns were also found. For example, smoking prevalence among white women was among the highest, but the group’s ETS exposure was low among non-smokers; while Vietnamese women were unlikely to be active smokers, they experienced relatively high ETS exposure. Knowledge of race/ethnic differences may be useful in assessing disparities in health outcomes and creating successful tobacco interventions.


2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Campbell

Historical interpretations focusing on the development of irrigated agricultural communities in the early twentiethcentury American West have consistently repeated the neat division between "family" and "industrial" modes of production. However, these distinctions collapse when one recognizes that the seasonal demand for harvest labor could not be met from within the smallholders' households. Transient labor, as well as year-round wage work by property-less workers, appears to have been the rule even on the irrigated West's family farms. In the case of the Newlands Reclamation Project, dispossessed Native Americans provided essential labor, ensuring the nominal success of this initial Reclamation Service project during the first three decades of the twentieth century. In Nevada, Paiute and Shoshone laborers provided a local and low-cost work force. This irrigation culture could not avoid the pitfalls of capitalist agriculture that relied upon the dispossession of Indian lands and resources and the coerced labor of an underclass of Indian workers. While Paiute and Shoshone labor was certainly coerced, there were limits. This article demonstrates the degree to which these people maintained an autonomous community and culture. Drawing on precolonial roots, Native North American communities shared in the challenges and creative adaptations exhibited by indigenous communities globally in response to settler capitalism.


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Focella ◽  
Jessica Whitehead ◽  
Jeff Stone ◽  
Stephanie Fryberg ◽  
Rebecca Covarrubias

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-39
Author(s):  
LaNada War Jack

The author reflects on her personal experience as a Native American at UC Berkeley in the 1960s as well as on her activism and important leadership roles in the 1969 Third World Liberation Front student strike, which had as its goal the creation of an interdisciplinary Third World College at the university.


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