Students growing up in the US learn about the California gold rush — the forty-niners and their hunt for gold.
But, the gold rush was actually the start of one of the bloodiest periods in US history. It’s a story that remained covered up for years.
Greed for gold in California was pushed through violent articles, advertisements, and cartoons. Some even depicted 49ers carrying knives while wielding mining tools.
About 300,000 heavily-armed individuals descended on California to hunt for gold.
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California settlers also spent $6 million dollars on knives and pistols between 1848 and 1852.
Benjamin Madley, an associate professor of Native American history at UCLA, said this paved the way for the “violence of genocide.”
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Ranches recruited hundreds of Native men for the mines, where they were treated as disposable workers, said Nicole Myers-Lim, executive director of the California Indian Museum.
When members of the Pomo tribe rebelled, the US Calvary murdered them.
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Governor Hardeman Burnett was the first governor of California.
In his first speech to the citizens of California, he waged "a war of extermination" on California Indians and said it was inevitable.
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California’s newly established government also passed an act that authorized the organization of ranger militias.
These volunteer groups, which included gold miners, were sent on 24 Native American killing campaigns in just 11 years, from 1850 to 1861.
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Madley estimates the US army and auxiliaries killed 9,000 to 16,000 people during the Gold Rush. But this is rarely cited in history.
“We’ve had a kind of institutionalized amnesia about the genocide of California Indians,” he said.
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So many of these details have remained hidden or ignored.
Holt McDougal, the publisher of the grade school social studies textbook, told Insider in a statement that they’re currently in the process of reviewing these omissions.
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