California Indian Reservations and Cessions

[2][3] The following database is an extraction of all the United States' formal actions between 1851–1892 with California Indians documented by the Bureau of American Ethnology in its Eighteenth annual report[4] to the Smithsonian Institution in 1896.

Because California's previous Mexican government had no formal relationships with the Indians following the 1833 Secularization Act that closed the Spanish era's Catholic Missions, most of the 150,000 surviving tribal people either became servants for the Ranchos of California owners or migrated east to the Sierra Mountains or to the north where they mixed with other non-Mission tribes that had been left alone by Mexico.

In 1851, at the same time that the United States was setting up the Public Land Commission as required by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with the Republic of Mexico to verify the legality of the Ranchos of California Land Grants given California citizens prior to 1846, the government also set up a commission with military support that resulted in 134 of the state's 300-plus Indian tribes signing 18 treaties that gave away their sovereign rights in exchange for 7.4 million acres of "reservation" lands spread across the state.

The state, however, refused to even allow these massive land takeaways, resulting in the treaties' initial failure, and by a Senate order their very existence was hidden from the public for over 45 years.

One of the three appointed commissioners, Oliver M. Wozencraft, reported that the government's action would lead to a "war of extermination" against the state's tribal people on May 31, 1852, even going public by publishing a pamphlet laying out the impacts, but for speaking out he was relieved of his duties by September of the same year.

Their campaign led to the rediscovery of the 18 Treaties that were signed by 134 bands of Californians and the removal of the senate's order of secrecy on January 18, 1905.

In their 18th annual, two-volume report, they published a complete list of all U.S. takings (cessions), treaties and reservations prior to 1896.

The sovereigns of the Old World therefore found no difficulty in convincing themselves that they made ample compensation to the natives by bestowing on them the benefits of civilization and Christianity in exchange for control over them and their country."

The data are extracted from the U.S. government's treaties, reservations and land cessions with California's tribal people in the years 1851–1896.

All links embedded in the spreadsheet, including the names identifying particular "Mission Indian" Tribes, have been added to make the original report clearer.