Indigenous peoples of California

[2] Most tribes practiced forest gardening or permaculture and controlled burning to ensure the availability of food and medicinal plants as well as ecosystem balance.

This began with the arrival of Spanish soldiers and missionaries who established Franciscan missions that instituted an immense rate of death and cultural genocide.

[6][7][8] The Native population reached its lowest in the early 20th century while cultural assimilation into white society became imposed through Indian boarding schools.

[19]: 112  Because of the temperate climate and easy access to food sources, approximately one-third of all Native Americans in the United States were living in the area of California.

Tribes on the coast of northwest California, like the Miwok, Yurok, and Yokut, had contact with Russian explorers and seafarers in the late 18th century.

[40]: 10  Looking for a potential site for a new outpost of the company in California in place of Fort Ross, Wrangell's expedition encountered the native people north of San Francisco Bay.

He summarized his impressions of the California Indians as a people with a natural propensity for independence, inventive spirit, and a unique sense of the beautiful.

He described the locals that he met on his trip to Cape Mendocino as "the untamed Indian tribes of New Albion, who roam like animals and, protected by impenetrable vegetation, keep from being enslaved by the Spanish".

The legislation was primarily passed from liberal sects in the Mexican government, including José María Luis Mora, who believed that the missions prevented native people from accessing "the value of individual property.

In his second state address in 1851, Burnett framed an eliminatory outlook toward native people as one of defense for the property of white settlers:[43]The white man, to whom time is money, and who labors hard all day to create the comforts of life, cannot sit up all night to watch his property; and after being robbed a few times, he becomes desperate, and resolve upon a war of extermination.

[6] In the fiscal year of 1851–1852, California reimbursed approximately $1 million of expenses for militia groups engaged in "the suppression of Indian hostilities", although in fact, they were massacring native people.

The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848 inspired a mass migration of Anglo-American settlers into areas where native people had avoided sustained encounters with invaders.

[7] The negative impact of the California Gold Rush on both the local indigenous inhabitants and the environment were substantial, decimating the people still remaining.

[47] Sexual violence against native women and young girls was a normal part of white settler life, who were often forced into prostitution or sex slavery.

[50] The United States Senate sent a group of consultants, Oliver Wozencraft, George Barbour, and Redick McKee to make treaties with the indigenous peoples of California in 1851.

Leaders throughout the state signed 18 treaties with the government officials that guaranteed 7.5 million acres of land (or about 1/7th of California)[51] in an attempt to ensure the future of their peoples amid encroaching settler colonialism.

By the late 1850s, Anglo-American militias were invading the homelands of native people in the northern and mountainous areas of the state, which had avoided some earlier waves of violence due to their more remote locations.

[9] Although the American policy of Indian removal to force indigenous peoples off of their homelands had begun much earlier in the United States in 1813, it was still being implemented as late as 1903 in Southern California.

[54] The last native removal in U.S. history occurred in what has been referred to as the Cupeño trail of tears, when the people were forced off of their homeland by white settlers, who sought ownership of what is now Warner Springs.

[9] This separation often occurred without knowledge by parents, or under white claims that native children were "unsupervised" and were thus obligated to the school, and sometimes under threatening circumstances to families.

[69][70] Some native people identify the modern prison-industrial complex as another reproduction of the "punishing institutions" that have been imposed onto them and built on their homelands since the arrival of European settlers, including military forts, ranchos, Spanish missions, Indian reservations, boarding schools, and prisons, each of which exploited native people as a source of labor for the economic interests of settlers.

[71][72] In 1990, federally recognized tribes gained some rights to ancestral remains with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

[74] Tribes and tribal bands in urbanized or high-development areas, such as the Tongva (Los Angeles), Acjachemen (Orange County), and Ohlone (San Francisco Bay Area) struggle to protect burial grounds, village sites, and artifacts from disturbance and desecration, usually from residential and commercial developments, which has been a feature of daily life for native people in California since the arrival of European settlers.

[12][11] Along the middle reaches of Marsh Creek near the modern day city of Brentwood lies land that was once occupied by the Bay Miwok speaking peoples more specifically the Volvon tribelet.

Observations by researchers suggest that individuals were not interned based on their sex or age, leading some archaeologists to assume a more culturally significant reason.

[78] The Acjachemen sacred village site of Putiidhem was desecrated and buried underneath JSerra Catholic High School in 2003 despite protests from the people.

[90]The indigenous peoples of California had a rich and diverse resource base, with access to hundreds of types of edible plants, both terrestrial and marine mammals, birds and insects.

[29] Different tribes' diets included fish, shellfish, insects, deer, elk, antelope, and plants such as buckeye, sage seed, and yampah (Perideridia gairdneri).

[102] Ceremonies were performed after consuming a hallucinogenic drink made of the jimsonweed or Toloache plant (Datura meteloides), which put devotees in a trance and gave them access to supernatural knowledge.

Mohave Hopi Navajo Timbisha Cupeño (Kuupangaxwichem) Yokuts Chumash Mono Serrano (Taaqtam) Achomawi Northern Paiute Atsugewi Before European contact, native Californians spoke over 300 dialects of approximately 100 distinct languages.