Population of Native California

[6] Martin A. Baumhoff used an ecological basis to evaluate the potential carrying capacity and estimated an aboriginal population of 350,000.

[7] Sherburne F. Cook was the most persistent and painstaking student of the problem, examining in detail both pre-contact estimates and the history of demographic decline during mission and post-mission periods.

In the latter half of the 19th century both State and Federal authorities, incited[12][13] aided and financed miners, settlers, ranchers and people's militias to enslave, kidnap, murder and exterminate a major proportion of displaced Native American Indians, sometimes contemptuously referred to as "Diggers", using many of the same policies of violence against the indigenous population that it did throughout its territory.

[notes 1] A notable early eyewitness testimony and account: "The Indians of California" 1864, is from John Ross Browne, Custom's official and Inspector of Indian Affairs on the Pacific Coast systematically categorizing the fraud, corruption, land theft, slavery, rape and massacre perpetrated on a substantial portion of the aboriginal population.

[24] Professor Ed Castillo, of Sonoma State University, provides a higher estimate: "The handiwork of these well armed death squads combined with the widespread random killing of Indians by individual miners resulted in the death of 100,000 Indians in the first two years of the gold rush.

"[25] The decline of Native Californian populations during the late 18th and 19th centuries was investigated in detail by Cook.

[8][9][26] Cook assessed the relative importance of the various sources of the decline, including Old World epidemic diseases, violence, nutritional changes, and cultural shock.

He was not only given no assistance in the struggle against foreign diseases, but was prevented from adopting even the most elementary measures to secure his food, clothing, and shelter.

The utter devastation caused by the white man was literally incredible, and not until the population figures are examined does the extent of the havoc become evident.