In 1839 John Sutter, a Swiss immigrant of German origin, settled in Alta California and began building a fortified settlement on a land grant of 48,827 acres at the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers.
[4] Visitors to California described Indians as "legally reduced to servitude,"[5] "the bond-men of the country,"[6] "little better than serfs [who] performed all the drudgery and labour.
"[7] White American Lansford Warren Hastings wrote "the natives...in California...are in a state of absolute vassalage, even more degrading, and more oppressive than that of our slaves in the south.
An 1851 legislative measure not only gave settlers the right to organize lynch mobs to kill Indians, but allowed them to submit their expenses to the government.
[16] In 1856, a San Francisco Bulletin editorial stated, "Extermination is the quickest and cheapest remedy, and effectually prevents all other difficulties when an outbreak [of Indian violence] occurs.
A Sacramento Daily Union article of the time accused high-pressure lobbyists interested in profiting off enslaved Indians of pushing the law through, gave examples of how wealthy individuals had abused the law to acquire Indian slaves from the reservations, and stated, "The Act authorizes as complete a system of slavery, without any of the checks and wholesome restraints of slavery, as ever was devised.