the First Californians
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Return to the WebQuest
Standards:
These
activities address the following fourth grade standards:
http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/standards/grade4.html
4.3 Students explain the economic, social, and political
life in California from the establishment of the Bear Flag Republic through
the Mexican-American War, the Gold Rush, and the granting of statehood.
3. Analyze
the effects of the Gold Rush on settlements, daily life, politics, and the
physical environment (e.g., using biographies of John Sutter, Mariano Guadalupe
Vallejo, and Phoebe Apperson Hearst).
http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/SCORE/stand/std.html#4ws
1.0 WRITING STRATEGIES: Students write clear, coherent sentences and paragraphs that develop a central idea. Their writing shows they consider the audience and purpose. Students progress through the stages of the writing process (e.g., prewriting, drafting, revising, editing successive versions).
1.2 Create multiple-paragraph
compositions:
a. Provide an introductory
paragraph.
b. Establish and support a central idea with a topic
sentence at or near the beginning of the first paragraph.
c. Include supporting
paragraphs with simple facts, details, and explanations.
d. Conclude with a paragraph that summarizes the points.
e. Use correct indention.
1.0. LISTENING AND SPEAKING STRATEGIES: Students listen and
respond critically to oral communication. They speak in a manner that guides
and informs the listener's understanding of key ideas, using appropriate phrasing,
pitch, and modulation.
Comprehension:
1.2. Summarize major ideas and supporting
evidence presented in spoken messages and formal presentations
http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/critical_thinking/chronological.html
1.
Students place key events and people of the historical era they are
studying both in a chronological sequence and within a spatial context; they
interpret timelines.
3.
Students identify and interpret the multiple causes and effects of
historical events.
Materials
and Preparation:
a.
Prepare
a timeline (on the board or overhead projector) that includes the following
dates: 1769, 1845, 1848, 1850 and 1870.
b.
Resource 6-1a: “California Population by Ethnic Groups,
1790-1880”
c.
Pre-assign
approximately eight investigative teams.
Each team should include four to five students. Make sure each group
contains one strong reader and one strong writer.
d.
Post
the Role Sheet. This sheet describes each of the student roles.
Technology:
a.
Lesson
should take place in a computer lab or a classroom with multiple computers.
b.
Students
will use the WebQuest WANTED: Information About the Disappearance of the
First Californians. Make sure this site is already a bookmark
on all of the computers.
Procedure:
1.
Ask
students to stand up. Ask students
to imagine that they are Native Americans who lived in California. Explain to students that prior to 1769,
when the first mission was founded, historians estimate that 300,000 Native
Americans lived in California. The
Native Californian population included over 100 culturally diverse tribes. (Above the time line write Spanish
Missions
and/or draw a symbol near 1769. Write
the number 300,000 below the date.)
2.
Explain
to students that in 1845, after 76 years of the Spanish Mission system, less
than half of the Native American population remained in California. (Write the number 150,000 below the date.) Ask half of the class to sit down.)
3.
Explain
to students that in 1848, gold was discovered in the state of California. (Write Gold Rush and/or draw symbols near
1848.) Point out that two years
later, in 1850, California became the 31st state. Write 31st above the year 1850.)
4.
Explain
to students that in 1870, 22 years after gold was discovered in California,
less than 30,000 Native Americans still lived in California. (Write the number 30,000 under 1870.) Ask most of the students to sit down so
that only 10 percent of your class is still standing. Explain to students that if they were Native Americans during
these 100 years in California history, only the students standing would still
be alive.
5.
Show
students an overhead of Resource 6-1a.
Ask students to brainstorm what they think happened to the Native American
population. Record their answers
on the board.
6.
Assign
students to investigative teams. Introduce
the WebQuest to the teams. Ask groups to assign roles. Each team will have the following roles: chief investigator,
historian, reporter, and press agent.
Explain that in tomorrow’s lesson they will be working with their team
to uncover one of the main causes of the Native Californian population decline.
Activity 2: Investigation
Time
allotment:
1 hour
Materials
and Preparation:
a.
Copy
one Student Question Sheet per group. Color-code these sheets using the colors
yellow, red, and green. Groups
that have sheets colored yellow will study how disease affected Native Californians.
Groups that have sheets colored red will study how abuse affected Native
Californians. Groups that have sheets colored green
will study how the destruction of the environment affected Native Californians.
b.
Provide
dictionaries for each group.
Technology:
a.
The lesson should take place in a lab setting
or in a classroom with multiple computers.
Students will use the WebQuest WANTED: Information
About the Disappearance of the First Californians. Make sure this site is already a bookmark on all of the computers.
Procedure:
1.
Ask
students to get into their groups. Give students their question sheet. Ask students to go to the bookmark for
the WebQuest WANTED: Information About the Disappearance of the First Californians.
2.
The
first question asks students to find the three main causes of the decline
of the Native Californian population.
Once that question is answered, the groups will need to focus on one
of the causes.
3.
The
student answer sheets will be color coded so that each group knows which of
the three areas to focus on. Provide
students with a key that explains the colors. This key will also give students an opportunity to check their
answers for the first question.
4.
Students
will use the appropriate links to help them answer their questions.
5.
If
students finish early, they can visit the Oakland Museum of California
Gold Rush site and follow the California Indian pathway (the purple pathway).
They can also visit the Library
of Congress Gold Rush site. These
links are located in the WebQuest. Remind
students of the following:
·
To
follow the California Indian Pathway, first click on the words California
Indian.
·
After
you finish reading the page, find the purple words California Indian at the top right hand corner
of the page.
·
Click
on the right arrow.
·
Continue
looking in the top right corner of the page for the arrows next to the purple
California Indian pathway. DO
NOT click on the pointed finger at the bottom of the page.
Activity 3: Designing Presentations
Time
allotment:
45 minutes
Materials
and Preparation:
a.
Completed
student answer sheet
b.
A
piece of poster board or chart paper for each group.
c.
Drawing
instruments (e.g. pencils, markers, colored pencils, or crayons) for each
group.
d.
Scratch
paper
Procedure:
1.
Investigative
teams will create an Illustrated Event poster. Teams will design a poster that describes a historic event
with illustrations, symbols, annotations, quotes, and notes. Teams need to include the elements of
a news storyæwho, what, when, where, and whyæ on their poster. Encourage students to plan a rough draft
on scratch paper before they begin working on their poster board. Students will have 30-35 minutes to complete
their posters.
2.
Investigative
teams will plan how they are going to share their poster with the class. Although each team’s press agent will
be responsible for doing most of the sharing, other team members may also
contribute.
Activity 4: Sharing
Presentations
Time
allotment:
1 hour
Materials
and Preparations:
a.
Completed
Illustrated Event
posters
b.
Copy
Student Note Sheet (three per student).
Procedure:
1.
Investigative
teams will have 5-10 minutes to present their posters to the class. All students are required to use the Student
Note Sheet
to take notes on the presentations.
Students will use three note sheets (one for each reason).
2.
When
students are taking notes, encourage them to put a check near information
that they hear again.
Activity 5: Essay Writing
Time
Allotment: 1 hour
Materials
and Preparations:
a.
Student
notes prepared in Activity 4
b.
Paper
and pencils
c.
Display
“Illustrated Events” posters throughout the classroom.
Procedure:
1.
Students
will write a five-paragraph essay using the following prompt:
“Why did the Native Californian population decrease
at such a rapid rate during the years 1769-1870? Describe the three main causes.”
a. Provide an introductory paragraph.
b. Establish and support a central idea with a topic sentence at or near the beginning of the first paragraph.
c. Include supporting paragraphs with simple facts, details, and explanations.
d. Conclude with a paragraph that summarizes the points.
e. Use correct indention.
Here is one model that you can use to write your composition:
Paragraph 1 - State your topic clearly (Focus)). Use the information that you found in your Internet searches and the information that you learned during the student presentations to back up your reasons.
Paragraph 2 - State the first reason and back it up with material from your Internet research (Support/Elaboration).
Paragraph 3 - State the second reason and back it up with the notes you took during the student presentations. (Support/Elaboration).
Paragraph 4 - State the third reason and back it up with the notes you took during the student presentations (Support/Elaboration).
Paragraph 5 - Summarize your findings here.
For
additional lessons on the Gold Rush, consult Myth
and Reality: The California Gold Rush and Its Legacy developed by the Oakland
Museum of California. Sample
lessons are online at http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/curriculum/curr-less.html#4th1.
·
Navigating
the California Indian pathway through the Oakland Museum of California Gold
Rush site can be tricky. Students
need to look for the purple pathway that is labeled California Indian. If they follow the pointed finger at the bottom of the web
page, they will get off the path. Remind
them of the following directions:
·
To
follow the California Indian Pathway, first click on the words California
Indian.
·
After
you finish reading the page, find the purple words California Indian at the top right hand corner
of the page.
·
Click
on the right arrow.
·
Continue
looking in the top right corner of the page for the arrows next to the purple
California Indian pathway. DO
NOT click on the pointed finger at the bottom of the page.
·
“California
as I Saw It:” First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849-1900 is a Library of Congress
website that documents California history through eyewitness accounts. It provides teachers and students with
a good overview of early California history. The Other Californians section includes information
on Native Californians and other minority groups.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbintro.html
If
California was an exciting and hospitable place for newcomers, it no longer
served the needs of groups that had lived there before the Gold Rush. Every
year, illness and armed skirmishes took their toll on the Native Americans
in the state. The Spanish, Mexicans, and mission fathers had confined their
activities to the coast, and the tribes and clans inland had suffered comparatively
little by contact with Europeans. However, the Gold Rush took prospectors
and peddlers precisely to the mountains where Native Americans had earlier
lived in peace. The Indians now suffered not only from the spread of disease
and violence at the hands of prospectors and settlers but also from the white
Americans' greed for land. The newcomers seldom honored any legal safeguards
for the tribes under Mexican deeds, and the Natives were not even safe on
reservations set aside for them by the government. If whites wanted the lands
for gold mining or other purposes, the tribes found themselves shunted to
even more desolate reservations. And every year, the expanding network of
railroads brought more whites closer to the lands of California's native peoples.
California:
An Interpretive History, written by James J. Rawls and Walter Bean, provides a good overview
of the problems Native Californians faced before, during, and after the Gold
Rush. This selection is taken
from chapter eleven of the book, which is entitled “Racial Oppression and
Economic Conflict.” Bibliography
Since
the 1820s the federal government had followed a “removal policy” as its general
solution of “the Indian problem.” A
“permanent Indian frontier” had been created along the eastern edge of the
Great Plains. By a long series
of treaties the Indian nations or tribes of the eastern and central parts
of the country had been induced to move west of this line to new lands which
the American government promised to reserve for them in perpetuity. But this process had scarcely been completed
when in the 1840s the extension of the American boundary to the Pacific made
the line obsolete. A new federal
policy for the Indians of the West had to be devised.
In 1850 Congress passed an act authorizing three Indian agents, or
commissioners, to negotiate a series of treaties with the California tribes. The commissioners were Redick McKee, George
W. Barbour, and Dr. Oliver M. Wozencraft. They negotiated 18 treaties affecting 139 tribes or bands. In each of the treaties the natives acknowledged
the jurisdiction of the United States, agreed to refrain from hostilities,
and ceded to the federal government all claims to the territory that they
had held. In return the commissioners
promised the Indians provisions, cattle, and large tracts of land to be set
apart for reservations. The proposed
reservations totaled 11,700 square miles, or 7,488,000 acres.
This was about 7 ½ percent of the entire land area of the state.
Moreover, although congress had appropriated only $50,000 for the work
of the commissioners, they let contracts totaling nearly $1 million for provisions
and cattle, on the theory that, as they reported to Washington, “it is cheaper
to feed the whole flock for a year than to fight them for a week.”
The federal commissioners overreached themselves, and, unfortunately,
their plan failed. Only a small fraction of California Indians
moved even temporarily to the proposed reservations. Opponents of the plan believed it intolerable
that vast tracts of rich land within the state should be made the exclusive
domain of Indians, and the state legislature recommended that the federal
government continue its traditional policy of removing the Indians entirely
outside the boundaries of the state. The legislature was careful to distinguish, however, between
the “wild” or “hostile” Indians which it wanted removed and those which it
regarded as “tame” or “useful.” In
the latter category were the Indians who had been influenced by the missions
and were now an important source of labor for white farmers and ranchers. The legislature objected to these Indians
being placed on the proposed reservations because it would deprive whites
of their Indian workers.
When the treaties came up for ratification in 1852, California’s United
States senators, Gwen and Weller, opposed them so vigorously that the Senate
rejected all of them. The vast
reservations proposed by McKee, Barbour, and Wozencraft thus were never created. The size of the reservations and the amount
of food and supplies the commissioners promised the Indians far exceeded the
intentions of Congress, but had their grand design been successful, the history
of Indian and white relations in California surely would have been less bloody.
There was widespread fear that the rejection of the treaties would
lead the Indians to outbreaks of violence.
Thus in 1853, as a palliative, Congress adopted a much more modest
plan suggested by Edward F. Beale, the new superintendent of Indian affairs
for California. Beale recommended a system of smaller
reservations that would also serve as military posts for the United States
Army. The Indians would be taught
to engage in agriculture and handicrafts, much in the manner of the Spanish
missions though without the religious emphasis. Ultimately, it was hoped, the Indians on these reservations
might become self-sustaining. Five
such establishments, of 25,000 acres each, were authorized under the act of
1853. The first, at Tejon on
the Tehachapi foothills, contained about 2500 Indians. Other reservations were soon established in northern California.
Beale pushed his experiment with enthusiasm and vigor, but it had scarcely
begun when he was removed from office in 1854.
The Office of Indian Affairs in Washington was peculiarly vulnerable
to the abuses of the spoils system, and its personnel rotated with every new
administration. In general, Beale’s
successors and their subordinates were incompetent and venal political appointees.
In 1858 a federal investigator reported that the reservations were
a lamentable failureæmere almshouses for a trifling
number of Indians.
Unsuccessful as this pitiful system was, however, the federal government
failed to devise a better one, and Beale’s plan became the model for federal
Indian reservations all over the west for many decades afterward.
Episodes
in Extermination
The
two decades after the gold rush produced dozens of wretched episodes that
can best be described as massacres, the great majority of them perpetrated
on the Indians by the whites. As
the incoming tide of whites drove the Indians from their traditional food-producing
areas, many Indians were able to survive only by seizing horses and other
livestock belonging to whites, and this led to instant and violent retaliation.
The most terrifying assertions about the California Indians were widely
believed. In 1851 Governor John
McDougal asserted that 100,000 Indian warriors were in a state of armed rebellion,
and the following year one of California’s United States senators claimed
that only a “master spirit” was needed to “confederate the tribes in a bloody
and devastating war.” These statements
were fantastically false. By
this time there were less than 100,000 Indians of all ages and both sexes
left in the state, and because of their linguistic and cultural differences
they were incapable of “confederating” for war of for any other common purpose.
Gripped by fear and convinced of their own racial superiority, whites
on the California frontier banded together to exterminate the Indians. Units loosely organized as state militia went on Indian-hunting
expeditions. In the process,
thousands of Indians were killed. Typical of the extreme anti-Indian sentiment was the demand
by the Chico Courant in 1866 for vigorous armed action against the Indians. “It has become a question of extermination
now,” the Courant explained.
“The man who takes a prisoner should himself be shot. It is a mercy to the red devils to exterminate
them, and a saving of many white lives. Treaties are played out. There is only one kind of treaty that is effectiveæcold lead.”
Many of the punitive expeditions launched against the Indians were
financed by the state government, and during the 1850s more than $1 million
worth of state bonds were issued to pay the expenses of local volunteer campaigns
for “the suppression of Indian hostilities.”
The federal government reimbursed the state for most of these expenditures
under congressional appropriation acts of 1854 and 1861. Thus the actions of the frontier bands
took on an aspect of legalized and subsidized murder.
Few of the California Indians were able to offer effective resistance
to the military and quasi-military campaigns against them. The main exceptions came in the mountainous northern part of
the state. The most famous conflict
in that region occurred after a band of Modocs left the reservation which
they had been forced to share with the Oregon Klamaths and returned without
permission to their former country on the Lost River. The conflict could have been prevented
by allowing the Modocs to occupy a bit of land which was of very little value
to the whites, and which would have been only a tiny fragment of the lands
that had once been Modoc territory.
In 1873 a force of 400 soldiers, mostly of the regular army, drove
the Modocs to take refuge in lava beds. There, although heavily outnumbered
and fighting only with old muzzle-loaders and pistols against rifles and artillery,
the Modocs fortified themselves so well that they inflicted many casualties
while suffering very few of their own.
At a peace conference where they were offered no better terms than
a return to the reservation in Oregon, the chief, Kientepoos (“Captain Jack”),
was goaded by some of his warriors into a plot in which they murdered Gen.
E. R. S. Canby and a Methodist missionary and wounded and Indian Agent. Ultimately the Modocs were defeated and
Kientepoos was hanged, but not until the war had cost the lives of 75 whites
and half a million dollars.
Some of the most geographically isolated of the California tribes,
such as the Yahi, tried to continue their ancient manner of life and avoid
all contact with white society. The
country of the Yahi was in the Mill Creek region south of Mount Lassen. The gold seekers of the 1850s hunted the Yahi as if they were
wild animals, and by 1870 it was supposed that they were extinct. But in 1911 a man who was apparently the
last survivor of the tribe was found in a slaughterhouse near Oroville, where
he had come in search of food. Prof.
Alfred L. Kroeber of the University of California called him Ishi, the Yahi
work for man. Yahi meant simply the people.
Professor Kroeber and Prof. Thomas T. Waterman also of the University
of California brought Ishi to the university’s museum of anthropology, then
in San Francisco. There the “last
wild Indian in North America” lived for several years until his death. Middle-aged and in reasonable good health
at the time of his “capture” by the sheriff at Oroville, Ishi caught his first
cold in San Francisco, and later succumbed to tuberculosis. But in the meantime this stone-age man
had adapted himself remarkably well to a twentieth-century environment. Alfred Kroeber believed that Ishi had
made the transition from one culture to another more effectively and more
quickly than he himself could have done, and the episode became an important
example of the kind of evidence the led virtually every competent anthropologist
in the world to reject the idea of the biological inferiority of so-called
primitive races.
During
the Spanish and Mexican periods the California Indian population had dropped
from at least 300,000 to no more than 150,000 by 1845. With the coming of hundreds of thousands
of whites following the American conquest, the Indian death rate tragically
accelerated. By the 1870 there
were only about 30,000 Indians left. In 1900 there were less than 16,000. Disease continued to take the largest
toll, probably accounting for about 60 percent of the deaths during the second
half of the nineteenth century. Starvation
and malnutrition probably added about 30 percent of the death toll.
Less than 10 percent resulted from purely physical assault through
formal military campaigns, informal expeditions, and other various forms of
homicide.
Some Indians adapted to the new order by working for whites, often
in a state of peonage comparable to that which had existed on the Mexican
ranchos. Indian labor was especially prized during
the early years of the American period when all other available laborers were
making for the gold- fields. In
those flush times it was often difficult to procure white labor at any price,
and the Indians of California filled the gap. Americans adopted various regulations
which continued the Mexican system of Indian labor exploitation. Under an act of the state legislature
in 1850, any unemployed Indian could be declared a vagrant and auctioned off
to the highest bidder as an indentured servant. A lucrative business of kidnapping Indians, especially children,
for sale as household and farm servants flourished. A white person could mistreat and even
murder an Indian with virtual impunity.
J. Ross Browne wrote that “If ever an Indian was fully and honestly
paid for his labor by a white settler, it was not my luck to hear it.” The treatment of Indian laborers was in
general so oppressive that it contributed more to the extinction than to their
support, and particularly in agriculture the feeling that the landowner has
a right to a supply of cheap labor drawn from the people of some supposedly
inferior race set an evil precedent for future generations.
As for the alternative of assimilating the Indians into the general
population this was made impossible in the early American period not only
by the prejudices of the whites against the Indians but also by the deep resentment
which the Indians felt against the whites.
For
additional background information on the Gold Rush, consult Myth and Reality: The
California Gold Rush and Its Legacy developed by the Oakland Museum of California. Sample lessons are online at http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/curriculum/curr-less.html#4th1.