An excerpt from the first chapter of An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, by Benjamin Madley.

CALIFORNIA INDIANS BEFORE 1846

Within a few days, eleven little babies of this mission, one after the other, took their flight to heaven.
-Fray Junipero Serra, 1774

We were always trembling with fear of the lash.
– Lorenzo Asisara (Costanoan), 1890

In the centuries before Europeans arrived, California Indians inhabited a world different from the California we know today. Rivers ran undammed to the Pacific, man-made lakes like the Salton Sea and Lake Shasta had yet to be imagined, and vast wetlands bordered many rivers and bays. Other bodies of water were far larger than they are today. Eastern California’s now mostly dry Owens Lake covered more than 100 square miles, San Francisco Bay was almost a third larger, and the San Joaquin Valley’s now vanished Tulare Lake was the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi. [Read more…]