An American Genocide

The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873

By: Benjamin Madley

Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi

Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.

Madley describes precontact California and precursors to the genocide before explaining how the Gold Rush stirred vigilante violence against California Indians. He narrates the rise of a state-sanctioned killing machine and the broad societal, judicial, and political support for genocide. Many participated: vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, US Army soldiers, US congressmen, California governors, and others. The state and federal governments spent at least $1.7 million on campaigns against California Indians. Besides evaluating government officials' culpability, Madley considers why the slaughter constituted genocide and how other possible genocides within and beyond the Americas might be investigated using the methods presented in this groundbreaking book.

Cover image courtesy of the Braun Research Library Collection, Autry Museum, Los Angeles: 482

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2016 Benjamin Logan Madley (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Well Researched, Wrenching, Necessary

I've struggled so much with listening to the narrative Manley develops in this essential book for anyone who cares about the soul of America. The volume of data provided on the slaughter of Native peoples is overwhelming. And, as I listened in California, walking to and from my office on the grounds of the former mission where I work, wave after wave of it rolled into my consciousness to a degree that was often hard to take. The tsunami of that fact-based reality is a key part of Manley's argument: there was just SO MUCH KILLING with so much government endorsement and active facilitation. Hearing of case upon case of killing justified by the flimsiest of rationales--this at a time when children are being ripped from their parents' arms at US borders and put in what amount to concentration camps--it's a lot to take in. Attending to all of it, resisting the urge to tune it out, to turn it off, is the basis of the moral argument Manley develops. If you want to just stop listening because it was so unimaginably awful, but didn't, you've got the point. If you keep listening, attending to parallels in the discussion about reparation for descendants of African slaves, to the humanitarian crisis on the southern border, to the destruction and degradation of Native lands in Standing Rock, well, now you're beginning to do the work that comes next. All of it is painful, and I can't imagine how Manley got himself through researching and writing this book. My only quibble with the book itself would be that I would have liked to have known more about religious justifications for the Native American extermination in California, particularly as many of the stolen children were taken into church-sponsored schools often funded by the government. I'm looking at some of that material myself now. Beyond that, the audiobook wobbles only on the often weird pronunciations of the narrator, particularly of local place names, some of which I looked up to see if I'd been mispronouncing them or if the pronunciations had changed dramatically over the past century. While that sometimes was the case, it wasn't often. Otherwise, this is an important work that is well worth the wrenching experience of listening all the way through.

Must read history

This book was a wonderful read for primary resources about Native American genocide in California. Many of the stories are hard to listen to especially being afather myself. However, I believe that this history which utilizes many primary resources should be part of the curriculum for students to understand what happened to our native American tribes in California and their strength to survive.

Moving, Painful, Convincing

With useful, effective if brutal detail, makes a convincing argument that the destruction of the California Indians after the Gold Rush meets the UN criteria for genocide. This is a well constructed argument presenting the complexities of the issue, not a polemical attack. Makes a point that a regional approach to white and Native relations in the Americas over time is the best way to determine whether a particular tribe experienced or incidents comprised genocide based on the 1948 UN definitions. Narrator has a great voice, gravitas, and engagement with the material, but his mispronuciations of even some common names (like Fremont) can be jarring at times.

Must read

Incredibly written. Well researched. Recommended reading for anyone living in the US and is not familiar with this genocide.

oh so much death it was hard to listen to

it was a good book, but it was beyond depressing and difficult to finish. I recommend all people read this as it is vital to know the true history of the United States