Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Brendan C. Lindsay , Murder State: California's Native American Genocide, 1846-1873 (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press , 2012, $70.00). Pp. xv+436. ISBN 978 0 8032 2480 3 .
Exclusive Online Reviews
Brendan Lindsay has written a significant historical account detailing white pioneers perpetrating genocide against California Indians. Most authors popularize the California Gold Rush, focussing on rip-roaring frontier towns and sourdough miners panning color along rapid rivers. Many historians ignore California Indian people during the Gold Rush and silence Native American accounts of pioneer attacks, murders, rapes, kidnappings, and slavery. Even the state department of education in California denies the genocide. Lindsay places the spotlight on democratically constituted militia groups that systematically committed genocide. Settlers cleared the landscape of original inhabitants, then "legally" stole Native American land and resources, including gold, wood, and water. Lindsay argues that pioneers "used the democratic process and the structures of republican government to call for and execute a massive genocide of 'Indians' during the second half of the nineteenth century" (2). He bases his cutting-edge research on primary documents, but he also acknowledges the work of scholars before him.
Sherburne Cook,...