…California in the forties and fifties was a frontier…The early settlers were dedicated to what a government inspector said in 1858 was the “great cause of civilization, which, in the natural course of things, must exterminate Indians.” Many of the Missourians and other inlanders had never before seen a “foreigner,” and the color of a man’s skin was important. A Scandinavian, arrived yesterday, could say he was “American,” and be accepted. Indians, the most American of all, had no rights. Neither did the swarthy Mexicans…Then the Chinese came…and the violence found a new outlet. Everything that later befell the Japanese Americans had its origin in what happened to the Chinese. In 1857, a newspaper, the Shasta [California] Republican, said that “hundreds of Chinamen have been slaughtered in cold blood during the last five years by desperadoes that infest our state. [Yet] we have heard of but two or three instances where the guilty parties have been brought to justice”…Small wonder, since California had passed a state law prohibiting Chinese from testifying in cases that involved whites…In 1862, the Californians got back to the redskins with a vengeance. They attacked Indian Island in Humbolt Bay, after dark, and killed more than two hundred people, mostly women and children…The American Heritage Book of Indians quotes an old-timer, Kingsley, who told how Sacramento Valley ranchers found a steer wounded by Indians, trailed the redskins with dogs, trapped them in a cave, and killed about thirty…In the cave…were some Indian children. Kingsley could not bear to kill the children with his 56-caliber Spencer rifle. “It tore them up so bad.” So he did it with his 38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver.
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