"Exterminate Them": Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Slavery of Native Americans During the California Gold Rush, 1848-1868

Trafzer, Clifford E. (Editor)/ Hyer, Joel R. (Editor)

ISBN 10: 0870135015 / ISBN 13: 9780870135019

Published by Michigan State Univ Pr, 1999

About this Item

1999 no other dates edition. 177 pages. 9.25x6.00x0.50 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # 0870135015

Bibliographic Details

• Title: "Exterminate Them": Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Slavery of Native Americans During the California Gold Rush, 1848-1868
• Publisher: Michigan State Univ Pr
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0870135015
• ISBN 13: 9780870135019
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.3 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

Popular media depict miners as a rough-and-tumble lot who diligently worked the placers along scenic rushing rivers while living in roaring mining camps in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Trafzer and Hyer destroy this mythic image by offering a collection of original newspaper articles that describe in detail the murder, rape, and enslavement perpetrated by those who participated in the infamous gold rush. "It is a mercy to the Red Devils," wrote an editor of the Chico Courier, "to exterminate them." Newspaper accounts of the era depict both the barbarity and the nobility in human nature, but while some protested the inhumane treatment of Native Americans, they were not able to end the violence. Native Americans fought back, resisting the invasion, but they could not stop the tide of white miners and settlers. They became "strangers in a stolen land."

About the Author

Cliffor Trafzer is Director of American Indian Studies at University of California, Riverside. He received the 1996-97 Wordcraft Prose Writer of the Year Award for Death Stalks the Yakama.