Indian Survival on the California Frontier

The transformation of California from an unsettled frontier to a beacon of migration and social organization was in significant part a response to the famous Gold Rush. Hurtado's book is chiefly concerned with how the rapid changes in the social environment of the California frontier in the mid-nineteenth century made a negative impact on a population that had already been made vulnerable owing to the influx, social preferences, and deeply felt prejudices of white settlers. In sheer numbers, the population of indigenous peoples declined drastically. However, in the records of those who survived the wholesale mutation of their life experience can be discerned not only the systematic and often brutal domination of indigenous culture by alien values and power but also the (often pathetic) character of (often ineffectual) coping and adapta

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among soldiers, had the effect of spreading syphilis, which in turn spread infant and adult mortality in the native population. Meanwhile, the more or less enforced integration of Indian with the Spanish/mission population in the early nineteenth century did not result merely in easy acquiescence on the part of the Indians. Hurtado cites Indian raids on livestock, trading pelts, and farming and ranching settlements (50ff), not only during the mission period but also during and after the period of Anglo settlement and the U.S. Army incursions for Indian "pacification." The influx of Anglo populations into California altered the experience of the native population, mainly on account of the sexual encounter between white men and Indian women. The structure of traditional Anglo family units included presumptions about proper gender and racial roles. "Women provided not only emotional and social stability," says Hurtado, "but [unpaid] economic contributions as well" (27). But this stability referred to Anglo social arrangements only. Indian populations were increasingly displaced at the wholesale level in most parts of North America. In California, the pattern of native displacement was slightly different, owing to the differences bet
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Approximate Word count = 1772
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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