cathedral. it was an incredible evening but what i came away with his teeth comfeetcome away with some seris things in the civil war. it's the civil rights struggles and we've gotten through them and we can get through some big things. if we work faith leading the way.

the book is called the american genocide of the united states and california and in catastrophe 1846 to 1873. the author is the la professor of history, benjamin madly. you righ write between 1846 and, california's native american population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to the 30,000. how did that occur? >> there are many things we understand already about the story. we know disease, exposure, starvation, those were all major factors not only in the population decline but the suppression of the demographic rebound.

once all the other factors and how they played in systematic regimes they had 370 massacres carried out by vigilantes and volunteers. it was a very damning argument that took place in california between 1846 and 1873. it is when they took california from mexico as a part of the mexican-american war and so the story begins their but it's also the year that the major massacre of the california indian people in this case.

it's a massacre of by all accounts people gathered on the banks of the sacramento river but who attacked preemptively killing hundreds of individuals. >> what was their reasoning for this preemptive attack? >> they had bee >> they had been told that this group of california indian people might pose as a threat so they attempted to through what i call in the book pedagogic killing to teach a lesson to other californian indians never to resist and so carson and john c. fremont and the band of troopers killed as many as 800 on a single morning setting the stage for what would become a genocide. >> it's only three years before the 1849 gold rush.

if we can look at the cover of the book, it is insisted that there be a gold leaf on it in order to not so subtly hint at that crucial role goldplated. there were 13 or 14,000 living in california but between 1870 surged to hundreds of thousand almost 400,000 people so that massive demographic switch made it possible for the newcomers to end a really change the relationship where before the gold rush vapor central to the mexican economy serving as farm workers, lassoing cattle. once they came from europe and the eastern united states they were no longer so crucial and

many of the newcomers saw them as competitors in their search for the rapid acquisition of wealth so they accelerated dramatically particularly against those that were engaged in gold mining. >> getting 1849 more than 65,000 immigrants within often heavily armed experienced paramilitary organization full of fear and hatred towards indian survived in california. >> they often came already organized with officers and have sometimes corporations but the literature that they were reading in the print media was telling them that it was very dangerous to cross sell one group hold a cannon and didn't

find a reason to use it and ended up being able to sell it for a dollar in sacramento because nobody saw california indians as a substantial threat many as i said before were part of the economy working in the mining industries but because they became so heavily armed it made it easy for them. the way this worked is the massacres were done at a distance so long range weapons like rifles were used but had a longer range than the bows and arrows and a lot of these killed indian people without putting themselves in harms way. >> in california and grew up in the country. i knew a lot of people growing up and then we moved here to los angeles and the suddenly i was wearing an indian on my

letterman's jacket but wondering where are all of the indian people and it wasn't apparent to me that we are on top of the most populist indian city in the western united states. so i began to wonder where everybody went and i began to study this history and the further i went into it dot the more terrifie, the moreterrifiee of california, our very first democratically elected declared that the war of extermination would be waged until the race becomes extinct in the first i thought that he was a madman and then i see right away the state legislature puts the power.

he told large numbers of people and inspired a number of the vigilante killings and the u.s. army was donating all of the weapons and ammunition to the militia that the federal government later reimbursed over 900,000 to pay for the militia and they also killed more people than the california militiamen and in total the numbers are quite staggering but the book documents all of the killings and what he learned is the vigilantes and militiamen and soldiers killed at an absolute minimum 9,400 or perhaps as many as 16,000 probably thousands of

others whose deaths were not recorded in the newspapers and official reports that were combed over for years. it might seem like some kind of an antiquarian fetish but i wanted to do here is present some kind of memorial to all of the fallen people who were victims of state-sponsored mass murder and there was the day that i was doing my research and i bumped into the names of those that had fallen and i thought we need something like this. we may not get a memorial designed by somebody like maya lin but we do have these

appendices and you've spoken about your own experience and pain when you lost a loved one in your life and you look at these numbers and think about the magnitude of what this means, it isn't just the political leaders that are lost, it's the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, the people that knew how to make a go perfectly, the people that knew how to leave a beautiful basket with the designs of the community and yet after all of this, but lori of the most unimaginable harbor in this startling environment of navigating the programs you have a dark cloud of genocide and the resilience and survival certificate is 150,000, 109

federally recognized up and down the state and another 70 so these people are the defendants that folks figured out how to live in a world of that wanted to destroy them with federal soldiers looking for them, militiamen searching for them, bounty hunters paid. while it's a very dark story in many ways it is also a story of the triumph of the human will and instinct for survival against these odds that seem impossible. >> you use the term indians and not native americans.

>> in the academic world we often talk about native americans are american indians that i grew up in what is called indian country and most people i know one guy ranches and reservations as well as in urban areas refer to themselves simply as indian. we know that this is based on columbus's great mistake. he thought he reached the east indies when he only reached the caribbean basin. but the term has a resonance that is very important so the single biggest periodical that circulates around the country is called indian country today and that is if you will the national journal or the national periodical of the american people throughout this country. but it is important to acknowledge that it is a mistake. but when we think of indian country, and i'm glad you've raised this is important to remember we are in and begin

country right now. but anywhere you go in california, you will be in someone's ancient and central homeland people inhabited for thousands of years where many believe since that time and memorial and that is true wherever you go in this hemisphere from the straits of magellan to the shores of the arctic oceans. and one of the things that happened because of the great loss of life with the indian people and the public consciousness not only have all of the indian names for the landforms into the rivers and lakes and inlets and the race but they've been written over often with the very names of the people who did the killing. so we have person peak and numerous places named after john c. fremont, people that we alluded to earlier that were direct genocide perpetrators and

we also have many schools and institutions named after the leaders in high political places who played roles in this genocidal process. so, for example, hastings law school in san francisco, the state's oldest law school is named after the first supreme court chief justice, the man that ruled in the case the release date men others arrested for mass murder in the napa valley's and also men who personally bankrolled the death squad that became the evil river rangers. one of the california state militia units responsible for killing hundreds of indian people come over 280 by their own official reports, perhaps 400 or more according to journalists and eyewitness accounts. so the very history of this genocide is woven into the states place names so the way we see the cartography of

california represents us not in terms of letting people know that here in massacre happened, here are a great enslavemen a gf california indian people have been, here on this reservation hundreds of people starve to death. but rather in the celebration of the people who planned, paid for and carried out and this is one of the things i hope this book might help change and i should say that on wednesday i had the opportunity to speak with the governor in california to present this book in the capital to him and the cabinet and the california indian leaders and he is going to acknowledge that this was what he calls an actual genocide so it is a rare moment for a historian to actually have impact on public discourse and what i hope can come out of this is a wider dialogue about how we

teach our youth and i hope that this history can ultimately get part of the state educational standards for what young people in california learned. right now it is relegated to the fourth grade and most of us coming up at the amount of time and oppressors but that is the only time where we talk about california history today and my hope as an activist historian is to put the california indians not only into the educational standards but into the public discourse and perhaps we can have monuments that commemorate the massacres and the victims and that told the truth about what happened. and once we have a more comprehensive understanding of this mass violence, the systematic state-sponsored mass violence that took place in california then we can begin a

healing process that might involve not only memorials, but state-mandated days of remembrance and a real discussion about the state of california and the government of the united states posed in light of this horrific criminal past. >> what is an activist historian? >> i see myself as an activist historian and that i am constantly thinking about the documents uncovering and of the wathe wayi told the narrative eo the experience and the way in which uncovering the hidden paths can change public policy and public discourse as a way that we understand the path in order to shape the future. >> you spoke of the first governor of california. your book begins in 1846 california came into the union in 1850. back then there was that was ay quick time frame wasn't as?

>> it's an extraordinary thing. i'm not a subscriber to the exceptionalism as you know the book pushes against that pretty hard but it is a rapid turnaround because of the extraordinary wealth provided in the gold rush and the extraordinary migration, so the migration to california is the single largest mass migration of the united states 19th century so by 1850 there is already a substantial number of people and it's also because the generals in charge were not activists and in fact they encouraged the democratic process to happen very quickly, so the california state constitutional convention happens in the fall of 1849 almost a year before statehood, so they seiz seized the day hern california to move very rapidly and one of the interesting things about the constitutional convention is they came one vote

away from advertising to california indians. so we see again and again in the story have a history of california could have gone in a very, very different direction but for a very few people turning the tide in the direction of what ultimately became disenfranchisement and genocide. >> your book was recently recognized by the la times. what was the recognition? ..

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