Buried Beneath the Golden Dream: The California Genocide and the Foundations of Eugenics Office (1846–1873)

“A war of extermination will continue to be waged until the Indian race becomes extinct.”

— California Governor Peter Burnett, 1851 The Blood Beneath the Gold

California is often painted as a land of opportunity, sunshine, and gold — but beneath its gilded image lies one of the most brutal and strategically hidden genocides in U.S. history. Between 1846 and 1873, California underwent a calculated purge of its Indigenous peoples — a process of ethnic cleansing aided by settler militias, the U.S. military, and state-sanctioned violence. But genocide was not the endgame alone. It was the foundation for eugenic policy, the spiritual blueprint for what would become California's Eugenics Office and its sinister legacy of sterilizations and racial purification.

THE GENOCIDE WASN’T AN ACCIDENT — IT WAS A POLICY

Between 1846 (U.S. occupation) and 1873 (the end of the Modoc War), over 100,000 Indigenous Californians were killed — many in state-funded campaigns. The genocide had three key components:

• State Sponsorship of Violence: California’s first legislature appropriated over $1.5 million in taxpayer money for militias to hunt and kill Indigenous peoples.2

• Legalized Enslavement: Under the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, Aboriginal people could be arrested and auctioned off as laborers. Children were kidnapped and sold openly.3

• Bounty Killings: Settlers were paid for scalps. Babies were smashed against trees. Women were raped, then murdered. Whole villages were burned to erase the “problem.”4

This wasn’t frontier chaos — it was organized destruction.

EUGENICS BEFORE THE NAME: THE PSEUDO-SCIENCE OF EXTERMINATION

Though the California Eugenics Office wasn’t formally established until the early 20th century, eugenic thinking was already alive in the genocide. The destruction of Indigenous people was not just military — it was ideological:

• The belief in “racial purity” justified massacres. Whites considered Native people subhuman, “unfit” to share the land or reproduce.

• Settlers described Native Americans as a “dying race” and framed extermination as “natural selection.”5

“Mixed-blood” children were either abducted, sterilized later, or misclassified — erasing Indigenous identity by law.6

This racial logic laid the foundation for the later eugenics movement, which sought not only to prevent “undesirable” people from reproducing — but to erase entire bloodlines from record and memory.

FROM SLAUGHTER TO SCIENCE: THE EUGENICS OFFICE CONNECTION

By the early 1900s, California became the epicenter of American eugenics. Between 1909 and 1979, over 20,000 forced sterilizations were performed — disproportionately on Indigenous, Mexican, and Black women.7 But this was not a separate story from the genocide. It was a continuation by other means.

• California’s first sterilization law was built on the same assumptions of racial hierarchy that fueled the genocide.

• Institutions like the Sonoma State Home and Patton State Hospital institutionalized Indigenous descendants as "feebleminded" — then sterilized them.8

• Bureau of Vital Statistics officials, influenced by eugenicists like C.M. Goethe, helped reclassify Indigenous people as “colored,” “mulatto,” or “Mexican” to erase their legal tribal identity.9

This wasn’t medicine — it was ethnic engineering.

RACIAL RECLASSIFICATION: ERASING THE RIGHT TO EXIST

Eugenics wasn’t just about the body — it was about records. In California:

• American Indian children were taken from their families and placed in “civilizing” institutions.

• Their tribal names were replaced, their languages banned, their identities legally whitened or Blackened — but never left intact.

This bureaucratic erasure destroyed claims to land, ancestry, and tribal rights. Today, many urban and rural Indigenous families still can’t “prove” who they are — because the state destroyed the paper trail.

WHY THIS STILL MATTERS

This isn't distant history. California’s genocide and eugenics machine:

• Shaped public policy on race, immigration, and welfare for a century.

• Continues to haunt Indigenous families who are fighting to reclaim their ancestry, burial sites, and tribal recognition.

Was directly exported to Nazi Germany, where California sterilization laws were praised by Hitler’s advisors.10

We cannot talk about justice or reparations without reckoning with the genocidal and eugenic blueprint California built — and exported.

FROM RECOGNITION TO RESTORATION

Let’s stop calling this "forgotten history." It wasn’t forgotten. It was buried — on purpose. The time has come to dig it up, name the architects, and confront the systems they built — from scalp laws to sterilization tables to racial misclassification.

This is not just history. It’s unfinished business.

Madley, Benjamin. An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873. Yale University Press, 2016. ↩

Lindsay, Brendan C. Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846–1873. University of Nebraska Press, 2012. ↩

Heizer, Robert F. The Destruction of California Indians. University of Nebraska Press, 1993. ↩

Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival. University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. ↩

Silliman, Stephen W. “Misclassification and the American Indian: Racial Reclassification and the Reproduction of Settler Colonialism.” American Anthropologist, Vol. 122, No. 3, 2020. ↩

Stern, Alexandra Minna. Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. University of California Press, 2005. ↩

“Sterilization and Social Justice Lab.” University of Michigan. https://sterilizationandjustice.org ↩

Smith, Andrea. “Native American Feminism, Sovereignty, and Social Change.” Feminist Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2005. ↩

Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003. ↩

⚔️ 1. Round Valley Massacres (1856–1859) — Mendocino County

What happened: U.S. Army troops and settler militias in Northern California carried out repeated massacres of Yuki Indians in the Eel River and Round Valley regions. These attacks were organized and justified by claims that the Yukis were “savages” and “dying out naturally.”

Why it matters:

 The Yuki population dropped from about 3,000 to less than 100 by 1864.1 This wasn’t spontaneous — it was systematic slaughter, and the logic behind it mirrors early eugenics: certain races were seen as biologically "unfit" to survive.

💰 2. California State Bounty Laws — Paid Killings of Native People

What happened: In 1851, California’s legislature passed a law funding the killing of Native people. Settlers were paid bounties for scalps and severed heads. By 1852, over $1 million had been reimbursed for “Indian hunting” expeditions.2

Why it matters:

 This official funding of mass killing is direct state-sponsored genocide. It parallels later eugenic policies that targeted certain populations as a “cost” or “burden” to society — justifying their sterilization or institutionalization.

🚸 3. 1850 “Act for the Government and Protection of Indians”

What happened: This law legalized Native child slavery. Settlers could "adopt" Indigenous children — but it was essentially legalized kidnapping and indentured servitude. Thousands of Native children were stolen from their families.

Why it matters:

 Children were intentionally removed to erase cultural identity and sever reproduction. Girls were particularly targeted to prevent future Indian families. This social sterilization prefigures later forced sterilizations and eugenic adoption policies.

🧬 4. Institutionalized Sterilization at Sonoma State Home (1909–1970s)

What happened: The Sonoma State Home for the Feebleminded, one of California's first eugenics institutions, sterilized thousands of people. Many of them were Indigenous or Mexican women and girls deemed “unfit” to reproduce.3

Why it matters:

 While outside the 1846–1873 timeframe, it is directly rooted in the racial hierarchy established during the genocide. California eugenicists saw these groups as a threat to the “purity” and economic success of the state.

🔒 5. Racial Reclassification: "Paper Genocide"

What happened: State and federal officials, especially in the early 20th century, reclassified Native Californians as “colored,” “mulatto,” or “Mexican” on birth certificates and census records. This destroyed tribal recognition and legal identity.

Example:

 Descendants of Mission Indians, such as those from the Gabrielino-Tongva and Luiseño tribes, found themselves listed as “Mexican” or “Black” in 20th-century documents, even if their families had lived in tribal areas for generations.4

Why it matters:

 This made them ineligible for tribal benefits, land claims, or federal recognition. It was eugenics by paperwork — erasing Indigenous bloodlines without a drop of actual blood spilled.

🔥 6. Modoc War (1872–1873) — The Last Stand and Forced Exile

What happened: The Modoc people, led by Captain Jack (Kintpuash), fought a desperate war against U.S. forces after being forced from their homelands. After surrendering, Modoc leaders were executed, and survivors exiled to Oklahoma.

Why it matters:

 The war’s end in 1873 marks the closing chapter of California's genocidal era — but also the start of mass relocation and legal erasure. The use of violence and forced diaspora matches what eugenics would later do with sterilization and confinement.

💉 7. Victims' Stories — Compulsory Sterilization of Native Women

What happened: Survivors like Mary “Minnie” Rios, a California Native woman, were sterilized without informed consent at state hospitals like Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino. Some were teens; many didn’t even know it had happened until later in life.5

Why it matters:

 This was population control disguised as medical care — an echo of the belief that Indigenous populations had to be reduced or erased. These practices targeted the same bloodlines that California's early genocide tried to destroy.

Madley, Benjamin. An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873. Yale University Press, 2016. ↩

Lindsay, Brendan C. Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846–1873. University of Nebraska Press, 2012. ↩

Stern, Alexandra Minna. Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. University of California Press, 2005. ↩

Smith, Paul Chaat. Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong. University of Minnesota Press, 2009. ↩

University of Michigan Sterilization and Social Justice Lab. https://sterilizationandjustice.org ↩

FIRST TRIBE