Throughout the course of history various ethnic and racial groups have been discriminated against. In the mid-nineteenth centuries it was the Native Americans who faced heavy discriminatory practices by the American people. In, “Los Angeles’ 1850s Slave Market Is Now the Site of a Federal Courthouse”, an article by Robert Petersen, he describes the tactics employed by the white settlers in order to suppress the Indians and take over the land.
The article begins by describing how when the Europeans came to America in 1769, there were more than 300,000 Natives that lived in the area we know today as California. By 1860, however, that number dropped tremendously to around 30,000. That means that nine out of every ten Natives were exterminated. This is mainly because as California became part of the United States in 1848 after the Gold Rush began, Americans were pouring into the state leading …show more content…
Local ranchers and vineyard owners began paying the majority of their Indian worker’s salary in alcohol, while knowing that they would get drunk so lawmen could arrest them for their drunkenness. Anyone could then post the bail of these Indians in exchange for a week of servitude. However, after the Natives finished their work they were once again payed in alcohol and once again thrown in jail. This vicious cycle ultimately ended up being extremely detrimental to the Natives as they were individually falling into deeper and deeper debts. Furthermore, since anyone could post the bail for an Indian any random person could just go to the auction and basically buy their very own drunken slave for the week. In a letter written by the administrator of Rancho Los Alamitos, he asks his boss to allow someone to go to the auction and buy five or six Indians. Ultimately this just goes to show the type of abuse the natives had to endure in these developing stages of our
The article begins by describing how when the Europeans came to America in 1769, there were more than 300,000 Natives that lived in the area we know today as California. By 1860, however, that number dropped tremendously to around 30,000. That means that nine out of every ten Natives were exterminated. This is mainly because as California became part of the United States in 1848 after the Gold Rush began, Americans were pouring into the state leading …show more content…
Local ranchers and vineyard owners began paying the majority of their Indian worker’s salary in alcohol, while knowing that they would get drunk so lawmen could arrest them for their drunkenness. Anyone could then post the bail of these Indians in exchange for a week of servitude. However, after the Natives finished their work they were once again payed in alcohol and once again thrown in jail. This vicious cycle ultimately ended up being extremely detrimental to the Natives as they were individually falling into deeper and deeper debts. Furthermore, since anyone could post the bail for an Indian any random person could just go to the auction and basically buy their very own drunken slave for the week. In a letter written by the administrator of Rancho Los Alamitos, he asks his boss to allow someone to go to the auction and buy five or six Indians. Ultimately this just goes to show the type of abuse the natives had to endure in these developing stages of our