History
The Gospel calls us to be agents of reconciliation, not carriers of harm. Jesus tore down the walls of hostility (Ephesians 2:14) and, in Himself, created one family. Our calling is to embody that same reconciliation in ways that can be seen and felt. Every embrace filled with meaning, every box of food, every roof restored, every visit with an elder, every meal shared, every prayer whispered in love; these are acts of repentance. They declare with courage and humility: “We will not repeat the sins of the past. We choose to walk in the way of Jesus…the way of love.”
According to the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, genocide is defined as:
“Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
These acts include:
The definition of genocide is not just a matter of law or history, it is a human reality that deeply impacts the lives of Indigenous peoples today. The scars of massacres, forced removals, and boarding schools are carried across generations. Families torn apart, languages silenced, and traditions shamed; these are not only historical facts, but living wounds.
The Gospel compels us to see this truth with open eyes and open hearts. Jesus Himself entered into the suffering of the world. He did not avoid pain or injustice but stepped into it. “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us” (John 1:14). He wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), He touched the untouchable (Mark 1:41), and He declared that He came to bring “good news to the poor… freedom for the oppressed” (Luke 4:18).
When we recognize the reality of genocide against Indigenous peoples, we are not dwelling in despair; we are responding with the heart of Christ. He calls His followers to “mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15), to “defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17), and to walk humbly with Him as we seek justice (Micah 6:8).
Genocide attempts to erase identity and dignity. But Jesus restores both. At the cross, He bore the weight of humanity’s sin and suffering. In His resurrection, He offered new life, reconciliation, and hope. His ministry shows us that every person, every culture, every community bears the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and is worthy of love, honor, and protection.
At Singing Feather Ministries, we believe that acknowledging genocide is part of telling the truth, and truth is the beginning of healing. But it is not enough to only acknowledge the past, we are called to live differently today. To truly repent is to acknowledge the wrong that was done, and to intentionally turn around and go in a different direction.
We recognize that in history, much of the pain inflicted on Indigenous peoples was done in the name of “the Church.” Mission systems, boarding schools, forced assimilation, and destruction of culture were often carried out under the banner of Christianity. For this reason, we believe that our response must look radically different. We choose to serve in humility, to honor their culture rather than erase it, and to walk alongside Native communities instead of above or without them. This is our act of repentance, turning from the sins of the past and bearing fruit in keeping with repentance (Matthew 3:8). This brings the restoration, redemption, and salvation that Jesus died for.
Scripture shows us what this repentance looks like:
Repentance is more than words; it is a lifestyle. For us, that means:
We’ve learned that as we pave the way for trust and authentic relationships, we also open the way for encounters with the living God, our Creator. And when people encounter Him, He is faithful to draw them to Himself with a love that is boundless, real, tangible, and life changing. From there, everything else begins to fall into place. Jesus is so good at bringing connection and repentance in the most beautiful and holy ways. We are simply the vessels that lead them to that connection.
The U.S. federal government has not officially declared that genocide took place in California against Native Americans.
While Congress has issued apologies (2009 Apology Resolution) and recognized the harms of broken treaties, removal, and boarding schools, it has never used the term “genocide” in relation to California or U.S. Indian policy more broadly.
In 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a formal apology to California Native peoples, explicitly stating that what happened in California was “a genocide.”
He acknowledged that between the Gold Rush and early statehood (mid-1800s), state-supported militias and policies led to mass killings, enslavement, and forced removals of Native Californians.
Newsom also established the California Truth and Healing Council to further address this history.
Federal Government → Recognizes historical wrongs and atrocities, but does not officially use “genocide.”
State of California → Explicitly acknowledges genocide against Native Americans during state formation and the Gold Rush era.
“He reveals deep and hidden things; He knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with Him.”
— Daniel 2:22
On September 9, 1850, California celebrated its freedom from Mexico and became the 31st state of the Union. Just a year earlier, we had entered into covenant with God and man through the birth of the California Constitution of 1849, which opened with these words:
“We, the people of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish this Constitution.”
Article 1, Section 1 declared: “All men are by nature free and independent, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.”
Yet, in 1850 — less than a year later — California broke this covenant when the genocide of Native Americans began.
Many Americans are familiar with tragedies such as the Trail of Tears, the Wounded Knee Massacre, or the Sand Creek Massacre. But few Californians know of our own state’s history, steeped in the murder, enslavement, and rape of Indigenous peoples.
Part of the reason is that these atrocities were overshadowed by other major events:
Our history books saturate us with these stories, while largely silencing the genocide that was unfolding here. From 1850 to 1890, California witnessed some of the most brutal campaigns of extermination in the nation. Hundreds of thousands of Native men, women, and children perished.
In 1850, as tens of thousands flooded into California seeking gold, the government faced what they saw as a “problem”: the most fertile land was already occupied by Native people. Their solution was the “Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.”
Despite its name, this law did not protect Native Californians. Instead, it:
Newspapers even advertised the trafficking of Native women and children. The Marysville Appeal reported in 1863:
“There are parties in the northern portion of the state whose sole occupation has been to steal young children and squaws and dispose of them at handsome prices to the settlers, who willingly pay $50 or $60 for a young Digger to cook or wait upon them, or $100 for a likely young girl.”
California’s reservations, supposedly created for Native safety, only concentrated Indigenous families and made women and children more vulnerable to kidnappers. Tribes who were once independent were herded together, stripped of land, starved, and subjected to military control.
It didn’t take long for the government of California to openly fund extermination. The state set aside $1.5 million to reimburse militias for hunting down and killing Native people. Bounties were placed on scalps and heads; five dollars for every Native head in Shasta City (1855).
Governor Peter Burnett, California’s first governor, declared:
“A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct.”
Public policy, from the highest levels of government, supported nothing less than genocide.
The flood of Euro-American settlers further destroyed Native life:
Entire communities were devastated. The survivors carried generational trauma that persists to this day.
“He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
The words and actions of that era are not easy to read. Yet we must remember: God saw it all. His heart breaks for every life stolen, every child sold, every mother violated, every elder silenced. His anger burns against injustice.
Even now, He is jealous for “His Beautiful People”, the First Nations of this land, who were never given the chance to freely know Him. Their pain and stories remain deeply embedded in their culture, passed from generation to generation.
A young Native woman from Round Valley once told me after I commented on the hiddenness of her reservation:
“It is better to be hidden than hunted.”
Her words echo the truth: Native people still remember. And so must we.
Ignorance breeds injustice. But awareness, repentance, and action open the door to healing. It is time to stand with our Native brothers and sisters and cry out for justice, healing, and restoration.
Let us be a people who:
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”
“The most persistent enemy of the Native Californians was the firmly rooted white philosophy which preached that, one way or another, the Indian was doomed. Beyond the callous references to “Diggers” and “Poor Lo,” the single most important catchword of the period was “extermination.” It was used early and often and picked up by the newspapers and repeated in the army reports, letters, government documents, and journals of the time. It was a word that set the stage for slaughter.”
“It is now that the cry of extermination is raised…; men, women, and children… of the Indian race… shot down.” Sacramento Placer Times, April 1849.
“There will be safety then, only in war of extermination.” San Francisco Daily Alta California, May 1850
“That a war of extermination will continue to be waged, until the Indian becomes extinct, must be expected…” Governor Peter Burnett to the State Legislature, 1851
“The blame [for some robberies] as usual [was] laid at the door of the Indians… And a war of extermination… determined on.” Indian Agent Redick McKee to the governor, 1852
“A party of men went out, discovered the Rancheria… and killed 140 Indians. …Their destiny is to be exterminated.” A Weaverville merchant writing home, 1852
“The northern settlers [will visit] their savage enemies with a thorough and merciless war of extermination.” Marysville Herald, October 1855
“This will, of course, continue until the force of the whites is sufficient to overwhelm the Indians and exterminate them…” Superintendent Thomas J. Henley to James W. Denver, October 1857.
As part of this journey God has reminded me of Cain and Abel. Genesis 4:9 “Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground…” I felt the Lord say to me, “The blood of the Native Americans cries out to me from the ground in California. Can you hear it?”
Then He gave me this scripture… Ezekiel 33:6 “If the watchmen sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchmen accountable for his blood.”
“I am writing this as a trumpet. We deserve judgment. The blood of the indigenous people of California is crying out from the land. But God, in His infinite mercy, is extending His hand to us. We have an opportunity to consider the sins of our state, to repent and turn away from our wickedness. We have a window of time to extend justice to the people who have fought for it for so long, with little result. It all starts with prayer. I encourage you to allow your heart to connect with this, and pray for God to show you His heart, that you will be filled with His wisdom, compassion and understanding. If we want an “Awakening” in California we must consider the past, we must enter into heaven’s perspective and from that place we must humble ourselves and pray, so that Jesus will come and heal our land and rescue souls. We must go into the most hidden communities and share the good news that they are not forgotten or alone. Jesus sees them…and so do we.” ~ Cindy Butow.
On February 2, 1848, the United States took possession of California from Mexico. Ten months later, news of the gold found at Sutter’s Mill triggered a tidal wave of immigration into the new state. Between 1849 and 1851 alone nearly 250,000 settlers arrived (Cook, 1970, p 28). These immigrants needed food and triggered an agricultural explosion that in turn created shock waves of land grabbing. In 1851 the first white explorers visited the Yuki homeland, in northern California, and in 1854 settlers arrived to farm and ranch the area’s fertile valleys. Before whites arrived, the Yuki numbered between 5,000 and 20,000. By 1864, settlement policies and a war of genocide had reduced them to “85 male[s] and 215 female[s]” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 126). Genocidal policies then continued into the twentieth century, further reducing the population.
Like the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki came into conflict with settlers over natural resources, land, the abduction of their children, and the enslavement and mistreatment of their women. Likewise, the Yuki rose up only to be hunted nearly to extinction and incarcerated in lethal ethnic gulags. Indeed, these genocides demonstrate remarkable similarities.
Soon after white settlers arrived in 1854, their pastoral activities began to threaten the Yuki hunter/gatherer economy. The Yuki depended on hunting deer and birds, fishing for steelhead and salmon, and gathering insects, nuts, seeds, tubers, and wild plants for survival (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 18–19). The lush meadows and river valleys where these Yuki staples thrived were also the best places for building houses, tilling the earth, and grazing livestock. Settlers’ hogs, cattle, and horses set out to pasture in these areas consumed the core of the Yuki diet. Further, the settlers’ domesticated animals drove wild game away from prime grazing areas thus depriving the Yuki of meat.
As in Tasmania, competition for natural resources generated conflict. Settlers occupied traditional Yuki hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds, denying them to the Yuki and forcing the Yuki to the point of starvation. According to settler John Burgess, who lived in the Yuki homeland:
I saw a man driving some squaws from a clover field… they were picking clover or digging roots; he said he would be damned if he would allow them to dig roots or pick clover, as he wanted it for hay. (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 68)
In the face of the sudden and intense competition for access to natural resources, many Yuki radically changed their lives in order to eat. They retreated into mountain areas where they faced the twin challenges of fewer food sources and violent encounters with hostile tribes.
Without access to productive land and fearful of the dangers associated with hunting and gathering on neighboring tribes’ lands, Yuki began killing settlers’ stock to survive (Miller, 1978, pp 249–254). The San Francisco Bulletin noted on January 21, 1860 that due to their “condition bordering on starvation … [the Yuki] are committing serious depredations on the stock” (San Francisco Bulletin, January 21, 1860).
A dearth of written records obscures Yuki thinking, but their attacks on settlers’ livestock were also likely intended to exact revenge for dispossession, loss of food, the enslavement of children and the abduction and mistreatment of women. As one settler noted, “the treatment received by the Indians from some of the white settlers has tended to exasperate them and cause them to destroy stock in a spirit of revenge” (Heizer and Almquist, 1971, p 39).
Forcibly indenturing Indians was legal in California from 1850 to 1863. On April 22, 1850, the state legislature passed “An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians” into law, providing for the indenture or apprenticeship of California Indians (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 40; Castillo, 1978, p 109; Hurtado, 1988, pp 129–131). This legislation led to widespread kidnapping of Yuki children. When Indian Agent Simon Storms visited a Round Valley Yuki encampment in 1856 he found that “a number of squaws and children had been taken away by white men, which was the principal reason they were so much afraid of whites” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 40). Indian Agent Vincent Geiger reported in 1857 that “the Indians … have very few children, most of them doubtless having been stolen and sold” while in 1858 a settler noted what appeared to be kidnappings: “In coming into the valley, on the first occasion, I met a man with two Indian boys taking them off, and the third time I came on the trail, I met a man taking off a girl” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 61). There are no written records of stolen Yuki children ever returning to the tribe.
Few white women migrated to California with the Gold Rush. To obtain sex and labor, white settlers abducted and enslaved Indian women, including the Yuki. According to genocide scholars Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, stolen Yuki women became “temporary harvest hands, household servants, and camp wives” (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990, p 197). Written evidence of Yuki reactions to these kidnappings are not extant, but Sherburne Cook suggests that abduction and abuse of Yuki women were causes of violent conflict between the Yuki and settlers (Cooke, 1976, p 278).
Between 1856 and 1859 the Yuki began attacking first livestock, and then both stock and a limited number of settlers. The conflict was always asymmetrical. California Indians were prohibited from owning guns and records suggest that the Yuki primarily relied on bows and arrows. Despite the disparity in firepower and the fact that the Yuki rarely killed whites, settlers responded with massacres of increasing scale (Heizer, 1974, p 11). Farmer John Lawson explained, in 1856, that when “I lost twenty hogs … [I] went after the Indians … shot three [and] five … were tried at the reservation, found guilty and hanged” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 59). Settler Dryden Lawson stated in 1860 that:
… in 1856 the first expedition by the whites against the Indians was made … these expeditions were formed by gathering together a few white men whenever the Indians committed depredations on their stock; there were so many expeditions that I cannot recollect the number…we would kill on average fifty or sixty Indians on a trip …frequently we would have to turn out two or three times a week. (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 40)
Between 1857 and 1858 the Yuki killed four white men in attacks that appear to have motivated settlers to perpetrate increasingly large massacres. In May 1859, Round Valley settlers avenged the killing of a single prize stallion with the slaughter of 240 Yuki (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 64–65, 82). Responding to the increasing violence of the summer of 1859, the editor of the Sacramento Union wrote: “The aborigines are melting away as the snows of the mountains in June … they are doomed to steady extirpation” (Sacramento Union, August 22, 1859).
On September 6, 1859 California Governor John Weller intervened to sanction genocide by granting a state commission to Walter Jarboe, a notorious Indian killer whose “Eel River Rangers” had already murdered 62 Yuki men, women and children that year (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 90–91, 89). Despite these killings, Weller considered the Yuki a threat requiring even more extreme measures. A San Francisco Bulletin editorial even suggested, “Extermination is the quickest and cheapest remedy, and effectually prevents all other difficulties when an outbreak [of Indian violence] occurs” (San Francisco Bulletin, September 1, 1856). When US Army generals refused to order their troops to join the war against the Yuki, Weller hired Jarboe and his “Rangers.”
Five months later, in January 1860, Weller disbanded the “Eel River Rangers” and Jarboe presented his final report to the new Governor of California, John Downey: “from … [September 20] to the 24th of January[1860], I have fought them twenty-three times, killed 283 warriors, the number of wounded was not known, took 292 prisoners, sent them to the Reservation” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, pp 95–96). Jarboe then presented the state with a $11,143 bill for his expeditions (San Francisco Bulletin, February 24, 1860). Given his previous record for killing scores of women and children, Jarboe’s official account cannot be trusted. He lists only men killed. Yet, if his previous activities are any indicator, he and his death squad did not discriminate between men, women, and children. All were likely targeted.
Governor Weller understood that Jarboe would kill women and children as well as the California press did. By February 1860, despite its earlier editorial, the San Francisco Bulletin was shocked and criticized Jarboe’s actions as a “Deliberate, cowardly, brutal massacre of defenseless men, women, and children …” (San Francisco Bulletin, February 24, 1860). In March of the same year, San Francisco Herald editor John Nugent attacked the government’s genocide with biting wit:
I propose to the legislature to create the office of Indian Butcher with the princely salary conferred upon the man who has killed the most Indians in a given time provided it is satisfactorily shown that the Indians were unarmed at the time and the greater of them were squaws and papooses [women and children]. (San Francisco Herald, March 5, 1860)
Governor Weller had officially sanctioned genocide. He understood that by commissioning Jarboe he would unleash a force with a proven record of killing women and children and that it would annihilate most, if not all, Yukis. The government of California sanctioned and paid for Weller’s genocide policy and Jarboe’s execution of it. On April 12, 1860 the California state legislature appropriated $9,347.39 for “payment of the indebtedness incurred by the expedition against the Indians in the county of Mendocino organized under the command of Captain W.S. Jarboe in the year 1859” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 97). Jarboe’s 292 prisoners then joined other Yuki at the Round Valley Reservation.
The Round Valley Reservation was established in 1854 as a collection point for the Yuki as well as a number of other northern California tribes. In 1857 Special Indian Agent Browne reported that “some 3,000 Indians” were living on the reservation (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 58). No records exist to show exactly how many Yuki died there. However, it is clear that even as Indians were continually brought to the reservation in the hundreds, the population steadily declined as a result of malnutrition, the abduction of women and children, rape and consequent venereal disease, and constant settler attacks. Although ostensibly created to protect the Yuki, in practice Round Valley bore striking resemblances to the Tasmanian ethnic gulag on Flinders Island. Inadequate rations led to malnutrition, disease, and subsequent death. In 1858 a reporter from the San Francisco Alta California visited the reservation and gushed:
There is …an abundance of food …to supply the immediate wants of a vast multitude of Indians, and in a short time, their labor might produce an adequate supply of grain and vegetables for the entire aboriginal population of this State. (Steamer Edition, San Francisco Alta California, May 27, p 1858)
But those Yuki working on the reservation farm were provided only a starvation diet. Rations consisted of six ears of corn per worker per day or flour with which to bake bread; those who did not work were not given food (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 68; Heizer, 1974, p 106). To supplement these insufficient rations, the Yuki turned to foraging and hunting on the reservation (Heizer, 1974, p 106). Here too they confronted a penal system designed to destroy them: ranchers were allowed to graze their livestock on the reservation, thus destroying the seeds, plants, tubers, and acorns the Yuki were foraging for. Without sufficient nutrition immune systems weakened and many Yuki succumbed to disease.
The abduction and rape of Yuki women increased the reservation mortality rate. Despite US Army soldiers stationed on the reservation to protect the Yuki, Round Valley was no safe haven. Lieutenant Edward Dillon, based on the reservation, reported “It is a common occurrence to have squaws taken by force from the place” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 61). Frequent rapes brought death by spreading venereal diseases through the Yuki reservation community. According to an 1859 petition sent by Tehama County settlers to the US Secretary of the Interior, the agent in charge of the reservation was “compelling the squaws, even in the presence of their Indian husbands to submit to (he and his cronies’) lecherous and beastly desires,” thus introducing “among them diseases of the most loathsome character” (Heizer, 1974, p 139). When Simon Storms entered Round Valley in June 1856 he noted that not a single Indian was “affected with the venereal,” but by August 1858 he reported “about one-fifth are now diseased” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 61).
The reservation even became a shooting gallery for white settlers. Without the authority to arrest white men beyond the reservation, US Army soldiers had little ability to pursue and punish whites that attacked the Yuki. Settlers would commit a crime on the reservation and slip over the line of safety. Moreover, because the California legislature excluded Indians from serving as witnesses “for or against any white” in the California court system, it was virtually impossible to charge those suspected of victimizing Yuki on the reservation (Heizer, 1974, p 5). With little fear of consequences, whites killed those incarcerated on the reservation with impunity. As Captain Johnson, charged with protecting the reservation, explained of the Yuki, “they had always been told by the white man ‘come on the reservation; we do not want to kill you,’ but they had been invariably deceived and killed, and now they did not know whom to believe” (Tassin, 1887, p 29). In 1859 Captain Johnson warned, “I believe it to be the settled determination of many of the [white] inhabitants to exterminate the Indians,” but given the laws he could “see no way of preventing it …” (Carranco and Beard, 1981, p 90).
Long after the war was over, reservation policies continued to destroy the Yuki. According to Sherburne Cook, starvation and sickness combined with settler encroachment and attacks to destroy 80% of the Yuki on the reservation between 1873 and 1910 (Cook, 1976, p 238). Thus, the reservation system continued the genocide into the twentieth century. As on Flinders Island, there was a clearly discernible record of steadily declining population at Round Valley. The US and California governments may not have set out to destroy the Yuki at Round Valley, but they, like the colonial government of Tasmania, did little or nothing to correct this process despite years of evidence indicating that extermination was under way and that official policies contributed to it.
Today approximately 100 Yuki live in Mendocino County on the Round Valley Indian Reservation together with members of five other California Indian nations. Fewer than a dozen native Yuki speakers remain.
The Legislature’s Majority and Minority Reports on the Mendocino War (1860)
Extracted from Early California Laws and Policies Related to California Indians
By Kimberly Johnston-Dodds, California Research
Bureau, California State Library, September 2002