6. The California Gold Rush of 1848 results in an influx of gold prospectors through and into Native American territory
In early 1848 a carpenter from New Jersey named James Wilson Marshall who was building a sawmill in Coloma, California, discovered gold in the American River. News of this spread and sparked a gold rush resulting in tens of thousands of gold prospectors flocking to California in search of their fortune. Approximately 40,000 headed west along the California Trail but few made the fortune they had hoped for. The sudden influx of Anglo-American settlers passing through and settling on Native American territory heightens tensions between the two groups and leads to conflict. In 1850 California passes the Indenture Act which effectively allows for a form of legal slavery of indentured Indians by non-Indians. During this time the practice of kidnapping Indian children and their subsequent sale as apprentices becomes widespread. In 1853 the Indian population is forced onto military reservations. In 1849 approximately 150,000 Indians lived in California, but a “combination of legal slavery and near genocide” reduces that number to just 30,000 by 1870.