Rancheria Tulea massacre facts for kids

The Rancheria Tulea massacre was a sad event in March 1847. During this time, American slave traders killed five Native Americans. This happened because some enslaved Native Americans had managed to escape.

A Difficult Time in California

Life in Early California

In 1839, a man named John Sutter came to Alta California, which is now part of California. He was from Switzerland but had German roots. Sutter started building a large, strong settlement where the Sacramento and American rivers meet. The Mexican government gave him a huge piece of land, about 48,827 acres. They hoped he would help keep Americans from taking over the area.

To build his fort and run his big farms, Sutter used Native American workers. People at the time said he forced Native Americans to work for him. They described his methods as "kidnapping, food privation, and slavery." Many believed that Sutter treated these workers very badly. In 1846, someone wrote that Sutter kept "600 to 800 Indians in a complete state of Slavery." Sutter was also involved in attacks against Native Americans if they stole cattle.

Sutter welcomed new settlers, especially Americans, to Alta California. Soon, many ranches appeared in the area. A lot of these ranches also forced Native Americans into slavery to work their huge lands. Slavery became very common in the region. Visitors to California said Native Americans were "legally reduced to servitude" and were "little better than serfs." One writer even said their situation was "more degrading, and more oppressive than that of our slaves in the south."

The Attack at Rancheria Tulea

In March 1847, some Native Americans from the Rancheria Tulea group managed to escape from slavery. According to a report they later gave to government officials, the slave traders attacked their home village. This was done as a punishment for the escape. In this attack, five Native Americans were killed, and "many more" were hurt.

Another report from a U.S. marine officer, made on the same day, also described an attack. He said that White Americans "stormed" a Native American village. They tried to take the people there into slavery. In this event, four Native Americans were killed, and the attackers lost one person. It is possible that both of these reports are talking about the same sad event.

What Happened Next?

Even though there were reports about this attack made to officials, there is no record that anyone was punished for what happened.

After the Massacre

Changes and New Laws

Later, John Sutter, who was now working for the U.S. government as an agent for Native Americans, criticized other settlers. He said they would "shoot them, steal away their women and children, and even go so far as to attack whole villages, killing, without distinction of age or sex, hundreds of defenseless Indians." This was even though he himself had used forced labor.

The month after the Rancheria Tulea massacre, more Native Americans were killed in another event called the Konkow Maidu slaver massacre.

On April 22, 1850, California's new state government passed a law called the "Act for the Government and Protection of Indians." This law made it legal for White settlers to kidnap and force Native Americans to work for them under certain rules.

In 1851, the governor of California sadly stated that "a war of extermination will continue to be waged, until the Indian race becomes extinct." This idea soon became part of the law. A law passed in 1851 allowed settlers to form groups to kill Native Americans. It even let them ask the government to pay for their expenses. By 1852, the state had approved over a million dollars for these claims.

In 1856, a newspaper in San Francisco wrote that "Extermination is the quickest and cheapest remedy." In 1860, the government passed another law that made it even easier to force Native Americans into slavery. A newspaper at the time said that rich people who wanted to profit from enslaved Native Americans pushed for this law. It gave examples of how wealthy individuals used the law to get Native American slaves from reservations. The paper called the law "as complete a system of slavery, without any of the checks and wholesome restraints of slavery, as ever was devised."

On April 27, 1863, California finally made it illegal to enslave Native Americans. This was five months after Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which freed enslaved people in the United States. However, forced labor continued in California under different names, like "apprenticeship," until at least 1874.