Table of Contents

List of Tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Defining Genocide

Part 1. Imagining Genocide

Introduction

1. The Core Values of Genocide

2. Emigrant Guides

3. The Overland Trail Experience

Part 2. Perpetrating Genocide

Introduction

4. The Economics of Genocide in Southern California

5. Democratic Death Squads of Northern California

Part 3. Supporting Genocide

Introduction

6. The Murder State

7. Federal Bystanders to and Agents of Genocide

8. Advertising Genocide

Conclusion: At a Crossroads in the Genocide

Epilogue: Forgetting and Remembering Genocide

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Brendan C. Lindsay is an assistant professor of history at California State University, Sacramento.

Reviews

"[Murder State is] one of the most important works ever published on the history of American Indians in California in the mid-nineteenth century."—Steven Newcomb, Indian Country "A significant historical account detailing white pioneers perpetrating genocide against California Indians. . . . [Employs] compelling evidence."—Clifford E. Trafzer, Journal of American Studies
  "Lindsay's methodology and conclusions . . . highlight important questions for scholars to ask of frontier societies, their legal systems, and their citizens."—Brenden Rensink, Western Historical Quarterly
  "Perhaps the most provocative aspect of his book is Lindsay's connection of American democracy to the killing of Indians."—Robert G. Lee, American Historical Review
"Democracy and genocide are two activities that most would declare antagonistic. Yet Brendan Lindsay presents primary evidence that reveals the hatred and murderous acts committed by early Californians and government officials, as a grassroots movement, to settle the 'Golden State' by exterminating and dispossessing Native peoples of their ancestral homelands."—Jack Norton, Hupa historian and emeritus professor of Native American studies, Humboldt State University "Historian Brendan Lindsay has documented the attempted extermination of California's first people and provided a detailed, comprehensive historical treatment of California's genocide. He offers a groundbreaking study that will change the historiography of California and genocide studies—a penetrating but readable book that will quickly become a classic."—Larry Myers (Pomo), executive secretary of the California Native American Heritage Commission