Introduction
California has been populated for thousands of years. There were diversified tribes of Native American living there when Europeans arrived. These tribes, together with Maidu, Pomo, Mohave, Chumash, and Yuma, spoke plenty of languages but were separated by geographical characteristics such as desserts and mountain ranges. They were recognized as peaceful people with varied cultures who gathered nuts, fished, and hunted for food (Moyle, 1976, p. 111). In this critical essay, we will concisely but critically evaluate California’s history in terms of social behaviours, institutions, and oppressive systems.
Body
The oppression system is documented as institutional and systemic exploitation of authority and is constructed around the philosophy of the inferiority of some groups and the inferiority of others. This system enables the authoritarian to have complete control over the choices and natural resources of the inferior group, which obstructs them from practising their freedom of choice. The mid to late 19th-century era of California history is familiar as the “California Genocide,” where local, state and federal government institutions’ actions demolished the Indigenous California population. The California population dropped by 50,000 under Spanish rule from 1769 to 1834. The indigenous population was further reduced to 150,000 when Mexico gained independence from Spanish rule. This population remained at just 30,000 in 1870 under US dominance. During the 1850s to 1870s, almost 15,000 Native Americans were killed by European Americans in California (Madley, 2016). There is a plethora of literature available which concludes that the misuse of Californian institutions was the core cause of the dispossession of the Native Americans. The Pre European to mid-1900s California history revolves around significant gender, class and race discrimination. No matter who ruled California, the superior people always propagated domination over the inferior people (Fenelon & Trafzer, 2014, p. 4). The oppression of any type, either racial or classism oppression, has been an important source of turmoil among all civilizations. These historical events provide us with intuitions that every country or tribe have their own distinctive culture and characteristics that should be adopted or at least respected by everyone to live peacefully in the modern world of nuclear-equipped.
Conclusions
In this research essay, after a keen evaluation of the bulk of historical literature, we shed light on the selected era of Pre Europe to the mid-1900s. This essay provides insight into how Native Americans suffered during different ruling regimes in the understudy time period. These historical patterns can be observed in modern America, too, but now all kinds of harassment advance resistant behavior among Americans to stand for their human rights.
Work Cited
Fenelon, J. V., & Trafzer, C. E. (2014). From colonialism to denial of California genocide to misrepresentations: Special issue on indigenous struggles in the Americas. American Behavioral Scientist, 58(1), 3-29.
Madley, B. (2016). An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873. Yale University Press.
Moyle, P. B. (1976). Fish introductions in California: history and impact on native fishes. Biological Conservation, 9(2), 101-118.
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