Thursday, March 12, 2026 6:06 PM
Image aggregated from CalMatters.
While writing a book about California politics a quarter-century ago, I devoted one chapter largely to the phenomenal emergence of Native American tribes as a powerful interest group after being treated shamefully, even viciously, for nearly 500 years.
After their first contact with Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo in San Diego Bay in 1542, tribal members were regarded as sub-humans by California’s early settlers. The abuse continued after California became a state in 1850.
As California historian Kevin Starr wrote, “The Indian was not kept in formal slavery, but he was exterminated at the wish and the expense of the Legislature, and for years in the southern part of the state, under the guise of penal labor, Indians were hawked from the auction-block.”