Summary Of Murder State By Brendan C. Lindsay

Brendan C Lindsay author of Murder State writes about the early stage of California the violence that occurred, genocide of native people in the time era of 1846 to 1873. There are two claims that Lindsay makes in the book about the violence towards the native people and the genocide created by democracy of the Euro Americans. He demonstrates these two arguments by first the Euro Americans coming into the native people’s territory and taking it away from them and also the democracy that killed all the innocent native Indians.

In Lindsay’s book Murder state there are three sections to the book “Imaging Genocide”, “Perpetuating Genocide” and “Supporting Genocide”. Within these three sections there is violence, democracy, genocide and the formation

Euro Americans perceived native people, as less than human, they learned about native people through books, and articles in the newspaper, they created their own impression without even knowing who they really were. Native people were also referred to be savage animals and if Euro Americans came across native people because they were to meet with them on their way to California, they had to be cautious, fear and guard against the hostile Indians. Lindsay states that genocide was not something that was created at that time in history but before California, it was started in the Mid -West and East. “The core belief created within many Euro-American’s that this was the essential nature of Indians was the foundational step to genocide in California” (40). Genocide was a big factor when it came to forming the state’s democracy and economic development. Lindsay states in his book about genocide “rather than a government orchestrating a population to bring about the genocide of a group, the population orchestrated a government to a destroy a group”

As well as how the process started to evolve for the Euro-Americans in democracy. At this time period gold had been discovered and a lot of people were coming to California, the wealthy by ship and others by land. Euro Americans at this time didn’t have any other type of resources so finding the gold was how they were going to make money, but Native Americans had farming, mining and grazing that helped them. All that the Euro Americans needed to get started was a little bit of capital, or an ax or some cattle brought over or bought from the California Rancheros. With the gold being discovered Euro Americans found a way that drove them to genocide, they figured that they were able to take control of land and resources from native people to themselves. Since they still had thought of Native people as savages and wild animals, this encouraged genocide even more in order to justify it. “By employing traditional practices and institutions, such as community cooperation, democratic decision making, and republican representation, small communities of Euro-Americans learned they could effectively exterminate native Americans legally, efficiently and profitably”