American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In the 1840s Captain John A. Sutter transformed part of the Sacramento Valley Indian population into a work force for his New Helvetia settlement and the surrounding ranchos. Formerly the Nisenan and Miwok population had a hunting and gathering economy that apportioned labor between the sexes and followed a well-defined seasonal round. Formerly their work directly benefited them, providing sustenance, a basis for biological survival and the continuation of traditional lifeways. Suter and his White associates depended on Indian labor and altered the economic and social fabric of Indian communities to make Native people useful to them. Under Mexican law the newcomers had acquired title to huge tracts of land along the Sacramento River and its tributaries, but as late as 1847 there were fewer than 300 Whites in the valley while there were more than 20,000 Indians. With limited White labor resources available, landholders had no choice but to rely on Indians for their labor requirements. Sutter explicitly recognized the value of Indian labor when he advised one of his White overseers on the treatment of Indian livestock thieves. The guilty should receive "severe punishment but he advised against actions that would eliminate the Indian population. He thought it was preferable "for those who have land" that Indians were "saved so much as possible for labor." To that end Sutter and other settlers used the Native population, converting it into a resource at their disposal. The ways that they did so and the effects on the Indian population are the two subjects of this paper.