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Title: An American Genocide

Subtitle: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873

Author: Benjamin Madley

Narrator: Fajer Al-Kaisi

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-24-16

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 31 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.

Madley describes precontact California and precursors to the genocide before explaining how the Gold Rush stirred vigilante violence against California Indians. He narrates the rise of a state-sanctioned killing machine and the broad societal, judicial, and political support for genocide. Many participated: vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, US Army soldiers, US congressmen, California governors, and others. The state and federal governments spent at least $1.7 million on campaigns against California Indians. Besides evaluating government officials' culpability, Madley considers why the slaughter constituted genocide and how other possible genocides within and beyond the Americas might be investigated using the methods presented in this groundbreaking book.

Cover image courtesy of the Braun Research Library Collection, Autry Museum, Los Angeles: 482

Members Reviews:

Required reading for California residence!

Loved it. A truth so painful yet necessary to have told. You will never think of California the same afterwards or many of its big names and founders, like Fremont, Hastings, and Stanford, many of whom were worse than the worst Nazis murders and butchers. We are a shame as long as we do so little to right this gross injustice and suppression of the truth. -s.

A must have book

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, this history must be known worldwide.

What was one of the most memorable moments of An American Genocide?

The whole book is traumatizing but must be a told

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I don't know. Movies should be made.

Any additional comments?

This history needs to be told. The European still call Indian wars what is nothing more than genocide and deliberate extermination of a people so they could build the USA. The whole of the America continent is a blood bath of indigenous peoples. Accept the truth.

Not for the faint at heart

What made the experience of listening to An American Genocide the most enjoyable?

The history - I read and listened to the book via Kindle. Amazing. I think the attention to detail is incredible here - Madley names the names, dates, and places of so many of the hundreds of massacres the thousands of emigrant gold miners of 1849-1870 and others perpetrated on the Native California Indians. He calls the 25- to 30-year span of virtually uncontrolled delegalizing, trafficking and killing a genocide (using UN definitions) for good reason.

What was one of the most memorable moments of An American Genocide?

When I realized what the "killing machine" was actually comprised of was "memorable." There were the local volunteers (newcomer miners and ranchers) electing like-minded congressmen who got funding to support the militias which were established and the money often refunded by the Federal government. Meanwhile the newspapers encouraged the carnage.