QEI-M3EDUC 642Number of pages 6 pagesAcademic Level Post.docx

QEI-M3
EDUC 642
Number of pages: 6 pages
Academic Level: Post-Graduate
Deadline: 10 Hours (This is the maximum time I have so
anything beyond this will not be useful)
Observation Protocols Instructions
It is important for aspiring administrators to understand that
different school districts have different expectations in regards
to both the frequency of observations and the areas that are
observed and evaluated. By finding samples of protocols from
various states and districts, you will begin to realize that policy
and practice (instead of the principal) sometimes dictate how
observations/evaluations are conducted.
For this assignment, locate 10 observation protocols utilizing
research and the Internet. These protocols are sometimes called
observation checklists or evaluation forms. The 10 selected
protocols must represent a variety of states, levels
(elementary/middle/high), and subject areas and must include
both public and private schools (note: one of the 10 must be the
protocol that will be used in your observation cycle assignment
during Module/Week 8).
Create an electronic portfolio of these observational protocols
and include directions for the utilization of the tool. This
portfolio must be organized as 1 document with the last page
(entitled “References”) containing a list of URL links that are
used in the project. The document must include the details of all
of the different protocols you found. Make this a practical
assignment that can be utilized when observing and

conferencing with teachers.
The easiest way to think about this assignment is to consider it
an annotated bibliography. It is suggested that, for the body of
the paper, you put the hyperlink to the website where the
observation instrument is located and then follow with your
summary of that particular instrument. For the references page,
you will list the websites you used in current APA format.
Observation Protocols Sample
https://hr.dpsk12.org/dcta_evaluation_forms
The state of Denver has a website that includes forms that are
needed yearly for evaluations of all staff. The website is

connected to the human resources website. The evaluation is
easy to complete. The teacher is graded on instruction,
assessment, curriculum and planning, and learning environment.
The administrator provides comments for each grade, selects
satisfactory or unsatisfactory and provides a summary of the
teacher. The administrator also provides a summary of evidence
journal.
http://www.gcs.k12.al.us/pdf/EDUCATEGadsden.pdf
Gadsden City Public schools uses an evlaution form that is
based on the state of Alabma’s standards and the common core
standards that the state of Alabama uses. The classroom
observation form measures a teacher’s ability of: content
knowledge, teaching and learning enviroment, literacy, and
diversity.
http://www.haywood.k12.nc.us/resources/forms/
Haywood county schools is in North Carolina. Haywood has
their website set up for anyone to use. The website has all of
the forms neccsssary to complete supervision duties. As well as
guides for the teachers. The observation form is 13 pages long
and measures: leadership, enviroment, content, failitat of
learning, and teachers relection.
References
Denver Public Schools. (2013, April 29). Human Resources
DCTA Evaluation Forms. Retrieved from Denver Public Schools
website: https://hr.dpsk12.org/dcta_evaluation_forms
Gadsden City Schools. (2013, April 29). Teacher Evaluation
Manual. Retrieved from Gadsden City Schools:
http://www.gcs.k12.al.us/pdf/EDUCATEGadsden.pdf
Haywood Public Schools. (2013, April 29). Forms. Retrieved

from Haywood Public Schools:
http://www.haywood.k12.nc.us/resources/forms/
Observation Protocols Grading Rubric
Student:
Criteria
Points Possible
Points Earned
Instructor’s Comments
Content
· At least 10 protocols are selected
· Protocols represent a variety of states, levels, subject areas,
and public/private schools
· Protocols are practical
· Details are provided for each protocol
70
Format
· Portfolio organized as one document

· Correct spelling and grammar
· References in APA format
· URL links are included
30
Total
100
Page 4 of 1
Chinese American Women Defense Workers in World War II
Author(s): Xiaojian Zhao
Source: California History, Vol. 75, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp.
138-153
Published by: University of California Press in association with
the California Historical Society
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Before the Second World War it was difficult for Chinese
American women to get jobs outside Chinatown because
of racial and gender
discrimination. However, the nation's wartime needs required
that every able-bodied per
son be mobilized, including
women and racial minorities. The result was an
unprecedented hiring
of Chinese
American women in the Bay Area's wartime industries. This

picture shows Nancy Lew
Mar
working
as a riv
eter at the Pan-American Airways
on Treasure Island. Nancy Lew Mar Collection.
138 CALIFORNIA HISTORY
2013 13:20:30 PM
Chinese American Women
Defense Workers in World War II
by Xiaojian Zhao
In February 1945, Fortune Magazine published an
article on the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, Cal
ifornia, including eight photos of the shipyards
workers. One of the captions for the photos says,
"Chinese Woman: she hasn't missed a day's work in
two years."
1
This woman was Ah Yoke Gee, a

welder in Kaiser Richmond Shipyard Number Two.*
The weekly magazine of the Kaiser Richmond ship
yards, Pore 'N'Aft, described her
as one of the oldest
crew members of Richmond shipyards. From July 31,
1942, when she started to work in the shipyard, to
April 20,1945, Ah Yoke Gee had missed only one day
of work to spend time with her oldest son,
a ser
viceman who was passing through San Francisco
on
his way to the Pacific front.2 At a time when there
was a
shortage of labor, Ah Yoke Gee's story
was
apparently useful for the Kaiser company's public
relations. Here, a middle-aged Chinese American
woman was
being recognized
as a
patriotic, hard
working defense worker, who
was

doing her best to
contribute to the nation's war effort.
Ironically, this model shipyard worker had been
deprived of citizenship by her
own government.
Born in 1895 on the Monterey Peninsula in Califor
nia, Ah Yoke Gee was a second-generation Chinese
American for whom U. S. citizenship
was a
*The real names of some of my informants are not given in
this essay upon their request. I
use the pinyin system in translit
erations, except for
names of well-known persons. If a person's
name has been printed in English sources before, I follow the
way it was in print to avoid confusion.
birthright. Her legal status changed, however, after
she married a Chinese immigrant from Hong Kong.
During the period of Chinese exclusion from 1882
to 1943, Ah Yoke Gee's husband, an alien from China,
was
racially ineligible for naturalization.3 Moreover,

the Cable Act of September 22,1922, stipulated that
women citizens who married aliens ineligible for cit
izenship could
no
longer be citizens themselves.4
Though Ah Yoke Gee worked for the nation's defense
industry, she could not vote
as a citizen. Her daugh
ters recalled that she had been very upset about los
ing her citizenship because she always considered
herself an American. At age forty-six, she finally had
the opportunity to work in
a defense industry to
demonstrate her patriotism to her country. It was also
during the
war that Congress repealed the Chinese
exclusion laws and made it possible later for Ah Yoke
Gee to regain her citizenship through naturalization.
Unfortunately, her husband, who died before the
war, did not live to see the happy day.5 Ah Yoke
passed away in 1973.

World War II marked a turning point in the lives
of Chinese Americans. For the first time, Chinese
Americans began to be accepted by the larger Amer
ican society. Chinese American
women not only had
a chance to work at jobs traditionally held by men,
but were also allowed to show their loyalty to their
country. Although scholars have long recognized the
importance of World War II in the lives of American
women, and there has been increasing popular inter
est in the topic since the release in the late 1970s of
a
documentary?"The Life and Times of Rosie the
SUMMER 1996 139
2013 13:20:30 PM
Riveter"?the existing literature has overlooked the
profound impact of the
war on Chinese American
women.
Partly because of

a
scarcity of English-lan
guage sources on this topic,
some scholars simply
have assumed that Chinese American women did
not share the experience of "Rosie the Riveter."6
Based on sources from Chinese-language
news
papers and reports, company documents, and oral
history interviews, this essay focuses
on the unique
experience of Chinese American female defense
workers in the San Francisco Bay
area. It examines
the racial discrimination and prejudice that had
forced Chinese Americans to isolate themselves in
their ethnic communities, and explores how second
generation Chinese American women, together with
men of their communities, grasped the wartime
opportunity to enter the larger American society. I
chose the San Francisco Bay

area as the setting of this
study because the
area had both the largest
concen
tration of defense industries and the largest
con
centration of Chinese American women during the
war.
The war created a favorable climate for Chinese
Americans to be accepted by American society, but
looking back, many Chinese Americans have mixed
feelings about the
war. The bombing of Pearl Har
bor was one of the most tragic incidents in the his
tory of the United States. Without it, however,
Chinese Americans would not have been able to
enter defense industries or the armed services. Since
the United States and China were allies against
com
mon enemies during the war, American images of
Chinese began to change from negative to positive
ones. Whereas, once, negative stereotypes of the

Chinese had dominated popular culture, the Amer
ican mass media now described the Chinese as
polite, moderate, and hard-working. On December
22, 1941, Time magazine, for example, published
a
short article to help the American public differenti
ate their Chinese "friends" from the Japanese. The
facial expressions of the Chinese, according to the
article, were more "placid, kindly, open," while those
of the Japanese
were more
"positive, dogmatic,
arro
gant."7 Also, because World War II
was considered
by the American public
as a
"good war" against fas
cists who had launched a racist war, it was impor
tant for the United States itself to improve its
domestic race relations. Chinese Americans, too,

recognized the racial dimension of this
war. "It is for
tunate," said an editorial in the Jinshan shibao (Chi
nese Times), a San Francisco-based Chinese-language
daily newspaper, "that this
war has the white race
and the yellow
race on both sides and therefore will
not turn into a war between the two."8
Moreover, Chinese Americans were needed for the
nation's armed forces and defense industries. In
May 1942, Bay Area defense establishments began
to advertise jobs in local Chinese newspapers. Rich
mond shipyards, in particular, announced that they
would hire Chinese Americans regardless of their cit
izenship
status or their English skills. In
a recruitment
speech, Henry Kaiser, president of Kaiser Industries,
which operated four shipyards in Richmond, called
upon Bay Area Chinese Americans to work in his
shipyards to support the
war effort. The Moore Dry

Dock Company hired Chinese-speaking instructors
in their Oakland welding school and started
a spe
cial bus service between the shipyard and Chinatown
for Chinese American trainees.
After decades of isolation imposed by the larger
American society, the Bay Area Chinese American
communities lost no time in seizing this opportunity.
In various meetings and social gatherings,
commu
nity leaders and organizations urged Chinese Amer
ican residents to participate in the
war efforts.
Because military service would qualify immigrants
for U.S. citizenship and
some Chinese immigrants
had been granted citizenship while in the Army, it
was considered a breakthrough in challenging the
exclusion acts. Jinshan shibao published
a number of
articles regarding the advantages of defense jobs.
First, defense jobs
were well paid. Second, these jobs

could be used for draft deferment. Third, defense
employees could apply for government- subsidized
2013 13:20:30 PM
housing, which provided
a great opportunity for
Chinese Americans to move out of their isolated eth
nic ghettos.10
Because few companies recorded the number of
their Chinese American employees, the existing lit
erature tends either to overlook them or give inac
curate estimates of them. In The Chinese Experience
in America, Shih-shan Henry Tsai estimated that in
1943, Chinese Americans "made up some 15 percent
of the shipyard work force in the San Francisco Bay
area."11 Since in 1943, the Bay Area had about 100,000
shipyard workers, Tsai's estimate suggests that
15,000 were Chinese Americans.12 However, given
the fact that the Bay Area's entire Chinese American

population, including all age groups,
was
only about
22,000 in 1940, and only
a small number of Chinese
Americans migrated to the West Coast during the
war, it was very unlikely that 15,000 of them (over
68 percent)
were defense workers.13 On August 21,
1942, the Chinese Press, a San Francisco Chinatown
based English-language newspaper, reported that
1,600 Chinese Americans worked in Bay Area
defense industries.14 This was one year before the
peak of the war, before several of the Bay Area's
major wartime shipbuilding establishments, includ
ing Richmond Shipyard Number Three and Marin
ship in Sausalito, began production. The number of
Chinese American defense workers would increase
significantly
a few months later, after major defense

establishments ran their ads in Chinese community
newspapers. Marinship alone, according to Jinshan
shibao, employed 400 Chinese Americans in March
1943. At the launching ceremony of Sun Yat-sen,
a Lib
erty Ship named after the leader of the Chinese Rev
olution of 1911, Marinship invited all the yard's
Chinese American employees and members of their
families. The ship
was christened by Mrs. Tao-ming
Wei, wife of the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., and
Madam Chiang Kai-shek
was the guest of honor.15
Based on these scattered pieces of information and
interviews with old timers of local Chinese com
munities, a reasonable estimate is that by 1943, about
Born and schooled in Oakland, Elizabeth Lew
Anderson, shown here, worked as a metalsmith
at Alameda Naval Air Station
during
the war. Eliz
abeth Lew Anderson Collection.

5,000 Chinese Americans were working (or had
worked) for defense-related industries in the Bay
Area, and between 500 to 600 of them were women.16
For a number of reasons, there were fewer female
than male Chinese Americans in defense industries.
The Chinese population in the United States histor
ically has had
an unbalanced sex ratio. Most of the
early Chinese immigrants
were male, and the Exclu
sion Act of 1882 also forced male Chinese immigrants
who had married women in their native provinces
SUMMER 1996 141
2013 13:20:30 PM
to leave their wives and children in China. Only reg
istered merchants and their families, students, teach
ers, diplomats, and travelers could be exempted
from the exclusion. In order to bring their wives to
the United States, many Chinese laborers were eager

to change their status
to merchants. Some of them
accomplished this by saving
a small amount of
money and then raising capital through
a hui to start
their own businesses.17 Others listed their names as
partners in businesses of relatives and friends. In
exchange for such privileges, they sometimes offered
years of free labor. The 1906 earthquake in San Fran
cisco to some extent facilitated the immigration of
Chinese. Since birth records of the city
were
destroyed during the earthquake
and fire, many
Chinese grasped the opportunity to claim U.S. citi
zenship and used their
new status to send for their
sons and daughters.18 Not until after 1910 did fam
ily-oriented life begin gradually to replace the old
bachelor society. By 1940, Chinese American citizens

finally outnumbered alien residents in Chinese
American communities.19 Nevertheless, that year
there were still 285 Chinese American men for every
one hundred Chinese American women.20
The precarious economic situation of immigrant
Chinese families compelled the majority of Chinese
American women to help
earn an income, no mat
ter whether they
were wives of business owners,
wives of laborers, or daughters of immigrants.21
Women's work in Chinese communities was often
integrated with family life and family businesses. In
small shops,
women worked alongside their hus
bands, between their households chores. Children of
shop-owners often worked from
an
early age, begin
ning by folding socks in laundry shops or cleaning
vegetables in restaurants and moving
on to more dif
ficult tasks as they got older. While

women and chil
dren did not earn wages, their work was
indispensable
to the family business since few
busi
nesses could afford to hire extra hands.22
Women whose families were not wealthy enough
to own businesses found employment mostly
as
cannery workers, shrimp cleaners,
or garment work
ers.
Cleaning shrimp
was a common
job for
women
with young children. During the shrimp season,
some women would bring shrimp home and sit
with their children shelling the shrimp from
morn
ing till night, sometimes under candlelight. Wages
were based on the weight of the shrimp that they
shelled daily. The most

common employment for
Chinese American women was in the garment indus
try, which made up 58 percent of all industrial
employment in San Francisco's Chinatown in the late
1930s. In the early 1940s, there
were more than sev
enty garment shops, most of which had fewer than
fifty employees. At
a time when unionized garment
workers received $19 to $30 a week, workers in Chi
natown's garment shops received only $4 to $16. A
typical garment shop
was located at the owner's
home, where family members of the shop-owner and
employees often worked together.23
During the war, in
contrast to Chinese American
men, who were more likely to be encouraged to join
the military or defense work, women's primary
duties still consisted of being wives and mothers.

Throughout the
war years, there were no articles or
editorials in Chinese newspapers specifically calling
on Chinese women to enter defense industries. "It
is the servicemen who will do the fighting for us,"
Madame C. T. Feng, chairman of the American
Women's Voluntary Service (an
overseas Chinese
organization) told Chinese American
women. "We
must show our fighting
men that we are...absolutely
behind them."24 As part of its war effort, the China
town branch YWCA in San Francisco started a spe
cial weekly class for
women to learn time-saving
ways for preparing nutritious food. In
a
speech
delivered to a YWCA open house meeting, the Y's
administrator, Jane Kwong Lee, called upon Chinese
American women to support the country by giving
their families "the right nutritional food."25 What

open support existed for defense employment for
women came mostly from the American-educated
second generation. As
a matter of fact, only the Eng
2013 13:20:30 PM
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After the war, Elizabeth Lew Anderson married a Cau
casian merchant seaman. Most of the time she accompa
nied him when he traveled and worked outside California,
but she returned to work at the Naval Air Station during
both the Korean and Vietnam wars. This 1983 photograph
captures her
at work. Elizabeth Lew Anderson Collection.
lish-language Chinese Press occasionally reported
activities of Chinese American women defense
workers. In contrast, Jinshan shibao, a major local Chi
nese-language newspaper that had
a
larger circula
tion, paid little attention to the subject. On April 16,
1943, Jade Snow Wong,
a San Francisco-born young

Chinese American woman, christened a Liberty
Ship at a Richmond shipyard and made the news in
the San Francisco Chronicle, but there was no cover
age of the event in Jinshan shibao. Not until three days
later, after friends and relatives of the Wong family
made complaints, did the newspaper print Wong's
story and offer a public apology.
2?
It was difficult for many Chinese American
women to go outside their communities to work,
even when they wanted to. Jobs in ethnic factories
were low paying. Nevertheless, the piece-work sys
tem and the flexible working hours made it possi
ble for women to combine wage-earning with their
family obligations. Before the war, 80 percent of the
women who worked in San Francisco's Chinatown
were married and 75 percent of them had children.
Married garment shop workers could take time off
to cook meals, shop, and pick up children from
school. Garment shops also allowed
women to
bring their small children with them to work. It was
very common to see babies sleeping in little cribs

next to their mothers' sewing machines and toddlers
crawling around
on the floor.27 Jobs outside the eth
nic community, however, did not allow such prac
tices.
The ethnically exclusive working environment,
moreover, provided
a
place where immigrant Chi
nese women could socialize. A married Chinese
woman with children did not have much time for
social life. At work, however, she could chat with
friends. Since everyone at work spoke Chinese,
women found the working environment agreeable,
and intimacy in sharing experiences of life in the
United States developed naturally. The relationship
between shop-owners and workers, if often eco
nomically exploitative,
was nonetheless friendly.
Family members of the shop-owners often worked
side-by-side with the workers. Their children
were
told to respect the employees, often addressing
older workers as 'Auntie" or "Uncle." Garment fac

tory jobs, therefore,
were in great demand in Chi
nese American communities. Even the wives of
bankers or small merchants sometimes sought
employment there.28
SUMMER 1996 143
2013 13:20:30 PM
Thus, although most Chinese American
women
were
compelled to
earn money to supplement their
family income, they did it while taking care of their
husbands and children. Since the exclusion acts
made it difficult for Chinese women to immigrate to
the United States and those who made it often did
so after years of separation from their husbands, it
was
extremely hard for them to take jobs that con

flicted with their household duties. Childcare was
one of the major problems. Nursery schools were not
available in San Francisco's Chinatown until the
early 1940s, and Chinese American
women were not
accustomed to the idea of leaving their children at
childcare facilities. Since very few Chinese immi
grated to the United States with their parents, they
usually did not have their parents helping out with
childcare.29
The decades-long isolation had also limited the
ability of immigrant Chinese working
women to
communicate with the outside world. Since they
often worked between household chores, they had
no time to participate in mainstream cultural activ
ities and little chance to speak English. After years
of working at Chinatown jobs, they found the out
side world too remote from their daily experience.
They did not have any non-Chinese friends and did
not know whom to trust outside their ethnic com
munities. For wives of shop-owners, their departure
for outside jobs would harm the family businesses

that depended
on the free labor of family members.
Transportation
was also an almost insurmountable
problem. Since very few Chinese families had
cars
at the time (4 percent in the late 1930s in San Fran
cisco), the majority of Chinese immigrant working
women were familiar only with the
area within
walking distance from their homes. To these women,
commuting from
one city in the Bay Area to another
was no different from traveling from
one state to
another.30
Given the social isolation of the immigrant gen
eration, it is not surprising that the Chinese Ameri
can women who worked in defense industries were
mostly the second-generation daughters of immi
grant women.31 Among the eighty-two Chinese

American women about whom I found information
in various sources, and the twenty-seven women
whom I was able to locate to conduct oral history
interviews, only four
were over the age of forty at
the time they worked.32 Few of them
were married
with children. Most of these women had gone to Cal
ifornia's public schools; they had at least a high
school education, and quite a few of them had
attended college. With relatively few household
responsibilities, in contrast to their mothers, they had
the freedom and independence to work outside the
home.
Since most of them were already living in the Bay
Area before the war, these younger Chinese Ameri
can women were among the first American women
to join the Bay Area's defense labor force. As early
as May 1942, the Chinese Press reported that young
Chinese American girls
were
working in most of the

defense establishments in the region. At the Engineer
Supply Depot, Pier 90, eighteen-year-old Ruth Law
was the youngest office staff member in the company.
Her co-worker, Anita Lee, was an assistant to the
company's chief clerk. Fannie Yee,
a
high school
senior at the time, won top secretarial honors for her
efficiency at work at Bethlehem Steel Corporation in
San Francisco. She worked with two other young
women, Rosalind Woo and Jessie Wong. The major
defense employers in San Francisco for Chinese
American women at the time, according to the Press,
were the Army Department and Fort Mason. In
Oakland, the Army Supply Base recognized Stella
Quan as a very capable clerk. The first two Chinese
American women who worked at Moore Dry Dock
Company
were
Maryland Pong and Edna Wong. The
State Employment Bureau also had Chinese Amer
ican women on its staff. Before Kaiser's Richmond

shipyards and Marinship began production work,
many young Chinese American girls worked
at
Mare Island Navy Shipyard. Among them
were
Anita Chew, Mildred Lew, and Evelyn Lee of Oak
2013 13:20:30 PM
Pearl Wong (second from the right) worked at the Oak
land Draft Board during the war. Third from the right is _
Army Major Farington. Pearl Wong Collection.
land. Both Jenny Sui of San Francisco and Betty Choy
of Vallejo started
as messenger girls in the yard,
but
they
were soon
promoted to clerk-typists.33
Some women even left their professional training

or
occupations for defense-related work. Miaolan Ye,
an Oakland-born Chinese American girl,
was a col
lege student majoring in agriculture at the time. She
left school during the
war to work as an inspector
in a defense establishment in San Leandro. Hon
olulu-born Betty Lum had been
a nurse before the
war. She, however, thought "shipbuilding is the pre
sent must industry of America" and resigned from
her nursing job to learn acetylene burning at
a Rich
mond shipyard. According to Fore 'N' Aft, there
were three reasons for Betty to support the
war effort:
she was an American citizen, she was Chinese, and
she had a nephew who
was killed during the attack
on Pearl Harbor. It is unclear when Betty Lum
moved to the Bay Area, but the Kaiser company used

her voice to urge other Chinese women to partici
pate in defense work. Betty also had two sisters
working in defense industries,
one of them at Rich
mond Shipyard Number Three. Her brother,
a den
tist at the time, was prepared to join the Army.35
Unlike single young women, it
was much
more difficult for married Chinese American
women to take defense jobs unless they did
not have small children at home. After she married,
Ah Yoke Gee spent most of her time at home tak
ing
care of her six children. She kept her sewing
machine running whenever she
was free from
household chores. One of her daughters
remem
bered that sometimes she woke up at two o'clock
in the morning and could still hear her mother
sewing. By the time the
war started, Ah Yoke was

widowed. Two of her older children had left home
and the rest of them were in either high school
or
college. Although she still cooked for her family, her
children had their own routines and did not expect
to be served in a formal way. Every morning before
leaving for her swing shift job in the shipyard, Ah
Yoke would cook enough food for the whole fam
ily for the day. On weekends she shopped, washed,
and cleaned.36
SUMMER 1996 145
2013 13:20:30 PM
A few married Chinese American women man
aged to find defense work alongside their husbands.
In late 1942, the Mare Island Navy Shipyard decided
to select a Chinese female employee to christen
a Lib
erty Ship. Among the eight Chinese American
nom

inees, two were married. The honor went to Mrs.
Yam, a Shop 51 electrician's helper. Mrs. Yam had just
graduated from San Jose High School.
Her newly
wed husband, Fred Yam, was the yard's pipe-fitter.
Having joined the shipyard in June 1942, the young
couple took the bus
to work together from San Fran
cisco's Chinatown to Vallejo. On December 18,1942,
Mrs. Yam, accompanied by six young Chinese Amer
ican girls, smashed
a bottle of champagne
at HMS
Foley's launching ceremony and became the first
Chinese American woman in California shipyards
to receive this highest wartime honor. She said she
felt like "the proudest and happiest girl in the
world."37
Other married Chinese American women joined
defense work while their husbands were away from
home. Jane Jeong,
a burner at Richmond Shipyard

Number Two, started her job in the shipyard only
four months after her wedding. Before the war, Jane
Jeong had been
a dancer and a nightclub manager.
She had also accumulated two hundred flying hours
and dreamed of being
a pilot fighting against the
Japanese in China.38 After the United States officially
entered the war, however, she realized that she could
support the
war effort both in China and in the U.S.
by building ships. Since her husband
was a merchant
seaman who was away from home most of the time,
Jane Jeong took a job at a Richmond shipyard.39
Coming from
a
farming community
in Fresno,
Mannie Lee moved to Richmond along with her hus
band and children. At a Kaiser shipyard, her husband
Henry Lee was
a

graveyard-shift welder,
while Man
nie worked with her two daughters, Henrietta Lee
and Hilda Fong, and
a
daughter-in-law, Lena Lee,
in the yard's electric shop.
In addition to the five ship
yard workers of the family,
Mannie Lee's two sons
and her son-in-law were all in the Army. Although
born in America, it was a big change for Mannie to
move from her vegetable farm to Richmond. But at
least the family still worked and lived together. The
difference was that everyone worked fewer hours
and made more money. Moreover, they enjoyed the
publicity from the company. Mannie and her family
had never received any recognition
as hard-work
ing farmers.40
Although the majority of the Chinese American
defense workers had grown up in the United States,

racial discrimination and prejudice before the
war
had prevented their participation in many
areas of
American society. Since
sons in Chinese American
families usually had priority
over
daughters in
receiving family support for higher education, Chi
nese American girls had to work harder than other
students to save money or win scholarships to go to
college. And despite the fact that these
women were
educated in the United States and had a good
com
mand of English, Chinese American children
in
racially integrated public schools in San Francisco
were excluded from most of the extracurricular
activities. They could not dance with white children
and few were invited to parties organized by peo

ple other than Chinese. The way they
were treated
in the job market
was even worse: engineering grad
uates of Chinese descent from the University of Cal
ifornia, Berkeley,
were
frequently rejected by
American firms. While white women with college
degrees and special training worked
as teachers,
nurses, secretaries, and social workers, similarly
educated Chinese American women could only find
service jobs
as elevator operators, waitresses,
dancers, and maids. Outside Chinese communities
their professional degrees
were
meaningless, for
few people wanted their services.41
It was the war that opened the door to better-pay
ing jobs for Chinese American
women. Aimei Chen,

who came to the United States shortly after she
was
born, had grown up in a small Chinese community
in Stockton. Before the war, she had worked as a
waitress in a Chinese cafe while attending junior col
2013 13:20:30 PM
lege. Some Caucasian girls her age got jobs in local
dime stores, ice cream parlors, and department
stores. Aimei, however, had never applied for those
jobs because she knew
no Chinese would be hired.
While in college taking business classes, Aimei
was
very pessimistic about her future. As
a Chinese
American woman, it was unlikely that she could find
a
job outside Chinatown. Moreover, Stockton's Chi

natown was very small and could not provide full
time employment for most of the
women in the
community. But, shortly after Pearl Harbor, Aimei
learned from friends that defense industries were hir
ing, regardless of the applicants' ethnic backgrounds.
She went with a friend to the Stockton Army Depot
and was hired on the spot as
a
secretary.42
Yulan Liu, an Oakland-born Chinese American
girl, had just graduated from high school in the
summer of 1942. Her father, who had come to the
United States as a "paper son" in 1915, worked
seven
days
a week in a grocery store in Oakland's China
town.43 Yulan's mother worked in a laundry shop,
where her four children spent most of their child
hood. Yulan also started to work in a laundry shop
at age twelve. She did not have time to play with
other children, and she did not recall ever being
invited to a Caucasian's house. After she graduated
from high school, Yulan began to work full-time. She

did not like the laundry shop job, but there were few
other alternatives. Most of the girls in Chinatown
were waitresses and garment workers. Some of her
friends worked as maids in private homes. One day,
her brother got a job at Moore Dry Dock Company
in Oakland and told Yulan that there were many
women
shipbuilders there. Yulan went to the yard
the next day and got
a
job
as a welder.44
Being employed in
a defense industry gave
some
Chinese American women a sense of belonging?of
finally being accepted by American society. At Marin
ship in Sausalito, Jade Snow Wong was happy that
she was employed by
an 'American" company. A San
Francisco-born Chinese American girl, Jade Snow
was the fifth daughter of

a garment shop-owner. She
In the summer of 1942, Jade Snow Wong, above, grad
uated from Mills College. When she sought advice at
the college placement office for
her job search, she
was
told not to expect any opportunities
in 'American busi
ness houses," and to look only for work
within her eth
nic community. U.S. involvement in World War II,
however, provided
new
employment situations for
women of all ethnicities. Hundreds of Chinese Amer
ican women found work in Bay Area shipyards
and
defense plants. Among them, Jade
Snow Wong worked
in a Richmond shipyard. After the war, in 1945, Wong
published Fifth Chinese Daughter, one of the first books
about what it was like growing up
as a Chinese Amer

ican woman. Jade Snow Wong Collection.
SUMMER 1996 147
2013 13:20:30 PM
started to work in the shop when she
was ten, help
ing her parents load garments
on
pick-up days. At
eleven, she learned to sew and worked next to her
mother. Although living in
an ethnic community, she
was
quite
aware of the differences between white
Americans and people from her
own ethnic group
and was eager to venture into the outside world.
Because of the financial difficulties of her family and
her parents' belief that it

was unnecessary for girls
to obtain a college education, she could not get fam
ily support to go to college
as her brother had. With
determination, however, Jade Snow studied very
hard and finally went to Mills College
on a scholar
ship. In the
summer of 1942, she graduated from
Mills College. As she stopped at the college place
ment office seeking advice for her job search, she
was
told not to expect any opportunities in 'American
business houses," and to look only for places within
her ethnic community. Jade Snow
was stunned; an
honor student, she felt "as if she had been struck on
both cheeks." She was, however, determined to get
a
job in
a non-Chinese company. Her younger sister
at the time worked at Marinship in Sausalito. Jade

Snow wanted to support the
war effort as a citizen,
so she went with her sister to Marinship. Twenty-four
hours after she submitted an application, she
was
hired.45
Maggie Gee, Ah Yoke Gee's daughter,
was born
in Berkeley. In
a
community where Chinese Ameri
can families were relatively few, Maggie grew up
among children from various ethnic backgrounds.
As a teenager, Maggie delivered newspapers and
helped Caucasian
women with their babies and
cooking. She thought the people whom she worked
for were nice to her. Nevertheless, as a Chinese, she
was not allowed to join white students' clubs and she
could not swim in community pools. After she grad
uated from high school, Maggie entered the Uni
versity of California, Berkeley. She paid the $28

tuition each semester out of her own earnings and
bought books and clothes with her
own money. Her
mother had supported Maggie's older brother
in col
lege and had
no money left for Maggie's education.
But Maggie did live and eat at home while in col
lege. Maggie
was a
good student in school, but she
did not know what she could do with a college
degree. She heard that many Chinese American
male college graduates, let alone Chinese American
women, had difficulties finding jobs in the fields in
which they had been trained.
Pearl Harbor finally brought Chinese Americans
and white Americans together
on new com
mon
ground. On December 7, 1941, Maggie
was
spending the afternoon studying in the campus

library. She found many students there talking very
emotionally. Maggie sensed that something unusual
had happened. To Chinese Americans, World War
II had begun
on
September 18,1931, when the Japan
ese invaded Manchuria in northeastern China. Mag
gie had been in the fourth grade at the time. Her
mother had planned
to send her and her sister to
China to study, and they had to cancel the trip after
the Japanese occupied Chinese territory. After July
7,1937, when the Japanese attacked Chinese troops
at Lugou Bridge
near
Beijing, the
war
against Japan
became a nationwide effort in China. Overseas Chi
nese were actively involved in supporting their fel
low countrymen. Maggie often went with her
mother to San Francisco's Chinatown to attend ral

lies and fund-raising activities. She remembered
how badly she felt when she learned about the
out
rageous atrocities during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre,
but she was surprised to notice that her American
classmates knew very little about what had hap
pened in China. Not until Pearl Harbor did every
one seem involved in the war effort. The Berkeley
campus offered classes for defense employment, in
which Maggie and many other students received
training. While still
a full-time student at Berkeley,
she got a graveyard-shift job
at Richmond Shipyard
Number Two.
Wartime employment provided tangible benefits
to many Chinese Americans. "For people who used
2013 13:20:30 PM

to have very little money," recalled Aimei Chen, "the
war was a time of great economic opportunity." She
started to buy things for her family?food, kitchen
ware, and other household items. Aimei's mother
also got a job in
a cannery in Stockton, where many
former employees had left for defense jobs. Yulan
Liu, meanwhile, made $65 a week, four times more
than she had made before the war. She gave some
money to her mother and saved the rest for herself.
On her day off, she went to the movies and bought
herself candies and pastries. As for Ah Yoke Gee, her
family endured great difficulties for many years
after she lost her husband. During the war, with both
her and her daughters working in the shipyard and
her son in the service, the living standard of the fam
ily improved significantly. Jade Snow Wong, for her
part, contributed part of her income to her parents
and saved money for her future education.
The ethnically diverse working environment pro

vided an opportunity for
women such as Ah Yoke
Gee to meet people about whom they had known
little before the war. For over forty years,
ever since
her birth, Ah Yoke had lived in the United States, but
as she moved from the Monterey Peninsula to San
Francisco and then to Berkeley, she had little con
tact with people other than Chinese. It
was at work
that she met all kinds of people and gained respect
as one of the oldest crew members of the yard.46
Yulan Liu was also very popular among her team
mates. A small figure weighing only eighty pounds
at the time, she not only worked hard but was also
the only
one of the team who could handle welding
jobs in
narrow areas of the ships. Her teammates
liked to hear her stories about people living in Chi
nese American communities. Upon their request, she
led a tour of the group to San Francisco's China
town.47

Defense industries provided
an
opportunity for
Chinese women to put to good
use their knowledge
of the world beyond school. After months of
research, Jade Snow Wong produced
a paper on the
absenteeism of shipyard workers. The paper
won
first prize in
an essay contest sponsored by the San
Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area defense industries.
In addition to a fifty-dollar
war bond, she was
offered the privilege of christening a Liberty Ship
at a Kaiser shipyard. When her picture appeared in
both English and Chinese newspapers, she gained
respect from members of her family and from peo
ple in the community. Many people in Chinatown
came to congratulate her parents for their daugh
ter's success in the 'American world."48
Although

some women were
doing traditionally
male jobs, compared to what they had done before
the war, most of them did not think defense work
was that hard. Joy Yee,
a San Francisco-born high
school graduate,
was the second daughter of
a gar
ment shop-owner in Oakland. Although Joy had
tried to sew with her mother and sisters in the shop,
her mother thought that Joy
was not good at sewing
and that she would never make it as a seamstress.
During the war, however, Joy got
a
job as a mechanic
at Alameda Naval Air Station. Excited at having "a
real job" in
a defense industry, she learned to
use dif
ferent tools and became very efficient at work.49
Before the war, Yulan Liu had worked ten hours a

day,
seven
days
a week, at a laundry. "There
was
nothing heavier than the iron," she said. "Sometimes
my arm was so sore at night that I could not hold
my chopsticks." On the other hand, "the welding
torch," as she remembered, "was lighter," mainly
because she did not have to hold it for hours. Even
on an
assembly line, she
was able to work in differ
ent parts of the ships and she always had
a chance
to chat with people between assignments. In the
laundry shop,
no matter how fast she worked, there
was
always
more to be washed, ironed, and folded,
and she could hardly find any time to rest.50 The big
change for Ah Yoke Gee was that she did not have

to sew late at night any
more. She worked eight hours
a
day for most of the days and had Sundays off.51
For some women, however, a defense job
was not
easy. Maggie Gee, for example, found working at
night in the shipyard to be tiring. Welding itself was
SUMMER 1996 149
2013 13:20:30 PM
_<_________? ___ ^____b
/^l____________^ _#?_ _______
___________________________ :Jff^^ ___.-__ _______
Maggie Gee worked
as a welder at a Richmond shipyard
and then as
a draftswoman at the Mare Island Navy Shipyard during the
war. In
1944, she joined the Women's Air force Service Pilots (WASPs)

where
she was one of only
two Chinese American women. Because Chinese
families did not value the education of their
daughters
as much as
they
did of their sons, Maggie had to pay her own way through the
Uni
versity of California
at
Berkeley. After the
war she earned a Ph.D., and,
continuing her tradition of unprecedented accomplishments
among
Asian American women in the United States, she worked for
many
years as the only
woman
physicist
at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory. Maggie Gee Collection.
not bad, but at night she did not have people around
to talk to. It was difficult to stay awake at work, since

she was still attending school during the day and
could not get much sleep. When the job
was slow,
she sometimes fell asleep, but it
was so cold at night
in the shipyard that she could
never
sleep well. A
year later, when she graduated from college, Mag
gie decided to do something different for
a
change.
She got a new job at Mare Island Navy Shipyard as
a draftswoman.
It was the job at Mare Island that led Maggie to the
most exciting adventure of her life. Working in
a
big
office with over thirty people, she and two young
women, one a Caucasian and one a Filipina, quickly
became close friends. At lunch time, the three of them
would meet in the rest area adjoining the ladies'
room.
They would chat, eat their lunches, and drink

coffee. They all liked the idea of helping the country
fight the war, but at the
same time, they all wanted
to do something
more
exciting. The Filipina had
taken some flying lessons before the war, and the
three of them decided to save money for aviation
training. When Maggie finally saved enough money
for a training program, she
was so
overjoyed that she
tossed the money into the air. Although
as a child
Maggie had enjoyed watching airplanes at the Oak
land Airport, she had
never dreamed of flying
an air
plane herself. After she graduated from
an aviation
school in Nevada, she interviewed with the Women's

Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). When she returned
to her drafting job at Mare Island, waiting for
a call
from the Army, Maggie realized that her life had
changed. Everyone?mostly men?in her work
area
was interested in what she and her friends had done.
Some people
were envious. A few months later,
Maggie
was called by the Army and became
one of
only two Chinese American
women in the WASPs.
Her mother saw her off at the train station. Ah Yoke
Gee was proud of her daughter. She wished that she
herself were twenty years younger because she
would have liked to fly too. Maggie remained
a
WASP until the unit was disbanded in late 1944.
While in the service, she transported military sup
plies throughout the country.52

Although Chinese Americans
were
accepted in
defense industries, they had little chance to be pro
moted to supervisory positions. Many companies
simply assumed that white employees would not fol
low orders given by Chinese. For those who had
upgraded their skills
over the years (usually male
workers), this could be very frustrating. One male
Chinese American worker at a Richmond shipyard
had years of working experience with
an excellent
performance record. But he, too,
saw several less
qualified white workers promoted to foreman posi
tions with no chance being given to him. Although
he complained,
no one listened. Finally he got
so
angry that he quit his job.53
Because women were not expected to work in

defense industries after the war, they
were not in a
position to compete with male employees for super
visory positions. Therefore, unlike the Chinese Amer
ican men, very few Chinese American women had
direct conflict with other workers or their supervi
sors. Some women recalled that better jobs usually
went to Caucasian women. On the other hand, except
for the few immigrants who did not speak English,
2013 13:20:30 PM
most of the Chinese American women had at least a
high school education, and therefore did not work
as
janitors.54 They
were
mostly employed
as office

clerks, draftswomen, welders, burners, and in other
semi-skilled positions. Since not many defense estab
lishments employed large groups of Chinese Amer
ican women, it was hard for these women to socialize
exclusively among themselves. This, in fact, gave Chi
nese American women opportunities to meet people
from different ethnic backgrounds.55 Other workers
also showed a great deal of curiosity about Chinese
American women, for few of them had met Chinese
American women before the war. Leong Bo San,
a
middle-aged Chinese American
woman from San
Francisco, was described in Fore 'N'Aft
as "a tiny, doll
like figure" who "walks with the dainty, mincing gait
of the upper class Chinese lady whose feet
once were
bound" in her "flat rubber-soled shoes of the ship
yard." According to the report, Leong Bo San had
drawn attention from "everyone" who rode "the

graveyard ferry boat." At Assembly Line 11, the
report went on, Leong Bo San
was
"everybody's
favorite," for she often came to the yard with Chi
nese
shrimp, fruit, and cake to share with other
workers. Although she looked tiny and delicate, she
worked with "an energy that amazes people twice her
size." Her boss, James G. Zeck, reportedly said that
"I wish I had a whole crew of people like her."56
Nevertheless, some women did find themselves
trapped in
a
place where the future
was dismal. For
example, Jade Snow Wong's talent and ability
were
recognized by her boss at Marinship. Every time the
boss got promoted to
a
higher position, he would
take her with him to his new office. But Jade Snow

noticed that while many clerks, secretaries, and
other office workers in Marinship
were women,
their bosses, those who read the reports prepared by
their secretaries and made decisions, were all men.57
Asked later whether she would like to stay at Marin
ship when the
war ended if she had the choice, she
answered "no" without any hesitation. "I decided to
leave before they started to lay people off," she said.
"There was no future for me, no future for women
in the shipyard." At Mills College, Jade Snow had
found a few female role models?her professors, the
dean for whom she had worked, and the college pres
ident. She wanted to be a professional
woman like
them. But "in defense industry," she said, "a
woman
could only be someone's secretary. The bosses
were
all men." Before the war ended, she started search
ing for a career in which she did not have to be

treated differently because she
was a Chinese Amer
ican and a woman.58
Toward the end of the war, defense industries
gradually reduced the volume of their production,
and their workers were free to leave their jobs. Some
Chinese American women had waited for this day
to come. Jade Snow Wong
was
happy that she had
done her part to support the war effort of her coun
try, but she quit her job right after V-J day. With the
money that she had saved, she started a business of
her own in San Francisco's Chinatown and began
writing books.59 Alameda Naval Air Station was one
of the few defense establishments in the Bay Area
that was able to keep
some of its female employees
after the war. Some women in the station, neverthe
less, decided to leave. Lanfang Wong,
a metalsmith

in the yard for over three years, quit her job for two
reasons. First, she found it tiring to commute two
hours a day from San Francisco's Chinatown to
Alameda to work. Second, she did not think her job
was skilled work. After a while, she realized that it
was not much different from making clothes except
that metal instead of cloth was used. As soon as she
learned that the war was over, she found a new job
working for
an insurance company in San Francisco.
She later married a war veteran and moved with him
to Napa Valley to work
on a small farm.60
Only
a few Chinese American women continued
to work in defense industries after the war. Yuqin Fu
worked as an office clerk at Alameda Naval Air Sta
tion until 1947, when she got married. After a few
years at home taking
care of her children, she found
a
job at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph.61 Born and
SUMMER 1996 151

2013 13:20:30 PM
^^^HF
; v"" %^ v^^HB^%m$',<^&^J&Mt-^^.^*1^B^H^^^^^E-"^^*
schooled in Oakland, Elizabeth Lew Anderson
worked as a metalsmith at the Alameda Naval Air
Station during the
war. She later married a Caucasian
merchant seaman. Although her husband had to
move from one place to another all
over the coun
try (and sometimes outside the country) and Eliza
beth followed him most of the time, she was called
back to work by the Naval Air Station during the
Korean War (and later again, during the Vietnam
War), when her family moved back to the Bay Area.62
Joy Yee continued to work at the Naval Station until
1955, when she was about to have her first child. But

when she stayed at home, she missed her job and her
friends at work. In 1968, she went back to work and
kept her job for another seventeen years until her
retirement. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the
war, Joy Yee helped organize
a reunion of Chinese
American women who had worked at the Alameda
Naval Air Station during the war.63
A few others, however, were reluctant to leave
their defense jobs. Ah Yoke Gee loved her job in the
shipyard
so much that she would not leave it for any
thing else. She knew that other jobs would not pay
as well. Aimei Chen also wanted to stay at her
defense job. Since
so many white women were then
also job-hunting, the chances for her to find
a
good
job
were slim. By late 1945, however, most of the Bay

Area's defense establishments were about to shut
down, and large-scale lay-offs began. With limited
training and skills, these
women could not find jobs
in other industries; they had to look for jobs that were
traditionally held by
women.
These Chinese American women's wartime work
nevertheless had important consequences: their lives
were no
longer restricted within their ethnic
com
munities. Most of them found jobs outside China
towns as race relations and the economy improved
in the postwar years. Ah Yoke Gee took a job at
a post
office in Berkeley, where she worked until her retire
ment. Meanwhile, she became actively involved in
Berkeley's Chinese American community.64 Aimei
Chen married and moved with her husband to
Berkeley. Under the GI Bill, her husband became
an

engineering student at the University of California.
2013 13:20:30 PM
Aimei found a job
as an office clerk in a small firm,
where she worked until her first child was born.65
Yulan Liu married her former shipyard foreman,
a
white man. The young couple bought
a house in
Vallejo, where Yulan's husband worked
in the Navy
Shipyard
at Mare Island. Yulan worked as a nursing
aide on and off for over thirty years.
Lili Wong,
daughter of
a San Francisco restaurant waiter, left her
job at a Richmond shipyard and went to medical

school. She later moved to Washington, D.C., and
practiced medicine with her husband.66
Their wartime experience gave Chinese American
women confidence and maturity. They found that
they could do the things that men could. Maggie Gee
left the WASPs and went to graduate school
in
Berkeley. She
was not a shy Chinese American girl
anymore and was soon elected president of the Chi
nese Students Association on the Berkeley campus.
Thereafter, she became active in local communities.
She also decided to become a physicist, although
most graduate students
in physics
were men. She
later worked at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory and
was the only
woman physicist there
for many years.67 Jade Snow Wong, however,
was no

longer eager to work outside her ethnic community.
After she left Marinship, she went back
to San Fran
cisco's Chinatown looking for her
own identity. Her
first book was about herself; she wanted the outside
world to know what the life of a Chinese American
was like, especially
a Chinese American woman. It
was at that time that she decided to give up her Eng
lish name "Constance," a name that she had been
known by in school and at Marinship. The girl in her
autobiography
was "Jade Snow," translated origi
nally from her Chinese name.68
While acknowledging that World War II brought
significant changes
to their lives, many Chinese
American women noticed that racial discrimination
and prejudice did
not disappear after the

war.
They
continued in subtle ways. When Maggie Gee and her
sister tried to find an apartment in Berkeley in the
early 1950s, they knew that
some people would not
rent their properties to Chinese Americans.
So they
told people their ethnic identity when they first
inquired
over the telephone. At least in
one case, a
landlady refused
to show the sisters the apartment
when she learned that they
were Chinese.69 Limin
Wong,
a defense worker during the war, remembered
calling
a business firm in Berkeley for
an advertised
office position after the
war. The person who

answered the phone at first told her that the job was
available. When he realized that she was Chinese,
however, he changed his statement and said the posi
tion had been filled. Limin later found a job at the
State Employment Office. She worked there for thirty
years and was the manager of the office before she
retired.70
The young Chinese American women who par
ticipated in defense work had had fresh memories
of discriminatory practices in American society
before the war, and they
were
fully
aware of the polit
ical implications of taking defense jobs. Although
very few of them were able to keep their jobs after
the war, and some of them might not necessarily have
cared about the limited skills that they acquired,
what they had accomplished was far more signifi
cant than the jobs themselves. They
were accepted,
for the first time, as Americans, even though most
of them were born in the U. S. and had been Amer

icans since birth. To a large extent, the
war
provided
an entry for Chinese American women into the
larger American society, something for which their
ancestors had struggled
a hundred years. |chs]
See notes beginning
on page 182.
Xiaojian Zhao is assistant professor of Asian American stud
ies and history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
She received her Ph.D. in U.S. history from the University of
California, Berkeley, in 1993.
SUMMER 1996 153
2013 13:20:30 PM
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. 138p. 139p. 140p. 141p. 142p. 143p. 144p. 145p.
146p. 147p. 148p. 149p. 150p. 151p. 152p. 153Issue Table of
ContentsCalifornia History, Vol. 75, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp.
113-192Front MatterMilestones in California History: The 1846
Bear Flag Revolt: Early Cultural Conflict in CaliforniaFuel at
Last: Oil and Gas for California, 1860s-1940s [pp. 114-
127]Turbulent Waters: Navigation and California's Southern
Central Valley [pp. 128-137]Chinese American Women Defense
Workers in World War II [pp. 138-153]A Tale of Two

Hospitals: U.S. Marine Hospital No. 19 and the U.S. Public
Health Service Hospital on the Presidio of San Francisco [pp.
154-169]ReviewsReview: untitled [p. 170-170]Review: untitled
[p. 171-171]Review: untitled [p. 172-172]Review: untitled [pp.
172-173]Review: untitled [pp. 173-174]Review: untitled [pp.
174-175]Review: untitled [p. 175-175]California Checklist [pp.
177-178]Notes [to the Articles within This Issue] [pp. 180-
187]Corrections to Bloomfield, Moore, Blodgett and Lowell [p.
188-188]Back Matter
The Western History Association
California's Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native
American History
Author(s): Benjamin Madley
Source: The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 3
(Autumn, 2008), pp. 303-332
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California's Yuki Indians: Defining
Genocide in Native American History
Benjamin Madley
This article summarizes the heretofore incomplete and disputed
assessment
of the Yuki genocide, narrates the cataclysm, r??valu?tes state
and federal
culpability, and explains how this catastrophe constituted
genocide under the

1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. Finally, the article
explores how
other case studies and the convention may inform future
research on genocide
in California and the United States in general.
"Accounts are daily coming in from the counties on the Coast
Range, of
sickening atrocities and wholesale slaughters of great numbers
of defense
less Indians . . . For an evil of this magnitude, someone is
responsible.
Either our government, or our citizens, or both, are to blame."1
California Legislature, 1860
a "n 14 May 1854,
six Missourian explorers
crested a steep ridge, some 150 miles north of San Francisco.
After days of hard travel
through mountainous, broken terrain, they encountered a
stunning sight. Spread below
them was 25,000 acres of lush, flat land. The next day, the six
horsemen descended
to the floor of what is now known as Round Valley, in northern
Mendocino County.
According to Frank Asbill, son of one of the six, "they had not

gone far when the tall,
waving, wild oats began to wiggle in a thousand different places
all at the same time."
The group's leader, Pierce Asbill, then called out: "We've come
a long way from Missouri
to locate this place ... an' be danmed if wigglin grass ull keep us
away! Git a-hold of
yer weapons?we'uns are goin' in!"
Reaching a creek bed, the six horsemen reportedly encountered
three thousand
Yuki Indians. "A war hoop went up from the Missourians [who]
just lay over the horse[s']
Benjamin Madley, a doctoral candidate in history at Yale,
thanks William Bauer, John
Faragher, Albert Hurtado, Adam Jones, Ben Kiernan, Timothy
Macholz, George Miles, Jeffrey
Ostler, Sarah Philips, and Laura Roe.
1
California Legislature, Majority and Minority Reports of the
Special Joint Committee on the
Mendocino War (Sacramento, 1860), 4, Bancroft Library,
Berkeley, California (hereafter MMR).
Western Historical Quarterly 39 (Autumn 2008): 303-332.
Copyright ? 2008, Western
History Association.

2013 12:47:41 PM
304 AUTUMN 2008 Western Historical Quarterly
neck[s] and shot... They just rode them down ... It was not
difficult to get an Indian
with every shot. . . When the shootin' was over, thirty-two dead
and dying [Yuki] lay
scattered." By the end of the day perhaps forty Indians were
dead.2 The massacre was
a prelude to an American genocide.
Like many California Indians, the Yuki suffered a cataclysmic
population decline
under United States rule. Between 1854 and 1864, settlement
policies, murders, abduc
tions, massacres, rape-induced venereal diseases, and willful
neglect at Round Valley
Reservation reduced them from perhaps 20,000 to several
hundred. Despite decades of
discussion over who or what was responsible, no consensus
exists on state and federal
decision-makers' roles or whether or not the catastrophe
constituted genocide. This
article summarizes the heretofore incomplete and disputed
assessment of the Yuki

genocide, narrates the cataclysm, r??valu?tes state and federal
culpability, and explains
how this catastrophe constituted genocide under the 1948
United Nations Genocide
Convention. Finally, the article explores how other case studies
and the convention may
inform future research on genocide in California and in the
United States in general.
Scholarship on California Indian population decline under
United States rule
frames the discussion of the Yuki catastrophe. Between 1846
and 1865, California's
Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to "somewhere
near 25,000 or 30,000,"
and in 1890, H. H. Bancroft described it as "one of the last
human hunts of civilization,
and the basest and most brutal of them all." Later, Nazi mass-
murder redefined the terms
of such discussions. In 1944, Rapha?l Lemkin minted a new
word for an ancient crime.
He combined the Greek genos, [race] with the Latin cide,
[killing] to define "genocide" as
any attempt to physically or culturally annihilate an ethnic,
religious, or political group.
Then, in 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined
genocide as:
Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national,
ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the
group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The convention thus provides a clear, internationally recognized
rubric for evaluating
instances of genocide, including historical cases not subject to
legal jurisdiction. First,
2 For Asbill quotation, see Frank Asbill and Argle Shawley, The
Last of the West (New York,
1975), 18, 19. For death toll of 40 Indians, see Lyman Palmer,
History of Mendocino (San
Francisco, 1880), 459, 595, 596, Beinecke Library, New Haven,
Connecticut (hereafter BLNH).
Online version also available.
2013 12:47:41 PM
Benjamin Madley 305

Figure 1. Yuki Territory, 1854-1864. 2008, courtesy Abraham
Kaleo Parrish, Head Yale Map
Collection, New Haven, Connecticut.
2013 12:47:41 PM
perpetrators must evince "intent to destroy." Second,
perpetrators must commit at least
one of the five genocidal acts against "a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group."3
In United States criminal law, "intent" is present where an act is
intentional, not
accidental. The international crime of genocide involves more,
comprising "acts com
mitted with intent to destroy" a group "as such." International
criminal lawyers call
this "specific intent," meaning destruction must be consciously
desired, or purposeful.
Yet "specific intent" does not require a specific "motive," a
term absent from the con
vention. Genocide can be committed even without a motive like
racial hatred. The

motive behind genocidal acts need not be an explicit desire to
destroy a group; it may
be, but the motive can also be military, economic, or territorial.
The United Nations
Genocide Convention does not mention motive. Thus, if the
action was deliberate,
and the group's partial or total destruction a desired outcome,
the motive behind that
intent is irrelevant.
Twenty-nine years after the formulation of the new international
legal treaty,
scholars began reexamining California's colonization by the
United States. In 1977,
William Coffer wrote a brief article, "Genocide among the
California Indians." Two years
later, in a 1979 monograph, Jack Norton argued that certain
northwestern California
Indians had suffered genocide. Then, during the 1980s, James
Rawls argued that some
"whites ... advocated and carried out a program of genocide that
was popularly called
'extermination,'" while Russell Thornton wrote that "the
documented examples of
genocide are too numerous to mention," and Albert Hurtado
described an "atmosphere
of impending genocide" in gold rush California. In the 1990s,
Richard White, David
Rich Lewis, Laurence Hauptman, Clifford Trafzer, and Joel
Hyer all mentioned genocide

in California. By 2000, Robert Hine and John Faragher
concluded, "It was the clearest
case of genocide in the history of the American frontier."4
Despite the work of these scholars, too little has been written
about California
genocide at the tribal level, and only Norton and Hauptman
have attempted to apply
3 Sherburne Cook, The Population of California Indians, 1769-
1970 (Berkeley, 1976), 44, xv,
53; H.H. Bancroft, The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft (San
Francisco, 1890), 24:474; Rapha?l
Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation,
Analysis of Government, Proposals for
Redress (Washington, DC, 1944), xi-xii; United Nations,
Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 280, Yale Law Library,
New Haven, Connecticut.
4 William E. Coffer, "Genocide among the California Indians,"
Indian Historian 10 (Spring
1977): 8-15; Jack Norton, When Our Worlds Cried: Genocide in
Northwestern California (San
Francisco, 1979); James Rawls, Indians of California: the
Changing Image (Norman, 1984), 171;
Albert Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier (New
Haven, 1988), 135; Richard
White, "Morality and Mortality," New Republic 208, 18 January
1993, 35; David Rich Lewis,

Neither Wolf Nor Dog: American Indians, Environment, and
Agrarian Change (New York, 1994),
84; Laurence Hauptman, Tribes & Tribulations: Misconceptions
About American Indians and their
Histories (Albuquerque, 1995), 5; Clifford Trafzer and Joel
Hyer, eds., Exterminate Them! Written
Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Enslavement of Native
Americans during the California Gold
Rush (East Lansing, 1999), 1; Robert Hine and John Faragher,
The American West: A New
Interpretive History (New Haven, 2000), 249.
2013 12:47:41 PM
Benjamin Madley
the Genocide Convention. With the exception of Thornton, most
scholars have largely
avoided in-depth analysis of genocides suffered by particular
tribes. Thornton blazed
a trail by bringing brief case studies into his argument, yet there
remains a need for
more detailed studies providing the data that permits an
assessment of the causes,

frequency, and variability of genocide in California. These
questions call for meticu
lous analysis, using the internationally recognized Genocide
Convention, because the
stakes are so high.
Cases of genocide in California raise major historical quandries.
Should scholars
reevaluate the assumption that indirect effects of white
settlement (like disease), rather
than deliberate actions, like murder, were the leading cause of
death in Indian-white
encounters? Was United States rule in California founded on
genocide? And, even if this
is true only in part, what does this mean to our understanding of
national character?
Cases of genocide in California also raise important political
questions. Should
tribal government officials seek formal apologies or monetary
reparations from gov
ernment officials? And, how should state and federal decision-
makers respond? These
questions are important and explosive in every potential case of
genocide in California.
The Yuki genocide?as one of the largest instances of California
Indian population
decline under United States rule?is one case in need of rigorous
r??valuation.
Four authors pioneered Yuki genocide scholarship. Gary
Garrett's 1969 master's

thesis outlined a four-year-long "genocide." A decade later,
Virginia Miller chronicled
a longer "genocide," but concluded that "the cause was
... two entirely opposing ways
of life and value systems .
. .
vying for the same territory which each would exploit in
a different way. The two ways of life were incompatible, and so
one or the other had to
go." In 1981, Lynwood Carranco and Estle Beard provided more
detail. They blamed
"impatient settlers" for "genocide," but largely exonerated the
"Congress and California
State Legislature," which they considered "in a dilemma"; for
while "not unaware of
the Indian's rights" they still "attempted to be fair." Like Miller,
these authors failed
to emphasize state and federal decision-makers' agency,
ultimately concluding: "The
Indian was forced to make way for the march of empire."
Explaining genocide as the
product of such general factors as the march of empire fails to
grapple with the specific
variables of human agency and decision-making that vary from
case to case. This article
first attempts to identify these factors in the Yuki case.5

Others have also explored Yuki history or that of their Northern
California home,
Round Valley, but do not frame the catastrophe as genocide. In
his 2005 Killing for Land
in Early California: Indian Blood at Round Valley, 1856-1863,
Frank Baumgardner claimed
that while "the genocide process" applied to one series of
killings near Round Valley
and that one man "committed genocide," ultimately the
catastrophe was more a case
5
Gary Garrett, "The Destruction of the Indian in Mendocino
County, 1856-1860," (mas
ter's thesis, Sacramento State College, 1969), 52; Virginia
Miller, Ukomno'm: The Yuki Indians of
Northern California (Socorro, NM, 1979), 99; Lynwood
Carranco and Estle Beard, Genocide and
Vendetta: The Round Valley Wars of Northern California
(Norman, 1981), 156.
2013 12:47:41 PM
of "conflict" than genocide. Who or what then was responsible
for the Yuki cataclysm?
Local, state, and federal decision-makers' roles, as well as the
genocide question itself,
remain to be completely examined. That is the second aim of

this article.6
When Anglo-Americans arrived, Yuki inhabited a "400 to 900
square mile" area.
Some populated surrounding mountains, but most lived in
Round Valley. They called
themselves "Ukomno'm," or "valley people." Amidst grasses and
clover, they constructed
permanent conical bark and animal-skin houses. Along the Eel
River's branches, they
built community halls thirty to forty feet in diameter, with
access to water for cooling
swims following dances, ceremonies, gaming, and gatherings.
Able to take shelter in
their dwellings and halls, most wore light clothing and rarely
donned footwear. Ridges
and summits formed an elliptical ring around the valley,
creating a sanctuary the Yuki
defended in wartime, and from which they traded during
peacetime. Economic cornu
copia and strategic redoubt, Round Valley nurtured them for
centuries. Beginning in
1854, however, this refuge became a place of death. Protective
peaks turned to prison
walls, pleasant meadows to burial grounds.7
Round Valley's bounty supported 6,000 to 20,000 Yuki.8 In
1854, explorers esti
mated 20,000 in and around the valley, based on "numerous

camp fires dotting it in
every direction." A colonizer later wrote that when, "the first
Settlers came to Round
Valley
. . .
they estimated the number of Indians in the valley, to be 3000,
and
. . .
within a radius of ten miles, more than 10,000." In 1856, well
after whites arrived,
Indian Agent Simon Storms estimated "at least" 5,000 Indians
inhabiting the area.
Yet by 1864, California Indian Affairs Superintendent Austin
Wiley counted just 85
men and 215 Yuki women at Round Valley.9
6 Frank Baumgardner, Killing for Land in Early California:
Indian Blood at Round Valley,
1856-1863 (New York, 2005), 116, 122, 264.
7 Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A
Population History since 1492
(Norman, 1990), 201. On page 203 of the same work Thornton
wrote that 225 of 500 known
Yuki "village sites ... are in Round Valley." Rena Lynn, The
Story of the Stolen Valley ( Willits,
CA, 1977), 4; A.G. Tassin, "Chronicles of Camp Wright, Part
I," Overland Monthly 10, July 1887,

25, BLNH; George Foster, A Summary of Yuki Culture
(Berkeley, 1944), 176; Stephen Powers,
Tribes of California (Washington, DC, 1877), 128; Sharon
Malinowski, et al., eds., Gale
Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes (Detroit, 1998), 4:239.
8 A.L. Kroeber concluded: "2,000 is perhaps the most
conservative estimate." See Kroeber,
Handbook of the Indians of California (Washington, DC, 1925),
168. Sherburne Cook estimated
6,880 in The Aboriginal Population of the North Coast of
California (Berkeley, 1956), 108, 127.
Thornton suggested, u6,000 [to] 12,000 appears reasonable,
though perhaps conservative." See
Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival, 203.
9
Tassin, "Chronicles of Camp Wright," 25; Elijah Potter, "Elijah
Renshaw Potter
Reminiscences," BANC MSS C-D 5136:2, Bancroft Library,
Berkeley, California (hereafter BLB),
p. 1; Simmon Storms to Tho. Henley, 20 June 1856, Letters
Received, Records of the Office of
Indian Affairs, 1824-1881, RG 75, M234, reel 35:475, National
Archives, Washington, DC (here
after M234); Austin Wiley, "Report of Indians on the
Reservations within the California

Superintendency, September 1 1864," Office of Indian Affairs,
Report of the Commissioner of
Indian Affairs for the Year 1864 (Washington, DC, 1865), 119,
Mudd Library, New Haven,
Connecticut (hereafter MLNH).
2013 12:47:41 PM
Benjamin Madley
Disease is widely considered a leading cause of California
Indian population de
cline under United States rule. In 1943, Sherburne Cook argued
that "60 per cent of
the decline may be attributed to" disease, while dislocation,
starvation, and homicide,
roughly in that order, also contributed to the decline. Cook's
argument was republished
in an influential, posthumous, 1976 essay collection, and
reworked in a posthumous
1978 article that posited: "the direct causes of death were
disease, the bullet, expo
sure, and acute starvation," without specifying any causal
hierarchy. In 1988, Albert
Hurtado offered a similar interpretation: "disease, starvation,
homicide, and a declining

birthrate for native people took a heavy toll." Yet, exceptions to
this pattern exist. The
Yuki population decline, at least, challenges Cook's long-
standing thesis. Apart from
venereal disease, which likely decreased reproduction through
sterility and fetal death,
there is no evidence of lethal "Old World" epidemics among the
Yuki between 1854
and 1864. So, what killed them?10
The Yuki catastrophe was prefigured by the events of 1847-
1853. On 13 January
1847, the United States took possession of California from
Mexico. One year later,
James Marshall's gold strike triggered mass immigration. Before
the gold rush, there
were only 13,000 non-Indians in California. The 1860 census-
takers counted 362,196.
These hundreds of thousands came primarily in search of
wealth. However, in seeking
to eat, dress, acquire labor, and satisfy their sexual desires,
immigrants placed immense
pressure on California Indians. These demands triggered an
explosion of immigrant
agriculture, hunting, and slave-raiding. When the shock waves
reached Round Valley,
the impact was devastating.11
California's new leaders magnified that impact. In 1851,
California's first civilian
United States governor, Peter Burnett, declared: "that a war of
extermination will con
tinue to be waged

. . . until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected,"
and
warned that what he called "the inevitable destiny of the race is
beyond the power or
wisdom of man to avert." Succeeding Burnett, Governor John
McDougal sent Militia
Colonel J. Neely Johnson (who later served as governor
himself) to meet with federal
Indian treaty negotiators. Johnson "promised" them that if
negotiations "were unsuc
cessful he would then make war upon [the Indians], which must
of necessity be one
10
Sherburne Cook, "The American Invasion," ?bero-Americana 23
(April 1943): 1-94;
Sherburne Cook, The Conflict between the California Indian
and White Civilization (Berkeley,
1976), 253-348; Sherburne Cook, "Historical Demography" in
Handbook of North American
Indians, ed. Robert Heizer (Washington, DC, 1978), 8:93;
Hurtado, Indian Survival on the
California Frontier, 1. When Storms first visited Round Valley
in June 1856, he "did not see a sick
Indian or one afflicted with the venereal." See Storms to
Henley, 20 June 1856, 475. By August
1858, he reported: "about 1/5 .. . are now diseased." See
Examination of S.P. Storms, 11 August
1858, reel 36:301, M234.
11

Malcolm Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush
and the American Nation
(Berkeley, 1998), 8 and Joseph Kennedy, Population of the
United States in I860 (Washington, DC,
1864), 28, MLNH.
2013 12:47:41 PM
of extermination to many of the tribes."12 Such open talk of
extermination was then
common among Anglo-Californians.
Congress, meanwhile, made California Indians particularly
vulnerable to im
migration's blast. In 1851 and 1852, federal agents signed
eighteen treaties with 119
California tribes allocating them 7,488,000 acres. However,
under pressure from Anglo
Californians, United States senators repudiated these treaties.
Instead, on 3 March
1853, Congress authorized "five military reservations not
exceeding 25,000 acres each"
and conferred no legal recognition or land titles. The results
were fourfold. First, no

reservations were patented and jurisdiction over them was left
uncertain. Second,
California Indians did not become explicit federal wards. Third,
because jurisdiction
remained uncertain, confusion and conflict between and among
state and federal
authorities prevailed. Finally, Pacific Department commander
Major General John
Wool's 1857 interpretation of California reservations' legal
status denied them full army
protection: "Until these reservations are
...
perfected the United States troops
... have
no right to
. . . exclude the Whites from entering and occupying the
reserves, or even
prevent their taking from them Indians, squaws and children. In
all such cases, until
the jurisdiction of the State is ceded to the United States the
civil authority should be
invoked to correct the evil."I3
The Yuki catastrophe unfolded in four phases. Settlers initiated
the first with incur
sions in 1854 and 1855, and then with settlement in 1856,
struggling with the Yuki for
control of natural resources and kidnapping and enslaving Yuki
women and children.

To retaliate, and to eat, Yuki sometimes killed white-owned
livestock. Settlers then
attacked Yuki. In 1856, federal authorities created what would
become Round Valley
Indian Reservation to separate the Yuki and other Indians from
settlers and to provide
for their survival. This was largely unsuccessful, and Yuki
initiated the second phase by
killing several whites in 1857. From that time on, settlers
launched more frequent and
deadly attacks. In 1859, Governor John Weiler inaugurated a
third phase by deploying
paid militiamen. Finally, federal authorities oversaw the fourth
phase on Round Valley
Reservation. The following sections consider each phase in
turn.
During the catastrophe's first phase, settlers established
destructive behavior pat
terns, supported by state policies and federal authorities.
Mountain men and settlers
attacked Yuki, abducted women and children, and crippled the
Yuki economy. These
acts generated Yuki resistance, and occasional retaliation, that,
in turn, escalated the
frequency and violence of white attacks.
Following the massacre of 15 May 1854, described earlier, most
of the Missourians
continued north. However, three remained in the region to hunt.

One of them, Pierce
12 California State Legislature, Journals of the Legislature of
the State of California at its
Second Session (San Jos?, 1851), 15, BLB and G. Barbour to
Luke Lea, 17 February 1851, reel
32:106, M234.
13
Major General John Wool to U.S. Senators D.C. Broderick and
Wm. Gwin, 28 January
1857, 2, 4, Interior Department Appointment Papers, Held-
Poage Library, Ukiah, California.
2013 12:47:41 PM
Benjamin Madley 311
f?.,? ̂t^V?^y^ fSfoJy ?.P.^vUi,
Figure 2. Edward S. Curtis, "A Yuki Woman" photograph, in
The North American Indian, vol. 14
(Norwood, MA, 1924), 23, plate. Courtesy of the Beinecke
Library, New Haven, Connecticut.
2013 12:47:41 PM

Asbill, left the mountains in the spring of 1855 to sell 1,000
pounds of buckskin in the
Sacramento River Valley. En route, Asbill encountered a
Mexican cowboy, who asked
him, according to AsbilPs son:
"You got plenty women over there?"
"Plenty of wild, naked squaw," agreed the Missourian.
"I pay three good young horses for one good young squaw. No
want old one!"
"How many you take?" parried Pierce.
"I take all you bring."
Asbill then procured guns, a hunting dog, a dozen dog chains,
and padlocks before
returning to his companions in the mountains. In the summer of
1855, the men de
parted with 1,500 pounds of buckskin and at least thirty-five
Yuki women and girls.
After fifteen months, six whites had killed or kidnapped
between sixty-seven and
seventy-five Yuki.14

Abduction played a major role in Yuki population decline. From
1850 until 1863,
California Indians could legally be taken and forced to become
unpaid servants.
Confronting a labor shortage, on 22 April 1850, legislators
passed an "Act for the
Government and Protection of Indians," which legalized white
custody of Indian minors
and Indian prisoner leasing. Under the act, children could, with
consent of "friends
or parents," be held and worked without pay until age fifteen
(for females) or eighteen
(for males). The act also empowered whites to arrest Indian
adults "found loitering and
strolling about," or "begging, or leading an immoral or
profligate course of life." When
a court received a "complaint" along these lines, court officers
were required to capture
and lease "such vagrant within twenty-four hours to the best
bidder." Successful bidders
could then hold and work their prisoners for up to four months
without compensation.
"Any white person" could also lease labor by visiting a
jailhouse and paying "the fine
and costs" for any "Indian convicted of an offence
...
punishable by fine." Because few

Indians had access to sufficient funds, jails became low-cost
labor suppliers. Finally, while
the act stipulated that "forcibly conveying] any Indian from his
home, or compelling]
him to work" was punishable by a fine of "not less than fifty
dollars," it also read, "in no
case shall a white man be convicted of any offence upon the
testimony of an Indian,
or Indians," and that Indian testimony against a white could be
rejected by "the court
or jury after hearing the complaint of an Indian." Indians could
thus be forced into
unpaid work on trumped-up charges.15
14 Asbill and Shawley, Last of the West, 19, 31, 34-5, 43. The
Missourians were paid three
horses per woman. According to Asbill, they received 105
horses in September 1855. See page 43.
15 California State Legislature, Statutes of California, Passed at
the First Session of the
Legislature (San Jos?, 1850), 408-10, California State Library,
Sacramento, California
(hereafter CSL).
2013 12:47:41 PM

Benjamin Madley
The 1850 act opened the door to abduction and involuntary
servitude. In 1852, the
first California Indian Affairs superintendent wrote to the
United States Indian Affairs
commissioner to protest the "new mode of oppression to the
Indians, of catching them
like cattle and making them work, and turning them out to
starve and die when the
work-season is over." Two years later, California legislators
passed an "Act to Prevent
the Sale of Fire-arms and Ammunition to Indians," limiting
Indians' ability to protect
themselves from slave raiders. By 1856, Indian Agent E. A.
Stevenson reported from
Mendocino County on a "system of slavery" in which whites
"seem to have adopted the
principle that they (the Indians) belong to them as much as an
African slave does to
his master." That same year, California Indian Affairs
superintendent Thomas Henley
reported to the United States Indian Affairs commissioner:
"hundreds of Indians have

been stolen and carried into the settlements and sold; in some
instances entire tribes
were taken en masse."16
Despite evidence that the 1850 act supported abduction and
involuntary servitude,
it remained in effect until fewer than 600 Yuki remained alive.
In 1860, legislators even
extended the act to legalize "indenture" of "any Indian or
Indians, whether children
or grown persons," including "prisoners of war." The age of
majority for males was
raised from eighteen to twenty-five, and for females from
fifteen to twenty-one. Those
indentured "over fourteen and under twenty years of age, if
males" could now be held
"until they attained the age of thirty years; if females, until they
attained] the age
of twenty-five years." Finally, legislators legalized indenturing
minors without even
the presence in the court of their "parents" or "persons having
care or charge." Thus,
legislators lowered barriers to the acquisition of involuntary
servants and expanded
the terms of custodianship and indenture, which by their
violence, and separation of
men and women during peak reproductive years, accelerated
Yuki population decline.17

Whites kidnapped and enslaved some 10,000 California Indians
between 1850 and
1863. Of these, 3,000-5,000 were children. An 1854 San
Francisco Aha California ar
ticle reported, "ABDUCTING INDIAN CHILDREN ... has
become quite common.
Nearly all the children belonging to some of the Indian tribes in
the northern part of
the State, have been stolen." Yet federal authorities declined to
intervene. The Franklin
Pierce presidential administration received numerous slave
trade reports but took no
action. In 1855, then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis
explicitly refused Superintendent
16
California Superintendent of Indian Affairs Beale to
Commissioner of Indian Affairs Lea,
30 September 1852, 32nd Cong., 2nd sess., 1853, S. Doc. 57,
serial 665, 9; Theodore Hittell, The
General Laws of the State of California, from 1850-1861 (San
Francisco, 1865), 532; E. Stevenson to
Thomas Henley, 31 July 1856, Office of Indian Affairs, Report
of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
Accompanying the Annual Report of the Secretary of the
Interior, for the Year 1856 (Washington, DC,
1857), 251, MLNH; Henley quoted in Robert Heizer, The
Destruction of California Indians: A

QEI-M3EDUC 642Number of pages 6 pagesAcademic Level Post.docx

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