NATIVE AMERICAN CHILDREN SOLD AS SLAVES


Most of us who live in California are some what aware about the atrocities heaped upon the Native Americans of California. Some of us are fully aware of the many treaties signed between the government of the United States and the various California Native American tribes. We also know that most of these treaties signed, ended with promises not kept. The California Native American robbed of land, respect, dignity, and decimated by the thousands.

While it has been said that newly introduced diseases like small pox and other sexually transmitted diseases killed thousands of Native Americans in California, the fact of the matter is that thousands were killed just because those in authority thought the Native American to be a non entity.

The most shocking aspect of all these atrocities was the selling of innocent Native American children most girls for as little as $ 60 and boys for $100. Between 1852 and 1867 thousands of innocent young Native American boys and girls were sold as slaves.

I have had the fortune to travel all over the world in the 1970's and 1980's. On my travels I always liked to inter act with the people. Again and again the stories that stand out are stories where tribes, clans, people kill one another in the name of religion, race, philosophy, you get the picture. The saddest aspect of humankind that affects me is when any human being is slaved. Much more if they are children.

I strongly believe that each and every human being should be free, free in every sense. My fight for these rights has brought me in direct contact with many an authority. Some of them have threatened to imprison me, others to kill me, still others to maim me, but to this day I have been spared from these intentions.

The true facts about many of the crimes committed against the Native American and especially the innocent Native American children can never be documented in detail. This history is known in general. The horror stories of what many of the children went through can be found in some documents that have been spared from destruction.

Historians for a long time did not want the world to know the truth. However, in recent times historians have been bold to reveal the truth. The Internet allows one to access some of this research and reading the facts between the lines can be very traumatic.

There are very few history books that reveal the truth. There are documents that have survived by mistake and I was privy to read some of them when I worked as the Congressional Liaison for Sixth U.S. Army and Presidio of San Francisco.

There are sites on the Presidio of San Francisco that are Sacred Places. Most people engrossed in things mundane pass by these Sacred Places not knowing the historical happenings that took place on these Sacred Grounds. It was here that Shamans blessed and evoked sacred spells. It was here that so call miracles took place. It was here that the aura of the sacred remains and no human, especially those who are not spiritual cannot take away.

Ten years ago, I was in one sacred place at the Presidio of San Francisco when around me I heard the chants of those that vanished thousands of years ago. No one was present yet again and again I heard the chants. At first I could not make sense of this phenomenon. I consulted a Native American shaman and took him to this place. Right on the surface he picked artifacts and told me that this was a place which was inhabited by the Native Americans. When I told him about the chants I heard he told me to keep the experience to myself, treasure it as something that I was blessed to have experienced.

Some years later I took a prominent Native American leader and some Native American dignitaries to this very site. Each one of them acknowledged that this was a site that was sacred.

The site is high but on a slope. It is very near some clean springs and surrounded by thick vegetation. One shaman explained to me how the sites very chosen and why they were chosen. Stuff like what I heard is not written in books, not mentioned by historians, historians have rewritten history more to project a philosophy of thought and propagation of a race that did not want to have anything to do with the Native American.

Again and again at the Presidio of San Francisco the present entities want to relegate the history of the Native American to the lowest end of the totem pole. This is a shame. It is a fact that many clans lived for thousands of years at the Presidio. Yet it took us over 8 years to convince the National Park Service (NPS) and over 3 years to convince the Trust that the Presidio was inhabited by the Ohlone for thousands of years.

This web site and the forces behind this web site have played an important role in informing thousands, especially the NPS and Trust workforce and the residents living around the Presidio.

There is talk is some quarters that the time has come for the State of California to compensate the Native Americans for all the atrocities committed. Especially the selling of young children. Encouraging the killing of Native Americans in California especially during the Gold Rush days.

Native Americans were captured on pretext that do not meet the test of any law abiding principles. For example if any Native American was caught in any area and it was some what determined that the Native American was not working one could be forced to work for any individual for a period of four months. This time period could be extended to a period of servitude extending to several years or life. This is a shame.

We fully know how young children were taken from their villages and put into boarding schools. These innocent children were indoctrinated and their culture suppressed. This behavior by the authorities and the government both Federal and State is uncalled for. While many would like us to forget this period of history. I strongly feel the time is ripe to open the books, review, and adjudicate the behavior of the authorities and this sad time period.

I encourage you to access some web sites that spell out in detail the happenings of this period. I encourage you to study the history of the Native American in California. After all we all are strangers in their land.

We all agree that it was wrong to sell young children as slaves in California. This practice was approved by the State and Federal government and the time for restitution is now.