A Little History

I'm reading this book on my Kindle app to learn about the treatment of the American Indian in California.  It's quite an eye opening read. I don't remember reading any of this in my American History class in high school.

Seems John Sutter owned a sawmill in Sacramento along the American River when gold was discovered.  Here's a quote from the book, "Sutter's method of feeding his California Indian laborers shocked pre-gold rush visitors.  James Clyman wrote that Sutter "keeps from 600 or 800 Indians in a state of complete slavery, and ... I had the mortification of seeing them dine[:] 10 or 15 troughs, 3 or 4 feet long were brought out of the cook room, and seated in the broiling sun, all the laborers great and small, ran to the troughs like so many pigs, and fed themselves, with their hands, as long as the troughs contained even a moisture."

A second quote, "The laboring or field Indians about the fort are fed upon the offal (entrails or internal organs) of slaughtered animals, and upon the bran sifted from the ground wheat.  This was placed in wooden troughs standing in the court, around which the several messes seat themselves and scoop out with their hands this poor fodder.  It was hardly the "good soup", roasted and fried meat dishes with onions, bread, cheese, butter and melons, that Sutter served Bryant in seperate courses on china with silver utensils that evening."