Miwok Means People : The Life and Fate of the Native Inhabitants of the California Gold Rush Country

Imagine you live in a self-contained village where your parents and their parents and all your forebears from the beginning of time have lived. Imagine that within a day’s walking distance from your village are the villages of other People—to the east and west and north and south. They are PEOPLE because they speak words you mainly understand. There are in these foothills 9000 such PEOPLE. Then imagine that in the space of a few months 90,000 ûyeayû—white men—come uninvited to all the PEOPLE’S villages to tear away the ground under the PEOPLE’S feet looking for rocks. For each one of you there are 10 of them. Imagine!