<P> The human and environmental costs of the Gold Rush were substantial . Native Americans, dependent on traditional hunting, gathering and agriculture, became the victims of starvation, as gravel, silt and toxic chemicals from prospecting operations killed fish and destroyed habitats . The surge in the mining population also resulted in the disappearance of game and food gathering locales as gold camps and other settlements were built amidst them . Later farming spread to supply the settlers' camps, taking more land away from the Native Americans . The state government, in support of miner activities funded and supported Death Squads, appropriating over 1 million dollars towards the funding and operation of the paramilitary organizations . Miners often saw Native Americans as impediments to their mining activities . Ed Allen, interpretive lead for Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, reported that there were times when miners would kill up to 50 or more Natives in one day . Retribution attacks on solitary miners could result in larger scale attacks against Native populations, at times tribes or villages not involved in the original act . During the 1852 Bridge Gulch Massacre, a group of settlers attacked a band of Wintu Indians in response to the killing of a citizen named J.R. Anderson . After his killing, the sheriff led a group of men to track down the Indians, whom the men then attacked . Only three children survived the massacre that was against a different band of Wintu than the one that had killed Anderson . </P> <P> The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, passed on April 22, 1850 by the California Legislature, allowed settlers to capture and use Native people as bonded workers, prohibited Native peoples' testimony against settlers, and allowed the adoption of Native children by settlers, often for labor purposes . </P> <P> In some areas, systematic attacks against tribespeople in or near mining districts occurred . Various conflicts were fought between natives and settlers . The factors of disease, however do not minimize the tone of racial violence directed towards California Indians . Peter Burnett, California's first governor declared that California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extermination or removal . "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected . While we cannot anticipate the result with but painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power and wisdom of man to avert ." For Burnett, like many of his contemporaries, the genocide was part of God's plan, and it was necessary for Burnett's constituency to move forward in California . According to demographer Russell Thornton, between 1849 and 1890, the Indigenous population of California fell below 20,000--primarily because of the killings . In contrast, according to the government of California, only some 4,500 Native Americans suffered violent deaths between 1849 and 1870 . Furthermore, California stood in opposition of ratifying the eighteen treaties signed between tribal leaders and federal agents in 1851 . </P> <P> After the initial boom had ended, explicitly anti-foreign and racist attacks, laws and confiscatory taxes sought to drive out foreigners--not just Native Americans--from the mines, especially the Chinese and Latin American immigrants mostly from Sonora, Mexico and Chile . The toll on the American immigrants was severe as well: one in twelve forty - niners perished, as the death and crime rates during the Gold Rush were extraordinarily high, and the resulting vigilantism also took its toll . </P>

Where was the first place gold was discovered