Livestock occupied traditional food-gathering areas.

Mining altered rivers and streams.

Competition for land became violent.

For Native Californians, the consequences were catastrophic.

Disease, hunger, dispossession, forced labor, state policy, and direct killing devastated communities across the region.

The violence against Native people was not simply a collection of isolated frontier clashes.

Settler militias and posses repeatedly organized campaigns against Native communities, and California authorities supported or reimbursed some militia operations.

The Yahi were among the peoples driven toward collapse.

Accounts preserved by anthropologists and later historians describe repeated attacks on Yahi camps during the 1860s.

Men, women, and children were killed.