The Yokuts were reduced by around 93% between 18, with many of the survivors being forced into indentured servitude sanctioned by the California State Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. Over the course of the next 50 years, settlers and eventually the California State Militia would wage war on the Yokuts and other native tribes in what became known as the Californian Genocide. In 1851, California Governor Peter Burnett said that unless the Indians were moved east of the Sierras, ‘a war of extermination would continue to be waged until the Indian race should become extinct.' The newly organized state government took a different approach. The result of the vote was not made public until 1905. The US Senate failed to ratify any of the eighteen treaties in a secret vote cast on July 8, 1852, with every member either abstaining or voting no. The federal government, which had recently acquired California after defeating Mexico in the Mexican War, signed a treaty (one of eighteen such treaties signed state-wide, setting aside seven and a half percent of California's land area) defining a proposed reservation and two hundred head of cattle per year. The 1850s were a devastating time for California Indians due to the incursion of European-American settlers into their homelands, who enslaved or killed the natives in great number. They had one of the highest regional population densities in pre-contact North America. Elsasser 1980 suggested that the Yokuts had numbered about 70,000. Several subsequent investigators suggested that the total should be substantially higher. Kroeber in 1925 put the 1770 population of the Yokuts at 18,000. ca.1920Įstimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially (See Population of Native California). A Chukchansi (then spelled "Chuckachancy") family near Oakhurst, California.