This issue addresses the fundamental role of controversy in history. We expect Michael F. Magliari’s “The California Indian Scalp Bounty Myth: Evidence of Genocide or Just Faulty Scholarship?” to provoke controversy. In it, Magliari debunks an assertion that has become commonplace in histories of the newly formed state of California: that white Americans were so determined to exterminate California’s Indigenous population that state, county, and other officials appropriated funds and paid cash bounties to so-called “Indian hunters” for scalps, heads, and other Native American body parts. Magliari traces this evolving narrative through multiple secondary sources, searching for the primary source evidence upon which these claims were originally based. His article records the results of that careful search.
We invite scholars of California history to debate Magliari’s conclusions. This is our job as historians: we argue with one another. It is our duty, as scholars, to seek the truth and to...
University of California Press