This is how Native Indians were viewed for labor:
This peaceful scene would not have existed after 1848, for Indians were quickly eliminated from independent mining. Some were exploited as low-paid laborers for white miners. In the end, the Gold Rush devastated the Indians. A Frenchman named Covillaud described his plan to exploit the Indians: I intend to show the Indians how to wash gold. I will pay them with glass beads, knives, handkerchiefs, tobacco and trinkets which they consider valuable. For any of these little articles they will work many hours, digging gold whose value they are not aware of. Almost immediately, Indians became targets of white miners. These aggressive newcomers thought nothing of running the Indians off from their diggings, stealing their gold, and killing them if that was the simplest thing to do. The miners are sometimes guilty of the most brutal acts with the Indians, such as killing the squaws and papooses. Such incidents have fallen under my notice that would make humanity weep and men disown their own race. - anon. Antonio Coronel witnessed a number of senseless massacres of Indians he was powerless to prevent. I could not continue to watch this horrible killing. The situation was so disgraceful that to kill an Indian in cold blood was the same as to hunt a hare or rabbit.

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 In 1860 the Alta California reported a massacre conducted by a Captain Jarboe among the Achomawi peoples of the north-east.

"The attacking party rushed upon them, blowing out their brains, and splitting their heads open with tomahawks. Little children in baskets, and even babes, had their heads smashed to pieces or cut open. Mothers and infants shared the same phenomenon ... Many of the fugitives were chased and shot as they ran ... The children scarcely able to run, toddled towards the squaw for protection, crying with fright, but were overtaken, slaughtered like wild animals, and thrown into piles. ... One woman got into a pond hole, where she hid herself under the grass, with her head above water, and concealed her papoose on the bank in a basket. She was discovered and her head blown to pieces, the muzzle of the gun being placed against her skull and the child was drowned in the pond."

 This is how the Native Indians were treated socially:
No group of people faced more prejudice and discrimination than California's native people. In the onslaught of the Gold Rush and the American settlement, which followed, many Indian tribes were forced from their ancestral lands. The natural resources they depended upon for food and shelter were destroyed. Laws were enacted that prevented them from voting, owning property or weapons of any kind, serving on a jury, or testifying in a court of law. Eventually there were bounties placed on their heads, and legally-sanctioned massacres of defenseless villages. The editor of the San Francisco Bulletin spoke for most white Americans: It is a painful necessity of advancing civilization that the Indians should gradually disappear. Ultimately, there was an organized campaign that was explicitly designed to hunt and kill Indians, with bounties placed on their heads. The expenses of these paramilitary efforts were covered by the federal government and by the sale of state bonds. By 1866, newspaper articles endorsed the action. The Chico Courant proclaimed: It has become a question of extermination now. It is a mercy to the red devils to exterminate them. Treaties are played out. There is only one kind of treaty that is effective - cold lead. California's Indians very nearly did disappear. By 1900, their population had been reduced from 300,000 to only 16,000

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