History

Takaki says that the Irish provided the model for English colonists conception and treatment of subsequently encountered native peoples.

English identity was at that time newly formed. Englishness was defined not only by the speaking of the English language but also by the adoption of the Reformed Church. According to the adherents of the Reformed Church the Catholics were barely different from heathens in their idolatry and the Irish Catholics were particularly idolatrous with only a veneer of Catholic Christianity covering their ancient pagan beliefs. The English identified Englishness Christianity with civilization and determining the Irish to be neither, classified them as savages.  (Takaki, The Tempest in the Wilderness The Racialization of Savagery)

The English never perceived their own actions as savage in their minds they were inherently civilized. They launched, what can be objectively seen as, a barbarous invasion of Ireland with a genocidal of racial subjugation against the Irish resistance, but that did not seem uncivilized to them.  (Takaki, The Tempest in the Wilderness The Racialization of Savagery)

With regards to the Irish, on the other hand, such benign facets of their civilization as, their pastoral lifestyle and their tribal system of governance were cited as evidence of their savagery. (Noonan).
Irish resistance was never seen as a reaction against the English invasion, rather the Irish actions were cited as further evidence that the Irish were savages. The English colonists were portrayed as the victims of Irish savagery and brutality and the acts of resistance were used to justify further brutality and harshness in dealing with the Irish or justifications for the complete obliteration of the Irish people  (Takaki, A Different Mirror A History of Multicultural America).

This rhetorical trick of classifying the Irish as savages provided several material benefits to the colonization efforts. When the Irish were seen as savages or wild people that inhabited Ireland, they could be considered, not human, but part of the fauna and flora of Ireland. Their lands could then be seen as unsettled wild lands empty of people just waiting for the civilized people of England to inhabit them.

This characterization of colonized lands as formerly being un-peopled terra nullius was used in every subsequent European colonization effort from America to Australia to Africa and the Middle East.
The classification of the Irish as savages meant that there was no sin or guilt if they were driven off their lands. Driving the Irish off their lands was no different than driving wild animals off a piece of the forest in order to settle human beings there.

Classifying the Irish as savages also meant that the Irish tribes that threatened the settlement could be exterminated completely including woman and children, without any moral penalty just like one would destroy a pack of wild animals that threatened a human habitation.

Lands in the Munster and Ulster provinces of Ireland, especially, were cleared of the Irish and settled with Scottish plantations in this manner.  (Noonan)

This model of colonist-native interaction was used in the subsequent colonization effort in the New World as well. The English colonists found themselves in dire straits, when they ran out of supplies they attacked and set fire to Native American villages to extort food supplies from them.  (Takaki, The Tempest in the Wilderness The Racialization of Savagery).

Proponents of the colonization of Ireland had claimed that since the Irish were pastoralists, their land was being wasted, while under the English colonists, its agricultural capacity could be brought to use.

The same argument was applied to the Native Americans, even though the Native Americans used to practice agriculture, planting corn on a large scale. Sir Thomas Moore argued that since the natives did not utilize the soil and left it to go waste, it was not wrong for the English to appropriate some of it for their purposes.  (Takaki, The Tempest in the Wilderness The Racialization of Savagery)
The English also enslaved some of the Native Americans and forced them to perform labor on their plantations. Armed conflict with the Native Americans usually followed failed attempts to subjugate them (Morgan). The slave trade of Native Americans was gradually abandoned as the Native Americans succumbed to old world diseases and tribal remnants banded together in large confederacies. The slave trade also sparked the Yamasee War which threatened the very existence of the South Carolina colony for a time. These factors convinced the European colonists that it was an unwise an uneconomical strategy to try to use the Native Americans as slave labor (Morgan).
Just like the Irish resistance was used to justify increasing brutality against the Irish people, Native American resistance in 1622 was used to justify attempts at complete extermination of entire Native American tribes. The colonists waged an all-out war against the Native Americans, a Virginian colonialist pamphlet declared

Moreover, victorie of them may bee gained many waies by force, by surprize, by famine in burning their Corne, by destroying and burning their Corne, by destroying and burning their Boats, Canoes, and Houses, by breaking their fishing Weares, by assailing them in their huntings, whereby they get the greatest part of their sustenance in Winter, by pursuing and chasing them with out horses, and blood-Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives to teare them  (Takaki, The Tempest in the Wilderness The Racialization of Savagery)

Just as the English colonists denigrated the Catholic religion of the Irish, the Native American religion was denigrated as well. The Native American religion was described as a form of devil worship. Reverend Thomas Mayhew wrote in 1652 of the Wampanoag tribe of Marthas Vineyard that they were zealous and earnest in the Worship of False gods and Devils (Takaki, A Different Mirror A History of Multicultural America)

Even more, the Native Americans were often themselves referred to as Devils and were thought of as a type of demonic, non-human creatures. The preacher Cotton Mather, whose work Memorable Providences sparked off the anti-witch hysteria that led to the Salem witchcraft trials which led to the imprisonment and torture of hundreds of people and the death of twenty, wrote that the devil was not of a Negro, but of a Tawney, or an Indian colour, (Takaki, The Tempest in the Wilderness The Racialization of Savagery)

Idleness was described as a satanic characteristic. The Native Americans, like the Irish were described as a lazy and idle people. George Percy, an English aristocrat who visited the colony of Virginia observed I saw Bread made by their women which doe all their drugerie. The men takes their pleasure in hunting and their warres. (Smits).

In English culture, hunting was a highly ritualized pastime for the landed gentry it was therefore seen as an idle pastime and not as a supplementary activity necessary for the survival of the Native American people.

It was also claimed, for both the Irish and the Native Americans, that they oppressed and overworked their females while the males lived a life of pleasure and indolence (Smits).

Native American Interaction with Different types of Immigrants
It became obvious to the Native Americans early on that the European settlers did not intend to coexist with them on peaceful and equitable terms but were an invasive force that intended to turn them out of their lands, exterminate or enslave them  (Takaki, A Different Mirror A History of Multicultural America).

An example of this is given by Takaki in the words of Chief Powhatan who told Captain John Smith that he knew that the English had not come to Virginia to make trade but to invade and possess lands held by the Native Americans  (Takaki, The Tempest in the Wilderness The Racialization of Savagery).

Native Americans had a variety of different experiences with different groups of immigrants. Though, for a long time, the Native Americans may not have realized that the immigrants were of various backgrounds and had considerable ethnic and class differences among them (Gjerde).

In the battles between various Native American tribes and English settlers, the tribal warriors did not recognize any difference between the White people that had come voluntarily and others that were indentured servants etc. who were forced to come to America (Gjerde).

Native Americans had many different types of interaction with black slaves brought over from Africa as slaves, these reactions varied from tribe to tribe and situation to situation, in some cases we can see Native Americans and African Americans joined together against the Whites and in others we see joint White and Black campaigns against Native Americans (Forbes).

An example of Whites and Blacks joining forces in a campaign against the Native Americans is the Bacons Revolt. Led by a wealthy Virginian colonist, Nathaniel Bacon, the revolt against the British colonial administration was based on the view that the administrators were overly lenient or indulgent towards the Native Americans. They took the view that the Native American tribes around the colony should be driven off the area or exterminated (Forbes).

Sometimes Black slaves would run away from their masters and find refuge in some Native American tribes, at other times the tribes would capture Black slaves on the run and return them to their white masters or resell them elsewhere for profit (Forbes).

Many Native American tribes had some conception of the institution of slavery. Traditionally in Native American culture slave status was a transitional status afforded to captives prior to their being ransomed or adopted into the tribe (Forbes).

The members of the Five Civilized Tribes of Native Americans, who had been considerably culturally anglicized, kept slaves much in the manner of the White settlers. Of these the Seminole nation had a particularly large complement of Black runaway slaves and freedmen that had been adopted into the tribe (Forbes).

While the slave trade was a horrible experience for those enslaved themselves, it was also devastating to the relatives they left behind in Africa. The slavers raids devastated the areas raided for slaves and left them impoverished (Manning). The slave trade is possibly one of the biggest reasons why sub-Saharan Africa is the most impoverished and one of the least populated areas of the world (Yakubu).

The Reasons for the Mid Nineteenth Century Mass Immigration of the Irish to America
The Irish were amongst the first settlers to the Americas. A common solution to the Irish problem or groups of Irish people that were insufficiently submissive towards the English occupation was to send them oversees to an English settlement as indentured servants (Noonan).

However the greatest influx of Irish immigrants to the North American continent occurred in the mid nineteenth century. This great influx was precipitated as a result of several great demographic changes that occurred relatively suddenly in Ireland.

The first of these changes was a great rise in the Irish population. This great rise was brought about by the large scale cultivation of the potato in Ireland. Potatoes, originally brought over from the Americas, had become a staple Irish crop towards the end of the seventeenth century.   Potato crops allowed a man with the smallest plot of land to grow enough food to raise a family. This encouraged earlier marriages and more children among the Irish as did the Roman Catholic Churchs ban on the use of contraception (Anbinder).

According to Irish tradition, land would be parceled out equally to all sons at the death of the father, this lead to the average landholding becoming smaller and smaller reducing the margin of survival in case the Potato crop failed (Jones).

The outbreaks of Potato blight in the mid nineteenth century, which destroyed most of the potato crop, led to mass starvation and the deaths of thousands of people. This led the Irish to rethink their attitude towards marriage and inheritance (Jones).

 The Irish not only started marrying late, but it also became a common for only one brother in a family to get married while the rest would live a life of enforced celibacy. The brother chosen for marriage would then inherit all the landholdings of the family. Marital unions, which in the time of plenty were based on mutual attraction of the young people, were now strict business deals with the amount of dowry negotiated beforehand (Jones).

This new system created a huge surplus of unmarried young Irish people with no prospects for employment or marriage in their native land, landless young men could not get a bride and nor could many parents afford to marry off all their daughters (Jones). Thus circumstances forced these young Irish men and women to seek their fortunes in foreign lands of which America looked to be the most promising.

The Irish mass-immigration to America gave rise to a surge in anti-Irish and anti-catholic sentiment in the United States. The majority of Americans were Protestants of English descent and they feared the Irish migrations would weaken their political power.

The Irish women, who worked as menial labor in rich peoples homes were stereotyped as rude and dimwitted Bridgets or Norahs (Diner). Irish men were caricaturized as drunken and disorderly Paddys and were seen as a menace and a threat to the peace of society (Takaki, From different shores perspectives on race and ethnicity in America)

A great source of anti-Irish hatred was the fact that with the coming of the Irish the supply of cheap, unskilled labor has increased by a great amount and in accordance with the laws of supply and demand, the laborers received less in wages  (Takaki, From different shores perspectives on race and ethnicity in America).

The impoverished Irish immigrants were also willing to work for a much lower wage than natives and thus were seen as crowding out the American natives from the labor market  (Takaki, From different shores perspectives on race and ethnicity in America).

A further source of anti-Irish hatred were the Protestant Irish who had left Ireland to escape the Catholic majority and now saw their place of refuge fill with those they regarded as their enemies (Takaki, From different shores perspectives on race and ethnicity in America).

Racial Divisions in California Prior to and After US Occupation
The Spanish were the first European country to colonize the Americas. In the region constituting the present day United States of America, the first European colony was that of St. Augustine in present day state of Florida formed in 1565 (Gutirrez).

One historic incident that contributed greatly to an increase in the number of Hispanics in the United States is the end of the Mexican American War that occurred with the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Following the concept of Manifest Destiny the United States forced a  defeated Mexico to cede to them the territories of the present days states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas along with parts of present day Colorado, Nevada and Utah.  The signing of the treaty brought instantly made than 50,000 citizens of Mexico, citizens of the United States (Gutirrez).

In the Californian society prior to conquest by the United States there was a great racial and class-based stratification. At the top of the class structure were the Californians of pure Iberian (European Spanish) ancestry. They were called the Californios. Below the Californios were people of mixed Spanish and Native American or African descent, they formed merchant and the artisan class or worked as overseers on ranches owned by the Californios. They were called the Pobladores or Mexicanos. At the bottom of the class hierarchy were the Native Americans that lived in Spanish missions (Haney-Lpez).

Even prior to the conquest by the United States, many Anglos began settling in California. The Anglos being primarily rich traders, formed alliances with and intermarried with the upper class Californios (Haney-Lpez).

With the signing of the treaty all these Hispanic people were instantly converted from being members of the majority community of Mexico to being members of a despised minority of the United States (Gutirrez, 1995).

This transformation was especially dramatic in the case of the Californios who formerly considered themselves and upper class Anglos as people of the same status both being of European ancestry and were now relegated to the lower class as Mexicans by the Anglo majority. Rapid changes in demography caused them to lose their political power and their control over the land and its resources as well (Gutirrez).

There were changes in the lives of the lower classes as well they were exposed to competition in cheap labor from the varied minority peoples of the United States  (Haney-Lpez).

German Catholic Immigration to Minnesota as Compared to Immigration to New York
German Catholics migrated in large numbers to the United States, throughout the nineteenth century especially during the 1870s, as a result of the anti-catholic policies of the German government led by Count Otto Von Bismarck (Jones).

These Catholic immigrants set up Church based communities in the rural Midwest. Many of Catholic immigrants to the mid-west continued their agriculture based lifestyle in their new home. Their communities depended upon the farming of wheat, corn and oats. Others set themselves up in small cities such as St. Paul Minnesota (Gjerde).

The German immigrants to Minnesota tended to retain their German cultural and language characteristics. They intermarried mostly with other people of Germanic descent and their Churches tended to use German rather than English as the language of service (Gjerde).

In contrast to the farmlands and small towns of Minnesota, the German immigrants to New York, lived in cluttered and unhealthy German neighborhoods where there was no demarcation of commercial, industrial, residential or agricultural zones (Gjerde).

The Churches these German Catholics attended were shared between, Irish, Italian and Hispanic Catholic communities. The services at these Churches would be in the Lingua Franca English.
The Germans of New York also intermarried more frequently with Irish, Italian or Hispanic or other white communities (Gjerde).

It is no wonder than the Germans in New York were quicker in casting off their German identity and assimilating into the general White population.

The German Immigrants of the Southern States were on the whole opposed to slavery and had generally friendlier relations with the African American slaves and freemen than other people of European ancestry. They were willing to trade with then even when such trade was against the law (Strickland).

For some German immigrants, the relationship with African Americans went beyond trade. These German Americans found no sstigma or loss of prestige in marrying African Americans and a number of such unions have been recorded (Strickland).

However after the civil war, in order to be accepted as White in the Southern society, the Germans took up white supremacist and anti-Black politics (Strickland)

The Rise of Nativism and the Know-Nothings
An influx of around five million primarily Irish and German immigrants to the United States in the forty year period between 1820 and 1860 led to the rise of extreme anti-immigrant and xenophobic political ideas (Navarro).

Most of these immigrants were Catholics, which resulted in an increase in Catholic Numbers to over three million people attending more than two thousand Catholic Churches.

This rise in Catholic numbers came at a time when the various Protestant Churches in the United States were engaged in bitter disputes over theological issues and such matters as temperance, the abolition of slavery and the rights of women (Navarro).

Catholic people were portrayed as unpatriotic having their primary allegiance a foreign power i.e. the Vatican. Nativist pamphleteers wrote of a vast Catholic conspiracy to take over the United States, which was headed by the Pope and was being carried out by increasing Catholic migration to the United States and by placing Catholics in high positions in the government and the armed forces (Navarro).

Nativists published fantastic stories of monetary and sexual impropriety on the part of Priests and Nuns. Books like The Awful Disclosures by Maria Monk, purportedly the work of a former nun, alleged that it was considered a part of the Nuns duty to sexually satisfy the higher ups in the priestly hierarchy, that young nuns were kept in sexual bondage by the priests and the products of their illegitimate and sacrilegious unions were killed and disposed off soon after birth (Navarro).

The Native American Association formed in 1837, lobbied the lawmakers to introduce increased restrictions to immigration such as lengthening the naturalization period and placing immigration taxes upon each immigrant  (Navarro).

The fight against immigration was often led by protestant clergymen, one such clergyman was the Reverend William C. Brownlee, the head of the New York Protestant association, who 1941 started putting out an anti-immigration and anti-catholic newspaper named The American Protestant Vindicator in collaboration with the Reverend George Bourne  (Navarro).

The Maclay Education Bill, which enabled local schools to select their own text books, resulted in greater anti-immigrant and anti-catholic reaction as school administrations reacted to what they saw as increasing Catholic influence with more and more stringent anti catholic measures (Navarro).

 In 1842 a group of a hundred Protestant clergymen marched in Philadelphia near Catholic Churches. In 1843, the American Republican Party won the New York City elections on a Nativistic platform. The part proposed that congress extend the naturalization period from five to twenty one years. In 1844 widespread anti-Catholic riots broke out in Philadelphia. Irish immigrants defending themselves against mob violence were portrayed as looters in newspapers (Navarro).

In 1849 the secret society, The Order of the Star Spangled Banner was formed for furtherance of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant causes. The society was commonly known as the Know-Nothings because if a member of the society was asked if they knew anything about the movement, they were instructed to reply that the y knew nothing (Navarro).

The Know-Nothings sought to infiltrate various political parties and social organization and to bend them towards the Know Nothings beliefs. One of the organizations infiltrated by the Know-Nothings was the Washington, Monument society, a voluntary group that oversaw the construction of the Washington monument. Under Know-Nothing control, the stone sent by the Pope Pious IX to be set in the monument was destroyed which sparked riots and attempts to assassinate Catholic clergy in Louisville. Ulysses S. Grant, later to become a civil war general and eventually the President of the United States, joined the Know Nothings during the 1850s (Navarro).

In 1855 in Ohio, a group of Know-Nothings attempted to steal ballot boxes from German neighborhoods in order to fix the election results. This attempt was successfully repelled by the German immigrants who formed militias of their own. In 1856, the Nativist, American Party put up Millard Fillmore as their candidate for the presidency but he lost to James Buchanan of the Democratic Party (Navarro).

Such public failures contributed to the unpopularity and eventual demise of the Know Nothings but they continued their violent activities for a long time, such as the riot in Washington in 1857 that killed six people (Navarro).