Abstract: California is like America, only more so, Wallace Stegner has often been paraphrased as saying. His actual words: “Like the rest of America, California is unformed, innovative, ahistorical, hedonistic, acquisitive, and energetic—only more so.”1 Placed in the past tense, Stegner’s statement demands an adverb: only more violently so. During its formative period of “innovation,” the Golden State witnessed the most deplorable violence in U.S. history. Too often, the “American genocide debate” has been presented in yes-or-no format: Did the U.S. ever commit genocide? Bad questions produce stale arguments. Better to ask: Where and why did “normal” anti-Indian violence—that is, American settler colonialism—become genocidal?