Although this much about Sutter and his ultimate fate is generally known, his relations with the native peoples in the Sacramento Valley have received insufficient attention from historians. While extending kindness and generosity to Americans settling in Mexican California, he generally exploited, often ruthlessly, the local Indians in his early rise to power and wealth.

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The successful operation of California’s Mexican-era rancho system was based largely on Indian labor. In exchange for their services, the Indians customarily were rewarded with shelter, food, clothing and, at times, such trinkets as glass beads. In effect, they were serfs to the rancheros, who ruled their landed estates as feudal lords. Like other rancheros such as his nearest California neighbor, Mariano G. Vallejo of Petaluma and Sonoma, Sutter promised some tribes protection from their traditional Indian enemies in order to win their political support and secure an essential labor force. For example, he formed an alliance with Chief Narcisco, a Christian convert, who also was the leader of the Ochecames within Sutter’s pastoral domain.

The Ochecames and the other local natives with whom Sutter forged alliances were often products of the Spanish mission system. Therefore, they were skilled in agriculture, animal husbandry, masonry and various crafts. Sutter used them to build his fort, raise his crops, care for thousands of cattle, sheep, horses and hogs, catch his fish, deliver pelts for his profitable beaver trade, and serve as soldiers against other tribes he suspected of stealing his horses and destroying his property. However, Sutter’s methods of recruiting and maintaining his native labor force raise serious moral questions about his legendary liberality and benevolence.

Contemporary observers at Sutter’s Fort claimed that he resorted to "kidnapping, food privation, and slavery" to force Indians to work for him. He also manipulated and rewarded native chiefs to secure the labor of tribal members. Heinrich Lienhard, a Swiss employee at the fort, observed that the chiefs "received far better pay than the poor wretches who worked as common laborers, and had to slave two weeks for a plain muslin shirt, of the material for a pair of cotton trousers." Sutter also adopted the practice of paying his Indian workers in pieces of cheap tin currency to be exchanged for merchandise at his store. Most likely, the system worked to Sutter’s advantage. Theodor Cordua, a Prussian rancher living in nearby Marysville who initially leased land from Sutter before acquiring his own large land grant, provided perhaps the most incriminating indictment of Sutter’s Indian labor policy: "Those who did not want to work were considered enemies. With the other tribes the field was taken against the hostile Indian…the villages were attacked usually before daybreak when everybody was asleep. Neither old nor young was spared…and often the Sacramento River was colored red by the blood of the innocent Indians." While Cordua may have been guilty of exaggeration, it is nonetheless well documented that Sutter was inclined to punish harshly those he suspected of treachery or insubordination. Such was the case when the harvest at New Helvetia conflicted with good hunting or acron season, and his Indian laborers left the fort to provide for their families. To intimidate and terrify his workers into submission, he sent armed posses into the foothills to capture and punish runaways, whipping and even executing those who repeatedly resisted.

It is clear that Sutter was no benevolent despot to the Indians he employed. At the end of a day’s work, they were placed in holding pens or locked in rooms. Lienhard described graphically their incarceration: "As the room had neither beds nor straw, the inmates were forced to sleep on the bare floor. When I opened the door for them in the morning, the odor that greeted me was overwhelming, for no sanitary arrangements had been provided. What these rooms were like after ten days or two weeks can be imagined, and the fact that nocturnal confinement was not agreeable to the Indians was obvious. Large numbers deserted during the daytime, or remained outside the fort when the gates were locked."

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