California Gold Rush

California Gold Rush

Sailing to California at the beginning of the Gold Rush
Date	January 24, 1848 (1848-01-24)–1855
Location	Sierra Nevada and Northern California goldfields
Coordinates	38°48′09″N 120°53′41″W / 38.80250°N 120.89472°W / 38.80250; -120.89472Coordinates: 38°48′09″N 120°53′41″W / 38.80250°N 120.89472°W / 38.80250; -120.89472
Participants	300,000 prospectors
Outcome	49ers

The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a period in American history which began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California.^[1] The news of gold brought—mostly by sailing ships and covered wagons—some 300,000 gold-seekers (called "forty-niners", as in "1849") to California.^[2] While most of the newly arrived were Americans, the Gold Rush also attracted some tens of thousands from Latin America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. At first, loose gold nuggets could be picked up off the ground, and since there was no law regarding property rights in the goldfields, a system of "staking claims" was developed. In 1849, a state constitution, governorship, and legislature were established, and as part of the Compromise of 1850, California officially became a US state. Agriculture and ranching expanded throughout the state to meet the needs of the settlers. Roads and other towns were built throughout the new state, and new methods of transportation developed as steamships came into regular service. By 1869, railroads were built across the country from California to the eastern United States.

The California Gold Rush was a particularly violent period for the new settlers of the Wild West. After the initial boom had ended, explicitly anti-foreign and racist attacks, laws and confiscatory taxes sought to drive out foreigners, especially Chinese and Latin American immigrants.^[3][4] The toll on US immigrants was also severe: roughly one in twelve perished due to the extraordinarily high crime rates and the resulting vigilantism.^[5] While the total of gold recovered would be worth tens of billions of US dollars today, eventually the technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required in order to mine the gold, causing increasingly important mining companies to take over the industry and leading to great wealth for a few. Many of those who had had to rely on simple gathering methods, such as gold panning, returned home with only a little more than they had originally started with.

A major genocide was furthermore conducted on Native Americans who resided in the Great Basin, a watershed which had supported the tribes for more than 14,000 years.^[6] Peter Burnett, California's first governor, declared that California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extinction or removal.^[7] The State of California directly paid out $25,000 in bounties for Indian scalps with varying prices for adult male, adult female, and child sizes. It also provided the basis for the enslavement and trafficking of Native American labor, particularly that of young women and children, which was carried on as a legal business enterprise.^[8] Miners, loggers, and settlers formed vigilante groups and local militias to hunt the Natives, regularly raiding villages to supply the demand.^[9] The Native population of California, once perhaps as high as 705,000 in numbers, but by 1845 already down to some 150,000, further spiraled downward until by 1890 it had reached below 20,000.^[10][6][11]

History

California goldfields (red) in the Sierra Nevada and northern California

The California Gold Rush began at Sutter's Mill, near Coloma.^[12] On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter on the American River.^[13] Marshall brought what he found to John Sutter, and the two privately tested the metal. After the tests showed that it was gold, Sutter expressed dismay: he wanted to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were a mass search for gold.^[14]

However, rumors soon started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan. The most famous quote of the California Gold Rush was by Brannan; after he had hurriedly set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies,^[15] Brannan strode through the streets of San Francisco, holding aloft a vial of gold, shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!"^[16]

Previous to the discovery of gold, California was the Mexican territory of Alta California. This region had been under the control of Spanish speaking people since Europeans arrived in California, first under control of the Spanish Empire before being passed down to Mexican control after a successful campaign for independence. Most large outposts of civilization at this time were located along the coast from San Diego up to San Francisco where they were concentrated away from the areas that gold would eventually be found.^[17] The majority of non-natives living in Alta California at this time were Spanish speaking mestizos from either a Spanish possession or Spain itself. American and European settlers did began moving to Alta California in the years preceding the gold rush, but they tended to settle in these established regions and were a minority of the population.^[18]

Due to the expansive size of the territory and its distance from the central Mexican government located in Mexico, the people living in Alta California had a shaky relationship with the central government powers. This rocky relationship peaked in 1836 when Juan Bautista Alvarado led a rebellion and took the office of governor, this would happen again in 1845, these acts of rebellion allowed Alta California to have more freedom in their own government in the final years of Mexican rule.^[19] The revolt and annexation of Texas gave Alta California the opportunity to begin its own fight for freedom. With the help of the United States armed forces during the Mexican–American War American Settlers were able to defeat the Mexican Army and a Californio militia leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, less than two weeks after the discovery of gold.

On August 19, 1848, the New York Herald was the first major newspaper on the East Coast to report the discovery of gold. On December 5, 1848, President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress.^[20] Soon, waves of immigrants from around the world, later called the "forty-niners," invaded the Gold Country of California or "Mother Lode". As Sutter had feared, he was ruined; his workers left in search of gold, and squatters took over his land and stole his crops and cattle.^[21]

San Francisco had been a tiny settlement before the rush began. When residents learned about the discovery, it at first became a ghost town of abandoned ships and businesses,^[22] but then boomed as merchants and new people arrived. The population of San Francisco exploded from perhaps about 1,000^[23] in 1848 to 25,000 full-time residents by 1850.^[24] Miners lived in tents, wood shanties, or deck cabins removed from abandoned ships.^[25]

In what has been referred to as the "first world-class gold rush,"^[26] there was no easy way to get to California; forty-niners faced hardship and often death on the way. At first, most Argonauts, as they were also known, traveled by sea. From the East Coast, a sailing voyage around the tip of South America would take five to eight months,^[27] and cover some 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 kilometres). An alternative was to sail to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama, take canoes and mules for a week through the jungle, and then on the Pacific side, wait for a ship sailing for San Francisco.^[28] There was also a route across Mexico starting at Veracruz. Many gold-seekers took the overland route across the continental United States, particularly along the California Trail.^[29] Each of these routes had its own deadly hazards, from shipwreck to typhoid fever and cholera.^[30]

To meet the demands of the arrivals, ships bearing goods from around the world came to San Francisco as well. Ships' captains found that their crews deserted to go to the goldfields. The wharves and docks of San Francisco became a forest of masts, as hundreds of ships were abandoned. Enterprising San Franciscans turned the abandoned ships into warehouses, stores, taverns, hotels, and one into a jail.^[31] Many of these ships were later destroyed and used for landfill to create more buildable land in the boomtown.^[31]

Merchant ships fill San Francisco harbor, 1850–51

Within a few years, there was an important but lesser-known surge of prospectors into far Northern California, specifically into present-day Siskiyou, Shasta and Trinity Counties.^[32] Discovery of gold nuggets at the site of present-day Yreka in 1851 brought thousands of gold-seekers up the Siskiyou Trail^[33] and throughout California's northern counties.^[34] Settlements of the Gold Rush era, such as Portuguese Flat on the Sacramento River, sprang into existence and then faded. The Gold Rush town of Weaverville on the Trinity River today retains the oldest continuously used Taoist temple in California, a legacy of Chinese miners who came. While there are not many Gold Rush era ghost towns still in existence, the remains of the once-bustling town of Shasta have been preserved in a California State Historic Park in Northern California.^[35]

Gold was also discovered in Southern California but on a much smaller scale. The first discovery of gold, at Rancho San Francisco in the mountains north of present-day Los Angeles, had been in 1842, six years before Marshall's discovery, while California was still part of Mexico.^[36] However, these first deposits, and later discoveries in Southern California mountains, attracted little notice and were of limited consequence economically.^[36]

By 1850, most of the easily accessible gold had been collected, and attention turned to extracting gold from more difficult locations. Faced with gold increasingly difficult to retrieve, Americans began to drive out foreigners to get at the most accessible gold that remained. The new California State Legislature passed a foreign miners tax of twenty dollars per month ($570 per month as of 2016), and American prospectors began organized attacks on foreign miners, particularly Latin Americans and Chinese.^[37]

In addition, the huge numbers of newcomers were driving Native Americans out of their traditional hunting, fishing and food-gathering areas. To protect their homes and livelihood, some Native Americans responded by attacking the miners. This provoked counter-attacks on native villages. The Native Americans, out-gunned, were often slaughtered.^[38] Those who escaped massacres were many times unable to survive without access to their food-gathering areas, and they starved to death. Novelist and poet Joaquin Miller vividly captured one such attack in his semi-autobiographical work, Life Amongst the Modocs.^[39]

Forty-niners

Panning for gold on the Mokelumne River

"Independent Gold Hunter on His Way to California", circa 1850. The gold hunter is loaded down with every conceivable appliance, much of which would be useless in California. The prospector says: "I am sorry I did not follow the advice of Granny and go around the Horn, through the Straights, or by Chagres [Panama]."

The first people to rush to the goldfields, beginning in the spring of 1848, were the residents of California themselves—primarily agriculturally oriented Americans and Europeans living in Northern California, along with Native Americans and some Californios (Spanish-speaking Californians).^[40] These first miners tended to be families in which everyone helped in the effort. Women and children of all ethnicities were often found panning next to the men. Some enterprising families set up boarding houses to accommodate the influx of men; in such cases, the women often brought in steady income while their husbands searched for gold.^[41]

Word of the Gold Rush spread slowly at first. The earliest gold-seekers were people who lived near California or people who heard the news from ships on the fastest sailing routes from California. The first large group of Americans to arrive were several thousand Oregonians who came down the Siskiyou Trail.^[42] Next came people from the Sandwich Islands, and several thousand Latin Americans, including people from Mexico, from Peru and from as far away as Chile,^[43] both by ship and overland.^[44] By the end of 1848, some 6,000 Argonauts had come to California.^[44]

Only a small number (probably fewer than 500) traveled overland from the United States that year.^[44] Some of these "forty-eighters",^[45] as the earliest gold-seekers were sometimes called, were able to collect large amounts of easily accessible gold—in some cases, thousands of dollars worth each day.^[46][47] Even ordinary prospectors averaged daily gold finds worth 10 to 15 times the daily wage of a laborer on the East Coast. A person could work for six months in the goldfields and find the equivalent of six years' wages back home.^[48] Some hoped to get rich quick and return home, and others wished to start businesses in California.

By the beginning of 1849, word of the Gold Rush had spread around the world, and an overwhelming number of gold-seekers and merchants began to arrive from virtually every continent. The largest group of forty-niners in 1849 were Americans, arriving by the tens of thousands overland across the continent and along various sailing routes^[49] (the name "forty-niner" was derived from the year 1849). Many from the East Coast negotiated a crossing of the Appalachian Mountains, taking to riverboats in Pennsylvania, poling the keelboats to Missouri River wagon train assembly ports, and then travelling in a wagon train along the California Trail. Many others came by way of the Isthmus of Panama and the steamships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Australians^[50] and New Zealanders picked up the news from ships carrying Hawaiian newspapers, and thousands, infected with "gold fever", boarded ships for California.^[51]

Forty-niners came from Latin America, particularly from the Mexican mining districts near Sonora and Chile.^[51][52] Gold-seekers and merchants from Asia, primarily from China,^[53] began arriving in 1849, at first in modest numbers to Gum San ("Gold Mountain"), the name given to California in Chinese.^[54] The first immigrants from Europe, reeling from the effects of the Revolutions of 1848 and with a longer distance to travel, began arriving in late 1849, mostly from France,^[55] with some Germans, Italians, and Britons.^[49]

Chinese gold miners in California

It is estimated that approximately 90,000 people arrived in California in 1849—about half by land and half by sea.^[56] Of these, perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 were Americans, and the rest were from other countries.^[49] By 1855, it is estimated at least 300,000 gold-seekers, merchants, and other immigrants had arrived in California from around the world.^[57] The largest group continued to be Americans, but there were tens of thousands each of Mexicans, Chinese, Britons, Australians^[58] French, and Latin Americans,^[59] together with many smaller groups of miners, such as African Americans, Filipinos, Basques^[60] and Turks.^[61][62]

People from small villages in the hills near Genova, Italy were among the first to settle permanently in the Sierra Nevada foothills; they brought with them traditional agricultural skills, developed to survive cold winters.^[63] A modest number of miners of African ancestry (probably less than 4,000)^[64] had come from the Southern States,^[65] the Caribbean and Brazil.^[66]

A number of immigrants were from China. Several hundred Chinese arrived in California in 1849 and 1850, and in 1852 more than 20,000 landed in San Francisco.^[3] Their distinctive dress and appearance was highly recognizable in the goldfields, and created a degree of animosity towards the Chinese.^[3]

There were also women in the Gold Rush. They held various roles including prostitutes, single entrepreneurs, married women, poor and wealthy women. They were of various ethnicities including Anglo-American, Hispanic, Native, European, Chinese, and Jewish. The reasons they came varied: some came with their husbands, refusing to be left behind to fend for themselves, some came because their husbands sent for them, and others came (singles and widows) for the adventure and economic opportunities.^[67] On the trail many people died from accidents, cholera, fever, and myriad other causes, and many women became widows before even setting eyes on California. While in California, women became widows quite frequently due to mining accidents, disease, or mining disputes of their husbands. Life in the goldfields offered opportunities for women to break from their traditional work.^[68][69]

Legal rights

When the Gold Rush began, the California goldfields were peculiarly lawless places.^[70] When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, California was still technically part of Mexico, under American military occupation as the result of the Mexican–American War. With the signing of the treaty ending the war on February 2, 1848, California became a possession of the United States, but it was not a formal "territory" and did not become a state until September 9, 1850. California existed in the unusual condition of a region under military control. There was no civil legislature, executive or judicial body for the entire region.^[71] Local residents operated under a confusing and changing mixture of Mexican rules, American principles, and personal dictates. Lax enforcement of federal laws, such as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, encouraged the arrival of free blacks and escaped slaves.^[72]

While the treaty ending the Mexican–American War obliged the United States to honor Mexican land grants,^[73] almost all the goldfields were outside those grants. Instead, the goldfields were primarily on "public land", meaning land formally owned by the United States government.^[74] However, there were no legal rules yet in place,^[70] and no practical enforcement mechanisms.^[75]

The benefit to the forty-niners was that the gold was simply "free for the taking" at first. In the goldfields at the beginning, there was no private property, no licensing fees, and no taxes.^[76][77] The miners informally adapted Mexican mining law that had existed in California.^[78] For example, the rules attempted to balance the rights of early arrivers at a site with later arrivers; a "claim" could be "staked" by a prospector, but that claim was valid only as long as it was being actively worked.^[70][79][80]

Miners worked at a claim only long enough to determine its potential. If a claim was deemed as low-value—as most were—miners would abandon the site in search for a better one. In the case where a claim was abandoned or not worked upon, other miners would "claim-jump" the land. "Claim-jumping" meant that a miner began work on a previously claimed site.^[79][80] Disputes were often handled personally and violently, and were sometimes addressed by groups of prospectors acting as arbitrators.^[74][79][80] This often led to heightened ethnic tensions.^[81] In some areas the influx of many prospectors could lead to a reduction of the existing claim size by simple pressure.^[82]

Development of gold-recovery techniques

Four hundred million years ago, California lay at the bottom of a large sea; underwater volcanoes deposited lava and minerals (including gold) onto the sea floor. By tectonic forces these minerals and rocks came to the surface of the Sierra Nevada,^[83] and eroded. Water carried the exposed gold downstream and deposited it in quiet gravel beds along the sides of old rivers and streams.^[84][85] The forty-niners first focused their efforts on these deposits of gold.^[86]

Because the gold in the California gravel beds was so richly concentrated, early forty-niners were able to retrieve loose gold flakes and nuggets with their hands, or simply "pan" for gold in rivers and streams.^[87][88] However, panning cannot take place on a large scale, and industrious miners and groups of miners graduated to placer mining, using "cradles" and "rockers" or "long-toms"^[89] to process larger volumes of gravel.^[90] Miners would also engage in "coyoteing",^[91] a method that involved digging a shaft 6 to 13 meters (20 to 43 ft) deep into placer deposits along a stream. Tunnels were then dug in all directions to reach the richest veins of pay dirt.

In the most complex placer mining, groups of prospectors would divert the water from an entire river into a sluice alongside the river, and then dig for gold in the newly exposed river bottom.^[92] Modern estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey are that some 12 million ounces^[93] (370 t) of gold were removed in the first five years of the Gold Rush (worth over US$16 billion at December 2010 prices).^[94]

In the next stage, by 1853, hydraulic mining was used on ancient gold-bearing gravel beds on hillsides and bluffs in the goldfields.^[95] In a modern style of hydraulic mining first developed in California, a high-pressure hose directed a powerful stream or jet of water at gold-bearing gravel beds.^[96] The loosened gravel and gold would then pass over sluices, with the gold settling to the bottom where it was collected. By the mid-1880s, it is estimated that 11 million ounces (340 t) of gold (worth approximately US$15 billion at December 2010 prices) had been recovered by "hydraulicking".^[94] This style of hydraulic mining later spread around the world.

A byproduct of these extraction methods was that large amounts of gravel, silt, heavy metals, and other pollutants went into streams and rivers.^[97] As of 1999 many areas still bear the scars of hydraulic mining, since the resulting exposed earth and downstream gravel deposits do not support plant life.^[98]

After the Gold Rush had concluded, gold recovery operations continued. The final stage to recover loose gold was to prospect for gold that had slowly washed down into the flat river bottoms and sandbars of California's Central Valley and other gold-bearing areas of California (such as Scott Valley in Siskiyou County). By the late 1890s, dredging technology (also invented in California) had become economical,^[99] and it is estimated that more than 20 million ounces (620 t) were recovered by dredging (worth approximately US$28 billion at December 2010 prices).^[94]

Both during the Gold Rush and in the decades that followed, gold-seekers also engaged in "hard-rock" mining, that is, extracting the gold directly from the rock that contained it (typically quartz), usually by digging and blasting to follow and remove veins of the gold-bearing quartz.^[100] By 1851, quartz mining had become the major industry of Coloma.^[101] Once the gold-bearing rocks were brought to surface, the rocks were crushed and the gold separated, either using separation in water, using its density difference from quartz sand, or by washing the sand over copper plates coated with mercury (with which gold forms an amalgam). Loss of mercury in the amalgamation process was a source of environmental contamination.^[102] Eventually, hard-rock mining wound up becoming the single largest source of gold produced in the Gold Country.^[94][103] The total production of gold in California from then till now is estimated at 118 million ounces (3700 t).^[104]

• 

  Forty-niner panning for gold

• 

  Sluice for separation of gold from dirt with water

• 

  Excavating a river bed after the water has been diverted

• 

  Crushing quartz ore prior to washing out gold

• 

  Excavating a gravel bed with jets, circa 1863

Profits

Recent scholarship confirms that merchants made far more money than miners during the Gold Rush.^[105][106] The wealthiest man in California during the early years of the rush was Samuel Brannan, a tireless self-promoter, shopkeeper and newspaper publisher.^[107] Brannan opened the first supply stores in Sacramento, Coloma, and other spots in the goldfields. Just as the rush began he purchased all the prospecting supplies available in San Francisco and re-sold them at a substantial profit.^[107]

Some gold-seekers made a significant amount of money.^[108] On average, half the gold-seekers made a modest profit, after taking all expenses into account; economic historians have suggested that white miners were more successful than black, Indian, or Chinese miners.^[109] Most late arrivals made little or wound up losing money.^[110] Similarly, many unlucky merchants set up in settlements which disappeared, or which succumbed to one of the calamitous fires that swept the towns that sprang up. By contrast, a businessman who went on to great success was Levi Strauss, who first began selling denim overalls in San Francisco in 1853.^[111]

Other businessmen, through good fortune and hard work, reaped great rewards in retail, shipping, entertainment, lodging,^[112] or transportation.^[113] Boardinghouses, food preparation, sewing, and laundry were highly profitable businesses often run by women (married, single, or widowed) who realized men would pay well for a service done by a woman. Brothels also brought in large profits, especially when combined with saloons and gaming houses.^[114]

By 1855, the economic climate had changed dramatically. Gold could be retrieved profitably from the goldfields only by medium to large groups of workers, either in partnerships or as employees. By the mid-1850s, it was the owners of these gold-mining companies who made the money. Also, the population and economy of California had become large and diverse enough that money could be made in a wide variety of conventional businesses.^[115]

Path of the gold

Portsmouth Square, San Francisco, during the Gold Rush, 1851

Once extracted, the gold itself took many paths. First, much of the gold was used locally to purchase food, supplies and lodging for the miners. It also went towards entertainment, which consisted of anything from a traveling theater to alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes. These transactions often took place using the recently recovered gold, carefully weighed out.^[116][117] These merchants and vendors in turn used the gold to purchase supplies from ship captains or packers bringing goods to California.^[118]

The gold then left California aboard ships or mules to go to the makers of the goods from around the world. A second path was the Argonauts themselves who, having personally acquired a sufficient amount, sent the gold home, or returned home taking with them their hard-earned "diggings". For example, one estimate is that some US$80 million worth of California gold was sent to France by French prospectors and merchants.^[119]

As the Gold Rush progressed, local banks and gold dealers issued "banknotes" or "drafts"—locally accepted paper currency—in exchange for gold,^[120] and private mints created private gold coins.^[121] With the building of the San Francisco Mint in 1854, gold bullion was turned into official United States gold coins for circulation.^[122] The gold was also later sent by California banks to U.S. national banks in exchange for national paper currency to be used in the booming California economy.^[123]

Near-term effects

The arrival of hundreds of thousands of new people in California within a few years, compared to a population of some 15,000 Europeans and Californios beforehand,^[124] had many dramatic effects.^[125]

Development of government and commerce

The Gold Rush propelled California from a sleepy, little-known backwater to a center of the global imagination and the destination of hundreds of thousands of people. The new immigrants often showed remarkable inventiveness and civic-mindedness. For example, in the midst of the Gold Rush, towns and cities were chartered, a state constitutional convention was convened, a state constitution written, elections held, and representatives sent to Washington, D.C. to negotiate the admission of California as a state.^[126]

Large-scale agriculture (California's second "Gold Rush"^[127]) began during this time.^[128] Roads, schools, churches,^[129] and civic organizations quickly came into existence.^[126] The vast majority of the immigrants were Americans.^[130] Pressure grew for better communications and political connections to the rest of the United States, leading to statehood for California on September 9, 1850, in the Compromise of 1850 as the 31st state of the United States.

Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.^[131] The Gold Rush wealth and population increase led to significantly improved transportation between California and the East Coast. The Panama Railway, spanning the Isthmus of Panama, was finished in 1855.^[132] Steamships, including those owned by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, began regular service from San Francisco to Panama, where passengers, goods and mail would take the train across the Isthmus and board steamships headed to the East Coast. One ill-fated journey, that of the S.S. Central America,^[133] ended in disaster as the ship sank in a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas in 1857, with approximately three tons of California gold aboard.^[134][135]

Impact on Native Americans

Depiction of an attack by Native Americans on miners' settlement

According to Washington, D.C.'s National Museum of the American Indian, the California Gold Rush was a cause of a major, but little known, genocide on the Native Americans. The Native Americans resided in The Great Basin, east of the Sierra Nevada and west of the Rocky Mountains, which supported Native American people for more than 14,000 years.^[6] They were resourceful with the barren environment; having to travel long distances by foot to find food, Great Basin Indians developed technologies to sustain their lifestyle throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries.^[6]

"During the Gold Rush, miners, loggers, and settlers formed vigilante groups and local militias to hunt Indians living outside the mission communities—a genocide largely ignored by American history. The Native population, estimated at 150,000 in 1845, was by 1870 less than 30,000." ^[6] This means that less than 20% of the population remained.

The human and environmental costs of the Gold Rush were substantial. Native Americans, dependent on traditional hunting, gathering and agriculture, became the victims of starvation, as gravel, silt and toxic chemicals from prospecting operations killed fish and destroyed habitats.^[97][98] The surge in the mining population also resulted in the disappearance of game and food gathering locales as gold camps and other settlements were built amidst them. Later farming spread to supply the settlers' camps, taking more land away from the Native Americans.^[136]

Native Americans also succumbed in large numbers to newly introduced diseases such as smallpox, influenza and measles. Some estimates indicate the death rates to be between 80 and 90 percent in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics.^[137]

By far the most destructive element of the Gold Rush on California Indians was the violence against them and their environment by miners and settlers. Miners often saw Native Americans as impediments to their mining activities.^[138] Ed Allen, interpretive lead for Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, reported that there were times when miners would kill up to 50 or more Natives in one day.^[139] Retribution attacks on solitary miners could result in larger scale attacks against Native populations, at times tribes or villages not involved in the original act.^[140] During the 1852 Bridge Gulch Massacre, a group of settlers attacked a tribe of Wintu Indians in response to the killing of a citizen named J. R. Anderson. After his killing, the sheriff led a group of men to track down the Indians, who the men then attacked at Natural Bridge. Only three children survived the massacre that was against a different tribe of Wintu than the one that killed Anderson.^[141]

Native Americans were also deceived by settlers. Near Sacramento, California land baron John Sutter built, "a private empire on 50,000 acres of Indian land near Sacramento, kidnapped Natives and forced them to work for him in conditions that were akin to slavery."^[139] In addition to this, Sutter apparently would pay the Natives who worked for him with insignificant pieces of tin that could only be redeemed at his store.^[139]

The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians,^[142] passed on April 22, 1850 by the California Legislature, allowed settlers to continue the Californio practice of capturing and using Native people as bonded workers. It also provided the basis for the enslavement and trafficking of Native American labor, particularly that of young women and children, which was carried on as a legal business enterprise.^[8] Native American villages were regularly raided to supply the demand, and young women and children were carried off to be sold, the men and remaining people often being killed in genocidal attacks.^[9]

In some areas, systematic attacks against tribespeople in or near mining districts occurred. Various conflicts were fought between natives and settlers.^[143] According to population historian Russell Thornton, estimates of the pre-Columbian population of California was at least 310,000, and perhaps as much as 705,000. By 1849, due to Spanish and Mexican colonization and epidemics this number had decreased to 100,000.^[11] The factors of disease, however do not minimize the tone of racial violence directed towards California Indians. Peter Burnett, California's first governor declared that California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extinction or removal.^[7] California, apart from legalizing slavery for Native Americans also directly paid out $25,000 in bounties for Indian scalps with varying prices for adult male, adult female and child sizes. From 1849 until 1890 the Indigenous population of California had fallen below 20,000, primarily because of these killings.^[10] According to the government of California, some 4,500 Native Americans suffered violent deaths between 1849 and 1870.^[144] Furthermore, California stood in opposition of ratifying the eighteen treaties signed between tribal leaders and federal agents in 1851.^[145]

After the initial boom had ended, explicitly anti-foreign and racist attacks, laws and confiscatory taxes sought to drive out foreigners—not just Native Americans—from the mines, especially the Chinese and Latin American immigrants mostly from Sonora, Mexico and Chile.^[3][4] The toll on the American immigrants was severe as well: one in twelve forty-niners perished, as the death and crime rates during the Gold Rush were extraordinarily high, and the resulting vigilantism also took its toll.^[5]

Impact on Latinos

Conflict Between Latinos and Euro Americans

Native Americans were not the only people who suffered from Euro American migration to California during the Gold Rush of 1849. Another group that endured harsh times during this time period was Latinos. Many Latinos in California were seen as inferior by the Euro Americans, and experienced several cases of unfair treatment and discrimination. Gold mining competition between Latinos and Euro Americans sparked a feud that led to actions of violence with Latinos playing the role of the victim. Lynching became a common method for Euro Americans to kill and instill fear into the minds of Latinos. A famous story exists of a woman known only by the name "Juanita". Juanita lived in a mining camp at the time of the gold rush. Her home was broken into by a white male, and in self-defense, she killed this man.^[146] When she was brought to trial, the judge and jury were composed of the dead man’s friends. She was found guilty, and hung publicly.^[146] The execution of Juanita was a clear example of the unfair treatment of Latinos during this time period. She was an innocent woman who defended herself in a time of danger, and the legal system failed her.

Along with the many forms of social injustice faced by Latinos during the gold rush, they also encountered many economical and institutional disadvantages such as the Foreign Miners’ License Tax, the Land Act of 185, and the Homestead Act of 1862.^[146] The Foreign Miners’ License Tax declared that foreigners who wanted to mine during the gold rush must had to pay twenty dollars per month in order to do so.^[146] However, this tax was never applied to European immigrants, but was applied to Mexican-American citizens.^[146] This tax made it difficult for many Latinos to benefit from the gold rush. Furthermore, this tax caused many Latino families to live in poverty as they had a hard time making a living for themselves. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed any adult citizen to claim 160 acres of government land.^[147] After citizens had stayed on the land for 5 years, it became their property for a small fee.^[147] This act shut out many Mexican Americans from acquiring land of their own.^[146]

Vigilante justice For Latinos

Joaquin Murrieta was a Latino who worked as a miner during the Gold Rush. He became a victim of violence when a group of Euro-American men broke into his home, raped his wife, and murdered his brother.^[146] This sparked a desire in Murrieta to seek vengeance for all of the Mexican American community.^[146] Murrieta was understandably very angered by what was done to his family, and made it his job to bring discriminatory Euro Americans to justice. Many feared him, and he quickly became a legend in California. Law enforcement officials in California set out to capture Murrieta in order to put an end to his actions. He was reportedly killed by a captain, but his legend continued. Many years later, a writer heard of Joaquin Murrieta’s story, and began to create a fictional character that also fought for justice against an oppressive government.^[146] The name of this character was Zorro. Years after that, a writer in New York wanted to create a modernized version of Zorro, which led to the creation of the famous superhero, Batman.^[146] Joaquin Murrieta is a symbolic figure for Latino justice, and his legacy is still alive today in many ways.

Latinas in Gold Rush Society

Prior to the mass-migration of Euro Americans to California for the Gold Rush, many Latina women led more traditional lives with their families on Mexican-style ranches. In this Ranchero lifestyle, Latinas were considered to be the center of the family in many ways, and even worked beyond domestic duties in agricultural and household production. Ranchero communities viewed Latinas as leaders in the family – a role that held undeniable power and respect.^[148] However, after the Gold Rush era began, this custom rapidly changed in the affected areas of Northern California. Men flocked in droves to seek Gold as well as the adventurous lifestyle that the Gold Rush offered; women, however, were much less eager, and soon became grossly outnumbered.^[149] Male demand for sex and the presence of women drove up prostitution as a trade with high prices, which ended up drawing in many Latina and other minority women.^[150] The previous Ranchero family lifestyle stopped being perpetuated as the high demand for sexual female jobs spiked. Before long, the Gold Rush society forced many Latinas to forget the old ways of Mexican-owned California and abandon their Ranchero traditions in order to assimilate and survive in a new male-dominated Anglo society.

One of the most widely known Latinas from the Gold Rush went by the name of Josefa Segovia. More commonly known as just “Juanita,” she gained a notorious reputation for being the first woman lynched in California.^[151] Juanita met her fate of public execution in front of the mining town of Downieville, CA, after she killed a miner who had invaded her home and attempted to assault her.^[151] The infamous death of Juanita tells us in significant detail about Latinas in those Gold Rush societies. The decisive and unconditional way that the mining town of Downieville reacted to Juanita’s self-defense killing offers a look into how those societies viewed Latinas. Despite other commonalities, Juanita was not a prostitute and was considerably well kept.^[151] Even so, regardless of profession or upkeep, many Latinas faced double oppression on the grounds of race and gender.^[151] The Gold Rush era fostered incredibly gendered societies, in which it forced many women, especially Latinas, to choose between being self-supporting as a prostitute, or marry and bind to a man; there was rarely any possible in-between.^[152] Both Latino men and Anglo men viewed Latina women in this way. Either they were a prostitute and “bad,” or married and “good.”^[152] Furthermore, according to many accounts, both Latino men and Anglo men lined the banks of the river at which Juanita was hanged.^[152] This further emphasizes the extent to which Latinas in the Gold Rush era faced oppression from race and gender, as the men of their own race would choose to alienate Latinas to prevent their own estrangement from the Anglo men.

Despite the aforementioned hardships during the Gold Rush for Latinas, they also began to escape some of these repressive institutional elements. Both Californios and the California Constitutional Convention played a quintessential role in this accomplishment. Californios, when California was still Mexico, had gone by the rule of law that incorporated communal land grants and property rights for women.^[148] California as a US State later took note of this legal system, and in 1849, modified common US law. This modification legally established joint husband-wife women’s property rights in a then-radical act that awed many of the Eastern States. This undertaking did not solely apply to Euro American women, but all women.^[153] The law failed to provide perfect equality upon its initial enforcement, but it did set a valuable precedent for gender equality in California – at a time that Latinas were in dire need of social change.

World-wide economic stimulation

The Gold Rush stimulated economies around the world as well. Farmers in Chile, Australia, and Hawaii found a huge new market for their food; British manufactured goods were in high demand; clothing and even prefabricated houses arrived from China.^[155] The return of large amounts of California gold to pay for these goods raised prices and stimulated investment and the creation of jobs around the world.^[156] Australian prospector Edward Hargraves, noting similarities between the geography of California and his home country, returned to Australia to discover gold and spark the Australian gold rushes.^[157] Preceding the Gold Rush, the United States was on a bi-metallic standard, but the sudden increase in physical gold supply increased the relative value of physical silver and drove silver money from circulation. The increase in gold supply also created a monetary supply shock.^[158]

Within a few years after the end of the Gold Rush, in 1863, the groundbreaking ceremony for the western leg of the First Transcontinental Railroad was held in Sacramento. The line's completion, some six years later, financed in part with Gold Rush money,^[159] united California with the central and eastern United States. Travel that had taken weeks or even months could now be accomplished in days.^[160]

Longer-term effects

Legacy

(1) State motto, "Eureka" on the Seal of California. (2) California state route shield, with the number 49 and shaped like a miner's spade. (3) Commemorative coin from 1925.

California's name became indelibly connected with the Gold Rush, and fast success in a new world became known as the "California Dream."^[161] California was perceived as a place of new beginnings, where great wealth could reward hard work and good luck. Historian H. W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across the nation:

Overnight California gained the international reputation as the "golden state".^[163] Generations of immigrants have been attracted by the California Dream. California farmers,^[164] oil drillers,^[165] movie makers,^[166] airplane builders,^[167] and "dot-com" entrepreneurs have each had their boom times in the decades after the Gold Rush.^[168]

Included among the modern legacies of the California Gold Rush are the California state motto, "Eureka" ("I have found it"), Gold Rush images on the California State Seal,^[169] and the state nickname, "The Golden State", as well as place names, such as Placer County, Rough and Ready, Placerville (formerly named "Dry Diggings" and then "Hangtown" during rush time), Whiskeytown, Drytown, Angels Camp, Happy Camp, and Sawyers Bar. The San Francisco 49ers National Football League team, and the similarly named athletic teams of California State University, Long Beach, are named for the prospectors of the California Gold Rush.

In addition. the standard route shield of state highways in California is in the shape of a miner's spade to honor the California Gold Rush.^[170][171] Today, aptly named State Route 49 travels through the Sierra Nevada foothills, connecting many Gold Rush-era towns such as Placerville, Auburn, Grass Valley, Nevada City, Coloma, Jackson, and Sonora.^[172] This state highway also passes very near Columbia State Historic Park, a protected area encompassing the historic business district of the town of Columbia; the park has preserved many Gold Rush-era buildings, which are presently occupied by tourist-oriented businesses.

Cultural references

The literary history of the Gold Rush is reflected in the works of Mark Twain (The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County), Bret Harte (A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready), Joaquin Miller (Life Amongst the Modocs), and many others.^[39][173]

Gallery

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  First announcement, San Francisco, 1848

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  Gold fields and sailing routes to California, 1849

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  Whites, Native Americans and blacks engaged in gold prospecting, c. 1850.

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  Old-time gold nuggets from Tuolumne County, California; c. 1 in (25 mm)

See also

• Gold in California
• Barbary Coast
• California Mining and Mineral Museum
• Women in the California Gold Rush

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to California Gold Rush.

• California Gold Rush at DMOZ
• California Gold Rush chronology at The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco
• Gold at the website of United States Geological Survey
• Gold Country Museum in Placer County, California
• "California as I Saw It:" First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849–1900 Library of Congress American Memory Project
• University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library
• The University of California, Calisphere, 1848–1865: The Gold Rush Era
• California State Library, "California As We Saw It": Exploring the California Gold Rush, online exhibit
• Map of North America during the California Gold Rush at omniatlas.com