California Gold Rush and
Statehood
1848 -
Study Guide Identifications
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Gold Rush of 1848
Gold Rush of 1849
Polk’s Annual Address to Congress
Indian prices
Digger Ounce
Foreign Miner’s Tax
People V. Hall
Act for the Government and Protection of Indians
Indian Slavery
Scalp Bounty
Genocide
Demographic Flip
Mexican American War
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Study Guide Questions
• What was the nature of the 1848 and 1849
California Gold Rush?
• What characterized American Indian Policy
during the gold Rush?
• What legislation did Americans establish in
California that led to disparity based on race
and ethnicity?
• How did America Acquire California?
Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide
• Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United
Nations General Assembly on 9 December
1948
• Article 2
• In the present Convention, genocide means any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
• (a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group;
• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or
in part;
• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the
group;
• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another
group.
The Gold Rush of 1848
• Gold Rush impacted indigenous population,
changed the landscape irrevocably.
– James Marshall
– John A. Sutter
– Maidu village of Koloma
• Californios
• Mining
Companies
• Independent
Claims
• Payment in
supplies s.
grubbing for
1,000s worth
of gold dust
and nuggets
Indian Labor
Organization of Mining Companies
• Maidu, Nissinan,
Miwok, Pomo, Yokut
– Charles M. Weber,
rancher of Stockton,
California
• contracted Jose Jesus,
headman of the
Northern valley Yokut
Indians.
• meat, beans, sugar,
coffee, clothing =
$50,000 in gold.
1849 Gold Rush
• President Polk’s Annual Address to Congress
•Abundance of Gold
•Miners Mainly from United States – 90,000 in all
•The “49ers” include:
•Americans, French, Germans, Englishmen, Australians, Mexicans,
Italians, Chinese, African Americans
•IMMIGRATION causes population of California to sky rocket
1848 – 14,500
1849 – 26,000
1850 – 115,000
1852 – 223,856
1860 - 380,000
Gold Fever Spreads
Hauling supplies to a mining camp.
4
Across the Plains
• 6-9 month Trek from the Eastern United
States, Canada or Mexico
1849 32,000 walked
1850 200,000 more
Cholera, exhaustion,
Starvation, Sierra winters
By ship; overcrowding,
disease, inadequate food and
water, storms
• Miner’s
Tent Store
Racism
Indian Prices
Digger Ounce
• 50-500$ for colored Handkerchief's
• a string of beads/ 1lb of beads=1 lb of
gold
Chinese Immigration
4,000 by the end of 1851
25,000 by 1852
1860 8% stayed in
San Francisco
Foreign Miners Tax
• Population Pressure in the Northern Fields
– Desire to Expel Foreign Miners
• Passed by State Legislature in 1850:
– Affects all non-US citizens
– Includes Californios despite Treaty
• $20 per month for License
• Forces Foreign Miners Out:
– Mexicans
– Chinese
• Repeal and Reinstitution
Mexicans
• Mining Camp codes
– Excluded Mexicans, Latinos and Asians from
diggings
– Californios lumped in as Mexicans
• Miners License tax, violence, rape, and murder
– 15,000 present
– 10,000 left the fields
Chinese
• Credit-ticket system
– 1852 25,000, largest foreign minority
– Miner’s tax re-instituted to target Chinese
– Chinese protested rise in tax
• 1854 - People Vs. Hall – Chinese legally Indian
– No naturalization or right to testify legally
• 1855 - Head Tax 50$ - non citizens
African Americans in the Gold Fields
Early 1850’s
200-300 came as
Slaves
The census of 1850
Counted 962, of
those
600-700 were in the
Gold fields.
African Americans in Gold Fields
By 1852
2,000
1% of California
Population
• Auburn Ravine, California.
Women in the Gold Rush
Matilda Heron
Actress - below
• Above Lola Montez
Actor, Dancer, Courtesan
The Barbary Coast
• Women
– 1st 1848 Special and Few
–
–
–
–
–
Chile
Latin America
New Orleans
France
China
• Prostitution
– $400 per night ($20 oz for
gold)
• Housing
– Salons, brothels, dance
halls, tents
Three Classes
Parlor Houses
Street Cribs
Chinatown
Parlor Houses
Part of Society
High Class Women
Evening of Entertainment
Expensive
Judges, police, important men
paid taxes, gave charity
Madame Ah Toy
Parlor House
Decline of Indian miners
• American racism and Indian policy
– White attitudes and perception – 1848-68 rape, slavery,
extermination
• First killings ushered in the American Holocaust in California
– March 1849 – Maidu village/American river men tried to rescue their
wives, sisters and mothers, miners shot them to death
– Weber's Creek – 12 more shot, 7-8 captive, told to run and shot in
the back
Hupa Woman & Nissinan Man
Act for the “Government & Protection of
Indians”
• California is Starved for Labor in the Late 1840s and Early
1850s
• State Legislature Takes Action to Secure Control of Indians
with “An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians”
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Denies Rights Guaranteed by Treaty
No Legal Redress Possible for Indians
System of “Apprenticeships”
“Vagrants,” or “unemployed’ auctioned off for labor
Empowered Local Justices of the Peace
Keep Control of Indians and Exploit Their Labor
Legal System of Slavery and Encourages Murder
Horseman of the Apocalypse
Massacred
Villages
Slavery
prostitution
William McCollum
Oregon generally
“hunt [Indians] as
they would wild
beasts”.
Indian Slavery
• Act for the Government and
Protection of Indians
– 1855 – Indian Children sold for $50$500
• Scalp Bounty
– Eureka, Humboldt County, California.
Citizens of Honey Lake
• Wiyot Band headed by Smoke Creek Sam
• 25 cents/scalp
Military Orders
• Wiyot people of Humboldt
County, California
• Miwok, Manuel Medina
• 1852 - Upper Crossing
Massacre (0ver 40)
• 1852 Fresh Water Massacre
• 1858 Massacre
• 1860 Indian Island Massacre
– 60-80 bodies found
Jump Dance Ceremony – Indian island
Wiyot: Tolowat Village at Duluwat Island
Humboldt Bay near Eureka, California
1863 – Shoot Indians on Site
Yurok population 2500 in 1851 to 610 in 1910
Population Decline
• Estimated population of one million
• 1846 the population had declined to 120,000
Or 94% decline.
• 1850 over 100,000 Indian’s died by disease,
malnutrition, enslavement and murder.
• 1860’s 20-40,000 further declining to 1719,000.
Racist Views Persisted
• Chico Courant, July 28, 1866 offered the
position that “it is a mercy to the red devils to
exterminate them, and a saving of many
white lives treaties are played out – there is
one kind of treaty that is effective – cold
lead.” California was the model for whiteIndian relations throughout the course of the
mining frenzy.
Gold Rush Revisited
• Pete Wilson - 150 year Celebration
Committee, 2000
– Indian Protest
• Indian Island Massacre Revisited
– 2004 city fathers
– Ceremony
– Bridging gaps
Manifest Destiny
• Racial Component of Manifest Destiny
– inferiority of non whites
• Mexican Californios are “scarcely a visible grade in the scale of
intelligence above the barbarous tribes by whom they are
surrounded”
• American Minister to Mexico, Waddy Thompson, 1840s
• Mexicans were in general “lazy, ignorant, vicious and dishonest”
• John L. O’Sullivan, Editor & Democratic Republican in
1845
• “Manifest Destiny to overspread and posses the whole of the
continent which providence had been given us for the
development of thee great experiment of liberty and federated
self-government entrusted to us”
• Central assumptions of Anglo superiority
The Mexican War, 1846-1848
Texas Republic 1836
Unrecognized by MX
1845 invited by
Congress to join
Union
Mexico viewed as
hostile act
Causes of the War
• Texan Independence,
1836
• Manifest Destiny The
28th State, 1845
• Rio Grande Border or
Nueces Border?
• Polk
• War: May 13, 1846
Constitutional Convention, 1850
• Riley’s Order
• Colton Hall, Monterey
• 48 Delegates
– Californios (8) Serve
– Early Divisions: taxation
• North/South
• Californio/American
• State or territory? Free of
1852 Gov McDougal order taxes property paid slave?
6 cow counties/ 6,000 people = 42,000
12 mining cts/120,000= 21,000
Main Themes
American holocaust
Genocide
Indian policy
Demography Flip
– 98-99% First Nations/Californios 1848
– 99% “white”/ 1% all others 1849
Market Economy established
Diversity
New Racism
Manifest destiny
Statehood