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 thePrevention 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

Indian Labor• Californios

• Mining Companies

• Independent Claims

• Payment in supplies s. grubbing for 1,000s worth of gold dust and nuggets

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

4

Hauling supplies to a mining camp.

Across the Plains

• 6-9 month Trek from the Eastern United States, Canada or Mexico

1849 32,000 walked1850 200,000 more

Cholera, exhaustion, Starvation, Sierra winters

By ship; overcrowding, disease, inadequate food and water, storms

Racism• Miner’s Tent Store

Indian PricesDigger 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’s200-300 came asSlaves

The census of 1850 Counted 962, of

those600-700 were in theGold fields.

African Americans in Gold Fields

• Auburn Ravine, California.

By 1852 2,000

1% of California Population

Women in the Gold Rush Matilda Heron Actress - below

• Above Lola MontezActor, 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 ClassesParlor HousesStreet CribsChinatown

Parlor HousesPart of SocietyHigh Class WomenEvening of EntertainmentExpensiveJudges, police, important menpaid 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

MassacredVillages

Slaveryprostitution

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 foundJump Dance Ceremony – Indian islandWiyot: Tolowat Village at Duluwat IslandHumboldt 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 17-

19,000.

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 white-Indian 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

Causes of the War• Texan Independence,

1836• Manifest Destiny The

28th State, 1845• Rio Grande Border or

Nueces Border?• Polk• War: May 13, 1846

Texas Republic 1836Unrecognized by MX

1845 invited by Congress to join Union

Mexico viewed as hostile act

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 slave?1852 Gov McDougal order taxes property paid

6 cow counties/ 6,000 people = 42,00012 mining cts/120,000= 21,000

Main ThemesAmerican holocaustGenocideIndian policy

Demography Flip– 98-99% First Nations/Californios 1848– 99% “white”/ 1% all others 1849

Market Economy established DiversityNew RacismManifest destinyStatehood