Geography 417
California
for Educators
Early American California and the Gold
Rush
Objectives
•
Students
will identify and explain the events that led to the advent of the Gold Rush.
•
Students
will describe the life conditions in the diggings and compare the reality of
mining camps against the mythology surrounding them.
•
Students
will identify key events and explain the impact of the Gold Rush on California’s subsequent
development.
California Standards
•
4.3
Students explain the economic, social, and political life in California
from the establishment of the Bear
Flag Republic
through the Mexican-American War, the Gold Rush, and the granting of statehood.
•
Compare
how and why people traveled to California
and the routes they traveled (e.g., James Beckwourth, John Bidwell, John C.
Fremont, Pio Pico).
•
Analyze
the effects of the Gold Rush on settlements, daily life, politics, and the
physical environment (e.g., using biographies of John Sutter, Mariano Guadalupe
Vallejo, Louise Clapp).
•
Study
the lives of women who helped build early California (e.g., Biddy Mason).
•
Discuss
how California
became a state and how its new government differed from those during the
Spanish and Mexican periods.
CSET
•
They
describe the discovery of gold and its cultural, social, political and economic
effects in California,
including its impact on American Indians and Mexican nationals.
Web Link
•
California History On-Line
The Gold Rush: California Transformed
•
Huge
event in the history of California.
•
Transformed
the economy, demographics and government of California
John Sutter and the Gold Rush
•
1834
Sutter, faced with debt, leaves wife and 3 children and sails for America.
•
1838
Oregon Trail - no ships to S.F. ; sails to Hawaii,
then Sitka, AK
•
1839
Secures 50,000 acres along Sacramento River by
promising to protect against American intrusions. Builds massive fort at
intersection with tributary, which he ironically names “American” River.
•
1841
Buys Fort Ross from Russians for $30,000 (today: $2,000,000); he never honored
note. Dismantles the fort and moves it to Sacramento.
•
Sutter
keeps priest handy for converting settler’s into Mexicans, thus fulfilling his
role of keeping out Americans.
John Sutter and the Gold Rush
•
1846
U.S. seizes control of Alta California. Sutter’s relations with settlers becomes
protection.
•
January,
1848 - John Marshall, building saw mill for Sutter, discovers gold, destroying
Sutter’s plans as all his workers desert. Secret gets out.
•
1850 California
joins the Union. Sutter’s wife, daughter, and
two sons arrive after sixteen years of separation.
•
1851 Land Act passed by Congress requires
documentation of prior land grants.
•
1852 New Helvetia
is devasted and Sutter is bankrupt.
•
1871 Settles in Lititz, PA.
Seeks restitution.
•
1880
Sutter dies disappointed in Washington
seeking restitution for lost land (50,000 acres; his papers burned in fire).
Sutter’s Mill
John Marshall
discovered gold on the American
River while building a
lumber mill for Sutter in Jan, 1848. The mill has been recreated and the
original site is marked with a monument.
Forty-Eighters
•
Reaction
to the news of gold was rather muted at first.
•
Only
after Sam Brannan’s plan to
whip up Gold Fever was executed,
did the rush begin.
•
Primarily
Californians to begin with, but soon the World.
•
Not
to be confused with German ’48ers who fled Germany,
Austria the same year,
mostly to the U.S.
Forty-Eighter
•
Can
you recognize any of the materials carried by this man?
Gold Fever
•
I
started on the 12th of June last to make a tour through the northern part of California. We reached San Francisco on the
20th, and found that all, or nearly all, its male inhabitants had gone to the
mines. The town, which a few months before was so busy and thriving, was then
almost deserted. On the evening of the 24th the horses of the escort were
crossed to Saucelito in a launch, and on the following day we resumed the
journey, by way of Bodega and Sonoma,
to Sutter’s Fort, where we arrived on the morning of July 2. Along the whole
route mills were lying idle, fields of wheat were open to cattle and horses,
houses vacant, and farms going to waste.
–
1848, R. B. MASON, Colonel 1st Dragoons,
commanding.
Getting to California
•
Three
Routes
–
Panama Route
–
Cape Horn Route
–
Overland Route
•
What
are the advantages and disadvantages of each route?
Jim Beckwourth
•
Beckwourth
was an black ’49er from
Virginia who was also a scout, guide
and mountain man.
•
Discovered
a pass through the Sierras
that offered an alternative to existing routes into California.
•
Marysville
residents paid him to establish a road through the pass, so they could charge
tolls.
Boom Towns
•
Once
news got out that gold was to be found in California, riverside locations that may
have had no Europeans erupted with populations in weeks.
•
They
could disappear nearly as quickly if the Gold was not plentiful.
•
Colorful
names like Murder’s Bar and Miner’s Hell.
•
Sacramento among many that began
as boom towns.
Handbill
•
What
modern day equivalents do we have?
San
Francisco Bay 1846 (fig)
San Francisco
•
Only
a few hundred people lived there in the 1840s, but the discovery of gold
brought unimaginable growth. The city soon averaged 30 new houses and two
murders each day. A plot of San
Francisco real estate that cost $16 in 1847, sold for
$45,000 just 18 months later. In less than two years the city burned to the
ground six times. Merchants, such as Levi Straus, profited most.
•
Population
in 1847: 459
•
Population
in 1848: 800
•
Population
in 1849: 30,000
S.F. Bay, 1850
•
So
many ships were abandoned, that their wreckage forms part of San Francisco’s waterfront district
today.
Mining the Miners
• Very few made any money
from the Gold Rush…by finding gold.
• Best daily income made
in the first two years and by those who came first.
• Most of the fortunes
made during the boom years was from selling to those hoping to cash in on Gold.
• Levi Strauss, Hopkins
and Huntington, Studebaker and the Amour Family got their start
Dame Shirley
• Pen name for Louise
Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe, an Eastern “lady” that came with her husband and
wrote a series of entertaining letters about life in the camps to her sister.
• Letters were eventually
published and have become an great record of daily life in a camp, and reveal a
good bit about the way people thought back then.
Photograph of Miners
Frontier Democracy, Justice and Injustice
• Miners organized
themselves into small “democratic” governments that dealt with multiple issues,
but principally with questions of law and order, claims and compensation.
• Frequently turned to mob
violence and true justice was inconsistently meted out.
• “minority” miners were
singled out for extra punishment.
Indians fight
back
•
Indian
claims to land were largely ignored.
Mining Methods
• Gravity and water were
present in all forms of mining.
• Not much tunneling.
• Panning to start, then
rockers, then long boxes and sluices.
• Eventually entire river
courses were diverted.
Panning for
Gold
Sluice Diversion at Murder’s Bar
See Other
slide show
Rocker (fig)
Hydraulic Mining
• To get the most gold out
of the gravel, miners figured out they could blast out old gravel pits that no
longer were near a river and seek gold from these deposits as well.
• Incredibly destructive
both at a local and regional scale.
• Scars exist today.
Hydraulic Mining (fig)
Gold Rush Nostalgia
• Though the experience
was a bad one for most involved, the Gold Rush has been remembered mostly in
fond terms.
• The glory of the ’49ers
is a little more faded today.
“Foreign” Miners
• California’s cosmopolitan
demographics began before it was a state.
• Gold Rush boom towns may
have been the first place in the world to experience cultural diversity on this
scale.
• Political implications
today?
Native American Miners
• Many of the early miners
were Native Americans.
• Were quickly singled out
for harsh treatment and removed from many mines, even if they were working for
white claim holders.
• Especially vicious
treatment, including genocidal raids, etc.
Government support.
• As little as 30,000
Indians remained by 1870.
Latino Miners
•
Largest
immigrant mining group.
•
Another
group of miners that faced harsh treatment were Spanish speaking miners, who
eventually all were lumped together as “Spaniards”, although very few were actually from Spain.
•
Many
had mining experience from Mexico
or Chile
and were responsible for several innovations, and probably for their success
were forced out.
Other “Foreign” Miners
• Keskydees - French
• Kanakas - Hawaiians
• Chinese –Gam Saan “Gold Mountain”
– Simulation Game:
• African Americans – 1%
and victimized by the fugitive slave laws.
Foreign Miners Tax -1850
• Passed to soothe
Anglo-American miners who wished to force out ‘foreigners’ and native
Californians.
• $20 month
• 2/3rds of the Mexican
miners left.
• Later applied most
vigorously to Chinese miners.
Chinese Miner
• Figure
• Note the caption
Californios and the Gold Rush
• Perhaps the most
important consequence of the Gold Rush was the changes it wrought upon the
political, economic and demographic order of the state.
• The Californios lost
much of their power, land and privilege.
• The economy changed from
a cattle/land economy to a more diversified base within a few years.
Map of Gold
Mines
Figure :See the Elephant
• “Seeing the Elephant”
became an useful all purpose expression to communicate the amazing things (both
good and bad) that was witnessed and experienced by 49ers.
Biddy Mason
•
Slave
woman brought from
Georgia
to the mines in 1851.
•
Set
free by California
courts
upon her ‘owner’s’ attempt
to return her to the South.
•
Becomes
a prominent person
in Los Angeles
•
Landowner,
nurse and philanthropist.
•
Colorful
biography.
Statehood
•
Slavery
a major roadblock to California’s
admission.
•
Admitted
in 1850, no doubt sped along by the infusion of Gold Rush money and settlers.
•
Skipped
the “territory” stage.
•
Much
of the California Constitution written in 1849, in anticipation of statehood.
•
Capital
moved about for some years before a ‘compromise’ location was chosen in Sacramento.
Delegation and Early Issues
•
The
constitutional convention was made up of a mixed group of old and new
Californians, Spanish speakers and Anglos.
•
The
delegates also voted to include in the constitution a provision for the
separate ownership of property by a married woman – unique in the US. Why include this?
•
Stringent
new fugitive slave law. Southern senators, thus mollified, agreed to the
admission of California as a free state.
•
President
Millard Fillmore signed the bill for the admission of California on September 9, 1850.
•
News
of the momentous event did not reach California
for about five weeks.
•
Big
Parades, etc.
Capital
• Opened to the best
bidder the privilege of becoming the capital.
• Vallejo, San
Jose, Sacramento and Benicia all took turns
hosting the legislature.
• At last, in 1854, the
legislators settled on Sacramento
as their permanent headquarters.