California Gold Rush and Statehood

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California Gold Rush and Statehood

• 1848 -

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Study Guide Identifications

• Gold Rush of 1848
• Gold Rush of 1849
• Polks Annual Address to Congress
• Indian prices
• Digger Ounce
• Foreign Miners 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

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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?

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Convention on thePrevention and Punishmentof
the Crime of Genocide

• Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United
  Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948

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• 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.

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The Gold Rush of 1848

• Gold Rush impacted indigenous population, changed
  the landscape irrevocably.
• James Marshall
• John A. Sutter
• Maidu village of Koloma

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Indian Labor

• Californios
• Mining Companies
• Independent Claims
• Payment in supplies s. grubbing for 1,000s worth
  of gold dust and nuggets

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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.

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1849 Gold Rush

• President Polks 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

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Gold Fever Spreads
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Hauling supplies to a mining camp.
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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
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Racism

• Miners
• Tent Store
• Indian Prices
• Digger Ounce

• 50-500 for colored Handkerchief's
• a string of beads/ 1lb of beads1 lb of gold

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Chinese Immigration
4,000 by the end of 1851
25,000 by 1852 1860 8 stayed in San Francisco
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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

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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

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Chinese

• Credit-ticket system
• 1852 25,000, largest foreign minority
• Miners 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

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African Americans in the Gold Fields

• Early 1850s
• 200-300 came as
• Slaves
• The census of 1850
• Counted 962, of those
• 600-700 were in the
• Gold fields.

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African Americans in Gold Fields

• Auburn Ravine, California.

By 1852 2,000 1 of California Population
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Women in the Gold Rush

• 
  Matilda Heron
• 
  Actress - below
  
• Above Lola Montez
• Actor, Dancer, Courtesan

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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

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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
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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

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Hupa Woman Nissinan Man
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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

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Horseman of the Apocalypse

• Massacred
• Villages
• Slavery
• prostitution

William McCollum Oregon generally hunt Indians
as they would wild beasts.
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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

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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
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1863 Shoot Indians on Site
Yurok population 2500 in 1851 to 610 in 1910
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Population Decline

• Estimated population of one million
• 1846 the population had declined to 120,000 Or
  94 decline.
• 1850 over 100,000 Indians died by disease,
  malnutrition, enslavement and murder.
• 1860s 20-40,000 further declining to 17-19,000.

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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.

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Gold Rush Revisited

• Pete Wilson - 150 year Celebration Committee,
  2000
• Indian Protest
• Indian Island Massacre Revisited
• 2004 city fathers
• Ceremony
• Bridging gaps

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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. OSullivan, 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

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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 1836
• Unrecognized by MX
• 1845 invited by Congress to join Union
• Mexico viewed as hostile act

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(No Transcript)
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Constitutional Convention, 1850

• Rileys 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 42,000 12 mining
cts/120,000 21,000
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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