4 The California Gold Rush - Mr Thompson

1 396 CHAPTER1344 The California gold RushThe California gold RushTERMS & NAMES forty-ninerCalifornioMariano VallejoJohn SutterJames MarshallCalifornia gold rushONE AMERICAN S STORYL uzena Wilson said of the year 1849, The gold excitement spread likewildfire. The year before, James Marshall had discovered gold inCalifornia. Luzena s husband decided to become a forty-niner someone who went to California to find gold , starting in forty-niners left their families behind, but Luzena traveled toCalifornia with her husband. She later said, I thought where he couldgo I could, and where I went I could take my two little toddling babies. Luzena discovered that women and their homemaking skills wererare in California . Shortly after she arrived, a miner offered her fivedollars for the biscuits she was baking. Shocked, she just stared at quickly doubled his offer and paid in gold .

2 Luzena realized she couldmake money by feeding miners, so she opened a the Wilsons, thousands of people from around the worldbecame forty-niners. In this section, you will read about the forty-ninersand what their mining experiences were like. You will learn how therapid growth of California s population caused problems for the peoplewho lived there before 1849. You will also discover how the gold rushboosted California s economy and changed the nation s Before the RushBefore the forty-niners came, California was populated by as many as150,000 Native Americans and 6,000 Californios settlers of Spanish orMexican descent. Most Californioslived on huge cattle ranches. Theyhad acquired their estates when the Mexican government took away theland that once belonged to the California important Californiowas Mariano Vallejo(mah RYAH nohvah YEH hoh).

3 A member of one of the oldest Spanish families inAmerica, he owned 250,000 acres of land. Proudly describing theaccomplishments of the Californios, Vallejo wrote, We were the pioneersof the Pacific coast .. while General Washington was carrying on thewar of the Revolution. Vallejo himself had been the commander ofNorthern California when it belonged to was found in California , andthousands rushed to that quickly became a gold rush made California growrapidly and helped bring aboutCalifornia s cultural IDEAWHY IT MATTERS NOWThis woman is carrying food tominers, just as Luzena Wilson R U4C13S4 11/26/02 2:56 PM Page 396 Manifest Destiny397 When Mexico owned California , its government feared Americanimmigration and rarely gave land to foreigners. But John Sutter,a Swissimmigrant, was one exception. Dressed in a secondhand French armyuniform, Sutter had visited the Mexican governor in 1839.

4 A charmingman, Sutter persuaded the governor to grant him 50,000 acres in theunsettled Sacramento Valley. Sutter built a fort on his land and dreamedof creating his own personal empire based on 1848, Sutter sent a carpenter named James Marshallto build asawmill on the nearby American River. One day Marshall inspected thecanal that brought water to Sutter s Mill. He later said, My eye wascaught by a glimpse of something reached my hand downand picked it up; it made my heart thump for I felt certain it was gold . rush for GoldNews of Marshall s thrilling discovery spread all over California , people raced to the AmericanRiver starting the California gold gold rushoccurs when large numbers of people move to a sitewhere gold has been found. Throughout history, peoplehave valued gold because it is scarce, beautiful, easy toshape, and resistant to soon found gold in other streams flowing out ofthe Sierra Nevada Mountains.

5 Colonel R. B. Mason,the military governor of California , estimated thatthe region held enough gold to pay the cost of thepresent war with Mexico a hundred times over. Hesent this news to Washington with a box of golddust as following year thousands of gold seekersset out to make their fortunes. A forty-niner whowished to reach California from the East had achoice of three routes, all of them 18,000 miles around South Americaand up the Pacific coast suffering fromstorms, seasickness, and spoiled to the narrow Isthmus of Panama,cross overland (and risk catching adeadly tropical disease), and then sail the trails across North America braving rivers, prairies, mountains, andall the hardships of the the adventure was so difficult,most gold seekers were young men. A graybeard is almost as rare as a petticoat, observed oneminer.

6 Luzena Wilson said that during the six months she lived in themining city of Sacramento, she saw only two other :the movement of people into acountry or regionwhere they werenot bornClipper ship companies usedadvertising cards such as thisone to convince Easterners thattheir line provided the fastest,most pleasant has the artist triedto project a positiveimage for sailing west?A. CategorizingWhat were thethree differenttypes of trans-portation thatpeople took toget to California ?A. AnswerPeopleused ships, horses,riverboats, cov-ered wagons, andthey also R U4C13S4 11/26/02 2:56 PM Page 397398 CHAPTER13 Life in the Mining CampsThe mining camps had colorful names like Mad MuleGulch, Hangtown, and Coyote Diggings. They beganas rows of tents along the streams flowing out of theSierra Nevada. Gradually, the tents gave way to roughwooden buildings that housed stores and camps could be dangerous.

7 One woman wholived in the region wrote about camp VOICE FROM THE PASTIn the short space of twenty-four days, we have hadmurders, fearful accidents, bloody deaths, a mob,whippings, a hanging, .. and a fatal Clappe,quoted in Frontier WomenThe mining life was hard for other reasons. Campgossip told of miners who grew rich overnight by find-ing eight-pound nuggets, but in reality, such easy pick-ings were rare. Miners spent their days standingknee-deep in icy streams, where they sifted throughtons of mud and sand to find small amounts of , poor food, and disease all damaged theminers only was acquiring gold brutally difficult, but the miners had to pay outrageously high prices for basic addition, gamblers and con artists swarmed into the camps to swindle the miners of their money. As a result, few miners grew from Around the WorldAbout two-thirds of the forty-niners were Americans.

8 Most ofthese were white men many from New England. However,Native Americans, free blacks, and enslaved African Americans alsoworked the of experienced miners came from Sonora in foreign miners came from Europe, South America, Australia, andChina. Most of the Chinese miners were peasant farmers who fled froma region that had suffered several crop failures. By the end of 1851, oneof every ten immigrants was to backbreaking labor in their homeland, the Chinese proved tobe patient miners. They would take over sites that American miners hadabandoned because the easy gold was gone. Through steady, hard work,the Chinese made these played-out sites yield profits. American min-ers resented the success of the Chinese and were suspicious of their different foods, dress, and customs. As the numbers of Chinese minersgrew, American anger toward them also S BLUE JEANSN early everyone in the UnitedStates owns at least one pair offaded, comfortable blue first jeans were inventedfor California 1873, a man named LeviStrauss wanted to sell sturdypants to miners.

9 Strauss madehis pants out of the strongestfabric he could buy cottondenim. He reinforced thepockets with copper rivets sothat they could hold heavy toolswithout more than 125 years,jeans have remained Strauss s pants haveproved to bedurable inmore waysthan MakingInferencesWhydo you think lifein the miningcamps was sorough?B. PossibleResponsesMining was dirtyand dangerous. Itattracted dishon-est PossibleResponseAmericans wereunhappy aboutChinese successand suspicious oftheir AnalyzingCausesWhy didsome Americansresent Chineseminers?396-401US8P R U4C13S4 11/26/02 2:56 PM Page 398 Surface MiningGold is found in cracks, called veins, in the earth s rocky crust. As moun-tains and other outcrops of rock erode, the gold veins come to the sur-face. The gold breaks apart into nuggets, flakes, and dust. Flood watersthen wash it downhill into stream beds. To mine this surface gold , forty-niners had to use tools designed to separate it from the mud and sandaround it.

10 American miners learned some technology from Mexicans whocame from the mining region of shoveled dirt into thesluice. The rushing water carried lightweight materialsalong with it. Heavy gold sankto the bottom, and wastrapped between the shoveled dirt into thesluice. The rushing water carried lightweight materialsalong with it. Heavy goldsank to the bottom and wastrapped between the sluice was a series of long boxeswith ridges on the bottom. Waterran through the sluice, whichangled this photographshows American and Chineseminers working together, inmany places Americanschased the Chinese miners introduced the useof the pan. A miner would fill apan with dirt and water. Then hewould swirl the pan. Watersloshed over the sides, carryinglightweight minerals with it. Goldsettled in the TO ConclusionsWhich mining method could beused by an individual miner andwhich needed a group ofminers?