Chief Whachusa
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You can scroll back a couple of articles of this page for information. I chose to start at page five because the story seems to be in the middle not to much in the beginning and it has not past the point of interest in gold.
"Mexicans in the Gold Rush"
"5 of 12"
(quotes in part only)
"Soon after gaining independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico opened its northern coastal region of California to foreign trade. American vessels from the east were soon engaged in lucrative commerce with the Californios, Californians of Spanish or Mexican descent. Offering such necessities as cooking utensils and boots, as well as luxuries such as brandy, the Americans reaped profits of 200 to 300 percent. In exchange, the Californios exported cowhides produced on their vast coastal ranches."
"Manifest Destiny"
"President James Polk During the 1840s, an increasing number of Americans ventured west into Texas, Oregon, and California. They possessed the sense that their destiny was to establish a nation that included both coasts and all that lay in between. In 1835 President Andrew Jackson had attempted to buy California for $3.5 million. Mexico had rejected the offer, but the U.S. would not be thwarted. Ten years later, in his inaugural address President James K. Polk provocatively proposed annexing Texas, and he put remote California high on his list of property to acquire."
"Mexican Miners"
"In the fall of 1848, the first wave of Mexican miners traveled overland to California to join the gold rush. They numbered between two and three thousand and often traveled in entire families. By early 1849, there were an estimated 6,000 Mexicans digging for gold. In California, a region that had so recently been their own, the Mexicans found they were considered foreigners by the legions of Anglo miners from the east."
"Experienced Miners"
"To make matters more difficult, many of the Mexicans were experienced miners which soon made them the target of American animosity and violence. Californio Antonio Franco Coronel wrote, "The reason for most of the antipathy against the Spanish race was that the majority of them were Sonorans who were men used to gold mining and consequently more quickly attained better results."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/peopleevents/p_mexicans.html
This article cover Mexicans, Chinese, and Chilean miners, gold has a speaking to all people.
"Minorities During the Gold Rush"
"In the rough and tumble justice of the mining camps, unpopular minorities invariably suffered under the violent and well-armed majority. Most mining camps sought to forbid certain minorities from competing for claims, in particular Chinese and Mexican miners were chased off claims and driven from mining camps. In 1849, a group of miners calling themselves the "hounds" rampaged through "little Chile," a tent city of Chilean miners outside of San Francisco, killing a woman and beating several men. A group of San Francisco businessmen, uncomfortable with the thought of independent gangs roving the countryside, sought to bring the Hounds to justice, and provided some assistance to the victims.
Chinese were especially despised, embodying to the nativist American the ultimate foreigner. Almost 700 Chinese miners had responded to the earliest rumors of gold in ’48, accounting for roughly a seventh of the 48ers. By 1852, there were 25,000 Chinese in California, making them the largest ethnic minority. They were banned from the most current diggings. Many set about working claims that had been abandoned as unprofitable by white miners, patiently sifting out what gold remained. Others opened restaurants, laundries, and dry good stores, sometimes making more money performing services for miners than the average miner could hope to make in the diggings."
"Mexicans, many from the Mexican state of Sonora, formed another major minority groups. They too were banned from many diggings, or were relegated like the Chinese to exhausted diggings. Some worked as day laborers, willing to work for lower wages than white miners did. Yet in some areas, particularly in the Southern Diggings, Mexicans formed a majority. The mining camp of Sonora, for example, was named after the home state of its Mexican inhabitants.
In 1850, the Legislature passed the first law taxing foreign miners, who were required to pay $20 dollars a month for a license to work the gold fields, obstinately to reimburse the state the costs of protecting them and keeping order. While a miner on a prosperous claim (a good claim returned about $16 dollars a day) could easily afford such a tax, foreign miners were already relegated to less prosperous claims, and could ill afford to pay. Some 10,000 Mexicans left the state in disgust. The Legislature repealed the onerous $20 tax in 1851, but instituted a $3 dollar a month foreign miners tax in 1852."
http://www.learncalifornia.org/doc.asp?id=1933 |
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