1. How was gold discovered?
Early in January of 1848, John Sutter found himself in need of a sawmill in Coloma, California. He had put off building one due to a variety of obstacles, but when 100 just-released members of the Mormon Battalion offered to work for him for money, or for supplies to be used in helping the Mormon pioneers who were crossing the plains, he found his obstacles removed. He contracted with James W. Marshall to build the mills for him, and sent up a number of people, including the one hundred former members of the Mormon Battalion, to help out.
One rainy day, as he was working in his office, a very drenched Marshall arrived, requesting a private meeting. He seemed very nervous, and insisted the doors be locked. Then he pulled out about two ounces of yellow metal, which he believed to be gold. The laborers he had shown this to had laughed at him, but Marshall had not been discouraged. Sutter did some fast research and a few experiments and quickly discovered the metal really was gold-excellent gold, in fact. Sutter was more relaxed than his excited employee, and refused to leave for the mill until the next morning. Already though, he was aware that this discovery could have important consequences. When they arrived at the mill, they found small bits of gold in the bottom of the clean washed bed rock. Each morning, they checked again, and laborers began finding pieces on the ground as well.
Sutter soon needed to leave for Sacramento, but before leaving, he asked his employees to keep the find a secret for six weeks, while he finished work on his mills. The secret lasted only two. Two weeks after the discovery, Sutter sent a team to the mill. The wife of one of the employees confided the secret to the man who delivered it, and the woman's young sons gave the man a little gold as a gift. The man used the gold to pay for a purchase of brandy at the fort. The storekeeper, also one of Sutter's employees, was startled, and hurried to Sutter to find out if the gold was real. Sutter believed he had no choice but to reveal the find. The storekeeper told his partner, who immediately saw gold in his own future. He purchased more supplies and rented a large building, ready to handle the influx of treasure hunters he knew would be coming. Sutter soon realized his fears had come true. His employees began leaving him, and he was unable to complete the mills he had been building. Why hang around building mills, cooking or clerking when there was gold free for the finding? One former member of the battalion wrote that he was never paid for his work, having been told the bookkeeper had left for the gold mines without posting the books.
It was Sam Brannon who really got things moving. Most people, hearing tales of gold just laughed it off as another rumor. Sam, however, knew it was true, and knew what would happen when word spread. He quietly bought out every pickax, pan and shovel in the area. Then he ran through the streets of San Francisco yelling about the gold discovery, and showing a jar of gold dust to prove it. This time people believed, but before they could pan for gold they needed to buy a few supplies. Guess who owned all the supplies? Sam sold his merchandise at a huge profit. He bought his pans for twenty cents, but sold them for fifteen dollars, and miners had no choice but to pay the price. Sam made 36,000 dollars in nine weeks, more than he ever could have made actually looking for the gold.
Then President Polk, who had sent military officers to verify the claims, announced the find in a speech given in December of 1848. Now, with word coming from the president himself, people began to believe the wild reports. People began arriving from various other parts of California. As they poured into the area, Sutter saw his hard work destroyed. His crops were destroyed by gold seekers. His mills could not be built and the mill stones were stolen. "There is a saying that men will steal everything but a milestone and a millstone. They stole my millstones." Sutter complained later. He would eventually leave the state and spend his entire life trying to get the US government to reimburse him for his losses. However, at this time Mexico was held by the United States only as a conquest. It still belonged to Mexico and the laws of the United States did not apply. Sutter went bankrupt over a discovery that made so many others rich, because California changed, but he did not change to take advantage of it.
Colonel Richard Barnes Mason, sent to tour northern California near the end of June, found the once busy town of San Francisco nearly deserted. Almost every man had gone to seek his fortune. (It later regained popularity when gold seekers came in to the city's ports, making it an important commercial center.) Gold fever was intense. People came from all over the world-Europe, China, anywhere the news spread. Soldiers deserted. Newspapers were shut down because there were no employees left to make them. Rumors of thousands of dollars to be earned every day captured the imaginations of adventurers. (The average was thought to be about 20 dollars a day though.)
Prices went up on everything a man needed to head west. A one dollar shovel was selling for ten and once went for fifty dollars.
Math break: Younger children- If the shovel had been one dollar, and was now ten dollars, how much more did it cost now than before? Older children-What percentage increase was that? In the midst of the gold rush, prices were higher, but with people making money, the prices seemed easy to pay, particularly to those who believed the gold had no end. Still, by the fall of 1849, there were 40,000 miners at work, and so many miners meant less for each person to find. About two-thirds of the miners were from the United States, and half of those were from New England. California had more immigrants from nearly every part of the world than anywhere else in the country.
Discuss: Why did prices go up so much?
2.Who were the Forty-niners?
The Americans heading west are called forty-niners, in honor of the year they believed would change their entire lives. They often called themselves "Argonauts", after a Greek story about adventurers who sailed with Jason.
Look up a children's version of the story "Jason and the Golden Fleece." Were these people like the adventurers in this story? Think about the word astronaut. What do the parts mean? Were these adventurers like astronauts?
There were 90,000 in the first two years, and 300,000 by 1854, which was one in every 90 people in the country at that time!
Math break: What percentage of people living in the United States rushed for gold? Remember, one in every ninety came.
Most were young men: In 1850, 90 percent of the people in California were men, and 73 percent of the men were between the ages of twenty and forty. They organized into companies, laying down rules and then arguing over them. One of the big arguments concerned whether or not to keep the Sabbath Day holy. Those who wanted to were countered by those who saw money slipping out of their hands each Sunday. Keeping the Sabbath Day holy meant for many of this time that they should not do unneccessary work on Sunday. This was important to many of them before they got to the gold mines. Do you think they should have kept their beliefs or was it okay to break them for this short period of time? Talk about this with your family.
3. How did they get to California?
The American travelers had a few choices as to how to make the trip, but none of them were easy. They could take a 15,000 mile trip around the tip of South America. This was a boat trip that could take five months. You could cut two months off by cutting across the Isthmus of Panama, but it was very dangerous, and cholera and malaria were a serious risk. You could also travel by land for three months or so, but this was also dangerous. BR>
The travelers faced many dangers on the trail, but the Native Americans were not among the dangers. They too had seen an opportunity, and made a living charging tolls at rivers and fords, selling supplies to travelers, and ferrying people across the water. The natives helped travelers to find missing stock and in general made the trip easier for the gold seekers. Cholera was a danger, however, and one that ended about 1500 journeys just that first spring. A lack of water was another serious problem, solved for those who had money by entrepreneurs who brought buckets of water to areas with none. They sold the water for as much as they could get-one dollar, or even a hundred dollars for one glass. Those with no money died.
4.What was life like in the mining camps?
Mining was hard work, and often for very little money. Many people were injured, either during the dangerous work of finding gold, or were killed or hurt by a violent neighbor. Many became seriously ill or suffered from malnutrition. It is said that one in every five miners died within the first six months.
One problem the miners faced was that they were in a new country with few rules. Many of these young men found themselves away from their wives, parents and friends for the first time. For some, this seemed like a good time to try out some of the things they would not have had the courage, or even the desire to try at home. Many began to drink alcohol and to gamble, things that were considered sinful at home, but normal here. Alcoholism was a serious problem. Many people, disappointed by their finds and ashamed of the lives they had lived, committed suicide, and even more were murdered. San Francisco had two murders a day during the peak of the rush.
The railroad was not yet in California, so it became very difficult to obtain food. The money you earned in a day might be entirely used up buying your food, assuming you could even find any that was fresh. Sutter's crops were quickly raided and destroyed.
As times became harder, many people began looking for people to blame. As is often the case, it seemed easy to blame the many people coming in from all over the world. The legislature passed a law taxing people who came from other countries twenty dollars a month to mine here. Others took the law into their own hands, killing or persecuting the many foreigners around them. The Native Americans suffered the worst fates. The newspapers urged their extermination, and they saw their lands overrun by outsiders.
How did the miners look for gold?
The first miners panned for gold. They dipped a shallow pan into the water and swirled it around. The water and light sand fell over the sides, but the heavy gold would stay in the bottom of the pan. After a while, machines were developed. One machine was a wooden rocker. This let the miners dump buckets of water into the machine, and sort them all at once. Now, though, the miners really needed more than one person to work the equipment and to help pay for it. This caused miners to work together instead of alone, and people began forming companies. Eventually, equipment would get so expensive that only companies could afford it and miners would have to work for someone else. Many of them had come here to be their own boss and were not happy about this.
With so many miners, the river beds were soon empty of gold. The miners had to turn to the rocks. Mine shafts as much as forty feet deep were dug, to look for underground gold.
Hydraulic mining was developed to look for gold left behind when smaller hillside streams had changed course or vanished. This was a more complex and expensive process that required the miners to divert a stream or river to send water through high-pressure hoses. The hoses washed the gravel down the hill. The problem with this process was that it polluted the drinking water and raised the river levels, increasing the risk of floods. Eventually-thirty years later-this method was outlawed.
For many, the gold rush was a golden opportunity. For others, it was a nightmare.
5.How did the gold rush affect women?
Among those who found opportunity were the very few women who ventured into this mostly male world. The women who accompanied their husbands found themselves in demand as cooks, hotel owners, laundresses and even bankers. They were able to get paid good money for their work, something that could not have happened back home. Some of them became very successful businesswomen. Services were in high demand, and it didn't matter who you were. Women were so rare they were in demand just to be looked at. Men could charge other men five dollars to come to the wedding and see the bride. Women who had never been popular before had men traveling long distances just to look at them.
6.How did the gold rush affect the Native Americans?
Among those who found disaster were the native Americans. Half the Cheyennes were killed by the cholera the forty-niners brought with them. The travelers also drove away the herds of animals the Plains Indians depended on for food, and many starved, or had to fight other tribes for the little remaining food. The Native Americans were primarily not interested in gold. They had always known the gold was there, but it was not meaningful in their culture. Some did mine and become wealthy, but for the most part, the gold rush was a terrible thing for the natives. A population of 300,000 became only 50,000. Perhaps ten percent were killed by white men. State bonds were even used to fund expeditions designed to find and destroy local natives. They were not allowed to testify in court against white men, so they were unable to take their cases to court.
7. How did the gold rush affect the Chinese?
After a Chinese man wrote home about the gold rush, many people from China came to California to seek their fortunes. They faced a tremendous amount of prejudice from the Americans, and after the tax was imposed on foreign miners, many left for San Francisco. They formed China Town and went into business. Others stayed, though, or arrived after the twenty dollar tax was lowered to four dollars. Later, when the Chinese proved to be reliable builders of the railroads, feelings eased, but rose again when they moved into agriculture.
The Chinese who found their gold and wanted to return home knew they were popular targets of thieves. They solved the problem by melting the gold and forming it into ugly cooking utensils. When they got home, they melted the utensils and had their gold.
8. How did the gold rush affect the African-Americans?
These people were originally brought to the state by plantation owners who wanted gold. They sent their slaves to do the actual mining, but it was quickly discovered that the other miners were not going to tolerate this. They resented someone getting his gold without effort.
9. How did the gold rush affect the Spanish?
The United States purchased California from Mexico at the end of the war. The agreement stated that the Mexican land grants of the Californios would be honored. However, as people filled the state during the gold rush, they assumed the land was free for the taking, as it was in the Midwest. Some of the grants were confusing or badly written. Sometimes, the settlers just didn't care. Most of the early settlers in California lost their land because they could not afford the expensive court challenges. Some, faced with prejudice and the foreign miners taxes, left the state. Others stayed on, but most lost their lands.
10. How did the gold rush help California to become a state?
In August of 1848, Congress ratified the treaty that ended the Mexican War. This made California a territory of the United States. When no word came as to the type of government Congress intended for the territory, the residents went to work planning their own. As the forty-niners came rushing into the state, the need for a real government, and not just a violent rule of the masses, became something of an emergency. Finally, in September of 1849, still having received no word from the capital, a constitutional convention was held in Monterey. They decided to request admission to the Union as a free state, meaning that slavery would be prohibited. They immediately started acting as if they were a state. Congress now had to decide whether or not to admit California, and how it could be done. With the country in an uproar over the status of slavery, this would not be easy. Admitting California as a free state ruined the exact balance between the number of free and slave states. Congress gave the South a few concessions and California became a state on September 9, 1850.
11. When did the gold rush end?
Most of the easily found gold disappeared by the middle of 1849. There were still people searching though, hoping to find the gold they had promised to bring home. In fifty years of prospecting, about 125 million ounces of gold were found.
Some people, unsuccessful and too ashamed to return home without their wealth, took up gambling or crime. Many were hung, and some were too ashamed of failure or of who they had become to return home.