Gold Rush (1848)

The stimulus for the migration to the West was gold, found in 1848 in the Sacramento Valley in California. In one year the population of California increased from 14

thousand people to almost 100 thousand, and three years later it reached 250

thousand. Newcomers created a specific community which consisted mostly of young men who had come there not to settle down, but in the hope that they would easily become rich. Apart from flourishing cities like San Francisco, temporary towns consisting mainly of tents and sheds were built. These new settlements, apart from gold-diggers, also attracted salesmen, craftsmen, as well as outlaws. Despite the fact that the Gold Rush ended after several years, it led to a quick economic development of the region. The text below is a report written on August 17, 1848 by Colonel

Richard Barnes Mason, who had been appointed to the military command in

California and wrote his report for the adjutant-general in Washington. On the basis of this report, on December 5, 1848, President James Knox Polk in an address to Congress officially announced that gold had been found in California.

„Colonel Richard Barnes Mason, „Official Report on the Gold Mines,” Headquarters at Monterey, August 17, 1848.

Sir, - I have the honor to inform you that, accompanied by Lieut. W.T. Sherman, 3rd Artillery, A.A.A. General, 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. At Sutter's there was more life and business. Launches were

discharging their cargoes at the river and carts were hauling goods to the fort, where already were established several stores, a hotel, etc. Captain Sutter had only two mechanics in the employee – wagon-maker and a blacksmith, whom he was then paying 10 dollars per day. Merchants pay him a monthly rent of 100 dollars per room, and while I was there a two-story house in the fort was rented as a hotel for 500 dollars a month.

On the 5th we arrived in the neighborhood of the mines, and proceeded twenty-five miles up the American Fork, to a point on it now known as the Lower Mines, or Mormon Diggings. The hill sides were thickly strewn with canvas tents and bush-harbors; a store was erected, and several boarding shanties in operation. The day was intensely hot, yet about 200 men were at work in the full glare of the sun, washing for gold – some with tin pans, some with close woven Indian baskets, but the greater part had a rude machine known as the cradle. This is on rockers, six or eight feet long, open at the foot, and its head had a coarse grate, or sieve; the bottom is rounded, with small cleets nailed across. Four men are required to work this

machine; one digs the ground in the bank close by the stream; another carries it to the cradle, and empties it on the grate; a third gives a violent rocking motion to the machine, whilst a fourth dashes on water from the stream itself. The sieve keeps the coarse stones from entering the cradle, the current of water washes off the earthy matter, and the gravel is gradually carried out at the foot of the machine, leaving the gold mixed with a heavy fine black sand above the first cleets. The sand and gold mixed together are then drawn off through auger holes into a pan below, are dried in the sun, and afterwards separated by blowing off the sand. A party of four men, thus employed at the Lower Mines, average 100 dollars a-day.”

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„The Indians, and those who have nothing but pans or willow baskets, gradually wash out the earth, and separate the gravel by hand, leaving nothing but the gold mixed with sand, which is separated in the manner before described. The gold in the Lower Mines is in fine bright scales, of which I send several specimens. …

The most moderate estimate I could obtain from men acquainted with the subject was, that upwards of 4,000 men were working in the gold district, of whom more than one-half were Indians, and that from 30,000 to 50,000 dollars' worth of gold, if not more, were daily obtained. The entire gold district, with very few exceptions of grants made some years ago by the Mexican authorities, is on land belonging to the United States. It was a matter of serious reflection to me, how I could secure to the

Government certain rents or fees for the privilege of securing this gold; but upon considering the large extent of country, the character of the people engaged, and the small scattered force at my command, I resolved not to interfere, but permit all to work freely, unless broils and crimes should call for interference.

The discovery of these vast deposits of gold has entirely changed the character of Upper California. Its people, before engaged in cultivating their small patches of ground, and guarding their herds of cattle and horses, have all gone to the mines, or are on their way thither. Labourers of every trade have left their work-benches, and tradesmen their shops; sailors desert their ships as fast as they arrive on the coast;

and several vessels have gone to sea with hardly enough hands to spread a sail.

Two or three are now at anchor in San Francisco, with no crew on board. Many desertions, too, have taken place from the garrisons within the influence of these mines; twenty-six soldiers have deserted from the post of Sonoma, twenty-four from that of San Francisco, and twenty-four from Monterey. I have no hesitation now in saying, that there is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers than will pay the cost of the present war with Mexico a hundred times over. No capital is required to obtain this gold, as the labouring man wants nothing but his pick and shovel and tin pan, with which to dig and wash the gravel, and many frequently pick gold out of the crevices of rocks with their knives, in pieces of from one to six ounces.

Gold is also believed to exist on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada; and, when at the mines, I was informed by an intelligent Mormon that it had been found near the

Great Salt Lake by some of his fraternity. Nearly all the Mormons are leaving

California to go to the Salt Lake; and this they surely would not do unless they were sure of finding gold there, in the same abundance as they now do on the

Sacramento.

I have the honor to be, Your most obedient Servant,

R.B. MASON, Colonel 1st Dragoons, commanding.”

Source: The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/masonrpt.html

7.2. Argonauts (1849)

The Gold Rush in California was the beginning of mass migration from the east coast to the West. People were leaving everything behind, quitting jobs and selling

belongings in order to enter the unknown in search of a better future. The gold-diggers of 1849 were sometimes called Argonauts – after the Greek mythological heroes searching for the Golden Fleece. The vast majority of travelers to California took the land route, usually leaving Missouri in late spring, and spent six months covering the difficult, 2,000 km passage to California.

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They traveled in wagons pulled by oxen, which were able to cover 15 miles per day on average. On the way, apart from difficult, muddy roads and high mountains, numerous dangers awaited the travelers: armed robbers, Indians, illnesses and unstable weather. The text below is an extract from the memoirs written by Luzena Stanley Wilson during her journey to California in 1849.

„Luzena Stanley Wilson: Forty Niner, Her Memoirs as Taken Down by her Daughter in 1881

The gold excitement spread like wildfire, even out to our log cabin in the prairie, and as we had almost nothing to lose, and we might gain a fortune, we early caught the fever. My husband grew enthusiastic and wanted to start immediately, but I would not be left behind. I thought where he could go I could, and where I went I could take my two little toddling babies. Mother-like, my first thought was of my children. I little realized then the task I had undertaken. If I had, I think I should still be in my log

cabin in Missouri. But when we talked it all over, it sounded like such a small task to go out to California, and once there fortune, of course, would come to us…

It was the work of but a few days to collect our forces for the march into the new country, and we never gave a thought to selling our section, but left it, with two years' labor, for the next comer…

Well, on that Monday morning, bright and early, we were off. With the first streak of daylight my last cup of coffee boiled in the wide fire-place, and the sun was scarcely above the horizon when we were on the road to California. The first day's slow jogging brought us to the Missouri River, over which we were ferried in the twilight, and our first camp fire was lighted in Indian Territory, which spread on one unbroken, unnamed waste from the Missouri River to the border line of California. Here

commenced my terrors. Around us in every direction were groups of Indians sitting, standing, and on horseback, as many as two hundred in the camp. I had read and heard whole volumes of their bloody deeds, the massacre of harmless white men, torturing helpless women, carrying away captive innocent babes. I felt my children the most precious in the wide world, and I lived in an agony of dread that first night.

The Indians were friendly, of course, and swapped ponies for whiskey and tobacco with the gathering bands of emigrants, but I, in the most tragi-comic manner,

sheltered my babies with my own body, and felt imaginary arrows pierce my flesh a hundred times during the night. At last the morning broke, and we were off. I strained my eyes with watching, held my breath in suspense, and all day long listened for the whiz of bullets or arrows. The second night we were still surrounded by Indians, and I begged my husband to ask at a neighboring camp is we might join with them for protection. It was the camp of the „Independence Company”, with five mule-teams, good wagons, banners flying, and a brass band playing. They sent back word they

„didn't want to be troubled with women and children; they were going to California”.

My anger at their insulting answer roused my courage, and my last fear of Indians died a sudden death. „I am only a woman,” I said, „but I am going to California, too, and without the help of the Independence Company!” With their lively mules they soon left our slow oxen far behind, and we lost sight of them. The first part of the trip was over a monotonous level. Our train consisted only of six wagons, but we were never alone. Ahead, as far as the eye could reach, a thin cloud of dust marked the route of the trains, and behind us, like the trail of a great serpent, it extended to the edge of civilization. The travelers were almost all men, but a mutual aim and a

chivalric spirit in every heart raised up around me a host of friends, and not a man in the camp but would have screened me with his life from insult or injury. I wonder if in the young men around us a woman could find the same unvarying courtesy and kindness, the same devotion and honest, manly friendship that followed me in the long trip across the plains, and my checkered life in the early days of California!

The traveler who flies across the continent in palace cars, skirting occasionally the old emigrant road, may think that he realizes the trials of such a journey. Nothing but actual experience will give one an idea of the plodding, unvarying monotony, the vexations, the exhaustive energy, the throbs of hope, the depths of despair, through which we lived.”

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„Day after day, week after week, we went through the same weary routine of

breaking camp at daybreak, yoking the oxen, cooking our meagre rations over a fire of sage-brush and scrub-oak; packing up again, coffee-pot and camp kettle; washing our scanty wardrobe in the little streams we crossed; striking camp again at sunset, or later if wood and water were scarce. Tired, dusty, tried in temper, worn out in patience, we had to go over the weary experience tomorrow. No excitement, but a broken-down wagon, or the extra preparation made to cross a river, marked our way for many miles. The Platte was the first great water-course we crossed. It is a

peculiar, wide, shallow stream, with a quicksand bed. With the wagon-bed on blocks twelve or fourteen inches thick to raise it out of the water, some of the men astride of the oxen, some of them wading waist-deep, and all goading the poor beasts to keep them moving, we started across. The water poured into the wagon in spite of our precautions and floated off some of our few movables; but we landed safely on the other side, and turned to see the team behind us stop in mid-stream. The frantic driver shouted, whipped, belabored the stubborn animals in vain, and the

treacherous sand gave way under their feet. They sank slowly, gradually, but surely.

They went out of sight inch by inch, and the water rose over the moaning beasts.

Without a struggle they disappeared beneath the surface. In a little while the broad South Platte swept on its way, sunny, sparkling, placid, without a ripple to mark where a lonely man parted with all his fortune.

In strange contrast was the North Platte which we next crossed, a boiling, seething, turbulent stream, which foamed and whirled as if enraged at the imprisoning banks.

Two days we spent at its edge, devising ways and means. Finally huge sycamore trees were felled and pinned with wooden pins into the semblance of a raft, on which we were floated across where an eddy in the current touched the opposite banks.

And so, all the way, it was a road strewn with perils, over a strange, wild country.

Sometimes over wide prairies, grass-grown, and deserted save by the startled herds of buffalo and elk; sometimes through deep, wild canons, where the mosses were like a carpet beneath our feet, and the overhanging trees shut out the sunshine for days together; sometimes over high mountains, where at every turn a new road had to be cleared, we always carried with us tired bodies and often discouraged hearts.

We frequently met men who had given up the struggle, who had lost their teams, abandoned their wagons, and, with their blankets on their back, were tramping home.

Everything was at first weird and strange in those days, but custom made us regard the most unnatural events as usual. I remember even yet with a shiver the first time I saw a man buried without the formality of a funeral and the ceremony of coffining.

We were sitting by the camp fire, eating breakfast, when I saw two men digging and watched them with interest, never dreaming their melancholy object until I saw them bear from their tent the body of their corade, wrapped in a soiled gray blanket, and lay it on the ground. Ten minutes later the soil was filled in, and in a short half hour the caravan moved on, leaving the lonely stranger asleep in the silent wilderness, with only the winds, the owls, and the coyotes to chant a dirge. Many an unmarked grave lies by the old emigrant road, for hard work and privation made wild ravages in the ranks of the pioneers, and brave souls gave up the battle and lie their forgotten, with not even a stone to note the spot where they sleep the unbroken, dreamless sleep of death. There was not time for anything but the ceaseless march for gold…”

Source: Luzena Stanley Wilson, 'Forty Niner. Memories Recalled Years Later for Her Daughter Correnah Wilson Wright: Introduction by Francis P. Farquhar, The

Eucaliptus Press, Mills College 1937.

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7.3. Cowboys

Along with gold-diggers and Indians from the Great Plains, cowboys are a symbol and indispensable element of the Wild West’s folklore. Cowboys took cattle from Texas to the northern states, covering a distance of approximately 1,500 miles. For the outside observer, such a job might seem to be a romantic adventure. In reality it

was difficult, dangerous, monotonous work which was not very profitable. For 25 dollars a day a cowboy had to spend 18 hours in the saddle. Usually after a two-month sweat he would spend all of his money in saloons which offered the attractions of the local „entertainment industry.” The text below is a popular folk song, The Old Chisholm Trail, which describes a cowboy’s real life and work.

„Come along boys and listen to my tale,

I'll tell you of my troubles on the old Chisholm trail.

Oh, a ten-dollar hoss and a forty-dollar saddle, And I'm goin' to punchin' Texas cattle.

I wake in the mornin' afore daylight, And afore I sleep the moon shines bright.

It's cloudy in the west, a-lookin' like rain,

And my durned old slicker's in the wagon again.

No chaps, no slicker, and it's pourin' down rain, And I swear, by gosh, I'll never night-herd again.

Feet in the stirrups and seat in the saddle, I hung and rattled with them long-horn cattle.

The wind commenced to blow, and the rain began to fall, Hit looked, by grab, like we was goin' to lose 'em all.

I don't give a darn if they never do stop;

I'll ride as long as an eight-day clock.

We rounded 'em up and put 'em on the cars,

We rounded 'em up and put 'em on the cars,