By Matt Cutugno
Indio, CA, USA
When
gold was discovered at John Sutter’s sawmill, he tried to keep it a secret. This
occurred late in January of 1848. A week later the Mexican-American War ended
and the entire Southwest was ceded to the United States. It didn’t take long
for word of the precious metal to get out. A visitor to the mill brought the
news from the foothills of Sierra Nevada to San Francisco, then eventually to
New York. After that, Sutter would have had more luck pushing back the ocean
with a broom than stopping what happened.
Gold
ruined Sutter. He had obtained land in California from Mexico upon which he
built the settlement that would become Coloma. Protection for settlers was
provided by a great adobe structure named Sutter’s Fort. He used Indians to
work agricultural fields and the aforementioned sawmill was in full operation. News
of the discovery resulted in his land being overrun by fortune seekers and the
fort being abandoned.
 |
| Matt Cutugno |
They
called it “The Gold Rush.” That was an understatement. It was a wild stampede, a
raging torrent, a tsunami of greed. Whatever its name, its effect on California
and our country was a game-changer.
The
statistics: the population of non-natives in the entire territory went from some
14,000 before the discovery to 85,000 – in one year. San Francisco had a thousand
inhabits before the War; by 1849, there were 25,000. The trend continued as 80,000
intrepid souls came to the West coast the following year and 90,000 more the
year after that. Immigrants arrived from all over the world, many coming from
China – 20,000 in one year alone. The Chinese called California Gum San (Gold Mountain), and their
presence would forever alter the demographics of the land.
The
statistics are somber for native peoples. In 1750, under Spanish rule, there
were some 300,000 Indians, one hundred years later, there were half that. Surely
disease took its toll as indigenous people had no protection from smallpox or measles.
But the majority of Indians died at the hands of settlers, miners, and soldiers.
Thousands were taken into forced labor, most would die of disease and abuse.
The State of California used its institutions to favor settlers' rights.
The
Gold Rush of 1848 casts a dark shadow on our nation’s history. Some go so far
as to refer to it as part of the California Genocide. That highly charged phrase
brings the topic into modern parlance and feeds our collective guilt. It is in
vogue to judge the past by current sensibilities.
Gold
did not originate in California, nor did atrocities. Two hundred years earlier,
Spanish Conquistadors slew unarmed Aztecs for their gold. Rome destroyed
Carthage in part to control the mineral wealth of Hispania. The Tierra del
Fuego Gold Rush in Chile saw miners from all over the Latin-European world
flock there to gather riches. The subsequent boom wiped out the local
indigenous population. Gold rushes have happened throughout time, all over the
world, and none have been sinless.
Now
two hundred years after the facts, California is ethnically and culturally our
most diverse state. History swirls, sometimes stirred by ill-intent, but when
it settles, resultant changes seem natural in the course of time.
We
can learn from history without berating ourselves that it happened.
Link:
_____________________________________
Matt
Cutugno is an Amazon bestselling author and a frequent contributor to Stay
Thirsty Magazine. His latest Western, The Godless Times, the third
book in his Tarnished Star series, was published in December 2019.