Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

La Fanciulla del West
The Girl of the Golden West

Diversity and Conflict in the California Gold Rush

James J. Rawls

Following the discovery of gold in California in 1848, the world rushed in. Eager gold seekers headed south from Oregon; north from Mexico, Chile, and Peru; east from China and the islands of the Pacific; and west from every state in the union and countries throughout Europe. This richness of intersecting frontiers produced the most ethnically diverse region in the nation.

Gold-rush California also became a region noted for its ethnic conflict. Frustrated ambitions of unsuccessful gold seekers were vented in an almost unending round of ethnic hostilities. Scapegoats were eagerly sought, identified with lightning speed, and dispatched with little regret.

Native American miners were forced to abandon the diggings, and many fell victim to genocidal campaigns. The destruction of the ranchos dispossessed members of the old rancho elite, and Latino miners endured violent opposition as well as discriminatory taxes. French miners, derided as Keskydees, bitterly complained when they too were compelled to pay extra fees as foreign miners. Hawaiians in the gold fields were commonly called Kanakas. Chinese immigrants came seeking their fortune in the fabled land known as Gam Saan. African Americans were a small minority in gold-rush California and they too were bounded by unfair laws and practices. In spite of discrimination and hardship, individuals like Biddy Mason left a legacy of pride and accomplishment.

Native American Miners
The discovery of gold brought hundreds of thousands of newcomers onto the lands of the California Indians. The Native people responded in a variety of ways. Many retreated into the interior as their homelands were invaded by the flood of gold seekers. Others, especially among the Miwok and Yokuts in the Central Valley, raided the settlements of the newcomers for horses and other livestock.

Many Native people joined in the rush for gold and became miners themselves. Colonel Richard B. Mason estimated in 1848 that more than half the gold diggers during the first year of the gold rush were Indians. Miwok prospectors and miners, for instance, helped open the extraordinary riches of the southern mines.

At first, many Indian miners worked as laborers for white Californians, often in a state of peonage similar to their status on the Mexican ranchos. Others labored as independent agents and traded their gold to white merchants for a variety of goods. In the early days, California Indians were unaware of the true value of the gold they were trading, and the whites competed with one another in cheating them. A common practice was to trade glass beads to Indian miners for gold, weight for weight. But soon the Native miners developed a finer appreciation of the white man's high regard for gold and became increasingly able and sophisticated traders themselves.

Episodes in Extermination
The Native American population of California declined from an estimated 150,000 in 1846 to 30,000 by 1870. Most of the decline was caused by disease and malnutrition, but thousands of Indians died in genocidal campaigns carried out by white Californians. Miners and ranchers banded together for the express purpose of killing Indians. These men roamed through the hills and valleys of northern California, hitting especially hard the Native people who lived in the heart of the mother lode, the Nisenan Maidu and the Miwok.

Local sentiment was strongly in favor of Indian extermination. The Yreka Herald in 1853 made its position unequivocally clear: "Extermination is no longer a question of time-the time has arrived, the work has commenced, and let the first man that says treaty or peace be regarded as a traitor." In 1866 the Chico Courant concurred: "It is a mercy to the red devils to exterminate them, and a saving of many white lives. Treaties are played out-there is only one kind of treaty that is effective-cold lead."

Frontier communities raised subscriptions to pay bounties for Indian scalps and Indian heads. In addition to such local remuneration, the state legislature authorized payments of expense claims totaling over $1 million. The federal government subsequently reimbursed the state. Thus the process of extermination went forward with the financial support of local, state, and federal governments. It was legalized and subsidized murder on a mass scale.

African Americans
About one percent of the non-Indian population of gold-rush California was African American, including enslaved persons as well as free men and women. The free blacks came to California on their own, seeking gold. Those enslaved were brought by their southern masters in spite of California's status as a free state. Some who came as slaves, such as Biddy Mason, later obtained their freedom.

The status of African Americans in California was restricted by various discriminatory public policies. The state constitution restricted suffrage to "free white males," thus excluding all nonwhites and women from the right to vote. Likewise, the state legislature restricted membership in the state militia to whites. The legislature also adopted a harsh fugitive slave law. The most odious of these anti-black statutes were the state testimony laws that prohibited "blacks, negroes, mulattoes" and Indians from testifying in any civil or criminal proceeding either "in favor of, or against a white man."

African Americans in San Francisco organized a Franchise League in 1852 to petition the legislature to grant them their full civil rights. Later, in 1855, black residents organized a statewide California Convention of Colored Citizens to protest unfair and unequal treatment.

Biddy Mason
One of California's most intrepid African American pioneers was a woman named Biddy Mason. Born a slave on a Georgia plantation in 1818, she was taken by her owner to San Bernardino, California in 1851.

California was officially a free state. The state constitution of 1849 was very clear about this: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever be tolerated in this state." Nevertheless thousands of African Americans like Biddy Mason were brought to California by their masters and kept in bondage. When Mason's owner attempted to take her back to the slave-holding south, a California judge ruled that she and her family were "entitled to their freedom and are free forever."

Biddy Mason, free at last, stayed in California and went on to become one of the first African American women to own property in Los Angeles. From her home on Spring Street, she tended her family and helped the poor. She was a woman with a large and generous heart. "If you hold your hand closed," she was fond of saying, "nothing good can come in. The open hand is blessed, for it gives in abundance, even as it receives."

Reprinted courtesy of the California Historical Society.

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