Gold Rush madness

      It’s January in 1848, Southern California, so the weather is mild and inviting.  A man by the name of James Marshall is sitting along the American River and finds gold.  Mass migration and go!  Within 2 years, the California population went from 10,000 to 220,000 (less than 2% female) all looking to strike it rich fast.  But whose land were they going to mine?  In is thought that in the 1700’s the Native population was over 275,000, but after a few years of the famous California Gold Rush it had dwindled to about 16,000 by the 1900’s.  What happen to the Natives that called California home even after the invasion of the Spanish?  Why they were considered to be competitors for the gold in the land, and they were destroyed in masses by the miners in the area or taking in Slavery.                                               

                                              

        “The name of the law sounds benign, but the effect was malign in the extreme degree. Any white person under this law could declare Indians who were simply strolling about, who were not gainfully employed, to be vagrants, and take that charge before a justice of the peace, and a justice of the peace would then have those Indians seized and sold at public auction. And the person who bought them would have their labor for four months without compensation. (James Rawls, historian, PBS)                                                                                                                 

       But that was not enough for the settlers of California because they needed the land.  So they made it a sport, like hunting for deer or bison.  Bring in the body or the scalp and be pay $25.00 for a male, or $5.00 for a women or child. And so the Indian raiders could bring the evidence of their kill in, and receive direct local compensation. Furthermore, the state of California passed legislation authorizing more than a million dollars for the reimbursement of additional expenses that the Indian hunters may have incurred. And then that was passed on eventually to the federal Congress, where Congress passed legislation also authorizing additional federal funds for this purpose. So what we have here in California during the Gold Rush, quite clearly, was a case of genocide, mass murder that was legalized and publicly subsidized. (Rawls, historian, PBS) It wasn’t until after 1900 that this law was repealed.                              

                 

    It is thought that the Kumeyaay Indians who were the largest and strongest of the Southern California tribes dwindled down to less than 1,000 surviving members by the turn of the century.  “Hank Aldama was told to collect a small rock, no larger than his fist, and run as far north, east, south and west as his legs could carry him. This would become the boundaries of the reservation. Decades later, Mr. Aldama would recall with a laugh, “I thought I ran farther than that.”  Jamul Indian Village was established in 1912 for the Kumeyaay in east San Diego Country.  It was a rather small reservation that had no amenities that most people at that time were taking for granted like running water or vehicles to get to work.  It wasn’t 1980 that the reservation received electricity, a mere prior to the United States even recognized the Jamul Indian Village as a Indian Tribe.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

PBS. The Gold Rush- The Native American Experience. 13 09 2006. document. 28 02 2016. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/sfeature/natives_03.html>.

 

 

References

Indigenous Peoples Literature. 13 05 2012. 29 02 2016. <http://www.indigenouspeople.net/>.

Jamul Indian Village, A Kumeyaay Nation. 2015. 28 02 2016. <http://www.jamulindianvillage.com/>.

PBS. The Gold Rush- The Native American Experience. 13 09 2006. document. 28 02 2016. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/sfeature/natives_03.html>.