Traveled to california, the physical geography of the area and evolving Technology Used to mine gold. Good morning everybody. The topic of our lecture is the history of the gold rush and i will talk mainly about california in the years following 1848. But gold played a very, very Important Role in American History. Think back to the conquistadors, one of the things they were fascinating about was the quest for gold. An unquenchable desire for Precious Metals, gold above all, but also silver. When the first settlers came to jamestown they were hoping to find the same supplies of gold found by the spaniards and bitter disappointment not to find gold in the whats now virginia and brought with them jewelers and gold smiths. Americas first gold rush took place in georgia in 1829 in north georgia. If youve been about 100 miles north, you would see the old lump kin county courthouse has been converted into a gold mining museum. Its about 100 miles up the road. What happened was, first gold was discovered and people started pouring into the area in huge numbers because of the intoxicating possibility that gold would make them wealthy quickly. Until then this had been an area really beyond the line of settlement. But suddenly now the White Settlement catches up very quickly. Here is the governor, george gilmore, describing what it was like meeting the georgia miners in 1829. Many thousands of idle people flocked into georgia from every point of the compass whose pentup vicious propensities made them like the evil one. In other words, the devil, in his worst mood. After waiting all day in the rivers, picking up particles of gold, they collected around light wood fires at night and played on the ground and on their hats at cards, dice, pushpin and other games of chance for their days findings. Whiskey carts served them too. Hundreds of combatants were seen at fisticuffs. Swearing, striking, and gouging eyes as frontier men only can do these things. One of the ways frontiersmen used to fight until one of the men gouged out the eyes of his combatant. That was regarded as victory in one of the fights. The army was sent to restore order in this chaotic scene where people poured in from every direction. The major the army major sent to keep order reported this. Upwards of 200 persons who presented a motley appearance of whites, indians, halfbreeds and negros. Boys of 14 and old men of 70 and indeed their occupations appeared as various as their complexions. Comprising, diggers, soilers, shop keepers, peddlers and thieves and gamblers. Also found two colonels of the georgia militia, two candidates for the legislature and two ministers of gospel. All no doubt attracted by the love of gold. I think hes making the most of it with the lovely twos. This is very rich site of gold and a large quantity of gold was drawn out of the mines there between 1829 and into the 1870s and 80s. For a while it was minted into federal currency. See the coin on the left is a United States of america coin and on the right there after the confederate succession in 1861 the Confederate Bank also used georgia gold for minting. Just by living here youve all seen an example of the gold down on the state Capital Building five or six miles from here. The dome is thinly coated with gold. This is a very important source. Now the people who already lived there and who already lived in the area where the georgia gold rush took place were the cher row keys, one of the native american societies. Ever since the American Revolution the federal government had been trying to integrate the native american nations into the United States saying, learn to become christians. Learn literacy. Learn to become farmers instead of hunters and gatherers. Become integrated into our society. That was the federal policy in the first three or four decades of the republic. Now it turns out the cherokees are living on land for which the whites are very hungry indeed. What principle was going to prevail . Unfortunately the principle of racial exclusion would prevail. The whites just wanted to get rid of the indians one way or another. In the election of 1828 which immediately preceded the georgia gold rush, in their successful candidate, andrew jackson, they had found somebody who also wanted to get rid of the native americans any way he could. This is john ross, one of the cherokee chiefs. If any community of native americans had lived up to the hopes that the federal government had, it was clearly the cherokees. They had learned how to read one of the missionaries created a syllabus of to enable them to write down the cherokee language, the bible had been translated, many had become christians and many wore american dress. This was a highly integrated community. But nevertheless, the principle prevailed, weve got to get rid of them. Actually passed the indian removal act in 1830, which was signed by president jackson, saying that the socalled five kriflized tribes, this is president jackson, he said that five civilized tribes should move from their current lands out on to a place that was then called end yands territory. The five groups they had in mind were the creeks, cherokees, seminoles, chocktaws, and the seminoles. And there would be a resettlement, this is now oklahoma, and was then called indian territory. The Georgia State government passed a law specifying that the lands up in this Northern Tier of georgia should be reallocated by a land lottery to white settlers, in order to dispossess the former inhabitants and to hand it over to the whites instead. So this was the prelude to the movement youve heard about, the trail of tears, by which the cherokee were shifted and forced to migrate several hundred miles under very adverse conditions with large numbers of them dying along the way. Its one of the great Human Rights Violations of American History, and particularly in the history of the state of georgia itself. Now, last time in talking about the spread of american settlement and also the spread of american political power, we talked about the mexican war. This was the war fought between mexico and the United States in the years 1846 to 48. As i said then, although the american armies were not particularly well led, they were much more effective than the mexican armies they were able to win a spectacular series of battlefield series and by late 1847, the leader of one of the american armies Winfield Scott landed on the coast of the eastern coast of mexico at vera cruz, led his army inland and they were able to overrun mexico city itself. On the right you can see a picture of general scotts army marching triumphantly into mexico city. Where in effect they were able to dictate the terms of the peace treaty that followed. This was the treaty of guadeloupe hidalgo whose geographical significance was that a vast area of mexico was now handed over to the United States, nearly all the land which currently comprises california, nevada, utah, arizona, and then parts of new mexico and colorado. Whats today the southwestern corner of the United States. Certain things about it are important to remind you of. This is an area with a high population, but then its population was extremely low, only a few thousand spaniards actually lived there. Or a few thousand mexicans. There was a low density of native american settlements but it was mainly unoccupied territory. The reason it was unoccupied because its so dry. Nearly all this land has got very, very low rainfall, with a few exceptions like on the Northern California coast, most of it is too dry for ordinary agriculture, so not many people could live there. Just to give you an idea of how low its population was who has been to San Francisco . All right. As you know, its a fantastic natural harbor, you sail in through the golden gate, which was a fairly narrow entrance into a deep water enclosed harbor and now of course one of the great cities of the world is right there. But this is what it looked like in 194647. Just a handful of huts and a few streets, it was a very, very quiet and sleepy little place, and its future significance was unimaginable at that time. Now, this is a sether, a man called johan suts her and he lived on what was called sutters site. I mentioned in one of the previous lectures that americans had been moving into texas even when texas was still a mexican territory and in the same way american settlers had been moving into california when it was still mexican territory. One of those was johann sutter. He came from switzerland and he set up a trading fort. There it is in the upper picture. Its very different from a shop and the fact that he had to have a fort is how politically volatile the area was. He was expecting to be attacked so he took precautions against that. Now he was at sacramento and one of the things he needed to sell was lumber, but the lumber was going to come from up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains which is east of sacramento. And so he sent one of his assistants, called James Marshall up the American River and asked him to design and build a saw mill. And this was just a place where the American River is flowing fast enough that the water can turn a water wheel and the wheel is attached to circular saw blades so the lumber could be brought there and sawed and further down the river to sutter himself. And one thing you have to do to make an effective saw, is divert the river down the mill race, can you picture this, a designed flume which carries water fairly rapidly to turn the water wheel. In the mill race there, he found little flakes of gold, little metal flakes. He reported back to sutter his boss saying found gold in the mill race and sutter said dont tell anybody. Well keep it secret. They could foresee it was a great thing. You know how bad everyone is at keeping secrets. Dont you know from your own experience. The only way to have a secret is never tell anyone because somehow as soon as you tell anybody the secret gets out and thats exactly what happened in this case. And it wasnt long before the news got back east and it spread very rapidly all over the world, with the result that a massive incursion of people into california began to take place. This is the area where the gold was discovered. This is sacramento and sutters fort was right there. And he had sent his assistant marshall, upriver, up the American River to here where the gold had been discovered. We now know from substantive extensive geological work is that the gold field is the area shown in yellow, and the richest area where most of all the gold was found was about here, called the mother load. Those little boxes where the mining camps sprung up and they correspond very closely as you would expect to the lode itself. If you imagine a simplified version of the coast of california, i will do this for reasons of simplicity, heres San Francisco bay, one river is flowing south, and this is the Sacramento River. And eventually it flows into the San Francisco bay. And its parallel with the coast, about 100 miles inland, theres a Coastal Range here, and then a big Central Valley, and another flowing north is the San Joaquin River and it also eventually flows into San Francisco bay. So this is the Central Valley. And over here is much higher mountains, what are they call, jenny . I dont know, actually. Theres a clue. Oh, well, the Sierra Nevada. Thats right, just means the snowy mountains, thats right. So as you can tell from the map, lots of rivers flow out of the Sierra Nevadas and the northern ones join the Sacramento River and the southern ones flow into the San Joaquin River. So thats kind of the schematic of the fwee geography of california. So its important that you get a sense of what that looked like, and the gold is here, sort of in the foothills of the valleys. Okay . Now lets just first of all here, about the how the news got back east. Allen, can you come up and read first of all have you all heard of William Sherman . He was a famous Union General during the civil war, you see him on the right as a young man, at this point he was a lieutenant in the u. S. Army and witnessing what was happening when the gold was discovered. So here is lieutenant sherman. Off you go. As the spring and summer of 1848 advanced the reports came faster and faster of the gold mines of sutters mill. Stories reached of fabulous discoveries through the land. Everyone was talking about gold, gold, until it assumed the character of a fever. Soldiers began to dessert. Citizens were fitting trains of wagons to go to the mines. We heard of men earning 50, 500 and of thousands of Dollars Per Day and for a time, it seemed as though somebody would reach solid gold. Great. Thanks very much. The news gets out and heres an army officer reporting back to seniors whats been going on. And then the president made a speech. Youve got the president here, james k. Polk, so this again, this is just a few months after the initial discoveries were made by James Marshall. It was known that mines of the Precious Metals existed to a considerable extent in california. At the time of its acquisition. Recent discoveries render it probable that these mines are more extensive and valuable than was anticipated. The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory is of such extraordinary character is beyond belief. There are those who have visited Mineral District and derived facts were stated from personal observation. The explorations made warrant the belief that supplies very large and that gold is found in various places in districts of the country. It appears also from these reports that mines of quick silver are being found in the vicinity of the gold region and one is being worked and believed to be among the most productive in the world. The effects produced by the discovery of the rich Mineral Deposits and successes which attended the labors, has produced a surprising change in the state of affairs in california. All other pursuits that of the searching for the Precious Metals are abandoned. Ships arriving are deserted by crews and their voyages suspended for want of sailors. The Commanding Officer says soldiers cannot be kept without a large increase of pay. He recommends those who shall withstand the strong temptations and remain faithful should be rewarded. This abundance of gold and the all engrossing pursuit has caused in california an unprecedented rise in the price of the necessaries of life. Great. Thanks very much. Thats president polk and hes making this declaration that the way in which the economy of california is being transformed. People are pouring in and nobody wants to do any work except dig for gold. Ships arriving in San Francisco, the crews all dessert because they want to go to the gold diggings. Psychologists are interested in this. Gold fever takes people over. The curious thing about gold it isnt really particularly useful. I dont know if you thought about this very much, but i mean, today, its possible in things like semiconductors there are uses for gold and in heat shields on space ships, but then it was useful mainly for decoration and also sometimes as a unit of currency because its chemically inert and doesnt rust. If you make coins out of iron eventually they rust away where a gold coin persists. Its not really useful. Nevertheless it was incredibly valuable. Its one of the many things which have been so important to American History like gold and tobacco, which great fortunes were made even though they werent actually essential. Worth thinking about. All right. Now people started pouring into california from all over, and back east and even around the world in england and in france and in germany and in south america, even in china, there was an enormous amount of enthusiasm about finding ways to get to california. And lots of handbooks like this began to be published. You can see this one was published in boston. An account of california and the wonderful gold regions with the description of the different routes to california. Information about the country and the ancient and modern discoveries of gold. In other words, help for travelers on thinking about how theyre actually going to get there. Now one of the and there were essentially three ways of getting there, and what they had in common was that they were all incredibly difficult. Its unbelievably difficult. This is 1849, still another 20 years were going to pass before you could get there by rail road. The first railroads had been invented but they were very short lines, all right. So one of the ways of doing it was by going in a ship, a new type of ship with a lot of sail and capable of sailing fast. One possibility was to sail from the east coast all the way down through the south atlantic and then around cape horn, whats that like . Horrible. The stormiest waters in the entire world, when coming into the teeth of the roaring 40s and can take weeks to get around and get shipwrecked on the way. That was one way of doing it. Lots of people tried that. And this is an ad for it, a ship called the cal