![]() ![]() ![]() “The forty-niners treated the country as unowned, unexplored wilderness, free for the taking,” writes historian Beth Bagwell. Indigenous Indians did most of the hard labor, overseen by mestizo settlers known as Californios who owned or managed the large ranchos. Prior to the discovery of gold, the ranchero society of California was arranged largely along racial lines. Huge social and ethnographic shifts took place as entire native cultures were displaced by the newcomers. Violence, nationalistic squabbles, and lynchings proliferated as the idyllic landscape was overrun by quarreling interlopers. ![]() By 1852 the population had swelled to 250,000 people. ![]() Nahl and August Wenderoth, Miners in the Sierra, oil, 541⁄4 x 67.īy 1949, 100,000 forty-niners had arrived, including 8,000 Mexicans, 5,000 South Americans, and several thousand Europeans. With the discovery of gold (in present-day Coloma, 36 miles northeast of Sacramento) came an influx of ethnically diverse fortune-seekers, including hundreds of experienced Mexican and Chilean miners who taught Yankees everything from how to identify sites where gold was likely to be concentrated to how to wash the glittering dust from their gold pans.Ĭharles C. GOLD RUSH! California’s Untold Stories, which opens on January 24, encompasses three related exhibitions, a major symposium, and an ongoing lecture series. Exactly 150 years after James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill in Northern California, the Oakland Museum of California launches its contribution to a statewide, three-year-long commemoration of the Gold Rush. ![]()
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