By mid-May, the waters calmed down and fresh provisions arrived. So did a large number of mostly American newcomers. Meanwhile, Mexicans at the mines expressed growing frustration over the lack of justice where they were concerned. In her 16th letter, Louise writes sardonically:. A few evenings ago, a Spaniard was stabbed by an American. It seems that the presumptuous foreigner had the impertinence to ask very humbly and meekly of that most noble representative of the stars and stripes, if the latter would pay him a few dollars which he had owed him for some time.
His high mightiness, the Yankee, was not going to put up with any such impertinence, and the poor Spaniard received, for answer, several inches of cold steel in his breast, which inflicted a very dangerous wound.
Nothing was done and very little was said about this atrocious affair. This has caused nearly all the Spaniards [Californios] to immigrate upon Indian Bar. On the Fourth of July, tensions between Californios and Americans exploded.
While Dr. Clapp joined other sober Americans in celebrating Independence Day with speeches, poetry, music and dancing at the Empire on Rich Bar, drunken celebrants made the rounds at Indian Bar. Louis Clapp wrote about it in her 19th letter:. He said…Domingo — a tall, majestic-looking Spaniard, a perfect type of the novelistic bandit of Old Spain — had stabbed Tom Somers, a young Irishman, but a naturalized citizen of the United States,…[and while] brandishing threateningly the long bloody knife with which he had inflicted the wound upon his victim…[had paraded] up and down the street unmolested.
It seems that when Tom Somers fell, the Americans, being unarmed, were seized with a sudden panic and fled. There was a rumor unfounded, as it afterwards proved to the effect that the Spaniards had on this day conspired to kill all the Americans on the river. In a few moments, however, the latter rallied and made a rush at the murderer, who immediately plunged into the river and swam across to Missouri Bar; eight or shots were fired at him…not one of which hit him.
In the meanwhile,…Spaniards who…thought that the Americans had arisen against them…barricaded themselves in a drinking saloon, determined to defend themselves against the massacre which was fully expected would follow…. In the bake shop, which stands next to our cabin, young Tom Somers lay straightened for the grave…while over his dead body a Spanish woman was weeping and moaning in the most piteous and heart-rending manner.
The Rich Barians, who had heard a most exaggerated account of the rising of the Spaniards against the Americans, armed with rifles, pistols, clubs, dirks, etc. Each one added fuel to his rage by crowding into the little bakery, to gaze upon the blood-bathed bosom of the victim….
The more sensible and sober of the Americans partly quieted the angry crowd. Still, Fayette Clapp wanted his wife to join two other women who lived on a nearby hill, where things would be safer should a serious fight erupt. We three women, left entirely alone, seated ourselves upon a log overlooking the strange scene below. The Bar was a sea of heads, bristling with guns, rifles, and clubs…. All at once, we were startled by the firing of a gun, and…saw a man [being] led into the log cabin, while another was carried, apparently lifeless, into a Spanish drinking saloon….
Luckily for our nerves, a benevolent individual…came and told us what had happened. It seems that an Englishman, the owner of a house of the vilest description, a person, who is said to have been the primary cause of all the troubles of the day, attempted to force his way through the line of armed men which had been formed at each side of the street….
In his drunken fury, he tried to wrest a gun from one of them, which being accidentally discharged in the struggle, inflicted a severe wound upon a Mr. Oxley and shattered in the most dreadful manner the thigh of Sr. This frightful accident recalled the people to their senses….
They elected a Vigilance Committee and authorized persons to go…arrest the suspected Spaniards. The first act of the Committee was to try a Mejicana who had been foremost in the fray. She has always worn male attire, and on this occasion, armed with a pair of pistols, she fought like a very fury. Luckily, inexperienced in the use of fire-arms, she wounded no one.
She was sentenced to leave the Bar by day-light…. The next day, the Committee tried five or six Spaniards…. Two of them were sentenced to be whipped, the remainder to leave the Bar that evening; the property of all to be confiscated…. Oh Mary! Imagine my anguish when I heard the first blow fall upon those wretched men.
I had never thought that I should be compelled to hear such fearful sounds, and, although I immediately buried my head in my shawl, nothing can efface from memory the disgust and horror…. One of these unhappy persons was a very gentlemanly young Spaniard, who implored for death in the most moving terms. Finding all his entreaties disregarded, he swore a most solemn oath, that he would murder every American that he should chance to meet alone, and as he is a man of the most dauntless courage, and rendered desperate by a burning sense of disgrace…he will doubtless keep his word.
Not long after the floggings, Louise reported that a hanging and an attempted suicide had occurred at the mines. The first involved a man accused of murdering and robbing his employer. The second involved a Henry Cook, who apparently slit his own throat. After Dr. Clapp tended his wound, Cook decided to accuse Ned, owner of the Humbolt, of attempted murder. It was amputated, but he did not regain his strength. Sick with dysentery, he died soon afterward.
Nearly every night they built bonfires fearfully near some rag shanty, thus endangering the lives or I should rather say the property — for as it is impossible to sleep, lives are emphatically safe of the whole community.
In fall, the population began to decline swiftly. Shopkeepers, restaurants, and gambling houses…were in the same moneyless condition. Few people wanted to brave another winter on the bars, including the Clapps. I like this wild and barbarous life; I leave it with regret…. Yes, Molly, smile if you will at my folly; but I go from the mountains with a deep heart sorrow.
I look kindly to this existence, which to you seems so sordid and mean. Here, at least, I have been contented…. You would hardly recognize the feeble and half-dying invalid, who drooped languidly out of sight, as night shut down between your straining gaze and the good ship Manilla…in the person of your now perfectly healthy sister.
In , Fayette sailed to Hawaii without Louise. In , he showed up in Massachusetts. A year later, he headed west again, this time to Illinois. Louise chose to remain in San Francisco, where she taught school. She filed for divorce there in She died there on February 9, Gold rushes, stampedes, and boom towns attracted hundreds of thousands of people—and hundreds of different personality types—to the American West. Many of these stampeders were gamblers, men of the green cloth; some were lawyers and officers of the law; and others were dreamers, teachers, speculators, clergymen, merchants, or women of easy virtue.
But these people and their ilk were pikers, short-timers, compared to the Irish immigrant named Nellie Cashman. Equally at home in the Nevada desert, San Francisco, British Columbia, Baja California, the Klondike of the Canadian Yukon, and north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, Nellie began her stampede days in and did not end them until she died 53 years later.
After 13 or 14 years in Boston, the Cashmans headed west in the late s, settling in the vibrant community of San Francisco, where Irishmen were numerous and influential. In , Nellie and her elderly mother traveled to the new silver-mining district of Pioche, Nevada, opening a boarding house about ten miles from the camp. At Pioche, they found a wild environment, with thousands of boisterous miners and millmen—most of them Irish—living in a situation where filth, gun fights, and altercations between owners and employees were commonplace.
The throbbing life of this mining and milling center must have appealed to Nellie; in the coming decades, she would consistently move to similar communities. There is no evidence that Nellie engaged in mining during her first experience at living near a mining camp. But during her two years at Pioche, she did become very involved in the affairs of the local Catholic church, participating in bazaars and other money-raising efforts.
When Nellie moved from Pioche, she left her mother with her sister Fanny and her family in San Francisco and traveled alone to northern British Columbia. There, for a few years in the mids, she operated a boarding house in the Cassiar District, on the Stikine River, not far from modern Juneau.
She also worked gold-placer ground, becoming familiar with elementary mining geology. While on a trip to Victoria, Nellie heard that a severe winter storm had hammered her fellow miners in the Cassiar diggings and that no one could get through. She immediately purchased supplies and sleds, hired six men, sailed to Fort Wrangell, Alaska, and headed inland through heavy snows. Her success at reaching the miners with the needed medicines and food became the talk of the West, as hundreds of miners considered her their savior.
Anglo-American miners became increasingly territorial over land they viewed as meant for them and forced other nationalities from the mines with violent tactics. As for California's native people, one hundred and twenty thousand Native Americans died of disease, starvation and homicide during the gold rush. Fading Dreams As the surface gold disappeared, individual miners found their dreams of cashing in on the gold rush growing more elusive.
Many men went to work for the larger mining companies that invested in technology and equipment to reach the gold that lay below the surface.
By the mids mining for gold had become less an individual enterprise and more a wage labor job. Invasive Technique The large mining companies were highly successful at extracting gold.
In the process, they devastated the landscape and choked the rivers with sediment. The sediment washed downstream and flooded farmlands, ruining crops. A court ruling brought an end to hydraulic mining in , and agriculture took over as the principal force behind the California economy. Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America.
Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the largest fire in American history. The native tribes of California saw themselves as stewards not owners of the land. The white settlers who arrived during the Gold Rush brought a different view. By , the idea that the extermination of the native population of California was inevitable had been firmly settled in the minds of many white Californians.
In the California legislature passed and act that essentially forced many Native Americans into servitude. Support Provided by: Learn More. He and his men found more gold nearby. Both Marshall and Sutter tried to keep things quiet, but soon word leaked out.
Gold fever quickly became an epidemic. Many who already had arrived in California or Oregon immediately gravitated to the western Sierras. But it wasn't until December of that President James Polk confirmed the findings to Congress, which meant it was too late to start a trip for easterners.
But by the spring of , the largest migration 25, that year alone in American history was already taking place.
Better-than-average conditions on the plains and in the desert that spring and summer helped soften the blow of the wave of emigrants. But conditions were harsh at best and many livestock were lost along the way. Grass and clean water became scarcer as the trip wore on, and diseases like cholera took their toll.
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