"We are rough men
and used to rough ways."
Gold.
Greed. Murder.
When
gold was discovered the American West became the place to go, people were eager
to try their fortune and strike it rich. There were over ten gold strikes in
the west during the second half of the 19th century. The strikes
contributed more than anything else in shaping the American West, the idea that
people could find an abundance of wealth pouring out of the ground was too much
for them to resist. Westward expansion began as a slow progression, but once
gold was discovered it became a race. When the Corps of Discovery explored the American
West in 1803, they believed it was going to be a unique and agriculturally
centered place. The discovery of gold in 1848 turned the American West into a
violent struggle for power and wealth.
The
discovery and excavation of gold greatly transformed the west in several ways;
it encouraged the influx of immigration, migration of Americans to the west,
Native American conflicts, and rapid population expansion. Elliot West
described the erection of towns during the Pikes Peak gold rush as, “two poles
of charged ambition…a lot of energy was crackling, ready for release.”[1]
The energy created by the gold rushes changed the dynamics of the west; people
moved to the west quickly and began to change the environment. The west became
a land of fortitude; it became a "hard land, and it bred hard men to hard ways."[2]
Beginning
with the 1849 California Gold Rush, the American West instantly became a place
of heavy extraction and a new destination for thousands of people. By 1850 the far
west had a new characterization—clusters of settlements separated by hundreds
of miles of barren land. The gold rush caused the “sudden movement of tens of
thousands across the continent to the Pacific coast.” The environment of the
west was drastically upheaved as it saw an incursion of people across a
previously untouched landscape. Throughout the west, gold rushes were
discovered continually and more towns and people sprung up next to them. The consistent
announcements of gold changed the social, economic and imaginative development
of the west.[3]
During the Colorado gold rush of 1859, more then one hundred thousand people
traveled to Colorado, “more then had ever taken to the overland trails in any
previous year.”[4]
People took to gold rushes extremely quickly; everyone wanted a chance to
strike it rich. No longer was the American West a frontier to be explored, it
was now a land to be exploited. Gold rushes did not just bring United States
citizens to them, but they also attracted many different immigrants and even Native
Americans.
Mining
for gold was not limited to white Americans, but Mexicans and Native Americans
joined the rush in hopes of striking it rich as well. When the California Gold
Rush began in 1848, half of the people mining in California were Native
American. There was also an influx of Chinese immigrants; by 1850 they began to
come to California by the thousands. By 1859 there were about twenty-four
thousand Chinese miners in California looking for gold. Originally, the Chinese
came as temporary sojourners, but as other gold strikes were announced they
would travel deeper into the American West to them.
The
diversity of the west found its origin in the gold rushes; this was the way
that immigrants spread throughout the country. Immigration was not without
discrimination and racism, but despite the prejudice, “a multicultural West was
being born.”[5]
The new emigrant surge also brought an “economic jolt” and began another
“transformation of mid-America.”[6]
Originally the eastern portion of the United States was drastically changed by
immigration, but now the west faced a similar evolution of its population.
Diversity in the west resulted in an amazing amount of discrimination and
violence; foreign people were viewed as sub-human by the whites and brutality
against them was not just tolerable, it was encouraged. Judge Roy Bean demonstrated this standard
with his verdict in an 1882 case: "Gentlemen, I find the law very explicit
on murdering your fellow man, but there's nothing here about killing a Chinaman. Case dismissed.”[7]
A huge
influence over the evolution of the American West was discrimination, and most
of it revolved around gold rushes. Early laws forbid “Indians and Negroes from
testifying against whites in court” and newspapers wrote that, “Mexicans have
no business in this country.”[8]
Laws were also passed that would forbid Chinese testifying in courts against
whites, the law claimed that Native Americans originated from the Chinese and
thus they had equal standing—less than human. The strong xenophobia that permeated
the west was not as much about race as it was about gold and greed. In
particular Mexicans had a knack for gold mining and often found success, they
were usually the ones to show others how to successfully mine. One observer
states that, “As soon as [he] got an inkling of the system…he organized a
crusade against these obliging strangers.”[9]
Essentially the Americans would learn from foreigners and then attempt to expel
them from the area for fear that they would lose out on gold and wealth by
letting them stay. Racism abounded in the American West because of the
aggressive nature of people during the gold rushes.
One of
the most impactful aspects of the American West and racism was the conflict
between Native Americans and the United States. During the 19th
century it was said that white Americans “valued the life of an Indian just as
they do that of a cayota or a wolf”
and miners would shoot at and murder thousands of Indians. Originally, Indians
mined gold in 1848 by themselves, or even for white contractors. By the time
that the forty-niners arrived in California the dynamic changed. Native
Americans were run out of their homes and violently attacked, the desire for
wealth had men attacking and murdering the natives to acquire land and mine it
for themselves. Any excuse to claim someone else’s land for their own was taken
by the forty-niners. This attitude was even encouraged by the government when California
Governor Peter Burnett exclaimed, “A war of extermination will continue to be
waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct.”[10]
During
the gold rushes there was “little to no fear from Indians.” [11]
Instead, most of the violence was inspired by racism and greed. The lack of
fear meant that the white attitude toward Native Americans was apathetic; they were
a nuisance, not a threat. From indifferent attitudes and the hope of wealth the
miners murdered and enslaved thousands of natives. By 1860 over three fourths
of the Native American population in California was gone; it was a “clear case
of genocide” before the term even existed.[12]
Outside of California Native Americans were being organized onto reservations
and slaughtered because of the other gold rushes. Two examples of this are the
Colorado gold rush of 1859 and the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of
South Dakota in 1876.
The Sand
Creek Massacre was a direct result of the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush and the plains
wars with the Lakota’s resulted from General George Armstrong Custer’s discovery
of gold on their reservation. The refusal of the Native Americans to give
ground to the United States let to several battles and massacres. Eventually,
the Lakota gave up the Black Hills to the United States, the conflict over gold
and land finally over. One of the leaders of the Lakota, Sitting Bull,
summarized what he believed about the Americans, saying, “The love of
possession is a disease with them.”[13]
The discovery of gold and the subsequent rushes were an absolute disaster for
the Native Americans. They were merely obstacles to be overcome. The idea of
wealth convinced people that they ought to be rich, no matter what the cost.
The atmosphere
of gold and wealth was huge for the United States, its impact was monumental
and it is still effecting society to this day. The rush of people to gold
country made a previously empty land and small towns bustling with people and
key stops on the trail to the newest gold rush. Elliot West explains the effect
of the gold rush on small outposts and towns by saying, “They were gateways to
an opening promise…the Missouri, the plains, and the Rockies were seen as bound
organically into an economic whole.”[14]
Gold
drastically transformed the American West and created its burgeoning population.
When Thomas Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 he believed that
the west would be a slow progression of people, it would be a frontier for many
generations. He never imagined it would take less then three generations before
the western frontier would be closed; in fact, it was in 1890 that the United
States census officially deemed the American West was no longer a frontier. The
strange and anonymous frontier that Lewis and Clark explored in 1803 became an
established territory with a swelling populace in only 87 years.
The gold
strikes contributed more than anything else in shaping the west and the
elimination of the frontier. It was the gold rushes that encouraged the massive
influx of immigration to the western United States and it was the gold rushes
that changed the landscape of the United States forever, whether it was for
better or worse. The discovery and excavation of gold resulted in the rapid
population explosion and the violent conflicts with the Native Americans that shaped
the west.
[1] Elliot West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers,
and the Rush to Colorado. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998),
137.
[2] Louis L’Amour, Heller With a Gun, (New York: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1955 ), 15.
[3] Robert V. Hine and John
Mack Faragher, A Short History of the
American West, (London: Yale University Press, 2007), 94-95.
[4] West, The Contested Plains, 145.
[5] Hine and Faragher, A Short History of the American West,
99.
[6] West, The Contested Plains, 116.
[7] Bob Herzberg, Hang’em High: Law and Disorder in Western Films and
Literature, (North Carolina: McFarland & Company Publishers, 2013), 37.
[8] Hine and Faragher, A Short History of the American West,
98.
[9] Ibid, 98.
[10] Ibid, 100.
[12] Hine and Faragher, A Short History of the American West,
100.
[13] Ibid, 102.
