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Nature and Impact of California Gold Rush (1848-49) and Pike's Peak…
Nature and Impact of California Gold Rush (1848-49) and Pike's Peak Gold Rush (1858-59)
The Discovery of Gold in California, 1848, Led to a Rush of Settlers
January 1848
Gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, California Territory.
February 1848
Mexico sold California to the USA.
1849
Over 50,000 Americans headed to California to 'strike it rich'. They were known as the 'Forty-Niners'. Native Americans began to dig for gold too but they were driven into mountains.
October 1849
California applied to be a state in 1850. Mining towns grew up in the mountains. This devastated the land causing flooding, pollution from chemicals and harming the lands of Native American tribes.
1850
San Francisco grew to be a city of 34,000 people and became a busy trading port.
1850-51
Huge numbers of Chinese and miners went to find their own riches in California.
Mining Settlements were Established in California. They were Often Very Rough and Violent Places
Mining settlements were built quickly for the miners. They were very heavily male dominated and were often full of gambling dens and saloons.
Many miners forced Native Peoples from the land so that they could set up mining camps.
Mining settlements could be violent places with robberies and murders being more common than in other types of settlement.
Women did go to mining settlements; some as prostitutes, but many more made a good living by selling food or doing laundry for the miners.
Some People Made Lots of Money from the Gold Rush, but Few of Them were Individual Gold Miners
Small-business owners could make a lot of money by selling shovels or gold-washing pans.
A whole industry grew up selling maps and supplies to get to California.
After 1852, huge crushing mills (machines to get gold out of rock) were needed to extract the gold from the rock. These crushing mills were funded by businessmen from the East.
The Californian Gold Rush Had an Enormous Impact on the West, the Plains and the People Who Lived There
Immigrants in the West
In 1850, California passed a law which said that all non-US miners had to pay a $20 tax. This forced thousands of Mexicans and Chinese people to leave and favoured White Americans.
California and San Francisco
San Francisco grew to have 56,000 people by 1860 and was the fifteenth largest city in the country. Mining led to environmental destruction, clogging rivers with silt and putting harmful chemicals into the water supply. High powered water jets were used to release quartz from the mountains which led to erosion of hillsides. Flooding washed whole towns away. These mining activities devastated lands that had been used by Native Americans.
Lumbering and arming spread across California. This would eventually create the demand for better East-West connections and the railroad.
America as a whole
California became a free state (without slavery) very suddenly in 1850. This threw the delicate balance of slave and free states into crisis. It led to demands to connect the country up fully with a railroad.
Plains Indians
The miners who travelled West cut right through Plains Indians' hunting grounds. The government was forced to sign the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1851 which promised not to disrupt Plains hunting or to settle on the Plains.
Impact on Native Americans in California - Conflict
In 1848, some Native Americans began to dig for gold alongside White Americans.
The 'forty-niners' had driven them into the mountains often shooting them dead.
The violence was encouraged by the government of California. Governor Burdett talked of a 'war of extermination'.
In 1850, a law was brought in stating any Native American who could not prove he had a job could be arrested and sold to white settlers as slave labour.
Many men, women and children were captured and sold due to this.
The Pike's Peak Gold Rush (1858-59) Began the Settlement of the Great Plains. War Seemed Inevitable
The California gold rush led many Americans to take an interest in gold hunting and search for the next big gold rush.
The formation of Kansas territory in 1854 meant gold prospectors could settle with the assurance of government protection.
In July 1858, a new gold strike was made at Pike's Peak in Kansas Territory (modern day Colorado). This land was occupied by the Cheyenne Indians (a powerful Plains tribe).
Huge numbers of people came to Pike's Peak - over 100,000 by 1859.
The Pike's Peak Gold Rush was different from the California Gold Rush
Rail lines helped people travel from the East to St. Joseph with ease
More people came to Pike's Peak compared to California. The landscape was easier to cross.
Town boosters set out to increase the wealth of their towns by encouraging people to come and settle
There were three competing routes to the Colorado gold fields (Northern, Central and Southern), each pushed by a particular town.
It led to a battle of maps in which towns lied about the ease of routes
There were three main routes to Pike's Peak
The Central Route
Those promoting the Central route showed Smoky Hill river going almost directly to the gold fields - but it was 100 miles short.
In one extreme case, the Blue party ended up eating each other as they died of starvation on the Central Route.
The Sothern Route via Ben's Fort
The Northern Route via Fort Kearny
What was the impact of the Pike's Peak gold rush
New mining towns like Denver needed food. This led to thousands more people settling in the eastern half of Kansas Territory and establishing farms. Farmers could sell food to the new towns like St. Joseph, Missouri, which grew up in the gold-mining districts.
The settlement of Kansas proved that the Plains were not just a desert land and soon more settlers came flooding on to the new lands. Kansas Territory became a state in 1861 and the western half (which included Pike's Peak) was renamed Colorado.
Pike's Peak was a shift in relations between Whites and Native Americans
Treaties signed in 1851 and 1853 established routes across Native American lands but now white settlers wanted to settle on the Plains.
The settlement of Kansas and Colorado broke treaties the USA had signed with Native American tribes in the 1850s.
Tribes like the Cheyenne and Kiowa began to fight back against white settlers on the Plains.
Towns like Denver, Colorado grew rapidly where Native Americans such as the Cheyenne and Arapaho lived. In September 1859, Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders met the US authorities at Fort Laramie to express their anger - "we wish to live" said one Arapaho.
By 1860, war and conflict between the USA and the Plains tribes seemed inevitable.