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California Gold Rush Research Paper

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Everyone knows about the gold rush in California. We know that gold was discovered on January 24,1848, right before the end of the Mexican War the following month. With the end of the war meant adversity was going to be a huge challenge for this newly found territory that would later be known as California in 1850. Right away you have Spaniards turned Mexican then turned American, along with Mexican Americans. These people were known as Californios. Within a month the gold rush was in full swing, so how did these challenges affect the mining process? Was it fair for who found what and who got what? What did it do to the state of California? The gold rush had a large impact on the population within California. After James Marshall discovered …show more content…
That is when the “49ers”, the term used for the gold seekers in 1949, started showing up and taking their land to mine on. The amount of settlers showing up quickly turned around the overpowering ratio of Native Americans as well as the Californios, the Spanish speaking Americans. This caused a lot of problems within the economy and the American government within California. There was so much chaos and confusion, which lead to vicious cycles of death and violence. This caused the Native Americans and Mexican Americans to lose their power and will. There were many powerful settlers that would use the Native Americans as indentured servants. Even said, the violence wasn’t always against anyone in particular or any other reason except that everyone was greedy and wanted what they claimed as theirs. The Native Americans were known to attack a lot of the miners to protect their land; not just because it was there land but it was there they hunted and fished.
With California not being a state yet there were no official laws. So with the rush the government implemented a claim law. Stating that one person was allowed to have ten square feet. Taking some ones claim was very common, so a lot of camps had officers patrolling the area. Punishment for crimes was fast, for minor offenses would be lashings and serious crimes would be …show more content…
This discouraged a lot of foreigners to come to California especially once the gold was getting sparse.
African Americans also partook in the gold rush. There were over two thousand free African Americans. Still very small in numbers so like the Native Americans they were subject to a lot of the racism. With California still not being a state yet there were many areas still flourished with slavery. There was no site of change within the state, therefore there was not a big African American population.
Although discrimination and violence were rampant, Gold Rush California also became a place of cross-cultural communication and cooperation. There were over 50 different languages being spoken. There were once isolated groups within different cities that came into contact with other cultures for the first time. And in many cases were able to work side by side with no problems. The race, language, religion, and class separated Californians but proximity forced groups to accommodate as well as compete. Multiracial even before it was a state, California would be continuously be shaped by its

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