THE NEW WEST AND THE FREE NORTH, 1840–1860
235
DOCUMENT 12-3
Gold Fever
many Americans during the 1840s and 1850s. The gold rush offered opportunities for gain
that years of ordinary toil could never supply. Gold was there for the taking, for the dis-
solute hustler as well as the upright practitioner of free-labor values. Or so it seemed.
of 1849. Born in Vermont in 1797, Colton became a minister and served as a chaplain in
Walter Colton kept a diary as the gold fever struck Monterey, California, in the summer
the U.S. Navy. Shortly after Americans seized Monterey for the United States in 1846,
Colton was appointed alcalde of the city, an office that combined duties of mayor and judge.
When rumors of gold reached Monterey, Colton witnessed the contagion of gold fever and
charted the spread of the epidemic in his diary, excerpted here.
Walter Colton
California Gold Rush Diary, 1849-1850
Monday, May 29 [1849]. Our town was startled out of its quiet dreams to-day,
by the announcement that gold had been discovered on the American Fork. The
men wondered and talked, and the women too; but neither believed. .
Monday, June 5. Another report reached us this morning from the Ameri-
can Fork. The rumor ran, that several workmen, while excavating for a millrace,
had thrown up little shining scales of a yellow ore, that proved to be gold; that
an old Sonoranian, who had spent his life in gold mines, pronounced it the genu-
ine thing. Still the public incredulity remained, save here and there a glimmer of
faith.
Tuesday, June 6. Being troubled with the golden dream ..., I determined to
put an end to the suspense, and dispatched a messenger this morning to the
American Fork. He will have to ride, going and returning, some four hundred
miles, but his report will be reliable. We shall then know whether this gold is a fact
or a fiction. .
Tuesday, June 20. My messenger sent to the mines, has returned with speci-
mens of the gold; he dismounted in a sea of upturned faces. As he drew forth the
yellow lumps from his pockets, and passed them around among the eager crowd,
the doubts, which had lingered till now, fled. All admitted they were gold, except
one old man, who still persisted they were some Yankee invention, got up to rec-
oncile the people to the change of flag. The excitement produced was intense
; and
many were soon busy in their hasty preparations for a departure to the mines. The
family who had kept house for me caught the moving infection. Husband and
Reprint Services
236
READING THE AMERICAN PAST
e
Ei5
wife were both packing up; the blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his
plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the baker his loaf, and the tap-
on crutches, and one went in a litter. An American woman, who had recently
ster his bottle. All were off for the mines, some on horses, some on carts, and some
ers had even time to pay their bills. Debtors ran, of course. I have only a commu-
established a boarding-house here, pulled up stakes, and was off before her lodg-
nity of women left, and a gang of prisoners, with here and there a soldier, who will
give his captain the slip at the first chance. I don't blame the fellow a whit; seven
dollars a month, while others are making two or three hundred a day! [T]hat is too
much for human nature to stand.
the market. ... My carpenters, at work on the school-house, on seeing it, threw
Three seamen ran from the Warren, forfeiting their four years' pay; and a whole
platoon of soldiers from the fort left only their colors behind.
Tuesday, July 18. Another bag of gold from the mines, and another spasm in
hundred and thirty-six ounces. It is the most beautiful gold that has appeared in
the community. It was brought down by a sailor from Yuba river, and contains a
down their saws and planes, shouldered their picks, and are off for the Yuba.
Thursday, Aug. 16. Four citizens of Monterey are just in from the gold mines
on Feather River
, where they worked in company with three others
. They
employed about thirty wild Indians, who are attached to the rancho owned by one
of the party. They worked precisely seven weeks and three days, and have divided
seventy-six thousand eight hundred and forty-four dollars-nearly eleven thou-
sand dollars to each. [L]et me introduce a man, well known to me, who has
worked on the Yuba river sixty-four days, and brought back, as the result of his
individual labor, five thousand three hundred and fifty-six dollars.
introduce another townsman, who has worked on the North Fork fifty-seven
days, and brought back four thousand five hundred and thirty-four dollars.... Is
not this enough to make a man throw down his ledger and shoulder a pick?
. [L]et me
Tuesday, Aug. 28. The gold mines have upset all social and domestic arrange-
ments in Monterey; the master has become his own servant, and the servant his
own lord. The millionaire is obliged to groom his own horse, and roll his wheel-
barrow; and the hidalgoë-in whose veins flows the blood of all the Cortes - to
clean his own boots! Here is lady L—, who has lived here seventeen years, the
pride and ornament of the place, with a broomstick in her jewelled hand! And
here is lady B— with her daughter-all the way from “old Virginia," where
they graced society with their varied accomplishments —now floating between
the parlor and kitchen, and as much at home in the one as the other! And here is
lady S—, whose cattle are on a thousand hills, lifting, like Rachel of old, her
bucket of water from the deep well! And here is lady M. L—, whose honey.
moon is still full of soft seraphic (angelic] light, unhouseling a potatoe, and hunt-
ing the hen that laid the last egg. And here am I, who have been a man of some
note in my day, loafing on the hospitality of the good citizens, and grateful for å
meal, though in an Indian's wigwam. Why, is not this enough to make one wish
the gold mines were in the earth's flaming centre, from which they sprung?..
ts, and son
had recently
THE NEW WEST AND THE FREE NORTH, 1840-1860
237
,
Wwwod en
spot tay dio
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00151Teuli
... And there is more where
Saturday, Sept. 16... All distinctions indicative of means have vanished; the
only capital required is muscle and an honest purpose. I met a man to-day from
thousand dollars in yellow dust, swung at his back.
the mines in patched buckskins, rough as a badger from his hole, who had fifteen
this came from. His rights in the great domain are equal to yours, and his pros-
pects of getting it out vastly better. With these advantages, he bends the knee to
no man, but strides along in his buckskins, a lord of earth by a higher prescriptive
with your crests, and crowns, and pedigree trees, and let this democrat pass.
privilege than what emanates from the partiality of kings. ... Clear out of the way
spasmin
contains a
peared in
it, threw
he Xuba.
a whole
heart of the richest deposits which have been found, and where there are many
is got out; it must be less than half an ounce per day. It might be more were there
hundred at work. I have taken some pains to ascertain the average per man that
any stability among the diggers; but half their time is consumed in what they call
for their weariness and toil.
will carry them off in this direction or that, when perhaps they gathered nothing
of purpose to resist these roving temptations. .
I have never met with one who had the strength
a mines
They
by one
ivided
thou-
o has
of his
t me
Thursday, Oct. 19. All the gold-diggers through the entire encampment, were
shaken out of their slumbers this morning by a report that a solid pocket of gold
had been discovered in a bend of the Stanislaus. In half an hour a motley multi-
tude, covered with crowbars, pickaxes, spades, rifles, and washbowls, went stream-
ing over the hills in the direction of the new deposits
. You would have thought
some fortress was to be stormed, or some citadel sapped.... The most curious
feature in this business is, that out of a regiment of gold-hunters, where the utmost
apparent confusion prevails, the absence of two men should be noticed. But the
motions of every man are watched. Even when he gathers up his traps, takes for-
mal leave, and is professedly bound home, he is tracked for leagues. No disguise
can avail him; the most successful war-stratagem would fail here.
even
.IS
.
IS
Thursday, Nov. 2. Quite a sensation was produced among the gold-diggers
this morning by the arrival of a wagon from Stockton, freighted with provisions
and a barrel of liquor. The former had been getting scarce, and the latter had long
since entirely given out. The prices of the first importation were — flour, two dol-
lars a pound; sugar and coffee, four dollars; and the liquor, which was nothing
more nor less than New England rum, was twenty dollars the quart. But few had
bottles: every species of retainer was resorted to; some took their quart cups, some
their coffee-pots, and others their sauce-pans; while one fellow, who had neither,
offered ten dollars to let him suck with a straw from the bung. All were soon in
every variety of excitement, from prattling exhilaration, to roaring inebriety. Some
shouted, some danced, and some wrestled: a son of Erin [Irishman) poured out his
soul on the beauties of the Emerald isle; a German sung the songs of his father-
land; a Yankee apostrophized the mines, which swelled in the hills around; an
Englishman challenged all the bears in the mountain glens to mortal combat; and
a Spaniard, posted aloft on a beetling crag, addressed the universe.
Wednesday, Nov. 8. Some fifty thousand persons are drifting up and down
these slopes of the great Sierra, of every hue, language, and clime, tumultuous and
238
READING THE AMERICAN PAST
ores; they
into the h
their pres
will conso
its source
there it is
of its div
home
of Gibraltar.
Each
QUESTIC
1. Acco
arrar
confused as a flock of wild geese taking wing at the crack of a gun, or autumnal
leaves strown on the atmospheric tides by the breath of the whirlwind. All are in
quest of gold; and, with eyes dilated to the circle of the moon, rush this way and
that, as some new discovery, or fictitious tale of success may suggest. Some are
ration; some are carrying crowbars; some pickaxes and spades; some wash-bowls
with tents, and some without; some have provisions, and some are on their last
and cradles; some hammers and drills, and powder enough to blow up the rock
maging, ragged multitude, never before roared in the rookeries of man....!
Such a mixed and motley crowd such a restless, roving, rum-
great camping-ground is denoted by the ruins of shovels and shanties, the bleach-
swinging in the wind, from the limb of a tree, overshadowed by the raven.
ing bones of the dead, disinhumed by the wolf, and the skeleton of the culprit, still
Monday, May 14 (1850). Much has been said of the amounts of gold taken
country. As a general fact, this apprehension and alarm is without any sound
from the mines by Sonoranians, Chilians, and Peruvians, and carried out of the
basis. Not one pound of gold in ten, gathered by these foreigners, is shipped off
to their credit: it is spent in the country for provisions, clothing, and in the hazards
of the gaming table. It falls into the hands of those who command the avenues of
hundred Sonoranians, who had not gold enough to buy a month's provisions-
commerce, and ultimately reaches our own mints. I have been in a camp of five
all had gone, through their improvident habits, to the capacious pockets of the
Americans. To drive them out of California, or interdict their operations, is to ab-
indio
hon
2. Hot
ethr
fror
3. To
sys
4. Wa
Mi
your
stract that amount of labor from the mines, and
curtail proportionably the pro-
ceeds. If gold, slumbering in the river banks and mountains of California, be more
valuable to us than when stamped into eagles and incorporated into our national
currency, then drive out the Sonoranians: but if you would have it here and not
there, let those diggers alone. When gold shall begin to fail, or require capital and
machinery, you will want these hardy men to quarry the rocks and feed
stampers; and when you shall plunge into the Cinnabar mountains, you will want
them to sink your shafts and kindle fires under your great quicksilver retorts
.
They will become the hewers of wood and drawers of water to American capital
and enterprise. But if you want to perform this drudgery yourself, drive out the
Sonoranians, and upset that cherished system of political economy founded in a
spirit of wisdom and national justice.
Wor
men
the
tior
Sta
апс
Fai
dre
ti
f
Wednesday, June 20. The causes which exclude slavery from California lie
within a nut-shell. All here are diggers, and free white diggers wont dig with
slaves. They know they must dig themselves: they have come out here for that
purpose, and they wont degrade their calling by associating it with slave-labor:
self-preservation is the first law of nature. They have nothing to do with slavery
in the abstract, or as it exists in other communities; not one in ten cares a button
for its abolition, nor the Wilmot proviso either: all they look at is their own posi-
tion; they must themselves swing the pick, and they wont swing it by the side of
negro slaves. That is their feeling, their determination, and the upshot of the
whole business. An army of half a million, backed by the resources of the United
States, could not shake their purpose. Of all men with whom I have ever met, the
most firm, resolute, and indomitable
, are the emigrants into California. They feel
that they have got into a new world, where they have a right to shape and settle
things in their own way. No mandate, unless it comes like a thunder-bolt straight
out of heaven, is regarded. They walk over hills treasured with the
1
precious
•
•
238
READING THE AMERICAN PAST
ores; they
into the h
their pres
will conso
its source
there it is
of its div
home
of Gibraltar.
Each
QUESTIC
1. Acco
arrar
confused as a flock of wild geese taking wing at the crack of a gun, or autumnal
leaves strown on the atmospheric tides by the breath of the whirlwind. All are in
quest of gold; and, with eyes dilated to the circle of the moon, rush this way and
that, as some new discovery, or fictitious tale of success may suggest. Some are
ration; some are carrying crowbars; some pickaxes and spades; some wash-bowls
with tents, and some without; some have provisions, and some are on their last
and cradles; some hammers and drills, and powder enough to blow up the rock
maging, ragged multitude, never before roared in the rookeries of man....!
Such a mixed and motley crowd such a restless, roving, rum-
great camping-ground is denoted by the ruins of shovels and shanties, the bleach-
swinging in the wind, from the limb of a tree, overshadowed by the raven.
ing bones of the dead, disinhumed by the wolf, and the skeleton of the culprit, still
Monday, May 14 (1850). Much has been said of the amounts of gold taken
country. As a general fact, this apprehension and alarm is without any sound
from the mines by Sonoranians, Chilians, and Peruvians, and carried out of the
basis. Not one pound of gold in ten, gathered by these foreigners, is shipped off
to their credit: it is spent in the country for provisions, clothing, and in the hazards
of the gaming table. It falls into the hands of those who command the avenues of
hundred Sonoranians, who had not gold enough to buy a month's provisions-
commerce, and ultimately reaches our own mints. I have been in a camp of five
all had gone, through their improvident habits, to the capacious pockets of the
Americans. To drive them out of California, or interdict their operations, is to ab-
indio
hon
2. Hot
ethr
fror
3. To
sys
4. Wa
Mi
your
stract that amount of labor from the mines, and
curtail proportionably the pro-
ceeds. If gold, slumbering in the river banks and mountains of California, be more
valuable to us than when stamped into eagles and incorporated into our national
currency, then drive out the Sonoranians: but if you would have it here and not
there, let those diggers alone. When gold shall begin to fail, or require capital and
machinery, you will want these hardy men to quarry the rocks and feed
stampers; and when you shall plunge into the Cinnabar mountains, you will want
them to sink your shafts and kindle fires under your great quicksilver retorts
.
They will become the hewers of wood and drawers of water to American capital
and enterprise. But if you want to perform this drudgery yourself, drive out the
Sonoranians, and upset that cherished system of political economy founded in a
spirit of wisdom and national justice.
Wor
men
the
tior
Sta
апс
Fai
dre
ti
f
Wednesday, June 20. The causes which exclude slavery from California lie
within a nut-shell. All here are diggers, and free white diggers wont dig with
slaves. They know they must dig themselves: they have come out here for that
purpose, and they wont degrade their calling by associating it with slave-labor:
self-preservation is the first law of nature. They have nothing to do with slavery
in the abstract, or as it exists in other communities; not one in ten cares a button
for its abolition, nor the Wilmot proviso either: all they look at is their own posi-
tion; they must themselves swing the pick, and they wont swing it by the side of
negro slaves. That is their feeling, their determination, and the upshot of the
whole business. An army of half a million, backed by the resources of the United
States, could not shake their purpose. Of all men with whom I have ever met, the
most firm, resolute, and indomitable
, are the emigrants into California. They feel
that they have got into a new world, where they have a right to shape and settle
things in their own way. No mandate, unless it comes like a thunder-bolt straight
out of heaven, is regarded. They walk over hills treasured with the
1
precious
•
•
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