Ok, We’re Here, Now What?

After such a long and challenging trip, I can’t imagine that there was one emigrant who hadn’t changed from the person who had left their eastern home. But they made it and now their immediate futures were coming into view. 

Some families were meeting relatives who had arrived earlier so theirs was an easy decision. Others, mostly single men, were members of mining speculation companies, and they were expected to get down to the business of mining to repay the company for their expenses and send their profits back east. 

Some historical accounts talk about men making the journey to California for two reasons: first to get rich quick and the other was to escape the restrictive Eastern culture, especially the societal restraints associated with religion. I’ll go into that topic in another blog.

But others were men who had come just for the adventure of it all. They hoped to fill their pockets with gold nuggets before deciding if they would stay or return to their eastern homes. These fellows had to decide which gold patch to start their future either in the Northern goldfields or the Southern goldfields. The Mokelumne River served as the dividing line between the two. 

The Northern Mines ran along the American River and other tributaries of the Sacramento River. Familiar names like Sutter’s Mill, Placerville, El Dorado and Diamond Springs were a few of the spots. 

On the southern side of the Mokelumne River is where you can find the San Joaquin River flowing north to join the Sacramento River. Its tributaries and the foothills around them made up the Southern mines. Here the camps were Angels Camp, Jamestown, Tuolumne and the town of Sonora. 

From my research, the southern mines were very rough and tumble. When gold was first discovered, the news of it traveled along the west coast and into Mexico, Peru and Chile. It didn’t take long for men from those cultures to get to California and start working the creeks and streams. Dialects of all kinds were common, and the men traveled in groups so whole camps would be from one hometown. 

Of course, this led to tensions when the English-speaking Americans showed up and believed they had more of a right to the gold than the others. Staking a claim was basically planting stakes in the ground and then protecting that space by whatever means necessary. Plenty of men lost their lives while protecting their claims.

It took a while for formal land offices and law enforcement to arrive to protect the legal claims. In the meantime, it was truly the wild west. There are accounts after accounts of vigilante justice ruling the area. Stealing claims that were productive was as simple as killing the owner in a card game and then claiming his space in the creek. If someone was violating the “code”, others would “handle” the situation however they chose.

This isn’t to say that the Northern goldfields didn’t have their problems, I’m sure. But I centered my stories on the Southern goldfields so there is where I did most of my research.

In my next blog, I’ll explore what it was like for men to be forced to discover their domestic side.