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| Placer Gold / South Yuba |
“After love, the worst fixation is gold.” –
Isabel Allende
Few topics in
California history have generated more uninformed and romanticized fiction than
the gold rush. It was a colorful and short-lived
event that intensified the voracious arrogance of extractive industries and set a tone that continues into
the present. Prior to the
discovery of gold in California international expeditionary ventures were
designed to funnel wealth to royalty. But between 1848 and 1851, when everyone had an equal chance
to get rich, the camaraderie and sense of adventure must have been
exhilarating. In actual fact it was
never really equal in the goldfields even if a lawyer from Vermont might find
himself working alongside a cobbler from Virginia. They might get equally sunburned or muddy,
but ultimately a man was “measured by his pile.” Social stratification might have relaxed
somewhat, but racism never did. The Indians
were generally considered subhuman and were disregarded and cheated continually,
while Hispanics and Chinese were singled out for a Foreign Miner’s Tax. Reading mid-19th century letters,
journals and reminiscences reveals a prejudice toward “the other” be they
Kanaka, Italian, Jewish or Missourian.
Americans,
Europeans and Asians, among others, flocked to California to find gold. Few did, but in the process California was
repopulated with adventurous young men from all over the world, most of them
Americans. In the early years there were
relatively few women, but for those who dared there were exceptional entrepreneurial
opportunities. In the prevailing
settlement pattern families of settlers, or “pioneers”, moved into regions already
populated with indigenous people where they attempted to introduce agriculture
and Christianity. But the gold rush was
an adventure unlike any other – Historian Ronald H. Limbaugh writes, “With a
two-thirds majority and an ethnocentric chip on their shoulders, Americans at
mid-century imposed on California the mainstream values of a highly
materialistic, expansionist, overly optimistic society.”
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| Rose Bar and Timbuctoo Bend / Lower Yuba |
GOLD
ON THE YUBA
In
June of 1848 Jonas Spect and an Indian guide found placer gold on the Yuba
River “just above Timbuctoo Ravine.” Placer
is a Spanish word for gold weathered from its host rock and redistributed by
the action of water in streambeds, gravel bars, stream banks and alluvial fans.
Where
did the gold found in the Yuba and Bear Rivers originate? One source is lode gold, where gold is
embedded in hard rock (often quartz), in veins or in fine particles and
occasionally pockets. After millions of years of weathering,
upheaval and the action of water, gold becomes exposed and erodes from its
source. Eventually it enters drainages,
creeks and rivers where it moves downstream.
Another source of gold is the ancient Yuba River that ran to the
south-southwest about 60 million years ago, long before the Sierra Nevada
existed. This geologic period is known
as the Tertiary. When the mountain range
uplifted streams began flowing generally westward and in the process they
eroded segments of the ancient Yuba. In
the process placer gold from the tertiary river gravels was distributed in the
beds, banks and gravel bars of the present-day streams where it became the
impetus for the gold rush. Fortunately,
this type of gold was easy to mine because, with the exception of some miners from
Mexico, Chile, Peru and southern Appalachia, they were all amateurs.
Before the gold
miners got busy many streamside environments were relatively flat shaded areas
where the indigenous Nisenan enjoyed a variety of plant foods, basketry
materials and good fishing. It’s easy to
imagine these seasonal camps used from four to six months a year, especially at
lower elevations. Where there was high
ground there were often year-round settlements.
William A. Jackson’s 1849 Map of
the Mining District of California depicts 20 village sites on the lower
Yuba and 15 on the Bear, and this is a very cursory map. Appropriation by gold miners effectively eliminated
these locations from the Nisenan’s seasonal rounds. In a three-year period, this nourishing and
revitalizing element of Nisenan life was appropriated, privatized and
destroyed.
Nothing could have
prepared the Nisenan for the gold rush. To
the Euro-American gold seeker the Nisenan appeared inferior. After all, they didn’t cultivate the soil for
crops and pasture, they didn’t even realize that gold had value. If gold was found at a traditional fishing
camp the native people were shoved aside, sometimes violently. Elimination of the salmon run was devastating
to the Nisenan and the biosphere – imagine the nutrient load of all those live
and decomposing fish and the benefits it provided to plants and animals. Stream side gravel deposits and even the beds
of the Yuba and Bear Rivers were intensively mined between 1848 and 1858
leaving behind an industrial landscape with nothing left but tailings and mud
puddles.
Gold was
originally mined by crevassing with knives, spoons, shovels, picks and levers. Once mined, the basic
principal for recovering placer gold was gravity separation. Gold is heavy, about 19 times heavier than
water, and tends to move downstream following the path of least
resistance. Eventually, after much
battering by tumultuous water in rocky beds the free gold breaks up, becoming
finer and finer as it moves away from its source.
Placer gold could be separated from sand and
gravel by panning with a swirling motion.
Miners from Georgia introduced the metal “American pan” while Latin
American miners used a wooden bowl called a “batea”. When Indians were introduced to placer mining
they used their tightly woven baskets.
Panning was never productive but it was a good tool for prospecting and
it’s still used today, mostly by recreational miners.
INDIANS AS
MINERS
In 1848-1849
Indians were used as laborers in the placer mines; some estimates claim that
they were at least half of the workers.
Men with Mexican Land Grants, such as Johnson, Cordua, Sicard, Sutter
and Rose, on the Yuba alone, inherited an existing system of patronage that was
established in the Spanish era. To the
Rancho owners the local Indians were part of the deal, their labor was
expected, although it may not have been seen in such black and white terms by
the Indians. They still left their
“jobs” when the clover and pine nuts were abundant and may have seen their role
more like pitching in to help the curious new settlers. A lot depended on the nature of el jefe.
In Cordua’s memoirs he appears to be somewhat lenient and showed some
interest in Nisenan culture but this was not the case with Sutter who had
strict rules for his laborers and enforced them by intimidation.
The often-repeated
cliché that the Indians traded “a cup of beads for a cup of gold” may, or may not,
have been true in some places but it begs the question, “What has value?” Just before the gold rush hides were the most
valued commodity in California. If the
Nisenan had no use for shiny metal but were fascinated by beads, knives, cotton
cloth, beef, alcohol, sugar and military uniforms, among other things, it is surely
their right to trade labor for goods. In
1848 the Indians far outnumbered the miners and continued to live in a
traditional manner which satisfied their basic needs. It’s instructive to examine a list of trade
goods to see how little, if any, of the items were essential – through trade, unheard
of indulgences become available. People
want what they don’t have (or need) often for prestige. Pre-contact Nisenan traded flicker feathers,
woodpecker scalps, furs and black oak acorns for olivella and abalone shells
from the coast. Deliberate attempts by
miners and merchants to deceive and cheat the native population was endemic.
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| River Mining with Indian and White Miners (Disputed Location and Unknown Photographer)
By 1849 the Nisenan,
by now practiced at mining, realized that gold had symbolic value and could be
traded for exotic and “high-end” goods.
No one knew the landscape better than the natives so naturally enough
they went searching for it themselves.
In response trading posts appeared where there were large Indian
populations –places like Empire Ranch, Pleasant Valley, Cordua Bar, Jones Bar,
Nevada City and Newtown. To trade with
Whites they had to quickly master arithmetic and make calculations learned by
paying attention to former transactions and by making keen observations about
the integrity of traders. Then came the
Camp Union Treaty of 1851 which attempted to confine the Nisenan to a
reservation where their rights were not protected, promised goods were never delivered
and they were denied the right to own a mining claim.
EVOLVING TECHNOLOGIES
Each new tool, or “appliance”, used for gold
recovery processed more volume than the one it succeeded. They were, in order of appearance, the pan,
the rocker, the long-tom and the sluice. All of
these tools and techniques were previously tested in Georgia’s 1829 gold rush.
In 1848 the rocker
was introduced in Coloma. It was easy to
construct, it was portable and it washed a greater volume of gravel than a
pan. First used during the winter of
1849-1850, the long tom was a definite improvement. It featured a 10-to-20-foot trough, was a
foot wide and fitted with a sheet of perforated metal. Underneath the metal sheet was located the
“riffle box.” Typically the long tom
employed at least two men to shovel soil, rocks, and gravel into the top and a
man to stir it. However it
required a continuous flow of water brought by hose or pipe, but more
efficiently by ditch or flume. The first
mining ditches in gold country were most likely built to supply long toms.
When dams and flumes were used
to transport the water essential for gravel
mining to the claims, miners
formed themselves into joint-stock “companies” of five to twenty men to pool
labor, share expenses and presumably proceeds. In 1851 the long-toms at Cherokee were
supplied by the fourteen-mile long Grizzly Ditch, which originated on Bloody
Run Creek. Prior to the invention of
hydraulic mining in 1853, Cherokee was the mining center of San Juan Ridge.
The sluice was actually an ancient
device used by the Romans and by 16th century Germans and introduced
to California by miners from Appalachia.
Even today, at the end of every placer mining process, is a sluice or a
variation thereof. In its classic form it’s
simply a set of nesting rectangular boxes (12’-14’ long) set on a grade containing
riffles to trap gold by taking advantage of its great weight. Quicksilver, or Mercury (Hg), was added to the
sluice to aid in the recovery of fine gold. Big hydraulic mines used sluices that could be
hundreds or thousands of feet long. In
the 1870s there were sluices extending for miles along Greenhorn Creek, a
tributary of Bear River.
All the above
appliances were used for recovery and worked just fine when gold was easy to
locate. As gold became more elusive with
more people searching for it more deliberate mining methods were necessary.
MINING GRAVEL
In the early years
“sinking shafts” and “running tunnels” involved excavation. The gravel closest to bedrock had the highest
yield but the excavations were seldom “timbered” resulting in frequent
cave-ins. Another common practice was ground
sluicing, which is nothing more than amplifying erosion. While it rained miners would locate or dig a
ravine and tear down its banks hoping to capture gold in the bottom with
riffles of large flat rocks or boards.
The whole process was enhanced when water was brought to the claim by
ditches, flumes, stovepipe and hoses. Ground
sluicing was the immediate predecessor of hydraulic mining.
Once the
gravel bars and banks were exhausted the streambed was mined using a process
called “river mining” or “turning the river.”
Using dams, ditches,
tunnels and mostly flumes the miners
diverted streams from their native beds to expose boulder and gravels where
gold may have been deposited.
Construction took place in the dry season only to be swept away by the
first substantial winter rain. The goal
was, of course, to get at the stream bed before the rains.
The Canal Mining
Company, located at Saw Mill Bar on the Yuba River, “… was formed for the
purpose of draining the river.” Here,
31 men in five days in September of 1850,
“took out” $15,898. This is where State
Highway 20 crosses the Yuba today. On June
18, 1853, the Sacramento Weekly Union
reported that nearly 25 miles of the Yuba was “turned aside” in 1852 at a cost
of $3,000,000.
By 1857 the
lower Yuba was rapidly becoming a ravaged landscape and most miners were
working for the same daily wage that they were when they left home. Only a relative few enjoyed a “bonanza” but
almost every one of the thousands of hopefuls that mined the Yuba River
believed that it was a possibility.
(artist unknown)
Before 1851 the massive
scale of surface placer deposits gave practically anyone a chance to mine
without the necessity of elaborate equipment or experience. As their returns dwindled impatient miners mounted prospecting expeditions to higher
elevations where they discovered more “deep gravels.” Later on these deposits were more commonly
known as “Tertiary gravels”, the auriferous remnants of ancient river systems. Joint stock companies were becoming
commonplace as California gold mining was transitioning from an adventure to a
business venture. By 1852, the year of highest yield, the
gold rush was over for amateurs. There
was less easily obtainable placer gold and far more miners looking for it. Gold miners saw their daily income drop from
$20 a day in 1848, and $16 a day in 1849, to $8 a day in 1851. By 1851, the miner was either a hired hand or
he was a member of a company of miners who worked for shares.
DISSILLUSIONMENT
In 1858, tailings from
upstream hydraulic mines were starting to cover the earlier gold rush claims
and miners were making about $4 a day. They were becoming disheartened when news of a
gold strike on the Fraser River in British Columbia in 1858, and a silver
strike in what would become Nevada in 1859, prompted a third of the men in
Nevada County to flee to these regions in search of another boom.
As mining
corporations proliferated in California during the early 1850s, a new pattern
of economic power emerged. Direct
individual control over investment capital was displaced by indirect control
and loss of decision-making power, as the power of corporate insiders expanded.
Here at home we can see this process playing
out today where local marijuana growers, who have played an important role in
the local economy for the past 40 years, are being ignored in favor of large,
well-funded outside interests.
In addition to
the destruction caused by mining there were ancillary impacts. They included lumbering and the development
of large cattle ranches to feed the mining population which resulted in the
destruction of ground cover and serious degradation to water quality. Raymond
Dassman, an eminent field biologist who helped shape the environmental movement
observed, “There was no obvious concern for the environment. Anything that
stood in the way of the gold seeker was pushed aside or destroyed, whether a
grizzly bear or a mountain.” The gold rush brought mass
migrations of people, planned impermanence, and extreme landscape changes to
the Yuba River watershed.
Prospect of a Pot of Gold on San Juan Ridge
This is an
admittedly very brief look at the
gold rush, for a more extensive introduction I recommend: A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush
California. James J. Rawls and Richard J. Orsi, Editors.
There are three important
omissions in this peek at the gold rush: One is the Chinese immigration of 1852
and the subsequent Foreign Miner’s Tax, another is the introduction of
Hydraulic Mining in 1853 and finally the discovery of gold in Quartz in Grass
Valley in 1850. All of these topics are
important and will be addressed separately in future posts.
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