Roaring Camp
Page 25
Today they kill blacks like this
before it was Mexicans,
thus they also killed Chileans,
Nicaraguans, Peruvians,
those unrestrained gringos
with their inhuman instincts
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Who disputed their ground
and who challenged them face to face?
It was a Chilean bandit!
It was our Joaquín Murieta!60
Such tales of resistance—stories retold and retooled by each generation, each collectivity—were rooted in the everyday struggles of Gold Rush participants. Those historical struggles, while they have been recounted in wildly disparate ways according to the varied interests of tellers, had in common the pursuit of dominance in the diggings by some Anglo American men and the tacit approval of many others. The will to rule reflected in such conflicts as the Chilean War had as much to do with processes unfolding in cities and villages like Boston, Philadelphia, and Boscawen, New Hampshire, as with anything happening in camps and towns like Mariposa, San Andreas, and Mokelumne Hill. It reflected the transformation underway in the eastern states that entailed industrialization and the commercialization of agriculture, shifts that had a monumental impact on the lives of young men uncertain about how to negotiate the changing economic landscape. Going to California was a deeply individualistic, if also familial, response to the industrial and commercial revolution of the midnineteenth century. As such it was a kind of middle-class project, although, to be sure, many of the men who engaged in the project were at most aspirants to that class status. And many would fail miserably in their desperate attempt to avoid what free-labor advocates saw as the degradation of lifelong wage work. One Ohio man put it this way: “Being a shoemaker, and ambitious to rise somewhat over the bench, it is no wonder that the discovery of gold in California excited my fancy and hopes.” Such men would go to great lengths to protect the object of their dreams. They would be challenged, of course, by other Gold Rush participants caught up in what was ultimately a global economic transformation. What would prove decisive in the diggings, however, was the power of the state to back up the Anglo will to rule.61
The most common means white American men devised to protect California’s gold from the aspirations of other Gold Rush participants was the creation of mining districts with laws barring non–U.S. citizens from the diggings. This is the route John Hovey and James Ayres took at Chilean Gulch in late 1849. A couple of months earlier, “the People of Lower Mocalime Bar” (along the lower Mokelumne River) passed a similar set of resolutions, arguing that when U.S. citizens arrived in California, they found “a large proportion of its mineral resources in the hands of a people who have no right whatever to the soil on which they are trespassing—No interest in the perpetuity or prosperity of our government, and strangers alike to its laws, its language, and its institutions.” The Anglo men thus appointed an alcalde to notify the “foreign population” that they must immediately stop mining and “prepare to leave the country with all convenient dispatch.”62
Sometimes exclusionary practices were more ad hoc. For example, while mining at Mormon Gulch in Tuolumne County during the winter of 1850, the Reverend Daniel Woods noted that his neighbors quite unceremoniously had “driven off a large number of French miners from what is called ‘French Bar.’”63 Another such expulsion involved a more diverse set of miners. William Shaw, who had emigrated from England to Australia in 1848 and then moved on to California in 1849, traveled to the diggings with two other white men and two men of color. The latter included a Chinese man, who had been a crew member on the ship Shaw took from Australia, and a young Malaysian, who Shaw said had been adopted by one of the white men as a child and over whom the white man exercised “paternal controul.” Shaw referred to these two as “followers” whom he and his associates had brought along “thinking they might be useful”; the men of color, in other words, were employed by the white men. Once up in the foothills, Shaw’s party found themselves accused as trespassers by Anglo Americans, who offered a variety of reasons for trying to eject Shaw’s party from the diggings. As Shaw put it, “The presence of our black confederates they made a source of complaint: evidently imagining them to be in a state of slavery or vassalage to us.” Shaw assured them that he “exercised no compulsion over the blacks.” But the white Americans also argued that “coloured men were not privileged to work in a country intended only for American citizens.” And then some among them “were inconsistent enough to ask the Celestial and the Malay to work for them for pay.”64
Shaw went on to explain that over time “this feeling against the coloured races rose to a pitch of exasperation.” Some of the antipathy arose, he thought, because “capitalists” were hiring Chinese, Hawaiian, or native laborers in what he called a “system of monopoly.” “The obligations and agreements entered into” between such employers and workers, Shaw reported, were frequently “cancelled and annulled by the fiat of the vox populi.” At the same time, independent bands of Mexican, Chilean, and, increasingly, Chinese miners were at work in the diggings, and Anglo Americans, “relying on their numerical strength, commenced acts of hostility and aggression on any ‘placer’ inhabited by coloured people, if it were worth appropriating or excited their cupidity.” The results of such appropriations were not hard to predict. As Shaw put it, “retaliations were made, and where might was right, retributions upon unoffending individuals often took place, which were nigh producing a war of race against race.”65
This near “war of race against race” created some unexpected alliances, particularly after April 1850, when the California state legislature imposed a licensing tax of twenty dollars per month on all non–U.S. citizens at work in the diggings.66 Officially, the law was called “An Act for the better regulation of the Mines and the government of foreign miners,” but it was known to most as the foreign miners’ tax (or as one disgruntled French immigrant called it, “the miserable law of 20 piastres”).67 In and around the town of Sonora, response to the tax was especially swift and ultimately decisive. Friedrich Gerstäcker, the German travel writer who published his observations of the Gold Rush soon after his sojourn in California, called what happened in Tuolumne County the “French Revolution,” though the uprising against the foreign miners’ tax included not only French but Mexican and Chilean miners and some Germans as well.68 Anglo American merchants in Sonora (indeed, throughout the Southern Mines and the supply town of Stockton) rallied in opposition too. Other merchants, such as the Canadian-born William Perkins, joined them, since all faced tremendous business losses as a direct result of the tax.
Although the foreign miners’ tax was approved April 13, 1850, and its text printed in California newspapers within the following two weeks, it was not until May that organized resistance began. When the tax collector, Lorenzo A. Besançon, arrived in Tuolumne County to begin his appointed duties, Mexican, Chilean, and French miners gathered outside of Sonora, responding to notices posted throughout the town and the nearby American Camp (soon to become the town of Columbia).69 To date, no Mexican, Chilean, or French accounts of these cross-ethnic meetings have been uncovered, though Anglo newspaper stories abound and Gerstäcker’s fanciful tale of “Die französische Revolution” provides a non-Anglo counternarrative. (Gerstäcker’s account seems particularly fanciful because it recounts verbatim conversations to which he was unlikely to have been party.) The Stockton Times reported that some had seen Chilean, Mexican, and French flags hoisted in defiance where miners gathered at the ironically named American Camp. Gerstäcker recounted a different meeting at Murphys New Diggings, where German miners were also in attendance, Alsatians prominent among them, and Basques among the French.70
All were dismayed by the new tax. As one Sonora correspondent to the Stockton Times (who signed himself “Leo” but was actually the merchant William Perkins) explained, the miners insisted “that it was impossible that such an am
ount could be paid; . . . a great many diggers hardly getting more gold than sufficed for a mere livelihood.”71 Out of these assemblies came delegations sent to authorities in Sonora “to ascertain if any action of the Governor could arrest the consummation of the contemplated taxation.” The delegates memorialized the governor, complaining that the tax would lay waste to all of their hopes, not to mention all commerce in the Southern Mines. Leo translated a bit of the memorial for the Stockton Times to demonstrate how reasonable the petitioners were:
Without doubting for a moment the power of the present government to make a difference between American citizens and those of other countries, we humbly draw your excellency’s attention to the fact that it is altogether contrary to the institutions of the free Republic of the United States, to make such a difference as amounts in reality to a prohibition of labor. Without assuming any tone other than that of the deepest respect for the government under which we live and are protected, we beg humbly to suggest to your excellency that a larger state income could be raised, and that too, without causing the slightest dissatisfaction, by the imposition of four or five dollars per month, instead of the large sum of twenty.72
For some, however, reasonable petitions did not suffice to express their indignation. Nor did all Anglo Americans and their allies respond to Spanish- and French-speaking people’s protests with as much sympathy as Leo, or William Perkins, who wasted not a day in pronouncing the tax “illegal, unjust, abortive and extremely prejudicial to the best interests of the state.”73
Accounts of what occurred on Sunday, May 19, 1850, are vague and sometimes contradictory, but they suggest that the delegates sent into Sonora to reason with authorities were backed up by three to five thousand French, Chileans, and Mexicans. Perkins placed these men outside the town of Sonora, while another correspondent indicated that at least some of that number “proceeded tumultuously into town, sweeping through the streets, boasting of their strength, and threatening in many instances to burn the town that night.” Writing his reminiscences years later, Benjamin Butler Harris suggested that the “turbulent convention” of “foreigners” itself took place in Sonora and was dominated by a French man, Casimir Labetoure—who, as it happens, was Perkins’s next-door neighbor, a fellow merchant, and a member of the Sonora town council. Harris recalled that Labetoure “made a ‘liberty or death’ speech in both French and Spanish in which he encouraged the Mexicans with the averment that the foreigners on the Coast largely outnumbered the Americans, that the Americans here could not fight like those of the Mexican War, being servile peons sent here by their masters to delve in the mines.”74 Nevertheless, none of the accounts reported any violence, save an incident, seemingly unrelated to the revolt, in which a Mexican man resisted arrest. Perkins claimed that another Mexican drew a knife to protest the arrest and that yet another bystander, presumably Anglo, interceded, wounding the armed Mexican man severely with a bowie knife (the Mexican later died). Harris, on the other hand, recalled that it was the deputy sheriff himself who had “cut off with a bowie knife the head of a Mexican who, with drawn pistol, had resisted arrest under a warrant.”75
Whatever happened, a Mexican seems to have died at the hands of an Anglo, which must have added to the tension seething in Sonora.
Meanwhile, Anglos and their allies sent messengers out to the surrounding camps, drawing in hundreds of armed miners, who, according to Perkins, “marched through the streets with guns and rifles on their shoulders.” The Mexicans, French, and Chileans seem to have left Sonora, regrouping at American Camp, where they raised their flags and considered their options. Incensed, armed Anglos swept into the camp the following morning “to avenge the insult.” One correspondent insisted that when the Americans arrived, “they found all things in order.” But Harris recalled that the Anglos marched in just as “the foreigners, with streamers, banners, and flags, were parading the streets . . . preceded by a naked Indian daubed in war paint, all singing the Marseillaise and other Revolutionary Songs.” Along with the report that Labetoure denounced Anglo miners as peons, Harris’s description of this demonstration suggests that the language of free labor and the rhetoric of revolution could easily be tapped once tensions surfaced in the mines. Another observer, however, described no such dramatic encounter and maintained instead that the Anglo warriors “liquored up” once they reached the quiet camp and sat down en masse to a banquet served up at the principal hotel. All agreed that no battle ensued, though Harris was sure that the Anglos had intimidated the French- and Spanish-speaking miners into retreat, and the protesters’ flags, now full of bullet holes, were replaced by the Stars and Stripes.76
Gerstäcker reported that, in the meantime, the French, Germans, and “Spaniards” at nearby Murphys New Diggings got word that two French men and a German had been arrested at Sonora while protesting the tax, and that the sheriff there had “been killed with a knife by a Spaniard.” In response, a crowd of French-, German-, and Spanish-speaking miners gathered, “each talking in his own language” (occasionally resorting to English to make themselves understood), and decided to march into Sonora in defense of their compatriots. Among them was a particularly eager soldier, a woman who worked the gaming tables and habitually dressed in pants and a short jacket, “sporting a felt cap clapped jauntily on the side of her head.” On this day, she tied a red ribbon around the hat, mounted her horse, and urged a few of the more reluctant (and inebriated) men to join her. Some of the men hung back, but a Madame Louis—herself already clad in “dark colored pantaloons, a red woolen shirt, a large felt sombrero over one ear”—leaped into her saddle, her less enthusiastic husband, Monsieur Louis, falling in behind. “Here were our two Amazons,” Gerstäcker exclaimed, “galloping, laughing, and singing as they went.”77 It took a German observer to recognize, or perhaps to produce, the revolutionary panache of these French women’s attire.
As it turned out, when the soldiers arrived in Sonora, they learned that the report about the imprisoned men and the murdered sheriff was false: “The whole affair was merely an extravagant story that had had as its consequences the embroiling of the Americans with the foreigners.”78 An extravagant story indeed, but a story that had a particular resonance for certain Gold Rush participants. It was not hard for French-, Spanish-, and German-speaking miners to believe that Anglo Americans had thrown their compatriots in jail without just cause, or that one of their own might have become so enraged at discriminatory treatment that he would have stabbed a sheriff. Even lies tell truths. Likewise, it was not hard for readers of Gerstäcker’s tale to imagine that French women in the mines had donned pants, shirts, jackets, caps, and even Mexican sombreros, given the perceived blurring of gender and ethnic boundaries that the Gold Rush entailed. Of course, part of this blurring recalled the European revolutions of 1848, but it took on new meanings during the Gold Rush. Hardly a contest in the diggings narrated by participants or observers lacked its cross-gender, cross-racial component, whether it was a fiery French orator denouncing Anglos as peons to a Mexican audience or an “unhappy husband” searching for his “gentle better-half” among a bunch of red-shirted miners. In the latter case, when camped for the night en route to Sonora, Monsieur Louis had to survey closely each face among his party “until at last he discovered Madame, stretched under a tree at the side of her friend.” In true Gold Rush fashion, that is, “without regard for the rights of the first occupants,” Monsieur Louis “chose as his place of repose the space between the two fair ladies.”79
William Perkins, as Leo, seems to have heard about Madame Louis and her comrades, as he noted that “a large body of Frenchmen under arms” had arrived in Sonora, having received word that “the French inhabitants were in danger of their lives.” When they realized the report was false, “they peaceably dispersed.” In fact, a good number of French- and Spanish-speaking miners not only dispersed during the “French Revolution”; they left the Southern Mines altogether. One Anglo who had swept into American Camp with his compatri
ots, for example, noted the “scene of confusion and terror” that marked the men’s march: “Mexicans, Chilenos, et id genus omne—men, women and children—were packing up and removing.” In retrospect, this participant wondered, “What could have been the object of our assembly, except as a demonstration of power and determination, I know not; but if intended as an engine of terror, it certainly had the desired effect.” At the time of these events, however, most Anglos and their allies who worried about the effect of the tax had more practical concerns. Leo had warned in his very first letter to the Stockton Times about the antitax uprising in Sonora: “This state of affairs, if allowed to last, will ruin the prosperity of the whole southern mines, and your own town of Stockton will be the first to suffer thereby.” It took only a week for the Stockton Times editors to offer their wholehearted agreement. On June 1, the newspapermen noted, “As we expected, the collection of the new tax is producing a ruinous effect upon the traders in the southern mines. Business, in many places, is at a complete stand still; confidence is shaken; there exists a universal feeling of distrust among the miners; man is set against man.”80