by Richard Bergeon

On February 2, 1848 the first ship with Chinese emigrants arrived in San Francisco. These were mostly peasants fleeing from a decade of crop failures and unemployment that followed the end of the first “Opium War.” A month earlier gold had been discovered at Sutter's Mill. They were soon seeking their fortune in California's gold country. In 1850 only about 500 immigrants, out of the nearly 57,800, arriving in California were Chinese. By 1851 the number of Chinese had grown to over 3000. In 1852 the number of Chinese reached 11,794, but it appears that only 7 were women. Many came from Canton (Kwangtung) province where civil war, floods, droughts, typhoons and other disasters repeatedly plagued the countryside.

Shipping agents in Hong Kong and Canton lured them with flyers describing California as Gum San, "Gold Mountain," and offered passage for $30 to $125. In the first year of the gold rush one thousand crossed the Pacific; four years later there would be over twenty thousand coming each year. According to the Museum of the City of San Francisco, by 1876 there were 151,000 Chinese in the United States, of whom 116,000 were living in the state of California.

The trip to what was soon called "Gold Mountain" was hardly a vacation cruise. Most traveled on open decks or were assigned to births that were only 6 ft. by 1 ft. boards that were stacked several high below decks.  Deaths were frequent. Sometimes 10, 20 or more percent of the passengers died on the trip from either disease or malnutrition.

The Chinese, a few East Indians, Malays and South Sea Islanders  were at first welcomed because they did all the work that the Americans and European immigrants refused to do, and they did for little pay. They were invited to official functions and praised for their work quality.

San Francisco's Chinese merchants organized the arriving Asians into companies. They provided supplies and transportation to the diggings. Working in bands of fifty or more, they sought "placer gold" - loose flakes and pebbles - from sites Americans had given up as played out--those often yielding a return of only one or two dollars per day per laborer. The Americans often quickly lost interest in claims that did not return as little as $16 to $100 dollars per workday.

Ignorant of territorial laws, Californian Military Governor John Mason decided that any foreigners who worked in the mines were trespassers. In fact, all the miners were trespassers since they had no legal right to possess or work the land. Mason created the first Foreign Miners License levying each non-citizen $20 per month to work in the mines.

The Chinese were rarely permanent settlers. Most saved from $800 to $1,000 and then returned home. Often they took gold out of the country disguised as blackened cooking pots or tools and utensils. To lower the quantity of exported gold, and balance the national trade, the Federal Government passed an act in 1852. The act required everyone to register to become a licensed miner before they started mining. The law, aimed mostly at the Chinese miners, was to increase the State's revenue. It required every foreign miner who did not choose to become a U.S. citizen to pay another $3 to the state every month.

Despite prevalent racism, many US citizens (particularly merchants) supported the foreigners, but the lines between the ethnic groups were harshly drawn and violence became common. The Chinese performance labor for wages was counter to the local ideology of free labor and was used to incite discrimination against them.

The cost of living went wild in gold country. It is reported that some miners shipped their clothes to China to have it washed. Americans newcomers, not as well organized as the Chinese, were often left to go hungry as Chinese took jobs for lower wages. New ore veins were opened, and European miners grew angry as the Chinese became rich while they grew poorer. The governor started calling the Chinese greedy “coolies.” Many camps decided to expel the Chinese, along with the Native and Latin Americans. Many were chased out by vigilante violence. By 1852, white miners had driven hundreds of Chinese from Columbia, Yuba City, Horseshoe Bar, Mormon Bar, and other places. Chinese at Mokelumne Hill, in Calaveras County, paid $70,000 in 1856 for mining rights and “protection.”

Huge taxes discouraged them, but the Chinese managed to pay the levies and gathered as much gold, silver and other metal ores as they could. Many found it more lucrative, and safer, to become cooks, cigar makers, restauranteurs, vegetable farmers and merchants.  (The first Chinese laundry opened in San Francisco, or as the Chinese called it--"Dai Fow" (Big City), in 1851.) Everyone was usually too busy hunting gold to organize basic services, and the need for social order became overwhelming. Fires repeatedly wiped out towns. Water supply and sanitation became scandalous problems - sickness was constant. From 1851 onwards, the Chinese organized their own district associations to handle disputes, take responsibility for the care of the sick, and bury the dead.

Other problems faced the Chinese. Worthless claims were sometimes made to appear otherwise by sprinkling around a little gold dust to show prospective buyers - called “salting.” Hubert Burgess wrote, in Anecdotes of the Mines, about one salting episode in 1851. Miners digging near Columbia struck out while some Chinese mining nearby were turning up plenty of gold. Hoping to sell their worthless claim they decided to try to trick the Chinese into buying it.

Since the Chinese miners always looked for evidence of gold before buying a claim, they needed to be tricked. One of the miners killed a large gopher snake and put it into a bag. The next day, when the Chinese miners were to make their inspection, the snake was planted closeby. One of the sellers opened fire with his shotgun, pretending to kill the snake, blasted "salt" into the ground.

The Chinese washed several pans of dirt in a nearby stream. The sellers were sure the Chinese had found some of the salted gold because, when the bargaining was done, the Chinese had paid the full price. Two days later the sellers went on to new digs. Little did they know that the claim would soon become one of the richest in the district. The Chinese made themselves rich and went home. The "worthless" claim simply hadn't been worked deep enough--a fact that the Chinese had discovered during the inspection.

An interessting footnote to the time is that when employment in mining, railroad building and timbering was later closed to Chinese, they turned to manufacturing. This led directly to the industrialization of California.

Check out the following websites that were marvelous resources for this article.

http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch405/IUP/goldMining.html
http://www.pbs.org/goldrush/collision.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbrush.html
http://www.ustrek.org/odyssey/semester1/102800/102800irenegoldrush.html
http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/fever13-ch.html
http:// www.historichwy49.com/ethnic/chinese.html
http://www.maritimeheritage.org/newtale/chinese.html
http://www.ncgold.com/History/BecomingCA_Archive43.html  
http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03asians.html  
http://www.calliope.org/gold/gold2.html  

Finding Gold Mountain took Courage

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