USA > California > A history of California: the American period > Part 24
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But among all the violators of the law, the highwayman was most distinguished in the days of '49. No mining camp or stage coach but had its experience, frequently ending in tragedy, with this enemy to society. Much romance has been written about him, most of which is sentimental rot. For the average highwayman of that day was like his successor of today. He was brutal, callous, and anything but sportsmanlike. He took his victims un- aware, and often shot them down in cold blood for the pure delight of murder. Sometimes he worked alone, but more often in company with a few debased villains like himself.
Occasionally these criminals were brought together by some conspicuously able leader into a highly organized, effective company, whose depredations terrorized the whole mining area. The most notorious of these gangs was that led by Joaquin Murietta. The operations of Murietta and his cut-throat followers extended at one time or another almost from Siskiyou to San Diego. Other bands, like that led by Reelfoot Williams in the neighborhood of Downieville, confined their attentions to a more restricted district.
Suspected criminals, at least in the more settled com- munities, were nearly always given what, under the circum- stances, must be regarded as a fair trial. The most extreme
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form of lynch law, however, sometimes prevailed in newly established camps, especially in those cases where Chinamen or other foreigners were involved. But generally speaking, even here the offender was tried by judge and jury and punished according to established custom. Hanging was the recognized punishment for serious offenses, such as murder and robbery. Once the criminal had been declared guilty, justice knew no delays and was commonly meted out within a few hours. Nor is there any record of a plea of emotional insanity having saved a murderer's neck in the primitive days of '49.
Minor offenses were punished with whipping and exile; or sometimes even by death. Yet in spite of the salutary effects of these self-constituted courts (and conditions would have been intolerable without them, even though they had their defects), lawlessness each year became an ever more serious problem in the mines, as indeed it was through- out the entire state. Delano wrote in his Life on the Plains that robbery and murder were of daily occurrence in 1851, and that organized bands of thieves existed both in the towns and mountains. The writer of the "Shirley Letters " -as delightful literature, it may be remarked, as ever came out of the mining regions-found that social life had deterio- rated so seriously by 1852 that within the short space of three weeks, her own little community of Rich Bar had witnessed "murders, fearful accidents, bloody deaths, a mob, whippings, a hanging, an attempt at suicide, and a fatal duel."
The truth is that all California, the mining regions, as well as every other section, was compelled to fight out the old battle between law and disorder which every frontier society has had to face. The rapid increase of population, the many attractions held out to the lawless element of every land, the weakness of regular government institu- tions, and the large size of the state over which these institu- tions were supposed to spread, all made the problem in California one of peculiar difficulty. Yet, all things con- sidered, life and property were probably as secure in the
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mining regions during these uncertain years as anywhere else in the state. Certainly, lawlessness was not the ex- clusive prerogative of the gold seeker. Rivals in the cities and cattle sections broke down his monopoly.
For dealing with questions of boundaries, rival claims, and such matters, each mining camp established its own customs. Ordinarily there were definite local regulations covering these points, which were written into a sort of code. These were enforced by a committee of the miners, acting through a president and secretary; while disputes were decided by a jury. The following articles, enacted by the miners of Jackass Gulch on October 16, 1852, will serve to show the nature of these local regulations, which for several years constituted the only mining law the mountain regions knew. It may be remarked, parenthetically, that Jackass Gulch, five miles north of Sonora, was one of the richest camps in California and for several years enjoyed great notoriety. Here many a lucky miner struck a bonanza that yielded him a fortune in a few hours. The regulations read thus:
ARTICLE I
Each and every person shall be entitled to one claim by virtue of occupation, the same not to exceed one hundred feet square.
ARTICLE II
To hold any claim or claims by virtue of purchase, the same must be in good faith and under a bona fide bill of sale, certified to as to the genuiness of the signature and the consideration given by two disinterested persons.
ARTICLE III
Any question arising under article II shall be decided on appli- cation of either party by a jury of 5 members.
ARTICLE IV
Any claim located on any gulch may be held by putting up notices, with the names of the parties thereon, and renewing the same every ten days till water can be had.3
3 In most cases a pick or shovel left in the workings was sufficient to hold a claim.
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ARTICLE V
Any claim upon which there is sufficiency of water to be worked in the usual manner, if not worked for the space of five days shall be forfeited, unless provided the party interested is prevented from working by sickness or other good and sufficient cause.
ARTICLE VI
These Rules and By-Laws shall extend over Jackass and Soldier Gulches and their tributaries.
CHARLES GIBSON,
President
JAS. CORNIFF, Secretary
One of the most fertile causes of trouble in the mining regions was the question of water rights. In many of the dry diggings, water could be obtained only by constructing costly wooden flumes or open ditches; and not infrequently companies were formed to undertake this work, finding their profit in the sale of water to the various claims. The main ditch or flume, upon reaching the diggings, was divided into as many smaller streams as it could adequately supply, and these in turn were made to serve two or three Long Toms apiece. From four to ten per cent of the gold secured by the miners went to pay these water charges, so that the profits of the ditch companies were generally very large. The company supplying Timbuctoo, for example, paid annual dividends of 40% on an investment of $600,000. In this case the ditch through which the water flowed was thirty-five miles long.
The dependence of the miners upon such companies for the water, without which operations were impossible, the rival claims for stream rights, the question of prior use, and a score of similar issues, made water almost as much a source of wrangling and bloodshed as the gold itself. To settle these disputes, the state at last built up a most elabor- ate riparian code, which became much more complex when the long, bitter struggle began over the use of streams for irrigation purposes. But in the hectic days of California's
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youth, the question of water ownership and use was gen- erally settled by force rather than by legal technicalities.
The foreign element in the mines was also the cause of a vast amount of trouble. In the great rush of 1848 and 1849, almost as many vessels came from foreign ports as from the United States. Japan seems to have been practically the only country of importance not represented in the heterogeneous population that crowded into the Sierras; and before many months, racial antagonism began to appear in various forms. As early as January, 1849, General Persifor F. Smith, who was then at Panama enroute to California to take command of the United States forces, urged that all non-citizens, who sought to mine on the public domain, should be treated as trespassers. But his efforts failed, and the foreign influx still continued.
Generally speaking, persons of European birth were not regarded as aliens by the American miners.4 Indeed, if one omits the Indians, the only foreigners against whom real prejudice existed were Mexicans (or Hispanic Americans generally) and the Chinese. The former were very numerous, coming into California by the thousands overland from Mexico, and by sea from every country of Central and South America. The states of Chihuahua and Sonora were especially well represented in this migration, and the fame of the latter still lingers in the name of one of the most important of mining towns.
These Hispanic Americans, whether from Chili, Peru, Mexico, or any other country south of the Rio Grande, were skilled miners and trained for generations in a business with which most of the American immigrants were exper- imenting for the first time. Many of them were decent and law-abiding enough; but without prejudice, it must be ad- mitted that a considerable portion belonged to a class ranked as undesirable even in the countries from which they came. They were inveterate gamblers and utterly reckless when intoxicated. Robbery and murder were common enough
4 The French miner, however, was not very popular in most Anglo-Saxon camps.
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with them before they came to California; and the new environment furnished both cause and opportunity for carrying on these crimes on a larger scale. From them came many of the most desperate criminals of the mining days; and as a natural consequence, the cruelest and most treacherous deeds were always laid at their door.
In addition to the evils for which the Hispanic Americans were actually responsible, the old anti-Spanish prejudice of the southwest also worked against them in California. Frequently this antipathy was mutual, resulting in a small race war, accompanied by much bloodshed. More often, however, race prejudice, stimulated by the helplessness of the victims, led the rougher element of a mining camp, many of whom were quite likely to be foreigners themselves, to seize the claims which Mexicans or Chilians had opened up, and drive the latter away from the community, with- out resorting to actual bloodshed, unless the dispossessed owners were foolish enough to resist such high handed acts of justice. Later on, many mining camps passed laws like that enacted at the El Dorado Branch House, "that no Asiatic, Mexican, or South American shall hold a claim in our mines."
From a political standpoint, this feeling against the Mexican miners and their kindred, culminated in the famous Foreign Miner's Tax Law of the first California legisla- ture. The chief feature of this statute was a monthly tax of twenty dollars upon each foreigner engaged in mining. This was collected under a system of licenses, and forced many foreigners to abandon claims of their own to work for day wages. Others refused to pay the fee, forcibly resisting the officials sent to collect it. Evasions were also common; and scoundrels, masquerading as state officials, often obtained large sums from false collections or through various other forms of graft. Altogether, the tax proved such a failure and trouble maker that it was speedily repealed. Some time afterward, however, it was revived at a much lower rate.
Agitation against the Chinese did not begin until 1851,
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since previous to that time they were not present in the mining camp in sufficient number to arouse prejudice. But opposition developed fast enough when the Hong Kong migration set in on a large scale. Unlike the Mexican, the Chinaman was seldom guilty of bloodshed, unless his vic- tim was a fellow countryman. He was peaceful, inoffensive, and nearly always content to work over claims that his superiors had abandoned. While passionately fond of gambling, he won or lost without resorting to violence. About the most to be said against him, was that he kept to himself, wore peculiar clothes, worked long hours for rela- tively small returns, and sometimes robbed a white man's claim or cleaned up a sluice box twenty-four hours before the disappointed owner got around to do it for himself.
For all these faults the Chinaman paid very dearly, and for many others which criminals of other races fastened upon his defenseless person. As a consequence, he was lynched singly, or in groups, when some mining camp lost its head or surrendered its sense of justice to the baser element. His most common misfortune, however, was to be driven off the claim he had taken up or bought. This was sometimes done by men of the professional claim jumping class, who could too often, though not always, count upon anti-Chinese prejudice among the miners to prevent any defense of the unlucky owner. At other times, whole camps united to drive the Chinese out of their district. For example, two hundred Chinamen on the American River were expelled from their claims by sixty miners from Mor- mon Bar in the spring of 1852. The same sixty next de- scended upon four hundred celestials who were hard at work farther down the river at Horse Shoe Bar. To accomplish the work properly in this particular case, it was considered necessary to engage a band to accompany the expedition.
To conclude this chapter, which in limited space has sought to summarize the most crowded and energetic period of California history, one can do no better than to quote the following paragraph from Howard Shinn, a recognized authority on the mining days:
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"The typical camp of the golden prime of '49 was flush, lively, reckless, and vigorous. Saloons and gambling-houses abounded; buildings and whole streets grew up like mushrooms, almost in a night. Every man carried a buckskin bag of gold dust, and it was received as currency at a dollar a pinch. Every one went armed, and felt fully able to protect himself. A stormy life ebbed and flowed through the town. In the camp, gathered as one house- hold, under no law but that of their own making, were men from the North, South, East, and West, and from nearly every country of Europe, Asia, and South America. They mined, traded, gam- bled, fought, discussed camp affairs; they paid fifty cents a drink for their whisky, and fifty dollars a barrel for their flour, and thirty dollars a piece for butcher knives with which to pick gold from the rock-crevices."
Shinn might also have added that thus the miners played their part in one of the most romantic episodes of American history, and helped in no mean way to lay the foundation for a very noble state.
CHAPTER XX
SAN FRANCISCO, THE BOISTEROUS
MANY cities in the United States boast a more ancient lineage than that of San Francisco; but none can look back to a more vigorous, boisterous, or interesting youth.
In 1835 Captain W. A. Richardson laid the foundation for the modern San Francisco, by erecting a rude building on the beach known as Yerba Buena. The next year Jacob P. Leese built a comfortable frame house near the same site. As time went, Leese added a store and made the place something of a trading center for ships taking on wood and water across the bay at Sausalito. In 1841, however, Leese sold his property to the Hudson's Bay Company, which thereafter for four or five years became the chief factor in the commercial life of the little village.
With the American occupation Yerba Buena rapidly began to increase its scant population, and by the spring of 1848 could boast nearly nine hundred inhabitants. Tele- graph, Rincon, and Russian hills marked the town's western boundary; and the narrow plain on which its adobe and frame buildings stood, merged into the water front where Battery and First Streets now touch Market. By this time the town had changed its name from Yerba Buena to San Francisco, established a number of newspapers, opened a public school, and become somewhat of a commercial rival to Monterey.
The first rush to the mining regions, however, brought this promising growth to a sudden end; for like all other towns of California, the would-be metropolis was virtually deserted by its inhabitants during the first few months of the gold excitement. Stores were closed, labor became almost unobtainable, and real estate depreciated woefully
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in value. But before the year's close, prosperity and popu- lation came back with a rush like that of the tide in the Bay of Fundy. Immigrant ships began to dump hundreds of passengers upon the shore; tons of merchandise were piled in the streets; men were clamoring for places to eat and sleep; and there were eager, hurrying, insistent crowds where all before had been empty streets or unoccupied beach. Never, since the days of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp, did a city arise so full of activity and life in so short a time.
In this sudden growth, naturally enough, beauty and com- fort for a long time found little place. The dwellings were chiefly of canvas or rough lumber, affording only the flimsi- est of shelter, and utterly devoid of attractive qualities. They straggled from water front to hillside, for a time paying but little attention to the street lines marked out by official survey; or grouped themselves in a compact, dis- orderly mass behind the shelter of the sand hills in the area now bounded by First, Second, Market and Mission Streets, in what was then known as Happy Valley.
In summer the streets were dusty, wind swept, and ren- dered almost impassable by the boxes and bales of merchan- dise whose owners had no other places of storage. In winter, especially that of 1849 and 1850, the dust became a sea of mud in which, incredible as it may seem, animals not in- frequently disappeared from sight, and even drunken men were known to have died of suffocation. At the corner of Clay and Kearny Streets, so it is said, the mud became so serious that someone posted a warning which read, "This street is impassable. Not even Jackassable." W. T. Sher- man also recounts in his Memoirs that he was afraid to ride down Montgomery Street after a rain because of the danger of being drowned in the mud and water, if his horse should stumble.
Almost every race and costume could be met with in the shops or gambling places of the new metropolis, for even as early as 1849 the cosmopolitan character of the city's population had become firmly established. Moor, Chinaman, Kanaka, Malay, Mexican, as well as immigrants
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from all the European countries, touched elbows with Amer- icans from every state in the Union. In the medley of strange dress which resulted from this variety of race, the flannel shirt, soft hat, and high boots of the miner easily pre- dominated. Top hats, frock coats, jewelry, and other marks of a more elegant civilization, were also much affected by certain types. And thus it happened that sameness of dress was as foreign to those early days as monotony of life.
In San Francisco, as well as in the mining regions, democ- racy flourished on every hand. Men sloughed off their class distinctions as instinctively as a snake sheds its skin. Work was honorable; and a man's standing was not affected by his occupation, so long as he remained reasonably honest. The term menial disappeared from speech; and those who had once been accustomed to servants, now did their own cooking and mending, carried their own trunks, worked with pickax and shovel, or drove mule teams for employers who had not long since been day laborers in the eastern states!
The business life of the period can scarcely be described. It both partook of the characteristics of the people, and helped in no small way to intensify their predominant traits. Speculation, open handedness, startling success or equally swift failure, hurry, rush, and disregard of caution, were its chief features. Two streams flowing through the city constantly enriched its economic life, and day by day added to its amazing wealth. Every shipload and overland party of immigrants brought a new demand for food, lodging, drink, and mining equipment to the San Francisco merchants. Of even more importance, was the never failing influx of miners returning from the Sierras with the precious "dust" upon which the whole business life of the city depended.
Whether bound for home with his "pile," or merely seeking a brief relaxation at the city's flesh pots, the average miner spent his money generously and without much regard for what he got in return. Small change was seldom requested; few articles could be had for less than fifty cents; prices were almost never challenged; higgling was a lost art. Com- modity prices in the city were normally about the same as at
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the mines themselves. But when the market became glutted through excessive importations, or when goods could not be shipped to the mountains because of impassable roads, violent fluctuations made the merchant's profits as uncer- tain as the miner's luck. Flour, which sold on December 1, 1848, for twenty-seven dollars a barrel, within two weeks had fallen to twelve or fifteen dollars. Beef and pork dropped at times with even greater swiftness. Molasses, which one month cost four dollars a gallon, sold the next for sixty-five cents. More than one cargo was thrown into the bay because prices would not pay for its unloading; and several of the muddiest streets from time to time were ren- dered passable by dumping into them barrels of unsalable provisions, and other commodities not often used as paving material.
Wages, immediately after the first rush to the gold fields, reached and maintained high levels. Ordinary labor brought from eight to ten dollars a day; while mechanics and car- penters easily commanded twelve or sixteen. Restaurants and hotels charged what, for that period, were unheard of rates. The cheapest and best eating places in the city were run by Chinese proprietors, who gave ample and well cooked meals for a dollar each. But American houses, like the Alhambra or Delmonico's, had nothing to offer for less than five. Rooms at the more pretentious hotels, like the Ward, the Graham, or the St. Francis, brought as high as $250 a month; and even a bunk in tent or garret could be disposed of for $10 or $20 a week.
Rentals and real estate values were correspondingly high. According to Bayard Taylor, the Parker House was leased for $110,000 annually. A canvas tent, fifteen by twenty five, occupied by gamblers who called it the El Dorado, brought $40,000. A small broker's house, known as the Miner's Bank, rented for $75,000 a year. A one story build- ing, with a twenty foot frontage on the Plaza, then known as Portsmouth Square, brought $40,000. And a cellar, twelve feet square and six feet deep, was offered for a law office at $250 a month. "Any room twenty by sixty
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feet," wrote Sherman, "would rent for a thousand dollars a month."
Even though the cost of labor was high, and lumber, brought from Oregon or from the Graham mills at Santa Cruz, sold for $500 a thousand, when such rentals could be obtained for buildings of every description, the price of vacant property naturally mounted with sky rocket speed. Lots, which only a few years earlier had gone begging at twelve dollars each, now sold for as many thousand. Men, bankrupt in unfortunate mercantile ventures, suddenly found themselves rich through the possession of real estate previously considered worthless. More than one citizen, who had rushed off to the mines in 1848 and failed to make his fortune, came back to San Francisco to find his property so risen in value during his absence as to make him a wealthy man. Some of the shrewder Argonauts of 1849 thus found their true El Dorado in San Francisco real estate, which afforded early investors much surer and easier profits than the gold mines of the Sierras.
In most cases, at least up to 1853 when a decline in values began, almost the only cloud on the investor's horizon was the validity of title. To go into the innumerable disputes over land claims which troubled early San Francisco, would crowd all other material from this volume. Yet, though it cannot be written here, the story of San Francisco's real es- tate transactions has in it much beside technical de- tails relating to land titles and law suits. A large part of the story, especially after 1850, would deal with official corrup- tion and public indifference-a combination that has injured many another American municipality; and in the case of San Francisco, cost her most of her patrimony, and threw her early land titles into unfortunate confusion.
The subject is interesting, also, because it gave rise to some very clever attempted land frauds. One of these was the so-called Limantour grant, a claim brought forward in 1853 by José Limantour of Mexico before the California Land Commission to 600,000 acres of land in California. Included in the claim were a number of islands, and some
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