USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > History of the San Francisco Committee of vigilance of 1851 : a study of social control on the California frontier in the days of the gold rush > Part 6
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But in spite of this anticipation the governor was exeeedingly anxious over the situation in California. On August 19 he wrote to the adjutant general :22
For the past two years no civil government has existed here, save that controlled by the senior military or naval officer; and no civil officers exist in the country, save the alcaldes appointed or confirmed by myself. To
17 Cong. Docs., Ser. No. 573, Doc. 17, p. 580.
18 Cong. Does., Ser. No. 573. Doc. 17. p. 593.
19 Letter of Oct 24, 1848, Cong. Docs., Ser. No. 573, Doc. 17, p. 677.
20 Archives, "Unbound Docs., " 157.
21 Cong. Does .. Ser. No. 573, Doc. 17, p. 677.
22 Cong. Docs., Ser. No. 573, Doc. 17, pp. 597-598. This was in reply to orders of March 15, see supra, p. 57 note 8.
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throw off upon them or the people at large the civil management and con- trol of the country, would most probably lead to endless confusions, if not to absolute anarchy; and yet what right or authority have I to exercise civil control in time of peace in a Territory of the United States? or, if sedition and rebellion should arise, where is my force to meet it? Two companies of regulars, every day diminishing by desertions, that cannot be prevented,23 will soon be the only military force in California .... Yet, unsustained by military force, or by any positive instructions, I feel com- pelled to exercise control over the alcaldes appointed, and to maintain order, if possible, in the country, until a civil governor arrive, armed with instructions and laws to guide his footsteps .... In the meantime, however, should the people refuse to obey the existing authorities ... my force is inadequate to compel obedience.
This was the situation in midsummer, 1848, when the uni- versal rush to the mining regions swept the men of the state away from their ordinary interests to seek their fortunes beneath the soil of the Sierra Nevada foothills.
First in the gold fields were the natives of the United States who were already in California, for the strenuous labor of the mines did not greatly attract the indolent Californians.24 Soon after came many who had settled in the neighboring territory of Oregon.25 Thus the nucleus of the mining population was composed of pioneers of the usual American type, and it was the universal verdict that even in the excitement and license of the mines they were not only hard working and self-reliant, but honest and generous in their attitude toward each other.
News of the richness of the placers spread quickly among the ports of the Pacific, and the next gold seekers came from Mexico, South America, and the Sandwich Islands. They were quickly followed by parties from Australia, among whom were
23 " There will be fifty able-bodied soldiers fit for duty in California" (Report, Aug. 25, 1848, Cong. Docs., Ser. No. 573, Doc. 17, p. 603). 24 Hittell, California, III, 161-162.
25 " I think that at least two-thirds of the male population of Oregon, capable of bearing arms, started for California in the summer and fall of 1848" (Peter H. Burnett, Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer, 1880, p. 254).
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numbers of discharged eonviets and ticket-of-leave men. Such foreigners, unaccustomed to self-government and in some eases outlaws by instinet and experience, were undesirable additions to the ranks of the miners, and were much disliked as alien intruders who had no rights in the mineral wealth of the public lands.26 The eastern states received information of the mines so late in the autumn of 1848 that the season was unfavorable for undertaking the overland journey, but twenty thousand men assembled on the banks of the Missouri River, eager to start for the West as soon as the winter was over, and a fleet of vessels prepared to carry passengers to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and around Cape Horn.27 The real rush therefore reached the state early in 1849, when thousands of men poured over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and other thousands sailed through the Golden Gate into the harbor of San Franciseo.
The typical pioneer was no longer in the ascendant. Men came from every section of the land, and from every walk of life. Puritans and drunkards, clergymen and convicts, honest and dishonest, riel and poor-they strode side by side across the plains, crowded the deeks of steamers, and worked shoulder to shoulder in the diggings. A little later came all the world, and the people of Europe and Asia and Africa brought to Cali- fornia every social inheritance entailed upon humanity since the dawn of history.28
26 The subject of foreign miners is discussed infra, pp. 121-126. J. S. Hittell spoke of the predominance of aliens during 1848 ( San Francisco, 140). It is quite certain, however, that in 1849 the American arrivals greatly exceeded those of other nationalities.
27 See Bancroft, California, VI, 110-163.
25 On Nov. 1, 1849, the Alta reported in the harbor vessels flying the flags of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hamburg, Bremen, Bel- gium, New Granada, Holland, Sweden, Oldenburg, Chili, Peru, Russia, Mexico, Ecuador, Hanover, Norway, Hawaii, and Tahiti (Steamer Ed., snp- plement 31). The world-wide interest in California mines is attested by the great number of books on the subject, published in various European languages.
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They found a land of magnificent distances, sparsely settled toward the south, and virgin wilderness from the mining region to the northern boundary. The genius of the country was an apparition of the Mexican law, invoked by a military-civil governor whose authority was unsupported by even a show of physical force, and rested precariously on the presumed consent of the governed. It is necessary for us to picture as vividly as possible the tremendous excitement of these first months of the gold rush, then to revert to Colonel Mason's report29 of August 19, and remind ourselves that he had neither the author- ity nor the equipment to impose any regulations upon these men, who were already miles removed from the jurisdiction of the alcaldes he had installed in office. Again we must visualize the thousands of gold seekers, constantly keyed to the highest pitch of excitement, gathered in mountain camps far from the nearest office of government, generally unacquainted with the customs prevailing in the older settlements, and perfectly aware that there was no executive strong enough to enforce order, no police empowered to make arrest, and no jails where the lawless could be confined.
The miners had, however, at least two pressing social neces- sities : every man wished to be assured that he could dig where he chose without displacement by an interloper, and that his life and his gold should be reasonably safe from the assaults of violence. Here were primitive elements of society: a man's relation to the soil, and his relation to his neighbor, in the restricted sense of the other man who might jump his claim, rob his tent, or shoot him in the back.
But the people called upon to adjust these primitive relations were not primitive people. They were the heirs of all the ages: their social reactions to their environment were not the reactions of inexperienced, unsophisticated men, groping through experi-
29 See supra, p. 60.
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ment and failure after methods that should meet their partieular needs. Amerieans were the dominant spirits in '48; they formed a great majority of the miners of '49, and the American tradition and experience hovered as a mighty influence over the inehoate groups that hurled themselves swiftly together, and as swiftly disintegrated, while anticipation and disappointment drove the eager miners restlessly from guleh to gulch. They carried with them no itinerant shrine of eivic life, but rather the tools with which that shrine might be ereeted wherever their wandering feet should linger. For wherever three or four Americans gathered themselves together, they understood how to accomplish rapid but effective social organization by agreeing to aseertain and accept the wishes of the majority.
The popular imagination has been delighted by many pietures of the California miner of 1848 and 1849, with his uncouth virtues and his picturesque viees, his eourage, his rough kindness, his swift and unsparing justice, and his simple standards of manliness and integrity. But the erneial moment of his adven- turous life has been passed over with a light touch, possibly because he met it lightly and without melodrama. It was the moment when the seeret strike of a prospector beeame public property. He had traveled far, perhaps quite alone, perhaps as a member of some little company ; he had carried on his own baek tools and food and rifle across country still impassable for a paek animal ; he had spent days in barren, heart-breaking toil, and nights at the merey of murderous Indians, and at last he had "struek it rieh !" But before his dream of fortune might be realized there came others who had spied on his movements, followed his trail, and overtaken him in time to divide the fruits of his suffering, his patience, and his skill.30 This was the danger
30 Such an incident was described by E. G. Buffum, who found a rich ravine and hoped to make a fortune from the location. Within twenty-four hours he was traced, and the gulch was over-run with other miners. About $10,000 was taken in a few days, of which the discoverer realized only about $1000 (Six Months in the Gold Mines, 1850, p. 91).
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point in California life-excited men, in a remote mountain gorge, with gold uncovered at their feet and loaded weapons in their hands. And this was the salvation of that life : they put their guns aside, sat down and talked things over, estimated the richness of the placer, and apportioned it fairly between them. In that action was displayed the fundamental characteristic of California existence in 1848 and 1849: swift agreement by the will of the majority on matters of common interest, and cheerful loyalty to such decisions until they might be changed by another popular verdict. And by this token the Argonaut of '49 claims his honorable descent as a social being through two centuries of American pioneers, across three thousand miles of American frontier, from the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, the settlers of the Cumberland, and the explorers of the Old Northwest. Too little effort has been made to set him in his place as an American, in a large majority of cases born and bred east of the Mississippi, equipped with the traditions of his people, but thrust into cir- cumstances unprecedented even amid the infinite variations developed during the conquest of the continent.
CHAPTER IV VOX POPULI IN THE MINES OF CALIFORNIA
The Argonaut of California unquestionably belonged to the great brotherhood of American frontiersmen, but it is equally true that his surroundings created problems which were entirely his own. A few of the fundamental differences that distinguished the American settlement of California from that of other parts of the frontier require particular emphasis here.
While the majority of the miners eame from the United States, the mixture of men from every elass and section of the nation and from all the nations of the earth destroyed that unity of deseent and of social experience that had elsewhere blended pioneer communities into homogeneous groups. Moreover, in place of the gradual development of complex conditions accom- panied by progressive adjustment of social mechanism, many of the problems of life became suddenly acute as throngs of new arrivals crowded into the congested towns and swarmed over the restricted area of the mining regions.
The advanee into California, unlike the advance of the men of the western waters, was not the migration of a people, pushed westward by hereditary tendencies. It was more like the onrush of viking hordes lured by spoil to a foreign shore. The adven- turers were nearly all men,1 nearly all young : they came with no thought of remaining beyond the time necessary to snatch a fortune from the plaeers; they had no purpose of reproducing accustomed institutions in a land of transient sojourn ; and they
1 From April 12 to Dec. 31. 1849, the arrivals by sea were 28,269 men and 800 women ( Browne, Debates, Appendix, p. xxii). See also J. D. Borthwick. Three Years in California, 1857. pp. 381-383; Burnett, Recol- lections, 301; Alexandre Holinski, La Californie, ed. 2, 1853, pp. 125-126.
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were utterly divoreed from those ties of home and family which have ever been the center of community life.
Another radical difference arose from the circumstance that the earliest California miners formed no fixed attachment to the soil, and that they were interested in a given locality only so long as it yielded freely of surface gold. The greater part of the mining region was on the public domain of the United States. No statutes provided for its temporary or permanent oeeupa- tion, as, before the discovery of gold was made publie, Mason had abolished the laws relative to the denouneement of mines, he had never substituted regulations of his own, nor had Congress placed California under the laws that in other regions opened publie land to private ownership." The miners, then, were simply trespassers on land belonging to the United States, but they serenely accepted their anomalous position as a sort of modus vivendi, applied to it the old idea of social control based on a more or less extemporaneous expression of the will of the majority, and by this appeal to mutual agreement rather than to the strong arm established their relation to the soil on an equitable basis. In commending the usual fairness of their regu- lations, however, one must not ignore their disregard of the prior rights of a few men who held private titles to property in the mining regions. Sutter, for instance, was despoiled of his live stock and equipment, and James W. Marshall, who dis- covered gold, had his own prospects ruined by miners who paid no attention to his claims as a legitimate land owner.3
2 See Cong. Docs., Ser. No. 573, Doc. 17, pp. 476, 532. Mason's succes- sor, General Riley, continued the policy of non-interference (ibid., 789).
3 See E. E. Dunbar, The Romance of the Age, 1867, p. 129; J. B. Laudis, "Life and Work of General Jolin A. Sutter, " Lancaster County [Penn- sylvania] Historical Society, Papers XVII (1913), 288; G. F. Parsons, Life and Adventures of James W. Marshall, 1870; Hittell, California, III, 52-54. Bnt compare a statement of H. I. Simpson, who said that a fine deposit on Sutter's property was not disturbed during the summer of 1848 (Emigrant's Guide, 1848, p. 6).
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The growth of every eamp was merely an expansion, in vary- ing terms, of the relation of the man first on the ground to the newcomer who was determined to work beside him. At first, while the plaeers were unexplored and miners were compara- tively few, there was little need for organization. As early as June, 1848, however, one observer wrote : "It is curious how soon a set of rude regulations sprung into existence, which everybody seemed to abide by."4 In many cases the initial steps towards association were taken before the miners reached the field. Parties of discharged volunteer soldiers who hastened to the mines as soon as they were mustered out in the early fall of 1848, often adopted rules to enforce necessary concert of action. Larger companies from the East were usually bound together not only by commercial agreements, but also by pledges to follow certain lines of conduet and to aceept the will of the majority as it might be expressed in future contingencies.5
Sueh companies tended to speedy dissolution, owing to conditions unforeseen at the moment of their formation.6 Never- theless, they supplied elements of unity which asserted themselves in place after plaee, while the camp communities were so quiekly assembled and so hastily dissolved that organization appeared only under the pressure of actual necessity. But whenever that necessity arose there was instant appeal to the American ex- pedient of popular decision, and no question was too important or too trivial for an ultimatum by the vox populi. The little
4 J. T. Brooks, Four Months among the Gold-Finders, ed. 2, 1849, p. 77. 5 See Bancroft, California, VI, 144 et seq .; Hittell, California, III, 232- 250. Such an association is described in the Diary of Nelson Kingsley, 1914. Specimen rules may be found in W. R. Ryan, Personal Adventures in ... California, 1850, I, 211-214; A. J. McCall, Great California Trail, 1882, p. 17.
6 D. B. Woods, in Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings, 1851, pp. 171-176, gave the following statistics of fourteen companies for 1849 and 1850: Number of members, 344; total days of labor, 35,876; value of gold extracted, $113,633; average for each day's labor, $3.16.
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companies voted where the camp should be pitched; who should be cook; who wash the dishes. In one instance it was decided by ballot how a particularly luxurious packing box should be enjoyed as a couch, in strictly fair rotation." If three prospectors discovered a promising placer they voted to assign a specified area to each one; if three hundred more invaded the gulch, claims were readjusted by another vote.8 If a dispute arose between individuals, their companions dropped their picks, listened to the controvery, rendered a decision, and saw to it that the verdict was enforced. In matters of greater moment the halloo was sounded from ridge to ridge, and a general gather- ing from a larger district was summoned for careful discussion and deliberation.
In the earlier months and in the smaller camps only the simplest regulations were required, and they were adopted by a verbal agreement, or sometimes even by silent assent to the obvious will of the entire group. As the number of miners increased, and the camps assumed more permanent character, the rules became more elaborate. Shinn said that laws were formulated as early as the summer of 1848. In the Annals of San Francisco it is stated that the first code was framed by Colonel J. D. Stevenson, and was adopted in the fall of that year by miners in the district above Mokelumne Hill.9 One of the best known of the early miners, who had been in the field from the first months of the gold excitement, wrote that he never heard of a specified miner's claim until the spring of 1849, when at Wood's Creek, in the southern mines, he saw the ground
7 Buffum, Six Months, 26-27.
s One pioneer said that when the mines were opened around Nevada City a determined prospector claimed all the diggings as far as his rifle carried. The miners soon saw that more practical agreements were necessary (C. D. Ferguson, Experiences of a Forty-niner, 1888, p. 157).
9 C. H. Shinn, Land Laws of Mining Districts, 1884, p. 236; Annals, 788.
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measured off with tapes, under the direction of alcaldes, so as to prevent disputes.10 It is reported in the history of Colusa County that formal laws were adopted by a meeting at Rose Bar in April, 1849, and that "so far as then known" they were the earliest of their kind.11 It is evident, however, that by the spring of 1849 the eustom had become so widespread that one writer humorously referred to the "lex diggerorum" which placed the strong and the weak upon a footing of equality, defined the claims that might be set apart, protected the tools left on the ground as an evidence of proprietorship, and per- mitted the adventurers to hold their rights as securely as if they were guaranteed by a charter from the government.12
Shinn stated that the smaller eamps carried on most of their proceedings without written records.13 As the regulations still accessible are not dated earlier than 1850, it is probable that meetings were called to adopt new codes, or amend old ones, when the organization of the state afforded an opportunity for permanent entry on the books of the county reeorder.
The miners' laws usually dealt with the size of the individual claim, the signs by which ownership should be indieated, the amount of work necessary to establish and retain possession, the
10 J. H. Carson, Early Recollections of the Mines, ed. 2, 1852, p. 10. The two watersheds of the Saeramento and San Joaquin rivers were generally distinguished as the "northern " and "southern"' mines.
11 Colusa County, 1880, p. 80.
12 Notes on California and the Placers [by James Delavan], 1850, pp. 64. 66. "A tool left in the hole in which a miner is working, is a sign that it is not abandoned yet, and that nobody has a right to intrude there, and this regulation, which is adopted by the silent consent of all, is generally complied with ( F. P. Wierzbicki, California as It Is, and as It May Be, 1849, p. 45). A few years later H. R. Helper said: "Every Bar is governed by such laws as the majority of the miners see fit to enaet, not by written or published documents, but by verbal understanding. . . . Almost every Bar is governed by a different eode of laws ... . The discoverer of new diggings is awarded a double or triple share, or only an equal part, as a majority of those on the ground shall determine" (Land of Gold, 1855, p. 151). See also Kelly, Excursion to California, II, 24.
13 Shinn, Mining Camps, 168.
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title to water rights, and the adjustment of disputes. Speaking of them, in the broadest sense, H. W. Halleck said :14
The miners of California have generally adopted .. . the main principles of the mining laws of Spain and Mexico, by which the right of property in mines is made to depend upon discovery and development ; that is, dis- covery is made the source of title, and development, or working, the con- dition of the continuance of that title.
The strength of these regulations lay in the universal acceptance of the theory that the local group had a right to establish its own rules, and in the democratic practice that gave an equal voice in the open conference to every citizen of the United States, whether he spoke in the quaint phrases of the illiterate frontiers- man, or in the polished tongue of a college graduate. One may confidently say of the miners of California, as Albert Bushnell Hart has said of the New England colonists, that they practiced "that acceptance of the will of the majority which is the supreme test of popular self government."15 One may also apply to theni the words of James Bryce : "In nothing does the executive talent of the people better shine than in the promptitude wherewith the idea of an organization for a common object is taken up, [and]
14 See Gregory Yale, Legal Titles to Mining Claims and Water Rights, in California, 1867, p. 71. On the subject of miners' laws, see also Shinn, Mining Camps, and his Land Laws of Mining Districts; Bancroft, Califor- nia, III, chaps. 15-17; Hittell, California. III. 251-271; C. H. Lindley, Treatise on the American Law Relating to Mines and Mineral Lands within the Public Land, ed. 3, 1914, especially on California, I. secs. 40-49, pp. 71-88; J. W. Thompson, United States Mining Statutes, 1915, I, 635-643; Rodman, History of the Bench and Bar of Southern California, 85-92; C. L. Brace, The New West, 1869, pp. 128-129. Collections of miners' codes are given in J. Ross Browne, Reports upon the Mineral Resources of the United States West of the Rocky Mountains [for 1866], 1867, especially pp. 226- 242; J. F. Davis, Historical Sketch of the Mining Law in California, 1902; Heckendorn & Wilson, Miners & Business Men's Directory . . . . 1856 .... of Tuolumne. A special report prepared by Clarence King for the Tenth Census of the United States (Cong. Does., Ser. No. 2144, Doc. 42, Pt. 14), collected all the local mining laws and regulations of the nation that could then be obtained.
15 A. B. Hart, National Ideals Historically Traced, 93.
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in the instructive discipline that makes every one who joins in starting it fall into his place.''16
The most interesting study of this phase of California life may be found in the works of Charles H. Shinn, but his treat- ment differentiated the pioneers of the Pacific Coast too sharply from those of the East and the Middle West. IIe felt that the latter "melted away before the tides of civilization, without being forced by imperious necessity to the creation of any code of local laws, or to the organization of any form of permanent govern- ment," and that the mining camp was the "original contribution of the American pioneer to the art of self-government."17
This point of view led Shinn to trace the miners' dexterity in self-government directly to the racial genius of their Teutonic forbears, to connect the miners' meeting immediately with the Germanic folk moot,19 and to forget the long process of social education that had taken place in the Old World, in the Ameri- can colonies, and on the Western frontier. Professor Royce also ignored the American heritage of the California miners, and spoke of the result attained by their efforts at self-organiza- tion as in its nature unstable, since it had not been won as a prize of social devotion but only attained by a sudden feat of instinetive cleverness.19 Just as Shinn's admiration for the heroic qualities of his actors left them still unrelated to their forefathers of wilderness and inland valley, so did Royce's censure of their faults fail to relate their sins of citizenship to similar shortcomings elsewhere, and to recognize them as the product of a democracy that made haste to possess the continent before it perfected the vehicle of popular government.
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