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The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a period in American history which began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California.〔"()vents from January 1848 through December 1855 () generally acknowledged as the 'Gold Rush'. After 1855, California gold mining changed and is outside the 'rush' era."〕 The news of gold brought—mostly by sailing ships and covered wagons—some 300,000 gold-seekers (called "forty-niners", as in "1849") to California.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url=http://www.sos.ca.gov/archives/ )〕 While most of the newly arrived were Americans, the Gold Rush also attracted some tens of thousands from Latin America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. At first, loose gold nuggets could be picked up off the ground, and since there was no law regarding property rights in the goldfields, a system of "staking claims" was developed. In 1849, a state constitution, governorship, and legislature were established, and as part of the Compromise of 1850, California officially became a US state. Agriculture and ranching expanded throughout the state to meet the needs of the settlers. Roads and other towns were built throughout the new state, and new methods of transportation developed as steamships came into regular service. By 1869, railroads were built across the country from California to the eastern United States. The California Gold Rush was a particularly violent period for the new settlers of the Wild West. After the initial boom had ended, explicitly anti-foreign and racist attacks, laws and confiscatory taxes sought to drive out foreigners, especially Chinese and Latin American immigrants.〔〔Starr, Kevin and Orsi, Richard J. (eds.) (2000), pp. 56–79.〕 The toll on US immigrants was also severe: roughly one in twelve perished due to the extraordinarily high crime rates and the resulting vigilantism.〔Starr, Kevin (2005), pp. 84–87. Joaquin Murrieta was a famous Mexican bandit during the Gold Rush of the 1850s.(The Last of the California Rangers (1928), "16. California Banditti," by Jill L. Cossley-Batt )〕 While the total of gold recovered would be worth tens of billions of US dollars today, eventually the technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required in order to mine the gold, causing increasingly important mining companies to take over the industry and leading to great wealth for a few. Many of those who had had to rely on simple gathering methods, such as gold panning, returned home with only a little more than they had originally started with. A major genocide was furthermore conducted on Native Americans who resided in the Great Basin, a watershed which had supported the tribes for more than 14,000 years.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=California/Great Basin )〕 Peter Burnett, California's first governor, declared that California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extinction or removal. The State of California directly paid out $25,000 in bounties for Indian scalps with varying prices for adult male, adult female, and child sizes. It also provided the basis for the enslavement and trafficking of Native American labor, particularly that of young women and children, which was carried on as a legal business enterprise. Miners, loggers, and settlers formed vigilante groups and local militias to hunt the Natives, regularly raiding villages to supply the demand. The Native population of California, once perhaps as high as 705,000 in numbers, but by 1845 already down to some 150,000, further spiraled downward until by 1890 it had reached below 20,000.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Destruction of the California Indians )〕〔 ==History== The California Gold Rush began at Sutter's Mill, near Coloma.〔For a detailed map, see (California Historic Gold Mines ), published by the State of California. Retrieved December 3, 2006.〕 On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter on the American River. Marshall brought what he found to John Sutter, and the two privately tested the metal. After the tests showed that it was gold, Sutter expressed dismay: he wanted to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were a mass search for gold.〔Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1888), pp. 39–41.〕 However, rumors soon started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan. The most famous quote of the California Gold Rush was by Brannan; after he had hurriedly set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies, Brannan strode through the streets of San Francisco, holding aloft a vial of gold, shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!"〔Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1888), pp. 55–56.〕 At the time gold was discovered, California was part of the Mexican territory of Alta California, though it had been occupied by the U.S. in the Mexican–American War. The area was ceded to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, less than two weeks after the discovery. On August 19, 1848, the ''New York Herald'' was the first major newspaper on the East Coast to report the discovery of gold. On December 5, 1848, President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress. Soon, waves of immigrants from around the world, later called the "forty-niners," invaded the Gold Country of California or "Mother Lode". As Sutter had feared, he was ruined; his workers left in search of gold, and squatters took over his land and stole his crops and cattle.〔Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1888), pp. 103–105.〕 San Francisco had been a tiny settlement before the rush began. When residents learned about the discovery, it at first became a ghost town of abandoned ships and businesses,〔Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1888), pp. 59–60.〕 but then boomed as merchants and new people arrived. The population of San Francisco exploded from perhaps about 1,000〔Holliday, J. S. (1999), p. 51 ("800 residents").〕 in 1848 to 25,000 full-time residents by 1850. Miners lived in tents, wood shanties, or deck cabins removed from abandoned ships.〔Holliday, J. S. (1999), p. 126.〕 In what has been referred to as the "first world-class gold rush,"〔 p. 1.〕 there was no easy way to get to California; forty-niners faced hardship and often death on the way. At first, most s, as they were also known, traveled by sea. From the East Coast, a sailing voyage around the tip of South America would take five to eight months, and cover some . An alternative was to sail to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama, take canoes and mules for a week through the jungle, and then on the Pacific side, wait for a ship sailing for San Francisco.〔Brands, H. W. (2003), pp. 75–85. Another route across Nicaragua was developed in 1851; it was not as popular as the Panama option. Rawls, James J. and Orsi, Richard (eds.) (1999), pp. 252–253.〕 There was also a route across Mexico starting at Veracruz. Many gold-seekers took the overland route across the continental United States, particularly along the California Trail.〔Rawls, James J. and Orsi, Richard (eds.) (1999), p. 5.〕 Each of these routes had its own deadly hazards, from shipwreck to typhoid fever and cholera.〔Holliday, J. S. (1999), pp. 101, 107.〕 To meet the demands of the arrivals, ships bearing goods from around the world came to San Francisco as well. Ships' captains found that their crews deserted to go to the goldfields. The wharves and docks of San Francisco became a forest of masts, as hundreds of ships were abandoned. Enterprising San Franciscans turned the abandoned ships into warehouses, stores, taverns, hotels, and one into a jail.〔Starr, Kevin (2005), p. 80; 〕 Many of these ships were later destroyed and used for landfill to create more buildable land in the boomtown.〔 Within a few years, there was an important but lesser-known surge of prospectors into far Northern California, specifically into present-day Siskiyou, Shasta and Trinity Counties.〔Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1888), pp. 363–366.〕 Discovery of gold nuggets at the site of present-day Yreka in 1851 brought thousands of gold-seekers up the Siskiyou Trail〔pp. 361–362.〕 and throughout California's northern counties. Settlements of the Gold Rush era, such as Portuguese Flat on the Sacramento River, sprang into existence and then faded. The Gold Rush town of Weaverville on the Trinity River today retains the oldest continuously used Taoist temple in California, a legacy of Chinese miners who came. While there are not many Gold Rush era ghost towns still in existence, the remains of the once-bustling town of Shasta have been preserved in a California State Historic Park in Northern California.〔The buildings of Bodie, the best-known ghost town in California, date from the 1870s and later, well after the end of the Gold Rush.〕 Gold was also discovered in Southern California but on a much smaller scale. The first discovery of gold, at Rancho San Francisco in the mountains north of present-day Los Angeles, had been in 1842, six years before Marshall's discovery, while California was still part of Mexico.〔Rawls, James J. and Orsi, Richard J. (eds.) (1999), p. 3.〕 However, these first deposits, and later discoveries in Southern California mountains, attracted little notice and were of limited consequence economically.〔 By 1850, most of the easily accessible gold had been collected, and attention turned to extracting gold from more difficult locations. Faced with gold increasingly difficult to retrieve, Americans began to drive out foreigners to get at the most accessible gold that remained. The new California State Legislature passed a foreign miners tax of twenty dollars per month ($ per month as of ), and American prospectors began organized attacks on foreign miners, particularly Latin Americans and Chinese.〔Rawls, James J. and Orsi, Richard (eds.) (1999), p. 9.〕 In addition, the huge numbers of newcomers were driving Native Americans out of their traditional hunting, fishing and food-gathering areas. To protect their homes and livelihood, some Native Americans responded by attacking the miners. This provoked counter-attacks on native villages. The Native Americans, out-gunned, were often slaughtered.〔Rawls, James J. and Orsi, Richard (eds.) (1999), p. 8.〕 Those who escaped massacres were many times unable to survive without access to their food-gathering areas, and they starved to death. Novelist and poet Joaquin Miller vividly captured one such attack in his semi-autobiographical work, ''Life Amongst the Modocs.'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「California Gold Rush」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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