Chileans and the California Gold Rush

The Mania for Wealth

The 1849 gold rush was touched off by an opportunist attempting to capitalize off of the important discovery. [Page 141]After purchasing every available axe, pan, and shovel in the city, Samuel Brannan ran wildly through the bustling streets of San Francisco dramatically waving a vile of gold and hollering, “Gold! Gold found in the American River!”

These words echoed through San Francisco, and within months sent shockwaves throughout the world. “California” became synonymous with fortune. Rumors of “inexhaustible gold mines” traveled as far as South America, Europe, and China, and a mania for wealth ensued. Tens of thousands of dream seekers, their minds filled with images of wealth and prosperity, abandoned their humdrum lives to try their luck in California, where they believed the precious metal was so plentiful that “all you had to do was bend over and pick it up.”

Before long, gold fever afflicted the world's adventurous spirits who sought a better life in a foreign land. Perhaps as many as 50,000 South Americans migrated to California between 1848 and 1852. Many of them were Chileans. It is difficult to estimate their numbers because documentation from Chile is not readily available. However, the Chilean Foreign Office issued more than 6,000 passports in the first six months of 1849. Realizing that over half of the travelers to California were not bothering to obtain passports, the Chilean Congress passed legislation allowing citizens to travel to California without official documentation.

News of Gold Reaches Chile

Chileans traveling to California came from all regions and social classes. Most of them departed from the strategically positioned port of Valparaiso and nearly all were filled with illusions. They had heard tall tales written in newspaper accounts, trumpeted in local theaters, or spread through town gossip. The stories described not only the gold in California, but also “the endless pine trees in the San Joaquin Valley, the thousands of cows that roamed the vast plains without owners, and the fields which had an eternal supply of vegetables.” To Chileans, California was the embodiment of the Garden of Eden, and America was the land of opportunity and equality, beckoning industrious men and women to wealth.

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