California Gold Rush

Historical Background

At the time of Marshall's discovery, California was a sparsely populated territory with a total non-Indian population estimated at 14,000. John Sutter, owner of the lumber mill where Marshall labored, wanted to keep Marshall's finding secret to prevent a flood of newcomers descending on the area. Despite Sutter's wishes, rumors of California as a gold-laden paradise soon spread to the East Coast and beyond.

A Chinese merchant from Canton named Chum Ming, who had been living in California at the time, quickly wrote a letter to a friend in his homeland that contained news of Marhshall's find. Three Chinese immigrants who had just landed in San Francisco also sent letters to friends and relatives back home to announce the discovery of gold, setting the wheels of a major Chinese influx to California in motion.

Migration and Ethnic Relations

The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill sparked a major wave of migration from various countries into the present San Francisco Bay Area and to California in general. Immigrants from China constituted the largest foreign-born population group lured by the Gold Rush. By the end of the 1850s, approximately 60,000 Chinese immigrants had settled in California. In China, rumors of Gold Mountain (the mid-century Chinese nickname for the United States) lured a large number of migrants across the Pacific Ocean, although many Chinese did not originally intend to settle permanently in California.

Most Chinese newcomers came from the southeastern provinces Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi, where a series of natural disasters and warfare—including the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion—served as additional push factors encouraging residents of these provinces to seek better fortunes in Gold Mountain. China's southeastern provinces already had a well-established tradition of sending migrants to other regions of Asia to find employment, which stimulated further motivation to migrate in search of gold. The large number of Chinese making the journey eastward provided a boon for American traders and steerage operators, who charged passengers a $40 to $50 fare for a one-way trip to California. Many of these ships departed from Hong Kong and Canton.

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