The Gold Rush Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Gold Rush - Essay Example The gold rush seemed to spell the beginning of the end for the people who lived in California when gold was found, it was also the beginning of equal rights for others who had long been oppressed by these same oppressors. There were several people already in California when gold was discovered. In addition to the white men that were moving into the west as a result of the Mexican-American War, there were plenty of Mexicans already living on the land of California, colonists sent by Mexico and Spain called Californios. Although many of the Mexicans who settled in California to work the ‘southern mines’ were experienced miners in the same sort of climate as they encountered in California, their expertise and success was resented by the white colonists. â€Å"In a little over two years, Americans came to resent the fact that foreigners -- particularly those from a country the United States had just defeated in war -- were making it rich off land that they now considered exclusively theirs† (Chavez, 1998). As a means of ‘evening up’ the playing field, the white settlers struggled to gain control of the legal institutions and thus bring about laws that favored them while s ignificantly reducing the resources and recourses available to the Mexicans or people of non-white descent. Another group of people had also been living on California land in the mid-1800s. They made up a variety of tribes and distinctly separate cultural groups, but history has clumped them together under the common term Native Americans. These people had long lived off of the fruits of the land, fitting themselves within the rhythms of the natural seasons and placing value on things that actually benefited them directly, such as food, clothing, shelter and workable metals or stone. Materials such as gold had little value to them because it was too soft to be dependable and did not provide any other direct benefit. However, these Native Americans