12.5 Chapter Notes
Vocabulary
forty-niners - the nickname for the people who mined in the gold rush in 1849
vigilantes - self-appointed law enforcers who dealt out punishment without legal trial
- 1849: James Marshall finds gold on a site in Sacremento, California. Word spread and thousands of people flocked to California to dig.
- People came to the new Western states (California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas) to build homes and live a new life.
- Mormons, religious followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, followed Joseph Smith out West. Mormons believed that property should be owned in common and that a man could have more than one wife.
- Mormons traveled from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois, where they set up a community called Nauvoo but angry mobs killed Joseph Smith, forcing them to move further west with Brigham Young as their new leader. They made it to Utah to live in a secluded valley.
- Americans were traveling to California, leaving just about everything behind to gather gold. They were called "forty-niners" because they mined in 1849. More than just Americans came; Europeans and South Americans also came for gold.
- All the gold turned some greedy forty-niners into criminals who would murder and/or rob people for their gold. Self-appointed law enforcers, called vigilantes, tried to restore peace but were doing more bad than good. This caused California to organize a state government and joined the Union in 1849.
- Lots of people lost their land because of Americans, escaped slaves, Native Americans, New Englanders, Hawaiians, Chinese, Peruvians (people from Peru), Chileans (people from Chile), French, Germans, Italians, Irish, and Australians. Native Americans lost a lot of land and many died of starvation. Mexican Americans also lost land they had owned for generations but still stayed in California.
- The Chinese were attracted to America because of the gold, but were driven off by white miners when they went from farming the land to digging for gold.
- African Americans became very rich but still didn't have the same rights in court as whites did until 1863. And yet California prospered with this hugely unique cultural difference.
Study up and do well on the quiz. See ya then.
