The first parties of prospecting miners were welcomed by the
Indians with their usual friendliness and hospitality toward
strangers--a universal characteristic of these tribes,--and the
mining for gold was watched with great interest. They soon
learned the value of the gold dust, and some of them engaged in
mining, and exchanged their gold at the trading stations for
blankets and fancy trinkets, at an enormous profit to the
traders, and peace and good feeling prevailed for a short time.
The report of the rich gold "diggin's" on the waters of the
Tuolumne, Merced, Mariposa, Chowchilla, and Fresno Rivers, soon
spread, and miners by thousands came and took possession of the
whole country, paying no regard to the natural rights or wishes
of the Indians.
Some of the Indian chiefs made the proposition that if the miners
would give them some of the gold which they found in their part
of the country, they might stay and work. This offer was not
listened to by the miners, and a large majority of the white
invaders treated the natives as though they had no rights
whatever to be respected. In some instances, where Indians had
found and were working good mining claims, they were forcibly
driven away by white miners, who took possession of their claims
and worked them.
Moreover, the Indians saw that their main sources of food supply
were being rapidly destroyed. The oak trees, which produced the
acorns--one of their staple articles of food,--were being cut
down and burned by miners and others in clearing up land for
cultivation, and the deer and other food game were being
rapidly killed off or driven from the locality.
[Illustration: _Copyrighted Photograph by Boysen_.
AN INDIAN DANCER.
Chow-chil-la Indian in full war-dance costume.]
In the "early days," before California was admitted as a free
State into the Union, it was reported, and was probably true,
that some of the immigrants from the slave-holding States took
Indians and made slaves of them in working their mining claims.
It was no uncommon event for the sanctity of their homes and
families to be invaded by some of the "baser sort," and young
women taken, willing or not, for servants and wives.