Gold Rush | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

January 24, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

“Some Kind of Mettle”

After a brief stay in the Islands, in 1839, John Augustus Sutter, a Swiss seeking his fortune in America, brought a small group of native Hawaiians with him to California.

They worked for him and eventually intermarried with local native American families. They settled in the area of Vernon, which is now called Verona, where the Feather River flows into the Sacramento River in South Sutter County. (co-sutter-ca-us)

At the time of Sutter’s arrival in California, the territory had a population of only 1,000 Europeans, in contrast with 30,000 Native Americans. At the time, it was part of Mexico and the governor, Juan Bautista Alvarado, granted him permission to settle.

In order to qualify for a land grant, Sutter became a Mexican citizen in 1840; the following year, he received title to about 49,000-acres and named his settlement New Helvetia, or “New Switzerland.” He called his compound Sutter’s Fort.

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, using a name then-common to describe Hawaiian workers, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas.” They built the first settlers’ homes in Sacramento – hale pili (grass shacks) made with California willow and bamboo.

Sutter later ordered that a sawmill be built in the Coloma Valley on the South Fork of the American River, about 50-miles from the fort. In the process of deepening the millrace (the channel of water where the flow of current causes the mill wheel to turn,) James Marshall made an important discovery that changed things, a lot.

On January 24, 1848, a young Virginian named Henry William Bigler recorded in his diary: “This day some kind of mettle was found in the tail race that looks like gold first discovered by James Martial, the boss of the Mill.” (csun)

Marshall and Sutter tried their best to keep the discovery of gold quiet until the construction of Sutter’s mill was completed; the news leaked out, and the stampede began. Some 300,000-people came to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.

“Forty-Niner” has become the collective label for those who participated in the famous California Gold Rush. Quite a few people arrived in 1848, and many came after 1849; however, it was the year 1849 which witnessed the large wave of gold-seekers. (Hinckley)

The first large group of Americans to arrive were several thousand Oregonians who came down the Siskiyou Trail. News reached Hawaiʻi on June 24 on a boat that had departed San Francisco on May 24.

A large proportion of the Americans and Europeans residing in the Islands, along with many native Hawaiians, headed east; as many ships as were available were outfitted for the journey to the Pacific Coast.

When news of the Gold Rush reached Canton in 1848, thousands of young Chinese mortgaged their futures and boarded boats to “Gum Shan,” or “Gold Mountain,” as California became named. (By 1852, 25,000 Chinese had reached Gold Mountain.)

New Zealanders received the news in November 1848 when an American whaler put into port with several newspapers from Hawaiʻi, and Australians learned about the discoveries a month later.

All of these groups predated Americans arriving from the US East Coast, who had to wait until trading ships from Asia who had stopped in San Francisco or Hawaiʻi either rounded the tip of South America or reached the Isthmus of Panama and crossed it with the news.

Kanaka colonies sprang up throughout the gold country, and California’s first “Good Humor” man, Charlie O’Kaaina, supposedly sold ice cream from his ice wagon in the Sierra foothills. (Magagnini)

Place names like Kanaka Creek in Sierra County and Kanaka Bar in Trinity County tell us of the growing presence of Hawaiians in gold country. “Hawaiians also migrated to Yolo County, California to participate in the Gold Rush and created their own Kanaka Village.”

“There is evidence that Hawaiians settled across California in the late-1800s and even intermarried with Native Americans. Many scholars speculate that Hawaiians migrated to the mainland in order to gain more economic opportunity and to flee from the dramatic Westernization that was changing the face of Hawaiʻi.” (pbs-org)

The California Gold Rush drawing Hawaiians to the continent was not its only effect on the Islands; the Hawaiian economy was affected in several ways – good and not-so-good.

Prior to the Gold Rush, supporting the Pacific whaling and trading fleets and trade between the West Coast and Hawaiʻi was the scale of the Hawaiʻi participation. The scale of that significantly changed with the Gold Rush.

Hawaiʻi was only three to five weeks away, and with the growing population drawn to the gold fields, in addition to provisioning ships, Hawaiʻi farmers were feeding the gold seekers on the continent.

There were some down sides; this also brought a marked increase in the prices of consumer goods, especially food, caused by the great increase in agricultural exports to California, which offered very profitable new markets. (Rawls)

Likewise, the exodus to the continent created a critical labor shortage in Hawaiʻi, where a sizeable number of sugar plantation workers migrated to the California gold fields.

The parting of workers from the plantations between 1848 and 1853 was so large, Hawaiʻi sugar producers began to seek Chinese immigrants to fill the gap. (Rawls)

As the California Gold Rush demonstrates, the success of the Island’s economy was largely tied to events that occurred outside the Islands, especially on the continent. The American Civil War’s influence on Hawaiʻi’s fledgling sugar industry is another example of that, starting in 1861.

The Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai‘i to fill part of the void left by the absence of then-blockaded southern exports – at elevated prices.

Hawaiian-grown sugar soon replaced much of this southern sugar through the duration of the conflict. By the end of the war, over thirty extremely prosperous plantations were in operation and expanded to new levels previously unheard of before the war’s commencement.

April 18, 2024 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Prefab Construction in Hawaiʻi

The 1821 Frame House at Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives was one of Hawaiʻi’s early prefab houses. They precut the lumber on the continent, then delivered it to Hawaiʻi and erected the house. It’s still there.

The timbers of Maine white pine were cut and fitted in Boston in 1819 and came around the Horn on the brig Thaddeus with the Pioneer Company in April 1820, arriving first in Kona. The frame of the house arrived in Honolulu on Christmas morning of that year on board the ship Tartar.

Construction of the house wasn’t necessarily smooth – it was some weeks before the King would permit its erection. Construction did not begin until April, and the frame had by that time been injured by exposure to the tropical sun.

The boards for the roof could not be found, and it was concluded that they were never put aboard ship. Other lumber had been damaged enroute, and some was stolen after arrival at Honolulu. The balance had to be eked out by boards purchased locally.

During the shingling, the scaffolding collapsed, injuring one of the men. The siding of rough feather-edged boards proved leaky, and attempts were made to stop the cracks with rags soaked in tar. (Mission Houses; Peterson)

The Frame House was used as a communal home by many missionary families who shared it with island visitors and boarders. It is the oldest wood frame structure still standing in the Hawaiian Islands.

It wasn’t until the California Gold Rush (1848) that prefab housing started to really catch on, on the West coast of the continent and elsewhere.

As news spread of the discovery, thousands of prospective gold miners traveled by sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area; by the end of 1849, the non-native population of the California territory was some 100,000 (compared with the pre-1848 figure of less than 1,000.) They needed places to stay.

Ralph Waldo Emerson noted the gold seekers brought ‘framed houses’ with them, “Suddenly the Californian soil is spangled with a little gold-dust here and there in a mill … the news flies here and there, to New York, to Maine, to London, and an army of a hundred thousand picked volunteers”.

“(T)he ablest and keenest and boldest that could be collected, instantly organize and embark for this desart, bringing tools, instruments, books, and framed houses, with them. Such a well-appointed colony as never was planted before arrive with the speed of sail and steam on these remote shores, bringing with them the necessity that the government”. (Emerson, 1849)

Framed houses were also an early article of overseas trade, and before long the American colonies, in their turn, were making and shipping houses to the Caribbean sugar islands. After that both Europe and our Eastern Seaboard produced them for the settlement of Australia and California.

At the height of the Gold Rush in 1849 port cities around the world were sending large numbers of buildings to San Francisco. Hawaiʻi – and especially Honolulu – was soon to share them. (Peterson)

The Polynesian notes, “A New Article in Commerce. From all parts of the world we hear that HOUSES, in perfect order to be set up in a short time, are being constructed for California. From the humble wooden tenement of a single room, to immense iron and framed buildings of three stories”.

“Belgium, France, England, the British Colonies the South American States and China, are all sending their quota … from New York and immediate vicinity alone, 5,000 houses have been … shipped for El Dorado.” (Polynesian, March 2, 1850)

A century later, the Islands saw the proliferation of ‘pre-designed’ homes built by Harold Hicks. In 1949, Hicks brought his family to the Islands and started his own residential construction company in the laundry room of his house.

Hicks designed and built homes for the ‘First Time Buyer,’ as well as for subdivision developers. He wanted to offer affordable homes to the working families of the islands and would build one home or 100 at a time. (BIA)

One dozen efficient model home designs offered the homeowners a range of flexibility in bedrooms and bathrooms. Sizes ranged from a one-bedroom 576-SF model to a four-bedroom 1,208-SF home.

Consistent features in a Hicks’ home include clear heart redwood interior and exterior single walls, oak flooring and jalousie windows … and the white roof (no matter the model or square footage, the roof was always white.)

Hicks wanted his customers to be able to “select a home model just as a shopper could select items in a department store”. Since 1950, 17,000 Hicks homes have been built in the islands and the working families of Hawaiʻi have experienced their homes for generations. (BIA)

November 8, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

America the Beautiful

Katharine Lee Bates, was born on August 12, 1859 in Falmouth, Massachusetts; she was described as a “brilliant trail-blazing woman – poet, teacher, community builder, and patriot – who challenged Americans to make their country the best it could become in its values and literature.” (Ponder)

Bates graduated from Wellesley College in 1880; she joined the faculty just five years later. After earning her master’s degree at Oxford University in 1890, Bates became the head of the English literature department.

“It appears that in 1893 Miss Bates had been called to join the faculty of a summer school at Colorado Springs. On the way she visited the Columbian World’s Fair at Chicago.”

The end of the three-weeks’ session of the school was celebrated by the stranger members of the faculty (including Dr. Rolfe, the Shakespearean scholar; Professor Todd, the Amherst astronomer, and Miss Bates’ colleague at Wellesley, Professor Katherine Conan) with an excursion to the summit of Pike’s Peak.” (Baxter in Boston Herald)

“We strangers celebrated the close of the session by a merry expedition to the top of Pike’s Peak, making the ascent by the only method then available for people not vigorous enough to achieve the climb on foot nor adventurous enough for burro-riding.”

“Prairie wagons, their tail-boards emblazoned with the traditional slogan, ‘Pike’s Peak or Bust,’ were pulled by horses up to the half-way house, where the horses were relieved by mules.”

“We were hoping for half and hour on the summit, but two of our party became so faint in the rarified air that we were bundled into the wagons again and started on our downward plunge so speedily that our sojourn on the peak remains in memory hardly more than one ecstatic gaze.”

“It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.” (Bates)

Gazing out from the top, the view from the “purple mountain majesties” (the Rocky Mountains) captivated Bates and inspired the opening lines or her poem (it later became a song).

In the first stanza, Bates describes “amber waves of grain.” She later remarked that this lyric referred to the seas of grass and grain fields in Kansas that she could see from the top of Pikes Peak.

The final stanzas of the song offer praise for “heroes proved in liberating strife” and a vision of “nobleness,” and “brotherhood.” These lines became popular among American troops fighting overseas during World War I. (NPS)

The refrain “From sea to shining sea!” is perhaps one of the more recognizable lyrics. Yet, the first version of Bates’ poem read “And music-hearted sea!” The more familiar wording did not appear until 1910.

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

“When we left Colorado Springs the four stanzas were penciled in my notebook, together with other memoranda, in verse and prose, of the trip.”

“The Wellesley work soon absorbed time and attention again, the notebook was laid aside, and I do not remember paying heed to these verses until the second summer following, when I copied them out and sent them to The Congregationalist, where they first appeared in print July 4, 1895.” (It was first presented as a poem, “America”.)

“The hymn attracted an unexpected amount of attention. It was almost at once set to music by Silas G. Pratt. Other tunes were written for the words and so many requests came to me, with still increasing frequency, that in 1904 I rewrote it, trying to make the phraseology more simple and direct.” (Bates, Museum on the Green)

“America the Beautiful” has been called “an expression of patriotism at its finest.” It conveys an attitude of appreciation and gratitude for the nation’s extraordinary physical beauty and abundance, without triumphalism. (LOC)

Katharine Lee Bates died March 28, 1929 and is buried in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Radiocarbon dating indicates that Clovis people were the first to inhabit the area, roughly around 11,000 BC. More recently, Ute, Comanche, Arapaho and Cheyenne also frequented the area. The Utes called Pikes Peak “Sun Mountain Sitting Big” and believed that it was here that the Great Spirit created the world.

Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Pikes Peak became part of the United States. In 1806, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike, after whom the peak is named, was sent on an expedition to locate the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers.

The expedition also aimed to explore the new territory and its natural resources, as well as establish friendly relations with Native American nations. On November 15 he spotted the peak and referred to it as “the Grand Peak.” (Colorado Encyclopedia)

Pikes Peak is the 31st highest peak out of 54 Colorado peaks (at 14,115 feet). It is the farthest east of the big peaks in the Rocky Mountain chain, which contributed to its early fame among explorers, pioneers and immigrants.

During the 1850s and 1860s an estimated 100,000 people moved to Colorado in search of gold and were known as “Fifty-Niners”, a reference to 1859, the year the rush to Colorado peaked.

The initial gold discoveries were made below confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, which is now the location of downtown Denver. Denver City was established near the gold discoveries in late 1858.

The first “bonanza” of rich gold placers was discovered by a prospecting party from Georgia led by John Gregory, at a site that was first named “Gregory Gulch” and would soon be the site of the Central City mining district. Other gold discoveries were made and news reports back East caused the frenzied rush to the Pikes Peak region.

It was the symbol of the 1858 Gold Rush to Colorado with the slogan, “Pikes Peak or Bust”, reference to the prominent mountain at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains that guided many early prospectors to the region westward over the Great Plains.

January 24, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Fever

“The first symptoms of the fever is a restless sensation – an excited state of the system – a wild expression of the eye – and a light and elastic tread. These symptoms are followed with a desire to obtain implements for digging and washing …” (Polynesian, July 15, 1848)

There are “fearful ravages of a terrible fever which has nearly depopulated all the seaport towns and caused general rush to the interior. It is not exactly the yellow fever, but a fever for a yellow substance, called gold.”

“An exceedingly rich gold mine has been discovered in the Sacramento Valley, and all class all sexes have deserted their occupation and rushed en masse to the mines to make their fortune.”

“The gold taken from this newly discovered mine is not gold ore, but pure virgin gold. It is procured by the simple process of digging and washing, and is obtained at the rate of from two to four ounces per day by each laborer.” (Polynesian, June 24, 1848)

The great California gold rush began on January 24, 1848, when James W Marshall discovered a gold nugget in the American River while constructing a sawmill for John Sutter, a Sacramento agriculturalist. News of Marshall’s discovery brought thousands of immigrants to California from elsewhere in the United States and from other countries.

At first, there were only two routes. The first entailed a six-month sea voyage from New York around the tip of South America to San Diego or San Francisco. Rampant seasickness, bug-infested food, boredom, and high expense made this route unattractive for many would-be prospectors.

The second route brought travelers over the Oregon-California Trail in covered wagons—over rugged terrain and hostile territory. This journey also averaged six months’ duration.

By 1850, the length and difficulty of both routes had inspired the construction of the Panama Railway, the world’s first transcontinental railroad. Built across the isthmus of Panama by private American companies to speed travel to California, the railroad helped to shave months off of the long voyage around South America.

In addition to massive emigration from the eastern US, the California gold rush triggered a global emigration of ambitious fortune-seekers from China, Germany, Chile, Mexico, Ireland, Turkey, and France. The number of Chinese gold-seekers was particularly large, though many Chinese did not intend to settle in the United States, which they called “the Gold Mountain.” (harvard-edu)

It is estimated that not less than two hundred foreigners have left the Sandwich Islands for the gold mines in California.— Others it is rumored will soon follow. At the latest intelligence from the gold region there was no falling off in the amount of gold that rewarded the labors of the miner …” (the Friend, September 1, 1848)

“The rush, to that part of the world, flows in unabated. One hundred and eight vessels, are reported to have left the Atlantic States, for San Francisco, during the month of December. … The mines continue to yield the usual amount of gold, and no sign of being exhausted. The freshet and overflowings of the numerous streams and rivers, are reported to increase the amount of gold in the ‘diggings.’” (The Friend, April 1, 1850)

And, they came from Hawaiʻi … hundreds of Hawaiians came to California to work in the mines. Remaining place names, Kanaka Creek and Kanaka Bar remind us of their early presence in the gold country.

Others from Hawaiʻi, even some of the missionaries, joined in the quest for gold.

“Several other vessels left port some for California, which has become a very interesting quarter, since the reports have reached us of the gold mines.” (August 1, 1848) “Comore. Jones has gone to St. Francisco and it is said he will put a stop to the private operations in the gold district, and will claim the district & the gold for the U. S. government.” (Levi Chamberlain, August 8, 1848)

“There is at present a great excitement here about digging gold in California. … Mr. Douglass and Mr. Lyman of whom you have heard as former assistants in our school are both there, also — Mr. Ricord, the former attorney general. … Men, women, and children are all absorbed in it, the one great thing Gold.” (Julia Cooke, September 21, 1848)

Reverend Damon of the Seamen’s Bethel Church and publisher of The Friend travelled the area – not as a miner, but an observer of the activities there.

“In travelling through the country I have met scores of seamen with whom I had become acquainted while at Honolulu. I was cordially welcomed, although in more than a single instance they exclaimed ‘you are the last man that we expected to see at the mines.’ A few words of explanation were however sufficient to set the matter right.” (Damon, The Friend, December 1, 1848)

Thomas Hopu and William Kanui, who returned to the islands with the Pioneer Company of missionaries in 1820, joined the gold rush. Damon saw them in Sacramento on his journey through the area.

John Thomas Gulick, son of the Gulick missionary family, joined the rush after seeking his parents’ permission. By June 1849, his prospecting was reasonably successful, but after having his money stolen, he returned to Hawaii a few months later after having recovered his finances through various trading ventures. (Bennett)

Likewise, the Reverend Lowell Smith, the first minister of Kaumakapili Church, sailed to San Francisco for a rest because of poor health. He visited the California gold fields.

“Kamae went immediately to speak to the Hawaiians in other places to come so we might be together for the week. I witnessed their work in the gold fields …. They were not able to obtain much on account of the scarcity of water. Some made a dollar a day, others two dollars, and still others, nothing.” (Smith; Kenn, HHS)

The California Gold Rush drawing Hawaiians to the continent was not its only effect on the Islands; the Hawaiian economy was affected in several ways – good and not-so-good.

Likewise, the exodus to the continent created a critical labor shortage in Hawaiʻi, where a sizeable number of sugar plantation workers migrated to the California gold fields.

The parting of workers from the plantations between 1848 and 1853 was so large, Hawaiʻi sugar producers began to seek Chinese immigrants to fill the gap. (Rawls)

February 1, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

1848

After a brief stay in the Islands, in 1839, John Augustus Sutter, a Swiss seeking his fortune in America, brought a small group of native Hawaiians with him to California.

John Sutter ordered a sawmill to be built. On the morning of January 24, 1848, James Marshall made his customary inspection of the sawmill he was building for Sutter.

During the previous night, Marshall had diverted water through the mill’s tailrace to wash away loose dirt and gravel, and on that fateful day, he noticed some shining flecks of metal left behind by the running water.

He picked them up and showed them to his crew; a young Virginian named Henry William Bigler recorded in his diary: “This day some kind of mettle was found in the tail race that looks like gold first discovered by James Martial, the boss of the Mill.” (csun)

Word of Marshall’s discovery leaked out and immediately set off a “rush to the mines.” By the spring of 1849, the largest gold rush in American history was under way. At the time of Marshall’s discovery, the state’s non-Indian population numbered about 14,000. By the end of 1849, it had risen to nearly 100,000, and it continued to swell to some 250,000 by 1852.

Gold was both plentiful and – by happy geologic accident- easy to extract, making the gold-bearing gravels of California’s rivers into what has been described as “the finest opportunity that, has ever been offered on any mining frontier.”

A contemporary newspaper put it slightly differently: “The whole country, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the sea shore to the base of the Sierra Nevadas, resounds with the cry of ‘gold, GOLD, GOLD!’ while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pickaxes.” (California Parks)

In the Islands …

The California Gold Rush drawing Hawaiians to the continent was not its only effect on the Islands; the Hawaiian economy was affected in several ways – good and not-so-good.

Likewise, the exodus to the continent created a critical labor shortage in Hawaiʻi, where a sizeable number of sugar plantation workers migrated to the California gold fields.

The parting of workers from the plantations between 1848 and 1853 was so large, Hawaiʻi sugar producers began to seek Chinese immigrants to fill the gap. (Rawls)

Great Māhele – 1848

At the time of Captain Cook’s contact with the Hawaiian Islands the land was divided into several independent Kingdoms. By right of conquest, each King was owner of all the lands within his jurisdiction.

After selecting lands for himself, the King allotted the remaining to the warrior Chiefs who rendered assistance in his conquest. These warrior Chiefs, after retaining a portion for themselves, reallotted the remaining lands to their followers and supporters.

The distribution of lands was all on a revocable basis. What the superior gave, he was able to take away at his pleasure. This ancient tenure was in nature feudal, although the tenants were not serfs tied to the soil – they were allowed to move freely from the land of one Chief to that of another.

Under King Kamehameha III, the most important event in the reformation of the land system in Hawaii was the separation of the rights of the King, the Chiefs and the Konohiki (land agents.)

The King retained all of his private lands as his individual property; one third of the remaining land was to be for the Hawaiian Government; one third for the Chiefs and Konohiki; and one third to be set aside for the tenants, the actual possessors and cultivators of the soil.

More than 240 of the highest ranking Chiefs and Konohiki in the Kingdom joined Kamehameha III in this task. The first māhele, or division, of lands was signed on January 27, 1848; the last māhele was signed on March 7, 1848.

Each māhele was in effect a quitclaim agreement between the King and a Chief or Konohiki with reference to the lands in which they both claimed interests.

The lands identified and separated in 1848 as Crown lands, Government lands and Konohiki lands were all “subject to the rights of native tenants” on their respective kuleana. The Land Commission was authorized to award fee simple titles to native tenants who occupied and improved the land (and proved they actually cultivated those lands for a living.)

The awarding of these completed the māhele of the lands into the Crown lands, Government lands, Konohiki lands and Kuleana lands and brought to an end the ancient system of land tenure in the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Epidemics of 1848 – 1849

The earliest published reference to the epidemics occurred in The Polynesian, the government newspaper, on October 14, 1848: “SICKNESS.—Much sickness prevails here at the present time.”

“The measles and whooping cough have at length made their appearance here. The whooping cough made its appearance a few weeks since, and during the last week several cases of the measles have occurred in town.”

“By an arrival from Hilo, we learn that the measles prevail extensively among the native population of Hilo. Both the measles and whooping cough are comparatively light, and no fears need be entertained if proper care be taken. Among the native population some cases have proved fatal, owing to exposure and improper treatment.”

“The mumps prevailed here some years since, and we understand several cases have lately occurred. Pleurisy and bilious fever prevail to some extent among the native population. Several cases of influenza similar to that which occurred here in 1845 have lately occurred.”

On March 1, 1849, toward the end of the epidemics (which, incidentally, no one has precisely dated), The Friend ran a brief article titled “Decrease of Polynesian Races.”

This article stated, “By the epidemics (whooping cough, measles, and influenza), which have raged among the Hawaiians, during the last 12 months, it is estimated that not less than 10,000 have been swept away or about one-tenth of the population.”