CHASING THE AMERICAN DREAM

Being a prospector during the California gold rush was by no means plain sailing, but non-white arrivals had it especially tough

- RHIANNON DAVIES

When picturing a "forty-niner", one of the treasure seekers who travelled to California in search of gold and glory, your mind might conjure up a sun-burned white man with a tangled beard and a gold pan dangling from his hand. While almost 80 per cent of prospectors were white east coasters, thousands of newcomers to California also poured in from across the globe.

In early 1848, around the same time that the first cries of "gold" rang out in California, there were only around 157,000 people in the region. Of that number, 150,000 were Native Americans, 6,500 were of Spanish or Mexican descent and the rest - only a few hundred - were recent European settlers. As news of the gold seeded in California's valleys spread via ships, though, people began to flock to the region.

The early wave of prospectors heralded not from other areas of America - Americans who wanted to leave their lives behind in search of riches faced a long and dangerous trek across the country to reach California but from territories easily accessible to the shoreline by boat, such as Hawaii, Mexico, Peru and - significantly - China.

A huge proportion of prospectors originating from overseas were young Chinese men - around 24,000 arrived between 1849 to 1853. Many came from the country's southern coastal provinces, which were wracked by instability following the Taiping and anti-Manchu rebellions. California held the promise of riches and new opportunities for themselves and their families.