Winners and losers of the Gold Rush

Look back at everything studied so far this unit, and a clear pattern emerges: the Gold Rush created real winners and real losers, and they were not always who you might expect. Merchants often did better than miners -- Sam Brannan, from week 19, became one of California's richest men not by mining, but by selling supplies to miners. A German immigrant named Levi Strauss found his own opportunity making sturdy canvas and denim work pants built to survive hard mining labor, a business that still exists today. Most individual miners, as week 21 showed, worked hard and ended up no richer, or even poorer, than when they started.

The group harmed most severely, though, was Native Californians. The flood of miners moved directly onto land Native communities depended on for food and shelter, and the new California state government, formed in 1850, passed laws that failed to protect Native Californians and often allowed violence against them to go unpunished. Combined with disease and starvation from losing access to traditional food sources, California's Native population fell catastrophically during this period -- a tragedy so severe that the State of California has formally apologized for it in recent years. A full accounting of the Gold Rush has to include this alongside the stories of merchants and miners.