Keskydees
A San Francisco French-language newspaper in 1853 estimated that some 32,000 French gold seekers were in California. Throughout the gold country today are reminders of their presence--place names like French Camp, French Corral, and French Gulch.
The French, like other foreigners, were subject to discrimination by United States citizens who wished to exclude miners from other lands. The Americans derided the French by calling them "Keskydees," derived from the Frenchmen's frequent and uncomprehending question, "Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?" meaning "What does he say?"
Anglo-Americans tried to rid the state of foreign miners by requiring them to pay a special monthly tax of twenty dollars for the privilege of mining gold in California. The French, along with Mexicans and some Germans, mobilized opposition to the tax and staged an unarmed protest in the town of Sonora in 1850. Their protest came to be known as "The French Revolution."
Natives of the Hawaiian Islands first arrived in California in the early 1800s. These Pacific Islanders, then known as Kanakas, worked on ships engaged in the hide and tallow trade and in the hunting of sea otter. Richard Henry Dana included a striking portrait of the Kanaka sailors of California in Two Years Before the Mast (1840).
During the gold rush, hundreds of Hawaiians came to California to work in the mines. Place names like Kanaka Creek in Sierra County and Trinity County's Kanaka Bar remind us of their early presence in the gold country.
Even two young members of the Hawaiian royal family became forty-niners, Prince Lot and Prince Alexander. Like boys everywhere, the two young princes weren't very conscientious about writing letters to the folks back home. Fifteen-year-old Prince Alexander later explained that he hadn't written because he didn't think his family and friends would "like to hear about sufferings and murder and gamblers."
Many Chinese came to California during the gold rush. By 1870 approximately one-fourth of the miners in California were Chinese. News of the gold discovery spread rapidly throughout China, and California become known as a fabulous land--Gam Saan or "Gold Mountain."
Unfortunately the Chinese immigrants often received a hostile reception in California. Many Anglo-American miners feared the Chinese would take too much of the gold. Others opposed the Chinese because of their willingness to accept low wages. Much of the opposition was based on essentially irrational fears directed against a foreign people whose way of life was thought to be somehow dangerous to the well being of the state.
In 1852 the state legislature created a new Foreign Miners License Tax with the clear understanding that it would be enforced primarily against the Chinese. The tax was set at $3 per month, later raised to $4. The tax was collected, month after month, until it was declared unconstitutional in 1870. During these eighteen years, this discriminatory tax brought in nearly a quarter of the state's annual revenue.
About one percent of the non-Indian population of gold-rush California was African American, including enslaved persons as well as free men and women. The free blacks came to California on their own, seeking gold. Those enslaved were brought by their southern masters in spite of California's status as a free state. Some who came as slaves, such as Biddy Mason, later obtained their freedom.
The status of African Americans in California was restricted by various discriminatory public policies. The state constitution restricted suffrage to "free white males," thus excluding all nonwhites and women from the right to vote. Likewise, the state legislature restricted membership in the state militia to whites. The legislature also adopted a harsh fugitive slave law. The most odious of these anti-black statutes were the state testimony laws that prohibited "blacks, negroes, mulattoes" and Indians from testifying in any civil or criminal proceeding either "in favor of, or against a white man."
African Americans in San Francisco organized a Franchise League in 1852 to petition the legislature to grant them their full civil rights. Later, in 1855, black residents organized a statewide California Convention of Colored Citizens to protest unfair and unequal treatment.
One of California's most intrepid African American pioneers was a woman named Biddy Mason. Born a slave on a Georgia plantation in 1818, she was taken by her owner to San Bernardino, California in 1851.
California was officially a free state. The state constitution of 1849 was very clear about this: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever be tolerated in this state." Nevertheless thousands of African Americans like Biddy Mason were brought to California by their masters and kept in bondage. When Mason's owner attempted to take her back to the slave-holding south, a California judge ruled that she and her family were "entitled to their freedom and are free forever."
Biddy Mason, free at last, stayed in California and went on to become one of the first African American women to own property in Los Angeles. From her home on Spring Street, she tended her family and helped the poor. She was a woman with a large and generous heart. "If you hold your hand closed," she was fond of saying, "nothing good can come in. The open hand is blessed, for it gives in abundance, even as it receives."