The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 set off a migration to California that was one of the signature events in the history of Western America. Among the 49ers, as the gold migrants came to be called, were people from across the nation and around the world. Included among the earliest migrants to California were at least one thousand Chinese. Shipping agents in Hong Kong and elsewhere attracted the attention of men with advertisements describing California as Gum San, or "Gold Mountain.” By 1852, as many as 25,000 Chinese lived in California. Most of them were miners who had been organized into companies upon their arrival in America by Chinese merchants in San Francisco. After providing tools and supplies to the immigrants, the merchants transported their charges to the diggings, where the men worked in groups of fifty or more sluicing placer gold (gold in creeks and streams) on sites abandoned by Americans and others as mostly valueless, worked-over sites. Through hard work and patience, many of the Chinese were able to collect significant amounts of gold one tiny flake at a time. Americans were not pleased by Chinese success in areas they had abandoned as worthless, and often the Americans used violence against the “foreigners.” Since California, with a population comprised largely of Native Americans and Hispanics, did not become a U.S. Territory until 1848, many Anglos were very recently foreigners themselves. In 1849, Anglos attacked a team of Chinese miners working in Tuolumne County. By 1852, hundreds of Chinese had been driven from numerous diggings. Before long, Chinese men were paying vast sums of money for “mining rights” and “protection.” In 1862, an anti-Chinese club formed in San Francisco.

Not all Americans viewed the Chinese as worthy of expulsion from the mines. In his 1871 book Roughing It, Mark Twain had this to say about the Chinese he found in Virginia City, Nevada years earlier: “They are a harmless race when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse than dogs; in fact, they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldom think of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries. They are quiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness, and they are as industrious as the day is long. A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a lazy one does not exist…Any white man can swear a Chinaman's life away in the courts, but no Chinaman can testify against a white man. Ours is the ‘land of the free’- nobody denies that - nobody challenges it. Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify. As I write, news comes that in broad daylight in San Francisco, some boys have stoned an inoffensive Chinaman to death, and that although a large crowd witnessed the shameful deed, no one interfered.”

1. Read the poem “Laws Harsh as Tigers,” and the song “John Chinaman” on the preceding page. Who do you think were the respective audiences for the Chinese man’s poem and the American miner’s song? Imagine that you are the author of the song; write a response to the poem. Now, imagine that you are the poet, and write a response to the song “John Chinaman.”

2. Read the editorial page from your newspaper. Choose an opinion essay or letter with which you disagree, then write a response. Now, choose a letter with which you agree, then write a rebuttal from the opposite view point.