The Klondike Gold Rush Flashcards
The Klondike Gold Rush
.
Fraser River Gold Rush
In 1858 at least 30 000 gold seekers flooded the banks of the Fraser River from Hope to just north of Lillooet in British Columbia’s first significant gold rush. Although short in duration, the Fraser Rush had a significant impact on the area’s Aboriginal peoples.
- In 1858 at least 30 000 gold seekers flooded the banks of the Fraser River from Hope to just north of Lillooet in British Columbia’s first significant gold rush. Although short in duration, the Fraser Rush had a significant impact on the area’s Aboriginal peoples. It also caused the nonsovereign territory of Britain known as New Caledonia to be quickly established as the colony of British Columbia in order to deal with the massive influx of foreign miners.
- Unlike the Cariboo Gold Rush (1860-63), which attracted many Canadians, the Fraser Rush was an extension of California mining society. Yale, formerly a Hudson’s Bay Co post, was quickly transformed into a cultural centre typical of 1850s San Francisco.
Unlike the Cariboo Gold Rush…
Unlike the Cariboo Gold Rush (1860-63), which attracted many Canadians, the Fraser Rush was an extension of California mining society. Yale, formerly a Hudson’s Bay Co post, was quickly transformed into a cultural centre typical of 1850s San Francisco
Why did prospectors leave California towards Hope and Yale?
- By 1858, placer mining in California had depleted free gold and miners accustomed to the glory days of the California Rush were marginalized by capital intensive hydraulic mining. A large unemployed class leapt at the chance to join the rush to the “New Eldorado.”
- The richest discoveries of fine flour gold occurred between Hope and Yale in the Fraser River Canyon. This region was controlled by Americans who provoked conflicts between whites and aboriginals prior to the assertion of British sovereignty from the adjacent colony of Vancouver Island. All aboriginal lands of southern BC were invaded by large companies of miners that triggered the Indian Wars of Washington and Oregon, and by extension the Fraser River War of 1858.
The breaking off of aboriginal resistance
Through diverse overland and maritime routes north, it was this rush that broke the back of full-scale aboriginal resistance, particularly among the Central Coast Salish, Interior Salish and southern populations of the Chilcotin. Above Yale waterfalls and steep canyons prevented steamers from further ascending the Fraser River. Miners excluded from the dominant culture in the lower Fraser, such as the Chinese, Chileans, Hawaiians and other ethnic groups, established diggings beyond Yale.
Frazier Canyon Gold Rush
- The Fraser Canyon gold Rush, (also Fraser Gold Rush and Fraser River Gold Rush) began in 1857 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River a few miles upstream from the Thompson’s confluence with the Fraser River at present-day Lytton. The rush overtook the region around the discovery, and was centered on the Fraser Canyon from around Hope and Yale to Pavilion and Fountain, just north of Lillooet.
- Though the rush was largely over by 1860, miners from the rush spread out and found a sequence of other gold fields throughout the British Columbia Interior and North, most famously that in the Cariboo.
- The rush is credited with instigating European-Canadian settlement on the mainland of British Columbia. It was the catalyst for the founding of the Colony of British Columbia, the building of early road infrastructure, and the founding of many towns.
Where did the news of the Fraiser Gold Rush spread to?
San Fransisco. When James Douglas sent a shipment of Ore to that cities mint.
Was the Gold Rush a cause of the finding of British Columbia.
Yes!
It was the catalyst for the founding of the Colony of British Columbia, the building of early road infrastructure, and the founding of many towns.
Who did the Gold Rush influx from California and Sanfransico affect and cause an imbalance?
The Hudson Bay Company (HBC) traders and the First-Nations.
What were the ethnic groups that were part of the Rush?
During the gold rush tens of thousands of prospectors from California flooded into the newly declared Colony of British Columbia and disrupted the established balance between the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur traders and indigenous peoples. The influx of prospectors included numerous European Americans and African Americans, Britons, Germans, English Canadians, Maritimers, French Canadians, Scandinavians, Italians, Belgians and French, and other European ethnicities, Hawaiians, Chinese, Mexicans, West Indians, and others.
The aftermath of the Gold Rush
The Fraser Canyon War did not affect the upper reaches of the goldfields, in the area of Lillooet, and the short-lived popularity of the Douglas Road caused the town to be designated “the largest town north of San Francisco and west of Chicago”, with an estimated population of 16,000. This title was also briefly held by Port Douglas, Yale, and later on by Barkerville.
By 1860, however, the gold-bearing sandbars of the Fraser were depleted. Many of the miners had either drifted back to the U.S. or dispersed further into the British Columbia wilderness in search of unstaked riches. Other gold rushes proliferated around the colony, with notable gold rushes at Rock Creek, the Similkameen, Wild Horse Creek and the Big Bend of the Columbia River spinning immediately off the Fraser rush, and gold exploration soon after led to the Omineca Gold Rush and the Stikine Gold Rush, which led to the creation of the Stikine Territory to the colony’s north. The Fort Colville Gold Rush in Washington Territory was also a spin-off of the Fraser Gold Rush, as many miners from the Fraser headed there once news of the strike in US territory reached the mining camps. Many others moved on to a gold rush in Colorado.
Fort Yale
The First Nations Fort Yale area residents were the first people ever to mine gold from the sand bars of the Fraser River. Realizing its value, they mined it and used it in the trading of supplies with the British. Around 1856 or 1857 a prospector by the name of James Huston discovered gold close to Fort Kamloops. The search for more gold spread from the Thompson River, spilling over to the Fraser River with a substantial find made in 1858 at Hill’s Bar just south of the Yale.[7] The site of Fort Yale was located on a bar in the Fraser River and served first as an actual First Nations village site. When the Hudson’s Bay Co. established the fur trade in the region, it developed Yale as a small trading outpost located at the lower end of the Fraser River to service fur-trading brigades. When news of gold strikes in the Fraser River reached miners in California, Yale quickly evolved from a fur-trading outpost to a mining town with a population of 700 to 800 people.[8] The town’s native population was segregated to an area outside the town center. Yale even had a Chinatown to accommodate the growing population of Chinese miners and merchants arriving to the area.
New & Used Heavy Equipment http://www.ritchiewiki.com/wiki/index.php/Fraser_River_Gold_Rush#ixzz4W1dPp3ql
The Chinese Miner population
The Chinese were among the first visitors to the town of Yale, working as miners or as merchants supplying the miners with services. Many of them had come all the way from China and Hong Kong to San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, making their way up to British Columbia. It was characteristic of Chinese immigrants to rework existing diggings left behind by others miners in a gold rush. During 1858 for example, many Chinese and First Nations miners reworked sites abandoned by other miners who had come to the Fraser River area in 1858. Most mining was carried out using the practice of sluicing. While most of the most reachable gold had been picked clean, Chinese and First Nations miners stayed behind on the bars and beaches of the Fraser River to search for additional gold. By 1860 there were about 4,000 Chinese people living in the colony. By 1866 close to the end of the Cariboo Gold Rush, the number of Chinese in the province had dropped to 1,700.[9]
New & Used Heavy Equipment http://www.ritchiewiki.com/wiki/index.php/Fraser_River_Gold_Rush#ixzz4W1de5i5g
End of the Gold Rush
End of the Gold Rush
The Fraser Gold Rush was short-lived. By 1860 most of the free gold in the sand bars of the Fraser River had been cleaned out. Many miners returned back to the United States or pushed further into the British Columbia wilderness in search of new gold-prospecting opportunities. Though not as prominent as the Cariboo Gold Rush that followed in 1862, the Fraser River Gold Rush played a pivotal part in the establishment of British Columbia as a colony and witnessed such conflicts as the Fraser Canyon War in the fall of 1858 and the building of the Douglas Road, the colony’s first mainland public works project.[10]
Chinese
Gold was discovered in the lower Fraser Valley in 1857. In the following year, thousands of miners joined the gold rush in B.C. (British Columbia). The first group of Chinese immigrants from San Francisco arrived in Victoria by boat in June 1858. Soon after, more Chinese labourers came directly from Hong Kong to seek a better livelihood in Gum Shan (the “Gold Mountain”). During the pioneer days, shortage of labour forced the colonial government to rely on Chinese contractors for recruitment of Chinese labourers to build trails and wagon roads, drain swamps, dig ditches and engage in other sorts of backbreaking tasks. The prosperous period of the gold rush was basically over by 1865 and B.C. faced adverse economic conditions. A growing number of unemployed White workers began to blame the Chinese for taking away their jobs because of their willingness to work longer hours for lower wages. Hostility directed against Chinese immigrants emerged in B.C. in the late 1860s and burgeoned in the early 1870s.
