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 Entertainment | Books | December 2006 
Going for the Gold ... via Northern Mexico
 Kelly Arthur Garrett - El Universal
| "MEXICAN GOLD TRAIL: THE JOURNAL OF A FORTY-NINER"
By George W.B. Evans
Edited by Glenn S. Dumke
Preface by Robert Glass Cleland
Huntington Library/University of California Press 2006 |
California history is Mexican history. It didn´t stop being so when the flags changed over Sonoma and Los Angeles in the 1840s, and it is still so today. The flow of North American history darts and tacks along both sides of the border like the butterfly in that haiku poem they made you learn in school.
As fate would have it, the event that would shape California´s modern destiny - by no means for the better - happened in a matter of weeks after the fabled land passed from Mexican to U.S. control. Since the day gold was discovered in 1848 near what would later become the state capital of Sacramento, the rush of fortune seekers and troublemakers into the region has been depicted in popular lore as an all-American affair, a migration of courageous Yanks and southerners fulfilling the nation´s destiny.
In truth, the Gold Rush was multinational. Prospectors came from Europe and Asia, the Pacific and South America.
The largest non-U.S. contingent was from Mexico. The state of Sonora alone sent 10,000 souls to California in search of gold; the town called Sonora in the Sierra Nevada foothills above California´s Central Valley began as their mining camp and was named for the home they left behind.
Many of the Mexicans at the diggings had a distinct advantage when it came to mining: They were better at it. Mining towns had existed in Mexico´s north for centuries, giving them knowledge and experience most of their competitors lacked.
But they also suffered a fatal disadvantage: resentment by the white U.S.-born majority. The lucky ones were taxed abusively and relegated to inferior sites. The rest were simply bullied out of the way - jailed, beaten or killed. The irony, of course, was that the discrimination was taking place on soil that just months earlier had been Mexican territory.
Despite the sad outcome, our mental picture of the Gold Rush needs to include a northward migration of Mexicans passing through Chihuahua and Sonora to eventually cross the Gila and Colorado Rivers into California seeking an escape from poverty. Sound familiar?
Also needed in this revised image is the inclusion of a route through northern Mexico used by a surprising number of U.S. citizens as an alternative to the Oregon and Santa Fe trails, or to expensive sailings in a pre-Panama Canal era. By reaching New Orleans, marching through Texas and crossing the Rio Grande into Coahuila or Chihuahua, the migrants could start out earlier in the year with a lower risk of dangerous cold weather at either end of the journey. Thousands took these "Mexican gold trails" in the peak Gold Rush year of 1849, including one George W. B. Evans. The frail but tough 29-year-old Ohio attorney was a typical forty-niner in most ways, but atypical in one: He took the trouble to leave behind a detailed diary of the trek, the Mexican leg of which lasted from February to September of 1849.
Pioneer journals, with their stifling excess of detail and tortured prose ("we found a small patch of coarse mountain grass . . . and let our mules pick of this scanty provender") aren´t everybody´s idea of pleasure reading. Evans´ writing is more tolerable than most, and he makes an appreciated effort to be both thorough and reader-friendly. But interest in his journal was mostly limited to historians and Western Americana buffs when it was first published in 1945.
However, the 2006 re-release, under the title "Mexican Gold Trail: The Journal of a Forty-Niner," coincides with an increased interest on both sides of the border in interactions between Mexico and the United States, historical and contemporary. Evans doesn´t describe for us any meeting up of Mexican and U.S. wagon trains on the trail to California, but he does offer a lot of observations about the physical and social conditions in northern Mexico in the mid-19th century, both in a state of noticeable decline. With a few exceptions, the pueblos and haciendas were either destitute or deserted, devastated by the recent war (a cause Evans neglects to mention), a lack of attention from Mexico City, and raids by Apaches and others in search of supplies.
Evans´ route had a lot to do with the squalid conditions he relates. Many crossed into Chihuahua not too far south from El Paso, where the journey to Casas Grandes (a migrant and trade crossroads since pre-Hispanic times) was a matter of days. Evans´ party crossed from Eagle Pass, near the current Piedras Negras and then trekked across Coahuila to Chihuahua City, a seldom-used and apparently miserable route.
The dangers are unspectacular but real - lack of water, lack of grass (if the mules and horses don´t eat, they don´t go), wild cattle escaped from abandoned haciendas, robbers with no qualms about killing their victims, and, surprisingly often accidents. The biggest threat, however, was disease, usually cholera. A journal, unlike a history book, is personal. We know George Evans as a guy, not a mythic pioneer. So we feel his hardships in Mexico, and lament his death in California at age 31.
The journal also gives us an idea of the evolution of American attitudes about Mexico and Mexicans in the last century and a half. Alas, those attitudes had a long way to go in 1840. Some things never change: Evans complains constantly that he and his fellow foreigners were being overcharged for goods, which was probably true.
Evans has a better grasp of social and historical determinants than most in his position, but he can´t help reducing what he sees on the ground to a dichotomy of savage Indians and cowardly Mexicans. Today it´s only the anachronous extremists who echo Evans´ comment on a Comanche raid on a Coahuila pueblo: "the poor, miserable, driveling Mexicans must meet their fate, for they have no American government to protect them."
A recommended strategy for reading Evans´ journal is to trace his party´s route, day by day, on the most detailed map of northern Mexico available, noting the place names and comparing his descriptions with current ones. Adding to the challenge is Evans´ near-perfect record of getting names wrong, with no Google, guidebook or knowledge of Spanish to help him. It takes a while, for example, to realize that Santa Aronomo is San Gerónimo, even with Evans´ later "correction" to San Faronomo.
kelly.garrett@eluniversal.com.mx
"MEXICAN GOLD TRAIL: THE JOURNAL OF A FORTY-NINER"
By George W.B. Evans
Edited by Glenn S. Dumke
Preface by Robert Glass Cleland
Huntington Library/University of California Press 2006 |
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