Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of 1849

change for goods. 3 The Chilean's offer sounded very attractive, therefore, and many men started for the diggings. Bancroft and de Varigny agree on the approximate time the first rush began, and both authors' accounts are probably true in part. The gold discovered on the American River during the last week in January, 1848, had been accepted with increasing frequency at Sutter's Fort and even in San Francisco, where the newspaper Californian made casual mention of it as early as March 15. Of course this was not the first discovery of gold in California. A local rush had started in 1842 when a Mexican ranchman, seek- This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.