Native American citizens objected to foreigners fill-
ing their purses from the wealth of the foothills, and
returning to their own countries. They particularly
objected to Chinese and Spanish-Americans. White
skins were for a time welcome among the American
miners ; but Indians, Africans, Asiatics, Islanders,
and mixed breeds generally, were detested.
The state of California having no title to either the agricultural or mineral lands lying within her limits, her legislature possessed no right to impose a special tax on foreign miners as it attempted to do. Nor was it for the state, but for the United States, to say what should be done with the gold embanked in the foothills, or who should or should not abstract it, or pay for the privilege of abstracting it. The tax thus attempted to be levied was twenty dollars per month. The people soon saw the folly of such a measure. The miners scarcely averaged twenty dol- lars a month after all their expenses were paid. But those hostile to the Spanish-Americans, and other for- eign elements among the mining population gained their point. The Evening Picayune of San Francisco said on the 14th of August 1850, "We infer, with tolerable certainty, that from fifteen to twenty thou- sand Mexicans, and perhaps an equal number of Chilenos, are now leaving, or preparing to leave Cali- fornia for their own country." It is true that certain outrao;es committed in the south had somethino- to do with this exodus, but undoubtedly the main cause was the passage, by the legislature at San Jose, of the law to tax foreign miners. It would be useless to deny that the first day the tax-gatherers appeared at Sonora, where hitherto peace and amity had presided, the community was split in two, and arrayed one part against the other with bowie-knife and revolver.
It was a great error to suppose that the value of gold to California lay in enriching a few trappers, farmers, and emig-rants. Such narrow-mindedness could not compass the idea of enticing energy and
