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California on the Eve
They related differently to the beauty of California and its immense bounty of natural resources. Each saw a different kind of "gold" to be reaped from the land. They also related differently to each other. California Indians had been here for more than ten thousand years.
Top: Portrait of General John A. Sutter, 1856, Collection
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The Gold Rush dramatically affected California's
environment, but much had been changed well before 1848. Primeval California was a unique
and extraordinarily diverse natural environment, with a remarkable range of geography and
geology, of plants and animals, of weather and natural resources. California had been
inhabited or visited by many different people before gold was discovered. Each new group
of people brought its own system of values. 
They
encountered successive waves of explorers, would-be colonizers, and immigrants, including
Spanish missionaries, Mexican and Californio rancheros, Russian hunters, and American
trappers, traders and farmers. Who was a Californian? And what did California mean to
them?
