American miners, predictably for the age of Manifest Destiny, and especially after the war that won California for the United States, believed the mines belonged to them. They saw no reason to share the spoils with the indigenous peoples any more than with those against whom the war had been fought, or with foreigners who had taken no part in the war. American miners would defend one another against jumped claims and gross fraud—probably less from any sense of injured morality than from a recognition that what was done to their compatriots could be done to them. But they had scant such concern
...more
