Life in California Before the Gold Discovery

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Life in California Before the Gold Discovery In reading "Life in California Before the Gold Discovery", my first thought is that the Americans appear to have been rather greedy and not trustworthy during that time. Of course, all of the accounts given were given by Californios, and so they are of a biased nature, meaning we don't get to see both sides of the story. It seems to me like they had a good thing going for them, a healthy and prosperous culture where they could all trust one another, and then the greed of the Americans gradually destroyed it and unhinged their society until there was nothing left. The changes brought about by the gold rush made California a very popular place for Americans to settle. The greed of the Americans, combined with becoming a part of the United States made the Californios mistrust Americans and look upon their arrival with fear or anger. They were bound now by American laws that they did not understand, and instead of being helped to understand they were heavily taken advantage of. In Guadalupe Vallejo's account, he makes it clear that in the beginning the Americans were treated with equality and some groups even jumped at the opportunity to help them. "They had grants from the governor, just the same as the Spanish people". In Prudencia Higuera's account 'Trading with the Americans', it is clear that her family had been conditioned to not trust the Americans and to fear them greatly. They spent all day working on hides and making tallow to trade with the Americans, and then when they arrived and asked the father to board the ship in order to trade, they were terrified to let him go. However, when he returned, they were very pleased with the things he had brought back, which included cloth, axes, shoes, fish-lines, grindstones, jewelry, a gun and four toothbrushes. She adds that the toothbrushes were the first ones she'd

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