The Impact of the Gold Rush on Native Americans and Mexican Americans (email me for the bibliography!)

When the cry of "gold!" in early 1848 echoed through the mountains of California, the Native Americans should have run for the hills. By 1850, a flood of white settlers swarmed into the west filled with dreams of gold and prosperity. It was the single greatest migration of people in a shortest amount of time. The gold rush was a horrendous period in our nation's history; the Native American population was decimated as human rights were cast …

…out of Iraq. For personal and national economic gains, the U.S. set up a policy of pillaging the ancient land of Shiites, Muslims, and Kurds. A Lakota Indian draws this comparison, "America has had a terrorism problem ever since Columbus...Operation Freedom, someone said, they should call it Operation Massacre...This is the same old military tactic that was used on Indians at Wounded Knee, when they wanted our land and our gold." (Schmidt)