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NATIVE BUT FOREIGN
Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands by Brenden W. Rensink, Texas A&M Press, 2018

Chapter 2, Note 5 (pages 39 and 229)

Various accounts even attest to a noticeable Yaqui presence during the mid-century California gold rush – including future Yaqui leader José María Leyva Cajeme (p. 39)

…for sources and discussion of Yaqui activities in the California Gold Rush (p. 229)

With their well-known expertise in mining, it is no wonder that Yaqui miners found their way – along with countless others from Mexico – to the California gold fields. Rosalio Moises noted that “many Yaquis” travelled north to the gold fields. Notice, there are also various “Yaqui” place names in California, including a Yaqui Well, Yaqui Meadows, and Yaqui Pass in San Diego County and a Yaqui Camp and Yaqui Gulch in Calaveras County.

See sources:

  • Ramón Corral, “Biographía de José María Leyva Cajeme,” in Obras Históricas, (Hermosillo, Sonora: Bilbioteca Sonorense de Geografía e Historia, 1959), 150.
  • Henry F. Dobyns, ed., Hepah, California! The Journal of Cave Johnson Couts from Monterey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico to Los Angeles, California During the Years 1848-1849 (Tucson: Arizona Pioneer’s Historical Society, 1961), 90.
  • History of Amador County, California (Oakland, CA: Thompson & West, 1851), 202.
  • William H. Ellison and Francis Price, ed., The Life and Adventures in California of Don Agustín Janssens, 1834-1856 (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1953), 143-149.
  • Joseph Hall-Patton, “Pacifying Paradise: Violence and Vigilantism in San Luis Obispo” (M.A. Thesis, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, 2016), 87.
  • Susan Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 60-61, 172.
  • Ronald H. Limbaugh and Willard P. Fuller, Jr. Calaveras Gold: The Impact of Mining on a Mother Lode County (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2004), 107, 117.
  • Judith Marvin, Julia Costello and Salvatore Manna. North Calaveras County (San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing Company, 2007), 44.
  • Rosalio Moises, Jane Holden Kelley, and William Curry Hohlden, A Yaqui Life: The Personal Chronicles of A Yaqui Indian (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), 8-9.