The New International Encyclopædia/Forty-niners

FORTY-NINERS. A name popularly applied to the throng of fortune-seekers who emigrated to California in the years immediately following the discovery of gold there in 1848, especially to those who went during the period of greatest excitement in 1849. They were also called ‘Argonauts.’ They came, some by land and some by sea, from all parts of the world, and had among them representatives of almost every nationality, of every color, and of every social stratum. Those who came by sea embarked, for the most part, from ports in the Eastern States, some making the long and dangerous voyage around Cape Horn, and others proceeding to Chagres (q.v.),and thence across the Isthmus to Panama, where they again embarked on any vessel obtainable. The chief carriers were the three side-wheelers, the California, the Oregon, and the Panama, of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, which frequently transported more than three or four times the number of passengers for which they were designed. Besides these, nondescript vessels, of every size and kind, were commissioned for the service, and were likewise greatly overcrowded, while many reckless adventurers, unable to force their way aboard, left for their destination in clumsy Indian dug-outs. Much as passengers by the sea suffered, however, overland travelers suffered even more. The majority of these gathered from May to June of each year at Independence or Saint Joseph, Mo., at that time on the frontiers of civilization, and then proceeded to Sacramento in long caravans, continually harassed on the way by the Indians, and forced to suffer terribly from starvation, exposure, and fatigue. The first emigrant train reached Sacramento in August, 1849, and others followed in quick succession. By the end of 1849 it is estimated that 42,000 emigrants had arrived by land, and 30,000 by sea. Consult: Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, vol. xviii. (San Francisco, 1888), and ib., California Inter Pocula (San Francisco, 1888); Bayard Taylor, El Dorado (New York, 1862); Stillman, Seeking the Golden Fleece (San Francisco, 1877); and Bret Harte, Tales of the Argonauts (Boston, 1875).