THE FRASER RIVER HUMBUG: AMERICANS AND GOLD IN THE BRITISH PACIFIC NORTHWEST

ROBERT E. FICKEN

The Fraser River gold rush of 1858 was widely dismissed by contemporaries as a "humbug," an over-promoted failure of limited, albeit dramatic, duration. Modern historians have endorsed this point of view. The Fraser River rush was, however, actually a success, leading to sustained mining development and the founding of British Columbia. In the process, Americans coped badly with unfamiliar environmental conditions and differing concepts of law and public administration.

RESPONDING TO NEWS OF GOLD in the wild canyons of the remote Fraser River, thousands of Americans-from Washington and Oregon territories and especially from California-crossed the 49th parallel in the spring of 1858. For most of them, dreams of wealth in the British Pacific Northwest soon gave way to vivid expressions of disappointment. Returning to San Francisco, disenchanted prospectors complained of short supplies and harsh environmental conditions. Linked by the unwholesome practices of informal colonial governance, agents of the Crown and of corporate monopoly had conspired to thwart the legitimate aspirations of Yankee miners. The Fraser River was, in the favorite expression of the defeated gold hunter, a "humbug." Later historians rendered a similar negative verdict. According to Rodman Paul, the original accounts of precious metal were "10 per cent truth and 90 per cent humbug." Paula Mitchell Marks concludes, in a recent survey of mining history, that "the rush had fallen flat as a flapjack" by the fall of 1858. In reality, however, the Fraser River gold rush was neither a failure nor a venture limited to a single year. The continuing, and generally successful, exploitation of the river basin was, in truth, a major event in Pacific Coast history. The first discoveries led to the creation of British Columbia and provided that colonial entity with the basis for sustained economic and political viability. American frustration with unfamiliar laws, customs, and economic practices, moreover, threatened to undermine English sovereignty north of the border.1

1

Gold was discovered in New Caledonia, Great Britain's mainland Pacific Northwest possession, no later than 1857. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), holding a monopoly patent on the region's Indian trade, attempted to keep the discovery secret in the interest of developing a lucrative trade in precious metals. "These arrangements," chief factor James Douglas wrote of the inducements meant to encourage digging by Indians, "will lead to a considerable outlay of capital in the outset, but the object is important and if gold is found to be abundant the trade will become highly remunerative." Acting in his dual capacity as governor of the colony of Vancouver's Island, Douglas issued an official proclamation, declaring the deposits Crown property and off-limits to unauthorized persons. The declaration was legally dubious, given the fact that the governorship did not extend to New Caledonia. Success depended upon the reports being kept from the Americans, a doubtful proposition once new finds were made on the lower Fraser River in February 1858. Regular steamboat service linking San Francisco, Puget Sound, and Victoria, plus the porous nature of the undefended international boundary, encouraged the exchange of news and speculation. "It was impossible," Governor Douglas later conceded, "to keep the discovery of Gold . . . concealed from the public."2

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