Upon reaching the Oregon Territory and learning of a recently {short description of image}
enacted law that excluded African-Americans from staking claims, Bush took his family to an area north of the Columbia River, near present-day Olympia, W shington, an isolated spot ignored by earlier Oregon-bound migrants. There he found that the exclusion laws weren't enforced. His decision would have an importance far greater than the safety and security of his own family. Other members of his party followed him, creating the first significant settlement north of the Columbia, and leading, a decade later, to the establishment of Washington Territory.
The 1848 Gold Rush spurred black migration, and between 1850 and 1860,California's black population swelled to more than 4,000. Half that number made their homes in San Francisco and Sacramento,creating the first African-American urban communities in the Far West. Most of those San Francisco settlers would have missed the chance to meet the West Indian - born William Alexander Leidesdorff, who had settled in the city in 1841, when it was still called Yerba Buena. Leidesdorff, of mixed Danish-African ancestry, was a prosperous merchant captain in New York before migrating to California. Soon after his arrival, he successfully petitioned the Mexican government for a 35,000 acre grant of land that encompassed the future site of Sacramento.
In 1845 Leidesdorff, despite his Mexican citizenship, was appointed vice-consul by President James K.Polk, who apparently was unaware that he was black. Two years later he was elected to the Yerba Buena town council, and in 1848 he became city treasurer. His death that year came just a few months after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Fort. Around the same time, the Treaty of Gua- dalupe Hidalgo, ending America's war with Mexico, forced Mexico to cede to the United States a little more than half of its territory, including present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and California, and parts of Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. With the Americanization of the region came the imposition of new restrictions on the rights of the thousands of free African-Americans who continued to stream into California.

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