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Most of
these newcomers headed for the Mother Lode, the gold vein that stretched for 400 miles along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. One of them, a black woman,was spotted by a white settler named Margaret Fink just east of the Sierra Nevadas, "tramping along through the heat and dust, carrying a cast iron bake stove on her head with her provisions and blanket piled on top - all she possessed in the world - bravely pushing on for California." Some African-American miners did find gold. After a successful strike near Sacramento, Peter Brown wrote to his wife in Missouri: "California is the best ... place for black folks on the globe. All a man has to do is work, and he will make money." Women, too, discovered freedom and opportunity in the
West. In 1852 Mary Ellen "Mammy" Pleasant arrived in San Francisco
from Massachusetts. As one of the first black women in a city in need of cooks,
Pleasant advertised her services as a caterer, eventually selecting an employer
who promised $500 per month, a salary dwarfing that of any other local cook and
equal to that of many gold miners. With that income and the wise investment of
a $15,000 inheritance from her first husband, a Boston-area painter, by 1855
Pleasant was on her way to becoming one of California 's wealthiest women. She also continued the
abolitionist activities she had begun in New England. Although California
entered the Union in 1850 as a free state, local officials were unwilling to
challenge slaveholders. By 1852, 300 slaves, nearly one third of California's
black population, worked in the gold fields, while others were house servants,
giving the state the largest slave population west of Texas. Pleasant financed
legal challenges to slavery, including the campaign in 1857 and 1858 to free
Archy Lee. A slave born in Mississippi and brought to Sacramento by his owner,
Lee had tried to escape. His case symbolized the growing tensions between pro
and anti-slavery forces in California; it provoked street clashes in Sacramento
and San Francisco and eventually landed in the state's supreme court, where the
decision came down in Lee's favor. Speaking almost as if he had Pleasant in
mind, one German observer remarked,"the wealthy California Negroes
...exhibit a great deal of energy and intelligence in saving their
brethren."
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