Reportage“California, a French story” (5/6). The French of 1848 did not lose their rebellious spirit when they arrived in the Golden State. A proposed tax for foreign gold prospectors ignites the powder in Mokelumne Hill. Guns, barricades, the “revolutionaries” end up winning.
The room smells a bit of dust, but how could it be otherwise? We are in the municipal archives, and the office has been closed for more than three months due to Covid-19. Not that we saw the slightest sick in Mokelumne Hill, 646 inhabitants, but the regulations apply to all of California. Which, in Calaveras County, is not without debate, even rebellion: the sheriff even proclaimed that he would not enforce the obligation to wear the anti-virus mask decreed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom. Calaveras is part of Trump country, the foothills of the sierra who voted Republican in 2016. “Let’s reopen California! Let’s remove Newsom! “, claims a poster at the entrance to the village. Today as yesterday, Mokelumne Hill is a land of rebels.
The archaeologist Julia Costello has exceptionally opened the archives, it is the first time in weeks; Ruby, her red spaniel, enthusiastically rolls around on the carpet. The files are ready in the reading room, under the vintage engravings that show French Hill, the hill overlooking Mokelumne Hill.
It was the scene, in 1851, of a famous episode of the Gold Rush that the newspapers of the time – all proportions no guarded – called “The French War”. Nothing hectic on the scale of the Wild West settling of scores, but, in the history of the French presence in California, the incident was landmark. To be honest, the French consul had to travel from San Francisco, two days on horseback and one by boat, for a peacekeeping mission between the factions. The toll was contained – one dead, a few injured – but the French Hill’s “war” did take place. It remains to be seen who won it.
A miraculous place
“Moke Hill”, as the locals say, has long been, so to speak, the land of France. The camp was first called Les Fourcades, named after two brothers from Dordogne, Albert and Jean. Pre-positioned in the Monterey region, they had arrived in 1848, which allowed them to be among the first to make their fortune.
In the cosmopolitan universe of prospectors, the French had the reputation of being lucky and finding good veins. Mokelumne Hill is one of those miraculous places. Moreover, it is there that are dispatched in November 1850 the mobile guards sent from Paris on a building of the French Navy, by way of thanks for the services rendered during the repression of 1848. From Stockton, one hears them going up in military training, in quick time. One hundred and fifty men in uniform, behind their officers and their bugles.
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