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Mexicans have no business in this country. I don't believe in them. The men were made to be shot at, and the women were made for our purposes. I'm a white man-I am! A Mexican is pretty near black. I hate all Mexicans.
-Letter to the Stockton Times, April 6, 1850, emphasis in the original
When the California newspaper published the excerpt above, it included the adjoining statement: "We insert the following letter, though we do not hold ourselves responsible for our correspondent's sentiments" (Peterson 1975, 9). The letter was from a veteran of the Mexican War, and its blunt, hostile language likely worried the editors. However, it did not dissuade them from publishing the letter. Instead, they offered a disclaimer that distanced the newspaper from the writer, but still allowed for the inclusion of such opinions. As a public record of the turbulent interactions that often took place between the Euro-American and Mexican communities in nineteenth-century California, the letter revealed the strong attraction that Mexican women held for EuroAmerican men despite the former's ethnic background. In fact, the letter writer appeared to justify his ambiguous desire precisely through his feelings of hatred and white supremacy. Similarly, the newspaper's decision to run the letter despite (or more likely because of) its extreme perspective suggests the press's willingness to fuel these controversial views. Read together, the letter and disclaimer illustrate a set of attitudes that frequently defined the Gold Rush period. Numerous materials, published and privately written during the late 180Os, embody the mixed feelings of lust and prejudice that gripped much of the male population living throughout the female-scarce, ethnically diverse American West. At the same time, responses such as the two that appear in the Stockton Times reveal the deep-rooted violence that Mexican women faced and the lack of accountability that this morally ambivalent environment offered. The story of Josefa, the only woman ever hanged in the state of California, serves as an especially tragic example.
There are many versions of Josefa's hanging. However, a number of details remain consistent. Josefa, a Mexican woman who lived in the northern California mining town of Downieville, on July 5, 1851, was hanged by a mob for killing an Euro-American miner. Late into the evening on the...