Just before the gold Rush, two newspapers on the Atlantic coast received a series of letters from "W.G." in Monterey, California. The letters reported on political events, detailed the natural resources and possibilities for agriculture, commerce, lumbering and mining, and customs of the Californios. Methods of capturing wild horses (and the Indians' techniques of stealing tame ones), bull and bear baiting, a horseback wedding, Christmas customs, furniture, fandangos, and cultural changes resulting from the advent of Americans, all were recounted in a refreshingly straightforward style. Extensive research into contemporary documents by the late Donald Munro Craig established the identity of "W.G." as an expatriate Englishman named William Robert Garner. And Garner's experience as whaler, lumberman, rancher, miner, long-time Monterey resident, participant in revolutions, sheriff of Monterery, and secretary to the American alcalade, Walter Colton, made him a uniquely understanding reporter. George P. Hammond, Director Emeritus of the Bancroft Library, has remarked that this work is "one of the best such contributions to come to light in many years. The biographical sketch of William Robert Garner is comprehensive and informative--well researched and well written. The Letters themselves are extremely interesting, and as a source material are of first-rate relevance and importance."

This book began as a venture to collect official and unofficial documents relating to the interval of American military rule. There proved to be thousands, the writings of Presidents, executive officers, and congressmen, naval and military personnel, governors, settlers, and citizens-routine, familiar, wheedling, seductive, blustering, commanding. As the quantity grew, they seemed eager to be heard. But the documents exhibit the traits of their makers. Containing neither the whole truth nor nothing but the truth, they offer many-sided versions of what people believed or wanted others to accept; they must be taken with a grain of salt. Long, sometimes garbled, and always incomplete, the record requires assessment, a referee to appraise the evidence and form his own imperfect conclusions. And any curious or dissenting reader may, by consulting the numerous cited sources, make his own interpretations. References, whenever possible, have been made to materials in some printed form, leading an inquirer to a vast array of historical evidence. Everything herein happened, or so the record tells, and if an assumption has been made, it is that men, issues, and events can be interesting in their own right, without exaggeration. "To exaggerate," a knowing urban child recently observed, "means you put in something to make it more exciting" (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 10, 1978).

Traces the history of the California Gold Rush from 1849 through 1884 when a court decision forced the shut down of the hydraulic mining operations, bringing decades of careless freedom to an end.

Early outlaws tell their own raw tales of holdups, shootouts, and desperate flights from the law. Witness the cruel confessions of California bandits during the opening days of the Gold Rush, stage robbers, and California highwaymen. These tales of harrowing and sometimes hilarious antics are accompanied by many rare photographs.

Reinterprets borderlands history from the Mexican perspective.

Describes changing white views of native California Indians as Spanish victims, useful laborers, and, finally, obstacles to white expansion