Very soon after reaching Coloma, Mr. Case found that the community was in a broil. No open troubles had yet occurred, but there were causes of exasperation which were working rapidly to a climax. It was due primarily to a difference in system and ideas between the various elements of the people then in California. It was in fact a part of the final clash between the old Spanish system and the American; the beneficiaries of the Spanish system, or Grandees, being on one side, and on the other the Oregonians, representing the American idea. It was proved in the event that men who could establish an independent government in Oregon, and were able to compel the obedience of the Cayuse Indians, were able also to make in California a deep impression for their idea of liberty. The disturbed, or rather the entirely unorganized condition of government in California, made possible the following course of events. The military government of this territory, just taken from Mexico, had not given place to a civil organization, and it was not thoroughly known what authorities were in power. Sutter had received a large grant of land, and with this was coupled certain power to enforce justice among the Indians, and he was recognized as a sort of justice of the peace; but this was of very limited extent, and there was no central authority in the whole state, unless military.
California was occupied originally by men who had received great land grants, some of which were as much as six leagues square. These men were at first Spanish-Americans, who were thus rewarded for government services. They formed a sort of nobility or aristocracy, and held their places like the baronies or counties of the old world, and their possessions were frequently of the dimensions of a county. Their ranches were on an average about twenty-five miles apart, and the ranges between were stocked with great bands of cattle. The Indians, a mild and inoffensive people, were employed as laborers and cattle drivers by the Spanish-Americans, and a genuine European feudal system was in force. The first Americans (or Germans, or English) who went to California acquired some of these ranches, and continued the Mexican system. Only they employed it with characteristic American energy, and pushed it to a much greater extreme. With the discovery of gold and the opening of the mines, a prospect of vast profits appeared to the early Californians, who were English, or American, or German; and their first intention was to work the mines in the same manner that they worked their ranches—by the labor of the native Indian, or by importation of Mexican debtors, who could be procured very cheap. It was still the law in Mexico to put debtors in prison on the complaint of their creditors, and they could be held until the debt was paid, and the debtor himself failing in this, his son could be held. Many of these debtors were imprisoned for but trifling sums, and upon settlement with the creditors, could be practically bought by other parties almost like slaves, the purchase of the debt giving the right to hold the debtor. Hundreds of Mexicans were thus procured and sent to the mines, at a cost in some cases of but a few dollars to the purchasers, and contracted to work for some trifling sum, often not over twenty-five cents a day, in washing gold. Contract labor from Chili (W. M. C.) was also obtained, and it was estimated that by the midsummer of 1849 as many as five thousand such laborers were at work on the California placers.