Hanging bodies, slashed ears and bottled heads
Lynching, punishment and race in the California Gold Rush, 1848-1853
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64166/d5da9v66תקציר
This article examines the implementation and meanings of Anglo-American punishments of non-white immigrants during the California Gold Rush. Anglo-Americans tended to emphasize the idea of punishment as spectacle, where the victims 'bodies were abused and thereafter became collective symbols to Anglo-Americans of their racial superiority. This work analyzes these practices in three cases involving Mexicans and Chileans, men and women who suffered the terrible consequences of lynching and whose bodies, or body parts, were exposed to huge crowds. These events occurred in California's particular multi-racial society during a period when punishment in most of the United States was no longer public. The California cases reinforce the idea of how important contexts are for the development of racial discriminatory attitudes which, in these cases, derived from the actions of both common people and institutional powers.
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