By admin 
The California Gold Rush didn’t just draw fortune hunters to California it also resulted in a fatal confrontation that unfolded on the streets of early Sacramento.
Read more 1 dead in Loomis vehicle crash, Placer County Sheriff’s Office says
Evictions of squatters from the land once owned by John A. Sutter had inflamed passions in the city, the Sacramento History Museum said.
On Aug. 14, 1850 the simmering tension erupted after a group of discontented squatters, led by John A. Maloney, moved toward the waterfront, perhaps in an effort to free two men arrested the day before. The men were imprisoned in the city jail — actually a ship, the La Grange, anchored along the riverbank, according to online history guide Clio.
Mayor Hardin Bigelow and an “ad-hoc militia” of settlers confronted the group at 4th and J streets. Maloney’s men formed a line across 4th Street while Bigelow called on them to surrender their weapons, the guide site said.
Then, shots rang out.
Here’s what else to know about the Squatter’s Riot:
What led to the riot?
The discovery of gold in Coloma in 1848 brought hundreds of thousands of people to California. The influx all but ruined Sutter’s extensive land holdings around Sacramento, originally dubbed New Helvetia.
In desperate financial straits, Sutter sold parcels of land to various settlers and entrepreneurs looking to cash in on the Gold Rush, Clio said.
But some newcomers argued that Sutter sold property that was outside his land grant from Mexico. The newcomers, or squatters, contended that California’s impending statehood would ratify their claims to the land they considered their homesteads.
Dr. Charles Robinson, who came to California as the physician for a company of pioneers from Boston, took up their claims as head of the Sacramento Settlers’ Association, according to the Sacramento history site Confluence.
After a squatter’s cabin was burned, the association began conducting its own land surveys and issued certificates of title to members who paid their dues, Clio wrote.
The day of the fateful shootout, Sheriff Joseph McKinney had seized a squatter’s house, but a large armed party of men led by Maloney reclaimed it and began moving toward the waterfront.
Meanwhile, Bigelow rallied Sacramento citizens to arms to quell the disturbance.
How did the riot end?
While there is some dispute about which faction fired first, Bigelow and Maloney both fell during the shootout. The mayor was shot four times but survived his wounds; Maloney did not. Neither did the city assessor, J.M. Woodland. Robinson was also wounded.
Deprived of leadership, the squatters scattered, the brief riot ended with five dead and four wounded, the Clio said.
Who shot first?
Robinson accused Bigelow’s “ad-hoc militia” of firing the first shots, Confluence reported.
Read more Legal team for Nolan Wells’ family accuses DA of not operating in good faith
Robinson, who later served as governor of Kansas during the bloody conflicts leading up to the Civil War, devoted a chapter of his autobiography to the events of that day.
“The squatters had but just turned the corner of J street and Fourth, when a shout was raised and the mayor, sheriff and their adherents opened fire, doubtless contemplating a stampede of the army of fifteen,” Robinson wrote.
But accounts of the riot by authorities and landowners accused the squatters of firing first, Confluence said.
What happened after the riot?
Militias brought from San Francisco by the state’s lieutenant governor rounded up many of the accused rioters in the coming days, the Clio said.
But most of the indictments were dismissed with the ratification of California as a state a few months later.
Newspaperman James McClatchy, who would go on to found The Sacramento Bee in 1857, took up the cause of the accused squatters in the pages of the Placer Times, the Media Museum of Northern California said.
“If the landowners want a fight let them fight and the devil take the hindmost. Let us put up all the fences (of the settlers) pulled down and let us put up all the men who pulled them down,” McClatchy wrote.
After another disturbance, McClatchy was jailed on charges of resisting the authority of the sheriff, but later exonerated, the Media Museum said.
Sacramento’s first sheriff, Joseph McKinney, was killed the next day on Aug. 15, 1850, while trying to break up a squatters’ camp close to Brighton near the modern-day intersection of Folsom Boulevard and Bradshaw Road, the Sacramento History Museum said.
Disputes between the landowners and homesteaders continued for months and mostly played out in newspaper editorials, the Clio said.
Historians say the conflict and suppression of homesteading slowed early Sacramento’s population and economic growth.
An inscription about that early conflict can be seen on the California Fruit Building at 4th and J streets. It commemorates the riot and the mark it left on California history.
Read more Pedestrian seriously injured in South Oak Park hit-and-run, Sacramento police say