An Icon or Insensitive Relic? Prospector Pete Is on Its Way Out

Towering over the courtyard at California State University, Long Beach, is the barrel-chested statue of Prospector Pete, the epitome of the rugged 49ers who came to the state looking for gold and land.

To some, it is an innocuous icon hark back to the university’s first president, Pete Peterson, who frequently spoke of having “struck the gold of education.” For others, the bearded and weathered statue is an upsetting relic that sanctions the brutish treatment of indigenous people in the state during the Gold Rush.

As scholars and students on campuses across the country grapple with debates over free speech and political correctness, Prospector Pete has emerged as a divisive symbol in California.

“Walking by a statue that’s put in a prominent place on campus, in an almost honorary way, that’s another type of trauma that’s being imposed on me. This is a part of our family history,” said Miztlayolxochitl Aguilera, 20, who is of Tongva Indian descent. “I heard the stories of murder and rape and genocide growing up. Somebody else, they might not notice the statue. They might not feel what I feel as a California Indian when I see that symbol on campus.”

The school was built on the former site of the sacred village of Puvungna, where the Tongva indigenous people lived long before European contact. And beyond its early branding by Peterson, the university has no historical ties to the Gold Rush, having been founded a century after the 49ers struck gold.

Now, after years of activism and a formal committee inquiry, Jane Conoley, the university’s president, announced last month that the statue will be formally moved. The cartoonish Prospector Pete costume mascot used at athletic games, which has been slowly phased out in recent years, will also be formally retired.

Aguilera, who recalled when her grandmother forbade her from acknowledging her indigenous ancestry, out of fear that it would lead to further marginalization, praised the move.

“This is an acknowledgment of our trauma as indigenous people who suffered,” she said. “And it’s also an acknowledgment that we have to learn about these histories, about what’s going on around us.”

While the decision has not drawn the sorts of controversy and protest seen on other campuses and in other parts of the country, some alumni have questioned whether the university is merely catering to students and, in the process, severing ties with part of its past.

“We have heard from some who believe we are censoring the history of our campus and bending to political correctness,” said Terri Carbaugh, a university spokeswoman. “But this is not about political correctness; it’s about correcting the historical record.”

In an email announcing the decision, Conoley said the university’s push for diversity and inclusion in recent years have brought a new understanding of the fraught historical legacy for the Gold Rush. “We came to know that the 1849 California gold rush was a time in history when the indigenous peoples of California endured subjugation, violence and threats of genocide,” she wrote. “Today’s Beach is not connected to that era. We have evolved from Prospector Pete.”

Ray Halbritter, a representative of the Oneida Indian Nation, praised the student activists who urged the removal of the statue from its current location and pushed to formally change the university’s mascot.

“I think that’s a wonderful moment of teaching and hope. It’s fascinating to me that the youth are leading and the maturity of this issue,” said Halbritter, one of the leaders of the Change the Mascot movement, which seeks to stop the use of racially insensitive Indian mascots.

Cal State Long Beach is not the only campus that has reckoned with the history of the California mission system.

Last month, Stanford University announced it would rename several buildings memorializing Junipero Serra, who founded the mission system in California and who has been criticized for enabling the cruel treatment of Native Americans. Stanford eliminated its own Indian mascot in the 1970s over concerns of insensitive cultural appropriation; one common depiction on merchandise featured a cartoonlike Native American with a large round nose and feathers sticking out of its hair.

Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015 signed a law banning the use of the term “Redskins” as a school mascot across the state, after decades of efforts by advocates who say the term is a racial slur.

Prospector Pete will be moved to a new alumni center after the university breaks ground on the project, which it intends to do next spring. The precise timeline and location have yet to be announced.

In the meantime, students have called on the university to completely sever ties with Prospector Pete as well as the “49er” phrase in merchandise, statues and other branding materials. In a resolution passed in March, the Cal State Long Beach students association denounced “the systemic oppression of Native Americans,” which “was perpetuated by stripping their basic rights to vote, own land or weapons, and testify in court of law.”

The university’s athletics department underwent a rebranding effort several years ago and no longer uses the Prospector Pete mascot at games. The decision, according to the university, was based on branding and not related to external debates about political correctness.

But other organizations on campus bear names related to the Gold Rush, including the student newspaper “The Daily 49er,” alumni boards and a university bookstore. It is unclear if those organizations will consider changing their names.

“Some people say, ‘Why are you trying to erase history?'” Aguilera said. “As a California Indian, it’s never been about erasing history; it’s been about acknowledging history.”