Bark Canoe Research Articles

Australians and the Gold Rush: California and Down Under, 1849–1854 by Jay Monaghan

162 Western American Literature is slight, the book, judged by the ease with which it can be read, is excellent —especially its pleasing format and type, its index, and its complete (but unobtrusive) notes and explanatory material. In fact, from a technical stand­ point, it is a model of what a scholarly work of its kind should be. W il l ia m T. P il k in g t o n , Southwest Texas State College Australians and the Gold Rush: California and Down Under, 1849-1854. By Jay Monaghan. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1966. 317 pages, $6.50.) Many Westerners are aware that a number of Australians were among the men who joined the California gold stampede, and that a few of them, nicknamed “Sydney Ducks,” earned the attention of the vigilantes in San Francisco and the diggings. Few know, however, the fascinating story of the even greater gold rush to Australia that was a direct sequel to the California saga. The story of these two episodes and their interrelations is colorfully told here for the first time by Jay Monaghan of the University of California at Santa Barbara, author of The Book of the American West and since 1947 editor of the American Trails Series. Gold had been discovered in Australia before 1849, but it was to the advantage of the large stockraisers and employers of cheap labor to hush up any finds. When word came of the California strikes, even the most unsea­ worthy old windjammer of the South Seas was patched up and loaded with men from Australia and New Zealand, willing to suffer for three or four months the perils of storm, starvation, disease, and possible piracy to win to the shining shore of San Francisco. The colonial authorities, worried that the land would be emptied, offered a reward to anyone who would find gold in Australia. Three Australians lured to California, finding little luck there, decided they might strike it rich back home. The most energetic was Edward Ham­ mond Hargraves, and four chapters are devoted to his ironic success in panning the creeks near Bathhurst, N.S.W. The gold-seekers of the world thus changed the direction of their stam­ pede. With the discovery of Ballarat, “the richest alluvial goldfield ever Reviews 163 known,” men flocked into the future state of Victoria and repeated the scenes so familiar to collectors of Western Americana. Mr. Monaghan retells in brisk narrative the story of the skirmish at the Eureka Stockade, which has been termed “Australia’s Bunker Hill.” He shows that although few Americans were involved in the brief struggle between diggers and redcoats (only one American, a grinning Southern Negro, was tried and at once proceeded to make a burlesque of the court), American slogans were echoed at the time the Southern Cross flag was first raised. The new book also gives a chapter to the escape frotti servitude of the “Irish Patriots of ’48,” made easier when shipping became livelier during the rush from America to Australia. Charles Bateson’s excellent volume Gold Fleets for California (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1963), which Mr. Monaghan uses as one of his dozens of docu­ mentary sources, is not a substitute for Australians and the Gold Rush, since it covers only a fraction of the broader Monaghan canvas. The new volume contains a score of pictures, complete notes, and several pages of sources, as well as a good index. Mr. Monaghan’s skillful selection and vivid style recreate the days of the gold-finders in a way that makes reading his book an adventure in itself. Australians and the Gold Rush is the result of years of research and mel­ low writing. I first met the Monaghans early in 1955 among the files of the Mitchell Library in Sydney, that paradise of researchers in Pacific history, and as fellow Fulbright scholars we frequently discussed his projected book. The volume is at last available and is strongly recommended. A. G ro v e D a y , University of Hawaii Exploring the Northwest Territory: Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s Journal of a Voyage by Bark Canoe from Lake Athabasca to The Pacific Ocean in the...

Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

PRIMITIVE FORMS OF TRANSPORTATION IN NORTH AMERICA

The modes of transportation among North American aborigines are divided into about six groups according to the place where they live, as shown in the Map.In the land along the Arctic Ocean, Eskimos' land that is beyond the north bound of the tree-growing region, sleds and canoes made of hides provide means of transportation.In the snowy woodlands of Canadian Shiield bornering on Eskimos' region, sleds and snow-shoes are used in winter, and in summer canoes made of birch bark are employed for transport.However, in the region beyond the bound of birch-growing areas, large-modeled canoes of Atlantic districts were the means of transportation by water because light birch bark canoes did not suit large rivers. At the same tine, as it is not seldom that heavy snow in winter and marshes in summer hamper traffic, people start going on foot constructing roads.In Great Plains, travois, bull-boats and sleds are used. In the highland of the West, the bearers, and in the regions along the North Pacific and the Gulf, the large-modeled canoes provided principal means of communication.Regarding the distribution according to the area of primitive modes of transportation, the study by H. Banlig (Ann. de Geog., Vol. 17) contains valuable information.

141. The Genetic Relation of the Bark Canoe to Dug-Outs and Plank-Built Boats

141. The Genetic Relation of the Bark Canoe to Dug-Outs and Plank-Built Boats

Pierre Esprit Radisson and the Race of the Coureurs de Bois

By the turn of the seventeenth century into the eighteenth, the primeval wilderness, many moccasins remote from the St Lawrence, had become the scene of man's latest challenge to the unknown. The uttermost stretches of sky, water, and tangled evergreen which, hitherto, had known of men only the stealthy gliding past of the red man in his bark canoe were to see the white skin of the coureur de bois and the black robe of the Jesuit missionary.

109. The Tree Dwellers of the Arafura Swamps: A New Type of Bark Canoe from Central Arnhem Land

109. The Tree Dwellers of the Arafura Swamps: A New Type of Bark Canoe from Central Arnhem Land

198. African Bark Canoes

198. African Bark Canoes

Adventures in a Bark Canoe

Adventures in a Bark Canoe

48. Note on Carving on a North-West American Birch Bark Canoe Model.

48. Note on Carving on a North-West American Birch Bark Canoe Model.

Societies and Academies

LONDON Anthropological Institute, Dec. 22.-Prof. Busk, F.R.S., president, in the chair.-Mr. J. Park Harrison exhibited tracings of late Phoenician characters from the south-west of Sumatra. They are said to be still in use, and differ entirely from early letters in other parts of the island. The natives have a tradition that some descendants of Alexander settled there; and if Nearchns' second expedition, the account of which is lost, reached the Bay of Bengal, the date, Mr. Harrison considered, would, agree sufficiently well with the letters. His sailors were principally Tyrians.-Col. Lane Fox read a paper on early modes of navigation, in which he described the various contrivances employed by savage races for transit on the water. Commencing with the simple trunk canoe, the author traced the development of the art of boat and ship-building through the stages of stitched plank canoes, bark canoes, rafts, outrigger canoes, single and double, the double canoe, the variation of hull, the weather platform, the rudder, and the rude sail, and gave the distribution of their many forms and modifications. It was argued that the rude bark float of the Australian, the Tasmanian, and the Ethiopian, the catamaran of the Papuan, the dug-out canoe of the New Zealander, and the built-up canoe of the Samoan, were survivals representing successive stages in the development of the art of shipbuilding, not lapses to ruder methods of construction as the result of degradation; that each stage supplies us with examples of what at one time was the perfection of the art countless ages ago. Some of the more primitive kinds spread over nearly the whole world, whilst others had a more limited area of distribution. Taken together, they enabled us to trace back the history of shipbuilding from the time of the earliest sculptures to the commencement of the art.