Gold Seekers Research Articles

Utah's Women Homesteaders

Utah's Women Homesteaders

The Life of the Afterlife in the Big Sky State: A History of Montana's Cemeteries by Ellen Baumler

Reviewed by: The Life of the Afterlife in the Big Sky State: A History of Montana's Cemeteries by Ellen Baumler Annette Stott Baumler, Ellen – The Life of the Afterlife in the Big Sky State: A History of Montana's Cemeteries. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 186 p. This slender volume by the former interpretive historian of the Montana Historical Society, Ellen Baumler, covers a lot of ground. It reviews varied types of human burial and commemoration occurring over several millennia across the land that has become the state of Montana. Rather than an in-depth study of any particular part, Baumler gives the reader a broad overview of the subject, stopping to recount fascinating stories she has collected in the past two decades as she travelled through the state. Very few books consider Indigenous deathways or settler cemeteries and grave markers between the Mississippi River and the West Coast states. Baumler helps fill that gap with this engaging survey of Montana, written with a popular audience in mind. The first quarter of the book considers Indigenous burials, from the oldest discovered remains—dating to about 11,000 years ago and now known as the Anzick child—to tree and platform burials of the 1800s. A chapter about epidemics of smallpox and other diseases that decimated tribes after contact with Europeans is compelling. Indigenous death and surrounding practices have become especially sensitive subjects in recent years. Although Baumler mentions NAGPRA—the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act that seeks to respect Indigenous peoples by returning human remains and certain cultural artifacts from museums to tribes—and introduces the Montana Human Skeletal Remains and Burial Site Protection Act, the format of the book necessarily precludes a detailed, nuanced treatment of these topics. The endnotes and bibliographic essay, however, provide places where the interested reader can learn more. With a loose chronological approach, Baumler next considers the early emigrants to Montana, from fur traders and gold seekers to settlers and soldiers, whose actions often led to violent death. As she recognizes, "There is a vast difference between the ambience of cemeteries, where loved ones are carefully laid to eternal rest, and places where lives were lost during violent events" (p. 57). Battlefields such as Little Bighorn served as impromptu burial grounds and are briefly considered, primarily from non-Indigenous perspectives. Some of these burials were moved to cemeteries, but many remain unmarked. In fact, a large number of early graves in Montana Territory were unmarked, including those of outlaws and those without family or financial means, but Baumler provides some of their stories from old newspapers and other accounts. She explains that the first actual cemeteries in Montana were found at trading posts and forts (p. 60) as well as missions. Gold mining camps also buried their dead, usually in boot hill-style cemeteries on high ground. [End Page 181] Montana, like other western territories, has ghost towns and entirely lost towns whose cemeteries are the only remnant marking the place where a community once thrived. In other cases, whole cemeteries have been moved to make way for urban development. Forgotten graves are regularly unearthed and urban legends add to the complexity of the historian's task. The Life of the Afterlife recounts some of these tales, reminding the reader that "eternal rest" is anything but eternal. Another section of the book looks at the development of planned, landscaped cemeteries and Montana's first gravestone makers. Baumler identifies the Helena shop of Kirkaldie and Carr as one of the very first to advertise in 1878, and many other stone cutters and monument firms soon followed. In 1883, when the railroad came to Montana, importation of both raw marble and carved monuments became much more affordable. Residents of Montana's principal cities and several towns will find mention of their cemeteries here. These cemeteries testify to the vast diversity of peoples who settled in Montana from all over the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Veterans' cemeteries, prison and hospital cemeteries, church cemeteries, private family burial grounds, pet cemeteries, potters' fields for the indigent, and disaster site monuments all receive notice in this sweeping history. She focuses on the earlier...

The Gaol on the Hill: The prelude to and construction of Bendigo’s sandstone gaol

The gold rushes on the Victorian goldfields of the 1850s increased the population of the new colony seven times over. This created many problems for the new government, not the least of which was an increase in lawlessness which put authorities under severe pressure to house the rapidly growing convict population. Other issues confronting colonial prison administrators were the mobility of the population as gold seekers moved to the latest finds, the presence of a large Chinese population on the goldfields and the housing of the mentally disturbed. At the same time, new philosophies in prison design gave the Victorian government the potential to replace its first, hastily constructed, goals with the latest ‘state of the art’ prisons at strategic locations across the goldfields.

Chinese Gold Miners and the "Chinese Question" in Nineteenth-Century California and Victoria

During the second half of the nineteenth century the largest gold deposits yet known in the world were discovered in the American West, Australasia, South Africa, and western Canada. From 1848 to 1891 a series of gold rushes—quick, short-term bonanzas (or failures) for individual miners—swept those regions, drawing hundreds of thousands of gold seekers from around the world. In fewer than fifty years miners and mining companies extracted from the earth some 435 million ounces of gold—more than the total that had been mined in the previous three thousand years. The sudden increase in world gold production in the late nineteenth century was produced by Anglo-American settler colonialism and capitalist development. Since ancient times gold has been valued for its beauty and purity. Indigenous populations on the settler-colonial frontiers were long aware of alluvial gold deposits in their midst, but they did not value gold as a money commodity. Thus, gold rushes furthered the dispossession of native peoples and transformed the Pacific worlds where gold was discovered, as well as the global economy. Sustained exploration and extraction required capital investment, deep-mining technology, mass labor migration, and long-distance transportation. Such activity accelerated the economic development of the gold-mining regions and strengthened the international financial power of Great Britain and the United States as creditor and investor nations.1

First Impressions: Anglo Travelers and the Origins of El Paso, Texas, 1846-1852

El Paso del Norte was a thriving agricultural region on the Santa Fe-Chihuahua trail when the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848) and the 1849 gold rush turned it into a border town on the southern route to California. The diaries and letters of the Anglo-American soldiers, engineers, and gold seekers who passed through the area in the 1840s and 1850s document the emergence of a new political and economic landscape that helped define the pattern of Anglo-Mexican relations in the new town of El Paso, Texas (across the Rio Grande from El Paso del Norte), well into the next century.

Search for Treasure Is Woven Into Tapestry of City’s History

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Information About San FranciscoFull AccessSearch for Treasure Is Woven Into Tapestry of City’s HistoryJoan Arehart-TreichelJoan Arehart-TreichelSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:15 Feb 2013https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2013.2b2AbstractSeismic events other than earthquakes have shaped San Francisco’s modern history. One might say that these events have been propelled by people’s hunger for treasure—either of a financial nature or a psychological or spiritual one.Defining modern San Francisco is a challenge by anyone’s standards. Perhaps the best description is that of a city of hills, fog, earthquakes, and the search for treasure—either of a financial nature or a psychological-spiritual one.This is the famous Auburn Miner statue—a longtime city landmark in Auburn, Calif., an old Gold Rush city near San Francisco.Jim Feliciano/ShutterstockLet’s start with the Gold Rush. In 1848, gold nuggets were discovered in the foothills northeast of San Francisco where a Swiss immigrant, John Sutter, was building a saw mill. The discovery prompted thousands of speculators to inundate San Francisco. Most gold seekers, however, found only enough gold to pay for their daily expenses—if they were among the fortunate few, that is. Even Sutter, who had wanted to create a utopian agricultural settlement, was quoted in 1857 as saying, “What a great misfortune was this sudden gold discovery for me! From my mill buildings I reaped no benefit whatever, the mill stones even have been stolen and sold.”By the start of the 20th century, San Francisco had struck it rich again. Its U.S. mint contained a third of the country’s gold supplies. It was the largest city on the West Coast, the financial center of the Western United States, and famous for its ostentatious mansions, stately hotels, and the flamboyant lifestyle of its citizens. Then misfortune struck in 1906 when a powerful earthquake devastated the city. As buildings collapsed, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that rapidly spread throughout the city. Several thousand people died. More than half the city’s population were left homeless. But San Francisco rose once again, reinventing itself to become a financial powerhouse. In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, not a single San Francisco bank failed. Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge was started in 1933 and was funded by city bonds purchased by Amadeo Giannini, the founder of the San Francisco-based Bank of America. Giannini purchased the bonds to help the local economy. The bridge opened in 1937.In the summer of 1967, San Francisco acquired a new image and wealth of a less tangible nature than gold or currency. Thousands of young people—so-called hippies or flower children—flocked into the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. The migration was called the Summer of Love. “It was sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and those were all fun,” author and social satirist Paul Krassner commented in a 2007 San Francisco Chronicle article. “But at the core of this counterculture was a spiritual revolution, in a sense of leaving the Western religions of control and exploring the Eastern disciplines of liberation.” And as civil-rights lawyer Angela Alioto was quoted as saying in the same issue of the Chronicle, “The Summer of Love really stressed the principles of St. Francis of Assisi, the guy who loved the environment, loved animals, loved the sick and poor, and was against war…The Summer of Love was flat-out beautiful!”More searching for liberation and psychological-spiritual treasure was to follow during the 1970s as San Franciscans exercised a prominent role in the vanguard of the national gay-rights movement. During that time, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk became California’s first openly gay elected official and one of the first anywhere in the country. Today San Francisco remains a mecca for gays and lesbians from all across the globe.But the search in San Francisco for financial treasure was not over. Real-estate moguls built an array of skyscrapers during the 1980s. The dot-com boom exploded in San Francisco during the late 1990s as newly minted millionaires and billionaires became legion. Although the boom ended in 2001 when tech stocks crashed, new Internet and software companies were launched in the city beginning in 2003. Last year, still more high-tech companies such as Twitter moved there.In 2011, San Francisco elected Edwin Lee as mayor. He is the first Chinese-American mayor in San Francisco’s history as well as the first Asian American elected to the office. His election is yet another example of San Franciscans’ embrace of diversity and openness to people from a wide variety of backgrounds. ■More information about San Francisco’s history is posted at http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/sfh2.html. ISSUES NewArchived

Mineral resources of Costa Rica

The history of Costa Rica mining But enough of the past! This progressive operations reaches back into colonial times. Some country with its varied national wealth, which the of the largest gold mines have been worked in a Spaniards named “Costa Rica”, with good reason primitive way with success for several centuries, now arouses a lively interest in other countries. and the mineral treasures brought up to the light Distinguishing itself for a long time past from the of day by the old Spanish gold seekers are said other countries of Central America to its advan- to have been almost fabulous. One of the richest tage with its stable and responsible Government, gold mines called Tisingall, had to be abandoned this still scantily-populated republic offers oppor- because of the hostility of the native Indians ; tunities for investment of foreign capital equalled the mine itself was then completely destroyed by by few countries. It is abundant and diversified them, and the locality closes up by changing the mineral wealth, which is coming more and more course of the neighbouring streams. After quelling to the front, is already attracting the attention of the uprising it was impossible for the Spaniards to large capitalists today.

Gold! Gold from the American River! (review)

Reviewed by: Gold! Gold from the American River! Elizabeth Bush Brown, Don . Gold! Gold from the American River!; written and illus. by Don Brown . Flash Point/Roaring Brook, 2011. [64p]. (Actual Times) ISBN 978-1-59643-223-9 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 3-5. The third installment in Brown’s Actual Times series of pivotal events in U.S. history focuses on the California Gold Rush of 1849. This is a compact overview, following James Marshall’s discovery of gold in a ditch near his employer John Sutter’s sawmill; through the mania that drew thousands of prospectors to the West; and finally to the lasting success of entrepreneurs who supplied the miners and shaped the longterm commercial prosperity of the region. The overview is rather too compact at times, skipping from bit to bit and leaving linkages and details undocumented: for instance, Brown never fully explains how businessman Sam Brannan, who leaked the news of the gold strike, came by his information; nor does he give much more than cursory attention to the travails of gold seekers who found their way to California by sea route or across the Isthmus of Panama. The harmony of narration, wry watercolor pictures, and quotes from the miners themselves nonetheless makes this an engaging introduction for children who are just beginning to explore historical accounts beyond their social studies textbooks. Kids who’ve enjoyed Brown’s picture-book biographies will be happy to step up to the Actual Times readalones. A bibliography and brief note on research is included. [End Page 272] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

THE MOMENTOUS GOLD RUSHES

Gold discoveries in Australia in 1851 and New Zealand in 1861 galvanised the economic development of Australasia and had spillover effects in Britain, in ship technology, and even in the trans‐Atlantic trade. The gold rushes quickly transformed economic, social, and political life. Moving around the continent in an anti‐clockwise direction, they were to help found the northern port cities that grew to service the gold seekers. While the major strike in Western Australia in the 1890s out‐produced the earlier period, Australia saw a third gold peak in the 1990s. The article surveys the contribution of the rushes to the development of Australasia.

SOJOURNERS OR A NEW DIASPORA? ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE MOVEMENT OF CHINESE MINERS TO THE SOUTH‐WEST PACIFIC GOLDFIELDS

Chinese gold seekers were the largest non‐British group on the goldfields of Australasia and constituted the largest nationality on some diggings. In considering the movement of Chinese miners to and throughout the goldfields colonies of the southwest Pacific, this articles argues there existed a more complex pattern of migration than that suggested by the sojourner model of arrival, brief stay and departure. It examines the links between migration patterns and economic activity, and argues that economic history perspectives complement the insights offered by recent social and cultural history in the field.

W.O. Carpenter and the California Gold Rush: the making of entrepreneurial opportunities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to trace the entrepreneurial opportunity identification process of William Oscar Carpenter (WOC), a nineteenth century farmer, who went to California in 1850 to make his fortune in gold mining and ended up starting several new business ventures. The paper seeks to recount WOC's experiences and then apply them to similar issues faced by entrepreneurs in a modern‐day developing economy.Design/methodology/approachUsing qualitative inquiry through archival research, the paper examines a compilation of WOC's letters to his future wife in New York. The letters provide a detailed account of the hardships and poor living conditions faced by gold seekers. The letters are examined and interpreted in the context of opportunity identification and the California Gold Rush, then applied to contemporary entrepreneurs.FindingsWOC's letters elucidate the difficulties encountered making the trip from the East Coast to California, give later generations an historical viewpoint on a variety of social issues, and detail WOC's entrepreneurial activities in California. After a brief period as a successful miner, WOC's business career developed and branched out in different directions as he perceived entrepreneurial opportunities associated with the California Gold Rush. His story is an excellent example of opportunity recognition that has implications for current entrepreneurial activity.Originality/valueWOC's awareness, anticipation, and timely action regarding business opportunity can be related, compared and contrasted with entrepreneurial activity today. The paper discusses these implications in light of opportunity recognition research and developing entrepreneurial economies.

Oregon Places: "Without a Second's Warning": The Heppner Flood of 1903

Oregon Places BobDenOuden "Wit h 11 iiI a Second's Warning" TheHeppner Floodof1903 ? top a hill in the rolling wheat fields and grazing lands ofMor /-Jk row County lies theHeppner cemetery. A walk through its mani ?jl JL cured lawns and orderly clusters of grave markers reveals much about the community nestled in the narrow valley below. The cemetery's ample room for growth speaks to the town ofHeppner's confidence in its own future.Many of the names inscribed on the family plots are those of town founders and figures important to the history of the area. Numerous plots contain multiple generations of familymembers, a testament to the town's strong roots. At the bottom of the hill, meandering in a lazy arc through the small town of Heppner, flowsWillow Creek. The stream, which sometimes dries up completely by late summer, normally runs ankle deep and up to seven feetwide inmid-June. On the afternoon of June 14, 1903, however, Willow Creek was fed by a tremendous cloudburst rain storm and turned into something quite different. The Heppner Gazette reported: Without a second'swarning, a leaping, foamingwall ofwater, 40 feetinheight, struck Heppner at about 5 o'clock Sunday afternoon, sweeping everythingbefore itand leavingonly death and destruction in its wake.1 As a result, June 14,1903, is a prominent date among the rows of head stones in the cemetery. The date also appears on a three-panel stonemonu ment thatwas dedicated in 2003 tomark the hundredth anniversary of the catastrophe. The monument, which includes a panoramic image of the 108 OHQ vol. 105, no. 1 ? 2004 Oregon Historical Society QHS neg.,OrHi 24345 Floodwaters moved through Heppner, Oregon, on June 14, 1903, destroying the town. The toppledtreesin this photographindicatethe forceof the flood.The PalaceHotel, one of the few buildings not destroyed in the event, stands at the center of the image. destruction wrought by the flood and a list of the names of almost 250 people who died as a result, serves as a quiet reminder ofHeppner's day of tragedy. Heppner is located inOregon's Morrow County where Hinton Creek, Shobe Creek, and Balm Fork merge with themuch largerWillow Creek. Willow Creek flows north for approximately seventy miles from its source in the Blue Mountains to itsconfluence with theColumbia River upstream of the town of Arlington, Oregon. After leaving itsmountainous head waters, the creek enters a narrow valley whose width never exceeds three quarters of a mile ? the kind of landscape often favored by early white settlerswho wanted to ensure that their towns had a reliable water supply. DenOuden, "Without a Second's Warning" 109 Heppner, shown here in 1901,was a booming agricultural shipping center serving north central Oregon. Aside fromtheforested headwaterhighlands,thebulkof the watershed is comprised of strongly undulating, treeless prairies dissected by numerous watercourses.2 This geographic province of north-central Oregon isknown as the Deschutes-Umatilla Plateau, a semiarid region that receives fewer than twenty inches of precipitation in a year. The rains that do occur often come in the form of intense thunderstorms thatdump several inches in less than an hour.3 As early as 1858, cattlemen began foraging their herds in the abundant grasses found along the creek bottoms in the Willow Creek Valley, estab lishing cattle camps that later grew into the valley's first settlements. The 1860s gold rush inOregon's JohnDay country, to the south of Heppner, prompted further economic growth. During this time, the Willow Creek Valley served as an important transportation route from the Columbia River steamship landings to the gold strikes.4 Itwas not until 1869, how ever, that the area's first land claim was established by George W. Stansbury, who built a cabin there.5Many others soon arrived, including some Or no OHQ vol. 105, no. 1 egon Trail pioneers who had made it to the Willamette Valley but longed for the open prairies to the east of the Cascade Range. Others were gold seekers who wished to give up their prospecting lifestyles and settle down inwhat became known as Stansbury Flat.6 In 1873,Henry Heppner and Jackson L. Morrow opened the first merchandise store in town to supply thenew inhabitants who tiredofpacking...

The Nez Perce Nation Divided: Firsthand Accounts of Events Leading to the 1863 Treaty by Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, W. R. Swagerty

The Nez PerceNation Divided: Firsthand Accounts of Events Leading to the 1863Treaty Edited byDennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, andW.R. Swagerty University of Idaho Press, Moscow, 2003. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. 406 pages. $50.00 cloth. Reviewed by G. Thomas Edwards Whitman College,Walla Walla, Washington Through extensive research in theNa tionalArchives, theOregon Historical So ciety,theBeinecke Library atYale, and regional newspapers, Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, and W.R. Swagerty have compiled essential documents related toNez Perce history from 1858to 1863.This collection also coversmilitary history and themining rush intowhat became Idaho Territory. The Nez Percewere granted a reservation of eleven thousand squaremiles in the Walla Walla Treatyof 1855. During thegold rushof 1861-1863, thousands ofminers, includingmany Orego nians, sought gold intheClearwater and Salmon River watersheds, where they disregarded the treaty and abused the natives. This intrusion alarmed Indian agents, soldiers, editors, and politicians because miners had triggeredIndian wars in the 1850s.The initial,naive response of Indian agents and soldiers to trespassing liquor traders and miners was followed by the impli mentation of unjust government policies. In 1859,Oregon Superintendent of Indian AffairsEdward Geary reported: "TheNez Perces are characterized bymental power, energy of will, bravery and docility, and are larger and more muscular thanmost of the other tribes. ... As a tribe theyhave ever been well affected towards our Government" (p. 37). He warned that the "usual disastrous consequences must ensue" if liquor was introduced to Indians and offered an impossible solution: an official should "examine all packs [as] an effectual check on this iniquitous traffic"(p. 37).Major Enoch Steenwas equally unrealistic, predicting thatwhen soldiers ordered trespassing gold seekers to leave theywould obey rather than violate the law.Geary soonwrote of theneed for an unexplained protective policy that would "be worthy of a great andmagnanimous nation." A failure to actwould result in "death by savage hands . . . and the extirpation of the Indian race" (p. 54).Meanwhile, Indian Agent Andrew J. Cain argued that,because miners could not be barred from theClearwater region and would inevitablyprovoke awar, theNez Perce should surrender all of their "gold bearing country" (p. 53).Many other federal officials, including Geary and Oregon Senator JamesNesmith, advocated for a new treaty thatwould shrink the reservation. In 1861,thebeleaguered Nez Perce permit tedminers onto certain lands on the condition that themilitary would preserve order. Geary informed the military that the Indians opposed the "intrusion of thewhites" and that troops should be quartered near themines "to enable theAgent to prevent the liquor traffic, tobring all offenders to speedy trial, and [to] protect the inhabited portion of the reservation from unlawful intrusion" (p. 86). Soldiers could not, as Geary knew, provide such sweeping service. While officials planned for a new treaty, thousands of prospectors rushed into the reser vation, andmany wrote descriptive letters. One boasted thathis group defied amilitary effort to keep them from "ourwild and uninhabited land" because theydid not need "kinglypasses througha lotof savages" (p.74).Another charged that transportationmonopolists promoted the outrageous "Salmon river excitement" (p. 187). These documents relate Lewiston's emergence 332 OHQ vol. 105, no. 2 as a city, including one visitor's description of itas a place lacking "houses, virtue, decency or comfort; where religion isforgotten,and the law isa farce; where whisky shops, gambling houses and brothels predominate, where blacklegs and traitorsrule everything" (p. 189). Gen. Benjamin Alvord, an admirer of the Nez Perce, voiced concern about both their ill treatment and meddling secessionists. His policies, including troop assignments and the establishment of Fort Lapwai, deserve analysis. Obviously he provided much betterprotection forOregon Trail travelers than he did forNez Perce Indians, but Alvord's role in takingNez Perce land is lesscrucial thanNesmith's support for a new treaty. InMay 1863, the Lapwai Indian Council produced a treatythatreduced the reservation's size to eleven hundred square miles and wid ened the breach between theNez Perce who supported the treatyand thosewho opposed it, including Chief Joseph.The Nez PerceNation Divided includes the council's proceedings and observations by various witnesses. Fearful of the tribe's future,Lawyer, one of theNez Perce who would sign the treaty,reminded council members of "our acts showing our friendship to thewhites, and our respect forLaw" (p. 358). Other pro...

Prehistory of the Carson Desert and Stillwater Mountains: Environment, Mobility, and Subsistence in a Great Basin Wetland, by Robert L. Kelly, University of Utah Anthropological Papers Number 123, Salt Lake City, 2001

The Great Basin of Western North America is one of the. legendary deserts of the world. This rugged, wide open, and apparently harsh landscape has long served as a backdrop for human drama. Gold seekers and immigrants of the 19th century immortalized the rigors of travelling across the Great Basin on their way to greener grass in California and Oregon. But archaeological research has shown that human occupation of the Great Basin dates back for thousands of years, and ethnographic accounts of Native Americans who lived in this desert have played an important role in the development of concepts of hunter-gatherer subsistence and settlement patterns. It is the Indians of the Great Basin that Julian Steward (1938) studied for his well-known model of sodo-political organiza­tion and evolution (Steward 1955; also see Service 1975), Jesse Jennings (1957) later used Steward's model in his development of the Desert Culture concept, which was widely adapted to other North America deserts.

The Primitive and the Civilized in Western Fiction

L E V I S. P E T E R S O N Weber State College Tke Primitive and tke Civilized in Western Fiction Among the many patterns of significance that may be observed in what one might appropriately call the renaissance in Western fiction, one of the most interesting is that this new fiction demon­ strates an intense cultural debate over the conflicing values of the civilized and the primitive. The Western novel has become the testing ground for the relative worth to humanity of these con­ flicting values. It has captured the sense of ambivalence that Amer­ icans feel about their vanished frontier. On the actual frontier, Americans found a retreat from civilization. The historical frontiers­ man was often removed from the civilized values of love and mar­ riage, chastity, sobriety, non-violence, and lawfulness. A serious question before the actual frontiersman was whether he would respond to the civilized impulses he had acquired in the society left behind him or whether he would continue in the simpler, more elemental, cruder and more violent life of the wilderness. This question has continued to infuse our frontier fiction. It works out as a debate, a statement and counter-statement over the worth of the primitive and the civilized. The first side of the American debate over the worth of the primitive and the civilized is the affirmation of the primitive. The simple affirmation of frontier removal from civilized values is the attitude that traditionally and most abundantly characterizes Amer­ ican frontier fiction. The simple affirmation begins with Cooper, 1This is an essential portion of a thesis submitted to the English Department, Uni­ versity of Utah, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of a Doctor of Philosophy Degree. 198 Western American Literature who, despite a more complex attitude in the earliest of the Leatherstocking Tales, gravitates in his later novels to an unbridled ad­ miration for the primitive scout and hunter, Natty Bumppo. Al­ though Natty Bumppo is civilized enough to be deferential to the genteel men and ladies who people the novels in which he appears, he possesses the primitive qualities of freedom, lawlessness, and violence. There is no evil in Leatherstocking’s practice of these values, for his is a perfect rectitude. Furthermore, these values are exalted by the fact that Leatherstocking is a heroic character. Far from an ordinaiy man, Leatherstocking bears the superlativeness of a hero. The heroic mood has continued in frontier fiction since the day of Leatherstocking. The simple affirmation of the primitive values of freedom, lawlessness, and violence as the attributes of heroes has flourished to the latest moment. We can observe the course of this affirmation through heroic novels of the nineteenth century such as Charles Webber’s Old Hicks the Guide, Charles Averill’s Kit Carson; Prince of the Gold Seekers, and innumerable dime novels written between 1860 and 1915. We can trace this affirmation through Owen Wister’s The Virginian and Clarence Mulford’s Hopalong Cassidy stories, and through the novels of men like William MacLeod Raine, Ernest Haycox, and Luke Short, whose fifty or sixty novels have helped swell the stream of popular cowboy novels that flood the literary market to this day. Unfortunately, the fiction which has treated the primitive fron­ tiersman as heroic has for the most part remained of a sub-literary quality. It is more significant that in our own century the simple affirmation of freedom, lawlessness, and violence has appeared in a handful of novels of a realistic, non-heroic bent. Andy Adams’ The Log of a Cowboy, Eugene Manlove Rhodes’ novelettes like The Trusty Knaves and Paso Por Aqui, Forrester Blake’s Johnny Christ­ mas and Wilderness Passage, and Edward Abbey’s The Brave Cow­ boy and Fire on the Mountain all affirm primitive values without the distractions of the heroic formula of invincible and superhuman manhood. It is worthwhile to examine two of these works in some detail. Forrester Blake’s Johnny Christmas is a celebration of the primitive values of the mountain man. His central character, Johnny Christmas, is infused with wanderlust. His desire to feel new winds and hear strange waters leads him afar through the southern Rocky The Primitive...

The Conquest of a Continent: Siberia and the Russians.

In The Conquest of a Continent, the historian W. Bruce Lincoln details Siberia's role in Russian history, one remarkably similar to that of the frontier in the development of the United States.... It is a big, panoramic book, in keeping with the immensity of its subject.-Chicago TribuneLincoln is a compelling writer whose chapters are colorful snapshots of Siberia's past and present.... The Conquest of a Continent is a vivid narrative that will inform and entertain the broader reading public.-American Historical ReviewThis story includes Genghis Khan, who sent the Mongols warring into Russia; Ivan the Terrible, who conquered Siberia for Russia; Peter the Great, who supported scientific expeditions and mining enterprises; and Mikhail Gorbachev, whose glasnost policy prompted a new sense of 'Siberian' nationalism. It is also the story of millions of souls who themselves were conquered by Siberia.... Vast riches and great misery, often intertwined, mark this region.-The Wall Street JournalStretching from the Urals to the Arctic Ocean to China, Siberia is so vast that the continental United States and Western Europe could be fitted into its borders, with land to spare. Yet, in only six decades, Russian trappers, cossacks, and adventurers crossed this huge territory, beginning in the 1580s a process of conquest that continues to this day. As rich in resources as it was large in size, Siberia brought the Russians a sixth of the world's gold and silver, a fifth of its platinum, a third of its iron, and a quarter of its timber. The conquest of Siberia allowed Russia to build the modern world's largest empire, and Siberia's vast natural wealth continues to play a vital part in determining Russia's place in international affairs.Bleak yet romantic, Siberia's history comes to life in W. Bruce Lincoln's epic telling. The Conquest of a Continent, first published in 1993, stands as the most comprehensive and vivid account of the Russians in Siberia, from their first victories over the Mongol Khans to the environmental degradation of the twentieth century. Dynasties of incomparable wealth, such as the Stroganovs, figure into the story, as do explorers, natives, gold seekers, and the thousands of men and women sentenced to penal servitude or forced labor in Russia's great wilderness prisonhouse.

On warfare: an answer to N. A. Chagnon

N. A. Chagnon's recent article in Science, Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population, in which he offers an interpretation of violence and warfare among the Yanomami,1 has provoked the surprised consternation of the specialists and of all those who are interested in the survival of the Amazon Indians. Their concern is due simultaneously to the content and to the unfortunate political consequences of the theory expounded, these two aspects being quite obviously intimately intertwined. For a number of years now, a deadly menace has been threatening the Yanomami of Brazil; they are at risk not only of completely losing their cultural identity, but also of physically disappearing as well. The Yanomami were severely affected by the construction of the northern perimetral highway (BR-210), and since then the territory they traditionally inhabit has been invaded by hordes of gold miners supported by the authorities of Roraima and by the sinister Fundacao Nacional do Indio (FUNAI), the Brazilian bureau of Indian affairs. Bloody conflicts have caused the death of many Indians; severe illnesses and epidemics have increased; watercourses have been poisoned by the mercury used by gold seekers; embarrassing witnesses-missionaries, doctors, anthropologists-have been expelled; all medical assistance has been suddenly cut off at the very moment when it was most needed. Far from remaining confined to a scientific journal, even one as prestigious as Science, Chagnon's theories have-with the author's collaboration-become the object of sensational publicity in the U.S. press. A grotesque and malevolent image of the Yanomami has been put forth in indisputably racist terms, the Indians being presented as bloodthirsty people obsessed by the desire for murder. In Brazil, the newspapers that support the mining interests have taken up the Science article and the ensuing commentary with relish, using them to justify the ongoing genocide. Anthropologists' work can have serious, and sometimes tragic, consequences; the controversy surrounding the events in Brazil should give all anthropologists pause to consider the effects of their research on the people they study. The problem is precisely to determine if the hypotheses expounded by Chagnon have any scientific foundation and if they stand up to the demands of rigorous investigation. It is this aspect that the present article proposes to careful ly examine, from the point of view both of the general theory in whose framework the arguments reside and of the value of the ethnographic data presented as support. I will show that the theoretical framework is completely incongruous with respect to the theses expounded. To make the critical discussion more intelligible, and with the object of furthering some of the questions addressed, I will present my own interpretation of issues such as the presumed objectives of warfare, the causes of armed conflict, the status of brave warriors, and the American Ethnologist 21(4):845-862. Copyright ? 1994, American Anthropological Association.

Review: The Gold Discovery Journal of Azariah Smith, by Azariah Smith and David L. Bigler and Gold Seeker: Adventures of a Belgian Argonaut during the Gold Rush Years, Jean Nicholas Perlot, by Helen Harding Bretnor, Howard R. Lamar, and Jean Nicholas Perlot

Book Review| April 01 1992 Review The Gold Discovery Journal of Azariah SmithAzariah SmithDavid L. BiglerGold Seeker: Adventures of a Belgian Argonaut during the Gold Rush Years, Jean Nicholas PerlotHelen Harding BretnorHoward R. LamarJean Nicholas Perlot Robert G. Fricke Robert G. Fricke Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (1992) 71 (1): 131–132. https://doi.org/10.2307/25158616 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Robert G. Fricke; Review. California History 1 April 1992; 71 (1): 131–132. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25158616 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentCalifornia History Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1992 CHS Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

AURUM AND AESCULAPIUS: THE ADVENTURES OF DR THOMAS TATE—SURGEON, GOLD SEEKER, ADVENTURER AND TEACHER

AURUM AND AESCULAPIUS: THE ADVENTURES OF DR THOMAS TATE—SURGEON, GOLD SEEKER, ADVENTURER AND TEACHER

Dreams to Dust: A Diary of the California Gold Rush, 1849-1850.

With a high sense of adventure and even higher hope of profit, Dr. Charles Ross Parke joined the gold seekers streaming toward California in the spring of 1849. A resident of Whiteside Country, Illinois, he formed a small company and headed west to the Great Platte River Road. Other forty-niners kept diaries of daily events on the trail, but Dr. Parke's is unusual in its scope and detail. Edited and annotated by James E. Davis and published for the first times, Dreams to Dust: A Diary of the California Gold Rush, 1849-1850 reveals an anthropologist's curiosity about Indians and their culture, a young man's eye for the ladies, a sociologist's sense of the roles people play, a politician's instincts for the art of governance, and a doctor's view of the cholera pandemic along the trail.Dr. Parke had more to say than most contemporary diarists about the journey across northern Illinois, Iowa, northern Missouri, and beyond South Pass, Wyoming. Unlike most gold rushers, he continued his diary amid the gaudy attractions of California. His entries reflect on the scenery, hardships, squabbles, deaths, and much more; less typical was the space he gave to women on the trail, to Indians, and to life in the mining camps and towns of California. When his luck did not pan out in the gold fields he was one of the few to return east by way of Mexico and Nicaragua. The portion of his diary dealing with Nicaragua is rare for its personal glimpses of social and political conditions in that country in 1850.In his introduction Davis sets Parke's great venture in its historical and social context; his afterword fills in the doctor's later life. Davis's annotations to the diary elaborate on the people, places, and conditions the doctor encountered.