lesson three days of ‘49 “i’ve been toiling hard for … the huntington library, art...

30 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

Lesson Three

LESSON THREE

Days of ‘49“I’ve been toiling hard for the last two and a half years”

I. OBJECTIVES

♦ To trace the stages of gold mining in California (i.e., how minersquickly exhausted the accessible deposits and increasingly relied uponelaborate and expensive technological solutions during the 1850s.)

♦ To describe some of the artifacts of gold mining, gaining a sense ofwhat was entailed in digging for gold.

♦ To gain an understanding of daily life in the gold mines and in thetowns and cities.

♦ To describe the back-breaking labor associated with mining gold.

♦ To understand that mining for gold was not always successful.

♦ To describe the environmental impact of gold mining.

II. TEACHER BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Before the great migration to California, Californios, Anglo-American set-tlers, and Indians had flocked to New Helvetia in search of riches.

Rancheros and townsmen from all parts of Mexican California, Indiansfrom the Sierran tribes, veterans from the United States Army’s garrisonsin California, Mexicans, Chileans, and Hawaiian Islanders (known as“Kanakas”) prospected and dug with a vengeance. These early prospectorshad no scientific training in geological principles, but as time passed, theybegan to amass considerable practical knowledge and to focus their searchin rivers and streams that drained from the summits of the Sierras.

Early miners used a shallow pan to scoop-up and wash away sediment,leaving the heavier gold in the pan. The first miners to arrive in the goldfields were able to find some quantities of gold with this primitive technol-ogy. Once these deposits of gold were dug out of crevices in and aroundcreeks and streams, gold seekers faced a more daunting task. To separate

31The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

finer specimens of gold from dirt, gravel, and other debris, they had to findways in which to run earth and water together, relying upon gold’s unusualweight to pull the ore to the bottom of any receptacle where it would awaitdiscovery. Gold pans were portable and easily moved. A miner capable ofquickly relocating to another site stood a better chance of striking it rich.

Always eager to find better ways to coax gold from its hiding places, minersinvested in devices known as “cradles,” “rockers,” “long toms,” and “sluiceboxes.” Many who traveled around Cape Horn often invested large sums ofmoney in elaborate, although mostly ineffective, machinery they believedwould give them the upper hand in their search for gold. As competitionheightened because of the massive influx of emigrants, miners all over thegold country used whatever devices they could to gain the upper hand intheir search for gold.

Letters home described the back-breaking work in the quest for riches.Some could boast of finding a vein of gold; however, many more simply toldof the trials and tribulations they endured with little or nothing to show fortheir efforts.

III. MATERIALS

Document 1Daniel B. Woods, Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings, 1851

This 1851 journal provides insight into the early stages of golddigging. It is important because of its disillusioned tone, whichemphasizes the many hardships argonauts faced.

Document 2Letter from Lucy Stoddard Wakefield to “Lucius And Rebecca,”Sept. 18, 1851

Lucy Stoddard Wakefield, writing from Placerville in September1851, proclaimed that California would be her final restingplace. A divorcee, she achieved financial independencethrough back-breaking work.

Lesson Three


Document 3California lettersheet, “Miners Coat of Arms”

This document is significant both as a lettersheet, with its rolein conveying information about the California experience, andas a source of details about gold mining. (You will also find realartifacts in the exhibition, including a gold mining pan, Bowieknife, and pickaxes, all examples of the most basic miningtechnology.)

Document 4California lettersheet, “Hutchings’ California Scenes—Methodsof Mining”

With thousands of miners crowding into the gold regionsduring 1849 and 1850, many of the easily accessible placerdeposits were soon exhausted. As a result, gold mining duringthe 1850s increasingly relied upon elaborate and expensivetechnological solutions, as pictured in this lettersheet. It issignificant both as a lettersheet, with its role in conveyinginformation about the California experience, and as a source ofdetails about how gold mining was carried on.

Document 5“Suspension Flume Across Brandy-Gulch” and “Mining by Hy-draulic Power” color lithographs in Ernest Seyd, California andits Resources: A Work for the Merchant, the Capitalist, and theEmigrant (London, England, 1858)

Even as mining techniques evolved, extensive and reliablesupplies of water remained crucial for nearly any miningoperation. Water companies developed during the 1850s,building large systems of sluices, flumes, canals, and dams tofurnish water for all kinds of enterprises including the newmethod of hydraulic mining.

Lesson Three


Document 6Lettersheet, published by Britton & Rey, “The Mining Businessin Four Pictures”

Most argonauts arrived in California convinced that diligenceand skill in mining would guarantee them success. Theirexperiences in what someone described as “Nature’s greatlottery” eroded such confidence, however. Many eventuallyabandoned the mines in disappointment like the two portrayedin this lettersheet satirizing the mining business.

IV. LESSON ACTIVITIES

1. In their textbooks, have students read about the various stages ofgold mining that evolved as placer deposits were exhausted.(Panning, cradles, rockers, sluice mining, hydraulic mining, andtunneling, or shaft mining).

2. Using a jig-saw activity or a whole-class discussion, reviewDocuments 1–6. Documents 1 and 2 provide firsthand accounts ofback-breaking work; Document 3 provides illustrations of goldmining artifacts; Documents 4 and 5 convey various technologicalsolutions to mining gold; and Document 6 conveys the inevitabledisappointments miners faced. “Questions to Consider” can helpguide the discussion.

3. Choose from among the following activities

a. Have students write directions for panning, using a rocker, or acradle. Students should provide illustrations.

b. In groups, have students analyze Documents 4 and 5 and discussthe different methods of mining in terms of technological difficulty,expense, and environmental impact.

c. Have students design a lettersheet comparing a miner’s daily lifewith his or her “memories” of life at home.

d. Ask students to design a lettersheet describing gold-miningtechnologies or daily life in the mines.

Lesson Three


e. Ask students to write several diary entries depicting daily life inthe mines, or in the cities and towns. (Don’t forget about thewomen who came to California to earn high wages as laundresses,bakers, keepers of boarding houses, cooks, maids, andentertainers. The California Emigration Society broadside fromthe previous lesson provides some information on this topic.)

f. Using Document 6 as a guide, have students design lettersheetsor comic strips depicting their successes and failures. Askstudents to put themselves in the picture.

V. EXTENDED LESSON ACTIVITIES

1. Have students build a diorama of a mining scene or a supply store.

2. Using a historical atlas, have students identify gold mining rivers andput gold sites on the map. Have students use the map scale to finddistances between major mining towns.

3. Ask students to write a song about the Bear Flag Revolt, their journeyto California, or life in the gold mines, based on tunes such as Oh!Susannah, Home on the Range, Clementine, Skip to my Lou, and CampTown Races.

4. Have students make a mural of mining technologies or daily life.

5. Have students research the environmental impact of gold mining.Have students write a feature story.

Lesson Three


VI. VOCABULARY

1. claim jumpingstealing someone else’s claim

2. cradlea box-like device furnished with rockers, used for washinggold-bearing soil

3. etiquetterules for polite social behavior

4. hydraulic mininga system of mining in which the force of a jet of water is usedto wash down a bank of gold-bearing gravel or earth

5. Klondikea region of Yukon Territory, Canada, where gold was discov-ered in 1896

6. mother lodethe main vein of ore in a region

7. panningseparating gold or other metal from gravel or waste by wash-ing in an open metal dish or basket

8. placer golddeposits of gold in the bed of a stream

9. prospectora person who explores an area for mineral deposits or oil

10. rockera cradle used for washing or panning ore

11. sluice boxa long inclined trough for separating gold ore

12. squatterone who occupies a given piece of public land in order to claim it

13. staking a claimto mark the location or limits of a claim with or as if withstakes

14. technologythe application of science, especially to industrial or commer-cial objectives

15. veina regularly-shaped and lengthy occurrence of ore

Lesson Three


Document 1Lesson Three

Sixteen Months at the Gold DiggingsDaniel B. Woods, 1851

Daniel B. Woods provides insight into the early stages ofgold digging in this 1851 journal.

Jan. 14th. . . . Our best prospect was in the channel of this mountainstream. We spent some hours in diverting the stream from its courseby a dam and a canal on a small scale. Then, by bailing, we succeededin opening the channel. Most of the upper soil, with the stones, mustbe removed, nearly to the primitive rock below, often a distance ofsome feet, always ankle or knee deep in the mud. We were greatlyencouraged, in the present instance, by an indication of gold rarelypresented. About four inches from the surface of the ground, and inthe loose upper soil, I found a lump of gold weighing nearly threepennyweights. Greatly cheered by this circumstance, we workedaway with spade and pick, With cradle and pan, hour after hour, andwere rewarded by finding in our treasury at night a few bright scalesof gold, amounting to 25 cents.

Jan. 15th. This morning, notwithstanding the rain, we were again atour work. We must work. In sunshine and rain, in warm and cold, insickness and health, successful or not successful, early and late, it iswork, work, WORK! Work or perish! All around us, above and below,on mountain side and stream, the rain falling fast upon them, are theminers at work—not for gold, but for bread. Lawyers, doctors,clergymen, farmers, soldiers, deserters, good and bad, from England,from America, from China, from the Islands, from every country butRussia and Japan—all, all at work at their cradles. From morning tonight is heard the incessant rock, rock, rock! Over the whole mines,in streamlet, in creek, and in river down torrent and through thevalley, ever rushes on the muddy sediment from ten thousand busyrockers. Cheerful words are seldom heard, more seldom theboisterous shout and laugh which indicate success, and which, whenheard, sink to a lower ebb the spirits of the unsuccessful. We havemade 50 cents each.

Jan. 16th. A friend put into my hands to-day a copy of the BostonJournal. We laid it aside to read in the evening. But how was this to


be accomplished? The luxury of a candle we could not afford. Ourmethod was this: we cut and piled up a quantity of dry brush in acorner near the fire, and after supper, while one put on the brush andkept up the blaze, the other would read; and as the blaze died away,so would the voice of the reader. Our work to-day has amounted to 80cents each.

Jan. 17th. A very rainy, cold day . . . Captain W. is sorely afflictedwith an eruption, which covers his whole body, probably the effects ofhaving handled . . . ‘poison oak’ . . .

Questions to Consider:

1. What does Daniel Woods mean when he says that the miners work“not for gold, but for bread”?

2. Why are cheerful words never heard, according to this account?




Letter from Lucy Stoddard Wakefield to“Lucius and Rebecca,”

Sept. 18–25, 1851

. . . I have been toiling hard for the last two and a half years and

am still doing an almost incredible amount of work averaging about

20 dozen pies weekly with my own hands without any one to fetch as

much as a bucket of water. Do you wonder I am not a good

correspondent. If Rebecca were to perform the same amount of work

one week you would perhaps appreciate what I have to do, and say no

more about etiquette in writing. People who have so little to do that

they do not know how to dispose of themselves or their time may

stand on etiquette, but let them toil till they cannot stand up another

minute and till they are actually fall asleep at their work, and they

cannot well appreciate the importance of etiquette.

Questions to Consider

1. What is Lucy Stoddard Wakefield’s occupation?

2. Why can’t she write letters more often?



“Miners Coat of Arms”California lettersheet


1. What objects are depicted in this lithograph?2. Why do you think the publisher called this lithograph “Miners Coat

of Arms”?




1. Which methods of mining required the least technology?2. Which methods of mining required the most technology?3. What were the effects of mining on the environment?

“Hutchings’ California scenes—methods of mining”



“Suspension Flume across Brandy-Gulch” and“Mining by Hydraulic Power”

Ernest Seyd, California and its Resources . . . , London, 1858

Question to Consider

1. Which method of mining is depicted here?



“The Mining Business in Four Pictures”California lettersheet

Question to Consider

1. What story do these four images tell?