Two Things For Me to Remember

[liralen]

"Nothing lives long, only the earth and the mountains." -- White Antelope

Which makes all this carving of images into mountains something haunting, or, perhaps, mildly more understandable. The Lakota elders were the ones that asked for the carving to be done.

The other was the fact that in Deadwood, which was created for gold mining, the Chinese that came were not allowed to have any mining claims, so could not get in on the principle reason for the rush. They could "only" to peripheral things, and made a good living at importing expensive goods for the rich there along with the other usual stuff. Deadwood had a really large Chinatown. That bemused me.

Comments

[mysocalledhell.livejournal.com]

sounds like you're having tons of fun. I just hope Jet doesn't have to do one of those 'what I did on summer vacation' kind of reports when he goes back to school in the fall. the whole thing would just be listing off places that you guys went to. no time to actually comment on any of them. :D

[liralen.livejournal.com]

He probably will, the poor guy. He did last year. *laughter*

He's got summer camp coming, vacation bible school (where John and I get to do the Science classes), and a trip to San Diego before his summer's through. Luckily, it'll be over on the 17th of August (EARLY!!) so I'll finally get my brain and time back so I can write for real again.

Still, we're enjoying it all while we can.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Histories of Sutter's Mill and other mining boom-spots reveal that while some miners did strike it rich, the real money-makers were the folks selling eggs for $10 each. Sure, a chunk of gold is good stuff, but the conversion rate is whatever the folks with the dry goods will give you.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Totally makes sense. Yeah. The deadwood records show the same thing, as the Chinese merchants really did well at it. It's kind of cool in a different way. Less speculation and more profit in the long-term.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

did the Chinese build the same family structures as in Australia (they called it the second gold mountain), where they came for the gold mining and then opened silk shops and ran laundries and restaurants and built market gardens to supply the restaurants and ended up with their own tiered economy cantilevered off the main economy?

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yes. Exactly. :-)

That's pretty much exactly what they did here, and it worked out very, very well for the Chinese in Deadwood, it seems.