The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

The Lure of Gold and Silver in the West 443

150 Sioux were killed, including many women and
children. Thirty federal soldiers also died during the
fighting at Wounded Knee.

The Lure of Gold and Silver in the West

The natural resources of the nation were exploited in
these decades even more ruthlessly and thoughtlessly
than were its human resources. Americans had long
regarded the West as a limitless treasure to be grasped
as rapidly as possible, and after 1865 they acquired its
riches still faster and in a wider variety of ways. From
the mid-1850s to the mid-1870s thousands of gold-
crazed prospectors fanned out through the Rockies,
panning every stream and hacking furiously at every
likely outcropping from the Fraser River country of
British Columbia to Tucson in southern Arizona, from
the eastern slopes of the Sierras to the Great Plains.
Gold and silver were scattered throughout the
area, though usually too thinly to make mining prof-
itable. Whenever anyone made a “strike,” prospec-
tors, the vast majority utterly without previous
experience but driven by what a mining journal of

the period called an “unhealthy desire” for sudden

wealth, flocked to the site, drawn by rumors of

stream beds gleaming with gold-rich gravel and of

nuggets the size of men’s fists. For a few months the

area teemed with activity. Towns of 5,000 or more

sprang up overnight; improvised roads were

crowded with people and supply wagons. Claims

were staked out along every stream and gully. Then,

usually, expectations faded in the light of reality:

high prices, low yields, hardship, violence, and

deception. The boom collapsed and the towns died

as quickly as they had risen. A few found significant

wealth, the rest only backbreaking labor and disap-

pointment—that is, until tales of another strike sent

them dashing feverishly across the land on another

golden chase.

In the spring of 1858 it was on the Fraser River in

Canada that the horde descended, 30,000 Californians

in the vanguard. The following spring, Pikes Peak in

Colorado attracted the pack, experienced California

prospectors (“yonder siders”) mixing with “green-

horns” from every corner of the globe. In June

1859 came the finds in Nevada, where the famous

Land transferred from

Indians to whites

Land held by or

returned to Indians

1850 1865

1880 2010

Loss of Indian Lands, 1850-2010This chapter describes the specific government policies, economic tendencies, and specific treaties that wrested
land from the Indians. But the simplest explanation is that an aggressive, acquisitive, and militarily powerful people craved the West and they took it.