Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: essay on gold rush
The Foreign Miners in the American Gold Rush
One Saturday night, a mob of masked men, who numbered forty to sixty, approached a small house. Arriving at the house, they dragged two slumbering men from their bunks and hustled them from the house, without even allowing them to put on their clothes, and started to kick and beat them. One of the invaders drew his pistol and shot at one of the victims. The bullet pierced the body of the man and inflicted a terrible wound. Both men who were attacked that night died. This event occurred in Rico, a camp in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado on May 13, 1882. The two Chinese miners that inhabited the village were kicked, cuffed, and dragged over the ground by the hair of their heads, clubbed with pistols and sticks by white men who wanted to run the Chinese out of town. Six Chinamen who resided next door were treated in much the same manner as their friends were that night. Mongolians of the village were thrown into the icy water half-naked.
This was nothing new in the west, since the non-traditional miners, especially Chinese miners, were the victims of American racial prejudice from the beginning of the Gold Rush. When the Gold Rush struck the American continent, waves of people came to the west. One might think that only white people participated, but there were lots of miners who came from various places around the world. Their life and experiences were not widely known, whereas those of the white miners were pretty well known. Non-traditional miners certainly had much harder experiences than the white miners did. Many of them were discriminated against, abused and even killed. Looking into the life and experiences of the non-traditional miners, the American Gold Rush period w...
... middle of paper ...
...du/~agf2/history391/nativism.html.
Gerstaecker, Friedrich. California Gold Mines. NP: Greenwood Press, 1946.
"Gold Fever Prospecting-Sonoran Arrastra." Gold Rush. 1998. 18 Apr. 2002. http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/fever13-ar.html.
Hine, Robert V., and John Mack Faracher. The American West: A New Interpretive Story. Yale University, 2000.
Lewis, Marvin. The Mining Frontier. Oklahoma: the University of Oklahoma Press, 1967.
Milner, Clyde A, ed. The Oxford History of the American West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Nugent, Walter. Into the West: the Story of Its People. New York: Alfred A Knopk, 1999.
Sylva, Seville A. A Thesis-Foreigners in the California Gold Rush. California: University of Southern California. 1932.
"The People Vs. Hall." Ancestors in the Americas. 1998. 10 Apr. 2002. http://www.cetel.org/1854_hall.html.
The Articles of Confederation was America’s first constitution. The Articles of Confederation failed to create a strong central government, however. With the demise of the states in sight, the need for a stronger and more structured central government became apparent. An invitation was sent to all thirteen states in February 1787 by the Confederation Congress to resolve the matter. The events that took place over the next several months would create the United States Constitution. Going down in history as a revolutionary form of government, the U.S. Constitution would give life to a country that is still running strong over 200 years later.
Approved on 15th of November in 1777 by Congress and confirmed by the state on March 1, 1781, The Articles of Confederation were a humbled effort by a new country to consolidate itself and to create an ideal national government. The Articles were said to have been a “firm league of friendship” () between the states which means that these thirteen states would cooperate and commute together, but leaving out a principal form of government; hence to give limited powers to the central government. However, to some states the current form of government was not satisfying because the Articles of Confederation will come out to be too disadvantageous. Constitution will become the saving grace for America. Written in 1787, Constitution was requesting united and more powerful government.
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
After the Revolutionary War, the newly formed United States still had a major task ahead of them. They had to form a new government that would satisfy the demands of the people and ensure the success of their nation. The Articles of Confederation was the first system of government that was proposed and put into effect. This attempt at creating a system that protected the people form a strong central government ultimately failed but was an important step in the development of the current government system. The weaknesses presented by the Articles of Confederation helped lead to reforms that made the Constitution successful. Both the Articles and the Constitution demonstrate the struggles that the colonists went through with the British and their desire to establish a new tyranny free government.
Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.
What do you think of when you hear the term “Gold Rush”? The 1849 gold rush in California?
Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton and Company, 2007. 1149-1153.
Frederick Jackson Turner and Patricia Nelson Limerick are two historians that had two different points of views to define the West and its history. The West usually refers to the present-day states of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana ( Patricia Nelson, p.8). The first view put forth by Fredrick Turner in the 1890s explained that the movement of American settlers westward, was a process and “ its a form of society rather than a area” (Turner, p. 2). Less than a century later, New Western Historians analyzed that the West is a place that has diverse people, with diverse ethnicity,
The development of psychology like all other sciences started with great minds debating unknown topics and searching for unknown answers. Early philosophers and psychologists such as Sir Francis Bacon and Charles Darwin took a scientific approach to psychology by introducing the ideas of measurement and biology into the way an indi...
There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .
The study of psychology began as a theoretical subject a branch of ancient philosophy, and later as a part of biological sciences and physiology. However, over the years, it has grown into a rigorous science and a separate discipline, with its own sets of guidance and experimental techniques. This paper aims to study the various stages that the science of psychology passed through to reach its contemporary status, and their effects on its development. It begins with an overview of the historical and philosophical basis of psychology, discusses the development of the various schools of thought, and highlights their effects on contemporary personal and professional decision-making.
Anthony C. Yu, translated and edited, The Journey to the West Volume I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 16, 21.
... pre-existing knowledge that when an individual recognise specific situations they use their own views, beliefs, understanding and stereotypes to form a full view or understanding.
The five major theoretical perspectives in psychology are biological, learning, cognitive, psychodynamic, and sociocultural perspectives. Each one of these perspectives searches for answers about behavior through different techniques and through looking for answers to different kinds of questions. Due to the different approaches, each perspective form their own assumptions and explanations. Some perspectives are widely accepted while others struggle for acceptance.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.