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Reviews
The Nature of Gold: An Environmental Historyof the Klondike Gold Rush
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By Kathryn Morse
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University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2003. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 304 pages. $29.95 cloth.
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Reviewed by Duane Smith
Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado
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| The nature of gold will convince readers of the powerful lure of gold for men and women. Otherwise, there is no way to explain why anyone would put up with the trials and tribulations of rushing to the Klondike in 1898 and later and the disappointment of being too late or finding the diggings too poor. The titanic struggle against nature and the environment during the Klondike era is unequaled in American mining history. The Klondike rush makes those in California in 1849 and Colorado in 1859 look like summer excursions. |
1
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The story of Yukon and Alaska mining is about how miners "collided head on with the true nature of gold: its scarcity." The rush was not, as they had hoped, a chance to escape the lifestyle and corporate-controlled, wage-labor industrial world they had left behind. It "became a game of chance, an endless, frustrating, and often fruitless gamble" (p. 116). Eventually, the miners recreated the industrial society they had left behind, and most ended up doing the same kind of labor they had done back home. As was typical for a mining rush, the early arrivals made the easy money before companies dominated the scene. Industrialization triumphed here, as it was doing elsewhere in the United States in the late nineteenth century. |
2
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Having said that, this is not a typical mining history, although the author has done extensive research into original sources and tells much of the story through the eyes of the participants. The subtitle, "An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush," is the key to understanding Kathryn Morse's approach. An assistant professor of history at Middlebury College in Vermont, Morse looks at the rush's impact on the immediate mining region and then follows the ripples as they spread far beyond. |
3
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The author examines a fascinating variety of topics; but, first and foremost, the introduction and chapter 1, "The Culture of Gold," need to be carefully read before venturing on in the book. This discussion sets the scene of people encountering nature — and humans versus nature — in a rush that gave barely two years of opportunity to the "poor man" before corporations came to dominate the goldfields. The first chapter might have been a little shorter and gets the story off to a slow start, but readers should persevere. |
4
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Gold had to be the most important thing in these people's lives, given what they had to put up with in getting to the region and what they had to face when they arrived. This is what the author takes up in the following chapters. In each, she examines the effects of the gold rush on the physical world, newcomers, and native residents and explains how they all changed or remained the same. |
5
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Particularly interesting are chapters 6 and 7, which discuss the nature and culture of food and Seattle, the gateway town. Morse clearly shows the connection between the Yukon and the outside world by considering, for example, the effect of the rush on sales of Van Camp's pork and beans and, beyond that, on the farmers who produced the ingredients. Seattle, obviously, profited in a multitude of ways, once it fended off competition. |
6
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The Nature of Gold requires careful, close reading. It is not a book for the nightstand. The experience was grim for the participants, and Morse does not try to make it what it was not nor to fit into a romantic, adventuresome image. This volume shows the hard side of mining but also ventures beyond that to examine its larger significance for people — many of whom did not go north in 1898 — and for the world around them. The photographs add to the story, contributing a visual component necessary for understanding what went on and why. |
7
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Readers should not ignore the footnotes, which contain some gems of information. Readers may have to work almost as hard as some of the miners, but the rewards will be much greater. The author might conclude that the Yukon rush was not worth the cost and effort, but the book definitely is worth both. |
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