Landscape, Art, and Ecology

Classroom Activities-

Part 1: Caricatures, Advertisements, and the Dominant Narrative

The first activity of this unit will have students read selections from a book of caricatures written circa 1850 that tells the story of three men who traveled to California for the Gold Rush. To become familiar with the dominant narrative that circulated in the eastern US at that time. The exact caricatures I will use are from the Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and tell the story of the three major types of journeys white US American men made to get to California. The story explains the Overland, The Cape, and The Panama routes. The characters arrive in California, find gold, get in fights, and return home with wealth. The moral of the story is that wealth corrupts, and two of the three main characters end up in tragic ends--gambling debts and suicide. Only one of the three gets married and buys a farm.  The moral of the story is one of avoiding the temptation of sin, and the desire to take more than you should. One main feature of the story that students will be directed to notice, is that it is a story of individual labor rather than collective effort. The main moral dangers are greed and alcoholism.⁶⁴

Then students will examine advertisements for Clipper Ship passage to California from the east coast of the US. They will look at the claims made by the posters and compare the mood of the posters to the mood of the caricature booklet. The goal is for them to take away the idea of the “California Dream” of getting rich fast. And the idea that it will be an exciting adventure, rather than a physically grueling industrial style employment as a wage laborer.

The Third activity of part one is to watch a Bill Moyers video which discusses the push and pull factors that led to Chinese immigration in the period of the Gold Rush. Students will watch a selection of this video so they can hear from historians, and authors about the Chinese perspective and experience in history. A transcript is available on the website where the video is hosted.⁶⁵ At the end of this part of the unit students will create a thought bubble collage of an immigrant in this period. What are the hopes and dreams of an individual which are common across all places of origin?

Part 2: Industrialization of Mining and exploitation of Chinese labor

The second part of this unit corresponds to most of the images in this document. The main activity is image analysis. Students will examine paintings and photographs from the time to compare the sentiments of and experiences of different groups of people. The landscape itself is depicted as a lush and fertile in most of the paintings, while the early photographs focus on the humans and their physical exhaustion. The main images students will analyze are the Nahl painting and the Letter Paper prints of the Miner’s Dream and the camp of Chinese Miners.  Students will compare the narrative of the independent miner alone in the wilderness with the well documented groups of Chinese miners which would have been in every area of the state.

The performance task at the conclusion of this part of the unit is for students to write a letter home from California on a reproduction of letter paper. They can select from the main images we looked at in class and write a letter home—hopefully with their own illustrations-- to their family about how their hopes and dreams have “panned out.” In the letter they must explain how they feel about the accelerating technology of mining, the social conditions in the Sierra “Gold Country,” and their optimism or pessimism about their chances of success and how they feel about competition from other miners.

Part 3: Environmental damage and lasting impacts

The fourth major part of this unit looks at mercury mining and its environmental impact. Mercury mining was a rich man’s business from the start. Its history is entwined with the Spanish crown, the Emperor of China, and wealthy Mexican landowners who spend more time in court suing over land ownership and corporate shares than they do at the mines. The workers were employed as wage laborers for dangerous jobs. They will consider the meaning of working above ground in lower paid jobs compared with working below ground for higher pay but higher danger. Students will consider the impact on the health of the miners as well as the long-term damage these mines caused to the environment via satellite photos, and local health warnings about eating seafood.

The performance task associated with this part of the unit is to create a benefits and drawbacks chart of mercury mining. Benefits can include high wages, high profits for investors, and technological progress made possible by such mining. The drawbacks include deadly workplace injuries, and the permanent poisoning of the landscape for the foreseeable future. They will be challenged to think about where on the chart to place immigrant labor doing dangerous work. Is it a benefit or a drawback?

Part 4: Hydraulicking

The later photos of hydraulic mining minimize the humans in each image in favor of the grandeur of the spouts of pressurized water. Photos of hydraulic mining celebrate the power of machinery over nature, and the photos can be “read” similarly to the clipper ship advertisements. For example: How was the photo intended to make you feel about the “California Dream” of getting rich fast?

The performance task for this part of the unit is to ask students to write about one of the images of hydraulic mining from the 19th century compared to an image of landscape destruction today. They will write about how both images make them feel about humanity and man’s power to destroy in the name of profit.