Post Four: Tombstone and the California Gold Rush
In Response to:
Roaring Camp, The Social World of the California Gold Rush by Susan Johnson
Murder in Tombstone by Steven Lubert
In reading Roaring Camp, Susan Johnson paints this historical world of the California Gold Rush in a vivid and thoroughly researched manner. Her initial story of the Joaquin Murrieta saga and the events that unfolded after Anglo ruffians raped his wife, lynched his half brother Jesus and horsewhipped him were enough to sympathize with Joaquin's reported response to get back at the whites. Newspapers sensationalized his response apparently blaming all bandit attacks on this one Joaquin even though he could not have been at all places during the times that they occurred. These newspaper accounts, particularly from the San Joaquin Republican, were dramaticized to serve larger local political objectives stigmatizing the immigrant Mexican population which had grown during the Gold Rush. Susan Johnson spells out that "the Anglo American opposition took three basic forms; individual incidents of harassment; mining district "laws" that excluded Mexicans and other non-U.S. citizens from particular areas; and a statewide foreign miner's tax charging foreign nationals twenty dollars a month to work the placers". (p31-32 Johnson)
Susan Johnson goes further to persuade us that the Gold Rush "particularly as it occurred in California's Southern Mines, marked a time and place of tremendous contest about color and culture and about wealth and power, and that the relative absence of women, the overwhelming presence of men of many nations and colors and creeds, and the wild fluctuation of local economies ensured that white, American-born, Protestant men who aspired to middle-class status would be anxious about issues of gender, of race and culture, and of class. After all many such (white) men assumed that they collectively, should subdue and rule the newest territorial acquision of the United States." (p51 Johnson) Certainly this anxiety over issues of gender, race, culture, and class by whites are illuminated throughout other parts of her book such as her statement that "in California, 'whiteness' was defined in oppoition to a variety of 'non-white' peoples". (p 71 Johnson)
The Joaquin Murrieta story in Roaring Camp shows an attempt of the Conquest of History by Anglo Americans and also by Mexican American accounts of the same story which idealizes Joaquin. But the concept of the Conquest of History can also be extended to Murder in Tombstone where legendary Wyatt Earp is examined in a different light when the details of his life and trial for murder in Tombstone Arizona are chronicled. It was attorney Thomas Fitch which saves Wyatt Earp from conviction of murdering the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton, otherwise this Western American icon would not have been so brightly celebrated.
Roaring Camp, The Social World of the California Gold Rush by Susan Johnson
Murder in Tombstone by Steven Lubert
In reading Roaring Camp, Susan Johnson paints this historical world of the California Gold Rush in a vivid and thoroughly researched manner. Her initial story of the Joaquin Murrieta saga and the events that unfolded after Anglo ruffians raped his wife, lynched his half brother Jesus and horsewhipped him were enough to sympathize with Joaquin's reported response to get back at the whites. Newspapers sensationalized his response apparently blaming all bandit attacks on this one Joaquin even though he could not have been at all places during the times that they occurred. These newspaper accounts, particularly from the San Joaquin Republican, were dramaticized to serve larger local political objectives stigmatizing the immigrant Mexican population which had grown during the Gold Rush. Susan Johnson spells out that "the Anglo American opposition took three basic forms; individual incidents of harassment; mining district "laws" that excluded Mexicans and other non-U.S. citizens from particular areas; and a statewide foreign miner's tax charging foreign nationals twenty dollars a month to work the placers". (p31-32 Johnson)
Susan Johnson goes further to persuade us that the Gold Rush "particularly as it occurred in California's Southern Mines, marked a time and place of tremendous contest about color and culture and about wealth and power, and that the relative absence of women, the overwhelming presence of men of many nations and colors and creeds, and the wild fluctuation of local economies ensured that white, American-born, Protestant men who aspired to middle-class status would be anxious about issues of gender, of race and culture, and of class. After all many such (white) men assumed that they collectively, should subdue and rule the newest territorial acquision of the United States." (p51 Johnson) Certainly this anxiety over issues of gender, race, culture, and class by whites are illuminated throughout other parts of her book such as her statement that "in California, 'whiteness' was defined in oppoition to a variety of 'non-white' peoples". (p 71 Johnson)
The Joaquin Murrieta story in Roaring Camp shows an attempt of the Conquest of History by Anglo Americans and also by Mexican American accounts of the same story which idealizes Joaquin. But the concept of the Conquest of History can also be extended to Murder in Tombstone where legendary Wyatt Earp is examined in a different light when the details of his life and trial for murder in Tombstone Arizona are chronicled. It was attorney Thomas Fitch which saves Wyatt Earp from conviction of murdering the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton, otherwise this Western American icon would not have been so brightly celebrated.
posted by BrianGoodson | 10:07 PM
2 Comments:
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Nice Post Brian,
I found Johnson's description of latino defiance by way of affection for their outlaws to be a very interesting. Disney has loved this type of subject for years...and indeed, one cannot help but wonder if we see parraellels in Robin Hood, and others like him.
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