'10000 Maniacs Gold Rush Brides Lyrics.'. And when I see the gold lumps there, Ill pick them off the ground. Have students complete Worksheet A (suggested for younger students or abbreviated lesson) or Worksheet B (suggested for older students or a longer lesson. I soon shall be in Frisco and there Ill look around. Together or independently, students should answer the questions that accompany each verse on the Oh, California Lyrics Handout. Im going to California with my washpan on my knee. The sun so hot I froze to death, Oh, brothers dont you cry. The song, however, points up the far more complex reality that people of the Wild West had to live in-one fraught with risk, hardship, and tragedy where there was not always a happy ending but people continued to press on through sheer grit (Pierlioni E.1). Im going to California, the gold dust for to see.

Thus, when rough winters came, there was not enough food or sufficient shelter, and people were assailed by disease and Indians they had to be tough and persistent and stick together (Pierlioni E.1).ĭominant cultural understandings of the Wild West portray a vision of a land that lent itself to settlement and a simple context of cowboys versus Indians that American westerns reduced all their plot lines to. The sun so hot I froze to death, oh brothers don’t you cry. It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry. I’m goin’ to California, the gold dust for to see. I sailed from Salem City with my washbowl on my knee.

The West was for all intents and purposes an uncivilized wilderness lacking the comforts and amenities of the civilized East. Lyrics (Melody by Stephen Foster, Lyrics by John Nichols) 1. One of the points that the song makes is that the Old American West offered much opportunity but that the opportunity came at a heavy price. As the song lyrics indicate, women in the West suffered through yellow fever, childbirth, the deaths of their husbands, and even madness, and although the land out West was free, it cost the women their lives ('10000 Maniacs Gold Rush Brides Lyrics'). The women had to undergo horrendous struggle and hardship as 'homestead wives' and 'gold rush brides' ('10000 Maniacs Gold Rush Brides Lyrics'). Natalie Merchant's song 'Gold Rush Brides' recalls the beauty and majesty of the early American West but emphasizes that it was the men who enjoyed the freedom of the Wild West. Our musical review of the Gold Rush presents the highlights of the great stampede of 49ers to the California goldfields.

California gold rush lyrics