Lesson one:
Read the gold rush overview, do the math problems, and answer the questions. Circle words you don't know.
Lesson two:
Go through the vocabulary and mark the words you don't know. Practice using them in sentences. Make a list of vocabulary words from the words you circled yesterday and today. Choose five of them to learn to spell.
Lesson three:
1. Read the following web page: The Name and the Geography about California.
2. Find a map of California.
3. Find Baja, California, which was what the Spanish first discovered. Why did they think they had found an island?
4. Find Mount Whitney, the tallest place in California. Find Death Valley, the lowest place. Notice how far apart they are.
5. California lies on the 42nd and 32nd parallels. Find those lines. Name three other places that lie on each of those parallels.
Lesson four:
1.Read the following web page: The First Peoples of California.
2.Study the following web page: a map of the native tribes of California.
3. Go to this web page: Stories
Choose ten of the stories on this page to read. They were told by the Plains Indians.
4. This week, write one creation story or legend of your own-make one up. Type it neatly, edit it, and put it in your portfolio. You have seven days to do this. You may illustrate it if you would like to.
Lesson five:
1. Visit the following web page: Luxton Museum of the Plains Indians. Click on History/Background. Click on "The Plains Indians Before 1700. Read the selection, including the link. Then click on questions and answer the questions there. Be sure to list the name of the web site in your heading.
2. Return to History/Background. Click on The Plains Indians and the Europeans. Read the article with the links. Answer the questions. Click on activities and do the grade 5 activity. Write one or two paragraphs.
Lesson six:
1. Return to the previous web page and click on Spiritual Life. Read the articles and follow the links. Answer the questions for Traditions only. Read each of the other sections in this site: Hunter/Warrior and Daily Life.
Lesson 7:
1. Older teens: Visit this site to learn about the effect of the Gold Rush on Native Americans. Warning: This is a most unsettling page, so parents should look it over first. Parents may prefer to extract information to give children based on their ability to handle upsetting material. Another article on the subject for older students is in the Sacramento Bee. Again, parents will need to preview this.
I cannot find a site that is appropriate for younger students on this topic. Parents will need to read these sites and select material for their children.
2. Read about this tribe now on this site: Maidu.com. Warning: The history sections are not happy, because their history was sad at times.
Lesson 8:
1. Visit this site:
PBS site on the gold rush
Read these two sections: Preface and Discovery
2. Californios
3. Visit this site:
John Sutter's personal account of finding gold in California. Notice that the person whose land had the gold was one of the few people who made no money from the rush. Who did Sutter blame for his failure? Do you think there was anything Sutter should have done differently? Write your answers.
3. Read the second article linked on this page: An Eyewitness to the Gold Discovery. Notice that the author says he never got paid for his work on the mill and that many other men said they weren't paid either. In the last account, Sutter wrote that when the Mormons settled their accounts, they were all content and happy. You have a difference of opinion here. Watch through other accounts to see if you can resolve this problem. Do you see any other differences in the way the story is told? List them on your paper. Explain why these two men might have different versions of the event.
4. Visit this site:
About Marshall. Also click on the link for Sutter.
Notice that Marshall paid the Russians with a note he never honored. This means he never paid the bill for the land, even though he took it. Does this affect your feelings about the kind of person Sutter was? Does it affect the decision you are making about whether Sutter or the worker in the last site were correct? Write your opinion with an explanation. Remember, both reports could be inaccurate. People were writing from memory and from their own point of view.
5. Visit this site: Gold Discovery Park for a history. Sam Brannon keeps coming up in these stories. Although the articles tell you he was a Mormon, you should be aware that he was later excommunicated (his membership in the church was taken away) because of his behavior during this time.
2. Visit this site:
Historic site
These are pictures of some of the places you have been reading about.
3. Visit these sites:
PBS, Fever
This was an actual article that appeared in the newspaper at this time.
Colonel Mason's report
Sherman's account
impact of the rush
Lesson 10:
Visit these sites:
gold rush as seen by New York and London
the journey
Photos of the journey
Lesson 11:
Sacramento Bee account of overland journey
Lesson 12:
1. Visit this site: Sacramento Bee on ship journey
2. Compare the overland journey to the sea journey. In what ways are they different? In what ways are they the same? Write a number of paragraphs comparing and contrasting the two ways to travel.
Lesson 13:
Clipper ships: Clipper ships were built in New England, spurred by the rush to California for gold. They were named this because they clipped time off passage. Naturally the faster the ship went, the more they sold, and the fastest ships made huge profits.
Donald McKay made the best ships. He immigrated from Nova Scotia, and worked in East Boston, making the fastest, ships of the time period. In April of 1851, his best ship, The Flying Cloud, set record of 89 days from New York to San Francisco.
Visit this site to read an
article from the 1800s on the ship. Then look at an ad
Even women sometimes commanded the ships. Mary Brown Patten took charge of the Neptune's Car when her husband became ill. She was only nineteen years old, but managed to take care of her husband while navigating the 1800-ton clipper for 52 days they still had to travel to California.
The age of Clipper ships ended after railway built across Panama and when British steamships, larger and more dependable, became popular.
Lesson 14:
Visit these sites:
1.PBS site, Gold Country
Think about this problem: Many people did things they would never have done at home because no one would ever know-they thought. Write several paragraphs about your opinions on this subject. Is it okay to try things you believe are wrong if no one will see? How do you think these people felt about themselves later? Sometimes we do know what they did, because of newspaper articles or journals. For religious families: How do you think they feel now, in Heaven, about people knowing what they did? Do you think it was worth it?
2. Sacramento Bee article on justice This discusses lynchings, so screen it first.
Lesson 15:
Visit this site: The Land of Glittering Dream. Look at the photos of these places in modern times and read the explanations.
Lesson 16:
Visit these sites:
Despair, PBS
Collision of Cultures, PBS
Effect of Gold Rush on Chinese
Written in 1924 on the Chinese. Remember, that people did not use the same terms we use then, and that stereotypes were more acceptable then. What parts of this article could not have been written today, when we are more aware of the cruelty of racism and stereotypes?
Lesson 17:
Visit these pages:
1. Gold rush techniques.
2. food during the gold rush
3. getting statehood
4. environmental impact of gold rush
Lesson 18:
Visit these pages:
1. PBS, Fun Facts
2. These are questions about the gold rush. Answer each one. Then look at the activities list.
3. Under 4-7th grade, do the first activity, the third activity, and the fifth activity. You may need a few days to complete this.
4. Under the section for seventh through twelfth graders on the same page, do all activities. Again, you may take several days to do these.
