The 1829 Gold Rush ... in Georgia
The one you know about in California didn't happen until 1849!
In 1849, at a place called Sutter’s Mill in California, gold was discovered lying around on a stream bottom and about three minutes later the word got out and spread not appreciably slower than lightning and suddenly men were leaving homes and jobs and families from all over America to beat a fast track out to California, where they were convinced that they were going to get rich quick. They became known as “The Forty-Niners”. But you knew that.
What you might not know is that 20 years before the California gold rush there had been one in Georgia and it caused thousands of otherwise sane men to go crazy and throw away all the caution and common sense they ever had and scramble feverishly into the hills of north Georgia with picks and shovels and pans, blinded by the absolute certainty that they were going to become overnight millionaires.
In the process of illegally invading the Cherokee Nation, these deluded hordes, with a great deal of help from President Andrew Jackson, drove the Indians from their ancestral lands in Georgia and the Carolinas and stole their territory and forced them west to Oklahoma along what became known as the “Trail of Tears”
“Gold Fever” is one of the many manifestations of human greed, except it’s like greed on steroids, heedless of any suffering it causes or any dangers it faces on the way to fetching the desired millions. Greed, however, is a self-limiting disease, as many of those seeking gold in the hills around Dahlonega* found out in filthy encampments plagued by robbery, theft and murder.
(Dahlonega is the Cherokee word for “yellow”)
Every week in the United States there are about 38 million people buying lottery tickets with the sole aim of striking it rich overnight so that they will never have to work again and can buy a yacht and maybe an airplane and a convertible sports car and flit around Florida and the Bahamas snorkeling and fishing and hanging out at the poolside bar and not worrying about anything ever. These people are purchasing nothing more than the hope of getting imaginary unlimited dollars with the actual limited dollars in their wallets. I have survived this fantasy on several occasions. It’s the same as gold fever.
Back in my college days, shortly after the invention of indoor plumbing, my buddy, Graham Timbes and I decided to become placer miners along a mountain stream near Dahlonega and get so rich selling gold nuggets that we could afford to quit school and never have to work and buy yachts and flit around Florida and the Bahamas, chasing women and surfing and generally being lazy and no-count. We had caught the gold virus.
So we loaded up the car with a pick, a shovel, pans, food and cooking utensils along with a bottle of spirituous libation. We parked the car off a dirt road and struck out through deep woods along a mountain stream. I had a .22 rifle in case we were forced to amuse any bears and Graham had a slingshot, probably a more effective deterrent. We stayed up late by the fire that night plotting what we’d do with all the gold. It was hard to sleep.
In panning for gold you just have to use gravity. Throw a handful of stream gravel into your pan filled with water and carefully swirl it around so that the lighter bits wash out over the side, allowing any denser material to sink and remain in the pan. Keep doing that until you can see some tiny flecks of gold in the bottom. Sounds easy, right?
Well, think again. Because to do this you have to squat at the edge of the stream with wet feet in the blazing sun for hours at a time, straining all the tubes, batteries, transistors and capacitors in your retina and then come up with nothing. By sundown your knees are locked up and you’re stiff all over and you still have to build a fire and cook supper.
After two days of not finding gold, Graham and I were worn out but firm in the belief that gold panning was for other people.
Graham went on to become a combat infantryman as part of the 101st Airborne Division in Viet Nam. He didn’t find any gold there, either but fortunately he did make it back home.
“Living well is the best revenge”
The Cherokee people who were forcibly removed by Andrew Jackson and the gold rush squatters in Georgia and North Carolina lost 4,000 people dead on the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. There they established the Cherokee Nation which remains a sovereign tribal government today.
Some of the Cherokee, however, refused to leave their ancestral homeland and retreated back into the mountains. Years later, these people and their descendants formed the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and established the town of Cherokee, North Carolina, which remains a highly popular tourist destination today, adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains.
Thanks to the casino version of gold fever and to the souls who go to Cherokee to fork over their money playing roulette and blackjack and the slot machines, the remnants of the original Cherokee tribespeople are the ones getting wealthy today. The same gold fever that ran them off in 1829 has come full circle to make them rich.
Oh my! Such sweet irony!
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