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California gold rush and its impact
British colonization of America
California gold rush and its impact
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Steve and his family live in Jamestown, Britain’s easiest colony, in the United States. They live in an older house made from early settlers. Steve and his wife have two children. One bay named Cole and one daughter named Stacy. While at work one day, his coworker was explaining that the US was predestined to expand across the continent. Steve thought this was exciting. He always wanted to move out of the town and travel somewhere so he can more land. When Steve’s shift was over, he ran home to tell his wife, Helen, the great news. When Steve returned home, he found Helen sitting at the dining room table drinking tea. After he finished telling her his great news, she did not look impressed. Helen didn’t want to leave Jamestown. It was great …show more content…
there. She also responded that there is more rain in the west because of Mountain ranges that produce the rain shadow effect. Steve argued over and over with his wife but soon quit. He knew Helen would not change her mind. The next day was hot and sunny.
Steve returned to work but found a flyer that explained there was gold out in California. Steve immediately ran home and Showed Helen the flyer. Once again, she was not impressed. Her excuse today was the average American cities moves once every three years and they have only lived in Jamestown for three years. Steve would not stop there. Later that night, Steve got his family all together in the Dining room and went over his idea one last time. He started explaining to the children first because they were younger and would be more excited about moving. Cole and Stacy got really excited about moving west. They really want to live on a farm with pigs and horses. They begged their mom to say yes but she still wasn’t sure. Steve said it was time to get away from the town and they could start a new life out west. Helen always wanted to be a dairy farmer. She soon agreed and the next day, they packed their things and headed out. On the way they said goodbye to all of their friends and family and headed out. While on the trails, Helen noticed that it was mostly flat plains in the north. She thought this was perfect and this was their final destination. Steve told her they were only halfway there and they were about to come up to these really cool mountains. Stacy couldn’t figure out why they were so great. Steve said they were full of plateaus and intermountain basins. Stacy still didn’t think they were …show more content…
cool. After a very long journey, Steve’s family made it to California. They set up a couple of tents and slept for the rest of the day since they had such a long journey. The next day was hot. Steve decided he would go into the town to meet people. He found a poster, grabbed it, and ran back to his wife. Helen read the poster. “California Gold Boom. 1849. GOLD GOLD GOLD.” Steve was super excited about this. He bought some equipment so that the next day, he could go mining. He returned with nothing. For a whole week, Steve did not find anything in the mines.
Helen was mad. They left their home to come here but they found nothing. Helen decided she would go into the town to find friends of her own. One girl invited her in for tea. She was explain that her family moved here because they were promised 160 acres of land for moving west. Helen did not seem happy about this either. They weren’t promised anything. Helen started talking about Jamestown and the girl soon said the US got that land from Britain. Helen didn’t know this. Helen soon found out the US got most of their land form Britain, France, and Spain. Helen returned home after
that. Later that night, Steve returned home. He was the happiest he had ever been. He struck Gold. Lots of Gold. Helen was so proud of her husband. They had gold. They soon bought a nice, big dairy farm, pigs, and horses. They were all very happy. Steve struck gold, Helen got to be a dairy farmer, and the children got to have horses and even a pig in the yard.
Against all Odds is a very interesting Documentary that follows the early settlement of Jamestown in the 17th century .With endless against the odds situations thrown out in from of the people of Jamestown left and right things seemed bleak. But a lot of perseverance from the early settlers including the Documentaries depiction of the original leader John Smith things seemed to resolve themselves. In Documentary there were several parts where it conceited with what is in chapter three of the Textbook the American Promise. For example, In the Documentary when the subject of the Tobacco business came up it was exampled in the same way as the first page of chapter three. With examples of how the product was grown and distributed out into the world. Making it a very valuable trade to be doing although very labor intensive, which is why it would soon lead into the slave trade. Something that was briefly shown in the documentary mainly to show what lengths the people of Jamestown were willing to go to make things work out in their new home.
...Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown Is a very well thought out and put together book. With the index of terms and bibliography it looks and feels like a text book, but it reads like a story book. It tells a very fascinating story in an effective yet entertaining way. Calling the English smelly people and olfactorily objectionable adds a light heartedness to a sad story. The book portrays both groups of people in a fair light and doesn't pull any punches for either side. There is so much information in the book that surely in one reading much is missed, overlooked, or forgotten. It is a highly enjoyable, and educational book well worth the time needed to decipher the complexities of the situations presented throughout the story. The only major downfall of the book is that it ends sadly with the death of Opechancanough while being held captive by the English.
‘“When John White came back to the Colony of Roanoke, everybody in the colony had mysteriously vanished.,” The Lost Colony of Roanoke is still an undiscovered mystery today. Nobody can wrap their heads around how a hundred and seventeen people mysteriously disappeared without a trace never to be located again.
As a young child many of us are raised to be familiar with the Pocahontas and John Smith story. Whether it was in a Disney movie or at a school play that one first learned of Jamestown, students want to believe that this romantic relationship really did occur. As one ages, one becomes aware of the dichotomy between fact and fiction. This is brilliantly explained in David A. Price's, Love and Hate in Jamestown. Price describes a more robust account of events that really did take place in the poorly run, miserable, yet evolving settlement of Jamestown, Virginia; and engulfs and edifies the story marketed by Disney and others for young audiences. Price reveals countless facts from original documents about the history of Jamestown and other fledgling colonies, John Smith, and Smith's relationship with Pocahontas. He develops a more compelling read than does the typical high school text book and writes intriguingly which propels the reader, to continue on to the successive chapters in the early history of Virginia.
In this book, Kupperman is telling a well-known event in remarkable detail. She intentionally uses last three chapters of the nine to tell the Jamestown’s history. The first six are in relation to how Jamestown came to be. The first chapter deals with political, national and religious conflicts during this period and how it motivated the English to venture West. The second is titled,” Adventurers, Opportunities, and Improvisation.” The highlight of this chapter is the story of John Smith, and how his precious experience enabled him to save ”the Jamestown colony from certain ruin.” (51) He is just an example of the “many whose first experiences along these lines were Africa or the eastern Mediterranean later turned their acquired skills to American ventures.” (43) Chapter three discusses the European and Native American interaction before and during this period. “North America’s people had had extensive and intimate experience of Europeans long before colonies was thought of, and through this experience they had come to understand much about the different kind of people across the sea.” (73) This exchange of information happened because a lot of Europeans lived among the Natives (not as colonist or settlers), and Natives were brought back to Europe. The people in Europe were very fascinated with these new people and their culture. Chapter four analyzes this fascination. It starts off talking about Thomas Trevilian, an author of “an elaborate commonplace book,” that showed “the English public was keenly interested in the world and in understanding how to categorize the knowledge about all the new things, people, and cultures of which specimens and descriptions were now available to them.
Southern family preparing to go on what seems to be a typical vacation. The story is humorous at first because the reader is unaware of how the story will end. The tone changes dramatically from amusing to frightening and plays an important part in making the story effective.
In “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan mother from Lancaster, Massachusetts, recounts the invasion of her town by Indians in 1676 during “King Philip’s War,” when the Indians attempted to regain their tribal lands. She describes the period of time where she is held under captivity by the Indians, and the dire circumstances under which she lives. During these terrible weeks, Mary Rowlandson deals with the death of her youngest child, the absence of her Christian family and friends, the terrible conditions that she must survive, and her struggle to maintain her faith in God. She also learns how to cope with the Indians amongst whom she lives, which causes her attitude towards them to undergo several changes. At first, she is utterly appalled by their lifestyle and actions, but as time passes she grows dependent upon them, and by the end of her captivity, she almost admires their ability to survive the harshest times with a very minimal amount of possessions and resources. Despite her growing awe of the Indian lifestyle, her attitude towards them always maintains a view that they are the “enemy.”
As a result, their lives changed, for better or for worse. They were inexperienced, and therefore made many mistakes, which made their life in Chicago very worrisome. However, their ideology and strong belief in determination and hard work kept them alive. In a land swarming with predators, this family of delicate prey found their place and made the best of it, despite the fact that America, a somewhat disarranged and hazardous jungle, was not the wholesome promise-land they had predicted it to be.
The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles by John Smith, portrays the enormous troubles the settlers were faced with by the Native Americans. He explains how he was captured by Indians and also saved by a young Native American girl, Pocahontas. He vividly describes the ceremonies and rituals of the Natives performed before his execution. However, the execution never occurred due to the tremendous mercy showed by the king’s daughter who blanketed John Smith’s body her own. Pocahontas went on to persuade the Native Americans to help the settlers by giving them food and other necessities. Despite her efforts to reach peaceful grounds, her people were still bitter and planned an attacks on the colony. Nevertheless, Pocahontas saved them once again by warning the settlers of attacks. Pocahontas went on to marry an Englishman and traveled to England. She resembled the prosperity and good that was to be found in an untamed land.
A fleet of English ships arrived in the spring of 1607 at the Chesapeake Bay to start an English settlement in an effort to proselytize Christianity and find a trade route to China. These ships carried in excess of 100 passengers who had been granted King James I’s permission to go to the new world. This expedition was funded by a wealthy group of English Aristocrats hoping they could get a return on their investment. The men on the ships knew of the dangers they would experience whether it be the Spanish warships attacking or the Native Americans ambushing the colony. The colonists wanted to avoid a fate similar to that of Roanoke Island, the previous English settlement in the New World where all of the colonists mysterious disappeared. The Chesapeake area was heavily inhabited by over 15,000 Indians living near the James River. After their arrival the English settlers built a fort on an island they called James Island which would eventually become Jamestown. Originally, 110 settlers came to Jamestown but only 40 of them survived until the next year. A resupply ship arrived that prevented the colony from collapsing but hardship soon followed for the next two years when Captain John Smith, the leader of the colony was sent back to England. Following his departure, two-thirds of the colonist died during the winter. This did not hinder the rising popularity of Jamestown because an abundance of young English settlers kept coming. They were primarily poor and the new world was a way for them to work off their debt so they could begin a new life with their own piece of land. Those who did come with money hoped to become successful growing tobacco but the majority of those who came found no prosperity because around 80% of the people...
Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” and Benjamin Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” are two different perspectives based on unique experiences the narrators had with “savages.” Benjamin Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages…” is a comparison between the ways of the Indians and the ways of the Englishmen along with Franklin’s reason why the Indians should not be defined as savages. “A Narrative of the Captivity…” is a written test of faith about a brutally traumatic experience that a woman faced alone while being held captive by Indians. Mary Rowlandson views the Indians in a negative light due to the traumatizing and inhumane experiences she went through namely, their actions and the way in which they lived went against the religious code to which she is used; contrastingly, Benjamin Franklin sees the Indians as everything but savages-- he believes that they are perfect due to their educated ways and virtuous conduct.
The underlying theme of Brown’s writing is the overall inappropriate and poor treatment of Native Americans during the late 1800’s, as the US government began to attempt to take over all of the land that the Native Americans were living on. The events of the book are a good representation of the historical background of the time in which the book is written. Dee Brown essentially is writing a chronology depicting the existence of Native Americans in early America. The book opens with a discussion of the early years of Native American inhabitance, and their relationship with settlers up through the mid-1800s. Early on, the relationship was peaceful, and Brown discusses the time period when the Pilgrims began to arrive, and how the Native Americans helped those Pilgrims survive on the new land and especially how to survive the winter. However, as the late 1600’s and early 1700’s came, settlers – mostly white from Europe, began to encroa...
It is true that the legend of Pocahontas as told by John Smith makes for a great story but that is all it is and upon reading Roundtree’s book I am disappointed that this is not a true account but also angry that the school systems of our country are still toting this as an accurate and significant event in history. Roundtree’s book should be a required read in schools nowadays to ensure that our children are getting the most accurate interpretation of the realities of life in Jamestown. They should be able to read Smith’s version of events and decide for themselves what they feel is the most accurate account of what happened during that time. There is always three sides to a story, his side (Smith), her side (Roundtree), and the truth. I think that Roundtree’s side of the story has more truth to it but I am sure there are some instances where she may be wrong as well but is not outright lying as Smith has
I can’t believe it! We’re moving at a rate faster than ever before – almost 10 miles were covered since daybreak and it isn’t even the evening yet! We’ve been moving since 4 in the morning. Some pesky Indians came in the way when we were herding up our cattle but I know dad and his friends took care of the issue. I made my own breakfast today too, we call it Johnnycake. You mix some cornmeal with salt and water; I’ve heard they’ve been eating this stuff since the 1730s! I finished eating real quick to go with my father to the front. Some men ride on horses in the front to make a plain and open path for us to go on, and he’s one of ‘em. Before I knew it, it was Wagons Ho. It was all going smooth until tragedy struck ‘round noon. Little Johnny done died of cholera. I knew somethin’ was wrong since he was always throwin’ up all his good food and he even had diarrhea I’ve heard. Mom told me this is the number one killer on the Oregon Trail. Some others were diphtheria and dysentery. Hope I don’t catch none of these. We got ‘em buried but we had to move on, we couldn’t waste any sunlight, ever. We’re lucky our group didn’t run into any other problems today. Alex told me about these guys whose wagons fell off the side of the mountain and they weren’t ever seen again! I always act extra careful, even checkin’ to see if the wheels are loose. Oh well, so far, so good. Can’t wait for this new land we’ve all been talkin’ about for the past few days, the new life is not too far away and what the future holds for us. Let us continue towards the bright and golden sun of hope.
In a strange way, Victor Navorski’s long and obstacle packed journey relates closely to the journey many early settlers must have experienced. Just like Victor Navorski journey, the early