The Gold Rush Diary of Ramon Gil Navarro [Hardcover]

Ramon Gil Navarro (Author), Maria Del carmen Ferreyra (Editor, Translator), David Reher (Editor, Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000

Gold! Gold! Gold! This seductive mantra, shouted throughout the Americas in 1848–49, convinced thousands of people that California's gold could be had simply by picking it up off the ground. Ramón Gil Navarro, an Argentinean political exile living in Chile, heard these rumors of a new El Dorado, but he was not so naïve as to believe that the gold merely had to be gathered. He understood that mining required extensive capital investment and labor, and along with three other investors he arranged to have 120 workers and a shipload of supplies sent to California. Navarro accompanied the workers to Stockton and began prospecting.

Gold rush California was a rough and tumble world where finding gold—and keeping it—was not a simple matter. Navarro encountered people from all over the world brought together in a society marked by racial and ethnic intolerance, swift and cruel justice, and great hardships. It was a world of contrasts, where the roughest of the rough lived in close proximity to extremely refined cultural circles. Despite his planning, Navarro had not reckoned on the racism he would encounter. He witnessed several instances of Anglo miners harassing Latinos and other ethnic groups. After three years without success, Navarro returned to South America. He became a national representative in the Argentinean congress and worked as a journalist. He never returned to California.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

About the Author

María del Carmen Ferreyra is a researcher affiliated with the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. She is the great-granddaughter of Ramón Gil Navarro and made the original transcription of his diaries. David S. Reher, a professor of history at the University of Madrid, is the author of Perspectives on the Family in Spain: Past and Present and other works.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 315 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press; First Edition edition (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803233434
• ISBN-13: 978-0803233430
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,641,267 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A shrewd foreign observer on the Early American West, December 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gold Rush Diary of Ramon Gil Navarro (Hardcover)

Ramon Gil Navarro, age 22, an intellectual and writer exiled by an Argentine tyrant to Chile came to California in 1849 looking for gold. Instead of riches, what he found was a riveting multicultural maelstrom of a new society struggling to be born. With his excellent command of languages (English, French, Spanish) Navarro was able to interact with most of the cosmopolitan population of the California gold fields. In this exceptionally fine diary, he paints a vivid and memorable portrait of early California and its mesmerizing cast of characters: adventurers, entrepreneurs, fortune hunters, bon vivants, cowboys, outlaws, cold-blooded killers, wandering Indians, dispossessed Mexicans, and many others. There is an especially a moving portrait of African-American slaves brought by their masters from the warm regions of the US South to the snowy mountains of California to work in the mines. Appalled by their plight, Navarro visits the shackled, freezing, famished slaves while their masters are away and describes his attempts to warm up the slaves, to feed them, and to cheer them up by playing favorite songs on his guitar. Highly recommend primary source for historians and a marvelous account of a bygone era for the average reader.