Gold - Fred Rosen

 Sub-title: - The Story of the 1848 Gold Rush and How It Shaped a Nation

This book gave me new perspectives on the impact of the gold rush on the migration across America.  According to the author more than 300,000 people had trekked across the plains, rounded South America, crossed Panama and Mexico and traveled from Australia to the California gold fields.  It was a scramble for riches and upward mobility, a chance for a better life for men and their families.  He covers the treaty with Mexico to add California to the U.S. and how the Native Americans were driven off into reservations. 

I was fascinated by the personalities in the story, Sutter the merchant, Marshall, the builder.  The generals who oversaw the war with Mexico, the diplomats sent by the government to negotiate an agreement and the hundreds of unnamed men who swarmed the area, establishing gold rush towns that disappeared when the gold ran out and they moved on.  One story was about A.D. Hobson, a man from Yadkin County on the Yadkin River in East Bend, North Carolina, born in 1825 and of English and Welsh ancestors. He and his brother traveled through Salt Lake City to Shaw Flat on the Tuolumne River "where they did very well in mining".

An in-depth read of the 1840 to 1870 period of a mass migration that populated the West.

Published: 2005  Read: May 2024  Genre: History

Origin - Jennifer Raff

 Sub-title: A Genetic History of the Americas

I've been reading recently published books addressing genetics and DNA.  This one came to my attention in my social media feed and I had to wait several weeks for it to be available at the library.

The author is an anthropologist and geneticist with the University of Kansas.  While she is letting the research on ancient remains tell the story of how the Americas may have bee populated, her larger message is that the scientific community and the general public needs to seek out and respect the Native Americans who are the modern descendants of the peoples they study and research and that we should be collaborating with them, as she does.

I enjoyed the summary of the science to date, the history of the finds and analysis of the on-site anthropological materials as well as the laboratory work done to analyze DNA.  A good read that brought into perspective the studies being done to trace our human family.  I will be interested to see what fellow genealogists who have researched Native American DNA think of her book.

Quotes:

p. 150 - She provides an explanation of extensive lab procedures for cleanliness and to avoid contamination as "...a contract between ourselves [scientists] and the Indigenous peoples who have given us permission to conduct this work" that demonstrates the ethics of anthropology and genetics.

p. 198 - She describes the parallels between the evolution of dogs as contributing to being "...able to get insights into human story from an unexpected source: the genomes of dogs."

p. 256 - "...the Common Rule, which underlies ethical oversight of research on humans (governed by Institutional Review Boards or IRBs) does not apply to ancient humans.  NAGPRA, the law the governs human remains and artifacts associated with descendant tribe, does not apply to the remains of ancient people found on private property."

p. 261 - "For Indigenous peoples this [Native American heritage] is not a minor or abstract issue; giving legitimacy to the notion that one can claim Native identify via a DNA test or family legend without any connection to present-day tribes is an implicit threat to tribal sovereignty....Because of widespread interest ...commercial ancestry testing services are intensely focused on obtaining Native American DNA from tribal members...met with a fair amount of resistance.  The marketing of ancestor test as "telling you who you are" is not accurate.  It boils down to this - what makes a person Indigenous is not a subject on which I- or any other non-Native geneticist- can speak with any authority or knowledge."

Published: 2022  Read: May 2022  Genre: Science

The New Odyssey - Patrick Kingsley

Sub-title: The story of the twenty-first century refugee crisis

This book is an eye-opener.  The author parallels the journey of one refugee with the facts and evolution of the massive migration of refugees from the Middle East and Africa.  The numbers of people impacted by the wars and repressive regimes is staggering - hundreds of thousands of attempted to leave their countries for a safer existence in European continent.

The book changed my understanding of the Syrian conflict and others in the region and humanized the people just trying to live and raise their families some place safe and secure.  These are not all individuals who are poor and uneducated, instead they are people like you and me who are caught up in societies being destroyed by tyrants and fanatics, paralleling the reign of Hitler in the 1930's.

The response of European nations that are overwhelmed with the numbers of people seeking asylum creates division and cooperation as they try to address the crisis.

A must read.

Published:  2017   Read: April 2017   Genre: Non-fiction