They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush

by JoAnn Levy

Book Overview

"The phrase 'seeing the elephant' symbolized for '49 gold rushers the exotic, the mythical, the once-in-a-lifetime adventure, unequaled anywhere else but in the journey to the promised land of fortune: California. Most western myths . . . generally depict an exclusively male gold rush. Levy's book debunks that myth. Here a variety of women travel, work, and write their way across the pages of western migrant history."-Choice

"One of the best...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806124733
• ISBN13: 9780806124735
• Release Date: September 2014
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Amazing and skillfully written!!

I'm so impressed with this author! She proves that history is as engrossing as our lives today by quoting many of the brave women who were actually there. I just put another book by her into my cart

Very much worth your time to read!

This book is great! A person wouldn't even need to be interested in history of the gold rush days to thoroughly enjoy reading this book. I don't have alot of free time to read, so when I pick a book it has to be worth my while. This certainly was. And it's an easy book for reading a few pages at a time, like I do just before going to bed. I love how it organizes the accounts and groups the stories into chapters of a particular theme. Fascinating!

A Fresh and Factual Look at Women in the West

In They Saw The Elephant, Jo Ann Levy has combined women's journals and letters with newspaper articles of the gold rush era into an articulate, shining gem of historical writing. Her purpose was to dispel many of the common assumptions and general characterizations made in earlier histories about the women who participated in the California gold rush. A number of the early twentieth century histories of this monumental American event imply there were few women in California, and that a majority of those women were of questionable social standing. Levy's placement of her chapter on prostitution is wisely situated in the second half of her work. She admits there is little written record concerning the lives of these women, particularly those of Chilean and Chinese descent who came to the gold fields. The author does not fill in the blanks with supposition or fiction. By the time the reader gets to the chapter on prostitution, it is already clear that women were contributing far more to the Gold Rush than physical pleasure for males. The Oregon Trail opened in 1847. Levy includes some of the women's stories from this trek even if their final destination was not the gold fields. This is a plus. The reader understands that women had started emigrating west for reasons other than gold and the journals and letters used to demonstrate life on the trail were vivid. The variety of women discussed in this book was a cross section of society at the time. I laughed out loud while reading about how some of the highbrow, educated women reacted to the primitive society of San Francisco. These women adapted, and most made a good living as boarding house keepers and cooks. Levy does an excellent job showing us the ingenuity of the women who went west. Living aboard abandoned ships in the bay, renting out rooms in, and using wood and goods from those ships are details about day-to-day life often lost in the telling of the human experience of the gold rush. Perhaps the strongest statement Levy makes in her book is found in the Postscript. Women who went west during the gold rush continued their lives long after the three- year bonanza. Most didn't stay in San Francisco. Most didn't even stay in California. Their toil was but another blip on the radar screen of their lives. They didn't crawl back east to their families as broken women. They had seen the elephant, but had no desire to own the circus. Several of the accounts made me chuckle and realize how little life has changed. One letter describes how quickly houses were being built in San Francisco. It goes on to describe the shoddy workmanship including gaps in the walls large enough to see through. I live in the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country. Houses go up over night here, literally. We joke about housing developments growing as quickly as mushrooms in the forest. The only reason the cracks in the walls don't allow light in now is chicken wire and stucco. Little has changed in the

They Saw The Elephant

As a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, I found tremendous value in "They Saw The Elephant." For the general reader of non-fiction, this book reads like a novel! The stories of these valiant women grab the reader and never let go. You feel that you are with them, as they face the unknown perils and triumphs of the Gold Rush in California of the mid-19th Century. The words of these wonderful women have the special ring of Truth to them. I cannot overstate my admiration for the author and her work in presenting this important book.

One of the most amazing books I've ever read.

Well written, well researched, mesmerizing! There are not enough words to praise this book. It covers every aspect and type of life a woman could lead when she came West. It takes information from diaries and eyewitness accounts. It will make you realize that human feelings don't change. We can all relate to what these women felt. It doesn't read like a history book, it reads like a magnificent saga. I couldn't put it down.

I couldn't put it down!

Reading ³They Saw the Elephant² changed the way I think about historical narratives. JoAnn Levy¹s ³westering women² come alive through their own words and through her skillful weaving of their stories. They weren't just hookers and schoolmarms; they ran boarding houses and laundries, they mined for gold, and there was even one who drove a stagecoach for Wells, Fargo, & Co.! Excellently researched and a great read!