“Donald’s Gold Mine”

Many years ago, I had an argument with someone who espoused the belief that the reason English colonies in the New World succeeded and Spanish ones failed was that the English were there to build homes and the Spanish were there to find gold. Now, I am a native Californian. What’s more, I took a family vacation through Gold Country when I was between fourth and fifth grade. I have been to Sutter’s Mill, friends, and leaving aside how much the English in Virginia were very much hoping to find gold there, I can tell you about the ranchos of the Californios and the mining of the gringos and what are we even doing here?

Anyway, Donald’s mining for gold, because they hadn’t had him do that yet. First, he fights with what is alternately called a donkey and a burro, depending on the website you’re checking. Then, his pickax proves recalcitrant. Then, he finds gold, which he cackles over greedily. Finally, he ends up dropped into the ore processing plant, where he is, you know, processed. With the donkey looking on horrified.

For good reason, frankly. Gold processing is some pretty nasty stuff, and the version here is more comedic than accurate. For one thing, Donald isn’t washed in toxic chemicals, such as sodium cyanide. And it’s possible for him to get through the crushing machines at all. A lot of the Californian environment was irreparably damaged by the quest for gold. Entire hillsides were swept away with power washers. Other hills are nothing but tailings from gold mines.

This cartoon is essentially mute for much of its length—Donald sings and grumbles in the first half, and the donkey makes noises, but that’s it, and Donald has no lines in the second half. But real California gold mining was a labor-intensive process. Not many ducks involved, but a lot of minorities. A lot of immigrants. A lot of desperate people hoping for better lives. Mostly, the people who got rich during the Gold Rush were those who sold things to the miners, not the miners themselves. Even James W. Marshall, who found the gold, and John Sutter, on whose land it was found, died poor.

The history of gold mining in California is frankly more interesting to me than the events in a Donald Duck cartoon that aren’t even all that unusual. Donald Duck fights with an animal and assorted inanimate objects; the inanimate objects win. We’ve been through it. But there’s a lot to be learned from history. Place names and former place names tell a story with good points and bad points. The landscape itself tells the story of how important gold was to the people flooding into the state. Many did in time build homes, but only after they stopped looking for gold.