The Ballad of Lucy Whipple (18 page)

Lucy Whipple personifies the gold rush pioneers. She came to California to get rich and get out; yet beguiled by the land and the people, she stayed to be a Californian and enrich her new home with the experiences, culture, and expectations she brought with her.

I tried in this book to use language, ideas, and attitudes contemporary to 1850s California. For example, African-Americans are referred to as colored instead of black or Negro, which were considered derogatory terms at the time. Slang, swear words, and odd turns of phrase were found in or inspired by the reference works
Wicked Words: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs, and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms
by Hugh Rawson (Crown Publishers, 1989);
Cowboy Slang
by Edgar R. "Frosty" Potter (Golden West Publishers, 1986); and
The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800s
by Marc McCutcheon (Writers' Digest Books, 1993).

There are many, many books on the California gold rush, but very few of them discuss the children of the time. Some of the most helpful California books I found included:

Chauncey Canfield:
The Diary of a Forty-Niner.
Turtle Point Press, 1992.

"Dame Shirley":
The Shirley Letters from the California Mines.
Knopf, 1965.

Joy Hakim:
A History of Us, Book Five: Liberty for All?
Oxford University Press, 1994.

Robert F. Heizer and Albert B. Elsasser:
The Natural World of the California Indians.
University of California Press, 1980.

Joseph Henry Jackson:
Anybody's Gold: The History of California's Mining Towns.
Chronicle, 1970.

Joann Levy:
They Saw the Elephant: Women in the Califonia Gold Rush.
Archon, 1990.

Remi Nadeau:
Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of California.
Crest, 1992.

Petra Press:
A Multicultural Portrait of the Move West.
Marshall Cavendish, 1994.

Sarah Royce:
A Frontier Lady.
University of Nebraska Press, 1932.

Lillian Schlissel:
Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey.
Schocken, 1992.

Elliott West:
Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier.
University of New Mexico Press, 1989.

U.S. President James K. Polk claimed the California gold discoveries were "the find of the century." An early miner said gold meant "castles of marble ... thousands of slaves ... myriads of fair virgins contending with each other for my love." The Sioux holy man Black Elk called gold the yellow metal that makes the white man crazy. I think perhaps they were all correct.

Karen Cushman was born in Chicago, Illinois, and went west with her family when she was ten.

The Ballad of Lucy Whipple
is Ms. Cushman's third book. Her first,
Catherine, Called Birdy,
was a Newbery Honor winner, and her second,
The Midwife's Apprentice,
was awarded the Newbery Medal.

Karen Cushman lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, Philip. They have a daughter, Leah.