American Western Placer Mining And It's Effect(1848-1878)

American western mining is one of the most important events in American western exploitation. Gold rush is the main form in American earlier mining period. It occupies an important status. This paper is intended to discuss the early history of American Western mining, including from its foundation and early development to downfall(1848-1878). Based on this topic, the paper will focus on three large-scale gold rushes and the gold miners'living. The paper will illustrate their backgrounds, general conditions, functions and influences.The whole paper is to be divided into three chapters.Chapter one concentrates on three large-scale gold rushes of their emerging backglounds, characters and gold rush general conditions.The three gold rushes are California's gold rush, Navada's Comstoke gold rush and South Dakota's Black hills gold rush.They develop very fast, as the old Chinese saying, "A single spark can start a prairie fire." They make the American west from a thinly settled area into a flourishing rumbustious region. The poor and the rich live in mining frontier at the same time.The second chapter mainly surveys the miners and their living in gold rush areas. The chapter has a restricted view about the miners' different living by material and mental life. It's aim at revealing the fact that the gold rush place isn't a heaven for each man.Chapter three discusses the funtion and effect of the gold rush by dichotomy. The gold rush is a two-edged sword. One hand, it gives a pair of awing wings for American economic development, on the other hand, it destories environment, leads to a lot of "ghost towns"arising. Aboriginal indians are driven away, their lands are deprived, indian women are ravaged and so on. In a word, indians are suffered the deadly persecution. By this way,we can give a fair external evaluation for the gold rush.