Queens of the Mines Andrea Anderson, Gold Rush Author & Historian

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this week, I am posting an old episode that was subscription only. I’m sorry. I caught the ‘vid. Back to regular programming next week!



In Yosemite, for thousands of years before the discovery of gold, Native Americans traveled through and inhabited the area that the Sierra Nevada’s melting snow spills dramatically over rocky cliffs on the walls into the Valley. Waterfalls that sit over three thousand feet above its floor. The treasures the park holds are unduplicated, each wonder differing from the next, each overwhelmingly spectacular.
From 1850 to 1851 Native Americans and Euro-American miners in the area were at war, the Mariposa War. Some Euro-American men had formed a militia known as the Mariposa Battalion. Their purpose - drive the native Ahwahneechee people onto reservations. The Mariposa Battalion were the first non-natives to enter Yosemite. When this war ended, Yosemite was then open to settlement and speculation.

Today we are going to talk about Jennie Curry, half of the curry couple who founded Camp Curry in Yosemite, and the history of the Yosemite Firefall.
Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West. Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three.




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Welcome back to Queens of the Mines. This is Season 4. Yosemite.

This season of Queens of the Mines explores the making of Yosemite National Park and true stories of women who were there along the way, and women that were there before.

In this episode, I am going to tell you about To-tu-ya, who was later known as Maria Lebrado. She was part of that 5 percent and she was the last survivor born of the Ahwahneechee band that was driven out of the Yosemite Valley by the Mariposa Battalion during the Mariposa War. 

5,500 years ago, Indigenous tribes were the first to settle what we now know as Yosemite. The most recent native group to live there was primarily an extension of the Southern Sierra Miwok. They had named the Yosemite Valley “Ahwahnee” and they referred to themselves as the Ahwahneechee. People of the valley. The Ah-wah-nee´-chees had been a large and powerful tribe and 171 years ago, before white men arrived to Yosemite, there were 37 indigenous villages in the area with over 10,000 Miwok living there. 

After a war, and what the Miwoks called the fatal black sickness, the majority had died or had fled to live with other tribes. When it was all said and done, only around 500 of the 10,000 Miwoks remained. That is five % of their population.



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“This is Queens of the Mines, where we discuss untold stories from the twisted roots of California. Today, we’ll be talking about Indian Boarding Schools in the US and California. We are in a time where historians and the public are no longer dismissing the “conflict history” that has been minimized or blotted out. We now have the opportunity to incorporate the racial and patriarchal experience in the presentation of American reality. The preceding episode may feature foul language and or adult content including violence which may be disturbing some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised.

Over 1,300 bodies of First Nations students were found at former Canada‘s residential schools this year. In response, Canada has declared September 30 2021, as the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Since 2013, this day has been commemorated as Orange Shirt Day.
Like most of our topics on the podcast, the truth about our Indian boarding school has been written out of the US history books. The system has long been condemned by Native Americans as a form of cultural genocide. By 1926, nearly 83% of Indian school-age children were attending boarding schools. There once were over 350 government-funded Indian Boarding schools across the US where native children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their native languages. Nothing short of the previous Mission System, truly.

This Episode is also brought to you by the Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH. Are you facing criminal charges in California? The most important thing you can do is obtain legal counsel from an aggressive Criminal Defense Lawyer lawyer you can trust. The Law Office of Charles B. Smith has the knowledge and experience to assess your situation and help you build a strong defense against your charges. The Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH do not just defend cases, they represent people. So visit their website cbsattorney.com, we know even in the gold rush no one liked attorneys, but Charles you will love.

Between 1869 and the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were voluntarily or forcibly removed from their homes, families, communities and placed in boarding schools. where they were punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture. The United States government tied Native Americans’ naturalization to the eradication of Native American cultural identity and complete assimilation into the “white culture.” Congress passed an act in 1887 that established “every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up… his residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians…[and] adopted the habits of civilized life…” may secure a United States citizenship.
Often these residential schools were run by different faith groups including Methodists, Latter-day Saints (LDS) and Catholics. Like the Missions, often crowded conditions,students weakened by overwork and lack of public sanitation put students at risk for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, measles and trachoma. None of these diseases were yet treatable by antibiotics or controlled by vaccines, and epidemics swept schools as they did cities. Often students were prevented from communicating with their families, and parents were not notified when their children fell ill; the schools also failed sometimes to notify them when a child died. ”Many of the Indian deaths during the great influenza pandemic of 1918–19, which hit the Native American population hard, took place in boarding schools. ”The 1928 Meriam Report noted that death rates for Native American students were six and a half times higher

Have you ever experienced the breathtaking California wilderness? Yosemite National Park is known for its giant waterfalls and granite cliffs. Boasting Giant sequoia groves, grand valley, and lakes and streams. Yosemite receives over 3.5 million visitors annually. Just before the United State’s largest migration, the California gold rush, Yosemite remains vastly untouched and was the home of 10,000 California Miwoks. 

Join me Andrea Anderson through the history of the making of Yosemite National Park and the women that were there along the way, and before. 

Queens of the Mines- Yosemite 

Premieres September 19th 2023

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Last Time in Luzena Wilson’s Story it was late December 1849.

Luzena was serving up to 200 boarders a week in Sacramento and charging each twenty five dollars. Customers were happy to pay the high price tag for a meal prepared by Luzena Wilson, for the white woman, was a rarity. In 1850 women made up just three percent of the non-Native American population in California‘s mining region, numbering about 800 in a sea of 30,000 men. As a married American woman, Luzena Wilson reminded many of the American men of home, of their wives, mothers or sisters. They treated Luzena, as she put it, like a ”queen.” Luzena had put her boys to bed, and under dim light, wrote out her list of goods needed for the next week. She would make her largest purchase yet in the morning. Six months had passed in Sacramento and now she longed for a friend. She set down her steel dip-pen, blew out the beeswax candle next to it, and laid down beside Mason. The rain began to furiously pound on the family home’s weak roof, and it did not stop all night.

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