Roaring Camp

"Susan Lee Johnson's Roaring Camp explores the dynamic social world created by the gold rush in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Stockton. In it we find Mexican families like the Murrietas who worked the mines, did the wash, and rose up against Anglo rule. There are the California Indians who tried to maintain their customary practices even while helping to construct the sawmill at Sutter's fort where gold was discovered in 1848. We enter the all-male households of the diggings, the mines where the men worked, and the fandango houses where they played. At places like Casa de los Amigos in…