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Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Advance Access originally published online on October 21, 2009
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 2009 16(4):761-778; doi:10.1093/isle/isp097
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© The Author(s) 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Ambivalent Heritage of Mining in Western American Literature: Wheeler's Dime Novels and Austin's The Land of Little Rain

Matthew J. C. Cella

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Searching for gold in the waters clear,

Running a race with the mountain deer:

Profiting well by the miner's abuse.

Taming with spur the buckin' cayuse;

Paying one's way, taking no ‘slack,’

Biting cold lead, and sending it back;

Friendly to friends, deadly to foes,

Gay as a robin, hoarding no woes;

Such is the life of the scout, gay and free,

Such is the life that is suiting to me.

     —Calamity Jane, from Edward Wheeler's

        Deadwood Dick on Deck

Can't you feel the rock dust in your lungs?

It'll cut down a miner when he is still young.

Two years and the silicosis takes hold.

And I feel like I'm dying from mining for gold.

     —Traditional lyric, performed by Cowboy Junkies

These two lyrics reveal the conflicted heritage of the American miner. Calamity Jane's "gay and free" life as a scout and sometime placer miner, the subject of the . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Heroes and Villains in the Black Hills: Wheeler's "Deadwood Dick" Novels
 

   Miners and the Land: Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain
 

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