Popular Culture Review Vol. 1, December 1989 | Page 61

El Dorado and Silverado:
Gold and Silver Rushes in
the Old West
Chemically designated as Au, this barest description says
nothing o f the romance connected with the quest for and possession
of gold. Yet few material possessions have captured the hearts and
imaginations of humans in both hemispheres more than gold. From
earliest times gold symbolized wealth, power, and the epitome of
opulence. At first, utility was the least important o f its qualities—
these would be known only later and entered into space technology
as well as medicine. Yet still, today, two thirds of gold is used in
jewelry, and whenever wealth is to be flaunted, gold is its agentservant.
Ancient Chinese used gold flakes and paints to gild precious
statues and objects of art. In the times of the pyramids, Egyptians,
who believed that gold originally was taken from the sun by the
gods and given to man, hammered death masks o f their pharaohs
out of gold, so malleable that one ounce could be hammered into
nearly one hundred square fe e t In India, Hindus consider gold as
sacred, and no matter how poor the person otherwise, nearly every
Hindu owns some gold. Gold leaf adorns church domes in the
western world, symbolically offering m an’s most precious posses
sion to the Almighty.
Greek myths tell several tales o f gold and its allurement,
among them the stories of King Midas and Jason’s Quest for the
Golden Fleece. Every myth entails a fiction grounded in a truth and
these are no exceptions. The Midas one warns us o f avarice and
hubris, while also revealing that gold is to be found in streams, since
it was in the river Pactolus that Midas cleansed his body o f gold.
The myth of Jason likewise tells us that gold can be procured from

55