by Pam Berkman
“Come on, Bo-Bo!” he cried. “I don’t care about the gold anymore! I don’t care about paying the tax anymore! Mr. Smeets can jump in the river with his gold in his pockets!”
He dragged her to the main cave entrance. She hadn’t realized quite how strong he was. He pulled her out of the cave and into the light. Choi Hung was the last one out.
The ringtail seemed to have finally let Mr. Smeets go. Bo-Bo didn’t see her. The men were swinging into their saddles. “We’re leaving, Smeets!” one of them said. “We’re not getting paid enough to get eaten by a bear!” They rode off. They didn’t even take all the shovels.
“You get back here!” Mr. Smeets shouted. He mounted his own horse and chased after them.
The entrance to the cave shook. A wooden beam snapped. There was a great crash. Rocks and dirt and wood piled up to block the place where the opening had been.
“That was close!” Sheng said.
Bo-Bo pulled away from Sheng. They still needed the gold!
She saw that the entrance hadn’t collapsed completely. There was a small hole near the top of the rocks and dirt. She ran to the cave. She wriggled through the opening.
“Stop!” Sheng desperately called out to her.
“Flea-addled, fur-brained fool!!” Choi Hung screeched.
She was inside the cave. It was so quiet, Bo-Bo could hear her own heart beating. Dust swirled in the beam of light that shone in. She ran to the stack of gold rocks.
Sheng had said they needed three.
She picked out the biggest stone. It was too big to carry. So she rolled it with her nose. It was awkward, but she kept rolling it. She got to what was left of the cave entrance. She stuck her head out of the cave and pushed the stone outside. Sheng tried to grab her. She ducked back into the cave and ran down for a second stone. She rolled that out of the cave too.
“Bo-Bo!” Sheng shouted. “Come out now!”
His hands reached through the hole to try to get her.
Just one more! She sprinted back to the rock pile.
Crack! Rumble! CRACK! The earth beneath her paws trembled. The rest of the cave was going to go any minute! She grabbed a smaller rock in her mouth. She almost dropped it. Even though it was small, it was heavier than the others.
She ran as fast as she could to the cave entrance. She dropped the rock and pushed it through the gap. Some tiny claws and some big ones, the ringtail’s and Resilience’s, grabbed for the rock. And it was out. She could only hope it would be enough.
The ground beneath her gave way. Another wooden beam snapped. And then another. Dirt and rocks and wood rained down on her. She winced, waiting for the cave to crush her. But just before it did, the shaking stopped. She hadn’t been buried. All was quiet and darkness.
It was time to get out of there. She pulled herself up to the cave entrance.
But it was gone. Now there was a thick wall of rock between her and escape.
She was trapped.
Sheng has the gold! she thought. Even if she was trapped here forever, he would be able to pay for the tax and the bear.
But she was so afraid. Please don’t let me be trapped here forever. She started digging. The rest of the cave could still collapse.
She heard a scratching sound. Then rocks moving. More scratching. And Choi Hung ordering everyone around. Finally, she heard the ringing of a shovel. Bo-Bo kept digging. Her paws were full of dirt and so was her nose. The cave shook again. She froze with terror.
A ray of sunlight shone into the cave. A tiny crack had appeared between the rocks. Bo-Bo couldn’t believe what she saw. Acorn’s paws were digging away at the rocks. In a moment, she saw his nose. The crack grew wider as some rocks were pulled away.
Sheng’s hands reached through. “I’m here, Bo-Bo,” he panted. His hands felt around for her. Bo-Bo reached with her paws. Sheng grabbed them. He pulled.
She was out. Behind her, the entrance to the cave shuddered and crashed into rocks and dust.
It didn’t matter. Bo-Bo had found the gold. She hoped there was enough.
Acorn stood a few paces away. “Thank you,” Bo-Bo woofed. Acorn dipped his head.
“Maybe we’ll see you again sometime,” he answered.
He turned and trotted away toward Scrub Hill.
A tiny warm flame sparked in Bo-Bo’s heart. The feeling spread to her face, to the tips of her ears, to her toes digging into the dirt.
But Sheng looked so upset!
“Bo-Bo!” he shouted. “Don’t ever do that again!”
Why was he angry? She whimpered and flattened her ears against her head. Sheng lowered his voice.
“What were you thinking? I told you not to go! I told you I don’t care about the tax anymore! Do you think gold is more important to me than you are?”
Bo-Bo hadn’t thought about it that way.
“Stupid brave dog! Stupid brave dog!” Choi Hung said in human speech.
Sheng buried his head in her fur. Resilience, Hornet, Choi Hung, and the ringtail watched.
After a while, Sheng straightened up. He wiped his eyes. Bo-Bo looked at him anxiously. Was everything all right?
She woofed with relief when he smiled.
“Thanks for your help,” she said to Resilience and the ringtail.
“You were kind to us,” Resilience said. “Only fair for us to help you out too! Who was that other dog?”
“A friend,” answered Bo-Bo. Resilience snuffled. She huffed and took off. Hornet trundled behind her. He looked back and squeaked a goodbye.
The ringtail chittered, “I’m heading back to my den. Try to stay out of trouble!”
Sheng bent to gather the rocks. Bo-Bo saw that the two bigger ones were more gold than rock! But Sheng picked up the smallest one. He stared. His mouth dropped open.
“This is almost pure gold!” He held it out in his palm. Every bit of it sparkled in the setting sun. “There must be more than a pound of gold in this,” he said in a hushed voice.
Bo-Bo pointed her muzzle at the sky and barked with joy. That was much more than they needed to pay Mr. Smeets. That was more than they needed for anything!
“Come on, Bo-Bo,” Sheng said. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Bo-Bo watched Sheng put the last pack onto the wagon. The wagon was hitched to a pair of oxen Sheng’s family had bought with some of the gold from Crooked Cave.
Mr. Smeets’s men had told all of their friends about the cave full of gold, and dozens of men were trying to dig out Crooked Cave. But Sheng and his family didn’t care.
They were leaving Gum San.
“Why stay here if the people will treat us this way?” Sheng had said when he and Bo-Bo came home with the gold. “Making you pay, Father, when other men don’t have to! Just because we come from somewhere else. Just because they say we’re different. And I almost lost Bo-Bo!”
Father and Uncle Gwan talked a long time. They decided Sheng was right. They gave Mr. Smeets the money for Resilience. Then they agreed together not to pay the Foreign Miner’s Tax anymore. They had so much gold left over, they were going to open a store in a place called San Francisco.
Father, Sheng, and Uncle Gwan got into the wagon. Choi Hung perched on Uncle Gwan’s shoulder.
Father took the reins in his hands.
“Come on, girl,” Sheng said.
Father looked down at her. “Hop on up!” he said. “Can’t leave without you!”
Bo-Bo bounded onto the wagon with her family. Tail wagging, she nudged everyone with her nose.
As they rattled away from their claim, Bo-Bo smelled bear.
Hidden among the trees that lined the stream were Resilience and Hornet. Bo-Bo woofed a cheerful goodbye. They snuffled one back to her. The oxen snorted at the bears. The wagon rattled past.
“I don’t think it will be easy,” Sheng said to Bo-Bo. “But we’ll help each other. We’ll be strong enough together.”
“Together! Together!” Choi Hung agreed.
Before
them stretched the rolling hills, and the road to their new life.
Authors’ Note
When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, people came from all over the world to get rich. Most did not succeed. A few people found large amounts of gold and grew wealthy almost overnight. Some found enough to make a living, especially in the first few years when the gold was easier to find. But prospecting was hard work, and even if you worked hard, you had to be lucky, too. The people who reliably made money were the ones who sold the things the miners needed. They charged extremely high prices, and the prospectors had no choice but to pay them. Many people who had spent all their money to come to California did not find much gold. They couldn’t afford to go home. Some starved or died of diseases. Others kept on trying for years to find gold. Some did go home, but many others stayed, sent for their families, and settled in other parts of California.
Most of the people who came to California to search for gold were men. A few women and a few families came as well. There is no record of children coming from China, but we imagined that a strong boy, big for his age, might come to help his family.
Chinese Immigration and Racism in the California Gold Rush
Sheng’s family is fictional, but we based his father and uncle on the thousands of Chinese men who came to Gum San (Gold Mountain) to try to find gold. Most were from southeastern China and were escaping war and famine. The Chinese miners would sometimes work claims that white miners had given up on. At first, the Chinese prospectors were left alone by the white miners. But as more and more people came to California, and less and less gold was easily available, that changed.
The white miners began to resent people who had come from other countries. They thought the gold should belong to them. The Chinese immigrants looked different, ate different food, and spoke a language that seemed strange to the white miners. White prospectors stole their claims and threatened them. Sometimes they harassed and attacked them for “fun.” The tax on foreign miners we write about in the book was another way to stop the Chinese prospectors from competing for gold.
Chinese workers also came to the United States to earn money building the railroad that connected the eastern part of the nation to the western part. They were paid much less than other workers and given the most dangerous jobs. For example, at one point Chinese workers were paid 24 to 31 dollars per month while European American workers were paid 35 dollars per day.
In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act banned anyone from China from coming to the United States. The act was not repealed (canceled) until 1943. Even then, Congress only allowed 105 Chinese immigrants per year to enter the country. This kind of quota only ended with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
The Foreign Miner’s Taxes
The tax that Sheng’s family has to pay was the second foreign miner’s tax. The first one, the Foreign Miner’s Tax Act, began in 1850 and was $20 per month (about $400–$500 today). That tax was meant to discourage anyone from a different country from prospecting. It was quickly repealed. Then, in 1852, a new tax was created, the Foreign Miner’s License Tax Act. This one was specifically aimed at Chinese prospectors. It was the beginning of a long series of laws that discriminated against them. Many prospectors left, like Sheng’s family does, and built lives elsewhere. But even after the tax was repealed, and even in cities away from the goldfields and the railroads, Chinese immigrants were subject to racist laws. For example, they could not testify against a white man in court, and they were not eligible to become citizens.
The California Gold Rush and Native Americans
The Gold Rush was a catastrophe for the indigenous people of California.
Native Americans had lived in what is now California for thousands of years before the gold-seekers came. Some of the tribes who were there for generations were the Maidu, Nisenan, Konkow, Miwok, Pomo, and Yokuts. They lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering the rich resources the land provided. When the miners came, there was competition for the land. The miners also saw the Native Americans as cheap labor.
The 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians allowed Native Americans in California to be arrested and forced into slavery if they were not living on a reservation or working for a white person. Sutter’s Mill is known as the place where gold was discovered, but John Sutter enslaved Native Americans even before gold was discovered.
Before the Gold Rush the Native American population was about 150,000. By 1880 it was about 30,000.
African Americans in the Gold Rush
Some African American prospectors came to California. Early in the Gold Rush, some were slaves brought to work by gold-seekers from the southern slave states. One reason that California became a free state (one that didn’t allow slavery) was because the white miners who were there first didn’t want southern miners using slaves and getting more gold. But that didn’t mean the African American prospectors were protected. They were subjected to harassment and racist treatment. They were denied the right to vote and to testify in court. California had its own version of the Fugitive Slave Act. It allowed white slave owners to capture escaped slaves who had made it to California. Many fought against the discrimination. A man named William Sugg bought his freedom in 1854. He was part of a group of black Californians who fought for civil rights years before the Civil War started. You can visit his house in Sonora, California.
Bo-Bo’s Pack
There would have been many dogs in California during the Gold Rush. Some were brought with the people who came to look for gold. There are several stories of dogs traveling on the ships that came around Cape Horn from the East Coast (a trip that could take five to eight months!). Others came over land on wagons. Many of these dogs stayed with their families, but some were abandoned when times got hard. We decided Thunder’s pack would be made up of dogs left behind by prospectors.
Other Books to Read about the Chinese in California
Coolies by Yin. Illustrated by Chris Soentpiet. Puffin Books, 2003.
Oranges on Golden Mountain by Elizabeth Partridge. Illustrated by Aki Sogabe. Dutton, 2001.
Staking a Claim: The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung, A Chinese Miner, California, 1852 by Laurence Yep. Scholastic, 2013.
Acknowledgments
When we got the idea for At the Heels of History, we could only have dreamed of working with a team as skilled and supportive as the one at Margaret K. McElderry Books. Heartfelt thanks to the wonderful Ruta Rimas and Nicole Fiorica, whose editorial guidance and advice strengthened and enriched this book, and to illustrator Claire Powell, for her beautiful renderings of Bo-Bo and her world. A million thanks to the always brilliant Mollie Glick and the team at CAA.
Thank you to Eugenie Chan, acclaimed playwright of Madame Ho, for her cultural review of Bo-Bo’s Cave of Gold, her insights and guidance on the lives of Chinese immigrants during the California Gold Rush, and for giving us Bo-Bo’s name, and to Bonnie Akimoto for finding Eugenie for us. Thank you to author and Dance in the Spirit founder Dr. Carla Walter for advice and assistance on the experience of people of African descent during the Gold Rush. Thank you to historian Noel Cilker for being a go-to resource on the California Gold Rush and for pointing us in all the right directions for our reading. Thank you to Ed Allen at the Gold Discovery Museum and the staff at the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. Thank you to the Berkeley Public Library and Contra Costa County Library for the access to every book we could possibly need.
We could not have written this book without the guidance and support of our writing partners: Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Michelle Hackel, Mary Mackey, Lisa Riddiough, and Elizabeth Stark. Thank you to Debbie Notkin for helping us successfully navigate the world of coauthoring a creative project.
Pam would like to thank Max and Caspian for their patience and understanding while Mom was busy writing, and her husband, Mehran, and sister, Brenna, for their support and love. Dorothy would like to thank her family and friends for their love, encouragement, and support. None
of this happens without all of you. Thank you to the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and Word of Mouth Bay Area. And, of course, thank you to dogs. You’re all very good dogs.
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About the Authors and Illustrator
Pam Berkman has written books for grown-ups, and this is her first series for kids. She loves writing about events in history and thinking about how they connect to things that are happening today. She also works as an editor. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and twin sons.
Dorothy Hearst is the author of the Wolf Chronicles trilogy. She loves writing about canine characters, birds, and other creatures who can give us the chance to see ourselves in new ways. She is an acquiring editor, a martial artist, a self-defense-instructor-in-training, an avid hiker and reader, and a dog lover. She is not entirely domesticated, but is very food-motivated.
Claire Powell is a bestselling children’s book illustrator working in London, UK. She started out designing for big-hitting television brands before an impromptu visit to a children’s book exhibition led her down the path of illustration. Self-taught, Claire got her first book deal in 2016 and has never looked back.
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Margaret K. McElderry Books
Simon & Schuster, New York
Also by Pam Berkman and Dorothy Hearst
Filigree’s Midnight Ride
MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
