Thou Shalt Not Tell Any False Tales About Good Diggings in The Mountains

Correspondence and diaries are often the first objects that spring to mind when wanting to better understand the experiences of others, but ephemeral items can also offer surprising insights into the past. Whilst working on material from the Gilder Lehrman Collection for the American History resource, I came across an interesting re-working of the Ten Commandments in an article sent home by a miner. They had been adapted for those employed by companies during the gold rush of the 1850s. In it, the Christian commandments for a moral and virtuous life are embellished both for humorous effect and with some practical implications for how to survive in this highly-charged and competitive environment.

The Miners’ Ten Commandments © The Gilder Lehrman Institute. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Violence was a common issue amongst miners who were competing for good places to (literally) stake their claim, and this was exacerbated by the drinking and gambling which were rife in mining communities.

In commandment number three, for example, miners are warned not to “go prospecting before thy claim gives out” as “monte, twenty-one, roulette, faro, lansquenet and poker, will prove to thee that the more thou puttest down the less thou shalt take up”.

Image © Agnico-Eagle (Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Equally, woe betide anyone who steals their neighbour’s pan or undermines their bank whilst “following a lead”, or who lies about “good diggings” up the mountain in order to be able to sell someone some blankets and mules – “lest in deceiving thy neighbour, when he returneth through the snow, with nought save his rifle, he present thee with the contents thereof …”. The commandment “thou shalt not kill” is elaborated upon, to include not just avoiding killing a person, but ruining one’s body through drink or physical labour: “Neither shalt thou destroy thyself by getting “tight,” nor “slewed,” nor “high,” nor “corned,” nor “half-seas-over,” nor “three sheets in the wind””.

Detail from The Miners’ Ten Commandments © The Gilder Lehrman Institute. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Affairs of the heart were also potentially inflammatory. The tenth commandment is particularly amusing, as whilst it advises the miners to not forget their wives and sweethearts back home, nor to covet their neighbour’s wife or “trifle with the affections of his daughter”, it also gives advice as to how to approach love in these climates: “If thy heart be free, and thou love and covet each other, thou shalt “pop the question” like a man, lest another more manly than thou art should step in before thee, and thou love her in vain … and thy future lot be that of a poor, lonely, despised and comfortless bachelor”.

The whole article is peppered with these colourful, colloquial expressions, many of which are still recognisably in use today, and which give an insight into the world of these men who left their families and friends back home in search of fortune, but were faced with the slog of hard, and unfortunately often unrewarded labour.

This document highlights just one aspect of the history of the United States that can be discovered in the first module of American History, 1493-1945, due to be published in October 2014.