The Authority of Gold

Money, Empire, and the Power to Define Value

After the gun smoke cleared from Baja California, ending the last skirmish of the Mexican American War, Edward Gould Buffum went searching for gold. Traveling north through Sutter’s Fort, the soldier turned prospector reached Weaver’s Creek, where he found a new army of men who traded guns for shovels and went to war with the earth. While Buffum was eager to find his fortune, he was equally absorbed in the novelty of the adventure. A former journalist, Buffum documented his travels like a detective searching for something strange. What he found, though, was more puzzling than he ever imagined. It wasn’t the rugged landscape or the frenzy for hidden treasure; it was the Indigenous people, who threw gold into rivers or scattered its dust into the wind. “When the gold was first discovered,” he later wrote of his encounter, they “had very little conception of its value, and would readily exchange handfuls of it for any article of food they might desire, or any old garment gaudy enough to …