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Go Big Fan Go
 I
don’t watch much television. Mainly because, despite the hundreds
of channels, the menu is mostly repeats. Every so often, however, something
extraordinary airs and I become (dare I admit it?) a Fan.
So it was with the now defunct HBO series Deadwood, which depicted the
wild and wooly 19th-century Gold Rush days of the Montana Territory. The
show regularly drew harsh criticism for its raw scripting. It offered
more bawdy behavior and explosive expletives than an x-rated film.
More murder and mayhem than The Sopranos. More political pandering and
turncoat backstabbing than the nightly news.
Being a gal who can contentedly watch innocent capering on the Disney
Channel, this was not the type of programming I would normally view. Being
a historian on a continual quest for factual nuggets from the past, I
was completely hooked by the first few frames of the initial episode.
Despite its veneer of blood and blasphemy, Deadwood reeked of authenticity.
During the final season’s exposé of miners being robbed
of their gold claims in a ruthless corporate take-over, the fleeting
mention of a few murdered men’s names caught my attention. They
were all Irish. A little digging unearthed a motherlode of Montanan Irish-American
info.
Prior to the mid-1800’s, Montana was mainly populated by Northern
Plains Native American tribes who followed the seasonal migrations of
the vast buffalo herds. In 1858, a few shiny yellow nuggets were discovered
by a trio of prospectors at a place known ever after as Gold Creek, and
The Rush was on. Mining camps sprang up across the Territory, some morphing
into towns overnight, but in only six years the placer deposits began
to run out and it seemed that Boom would certainly switch to Bust.
The tide turned in 1875-76 when rich silver deposits were discovered
in Butte, and Marcus Daly, a 35-year-old miner from Ballyjamesduff, County
Cavan, purchased his first claim. As the plucky immigrant’s fortunes
grew, he bought more small silver mines, securing his place in history
in 1881 when he acquired the Anaconda Mine and persuaded George Hearst
(the nasty claim-grabbing corporate bully in HBO’s Deadwood and
the true-life father of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst) to
expand the Anaconda’s operation into deep-digging for copper, discovering
in the process a 50-foot-wide vein of the red ore that flowed like a river
through the Anaconda claim.
The canny Irishman’s timing was spot on. Copper was a key component
of Thomas Edison’s newfangled invention: the electric light. The
Anaconda Mine quickly became one of the world’s largest copper producers,
earning Daly the title “Copper King of America” and enabling
him to branch out into other ventures including timber, newspapers, coal,
railroads, and agriculture.
For all his endeavors, Daly preferred hiring fellow Irishmen. Families
fleeing Ireland’s famines came in droves, mainly from Cork
and the Beara Peninsula, but also from Donegal and Mayo. Advised “Don’t
tarry in America, go straight to Butte” they heeded the call, founding
settlements with names like Corktown and Dublin Gulch, and soon numbered
more than 25% of the region’s population.
The immigrants quickly discovered that life at 5,500-foot elevation on
a shelf of the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains of the American
West was a far cry from the balmy low rolling green hills of Ireland.
In 2002, the PBS series Frontier House offered a glimpse of the rigors
they faced. Three modern families spent six months living the frontier
life of 1883.
About the experience, Adrienne Clune, Arklow-born mother of the six-person
Irish household, says, “Living as I would have in 19th-century Montana
empowered me. It made me proud of my Irish survival traits.” Having
been raised on a farm, Adrienne (who now teaches Irish cuisine in Malibu,
CA) was no foreigner to such tasks as tending a kitchen garden, churning
butter, and baking bread. “I found the lack of modern gadgetry liberating,”
she says. “We’re enslaved by the abundance of today’s
society.”
Even so, feeding a family of six frontier-style for six months was grueling
work. “I spent most of my time either cooking or preparing to cook,”
says Adrienne. “Just keeping the wood stove at the ready was a challenge,
and in the beginning I cooked outdoors on an iron griddle over an open
fire – the smoke gave my bread a delicious flavor.”
The Clune garden provided vegetables and greens; fresh fruits were foraged.
The family had a milk-cow; hens laid eggs. Any surplus was bartered with
the other families or at the ‘mercantile’ store that was open
once a month. The show’s producers supplied flour, oats, sugar,
spices, dried fruit, hams, and a small stock of canned peaches. “We
ate many Irish breakfasts,” says Adrienne. “I became adept
at devising ways to use ham with potatoes from our garden. Peach crumbles
flavored with hand-grated cinnamon and nutmeg were our special treats.
When our neighbor’s daughter got married, I made the wedding cake,
which was particularly challenging as I had to pound our sugar into powder
to make the icing – but it was really delicious!”
These days mining is no longer the primary industry in Butte, but the
Irish still make up the largest population percentage. Sullivans, Sheas,
Driscolls, O’Neills, Lynchs, Harringtons, Shannons, Dolans, Duggans,
and O’Briens fill the phone book. Children learn step-dancing
at an early age and show off their skills accompanied by local musicians.
The Hibernian Society sponsors Gaelic classes. Pubs are regularly packed
and so jammed on St. Pat’s Day there’s scarce room to dance.
Irish pride runs as deep and wide as the vein of copper ore in the old
Anaconda mine.
If you’re longing to tap your toes to jigs and reels, palaver with
fine fellows and fair colleens, and just can’t wait until
March 17th to strut your Irish, Butte will celebrate its Gaelic heritage
for the eighth year, August 10-12, 2007, at the annual
An Ri Ra Montana Irish Festival (info at: http://mtgaelic.org/festival1.html).
And should you be hankering for a peek at what life was like for the Irish
Montanans of the 19th century, schedule a few days to visit the Gold Rush
towns of Virginia City and Nevada City (www.virginiacity.com). Go West,
Big Fan, Go West! Sláinte! |
