Gold Rush Brides lyrics

Follow the typical signs

The hand-painted lines

Down prairie roads

Pass the lone church spire

Pass the talking wire

From where to who knows

There's no way to divide

The beauty of the sky

From the wild western plains

Where a man could drift

In legendary myth

By roaming over spaces

The land was free and the price was right

Dakota on the wall

Is a white-robed woman, broad

Yet maidenly

Such power in her hand

As she hails the wagon man's

Family

I see Indians that crawl

Through this mural that recalls

Our history

Who were the homestead wives?

Who were the gold rush brides?

Does anybody know?

Do their works survive

Their yellow fever lives

In the pages they wrote?

The land was free, yet it cost their lives

In miner's lust for gold

A family's house was bought and sold

Piece by piece

A widow staked her claim

On a dollar and his name

So painfully

In letters mailed back home

Her Eastern sisters, they would moan

As they would read

Accounts of madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief

• Artist:10,000 Maniacs
• Album:Our Time In Eden