Posted 13 years ago
jalyia
(1 item)
This is an incredible find!!! I discovered this huge quartz rock on my gold claim in California last week. It has a NATURAL staining on it of the design of an indian chief with a bear across his forehead, no kidding!! This has got to be a one in a billion occurance!! This design is NOT man-made, this indian chief design is completely naturally occuring due to the high-iron content of the ancient rivers. I have a gold claim that is a section of a dried-up 50 million-year-old gold-bearing river. Back in the 1800s miners would hydraulic mine these ancient rivers with huge water jets to extract the gold. I think this would be a one-of-a-kind collectors piece for a Native American art collector. Please read the following article that I wrote describing my find:
50 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the planet, a mighty mile-wide raging river coursed a northerly route through the pre-historic hillsides of the northern California gold country. Nearly 300 feet of rocks, sand, mud, and water rumbled through the countryside, grinding up the many course outcroppings of rock and gold-rich quartz veins as it went. This was a time of great upheaval on our planet, a time of enormously powerful and destructive earthquakes and volcanoes. When one such volcano crossed the path of this monstrous ancient river, it blocked the flow of water causing the river to cease flowing and ultimately dry up into a cemented mass of rocks, sand, and gold, which was much later to be discovered by hundreds of thousands of glint-eyed treasure-seeking prospectors in the California gold rush.
Fast forward to modern times, in 1848 the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, CA sparked the largest gold rush this world has ever seen. Unfortunately, this rush to riches caused immeasurable damage to the fertile land of California, a land which the Native American tribes had lived in harmony with for thousands of years before. The method of mining which retrieved the most gold was also ironically the method which created the most destruction to the already fragile California landscape. This method was called hydraulic mining, where millions of gallons of water were blasted onto the cemented gravels of these ancient gold-bearing riverbeds in order to extract the gold. Hydraulic mining caused so much mud and rock to flow down to the Sacramento valley that some farmers reported having their crops, and their homes, buried under 20 feet of mud and rock. This created and outrage and, as a result, hydraulic mining was outlawed in the late 1890s.
Fast forward once again to 2011. Enter an adventurous and spiritual young woman named Jada who had always dreamed of being a gold miner since she was a young girl. She had purchased a gold claim in the northern California gold country which happened to be one of these old hydraulic mining claims. She was drawn to the history of the gold country and to the idea of living in closer connection with the land. She also loved the excitement and freedom that gold mining offered her. So one unusually warm, sunny autumn day in late October, Jada was prospecting on her gold claim when she came a across a huge, 40,000 pound white quartz rock that must have been unearthed by the previous efforts of the hydraulic miners in the late 1800s. This wonderful rock had been left exposed at the bottom of this glorious, once 300-foot-deep river. As Jada examined the rock, she noticed an unusual rust pattern on the surface of the rock which had been naturally stained as a result of the high iron content of the mighty ancient river. This phenomenal rust-staining left the unmistakable imprint of the profile of a proud Native American chief. Just contemplating this beautiful piece of nature’s paintbrush fills one’s heart with the integrity and sense of pride of the path and history of the Native American people. As she examined the rock further, she noticed and image in the shape of a bear which crossed the forehead of the Indian chief profile. Perhaps this is a timeless symbol of the healing of the land and a reminder of the sacredness of our planet.
