10.000 Maniacs Gold Rush Brides

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.