The first three pages of Chapter 1 of Roaring Camp are a tough place to jump into this book, but try not to get bogged down here by using the guiding questions to help you tackle this. She's primarily trying to set up that people came to Gold Rush California from many different places for a multitude of reasons and had greatly divergent experiences there. Her point on page 59 is key: "Gold Rush social relations, then, arose out of the backgrounds and aspirations of polyglot peoples differently affected by worldwide economic and cultural change."