Gold Rush Brides 10, 000 Maniacs

[Verse:]
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