attempt to obtain from the military Governor a recognition of his title
to the land upon which his tail race was situated is given by General W.
T. Sherman: "I remember one day in the spring of 1848, that two
men, Americans, came into the office and inquired for the Governor. I
asked their business, and one answered that they had just come down from
General Sutter on special business, and wanted to see Governor Mason in
person. I took them in to the Colonel, and left them together. After
sometime the Colonel came to his door and called to me. I went in, and
my attention was directed to a series of papers unfolded on his table,
in which lay about half an ounce of placer gold . . . . . . . Colonel
Mason then handed me a letter from Captain Sutter, addressed to him,
stating that he (Sutter) was engaged in erecting a sawmill at Coloma,
about forty miles up the American Fork, above his fort at New Helvetia,
for the general benefit of the settlers in that vicinity; that he had
incurred considerable expense, and wanted a 'preëmption' to the quarter
section of land on which the mill was located, embracing the tail-race
in which this particular gold had been found. Mason instructed me to
prepare a letter, reciting that California was yet a Mexican province,
simply held by us as a conquest; that no laws of the United States yet
applied to it, much less the land laws or preëmption laws, which could
only apply after a public survey. Therefore it was impossible for the
Governor to promise him (Sutter) a title to the land; yet, as there were
no settlements within forty miles, he was not likely to be disturbed by
trespassers. Colonel Mason signed the letter, handed it to one of the
gentlemen who had brought the sample of gold, and they departed . . . .
. . . That gold was the first discovered in the Sierra Nevada, which
soon revolutionized the whole country, and actually moved the whole
civilized world."--Personal Memoirs, p. 68.
[5] Cross vs. Harrison, 16 Howard (57 U. S.), 164, 192.
[6] "In 1850 the Congress of the United States passed what is called a
series of compromise measures. Among them was a fugitive slave law, the
indemnity to Texas, the creation of territories in Utah and New Mexico,
the admission of California, and the change in the Texas boundary. Four
of them had direct relation to the question of slavery, and one was the
admission of this State. Being in Congress, as a member of the House, at
that time, I know well what you remember. The admission of California as
a State was delayed for some nine or ten months, because the leaders of
the Pro-Slavery Party were determined to secure their own way on all the
other measures before California should be admitted."--E. D. Baker,
Forest Hill speech, Aug. 19, 1859.
[7] J. Ross Browne: Debates in the Convention of California on the
Formation of the Constitution in 1849, pp. 304, 322, 323.
[8] The "Triunfo de la Cruz" was begun July 16, 1719, and finally
launched at Mulegé, near Loreto, Lower California, on the Feast of the
Exaltation of the Cross, Sept. 14, 1719, on its mission to determine
whether California was an island, as described and delineated in many
official accounts and maps of the period.
[9] The original Proclamation of Commodore Sloat, July 7, 1846, signed
by his own hand, here produced, is preserved in Golden Gate Park Museum,
San Francisco, to whose Curator, Mr. George Barron, it was recently
presented in person as authentic by the lately deceased Rev. S. H.
Willey, the chaplain of the Constitutional Convention of 1849 in Colton
Hall.
[10] See Appendices A and B.
[11] G. H. von Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the
World (Henry Colburn, London, 1814), part 2, page 150. Langsdorff, of
course, gives it as March 28, 1806, old style, in that year twelve days
earlier than our calendar west of the 180th degree of longitude, and
eleven days earlier than our calendar cast of that degree. H. H.
Bancroft states that "the loss of a day in coming eastward from St.
Petersburg was never taken into account until Alaska was transferred to
the United States" (Bancroft, Hist. of California, II, page 299,
foot-note 9). Certainly, Langsdorff makes no such allowance in his
narrative of old-style dates, and in the only place east of the 180th
parallel where he computes the corresponding new style he adds eleven
days, instead of twelve (Voyages and Travels, II, page 136). Bancroft
adopts the date of April 5th, basing it on the Tikhmenef narrative.
Richman and Eldredge follow him in preferring the Tikhmenef narrative to
the Langsdorff narrative as a basis, though they differ from each other
in reducing it to the new style from the old style, Richman making it
April 5th, following Bancroft in this regard also, and Eldredge making
it April 4th, I prefer, with Father Engelhardt, to follow as a basis the
painstaking German, Langsdorff, who kept his diary day by day.
[12] G. H. von Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, part 2, pages 183, 217.
Tikhmenef's narrative would make the "Juno" leave on the 19th of May,
but Langsdorff was himself aboard and kept a log.
[13] Nicolaï Petróvich Rezánov, Chamberlain to the Czar, died March 13,
1807 (March 1, old style), at the little town of Krasnoïarsk, capital of
the Province of Yenisseisk, now a station on the Trans-Siberian
Railroad, where his body is still interred. Von Langsdorff visited his
grave Dec. 9, 1807 (Nov. 27, old style), and found a tomb which be
described as "a large stone, in the fashion of an altar, but without any
inscription." (Voyages and Travels, part 2, page 385.) Sir George
Simpson visited the grave in 1842, and states that a tomb had been
erected by the Russian American Company in 1831, but does not describe
it. Whether this is a mistake in the date on his part, or whether a
later and more elaborate tomb displaced the first one, I have not yet
been able to ascertain. It is certain, however, that Sir George Simpson
had read von Langsdorff's book.
The body of Sor Dominga Argüello, commonly called Sister Mary Dominica
(Concepción Argüello) after her death, which occurred Dec. 23, 1857, was
first interred in the small cemetery in the convent yard, but in the
latter part of 1897 (Original Annals, St. Catherine's, Benicia), when
the bodies were removed, it was reinterred in the private cemetery of
the Dominican order overlooking Suisun Bay, on the heights back of the
old military barracks. Her grave is the innermost one, in the second
row, of the group in the southwesterly corner of the cemetery. It is
marked by a humble white marble slab, on which is graven a little cross
with her name and the date of her death. This grave deserves to be as
well known as that of Heloïse and Abelard, in the cemetery of Père
Lachaise.
[14] "Rezánov," by Gertrude Atherton (John Murray, London). See also
Appendix B. The quaint poem of Richard E. White to "The Little Dancing
Saint" (Overland, May, 1914) is worthy of mention, though the place of
her childhood is mistakenly assumed to be Lower California instead of
San Francisco. It is to be hoped also that the very clever skit of
Edward F. O'Day, entitled "The Defeat of Rezánov," purely imaginative as
a historical incident, but with a wealth of local "atmosphere," written
for the Family Club, of San Francisco, and produced at one of its "Farm
Plays," will yet be published, and not buried in the archives of a club.
[15] If the facsimile of the chamberlain's signature, when written in
Roman alphabetical character, is as set forth in part 2 of the Russian
publication "Istoritcheskoé Obosrénié Obrasovania Rossiisko-Amerikanskoi
Kompanii," by P. Tikhmenef, published in 1863, by Edward Weimar, in St.
Petersburg, then the proper spelling is "Rezanov," the accent on the
penult, and the "v" pronounced like "ff."
For metrical purposes Bret Harte has here taken the same kind of liberty
with "Resanoff," and in another poem with Portolá, as Byron took with
Trafálgar, in Childe Harold.
[16] The mention of Monterey is a poetic license. Sir George Simpson
actually met her and acquainted her for the first time with the
immediate cause of her lover's death, at Santa Barbara, where she was
living with the De la Guerra family, Jan. 24, 1842, after her return
from Lower California, following the death of her parents. "Though Doña
Concepción," wrote Sir George Simpson, in 1847, "apparently loved to
dwell on the story of her blighted affections, yet, strange to say, she
knew not, till we mentioned it to her, the immediate cause of the
chancellor's sudden death. This circumstance might in some measure be
explained by the fact that Langsdorff's work was not published before
1814; but even then, in any other country than California, a lady who
was still young, would surely have seen a book, which, besides detailing
the grand incident of her life, presented so gratifying a portrait of
her charms." (An Overland journey Round the World, during the years 1841
and 1842, by Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-chief of the Hudson Bay
Company's Territories, published by Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia, in
1847, page 207.)
[17] She did not actually receive the white habit till she was received
into the Dominican sisterhood, April 11, 1851, by Padre F. Sadoc
Vilarrasa, in the Convent of Santa Catalina de Sena (St. Catherine of
Siena), at Monterey, being the first one to enter, where she took the
perpetual vow April 13, 1852 (Original Records, Book of Clothings and
Professions, page 1, now at Dominican College, at San Rafael, Cal.), and
where she remained continuously till the convent was transferred to
Benicia, Aug. 26, 1854. There being no religious order for women in
California until the Dominican sisterhood was founded at Monterey, March
13, 1851 (Original Annals, at Benicia, Reg. 1, pages I and 14), she had
at first to content herself with joining the Third Order of St. Francis
"in the world," and it was really the dark habit of this secular order
which constituted the "nun's attire" at the time Sir George Simpson met
her in 1842.