with a mallet in her hand, the stone head of which, precisely like
those sometimes ploughed up in the fields of New England, was made
fast to the handle by a covering of raw hide. I had observed some time
before a litter of well-grown black puppies, comfortably nestled among
some buffalo-robes at one side; but this new-comer speedily disturbed
their enjoyment; for seizing one of them by the hind paw, she dragged
him out and carrying him to the entrance of the lodge, hammered him on
the head till she killed him. Aware to what this preparation tended, I
looked through a hole in the back of the lodge to see the next steps
of the process. The squaw, holding the puppy by the legs, was swinging
him to and fro through the blaze of a fire, until the hair was singed
off. This done, she unsheathed her knife and cut him into small pieces,
which she dropped into a kettle to boil. In a few moments a large
wooden dish was set before us filled with this delicate preparation. A
dog-feast is the greatest compliment a Dakota can offer to his guest;
and, knowing that to refuse eating would be an affront, we attacked the
little dog, and devoured him before the eyes of his unconscious parent.
Smoke in the meantime was preparing his great pipe. It was lighted
when we had finished our repast, and we passed it from one to another
till the bowl was empty. This done, we took our leave without further
ceremony, knocked at the gate of the fort, and after making ourselves
known, were admitted.
GOLD! GOLD!
SUTTER’S FORT
CHARLES PETTIGREW
1848-1849
From _The Caledonian_. Reprinted by permission of the publishers,
Caledonian Publishing Company, New York.
In the year 1839, while California was still a part of the Mexican
Republic, there appeared before the Governor at Monterey, a man named
Johann August Sutter, asking for a grant of land on which he proposed
to found a colony. Though born in Baden, Germany, his parents were
Swiss, and when a young man he served as captain in the Swiss army,
and later was in business, but failed. He then came to America, and
crossing to the Pacific Coast on the Oregon trail, he rambled about the
Northwest, went to Honolulu, and finally landed at Yerba Buena (San
Francisco), going from there to Monterey. Governor Alvarado, in answer
to his request for a grant of land, told him that he must first become
a citizen of Mexico, then select the land for which he wished a grant,
and come back to him in a year, when perhaps his naturalization papers
would be issued, and a grant of the land given him.
Sutter acted as directed, and was not only made a Mexican citizen and
given a grant of the land he had selected but was also made an official
of the government, an alcalde (mayor with judicial powers), with
jurisdiction over a territory running eighty-five miles northward along
the Sacramento river from near the place where the American river joins
it, and eastward from the Sacramento a distance varying from ten to
twelve miles, Sutter’s grant being eleven square leagues (48,000 acres)
within that territory. Having previously selected his location, he at
once began to build a fort with adobe brick (bricks of sun dried clay),
with walls three feet thick and eighteen feet high, enclosing a space
five hundred feet long, by a hundred feet wide. The walls were pierced
at suitable places with loopholes for muskets, and at the southeast and
northwest corners of the enclosure were towers or bastions in which
small cannon were mounted, so that they commanded the four sides of the
enclosure. In this fort Sutter’s house, together with quarters for his
people, and all necessary storehouses and workshops were located. The
fort stood on high ground, on the south bank of the American river,
about a quarter of a mile from the water’s edge, and about a mile from
the Sacramento river. His original company of colonists consisted of
five white men, ten Indians, two of whom were squaws, and a large
bulldog. That Captain Sutter chose his location wisely was strongly
confirmed in 1854, when the site of his fort was chosen as the capital
of the newly organized State of California; and now the great city of
Sacramento, with its population of 75,000, has risen on the place of
his selection. He named the place New Helvetta, to remind him of his
native Switzerland; but somehow that name did not stick, and it was
popularly known as Sutter’s Fort, the site of which has long since been
absorbed by the great city. But the grateful citizens of Sacramento
have preserved and restored the ruins of the old fort in one of their
parks, so that its memory may be forever cherished.
During the five years that intervened between the time he became a
citizen of the Mexican Republic and the ceding of the whole territory
of Alta California by Mexico to the United States, Sutter was lord of
all he surveyed. He had studied Dr. McLaughlin’s (the agent of the
Hudson Bay Company) method of handling the Indians, and he followed
it strictly. He treated them kindly, without fear, paying them exactly
as agreed for their services, and punishing them when they stole or
disturbed the peace and order of the camp; and if they showed any
disposition to act against him in force, he easily frightened them by
the use of his three cannon, which always terrified them.
Sutter’s Fort soon became the rendezvous for all the trappers, hunters
and wandering people of all sorts in the surrounding territory, besides
the emigrants that all the time came from the East over the Oregon
trail, the fort being its terminal.
When the territory came under the Stars and Stripes, Sutter swore
allegiance to the flag and anglicized his name, becoming John Augustus
Sutter. By 1847 his colony had developed wonderfully. He had a thousand
acres of land growing wheat; he owned 8,000 head of cattle, 2,000
horses and mules, 2,000 sheep and 1,000 hogs.
Commodore Stockton had confirmed him as alcalde, or justice of the
peace, and General Kearney later made him Indian Agent. He had now come
to the point where it became necessary to have a flour mill for the
colony, and that a flour mill might be built, a saw-mill was necessary,
to prepare timbers, planks and boards. The machinery for these mills
had been recently brought to the fort in 1844 by the ship _Lexington_.
Among the immigrants that came to the fort in 1844 was a man from New
Jersey named James Wilson Marshall, a millwright by trade. He worked
for Sutter for a time, but being taken with an attack of land-hunger,
he undertook to work land of his own. Tiring of that, he came back to
Sutter in 1847, when the necessity for the mills became so urgent. They
formed a partnership in the saw-mill, and Marshall, with two white
men and an Indian guide, left the fort on May 16, 1847, to search for
a site and build the saw-mill. He found a place on the south fork of
the American river, about forty-five miles from the fort, adjacent
to timber, that he thought suitable. This place now bears the name of
Coloma. Work on the mill and dam was at once begun, and in January of
the following year the mill and dam had been constructed, and they were
at work on the tail-race that was to lead the water, after it had done
its work on the wheel, back to the river.
Marshall found conditions such that considerable time and labor could
be saved by simply loosening up the earth with a pick and by turning on
the water washing it out into the river.
On the afternoon of January 24, while directing this operation and
walking along on the bank of the tail-race, his eye was attracted by
some yellow specks that glittered in the sunlight. At first he took
little notice of them, till seeing still more of them, the thought
flashed through his mind--“Can these be gold?” He picked up a piece
larger than the rest and examined it. He had never seen gold in its
native state, but understood in a general way that it was heavier than
lead and that it was a soft, not a brittle metal. He weighed it in his
hands, bit it with his teeth, then laid it on a rock and pounded it
with a smaller stone, and found that he could mash it a little. Being
of a morose disposition, he became very thoughtful, and as he sat at
supper with his mates he scarcely spoke a word; but at last he quietly
remarked: “Boys, I think I have found a gold mine.” One of the men
spoke up and said, “I reckon not--no such luck for us.”
He could not dismiss it from his mind, and was up betimes in the
morning, again looking over the tail-race, and found more of the yellow
particles. The thought that it might be gold thrilled him. He and his
men picked up about four ounces of the yellow stuff, and Mrs. Wimmer,
the camp cook, boiled them, which only made them brighter. This more
and more convinced Marshall that they were gold. He begged his men
to go on with the work and say nothing about it. On the morning of
January 28 he mounted his horse and started for the fort, where he
arrived early in the afternoon. He was covered with mud, for he had
ridden hard, and it was raining so that he was wet to the skin, and he
was very much excited. Walking into Sutter’s office, he at once asked
for a private interview. Whispering that the doors must be locked,
this rather alarmed Sutter. Marshall then announced that he was sure
he had found gold, and taking a little bag from his pocket he dumped
his few ounces of nuggets on the table. Incredulous at first, Sutter
soon became convinced that this was gold, especially after he had
tested them with acid, and bringing from his drug store a small pair of
scales, he put some silver coins in one of the saucers, and balancing
them with gold in the other, he lowered them into a basin of water.
When the yellow metal dropped lower than the silver coins, he knew for
sure that they were gold.
So excited was Marshall that though Sutter urged him to stay at the
fort till the next morning, cold and wet as he was, he returned to the
mill the same night, hardly taking time to eat a bit of supper. The
next morning he was back on the road to meet Sutter, who had agreed to
come then. They spent two days together looking the ground over and
trying to decide what was the best thing to do.
Gold they found everywhere they looked for it, along the river.
Marshall’s chief anxiety was to secure for themselves all the rights
to the gold in the ground to which they might be entitled. Sutter’s
viewpoint was somewhat different. He had developed a very valuable
agricultural property, and at this time owned 12,000 head of cattle,
2,000 horses and mules, 10,000 to 15,000 sheep, and 1,000 hogs; he had
grown during the past year 20,000 bushels of wheat, and had several
thousand hides in process of tanning or waiting to be tanned. Then
there were the two unfinished mills. He at once saw that if his men
once broke away from him and went after the gold his mills would never
be finished, and they were now more than ever absolutely necessary. So
he decided to try and keep the whole matter secret, at least until the
mills were finished, and he pledged his men to stay on the job and say
nothing about the gold for the next six weeks. He thought that he could
easily keep them isolated for that time. He also took the precaution of
obtaining from the Indians living in the district the exclusive use of
their lands for all or any purpose, for himself and Marshall, for the
next three years, the tract consisting of twelve miles square.
The excitement within the camp increased daily. One of the men, Bilger
by name, had been assigned the duty of occasionally going along the
river and its tributaries, to shoot deer and ducks, to give variety to
the bill of fare. He always brought back with him specimens of gold
that he easily found wherever he searched for it in the streams. Sutter
himself became more and more uneasy as the weeks passed. His title
to the land grant given him by the Mexican Government had not been
confirmed by the United States authorities, that had so recently come
into control of the new territory. There had not been time for such
detail. At last he decided to send one of his trusted assistants, one
Charles Bennett, to Monterey, to see the Acting Governor, Mason, and
ask him to make a special grant, or at least give him and his partner
exclusive milling and mining rights and privileges on the land they
were developing. Mason had no power or authority to make such a grant.
Bennett, though strictly enjoined to say nothing about the gold find,
let the secret slip.
About the same time, supplies were needed at the saw-mill, and a
teamster whom Sutter thought he could trust was sent with them. He,
of course, heard from the workmen at the mill about the finding of
gold, and being very incredulous, was given a few small nuggets to
convince him. Returning to the fort, and still doubtful of the value
of the yellow stuff he had gotten from the men at the saw-mill, the
idea occurred to him that a good way to test the matter was to try to
trade it for whiskey, so he offered his few pieces of yellow metal at
the store that had been recently opened at New Helvetta by Smith &
Brannan. Smith, to whom he offered the gold, though distrustful of its
being gold, made the trade. The whiskey loosened the teamster’s tongue,
and the secret was out. This was about a week before the six weeks of
agreed secrecy had expired.
Unaware that they stood at the threshold of a great era, at the
birthplace, one might say, of a mighty empire, Sutter and Marshall
were reluctant to change the future of peaceful plodding pursuits that
they had marked out for themselves, for they knew not what, nor did
they dream that they would be the first to suffer disaster from this
discovery.
The news that had been let loose by the trusted assistant and the
drunken teamster spread like fire when touched to a pile of straw, to
San Francisco, Monterey, Los Angeles and San Diego, almost to every
settlement in California and up into Oregon, going almost like a flash.
The men at the saw-mill and at the fort at once traded the particles of
yellow metal they had found for picks, shovels, pans, blankets, boots,
bacon, beef and flour, on the basis of eight dollars an ounce; this the
traders were willing to risk as the value.
People poured in by the hundred from everywhere. The wheat in Sutter’s
fields was never harvested; his mills were never completed; no man
now wanted to do his work. His sheep, cattle and hogs were stolen and
devoured by hungry men who squatted on his lands, dug over and wasted
them, till little by little his vast properties melted away. He spent
his money in litigation that was fruitless, trying to reclaim the title
to his lands, and was saved from dire poverty by a pension from the
State. He died in Washington, D. C., in 1880.
Marshall fared no better. The squatters took possession of the land,
dividing it into mining claims; he wandered about the district, a
broken, homeless man, till finally in 1865 he obtained a grant to a
piece of land due him for services in the Mexican War, on which he
lived, growing grapes, till death called him. A simple monument now
marks the spot where Marshall first found the gold, and Sutter’s Fort
has been reproduced in one of Sacramento’s parks to keep their memories
green.
The news of the gold find spread the world over, to wherever news
could be carried, and California, like a great lodestone, attracted
the attention of all peoples, and became a Mecca for many. A great
human tide flowed to it in three great streams; one of these being by
sailing vessels around Cape Horn, that might take from six to nine
months or longer, depending on the weather. Another stream went by the
Isthmus of Panama; the very best time that could be made across was
five days, which was made chiefly by mule-back, though often on foot,
baggage being carried on mules, or on the shoulders of peons. The road
was nothing more than a trail, a very poor one, at that. Arriving at
Panama, the trip was continued up the coast by sailing vessel, or by
the one steamer that had recently been put on by the Pacific Mail
Steamship Company.
The third stream went overland across the plains and mountains by the
Oregon or the Santa Fé trail, by wagons or pack trains. Either of these
routes brought untold hardships, toil and suffering to the gold-seeker;
tales of these experiences of many are truly heart-rending, and we may
relate some of these later.
The ships that left ports on the Atlantic coast late in December,
1848, for the trip around the Horn bound for San Francisco, began
to arrive early in July, and by the end of that month fifty-four of
them had anchored in the bay. Each succeeding month brought more and
more, and besides there came from ports all over the world, ships that
altogether, by the end of 1849, made up a total of 540, all of them
laden to full capacity with a human cargo of all sorts and conditions,
bankers, merchants, manufacturers, ship owners, mechanics, farmers,
laborers, professional men, students, artists, and even women who
had caught the vision of great riches, braved the dangers of ocean,
mountain and desert to reach the land of gold.
Arriving at San Francisco, everybody, including the officers and crews
of the ships, headed for the diggings. This went on during the next
five years, until there were more deserted ships rotting at their
anchor cables in San Francisco Bay than ever before or since in the
history of the world. The city itself became almost deserted; at the
time of the discovery it had a population of 800 that speedily shrunk
to 150.
Food and miners’ supplies of all kinds became very scarce; flour sold
at $400 a barrel, and sugar at $4 a pound, and a very poor grade of
coffee at the same price. In many cases flour brought $2 a pound and
whiskey $20 a quart. Rowboats that ordinarily sold for $50 or less,
by the end of May, 1849, had jumped to $500, for people could go to
Sutter’s Fort by rowboat. A shovel that formerly sold for a dollar now
cost ten; picks, crowbars, pans and knives all advanced in the same
ratio. In like manner, clothing of all kinds, especially that of the
coarser quality, advanced in price, and was hard to get.
The first news of the discovery reached Monterey (then the capital
of the territory) on May 20, Colonel of Dragoons R. B. Mason being
governor of the new territory, and the Rev. Walter Cotton, alcalde of
the City of Monterey. At first the news was considered very doubtful,
till on June 5th, what seemed more reliable information was received,
and the day following Cotton despatched a messenger to the American
River, to ascertain, as he wrote, “whether the reported gold was a
tangible reality on the earth or a fanciful treasure at the base of
some rainbow.”
On the 12th of June a straggler wandered into the town with a nugget
weighing an ounce, and a few days later a man who had worked for
Cotton as a body servant, after being absent for a short time,
returned with $2,000 worth of native gold. A rough-looking man who did
not appear to have enough about him to buy a loaf of bread, came to
Monterey with a sack on his shoulder, from which he shook $15,000 worth
of gold-dust. Four citizens of Monterey who had employed some Indians
on the Feather River, collected $76,844 worth of gold in seven weeks
and three days; a man who had worked sixty-four days on the Yuba River
brought back $5,356 in gold; another resident of Monterey, who worked
fifty-seven days on the North Fork of the American River, brought back
$4,534; a party of fourteen who worked fifty-four days on the Mokelumne
River, had $3,467; a woman who had worked with pan and shovel in dry
diggings forty-six days cleaned up $2,125. All these incidents did not
seem to satisfy either the Governor or the Alcalde, and in order that
absolute proof of the truth of the whole matter might be had, it was
decided in September that the Alcalde should visit the mines in person,
a party of responsible citizens accompanying him. Let us take the trip
with them and note what they saw.
As they neared the mines, they met returning gold-hunters, of whom
Cotton wrote: “A more forlorn looking group never knocked at the gate
of a pauper asylum. Most of them were on foot, with rags tied on
their blistered feet.” They asked for bread and meat; Cotton’s party
gave them some, supposing that they were giving in charity, and were
surprised when one of the party passed out a pound or two of nuggets in
payment. Cotton afterwards learned that the ragged travelers had with
them over a hundred thousand dollars in virgin gold. On arrival at the
mines, the eager Alcalde borrowed a pick, and in five minutes found
enough gold to make a seal ring. He found seventy people at work in a
small ravine, each of them getting an ounce a day. A sailor whom he had
known when he was chaplain on the _Savannah_ had found a nugget that
weighed three ounces. He found another man picking at a spot on the
canyon side who presently uncovered a pocket from which he took nearly
two pounds of nuggets, all shaped like water-melon seeds, and near to
this spot, on the following day, he uncovered a pound and a half.
A Welshman whom the Alcalde had a short time before fined for being
drunk, and disturbing the peace, met him with a hearty greeting,
assuring him that he held no grudge against him, and turning to resume
his work, uncovered a nugget that weighed an ounce or more; picking
it up, he handed it to Mr. Cotton, saying: “Señor Alcalde, accept
that, and when you reach home, have a bracelet made of it for your
good lady.” A German picked up a piece weighing three ounces, from the
ground in front of Cotton’s tent, and later in the same day Cotton
himself took half an ounce from a crevice in a rock. A little girl
playing in a ravine near her mother’s tent, picked up a curious-looking
stone that proved to be nearly pure gold; it weighed over six pounds. A
much larger lump, twenty-three pounds in weight, was later found near
by.
Two men invited Cotton to come and see their claim. He found them
working in a hole up to their waists in water; they were getting from
fifteen to twenty dollars out of every pan they washed, and the day
that he was with them they took $1,000 for their day’s work. He found
at a place about three miles from his camp a woman working alone. He
had known her in San José; she was washing gravel in a wooden bowl, and
had averaged an ounce a day for three weeks.
Just before leaving the mines at the end of his stay of six weeks, he
found seated on a stone under a tree, in rather a dejected condition,
an old man, who bewailed the fact that he had worked for many days and
gotten little or nothing, and that he would move to another place.
Cotton said to him, “Why not turn over the stone you are sitting on?”
He replied, “It ain’t worth while, but I will do it if you say so.” He
turned it over, and clearing away a little dirt, found a lot of nuggets
that weighed nearly a half a pound.
On the way home, his party overtook another old man with his grandson;
they had been in the mines and collected twenty pounds of nuggets, of
which they had been robbed, and were poorer than when they began.
Governor Mason also visited the mines, and made a report of his trip to
the Adjutant-General of the United States. The report was dated August
17, 1848. With his report he sent two hundred and twenty-eight ounces
of nuggets as specimens of the product of the mines. He had visited
mines on all the rivers in the gold-bearing territory; his report
relates many interesting incidents, among them the following: He was
shown a trench about a hundred yards long, four feet wide and three
feet deep, from which there had been taken in one week $17,000; a small
ravine near to it had yielded $12,000; men were picking gold out of the
crevices of the rocks with butcher knives, in pieces weighing from one
to six ounces. At Weber’s store in Helvetta, a man had given an ounce
and a half of gold worth $24 for a box of seidlitz powders; another man
had paid one dollar for a drop of laudanum.
He estimated the whole output of the mines at that time from thirty to
fifty thousand dollars a day, and stated that he thought that the mines
in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys would easily repay the cost
of the late war with Mexico, together with all that the Government had
paid for lands ceded. All this gold was being taken from land which now
belonged to the Government, and he thought something should be paid for
the privilege of mining, but he saw no way to collect it, having but
few soldiers, not enough to cover the large territory that was being
worked over. He had considerable trouble holding enlisted men to the
performance of their duties, so concluded not to make any rules that
he could not enforce. The gold-bearing region known at that time was
about two hundred miles long, averaging about thirty miles wide.
This report he despatched by special messenger by way of Panama; it
reached Washington in time for President Polk to mention the discovery
in his message to Congress in December, thus transmitting it to
the people. It attracted wide attention, creating great interest
everywhere, so that every newspaper in the country, nay, in the world,
was daily scanned for news from the California gold diggings.