In the summer of 1847 the American residents of California, numbering
perhaps two thousand, and mostly established near San Francisco Bay,
looked forward with hope and confidence to the future. Their government
held secure possession of the whole territory, and had announced its
purpose to hold it permanently. The Spanish Californians, dissatisfied
with the manner in which Mexico had ruled them, and convinced that she
could not protect them, had abandoned the idea of further resistance.
Notwithstanding the unsettled condition of political affairs, the
market prices of cows, horses and land, which at that time were
the chief articles of sale in the country, had advanced, and this
enhancement of values was generally regarded as a certain proof of the
increased prosperity that would bless the country under the Stars and
Stripes when peace, which seemed near at hand, should be finally made.
It so happened that at this time one of the leading representatives of
American interests in California was John A. Sutter, a Swiss by his
parentage; a German by the place of his birth in Baden; an American by
residence and naturalization in Missouri; and a Mexican by subsequent
residence and naturalization in California. In 1839 he had settled at
the junction of the Sacramento and American Rivers, near the site of
the present city of Sacramento.
[Illustration: The most approved California outfit (from _Punch_).]
When he selected this site it was generally considered very
undesirable, but it had advantages which soon became apparent. It was
the head of navigation on the Sacramento River for sailing vessels, and
steam had not yet made its appearance in the waters of the Pacific.
It had a central position in the great interior valley. Its distance
of sixty miles from the nearest village, and its situation on one
of the main traveled routes of the territory, gave political and
military importance to its proprietor. The Mexican governors sought his
influence and conferred power on him. But more important than all these
advantages was the fact that the only wagon road from the Mississippi
Valley to California first reached the navigable waters of the Pacific
at Sutter's Fort. This road had been open for several years and was of
much prospective importance. The immigration had been interrupted by
the war, but would certainly start again as soon as peace should be
restored.
The American residents of California, knowing the feeling prevalent
among their relatives east of the Rocky Mountains, expected that at
least a thousand immigrants, and perhaps two or three times as many,
would arrive overland every year; and they supposed that such additions
to the population would soon add much to the value of property, to
the demand for labor, and to the activity of general business. The
immigration would be especially beneficial to Sutter. At his rancho
they would reach the first settlement of white men in the Sacramento
Valley. There, after their toilsome march across the desert, they
would stop and rest. There, they would purchase supplies of food and
clothing. There, they would sell their exhausted horses and oxen, and
buy fresh ones. There, the penniless would seek employment. There,
those who were ready to continue their journey would separate for the
valleys to the northward, westward, and southward. There, parties
starting for Oregon or "the States" would obtain their last stock of
supplies. The advantages of the site were numerous and evident.
[Illustration: The rush to California; a caricature of the time from
_Punch_.]
But the advantages of Sutter's Fort imposed certain obligations on its
owner. He should be prepared to furnish provisions to the immigrants.
He should not expect the Americans to be content with the Mexican
system of crushing grain by hand on the _metate_, as the flat under
millstone of the Mexicans and native Californians is called, the upper
millstone being cylindrical and used like a rolling-pin. He ought to
build a flour-mill in the Sacramento Valley to grind the wheat which
he cultivated in considerable quantity. There was no great difficulty
about the construction of such a mill. He had a site for it on his own
rancho. The necessary timber for it could be found not far away. Among
the Americans at the fort there was skill to build and to manage it.
These ideas pleased Sutter; he adopted them, and acted on them. He
selected a site and made his plans for a flour-mill, and, partly to get
lumber for it, he determined to build a saw-mill also.
Since there was no good timber in the valley, the saw-mill must be in
the mountains. The site for it was selected by James W. Marshall, a
native of New Jersey, a skilful wheelwright by occupation, industrious,
honest, generous, but "cranky," full of wild fancies, and defective in
some kinds of business sense. By accident he discovered the gold of
California, and his name is inseparably connected with her history,
but it is impossible to make a great hero of him. The place for his
mill was in the small valley of Coloma, 1500 feet above the level of
the sea, and 45 miles from Sutter's Fort, from which it was accessible
by wagon without expense for road-making. Good yellow-pine timber
was abundant in the surrounding hills; the water-power was more than
sufficient; there were opportunities to make a secure dam and race with
small expense, and there was little danger of loss by flood. Sutter
left the plans and construction of the mill, as well as the selection
of the site, to Marshall, and on the 27th of August the two signed an
agreement of partnership under which Sutter was to furnish money, men,
tools and teams, and Marshall was to supply the skill for building and
managing.
While the project of the saw-mill was under consideration some Mormons
arrived at New Helvetia and solicited employment. They had belonged to
the Mormon battalion, which, after enlisting in Nebraska for one year,
marching to the Pacific by way of the Gila, and garrisoning San Diego,
had been mustered out at Los Angeles on the preceding 16th of July.
They were on their way to Salt Lake, but at the fort received letters
advising all who could not bring provisions for the winter to remain
in California until the following spring. They were sober, orderly,
peaceful, industrious men, and Sutter hired them to work at his
flour-mill and saw-mill. He sent six of them to Coloma. Besides these,
Marshall had three "Gentile" laborers, and about a dozen Indians. All
the white men were natives of the United States.
For four months these men worked at Coloma, seeing no visitors, and
rarely communicating with the fort. The mill had been nearly completed,
the dam was made, the race had been dug, the gates had been put in
place, the water had been turned into the race to carry away some of
the loose dirt and gravel, and then had been turned off again. On the
afternoon of Monday the 24th of January Marshall was walking in the
tail-race, when on its rotten granite bed-rock he saw some yellow
particles and picked up several of them. The largest were about the
size of grains of wheat. They were smooth, bright, and in color much
like brass. He thought they were gold, and went to the mill, where
he told the men that he had found a gold mine. At the time little
importance was attached to his statement. It was regarded as a proper
subject for ridicule.
Marshall hammered his new metal, and found it malleable; he put it
into the kitchen fire, and observed that it did not readily melt or
become discolored; he compared its color with gold coin; and the more
he examined it, the more he was convinced that it was gold. The next
morning he paid another visit to the tail-race, where he picked up
other specimens; and putting all he had collected, about a spoonful, on
the crown of his slouch hat, he went to the mill, where he showed them
to the men as proof of his discovery of a gold mine. The scantiness in
the provision supply gave Marshall an excuse for going to the fort,
though he would probably not have gone at this time if he had not been
anxious to know Sutter's opinion of the metal. He rode away, and,
according to Sutter's diary, arrived at the fort on Friday the 28th.
Sutter had an encyclopedia, sulphuric acid, and scales, and with the
help of these, after weighing the specimens in and out of water, he
declared that they were undoubtedly gold.
[Illustration: Sutter's Mill, the scene of the gold discovery.]
The first record of the discovery, and the only one made on the day of
its occurrence, was in the diary of Henry W. Bigler, one of the Mormon
laborers at the mill. He was an American by birth, then a young man,
and afterwards a citizen of St. George, Utah. He was in the habit of
keeping a regular record of his notable observations and experiences,
selecting topics for remark with creditable judgment. His journal kept
during his service in the Mormon battalion and his subsequent stay in
California is one of the valuable historical documents of the State. On
the 24th of January, in the evening, Bigler wrote in his diary, "This
day some kind of mettle was found in the tail-race that looks like
goald."
The artless arrangement of ideas, and the ungrammatical phraseology,
accompanied by the regular mental habits that demanded a diary, and
the perception that enabled him to catch with his pen the main facts
of life as they passed, add much to the interest as well as to the
authority of his diary.
For six weeks or more the work on the mill continued without serious
interruption. Never having seen placer-mining, and having no distinct
idea of the methods of finding and washing gold, the laborers at
Coloma did not know how to gather the treasures in their vicinity.
The first one to find gold outside of the tail-race was Bigler, who
was the hunter of the party, sent out by Marshall at least one day in
every week to get venison, which was a very acceptable addition to
unground wheat and salt salmon, the main articles of food sent from
Sutter's Fort. Deer being numerous in the neighboring hills, it was
not necessary that Bigler should go far for game; and more than once
he managed, while hunting, to look at the banks of the river and
find some of the precious metal. His report of his success stimulated
others, and they, too, found gold at various places.
[Illustration: The song of the sirens (from "Punch").]
In regard to the beginning of gold washing as a regular occupation
there is a conflict of testimony. Bigler says that the first men
who, within the range of his observation, devoted themselves to
placer-mining were Willis Hudson and five others, all of Sam Brannan's
Mormon colony, whom he visited at Mormon Island, on the American River
below Coloma, on the 12th of April. On that day, washing the gravel
with pans and pan-like Indian baskets, they took out more than two
ounces and a half (forty-one dollars) for each man. On the other hand,
Isaac Humphrey, who had been a placer-miner in Georgia, and who was the
first person to use a rocker in the Sierra Nevada and to teach others
there to use it, said that he arrived in Coloma on the 7th of March,
and within a week commenced work with a rocker. We may explain the
discrepancy between these two authorities by imagining that for some
weeks Humphrey purposely avoided observation, as placer-miners often
do; or that in the interval of ten years between his first appearance
at Coloma and the publication of his reminiscences his memory misled
him in the date.
In the spring of 1848 San Francisco, a village of about seven hundred
inhabitants, had two newspapers, the _Californian_ and the _Californian
Star_, both weeklies. The first printed mention of the gold discovery
was a short paragraph in the former, under date of the 15th of March,
stating that a gold mine had been found at Sutter's Mill, and that a
package of the metal worth thirty dollars had been received at New
Helvetia. Five weeks later the _Star_ announced that its editor, E. C.
Kemble, was about to take a trip into the country, and on his return
would report his observations. He went to Coloma and either saw nothing
or understood nothing of what he saw, for he preserved absolute silence
in his paper about his trip. On the 20th of May, after a number of men
had left San Francisco for the mines, he came out with the opinion
that the mines were a "sham," and that the people who had gone to them
were "superlatively silly." The increasing production of the mines
soon overwhelmed the doubters; and before the middle of June the whole
territory resounded with the cry of "_gold!_ GOLD!! GOLD!!!"
as it was printed in one of the local newspapers. Nearly all the men
hurried off to the mines. Workshops, stores, dwellings, wives and even
fields of ripe grain, were left for a time to take care of themselves.
[Illustration: A primitive outfit.]
In 1848 the gold hunters of the Sierra Nevada did not need a scientific
education. The method of washing gold was then so simple, and they were
so skilful in many kinds of industrial labor, that they learned it
quickly. Capital, like scientific education and technical experience,
was unnecessary to the early placer-miner. With the savings of a
week's work he could buy the pick, shovel, pan, and rocker which were
his only necessary tools. As compared with other auriferous deposits
of which we have definite knowledge, those of the Sierra Nevada were
unequaled for the facility of working. They were not deep under ground,
or scantily supplied with water, as in Australia and South Africa; nor
in a land of tropical heat, as in Brazil; nor in a region of long and
severe winters, as in Siberia. The deposits were on land belonging
to the National Government, which, without charge, without official
supervision, and without previous permit or survey, allowed every
citizen to take all the gold from any claim held in accordance with the
local regulations adopted by the miners of his district.
The first gold washing was done on the bars of the rivers, where the
gravel was shallow, usually not more than two or three feet deep, and
where prospecting was easy, and mining was prompt in its returns and
liberal in its rewards. The gravel was rich if it yielded twenty-five
cents to the pan; and in favorable situations a man could dig and wash
out fifty to sixty pans in a day, while with a rocker he could do
three times as much. But on the bars of the American, the Bear and the
Yuba Rivers it was no uncommon event to obtain from one dollar to five
dollars in a pan, and then the yield for a day's work was equal to a
princely revenue.
When the rainy season began in the winter of 1848 the rivers rose
and covered their bars, and the miners, compelled to hunt claims
elsewhere, found them in ravines which were dry through nine months
of the year. These were in many cases almost as rich as the bars. It
was not uncommon to hear, on good authority, that this or that man had
taken out $1000 in a day, and occasionally $5000 or more would reward
the day's work. In 1849 the miners generally got $16 a day or more, and
when a claim would not yield that much it had no value.
The successful miners demanded provisions, tools, clothing and many
luxuries, for which they offered prices double, treble, and tenfold
greater than those paid elsewhere. Sailing vessels went to Oregon,
Mexico, South America, Australia and Polynesia with gold dust to
purchase supplies, and soon filled all the seaports of the Pacific
with the contagion of excitement. The reports of the discovery, which
began to reach the Atlantic States in September, 1848, commanded little
credence there before January; but the news of the arrival of large
amounts of gold at Mazatlan, Valparaiso, Panama, and New York in the
latter part of the winter put an end to all doubt, and in the spring
there was such a rush of peaceful migration as the world had never
seen. In 1849, 25,000--according to one authority, 50,000--immigrants
went by land, and 23,000 by sea from the region east of the Rocky
Mountains, and by sea perhaps 40,000 from other parts of the world,
adding twelve-fold to the population and fifty-fold to the productive
capacity of the territory. The newcomers were nearly all young,
intelligent, and industrious men. Fortunately the diggings were rich
enough and extensive enough to give good reward to all of them, and to
much larger numbers who came in later years. The gold yield of 1848 was
estimated at $5,000,000; that of 1849 at $23,000,000; that of 1850 at
$50,000,000; that of 1853 at $65,000,000; and then came the decline
which has continued until the present time. In forty-one years the gold
yield of California was about $1,200,000,000.
Gold mining was neither novel nor rare, but the unexampled combination
of wonderful richness, highly favorable geographical conditions,
high intelligence in the miners, and great freedom in the political
institutions of California led to such a sudden rush of people, and
such an immense production of gold, that the whole world was shaken.
The older placers of Brazil and Siberia, and the later ones of
Australia and South Africa, had a much smaller influence on general
commerce and manufactures.
The discovery of the mines was an American achievement. It was the
result of the American conquest, and of preparation for American
immigrants. It was made by an American, one of a little group of
laborers in which all the white men were Americans, as were the
first men who devoted themselves to mining. They also were Americans
who subsequently invented the sluice and the hydraulic process of
placer-washing, and who planned and constructed the great ditches,
flumes, and dams that gave a distinctive character to the placer-mining
of California.
Let us now consider the consequences of the discovery. First, as to
the men at Coloma in January, 1848, Marshall was not enriched. His
lumber was soon in demand at $500 a thousand feet of board measure, or
twenty-fold more than he had expected when he commenced his work; but
not many months elapsed before all the good timber trees near Coloma
had been cut down by the miners, and then the mill had to stop. He
turned his attention to mining, but was not successful. When he had
money he did not know how to keep it. When he had a good claim he did
not stick to it.
[Illustration: Marshall Monument at Coloma (erected in 1889 by the
Society of the Native Sons of the Golden West).]
Sutter's popularity with the pioneers was so great that when he had
lost all his property the legislature came to his aid with a pension
of $3,000 a year, which sum was paid for six years; and it would
perhaps have been continued till his death if he had not left the
State in order to demand justice from Congress for the spoliation
of his property. But he did not possess the same popularity and
influence in the Eastern States as in California. He spent winters
of vain solicitation at Washington, and there he died on the 18th of
June, 1880, at the age of seventy-seven years. His grave is at Litiz,
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he had made his home.
For California the main results of the discovery have been the sudden
changes from a Spanish-speaking to an English-speaking community;
from popular ignorance to high intelligence; from pasturage, first to
mining, and then to tillage, as the occupation of most of the people;
from a population of less than 10,000 to more than 1,200,000; and
from isolation to frequent, cheap, and convenient communication with
all civilized countries. The State has become one of the most noted
gardens, pleasure grounds, and sanitariums of the world; and San
Francisco is one of the most intellectual and brilliant, and in many
respects one of the most interesting, of cities. To the United States
the Californian gold discovery gave a vast increase of the national
wealth; great attractiveness for immigration from Europe; a strong
stimulus to shipping; the development of the mineral wealth of Nevada,
Idaho, and Utah; and the vast railroad system west of the Mississippi.
But Marshall's find did not limit its great influences to our
continent. It aroused and stimulated industrial activity in all the
leading nations. It profoundly agitated all the countries of South
America. It shook Europe and Asia. It caused the first large migration
of the Chinese across the Pacific. It opened Japan to the traffic of
Christendom. It threw a belt of steam around the globe. It educated
Hargraves, and taught him where to find and how to open up the gold
deposits of Australia. It built the Panama railroad. It brought the
Pacific Ocean within the domain of active commerce. Directly and
indirectly it added $3,500,000,000 to the stock of the precious metals,
and by giving the distribution of this vast sum to the English-speaking
nations added much to their great industrial and intellectual influence.