Part 8
One evening about sunset the village was deserted. We met old men, warriors, squaws, and children in gay attire, trooping off to the encampment with faces of anticipation; and, arriving here, they seated themselves in a semicircle. Smoke occupied the centre, with his warriors on either hand; the young men and boys came next, and the squaws and children formed the horns of the crescent. The biscuit and coffee were promptly despatched, the emigrants staring open-mouthed at their savage guests. With each emigrant party that arrived at Fort Laramie this scene was renewed; and every day the Indians grew more rapacious and presumptuous. One evening they broke in pieces, out of mere wantonness, the cups from which they had been feasted; and this so exasperated the emigrants that many of them seized their rifles and could scarcely be restrained from firing on the insolent mob of Indians. Before we left the country this dangerous spirit on the part of the Dakota had mounted to a yet higher pitch. They began openly to threaten the emigrants with destruction, and actually fired upon one or two parties of them. A military force and military law are urgently called for in that perilous region; and unless troops are speedily stationed at Fort Laramie, or elsewhere in the neighborhood, both emigrants and other travellers will be exposed to most imminent risks.
The Ogillallah, the Brulé, and the other western bands of the Dakota or Sioux, are thorough savages, unchanged by any contact with civilization. Not one of them can speak a European tongue, or has ever visited an American settlement. Until within a year or two, when the emigrants began to pass through their country on the way to Oregon, they had seen no whites, except a few employed about the Fur Company’s posts. They thought them a wise people, inferior only to themselves, living in leather lodges, like their own, and subsisting on buffalo. But when the swarm of _Meneaska_, with their oxen and wagons, began to invade them, their astonishment was unbounded. They could scarcely believe that the earth contained such a multitude of white men. Their wonder is now giving way to indignation; and the result, unless vigilantly guarded against, may be lamentable in the extreme.
But to glance at the interior of a lodge. Shaw and I used often to visit them. Indeed we spent most of our evenings in the Indian village, Shaw’s assumption of the medical character giving us a fair pretext. As a sample of the rest I will describe one of these visits. The sun had just set, and the horses were driven into the _corral_. The Prairie Cock, a noted beau, came in at the gate with a bevy of young girls, with whom he began a dance in the area, leading them round and round in a circle, while he jerked up from his chest a succession of monotonous sounds, to which they kept time in a rueful chant. Outside the gate boys and young men were idly frolicking; and close by, looking grimly upon them, stood a warrior in his robe, with his face painted jet-black, in token that he had lately taken a Pawnee scalp. Passing these, the tall dark lodges rose between us and the red western sky. We repaired at once to the lodge of Old Smoke himself. It was by no means better than the others; indeed, it was rather shabby; for in this democratic community the chief never assumes superior state. Smoke sat cross-legged on a buffalo-robe, and his grunt of salutation as we entered was unusually cordial, out of respect, no doubt, to Shaw’s medical character. Seated around the lodge were several squaws, and an abundance of children. The complaint of Shaw’s patients was, for the most part, a severe inflammation of the eyes, occasioned by exposure to the sun, a species of disorder which he treated with some success. He had brought with him a homœopathic medicine-chest, and was, I presume, the first who introduced that harmless system of treatment among the Ogillallah. No sooner had a robe been spread at the head of the lodge for our accommodation, and we had seated ourselves upon it, than a patient made her appearance,--the chief’s daughter herself, who, to do her justice, was the best-looking girl in the village. Being on excellent terms with the physician, she placed herself readily under his hands, and submitted with a good grace to his applications, laughing in his face during the whole process, for a squaw hardly knows how to smile. This case despatched, another of a different kind succeeded. A hideous, emaciated old woman sat in the darkest corner of the lodge, rocking to and fro with pain, and hiding her eyes from the light by pressing the palms of both hands against her face. At Smoke’s command she came forward, very unwillingly, and exhibited a pair of eyes that had nearly disappeared from excess of inflammation. No sooner had the doctor fastened his grip upon her, than she set up a dismal moaning, and writhed so in his grasp that he lost all patience; but being resolved to carry his point, he succeeded at last in applying his favorite remedies.
“It is strange,” he said when the operation was finished, “that I forgot to bring any Spanish flies with me; we must have something here to answer for a counter-irritant.”
So, in the absence of better, he seized upon a red-hot brand from the fire, and clapped it against the temple of the old squaw, who set up an unearthly howl, at which the rest of the family broke into a laugh.
During these medical operations Smoke’s eldest squaw entered the lodge, 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.