Part 9
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.
Enough has been said, and the many instances related will give readers a fair idea of the magnitude and importance of Marshall’s discovery. It will be of interest to add further that from the time of the discovery in 1848 to January 1st, 1903, California had produced $1,379,275,408 in gold. There were two periods of intense excitement, the first ending in 1854. From 1850 to 1853, the greatest yield from washings was probably not less than $65,000,000 a year. The average production per year for the years 1851 to 1854, inclusive, was $75,570,087, reaching $81,294,270 in 1852; this was the banner year, and from 1850 to 1862 the average production was $55,882,861, never falling below $50,000,000.
The ardent hope that ever lured the plodding miner and the prospector as well, was that they would come upon some rich deposits of dust, or a big nugget, that would make them rich at once. Let me quote from Eldridge’s history: “Some nuggets of surprising size were found in the early years, the largest recorded being one of one hundred and forty-one pounds four ounces of almost pure gold, found in 1854. One of perhaps equal value was found by some Chinamen, who cut it to pieces with cold chisels, and sold it bit by bit with their gold-dust, fearing that it would be taken away from them if shown to any one in the shape in which they found it. A single lump weighing one hundred and six pounds was found in Baltimore ravine, near Auburn, and another of one hundred and three pounds, and still another of ninety-six pounds near Downieville. A seventy-two pound chunk was found near Columbia, one worth $10,000 at Ophir, in Sutter County; one of fifty pounds on the Yuba; one of forty-four pounds near Dogtown, Butte County; one of fifty-one pounds near French ravine, in Sierra County, and one of eighty pounds from the American River.
“Pieces weighing from ten to forty pounds have been found in many places, and sometimes in the most casual manner. A farmer strolling through his pasture on or near the lower Mokelumne River, one Sunday morning, kicked at what appeared to be a stone lying in his path, but which proved to be so heavy that he examined it more carefully. It proved to be a lump of almost pure gold worth several thousand dollars. Many lucky miners made their fortunes within a few months after arriving at the mines in 1849 and 1850. Many were more easily satisfied, and returned east after they had found enough to buy a farm near the old homestead, or to pay off a mortgage, or start in some business for which they had long striven. Many lost their health and even their lives. The number of those who died in their tents or cabins, or under the open sky, during the fierce struggle of the first years after the discovery, will never be known.
“Of the thousands that were attracted to the West by the gold discovery, few, if any, ever thought that gold digging would be a permanent occupation for them, and so it proved. It was only a stepping stone to the acquiring of a farm and a home. It took but a few years to find and pick up all the yellow metal that Nature had so profusely scattered on or near the surface of California’s lovely valleys and foothills. That done, large numbers of the gold-seekers remained to help develop and cultivate her soil that was to produce still greater riches than the combined efforts of the vast crowd who came to search her soil for the yellow metal.”
Those who made the trip across the plains usually began the long journey at Independence or Westport, Missouri, for at that time the Missouri River was considered the western boundary of all civilization, and as these gold-hunters launched out on the almost trackless prairies that lay west of that mighty stream, many considered themselves as entering a country of peculiar freedom, and it was often said that “law and morality never crossed the Missouri River.”
Many parties came to this starting place by steamer via the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. There trains or companies, sometimes consisting of several hundred people, organized for the trip; this they did for mutual protection from the Indians. The usual outfit was a stout wagon with a cover of white canvas or sheeting that was oiled or painted, stretched over hickory or oak, the same prairie schooner that had brought thousands to the Middle West.
I have read many books that tell the stories of many parties who crossed, all of them filled with thrilling incidents of hardships and heroisms that are almost unbelievable. The book entitled _Death Valley in ’49_, by William Lewis Manley, is perhaps the most striking, being a story of personal experiences.
At the age of twenty, W. L. Manley left his father’s home on the frontiers of civilization, near Jackson, Michigan, that was then, in 1840, still a territory. He was starting in life for himself with seven dollars in his pocket. He and a companion together bought enough pine boards with which to build a boat, on which they paddled down Grand River to the place where the city of Grand Rapids now is. There they found a schooner, loaded with lumber, about to sail across the lake to Wisconsin, and for a dollar each they were permitted to cross on her. They were put ashore at Southport. At that time Wisconsin was practically a wild waste, but they tramped clear across it to Mineral Point, arriving there with blistered feet, Manley having thirty-five cents in his pocket. They found it hard to obtain employment, but finally did so, receiving the sum of thirteen dollars a month; a little later he went to work digging lead ore in the summer, and in the winter hunted fur-bearing animals.
In the spring of 1849 he caught the gold fever, and arranged to go to California with a man named Bennett, who with his wife and two children was about to go there. Through a misunderstanding as to the time of starting, the Bennetts started two weeks before Manley knew that they had gone. They had taken his outfit with them, thinking that he would overtake them. This he tried to do, but did not find them for many months after, when he accidentally met them at Salt Lake City. At Council Bluffs, he found himself with nothing but the clothes he wore, an extra shirt, a light gun, a small light tent, a frying-pan, a tin cup, his mules, but no money. He had come to the conclusion to return to Michigan, when he met a man named Charles Dallas, from Iowa, who was preparing to join a train of wagons bound for California. Dallas offered to feed Manley if he would drive one of his teams clear through; this he very reluctantly agreed to do.
The train was made up of a number of ox teams; the one Manley drove consisted of two oxen and two cows. After much hardship and many hair-breadth escapes, they reached a point near the Mormon settlement at Salt Lake City, where they found a band of emigrants, camped among them being Manley’s friends, the Bennetts, from whom he received his complete outfit just as he had left it with them months before in Wisconsin. He at once decided to join the Bennetts, and as Mr. Dallas had decided to stay at Salt Lake City until spring, he had no compunction in doing so. This other train consisted of one hundred and seven wagons, with about 500 horses and cattle. The company had a semblance of military organization, being made up of seven divisions, each having its own captain, whom they elected; one Captain Hunt was engaged to act as guide and commander (he called himself Dictator), acting under rules that had been framed by the whole body. These rules, it was understood, could be amended by a majority of the whole; each member was to pay Captain Hunt ten dollars for acting as their pilot. Hunt was a Mormon, and pretended to know the best routes to California. It was planned that they should move with military precision, division number one taking the lead the first day, division number two the second day, and so on in regular routine.
The route chosen was a new one for a wagon train, though there was a trail over which the Mormons traveled to their settlement or colony at San Bernardino, located about sixty miles east of Los Angeles.
A few days after starting, they met with another party of emigrants, spoken of in the histories as the Smith party, its leader’s name being Smith. Captain Smith had a map procured at Salt Lake City, from an engineer named Williams, that showed a route still different from the one Hunt was taking; this map pretended to show every place on the route where grass and water could be found. Hunt had no map, and many of his party who had lost confidence in him, were inclined to go with the Smith party. There was much discussion on the subject, and finally, when they reached the place where the two trails diverged, many of the Hunt party joined Smith’s, among them the Bennetts, and, of course, Manley. About three days after the breaking up of the Hunt party, the Smith train discovered that they had made a mistake. They came to a place beyond which it seemed the wagons could not go. Many in the train then turned back to go by the Hunt trail, so that the Smith party was reduced to twenty-seven wagons, among them the Bennetts.
Parties that had been sent out to find a pass shortly returned, reporting that they had found one, so on the twenty-seven wagons went. Soon they found a broad, well-defined trail that became known as the Jay-Hawker’s trail; at this point it ran over rolling hills covered with juniper trees, and through grassy valleys, with plenty of water, and all went very well. It was now November.
They plodded on, ever westward, but day after day getting farther away from game that was now the only source of food for themselves, and from water and grass so necessary for their animals as well as themselves. The party to which the Bennetts clung had been reduced to seven wagons, for dissensions due to difference of opinion had sprung up, so that a large number had broken away. Each day their supply of food diminished, so that at last they had to kill one of their steers to keep them supplied with food.
Manley spent all his time on scouting expeditions, searching for water and game, climbing to high points on the hills to spy out the land and decide what route should be taken, using a field glass owned by one of the party. Out on one of these expeditions, far ahead of the party, he came upon a dead ox that had fallen by the way. With his knife he cut into one of its hams and found that, on account of the dryness and purity of the atmosphere, the meat was fresh and sweet, though probably dead for many days. He was glad to eat it raw as he walked along.
All around, as far as the eye could reach, was dry desolation, not a spear of grass, not a drop nor sign of water anywhere. Night came on; he crept under a projecting rock to try to sleep, being afraid to make a fire, for he had seen signs of Indians, whom he feared. When he awoke it was Christmas day. They were now in what a little later came to be known as Death Valley, because so many of those who entered it never came out.
One day their eyes were gladdened by the sight of water. It was far ahead of them, but it gleamed in the sunlight and cheered them on. But alas! it proved to be salt water. Soon they reached a condition where it was decided that all the provisions of civilized life should be pooled, and served only to the women and children and that, as occasion required, an ox should be killed, the meat dried and served to the men; every scrap of the ox, the hide and horns excepted, was used for food, every drop of blood was as precious to them as the grains of gold they were in search of. Four of the teamsters now decided to take their share of the provisions, together with their blankets and guns, leave the party and push on to try to save themselves.
The party crawled along, the oxen hardly able to stand, having had no food or water for many days, and as far as Manley could see, there was no prospect of any being found. A solemn council was held, at which it was agreed that they could only live till the last of their cattle had been eaten up. It was then agreed that they should turn back to the place where they had last found a spring of water and grass, and that there the party should camp, while two of the youngest men, taking some of the food, should push on till they found a settlement where they could get help and food, and return as fast as possible; they hoped that in ten days they might be able to return with the needed relief.
The next morning the oxen were hitched up and started back to the spring. Shortly after they had started, one of them became so feeble that he lay down and never rose again, and when they were within two miles of the spring, another one could travel no further, and also lay down. Arriving at the spring, they carried water back to him, so that he recovered and came on to the spring.
Manley and a man named Rodgers, from Tennessee, were selected, and agreed to undertake the hazardous journey. Preparations were at once made for their departure; the weakest of the oxen was slaughtered, and the meat dried; the women made rawhide moccasins and knapsacks, and packed as much of the dried meat as could be comfortably carried. Manley and Rodgers started off with the expressed hopes and blessings of each member of the party.
Manley writes: “I wore no coat or vest, but took half a light blanket, while Rodgers wore a thin summer coat, and took no blanket; we each had a small tin cup and a small camp-kettle that held a quart. Bennett had me take his seven-shooter rifle, and Rodgers had a good double-barreled shotgun; we each had a sheath-knife, and our hats were small-brimmed affairs, fitting close to the head, and not very conspicuous to the enemy, as we might rise up from behind a hill, or a hiding-place, into view. We tried on our packs and fitted the straps a little, so that they would carry easy, and started off.”
The party they left in camp consisted of thirteen adults and six children; there was very little civilized food, the oxen that might be killed when necessary being their chief reliance.
Manley and Rodgers took a course due west as nearly as the mountains would permit. Days passed, but they found no water. A big snow-capped mountain in the distance lured them on, and not till they came within its influence did they find relief. In order not to miss a possible chance of finding water, they separated, agreeing on a general course each would take, and that if either found water he should fire his gun as a signal. In a little while Rodgers fired his gun, and going to him, Manley saw that he had found a little ice as thick as window glass; eagerly they put some of it into their mouths and gathered all they could. It just filled their quart kettle; this they melted, and thus saved their lives. They had become so thirsty and their mouths and tongues became so dry that they could not chew their dried beef; the saliva would not flow. On they went again; in a few days they found a well developed trail leading toward the west. This they followed and came up with a party written of in the histories as the Jay-Hawkers. They were camped at some water holes where they had killed an ox and were drying the meat.
From them they received some fresh meat, and were also much refreshed by the water; they filled their canteens and pressed on, every moment being precious. When they parted, tears flowed freely from all eyes. Many of the larger company, being men past middle life, had about concluded that their chances of surviving the hardships through which they were passing were rather slim. They gave Manley and Rodgers the names and addresses of the friends they had left in the old home, asking them to tell their friends where and how they had found them, provided that they themselves were fortunate enough to reach a post office.
Soon after leaving the camp of the Jay-Hawkers, Manley and Rodgers realized that they had crossed the divide and that every step they took was down the Pacific slope; soon they began to see signs of life; a crow came in sight and perched within gunshot, and very promptly he was shot and bagged in Rodgers’ knapsack. A little later a hawk hove in sight, and it was very promptly taken care of in the same way; then a little further along they spied a quail; it also they shot.
Trees began to appear, and stumbling into a narrow ravine and following it for many miles, it led them to a much larger one, and O joy! there was a babbling brook of clear, sparkling water that literally sang them welcome as it wimpled over the stones in its course. They drank liberally of its life-giving stream, then dressed and cooked their three birds, and began to feel that life still held something for them. Soon a broad, grassy meadow opened before them. I will quote Manley’s words describing this incident.