Part 12

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.

MARSHALL'S OWN NARRATIVE.

"In May, 1847, with my rifle, blanket, and a few crackers to eat with the venison (for the deer then were awful plenty), I ascended the American River, according to Mr. Sutter's wish, as he wanted to find a good site for a saw-mill, where we could have plenty of timber, and where wagons would be able to ascend and descend the river hills. Many fellows had been out before me, but they could not find any place to suit; so when I left I told Mr. Sutter I would go along the river to its very head and find the place, if such a place existed anywhere upon the river or any of its forks. I traveled along the river the whole way. Many places would suit very well for the erection of the mill, with plenty of timber everywhere, but then nothing but a mule could climb the hills; and when I would find a spot where the hills were not steep, there was no timber to be had; and so it was until I had been out several days and reached this place, which, after first sight, looked like the exact spot we were hunting.

"I passed a couple of days examining the hills, and found a place where wagons could ascend and descend with all ease. On my return to the fort I went out through the country examining the cañons and gulches, and picking out the easiest places for crossing them with loaded wagons.

"You may be sure Mr. Sutter was pleased when I reported my success. We entered into partnership; I was to build the mill, and he was to find provisions, teams, tools, and to pay a portion of the men's wages. I believe I was at that time the only millwright in the whole country. In August, everything being ready, we freighted two wagons with tools and provisions, and accompanied by six men I left the fort, and after a good deal of difficulty reached this place one beautiful afternoon and formed our camp on yon little rise of ground right above the town.

"Our first business was to put up log houses, as we intended remaining here all winter. This was done in less than no time, for my men were great with the ax. We then cut timber, and fell to work hewing it for the framework of the mill. The Indians gathered about us in great numbers. I employed about forty of them to assist us with the dam, which we put up in a kind of way in about four weeks. In digging the foundation of the mill we cut some distance into the soft granite; we opened the forebay and then I left for the fort, giving orders to Mr. Weimar to have a ditch cut through the bar in the rear of the mill, and after quitting work in the evening to raise the gate and let the water run all night, as it would assist us very much in deepening and widening the tail-race.

"I returned in a few days, and found everything favorable, all the men being at work in the ditch. When the channel was opened it was my custom every evening to raise the gate and let the water wash out as much sand and gravel through the night as possible; and in the morning, while the men were getting breakfast, I would walk down, and, shutting off the water, look along the race and see what was to be done, so that I might tell Mr. Weimar, who had charge of the Indians, at what particular point to set them to work for the day. As I was the only millwright present, all of my time was employed upon the framework and machinery.

"One morning in January,--it was a clear, cold morning; I shall never forget that morning,--as I was taking my usual walk along the race after shutting off the water, my eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch. There was about a foot of water running then. I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. The piece was about half the size and of the shape of a pea. Then I saw another piece in the water. After taking it out I sat down and began to think right hard. I thought it was gold, and yet it did not seem to be of the right color: all the gold coin I had seen was of a reddish tinge; this looked more like brass. I recalled to mind all the metals I had ever seen or heard of, but I could find none that resembled this. Suddenly the idea flashed across my mind that it might be iron pyrites. I trembled to think of it! This question could soon be determined. Putting one of the pieces on a hard river stone, I took another and commenced hammering it. It was soft, and didn't break: it therefore must be gold, but largely mixed with some other metal, very likely silver; for pure gold, I thought, would certainly have a brighter color.

"When I returned to our cabin for breakfast I showed the two pieces to my men. They were all a good deal excited, and had they not thought that the gold only existed in small quantities they would have abandoned everything and left me to finish my job alone. However, to satisfy them, I told them that as soon as we had the mill finished we would devote a week or two to gold hunting and see what we could make out of it."

PIONEER MINING

BY E. G. WAITE

Pioneer mining life--what was it? The miner must have an outfit of a pick, pan, shovel, rocker, dipper and bucket of wood, or of rawhide. A tent was good to have, but he could make shift during the dry season with a substitute of boughs, for there was no fear of rain from May to October. A blanket of rubber spread on a stratum of leaves, on which his woolen blankets were laid, sufficed for a bed. His culinary utensils were confined to a frying-pan, a small iron pot, tin cups and plates, knife, fork, and spoon. His wardrobe consisted generally of a pair of serviceable shirts, a change of trousers, strong boots and a slouch-hat. With these, and a supply of bacon, flour, salt, saleratus, beans, a few candles and occasionally fresh beef, the miner was ready for work. His luxuries were tea and raw sugar, with occasionally the addition of dried peaches from Chili. His bread was made by mixing flour, water, and saleratus in the tin or iron pan which did double duty in the kitchen and in gathering gold, and baking it about two inches thick, like a shortcake. But slapjacks, the legitimate successors of the Mexican tortillas, were also a standard article of diet. Tin teapots were sometimes affected, but the small iron pot with a hollow handle did duty for both tea and beans or frijoles. The latter were of a brown variety grown in Chili, and were prepared after the Mexican style with a piece of bacon or fresh beef and plenty of chili colorado, or red pepper. They were allowed to cook a long time, often standing in the hot embers over night to be ready for breakfast in the morning. The bill-of-fare did not vary much for breakfast, dinner and supper.

The most expensive instrument of the early miner was the rocker, which, though simple in construction, cost in the mines from fifty to a hundred dollars. In general appearance it was not unlike a baby's cradle as used by our grandmothers and as still seen on the frontier. It consisted of a flat bottom with two sides that flared outward, and an end board at the head, while the foot was open save a riffle about an inch and a half high at the bottom to catch the gold that might pass another riffle across the bottom near the middle. At the head of the cradle was a hopper about eighteen inches square, with a perforated sheet-iron bottom or wire screen. Under this was an apron, or board, sloping downward towards the head. Two substantial rockers under the whole completed the simple machine which gave to the world millions of dollars. The _modus operandi_ may be described as follows: Two sticks of wood hewn on the upper side were imbedded at the river's brink, one four inches lower than the other, on which the rockers were to rest, thus securing a grade in the machine to facilitate the outward flow of the water and sand. Two miners usually worked together as partners. One shoveled the earth into the rocker, while the other, seated on a boulder or block of wood, dipped the water from the river, and poured it upon the earth in the hopper with one hand, all the time rocking with the other. When the earth was thoroughly washed, he rose, lifted the hopper from its place, threw out the stones and gravel, replaced it, and thus the work went on. As the ground about the rocker became exhausted to the bed-rock, recourse was had to the bucket, and the earth was carried sometimes a few rods, making laborious work for the miner. To keep the rocker going another hand would be employed to carry earth, and each would carry two buckets at a time. I was in many camps down to 1854, and in none did I ever know of a theft of gold, and I heard of but one, and that was punished by a cat-o'-nine-tails, which was afterward nailed to the center-post of a trader's tent, as a warning to evil-doers.

The gold taken from the river bars was mostly in the form of scales resembling cucumber seeds, and of varying size. It was most plentiful on the bed-rock and in a few inches of soil above it, though sometimes three or four feet of earth would pay to wash. Where the bed-rock was hard the miner cleaned it, for a shovelful of dirt might contain a few dollars in small particles. Where the bed-rock was soft shale or slate on edge the miner picked away an inch or so and washed it, as frequently the scales were found to be driven quite thickly into the crevices. When the ground was very rich the rocker was cleaned of gold every hour or two. When work was over, around the supper fire the events of the day were discussed, earnings compared, reports made of grizzly bears or deer being seen or killed, of better diggings of "coarse gold" discovered. This was the hour for speculations as to the origin of the gold in the rivers, and a strong opinion was entertained by many who were not well-read that immense masses of the precious metal would some day be brought to light in the snow-capped peaks towering to the east. "Coarse gold" was a charm to the ear of the ordinary miner. His claim might be paying him an ounce a day in fine gold, but he was always interested in some reported diggings far away where the product was in lumps, and not infrequently he left a good mine to seek some richer El Dorado. The characteristic and besetting fault of the early miner was unrest. He was forever seeking better fortune. Yet it was this passion for prospecting that resulted in the discovery of gold in an incredibly short time from the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley to the northern limit of the State. To "prospect" was to find a spot that looked favorable and make an examination of it. The miner would take a pan of earth, shake and gyrate it under water, raising and tipping it frequently to run the dirt and water off, then plunge it again, and so continue until a small residuum of black sand and gold remained. A speck of gold was the "color," several specks were "several colors," and the number and size determined the judgment of the miner whether he should go to work or move on. I have seen ounces taken in this way in a single pan, but in the earlier days we counted a "bit" to the pan, twelve and a half cents, a fair prospect.

The average gain of the miner in those days can never be known. Though he was extraordinarily frank and confiding in the offhand conversations about the camp-fire, yet there is reason to believe that his largest receipts were sometimes not reported. My observation was that the industrious worker rarely brought to his supper less than ten dollars, often an ounce (reckoned at sixteen dollars), and sometimes six ounces, or even more. I myself took from the earth nearly one hundred and fifty ounces in seventeen successive working days. My largest clean-up was $224. One day, in less than half an hour, I took with my knife from a crevice in the rocks six and a half ounces of gold. When the river went down after it had been swollen by the first rains and had swept over the bed-rock of bars supposed to be worked out, hundreds of glittering scales were left exposed, affording pleasant picking for a day or two.

Mining is one of the most fascinating and exciting of employments. But in the earlier days, when we knew less about genuine indications, mining was, more than now, a species of gambling. The effects are yet to be seen in hundreds of men still living near their old haunts, who, in common phrase, have "lost their grip"; others live in our memories who, after repeated disappointment, sleep on the mountain sides in nameless graves. Yet these same unfortunates did their part in giving to the world thousands of millions of dollars, thus stimulating progress probably more than was ever known in any other epoch of similar length in the history of mankind.

The early miner has never been truly painted. I protest against the flippant style and eccentric rhetoric of those writers who have made him a terror, or who, seizing upon a sporadic case of extreme oddity, some drunken, brawling wretch, have given a caricature to the world as the typical miner. The so-called literature that treats of the golden era is too extravagant in this direction. In all my personal experience in mining-camps from 1849 to 1854 there was not a case of bloodshed, robbery, theft or actual violence. I doubt if a more orderly society was ever known. How could it be otherwise? The pioneers were young, ardent, uncorrupted, most of them well educated and from the best families in the East. The early miner was ambitious, energetic, and enterprising. No undertaking was too great to daunt him. The pluck and resources exhibited by him in attempting mighty projects with nothing but his courage and his brawny arms to carry them out was phenomenal. His generosity was profuse and his sympathy active, knowing no distinction of race. His sentiment that justice is sacred was never dulled. His services were at command to settle differences peaceably, or with pistol in hand to right a grievous wrong to a stranger. His capacity for self-government never has been surpassed. Of a glorious epoch, he was of a glorious race.

THE GREAT NORTHWEST IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES

BY E. V. SMALLEY

FURTHER WEST.

The old order of developing new regions in the West was reversed when the railroad era began. Formerly the country was settled first, and the towns grew up to supply the needs of the rural population. Afterwards the towns were created by speculators far in advance of the farming settlement; and by the conveniences they afforded for selling crops, and buying implements, lumber and household supplies, they attracted farmers to their vicinity. Each new frontier town is an advertisement of the surrounding country, upon the settlement of which it must depend for its existence. The towns-folk are untiring in their praises of the soil and climate, and if you believe them the next grade of human felicity to living in their raw little village is to live upon a farm in the neighborhood. Whatever happens in the way of disagreeable weather, they assure you it is good for the crops. If it snows in May or hails in June, they come up smiling, and remark blandly that it is just what the crops need. The creation of a new town on a line of railroad pushing its track out into the vacant, treeless spaces of the far West, is an interesting process to observe. A speculator, or a company of speculators, look over the ground carefully fifty or a hundred miles in advance of the temporary terminus of the railroad, and hit upon a site which they think has special advantages, and is far enough away from the last town. They make a treaty with the railroad company for a section of land, agreeing, perhaps, to share the prospective profits on the sale of lots. Then they "scrip" the adjoining sections of Government land, or take it up with desert land claims. A large amount of land scrip is afloat on the market issued in pursuance of Indian treaties, Agricultural College grants, old Military Bounty Land acts and other peculiar features of our complicated Public Land System. The speculator with his pocket stocked with scrip is able to pick out any choice sections not occupied by homestead or preëmption claimants. Having thus obtained a sufficient body of land to operate with, the founding of the new town is trumpeted in the newspapers, and in all the frontier region for hundreds of miles there is a stir of excitement about the coming city. Billings, on the Yellowstone, is a good example of a town made by this process. In the beginning it had no existence save in the brains of its inventors. The bare prairie was staked out in streets, avenues and parks, on a scale for a city of twenty thousand inhabitants. A map was engraved, and within a few weeks after the place got its name, the "Billings boom" began to be talked of as far east as St. Paul. Billings lots were advertised in every town from St. Paul to Miles City, and whole blocks were sold in Chicago and New York. The purchasers, as a rule, knew no more about the valley of the Yellowstone than about that of the Congo, and few of them could have put their finger on a spot upon a map within a hundred miles of Billings. They heard there was a boom, and were eager to take their chances for profit or loss. It was enough for them to hear the place spoken of as the future metropolis of the Yellowstone Valley. Within sixty days from the time when Billings got a local habitation and a name, lots to the value of $220,000 were sold within its limits, and before thirty days more had elapsed the purchasers had advanced the imaginary value of their holdings from one hundred to three hundred per cent.

Charles Dickens once said that the typical American would hesitate about entering heaven, unless assured that he could go further West. The men who lead the advance of the army of civilization on the frontier skirmish line do not come from the rear. They are always the scouts and pickets. The people of the six-weeks-old town do not come from the East. As a rule they are from the one-year-old and two-year-old towns a little further back. Most of the men I met in the Yellowstone country were from Eastern Dakota, or the Black Hills region, or from Western Minnesota. When asked why they left homes so recently made in a new country, their reply was invariably that they wanted to get further West.

BILLINGS AND COULSON.

We came upon Billings one sunny day in May [about 1882], dropped upon it, I might say; for after a ten miles' drive across a high and windy plateau, the immense dazzling range of the Big Snowy Mountains looming up in front, the ground fell away abruptly and the town lay at our feet in a broad, green valley. The yellow-pine houses, untouched by paint, glistened in the sunlight like gold. The valley, hemmed in by precipitous cliffs on the north, and by black, bare hills beyond the muddy river on the south, stretched away to the west to distant mountain slopes. Under the shadow of a huge sandstone butte lay the little hamlet of Coulson, now quite out of spirits because of the new town a mile further on. Old Coulson, it was called, though its age was only three years. It had made some money buying buffalo robes of the Crow Indians across the river, and selling shirting, groceries, and whisky to a few herdsmen whose cattle graze in the Musselshell Ranges. Now it must abandon its score of "shacks" and shanties or move them up to Billings. The new town, when I visited it, consisted of perhaps fifty cheap structures scattered over a square mile of bottom-land. Many people were living in little A tents or in their canvas-covered wagons, waiting for lumber to arrive with which to build houses. Sixty dollars a thousand was the price of a poor quality of green stuff brought from a mill twenty miles up the Yellowstone. All articles of food, except beef, were frightfully dear. Potatoes were eight cents a pound, flour six dollars a sack. I doubt if one in ten of the inhabitants could tell why he had come. The migrating impulse is the only way to account for the movement of merchants, mechanics, farmers, speculators, gamblers, liquor-sellers, preachers and doctors to a point nearly one hundred and fifty miles from anything that can be called a town--a point, too, in a region inhabited only by Crow Indians and a few scattered herdsmen. At the signal that a town was to be created, all these people, of diverse possessions and ambitions, moved forward and occupied the site as though they were soldiers marching at the word of command. What a wonderful self-organizing thing is society! How did the German baker from St. Paul, the milliner from Minneapolis, the Chinese laundryman from the Pacific slope, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the butcher, the beer-seller, the grocer and all the other constituent parts of a complete community happen to feel the desire, at the same time, to go with their trades and wares to a remote spot in an unknown land?