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The Diary of Johann Augustus Sutter
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Historical SummaryON The AFTERNOON of January 24, 1848, nine days before the formal transfer of California from Mexico to the United States, James W. Marshall, employed by Johann Augustus Sutter to build a sawmill on the South Fork of the American River about forty miles from Sacramento, discovered some shining yellow particles in the tailrace of the mill. Four days later he took them to Sorter. Behind locked doors they tested the specimens and found them to be virgin gold. Despite an attempt at secrecy the story was soon out, spread from ranch to ranch by vaqueros (cowboys). The Mormon elder, Samuel Brannan of San Francisco, took a flying trip for his paper, the California Star, and on his return from the mines, ran through the streets holding aloft a bottle filled with gold and shouting: "Gold! Gold! Gold! From the American River!" Frenzy seized the town. San Francisco and its environs were depopulated almost instantly. Waiter Colton, a naval pastor, describing the terrific excitement caused by the news at Monterey, wrote: "The blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the baker his loaf, and the tapster his bottle. All were off for the mines,—some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went in a litter." They came from the ends of the earth—around the Horn, across the isthmus of Panama, and overland, the most hazardous route of all. AS the forty-niners journeyed to California they sang a parody of O Susanna, which went: I’ll scrape the mountains very clear,I’ll drain the rivers dry.A pocket full of gold bringhome So brothers, don’t you cry. The greatest bonanza the world has ever known brought ruin to the co-discoverer, Sutter, a German of Swiss parentage who had come to America in 1834. A drunken cock-of-the-walk with a weakness for squaws, Sutter, in his fascinating Diary quoted below, describes how the Gold Rush devoured his cattle and trampled on his rights which derived from a Mexican grant and a purchase from the Russian American Company, whose title to the region Mexico had disputed. Riches came quickly to thousands; poverty to Sutter, who vainly petitioned the government for reimbursement. In his farewell message to Congress, President Polk announced in December, 1848, both the acquisition of California and the discovery Of gold, and appended a report to the War Department, which, in the President’s own words, was made "on the spot." The reporter was Colonel R. B. Mason, military commandant of California, who supplemented his eyewitness story relating that miners obtained inside a week as much as $10,000 in gold with specimens of the yellow metal. An excerpt from Mason’s story follows the account of the discovery from Sutter’s Diary. Other gold rushes followed—at Pike’s Peak, in the Black Hills, and in the Yukon, but none resulted in as permanent and substantial a colonization and settlement of an area as did the original Gold Rush. Something more precious than gold had been discovered—California, which real-estate boosters soon depicted in superlatives. As one promotional organization modestly put it, . . . in this grand country we have the tallest mountains, the biggest trees, the crookedest railroads, the dryest rivers, the loveliest flowers, the smoothest ocean, the finest fruits, the mildest lives, the softest breezes, the purest air, the heaviest pumpkins, the best schools, the most numerous stars, the most bashful real estate agents, the brightest skies, and the most genial sunshine to be found anywhere else in North America.
Key QuoteA drunken cock-of-the-walk describes how the discovery ruins the discoverer: "For me it turned out a folly."
D. S. Watson
1932
Grabhorn Press, San Francisco, California
Gold in Them Hills
[1848]
II
Headquarters, 10th Military Dept.
Monterey, Calif., August 17, 1848.
At the time of my visit, but little over three months after its discovery, it was estimated that upward of 4,000 people were employed. . . . I could not have credited these reports had I not seen, in the abundance of the precious metal, evidence of their truth.
Mr. Neligh, an agent of Commodore Stockton, had been at work about three weeks in the neighborhood, and showed me in bags and bottle over $2,000 worth of gold. I might tell of hundreds of similar instances; but, to illustrate how plentiful the gold was in the pockets of common laborers, I will mention a simple occurrence which took place in
my presence when I was in Weber’s store. This store was nothing but an arbor of bushes, under which he had exposed for sale goods and groceries suited to his customers. A man came in, picked up a box of Seidlitz powders, and asked its price. Capt. Weber told him it was not for sale. The man offered an ounce of gold, but Capt. Weber told him it only cost fifty cents, and he did not wish to sell it. The man then offered an ounce and a half, when Capt. Weber had to take it. The prices of all things are high, and yet Indians, who before hardly knew what a breech cloth was, can now afford to buy the most gaudy dresses.
The discovery of these vast deposit[e]s of gold has entirely changed the character of Upper California. Its people, before engaged in cultivating their small patches of ground, and guarding their herds of cattle and horses, have all gone to the mines, or are on their way thither. Laborers of every trade have left their work benches, and tradesmen their shops. Sailors desert their ships as fast as they arrive on the coast, and several vessels have gone to sea with hardly enough hands to spread sail.
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Chicago: R. B. Mason, "Gold in Them Hills—II," The Diary of Johann Augustus Sutter, ed. D. S. Watson in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1951), Original Sources, accessed April 20, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=F31NJ1VWHJLPIPD.
MLA: Mason, R. B. "Gold in Them Hills—II." The Diary of Johann Augustus Sutter, edited by D. S. Watson, in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, edited by Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris, Harrisburg, Pa., Stackpole Co., 1951, Original Sources. 20 Apr. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=F31NJ1VWHJLPIPD.
Harvard: Mason, RB, 'Gold in Them Hills—II' in The Diary of Johann Augustus Sutter, ed. . cited in 1951, History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. , Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, Pa.. Original Sources, retrieved 20 April 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=F31NJ1VWHJLPIPD.
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