By John S. Hittell

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."