USA > California > A history of California: the American period > Part 5
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Once arrived at the sea, the driver's work was over. The hides were dumped unceremoniously on the ground and the 2 In 1845 it came to $140,000.
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A HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA
Indian squatted beside ox-cart or pack-mule until the sailors made ready his return load of goods. As for the hides, these were carried by the ship's crew on their heads, through surf and over stones, slippery with sea moss, to the long boat which served as a means of communication between the vessel and the shore. The work was arduous and severe; but as there were no docks or wharves along the coast, no other method of loading could be devised. In the eyes of the sailors, San Pedro, with its steep landing, sticky clay soil, and long stretch of kelp-covered rocks over which the hides had to be carried, was probably the worst of California ports; yet more hides were taken on here than at any other landing.
In exchange for his hides, the Californian obtained goods of foreign manufacture at a profit to the shipowner of some 300%. To accommodate the buyers, each ship trading along the coast was transformed into a sort of general store. Richard Henry Dana in his Two Years Before the Mast (a book which combines one of the best sea stories ever written with a true picture of early California life), thus describes the methods followed:
"The trade-room [of the vessel] was fitted up in the steerage, and furnished out with the lighter goods and with specimens of the rest of the cargo For a week or ten days, all was life on board. The people came off to look and buy-men, women and children; and we were continually going in the boats, carrying goods and passengers,-for they have no boats of their own. Everything must dress itself and come aboard and see the new vessel, if it were only to buy a paper of pins. The agent or his clerk managed the sales, while we were busy in the hold or in the boats.
Our cargo was an assorted one; that is, it consisted of everything under the sun. We had spirits of all kinds (sold by the cask), teas, coffees, sugars, spices, raisins, molasses, hard-ware, crockery- ware, tin-ware, cutlery, clothing of all kinds, boots and shoes from Lynn, calicoes and cotton from Lowell, crapes, silks; also, shawls, scarfs, necklaces, jewelry and combs, for the ladies; and in fact, everything that can be imagined, from Chinese fire-works to Eng- lish cart-wheels-of which we had a dozen pair with their iron rims on."
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THE WHALERS AND HIDE TRADERS
The purchases made by the Californians were paid for either in silver or in hides, which were commonly known as "California bank-notes" along the coast, and generally averaged $1.50 or $2.00 in value. It was also the usual prac- tice for ships regularly engaged in the trade to extend credit to many of their customers from one season to the next, receiving in return the promise of sufficient hides at the end of the year to cover the cost of the goods, together with exceedingly high interest charges. Rarely, if ever, did a Californian fail to repay these debts, for his code of honor did not permit of business dishonesty.
Having completed a voyage along the coast, a hide ship landed the skins at San Diego. Here they were soaked in brine, scraped, dried, beaten with flails to rid them of dust and finally stored in large warehouses to await shipment around the Horn.
The New Englander, as well as the Californian, derived very considerable advantage from the hide and tallow trade. It not only furnished much of the leather which gave Con- necticut and Massachusetts a monopoly of the early boot and shoe industry in the United States; but also provided a channel through which the surplus products of New England factories might find a steady, if somewhat restricted, out- let in foreign trade.
Yet though the trade was important both to California and to New England from an economic standpoint, its enduring significance lay rather in another quarter. From it, as from the coastal fur trade and the whale fisheries, but even in a more direct way, the maritime interests of New England learned of the resources and commercial possibili- ties of California and became interested in her ultimate destiny. Through the hide and tallow trade, more than through any other agency, New England began her expan- sion to the Pacific Coast.
CHAPTER V
JEDEDIAH SMITH, "PATHFINDER OF THE SIERRAS"
THE exploration and settlement of the trans-Alleghany west is the great epic of American history; the opening of the approaches to California is the culmination of that epic. For the American advance to California possessed a dual character. While New England ship masters were establish- ing commercial relations along the coast, western fur traders were opening overland lines of communication between the Mississippi and the Pacific, and thus preparing the way for an overwhelming tide of immigration from the frontier states into the Mexican province.
The first American to reach California by overland route was Jedediah Strong Smith, a fur trader of very considerable education and of pronounced religious life. Smith was born in 1798 in the Mohawk Valley of New York, where his parents, pioneers of no mean type themselves, had moved from New Hampshire a few years before. As a boy Smith came in touch with the fur traders of Canada and the northwest through a position as clerk on one of the freight boats of the Great Lakes. Not many years later, when about twenty years of age, he went to St. Louis, then the very center of western activities, and began his career as a fur trader and explorer.
Smith's first expeditions, in company with such men as David E. Jackson, William Ashley, Andrew Henry, and Thomas Fitzpatrick, carried him through the regions drained by the central Missouri and the Yellowstone, and even as far west as the Columbia and the Great Salt Lake. This, however, was but the apprenticeship of his career. His real work as a pathfinder began in the summer of 1826 when, at the head of a party of fifteen men, he set out to
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JEDEDIAH SMITH, "PATHFINDER OF THE SIERRAS"
explore the unknown region lying between the Great Salt Lake and the California coast.
From the geographic standpoint, the exploration of this portion of the trans-Rocky Mountain west was of the utmost importance. For American knowledge of the country was still almost as hazy and indefinite as it had been a hundred years before. Early in the century Lewis and Clark had opened a transcontinental route to the Pacific by way of the Missouri and the Columbia, and had thus prepared the way for further exploration of the northwest by the fur traders. Pike's expedition had served a similar purpose for the southwest, and already the Santa Fé trade had begun to link the Mexican settlements along the upper Rio Grande with those of the Americans in Missouri. But the region known as the Great Basin, from the Snake River to the Colorado, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierras, as well as the great inland valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, lay unexplored by Ameri- can adventurers and unknown to American geographers. It was the task of Smith and his fifteen men to do for this region what Lewis and Clark had done for the northwest, and what Pike had accomplished in Colorado and New Mexico a few years before.
As already explained, Smith was a fur trader. His associates in the business were men who represented all that was best in the profession. Their real business, in fact, was not so much the taking of furs as the extension of American influence throughout the wilderness. They were the empire builders of the west. Foremost among them was William Henry Ashley, explorer extraordinary and recognized leader of the fur hunters in the Rocky Mountains. Two others of equal ability and scarcely less reputation were David E. Jackson and William L. Sublette.
The two last mentioned trappers had rendezvoused at the Great Salt Lake in the summer of 1826. Here they were joined by Ashley and Smith, coming from St. Louis with a supply of goods for the Indian trade. At this rendezvous
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Ashley disposed of his share of the business to his three partners and it was under the direction of this newly organ- ized firm of Sublette, Jackson, and Smith that the expe- dition to California was undertaken.
The primary purpose of the undertaking was the dis- covery of a new field for the exploitation of furs; but as Smith and his associates were not men of narrow interests, the expedition was something more than a commercial enter- prise. Incidentally, the leader probably hoped to establish a dêpot on the California coast for the shipment of furs to China, thus carrying out the plan John Jacob Astor had tried unsuccessfully at the mouth of the Columbia some fourteen years before.
Smith's company left the Salt Lake rendezvous August 22, 1826. Taking a southwest course to Utah Lake, or Little Uta, as the trappers named it, the expedition followed up the Sevier River and later crossed a range of mountains to a river which Smith called the Adams "in compliment to our President." 1 Keeping down this stream for twelve days, the party arrived at the Colorado, or Seedskeeder, to give it the Indian name for the Green River, which Smith employed.
"I crossed the Seedskeeder," wrote Smith in describing his route, "and went down it four days a southeast [west?] course; I here found the country remarkably barren, rocky and mountainous; there are a good many rapids in the river, but at this place a valley opens out about five to fifteen miles in width, which on the river banks is timbered and fertile.
I found here a nation of Indians who call themselves Ammuch- abas [Mojaves]; they cultivate the soil, and raise corn, beans, pumpkins, watermelons and musk-melons in abundance, and also a little wheat and cotton. I was now nearly destitute of horses, and had learned what it was to do without food; I therefore re- mained here fifteen days and recruited my men, and I was en- abled also to exchange my horses and purchase a few more of a few runaway Indians who stole some horses of the Spaniards."
1 On the next expedition the same the Virgin after one of Smith's men.
river seems to have been renamed
JEDEDIAH SMITH, "PATHFINDER OF THE SIERRAS" 49
From these Indians Smith also secured two guides, and began the last stage of his journey to California. Of his trip across the desert, he wrote:
"I travelled a west course fifteen days over a country of com- plete barrens, generally travelling from morning until night with- out water. I crossed a Salt plain about twenty miles long and eight wide; on the surface was a crust of beautiful white salt, quite thin. Under this surface there is a layer of salt from a half to one and a half inches in depth; between this and the upper layer there is about four inches of yellowish sand."
The exact course followed by Smith on this stage of his journey is not clear. Probably it did not materially differ from the route now taken by the Santa Fé Railroad, but this can not be determined with certainty. He at length crossed the Sierra Madre range through the Cajon Pass and reached the fertile plains of California in the vicinity of the present site of San Bernardino. On November 27 the party encamped a few miles from the flourishing Mission of San Gabriel-the first Americans to make the trans- continental journey to California and the forerunners of a great overland advance.
The presence of the Americans in the province was con- trary to Mexican law; but in spite of this, and the addi- tional fact that Smith and his chief lieutenant, Harrison G. Rogers, were Protestants of the old school, the priests gave the strangers a courteous welcome. In charge of the mission at that time was Father José Bernardo Sanchéz, a man of generous spirit, for whom the Americans came to have a real affection.
"Old Father Sanchez," wrote Rogers as the party was about to leave the mission, "has been the greatest friend that I ever met with in all my travels . . . I shall ever hold him as a man of God, taking us when in distress, feeding and clothing us, and may God prosper him and all such men."
Upon the arrival of the Americans at the mission, a young cow was killed and an abundance of corn meal given the
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A HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA
half-starved trappers who at last, after three months of strenuous travel, had reached a land of plenty. A few days later Father Sanchez presented Smith with sixty-four yards of cloth out of which he and his men, by this time almost naked, made themselves shirts.
Smith and Rogers, as leaders of the company, were shown additional courtesies by the mission priests. Most of these, Rogers found to be "very jovial, friendly gentlemen," remark- ably appreciative of good liquors, and not much given to ask- ing embarrassing questions. The mission, itself, then at the height of its prosperity, made a deep impression upon the American trappers. Rogers wrote of it as follows:
"The Mansion, or Mission, consists of 4 rows of houses forming a complete square, where there is all kinds of macanicks at work; the church faces the east and the guard house the west; the N. and S. line comprises the work shops. They have large vineyards, apple and peach orchards, and some orange and some fig trees. They manufacture blankets and sundry other articles; they distill whiskey and grind their own grain, having a water mill, of a tol- erable quality; they have upwards of 1,000 persons employed, men, women, and children, Inds. of different nations. The situa- tion is very handsome, pretty streams of water running through from all quarters, some thousands of acres of rich and fertile land as level as a die in view, and a part under cultivation, surrounded on the N. with a high and lofty mou [mountain], covered with grass. Cattle-this Mission has upwards of 30,000 head of cattle, and horses, sheep, hogs, etc. in proportion-They slaughter at this place from 2 to 3,000 head of cattle at a time; the mission lives on the profits."
After remaining at San Gabriel ten days waiting to hear from the governor, to whom he had written upon his arrival at the mission, Smith set out for San Diego to make his peace with the Mexican officials in person and obtain per- mission for his men to stay in the province. The rest of the company remained at San Gabriel, during Smith's absence, under the command of Rogers. The latter equally deplored his ignorance of Spanish and the condition of his garments. These, he says, were so torn and dirty that they gave him "a
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JEDEDIAH SMITH, "PATHFINDER OF THE SIERRAS"
very grotesque appearance when seated at table amongst the dandys with their ruffles, silks, and broad clothes."
Otherwise, however, Rogers' life at the mission was all that could be desired. He had an abundance to eat and drink, spent much of his time in hunting with the mission fathers, and watched with never failing interest the varied activities around him. One day he attends a wedding. Again he superintends the making of a large bear trap " " to set in the priest's orange garden, to catch the Ind[ian]s in when they come up at night to rob his orchard." On an- other occasion he defends his Calvinistic creed against the Catholic doctrines around him, and on New Year's Day, 1827, he delivers an address to the "Reverend Father of San Gabriel Mission," setting forth in surprising detail the early missionary activities of the Christian church, and enriched by a lengthy quotation from Justin Martyr. Truly, Harrison G. Rogers, the fur trader, was a man of parts!
While Rogers was thus variously occupied, the men were becoming restless. A number of them were engaged by Father Sanchéz to cut cord wood for his coal pit; and others found temporary service with one of the hide and tallow ships taking on a cargo at San Pedro. On January 6, most of the company attended a celebration at the mission in honor of the feast of the Epiphany. Rogers thus describes what took place:
"Church held early as usual, men, women, and children attend; after church the ceremonies as on Sunday. Wine issued abundantly to both Spanyards and Inds., musick played by the Indian Band. After the issue of the morning, our men, in company with some Spanyards, went and fired a salute, and the old Padre gave them bread, wine, and meat as a treat. Some of the men got drunk, James Reed and Daniel Ferguson commenced fighting, and some of the Spanyards interfered and struck one of our men by the name of Black which came near terminating with bad consequence. So soon as I heard of the disturbance I went among them, and passified our men by telling what trouble they were bringing upon themselves in case they did not desist, and most of them being men of reason, adheared to my advice."
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A HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA
James Reed, however, a trouble maker on numerous occa- sions, whom Smith had been compelled to flog shortly after reaching San Gabriel, was too far gone to heed Rogers' admonitions. Instead, that same day, he came
"very abruptly into the priest's dining room while at dinner, and asked for ergadent [aguardiente or brandy]; the priest ordered a plate of victuals to be handed to him; he eat a few mouthfuls, and set the plate on the table, and then took up the decanter of wine, and drank without invitation, and came very near breaking the glass when he set it down; the Padre, seeing he was in a state of inebriety, refrained from saying anything."
No further incidents of such an unseemly nature occurred, however, while the party remained at the mission.
In the meanwhile Smith was having considerable diffi- culty in his dealings with Governor Echeandia at San Diego. The Mexican law very definitely forbade the pres- ence of foreigners in California without proper passports and these the governor was not willing to issue on his own responsibility. After nearly a month of negotiation, how- ever, and the presentation of eight fine beaver skins, Smith secured the necessary papers. In his efforts he was greatly aided by Captain Cunningham, an American shipmaster in command of the Courier, a hide and tallow vessel then lying at San Diego.
Echeandía's concessions, given with reluctance and sus- picion, were far from fulfilling all that Smith desired. He had requested permission to lead his party northward from San Gabriel through the settled portions of California, be- tween the Coast Range and the sea, until he reached the Russian colony at Bodega. But this Echeandía refused to permit, and would only allow the Americans to return unmolested over the route by which they had come.
Making the best of the situation, Smith returned to San Gabriel on January 10, coming from San Diego to San Pedro as a guest of Captain Cunningham on the Courier. The next few days were spent in purchasing horses from the ranches near Los Angeles, repairing saddles, and arranging
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JEDEDIAH SMITH, "PATHFINDER OF THE SIERRAS"
equipment for a renewal of the journey. Finally, on Thurs- day, January 18, the party set out. The horses, some sixty- eight in number, were only half broken, and before the cav- alcade had gone half a mile the animals began to run, strew- ing the contents of the packs along the way for a distance of eight or ten miles. Among the articles so unceremoniously lost were twelve dressed skins which Smith had received as a parting gift from Father Sanchéz.
The first night's camp was made near an Indian farm- house, four miles northeast of the mission, where the party had spent the night of November 27. From this point their course lay eastward along the edge of the Sierra Madre Mountains. Following closely what is now the Foothill Boulevard, so popular with Southern California motorists, the party reached an outlying ranch of the San Gabriel Mission near the entrance to the Cajon Pass. Camping a short distance from this ranch the trappers spent several days breaking the still unruly horses and making final prep- arations for the long journey through the wild and unknown country ahead.
In spite of Echeandia's instructions, Smith had no in- tention as yet of quitting California. The route along the coast might be closed to him by the governor's orders, but east of the mountains there was neither Mexican law nor Mexican soldier to dispute the passage of the Amer- ican trappers. Smith therefore turned northward when he reached the desert entrance of the Cajon Pass, followed the Sierra Madres to the junction of the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevadas, and entered the southern end of the great San Joaquin Valley, either by the Tejon Pass or the Teha- chapi. Travelling leisurely down the valley, which he found inhabited by large numbers of Indians, very backward in civilization, living only on acorns, roots, grass, and fish, armed only with bows and arrows, but in no way hostile or dangerous, Smith and his men came at length to one of the numerous rivers which flow into the valley from the Sierras. This was probably the Stanislaus or the Merced, but here again the record is too incomplete to fix the matter definitely.
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Smith called this stream the Wimmulche [Wimilche], after an Indian tribe which lived beside it. Here he trapped a short time, finding "a few beaver, and elk, deer, and ante- lope in abundance." He then endeavored to cross the Sierras and return to the Great Salt Lake. Nothing definite is known as to the pass through which Smith sought to lead his men on this occasion. He speaks of the attempt having been made across Mount Joseph,2 but the route can only be conjectured. Harrison C. Dale, the best authority on the expedition, identifies "Mount Joseph" with Mt. Stanislaus, and tentatively fixes Smith's course along the middle fork of the Stanislaus River to the divide. Smith's own brief account runs as follows:
"I found the snow so deep on Mount Joseph that I could not cross my horses, five of which starved to death; I was compelled therefore to return to the valley which I had left, and there, leav- ing my party, I started with two men, seven horses and two mules, which I loaded with hay for the horses and provisions for our- selves, and started on the 20th of May, and succeeded in crossing it in eight days, having lost only two horses and one mule. I found the snow on the top of this mountain from 4 to 8 feet deep, but it was so consolidated by the heat of the sun that my horses only sunk from half a foot to one foot deep."
From the eastern slope of the Sierras, Smith and his com- panions probably followed the course of Walker River to the vicinity of Walker Lake and then turned northeasterly toward the Great Salt Lake. The intervening country was of the worst possible description, barren, waterless, and without game. One by one the horses gave out and were eaten by the famishing men; the scanty water holes were frequently two days apart; the Indians they encountered were hopelessly degraded, living on grasshoppers, lizards, and roots. More dead than alive, the three men, with but one horse and a mule left out of the nine with which they started from the San Joaquin, at length reached the southwest end
2 Mt. Lassen on later maps some- times appears as Mt. St. Joseph; but Mt. Lassen is too far north by many
miles to be identified as the peak to which Smith refers.
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JEDEDIAH SMITH, "PATHFINDER OF THE SIERRAS"
of the Great Salt Lake, twenty days after leaving the Sierra Nevadas.
Smith's explorations in California did not cease with this first expedition. At the Salt Lake he met his partners, Jack- son and Sublette, and remained with them about a month. Here a new party of nineteen men was organized and Smith set out, July 13, 1827, to rejoin the hunters he had left on the Wimilche. Following his original route, he reached the Mojave villages without serious mishap; but here disaster overtook him. For three days the Indians traded with the trappers and appeared as friendly as on Smith's first visit; but on the fourth, when the company had become separated in crossing the Colorado, they fell upon the Americans, killed ten of their number and forced the remainder to abandon most of their belongings and flee by forced marches across the desert. The stricken party reached the San Ga- briel Mission after nine days and a half of desperate hardship. Smith, obtaining such supplies as he could at the mission and leaving two of his men behind, hurried forward into the San Joaquin Valley and rejoined the company he had left on the Wimilche the preceding May.3
The condition of the united party was far from satisfac- tory. Their food was about exhausted; the length of the journey and the difficulties before them made a return to the Salt Lake impossible without fresh supplies; and as they had violated the governor's orders by remaining in the pro- vince, they were likely to suffer arrest if application for aid should be made to the Californians.
Since there was no other recourse, however, Smith took his Indian guides and set out for the Mission of San José, which lay west of the Coast Range. This he reached in three days, probably crossing the mountains by way of Pacheco Pass. Father Duran, at the head of this mission, was a man of very different kidney from the good Sanchéz of San Gabriel. He had already accused the trappers of enticing away certain neophytes; and when Smith came
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