History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 8

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362

USA > California > Fresno County > History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I > Part 8

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Mason's letter was published with President Polk's congressional mes- sage of December, 1848, and with the exhibited gold and cinnabar specimens from New Almaden, sent on by special messenger, the news was spread in official and authoritative form. The gold assayed over eighteen dollars an ounce.

In a letter to Commodore Jones at Mazatlan, Mason wrote that, treaty or no treaty, the gold discovery had decided California's destiny, and he raised his estimate that the yield would pay the war cost 500 times over. The war appropriation was $10,000,000, with $15,000,000 as the consideration for the land cession and $3,000,000 assumed as a damage debt due Americans, a total of $28,000,000, saying nothing of other expenses of the war. 100 times $28.000,000 equals $2.800,000,000. 500 times $28,000,000 equals $14,000,000,000. Mason was a little off on his figures: so was Larkin.

Many foreigners were at work at the mines, so many that certain locali- ties were named after nationalities. The collection of the foreign miner's tax, afterward repealed, caused not a little friction, but the reported race hostility against the foreigner was exaggerated. Until the government should act in the matter, which it never did, General Riley upon his later visit said he would not disturb anyone in mining, nor would he countenance one class attempting to monopolize the workings of a mine or drive out any other.

The earliest important notice of the discovery was published in the Baltimore Sun of September 20, 1848, by which time private letters were arriving telling of the wonderful story. Soon all the newspapers were full of the subject and consignments of gold confirmed the tidings. Everybody talked California. The adventurous prepared for a general grand rush by land and sea, by latter route long before the great overland tide of '49 began. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company organized in April, 1848, and its first

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

steamer on the semi-monthly route between Panama and Astoria via San Francisco was the California, which arrived at San Francisco on February 18, 1849.

The early influx in the emigration flood to the gold placers was of Mexicans from Sonora, then Chilians and some Chinese. These assembled principally in the Southern Mines, which included the San Joaquin and its tributaries at the lower extremity of the Mother Lode originating in Mari- posa County. Colonel Mason so much feared wholesale desertion of the garrisons that in contemplation of the thought that the laborer earned in the mines in a day more than double a soldier's pay and allowances for a month he added in a report : "I really think some extraordinary mark of favor should be given to those soldiers who remain faithful to their flag through this tempting crisis."

During the latter nine months in 1849, 233 vessels arrived in San Fran- cisco from United States ports, besides 316 from foreign ports-a total of 549, averaging two daily and many unseaworthy, veritable "floating coffins." The overland caravans started in spring began to arrive in a continuous stream almost across the continent, and crossing the Sierras landed for a few years their human freight in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys to scatter over the country. A great and unparalleled spectacle was this immigration of 1849.

NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN MINES

In July, 1849, General Riley visited the mining regions by way of San Juan Bautista, crossing the San Joaquin near the mouth of the Merced and examining the principal camps on the Tuolumne and Stanislaus and their tributaries, then those on the Calaveras, Mokelumne, Cosumnes and American, returning to Monterey by way of Stockton. The mining country had by this time been divided in two sections, commonly known as the Northern and the Southern Mines. Sutter's Fort, or Sacramento, was the interior point from which the Northern Mines were reached, and Stockton, the new settlement on Mormon Slough of the San Joaquin, for the Southern, being also the distributing points for the districts and both accessible from San Francisco by water. The traffic was enormous. The rivers, naturally clear streams, had already commenced to become turbid, but they had deep, well-defined channels and navigation for vessels of considerable draught was as yet easy.

Many of the mining camps in the Sierra foothills became little towns, some to be abandoned with the impoverishment of the placers, others to advance from tent aggregations to villages of rough boarded houses, and yet others to permanency as towns. Not a few as in the San Joaquin Valley that had arisen to the dignity of county seats lost in time even that distinction with the advent of the railroad and the removal of the seat and were aban- doned as in Merced, Fresno, Tulare and Kern Counties.

In 1856 Dr. Trask, the state geologist, reported that mining was suc- cessfully prosecuted in twenty-three counties. The aggregate area in which gold was known to exist was estimated at from 11,000 to 15,000 square miles, adding that "when this is compared with the area actually occupied (prob- ably not exceeding 400 square miles and one-fourth of these old placers) the latter will be found to comprise a mere mite of our available resources. With our present population of the mining districts and the broad expanse of territory over which they are spread, they appear like mere specks dotting the surface of an inland sea, so indistinct as scarcely to be appreciable on the broad expanse by which they are surrounded." Trask described the gold region as extending from the Oregon line north to the Kern River south-460 miles long by from ten to 150 in width, and he classified the region into three distinct ranges-the Upper or Eastern, the Middle Placers

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

and the Valley mines. It was in the second range that the greater proportion of the mining community was located, more particularly in the central and eastern portions. The third range comprised the districts among the foot- hills extending westward into the eastern edge of the plains of the San Joaquin and Sacramento three to five miles and having a linear distance of about 250 miles.

The valley mines were on what constituted the high terraces of the plains composed mostly of alluvial drift. They were the most shallow of any of the discovered ranges and the most easily worked, though nearly coextensive with the middle or upper districts, and falling little short of the latter. In a review of the ranges, Trask said incidentally : "It will be seen that we have still enough and to spare for all who are present, and for all that may hereafter arrive, for at least the next half century. There need be but little fear of their failing to yield their annual crop of gold, as long, perhaps, as our valleys will yield their crops of grain."

The placers in the Fresno region were almost at the extremity of the Southern Mines. The accepted dividing line between the Northern and Southern Mines was the ridge on the north side of the north fork of the Mokelumine. All the rivers of the Southern Mines were tributaries of the San Joaquin. In extent of territory, population and yield, the Southern were almost the equal of the Northern mines in the early period, but they "petered out" more rapidly, and in a few years were comparatively ex- hausted, except for quartz outcroppings, and were favored by the Chinese and Indians more.

The rivers of this southern mining region were the Mokelumne, Cala- veras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced and the San Joaquin (in the foothills and mountains), with their forks. Spots in favorable locations along the creeks as far south as the San Joaquin, where it comes down in a westerly direction from the Sierras, repaid the miners with good returns, but neither the placers nor the quartz veins were comparable with those further north. The fact is the mines in this locality gave out at the San Joaquin, as they did in the north where the Pitt River, tributary of the Sacramento, came from the same mountain chain, and yet according to general tradition Miller- ton on the San Joaquin in its palmy days of 1853 of the mining period was as lively a miner's village with as many saloons and as much drinking, as much gambling and as much roistering as any, isolated as it was in a pocket of the foothills out of the line of travel.

The gathered gold in gravels and sands was not of uniform value, size or shape. The variance was so great that an expert could readily distinguish them. The poorest usually came from the Kern River, much mixed with silver. It improved in Fresno County, and even here the gold varied much. It was better in Mariposa, and had a high standard in Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Calaveras. The main original deposits were in quartz or limestone veins on the western slope of the Sierras at elevations of 1,000 to 4,000 or 5,000 feet above sea level, and the chief of these was the Mother Lode, traceable at or near the surface, from Mariposa to Amador County with frequent branch veins. The Merced, Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Mokelumne Rivers, with some of their tributaries, cut the lode at points where it branched, eroding the quartz veins and depositing the gold down stream far or near.

REMEMBERED EARLIEST CAMPS

Among the best remembered earliest mining camps in the northeastern Fresno County region were Coarse Gold Gulch, discovered in the summer of 1850, Texas Flat, Grub Gulch, Hildreth, Fine Gold Gulch, Temperance Flat, Rootville the immediate predecessor of Millerton on the San Joaquin and one mile below the fort, "Soldier Bar" and "Cassady's Bar" on the bend of the river above the fort. The channel of the river with its small tribu-

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

taries from the bridge at Hamptonville, below Millerton, was worked for forty miles up into the mountains. The Kings, which contributes to the wealth of the county as the provider of the water for irrigation and has its rise as high in the Sierras as the San Joaquin, has never witnessed any mining operations, though some placer mining was once upon a time con- ducted at or near what is now known as Piedra where the magnesite mine in an entire mountain is located. Quartz locations on its banks have been made many times, though no notable mine has been developed.

It is conceded that during the early mining period, as well as in subse- quent years and as late as the 70's and up to the 80's the gold placers and the surface outcroppings were well worked over and exhausted. No portion of the county but has been prospected by the grub-stake miner. Discoveries are being made to this day and quartz mine locations are frequent occur- rences. Even the old mining district boundary lines are adhered to as a reminder of the past. These locations prove to be little more than chance discoveries of pockets or vein outcroppings, raising great expectations with no realization save in a few exceptions. No systematic development of the mineral deposits has followed for self evident reasons in the too great risk of investment, cost of or lack of transportation and remoteness of the locations.

A marked map of the county would show it peppered in spots as remote and inaccessible as the upper precipitous gulches of the Kings River forks with mining locations and punctured with prospects holes and developing tunnel openings with their dumps. Late in the 70's there was sporadic effort at a development of quartz mines, but no rich or lasting ones resulted from the labor and money investments. Even the picturesque and extrava- gant names of the most notable of these have passed from memory. On the Madera side of the river in the drift gold gulches districts of earliest days several mills were erected, but the life of the enterprises was evanescent. In the end they were all money losers, encouraging though the first prospects. The names of them if recalled are reminders of wasted effort and misspent money. Not all were absolute failures, though all were abandoned and are only memories now. The number of them spells legion.

In Grub Gulch district was the Josephine, owned by an English syndi- cate, fourteen miles northeast from Raymond, located in 1880; also Les Mines d'Or de Quartz Mountain, a Belgian corporation that sank, without any returns, a fortune of the stockholders in erecting and locating a costly plant that has been idle for many years in charge of a watchman and given over to the bats and owls. The Raymond quarries have furnished granite for the state buildings at Sacramento, for miles upon miles of street curbing in San Francisco and after a period of comparative inactivity were drawn heavily upon for the rebuilding of the San Francisco public and other build- ings after the great disaster, and the later Panama Exposition. The quarries at Academy in this county have and are furnishing granite rock for orna- mental architecture and grave stones and monuments. In the inaccessible Minarets section, north of the San Joaquin there are said to be on the south- ern slope inexhaustible iron deposits in practically a mountain of almost pure metal, one of the known largest and richest iron ore deposits in the world.

The Kniepper copper mine, in the Big Dry Creek district, was later developed as the Fresno, and a first successful development of a copper ledge was that of the Ne Plus Ultra, on the Daulton ranch on the Madera side and it actually for a time sent mats to Swansea, Eng., for refining. It paid for a time but in the end petered out and another costly experiment was charged up to experience and corresponding loss. It was never resus- citated, evidence, however promising its fair prospects, that the jig was up. The Copper King and the Fresno copper mines near Clovis swallowed up small fortunes in exploitation and extravagant management.

The Copper King, originally the Heiskell mine, cost the British share- 3

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

holders $400,000 in the exploitation. Under the spectacular regime of Manager Daley, an F. F. V., there was a move to erect smelter works, but neighboring fruit growers blocked it by injunction. Expensive tractors were operated to convey ore to the railroad station, and were abandoned after arousing the opposition of the county supervisors because of the damage in cutting up the roads. Luxurious quarters were fitted up for the manager, provided with electric lights, porcelain baths and other costly appurtenances. The story is also authenticated that at the Palace Hotel grill in San Fran- cisco the manager would order three canvas-back ducks, and enriching the third with the sanguinary juices of two of them as extracted in the grilling, feast solely on the breast meat of that costly third bird, with a five-dollar bottle of champagne as accompanying beverage. The high priced machinery and tractors were "after the burst up" sold for old junk, and years later a nice profit was made by speculators, who bought up the ore on the neglected dump-pile when copper jumped up to twenty-six cents a pound with the demands on account of the war in Europe. The Copper King property has been taken over by a Texas corporation, organized in 1917, which having transferred its interest to California incorporators, the latter will operate it under a lease and royalty arrangement with option to buy after a given time for a stipulated price. It resumed operations in January, 1918, after long years of inactivity.

As late as 1865 gold dust was the medium of circulation in Fresno, rather than coin, as the Civil War had created a scarcity in circulated metal- lic coin and paper money being a curiosity and practically unknown in California even for many years thereafter.

Property values were estimated in ounces of pure gold rather than in dollars and cents. Gold dust was acceptable for taxes by special authority of the supervisors, and in business according to valuations as per this publication on March 8, 1865, in the Millerton Times:

NOTICE

On and after the 1st of March, 1865, we, the undersigned, pledge ourselves to receive and pay out GOLD DUST at the following rates only :

San Joaquin River or Bar dust, where it is not mixed with other dust, at $15.50 per ounce.

Fine Gold Gulch, Cottonwood, Long Gulch, and all taken out in small gulches between the San Joaquin and Fresno Rivers (except Coarse Gold Gulch) at $14 per ounce.

Coarse Gold Gulch dust at $16.50.

Big Dry Creek at $16.50.

Temperance Flat dust, and dust taken out at the head of Little Dry Creek, at $14. Sycamore Creek dust, free from quicksilver and not mixed with other dust, at $17.50. Fresno River dust, taken out below Mckeown's store at $15.50.

The above rates are as near as we can come at the value of the various kinds of dust in gold coin, and after this date, we do not intend to receive or pay out anything that is not equal in value to United States gold or silver coin.

(Signed) : Geo. Grierson & Co., J. R. Jones, Lewis Leach, James Urquhart, Ira McCray, Wm. Faymonville, Wm. Fielding, S. W. Henry, Robert Abbott, C. F. Walker, T. A. Long, Jno. White, Thos. Simpson, W. Krug, Geo. S. Palmer, Clark Hoxie, S. J. Garrison, T. C. Stallo, W. S. Wyatt, S. Gaster, J. Linnebacker, Geo. McClelland, J. R. Barkley, Henry Henricie, Chas. A. Hart, Tong Sing, Hop Wo, Daniel Brannan, H. W. Clark, D. H. Miller, C. P. Converse, L. M. Mathews, C. G. Sayle, Ira Stroud.

There were 138 quartz mills in operation in the state in 1856-eighty-six propelled by water, forty-eight by steam and four by horse power, moving 1,521 stamps. The cost of the machinery was $1,763,000.

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

CHAPTER IX

PRACTICAL DISAPPEARANCE OF THE INDIAN. HE WAS IN THE LOWEST

SCALE AS A HUMAN BEING. CHARACTERISTICS OF VALLEY TRIBES. GENTLE AND FRIENDLY IN DISPOSITION. POLYGAMY WAS NOT UNCOMMON. AT STARVATION POINT FOLLOWING RESERVATION LIBERATION AFTER THE 1850-51 UPRISING. SIX- TEEN TRIBES SIGNED THE TREATY OF PEACE OF 1851 IN FRESNO.

Kit Carson, the scout, said that in 1829 the valleys of California were alive with Indians. On again visiting the territory in 1839, they had measur- ably disappeared. In 1851. James D. Savage, of whom more anon, gave the number of Indians on the coast as 83,000, an inflated figure, as were all the census estimates on Indians.

In October, 1856, the number of Indians on the reservations was reported to be :

Klamath, 2,500; Nome Lacke, 2,000; Mendocino, 500; Nome Cult, 3,000; Fresno and Kings River, 1,300; Tejon, 700: total 10,000.

Today the redman has practically disappeared from the haunts where he was once most numerous. It is a repetition of the old story with this doomed, unfortunate race. The passing of the Indian was hastened on by the gold diggers and the first settlers. He was an inoffensive being, but he was in the way of the white man, and the latter did not seek far or long for cause or reason to put him out of the way.

The California Indian was a nomad, moving with the seasons in the search for food, subsisting on acorns, seeds, berries and nuts, roots, fungi and herbs, fish, fowl and game-in fact nothing was overlooked as a diet. Grass- hoppers, worms and the larvae of ants and insects were delicacies, and mus- tang horse flesh a dainty. Along the coast, sea-fish and mollusks were im- portant dietary additions, and a dead, stranded whale was a prize to warrant general feasting. They lived in the most primitive habitations, dressed in skins, or woven bark or grass fibre, and used stone implements. The women did all the laborious work and wove beautiful baskets.

While the tribal individuals bore a general resemblance, there was a remarkable diversity in language. Their racial origin is an interesting prob- lem. Living in a pleasant clime, with the food supply abundant in ordinary years and demanding no great exertion to procure-and then by the slavish squaws-the Indian was an indolent, shiftless creature, and there is a general consensus that in California he represented the lowest scale of human develop- ment. He did not take kindly to the labor of the civilization that the padres enforced, wherefore the frequent uprisings. With the confinement that they were subjected to in the close mission buildings, herded like so many cattle, and in the general demoralizing association with the whites, their decimation was rapid enough.

At the close of 1802, the Indian population at the eighteen missions is placed at 7,945 males and 7,617 females. In 1831 it was placed at 18,683, and in 1845 the estimate was that, while the white population had increased to about 8,000, the domesticated Indians, who twelve years before numbered close to 30,000, scarcely represented one-third of that number. There are no statistics of the wild Indians-gentiles as the Spaniards called them. Guesses ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. Yet another classification was made. All save Indians were gente de razon-rational people-in contradistinction to the natives, who were considered only as beasts-unable to reason.

The secularization of the missions with the return of the neophytes to

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

savagery and wretchedness was their perdition. It also marked the decline of ecclesiastical power and influence in California. But no material loss was suffered by the Indians. They were no worse off than under the mission sys- tem, which held them as slaves, abject and groveling. The missions them- selves and the missionaries were the relic of a medieval age, and long had outlived their usefulness.

In 1856, when Fresno was organized as a county there were six reserva- tions in the state under the superintendency of T. J. Henley. The Fresno and Kings River farms were, in this county, on the streams so named. They were established in 1854 and covered about 2,000 acres in extent, 1,000 under cultivation to wheat, barley and vegetables. The Indians gathered on the two farms numbered 1,300. M. B. Lewis was sub-agent of the Fresno reser- vation, with E. P. Hart as foreman, appointed in July, 1856, at $1,500 and $1,200 salaries, with J. B. Folsom as chief hunter. William J. Campbell was sub-agent at the other farm with one "Judge" John G. Marvin as quarter- master furnishing all the supplies, Charles A. Hart his wagonmaster and D. J. Johnson an employe.

The number within the state jurisdiction was estimated at 61,600, of which 16,000 were on the reservations in March, 1857. Cost of maintenance in the state for 1855 was $236,000 and for 1856 $358,000. The idea of making treaties with them or "recognizing in any way the rights they claim to the soil" was a policy "rejected entirely" by the department, and according to Henley his wards were everywhere highly pleased with the policy proposed, "except in locations where malicious or interested persons have by false representations prejudiced them against it."

Henley was severe against this class, asserting that it had been "the cause of most of the Indian difficulties which had up to then occurred in the state," and that in "almost all cases where the Indians have been guilty of aggressions it has been to avenge some outrage committed upon them by the class of persons in question."

The late Galen Clark, who in 1854 mined in Mariposa, assisted in govern- ment surveying of west side San Joaquin Valley land and of canals for mining in the celebrated Mariposa Grant, who first visited the Yosemite in 1855 and in 1857 on a hunting trip discovered the Mariposa grove of big trees, for twenty-four years was the state guardian of the Yosemite Valley, and lies buried near Yosemite Falls, where, with his own hands, he dug his grave and quarried his own tombstone, came, by reason of his long associa- tions, to know much of the traditions and customs of the Indians of Yosemite and of the tribes that once peopled this valley.

According to this authority, the tribes in the region of the Yosemite were affiliated by blood or intermarriage relationship. Before the coming of the whites, they had defined tribal hunting limits, though the higher Sierras were common ground. There was reciprocal barter between them, as on the west with the Paiutes on the east side of the range, in salt blocks from Mono Lake, and with the Mission Indians on the coast, in hunting knives and shells for ornament or money, beads, blankets and the like. They had an efficient relay conrier system for 100 miles for the transmission of news, and a signal code with fire by night and smoke by day. Their winter conical huts, holding a family of six with all property, canines included, and with a fire in the center, were covered with cedar bark and had entrance on the south side. In summer brush arbors were occupied, the winter huts used for storage.

Their clothing before the reservation period was scant. Young children went naked. Males wore a skin breech-clout or short skirt; females, a deer skin skirt from waist to knees, at times fringed or fancily decorated. Both sexes wore deer or elk skin moccasins.

Clark said of the Sierra tribes that "They are naturally of a gentle and friendly disposition, but their experience with the white man has made them distant and uncommunicative to strangers." And "as a rule also they are

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 8

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1362

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362