USA > California > San Mateo County > History of San Mateo County, California, including its geography, topography, geology, climatography, and description, together with an historical sketch of California; a record of the Mexican grants; the early history and settlement, compiled from the most authentic sources; some of the names of Spanish and American pioneers; legislative history; a record of its cities and towns; biographical sketches of representative men; etc., etc > Part 6
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With the year 1846 more emigrants mounted the Sierras, and descended into the California valleys, some to remain; but there were those who never arrived, as the following interesting relation of the sufferings of the ill-fated Donner party will exemplify :
Tuthills' History of California tells us: "Of the overland emigration to California, in 1846, about eighty wagons took a new route, from fort Bridger, around the south end of Great Salt Lake. The pioneers of the party arrived in good season over the mountains; but Mr. Reed's and Mr. Donner's com- panies opened a new route through the desert, lost a month's time by their explorations, and reached the foot of the Truckee pass, in the Sierra Nevada, on the 31st of October, instead of the 1st, as they had intended. The snow began to fall on the mountains two or three weeks earlier than usual that year, and was already piled up in the Pass that they could not proceed. They attempted it repeatedly, but were as often forced to return. One party built their cabins near the Truckee Lake, killed their cattle, and went into winter quarters. The other (Donner's) party, still believed that they could thread the pass, and so failed to build their cabins before more snow came and buried their cattle alive. Of course these were soon utterly destitute of food, for they could not tell where the cattle were buried, and there was no hope of game on a desert so piled with snow that nothing without wings could move. The number of those who were thus storm-stayed, at the very threshold of the land whose winters are one long spring, was eighty, of whom thirty were females, and several children. The Mr. Donner who had charge of one com- pany, was an Illinoisian, sixty years of age, a man of high respectability and abundant means. His wife was a woman of education and refinement, and much younger than he.
During November it snowed thirteen days; during December and January, eight days in each. Much of the time the tops of the cabins were below the snow level.
It was six weeks after the halt was made that a party of fifteen, including five women and two Indians who acted as guides, set out on snow-shoes to cross the mountains, and give notice to the people of the California settlements of the condition of their friends. At first the snow was so light and feathery that even in snow-shoes they sank nearly a foot at every step. On the
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second day they crossed the 'divide,' finding the snow at the summit twelve feet deep. Pushing forward with the courage of despair, they made from four to eight miles a day.
Within a week they got entirely out of provisions; and three of them, succumbing to cold, weariness, and starvation, had died. Then a heavy snow-storm came on, which compelled them to lie still. buried between their blankets under the snow, for thirty-six hours. By the evening of the tenth day three more had died, and the living had been four days without food. The horrid alternative was accepted-they took the flesh from the bones of their dead, remained in camp two days to dry it, and then pushed on.
On New Years, the sixteenth day since leaving Truckee Lake, they were toiling up a steep mountain. Their feet were frozen. Every step was marked with blood. On the second of January, their food again gave out. On the third, they had nothing to eat but the strings of their snow-shoes. On the fourth, the Indians eloped, justly suspicious that they might be sacrificed for food. On the fifth, they shot a deer, and that day one of their number died. Soon after three others died, and every death now eked out the existence of the survivors. On the seventeenth, all gave out, and concluded their wander- ings useless, except one. He, guided by two stray friendly Indians, dragged himself on till he reached a settlement on Bear river. By midnight the settlers had found and were treating with all Christian kindness what remained of the little company that. after more than a month of the most terrible sufferings, had that morning halted to die.
The story that there were emigrants perishing on the other side of the snowy barrier ran swiftly down the Sacramento valley to New Helvetia, and Captain Sutter, at his own expense, fitted out an expedition of men and of mules laden with provisions, to cross the mountains and relieve them. It ran · on to San Francisco, and the people, rallying in public meeting, raised fifteen hundred dollars, and with it fitted out another expedition. The naval com- mandant of the port fitted out still others.
The first of the relief parties reached Truckee lake on the nineteenth of February. Ten of the people in the nearest camp were dead. For four wseks those who were still alive had fed only on bullocks' hides. At Donner's camp they had but one hide remaining. The visitors left a small supply of provisions with the twenty-nine whom they could not take with them, and started back with the remainder. Four of the children they carried on their backs.
Another of the relief pirties reached Truckee lake on the first of March. They immediately started back with seventeen of the sufferers; but, a heavy snow storm overtaking them, they left all, except three of the children, on the road. Another party went after those who were left on the way; found three of them dead, and the rest sustaining life by feeding on the flesh of the dead.
The last relief party reached Donner's camp late in April, when the snows
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had melted so much that the earth appeared in spots. The main cabin was empty, but some miles distant they found the last survivor of all lying on the cabin floor smoking his pipe. He was ferocious in aspect, savage and repulsive in manner. His camp-kettle was over the fire and in it his meal of human flesh preparing. The stripped bones of his fellow-sufferers lay around him. He refused to return with the party, and only consented when he saw there was no escape.
Mrs. Donner was the last to die. Her husband's body, carefully laid out and wrapped in a sheet, was found at his tent. Circumstances led to the suspicion that the survivor had killed Mrs. Donner for her flesh and her money, and when he was threatened with hanging, and the rope tightened around his neck, he produced over five hundred dollars in gold, which, prob- ably, he had appropriated from her store."
In relation to this dreary story of suffering, this portion of our history will be concluded by the narration of the prophetic dream of George Yount, attended, as it was, with such marvelous results.
At this time (the winter of 1846), while residing in Napa county, of which he was the pioneer settler, he dreamt that a party of emigrants were snow- bound in the Sierra Nevadas, high up in the mountains, where they were suffering the most distressing privations from cold and want of food. The locality where his dream had placed these unhappy mortals, he had never visited, yet so clear was his vision that he described the sheet of water sur- rounded by lofty peaks, deep-covered with snow, while on every hand tow- ering pine trees reared their heads far above the limitless waste. In his sleep he saw the hungry human beings ravenously tear the flesh from the bones of their fellow-creatures, slain to satisfy their craving appetites, in the midst of a gloomy desolation. He dreamed his dream on three successive nights, after which he related it to others, among whom were a few who had been on hunting expeditions in the Sierras. These wished for a precise description of the scene foreshadowed to him. They recognized the Truckee, now the Donner lake. On the strength of this recognition Mr. Yount fitted out a search expedition, and, with these men as guides, went to the place indicated, and, prodigious to relate, was one of the successful relieving parties to reach the ill-fated Donner party.
Who does not think of 1848 with feelings almost akin to inspiration?
The year 1848 is one wherein reached the nearest attainment of the discov- ery of the Philosopher's stone, which it has been the lot of Christendom to witness: On January 19th gold was discovered at Coloma, on the American River, and the most unbelieving and coldblooded were, by the middle of spring, irretrievably bound in its fascinating meshes. The wonder is that the discovery was not made earlier. Emigrants, settlers, hunters, practical miners, scientific exploring parties had camped on, settled in, hunted through, dug in and ransacked the region, yet never found it; the discovery was
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entirely accidental. Franklin Tuthill, in his History of California, tells the story in these words: "Captain Sutter had contracted with James W. Mar- shall, in September, 1847, for the construction of a sawmill, in Coloma. In the course of the winter a dam and race were made, but, when the water was let on, the tail-race was too narrow. To widen and deepen it, Marshall let in a strong current of water directly to the race, which bore a large body of mud and gravel to the foot.
On the 19th of January, 1848, Marshall observed some glittering particles in the race, which he was curious enough to examine. He called five car- penters on the mill to see them; but though they talked over the possibility of its being gold, the vision did not inflame them. Peter L. Weimar claims that he was with Marshall when the first piece of " yellow stuff" was picked up. It was a pebble, weighing six pennyweights and eleven grains. Mar- shall gave it to Mrs. Wiemar, and asked her to boil it in saleratus water and see what came of it. As she was making soap at the time, she pitched it into the soap kettle. About twenty-four hours afterwards it was fished out and found all the brighter for its boiling.
Marshall, two or three weeks later, took the specimens below, and gave them to Sutter to have them tested. Before Sutter had quite satisfied him- self as to their nature, he went up to the mill, and, with Marshall, made a treaty with the Indians, buying of them their titles to the region round about, for a certain amount of goods. There was an effort made to keep the secret inside the little circle that knew it, but it soon leaked out. They had many mis- givings and much discussion whether they were not making themselves ridicu- lous; yet by common consent all began to hunt, though with no great spirit, for the "yellow stuff" that might prove such a prize.
In February, one of the party went to Yerba Buena, taking some of the dust with him. Fortunately he stumbled upon Isaac Humphrey, an old Georgian gold-miner, who at the first look at the specimens, said they were gold, and that the diggings must be rich. Humphrey tried to induce son e of his friends to go up with him to the mill, but they thought it a cra; y expedition, and left him to go alone. He reached there on the 7th of March. A few were hunting for gold, but rather lazily, and the work on the mill went on as usual. Next day he began "prospecting," and soon satisfied himself that he had struck a rich placer. He made a rocker, and then commenced work in earnest.
A few days later, a Frenchman, Baptiste. formerly a miner in Mexico, left the lumber he was sawing for Sutter at Weber's, ten miles east of Coloma, and came to the mill. He agreed with Humphrey that the region was rich. and, like him, took to the pan and the rocker. These two men were the com- petent practical teachers of the crowd that flocked in to see how they did it. The lesson was easy, the process simple. An hour's observation fitted the least experienced for working to advantage."
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Slowly and surely, however, did these discoveries creep into the minds of those at home and abroad; the whole civilized world was set agog with the startling news from the shores of the Pacific. Young and old were seized with the California fever; high and low, rich and poor were infected by it; the prospect was altogether too gorgeous to contemplate. Why, they could actually pick up a fortune for the seeking it! Positive affluence was within the grasp of the weakest; the very coast was shining with the bright metal, which could be obtained by picking it out with a knife.
Says Tuthill: Before such considerations as these, the conservatism of the most stable bent. Men of small means, whose tastes inclined them to keep out of all hazardous schemes and uncertain enterprises, thought they saw duty beckoning them around the Horn, or across the Plains. In many a family circle, where nothing but the strictest economy could make the two ends of the year meet, there were long and anxious consultations, which resulted in selling off a piece of the homestead or the woodland, or the choicest of the stock, to fit out one sturdy representative to make a fortune for the family. Hundreds of farms were mortgaged to buy tickets for the land of gold. Some insured their lives and pledged their policies for an outfit. The wild boy was packed off hopefully. The black sheep of the flock was dis- missed with a blessing, and the forlorn hope that, with a change of skies, there might be a change of manners. The stay of the happy household said, "Good-bye, but only for a year or two," to his charge. Unhappy husbands availed themselves cheerfully of this cheap and reputable method of divorce, trusting Time to mend or mar matters in their absence. Here was a chance to begin life anew. Whoever had begun it badly, or made slow headway on the right course, might start again in a region where Fortune had not learned to coquette with and dupe her wooers.
The adventurers generally formed companies, expecting to go overland or by sea to the mines, and to dissolve partnership only after a first trial of luck. together in the "diggings." In the Eastern and Middle States they would buy up an old whaling ship, just ready to be condemned to the wreckers, put in a cargo of such stuff as they must need themselves, and provisions, tools, or goods, that must be sure to bring returns enough to make the venture profitable. Of course, the whole fleet rushing together through the Golden Gate, made most of these ventures profitless, even when the guess was happy as to the kind of supplies needed by the Californians. It can hardly be believed what sieves of ships started, and how many of them actually made the voyage. Little river-steamers, that had scarcely tasted salt water before, were fitted out to thread the Straits of Magellan, and these were welcomed to the bays and rivers of California, whose waters some of them ploughed and vexed busily for years afterwards.
Then steamers, as well as all manner of sailing vessels, began to be adver- tised to run to the Isthmus; and they generally went crowded to excess with
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passengers, some of whom were fortunate enough, after the toilsome ascent of the Chagres river, and the descent either on mules or on foot to Panama, not to be detained more than a month waiting for the craft that had rounded the Horn, and by which they were ticketed to proceed to San Francisco. But hundreds broke down under the horrors of the voyage in the steerage; contracted on the Isthmus the low typhoid fevers incident to tropical marshy regions, and died.
The Overland emigrants, unless they came too late in the season to the Sierras, seldom suffered as much, as they had no great variation of climate on their route. They had this advantage too, that the mines lay at the end of their long road; while the sea-faring, when they landed, had still a weary journey before them. Few tarried longer at San Francisco than was neces- sary to learn how utterly useless were the curious patent mining contrivances they had brought, and to replace them with the pick and shovel, pan and cradle. If any one found himself destitute of funds to go farther, there was work enough to raise them by. Labor was honorable; and the daintiest dandy, if he were honest, could not resist the temptation to work where wages were so high, pay so prompt, and employers so flush.
There were not lacking in San Francisco, grumblers who had tried the mines and satisfied themselves that it cost a dollar's worth of sweat and time, and living exclusively on bacon, beans, and "slap-jacks," to pick a dollar's worth of gold out of rock, or river bed, or dry ground; but they confessed that the good luck which they never enjoyed abode with others. Then the display of dust, slugs, and bars of gold in the public gambling places; the sight of men arriving every day freighted with belts full, which they parted with so freely, as men only can when they have got it easily; the testimony of the miniature rocks; the solid nuggets brought down from above every few days, whose size and value rumor multiplied according to the number of her tongues. The talk, day and night, unceasingly and exclusively of "gold, easy to get and hard to hold," inflamed all new comers with the desire to hurry on and share the chances. They chafed at the necessary deten- tions. They nervously feared that all would be gone before they should arrive.
The prevalent impression was that the placers would give out in a year or two. Then it behooved him who expected to gain much, to be among the earliest on the ground. When experiment was so fresh in the field, one theory was about as good as another. An hypothesis that lured men perpet- ually further up the gorges of the foot-hills, and to explore the canons of the mountains, was this :- that the gold which had been found in the beds of rivers, or in gulches through which streams once ran, must have been washed down from the places of original deposit further up the mountains. The higher up the gold-hunter went, then, the nearer he approached the source of supply.
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To reach the mines from San Francisco, the course lay up San Pablo and Suisun bays, and the Sacramento -- not then, as now, a yellow, muddy stream, but a river pellucid and deep-to the landing for Sutter's Fort; and they who made the voyage in sailing vessels, thought Mount Diablo significantly named, so long it kept them company and swung its shadow over their path. From Sutter's the most common route was across the broad, fertile valley to the foot-hills, and up the American or some one of its tributaries; on, ascending the Sacramento to the Feather and the Yuba, the company staked off a claim, pitched its tent or constructed a cabin, and set up its rocker, or began to oust the river from a portion of its bed. Good luck might hold the impatient adventurers for a whole season on one bar; bad luck scattered them always further up.
Roads sought the mining camps, which did not stop to study roads. Traders came in to supply the camps, and not very fast, but still to some extent; mechanics and farmers to supply both traders and miners. So. as if by magic, within a year or two after the rush began, the map of the country was written thick with the names of settlements.
Some of these were the nuclei of towns that now flourish and promise to continue as long as the State is peopled. Others, in districts where the placers were soon exhausted, were deserted almost as hastily as they were begun, and now no traces remain of them except the short chimney-stack, the broken surface of the ground, heaps of cobble-stones, rotting, half-buried sluice-boxes, empty whisky bottles, scattered playing cards and rusty cans.
The "Fall of '49 and Spring of '50" is the era of California history which the pioneer always speaks of with warmth. It was the free and easy age when everybody was flush, and fortune, if not in the palm, was only just beyond the grasp of all. Men lived chiefly in tents, or in cabins scarcely more durable, and behaved themselves like a generation of bachelors. The family was beyond the mountains; the restraints of society had not yet arrived. Men threw off the masks they had lived behind, and appeared out in their true character. A few did not discharge the consciences and convic- tions they had brought with them. More rollicked in a perfect freedom from those bonds which good men cheerfully assume in settled society for the good of the greater number. Some afterwards resumed their temperate and steady habits, but hosts were wrecked before the period of their license expired.
Very rarely did men, on their arrival in the country, begin to work at their old trade or profession. To the mines first. If fortune favored, they soon quit for more congenial employments. If she frowned, they might depart disgusted, if they were able; but oftener, from sheer inability to leave the business, they kept on, drifting from bar to bar, living fast, reckless, improv- ident, half-civilized lives; comparatively rich to-day, poor to-morrow; tor- mented with rheumatisms and agues, remembering dimly the joys of the old
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homestead; nearly weaned from the friends at home, who, because they were never heard from, soon became like dead men in their memory; seeing little of women and nothing of churches; self-reliant, yet satisfied that there was nowhere any "show " for them; full of enterprise in the direct line of their business, and utterly lost in the threshold of any other; genial companions, morbidly craving after newspapers; good fellows, but short-lived."
Such was the mælstrom which dragged all into its vortex thirty years ago! Now, almost the entire generation of pioneer miners, who remained in that business has passed away, and the survivors feel like men who are lost and old before their time, among the new comers, who may be just as old, but lack their long, strange chapter of adventures.
In the Spring of 1848 the treaty of peace was signed by which California was annexed to the United States, and on the first day of September, 1849, the first Constitutional Convention was commenced at Monterey. The first Legislature met at San Jose, December 13, 1849, and thereafter the welfare of the State became a part of the Union.
Thus far we have brought the reader. The events which have occurred since the admission of California is a matter of general knowledge. These items on which we have dwelt are those which come under the category of things not generally known, therefore they have been given a place in this work. It is for the reader to decide if it enhances the historic value of the volume.
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THE BEAR FLAG WAR.
ITS CAUSE-ITS PROGRESS-ITS CONCLUSION.
In the early part of this century California would appear to have found extreme favor in the jealous eyes of three great powers. We have elsewhere shown what the Russians did on the coast, and how they actually gained a foothold at Bodega and Fort Ross, Sonoma county. In the year 1818, Gov- ernor Sola received a communication from Friar Marquinez, of Guadalajara, in Old Spain, wherein he informs His Excellency of the rumors of war between the United States and Spain, while, in February of the following year, Father José Sanchez, writes to the same official that there is a report abroad of the fitting out of an American expedition in New Mexico. Both of these epistles remark that California is the coveted prize. Great Britain wanted it, it is said, for several reasons, the chief of which was, that in the possession of so extended a coast line she would have the finest harbors in the world for her fleets. This desire would appear to have been still manifested in 1840, for we find in February of that year, in the New York Express, the following: " The Californias .- The rumor has reached New Orleans from Mexico of the cession to England of the Californias. The cession of the two provinces would give to Great Britain an extensive and valuable territory in a part of the world where she has long been anxious to gain a foothold, besides securing an object. still more desirable-a spacious range of sea-coast on the Pacific, stretching more than a thousand miles from the forty-second degree of latitude south, sweeping the peninsula of California, and embracing the harbors of that gulf, the finest in North America."
These rumors, so rife between the years 1842 and 1846, necessitated the maintenance of a large and powerful fleet by both the Americans and British on the Pacific Ocean, each closely observing the other. The first move in the deep game was made for the United States in September, 1842, by Commodore Ap Catesby Jones. He became possessed of two newspapers which would appear to have caused him to take immediate action. One of these, published in New Orleans, stated that California had been ceded by Mexico to Great Britain in consideration of the sum of seven millions of dollars; the other, a Mexican publication, caused him to believe that war had been declared between the two countries. The sudden departure of two of the British vessels strengthened him in this belief, and, that they were en route for Panama to embark soldiers from the West Indies for the occupa- tion of California. To forestall this move of "perfidious Albion," Commo- dore Jones left Callao, Peru, on September 7, 1842, and crowded all sail
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