USA > California > Siskiyou County > History of Siskiyou County, California > Part 6
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HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
So, mounting his horse, and taking some three ounces of gold- dust with him, he started. Having always an eye to business, he availed himself of this opportunity to examine the river for a site for a lumber yard, whence the timbers cut at the mill could be floated down; and while exploring for this purpose he dis- covered gold in a ravine in the foot-hills, and also at the place afterwards known as Mormon Island. That night he slept under an oak tree, some eight or ten miles east of the fort, where he arrived about nine o'clock the next morning. Dis- mounting from his horse, he entered Sutter's private office, and proceeded to inquire into the cause of the delay in sending up the provisions. This matter having been explained, and the teams being in a fair way to load, he asked for a few minutes private conversation with Colonel Sutter, and the two entered a
little room back of the store, reserved as a private office. Then Marshall showed him the gold. He looked at it in astonish- ment, and, still doubting, asked what it was. His visitor replied that it was gold. "Impossible !" was the incredulous ejaculation of Sutter. Upon this Marshall asked for some nitric acid to test it, and a vaquero having been dispatched to the gun- smith's for that purpose, Sutter inquired whether there was no other way in which it could be tested. He was told that its character might be ascertained by weighing it, and accordingly some silver coiu ($3.25 was all that the fort could furnish) and a pair of small scales or balances having been obtained, Marshall proceeded to weigh the dust, first in the air and then in two bowls of water. The experiment resulted as he had foreseen. The dust went down, the coin rose lightly up. Sutter gazed and his doubts faded, and a subsequent test with the acid, which, by this time, had arrived, settled the question finally. Then the excitement hegan to spread. Sutter knew well the value of the discovery, and in a short time, having made hurried arrange- ments at the fort, he returned with Marshall to Coloma, to see for himself the wonder that had been reported to him.
On the same subject the following extract from a diary kept at the time by John A. Sutter will be found highly interesting. It is given just as written by that gentleman :---
January 28, 1848, Marshall arrived in the evening. It was raining very heavy, hut he told me that he came on important business. After we was alone iu a private room, he showed me the first specimens of gold-that is, he was not certain if it was gold or not, but he thought it might be; immediately I made the proof and found that it was gold. I told him even that most of all is 23-carat gold; he wished that I should come up with him immediately, but I told him that I have first to give my orders to the people in all my factories and shops.
February Ist-Left for the saw-mill attended by a vaquero (Olimpio); was absent second, third, fourth, and fifth. I examined myself everything and picked up a few specimens of gold myself in the tail-race of the saw-mill, this gold and others which Marshall and some of the other laborers gave to me (it was found while in my employ and wages.) I told them that I would a ring got made of it so soon as a goldsmith would be here. I had a talk with my employed people all at the saw-mill. I told them that as they do know now that this metal is gold, I wished that they would do me the great favor and keep it secret only six weeks, because my large Flour Mill at Brighton would have been in operation in such a time, which undertaking would have been a fortune to me, and unfortunately the people would not keep it secret, and so I lost on this mill, at the lowest calcu- lation about $25,000.
In speaking of the finding of the first piece of gold and the tests Marshall submitted it to, Tuthill's History says :--
Peter L. Wemer claims that he was with Marshall when the first piece of the "yellow stuff" was picked up. It was a pebble weighing six pennyweights and eleven grains. Marshall gave it
to Mrs. Wemer, 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.
It did not take long for the news to spread throughout the coast. In February, General John Bidwell went to San Francisco with some speci- mens, which were pronounced genuine gold by Isaac Humphrey, an old Georgia miner. This man's experience taught him that such coarse gold was only found in rich placers, and in vain he sought to induce some one to go with him on a prospecting trip to Coloma; they all thought it a brainless folly. On the seventh of March he arrived at the mill, and after prospecting a day, made a rocker and com- menced the first of that gold mining that was the life of California for many years. In a few days Baptiste Rouelle, who had discovered gold near Los Angeles in 1841, joined Humphrey and went to work. One and two at a time the people slowly arrived to see for themselves and to go to work, and on the twenty-fifth of March the California Star announced that gold-dust was an article of traffic at New Helvetia (Sacramento).
The discovery at Coloma was soon followed by the finding of gold on many other streams. The circum- stances surrounding the first gold mining on the Calaveras, Stanislaus, Mokelumne and Yuba rivers, which, with the American, form the principal streams on which the early mining was done, are of peculiar interest. Specimens of scale gold were car- ried to Tuleburgh (Stockton) in the latter part of March, and exhibited to Charles M. Weber. He did not rush to Coloma as many did, with the idea that it was there only that gold could be found, but fitted out a party for prospecting the neighboring streams. Haste and inexperience prevented success for some time, but they finally found the metal on the Mokel- umne river, and then on every stream from there to the American river, where a location was made on Weber creek and the first work commenced. As soon as the Indians accompanying the party became skillful in mining, Weber sent them to their home on the Stanislaus with instructions to prospect that and adjacent streams. Word was soon brought him that gold had been found in large quantities on the Stanislaus, Calaveras and the streams that lie between them. Weber then formed the Stockton Mining Company, and with the aid of many Indians carried on an extensive mining enterprise on those streams for some time. This was the first working of the southern mines, that afterwards yielded their millions and resounded to the busy clatter of thou- sands of rockers.
The discoverer of gold on the celebrated Yuba river was Jonas Spect, who, on the twenty-fourth of
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HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
April, 1848, encamped at Knight's Landing, on the Sacramento river, on his way from San Francisco to Jolmson's ranch to join a party being made up for an overland journey to the States. He relates his discovery as follows :-
Up to this time there had been no excitement about the gold diggings; but at that place we were overtaken by Spaniards, who were on their way to Sutter's mill to dig gold, and they reported stories of fabulously rich diggings. After discussing the matter we changed our course to the gold mines, and hurried on, arriving at the mill on the thirtieth of April. It was true that several rich strikes had been made, but the miners then at work did not average two and one-half dollars per day. Mar- shall and Sutter claimed the land and rented the mines. Every- one supposed gold was confined to that particular locality. We did not engage in mining, and concluded to resume our journey across the plains. On our return trip, we learned that gold had been found on Mormon island; but we took no further notice of it, and on the twelfth of May arrived at Johnson's ranch. We found one man there awaiting our arrival, but we expected many others in a short time. We waited until about the twenty-fifth, when we learned that there was another rush to the mines, and then vanished all prospect of any company crossing the mount- ains that summer. My partner left for the American river, and I proposed to Johnson that we should prospect for gold on Bear river. We went some distance up the stream and spent three days in search without any satisfactory results. I then sug- gested to Johnson that he should send his Indian with me, and I would prospect the Ynba river, as that stream was abont the size of the south fork of the American river. We prepared the outfit, and on the first of June we struck the river, near Long Bar. After a good deal of prospecting I succeeded in raising "color." That night I camped in Timbuctoo ravine, a little above where we first found gold. The next day, June second, I continued prospecting up the stream, finding a little gold, but not enough to pay. The Indian was well acquainted, and he piloted me up to the location of Rose Bar, where we met a large number of Indians, all entirely nude and eating clover. I pros- pected on the bar and found some gold, but not sufficient to be remunerative. Greatly discouraged, I started on my return home. When I arrived at a point on the Yuba river, a little above Timbuctoo ravine, I washed some of the dirt and found three lumps of gold, worth about seven dollars. I pitched my tent here on the night of June second, and sent the Indian home for supplies. In about a week I moved down on the creek and remained there until November twentieth, when I left the mines forever. June third, the next day after the location of my camp, Michael Nye and William Foster came up the creek prospect- ing for gold.
General John Bidwell paid the mines at Coloma a visit, and then returned to his ranch near the site of Chico, and soon discovered gold and inaugurated mining on the Feather river. Major P. B. Reading, whose place on the upper Sacramento was a well- known landmark in the early days, followed Bid- well's example, and in the summer of 1848 pros- pected the Trinity river and began the first mining of that system of water-courses that carry the snows of the northern mountains through the turbulent Klamath to the sea.
Such was the manner in which gold was dis- covered in those marvelously rich streams, and in that first year nearly every man in California paid a visit to some of the mines. Crops were permitted to rot in the fields, buildings were left incompleted
and all the avenues of industry were deserted, men even refusing to work for fifteen dollars a day, so great was their eagerness to get to the mines. From Oregon and along the coast a great many arrived that fall to seek the yellow treasure, and hundreds worked in the mines, became rich or disgusted, and abandoned them forever, before the advance guard of that army of Argonauts of 1849 began to make its appearance. Such an one was David Parks, who worked on the celebrated Park's Bar, on Yuba river, returned East and arrived in New Orleans early in the spring of 1849, to meet the first tide of emigration, and to enthuse them with the sight of eighty-five thousand dollars in gold-dust that he had brought back with him. When these, the ' 49ers, began to arrive they went to the streams on which gold had been found and went to work. Soon they were in such numbers that claims were not plentiful enough on the bars then being worked. Farther up the streams they pressed, finding new and rich diggings on every bar, ravine, gulch and creek, until in a year there was scarcely a stream in the heart of the mountains that had not its quota of industrious miners. The Feather and Sacra- mento rivers were explored to their sources, and up the latter stream, among hostile Indians, the hardy prospector made his way and found for the thou- sands of others soon to follow, the rich diggings on the upper Sacramento, Trinity, Salmon, Klamath and Scott rivers, that soon filled the extreme north- ern portion of the State with a busy horde of miners, and spread the dominion of civilization to the utmost bounds of the State.
CHAPTER VI.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF SISKIYOU COUNTY.
EXTENDING from the ridge that lies between the Salmon and Trinity rivers on the west, to the lava beds on the east, and from the Sacramento divide on the south to the Siskiyou mountain on the north, the county of Siskiyou contains a total superficial area of over three thousand square miles. It is essen- tially a region of mountains. Great ridges and spurs of pine-clad hills reach out in all directions, their cañ- ons, gorges, precipitous bluffs combining with the graceful sides of other green hills to form a picture of wonderful beauty, wherever the eye may rest. Here it is impossible to withdraw the eye from beholding the loveliness of Nature. When intervening hills obscure from view the hoary crown of Shasta and the grand but less imposing peaks that lift them- selves into the sky on every hand, the eye rests with pleasure upon the obstructing hills themselves, and sees in them beauties to admire and love. The deeper we plunge into the rocky cañons that shut
THE RESIDENCE OF ELIJAH T. KEYSER, 640 ACRES 3 /2 MILES NORTH OF BERRYVALE, SISKIYOU CO CALIFORNIA.
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HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
us in from the great world without, the more we come into sympathy and union with Nature, and admire the simple grandeur she there reveals to us. We sit in some cavernous depth or perch ourselves upon some commanding peak and think of the long cen- turies that rolled swiftly by, while the red men called this home and disturbed not with profaning hand the simple order Nature had established in her chosen dominion. The deer, the bear, and the antelope roamed its valleys and penetrated the dense forests. that covered its mountain sides; the simple natives lived in peace and quietude, so few and so retired that the first white men who passed through scarce saw them at all. This was the condition till thirty years ago, when the magic wand of gold was waved over the mountain tops, and a new race came to supplant the old, to level forests and disembowel the earth, to subdue the soil and deface the brow of Nature with the crown of civilization.
Siskiyou county was named after the high range of mountains that rolls the waters of its northern slope into the Rogue river, and those that fall on the south into the rushing Klamath. On the summit of the mountain, just over the divide, in Oregon, there is a beautiful level spot, watered by cool springs, that overlooks the country for miles around. It was here that the powerful Shasta, Rogue River and Klamath tribes used to congregate, smoke their pipes, indulge in dancing and games, and exchange those friendly offices so usual with neighboring tribes living at peace with each other. This place they called Sis-ki-you, or the council ground, the name now borne by one of the largest counties in California.
Siskiyou and the counties of the northern mount- ains have a system of water-courses distinct from their sisters to the south. The great Klamath river rises in the lake of the same name, and in its windings through the mountains takes a general westerly course until it pours into the ocean near Crescent City the combined waters of the Kla- math, Shasta, Scott, Salmon and Trinity rivers, with their hundreds of tributaries. The volume of water that goes surging through its rocky gorges and pre- cipitous cañons in the winter season is tremendous, and the slowly melting snows on the mountain peaks keep the stream a rushing torrent till late in the summer. The name Klamath is of Indian origin and was first applied to the stream near its source by the early trappers, who asked the natives there what they called the stream and were answered " Klamat" or "Tlamat." (It is spelled by Fre- mont " Tlamath.") The tribes that lived along the stream each had its name for the great river but the name adopted by the whites soon became known from the mouth to the source, and was also "
applied to the lakes from which it springs, though for these the Klamath tribe that inhabited their borders had different and distinct appellations. This stream as well as its first important tributary, the Shasta, was known to the trappers before the advent of the prospector, their frequent journeys from the Sacramento valley to the Willamette, making their names and location familiar. The Shasta rises in the hills that form the north and western base of the noble Shasta peak, and flows in a northerly course through the valley of the same name till it mingles with the waters of the Klamath a few miles below the town of Cottonwood. The name of both river and valley was received from the patron peak that towers above them. Knowing such a river to exist, the miners as they advanced from the south and west in 1850, first supposed the Salmon river to be that' stream, and next Scott river, not finding the true river till the middle of the summer.
The next stream of importance is Scott river, which takes its rise in the giant ridge that lies between Scott and Shasta valleys and the great Scott mountain that separates it from the head-waters of Trinity. It runs in a general northerly direc- tion through the valley, plunges into the mountains that hedge in the Klamath, and then loses itself in that stream. The name was derived from John W. Scott, who mined for gold on Scott Bar in July, 1850, and has been handed down to the valley through which it runs and one of the mountains from which it springs.
Just beyond the range of mountains that hem in the valley to the west, runs the Salmon river, first discovered and named early in 1850. The north fork rises in these dividing mountains and flows west, while the south fork comes from the Scott and Trinity mountains on the south, the two uniting but a few miles before their mingled waters are poured into the Klamath. This stream traverses no large valley, but runs through an unbroken series of mountains from the sources of both forks to their junction with the Klamath. Until 1875 the country drained by this stream formed a por- tion of Klamath county, but at that time it was annexed to and became an integral part of Siskiyou.
The next and the last great tributary of the Klamath is Trinity river, lying wholly in Trinity and Humboldt counties. It received its name from Major P. B. Reading, who trapped on its head- waters in 1845, and named it Trinity because he supposed it to empty into Trinidad bay, discovered by the early Spanish explorers, an error which misled thousands of gold seekers in 1849 and 1850, who sought to reach its famous mines by entering the bay in vessels and passing up the stream from its mouth.
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HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
Other tributaries of the Klamath are Butte creek, Bogus creek, Shovel creek, Willow creek, Cotton- wood creek, Humbug and Little Humbug creeks, Weaver creek, Indian creek, and a number of others, while McAdams, Crystal, Moffat, Patterson, Indian and Etna creeks flow into Scott river, and Little Shasta, Yreka creek and Greenhorn contribute their waters to swell the Shasta river.
That portion of the State embraced in Modoc was, until 1874, a portion of Siskiyou, and is tributary to the Saeramento river, lying on the eastern slope of the mountains that wall in the Klamath and its tributaries. Two great branches of the Sacra- mento, the McLeod and the Pit, receive the waters of this region. The Pit river is properly the Sacra- mento, and heads in Goose lake on the Oregon bor- der. It received its name from the custom of the natives along its banks of digging pits in which to capture bear and deer, and even entrap strange war- riors who might set hostile foot in their hunting grounds. The pits were dug in the regular trails made by animals, and were from twelve to fourteen feet deep and conical in shape, with a small opening at the top, which was covered with brush and dirt so carefully as to completely deceive the unpracticed eye. All loose dirt was removed and a trail made over the pit, near which signs, such as broken twigs, etc., were placed that gave warning to members of the tribe of the location of the dreadful pitfall. Sharpened stakes were sometimes set up in the bot- tom, upon which any object falling into the pit was certain to impale itself. The name is usually spelled Pitt, the mistake arising from ignorance of its origin. The McLeod, or, as it is usually called, the McCloud, received its name from an old Scotch trapper, who, in 1827 (by some authorities, 1828), led the first party of Hudson Bay Company trappers that ever penetrated into California. Having passed down from Oregon, along the sea-coast, and entered the Sacramento valley from the west, the snows of winter caught the party trapping beaver on this stream. They narrowly escaped the fate of the lamented Donner party, in 1846, and were compelled to cache all their furs and traps and make their way over the snow and mountains to a more hospitable clime. The name of this trapper was Alexander Roderick McLeod, and the river has ever since borne his name. Years later, when white men had settled in this region, a well-known and worthy citi- zen, Ross McCloud, a surveyor by profession, lived on this stream, and the similarity of pronunciation in the two names led to the common error of sup- posing that his name was the one the river bore, and thus it stands upon the maps. It is an error that should be corrected, and the name of the first white trapper to penetrate this region should be
handed down in history associated with the mount- ain stream upon whose banks he and his party suffered so much. (See last of Chapter VII.)
In its general topographical features, Siskiyou county may be said to consist of two large valleys hemmed in on all sides by lofty ranges of forest- covered mountains. On the south hie the Trinity, Scott, and Sacramento mountains, on the east the Butte creek, on the north the Siskiyou, and on the west the Salmon range. Through the center, from north to south, separating the two valleys and the waters that fertilize them, runs a range from the Klamath river to the Sacramento divide. A small portion of the county lies both east and west of these mountain bulwarks, the Salmon river country lying to the west and the Butte creek region to the east. Among these towering ranges are many places of grandeur that deserve a special mention, and one, Mount Shasta, of world-wide fame and notoriety.
The snowy crown of Shasta was a familiar sight to the early settlers in the lower portion of the State long before the foot of the white man ever pressed the green grass at its base. Standing in the Sacra- mento valley, one can plainly see its white top lifted proudly above the blue range that closes in the val- ley to the north. From Mount Diablo it is dis- tinctly visible, and from the dome of the State capitol at Sacramento it meets the eye of many a gazer who knows not its name nor the great dis- tance it lies to the north. The mariner on the ocean can see it, and the emigrant on the parched deserts of Nevada has often traveled towards it day after day, an infallible guide to lead them on to the land of gold. The Russians who settled at Bodega could see it from the mountains of the Coast Range, and called it Tchastal, or the white or pure mount- ain. This name the early Americans adopted, spell- ing and pronouncing it Chasta, time having made the further change of substituting the soft sh for the hard ch. The name was also applied by the trappers to the valley that lies at its northern base and the river that bears its cold, snow waters to the Klamath, as well as to the tribe of Indians that inhabited Scott and Shasta valleys and the monnt- ains to the north. The true name of their tribe they have forgotten or will not tell, having been called Shastas for half a century, but the name of their beautiful, patron mountain still remains to us, I-e-ka, the white.
The Indians have a tradition that the mountain is the abode of the Great Spirit, and that the whole country about was inhabited by grizzlies, who capt- ured the daughter of the Great Spirit, and married her to one of their number. These were the pro- genitors of the Indians. They built Little Mount
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HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
Shasta for a wigwam for the captured girl, that she might live near the lodge of her father.
The Little Mount Shasta referred to in the legend as the wigwam of the daughter of the Great Spirit, generally called the Black Butte, is a, miniature counterpart of the great mountain itself, minus the snow and ice. It looks as if the Creator when he made Mount Shasta took the dirt and stones that were left over and made a little one, which he set by the great masterpiece to show how truly great and grand it was. Nothing gives us so good an idea of the greatness of Shasta as to compare it with the apparently dwarf-like hills that surround it, and which, were it not for the overshadowing pres- sence of the mighty mountain, would be great them- selves. Surely a peak ten thousand feet high, like the Goose Nest, is no little hill, and yet beside Shasta it looks like the little pile of snow beside the great snowball the boys roll up in winter. The mountain is an old volcano, which still exhibits its vitality in the shape of the hot springs that bubble up on the apex of the highest peak. They are thus described by the United States Coast Survey: "A very remarkable feature of Mount Shasta is the collec- tion of hot springs two hundred feet below the top. The extreme summit is a steep ridge, not more than two hundred or three hundred feet through on a level with the springs, and composed of shattered lava which looks as though any water falling in rain or formed by melting snow on it would immediately run out through the cracks. There is in the material nothing which, when brought in con -. tact with the air or moisture, would cause heat by chemical action; yet at the bottom of the steep ridge there is a little flat of half an acre, full of hot springs, most of them very small and the largest not more than three feet across. They have a tempera- ture of 100°, and their water is strong with sulphur and other minerals. In some, the water bubbles up violently, and there are openings in the earth from which hot steam rushes out with great force and considerable noise. One of these vents throws out a jet of steam two feet in diameter. These springs, and the earth around them, retain their heat through winter as well as summer, notwithstanding the severe cold which must prevail there. On the first of October the thermometer was below the freezing point, at both sunrise and sunset, and the temperature of the year there is probably, for we have no series of observations, not higher than 30°, possibly much below that figure. Immense masses of snow lie on the southern side of the mountain through the summer, and on the northern side there is a living glacier. Notwithstanding the almost constant cold resulting from the snow, ice and high elevation, the great heat supplied from the heart of
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