USA > California > Lassen County > Illustrated history of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra counties, with California from 1513 to 1850 > Part 15
USA > California > Plumas County > Illustrated history of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra counties, with California from 1513 to 1850 > Part 15
USA > California > Sierra County > Illustrated history of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra counties, with California from 1513 to 1850 > Part 15
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who never came. The snows of many winters had begun to leave their color on her raven locks ere hope faded from her heart, and with it the spirit that had become a burden, leaving behind to greet him on his return a grave only and a broken life, when Ermetinger should seek, as an old man, the bride of his early years."
Mr. Forbes, the Hudson Bay Company's agent, resided in Oakland until his death, in the spring of 1881. Still pursuing his old occupation along the mountain streams of northern California, is the old trapper, Stephen H. Meek, one of the few of those early mountain men who still cling to this earthly clod.
SETTLEMENT OF THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY.
BY HARRY L. WELLS.
In his History of Yolo County, F. T. Gilbert thus describes the central basin of the state :---
"The great valley of California, lying between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range mountains, is 400 miles long, averages a trifle less than fifty-one miles in width, and contains 20,394 square miles. Its general course from the south is in a northerly direction, bearing to the west about 13º. Approach- ing each other, through its center, two large rivers flow; one from its source among the mountains bordering upon Oregon, the other from the south, where the Sierra Nevada and Coast Range lose them- selves in the Mohave desert ; and, joining from the north and south, their waters mingle and move away into the ocean through the straits of Carquinez and the bays of Suisun, San Pablo and San Francisco. These two rivers are the channels through which flow back to their original fount the waters cast by the winds, in rain and snow, upon 33,574 square miles of mountains, peaks, slopes and cañons, flanking this great valley of California. They are both fed by numerous small streams, the one north being known as the Sacramento, that from the south as the San Joaquin ; and their names are given to the country through which they flow. Thus we have the great valley divided by names into lesser ones ; starting with Kern on the extreme south, bordering upon the Mohave desert, the Tulare joining on its north, followed by the San Joaquin, until the north line of the county by that name is reached, where the Sacramento-the section in which the majority of our readers are more especially interested-begins, and stretches away to the north, one hundred and fifty miles, to the head of Iron cañon. This last- named subdivision of the great valley maintains a gradually diminishing width for a distance of ninety- five miles from its south line, starting with a width of about fifty-five miles and losing but ten in that distance north. Beyond that point, the east and west borders approach each other more rapidly until a point is reached fifty-five miles further up, at the head of Iron cañon. The Sacramento river makes its irregular, tortuous course through the valley, approaching nearer the Coast Range than the Sierra Nevada, and in its windings has established a channel 255 miles long through 150 miles of low lands. In this great basin, in various places, have been found the remains of extinct species of animals, among which are those of the hairy elephant that followed upon the track of the receding glaciers, the first of known herbiverous animals to feed upon the primative verdure of the earth-ere man appeared upon the scene-a prehistoric animal that became extinct while the human race was in its infancy. Wm. Cullen Bryant, in referring to our ancestors of that time, describes them as 'Mere naked savages, with an instinct to kill and to eat, to creep under a rock as a shelter from the cold and the rain ; who, in the course of time, learned that fire would burn and cook, that there was warmth in the skin of a beast, that a sharpened stone would kill and would scrape much better than a blunt one. From generation to gen- eration, they lived and died in the caves where they have left the evidences of their existence ; and it is a curious and interesting mark of their progress, that some of these troglodytes in the south of France made tolerable carvings in bone and drawings of various animals upon horn and tusks of ivory. Pictures of the long-haired elephant and of groups of reindeer prove that these artists were
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familiar with the animals they sketched, of which one (the long-haired elephant) is known to the modern world only by its fossil remains.' A portion of the skeleton of one of these hairy monsters was found in sinking a well in Tulare township, San Joaquin county. It was resting upon a bed of water-charged gravel, fifty-one and a half feet below the present surface of the ground. Some of the hair was yet preserved after this lapse of ages, and Hiram Hamilton, an acquaintance of ours, wore for several years a braided watch-chain of the hair. It was a coarse fiber, about eighteen inches in length, and resembled that constituting the mane of a horse.
"The remains of another are said to have been recently discovered about one mile above Yuba city, by parties who were building a levee on the west bank of Feather river. The remains were found imbedded in a hard-pan soil, in a standing position, three feet below the surface. Some of the teeth weighed four and a half pounds each. At the Bank of Woodland is a portion of a tusk of one of that species of animal, which measures six and a half feet in length and twenty-two inches in circumference at the largest point, and in form describes a half circle. A portion from each end of the tusk is gone, and its original length cannot, therefore, be determined. It was found in a wash, in 1874, embedded in a cement, water- charged gravel, on the farm of Messrs. Gable Brothers, eight miles west of Black's station, in Yolo county, and taken out by them. The locality where it was discovered is in the hills, considerably above the level of the valley, a little below where water from a spring coming out of the ground has cut a channel some sixteen feet deep in the soil in its course towards lower ground, thus bringing to light the fossil remains. Overlying the cement in which it was found are four strata of deposit, varying from one to five feet in thickness. Next above the cement lies one foot of loose gravel and sand supporting a three-foot stratum of yellowish clay, on which rest three feet of adobe overlaid with five feet of sediment surface soil. Within thirty feet of this place, two years earlier, in the same cement stratum, which seems to contain the fossil remains of other contemporaneous animals, was found the under jaw of some prehistoric monster, that most resembled that of an ox. The bone weighed nearly seventy pounds, and its grinder teeth, all perfect, measured each four and a half inches across. The fossil remains of these hairy monsters of the prehistoric time are found in fabulous quantities in the frozen regions of the north, where nature seems to have poured out her vials of wrath upon them, enfolding their bodies often in fields of ice to keep for the inspection of the present generation. Their flesh, embalmed in those frigid tombs, is often so perfectly preserved that, when thawed, dogs eat of the animal possibly ten thousand years dead. It is a long way back that those remains carry the fancy, but they come down to us from a time, perhaps, when the great plan of creation had not developed sufficiently to admit mortals among its results, and because of its ancient date is worthy of a place in the memory of men and among the monuments of the past that are not to be forgotten. It brings a strange, weird sensation of loneliness, a feeling of isolation, as though in this great world you were alone, when the mind comes home with the thought that once, in this now beautiful valley, those animal-monsters roamed at will when man was nowhere to be found upon the earth.
"The bones of these ancient monarchs are not the only relics that come to us out of the past from this great California valley, for near her borders was found the most ancient evidence of earth's occupa- tion by man. A human skull was found imbedded in cement one hundred and fifty feet below the surface of the ground, two miles from Angelos, in Calaveras county. Over it rested five distinct deposits of volcanic matter and four beds or layers of gold-bearing gravel, solid and compact. In this mass of accumulation through the centuries there was not a crack or crevice to have given it access to the place where found. It must have gained the position when that stratum, now turned to cement, was the surface of the earth ; since when volcanoes have been born in those mountains, which, ere the hand of time extinguished them, had joined the elements in five separate efforts, with their fiery outbursts of
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ashes and lava, to cover the remains and evidence that could tell us of the age when this Adam of Cal- ifornia lived."
On the thirtieth of March, 1773, four years after the founding of the first mission at San Diego, Father Crespi discovered the San Joaquin river. He was at the head of a Spanish expedition, and had strayed into the great valley near the site of Antioch. No Caucasian eye had ever seen, nor white foot pressed its flowery carpet until this emissary of the cross stood upon its verge. It was in 1813 that a Spanish lieutenant named Marago entered and explored the southern end of the valley, which he called the Valle de los Tulares. He it was who named the stream, discovered forty years before by Father Crespi, the San Joaquin. By orders of the governor of California, Capt. Louis A. Argüello passed up the Sacramento valley in 1820, and penetrated as far north as the Hudson Bay settlements on the Columbia river. He discovered and named the Marysville Buttes, calling them Picachos. They were called the Buttes in 1829 by Michael Laframbois, a Hudson Bay Company trapper, and have since been variously denominated Los Tres Picos, Sutter Buttes and Marysville Buttes.
These curious productions of nature are situated in Sutter county, just west of the Sacramento river and ten miles from Marysville. They consist of three principal peaks, called the North, South, and East Butte, the highest having an altitude of about two thousand feet, with a great number of lesser peaks lying between and around them. The north and east sides are covered with a stunted growth of oak, while the opposite appear bleak and barren. They are undoubtedly of volcanic origin, and form but one line in a chain of volcanic peaks, being distinguished, however, from the others by rising abruptly from the plain, apparently disconnected and alone, standing like ever-wakeful sentinels to guard the slumbering valley. That they are of no recent formation is evident ; they bear the same marks, fossils and shells as are found on Mount Diablo and the Coast Range. Large springs are found almost at the summit of the highest peak, welling up through crevices in the rock, perpetually flowing through summer and winter. The source of these is no doubt the distant mountains, probably the Coast Range, with which they must be connected by an under stratum of gravel. Some of these furnish run- ning water during the long dry season, a thing impossible did they depend for their supply upon the rain that falls there in winter. Long arms and ridges of volcanic rocks reach out towards the northwest and southeast, and shorter spurs shoot out from all sides. Between these, and winding in and around the lower hills, are little fertile valleys, in summer yellow with waving grain.
Once the plains around them were covered with a scattered growth of noble oak and sycamore, among whose wreathing branches birds of varied plumage made the air vocal with their songs of joy. Flowers of every hue filled the air with fragrance, and formed a brilliantly-colored carpet for the foot of the wanderer. Far up the rugged sides of the mountain was seen the verdant hue of the live oak, its gnarled and knotted branches wreathed around the sharp edges of the rocks. Clear springs of water formed little foaming rivulets, which met in some secluded spot in the ravines, forming lovely mountain tarns, whose mirror-like waters reflected the trees and rocks that surround and give them shelter. From these larger streams ran down the sloping hills and found their way to the rivers in the valley. These little streams were the home of many varieties of the finny tribe, that leaped and sported in their crystal waters.
From the summit the great ranges of mountains can be seen on either hand enclosing the valley with their rocky walls, until away in the north they meet where the snow-crowned brow of Mount Shasta rears itself far into the heavens. A beautiful sight are these hills in winter, frequently crowned "with a fringe of snow, over which play the sunbeams and dark shadows of the clouds, while the valley lies robed in green at their feet ; or when the clouds hang low and sullen o'er the valley and the three
A. BURR DE
REMAINS OF SUTTER'S FORT IN 1880.
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peaks disappear, their lofty tops thrust far into the murky blackness, or rise above them fringed with the encircling mist.
The ever-busy finger of time has wrought many changes. The shady groves and prismatic flow- ers that mantled the plains have disappeared before the axe and plow of the husbandman ; the breezes that once fanned the leaves into rustling music now sweep in waving billows the golden grain ; the limpid streams, filled with sporting fish, are seen no more, but in their stead are mountain torrents in winter and dry water-courses in summer ; the noble growth of trees that skirted the mountain sides has given away to a fringe of stunted oaks and bushes. From the apex the view is still as grand and beautiful ; the mountains rear themselves as proudly as of yore, their snowy tops brushing the clouds from the blue vault of heaven ; the rivers still wind their devious courses to the awaiting sea ; the sun in all its grandeur rises and declines, bathing the rocks in roseate hues, as has been his wont for ages past. Below, how great a change : where once stood the humble cot of the settler, now noble cities, busy with the hum of life, rear their lofty spires ; villages, with their quiet thrift, dot the landscape ; while on every hand the husbandman wins peace and plenty from the yielding earth, over which ranged the bounding antelope and the antlered elk. Through cycles the Buttes have stood mute witnesses of an ever-changing scene, and in the long ages of the future, when time has wrought still greater changes in this fair valley, they yet will stand and gaze upon the shifting scene, and in their silent aspect seem to say, "We, the hills, are alone eternal."
Cronise states that as early as 1820, "numerous hunters and trappers from the West (as it was then called in the eastern states, meaning the Missouri river country), while wandering in search of the posts on the Columbia river, found their way across the Sierra Nevada into California." He also says that a party of American trappers lived on the American river from 1822 to 1830, which faut gave to the stream the name it now bears. He is beyond question mistaken, as no Americans came overland as early as 1820, save Lewis and Clark, in 1804, the Missouri Fur Company, in 1808, and the Pacific Fur Company, in 1811, none of whom went south of the Columbia river. Indeed, the American trappers confined themselves to the eastern side of the Rocky mountains until General Ashley led a company of men into those mountain fastnesses in 1823. [See article on Fur Companies.] In 1825, the first party of Americans that ever came overland to California reached the Sacramento valley. They were a band of trappers led by Jedediah S. Smith. [See articles on Fur Companies and Discovery of Gold.] They spent the winter of 1825-6 on the American river, and this is no doubt the company of which Mr. Cro- nise speaks. That any company of trappers spent so long a time as he states is highly improbable, as they were too far from either a base of supplies or a market for their pelts. They could not have been in any way connected with the Hudson Bay Company, for that corporation did not penetrate into Cali- fornia until 1828, nor establish a headquarters here till 1833. Jedediah S. Smith must stand in history as the pioneer overland traveler to California, and his band of trappers the first Americans to set their traps in the Sacramento valley.
For the next fourteen years, trappers of the American companies and the Hudson Bay Company roamed the valley, and then there came a change-a change so marked that it may well be called the beginning of the reign of civilization in the Sacramento valley. This was no less than the settlement near the junction of the Sacramento and American rivers, of Capt. John A. Sutter. This gentleman, the most renowned of all the California pioneers, was born in Baden, Germany, February 28, 1803, so late in the day that his birth is often given as having occurred on the first of March. His parents were Swiss, and he is generally spoken of as a native of Switzerland. He entered the military academy of Berne, Switzerland, and after graduating became a lieutenant in the celebrated Swiss Guard of the French army. In 1830, he returned to Switzerland and served four years in the army of that country, reaching
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the rank of captain. Imbued with republican ideas and possessed of an independent and adventuresome disposition, which his military life had served to strengthen, he bade adieu to the despotism of Europe and sailed for America, landing in New York in July, 1834. He first settled at St. Louis, Missouri, and then at West Point in the same state. For several years he engaged in the cattle trade upon the frontier, occasionally making journeys to Santa Fé. The whole frontier was crowded with trappers and mountain men who had traversed the broad west from end to end, many of whom had been to the Willamette valley, and some to California with Bonneville's company in 1833. Santa Fé was a great centre for trappers, and many who had been to California with Ewing Young in 1829 and 1833, were continually sounding the praises of the beautiful and fertile valley of the Sacramento, which had seemed so much like a paradise to them, fresh as they were from the sands of the desert and snows of the mountain.
Like seed upon rich soil fell these eulogies upon the ear of Captain Sutter, taking root in his mind and springing up into a firm resolve to make that lovely valley his future home. Early in April, 1838, he accompanied a band of trappers to the Rocky mountains, and then with six companions pushed reso- lutely on till he reached Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia river. He did not go direct to California, for the route thither was practically unknown, and the Bonneville party had reported it dangerous from lack of both food and water ; while the Oregon route, by way of Fort Hall, was familiar to every moun- tain man, either by experience or reputation.
Finding no vessel there by which he could reach any port of California, he took passage on a vessel for the Sandwich Islands, hoping there to find a ship whose destination was Yerba Buena. There lie gathered a number of native Kanakas under his wing, to enable him to plant a strong colony, and sailed in a brig bound for Sitka, Russian America ; from which place it sailed down the coast and cast anchor off Yerba Buena, in San Francisco bay, on the second of July, 1839., More than a year of constant effort had it taken to reach the land of his choice and his future destiny. His reception was the reverse of cordial, for an order to leave the port was his only greeting. Having been allowed forty-eight hours in which to make repairs, he put to sea at the end of that time and sailed for the port of Monterey, for the purpose of interviewing the governor in regard to his colonization project. Governor Alvarado was pleased with the intentions of the old pioneer, for he saw that Sutter's settlement would be a strong defense on their frontier, where hostile Indians annoyed the Californians exceedingly, and kept them pretty well confined to the strip of land along the coast, where all their settlements were located. The San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers were on the extreme frontier, and no attempt had been made by the Californians to occupy the valley, because of the hostility to them of the native tribes. Sutter's settle- ment, then, was just what they desired ; and Alvarado assured him that, if he would make a selection of land on the Sacramento river, and occupy it one year, he would be given a title to the tract, be in- vested with Mexican citizenship, and be made a civil and military authority in that department.
Sutter then retired to Yerba Buena, dispatched the brig back to the Sandwich Islands, purchased some launches, chartered a small schooner called the Isabella, and commenced the voyage through the bays and up the Sacramento river. Having penetrated as far as the mouth of Feather river, he was met by a mutiny on the part of the crew, who, not liking the appearance of the natives and the isola- tion from civilization a settlement in the unoccupied valley indicated, demanded that they be permitted to take the schooner back to Yerba Buena. Sutter was perplexed, and told them he would give them an answer in the morning. The order to drop down the stream which he gave the next morning was obeyed with alacrity, and no opposition was manifested even when he ascended the American river a few miles. On the south bank of this stream he disembarked his effects, erected tents for shelter, placed his three cannon in position for defense, and then called his colony around him. . This was on the twelfth of August, 1839. His little party consisted of eight Kanakas, two of whom had wives, and six white
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men, some of them mechanics, and upon whom he had placed his chief reliance both in building up his settlement and in defending and preserving it from destruction by the savages. These six were the dis- contented ones, and to them Sutter addressed himself. He said that he had now settled himself where he proposed to stay ; that if they did not desire or were afraid to remain with him and the others, they were at full liberty to return to Yerba Buena in the Isabella, which he intended to send below in the morning. With these words he left them ; but what was the tumult of emotions in his heart ? For nearly a year and a half had he bent every effort and directed every energy to stand where he was that night. Dangers had been encountered, hardships endured, and difficulties overcome, that he might plant the seed of civilization in this lovely valley ; and now, on the threshold of his hopes, in the very door of his ambition, he was threatened with a complete annihilation of his dream by the desertion of those upon whom he had placed his chief reliance. It was a bitter thought, and the sturdy old pioneer never after referred to that moment without showing a trace of the emotion that then filled his heart. When the time came for the schooner to sail, three of the men announced their intention to remain, and the three deserters were allowed to depart with but few regrets. The place was named New Hel- vetia, in honor of Sutter's native land, and thus began the first settlement in this vast valley.
The trials and triumphs of that first year were many. Through dangers from without and jealousy from within, through disappointments and vexations incident to a pioneer colony, Captain Sutter's care- ful management brought them in safety ; and the next year found him securely settled, with the nego- tiations on foot for acquiring a Mexican title to his land. By promptly resenting any insult, he so impressed the natives with his inclination and ability to punish them for any outrage as to deter them from stealing his stock, or interfering with his settlement in any way. Some of these difficulties with the Indians, and other incidents, are told by Dr. J. F. Morse, to whom they were related by Sutter himself. He says :- " Their intercourse was at once distinguished by acts of kindness, by freedom of communication, and even by manifesting an interest in sharing some of the toils and hardships of the colonists. By this conduct, they acquired the confidence of the captain and his associates, and lulled them into a conviction of security that came near fixing their fate forever. Indeed, nothing rescued them from a wily and malignant plot of assassination but the superior instinct and vigilance of an immense bull-dog belonging to the captain, and whose'claims as an integral and fortunate portion of the colony have been almost criminally overlooked.
"A few of the most daring Indians had determined, as soon as they discovered a sufficient lack of caution on the part of the whites, to steal upon them in the night with such a force as to enable them to murder the entire company at a single blow. In the daytime they were around the camp, exhibiting a kindness, a familiarity, and a general friendliness which was rapidly conciliating the good will of the colonists, and, for the time being, overruled the suspicions of the faithful bull-dog. So well did they perform their part in the maturing conspiracy, that the captain and his friends began to welcome night and sleep without the disagreeable necessity of a constant sentinelship. This was recognized with a sort of savage congeniality by the villainous conspirators. They watched its progress with the eager- ness of fiends, and yet were never surprised into a betrayal of their own feelings. One precaution after another was abandoned, until little show of suspicion was evinced ; and then the Indians prepared for the contemplated slaughter. Furnishing themselves with hunting-knives, procured from the southern tribes in trade, they sallied out one night, at an hour when all was silent and quiet in the camp of the colonists, and stealthfully crawled up towards the tents. All thus far was most promising to their appetite for vengeance and plunder. Every one of the tired colonists was buried in sleep, while the approaching murderers had stolen, in perfect security, to within a few feet of the intended vietims; and the ringleader, in advance of the rest, was about crawling into the mouth of the old captain's tent.
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