The next morning, February 3, 1848, Sutter and Marshall walked upstream from the race exploring the dried up creeks and ravines, that were tributaries to the south fork, searching for gold. They poked around the gravel here and there with their knives and soon found gold of even better color. A huge nugget weighing over an ounce and a half was discovered. Visions of the legendary land of El Dorado became more real to the two men as they searched for more.
Upon returning to the sawmill, Sutter gathered his workmen around him and swore them to secrecy for the time being at least, and got them to promise to keep working on the mill for the next six weeks till completion, but allowing them to prospect in their free time. The conservative Mormons agreed to this even though "The fever set in the gold was on the brain," was how one of the Mormons described his feelings in his diary at that time.
The discovery of gold was safe for the moment, but "women and whiskey let the secret out," Sutter would say in his later years; even though he was the first to mention the gold discovery to some acquaintances in correspondence.
Sutter's hired teamster, Jacob Wittmer, brought two wagons of supplies to Coloma in early February. One of Mrs. Wimmer's urchin sons boastfully told Wittmer that "We have found gold up here." Wittmer laughed at the lad with disbelief and this infuriated his mother, who immediately came to the rescue of the boy's honor with a sample of the gold. The gold fever was passed on to the teamster who brought the sample back to the fort. Upon his arrival, he walked into the supply store-cantina of Sam Brannan and C. C. Smith and demanded a drink to wash down the trail dust. When the belligerent C. C. Smith who was tending bar demanded cash money for the liquor, Wittmer produced the gold saying "this is money!"
Smith replied, "Damn you, do you mean to insult me?" At this point the intimidated teamster told the menacing bartender to go to the fort and ask Sutter if he did not believe him.
The gold fever was passed on to Smith, who was soon running to the fort to confront Sutter. With his choice of words all craftily planned, Smith told Sutter that his man, Wittmer, came to him saying that this was gold, and that he knew Wittmer was lying and as much told him so. Confronted with the impetuous Smith, Sutter replied that it was true. The secret was out.
The excitement of gold fever spread throughout the fort. By now resigned to the fact, Sutter broke out a bottle of red wine to commemorate the occasion. It was still the rainy season with frequent heavy downpours and snow melt off from the Sierras swelling the streams so there was no immediate rush to the gold fields. Men went about their usual work at the fort. Some of the Mormons did scratch around the riverbed and gravel bars and found some gold, as did a few outsiders who showed up in March.
C. C. Smith got word of the discovery to Sam Brannan in San Francisco, who paid a visit to the fort later on in April, along with a small number of gold seekers.
Brannan, a printer by trade, was the leader of a group of Mormons who had come around the Horn in mid-July, 1846, with 238 members of that persecuted sect; men, women, and children, in search of a possible place of refuge.
Upon entering San Francisco Bay, they saw the American flag flying over the Presidio and Brannan was observed to take off his hat and stomp all over it on the deck saying "There is that damn rag again." He was, however, an adaptable sort of man and soon had his Mormon flock working at various industries. Some members he sent to New Helvetia to work at Sutter's Fort, while others remained at Yerba Buena, soon to be renamed San Francisco after the bay. In January 1847, Brannan started printing the California Star. By the end of that year, the population of San Francisco had grown to over 200 people.
Brannan soon found himself in trouble with Brigham Young and Church authorities in Salt Lake, Utah, over the 30 percent tithes of all the gold mined by Mormons and collected from his men for the building of the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, which Brannan consistently failed to pass on. "Tell the Lord to send me a receipt," said Brannan, "and I'll send it at once." When one of Sutter's Mormon workmen asked him how long they should continue paying tithes to Brannan, Sutter replied "Just as long as you are fools enough to do so."
Upon being dunned by Brigham Young, Brannan resigned from the Church of Latter Day Saints. He still remained a powerful engaging personality, however, a coarse, burly man with an unswerving instinct for the limelight.
On May 5, 1848, Brannan and Smith visited Coloma for a personal look at the goings on at the south fork of the American River. Sure enough, they found some gold. Three days later, Brannan sailed on a launch bound for San Francisco with a vial of gold dust in his pocket, and immediately upon arrival, ran down Montgomery Street with his hat in one hand, the gold dust in the other, shouting "Gold! gold! gold from the American River," which became the shout heard around the world. Perhaps Brannan was trying to stir up some business for his store at Fort Sutter, but in any event, he certainly got more than he bargained for.
An electrified crowd immediately gathered around the excited Brannan as he basked in his latest limelight. Residents of the city, who only a short while earlier had shrugged off the preliminary reports of gold on the American River, were now lit up with gold fever and soon were stampeding to the gold fields. The gold fever now traveled fast to all parts of the territory. People dropped whatever they were doing and left for the diggings; some by sloop, schooner, or lesser craft across San Pablo Bay to Sutter's Fort at the mouth of the American River and on to Coloma. Other people went by horse back, or foot around the northern or southern arms of the bay, making their way along the trails as best they could to the diggings. Sailors in port jumped ship, lowered boats and rowed across the bay. The excitement reached San Jose. Soldiers stationed at Monterey deserted their posts for the diggings. Before too long, gold seekers were streaming in from Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. By the end of the summer, men from all over the territory, with the exception of the Spanish Californians, were there.
The spirit of the moment was captured, on May 29, by the Californian:
The whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles and from the seashore to the base of the Sierra Nevada resounds to the sordid cry of gold, gold!, GOLD! while the field is left half planted, the house half built and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pickaxes.
The schooner Louisa sailed out of San Francisco Bay on May 31, and carried the news of gold to Honolulu along with two pounds of the precious metal. The press there was quick to comment that "California merchants might now be able to settle accounts due." From Honolulu, Hudson's Bay Company men took the news of the gold strike to the Northwest coast and the Willamette Valley, which soon brought about a stampede, some by ship, others by pack train or covered wagon to the northern gold fields on the Trinity River.
The streets of San Francisco were empty by the middle of June. Only a quarter of the male population remained. All the able-bodied men were off to the gold fields. Stores were closed. Newspapers ceased to print. The beginnings of the infamous San Francisco ghost fleet lay at anchor in the harbor.
By mid summer at the American River, the spring runoff was gone leaving the gravel islands exposed, which the gold seekers eagerly dug up with their picks and shovels and washed in their pans. Others walked along the ravines probing the rocky bars for nuggets with their knives. Only simple tools were used and needed at the beginning. The prices for such simple items skyrocketed as merchants were quick to capitalize on these desperately needed commodities.
Week by week, the range of the gold diggings expanded in all directions as gold seekers eagerly searched for El Dorado. They searched north to the Bear and Feather rivers, and the many tributaries of the Sacramento River. Others searched south to the San Joaquin River and her tributaries; the Merced, Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Mokelumne rivers.
Thomas O. Larkin, the influential merchant of Monterey, kept close watch over all that went on. He gathered a prescient insight and corresponded regularly with his business associates and United States government officials back in Washington; most notably, Secretary of State James Buchanan who received word of the gold discoveries in mid-September 1848.
From Pueblo de San Jose on May 26, 1848, Larkin wrote to Colonel Richard B. Mason, the military governor of California, at his Monterey headquarters:
We hear of nothing but gold, gold, gold. An ounce a day, two or three. Last night several of the most respectable American residents of this town arrived home from a visit to the gold regions. Next week they will go with their families, and I think nine-tenths of the foreign storekeepers, mechanics or day laborers of this town and perhaps of San Francisco will leave for the Sacramento. . . . Baskets, tin pans, shovels, etc. bring any price imaginable at the gold washings.
In late June, Governor Mason, uncertain as of yet just what to make of "the Golden Yellow Fever," decided to have a look at the diggings for himself. Accompanied by Lt. William Tecumseh Sherman and Capt. Joseph Folsom along with an escort, they left for Sutter's Fort. They arrived on July 2, 1848, having lost some of their escorting soldiers who deserted for the gold fields along the way.
Sutter loved celebrations and decided to put on a great banquet to honor Governor Mason for the Independence Day celebration on the fourth of July. On that day, an old iron cannon was loaded and salutes fired off at dawn, followed by the raising of the Stars and Stripes at sunrise. Everyone was in high spirits throughout the day. Fortunately for the celebrants, a launch had recently arrived with an ample supply of spirituous liquors--brandy, sauterne, aguardiente--which flowed freely long into the night. Sutter had generously set the table with venison, wild fowl, and beef, described in his memoirs as "all the luxuries which a frontier life could offer."
William Tecumseh Sherman mentioned in his memoirs that Sutter was "tight" that night and the evening was forever immortalized in a verse that later appeared in the popular Putt's Original California Songster:
I went to eat some oysters, along with Captain Sutter;
And he reared up on the table, and sat down in the butter.
This extravagant banquet set Sutter back some $2,000 and did not really reflect the true state of his affairs that were in decline. As the governor's party left for the gold fields the next morning, July 5, 1848, they undoubtedly noticed that the fort was in disarray. Nearby farms and fields were deserted. Most of Sutter's workers and all of his Mormons had run off to the gold fields and many of his industries were closed down, the blacksmith shop as well. Fort Sutter had become the central way station for all manners of goods and was now the major mercantile exchange on the frontier. Boxes, bales, and casks were piled high. Teamsters with their teams of horses loaded up their wagons to head off for the different mining communities that were springing up overnight all through the gold fields.
The governor's party journeyed up the south fork of the American River, and later on that same day came upon the Mormon Island diggings ten miles downstream of Coloma. There, they found about 200 men working rockers, washing gravel, each man earning anywhere from $25 to $100 a day. A makeshift village of a store, tents, brush shelters, and boarding shanties had sprung up near the diggings.
They visited the diggings at other rivers and ravines to observe all the goings on. Before long, Mason estimated that there were somewhere around 4,000 miners in the gold country, half of them Indians, who were taking out somewhere between $30,000 to $50,000 worth of gold every day, "if not more." In his careful observations Mason noted:
I was surprised to learn that crime of any kind was very infrequent and that no thefts or robberies had been committed in the gold district. All live in tents, in brush houses or in the open air and men have frequently about their persons thousands of dollars' worth of this gold. . . . .Conflicting claims to particular spots of ground may cause collisions, but they will be rare as the extent of the country is so great and the gold so abundant that for the present there is room and enough for all. . . .
Whatever doubts Mason may have had concerning earlier reports about the gold fields were gone. Mason saw with his own eyes just how easy it was for a laboring man with just a simple pick, shovel, and pan to dig and wash gravel or to poke rock crevices with their knives and find gold. And work they did, regardless of hardship or the weather, all summer long into the fall, each man hoping to make his fortune in the land of Queen Califia before the rainy season set in.
Wherever the seekers went in their search for gold, merchants would follow and set up a system of supply. Sam Brannan and C. C. Smith grew rich from their stores at Sutter's Fort and Coloma. Others manned crude merchant outposts, little more than shacks or flimsy tents, at the many frontier settlements that sprung up here and there near the diggings, offering up the necessities at 300 to 500 percent profit. Flour, salt pork, whiskey, eggs, picks, pans, shovels, shirts, and boots; whatever was needed or whatever the merchants could get their hands on in commodity scarce San Francisco. The reckless spending habits of the miners themselves spurred on the fanatically high prices of goods and created a demand for luxury items.
Gold fever swept across the Pacific as fast as the ships could carry the news. From Hawaii, then known as the Sandwich Islands, and from Australia and China, gold seekers crossed the Pacific to the land of Queen Califia in the quest for gold.
Enterprising merchants from the Sandwich Islands and Oregon swiftly got into the lucrative trade of supplying the gold seekers with their everyday goods and shipped in general cargoes to San Francisco.
From San Francisco, the goods were transported by schooner and other small craft to Sacramento, transferred to wagons, and hauled by well-paid teamsters to the various diggings. The rush was on.
By late August, miners from the northwestern provinces of Mexico, mostly from Sonora, trekked north to the southern most diggings. Included with this group were many skilled miners whose skills the Americans, who were new at this, would draw from.
Small delegations from Chile, another country rich in mining experience, began to arrive later in the year. For the rest of 1848, the population of California and those flocking in across the Pacific would enjoy a monopoly of the California gold fields. That would change in 1849, just as soon as the rest of the world caught the gold fever.
Next: Mason's Dispatch
The Era of the Clipper Ships
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