Gold! (7 page)

Feeling hostility to his growing power, Smith moved his people west, to Kirtland Mills, Ohio. There, he hoped the Mormons could thrive and erect their Kingdom of God on earth. The “saints,” as Smith's converts referred to themselves, soon found themselves in
1837 in the middle of a nightmare. The banking collapse that year caused their settlement in Kirtland Mills to falter. Rumors had spread that all Mormons endorsed polygamy; some did. Once again, the endemic hostility of outsiders to what was different—and the saints were—forced Smith to move his flock westward yet again.

This time they settled in Missouri for all of one year before Missouri's governor, fearful of what he perceived as the saints' barbarous religious and marital practices, condemned them by executive order to leave the state. At first, the Mormons hesitated but changed their minds rather hastily after armed men surrounded the Mormon stronghold in Far West, Missouri, and “demanded” they leave.

The Mormons fled east and established the city of Nauvoo on the Mississippi River near Quincy, Illinois, in 1839. Five years later, in 1844, the city had grown to ten thousand inhabitants. Mormon missionaries had been sent out by Smith around the world, and they had made another twenty-five thousand converts.

All this explosive growth in the religion was threatening to the Mormons' Gentile neighbors. The latter, aware of the polygamy among the saints, detested them. It didn't help when Smith announced that he was running for the presidency of the United States.

In response, a newspaper in Carthage, Illinois, ran an expose of the Mormons' practice of polygamy. Incensed at the article, Smith attempted to destroy the newspaper's office but was arrested and charged with incitement to riot. Before he could be tried, a mob overpowered his jailers, broke into his cell, and murdered him.

Suddenly, the saints were at a crossroads. Should they stay, or flee once again?

Most of them followed the banner of Brigham Young. As president of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he claimed he was Smith's successor. He became leader just in time to face the ire of the president of the United States, James Polk. Polk thought the Mormons aberrant and a threat to the westward expansion of the United States. If they tried to cross the Rocky Mountains, he intended to intercept them by force.

Young was a much better politician than Smith. He sent letters to Senator Stephen A. Douglas—who would later lock up in a series of debates with an Illinois barrister named Lincoln—and other influential members of Congress. He tried to persuade them that the Mormons were peaceable, that they were not a threat in any way to the United States, and that they were good citizens. In fact, Young had already made the decision for the Mormons to journey farther west, beyond the Rockies, but he now knew he needed government sanction to do it.

When the United States entered the Mexican-American War in 1846, President Polk made plans for an invasion of California. The overtures of Young with Douglas and the others now paid off. Ever mindful that his Army of the West was too undermanned to attempt an invasion of California, Polk chose to put his prejudices aside. He issued an executive order establishing that a military battalion of the U.S. Army be raised from the Mormons. Young saw this as a practical opportunity to expand west with the sanction of the U.S. government.

“The enlistment of the Mormon Battalion in the service of the United States, though looked upon by many with astonishment and some with fear, has proved a great blessing to this community. It was indeed the temporal salvation of our camp,” he said.

Thus was born the Mormon Battalion: five hundred men, thirty-four women, and fifty-one children. To assist General Stephen Watts Kearney in California's conquest from the Mexicans, the Mormons' job was to march through New Mexico, Arizona, and California, following the route taken by sixteenth-century explorers across the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and California deserts. The intent was to rendezvous with General Kearney in San Diego.

Before they left, Brigham Young told the Mormon Battalion:

“Brethren, you will be blessed, if you will live for those blessings which you have been taught to live for. The Mormon Battalion will be held in honorable remembrance to the latest generation; and I will prophesy that the children of those who have been in the army, in defense of their country, will grow up and bless their fathers for what they did at that time. And men and nations will rise up and bless the men who went in that Battalion.

“These are my feelings in brief respecting the company of men known as the Mormon Battalion. When you consider the blessings that are laid upon you, will you not live for them? As the Lord lives, if you will but live up to your privileges, you will never be forgotten, without end, but you will be held in honorable remembrance, for ever and ever.”

Among the battalion that day listening to Young's speech were many men destined to build Sutter's Mill. The Mormon trek west began in July 1846 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with twenty-five army wagons and twelve privately owned wagons. They literally blazed the southern trail that many of the subsequent argonauts bound for northern California's gold fields would take.

Six months later they reached San Diego, thus becoming the first group in American history to take wagons west across the desert. Melissa Burton Couray, a member of the Mormon Battalion, later described the battalion's arrival at Palm Spring, just southeast of Vallecito in the Anza-Borrego region:

“January 18, 1847. The men were so used up from thirst, fatigue, and hunger [after crossing the desert from the Colorado River at present-day Yuma] there was no talking. Some could not speak at all; tongues were swollen and dark. Sixteen more mules gave out.

“Each man was down to his last four ounces of flour; there had been no sugar or coffee for weeks. Only five government wagons and three private wagons remained.… When they arrived at Vallecito Creek, they rested and washed clothes and cleaned their guns. An Indian from a nearby village brought a letter from the Alcalde in San Diego welcoming the Battalion to California. In the early evening there was singing and fiddling with a little dancing.”

On January 29, 1847, the Mormon Battalion reached San Diego.

“Traveling in sight of the ocean, the clear bright
sunshine, with the mildness of the atmosphere, combined to increase the enjoyment of the scene before us.… The birds sang sweetly and all nature seemed to smile and join in praise to the Giver of all good; but the crowning satisfaction of all to us was that we had succeeded in making the great national highway across the American desert, nearly filled our mission, and hoped soon to join our families and the Saints, for whom, as well as our country, we were living martyrs,” wrote Daniel Tyler, a battalion member.

Almost a year to the day before gold was discovered, Mormons discovered their El Dorado there on the California coast. Some members of the battalion were assigned to garrison duty in San Diego, San Luis Rey, and Los Angeles, but only temporarily. The members of the Mormon Battalion, who had enlisted for exactly one year, were mustered out of the U.S. Army on July 16, 1847. Eighty-one men reenlisted and served an additional eight months of military duty under Captain Daniel C. Davis in Company A of the Mormon Volunteers.

The majority of the soldiers migrated to the Salt Lake Valley and were reunited with their pioneering families. Some of those who didn't, found work in Sutter's Fort. Marshall subsequently hired them to help him set up the sawmill. After his gold find, when Marshall traveled to Sutter's Fort in late January 1847, the mill was still not in full operation. It wouldn't be until the tailrace was deepened. With Marshall gone, the workers continued to work on the race, but still found time to do a little prospecting of their own.

Since the tailrace was where Marshall had made his discovery, the workers concentrated their efforts in that vicinity. Pocketknives and butcher knives were used to extract the gold particles and separate them. During the first week after the discovery, Marshall's men succeeded in picking up approximately $100 worth of gold.

If gold was only limited to that one spot where Marshall had made his discovery, it really wouldn't be much of a discovery at all. For there to be a “gold rush,” gold needed to be discovered in another location. The more the locations of the discovery of the precious metal, the more the opportunity to get rich. On Sunday, February 6, only thirteen days after Marshall's discovery, his men Bigler and Barger decided to strike out to the other side of the river.

Searching for gold in the seams and cracks of the granite outcrops that lined the riverbanks, they found what looked like a gold nugget. They jury-rigged a pair of wooden scales to assist them in estimating the value of their find. Using a 12-cent piece of silver as a counterweight, equal to $2.00 in gold, they estimated they had found $10 worth.

An enterprising individual, Bigler had a hunch. Believing that gold might also be discovered farther downstream, he borrowed a gun and said he was going hunting for ducks. About half a mile below the mill and out of sight of his fellows, he noticed an outcropping on the other side of the river, similar to what had been found in the bottom of the tailrace. Wading across the rushing, cold water, he got to the outcropping and began
scraping at a particularly bright yellow spot. What he took out was later estimated to be worth $1.50.

So far, the actual yield of the “discoveries” was not even worth mentioning monetarily, except
it was happening
. Gold was being discovered by eye—that is how plentiful it appeared to be. Who knew what lay below the surface, what fortunes there were to be mined out of the rock and earth and water?

Bigler returned without telling anyone what he was doing. On February 22, Washington's birthday and a national holiday, Bigler, using his hunting excuse again, began his trip downstream to his “digs.” This time, though, the water level was up and with it the rapids; he had difficulty struggling against the current to cross. But he made it, barely, to the other side, and collapsed, exhausted.

As night settled in, Bigler tried to build a fire to keep warm. He figured to use his gun's primer to spark the fire to life. But the primer had gotten wet. He tried flint and steel to start the fire but that didn't work either, because his hands were shaking so much from the cold, he couldn't get a good strike of the steel on the flint.

“Jumping up and down and dancing over rocks in my misery,” Bigler would later write, “I saw every now and then a yellow piece staring me in the face, but was too cold to stop and pick them up.” When he felt warmer, he went to work on the rocks with his pocketknife.

Searching closely in the sand near the river, Bigler found a round nugget shaped like a bullet, which was worth about $6.00. This excited him so much that he
crouched for several hours looking for more. He picked up several smaller pieces, but when he arose to his full length, he cried out from the pain caused by his cramped muscles, which made him feel as if his back were broken.

After a few minutes of standing and stretching, the agony wore off. Night descended quickly and Bigler made his way back upriver to the dam, where the water was diverted to the sawmill. He called for Brown, who soon crossed the river on a log raft and thus ferried him across to the far bank. At Bigler's cabin that night, his friends questioned him about his hunting and the “reason for his lateness.”

He had been acting suspiciously, and they wanted to know what was up. Bigler's answer was to ask for the wooden scales. Pulling up one corner of his shirt, which he had used to tie up his gold, he weighed his findings before the fixed stare of the others. In all, Bigler's gold amounted to $33 worth. He had found it in a few hours. Bigler's usual rate of pay was about one dollar per day. In one day he had found his month's pay!

Marshall's workers knew that they had signed to do a job. They couldn't just desert Marshall; first they needed to finish construction of the sawmill. They decided to finish their millwork during their six-day-a-week work schedule and keep the prospecting to their free day on Sunday.

On February 27, Bigler took his Mormon brethren to his ledge down the river, where, because of the high water, only $33 worth of gold could be found that day. Once again, all swore to secrecy and once again, the
secret got out. This time is was Sutter's Swiss teamster, Jacob Wittmer.

On February 9, Sutter had sent his brethren with two wagons to the sawmill. When he got there, Wittmer heard of the discovery from the children of one of the mill-workers. At first Wittmer didn't believe it, but he later proved the story true by his wife, the cook, who showed him some of the gold in the bottom of her vat of soap.

On February 14 in his diary, Sutter recorded:

“Wittmer returned with the two wagons from the mountains, and told every body of the Gold mines there and brought a few samples with him.”

George Smith, who ran a general store at Sutter's Fort, was the first one Wittmer told. He bought a bottle of brandy from him. When Smith refused to accept gold dust as payment, Wittmer told him to ask Sutter whether it was really gold. Smith did. Sutter had no choice but to confirm the discovery of gold. Smith wrote to his partner Sam Brannan in San Francisco telling of the find. That was how San Francisco initially found out about the discovery of gold at Sutter's sawmill. Even Sutter himself finally, had to give in to the gold excitement and send an emissary to the territorial governor in Monterey, reporting the discovery. But now the stakes had gone up considerably.

Sutter knew that a great rush of humanity was about to rush to California in search of gold. There was no way to hold back the tide. What he hoped was that he could retain title to his lands on the basis of his land grants from the Mexican government being recognized by the
conqueror, the United States of America. Would the conqueror recognize his hereditary rights, what was just and due to as fine a gentleman as he, late of the Swiss Guard? Sutter sent his man Bennett to carry the word of the discovery and Sutter's request to the governor. Sutter's empire, and the freedom for the prospectors to go where they wanted in pursuit of gold and the ultimate expansion of the United States, rested with the decision of the military governor, Colonel Richard Barnes Mason, in Monterey. Mason's adjutant was William Tecumseh Sherman. His family called him “Cump.” Take a look at any daguerreotype of Cump and you come away with the impression that he must have been one rough, tough son of a bitch, and you'd be right. Born in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1820. His father gave him the middle name of Tecumseh in honor of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who had tried in the first decade of the nineteenth century to unite the tribes of the Ohio River Valley against the white usurpers, and failed.