Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 1 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 11

CHAPTER VII

Total manifested gold shipments from California ports via Panama from April, 1849, to the close of 1856, not including unascertained sums taken on privately, are given as $365,505,454. Estimated yield is reported as $596,162,061. Known receipts from this state foot up $522,505,454, not including foreign shipments other than to England, nor quantity manufactured in the United States, indicating a state total yield after analysis of the figures of about $600,000,000. Estimate has been made that since discovery, gold bullion in an amount exceeding $1,500,000,000 in value has been produced in California.

Singular it is that the exact date of Marshall's discovery near Coloma, on the south fork of the American River, should be a disputed question. Hittell gives January 19, 1848, as the date. Bancroft says on Marshall's authority that the find was made between the 18th and 20th, but that the 19th has generally been accepted as the date. Marshall was so confused as to time that Bancroft by other records fixed the day as the 24th. And yet the event has been ranked second only in importance to California's discovery and later settlement by the padres.

A commission had been appointed by Gov. William D. Stephens of California under the authority of a legislative bill, the inspiration of that exclusively Californian fraternal order, of three members of the Native Sons of the Golden West, to make research of historical data to ascertain, if possible, the date of the discovery of gold and also to correct the date of inscription on Marshall's monument at Coloma. Under Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 25 (42nd Session) the committee named by the governor, Phillip B. Bekeart representing the Pioneers of California, Fred H. Jung the N. S. G. W. and Grace S. Stoermer the N. D. G. W., made report October 15, 1918, based on entries in historical diaries, recorded statements and conclusions drawn therefrom, to find that January 24, 1848, and not the 19th, is the correct date of the discovery of gold in California and to recommend that the inscription on the monument of Marshall at Coloma in El Dorado County be corrected accordingly.

Little dreamed the Mexicans of the value of the land they ceded, other than as to its probable future value commercially. As little, the buyers how fat the soil with wealth untold and that rivers flowed over golden beds. Between the discovery and cession periods of the territory, many examinations were made by enterprising and inquisitive officers and civilians, but none discovered that the Sierra Nevada streams poured golden sands into the valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. No hint of it in legend or tradition was learned from white or red man. As Historian John Frost remarks: "A nation's ransom lay within their grasp but strange to say it escaped their notice — it flashed and sparkled all in vain." Capt. Sutter, despite a residence of ten years in the vicinity of the discovered placer regions, was none the richer or wiser for the treasure about him lightly concealed under the surface soil.

It is a remarkable fact, which has been more or less commented upon, that with the insatiable greed for gold the Spaniard, and those that followed him, never made investigation to ascertain the existence or non-existence of it, or that if they did and made discovery that the secret was kept inviolate. The fact is, however, that the existence of gold was unknown by them and the Indians. The latter had no golden ornaments — in fact did not know of the value of gold, until the white man taught him it in barter at the trading post stores, and then further presumed on his ignorance by exchanging gold ounce for commodity or whiskey ounce, glass bottle included.

Governmental examinations had been made but no discoveries of minerals resulted. True, there was conjecture that from the region's undoubted volcanic origin and peculiar geological features gold or other valuable mineral deposits might exist. Chance disclosed what inquiry had failed to reveal, and in a few weeks California was agitated to fever heat, nearly all the population became infected and flocked to the mines. By August some 4,000 people, including Indians, were washing the river sands and gravel for gold, the washings confined to the low wet grounds and the margins of the streams and the daily yields from ten dollars to fifty dollars per man but often much exceeded.

Every stream in the valleys came under scrutiny. Gold was found on almost every tributary of the Sacramento, and the richest earth on the Feather and its branches, the Yuba and the Bear, and on Weber's creek, a tributary of the American fork. Prospectings in the valley of the San Joaquin also resulted, but later, in gold discoveries on the Cosumnes, the San Joaquin, Fresno, Chowchilla, Merced and Tuolumne, besides in lesser quantities in the ravines of the western Coast Range as far as Los Angeles.

The valleys were explored as never before, and with the spread of the contagion man came to know the San Joaquin Valley, up to now the stamping ground of wild Indians and outlaws, the grazing ranges of immense herds of elk, antelope and wild mustangs, with the plains in their wake footprinted by the stalking grizzly bear and the loping coyote. The territory now comprising Fresno County was absolutely unknown and with state government was yet to be a part of Mariposa until independent county organization in April, 1856.

There had been reports of gold discoveries before Marshall's, but if true they created little more than local stirs and did not come to the knowledge of the enterprising and wide awake Americans. That Capt. J. D. Smith found gold in 1826 on his first crossing of the Sierras "near Mono Lake"' may be true, but if he did it was on the eastern side of the range. In 1841 gold was found in Santa Clara County on Piru Creek, a branch of the Santa Clara, but the find in March, 1842, at San Francisquito near Los Angeles, as mentioned elsewhere, was a genuine one, and it may be said that considerable gold was extracted in all the region from the Santa Clara River to Mount San Bernardino.

In greater or lesser quantity, it has been found in almost every part of the state, but nowhere and never in such deposits as on the western slope of the Sierras in the quartz veins, in the gravel and clay of ancient river beds and in the channels of existing streams. It is another remarkable fact that geology has not been able to explain that gold should be found on the one side and silver on the other of the Sierras. The gold occurs in virgin state, the silver in various ores. The western slope of the Sierras rich in gold, the eastern in silver, the Coast range is equally rich in quicksilver in red cinnabar, especially at New Almaden (1845) south of San Jose, later found at New Idria in San Benito (in a corner formerly of Fresno) and about St. Helena in Napa County.

There never was and has not been since, in history, such a stampede as was started by the discovery at Coloma. In twelve months it attracted to California more than 100,000 people of all nationalities, and commerce sprang up with China, Mexico, Chili and Australia, while yet in governmental confusion. The world was wild and delirious, and while only another remarkable incident in the state's history, it did hasten as no other event could have the assumption of state sovereignty and the development so certain to follow acquisition of the land. There was a wild scramble for the mines, the daily gold accumulations ranged from $30,000 to $50,000, the discovery wrought a marvelous and almost incredible change in the character of the country, laborers, professionals and tradesmen tramped the crowded trail for mountain gulch or ravine, soldier and sailor deserted, and there was a social upheaval with excesses and lawlessness for a time, with labor commanding fabulous wages and prices of commodities and foodstuffs prohibitive, even when they could be had. The exodus to California has for its magnitude been likened to that of the Crusades of the Middle Ages. The Annals of San Francisco, published in 1854, records that there was soon gathered a mixed population of the "wildest, bravest, most intelligent yet most reckless and perhaps dangerous beings ever collected into one small district of country." Thousands came after the American occupation not to stay but to pick up a fortune quickly and return home. It was no longer the place "for a slow, an overcautious or a desponding man."

California was in complication over land and mining claims. The Indian resented the taking of his hunting grounds by the miners, and with the uncertainty of things the old regime bewailed the coming of the Gringo, and lamented the discovery that attracted the horde as a green pasture field does the locust or the grasshopper. The dreamy days at the haciendas, life at the old missions with the patriarchal padres, all the idle days were no more. A feverish excitement prevailed with gambling, drunkenness, horseracing and stealing, claim jumping and worse things. The days of '49 "beheld one of the most reckless, heterogeneous societies ever brought together."

In January, 1849, according to a memorial of Senators Gwin and Fremont to Congress, while waiting for the state's admission to take their seats, the estimated population was:

Californians, 13,000; Americans, 8,000; Foreigners, 5,000; Total, 26,000.

As a result of the gold find, a population of at least 107,000 was claimed for the state as follows:

Estimate as above 13,000

Pacific ports sea and Sonora land arrivals January-April '49 8,000

San Francisco sea arrivals, April-December 1849 29,000

Other ports 1,000

Southern overland 8,000

From Mexico 7,000

Deserting sailors 3,000

Overland via Salt Lake 25,000

Total 107,000

All enumerations of the day may be accepted as inflations and little better than wild-eyed estimates because of the shifting character of the population as well as because of the other difficulties in making any reliable canvass. The variance of the various reported figures is irreconcilable. The figures emphasize though the immensity of the California-ward movement of the day. The world had been inoculated with the gold fever, California had a heterogeneous population, but no government, save the makeshift authority exercised by a small and utterly inadequate military force.

California had leaped into worldwide importance with Marshall's discovery of gold in that mill race on that disputed January day in 1848. The excitement and immigration and the insistent demand for a state government furnish a chapter in history without like in the world. Somewhere someone has written that the brilliant audacity of California's methods for admission into the union is without parallel in the nation's history. Brilliantly audacious it was, truly, but only characteristic of California and the Californians and of the abnormal condition of the times.

Minerva, the mythological goddess typical of endowment of mind and prominent and distinctive as the figure in the foreground of the Great Seal of California, is emblematic and illustrative of its sudden springing into the maturity of statehood as no other before or since of the United States of America.