Ralph K. Andrist - The Gold Rush

The discovery of gold in California in 1848 signaled the first gold rush in history. In 1849 alone, the population of this American territory increased 500 percent as 80,000 men rushed to claim their share of the riches; three years later, the state held nearly 250,000 people. By 1865, miners had clawed $750 million in gold from the hills and streambeds of California.

In other countries in earlier times, mines that produced precious metals became the property of kings and princes. But in California, the gold, like everything else on the frontier, belonged to those who took it.

The gold rush story begins with the man whose employee first discovered gold and who, in the end, lost everything because of it.

Johann August Suter was born in Germany in 1803. His parents came from Switzerland, then one of Europes few democracies. As a boy, Suter went to school in Neuchtel (New Castle), Switzerland, a city near the border with France. When he was older, he joined the Swiss Army and became a soldier. He liked to tell people that he was a captain, but his highest rank was first under-lieutenant of the reserves. At age twenty-three, Suter married Annette Dbold and fathered five children. He opened and operated a store in Switzerland, but spent more money than he made. By the time he was thirty-one, he feared being put in debtors prison.

In 1834, to avoid trial, he bought a forged French passport and boarded a ship, the Sully, sailing from Le Havre, France, to New York City. He left his wife and children with his brother, promising to send for them when he could.

Arriving in the United States on July 14, he changed his name to John Augustus Sutter because he wanted to be as American as possible. He spoke both English and Spanish, in addition to his native Swiss French. Traveling with two Germans and two Frenchmen, he headed west. They spent some time in Ohio, then Indiana, and finally settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where there was a large German population.

Sutter moved into a German hotel on Front Street, where he made friends, including another new arrival, twenty-two-year-old John A. Laufkotter. They became roommates and talked about opportunities in Missouri and farther west. Sutter had read German writer Gottfried Dudens Report of a Journey to the Western States of North America, which gave glowing descriptions of the Missouri River valley. Like Duden, my object in coming to America was to become a farmer, Sutter later explained. Many had become wealthy by farming in Missouri and using slave labor. But Sutter soon discovered there were quicker ways to get rich and quick was what mattered most to him. He wanted to bring his family to America.

Sutters roommate, John Laufkotter, moved to St. Charles, on the north side of the Missouri River and opened a grocery store with a partner. Sutter soon followed, but because of his failures in Switzerland, the grocery business did not appeal to him. Instead, Sutter spent time in German saloons, where he spent what little money he had.

Worse yet, he was victimized by a man who convinced everyone that he was a colonel in the Prussian army, a former adjutant to the crown prince of Prussia, and wealthy. The so-called colonel ran up big bills in the saloons, and his new German friends, Sutter included, loaned him money. He promised to repay them once his steamship came in, loaded with money and merchandise. Sutter lost $50 and learned a valuable lesson: A man with nothing more than good manners and a convincing story could live well in America.

But Sutter still could not pay his rent and bring his family to America. He was becoming desperate. He remembered the colonel telling stories about trading opportunities in Santa Fe. When Sutter met a group of Frenchmen heading for the New Mexico territory on a trading expedition, he joined them. In the spring of 1835, he set out on the Santa Fe Trail .

Sutter took some of his stock of Swiss clothing to barter. Even though he became ill during that first journey and was bedridden for much of his time in Santa Fe, he still made a good profit. In the fall, he returned to Missouri with more money in his pocket, seven mules, and a barrel of Santa Fe wine. With this proof of payoff, Sutter convinced seventeen men to pool their money to start a company, which then elected him captain. He was freer with other peoples money than his own and soon needed more investors.

For three years, Sutter was a trader on the Santa Fe Trail. Distracted by drinking sprees, he mismanaged supplies critical to the caravans. In one case, he forgot to purchase flour, which caused a costly delay, and some of his investors lost faith in the venture and sold their shares back to Sutter. Soon he tried to trade goods and trinkets to the Indians on the trail for horses and mules, a violation of Mexican law which forbid dealings with the Apaches. Caught in the act and accused of smuggling, Sutter bribed a Mexican official with a few baskets of champagne. By 1837, he had raised enough money to buy farmland on the Missouri River.

Sutter arrived in Westport, present-day Kansas City, with a retinue of Mexican greasers as servants and herdsmen, a wagon or two, and forty or fifty mules, according to John Calvin McCoy, who had founded the town in 1833. McCoy described Sutter as a soldierly looking man with a great deal of dash and restless energy, [who] wore high-topped boots, a splendid blue cloth cloak, the capes reaching nearly to the ground, and altogether was well calculated to create a profound impression upon us simple backwoods men. Sutter sold most of his mules to purchase two town lots from McCoy.

Later, Sutter added 320 acres of farmland, built a stable and corral for his horses and mules, and a hotel. He also bought out a town store, which supplied traders on the Santa Fe Trail. Sutter made these purchases on credit from his neighbors and soon was in debt. He had to sell property at a loss and still didnt satisfy his creditors. Depressed by these setbacks, he contemplated suicide. John McCoy brightened his spirits by agreeing to finance an expedition to California.

In New Mexico, Sutter had met Carlos Beaubien, an educated Canadian, who had studied for the clergy but had never taken the orders. Beaubien had come to New Mexico as a trapper and became alcalde (mayor) of the town of Taos. But before that, he had traveled to the Mexican province of Upper California, and he often bragged to Sutter about that territorys mild climate and rich soil. Beaubien said that California had all the land a man could want and hundreds of horses just there for the taking. On April 1, 1838, the day before he was scheduled to appear in court to face his creditors charges, Sutter left Westport for California with eight other men.

Sutter traveled on horseback, pulling another horse packed with provisions and camping equipment. He gave McCoy what remained of his Swiss clothing, a gold watch chain, and some pictures partly in gratitude, but mostly to lighten his load. The caravan headed for the Rocky Mountains, pausing for a few weeks at a reservation of Delaware Indians near the Kansas River, where they met and joined an American Fur Company wagon train. On April 28, the party added nine Protestant missionaries, including four newlywed couples, bound for Oregon.

The route they followed soon became known as the Oregon Trail . From the Kansas River, they headed north along the Big Blue River and then the Platte River in Nebraska, a trail first mapped by the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1804. Fur trappers and traders had beaten this path, on foot or by horseback, since 1811. Sutters party followed the Oregon Trail as far west as Fort Vancouver in the Willamette Valley, near the present-day city of Portland, Oregon, but couldnt find a ship to take them to California. Instead, the Hudsons Bay Company had a ship set to sail for the Sandwich Islands, now the Hawaiian Islands, with a cargo of furs. Sutter sold his horses to pay for his passage and boarded the