Controlling found Gold

Sutter tried hopelessly to obtain control of the land the gold was in by signing a treaty with the Indians and by leasing the land for three years. But the American military govenor in Monterey, Richard Mason, refused to confirm his claim.

Sutter attempted to mine the gold himself by using Indians and Kanakas, who were the natives of the Sandwich Islands he had brought to California with him to work as laborers. But this did not prove to be successful and all of the gold that was recovered was used to pay off most of the debts he had.

The majority of the men went back to their jobs when winter came in and by April 1849, there were only two men and some Indians left at the fort while the gold rush went on strong.

The people that had gone to the mountains in 1848 were in the grand majority from California. The 49’ers were all over the place and they had taken over Sutter’s land, taken and robed his cattle, and took his land without payment. Then a new town, called Sacramento City started up only a few miles away from Sutter’s fort and prospered.

Sutter attempted to make a profit out of the gold rush that was going on but he ended up losing everything in the end. He moved to a little town in Pennsylvania and the state of California provided him with a small pension, which he lived on. He died in 1880 in Washington, DC, while attempting to gain some justice from the United States government.

The effect that the gold fever had on the state, nation and the world during that time is something difficult to understand. But there are records of some of the people that witnessed it. Mr. Buckelew, who was a publisher of the Californian, suspended publications on May 29 because there were no longer any people left in town to read it. In his last, reduced issue he says: “The majority of our subscribers and many of our advertisers have closed their doors and places of business and left town....The whole country, from San Francisco to Los Angeles and from the seashore to the Sierra Nevada, resounds with 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.” Mr. Buckelew then also went to the mountain to have a look around for his own prospecting self.

The news also got to the Monterey on that same day on May 29. The Alcalde of Monterey, Reverend Walter Colton, pointed this out in his California Diary:

 “Our town was startled out of its quiet dreams to-day, by the announcement that gold had been discovered on the American Fork. The men wondered and talked, and the women too; but neither believed. The sibyls were less skeptical; they said the moon had, for several nights, appeared not more than a cable’s length from the earth; that a white raven had been seen playing with an infant; and that an owl had rung the church bells.” Colton sent off a messenger to the mines to establish for himself and the people of Monterey if the astonishing information was true. And on June 20, the messenger came back and everyone went running to hear the news.

“As he drew forth the yellow lumps from his pockets, and passed them around among the eager crowd, the doubts, which had lingered till now, fled. All admitted they were gold, except one old man, who still persisted they were some Yankee invention, got up to reconcile the people to the change of flag. The excitement produced was intense; and many were soon busy in their hasty preparations for a departure to the mines.... The blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the baker his loaf, and the tapster his bottle.  I have only women left, and a gang of prisoners, here and there a soldier, who will give his captain the slip at first chance.”