goldfields

Amos Frye’s death made him famous in a way that his life never would have. The story appeared in the Shasta Courier, the Sacramento Daily Union, the San Jose Republican, the Daily Alta California (San Francisco), and others around the state. It even showed up as far away as New England (last paragraph in the second clipping).

Notice that the first article says Frye was “of Missouri” and the second “of Mobile.” It’s likely that he was born in Mobile, Alabama; it is known that he came to California by way of Missouri, where he may have lived for some years. The date of “12th July ” is wrong. The fight took place on either June 28th or 29th, 1852.

Amos E. Frye was buried in a plot that John Bidwell set aside on the ranch for the Chico Cemetery.

Bidwell, as Frye’s employer, became the executor of his estate. Frye’s few possession were sold at auction in January 1853. An entire year went by until probate was settled in court.

Note that the court is located “at Bidwell.” That would be Bidwell Bar, which at that time was the county seat.

Here is the inventory of Frye’s property sold at Rancho Chico. My thanks to “Rooty” who posted this on findagrave.com.

Amos Frye’s entire estate consisted of six horses, two weapons, saddle, bridle and halter, a coat and a cloak, and an old pair of boots. According to Measuring Worth, one dollar in 1853 had a purchasing power of forty dollars today, in case you would like to calculate the value of his estate.

Who inherited? Amos Frye had a nephew living near Stockton, who wrote to Bidwell in November 1853 that he was contemplating returning to the States in the spring and would like to have the estate settled by then.

Stockton No 18^th 1853

Mr. Bidwell ser

            I received a line from you a short time a go statin that you had not got threw with the settling the estate of of my deseast uncle you will send me a statement of the settlement and oblig me I intend going home in the spring and I want something to show how the thing was settled.   Yours etc. John Frye

If he went home in the spring of 1854, he must have returned at some point. John Adolphus Frye is listed on the California Great Register (voter registration) for the years 1871 to 1888. For some of those years (1871-73) he is at French Camp, now a suburb of Stockton. He was born, probably in 1828, in Alabama, which ties him nicely to his uncle’s place of birth.

. . . shot in artery and died instantly. One man killed, had to bring him on a horse and he was the 1^st man buried in Chico Cemetery. Great indignation that I let a white man be killed and did not kill all the Indians.

from Annie Bidwell’s notes to John Bidwell Dictation, John Bidwell Papers, California State Library

That one man was Amos E. Frye. The record for “Internment No. 1” in the Chico Cemetery states, “This grave must be located in Section 4; site otherwise unknown; the monument has not be found.” There may have been a marker at one time, if so it has been lost.

Frye’s death occurred in June 1852, during Bidwell’s only excursion against natives. As Bidwell recounted in 1891:

I never went on an Indian killing expedition except on one occasion. The Indians came to my place and stole cattle. I had a few domesticated cattle of better breed, bought from emigrants, and they were very valuable and of course they were easily driven off. I wanted to punish the Indians and communicated the fact to my neighbors. They were all willing to help me, but I did not want to kill. I wished to arrest them and have them punished according to law. For some time I was unable to get any one to assist me unless I would, as they expressed it, “wipe them out.” Finally about a dozen men volunteered and promised to do just what I said.

I waited a month perhaps before I made my move, for I wished to find out as near as possible who took the cattle. Finally two mountain Indians came down. I seized them and locked them apart so that they could not talk to each other. Asked each one if he knew who stole the cattle, and one of them replied that the Indians had, and gave me the exact names. The other did likewise, withholding his own name. I said we would go and get those Indians. I thought we could surround the village and wait until daylight. We had the two Indians with us, and had agreed that their lives would be safer if they helped us to catch the others.

John Bidwell Dictation 1891, pp. 20-21

American cattle were of higher quality than the local Spanish cattle and were thus more valuable. The county sheriff was willing to deal with Indians in town, but had no desire to go after natives in the mountains. That left Bidwell or other settlers on their own if they wanted to retaliate against Indian theft and depredations. There was little sympathy for the natives among most settlers. They expected the indigenous people to give way to the newcomers, and punished those natives who did not. The Indians took livestock because they had seen game and other food resources destroyed by the influx of miners and farmers.

Bidwell desired to work within the law. As Michele Shover states in her book California Standoff, “he was determined to be deliberate, show restraint, and model a peaceful resolution to the problem.” (58) But this was a problem that neither side could solve.

After the loss of his cattle, Bidwell waited until late June to make his move. With an armed band of ranch Indians and white employees, including Amos Frye, he proceeded up Chico Creek Canyon with the aim of surprising the Indians village at dawn.

Just as it was getting light, one of our men accidentally discharged his gun. Then the Indians were roused and they ran in all directions. I had stationed one man on the outside to see that none of the Indians escaped. In the excitement he was shot. The men were greatly excited and wanted to kill the Indians. I would not allow it, and we returned home, without the thieves. I was blamed for the loss of a white man’s life in comparison with which 1000 Indians were as nothing. That was the only Indian expedition I ever engaged in.

John Bidwell Dictation 1891, pp. 21

Michele Shover suggests that it may have been one of the ranch Indians who deliberately fired his gun to warn the mountain natives. Whichever it was, the shot destroyed the element of surprise.

Amos Frye was shot in the neck with an arrow and died instantly. John Bidwell regretted the incident for the rest of his life. His decision to go against the mountain natives had caused the death of his friend. He had not retrieved his property and he had not been able to set an example of his ideal of American justice. His neighbors blamed him for Frye’s death, but he felt that the death of native men was just as great a loss.

Amos E. Frye was now in his forties, working for John Bidwell on Rancho Chico. Bidwell was often away from the ranch, serving in the California senate in San Jose and looking after business in San Francisco and Sacramento. John Bidwell left his ranch in charge of his younger brother Thomas, age 29, and other employees like Alfred H. Stout.

Frye turned out to be a good employee. He probably had considerable experience in farm and ranch business. Thomas wrote on January 6, 1851:

Mr. Frye has proved a most useful man to the ranch and is deserving both of commendation and reward. He thinks that the hog speculation would be altogether too uncertain to engage in. There will in all probability be “a rush” towards the Scot River mines [in Siskiyou Co.] in the Spring and as mules are selling pretty low at Marysville Mr. Frye thinks it would be a good investment to buy a few. He has accordingly gone down to purchase a few.

Bidwell’s aim was to make money selling beef, flour, and produce to the mining camps. A letter from Frye to Bidwell on May 19th 1851 gives some idea of how business was going at Shasta Valley.

Chasty Vally [Shasta Valley]  May 19^th 1851

John Bidwell

Dear Sir  I have been here for the last five days this is a bad speculation for us the flour brot 50 cts and Dull Beefe 20 to 35.  We have put up and opened a Butchers for sale of the Beefe and as soon as I can rais out of Beefe & Flour 1000$ I shall start for home and leve Keefer to sell out the balance as for Mr. Hillman & Morford they have behaved very bad. Morford is of all men the poorest and smallest Specimen of men I ever saw and quarrelsome I have stood everything from Morford but closed all Transactions and do not allow him to speak to me.

I don’t know what “Dull Beef” is; maybe I am misreading the word. He goes on to call Morford “a Dam Rascal” and says “You will see me as soon as I can rais the amt before mentioned” which was $1000. They were certainly making money, but not as quickly or easily as hoped. In another short letter in August 1851 Frye says, “the prospects are bad for the sale of all kinds of Provisions.”

Here’s another Frye to Bidwell letter, dated January 7, 1852.

Yuba City Ja’y 7, 1852

Maj. Bidwell

            I am abt making an arrangmt for a Lot of Hogs say from one hundred & fifty to 60 and shall no doubt make the arrangmt if so I shall bring 30 sows home and leave the balance of the hogs in this place for sale. Taylor left a horse for me here but the horse was stolen or got away. I sent a mule home please put the [double F] Iron on him and turn him out. the buyer is an acquaintance of mine please say to Barber to charge his bill to me and if he wants to go to the mines let him have some hoss or mule to ride on my a/c [account] and oblige. I advise him to go to the Butte Mines [?] or where Nelson was. please direct him out and if you can give him any advise you will much oblige etc.

                                                                                    A.E. Frye

These letters deal mostly with livestock, but it is also interesting to see who he mentions. Taylor was Charley Taylor, a skillful cowboy who worked for Sam Neal, and Nelson Blake was another young man employed by Bidwell. The Iron he mentions would have been Frye’s own brand. Barber is Alexander H. Barber, who also worked for Bidwell and was appointed postmaster at Rancho Chico in 1851.

Amos E. Frye led an adventurous life, but left very little record of it. He is more noted for his death than his life — he was the first man buried in the Chico Cemetery. How he came there, and speculations about where he started from, will be the subject of the next few posts.

Amos E. Frye first turns up as a member of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, the first group of American emigrants to head to California. But he didn’t make it to California, and it seems he didn’t have any intention of going that far. When Bidwell listed the men in the company at the beginning of his journal he noted “A. E. Frye and Rogers on a pleasure excursion.” After they crossed through South Pass and were on the Green River, Bidwell recorded:

Sunday, 25th. Left the rendezvous this morning, 6 of the company, viz., John Gray, Peyton, Frye, Rogers, Jones, and Romaine, started to return to the United States.

John Gray and William “Lord” Romaine were an interesting pair and I have written about them elsewhere. Frye and the others were men who wanted to spend the summer viewing the West, hunting buffalo, and enjoying the great outdoors. According to Father Nicholas Point, a member of the missionary party that traveled with the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, a group of French Canadian trappers coming the opposite direction “painted a picture so little encouraging that many of our party thought only of taking advantage of the opportunity to turn back.” They had seen enough; time to head back to the States.

Who was Amos Frye? He was probably born in 1809, making him 32 years old on this expedition. He might have been born in Mobile, Alabama, if one notice of his death is correct. He might be the Amos E. Frye (although confusingly, there is a New Englander with the same name and the same death date) listed as a trader on this New Orleans port immigration record.

By 1841 he was in Missouri, but countless men passed through Missouri, and in 1841 almost none of them had been born there.

So in 1841 John Bidwell goes on to California, and Amos Frye returns to Missouri. What Frye did between 1841 and 1850 is unknown. But in 1850, somehow and somewhere, Bidwell and Frye meet up again. Bidwell had gone to Washington, D.C., to lobby for California statehood. He visited his family in Ohio and traveled through some of the other states. Perhaps Frye read his name in a newspaper, remembered his old trail mate, and sought him out. Maybe he was looking for a better job or a way to get to the goldfields. In any case, he returned to California with John Bidwell, steaming into San Francisco Bay on the Oregon, the ship that brought the news of California statehood.

A. Frye is listed just before J. Bidwell and servant (that was Rafael, a Maidu boy) and Mrs. and Miss Crosby. Further down the list is Thos. Bidwell, John’s younger brother. Thomas’s letters will give us a glimpse of Amos Frye and life on Rancho Chico.