goldfields

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at Bidwell Mansion. BMA elves were busy decorating last week with new old-fashioned holiday decor.

December is a wonderful time to visit the Mansion, and a great place to take your out-of-town guests. The Bidwell Mansion Association will hold its annual Holiday Event for members and their guests on Friday, December 6th. For a donation of $25 you will be treated to catered appetizers, wine-tasting from New Clairvaux Vineyards, an exhibition of fine art photography, a tour of Bidwell Mansion in all its holiday splendor, costumed guides, AND . . .

the opportunity to be greeted by General and Mrs. Bidwell themselves. Yes! John and Annie will welcome you to their home in person!

If you are interested in the BMA Holiday Event on December 6th, please let me know and I will see that you get tickets. You can email me at naleek@gmail.com.

Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park will also be open for Holiday Night Tours on Tuesday through Friday, December 12th-15th. Another chance to enjoy Bidwell Mansion at Christmas!

John Bartleson took a look around California, decided it wasn’t for him, and left the next year to return to Missouri. Joseph Chiles took a look around California, and decided it was for him, and also returned the next year to Missouri to recruit more settlers.

After all the hardships of six months on the California trail, to turn right around and do it again shows a full measure of fortitude and toughness. Joseph Chiles was a Kentuckian, born in 1810, who moved to Missouri in 1831 with his wife, Polly Ann Stevinson. She bore four children and passed away in 1837. When the Western Emigration Society formed in 1841 Chiles signed up to take the trail to California, leaving his four young children with relatives.

Chiles traveled all over California on his first visit and got General Mariano G. Vallejo to promise him a grant of land for a mill site in Napa Valley. Then he took the southern route back to Missouri to see his children. There he signed up his friend Billy Baldridge for the next California trip and gathered the machinery for a gristmill. With a party of thirty men, six women and a few children he set out, eventually passing through the Sierras by way of Walker Pass. Unfortunately, they had to abandon the mill machinery on the way.

Nevertheless, Chiles proceeded to Sonoma and showed his friend the nice little valley he had found on the eastern side of the Napa Valley. He got a grant of two leagues and named it Rancho Catacula. He fought in the Mexican War in 1846 and then returned once again to Missouri to collect his children in 1847. Not yet done with trekking back and forth across North America, he would make one more round trip in 1853-54. This time he met Margaret Garnhart and married her. Their first child was born on the trail in Nevada.

By this time he had built his gristmill, and when the Gold Rush came he resisted the temptation to go prospecting for gold, and instead prospered from the great demand for beef and flour. Although his fortunes had their ups and downs through the years, he lived to the good old age of 75, leaving behind a numerous posterity.

So now we have gotten John Bidwell to California in November of 1841. On the 1st they arrived on the Central Valley floor, where they found an abundance of game–good eating at last!–and by November 4th the company was at John Marsh’s rancho, near Mt. Diablo, eating pork and beef. Things were looking up for the Bidwell-Bartleson Party.

If you are interested in following these intrepid emigrants for the entire journey, you may wish to revisit my blog posts from May to November 2011, when I traced their progress day by day from Missouri to California. For now I am going to leave them at Marsh’s adobe house and take a look at some other aspects of the history surrounding John Bidwell.

In upcoming posts I’ll be looking at some of Bidwell’s companions on the journey and what became of them. Who found success in California and who returned to the United States?  Did any of them (other than Bidwell) become prominent in their new home? What became of Nancy Kelsey, the lone woman in the company?

So stay tuned for more news from old Northern California, and thanks for  visiting.

From John Bidwell’s trail journal:

November. Monday, 1st. The Company tarried to kill game; an abundance of wild fowl and 13 deer and antelopes were brought in. My breakfast, this morning, formed a striking contrast with that of yesterday which was the lights of a wolf .

In other recollections Bidwell says he had a coyote windpipe for breakfast on the morning of the 31st. Another member of the party had shot the coyote, but by the time Bidwell caught up with them, the only thing left to eat was the lungs (lights) and the windpipe.

Got to be about the worst breakfast ever!

But on the afternoon of the 31st they sighted the valley, “joyful sight to us poor famished wretches!!!” Antelope! Elk! Wild ducks and geese! Their situation changed literally overnight.

Bidwell tells it this way in his 1877 Dictation:

The eve of the next day found us surrounded by abundance. . . . It was about the first of November, and there was no time to delay if we were going to reach California that fall. Most of the party were ready and anxious to press forward. Captain Bartleson and his men though otherwise. They said we hadn’t yet reached California, we probably still had a long distance to travel, that such a place as we were in could not be found everywhere and they were going to stop and lay in meat for the balance of the journey.

Leaving them in camp and crossing the Stanislaus River, we proceeded down the north side of the same and camped. Early the next day the news came that the Indians in the night had attacked them and stolen all their horses. We remained till they came up, carrying on their backs such things as they were able.

John Bidwell never did get on with Captain Bartleson, and I think there is a note of satisfaction here that once again, Bartleson was wrong and got what he deserved.

From John Bidwell’s trail journal:

Friday, 29th. Last night, the Indians stole a couple of our horses. About noon we passed along by several huts, but they were deserted as soon as we come in sight, the Indians running in great consternation into the woods. At one place the bones of a horse were roasting in a fire; they were undoubtedly the bones of the horses we had lost. Travelled no less than 9 miles today; the night was very cool and had a heavy frost. Although our road was tolerably level today, yet we could see no termination to the mountains–and one much higher than the others terminated our view. Mr. Hopper, our best and most experienced hunter, observed that, “If California lies beyond those mountains we shall never be able to reach it.”

Weary and worn to the bone, barely living on the meat of their own pack animals, struggling down rocky canyons, the Company was in a desperate situation. With no map and no guide, they had not a clue where they were, and they could see no end to their journey.

Nancy Kelsey, the only woman in the group, had started up into the Sierras riding a horse, with Baby Ann on her lap, but she was now walking. In her own recollection, taken down by a friend in 1893, she says, “I walked barefoot until my feet were blistered.”

As Bidwell explained in Echoes of the Past, “we were now on the edge of the San Joaquin Valley, but we did not even know that we were in California. We could see a range of mountains lying to the west–the Coast Range, but we could see no valley.” They discussed and debated their situation. Many in the party were convinced that they were not yet within five hundred miles of the Pacific Ocean. The mountains stretched as far as the eye could see, and greatly discouraged, they feared that they would never reach California alive.

From John Bidwell’s trail journal:

Thursday, 28th. Surely no horses nor mules with less experience than ours could have descended the difficult steeps and defiles which we encountered in this day’s journey. Even as it was, several horses and mules fell from the mountain’s side and rolling like huge stones, landed at the foot of the precipices. The mountains began to grow obtuse, but we could see no prospect of their termination. We eat the last of our beef this evening and killed a mule to finish our supper. Distance 6 miles.

Yum! stringy old mule meat. How John Bidwell must have longed for a loaf of bread. He always said he couldn’t imagine how men like the fur trappers could live on meat alone, and no bread.

A healthier mule than Bidwell had. Photo by William Henry Jackson, 1871.

And those poor animals, done to death at the bottom of a cliff. It’s a wonder there was anyone with a horse left by the time they got out of the mountains.

Keep in mind that the Bidwell-Bartleson Party at this point does not know that they have entered California, and they don’t know how much farther the mountains go on. The nights are cold, snow will be falling soon, and they have run out of food. How anxious they must have been feeling!

Drawing of John Bidwell by Steve Ferchaud

“Monday, 25th. Went about 6 miles and found it impossible to proceed. Went back about 2 miles and encamped — dug holes in the ground to deposit such things as we could dispense with. Did not do it, discovering the Indians were watching us . . .”

“Tuesday, 26th. Went S. about 3 miles and camped in a deep ravine. It was urged by some that we should kill our horses and mules — dry what meat we could carry and start on foot to find the way out of the mountains.”

Bidwell had rejoined the company after his detour to the grove of sequoias. While he was gone they had hired an old Indian to pilot them out of the mountains. They were sure that he had led them “into the worst place he could find” and then absconded. They suspected the Indians of wanting to get their horses for food, and they did not trust the guide.

When Bidwell caught up with his companions late on the 24th, they had abandoned 5 of the horses and mules that could no longer travel, and the Indians had taken them for meat. Now they had to consider whether it was time to kill the rest of the animals and travel on foot as lightly as possible.  They decided for the time being to keep their animals alive since, if nothing else, they were dinner on the hoof. How many of the men had mounts is unknown, but Bidwell was on foot.

Game was surprisingly scarce in the Sierra Nevada. All the deer must have been down in the valley, fattening on the lush grass. “When we killed our last ox [on the 22nd] we shot and ate crows or anything we could kill, and one man shot a wildcat. We could eat anything.”

They ate acorns, but the bitter tannin in the untreated acorns made them sick. Years later Bidwell could still vividly recall how he longed for good food, especially fat beef and bread.