goldfields

“Started for Capt. Sutter’s on the 21st and arrived there on the 28th. This place is situated nearly due N. of Marsh’s, on the Sacramento river, and about 75 miles. We were received by Capt. Sutter with great kindness, and found here J. John, who had left us in the mountains on the 10th of last month. Oct. He arrived one day sooner at this place than we did at Marsh’s.”

So wrote Bidwell in the revision of his journal. Both Marsh and the Mexicans told the men that if they were looking for work, to go see Sutter, who had only recently acquired his vast land grant where the Sacramento and American Rivers converge.

The Mexicans had colonized the land along the coast, and along the Mission Trail, but they had not ventured inland very far. Sutter persuaded them to give him a huge peice of the inland valley, where he planned to build his own independent empire.

“Dr. Marsh said we could make the journey in two days, but it took us eight. Winter had come in earnest, and winter in California then, as now, meant rain. I had three companions. It was wet when we started, and much of the time we traveled through a pouring rain. Streams were out of their banks; gulches were swimming; plains were inundated; indeed, most of the country was overflowed. There were no roads, merely paths, trodden only by Indians and wild game. We were compelled to follow the paths, even when they were under water, for the moment our animals stepped to one side down they went into the mire.”

How they could see the path in the pouring rain is hard to imagine. They must have gone into the mire time and again. The trip is certainly easier nowadays, in a car, whether it’s raining or the sun is shining.

John Bidwell spent November 17, 1841 in jail.

At the order of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who wanted to know what the heck these Americans were doing in Mexico, John Marsh had gone to San Jose to explain the matter and soothe the general. He came back with passports for most of the men in the Bidwell-Bartleson Party—but not John Bidwell.  Bidwell suspected that Dr. Marsh hadn’t gotten him a passport because he wanted to keep him at his ranch as a useful employee, but Bidwell was having none of that.

On the 15th he set out for San Jose on his own to get a passport. Arriving at Mission San Jose on November 16th, he was promptly thrown in jail by Mexican soldiers until he could find someone to explain his presence to the authorities.

He spent three uncomfortable and flea-bitten days in jail until he was able to hail a passerby who understood English.

“He proved to be an American . . . and he kindly went to Vallejo, who was right across the way in the big Mission building, and procured for me the passport.” The passport was made out for Juan Bidwell, and can be seen at the California State Library.

Vallejo could have sent the whole party of Americans back where they had come from. But Alta California had need of skilled labor, and he decided to let them stay.

Bidwell returned to Marsh’s ranch on the 18th. But he had no intention of sticking around. Captain John Sutter was hiring, so to Sutter he would go. He set out for Sutter’s settlement  on November 21st.

The same day that John Bidwell and the rest of the company arrived at Marsh’s ranch, Jimmy John arrived at Sutter’s Fort. He had become separated from the rest of the party in the Sierras two weeks earlier. He and Bidwell had gone down a canyon looking for a passable route. Bidwell, being the cautious one, insisted that the men and horses could not get through, and went back. Jimmy, who was always more impetuous and daring, pressed on.

He expected the others to catch up with him, but they never did. He continued over extremely rough terrain, with very little to eat. Sometimes he found some wild grapes, and another time he ate the same rushes that his horse grazed on. Once he shot at a hawk carrying a squirrel. “Did not kill the hawk, but made it drop the squirrel. This gave me some relief being nearly all I had to eat since I left the Company.”  (The First James John Diary, in The Bidwell-Bartleson Party, edited by Doyce B. Nunis, p. 178.)

He met friendly Indians, who gave him acorn soup to eat, but then angered them when he   mistook one of their dogs for a wolf and killed it. He barely escaped with his life. Coming down into the valley he met another group of Indians who led him to Captain John Sutter’s settlement on the Sacramento River.

In his diary, Jimmy’s entry for November 4th reads:

“About sunset two Indians came on horses and took me and my baggage to Captain Suiter’s [Sutter’s] house, a distance of 6 miles. Capt. Suiter has a fort here made of dobies [adobes] and burned brick, mounted with a few old cannons and guarded by about 29 men, mostly runaway sailors and Canackers or Owihees [Hawaiians] besides a number of pet Indians which he employs for war parties and who built his fort and farm. He keeps also a harem of Canacker [Hawaiian] women. This place is called New Helvetia.”

Makes you wonder what life was like at Sutter’s Fort in the early days.

John Bidwell stayed at Marsh’s rancho, while fifteen of the company went to “the pueblo of St. Joseph” (San Jose) to look for work. Bidwell wanted to pump Marsh for more information about California and its resources, as well as travel around and see some of the country on his own.

“The next morning I rose early, among the first, in order to learn from our host something about California, –what we could do, and where we could go,–and strange as it may seem, he would scarcely answer a question.”

Marsh had at first welcomed the newcomers, but he was evidently having second thoughts.  Bidwell soon came to see him as “one of the most selfish of mortals.” Although he had fed them on pork and beef the first night, and even used some of his seed wheat to make tortillas for the thirty-two men, Marsh was obviously worried about being saddled with a host of hungry mouths that he couldn’t afford to feed.

The men, who had no money, paid him with various items—a can of gunpowder or a butcher-knife–but Marsh only grumbled that they had already cost him $100, and “God knows whether I will ever get a real or it or not.” (A real being a Mexican coin.) All the men left as soon as they could, and Bidwell never had a good word to say about John Marsh.

“Wednesday, 3d. We waited till Capt. B. came up, and all started for Marsh’s about noon; arrived at the St. Joaquin and crossed it — distance 13 miles — found an abundance of grass here. The timber was white oak, several kinds of evergreen oaks, and willow — the river about 100 yds. in width.”

With the news from Jones and Kelsey on the 2nd that they had found Dr. Marsh, the Company at last knew that they were definitely in California. All that was left to do now was to cross the San Joaquin River and the Central Valley. “It was an occasion of great joy and gladness. We were not only near our journey’s end, but the men knew just where to go, instead of uncertainty.”  (1877 Dictation)

It is stunning to consider how long they had traveled in uncertainty and doubt. For three months, since they had split off from the party that went to Oregon, they had been blazing a trail through unknown territory. Who today would undertake such a journey?

“Tuesday, 2nd.  Capt. B. with his 7 remained to take care of the meat he had killed — while the rest of the Company went on. We passed some beautiful grapes, sweet and pleasant.  . .  Behold! This morning Jones, who left the camp to hunt on the 23rd ult. came to the camp. They (he and Kelsey) had arrived in the plains several days before us, and found an Indian, who conducted them to Marsh’s house, but he brought bad news; he said there had been no rain in California for 18 months, and the the consequence was, there was little breadstuff in the country. Beef, however, was abundant and of the best quality.”

Thomas Jones and Andrew Kelsey (younger brother of Benjamin Kelsey) had gone on ahead to search for settlements, and came back with the exciting news that they had been lead by an Indian to the ranch of Dr. John Marsh. This was good news indeed, for Marsh was the man who had set the movement in motion. His letters to Missouri, read by Bidwell and many others, had painted a glowing picture of the healthful climate and fertile soil of California. It was Marsh who had enticed them across half a continent to  this new land. Now they were about to meet the man himself.

Bidwell might have been worried though, by that mention of drought. As a farmer, he was looking for a place to raise wheat, livestock, and produce. Without reliable rainfall, how could that happen?