goldfields

On November 25th John Bidwell was traveling between Marsh’s ranch and Sutter’s establishment on the Sacramento River. He had probably gotten about as far as someplace just west of Elk Grove. Marsh had told Bidwell that the trip would only take two days, but it would end up taking eight, on account of the rain and mud and swollen streams. He was traveling with two companions, Mike Nye and Harrison Pierce, and they didn’t pack enough food for such a long journey.

“We got out of provisions and were about three days without food. Game was plentiful, but hard to shoot in the rain. Besides, it was impossible to keep our old flintlock guns dry, and especially the powder dry in the pans.”

In another account he says, “Game plentiful. Elk, antelope, deer, grizzly bear, and yet after crossing the San Joaquin owing to the floods and rain it was impossible to kill any for three days.”

Sutter somehow heard that the three men were on their way, and sent out someone with two mules loaded with provisions for them–tea. coffee, flour, and sugar. But the men and the mules don’t seem to have met up until they got to Sutter’s. There was plenty of room in the Central Valley for two parties to miss each other.

John Bidwell had heard that a man by the name of John Sutter was starting a colony about a hundred miles to the north of Marsh’s ranch in the Sacramento Valley. The Mexicans had colonized the land along the coast, and along the Mission Trail, but they had not ventured inland very far. Sutter was able to persuade them to allow him to develop a vast tract of land along the Sacramento River. On November 21, John Bidwell set out for Sutter’s colony of New Helvetia.

“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. As I sit in my nice dry home, with the November rains beating on the roof, I can imagine John Bidwell trying to make his way through exactly the same cold and wet weather then as we are having now.

John Marsh went to San Jose and got passports for everyone in the Bidwell-Bartleson Party—everyone except John Bidwell. Bidwell suspected that Dr. Marsh wanted to keep him at his ranch as a useful
person to have around, but Bidwell was having none of that, and 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.

The jail would have looked a lot like this picture of the first jail in Monterey, made of adobe bricks and wood.

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 signed by Comandante General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. 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.

With passport in hand, Bidwell set out for Marsh’s ranch, arriving there late on the 18th. He didn’t plan to stay with Marsh, however. He had heard about John Sutter’s establishment on the American River, and that would be his next stop.

Google reminded me that today is the birthday of the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, author of such classics as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, and that consummate pirate adventure, Treasure Island.

And what does RLS have to do with John Bidwell and Northern California? Not much, but Stevenson did spend a few (but very important) months in California. He came here in pursuit of the woman he loved and wished to marry, Fanny Osbourne, in 1879. He lived for a time in San Francisco and Monterey. It is said that the California coast inspired the setting for Treasure Island.

After their marriage in May 1880 RLS and Fanny spent their summer honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on the slopes of Mt. St. Helena at the northern end of the Napa Valley. An odd choice for a honeymoon cottage, but it was all they could afford. He wrote about their experiences in The Silverado Squatters, a book I read last summer after visiting the Robert Louis Stevenson Silverado Museum in St. Helena, California.  It’s a very short book, and a good read. Stevenson could turn any experience into words worth reading.

So while John Bidwell was running his rancho in Chico, RLS was experiencing California just over the hill, 100 or so miles to the southwest. Too bad RLS never ventured into the Sacramento Valley—maybe he could have been a guest at Bidwell Mansion!

One of the men, Michael Nye, who gone down to San Jose to look for work cam back to Marsh’s ranch with the report that the other men were “detained” there, and the Mexican authorities wanted the rest of the party to deliver themselves as well, since they had not brought proper passports with them from the States.

Nye “likewise brought a letter from the Spanish Commander in Chief of Upper California (that would have been Vallejo) to Marsh, requesting him to come, in all possible haste, and answer or rather explain the intention of the company in coming to California.” Marsh was put out at having to go on this errand, but he set out for San Jose on the 12th. It would not do to further agitate the Commandante.

“I went to R. Livermore’s, which is about 20 miles from Marsh’s, nearly W[est]; he has a Spanish wife and is surrounded by 5 or 6 Spanish families.”

Robert Livermore was an Englishman; one of those sailors who jumped ship and stayed in California. Born in 1790, he landed in California in 1822 in San Pedro and worked as a ranch foreman until he could acquire his own land grant. In 1834 he and his partner Jose Noriega started running cattle on a ranch in what became Alameda County, and in 1839 they acquired title to Rancho Las Positas. In 1838 he married Maria Josefa de Jesus Higuera Molina. They had eight children.

He had a reputation as a hospitable and honest man. He stayed out of politics and didn’t even go prospecting for gold during the Gold Rush. He probably realized that his land, livestock, and crops were more valuable in the long run than gold could ever be.

Robert Livermore died in 1858, and the town of Livermore is named after him.

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.

On November 4th the Bidwell-Bartleson Party finally arrived at the home of Dr. John Marsh. Considering the glowing reports of California that Marsh had sent back east, Bidwell was surprised at the primitive conditions he was living in. He had a small adobe house with a dirt floor and no fireplace. ” In fact it was not what I expected to find,” wrote Bidwell.

Dr. Marsh fed the company as best he could. He killed a hog for their dinner. “We had nothing else but beef; the latter was used as bread, and the former (pork) as meat. Therefore I will say we had bread and meat for dinner.”

The Bidwell-Bartleson Party was almost out of the hills. Yesterday they had finally spotted the Central Valley, and now knew that the mountains did not go on endlessly. They headed for the nearest timber (which indicated water) and reached a river . . .

” . . . joyful sight to us poor famished wretches!!! Hundreds of antelope in view! Elk tracks thousands! Killed two antelopes and some wild fowls; the valley of the river was very fertile and the young tender grass covered it like a field of wheat in May.”

They feasted on the wild game. It was a stark contrast to the breakfast that John Bidwell had eaten that very morning—the roasted windpipe and lungs of a coyote. Their starvation days were over—they had entered into California.

“It commenced raining about one o’clock this morning and continued till noon–threw away all our old clothes to lighten our packs, fearing the rain would make the mountains so slippery as to render it impossible to travel.” The Bidwell-Bartleson Party was traveling light, coming down the western side of the Sierra Nevada. They had long ago abandoned their wagons, but John Bidwell still carried the astronomy handbook and celestial atlas that he could not bear to part with.

Here and there the men saw the bones of horses strewn about. Bidwell later learned that the Indians preferred the meat of horses to cattle, and brought horses up into the mountains to kill and eat them.

Each day as the party left its encampment, Indians rushed in to pick up whatever they had left behind. This day one of the men in the party stayed behind to watch them, and saw that they were led by the “old, racally pilot” that Bidwell’s group was sure was trying to lead them astray to their deaths. “The old gentleman was at the head of this band, and as he had undoubtedly led us into this place to perish, his crime merited death–a rifle ball laid him dead in his tracks.”

It was the only deadly encounter that the Bidwell-Bartleson Party had with any Indians.