goldfields

Nicholas “Cheyenne” Dawson spent about a year at Santa Cruz keeping store and supervising the shipping of redwood lumber for Job Dye. The business wasn’t making money, so Dye closed the store. He decided to try otter hunting instead and offered Dawson a job as a otter hunter.

Dawson was no seaman, but he was game. Dye built three 15-foot boats, and manned them with three men each. Dawson was the hunter in the bow of one of the boats. They sailed down the coast from Monterey to Santa Barbara and began hunting around the offshore islands. Their procedure was to surround a raft of otters and begin shooting them, and then collecting as many as they could. (I assume dead otters float.)

Otter hunting is a very exciting business, and somewhat dangerous, as you are apt to think when you hear a bullet whistle past you, it having glanced from a wave as it came from a hunter’s gun opposite, who had shot at an otter on a line between you and him. But these risks will be run for an otter skin, worth thirty dollars. and especially when there is rivalry among the hunters.

Thirty dollars in 1842 would be about $500 today, which certainly would make otter hunting a lucrative business. When Dawson later took ship for Mazatlan, Mexico from San Pedro, he paid for his passage with a single otter skin.

At Santa Barbara we found an old otter hunter, A. B. Thompson, who proposed to go into partnership with us on the halves–he to furnish a vessel officered and manned, and to provision us; we to furnish boats guns and ammunition and do the hunting.

This partnership had the advantage that the hunters would not continually be needing to seek shelter to camp. With a vessel to back them up they could work quicker.

We first visited San Nicholas Island, and, hunting around it, killed several otter. Here we searched on shore for a lone woman whom we knew to be on the island, but failed to find her, although we found her tracks.

Anyone who has read Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell, will recognize this reference. O’Dell used the story of the “Lone Woman” of San Nicholas as the basis for a novel for young readers. Island of the Blue Dolphins was published in 1960 and won the Newbery Medal in 1961. In the book O’Dell calls the girl Karana. I don’t think anyone knows her true Indian name. At the Santa Barbara Mission, where she was taken in 1853, she was known as Juana Maria. She lived alone on San Nicholas Island for 18 years and was not rescued (if that’s what it was) until 10 years after Dawson looked for her.

Dawson and his partners continued the hunt until the otter gave out, and then they went back to Santa Barbara and settled accounts.

I found myself with forty dollars in money and five or six otter skins, a broken arm, and my feet so badly bruised that I could scarcely walk on crutches. [This was the result of a fall off a cliff.]

About this time he decided he had seen enough of California, but “the difficulty now was how to get away.” Leaving California could be just as tricky as getting there, it seems, but eventually he was able to board a ship heading to Mazatlan, and take the overland route across Mexico. He wasn’t sure whether or not it was time to give up his wandering and head for the States, so he let his horse make the decision.

I saw the City of the Aztecs, and as I rode slowly out of it, my mind was still wavering. If I went on with my travels, I would strike out for Acapulco; if I gave them up, my route would be to Vera Cruz. I let my horse decide it. He took the road to Vera Cruz, and I have never regretted it.

But California would call to him again in ’49.

At that time Sutter was on the Sacramento, and wanted colonists; but I, with ten or twelve others who were in a hurry to get into employment, decided to try the Spanish settlements south of us, and after a day or two’s stay at Marsh’s, set off. Marsh told us that we might meet with difficulties on account of having no passports from our government, and advised us to leave our guns behind. This all did but me.

Marsh told them of the hospitality of the Mexican rancheros, and gave them a letter of introduction to the next ranch. They found that by showing up at any ranch and signaling that they were hungry they could get a meal of beef. There was very little else to eat. When they came near San Jose they were apprehended by a squad of soldiers who escorted them to the “calaboose, or jail.” They were rescued by an American named Tom Bowen, who persuaded the alcalde to liberate them and who looked after them until they could get passports from M. G. Vallejo, the military commander. Dawson describes San Jose as a sleepy little town of about 150 residents, with meandering streets and houses with next to no furniture.

Dawson was offered a job by Bowen to work at a distillery he was setting up to make rum from “Sandwich Island molasses.” They first went to Mission San Jose to get his passport. The distance was only twelve miles, but Monte, Dawson’s horse, was so weak that it took all day to get there.

Poor old Monte, worn out from his trek from Missouri, and starving from the lack of grass in drought-ridden California, kept laying down on the trail until at last Dawson dismounted, took the saddle on his shoulders, and led Monte by the bridle. They came to the house of Alexander Forbes, the English Consul, who provided Monte with a pile of wheat straw to eat, and offered to send him along with some of his horses up in the hills where there was grass. Leaving Monte in his care, Dawson went on to the distillery.

At the distillery I found, in the way of provisions, a sack containing beans and wheat, and a cake of tallow; and finding plenty of deer close by, I fared very well. The distillery was located in a grove of redwoods, west of San Jose.

It didn’t take much to fare very well in old California.

California was not what Nicholas Dawson expected, but he found his experience fascinating. In his narrative he describes the ranchos, the cattle and horses, and how everyone rode everywhere “perhaps only to cross a street.” He explains how the hide and tallow trade worked. He enjoys a fandango (“the  only dancing I ever did in my life”) and describes deer and geese grazing among the cattle, and grizzly bears crossing the roads.  He observes a bull and bear fight:

The issue of this fight was very doubtful, depending altogether on which put in the first blow. If Bruin got the bull’s nose with his paw, he won; if the bull got his horns in Bruin’s carcass first, he won.

It was a strange new world for the young man from the States.

The Bidwell-Bartleson party of American emigrants arrived at the ranch of John Marsh on November 4, 1841. Now they at last knew for sure that they were in California. But it was not exactly what they had expected. Here is “Cheyenne” Dawson’s reaction:

We had expected to find civilization – with big fields, fine houses, churches, schools, etc. Instead, we found houses resembling unburnt brick kilns, with no floors, no chimneys, and with the openings for doors and windows closed by shutters instead of glass. There were no fields or fencing in sight – only a strong lot made of logs, called a corral. Cattle and horses were grazing everywhere; but we soon found that there was nothing to eat but poor beef. The season before had been exceptionally dry*, and no crops had been made except at the missions, where they irrigated; and , as many of the mission were on a rapid decline, but little had been raised at them.

*Which goes to show that there is nothing new about drought in California.

John Marsh in 1852

Marsh was very kind and asked us what we craved most. We told him something fat. He had a fat hog. This he killed for us, and divided it among the messes. [The men had organized themselves into groups that ate together]. He also had a small quantity of seed wheat that he was saving to plant. A part of this he had made into tortillas for us.

A generous host indeed!

He told us that if we wished we could sleep in the house. This novel experience some of us tried, but we were much disturbed by fleas, and sick-stomached men crawling over us to get out. They had eaten too much pork.

Ah! Life in old California and the romance of the ranchos! Such were the realities of life in Alta California in 1841.

John Marsh’s rancho would not have looked this good.

At Soda Springs the company of emigrants split in two. The more cautious of them took the advice of their trail guide and remained on the Oregon Trail, but 32 men, plus Mrs. Kelsey and her baby, stuck to their original aim of heading for California.

One of the reasons that they felt confident in doing so, in spite of the warnings of Fitzpatrick and the unexplored nature of the Great Basin, was that they had a map. How were they to know that it was wrong? How should they know that the mapmaker had filled in the empty sections with hearsay and fabrications?

A misleading map of North America by Henry S. Tanner, 1822. The smaller of the two lakes is labeled Salt Lake, with the Buenaventura River flowing right to the Pacific..

According to Dawson:

We knew nothing positive about the route, except that it went west. True, we had some old maps picturing a river called Buenaventura, or St. Mary’s river, which, flowing out of Great Salt Lake and pursing a westerly course emptied into the Pacific; and from this map we thought all we should have to do was to find our river and follow it. However, we had been told by trappers that there was no river flowing from the lake, but that there was a river (which they called Ogden’s) that had its source west of the lake and flowed west, and that it might take us to California.

The trappers were right about Ogden’s river (also called Mary’s and later, Humboldt), but even they did not know about the Sierra Nevada. The company found the river, and faithfully followed it, expecting it to lead them to the shores of the Pacific. Alas—

The river seemed to be dwindling instead of receiving big tributaries to swell its flood and guide us into the plains of California and on to the Pacific, where our suffering and troubles would end, and where we could eat, eat, eat – and something that had some fat in it. But the route was getting more nearly impassable; and alas! What meant those big mountains ahead with no opening through them?