goldfields

On how to NOT get rich in California:

While I was slowly accumulating, the majority of fortune seekers in California were saving nothing. If they mined, they were shifting from place to place, or squandering money in impracticable ventures, such as turning rivers out of their channels; or else they lost as fast as they made by bucking at monte.

“Bucking at Monte”

If freighting, they must have a mule team and feed it; put up at a boarding house while in Stockton; pay a dollar for a meal and twenty-five cents for a cigar or glass of whiskey at the tavern tents stuck up at every water hole along the road. Many, especially those from the North became homesick immediately upon arriving at the diggings, and if they had money enough to pay their way back, would auction off their paraphernalia and take the back track. Many who would gladly have got away had to stay; and even now some men stay in California because too poor to get away. Those who made the most were those who fleeced the miners.

Nicholas Dawson was proud of his ability to save money by “the most slavish labor and rigid economy.” He went home with $1600 in gold dust.

How much would $1600 be worth today? According to Measuring Worth, $1600 in 1850 would have the purchasing power of $50,100 today. Enough to give a man with a family a good start in Texas.

(All the information about Nicholas Dawson has been taken from Narrative of Nicholas “Cheyenne” Dawson (Overland to California in ’41 & ’49, and Texas in ’51), Number Seven of the Rare Americana Series Printed & Published by the Grabhorn Press of San Francisco in May, 1933.)

Nicholas “Cheyenne” Dawson and his three comrades were not getting rich at gold digging. So they decided to try a new occupation–droving.

Droving meant going down to the ranches and buying up cattle to herd back to the mines. Dawson went to Monterey, to his old employer Job Dye, and bought a herd at $20 a head. When he reached the Stanislaus River he sold them for $40 a head, which sounds like a good profit,but the cost of hiring vaqueros and the difficulty of getting the cattle to cross rivers made it a hard job, one that Dawson had no wish to repeat. He lamented that “almost every night the beeves would stampede, and I got almost no sleep.”

When he got back to camp, he and his three friends dissolved their partnership and went their ways.  Dawson and a man named John Crow bought a wagon and four yokes of oxen and “went to freighting.”

We got from five to ten cents a pound, according to the distance. We camped out, did our own cooking, and soon had made enough to buy another team. The diggings were from thirty to one hundred miles distant, and to some of them we had awful roads, but we made it pay.

Charles M. Weber in 1850

Dawson and Crow were operating out of Stockton, and one day Nicholas got up the courage to visit Charles W. Weber, the proprietor of Stockton, owner of a large land grant, and a wealthy man. Weber had come to California in 1841 in the same company as Dawson.

One day when I was feeling a little braver than usual I went to see him, ragged and dirty freighter though I was. “Cheyenne Dawson!” he exclaimed joyously, when he recognized the object before him; and then could not find enough to do for his old mule-eating comrade. He offered to give me a ranch off his grant, and, though I remonstrated, ordered his clerk to make out deeds to me for the two best central lots in Stockton.

Though Weber was anxious to get me into more congenial employment, I was too independent to accept favors, and continued my freighting. The winter of 1850 was remarkably dry, and I freighted all winter, doing better than I had done in the summer, as freights were more plentiful and prices better.

In the spring I began to think of home, sweet home.

After spending almost three years in California, Nicholas Dawson returned to the States by way of Mexico. He went back to Arkansas, where he had formerly taught school, and there he found a former pupil, Margaret Wright, who was now a young lady. After teaching in Louisiana for a year, he married Miss Wright in 1848 and settled down to teaching. But California would soon be calling him again.

In 1849, the gold fever broke out in Arkansas. My brother-in-law and some neighbor boys taking it, I was begged to go along. After thinking it over—my state of health, my excellent health on my former trip to California, my poverty, the help I might be to the boys—and my wife giving her consent and agreeing to remain with her parents, I agreed to go.

He and his friends went down to Texas and took the southern route through Mexico and up through California, brown with drought. They arrived at the Mariposa diggings, the southernmost of the mines, in November 1849. Seeing the high prices of goods at the diggings, Dawson proposed to go back to Stockton for supplies while his companions built a cabin.

His observations of California paint a picture of the typical life of a forty-niner. Here are a few of his adventures and remarks:

On packing supplies:  This was a tough trip for me, as it rained every day, and my blankets and saddle blanket would get wet; but I pushed on to Stockton, bought flour, meat, and blankets, and struck back on foot driving the packed animals ahead of me. It was still raining. At night I covered the meat and flour with the new blankets, and exposed my own carcass to the weather. Sometimes an animal would bog down, and I would nearly bog myself in getting the pack to dry ground.

On the miners’ self-government: They were allowed to govern themselves, which they did so effectually that gold dust was stuck up in a crack in the wall, and flour and meat worth $1.50 per pound were left in the open cabin, when you knew that miners were likely to pass by any hour of the day. Nothing was ever stolen. They adopted claim laws also: a person was allowed to stake off a rod square, and as long as his tools were in it, the claim remained sacred, but on removal of the tools, it could be jumped by anyone.

Dawson was in partnership with three other men. One of the men took the mules and went off to pack freight, another went hunting in the hills and brought back deer meat to sell, and Dawson and a man named Lewis dug for gold.

Miners’ luck: Lewis and I had miners luck—some days taking out an ounce or more a day, but most of the time nothing, as we would be removing the top dirt from our claim, or prospecting for another claim, sometimes sinking several holes to the bed rock before finding a claim that would pay.

They started out panning, and later switched to rockers. They also tried the old Mexican method of winnowing dry dirt to recapture any gold flakes.

Miners’ homes: We were not making a fortune fast, though we toiled early and late, and in all kinds of weather; nor easily. A miner can rarely keep dry while washing gold, and in winter it is a disagreeable job. The winter of ’49 was very rainy, and snow frequently fell in the diggings when in the plain below it would only rain. The winter shelter for a miner was a log cabin; a house made of canvas stretched on light frames or post in the ground; or more frequently, a tent with a chimney to it, all put up by the miner himself.

Recreation: For those who did not play cards, the only recreation was visiting neighboring cabins for a chat. We rarely asked each other’s names, but only where from; and it was, “How are you, Missouri?” “What’s your luck, Arkansas?”

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.