Gold!

by Fred Rosen

  That work had been going on for a while. It had become Marshall’s habit to inspect the tailrace early in the morning before the laborers began their day’s work. The weed-strewn path he traveled on went a few hundred yards downstream from the mill. The path had been blazed by the workmen during the summer months, when the mill had been built with the big timbers cut from the hardwood trees that were abundant on the south fork.

  The sawmill project had actually started the previous year—in May 1847.

  “With my rifle, blanket, and a few crackers to eat with the venison (for the deer then were awful plenty), I ascended the American River, according to Mr. Sutter’s wish, as he wanted to find a good site for a saw-mill, where we could have plenty of timber, and where wagons would be able to ascend and descend the river hills,” Marshall later wrote. “Many fellows had been out before me, but they could not find any place to suit; so when I left I told Mr. Sutter I would go along the river to its very head and find the place, if such a place existed, anywhere upon the river or any of its forks.

  “I traveled along the river the whole way. Many places would suit very well for the erection of the tile mill, with plenty of timber everywhere, but then nothing but a mule could climb the hills; and when I would find a spot where the hills were not steep, there was no timber to be had; and so it was until I had been out several days and reached this place, which, after first sight, looked like the exact spot we were hunting.”

  Marshall was thinking forward to the transporting of the sawmill’s timbers to Sutter’s Fort. Without a well-blazed trail, the project wouldn’t work. He spent the next couple of days scouting the area until he found a place where the ground was level enough that the wagons could negotiate those foothills relatively easily. Then, on his return to the fort, Marshall went out through the country examining the canyons and gulches, picking out the easiest places for crossing them with loaded wagons.

  When he finally arrived back at the fort, “Mr. Sutter was pleased when I reported my success. We entered into partnership; I was to build the mill, and he was to find provisions, teams, tools, and to pay a portion of the men’s wages. I believe I was at that time the only wheelwright in the whole country.

  “In August, everything being ready, we freighted two wagons with tools and provisions, and accompanied by six men I left the fort, and after a good deal of difficulty reached this place one beautiful afternoon and formed our camp on yon little rises of ground.”

  The first thing Marshall needed to do was put up some “long houses, as we intended remaining here all winter. This was done in less than no time, for my men were great with the ax. We then cut timber, and fell to work hewing it for the framework of the mill. The Indians gathered about us in great numbers. I employed about forty of them to assist us with the dam [building].”

  A low dam was built across the river by the Indians and a labor force formed from members of the U.S. Army’s Mormon Battalion. Central to the plan’s success was the ability of the Indians to work side by side with the whites. They did, forming within Marshall a lifelong respect for Indians. When it was finished, in only four weeks, the dam funneled part of the stream into a diversion channel that carried it through the mill.

  “In digging the foundation of the mill we cut some distance into the soft granite; we opened the fore bay and then I left for the fort, giving orders to Mr. Weimar to have a ditch cut through the bar in the rear of the mill, and after quitting work in the evening to raise the gate and let the water run all night, as it would assist us very much in deepening and widening the tail-race.”

  When Marshall returned a few days later, he found work proceeding well, with all the men at work in the ditch. By January 1848 the mill was ready to be tested.

  “When the channel was opened it was my custom every evening to raise the gate and let the water wash out as much sand and gravel through the night as possible; and in the morning, while the men were getting breakfast, I would walk down, and, shutting off the water, look along the race and see what was to be done, so that I might tell Mr. Weimar, who had charge of the Indians, at what particular point to set them to work for the day. As I was the only wheelwright present, all of my time was employed upon the framework and machinery.”

  The January rain beat down on Marshall’s slouch hat with a wide band. Despite the greatcoat he wore, the chill, wet mountain air from the Sierra Nevada penetrated his coat; he felt it in his bones. Marshall had a bit of a nip every now and then to keep warm. He was near the bank of the race, about two hundred feet from the western end of the mill, when “My eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch.

  “There was about a foot of water running then. I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. The piece was about half the size and of the shape of a pea.

  “Then, I saw another piece in the water! After taking it out, I sat down and began to think right hard. I thought it was gold, and yet it did not seem to be of the right color: all the gold coin I had seen was of a reddish tinge; this looked more like brass. I recalled to mind all the metals I had ever seen or heard of, but I could find none that resembled this.

  “Suddenly the idea flashed across my mind that it might be iron pyrites. I trembled to think of it. This question could soon be determined. Putting one of the pieces on a hard river stone, I took another and commenced hammering it. It was soft, and didn’t break: It therefore must be gold, but largely mixed with some other metal, very likely silver; for pure gold, I thought, would certainly have a brighter color.”

  Marshall was used to thinking on his feet. It just made sense that if there was one chunk, there might be another, washed down from the mountains in the rain. Marshall turned and headed out on the race toward the river. He hadn’t gone far before he dipped his hand down in the brackish water and snatched up one … two … three … four more golden rocks, all in less than half an hour. Similar to the first one except of different sizes, these, too, he put into the depressed crown of his hat.

  It was enough for now, enough to at least test if he had really made a find. Soon, Marshall made his way back upstream to the mill. Coming on it, all of a sudden, without knowing it was there, it made quite a sight. It rose out of the primordial forest like a strange, surreal harbinger of the future. It was industrialization brought to the wilderness and the wilderness didn’t have any choice.

  There, soaring fifty feet into the air over the riverbank was Marshall and Sutter’s sawmill. A latticework of broodingly large oak timbers, it was dominated by the magnificent waterwheel that powered it. It was Marshall’s wheelwright talent that produced a paddlewheel that, when operated correctly, would power the mill’s saw to cut the wood for sales at as quick a rate as any machine on the planet.

  Most of the millworkers who hustled about as they began their morning labors were the same Mormon and Indian labor who had helped to build the mill that summer. Marshall respected his men and cared nothing of their backgrounds. The men looked up when they saw their boss coming.

  “Boys, I believe I have found a gold mine!” Marshall announced.

  There is some elemental connection to gold on the cellular level. It makes human beings turn into happy, raving lunatics when they discover it. Henry W. Bigler, one of the Mormon workers, was the first to drop his tools and crowd in when he saw Marshall take off his hat and take the glittering chunks out of his hatband.

  “It appeared to be gold,” Bigler later said. “They ranged in size from the tiniest fleck to a grain of wheat.”

  Still, they couldn’t be sure. They were carpenters and laborers, not geology experts. Neither was Marshall. Alan Scott, a carpenter who worked at the mill, disagreed with Marshall. He felt sure it was not that most valuable of elements.

  “I know it to be nothing else,” Marshall replied with great confidence.

  Marshall took his find, and in front of the assembled throng, beat it on an anvil to show how malleable it was. It wa
s also bitten. The cook, Jenny Wimmer, was making up a vat of lye soap. If the stuff really was gold, it would drop to the bottom of the barrel and resist the lye’s corrosive qualities. Rising to the challenge, Marshall dropped all of the gold in the corrosive vat.

  It sunk into the brackish mixture; the color faded from gold to nothing. When the mixture was subsequently poured out, that unmistakable golden hue began to shine through from the bottom of the barrel until finally, with the lye soap mixture emptied, it was clear that all of the gold had indeed not only survived its bath, but had indeed fallen to the bottom of the barrel, where Marshall recovered his find. Marshall took special note of the emotion of the men around him.

  “They were all a good deal excited, and had they not thought that the gold only existed in small quantities they would have abandoned everything and left me to finish my job alone. However, to satisfy them, I told them that as soon as we had the mill finished we would devote a week or two to gold hunting and see what we could make out of it.”

  That night, Bigler wrote in his diary, “Thus was first received, James W. Marshall discovering of gold at Sutter’s sawmill, Coloma, California, Monday, January 24, 1848.”

  For the next week or so, while they worked in the race after this discovery, Marshall and his men always kept a sharp lookout. “Men searched in the race excitedly,” said Marshall. “They’d spy a flash of gold, in the early morning sunlight and pick up the pieces with their fingers. Sometimes, they had to use the blade of a knife to pry [the gold] loose [from the rock].”

  In the course of three or four days, he and his men had picked up a total of what Marshall estimated was about three ounces of gold. They kept the work up, encouraged at their labors. But none of them, not Marshall or his men, ever dreamed that they were standing right then and there on a mother lode of gold. In fact, some still doubted the validity of the find.

  Millworker Azariqah Smith wrote in his January 30 journal entry, “This week Mr. Marshall found some peace [sic] of (as well suppose) gold, and he has gone to the fort for the purpose of finding out.

  “In about a week’s time after the discovery, I had to take another trip to the fort; and, to gain what information I could respecting the real value of the metal, took all that we had collected with me.” Marshall set out by himself for Sutter’s Fort.

  Beginning in May 1847, the U.S. government opened peace talks with Mexico. President Polk sent Nicholas Trist, a veteran diplomat who spoke fluent Spanish, to Mexico to negotiate a settlement. Immediately he ran into problems.

  Despite the fact that they were losing, the Mexicans didn’t want to admit it. A second problem was that Trist had words with General Winfield Scott, the overall commander of the American troops attacking Mexico within her borders. It took a while, but they managed to iron out their personality difficulties just in time for the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco, both of which the Americas won decisively. By August 1847 Scott’s men were a few miles from the gates of Mexico City. At that point, the Mexicans were ready to talk.

  Trist met with the commissioners representing the Mexican government: José Herrera, Bernardo Couto, Ignacio Mora y Villamil, and Miguel Atristan. They settled on terms that el presidente, General Santa Anna, rejected. El presidente then resumed hostilities. It was probably the greatest mistake he had ever made.

  Twice Santa Anna had gotten the Americans angry. The first time was when he slaughtered the Alamo defenders, which led to the enraged American battle cry “Remember the Alamo!” in the subsequent Battle of San Jacinto that Santa Anna lost. The second time was not agreeing to the agreement his peace commissioners had negotiated and going to war against the United States.

  It didn’t take long for Scott and his men to conquer Mexico City. Santa Anna was removed from power by the Mexicans themselves and sent into exile. With Mexico’s former foreign minister Manuel Peña y Peña assuming the role of president, a new Mexican government was formed in Queretaro in November 1847, willing to seriously consider the American peace terms. But this time negotiations were interrupted by a dispatch that recalled Trist to Washington. President Polk was impatient with the lack of movement on the issues and wanted Trist to close down negotiations and come to Washington for further instructions.

  Trist knew that, if he went, the opportunity for negotiating peace could be lost. There was no telling; if some other insurgent like Santa Anna came along, there would be more war. Encouraged by General Scott as well as the Mexicans and British to stay in Mexico City, to ignore his recall, and to finish the job, Trist openly ignored the president and stayed. The president had sent him south to negotiate a peace, and by God, he would do it.

  In December, negotiations began again in the town of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Across the table from Trist, the lone American negotiator, was a trio of Mexican commissioners who included, once again, Bernardo Couto and Miguel Atristan. They were joined by another former foreign minister whom Trist knew, Luis Cuevas.

  Trist demanded that Mexico relinquish all claims to Texas; New Mexico; and, of course, California. The Mexican commissioners were disposed to agree, except they insisted that they retain Lower California, the Baja Peninsula. They also demanded that there be a separate strip of land between Sonoma and Baja with unrestricted access to Mexican citizens.

  At first, Trist hesitated. Who knew how valuable the Baja might be? Still, it was in the southern part, and it was an arid place. The rest of the former colony had much more in the way of natural resources, especially northern California. Even acquired without Baja, California would be a considerable prize for the Union. Trist agreed to the Baja concession.

  The only other roadblock was whether San Diego was part of Lower California (Baja) or Upper California, which would make it American. The Stars and Stripes won; San Diego became American and was included in the territory ceded to the United States. By January 27, 1848, the same day Marshall discovered gold, Trist was satisfied that he had gotten everything President Polk had demanded he get. Now it was just a matter of fixing up some fine points and having the treaty signed. On February 2, 1848, Trist, along with Couto, Atristan, and Cuevas, put their signature on the document. That same day, California became a state.

  At almost the exact moment Trist put pen to parchment, James Marshall rode into Sutter’s Fort to consult with his partner over his discovery. The rain, which had dogged him for days, had not let up. He walked through the compound, ascended the stairs of the central building, and went into Sutter’s office without noticing anything else or thinking of anything else but finding out the exact nature of his discovery.

  Marshall had been down to the fort only a week before for provisioning, so Sutter was surprised to see him.

  “I have some important and interesting news,” Marshall told Sutter. “I wish to communicate it secretly to you.”

  Marshall suggested they go together to a place where they would not be disturbed, where no listeners could overhear their conversation. Curious now, Sutter led the way to his private rooms.

  “Lock the door.”

  Sutter did as requested. He assured Marshall that no one else was around except one of his clerks. Marshall asked for something, which the servants brought. After the servants left the room, Sutter forgot to lock the door. Marshall took a rag from his pocket and carefully opened it. Sutter had just a glance at the precious yellow metal when the door suddenly opened again; it was the clerk. Marshall quickly stashed the handkerchief and its contents back in his jacket pocket.

  The clerk had come in on some sort of business and excused himself for interrupting. He and Sutter exchanged a few private comments before the clerk left.

  “Now lock the door; didn’t I tell you that we might have listeners?” Marshall asked nervously.

  “Fear nothing about that,” Sutter reassured him, “as it is not the habit of this gentleman.”

  Once again, Marshall took out his handkerchief and opened it for Sutter to fully see his discovery. The metal was in small pieces of varying sizes.


  “I expressed my opinion to the laborers at the mill, that this might be gold; but some of them were laughing at me and called me a crazy man, and could not believe such a thing.”

  It looked like gold to Sutter, but he couldn’t be sure until he tested it. He took a bottle of aqua fortis (nitric acid) from his apothecary shop and applied a few drops to the metal. If it was gold, nothing would happen, except to any impurities. The more impure the gold was—that is, containing other elements—the more it would react to the acid by forming nitrate salts.

  Marshall watched Sutter apply the liquid. Nothing happened. All the gold appeared to be pure! Looking around his rustic office with the exposed timbers, Sutter’s eye stopped on his extensive bookshelves. Then he saw the book he wanted.

  “[He] at last stumbled on an old American cyclopedia [sic], where we saw the specific gravity of all the metals, and rules given to find the quantity of each in a given bulk. After hunting over the whole fort and borrowing from some of the men, we got three dollars and a half in silver, and with a small pair of scales we soon ciphered it out that there was neither silver nor copper in the gold, but that it was entirely pure.”

  When Sutter was finished, he looked up at Marshall.

  “I declare this to be gold of the finest quality, of at least twenty-three carats,” Sutter announced.

  Marshall was excited. He had been right and now scientifically he had been proven correct. He asked Sutter to start with him immediately for Coloma.

  “I cannot leave, as it is late in the evening and nearly suppertime. It would be better for you to remain with me till the next morning, and I will travel with you then,” said Sutter.

  Marshall shook his head, dissatisfied.

  “Will you come tomorrow morning?” asked Marshall, looking for Sutter’s word.