Gold! (6 page)

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.

“Yes,” Sutter promised. When assured of his presence, Marshall took his leave.

This wasn't the first time in history that gold had been discovered in the United States. There was a gold rush when the ore was discovered in North Carolina and Georgia in the 1820s and 1830s, respectively. But now the question was what exactly the construction at Sutter's Mill had brought to shining light. A significant discovery, or a flash in the pan?

“We thought it best to keep it as quiet as possible till we should have finished our mill. But there was a great number of disbanded Mormon soldiers in and about the fort, and when they came to hear of it, why it just spread like wildfire! Soon, the whole country was in a bustle,” said Marshall.

Sutter thought a great deal during the night about the consequences that might follow such a discovery. Yet all he wrote in diary entry for the day was, “Mr. Marshall arrived from the mountains on very important business.” No one had ever accused Sutter of understatement, but that charge could certainly be leveled at him now. Or more likely, he was so scared of the secret coming out prematurely; he didn't even want to refer to it by name in writing. Sutter ruminated on the matter.

The next morning, Sutter gave the necessary orders to
his laborers and left at seven o'clock, accompanied by an Indian soldier and a vaquero, in a heavy rain, for Coloma. Halfway down the road, Sutter saw at a distance a human being crawling out from the brush.

“Who is that?” Sutter asked the Indian.

“The same man who was with you last evening,” the Indian replied.

When they came abreast, they found that the man was indeed a very wet and disheveled Marshall.

“You would have done better to remain with me at the fort than to pass such an ugly night here,” said Sutter dryly.

Marshall explained that he had ridden the 54 miles back to Coloma, took his other horse, and came halfway back to meet them. Together, they all rode up to Coloma, which they reached in the afternoon, by which time the weather was clearing up. The next morning, Sutter accompanied Marshall to the tailrace of the mill. Like before, water had been running during the night to clean out the gravel that had been made loose to widen the race. After the water level went down, they waded out.

“Small pieces of gold could be seen remaining on the bottom of the clean washed bed rock,” Sutter later wrote. “I went in the race and picked up several pieces of this gold, several of the laborers gave me some which they had picked up, and from Marshall I received a part. I told them that I would get a ring made of this gold as soon as it could be done in California.”

Sutter later did. He had a heavy ring made, with his family's coat of arms engraved on the outside, and on
the inside of the ring was engraved, “The first gold, discovered in January, 1848.”

The next day, Marshall and Sutter went on a prospecting tour in the Coloma vicinity. The following morning, Sutter was scheduled to go back to his fort. Before his departure, “I had a conversation with all hands. I told them that I would consider it as a great favor if they would keep this discovery secret only for six weeks, so that I could finish my large flour mill at Brighton, which had cost me already about from 24 to 25,000 dollars.”

Everyone promised to keep the secret. But on his way home, Sutter did not feel happy and contented. Rather, he was surprised to find that he felt uneasy, and the more he thought about it, the more his emotions made sense. In his heart of hearts, he knew that such a secret, despite his men's best efforts, would not remain secret for long.

Two weeks after his return to his fort, he sent up “several teams in charge of a white man, as the teamsters were Indian boys. This man was acquainted with all hands up there, and Mrs. Wimmer (the cook) told him the whole secret; likewise the young sons of Mr. Wimmer told him that they had gold and that they would let him have some too; and so he obtained a few dollars' worth of it as a present.

“As soon as this man arrived at the fort, he went to a small store in one of my outside buildings, kept by Jed Smith, a partner of Sam Brannan, a Mormon merchant in Francisco, and asked for a bottle of brandy, for which
he would pay the cash; after having the bottle, he paid [instead] with these small pieces of gold.

“Smith was astonished and asked him if he intended to insult him. The teamster told him to go and ask me about it, Smith came in great haste to see me. I told him at once the truth.

“What could I do? I had to tell him all about it.”

4.

“ALL I HAD HEARD …”

Joseph Smith was about to take a hand in the next major event of the Gold Rush. That he was long dead made it that much more of an achievement.

Smith had been born in 1805 in Sharon, Vermont. He was one of ten children, and the family moved frequently during his youth. The most significant years of Smith's early childhood were spent in Palmyra, New York, where Protestant tent “revivals” were frequent and well attended. The family eventually moved to Illinois.

There, on the family farm, the man who would later be called the Prophet claimed to have received his first divine revelation when he was fourteen years old. God came to Smith with the revelation that all religions since the death of the disciples of Christ had turned away from the true church of Christ. His job was to restore that church.

Receiving subsequent visions of instruction that he obeyed, Smith claimed to have discovered, on a hillside, gold tablets written by ancient Indian inhabitants. A modern-day Moses, his translations of the tablets were published in 1830 as the Book of Mormon. Combined with the Old and New Testaments, plus some of Smith's later revelations, the Book of Mormon became the foundation for a new religion, Mormonism.

Smith's new religion was empowering. His zealots believed in their heart and soul in God and Jesus Christ as real corporeal beings who actively intervened in human affairs. To a Mormon, human beings are innately filled with the divine essence. They can become Godlike through strict conduct. The Mormon Church, under Smith's leadership as the divinely ordained Prophet, would provide the physical and emotional structures through which human beings could make this ascendancy.

The Formal Church of Mormon was established by Smith in 1830 in New York. Friends and family comprised his first converts. He had such a charismatic personality, he had so much of what appeared to be a divine presence, that Mormonism quickly saw thousands of converts to its fold. Even sworn enemies of Mormonism from other religions were left stunned by the power of his presence and the authority with which he spoke.