Gold! (5 page)

Afterward, Frémont gave Sutter back his fort. Sutter hated his guts for the rest of his life. Still, he had more important matters to deal with now that he had his fort back under his personal control. Sutter hadn't stopped making money just because a war was on. He had run his businesses all along like nothing special was going on, even when Frémont was in control. It had become obvious that he didn't have enough lumber to help businesses and settlers build outside the fort. What he needed was a sawmill.

A sawmill set up on a river needed a waterwheel that powered the operation. He needed someone to strike out from the fort and find a path to a river that had enough force to power a paddlewheel and had enough timber to give the sawmill a regular supply. Of course, at the heart of the operation was the waterwheel. Without that, there was no power. And, as Sutter well knew, there were few men who were wheelwrights.

As luck would have it, in mid-1847, Marshall's volunteer enlistment with Frémont ran out. Like many of the other volunteers, they went home. When he returned to Sutter's Fort in 1847, Marshall found his ranch in ruins, his livestock missing, probably rustled. With no other means of supporting himself, Marshall went back to work as a wheelwright for Sutter, who put him to work immediately on the problem of where to situate and construct his sawmill.

Back in Clay County, Missouri, preacher Robert James watched as the county's men lined up to enlist in the First Regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers, commanded by Colonel Alexander Doniphan. Doniphan's brother-in-law, O. O. Moss, was busy, too. In nearby Liberty, Moss put together a company of more than a hundred men.

Instead of going to war with the Mexicans, Robert James had refreshed himself in the wellspring of his childhood. James returned home from Kentucky, passing recruit after recruit on the open road. When he got home, he could think of nothing except saving more souls for Christ and being with his family. And then God bestowed on his family the greatest blessing he could imagine.

Zerelda got pregnant again, and this time everything went well. She gave birth to a healthy baby boy on September 5, 1847. Now Robert could imagine nothing that would ever take him away from the bosom of his family, and his new son. Christened by Robert himself, the baby was named Jesse Woodson James.

3.

MARSHALL IN THE RACE, JANUARY 24, 1848

James Marshall tramped along the banks of the southern fork of the American River. He would later remember the morning as cold, dark, and rainy. The wheelwright's keen intellect was on the problem at hand.

Building the tailrace had required damming up and redirecting some of the river's water. The tailrace, which carried water away from the mill, was much too shallow; the water kept backing up, which meant the millwheel had difficulty turning. That meant no wood being cut up. If the waterwheel didn't run, his and Sutter's investment would be ruined. Marshall knew that the solution was to deepen the tailrace. And the way to do that, Marshall also knew, was to have his Indian laborers loosen the rock by day. At night, they would allow the dammed-up water to
flow through, washing away all the loose stones too small for the Indians to pull out.

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 was 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.