Which Way to the Wild West? (7 page)
Read Which Way to the Wild West? Online
Authors: Steve Sheinkin
T
he morning of November 29 was foggy and cold, Catherine Sager remembered. She was at home with the Whitmans, helping to care for sick children. There was a sudden burst of banging on the front door.
he morning of November 29 was foggy and cold, Catherine Sager remembered. She was at home with the Whitmans, helping to care for sick children. There was a sudden burst of banging on the front door.
Outside, pounding with his fists, was a Cayuse chief named Tiloukaikt, along with several other Cayuse men. Tiloukaikt had just seen three of his children die of measles. Now he was shouting for Dr. Whitman to let him in and give him medicine for other sick children.
Marcus Whitman let the men into the kitchen. Catherine, who was in the living room with Narcissa Whitman, heard angry yelling. “Suddenly there was a sharp explosion,” she said, “a rifle shot in the kitchen, and we all jumped in fright.”
Moments later a girl named Mary Ann stumbled into the room.
“Did they kill the doctor?” Narcissa cried.
Panting and pale with shock, Mary Ann managed to say “Yes.”
“My husband is killed and I am left a widow!” wailed Narcissa.
Through the living room window, Catherine could see Cayuse men attacking other settlers in nearby buildings. “Then a bullet
came through the window, piercing Mrs. Whitman's shoulder,” Catherine said. “Clasping her hands to the wound, she shrieked with pain, and then fell to the floor. I ran to her and tried to raise her up.”
came through the window, piercing Mrs. Whitman's shoulder,” Catherine said. “Clasping her hands to the wound, she shrieked with pain, and then fell to the floor. I ran to her and tried to raise her up.”
“Child, you cannot help me, save yourself,” Narcissa told Catherine.
Catherine helped carry her younger sisters and two other girls up to the attic, where they hid until dark. Several of the girls were sick with measles, and they called out desperately for water. Catherine could not help them. Finally they passed out from exhaustion. The attic grew quiet.
“I sat upon the side of the bed,” said Catherine, “watching hour after hour, while the horrors of the day passed and re-passed before my mind.” She heard the clock downstairs strike ten, then eleven, then midnight. She listened to the steady breathing of the sleeping children, and the sounds of cats' paws on the floor downstairs.
Catherine and her sisters survived that terrible night. But Tiloukaikt and his men had killed the Whitmans and eleven other settlers, including two of Catherine's brothers. Calling for vengeance, white settlers formed armed groups and attacked Cayuse villages, killing many people who had nothing to do with the crime. Tiloukaikt finally turned himself in. He and four other Cayuse men were tried for murder, found guilty, and hanged.
Between the measles epidemic and the attacks following the Whitman massacre, the Cayuse were nearly destroyed. Survivors went to live with other Native American groups.
And Catherine Sager was an orphan again. She and her sisters split up, moving in with different families in the Oregon Territory.
V
iolent clashes like those between the Cayuse and white settlers in Oregon didn't happen every day, of course. But the Whitman massacre is an important story because it shows how tense things could get when large numbers of settlers started moving onto Native American lands. And it shows just how quickly those tensions could explode into violence.
iolent clashes like those between the Cayuse and white settlers in Oregon didn't happen every day, of course. But the Whitman massacre is an important story because it shows how tense things could get when large numbers of settlers started moving onto Native American lands. And it shows just how quickly those tensions could explode into violence.
Can you imagine what might happen if tens of thousands of settlers suddenly raced to the West? You're about to find out.
B
y the start of 1848, a Swiss immigrant named John Sutter had built himself a nice little empire in central California. He owned nearly 50,000 acres, including farms, orchards, stores, even his own
fortâa walled complex of buildings called Sutter's Fort (soon to become part of the new town of Sacramento).
y the start of 1848, a Swiss immigrant named John Sutter had built himself a nice little empire in central California. He owned nearly 50,000 acres, including farms, orchards, stores, even his own
fortâa walled complex of buildings called Sutter's Fort (soon to become part of the new town of Sacramento).
In January 1848 Sutter hired a carpenter to build a sawmill on some of his land along the American River. The carpenter, James Marshall, led a small group of workers to the spot where Sutter wanted his mill. The men unloaded their tools and started working.
On the morning of January 24, Marshall was inspecting a freshly dug hole when he stopped suddenly. “My eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch,” he remembered. “I reached my hand down and picked it up. It made my heart thump.”
Marshall held in his palm a little yellow lump, dented and creased, about half the size of a pea. He collected a few more of these lumps and showed them to William Scott, one of the workers.
Marshall:
I have found it!
I have found it!
Scott:
What is it?
What is it?
Marshall:
Gold.
Gold.
Scott:
Oh! No, that can't be.
Oh! No, that can't be.
Marshall:
I know it to be nothing else.
I know it to be nothing else.
Marshall was sure he had struck gold! Well, he was pretty sure. Actually, he didn't really know. “It did not seem to be of the right color,” he later admitted.
James Marshall
Only one person on Marshall's crew knew anything about gold miningâher name was Jennie Wimmer. As a teenager Wimmer had dug for gold in the streams of Georgia. Now she was working as a cook for Marshall's men. All along she had been saying that the American River looked like a promising place to search for gold. No one listened.
Now Wimmer took one of Marshall's nuggets and turned it over in her hands. It looked like yellow chewing gum, she thought, “just out of the mouth of a school girl.”
She looked up and said, “This is gold.”
To prove it, she dropped the nugget into a pot she was using to make lye (a chemical she needed to make soap). “I will throw it into my lye kettle ⦔ she said, “and if it is gold, it will be gold when it comes out.”
Wimmer knew that lye (a strong base) would quickly tarnish most metals, but would have no effect on gold. The next morning she pulled the nugget out of her kettle. “And there was the gold piece as bright as could be,” she said.
The men were still not convinced.
T
wo days later, John Sutter was working in his office, listening to the rain pounding on his fort. He heard the door crash open and looked up. James Marshall was standing in the doorway.
wo days later, John Sutter was working in his office, listening to the rain pounding on his fort. He heard the door crash open and looked up. James Marshall was standing in the doorway.
“He was soaked to the skin and dripping water,” Sutter recalled. “He told me he had something of the utmost importance to tell me, that he wanted to speak to me in private.”
Even before that moment, Sutter had considered the excitable Marshall to be, as he put it, “like a crazy man.” Now Sutter must have been really worried. But he got up and shut the door.
“Are you alone?” Marshall asked.
“Yes,” said Sutter.
“Did you lock the door?”
“No, but I will if you wish it.”
Marshall wished it.
Then Marshall took a rag from his pocket and unwrapped it. Sutter stepped forward and saw a few little yellow blobs.
“Well, it looks like gold,” Sutter said. “Let us test it.”
He got down an encyclopedia, turned to the
G
section, and looked up
gold.
He performed the tests recommended in the book, including biting the metalâpure gold is so soft that you can bite down and leave a tooth mark in it.
G
section, and looked up
gold.
He performed the tests recommended in the book, including biting the metalâpure gold is so soft that you can bite down and leave a tooth mark in it.
“I declared this to be gold of the finest quality,” Sutter said.
He raced out to the American River and told his workers to keep the discovery secret. But as you've probably noticed, most people can't keep secrets. The bigger the secret, the harder it is to keep. And this was a secret that was about to change the world.
Even after swearing his workers to secrecy, Sutter himself bragged to a friend: “I have made a discovery of a gold mine,
which, according to experiments we have made, is extraordinarily rich.”
which, according to experiments we have made, is extraordinarily rich.”
Then, over the first few months of 1848, Sutter's workers started showing up in San Francisco with bags of gold they had found. One worker went into a store and dropped a bag of gold flakes on the counter, announcing to everyone: “That there is gold, and I know it, and know where it comes from, and there's plenty in the same place, certain and sure!”
Recognizing a good business opportunity when he saw one, a store owner named Sam Brannan paraded through San Francisco holding up samples of the gold found by Sutter's workers and shouting, “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!”
As Brannan had hoped, people raced to his store to buy overpriced mining supplies. Then they rushed off to look for gold. By June 1848 three-quarters of San Francisco's population was gone. Businesses and newspapers shut down. The only school in town closed its doors (and the teacher took his students along with him to search for gold).
“T
he whole population are going crazy,” one Californian said. “Old as well as young are daily falling victim to gold fever.”
he whole population are going crazy,” one Californian said. “Old as well as young are daily falling victim to gold fever.”
A man named James Carson never forgot the moment he caught the fever. News of gold discoveries started reaching his town of Monterey, California, in the spring of 1848. He was sure the stories were exaggerated. Until â¦
“One day I saw a form, bent and filthy, approaching me,” Carson
remembered. “He was an old acquaintance and had been one of the first to visit the mines.”
remembered. “He was an old acquaintance and had been one of the first to visit the mines.”
This guy had once been neat and clean. Now his clothes were ripped and his wild hair and beard sprang out in all directions. Carson watched the man open a big bag filled with yellow chunks and flakes.
“This is only what I picked out with a knife,” the man told Carson.
As Carson gazed at the gold, he felt something strange happening inside him. “A frenzy seized my soul,” he said. Carson was catching a disease that was about to spread across the country, across the world.
“My legs performed some entirely new movements of polka steps ⦠piles of gold rose up before me at every step; castles of marble, dazzling the eye ⦠in short, I had a very violent attack of the Gold Fever.”
James Carson
One hour after dancing down the streets of Monterey, Carson had his mule packed with supplies and was hurrying to the gold mines.
Gold fever raced around the world, speeding through South America, Asia, Europe, even reaching the Australian island of Tasmania (eight thousand miles from California). A Tasmanian store owner started selling a new invention he called “gold grease.” The idea: you take off your clothes, smear your naked body with the stuff, roll down a hillâand the gold sticks to you.
American newspapers, meanwhile, were making it sound easy to get rich in California, even without magic grease. Readers in Philadelphia opened their papers and read a letter from a California miner: “Your streams have minnows and ours are paved with gold.” People all over the country were hearing similarly exciting stories.
“The gold excitement spread like wildfire, even out to our log cabin in the prairie,” remembered a Missouri settler named Luzena Stanley Wilson. “And as we had almost nothing to lose, and we might gain a fortune, we early caught the fever.”
Like so many Americans, the Wilson family packed up what they could carry, left everything else behind, and set out for California.
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