Coming of the Argonauts by Zoeth Skinner Eldredge

Coming of the Argonauts

All remember the fate of the Donner Party. On September 15th Waldo is back on the Truckee river sending in frantic appeals for supplies. He is issuing, he says, from five to eight thousand pounds of beef per day, and flour only to the sick. The station is surrounded by sick, unable to proceed on their journey. The flour deposited at Bear Valley by the Marysville train has not arrived. The relief raised by the Feather river towns has failed for want of system. If the people of California wish to extend efficient relief to the emigrants, their supplies must be placed under the control of one agent. The emigrants must have bread; thousands must die unless they can be supplied with bread. The cholera is killing them off from this point to the head of the Humboldt.

Ten thousand pounds of flour should be immediately forwarded to the Truckee station and another station established near the summit with the same amount, and such other articles as are necessary for the sick.

The Donner Party stranded in the Sierra Nevada

Range, 1847 Photo courtesy: True Tales of the West,

(Castle Books, 1985)

If the money cannot be raised for this, he offers to turn over to the committee, or to any other body of men, real estate in Sacramento which has cost him ten thousand dollars, if they will advance at once eight or ten thousand dollars, forwarded in flour and other necessary articles for the sick, to the summit and to the Truckee station. This, in connection with the beef, horses, mules, and the dead stock that can be jerked before it putrefies, will save ten thousand human beings from starvation. He says that if he were to describe the cases of extreme suffering that he has seen in the last fifteen days the account would occupy a quire of paper. He was to leave on the morning of the 16th for the head of the Humboldt to induce all that are yet from four to six hundred miles back to return to Salt Lake. Ten persons died of cholera, the day before, while trying to cross the desert.

By September traders were flocking to the desert with supplies, selling flour at one dollar and seventy-five cents to two dollars and fifty cents per pound. They also carried water and grass into the desert and gathered up the animals they found abandoned. They sold water at half a dollar a pint. Many of the emigrants had no money and were obliged to part with their property. In starting out many put nearly all they had into outfit; others thinking they were going to a land of gold did not bring much money with them. It was a great mistake. Money was required for ferriage across streams, for supplies, and for various purposes, and the want of it caused loss and hardship.

At length the emigrants reached the end of their journey, but their troubles were not over; they were attacked with fevers and bloody flux, and many perished miserably after having endured all but death in crossing the plains; they reached the Sacramento Valley sick and weary, with the horror of the scenes through which they had passed still upon them. For a time they were distressed and unsettled. Their numbers were so great that the relief extended by the miners, large as it was, could not reach them all, and many suffered and died for want of proper care and the nourishment which their condition required. Many were happy at first to get employment to pay their board, and even those accustomed to the luxuries of life were glad to get any servile employment suited to their strength and ability. Gradually the dark gloom that over-shadowed them was dispelled by the kind treatment and aid they received on all sides, the memory of their suffering faded, and with returning health hope revived and ambition again awoke.

Most of the states of the Union were peopled by a steady influx of settlers from other communities. California was suddenly changed from a quiet pastoral community, to a mining camp. A great population was poured into it from all quarters of the globe, all actuated by the most intense and absorbing of motives, the quest of gold. Some to mine for it, some to supply the gold miner with the means of existence, and some to prey upon him. Some saw fortunes in trade and in the building of cities; others sought to reap the great profits resulting from the cultivation of the fertile soil. The farming class found a large amount of the best lands in private ownership under the Spanish grants. They were not disposed to submit quietly to this condition of affairs and in many cases "preempted" what they chose to consider unoccupied land, ignoring the obligations of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which guaranteed to the Californians the enjoyment of their liberty and property. Both Colonel Mason the governor, and General Riley his successor, endeavored to protect the owners of property, but the failure of Congress to provide a civil government for the territory, together with an insufficient force to compel obedience to their mandates, made the matter a difficult one. As James Bryce says, a great population had gathered before there was any regular government to keep it in order. The great mass of the population was American, and the inhabitants formed for their own government and preservation local laws regarding the punishment of crime -- unwritten, but none the less understood -- the size, manner of locating and recording mining claims, and they visited summary punishment on those who violated the code. All things else were left to individual taste and discretion. The Alcalde of Monterey, Walter Colton, a chaplain in the navy, sold the land on which was situated the old Spanish fort (Castillo de San Cárlos). This transaction brought from Colonel Mason a letter asking what law or decree conferred on an alcalde the right to sell the title of a Mexican fort or battery. In reply the alcalde writes: "No Mexican law or decree, as I can find, designates any particular spot as sites for forts or batteries. Each military chief put up a post where he chose, or demolished those put up by his predecessor. He asked no leave to build, and none to abandon. When guns were mounted no alcalde ventured with his right to sell, but eagerly extended that right over an abandoned position.

"The only rule which appears to have governed the military and civil authorities in these matters seems to have been that of Rob Roy – “The simple plan, That they shall take who have the power, And they shall keep who can.’”

This flippant reply well illustrates the American ignorance of and contempt for the Spanish law and Spanish methods. Colton was an educated man, a graduate of Harvard College and of Andover Theological Seminary, and should have known better. A rebuke was administered him by Henry W. Halleck, captain of engineers and secretary of state. In a formal report to the governor Halleck says: "Monterey is the next point on the coast deemed of sufficient importance at the present time for permanent works. The old battery (San Cárlos) was built soon after the establishment of the mission of the same name (1770) and though much dilapidated was maintained up to about the time the Americans took possession of the country. Another battery in the rear of and auxiliary to this was begun by the Mexicans previous to July 7, 1846, and afterwards enlarged by the Americans, and occupied by them, without intermission, to the present time. Copies of the several claims to the land on which these batteries are situated, or which lie so immediately in the vicinity as to be necessary for the public service, if the batteries themselves are retained, are given in appendix No. 27, papers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and the accompanying letters of the alcalde, dated March 23, June 14, and August 10, 1848. It appears from these papers that titles Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, were given while Monterey was in possession of the American troops, and by an alcalde who was an officer in the United States navy; that Nos. 1 and 2 were given while the troops were occupying and holding the ground so deeded away and after both seller and buyers had been informed that the land would be required for government purposes.

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