Note 104 — REMINISCENCES OF VILLAGE LIFE AND OF PANAMA AND CALIFORNIA. 1840-1850.

Sutter’s Fort had been founded in 1839 by John A. Sutter, a native of Switzerland. Its walls were 500 feet long and 160 feet in the other direction, with loopholes and bastions and a dozen cannon. Sutter was a pioneer and a great local magnate. In 1847 he owned 12,000 cattle, 2,000 horses, from 10,000 to 15,000 sheep and 1,000 hogs. He employed some Mormons to build a flour mill six miles up the American river and forty miles up the South Fork at Colona he built a sawmill with its power derived through a millrace. Of all that Sacramento region he had become a sort of lord, when through the construction of this millrace his agent, Marshall, found what he believed to be gold dust.

Sutter was sorry at the discovery, foreseeing that it threatened an interruption to all his established enterprises. Sutter, in fact, never realized any gain from the gold thus found by his own employes upon his own premises. All the current and direction of his life was suddenly broken and he lacked the foresight or alertness to adjust himself to new conditions. His employes everywhere deserted him in order to enter the mines. Titles to his lands, then in dispute, were lost through adverse decisions and he was finally reduced to want. His old age was at last made comfortable through a pension of $250 a month granted by the State of California.