THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH of 1849

Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood (1838-1926) Born in Platte co. Mo. Came west on the 1843 wagon train to Oregon with her family and settled in the Willamette Valley at the Wheatland Ferry across the river from the Methodist Missionary Mission.

Chapter IX. THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH of 1849

The new western world went wild when news came "that gold had been discovered in California."

Five years had brought many changes to our country and little settlements had sprung up everywhere. Emigration after emigration had come to stake out land claims and build there one or two room cabins. The whole Willamette Valley was rapidly settling up.We were the only ferry between Oregon City , the Hudson Bay Co. Post and the headwaters of the river, so most of the people who went to the mines, crossed at our place. We saw the wildest excitement. Every hour of the day and night they were being set over the river. Most of them were on horseback. Some were walking with a lead pack animal, some even were walking with huge packs on their backs. Dozens passed in a day. Few of them loitered a moment beyond their turn at the ferry.

A poem, written at the time, describes it perfectly. I remember only a few verses.

"The boatman, too, forsook his crew let fall his oar and paddle. He stole his neighbor's iron gray and left without a saddle.

The old cordwainer heard the news although not much elated. He left his pile of boots and shoes and just absquatulated"

One of these verses had a real truth and underlying, we aXew this boatman very well. He really did let fall his oar and paddle and really did steal his neighbor's iron gray. and leave without a saddle.

All of our men went at once. Only Jasper and the Indian boys were left to tend the ferry.Within a few weeks the trail to California was well worn and dusty. Many a tragedy marked its length. Many a man, who crossed at our ferry never reached his destination or reached only to drop completely out of sight, out of existence probably. Greed of gold made men suspicious of their neighbors. When they found a place where the "diggings" were rich, they preferred to work it alone and tried, of course, to keep it to themselves. The Indians and riffraff, knowing this, found them easy prey. Many of our friends and neighbors were never heard of again. Camp fever, too, broke out among them and they died like sheep.

The trail led through a bad Indian country. The Shasta, Rogue, Umpqua and Modoc tribes were savage and murderous. Parties of ten or a dozen were fairly safe, but the lone straggler carried his life in his own hands.

Our men were all together, fifteen or twenty perhaps in the party. One morning, when they were about half way to the gold fields , Isaiah and a neighbor, Elgin Thorp, found that their horses were gone. The party was camped in a small valley in the Modoc country. They thought that perhaps, the horses had slipped their tether ropes and they went to look for them. They followed around the margin of the valley till they came to a coulee and there, directly in front of them, were the two horses. Two Indians were just in the act of mounting them.

The boys were braver than they were wise, but the Indians were stark naked and the boys could readily see that they were unarmed, so they bounded toward their horses and succeeded in getting hold of them. Then a fight to the death began between the boys and the two naked savages. Thorp had a pistol, but Isaiah had only a knife in a scabbard at his belt. They must have been too angry and excited to think about anything but getting hold of the horses. The Indian that had Isaiah's horse,was standing on a big, flat rock. He jumped on Isaiah, who tripped in stepping back and fell flat with the Indian on top of him. The big fellow saw his motion toward his knife, but not till Isaiah had a firm grip on the long, buckhorn handle. The Indian caught his wrist. They both knew that it was a fight to the finish. Isaiah was small, but wiry and strong. The Indian, in being naked had and advantage, for Isaiah had nothing to hold to. After that, "As slick as a naked Indian" was often heard at our house. They struggled and fought for possession of the knife till the grass and weeds were threshed and beaten for yards around. Through some trick or chance, Isaiah succeeded in freeing his wrist, and he buried the long blade to the hilt in the Indian's throat. By this time, Thorp had shot his Indian and had come to Isaiah's relief. When the two boys realized that both Indians were dead, they took their horses and went back to camp. The skin was slipped from Isaiah's wrist and it was bleeding badly. They told what had happened. Father fully realized the danger, for he knew Indians as few white men did. Within ten minutes the party was on the trail. They traveled all that day and all that night and all the next day till the horses were reeling in their tracks, all of them weak with hunger and exhaustion. They were entirely out of the Indian country, no doubt, before the bodies were even found. Another account of that fight came to me in an odd way. It was printed in a San Francisco paper twelve or fifteen years ago. This article told of a killing that had been a mystery among the Indians for fifty years. The finding of the naked bodies and how they had been killed, the place and the date, it was all clear and exact. I could have supplied the missing link. I did not, though I understand that someone else did and the story was printed again in full. It was in the San Francisco Examiner, I think.

I was terribly lonely while Father was away to the mines. There was no one to sing to me. I missed the thrilling stories that he was always willing and glad to tell, when we all sat around the fireside in the evening. Father's life had been very eventful. He never had to tell of the experiences of others or to draw upon imagination. He had the fine faculty of making one see the things as he had seen them. The stories that he told of his boyhood, of the war of 1812, the Indian wars and his flatboat days on the Mississippi River, would make a book of themselves. I remember a great many things but I could not tell them as he did. It would not seem right for me to try to repeat them.

I missed him, and he was gone a long while. There was nothing to do and no one to play with. I used to go to the river. Henry was gone too, and Lizabeth stayed at our house. Sometimes she was inpatient. I know now that she was not well. Mother was not very happy. Things at home had not gone on as she wanted them to. The big storehouse of supplies that Father intended to last us while he was away, had burned to the last once of bacon and Mother was worried about Father, Worried about the boys and about everyone else, who was near to us. They had all gone to the mines.

There was nothing else for me to do, so I used to go to the old shed on the bank of the river. It was stored full of potatoes. Henry had grown them and he called them Scotch-grays. They were big, smooth and round, crisp and white inside as an apple. I'd stand by the open door and look out across the river and picture just what Father was going to look like when he came riding home from California and hal-looed for Jasper to bring the boat. I'd watch the tall, slender cottonwood trees as they whipped about in the wind. I saw their tops sweep to the very water, itself. Mother laughed at me when I told her, but I knew that it was so, for hadn't I stood right there and seen them do it? I cannot convince myself, even now, that it was fancy, although I know that cottonwoods are very brittle.

I used to slip away to the river pasture, I have since wondered why they called it that, for it wasn't a pasture at all, but just a willful tangle of fir and vine maple and ash and underbrush with here and there little glades where violets grew in the spring and wee prickly burrs in the fall. They were so troublesome to one's toes. I remember that very well, for I almost never had shoes. What I loved best, though, was the crooked little road. It was an absurd little road, with no apparent purpose. It began without a reason and ended at a fence, a very high fence, it was built of peeled maple poles. It had been built by the Missionaries and must have been quite old, for the poles were weathered to a pure silver. They were as shimery and smooth as rich satin. It was a childish fancy that someday I would have a dress of just the self-same gray. It would be satin, of course, and for hours I used to hunt through the woods for bright moss or leaves or berries to drape along the gray poles and study color combinations.

My gown was to be my wedding gown and, of course, very wonderful, and as everyone knows that is something one must never plan hastily. About the color, of course, I was quite decided, but so many things go so beautifully with gray, blue violets, and wild rose petals, and green moss or red thimble berries, and then in the fall the scarlet rose pods were very effective indeed when strung on a stout thread and looped against the shimery gray poles. But I mostly thought that green moss was best only I thought for my dress I would have trimming of velvet like Father's waistcoat. Once I saw a fox, gray like the fence itself, and oh, he did go with it so beautifully, but he also went with very fast feet, went with it across the little glade, past the slump where the wild grape grew, past the dogwood tree and the scattering fir and into the swamp with its riot of briers and fern and gnarled maple and willows. I never went into that swamp unless prompted by real need, so I lost him and was never quite sure about gray fur. Perhaps green velvet would be better after all.

And as it happened, my wedding gown was really of green and gray. A green French Calico with a very light gray vine. It was a really beautiful calico dress, laced up the front with black cord and a skirt so full that it stood out like a half opened hollyhock. I had black hair and eyes, with very red cheeks. I expect that I looked very pretty in it.

Most of our people went to the diggings on the Southfork of the American River. Many of them are there yet. Camp fever broke out among them, Grandfather Cooper, Uncle Henry Matheny, Uncle John Cooper, Cousin Sarah Jane Layson and her baby.

Ed. Note: The baby named Cena did not die at that time but was returned to Oregon to grow up and raise a family of her own.

I think that I have forgotten some of them. I am sure that there were more, who died and were buried across from where Marshall's monument now stands.

Not long ago, I went to that old burying ground with my Great grandson. We had driven from his home in Sacramento and he pointed out that spot to me merely as a place of interest, entirely unmindful of what memories it held for me. seventy five years is a long while. He had never heard of Grandfather Cooper or any of the rest of them.

Father, our boys and a couple of neighbors, a Mr. Smith and his son, Zeke, went on till they found a small creek in a glen. The bed of it was rich with fine yellow gold. They dug out a good many thousand dollars worth. At night they would scrape away the ashes and embers from the camp fire, bury the gold and rebuild the fire over the spot again. Finally some thievish Indians found them out. The young Indian boys would stand and watch till a good sized nugget would be turned up, then they would grab it and run. One day Adam annoyed beyond discretion, ran after one of the boys. The nugget was big and many cornered, but the boy clapped it in his mouth and swallowed it. Adam was quite helpless in the face of such heroic strategy. Our people, being on the coast, were among the first to reach the gold fields, but by this time a lot of Kanakas and roughs of every kind and type were beginning to pour in. An Indian or two had been killed close to where Father was. One day he said: "Boys, trouble is sure to come. We must leave here at once."

The diggings were rich and Mr. Smith and Zeke would not leave. Father reasoned and begged, but neither of them would listen to his advice, so they were left alone there, and were never heard of again.

Father felt that he had gold enough for he had promised Mother to return as soon as he had plenty to meet our immediate needs. He had about ten thousand dollars in nuggets and dust. It built the new home on the hill and gave him comforts for his old age.

When Father returned to us, he had several large sea chest packed with many practical household things for Mother. There was material for a riding habit for me, it was fine satiny broadcloth. He had bolts of calico and white Swiss and flannel, lace and silk shawls, heavily embroidered. I have mine yet and anyone can see readily enough, that it was, and for the matter of that, still is, very nice.

Isaiah bought a white Spanish suit for himself and a gayly colored serape. The trousers of his suit were buttoned up the outside seams. The buttons were funny little bells that tinkled as he walked. But Isaiah did not feel as fine when he wore it, as he had expected to, he later sold it to an Indian.

every old tub that could float and carry enough canvas to make headway before the wind was brought to the coast during the gold excitement. Few of them were really seaworthy and all of them were unspeakably dirty and rat-infested. The food served to the passengers was barely enough to sustain life, if one were vigorous and strong, salt meat and hardtack, and the hardtack was often wormy.

When our folk returned from the mines they took passage on an old sailing vessel from San Francisco to the mouth of the Columbia River. The ship was unsanitary beyond description, an old hulk that would barely keep afloat.

There was an old man on board, who was coming to his son. The son and his family lived near us. The old man was ill, scurvy, I think he had. Brother Adam took care of him. The course food was not palatable to the old man. I could realize how terrible it must have been when Adam told about the man's begging him to kill and cook a rat for him. Adam probably did it, I do not remember, as I cannot say for sure but anyway, they were several days out when the old man died. He was sewed in a canvas bag and buried at sea. They had nothing to use for a weight except a small grindstone. It was tied to the feet.

A plank was pushed out over the side with the canvas covered body on it. All hands were called and the captain read a brief burial service. Then the end of the plank was lowered and the body slid into the sea. The weight was not heavy enough and the rebound and the air in the canvas brought it up half out of the water. It stood erect and turned around and around. The vessel under full sail before the wind, went scudding past, but the body, caught in the suction, could be seen for a long ways, following, turning, tilting and bobbing in its gruesome, grotesque dance. It was hard for me to forget after Adam told about it, and Adam had seen it, so it was harder still for him. It shocked and horrified him for he was sentimental and tenderhearted

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