Chapter VII: Life in the Mines

After a lapse of 44 years--January, 1894--I resumed this narrative.

The foregoing was written not long after the events therein written had transpired, from notes taken from day to day. All those events were then fresh in my memory.

Such notes as I took subsequent to the 9th of January, 1850, while I remained in California, and later while I was in Oregon, were not so copious and full, and what I may hereafter write in relation to my experiences in those states (then territories) for the next four years and more will be drawn from these scanty notes, with the assistance of a very retentive memory.

At the date of the sad experience with the boat on the Feather River, January 9, 1850, I was a young man of a little more than twenty-one years of age; while at this time I am more than sixty-five, yet my memory is still quite fresh in regard to many of those events that transpired in those times, while I doubt not that many others of equal interest may have been forgotten altogether; or I may retain only a partial or faint recollection of them at this time.

In consequence of this, whatever I may write in the following pages will be such only as I distinctly remember, and they will be a few of the leading incidents connected with my residence in California and Oregon until August, 1854, when I returned to New Hampshire.

After a rest of two days from January 9, 1850, the time of the accident with the boat, we again resumed work with Mr. Burch, and soon after commenced the excavation of the ditch, which was for the purpose of a fence on three sides of a field of ten acres, Feather River to form the boundary on the remaining side. The land was sandy and free from stones, and the shoveling excellent. We made a very good job, as by hard work we could each excavate four or five rods a day. The weather at this time was pleasant. The rainy season had not entirely passed, but February was a fine month and very agreeable.

After the ditch was completed, as Mr. Burch had no more work for us, we traveled down the river to Yuba City, a small, new village on the west bank of the Feather River, opposite the mouth of the Yuba River.

At that time Marysville, situated on the other side of Feather River and a short distance up the Yuba, was composed of very few buildings, with the exception of Nye’s ranch, which was one of the old California adobe ranches. This was substantially at the head of steam navigation on Feather River, and there was quite a rivalry between the two “cities”--each trying to become _the_ “city.”

Yuba City had the first beginning, but Marysville later outrivaled her and became the more important place. At this time two or three small steamers plied between Sacramento, Yuba City and Marysville. The largest of these was a flat-bottomed boat of considerable size, which, if I remember correctly, was the Vezie. It was owned by a company from Maine, called the Vezie Company, and was built in Maine, taken around Cape Horn on a vessel, and set up in California. I believe Captain, Colonel or General Vezie was at the head of the company.

Green oak wood was used for fuel to operate the steamboat, and as there was quite a number of men present, members and stockholders of the company, a small board shanty was erected a short distance below Yuba City for the accommodation of the choppers who undertook to cut the fuel for the steamer from the oaks that grew near by.

The majority of these men were young and were entirely unused to such hard manual labor as chopping, and the outcome was that eight or ten of them could not, or did not, cut a sufficient amount of wood to supply the boat with fuel.

Shortly after our arrival at Yuba City, I met the agent of the steamboat company and made an agreement with him to cut 100 cords of wood at $6.50 per cord.

The wood was to be cut three feet in length and split, but no deduction was to be made on account of its short length. I informed Pinney and Butler of the contract I had entered into, and of course they expected to take part in the job.

Mr. Pinney was a native of Vermont, and cutting cord wood had been his principal work for many years.

For several years previous to his immigration to California he had resided in Pelham, and had cut wood for about nine months in each year, being engaged at haying and other work for the farmers during the heated term of summer. He was noted in Pelham as being an expert chopper, one that could cut more wood in a given time than any other man known in or about Pelham. Mr. Butler and myself both knew how to use the axe, but had never cut very much cord wood.

Mr. Pinney made the remark that in all probability he would cut as much wood as Mr. Butler and myself together. I made the reply, that if he should cut twice as much wood as I did, I would leave the job.

A ferry spanned the river from this place to the Marysville side, and the fare for foot passengers was fifty cents each way.

No axes were on sale in Yuba City, and Mr. Pinney was selected to go to Marysville and purchase three chopping axes. In due time he returned with the axes--three being the entire stock found in the market in Marysville.

As I remember, the price paid was ten dollars each, without helves. One of them was about the ordinary size and weight for a chopping axe, while another was a large, heavy one, and the third light and small like a boy’s axe. Mr. Pinney selected the one of medium size for himself, and said that Mr. Butler and I could make such arrangements as we should choose in regard to the other two. I gave Mr. Butler his choice and he took the heavy one. We made arrangements with a man by the name of Galushia, who had a tent, to supply us with board at the price of two dollars per day. He did the cooking over a fire outside the tent.

We each made a helve and hung the axes and began chopping. The wood was the white oak species and was growing a short distance back from the river. The trees were principally large, very old and brash, not very tall but with numerous large branches spreading over a wide surface. The trees were scattering, with no underbrush, “oak openings.” It was seldom that we cut the trunks of the trees into wood, but left them on the ground, making use of the branches only. In many instances we would climb the trees and cut off the branches and leave the trunk standing.

The first of my work at chopping caused my hands to blister badly. It was late in the forenoon when I commenced, and when it became night I felt an anxiety to know about how much I had succeeded in cutting. I piled and measured it, when I found I had cut in the short day, one and one-quarter cords, or had earned over eight dollars.

By the agreement made we were not required to pile the wood, but the company was to have it drawn out and piled on the bank of the river, where it could be measured.

We were not a long time in completing the contract of cutting one hundred cords, and we made another contract to cut another hundred cords. Each of us had our wood kept separate and piled by itself. Some days, when I was fortunate in the selection of a good tree, I would cut as much as four cords; while on some other days, when I had a bad tree, I would not cut more than two cords. The first week or ten days of chopping caused my hands to become very sore, so much so that the helve of the axe would be covered with blood when they came in contact with it.

MARCH 1, 1850.

After having worked at chopping about one month and having had our wood drawn out and measured, it was found I had cut almost two-thirds as much as had Mr. Pinney, and Mr. Butler had cut about one-half as much.

As spring was approaching and as gold mining was our chief object and uppermost in our minds as a means by which to make a fortune in California, we thought the time was near at hand when we should select a mining claim for the coming summer.

At that time it was almost the universal opinion among the miners of California that the beds of the rivers and large streams must be very rich with gold dust. That to turn the water from its natural channel so as to be able to work out the gravel from the bed of the stream, a quick fortune was almost sure to result.

The mines had been worked for a comparatively short time, and this plan had not been tested in only a few instances. The theory was that as gold was found in greater or lesser quantities along the shores of nearly all the streams, in almost every bar, and in paying quantities in a great number of them, if the river bed could be worked there would be necessarily large deposits of the yellow metal, as owing to its great specific gravity it would naturally seek the lowest levels and there remain.

The rivers in the mountains were a succession of falls and rapids, and at many such places it was practical to construct temporary dams, so as to turn the streams from their channels for a greater or lesser distance.

Almost the entire mining population of Feather River in the spring of 1850 was engaged in enterprises of this nature. Many had selected their mining claims in the autumn previous or in the early winter, and had worked upon them during the winter in making preparations to carry their project into execution as early in the spring as the water should become low enough to permit of its being successfully carried out. The Pelham company owned a claim on the south fork of Feather River, where they had built and were occupying a comfortable log-house, and had expended much time and labor in making the necessary preparations.

They bought a pitsaw with which they sawed sufficient plank for the construction of a long flume to carry the water a considerable distance. In appearance it was one of the most promising gold claims in the mountains. It was almost certain that for each one of the company there was a fortune awaiting in the bed of the stream.

Numerous similar companies were constructing improvements of greater or lesser magnitude. Everybody seemed sanguine of success.

We were doing fairly well at cutting wood and could continue to cut for the Vezie Company at six dollars per short cord. We could earn on the average, including some rainy weather, twelve or fifteen dollars a day.

But we naturally reasoned something different. If our friends in the mines should _strike it rich_ and succeed in making a moderate fortune in a few months and we should spend our time cutting wood when we had the opportunity of securing a claim at some place along the river, perhaps equally as rich as others, we should regret that we did not attend to it at the opportune time.

After discussing the matter in many different aspects, it was decided by us that Mr. Pinney would remain and cut wood, while Mr. Butler and myself would go up the river into the mountains and endeavor to secure a claim.

Consequently, we left Yuba City and went up the Feather River into the mining country. After prospecting for several days, we succeeded in securing a claim on the middle fork of Feather River, nearly thirty miles above Bidwell’s.

At this time large quantities of snow still remained in the mountains above Bidwell’s Bar. We made sufficient arrangements to comply with the mining rules and regulations to hold the claim, and formed a company.

The names of all of this company I do not at this time recall, but at least there were two additional men that made the journey with us from Boston to California--Alden J. Nutting, of Westford, Mass., and Cyrus Whittemore, of Antrim, N. H.

The most promising claims had been selected and we made the best arrangements that seemed practical at that time.

The winter of 1849-50 was noted for the great amount of rain that fell in the valleys and the enormous depth of snow that accumulated in the mountains. It was not expected that the streams would become sufficiently low so as to admit of working our claim before June.

After making the arrangements to hold the claim we returned to Bidwell’s and did some mining there and at a place on the middle fork of Feather River, about 15

From an Old Print.

POSTOFFICE IN ’49.]

miles from Bidwell’s. The water being high our success was poor.

While at Yuba City I became acquainted with a man by the name of Damon. Capt. Robert D. Bonner went into trade then in company with another man and desired to hire some money at 10 per cent interest per month.

I loaned him a considerable sum, but unfortunately I never received from him any interest nor any part of the principal. I soon afterwards lost sight of him and never knew his fate. As he had become very dissipated probably he did not survive long.

Hay had sold at very high prices the winter previous, in some of the cities as high as $500 per ton.

Mr. Damon of Yuba City made the proposition that we go up Feather River to a suitable place and there cut and stack a lot of hay and sell it later. He said he could not mow himself, but that he would hire a man to mow with me, and as he owned a horse, he would draw the hay together and pile it up, and we would sell it before the rainy season should set in.

I acquiesced in the proposition and we went up the river a few miles to a place where we found the grass was quite good. We bargained for the right to cut as much as we might desire for a nominal sum from a man that owned a ranch nearby. He was a squatter and probably had no more right to the grass than we had.

Mr. Damon owned one scythe and we succeeded in finding another--an old one--which we purchased for about fifty dollars. Mr. Damon hired Alden J. Nutting, before mentioned. Mr. Nutting was a short, thick set, robust, muscular man, and seemed to be in the enjoyment of good health.

The grass grew on the river bottom and was the natural product of the soil. It stood quite thick and was a fair crop, but had been trampled by cattle that had ranged over it and fed upon it at will, which caused it to be slow and difficult mowing.

We commenced mowing on Monday morning and I continued mowing every day through the week until Saturday night. Mr. Nutting complained of being exhausted and quit work at Thursday noon, but resumed again on Friday morning. There was no dew there at the time and the hay remained in the swath as it fell from the scythe, where it cured perfectly.

The next week we pitched it together into small piles where we loaded it upon a wagon and formed it into a square pile on the ground in a broad, open field.

Rakes of any kind we did not use. We did some more mowing for Mr. Damon, as he would need some to feed to his horse.

Our stack of hay was about 40 feet long by 30 feet wide and ten or eleven feet high, and was estimated to contain twenty tons.

It is impossible at the present time, after the lapse of nearly forty-five years, to give from memory a _connected_ account of _all_ the transactions in which I was engaged during the spring, summer and fall of 1850. Consequently, I will write about events of which I find my original minutes, or others of which I still have a distinct memory, without regard to the exact dates or order in which they transpired. It is possible that some events which I may relate may have taken place at a time previous to that of cutting the hay.

Some time I believe during that spring as Mr. Pinney and myself were returning from the mines on our way to Marysville, or Yuba City, we made a stop at Charles Burch’s ranch, where we met a party of surveyors.

The engineer, Robert Elder, a Scotchman who had been employed for twelve years as an assistant engineer on the Michigan and Illinois canal, said to us that he was short of help and would like to employ us for a short time if our price was satisfactory.

Having no particular work in view, we set our price at eight dollars per day with board. Mr. Elder thought that was more than he could afford to pay for help that had had no experience at such work, but said we could go to work on trial for two or three days.

He was laying out a new city a short distance farther up the river, it being a mile square, or nearly so. He had then worked upon it for a few days. The survey was being done for a company in Sacramento City, who later erected one or two large buildings, and made considerable effort to get a city started, but at length it proved to be a “paper city,” as has been the fate of numerous other like schemes in the West. We commenced work and after a few days were constantly expecting a notice of acquittal from Mr. Elder, or otherwise a reduction of wages. Nothing, however, was said by either party in regard to it for nearly two weeks, when I inquired of him how much longer he supposed our services would be needed. His reply was: “I would like to have _you_ stay a good while.”

Mr. Elder was a very kind man, yet he was somewhat eccentric, and his likes and dislikes very decided. Up to that time I had no reason to believe that he had any preference for me over Mr. Pinney.

We worked a few days after the time of the incident narrated, when one day he said to me that he would suspend work and go to Marysville for a few days and he desired us to go with him. We had boarded with an Englishman whom Mr. Elder had employed for that purpose, but he had lived at the ranch or house of a Frenchman by the name of John Roulo, located more than a mile down the river. Mr. Roulo had an Indian wife.

The Englishman was not a bad cook, but the principal diet for breakfast, dinner and supper the week through was stewed beef. This beef was of good quality and was very well cooked, but it did not agree with me for a constant diet, with scarcely any other kind of food.

About this time we went to Marysville, and Mr. Elder took a trip to Sacramento City to consult with some of the officers of the company for whom we were at work, or they came to Marysville, I am not certain which.

Mr. Elder desired me to remain and return with him. I made the proposition that I would do so upon the condition that I should board at the Frenchman’s, where he did. I confessed I could not stand the Englishman’s stewed beef any longer. He said I could just as well board at that place and might have done so if I had spoken about it to him. We returned and I worked until the job was finished. Mr. Pinney did not return with us.

There was in our party a Scotchman by the name of Campbell, one of the Sidney convicts. He was quite agreeable when he was sober, but sometimes he would get partially intoxicated, and then he was a bad man to get along with. He appeared to be a man of good education and understood surveying. Mr. Elder was obliged to be absent a part of the time, and in his absence he made Mr. Campbell his foreman.

Sometimes when he had indulged too freely of whiskey, he would neither work himself nor permit any one else. This did not suit me, as I intended to labor just as faithfully in the absence of Mr. Elder as I would if he were present.

One day when Mr. Campbell became quite drunk and foolish, and had allowed but very little work to be done by the party until afternoon, my patience had become exhausted. I undertook to drink from the waterpail that was standing nearby under a large tree, when he gave the pail a sharp tilt, which spilled some of the contents upon me. I started the second time to drink from the pail and he repeated the same foolish trick. After he had done this for several times, I dashed all the remaining water in the pail squarely into his face. He at once became almost frantic with rage, and seizing an axe threatened to cut me in pieces. I kept myself a short distance beyond his reach, and laughed at his threats.

I knew it was an easy matter for me to keep beyond his reach, but I didn’t know how long his anger would continue to rage, or whether he would revenge himself at some convenient time in the future when I might not be expecting it. After a short time he ordered me to go to the river near by and refill the pail with water, but he still held the axe in one hand and the pail in the other. I invited him to put aside the axe and give me the pail, which he finally did, and I immediately complied with his request.

After Mr. Elder returned I spoke to him in relation to Mr. Campbell’s actions, and he discharged him. The next winter I heard that he was lynched at some place in one of the mountain valleys for horse stealing.

One incident I always remembered which took place while we were employed on this job. When we were boarding at the French ranch, we carried a lunch for our dinners, which we would eat while seated under a large oak tree. One day we sat down in the shade of a large branching tree and ate our dinner and rested ourselves perhaps nearly an hour. Upon starting for our work we had gone but a short distance from the tree, where but a moment previous we had been quietly seated, when we heard a loud crash, and upon turning around we saw that a very large limb had broken from the tree and had fallen exactly upon the spot where we had been seated but a moment previous.

This branch at the point of breakage was more than a foot in diameter, and probably contained nearly a cord of wood. There was not a breath of wind stirring and the branch had broken from its own weight, being just fully leaved out. It seemed to me to be a very narrow escape from a serious accident. I afterwards learned from my own observation that it was very often that limbs broke from such trees when loaded with leaves and there was no wind stirring.

Mr. Elder seemed to manifest a deep interest in my welfare, and while he was drafting the plan of the survey we had made, desired me to learn to use the protractor, scale and dividers.

At that time I had no intention of taking up the business of surveying, although from what little experience I had had with it, I thought I would like the work very much. I practiced with the instruments as I had the time to spare from my other work, and learned something about protracting and the use of the scale and dividers.

Later in the same season I assisted Mr. Elder in laying out another “paper city,” but it was not of so large extent as was the former one.

Not only was the winter of 1849-50 an excessive one in cold and storms, but the year 1850 was the most trying in the history of the gold-seekers. The struggles for the possession of titles to the claims staked out by the prospecting miners reached a critical stage; the cholera raged in every section of the Pacific slope--aye, spread from ocean to ocean--and in addition to these and the trials and uncertainties of life in the mines, where hundreds were losing to one making, the Indians started upon the warpath.

Early in the summer, while I was at work at Bidwell’s on Feather River, I witnessed the interesting and somewhat startling spectacle of a band of her men decked out in all of the horrible panoply of savage warfare. All were elaborately painted in striking colors and armed in Indian fashion, bows and quivers, decorated in bright figures and filled with sharp pointed arrows tipped with glass heads, knives and other implements of a warlike nature.

These dusky forces were composed of the “Valley Indians,” as the native inhabitants of the lowlands were called, among whom was a branch known as the “Digger Indians,” and the mountain tribes that had their homes in the Sierra Nevadas and adjacent highlands. The last named tribes were at enmity with the first--a predatory warfare that existed for a long period--a war as it seemed to the bitter end.

An Indian village was situated twenty or twenty-five miles from Bidwell’s easterly in the Sierras, which I had frequently passed through when I was prospecting in the Feather River gold mines.

One day about noon there suddenly appeared in this little mining settlement a file of naked Indian warriors; forty or fifty in number, nearly all young men in the vigor of manhood, all apparently sound, well developed, beautifully proportioned, athletic men, the leader the most conspicuous figure. They came into view traveling at a slow dog trot, single file, each at a uniform distance from his file leader. No word was uttered, and no one of them perceptibly turned his head to the right or to the left.

As the foremost reached the river, which at that place was deep and of considerable breadth, he stepped boldly and deliberately into the current without the slightest hesitation, and swam quickly to the opposite shore, where he again resumed the Indian trot of a few minutes before. Even the river did not break the line or check the speed materially, but the line was maintained and the speed was continued on and up the steep mountain incline as on the level, without break or hesitation, far, far up the rugged mountain trail as we could see, their military order and discipline unbroken.

They were from a valley tribe and had suddenly come into view, passed through the village, swam the river, climbed the mountain side, and passed beyond our view in silence, bent on their errand of bloody carnage and death. Determination, vengeance and savage destruction was pictured on every brow.

Something of vital moment to the aboriginal population not far distant was about to transpire. And it was not long delayed. It was learned a little later that the Indian village in the mountains before mentioned, was suddenly and sadly surprised on the night of the day that the war party passed through Bidwell’s, and for the small Indian settlement it proved a great slaughter or massacre of the men, while a large number of the women and children were taken prisoners and conducted to new homes.

Some time in the spring, James M. Butler being somewhat out of health, went to the Pelham camp to do the cooking for the company, where he remained until late in the fall, when he returned to his home in Pelham.

I did some mining at Bidwell’s and one or two other places while we were waiting for the water to subside. We visited our claim on the middle fork of Feather River several times, and made preparations to work it as soon as the state of the water would admit of doing it. We were obliged to convey all the provisions needed there on our backs over the mountains from Bidwell’s Bar, a distance of 25 or 30 miles.

It was some time in July when the water became sufficiently low so as to admit of working the claim to advantage. At that time the companies that had taken claims in the most favorable locations had succeeded in getting a part of the water turned aside from the channel, so that they had begun to work some of the beds of the streams. A few of those who had succeeded in working any part of the river bed had found the claims rich, but a very large majority of such mines were only paying very moderately, and many were almost entirely worthless. Some companies that had been at work all winter making preparations to turn a stream from its bed, when at last they had succeeded at the cost of so much labor and expense, found the bed of the stream so poor that it would not pay the expense of working. This state of affairs was not encouraging for us. As yet we had expended but little labor on our claim, but in loss of time in making arrangements, going back and forth conveying provisions and tools, with the loss of time in waiting for the water to subside, all together made it a matter of considerable magnitude, reaching probably two or three thousand dollars. However, it was not our purpose to abandon our claim without a fair trial.

Instead of arranging to turn the whole stream at once, as we had originally intended, we concluded to construct a wing dam, so as to be able to test the paying qualities of the bed. If it should prove of such richness as to warrant it, we could then build the dam as we had planned and turn the whole stream. If it should prove of poor paying quality we would abandon it.

Consequently, we constructed a wing dam so as to be able to turn the water from a small part of the river bed so as to permit of working so far as to be able to test the quality.

After completing this work, and washing the material from the river bed, we found but very little gold, not sufficient to pay for working.

I would probably have had nearly or quite a thousand dollars more than I did have at that time if I had kept at work and taken no part whatever in or about any river claim.

The Pelham company worked their claim and it paid for working after the stream was turned, but the returns as a whole were small, and the company was dissolved in the fall.