Where it all started
California’s Gold Rush began 172 years ago this month
Jan. 24, 1848, is one of the most significant dates in the history of the American West, or for that matter the United States and the world. The shiny yellow flakes that James. W. Marshall found that morning near a sawmill he was building for Capt. John A. Sutter was gold, and it turned out there was plenty more where that came from.
As word spread from Coloma on the south fork of the American River 50 miles east of Sacramento, men already in California headed for the Sierra foothills and were soon followed by many more equally eager to strike it rich. Almost 95% of the ‘49ers were men.
Fortunately, some of the new arrivals wrote down their experiences, preserving for all time that incredible epoch 172 years ago. One eyewitness to history, William Perkins, a Canadian from Toronto in his early 20s, spent three years in Sonora. His vivid and detailed recollections of those frenzied and often lawless times are among the best ever written.
Leaving from Cincinnati, it took Perkins and his small party four months to reach the camp of the Sonoranians in mid-1849. The young Canadian mined briefly at Sullivan’s Diggins a few miles southeast of Sonora before heading for the bustling camp known for its siz
able foreign population.
Perkins knew the camp’s alcalde, James Fraser, who introduced him to Hiram W. Theall, a soldier in the recently concluded War with Mexico. The New Yorker had made a small fortune by selling a watered-down barrel of rum by the glass to thirsty miners. With Theall’s newly acquired capital and money Perkins had, the two men bought Fraser’s store as Fraser wanted to be off to other adventures with the buckskin bags and tins of gold he had accumulated in just three months. His brushwood mining supply store was on the site of today’s Sonora Inn.
Perkins’ first impression of Sonora was enchantment, saying he “had never seen a more beautiful, wilder, or romantic spot,” one “literally embowered by trees.” Its streetscape reflected its Hispanic population, mainly Mexican miners and South Americans from Argentina, Peru and Chile. Americans did not predominate until the late summer of 1850, when the populace numbered between 3,000 and 5,000
Tents and adobes were common, and many other structures were improvised with brush or stakes driven into the ground to form an infrastructure embellished with “silks, fancy cotton, flags, brilliant goods of every description,” Perkins wrote. Nearby were strewn lavishly embroidered Mexican “zarapes” and gold and silver mounted saddles, bridles and spurs.
The South Americans wore ponchos and wide leather belts with pockets for money and smoking supplies. A Chinese man was arrayed in a quilted jacket, cotton breeches to the knees and a beehive-shaped hat which concealed his braided queue. There were Hawaiians in caico shirts, silk sash at the waist, cotton pants and bare feet.
The “saxon race,” Perkins said, donned thick pantaloons stuffed into heavy boots, a loose red or blue flannel shirt gathered around the waist by a scarf or sash, or both, with a Colt’s revolver tucked in. The Hispanics generally were armed with knives.
The Mexicans who traveled overland to Tuolumne County were gold miners in their native country and were mostly from the state of Sonora. It was their custom to travel with their families as they moved from one mining center to another. Thus, Tuolumne County was the only place in the gold country with a significant population of women and children before 1850.
Saturdays and Sundays, night and day, Sonora took on a “magical appearance” for Perkins as so many miners flocked to the camp for a good spree and to stock up on supplies. The lively main street was thronged with people speaking in many languages. There was music and even stalls where Mexican women made tortillas and filled them with meat and chili peppers.
Gambling was a big draw and tables chiseled out of logs were set up in the street to tempt men starved for amusement. A fancy cloth covered the makeshift tables and counters similarly hewn were nearby and well stocked with liquor. Perkins did not think much of professional gamblers, saying they corrupted “young men of respectable families” and drained the miners of their hardearned gold. But the precious metal was in such abundance, many didn’t seem to care.
As the winter of 184950 set in, many of the Hispanics left for milder climes or returned home. More men from the states and foreign countries poured into Sonora. Perkins said the exotic flavor of the town changed rapidly as the newcomers tore down the colorful brush and canvas structures, replacing them with adobes, log huts, tents with big false fronts, and wooden buildings when Sonora’s first sawmill began production in 1850.
Theall, Perkins and Co. prospered and by January 1850, the two men had an adobe of their own with living quarters upstairs and two glass windows, a rare luxury at the time. By then, they had been joined by Daniel Enyart, a friend of Perkins and a partner in the business.
Perkins said “the laws, such as they are,” were respected and he marveled that only “three Mexicans and one white man had been killed in street fights,” but “no cold-blooded murders” had occurred in the six months since he arrived. However, bloody times lay ahead fueled by alcohol, greed, theft, ethnic clashes, and the Foreign Miners Tax of May 1850, a levy imposed by the Legislature which further aggravated relations among many of those from the states who wanted to eliminate some competition and the areas many foreigners.
The violence chronicled by Perkins came quite close to him at times. In addition to sheltering women and children in his store when it was too dangerous outside, he saw a Mexican man stabbed to death in a crowd. The perpetrator was unseen and unpunished. He also watched as an Englishman was shot dead by an American near his store following a quarrel over a card game.
One of the most infamous events in the annals of law and order in Tuolumne County history occurred in July 1850 when 12 Americans seized four Mexican men in the process of burning a tent near Gold Springs, in which two men lay dead. According to Perkins (other accounts differ), the four men made it to the courtroom of Justice of the Peace Richard Barry, but the angry men who brought them there and others equally incensed made off with the suspects to convene a lynch court.
They were rescued by Sheriff George Work and deputies who galloped up to the hanging tree and muscled their way through a sizable mob of angry men shouting “hang them” just before the nooses were pulled tight. Work and his men cut the ropes and hustled his prisoners to the jail. As it turned out, all four were acquitted as the coroner said the miners in the tent had been dead for several days, and the accused men were merely disposing of their bodies as they would in their homeland. The Sonora Vigilance Committee was formed in mid1851, and Perkins was a member during its tenure of six months.
Perkins writes of grizzly bears close to town and nuggets of 20, 22 and 25 pounds unearthed by astonished miners. Of women, he said there were some “honest women,” but “they are few.” Brothels were generally adjuncts to saloons and gambling dens, although some operated as separate businesses.
In general, Perkins embraced Sonora’s ethnic diversity and was partial to South Americans. Sadly, he wrote disparagingly of what he considered “lower-class Mexicans” and “Mission Indians,” who migrated to the Sierra foothills after Mexico secularized the Franciscan settlements in the early 1830s. Blamed for stealing horses and mules for food, he said they were also known to murder “solitary miners.”
As for the local Mewuks, he had some unfortunate remarks but felt genuine remorse as their way of life had been turned upside down when Indian country was suddenly swarmed with hordes of gold hunters who showed them little respect. There is something in the character of Americans, the Canadians said, that causes them to misjudge those different from themselves.
In April 1852, Perkins left Sonora where he began his gold rush adventure three years earlier. His oft-stated fascination with South Americans drew him to Chile in the mid-1850s, where two Argentinians he knew in Sonora, Ramon and Samuel Navarro, were living. He married their sister Parmenia in 1856. Four years later, the family moved to Rosario, Argentina, where Perkins died on July 4, 1893.