by H. W. Brands
At one point the Benton-Foote feud turned almost deadly. On April 17, Foote assailed Benton as a “calumniator.” Benton responded by rising from his desk on the Senate floor and striding angrily toward the Mississippian. Foote, a small, slight man, feared the worst from the bruising Benton. He pulled a revolver, aimed it at Benton, and cocked it.
As colleagues hastily intervened, Benton threw them aside. “Let the assassin fire!” he shouted. “A pistol has been brought here to assassinate me!”
Foote responded that he was only defending himself, being no match physically for Benton.
Benton refused to be mollified. “No assassin has a right to draw a pistol on me!” he bellowed.
By now the gun had been taken from Foote, and the mortal danger passed. Several senators demanded Foote’s expulsion; others were willing to settle for an investigation. The investigation proved nothing except that the debate over California was as ugly and explosive as anything the legislators had ever experienced.
In Benton’s speech of June 10, he showered scorn upon the Foote-Clay omnibus. “This batch of bills is not to be a law freely made by Congress,” he asserted, “but a compact to be swallowed, and swallowed whole, under the penalty of party execution and political damnation.” The committee responsible for the omnibus bill had crafted a “monster.” Benton intoned, “I proceed to the destruction of this monster.”
Benton’s heaviest blows were directed at the link between California’s admission and the sundry complaints of the slaveholders. “The California bill is made the scape-goat of all the sins of slavery in the United States— that California which is innocent of all these sins.” In case his listeners had forgotten what a scapegoat originally was, Benton reminded them: “an innocent and helpless animal, loaded with sins which were not his own, and made to die for offences which he had never committed.” Benton continued, “So of California. She is innocent of all the evils of slavery in the United States, yet they are all to be packed upon her back, and herself sacrificed under the heavy load.” California should have been admitted as soon as her constitution arrived, but the men now promoting the omnibus refused. “She has been delayed long, and is now endangered by this attempt to couple her with the territories [New Mexico and Utah], with which she has no connection, and to involve her in the Wilmot Proviso question, from which she is free.” Nor was that all. “Now she is joined to Texas also, and must be damned if not strong enough to save Texas.” And there was still more: the question of slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the fugitive slaves. “The conjunction of these bills illustrates all the evils of joining incoherent subjects together. It presents a revolting enormity, of which all the evils go to an innocent party, which has done all in its power to avoid them.” California wanted nothing to do with the slavery quarrel, as she had demonstrated in her convention. “Existence and relief, is her cry!” the Senate must answer, affirmatively.
Benton’s blows accomplished their purpose. Encouraged by their senior colleague, the opponents of the omnibus bill amended it, reamended it, rescinded the amendments, and cast such a spell of confusion about the whole business that when it finally came to a vote on July 31, it failed. “The omnibus is overturned!” Benton cried triumphantly.
Yet the overturning oddly facilitated the transport of the passengers separately. After half a year of debate, during which other legislation ground to a halt, Washington grew tired of the quarreling. The sudden death of President Taylor—felled by acute indigestion after an Independence Day feast—facilitated compromise by bringing Millard Fillmore to power. Where Taylor had been a southerner with northern principles, Fillmore was a northerner with southern principles. More to the immediate point, he was an unelected president and therefore more willing than Taylor to defer to the leaders of Congress, especially fellow Whigs Clay and Webster.
Clay was disappointed at the failure of the omnibus, but phlegmatic. “I was willing to take the measures unified; I am willing now to see them pass separate and distinct.” Wisely (understanding that no small part of the animus against the omnibus was directed at him personally) and wearily (he was feeling the effects of the same consumption that afflicted Calhoun), Clay let an ally, Stephen Douglas of Illinois, conduct the salvage operation. Piece by separate piece, Douglas guided to passage what came to be called the Compromise of 1850. California was made a state. New Mexico and Utah were made territories, without prejudice regarding slavery. The boundary between Texas and New Mexico was made final. Texas received $10 million. The slave trade was banned from the District of Columbia. The fugitive slave law was strengthened.
The ailing Clay took comfort in this final compromise and received the plaudits of his colleagues. “Let it always be said of old Hal that he fought a glorious and patriotic battle,” Douglas declared. “No man was governed by higher or purer motives.”
For Webster, the essence of the outcome was the preservation of the Union. “Whatever party may prevail hereafter,” he said, “the Union stands firm.”
12
Children of the Mother Lode
Congress could grant California statehood, but it couldn’t civilize the place. For all the—finally successful—efforts of John and Jessie Frémont and other advocates of statehood to portray their new home as settled and deserving of recognition as the equal of the existing states, California in the early 1850s remained very much a wild child. Just as San Francisco, that urban frontier, was sui generis among American cities, California was unique among American states—for a different, although related reason. In nearly every other state, farmers formed the majority of the citizenry; spread more or less evenly over the land, they cast a broad umbra of the social order that typically distinguished the states from the territories and the outright wilderness. In California, by contrast, the citizenry consisted mostly of miners and townsfolk; clumped in the state’s few cities and the many mining camps, they left most of the rest of California (a land area larger than every other state except Texas) looking much like the territories and the wilderness—with the problems typical of regions in that prestatehood form of existence. Here the principal challenge was less to establish order among people newly arrived than to relate the new arrivals to the people who were already there.
THOUGH HINDSIGHT MAKES the destruction of California’s Indians appear inevitable, it by no means seemed so in the immediate aftermath of James Marshall’s discovery at Coloma. During the previous eighty years the numerous tribes of California had achieved a rough accommodation with the Spanish and the Mexicans; their numbers dropped from perhaps three hundred thousand to about half that, largely as a result of introduced diseases, but the direct pressure from the whites wasn’t overwhelming. Indians who lived near the missions and pueblos worked for and with the intruders, and if coercion was often involved, so too was cooperation. When the whites became especially pushy, the Indians could withdraw to the interior. This wasn’t an option exercised lightly, as it involved abandoning ancestral lands and encountering other tribes who didn’t appreciate the newcomers, even if—often especially if, in light of historic grievances—they were Indians. But California was a large place, the inhabitants were relatively few, and with adjustments all could fit.
In the first year or so after the gold discovery, life among the Indians proceeded much as before. Indeed, the gold provided new opportunities for the Indians. William Sherman’s observation on visiting the mining region in the summer of 1848, that half the estimated four thousand miners were Indians, suggested how quickly and well they were adapting to the changing circumstances. With their willow baskets they sifted the gold from the gravel and sand as efficiently as anyone. Some worked for themselves, others for such as Sutter. Very briefly, conniving whites were able to fool some Indians regarding the value of this yellow dust—one tale told by whites was that it was used it to plaster the walls of whites’ homes—yet the Indians soon caught on to the market price of gold and got what everyone else was getting. Life in the mines was no egali
tarian picnic for the Indians; whites often despised them, and cheated them whenever possible. But by and large the Indians were able to look out for themselves.
Things changed with the huge influx of 1849. More miners meant more competition for claims; in the competition the Indians were typically thrust aside. In this regard they suffered similarly to the Chileans, Mexicans, Chinese, and other foreigners. American miners, predictably for the age of Manifest Destiny, and especially after the war that won California for the United States, believed the mines belonged to them. They saw no reason to share the spoils with the indigenous peoples any more than with those against whom the war had been fought, or with foreigners who had taken no part in the war. American miners would defend one another against jumped claims and gross fraud—probably less from any sense of injured morality than from a recognition that what was done to their compatriots could be done to them. But they had scant such concern for those outside their circle of national and cultural affinity.
The Americans pushed, and the Indians either retreated or pushed back. Which course they chose—retreat or resistance—depended on the number of white miners involved, on the determination of particular Indians to defend their territory, and on the chance occurrences that shape history generally. As luck would have it, some of the fiercest tribes in all of California inhabited the southern mining district east of John Frémont’s Mariposa estate. (This was a principal reason, of course, that the tract had been foisted upon Frémont in the first place.) The fierceness of the locals kept white miners at bay initially, allowing the Indians to take the leading role in working the placers. But the Indians had no use themselves for the gold they collected; they benefited only by trading it to white merchants who had the guns, bullets, knives, and other items the Indians desired.
These merchants were much like other Indian traders throughout the West. As middlemen the traders possessed some of the qualities of the cultures on either side of them. Among the whites they behaved as whites, among the Indians as Indians. It was a difficult balancing act, and often a dangerous one. Pegleg Smith—of the Bear River trading post visited by Hugh Heiskell and William Swain—lost a leg to his occupation. James Savage of California eventually lost his life.
Savage was a picturesque character. “He is a man of about 28 years of age, rather small but very muscular and extremely active,” recorded Robert Eccleston, who had come west with a group calling itself the Frémont Association and had taken up a claim in the vicinity of the Mariposa. “His features are regular, and his hair light brown, which hangs in a negligé manner over his shoulders. He, however, generally wears it tied up. His skin is dark tanned by the exposure to the sun. He has, I believe, 33 wives among the mountain females of California, five or six only, however, of which are now living with him. They are from the ages of 10 to 22 and are generally sprightly young squaws. They are dressed neatly, their white chemise with low neck and short sleeves, to which is appended either a red or blue skirt. They are mostly low in stature and not unhandsome.” At a time when women were scarce among the Americans, Savage’s luck with the ladies, even if they were Indians, made him an object of envy.
Savage had served in Frémont’s battalion during the Mexican War, and he went to work for Sutter soon afterward. He was at New Helvetia when gold was discovered at Coloma. A short while later he left Sutter’s employ, heading south into the foothills along the Tuolumne River, where he employed a gang of Indians to mine for gold. He also entered the trading business, establishing several trading posts along the Merced, Fresno, and Mariposa Rivers. By all accounts he got on well with both whites and Indians. He helped negotiate a treaty with the Yokuts tribe, the predominant group on the Fresno River. The measure of his diplomatic skills was his business success; he soon acquired a modest fortune from his mining and trading operations. (Another measure of success was all those wives, who were often part of his business arrangements, offered by Savage’s Indian interlocutors as deal-closers, and accepted by him as surety for the Indians’ fulfillment of their ends of the bargains.)
Consequently it was significant when Savage in 1850 began detecting rumbles of Indian discontent. One of his wives heard from her people that the tribes above the Mariposa were plotting to drive all the whites from the area. A particular group, a fearsome band called the Yosemite—their name meant “grizzly bear” and summarized their reputation as raiders—seemed to be at the center of the trouble.
Savage affected to ignore the rumors. He conspicuously journeyed to San Francisco for supplies, inviting along one of the most vocal opponents of the whites, a chief called José Juárez. Savage wished to gain further intelligence about any incipient uprising; he also hoped to impress José Juárez with the power the whites could bring to bear against the Indians. The two reached the city in time for the celebration of California’s admission to the Union, which they observed by getting drunk, and then getting into a fight with each other. Neither sustained serious injury, but the outing had the opposite effect to what Savage intended, and, rather than easing the bad feeling between the whites and the Indians, aggravated it.
On arrival back at the Mariposa, Savage learned that scattered violence had already begun against isolated settlements. He summoned leaders among the local Indians to share a peace pipe, and expressed his desire that they not do anything they would regret. He explained how numerous the whites had become in California, and how they would avenge any of their white brothers killed by the Indians. Turning to José Juárez, he asked the chief to confirm what he said about the great numbers and power of the white men at San Francisco.
To Savage’s surprise, José Juárez derided the danger from the whites at the city. They were very many, he said, but they were too busy making money to worry about what happened so far away. They had big ships with many guns, but the ships couldn’t sail into the mountains. He then launched into an impassioned advocacy of war against the whites. The blow must fall at once, he said, while Indians in the mountains still outnumbered the whites there. More whites were coming all the time. Soon it would be too late. The Indian audience seemed persuaded by José Juárez’s remarks; another chief, called José Rey, declared that his people were ready to go to war at once. Beyond the satisfaction of reclaiming their homeland from the white interlopers, José Rey promised the plunder of the white man’s gold, trade goods, and other property. The first to take up arms would win the most booty.
After this audacious declaration, Savage expected additional violence at once. But rather than attack, the Indians of the Mariposa, including women and children, disappeared into the mountains—which worried Savage even more, for it appeared to presage a major offensive. Gathering a small party of armed men, he headed into the mountains after the Indians, hoping to talk them out of war. An all-night march carried the pursuers to the Indians’ hilltop camp, but the Indians refused to let Savage, even alone, come near. So he shouted at their leader, a chief named Baptiste, from an adjacent hill. Adam Johnston, a special government agent for Indian affairs, recounted the conversation:
Savage said to them it would be better for them to return to their village—that with very little labor daily, they could procure sufficient gold to purchase them clothing and food. To this the chief replied it was a hard way to get a living, that they could more easily supply their wants by stealing from the whites. He also said to Savage he must not deceive the whites by telling them lies, he must not tell them that the Indians were friendly; they were not, but on the contrary were their deadly enemies, and that they intended killing and plundering them so long as a white face was seen in the country.
Disappointed, Savage returned to the Mariposa, where he discovered that an Indian attack on the Fresno River had already occurred. Adam Johnston investigated. “We reached the camp on the Fresno a short time after daylight,” Johnston explained to Governor Burnett. “It presented a horrid scene of savage cruelty. The Indians had destroyed everything they could not use or carry with them. The store was stripped of b
lankets, clothing, flour, and everything of value; the safe was broken open and rifled of its contents; the cattle, horses, and mules had been run into the mountains; the murdered men had been stripped of their clothing, and lay before us filled with arrows; one of them had yet twenty perfect arrows sticking in him.”
Johnston’s report had the desired effect, producing an official call for two hundred men to mobilize in pursuit of the aboriginal insurgents. The mustering was complicated by two factors. First, the Indians had stolen or scattered most of the horses and mules in the region, compelling the militiamen to find substitutes. Second, even in the face of imminent war, many of the miners couldn’t tear themselves from the diggings. Ben McCullough, on leave from the Texas Rangers, with whom he had become famous for his exploits against the Comanches, was asked to lead the Mariposa Battalion, as the militia group was called. McCullough declined the command, saying it would bring him neither honor nor pecuniary advantage. (Another Texas Ranger, Jack Hays, currently sheriff of San Francisco County, was shamed into joining. “He says if we come to fighting, he will be in with us,” Eccleston recorded.)
Eventually, however, the two hundred were enrolled, and the campaign began. Savage served as guide. “From his long acquaintance with the Indians, Mr. Savage has learned their ways so thoroughly that they cannot deceive him,” noted T. G. Palmer, an obviously impressed member of the company. “He has been one of their greatest chiefs, and speaks their language as well as they can themselves. No dog can follow a trail like he can. No horse can endure half so much. He sleeps but little, can go days without food, and can run a hundred miles in a day and night over the mountains and then sit and laugh for hours over a camp-fire as fresh and lively as if he had just been taking a little walk for exercise. With him for a guide we felt little fear of not being able to find them.”
