by Fred Rosen
To get the gold, miners would generally wade out in the water of the American or Feather River, on a narrow strip of land (the “bar”) that was their claim. On either side would be other miners doing exactly the same thing, only they would be confined to their claim, which had a specific boundary line. While the government owned the land, the miner owned the mineral rights by simply filing that claim with the government.
To pan for gold, the miner would simply bend down and scoop out with his hand or shovel some of the black dirt that had settled on the river bottom, and deposit a big dollop of it in the pan. Then the pan would be placed in the water to fill it up, making sure the dirt stayed put.
The next step is to take the pan out of the water and shake it to settle the gold to the bottom of the pan. Gold is the heaviest thing in the pan, and if it’s there, it’ll settle to the bottom. It takes thirty seconds for this process. Then it’s on to shaking and swirling the pan to a working angle at about forty-five degrees to the ground or water. Stop those actions and while maintaining the working angle, submerge the pan back in the water. It is then immediately lifted out of the water, taking care not to lift the front lip. The idea is for the water to rush out of the pan and wash off the top layer of dirt.
Now comes the dipping sequence. Every few drops, swirl the sand while maintaining the working angle. That’ll keep any gold present trapped in the crease of the pan. The miner keeps dipping and swirling until only about a tablespoon of black sand is left. Moving to the last part of the process, the miner places about half an inch of water in the pan, then slowly swirls the water over the sand. As the sand is moved away by the water, if gold is present, the miner will immediately see its glittering presence.
In their excitement, some miners actually washed the gold out of their pans! Those who didn’t then placed it on a handkerchief to dry in the sun. Once dry, it could be transferred to a rawhide pouch.
Whether using the cradle or the pan, gold mining was backbreaking work. McNeil quickly learned that making it rich at mining required a combination of luck to both find the stuff and to survive the cholera and other epidemics that swept the mining camps.
“None but the stalwart and gigantic laboring man, who can work from sunrise to sunset and withstand the hot sun, is fit for such an occupation,” McNeil later wrote.
McNeil was one of the smart ones. Realizing that gold mining required luck and a back as strong as the Kentucky Giant, McNeil decided that instead of getting rich panning, he would be better off making his money doing something else. So he set off to Sacramento City with an idea: he would sell one of the two things men always craved.
Halfway between the ship landing in Sacramento and the main street was a singular sycamore tree, which, with age and honor, had bent down to the shape of a half circle, while from its curved trunk rose branches, casting “a delightful shade around. This curve I made the entrance or front door of my tent, building back of it with muslin until it was sufficiently large for every purpose. Between the two sides of the trunk ran my counter, leaving a small passage on one side for entering and going out.”
Surrounded by other “liquor houses,” McNeil’s Sycamore Tree Establishment became famous far and near as one of Sacramento’s better run saloons.
“I sold some brandy at my tent at twenty-five cents per drink. When a person came to me for brandy, I invariably observed that if he must and would have it, and was determined to die, that I had the stuff that would kill a man as quick as any other liquor in California. This I done fully one hundred times a day.”
McNeil supplied not only liquor but also a unique atmosphere to the miners and traders who populated the city. If there is any business through which a person can see into the heart of the human character, it is saloon keeping. McNeil soon found this out and kept careful notes on his customers.
“An Irishman, who lived on the opposite side of the river, came over to the City to have a spree, for the Irishman is the same jovial personage every where. Excited by ardent spirits, he had been swearing that he would kill somebody that day. From my tent, I saw him, with uplifted Bowie knife, pursuing an individual. When he had almost reached his expected prey, the latter turned on him and wounded him severely with a pistol. His wife was sent for, who came over in a canoe.
“With assistance, she had her husband placed in the bottom of it, and started for home. As the wound made him restive, she swore that if he did not be still she would throw him overboard. He died about four hours after reaching his dwelling. Elder, the man who shot the Irishman, was immediately arrested, and tried before a miner’s court, and acquitted.”
Miner courts were the only law and order in the boomtowns.
“A few days afterwards a man was arrested for stealing $50 worth of gold dust. A jury was called and a judge appointed, and he was found guilty, his sentence running thus: that he should have his ears cut off, receive fifty lashes on the bare back, and leave the country.”
Such penalties were barbarous leftovers from seventeenth-century Colonial times, when crime against property warranted a pious society’s fiercest punishment. Things changed with the introduction of criminal codes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the states. But in California gold country, with the law hundreds of miles away, mob rule took over and penalties for crimes were, to say the least, a throwback to what was.
“Lots were drawn to discover who should cut off his ears,” McNeil continues, “and it fell upon a person named Clark. The prisoner prevailed upon a doctor sojourning there to do the job instead of Clark, knowing that he could do it more skillfully and with less injury; but the difference was that between a little hell and a big hell. The doctor complied with great good nature and willingness, and with a well-sharpened glittering razor, cut the scoundrel’s ears off close to his head.”
Apparently the Hippocratic oath, too, could be put aside in favor of mob justice.
“With bleeding head and back, and, no doubt, with an agonized heart, if such a villain could feel, he stole a mule the same night, and was never heard of afterwards.”
On another occasion, “A [different] doctor stepped into my tent for refreshment. He was just from the mines with a gloomy countenance and apparently with almost broken heart. He stated that he had left a profitable practice in New Orleans for the life of a gold-seeking wanderer—a splendid carriage, to walk on foot over barren hills and valleys—an ample table, to cook his scanty worm meat and eat his musty bread—a feather bed and lovely wife, to sleep on the hard ground serenaded each night by howling starving wolves.”
Such tales of woe were common.
“A young man named Samuel Anderson, the son of a wealthy gentleman in New York, came to my tent sick and without a cent. I gave him something to eat, medicine and money to pay his way to San Francisco. He was direct from the mines. I never saw him since and never learned whether he lived or died.”
On another occasion, still another doctor rode up to McNeil’s bar and asked if he would like to purchase his horse.
“I am from Illinois,” the doctor said.
“Have you been to the mines?” O’Neil asked.
“I have been to the Mormon Island. I am going home, as I had only visited the region for my health. That’s why I am going home.”
McNeil looked him over; the stranger looked healthy. The mountain air must have worked.
“Any person who can endure the fatigues consequent on traveling across the Plains must have been very healthy at home,” McNeil observed shrewdly.
“I would like to give [John] Frémont, and all the letter-writers who had extolled California, a [dose of] arsenic, as the intelligence about the gold was designed to humbug the people of the United States,” the doctor replied bitterly.
“He rode off and I saw no more of him. On another day, two New Yorkers were eating dinner at my tent. In stepped a Massachusetts man, who said that he had just returned from the mines. The New Yorkers, to have a little fun with him, commenced asking him questions
, and found that he, like the celebrated doctor, was bound for home. They pretended they had a diving bell, and offered him $16 per day and board, for working only two hours a day with it. This offer he refused.
“They then offered him wages for that purpose from $25 up to $50. He swore that he would have nothing to do with the under-taking, as he believed they wished to drown him. He said that he could live better in a Massachusetts poor house than he could in California; home he would go, and took his hasty departure, followed by the laughter of those who had tried to hook the land gudgeon.
“A gentleman, named Francis Shaeffer, whom I had known from a boy, stepped into my tent. He was born and raised in Lancaster, Fairfield County, Ohio. His father keeps the finest hotel in Lancaster, and, I think, is worth $100,000. I was considerably glad to see Frank, as he was the first of my acquaintance I had seen in the gold regions. He came the overland route from Fort Independence, one among the first who got through. I asked him, why he had come to that desolate place, as his father had enough at home to sustain him during life without laboring.
“He answered, ‘I knew that. I wish to make with my own hands as much as my father possessed.’
“I could not help sincerely pitying him when I saw his fine form and expressive countenance, with an intelligence that might have realized him a fortune in any other place, knowing and feeling that the hardships and privations of that region would be severe on one who had been so delicately raised and liberally educated. Yet, feeling confident that by his extraordinary energy and ability, he would acquire an independent fortune at the mines, and would go to his home with one of the largest treasures on earth.
“A New York lawyer stepped into my tent one day, without the usual haughty swagger he had previously exhibited on Broadway, and without the usual gloves on his hands and umbrella under his arm, which he had displayed there in going to perform some petifogging business. I never heard his name, and perhaps he was so ashamed of the mines he wished to conceal it.
“He said there was no law in that country, and that gold digging was too severe for his delicate hands and body. I observed that the more law there is in any country, the more trouble there is among men.
“He said, ‘I am without money and without hope,’ showing me a splendid gold watch, saying that he wished me to purchase it from him, asking $50 for it, observing that it had cost him $110 in New York.
“I told him that I would give him $20 for it. This he took and spent $5 of it with me, in eating and drinking, before he left.”
It was an everyday occurrence for McNeil to wait on men coming to and returning from the mines. Most did not stay long enough to learn how to find the gold and wash it properly. Frequently they stayed only a few hours in the gold fields. Without the prerequisite patience for the boring, repetitive, backbreaking labor of pan and cradle, they instead retired in disgust.
“A sailor was at my tent. The captain of a vessel wished to hire him to accompany the former to Oregon. The captain offered him $250 per month. The sailor asked $300. The captain observed that that was too much, and he could not give it. The sailor then retorted that if this captain would accompany and help him at the mines, he would give him $300 per month and board. This is the only country in which I have seen true democracy prevailing. The poor man can give as high wages as the rich man, and the former can hire the latter as readily and as liberally as the latter can hire the former.”
The Sycamore Tree Establishment, with its philosophizing bartender/owner, the shoemaker from Lancaster, became so popular that one day the great man himself, John Sutter, showed up for a drink. After he’d had a few, Sutter began complaining to McNeil.
“On his first expedition to California, Colonel Frémont come to my fort, and took by force, horses, cattle, and provisions, for which he I have never been paid by the government,” Sutter said bitterly.
“What about the great crops of wheat you were raising when the gold excitement commenced?” McNeil asked.
“I only raised it for the use of my own stock, as there was not at that time a mill in that region for grinding wheat. I have not a fence on my farm, the Fort is in ruins, its walls having been formed [as those of his house in which there is now a tavern] of adobe brick, or clay bricks not burnt. I live now at Suterville [sic], a town of about one hundred buildings, one mile and a half below Sacramento City.’
Sutter was lying. This was the beginning of a myth that began that day in 1849 when Sutter visited McNeil’s establishment and extended throughout the rest of his lifetime, beyond his death, and into the twenty-first century.
Sutter would tell any and all that the Gold Rush ruined him, which wasn’t true. He just didn’t have unfettered control of northern California like he used to have. While it’s good to be king, when you’re kicked off your throne, it’s a hard fall. Now his fort wasn’t the only game in town for the kinds of civilized services men needed before going into the gold fields. He had competition, and he didn’t like that very much. McNeil barely had time to think about Sutter’s expressed condition when he came in for a surprise.
“The Lancaster boys are arriving. The vessel I sailed in from Mazatlán arrived at San Francisco two months before the French brig in which they voyaged. The Catholics have their hell in purgatory, the Universalists theirs on earth, but the Lancaster boys were to have theirs on the Pacific Ocean for their conduct towards me.
“They arrived at Sacramento City without money, and wished to borrow $50 from me. I readily agreed to let them have it. They wrote a joint note, not with a pen, but with a pencil, that through rubbing in the pocket book, it would soon rub out. I observed to them at the time that they need not think I am a fool because some may consider me an ignorant shoemaker, for I had discovered why they wished to have the note written with a flimsy pencil, and would not, in consequence, let them have $50 on any terms.
“After wishing to shoot me at Mazatlán, they tried to borrow money from me at Sacramento City! But the reader will see that the same principle, or rather want of principle, was exhibited both in the shooting business and the borrowing affair. They then took a pleasure trip to Smith’s Bar.”
It was then August 20; McNeil had landed in San Francisco on June 1. In almost three months, he had accumulated $1,500, “that is, cleared that sum, after paying all expenses. I firmly believe that, if I had not been bothered and delayed through Texas and Mexico by the Lancaster boys—that is, if the wagons had been sold, and we had muled it in 30 days instead of the two months the trip occupied, I might have doubled the $1,500 between the dates I mentioned.”
To show how social class was in a constant state of flux during this period, McNeil cites this example:
“An English vessel was lying at that port of the muslin houses. Although the sailors had been receiving good wages, all of them run away from the ships to the mines. The captain, who was receiving $50 per month from his employers in England, being an honest man and true to their interests, remained on board. He hired at that port a cook, for his own eating, to whom he gave $250 per month. This is the first time I ever saw a cook get more wages than the captain of a vessel. No other country can exhibit such a singularity as that. In fact, California has turned the world upside down in every department of life.”
California had not been the boom place it was for some, nor did he lose his shirt like most. McNeil saw the reality. It invaded his feelings with an intense and profound sense of loneliness. He missed home, he missed family, he missed his children, and he missed his friends.
“A New York gentleman walked pompously into my tent, and asked me what I would take for the now universally celebrated and appreciated Sycamore Tree Establishment and all its appurtenances, the latter consisting of as much as an ordinary man could carry on his back, and would be worth in the States about $50.
“I told him $500, considering that the credit of the establishment was worth a small fortune. He offered me $400 in cash. I observed that it was useless to multiply words between gentleme
n, and he might count out the $400 in sterling gold, and he could take the whole concern and possession at the same time.
“Now I am ready to start for home.”
As it turned out, McNeil would once again have a traveling companion. A countryman named Walker from Cincinnati, who had traveled with him previously from Mazatlán to Sacramento, showed up at the Sycamore Tree Establishment just as McNeil was selling the place. The last time they had seen each other, Walker “got drunk soon after arriving in Sacramento and went off intoxicated to the mines. When I saw him last he was making a perfect worm fence along his route.
“I did not hear of him afterwards until the moment I was ready to start towards home. I asked how he had progressed after leaving me. He informed me that he had found a rich spot, and had dug out $8,500. He showed me the dust. Both of us then proceeded to San Francisco, where, getting as beastly drunk, as ever, he gambled and soon lost $1,000. Then he had $7,500 left, which I took care of for him. As to fortune, there was a great disparity between us, as I had only $2,000.
“It is now August 20, and Walker and myself are at San Francisco, waiting for a passage to the States. The U.S. Mail steamer Panama, is anchored in the bay, three miles from the town, appointed to sail Sept. 2d. She is commanded by Capt. Baily. Our tickets for the steerage, in that ship, cost us each $150. I could have sold my ticket for $250, as there were about one thousand more than the steamer could take, wishing passage to the States.
“Before catching the steamer, several of the Lancaster boys showed up. I call them boys, for men would not have acted towards me as they did. They had not, as yet, made one dollar. They tried to persuade me to stay longer in that country, but they could not succeed.
