![]() ![]() Those native peoples presented both a threat and an opportunity to Sutter. The land Sutter controlled may have been sparsely populated to Anglo settlers, but it was home to Native Americans who “found their homelands now the property of outsiders who viewed them as potential laborers,” writes historian Lisa Emmerich. Sutter became Nueva Helvetia’s judge and military commander, with the authority to prevent what he characterized as “the robberies committed by adventurers from the United States” and “the invasion of savage Indians.” In order to acquire the land, he converted to Catholicism and became a Mexican citizen, and within a few years he had more than doubled his land holdings. Accompanied by a group of Native Americans he had “acquired” along with provisions and tools, he convinced the provincial governor to grant him 50,000 acres for a settlement and trade center he dubbed “Nueva Helvetia,” or New Switzerland, in 1841. Rather than serve jail time for his debts, the 31-year-old left his home country-and his wife and five children-behind.Īt the time, California was a Mexican province, and Sutter was tempted by its vast natural resources and its seemingly sparse population. (Credit: Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images)īefore John Sutter became a land baron, he was Johann Suter, a debt-ridden shop owner in Switzerland. Johann August Suter, the Swiss pioneer of California later known as John Sutter in association with the California Gold Rush. He also helped set the stage for their genocide. Sutter, a shrewd businessman, enslaved hundreds of Native Americans and used them as a free source of labor and a makeshift militia with which he defended his territory. Without Native Americans, John Sutter-owner of the mill where gold was discovered and the area’s most influential landowners-would never have become so powerful. ![]() The very land on which Marshall spotted the gold was part of a vast empire built on the slave labor of Indigenous peoples. But Forty-Niners weren’t the first white people to oppress or even enslave Native Americans in California. The Anglo settlers who flocked to California declared war on the Native Californians who had come before them. Within years, they would be almost wiped out due to the massive immigration-and hunger for wealth-the Gold Rush inspired. The Gold Rush that followed changed the lives of California’s Native Americans, too. It was 1848, and Marshall’s fate-and that of California-had just changed forever. But then he noticed a glinting rock in the dirt while constructing a new mill for local landowner John Sutter. James Marshall didn’t come to California to find gold. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |