John Augustus Sutter (February 23, 1803 – June 18, 1880), born Johann August Sutter and known in Spanish as Don Juan Sutter,University of Michigan – Supreme court of the United States. No. 135. The United States, appellants, vs. John A. Sutter. Appeal from the District court U.S. for the Northern district of California.The Sutter Family and the Origins of Gold-Rush Sacramento was a Swiss immigrant who became a Mexican and later an American citizen, known for establishing Sutter's Fort in the area that would eventually become Sacramento, California, the state's capital. His employee James W. Marshall discovered gold, leading to the founding of the mill-making team at Sutter's Mill. Sutter, however, saw his own business ventures fail during the California gold rush, though those of his elder son, John Augustus Sutter Jr., were more successful.Sutter, John A. Jr. & Ottley, Allan R. (Ed.). Statement: Regarding Early California Experiences. Sacramento Book Collectors Club. 1943.
Early life
Sutter was born on February 23, 1803, in Kandern,Eric Howard, John Sutter, California and Californians, Vol. 4. [database on-line]. Provo, UT: The Generations Network, Inc., 1998. Original data: Hunt, Rockwell D., ed. California and Californians. Vol. IV. Chicago, IL: Lewis Publishing, 1932. pp. 36, 37. Baden in present-day Germany, to Johann Jakob Sutter, a foreman at a paper mill, and Christina Wilhelmine Sutter (née Stober). His father came from the nearby town of Rünenberg, in the canton of Basel in Switzerland, and his maternal grandfather was a pastor from Grenzach, on the Swiss-German border.
After attending school in Kandern, Sutter studied at Saint-Blaise from 1818 to 1819. He then worked as an apprentice at the Thurneysen printing and publishing house in Basel until 1823. From 1823 to 1828, he was employed as a clerk in clothing shops in Aarburg and Burgdorf. At age 21, Sutter married the daughter of a wealthy widow. He briefly operated a store but spent more time indulging his interests than managing the business. Facing mounting debts and legal charges that could lead to imprisonment, he fled to America to avoid trial, adopting the name Captain John Augustus Sutter.
In May 1834, he left his wife and five children behind in Burgdorf, Switzerland, and with a French passport, he boarded the ship Sully, which traveled from Le Havre, France, to New York City, where it arrived on July 14, 1834.
The New World In North America, John Augustus Sutter (as he would call himself for the rest of his life) undertook extensive travels. Before he went to the United States, he had learned Spanish, English, and French. He and 35 Germans traveled from the St. Louis area to Santa Fe, New Mexico (then a province of Mexico), before eventually settling in Westport (modern-day Kansas City). On April 1, 1838, he joined a group of missionaries, led by the fur trapper Andrew Drips, and traveled the Oregon Trail to Fort Vancouver in Oregon Territory, which they reached in October. Sutter originally planned to cross the Siskiyou Mountains during the winter, but acting chief factor James Douglas convinced him that such an attempt would be perilous.Dillion, Richard. Fool's Gold, the Decline and Fall of Captain John Sutter of California. New York City: Coward-McCann. 1967, p. 66. Douglas charged Sutter £21 to arrange transportation on the British bark Columbia for himself and his eight followers.
The Columbia departed Fort Vancouver on November 11 and sailed to the Hawaiian Kingdom, reaching Honolulu on December 9. Sutter had missed the only ship outbound for Alta California, and had to remain in the kingdom for four months.Dillion (1967), p. 70. Over the months, Sutter developed friendly relations with the European-American community, dining with Consuls of the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, John Coffin Jones and Richard Charlton, as well as merchants like American Faxon Atherton. The brig Clementine was eventually hired by Sutter to take freight provisions and general merchandise for New Archangel (now known as Sitka), the capital of the Russian-American Company colonies in Russian America. Joining the crew as unpaid supercargo, Sutter, 10 Native Hawaiian laborers, and several other followers embarked on April 20, 1839.Dillion (1967), pp. 72–73. Staying at New Archangel for a month, Sutter joined several balls hosted by Governor Kupreyanov, who likely gave help in determining the course of the Sacramento River. The Clementine then sailed for Alta California, arriving on July 1, 1839, at Yerba Buena (now San Francisco), which at that time was only a small seaport town.
Beginnings of Sutter's Fort
At the time of Sutter's arrival, Alta California was a province of Mexico and had a population of Native Americans estimated at 100,000–700,000. Sutter had to go to the capital at Monterey to obtain permission from the governor, Juan Bautista Alvarado, to settle in the territory. Alvarado saw Sutter's plan of establishing a colony in Central Valley as useful in "buttressing the frontier which he was trying to maintain against Indians, Russians, Americans and British."Dillion (1967), pp. 76–77. Sutter persuaded Governor Alvarado to grant him 48,400 acres of land for the sake of curtailing American encroachment on the Mexican territory of California. This stretch of land was called New Helvetia and Sutter was given the right to "represent in the Establishment of New Helvetia all the laws of the country, to function as political authority and dispenser of justice, in order to prevent the robberies committed by adventurers from the United States, to stop the invasion of savage Indians, and the hunting and trading by companies from the Columbia (river)."
The governor required Sutter to meet certain conditions to qualify for land ownership. These included residing in the territory for one year and becoming a Mexican citizen, which Sutter fulfilled on August 29, 1840. After receiving the land grant and building his fort, Sutter did not strictly adhere on his initial agreement to deter European settlers. Instead, he actively supported the migrations of Europeans to California. Sutter later stated, "I gave passports to those entering the country… and this (Bautista) did not like it… I encouraged immigration, while they discouraged it. I sympathized with the Americans while they hated them."
Construction began in August 1839 on a fortified settlement which Sutter named New Helvetia, or "New Switzerland," after his homeland. In order to elevate his social standing, Sutter impersonated a Swiss guard officer who had been displaced by the French Revolution and identified himself accordingly as 'Captain Sutter of the Swiss Guard'. When the settlement was completed on June 18, 1841, he received title to on the Sacramento River. The site is now part of the California state capital of Sacramento.
Relationship with Native Americans Sutter's Fort had a central building made of adobe bricks, surrounded by a high wall with protection on opposite corners to guard against attack. It also had workshops and stores that produced necessary goods for the New Helvetia settlement.
Sutter employed or enslaved Native Americans of the Miwok, Maidu, Nisenan, and Ohlone tribes, the Hawaiians (Kanakas) he had brought, and also employed some Europeans at his compound. He envisioned creating an agricultural utopia, and for a time the settlement was in fact quite large and prosperous. Prior to the Gold Rush, it was the destination for most immigrants entering California via the high passes of the Sierra Nevada, including the ill-fated Donner Party of 1846, for whose rescue Sutter contributed supplies.
In order to build his fort and develop a large ranching/farming network in the area, Sutter relied on Indian labor. Some Native Americans worked voluntarily for Sutter (e.g. Nisenans, Miwoks, Ochecames), but others were subjected to varying degrees of coercion that resembled slavery or serfdom. Sutter believed that Native Americans had to be kept "strictly under fear" in order to serve white landowners. Housing and working conditions at the fort were very poor, and have been described as "enslavement", with uncooperative Indians being "whipped, jailed, and executed." Sutter's Native American "employees" slept on bare floors in locked rooms without sanitation, and ate from troughs made from hollowed tree trunks. Housing conditions for workers living in nearby villages and rancherías was described as being more favorable.Hurtado (1988), p. 57-59 Pierson Reading, Sutter's fort manager, wrote in a letter to a relative that “the Indians of California make as obedient and humble slaves as the Negro in the South". If Indians refused to work for him, Sutter responded with violence. Observers accused him of using "kidnapping, food privation, and slavery" in order to force Indians to work for him, and generally stated that Sutter held the Indians under inhumane conditions. Theodor Cordua, a German immigrant who leased land from Sutter, wrote:
"When Sutter established himself in 1839 in the Sacramento Valley, new misfortune came upon these peaceful natives of the country. Their services were demanded immediately. Those who did not want to work were considered as enemies. With other tribes the field was taken against the hostile Indian. Declaration of war was not made. The villages were attacked usually before daybreak when everybody was still asleep. Neither old nor young was spared by the enemy, and often the Sacramento River was colored red by the blood of the innocent Indians, for these villages usually were situated at the banks of the rivers. During a campaign one section of the attackers fell upon the village by way of land. All the Indians of the attacked village naturally fled to find protection on the other bank of the river. But there they were awaited by the other half of the enemy and thus the unhappy people were shot and killed with rifles from both sides of the river. Seldom an Indian escaped such an attack, and those who were not murdered were captured. All children from six to fifteen years of age were usually taken by the greedy white people. The village was burned down and the few Indians who had escaped with their lives were left to their fate."
Heinrich Lienhard, a Swiss immigrant that served as Sutter's majordomo, wrote of the treatment of the enslaved once captured:
"As the room had neither beds nor straw, the inmates were forced to sleep on the bare floor. When I opened the door for them in the morning, the odor that greeted me was overwhelming, for no sanitary arrangements had been provided. What these rooms were like after ten days or two weeks can be imagined, and the fact that nocturnal confinement was not agreeable to the Indians was obvious. Large numbers deserted during the daytime, or remained outside the fort when the gates were locked."
Lienhard also claimed that Sutter was known to rape his Indian captives, even girls as young as 12 years old. Despite the procurement of fertile agriculture, Sutter fed his Native American work force in pig troughs, where they would eat gruel with their hands in the sun on their knees. Numerous visitors to Sutter's Fort noted the shock of this sight in their diaries, alongside their discontent for his kidnapping of Indian children who were sold into bondage to repay Sutter's debts or given as gifts. American explorer and mountain man James Clyman reported in 1846 that:
"The Capt. [Sutter] keeps 600 to 800 Indians in a complete state of Slavery and as I had the mortification of seeing them dine I may give a short description. 10 or 15 Troughs 3 or 4 feet long were brought out of the cook room and seated in the Broiling sun. All the Labourers grate [sic] and small ran to the troughs like so many pigs and fed themselves with their hands as long as the troughs contained even a moisture."