terey, Abel J. Stearns of Los Angeles and Jacob Leese of Sonoma — to establish themselves in this new country as traders. Runaway sailors from the ships, hunters and trappers from the mountains, and occasional adventurers from almost anywhere, gradually introduced themselves.[1]
By 1836 the foreigners had become an important, if not always highly esteemed, element. In the autumn of 1840 some two hundred emigrants are said to have gone there from the Platte country, and in May, 1841, we know that about one hundred men and thirty women and children set out in that direction from Independence, Missouri. Many who undertook to settle in Oregon decided to exchange that wilderness for the more hospitable region close at hand. By August, 1844, our people were described by Larkin as "flocking" to California; and Whittier sang,
"By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and pine,
On many a wintry hill-top, their nightly camp-fires shine."[2]
Probably by the end of 1845 there were about eight hundred American residents — men, women and children — in the province.[3] Quite a number pushed on to the shore of San Francisco Bay, but most of them lived in the Sacramento valley, because immigrants from the United States naturally came to that region first, and because the Mexicans were too much afraid of the savages to settle there; and as a sort of base they had the fortified trading post of New Helvetia,[4] situated about a hundred miles from the coast on the site of the present Sacramento City, where Captain John A. Sutter — a German naturalized in Switzerland — received the wayfarers with an open purse, an open countenance and an open, hazy head.[5]
Some of the Americans took the trouble to go through the process of acquiring citizenship, and so could become the legal owners of land; but far the greater number were mere squatters, or else hung about the ranches of other Americans, working a little, hunting or trapping more, but mainly waiting for something to turn up. They were in general a rough-looking set: the vicious, devil-may-care sailor, the gaunt, awkward, ragged immigrant, and the heavily bearded, leather-coated hunter with his long hair turbaned in a colored handkerchief ; and while some had excellent brains and hearts of gold, the
