The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, November 27, 1898, Page 25

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1898. 25 + STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A CALIFORNIA WOMAN PIONEER. . Mrs. Nancy Harris, widow of Daniel Harris, and one of the most remarkable pioneer women of the Golden West, h They lived there till they thought the place had petered out. to see the wonders they had heard of distant California. Chicago with her pare nts in 1834. Cal,, Nov. 10. '— The| rkable pio: ed at Duarte partial i nd remained | ; last days ird white plains ir knew Jz or: finder and ant when she yrhising captain in the Uni a ;. - She was a genial person ev i1 her old age and days of weakr She -ed to dwell in the past and tu| fecount her extraordinary adventures in-California long before the Americans e became a cigarette s ciation with the M y life, and in her last d gift' of a few packages of amild cizar- ottes or a bag of smoking tobacco would elicit a tale of adventure or a g chapter of State history that Ic in her ea thrillir > £ was ys worth attentive hearing. Mrs. Harris was born in Gloucester. Mass., in 1820 and her relatives were whalers and fisherfolk. In 1834, when a girl of 14, her father gave up fishing, and hearing of the possibilities of for- tune on the frontier of Missouri and Illinois. in those the hicago v nt there by the Erie Canal to 1d were three weeks going on om Buffalo to Chicago via the Chicago was at that time a or 5000 people. In 1838, when Mr * father became con- vinced that Chicago was on the decling and would retrograde into a wild West- ern village, the family moved to St. Louis, which was then-a fast-growing city of some 1 There Mrs. Harris was married in 1840. She was s old at the time, and her young hus ad had letters from an uncle. who was a sailor, saying that there w. a fortune to be made on the Pacific A in~ with the Indians for ng people talked over a going to California almost g the first vear of their mar- ried That was six or seven years before Marshall found the gold in Sut- ter’s and no one but a few restless traders and daring mission- mong the Indians ever went - plains from the East to the | fic Coast. veral more letters came from the sailor uncle, and young Harris and his wife decided that they would risk their lives.in traveling across the prairies and mountains to the Pacific Ocean. They heard of two young Catholic priests who were getting ready to start s the plains for ntter's Fort as s among the Indians, and a few ~weeks later they found also that a com- a boat lakes. place .o ‘pany of young men, fired with a spirit ‘of adventure and a desire to become[ oo Pack-MULES DasHeD To DEATH | traders among the Spanish and the In- dians, were about to start from Fort Leave orth for California. When the 1s made up for the journey in 1841, there were twenty-two men n in the party before her death told the story of her remarkz o icularly . from April 11 until Sep- in going from Fort Leaven- t is now Colfax, Cal. We 1t Fort Leavenworth, who ss the plains once, for our he was to get $300 for s work, i1 he expected to become a or when he reached the coast. yur first mishap was on the Platte oung man named Daw- .d by the Indians and tember 2 worth to wha hired a man stripped of clothing. They let him go then and then followed him, so that without knowing it he acted as their guide to our camp. The redskins sur- rounded our camp and remained all night, but when daylight showed them our strength th nt away. We had a picket ard about our camp nearly e night we were on the plains, and we saw literally millions of buffaloes. a time the galloping of immense s of the bea across the prairies sounded like distant thunder. “We left our wagons this side of Salt Lake and finished our journey on horse- back and drove our cattle. At one place the Indians surrounded us, armed with their bows and arrows, but my hus- band and four other men leveled their guns at the chief and made him order his Indians out of arrow' range. Be- fore we had been two months on the plains we had become so used to hard- ships, had seen four of our party wel- come death from sickness, and had had such frights at threatened death by the savages, that we lost a good part of the natural alarm one has when environed by danger. “We crossed the Sierra Nevadas at the headwaters of the San Joaquin River. On the 1st of September we camped on the summit. It was my twenty-first birthday. That day one of the priests in our party drank at a spring of clear, cold water. - It was strong alkali water, however, and he came near dying in the next few days, and it ruined his stomach so that he lived only a year. We had a difficult time to find a way down the mountains. At one time I was left alone for nearly half a day, and as I was afraid of In- dians I sat all the while with my six- week-old baby in my lap on the back of my horse, which was a fine race ani- mal. “One old man gave out and we had to threaten to shoot him before he would attempt to descend the moun- tain. “At one place four pack animals fell over a bluff, and they went so far that we never attempted to recover the packs. We were then out of provisions, having killed and eaten all our cattle. 1 walked barefooted until my feet were blistered, and lived on roasted acorns for two days. My husband came very near dying with cramps, and it was suggested to leave him, but I said I would never do that, and we ate a horse and remained over till next day, when he was able to travel. Then we ran short of water twice, and the thirst | Sutter’s place. we endured once for two days and nights was the most horrible experi- ence I have ever known. If we had not found water just when we did I believe I should have gone crazy. Mr. Harrl cousin and a man named Jones had | strayed from the company while in the mountains and we supposed they were dead, but my husband discovered their tracks and reported that they were surely alive. At onme place I was 8o weak I could not stand, and I lay on the ground while Mr. Harris went out and killed a deer. We ‘were then near | the Sepulveda ranch, which was close to what is now Martinez. Mr. Jones, | one of the supposed dead men, and one of Sepulveda’s Indians rode into our camp and brought with them some farina for me. We arrived at Sepul- veda's on the 14th day of October. “We met General Sutter at Alva- | rado’s hacienda, and in December we went up with Sutter in a leaky rowboat to his fort. We were fifteen days mak- ing the trip. The boat was manned by | Indians, and Sutter instructed them to | swim to the shore with me and the That | child if the boat should capsi is only a sample of the chances we took with our lives every day in those pio- neer times. When we wanted to eat we landed, angled for fish or hunted for game, eooked and ate it and then moved on. We arrived at the stockade that the old man, Sutter, called a fort just as the winter rains set in, about the middle of December. “General Sutter was very hospitable, and we paid him a few dollars a week— $3 I think—for remaining there until February or March. I don’t quite re- member the exact month now. The old building was a great barnlike affair, and the household equipment the very plainest and most primitive. My hus- band used to go out with the Mexicans | who were in the employ of General Sut- ter and vainly look for something which he could develop into an industry or business, but he was too young, or he did not have the ability to see the fu- ture good things. I can tell you we pent some terrible homesick days at Many a night I have wept myself to sleep. In later years, when we saw the milllons of dollars made ‘in the gold diggings north and east of Sacramento, I recalled the fact while my poor husband was tramping over Central California, almost beside himself because he had brought his wife to a strange land, far away from civilization, he many a time passed by and even went among gold deposits that would have made him a combined Vanderbilt and Gould had he but known. “Along in May, 1944, General Sutter heard from some friendly Indians that the white settlers in Oregon and North- ern California (up near where the Mo- doc Indian war later took place) were makiug money by buying furs from the | country. s MES NancyMarriS | Indians and selling them to the trading agents for the Astor Company and some English buyers, who sailed up and down the coast for this purpose. So we started for Oregon. I have been told by some California historians that I was one of the first white women to make the journey which was danger- ous in those days I can assure you. There were fourteen men in our party. We went up the east side of the Sac- ramento River for about forty miles, where we crossed over by swimming our horses and cattle, of which the crowd had quite a number. It was there I first witnessed the killing of an Indian. The men were all out trying to drive the stocl. into the river and I was left alone in camp, when several nude Indians -ame in, and as I thought they intended to steal I stepped‘to a tree where the guns were. As they approached me I warned them away. “I marvel now how I ever dared so much, and my grandchildren <cannot believe I was in my senses to have stayed as I did in such a barbarous My husband saw from where he was that Indians were in camp and sent one of the men whom we called Bear Dawson to protect me. He was a reckless young man and as he rode up he ordered the Indians to go, but they drew their bows on him and reversed the order. Then he drew his pistol and killel one of them and the rest fled. The Indian fell within six feet of me. After that my husband got one of the Indians to swim across the river ana tow the canoe in which I and the child were sitting. The Indian took me all right because he knew they hada the guns bearing on him. “Do I remember the news of the finding of the first gold in California? I never could forget that if I should live a thousand years. We were living in Napa at the time. My husband was foreman for a Mexican ranchman and by that time managed to get a living. One night when Mr. Harris came home he said that one of the men who work- ed for Mr.Vallejo up on Sonoma Creek was terribly excited, and said they had found bits of gold in the sawmill sluice up at Coloma, and that the canyons and gulches up that way were full of gold nuggets. Mr. Harris and I had been fooled so many times by exaggerated stories in California that we gave the subject only passing comment. We thought no more about the stories un- til a sailor came to our house on his way to Sutter's Fort a few days later. He said that his brother-in-law had seen some gold down at San Jose that had been washed out by several of Sutter’'s workmen. He had quit sail- ing and was on his way to Coloma. Then the news of the gold find came thick and fast, considering what a sparsely settled region we were living k) Wy h W in. When a month more had passed and we began to see for ourselves nug- gets of gold as large as peas in the hands of people, my husband believed that the stories of the riches in the mountains were aftes all true. He started with several other men to walk | to Coloma. In three weeks he was home again with $1300 in gold and silver. He was as crazy as every one else by that time and I was about the same. he fixed the bables and me more com- fortably, stocked the house with pro- visions and started off to the gold dig- | gings again. The whole country was literally insane with excitement, and when autumn came around a white man or a white’ boy, who was at all able-bodied, was not to be found for miles and miles around Napa, for they had all gone seeking gold. Prices for everything we ate or used rose ten and twelve times their former value, and it was often hard work to get provisions at any price, because what man was going to fool awa- his time with ham and pork and calico when he could pick up gold nuggets all day long up at the diggings? “You can have no idea how plentiful | gold was in that region all of a sud- den, and its very plentifulness made it such a delirious, dreamy state that none of us realized what a marvelous epoch we were living in. “Did we know Marshall, the finder of the first gold? Yes. I recalled, when he became known as the first gold miner in California, that we knew him when we were at Suttey’s. He was a dozen years older than either my husband or my- self, and came to California a few weeks before we did. I remember we knew him as ‘Jersey,” and he called us ‘Yanks.” He was a herder or vaquero for General Sutter’s cattle when we first knew him. I saw him in 1851, when the gold fever was raging, and he was worth probably $60,000 or §70,000 by his gold operations. He might have been one of the greatest millionaires the world ever knew, but he had no ability for accumulating wealth. He had no ideas above the simple duties of life and caring for a herd of cattle or a band of horses. I saw him again in 1873, when he was old and poorly dressed and in poverty. He just laughed about the way he had sat about and let men get millions of dollars, but he did think California ought to give him more honor for what he had done for the commerce of the world. “My husband came home in April, 1850, for the third time. He had made over $30,000 in digging gold, and we felt as rich as any Astor or Vanderbilt ever did. Just at that time my husband broke his leg, and that was the begin- ning of our hard luck again. There was only one doctor within sixty miles, and he was a poor one. We paid him $1500 60 06 06 06 306 100 206 100 08 206 08 308 106 00 106 100 308 1000 06 100 100 0 308 0% 08 300 10008 0% 0 308 106 308 0% 1008 30¢ 30¢ 10 30¢ 0¥ 108 10¢ 08 308 40 08 30¢ X 30 X 0¢ 00 =3 < L =3 o J=3 =4 WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN COLORADO IS IT A SUCCESS? By MRS. K. d. G. PATTERSON, President of the Non-Partisan Colorado Equal Suffrage Association 2606 06 50006 06 £ 300 00 308 100 20K 306 06 S08 00 308 00 300 30 500 30 306 30 308 108 308 08 06 306 06 308 306 306 308 X030 X0 00 S0 O S O O I O X DENVER, Nov. 25.—Colorado is the State in which equal suffrage has found the warmest support and achieved its greatest success. In the East women have voted for schools and in some remote cases for muni- cipal officials. There were three women members of the last Legisla- ture, and they took an active part in the proceedings. Women have even outnumbered the men in a Colorado election. This occurred in April of last year, when municipal elections were held all over the State. Two years before the women of Denver oragnized a Civic Federation for the election of good men to office. This federation became an active politi- cal machine. It was non-partisan by its own platform. It recognized no creed or nationality. Its avowed object was “to investigate the condi- tion and needs of the city and to promote by education and active co- operation a higher public spirit and a better social order; to separate city “and county affairs from State and national politics; to endeavor to se- cure the nomination and election of competent and trustworthy persons for public office,” etc. This was the fourth election in twhich women had taken part in . Colorado, and they were eminently successful. Emboldened by the results of their interference in municipal affairs, the women have gone into matters of national policy, and in the elec- tion last week they threw their influence with the friends of silver, ac- cording to Mrs. Thomas M.'Patterson (or Mrs. Katherine A. G. Patter- son, as_she appears in public affairs), the President of the Non-Partisan Colorado Equal Suffrage Association. Here is what she has to say of women’s politics: influence in Colorado Spectal to The Sunday Call. OMEN have been voting in Colorado since 1895, and have yet made no permanent im. pression upon the politics of the State. . It is claimed that no ap- preciable effect of this enfranchisement could be expected in a time so short, since intricate political methods of long established organizations even when found very objectionable are not to be overcome by the efforts of tyros in a single generation. In muniofpal affalrs, it is true, woman'’s vote has as- sisted in a triumph over tyrannical ma- chine rule in more than one election, and it is acknowledged that through the leaven of a reorganization influence has begun its work, which, like all elemental processes that are to build up the new upon the decay of the old, is the task of more than a day. In the contest just closed between the political Titans of Colorado, the issue was rather national than / municipal, or of the State, and the complex con- ditions of its conduct rendered it im- possible to foresee the outcome or to predict the effect of woman’s vote among the willful confusion of tickets offered for the people's ballots. As to the conditions of the participa- tion of women in Colorado campaigns it is to be recorded that they are sub- ject during its course to no rude asso- ciations. In the stress of the partisan struggle that necessarily precedes an election, women of public spirit and good position are chosen to direct the political meetings of women, and it is the rule that from the precinct parlor meetings that dre preliminary to pri- maries to the parlor headquarters kept open exclusively for women citizens, their meetings closely resemble their accustomed club assemblies. There are, besides, women's purely political clubs of every party, whose seasons of activity coincide with cam- paign seasons. During these times fag=gagegag=g] 06 306 308 908 30 10 X0 also many a friendly tete-a-tete upon the situation or brief persuasive plea for candidate or measure is heard in some quiet corner of hall or library, where people meet in amiable mood at soclal receptions. In the great political mass meeting the proportion of women in attendance is no greater than in the campaigns before their opinions began to be counted at the ballot box. If, in all this Colorado women, al- though graciously allowed to agree with masculine managers, have yet lit- tle choice in the construction of the tickets placed before them or in the di- rection of campaign matters, they are content, through the still small voice of the ballot, to do their part with what patience they may toward the coming of the better times, when, even after their own day, perhaps only after gen- erations of use, woman’s prentice hand shall have come to be often the guid- ing hand and the beneficent wisdom of *‘the eternal womanly” shall have been found as indispensable in the State as in_the home. For the present the registration of new voters in Colorado is much larger than at any time since woman's vote four years ago was said to have “re- deemed the State” from the dangers that ‘were threatened by the possible success of one of the gubernatorial can- didates. As is the case with all elti- zens, the number of women voting va- ries with the interest felt in the issues that are at each election to be consid- -ered. School questions are woman’s great- est concern. But on account of the entire absence of the often predicted evil effects of the ballot in woman's hands, and because of the widening of her outlook and the healthful develop- ment in good women of their sense of responsibility for the public good, the number of the new citizens ‘who reg. ister and vote is on the whole steadily increasing from year to year. Among the women of Colorado who thorough- 1y believe in both the justice and ths expediency of equal suffrage are a host of the best women of the State; mov- ing spirits in the work of philanthropy, reform and education; unquestioned so- cial arbiters, intellectual leaders of thought and the women of supreme common sense wWho guide the new, ef- ficient club work. Then | as just died in Southern California at the age of T8 years. Before the discovery of gold in California she and her husband started across the prairies ds a girl she went to FinpinoHer DAUGHTER —— ScaLpED By INDIANS o Tue [ Miseramis to look after my husband for ices at that price. My husband never he was able to endure hardship the mining fleld was swarming with rest- felt that he had no more chances there to get rich. herd of cattle from Salvador Vallejo and drove them down to Benicia, where the military garrison was located. I went along with my four children in a wagon drawn by an ox team. The cat tle were butchered and the beef sold ment. year. While there we became well ac- quainted with Captain U. S. Grant, who had come there from the Mexican war. He and my husband were about of an age. We little imagined that the quiet, modest, chunky man would be the great American general in twelve years more. Captain Grant was then in those crazy gold days, and he con- tented himself with a briarwood pipe. He was a good card player, and I re- member that pedro was his favorite game. He was very poor then, and I recall that although he had to be care- ful of every cent he spent of his small salary, he took little Interest in the |alluring stories that men down from the mines with gold dust used to sit about the saloons at Benicia and tell day after day. “We lived in Monggrey for six years and my husband d®alt in cattle and sheep, which were shipped and driven to the mining towns. I have seen hun- dreds of fair steers that brought $500 in gold each in those days, but when you remember what exorbitant prices had to be paid for feed ard for ranch- men there was not such great profit in the business, besides everything we ate and wore was put on a gold mining basis. My husband paid a common vaquero $200 a month in gold for three years, and my calico dresses used to cost $35 and $40 each in those days. We sold hundreds of pounds of butter at $2 a pound, and some at $4 a pound, but that was too slow a way of making money in those extraordinary times, and we did not make a quarter as much butter as we might have done. “Up to 1859 T had enough personal in- cidents to fill a book. I once rode sev- enty-five miles on horseback in one day and carried a one-year old child in front of me: I was going to see a sick woman jn San Jose, and I fainted when they helped me off the horse. “Mr. Harris’ health began to fail in 1859, so we started for the dry, hot cli- mate of Arizona and New Mexico. The palmy days of gold mining for poor folks were over by that time. The mining companies with their combined capital, science and machinery were beginning their era then. "In 1860 we were in camp in Arizona, near where Benson has since grown up. We heard stories of massacres by the Apaches and Pimas once in a while, but we had no idea they were as bold as they were. One October day, when the men in the camp were out foraging for fuel, and we four women and seven children were left in camp, a boy came running ex- citedly into the tent and told us that a gang of Apaches was sneaking around among the chaparral in the foothills & “In June, 1851, Mr. Harris bought a | a smoker, but cigars were too expensive | Home < WHERE/MRS. Diep In PovesTy o four | mile from our camp. weeks, and were glad to have his serv- | went back to the mines, for by the time horns and belts about. . TRAVELING INAn Ox Team WITHA ~HERP OF CATTLE WHILE THE GOWD — FEvEm WAS RAGI\NG eseeov = HAn’mS ‘We had four car- bines in camp and we women quickly loaded them, and put the ammunition, Then we all hid ourselves as best we could. . We had | no time to plan the manmner of secret- less, aggressive, wild miners, and he | at Benicia, but it was a poor invest- | We lived at Benicia for over a | | | | | dared move or make a noise. | back to camp after nightfall. | night we searched for ing ourselves. It was as horrible an- experience as I ever knew in all my days among the redskins. There was a small cave near by. It was hid by tall chaparral,” and we women, each with a gun in hand and leading or carrying a child, ran swiftly for the cave. The larger girls started to run with us, but they changed their minds and ran into the brush to hide. FoA “In a moment the Indians came leap- ing toward the cave. We could see them on the way. Each of us women got behind a boulder at the mouth ‘of the shallow cave, resolved to deliber- ately shoot down every Indian that’ came that way before we were Kkilled. The Indians robbed the camp of all the money and the few valuables there. and started back to their own . camb. In some way they saw the big girls hiding in the chaparral and started after them. We heard the girls scream as they ran, closely followed by the Apaches. My girl, Jennie, aged 13 years, tripped and fell in the bush, while the arrows fell thick about her. - I can hear now the screams and piteous vells she uttered as she begged ' the savages for her life. But none of us dared move from our place. 2 “Then the screams subsided and we saw the Indians going away from the chaparral on a run. We watched for a time that seemed an age before we We =ot All that my Jennie’s body, but she had recgvered from her injuries so that she was able to walk about in a demented state. We came. upon her a mile away the next morn- ing. She was lying on the ground. and our horror when we picked her up is unspeakable. She had been scalped and her shoulders slashed. The men in camp got other men in camps near by to form a posse and for a week they vainly trailed the escaping Indians. But the latter knew the country. well and ~ot away into the mountains. “That experience was enough of Arizona for us. We came back to California at once. Our poor Jennie never recovered from her awful scalp wound. She suffered excruciating pain in her head as if she had acute neu- ralgia whenever the weather was cold or damp, and she had chronic head- aches under the skull where the scalp was cut away. She was ill for four years and gradually sank into her grave. My husband died in 1863 at Los Angeles. “During the period from 1864 to 1875 I had a dairy in Santa Barbara and a small sheep ranch in Santa Barbara County. I reared and educated my children and grandchildren by. that. A fire destroyed my home, barns and my best heifers in 1875, and I have been poor ever since. v “There, do vou not think I have had a life filled with remarkable vicissi- tudes? Often as I get to thinking about strange scenes I have witnessed and the extraordinary phases of .life I have participated in, T wonder if I really am one and the same person who has experienced this and seen a great State grow in one lifetime as has Cali- fornia.” /