CAPT. JOHN A. SUTTER.
The leading features of interest in the adventurous life of Capt. Sutter are connected with California affairs. He was born in Switzerland near the close of the last century, and early relinquished its glaciers and lakes for the sunny fields of France. His love of adventure turned his attention to the camp, where his gallant conduct soon secured him an honorable commission. But the wars of the continent being over, he emigrated to the United States, and having resided several years in Missouri, turned his roving eye to the shores of the Pacific.
Through a series of adventures, which seem more like fictions than realities, he at length reached the valley of the Sacramento, where he procured from the government the grant of a large tract of land. The country around was in the possession of wild Indians, some of whom he conciliated, and through their labors constructed a fort to protect himself from the rest. His influence over these children of the forest was such that in a few years he had over a thousand of their number at work on his farm. He was upright in all his dealings with them, and paid each as punctually as if he had been a king. His place, to which he gave the name of New Helvetia, was for years the emigrant’s goal,—the land of promise, which glimmered in warm light through his cold mountain dream. There he was sure of a cordial welcome, and a hospitality that knew no bounds; no matter from what clime he came, or what were his credentials; it was enough for his generous host to know that he was an adventurer, poor in all things save a manly purpose. But often the bounty of Capt. Sutter has gone forth to meet the emigrant; it was his sympathy and active benevolence that mainly rescued the emigrants of forty-six from starvation in the California mountains. When his relief reached them, their last animals had been killed and consumed for food, their last pound of provisions, and their last means of subsistence had given out; they were embayed in depths of snow which baffled their exhausted strength, and hunger hung in horror over the dead.
It was on the lands of Capt. Sutter that gold was first discovered; the cut of a mill-race revealed the entrancing treasure; but all were welcome to the results; no spirit of monopoly obstructed the digger, or enriched the proprietor; fortunes went freely to the pockets of those who drove the spade and turned the bowl. When a civil organization was proposed, the generous captain was deputed by the electors in his district to represent them in the convention. He there favored all measures calculated to secure the interests of the emigrants, and develop the resources of the country. When he put his own signature to the constitution, he dropped the pen in very gladness; the light of other days encircled his spirit, he was a child again; all felt the tears which filled the eyes of the old pioneer, and wept in joyous sympathy with their source. The work was done, and California was henceforth to revolve among the glorious orbs of the republic!