The new territory was soon to be the scene of a terrible tragedy. The white man had brought new diseases into it, measles, fevers, and even, smallpox; they spread rapidly among the Indians, aggravated by their imprudence and ignorance of proper treatment, and many died. The Indians became convinced that the missionaries were to blame, and it is claimed, too, that the emissaries of the Hudson Bay Company urged them on. However that may have been, on the twenty-ninth of November, 1847, the Indians fell upon the missionaries and killed fifteen, of them, among the dead being Marcus Whitman and his wife. So ended the life of the man who saved Oregon, and of the woman who was the first of her sex to cross the continent.
Meanwhile, far to the south, a drama scarcely less thrilling was enacting, its chief personage being John Augustus Sutter. Sutter was a Swiss and had received a military education and served in the Swiss Guard before coming to America in 1834. He settled first at St. Louis and then at Santa Fé, where he gained considerable experience as a trader. Finally, in 1838, he decided to cross the Rockies, and after trading for a time in a little schooner up and down the coast, was wrecked in San Francisco Bay. He made his way inland, and founded the first white settlement in the country on the site of what is now Sacramento. Here, in 1841, he built a fort, having secured a large grant of land from the Mexican Government, and set up what was really a little empire in the wilderness, over which he reigned supreme. And here, three years later, down from the snow-filled and tempest-swept passes of the Rockies, came a party of starving and frost-bitten scarecrows, the exploring expedition headed by John Charles Frémont, of whom we shall speak presently.
The rest of Sutter's history is soon told. In 1848, when Mexico ceded California to the United States, he was the owner of a vast domain, over which thousands of head of cattle wandered. A few years later, he was practically a ruined man—ruined by gold. On the eighteenth day of January, 1848, one of his men named Marshall, brought to Sutter a lump of yellow metal which he had uncovered while digging a mill-race. There could be no doubt of it—it was gold! News of the great discovery soon got about; there was a great rush for this new Eldorado; Sutter's land was overrun with gold-seekers, who cared nothing for his rights, and when he attempted to defend his titles in the courts, they were declared invalid, and his land was taken from him. To crown his disasters, his homestead was destroyed by fire; finding himself ruined, without land and without money, he gave up the struggle in despair and returned east, passing his last years in poverty in a little town in Pennsylvania.
Frémont, meantime, had done a great work for California. The son of a Frenchman, showing an early aptitude for mathematics, he had secured an appointment to the United States engineering corps, and, after various minor expeditions in which he had acquitted himself well, was put in charge of an expedition for the exploration of the Rocky Mountains. He was fortunate at the start in securing the services as guide and interpreter of that famous hunter and plainsman, Kit Carson, whose life had been passed on the prairies, who knew more Indians and Indian dialects than any other white man, and who was, to his generation, what Davy Crockett was to an earlier one. To Carson a great share of the expedition's success was no doubt due, and it was so successful that in the following year, Frémont was leading another over the country between the Rockies and the Pacific. This one was almost lost in the mountains, and came near perishing of cold and hunger, but, finally, in March, 1844, managed to struggle through to Sutter's Fort.
Frémont found California in a state of unrest amounting almost to insurrection against Mexican rule, and as the number of white settlers increased, this feeling grew, until Mexico, becoming alarmed, sent an armed force to occupy the country. The show of force was the one thing needed to fire the magazine; the settlers sprang to arms as one man, and, under Frémont's leadership, defeated the Mexicans and drove them southward across the border. Soon afterwards, General Kearny marched in from the east, from his remarkable and bloodless conquest of New Mexico, with a force sufficient to render it certain that California would never again be taken by the Mexicans.
On the fourth of July, 1849, Frémont was chosen governor of the new territory, and in the following year, arranged the treaty by which California passed permanently to the United States. The new state was quick to reward him and sent him to the Senate, where he gained sufficient prominence to receive the nomination of the anti-slavery party for the presidency in 1856. He never had any chance of election, for the reform party had not yet sufficient strength, and was defeated by Buchanan. He served with some distinction in the Civil War, gaining considerable notoriety, while in charge of the Western Department in 1861, by issuing a proclamation freeing the slaves of secessionists in Missouri. The proclamation drew forth some laudatory verses from John G. Whittier, but was promptly countermanded by President Lincoln. Soon afterwards, Frémont became involved in personal disputes with his superior officers, was relieved from active service, and the remainder of his life was spent in private enterprises.
Fremont's "pathfinding" virtually completed the exploration of the country. A few secluded nooks and corners became known only as the tide of immigration crept into them; but in its general features, the great continent, on whose eastern shore the white man was fighting for a foothold two centuries before, was known from ocean to ocean. It had been conquered and occupied by a dominant race, and won for civilization.