[2] Sutter's Fort. Captain John A. Sutter was by birth a Swiss. He came from Missouri to California in 1838-39, and made the first settlement in the valley on a tract granted him by the Mexican Government in consideration of his keeping the Indians in check. To this end he built a fort, and armed it with guns bought of the abandoned Russian Colony at Bodega. The fort was a quadrangular structure, built of adobe, mounting twelve guns, and capable of containing a thousand men, though Fremont found in it but thirty whites, and forty Indians whom Sutter had domesticated. It stood on the banks of a creek running to the American River. Vessels ascended to within two miles of it. Fremont found in Sutter's Fort a base ready prepared for his operations against the Californians. Though holding a Mexican commission, Sutter soon joined the American party himself. The fort is perhaps best known in connection with the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, now Coloma, fifty miles above it. Sutter lived here independently, raising large crops and herds with Indian laborers. His extensive grant was called New Helvetia, and included the site of Sacramento City. Except this, the Spaniards had neither post nor settlement in the great basin of California.
[3] De Mofras, a Frenchman who visited California, estimates its whole white population in 1842 at only five thousand, of which three hundred and sixty were Americans, and about six hundred natives of other countries.
[4] The American Consul was Thomas O. Larkin, a native of Charlestown, Mass., who went to California in 1832. He was the first and only American consul in that country, and performed his duties so well as to win the confidence of all parties. "To him, perhaps more than to any other man, the country is indebted for the acquisition of that territory."—W. W. Morrow.
[5] Fremont's Battalion. "Fremont rode ahead, a spare, active-looking man.... He was dressed in a blouse and leggings, and wore a felt hat. After him came five Delaware Indians who were his body-guard, and have been with him in all his wanderings. The rest, many of them blacker than the Indians, rode two and two, the rifle being held by one hand across the pommel of the saddle."—Lieutenant Walpole, R.N.
THE MORMONS IN UTAH.
The Mormons, or Latter Day Saints[1] as they prefer to call themselves, have been mentioned in a former chapter. They are a religious community whose teachings differ widely from those of any other Christian body in the land. For one thing, they allow polygamy,[2] which is not only repugnant to the moral sense of the great body of Christian people, but to the laws as well.
Driven from Missouri (1838), and from Illinois ten years later, their leaders cast about for some place of refuge, so remote that persecution could not reach them, and where they might practise their religious forms freely. Like most religious sects the Mormons seemed to thrive upon persecution, for their numbers were constantly increasing under it.
