When a person was attacked with it, it seemed the
worst kind of malady, as it would take them months
to return if they had the money to pay their passage.
Many were married men, separated a great distance from
their wives and children. Others, young men, who
had their engaged ones waiting for them to return,
with their fortunes made in the gold mines, to marry
them. I can recall several instances where I have
known them to lie down and die from despair.
I was talking with an old Californian of those days.
He said he had once given up and made up his mind to
wander off by himself on the mountains and die, which
he did. As he lay there in despair, after a while
he thought he would look around him, and he saw the
hill was covered with every variety of beautiful wild
flowers. He said their beauty seemed to refresh
and revive his mind, and give him new resolution,
and he decided to try his fortune again, and he became
successful and returned to the States with a competency.
[Illustration: THE DESPONDENT MINER.]
The early pioneers had some conflict with the Indians
in the interior of the country. Five Oregon men
were massacred by them when engaged in digging gold,
but a terrible retribution was visited upon those Indians
concerned in it by the enraged Forty-niners. The
Indians, at first, had nothing but bows and arrows,
and, of course, could not compete with rifles.
Several other small engagements were rumored, but they
soon gave up all contests with the whites, for they
saw it was useless. There was an acorn that was
quite plenty in California, being longer than ours,
but not of a bitter taste. The squaws made flour
of them. The Digger Indians were the next tribe
east of them; they were probably the lowest grade.
They would set fire to the prairie grass to burn the
grasshoppers, and pick them up and eat them. They
deemed them a luxury. The Oregon tribes were
a higher grade, a warlike race, and superior in every
respect. The highest grade of them, in the United
States now, are the Choctaws and Chicksaws that formerly
occupied the northern parts of the State of Mississippi.
When a young man, I spent three weeks in their nation,
travelling alone, and was treated with great hospitality
by them. They are quite intelligent, and they
have laws and customs as civilized nations. We
generally look upon all of them as alike, but such
is not the case—there is as great a difference
between different tribes as much as between different
white nations. The California Indians were not
naturally warlike, and when the early pioneers expected
any trouble from them, they would appoint a committee
to go and see them, and they generally settled their
difficulty without any conflicts.
JESUIT MISSION STATIONS.
There were about sixteen Jesuit missionary stations
in the country before the discovery of gold, and were
there for the purpose of converting the Indians to
the Catholic church, and when converted, generally
made them work to sustain their missionary establishments.
