Merced County CA Archives History - Books .....Mother Mariposa 1925
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Book Title: History Of Merced County California

CHAPTER V

MOTHER MARIPOSA

   Chapter 15 of the California Statutes of 1850 was "An Act Subdividing the
State into Counties and establishing the Seats of Justice therein." It was
approved February 18, 1850. Section 1 read: "The following shall be the
boundaries and seats of justice of the several Counties of the State of
California until otherwise determined by law":

   Section 28 was as follows: "County of Mariposa.—Beginning on the summit of
the Coast Range at the southwest corner of Tuolumne County, and running thence
along the southern boundary of said county, to the summit of the Sierra Nevada;
thence along the summit of the Sierra Nevada to the parallel of thirty-eight
degrees of north latitude; thence due east, on the said parallel, to the
boundary of the State; thence in a southeasterly direction, following said
boundary, to the northwest corner of San Diego County; thence due south, along
the boundary of San Diego County, to the northeast corner of Los Angeles County;
and thence in a northwesterly direction along the summit of the Coast Range to
the place of beginning. The seat of justice shall be Agua Fria."

   There were twenty-seven counties established under that act. Mariposa, as
will be seen, stretched from the Coast Range to the State's eastern boundary,
and from substantially the northern boundary of Mariposa and Merced Counties as
they are at present to San Diego and Los Angeles Counties. More than a dozen of
the counties of to-day have taken all or a part of their territory from the
original Mariposa.

   To understand how the line could hit the northwest corner of San Diego by
following southeast along the eastern boundary of the State, we need to remember
that there was than no San Bernardino County, and to read the first clause of
the description of the boundary of San Diego County in the same Act—"Commencing
on the coast of the Pacific, at the mouth of the creek called San Mateo, and
running up said creek to its source; thence due north to the northeast boundary
of the State . . ." San Diego County took in all of the State south and east of
that line. San Mateo Creek, mentioned in the description, is not far from the
present Orange-San Diego border; it is a short creek, and its head is between
117° 20' and 117° 30' west. The line passing due north from its head would
apparently have passed about two miles west of the city of San Bernardino, or
about twenty-three miles west of the San Bernardino meridian.

   South of Mariposa there were only San Diego and Los Angeles; up along the
coast came Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Santa Clara, Branciforte
(soon to become Santa Cruz), Contra Costa, and San Francisco. Seventeen of the
original twenty-seven counties lay north of Mariposa and the Bay, and perhaps as
graphic an illustration of the distribution of population in the State at that
time is found in the fact that in the vote upon the question of adoping the
State constitution of 1849, Mokelumne Hill cast more than twice as many ballots
as Los Angeles.

   By an act passed April 25, 1851, the early act and the acts amendatory of it
were repealed, after redividing the State into counties and providing for seats
of government. This act made some slight changes in the description of the
boundary of Mariposa County in its southern part, and provided: "The seat of
government shall be at such place as may be chosen by the qualified electors of
the County at the next general election."

   Agua Fria, the first county seat, has vanished almost completely off the face
of the earth. It was situated well up towards the head of Agua Fria Creek, which
the State highway to Mariposa now crosses on the fine concrete bridge at
Bridgeport, four miles below Mormon Bar. Some five miles up the creek from this
bridge was the former county seat. Mariposa soon succeeded it as the seat of
justice, but Agua Fria flourished during the mining days.

   Carson City, another town which is no more, was a flourishing Mariposa County
town of the mining days.

   If we look at the original counties lying north of this huge Mariposa of 1850
in the Sierra Nevada—Tuolumne, Calaveras, El Dorado, with Nevada and Placer
added in 1851, Sierra in 1852, and Amador and Plumas in 1854—we shall realize,
from Mariposa's large extent southward alone, that this was near the limit of
the Southern Mines.

   Population had flowed into the Sierra foothills in thousands in 1849 and
1850. Sonora's population, Hittell says, was 5000 before the end of 1849;
sometimes up to 10,000 on Sundays—a statement which gives us a pretty clear idea
of both the amount of population in the mining camps and its transitory character.

   "Hornitos," we quote Hittell again, "twelve or fifteen miles west of
Mariposa, was one of the richest localities for placer mining as well as one of
the largest and most attractive towns in the southern mines. . . . One spot, . .
. Horseshoe Bend, . . . had . . . four hundred miners in 1850."

   North of the Merced River, Coulterville flourished. Below Horseshoe Bend on
the river, a few miles above Merced Falls, there was a rich camp below
Barrett's, the ruins of which the hawker on the Yosemite Valley train now points
out, and tells tourists about through his megaphone. You may judge that it was
rich from the depth to which the ground was worked back into the steep canyon
sides, and you may see the dry-laid walls of its old ditch along the south side
of the river across from the railroad. A portion of this old ditch wall has
recently been torn out in the work of stripping the side hills preparatory to
pouring the concrete of the big Exchequer. Dam of the Merced Irrigation District.

   Just above Hornitos, which originally was largely Mexican in population, was
the American town of Quartzberg. It was later abandoned and the population moved
to Hornitos. S. L. Givens, now over eighty and a resident on his ranch on Bear
Creek a few miles below the Mariposa County line since pioneer days, states that
two present residents of Merced County attended school as children at
Quartzberg—himself, and Mrs. J. J. Stevinson of the Merced River, who was a
daughter of that Cox who gave his name to Cox's Ferry and the Cox Ferry bridge
on the Merced.

   A rather vivid idea of early Mariposa County in some of its aspects is to be
had from Dr. Lafayette Houghton Bunnell's book on "The Discovery of the Yosemite
and the Indian War of 1851." Bunnell begins with an account of how he first saw
El Capitan during the winter of 1849-1850, "while ascending the old Bear Valley
trail from Ridley's ferry, on the Merced River."

   James D. Savage, a trader, in 1849-1850 was located in the mountains near the
mouth of the South Fork of the Merced, Bunnell tells us, some fifteen miles
below Yosemite Valley. He was engaged in mining for gold and had a party of
native Indians working for him. Early in 1850 a band of Yosemite Indians
attacked his trading post and mining camp. They claimed the land in the vicinity
and tried to drive Savage off. Bunnell says their real object was plunder.
Savage and his Indians repulsed them, but he came to regard the neighborhood as
dangerous, and "removed to Mariposa Creek, not far from the junction of the Aqua
(sic) Fria, and near the site of the old stone fort."

   Bunnell wrote his book about 1880, and whether he meant that the "stone fort"
was old in 1850 or not until 1880 is not altogether clear. If it was old in
1850, we have no account of how it had come to be there long enough at that
early date to merit such a description. This location would be perhaps two miles
south of the highway bridge across Agua Fria Creek already referred to.

   Savage soon built up a prosperous business. He had a branch further south, in
what is now Madera County, in charge of a man named Greeley. Savage had several
Indian wives. From them he learned that the Indians were planning a general
uprising to drive the whites from the diggings. Savage went to the Bay to
purchase a stock of goods and took along two of his wives and a chief called
Jose Juarez, to show him how many whites there were, with the idea of convincing
him and the other Indians of the hopelessness of their plans.

   But they were not convinced and rose against the miners as they had planned.
The war extended far south. A battalion of two hundred mounted men was formed at
Agua Fria, what was lacked to make the quota being made up by a party which
Major Savage brought over from Cassady's Bar on the San Joaquin. Another
battalion was organized for Los Angeles. These bodies were organized in response
to a proclamation by Governor McDougal, occasioned by the growing depredations
of the Indians. The Agua Fria portion of the Mariposa Battalion had already
fought a battle in the mountains with the Indians.

   The outbreak began after a conference immediately following the return of
Savage and Jose Juarez from San Francisco. One of Savage's men, known as "Long
Haired Brown," brought him word at Agua Fria shortly after that his trading post
on the Fresno had been attacked and all the inmates killed except Brown himself.
Shortly afterwards a report was circulated that Savage's post on Mariposa Creek
had been attacked and everybody there killed; Savage himself soon appeared at
Quartzberg, however, and corrected this rumor. He sought aid from personal
friends at Horseshoe Bend. At Quartzberg, Mariposa, and Agua Fria the miners
were little moved by the reports. However, besides Greeley, two other men of
Savage's, Stifirner and Kennedy, were killed. Shortly after came the news of the
murder of Cassady and four others on the San Joaquin. From another attack an
immigrant who had just arrived escaped to Cassady's Bar with a broken arm, and
this and his hard-ridden and panting horse excited some sympathy among the
settlers, and roused the community.

   After the attack of the Yosemite Indians upon Savage's camp on the lower
South Fork, Col. Adam Johnston, a special agent representing Governor Peter H.
Burnett, came into the country to look the situation over, and upon his return
to San Jose, then the capital of the State, reported to the Governor on January
2, 1851, as follows:

   "Sir: I have the honor to submit to you, as executive of the State of
California, some facts connected with the recent depredations committed by the
Indians, within the bounds of the State, upon the persons and property of her
citizens. The immediate scenes of their hostile movements are at and in the
vicinity of the Mariposa and Fresno. The Indians in that portion of your State
have, for some time past, exhibited disaffection and a restless feeling towards
the whites. Thefts were continually being perpetrated by them, but no act of
hostility had been committed by them on the person of any individual which
indicated general enmity on the part of the Indians, until the night of the 17th
December last. I was then at the camp of Mr. James D. Savage, on the Mariposa,
where I had gone for the purpose of reconciling any difficulty that might exist
between the Indians and the whites in that vicinity. From various conversations
which I had held with different chiefs, I concluded there was no immediate
danger to be apprehended. One the evening of the 17th of December, we were,
however, surprised by the sudden disappearance of the Indians. They left in a
body, but no one knew why, or where they had gone. From the fact that Mr.
Savage's domestic Indians had forsaken him and gone with those of the rancheria
or village, he immediately suspected that something of a serious nature was in
contemplation, or had already been committed by them.

   "The manner of their leaving, in the night, and by stealth, induced Mr.
Savage to believe that whatever act they had committed or intended to commit,
might be connected with himself. Believing that he could overhaul his Indians
before others could join them, and defeat any depredations on their part, he,
with sixteen men, started in pursuit. He continued upon their traces for about
thirty miles, when he came upon their encampment. The Indians had discovered his
approach, and fled to an adjacent mountain, leaving behind them two small boys
asleep, and the remains of an aged female, who had died, no doubt from fatigue.
Near to the encampment Mr. Savage ascended a mountain in pursuit of the Indians,
from which he discovered them upon another mountain at a distance. From these
two mountain tops, conversation was commenced and kept up for some time between
Mr. Savage and the chief, who told him that they had murdered the men on the
Fresno, and robbed the camp. The chief had formerly been on the most friendly
terms with Savage, but would not now permit him to approach him. Savage said to
them it would be better for them to return to their village—that with very
little labor daily, they could procure sufficient gold to purchase them clothing
and food. To this the chief replied it was a hard way to get a living, and that
they could more easily supply their wants by stealing from the whites. He also
said to Savage he must not deceive the whites by telling them lies, he must not
tell them that the Indians were friendly; they were not, but on the contrary
were their deadly enemies, and that they intended killing and plundering them so
long as a white face was seen in the country. Finding all efforts to induce them
to return, or to otherwise reach them, had failed, Mr. Savage and his company,
concluded to return. When about leaving, they discovered a body of Indians,
numbering about two hundred, on a distant mountain, who seemed to be approaching
those with whom he had been talking.

   "Mr. Savage and company arrived at his camp in the night of Thursday in
safety.    In the meantime, as news had reached us of murders committed on the
Fresno, we had determined to proceed to the Fresno, where the men had been
murdered. Accordingly on the day following, Friday, the 20th, I left the
Mariposa camp with thirty-five men, for the camp on the Fresno, to see the
situation of things there, and to bury the dead. I also dispatched couriers to
Agua Fria, Mariposa, and several other mining sections, hoping to concentrate a
sufficient force on the Fresno to pursue the Indians into the mountains. Several
small companies of men left their respective places of residence to join us, but
being unacquainted with the country they were unable to meet us. We reached the
camp on the Fresno a short time after daylight. It presented a horrid scene of
savage cruelty. The Indians had destroyed everything they could not use or carry
with them. The store was stripped of blankets, clothing, flour, and everything
of value; the safe was broke'n open and rifled of its contents; the cattle,
horses and mules had been run into the mountains; the murdered men had been
stripped of their clothing, and lay before us filled with arrows; one of them
had yet twenty perfect arrows sticking in him. A grave was prepared and the
unfortunate persons interred. Our force being small, we thought it not prudent
to pursue the Indians farther into the mountains, and determined to return. The
Indians in that part of the country are quite numerous, and have been uniting
other tribes with them for some time. On reaching our camp on the Mariposa, we
learned that most of the Indians in the valley had left their villages and taken
their women and children to the mountains. This is generally looked upon as a
sure indication of their hostile intentions. It is feared that many of the
miners in the more remote regions have already been cut off, and Agua Fria and
Mariposa are hourly threatened.

   "Under this state of things, I come here at the earnest solicitations of the
people of that region, to ask such aid from the State government as will enable
them to protect their persons and property. I submit these facts for your
consideration, and have the honor to remain,
'                                       "Yours very respectfully,
                                                     "Adam Johnston. 
   "To His Excellency, Peter H. Burnett."

   Colonel Johnston's report had the desired effect; as a result, it was, that
Burnett's successor, Governor McDougal, isued the proclamation already
mentioned, which led to the mustering in of the Mariposa Rangers.

   The men on the Fresno had been killed on December 17, 1850, and buried on
December 20. On January 6, 1851, Major Burney, sheriff of Mariposa County,
assembled a strong posse to go in pursuit of the Indians whom Colonel Johnston
had thought too strong for his small party. He caught up with them on January
11. Major Burney had been elected captain of a company formed the previous May,
with J. W. Riley as first lieutenant and E. Skeane as second lieutenant, and
numbering seventy-four men. In a letter to Governor McDougal on January 13,
1851, Burney describes his pursuit of the Indians on the 11th. They had but few
provisions, and not enough pack horses. But they marched, and the day after
starting "struck a large trail of horses," writes Burney, "that had been stolen
by the Indians. I sent forward James D. Savage with a small spy force, and I
followed the trail with my company."

   They came upon an Indian sentinel, and being discovered, rushed to the
village and arrived almost as soon as the sentinel. Burney ordered the Indians
to surrender; some seemed disposed to do so, but others fired on the whites.
Burney's men fired and charged into the village. "We killed from forty to
fifty," he says, and burned the village. Six of Burney's company were wounded,
two mortally, Lieutenant Skeane and a Mr. Little. This fight seems to have been
in the vicinity of Fresno Flats in the present Madera County.

   The campaign was completed with a battle at "Battle Mountain," which Burney
describes as "a watershed of the San Joaquin," where the whites stormed a
stockade of the Indians and dispersed them.

   The campaign was carried on through the early months of 1851. Major Savage,
with leaders like Boling, Kuykendall, Chandler, and with Dr. Bunnell as a member
of the expedition, proceeded against Chief Tenaya and chased him into Yosemite
in March. His band, seemingly made up of outlaws from several tribes from both
sides of the Sierras, was dispersed; and after a hard campaign, the greater part
of them were brought out to a reservation which had been set aside in the lower
foothills near the Fresno. A campaign was waged against the Chowchillas in the
region where Burney had fought his battles, and they were finally pretty well
rounded up and brought in.

   Dr. Bunnell does not seem to mention what is now Merced County beyond the
statement that the Indians had removed their women and children from the Valley,
and the further statement that he and someone else, when the pursuit was being
organized, went to Snelling's Ranch for horses, which seemingly they had at
pasture there. This was in 1851. As we shall see later, the Snelling family did
not arrive on the Merced River until the fall of that year. Dr. Bunnell is
evidently applying a name which he knew in 1880, when he wrote, to the place
they visited in 1851.

   The number of Indians involved in these fights is not a thing that can be
determined very exactly; but where the number involved in any one fight is
given, it does not exceed a few hundred.

   We have not found where the Americans as settlers or miners came in contact
with any large numbers of Indians. It is said, though, that previous to 1833
they were very numerous. The author of a history of Merced County published in
1881 by Elliott & Moore quotes Kit Carson as saying that in 1829 the valleys of
California were full of Indians, but that when he again visited the State in
1839 they had mostly disappeared. He also quotes a Colonel Warner (Walker?) as
saying "I have never read of such a general destruction of a people by any
angel, good or bad, or by plague or pestilence, as that which swept the valleys
of the Sacramento and San Joaquin in the summer of 1833."

   Warner (?) is quoted as saying that he traveled through the valleys in 1832
and that the Indians were much more numerous than he had ever seen on a similar
area elsewhere. He describes another trip the following year, when they found
whole villages wiped out or deserted by their few remaining survivors, when the
dead came so far to outnumber the living that the latter could not either burn
or bury the corpses. Cholera, it is said, was the terrible scourge which thus
reduced the Indian population to a small remnant of its former numbers.

   County Auditor S. E. Acker, who lived most of his life on the West Side of
the county, informs us that there are in the vicinity of Los Banos a number of
rather shallow circular excavations several yards across, which are attributed
to the Indians. Whether they were perhaps where their temescals, or
sweat-houses, were erected, or served some other purpose, they seem to indicate
an Indian population there. Whether the population was permanent, or moved
between the valley and the mountains as cold weather in the latter or floods
made desirable, we can only conjecture. It is to be noticed that in the passage
from Fremont's journal referring to his passage through the county in 1844, he
does not mention seeing any Indians in what is now Merced County.

   We have digressed from Mariposa County. The space available will not permit
us to go into the history of mining in that county. Mining, with the exception
of recent dredging along the Merced between Snelling and Merced Falls, hardly
touches Merced County, except in the secondary sense that it was overflow from
the population of miners and those who served them in the Mariposa hills who
peopled early Merced.

   The two counties are closely connected by several interests. Yosemite and the
roads and the railroad which lead to it furnish one of the chief. Another is in
the fact that within Mariposa County lies the watershed—some thousand square
miles—from which the water is collected into the Merced River, and which will
shortly be impounded at the Exchequer Dam to irrigate Merced County lands. In
the power developed from the streams in Mariposa County is found a third. Cattle
and sheep men who range their stock in the Valley in Merced in the winter time
drive it to the mountains, many of them in Mariposa County, in the summer. In
the Mariposa mountains many inhabitants of Merced find summer recreation. The
logs for the Yosemite Lumber Company's mill at Merced Falls come from the
Mariposa County mountains. And in addition to these bonds of union, many of the
people who have helped to make Merced came originally from Mariposa. Such names
as Kocher, Olcese, Barcroft, Givens, Garibaldi, and a lot of others will readily
occur to anyone who knows the two counties.

   It is with reluctance that we turn from Merced's mother county with no more
than such brief and inadequate mention, for it is a story by itself worthy of a
volume.


Additional Comments:
HISTORY OF
MERCED COUNTY
CALIFORNIA
WITH A
Biographical Review
OF
The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been
Identified with Its Growth and Development
from the Early Days to the Present

HISTORY BY
JOHN OUTCALT

ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME
HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
1925


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