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training his own private army of Indians. Sutter maintained an Indian guard of fifteen mounted cavalry and twenty-five infantry. He did not hesitate to punish any tribes he suspected of raiding his property. Sutter’s Indian guardwas so respected on the frontier that no one ever attacked his fortress.
    The business that Sutter the entrepreneur knew would come, came. Russia had a problem supplying its colony in Alaska, which stretched out across the territory down the western coast of the continent. Sitka, for example, was actually easier to supply from California than Russia. Seeing this, the Russians made a deal with John Sutter to begin exporting wheat to Sitka and other Russian towns in Alaska.
    Sutter established a successful trading business with pioneers and Indians alike, specializing in everything from furs and cotton to whiskey and even brandy from his own personal distillery, on the eastern side of the fort. Unfortunately, the land on which he had his fort was still owned by the Mexican government. Despite the improvements he had made, the Mexicans still owned the land.
    Sutter applied to Mexican governor Juan Alvarado for a land grant. Only a Mexican citizen could be granted one, and since Sutter had taken care of that in 1840, that legal hurdle had been surmounted. Seeing an opportunity for the Mexican government to make money through Sutter’s prosperity, Governor Alvarado officially deeded Sutter eleven leagues of land, or 47,827 acres! Alvarado made it clear in the grant that Sutter was to maintain order among the Indians and “secure the land for Mexico in return.”
    Returning to his fort with the grant in hand, Sutter carried something else in his other. Handing the Mexican flag to one of his men, he ordered that it be raisedabove the fort. Anyone who came to Sutter’s Fort would know instantly that they were on Mexican land. Sutter began to see a flow of settlers into his fort, who came for respite, supplies, and shelter.
    They partook of the goods and services he offered. Business was good, good enough for Sutter to buy Fort Ross, in nearby Alta. To Sutter it was just another deal; he bought the fort on $30,000 credit, which he agreed to pay off in four years with a combination of produce and coin. In return, Sutter got Fort Ross’s supply stores, lumber, cannon, hardware, and livestock.
    For the U.S. government, the deal was even better. The Russians owned Fort Ross and were the next-to-last foreigners to get out of the United States and its contiguous territories. Mexico was to be next—that had to happen eventually. For the country to expand, they needed all foreign powers off of it. Russia was now one less country to worry about.
    He made regular trips to the territorial capital in Monterey, where he established himself as a political presence. In 1844 he met William Maxwell Wood, a ship’s surgeon, on one of his regular visits there.
    â€œCaptain Sutter was a man of medium or rather low stature, but with a marked military air,” Wood later wrote. “He wore a cap and a plain blue frockcoat; a mustache covered his lips. His head was of a very singular formation, being flat and well shaped behind and rising high over the crown, with a lofty and expanded forehead. His manners were courteous.”
    For the first time since leaving Switzerland, Sutter wasbeginning to enjoy life. Part of that was his love of waffles. Sutter liked them made from wild duck eggs and coarse grain flour from his own mill, cooked on an open fire in a rectangular iron pan that had been divvied up into numerous small, square indentations that gave the waffle its unique shape.
    By 1845, Captain John Sutter of the Swiss Guard was prospering. He owned 4,000 head of cattle, 1,700 horses and mules, and 3,000 sheep. He was doing well. While no more than 50 people stayed inside the fort at any one time, a maximum of 200 could use the fort during daylight hours.
    Sutter even got to help out his