The Age of Gold Read Free Page A

Coloma, and explained his plan. At the time, he probably intended to rely on Indian labor,although he—and Sutter too—must have had some reservations. The indigenous Nisenan and their neighbors were not especially warlike, but neither were they notably friendly to interlopers. When the interlopers stuck together—as near Sutter’s Fort, which was a fort for a reason—the Indians left them alone. But Coloma was two days from the fort, and, at the least, the livestock and other provisions brought from the fort to the construction site would be prey to pilfering. Marshall and Sutter might ask Indians in their employ to guard and defend Sutter’s property, but the partners would be foolish to count on the Indians to endanger themselves for the white men.
    Luckily, not long after Sutter satisfied himself that Marshall’s plan was feasible, and the two exchanged signatures on a contract, the labor problem solved itself, temporarily at any rate. Four months after Marshall was mustered out of the military, the army released the members of the Mormon Battalion, one of the more remarkable contingents in the long history of American military voluntarism. The war with Mexico began at just the moment when the Mormons, having been driven sequentially from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, were planning their hegira to the wilderness beyond the boundaries of the United States. Precisely where the hegira would end hadn’t been established, but Mormon leader Brigham Young and his fellow elders could tell that the trek would be difficult and expensive. Any assistance, from almost any source, would be appreciated. When the call came from Washington for volunteers against Mexico, Young recognized the possibilities it presented. Uncle Sam was offering to transport west as many men as the Mormons could supply, and pay them for the journey. Of course, their time, and their lives, would not be their own for the duration of the fighting, but at war’s end they would be closer to the Mormons’ new home, wherever that proved to be, and would have pockets full of cash, which would help build the new colony. So the Mormon Council of Twelve issued its own call for volunteers on Washington’s behalf, and the Mormon Battalion was born.
    Like Marshall’s, the Mormons’ war included far more marching—in their case, across some of the most forbidding stretches of the Great Basin—than shooting, as well as the soldier’s usual share of sitting around.Consequently it was a tough, bored, but otherwise healthy crew that left the employ of the U.S. Army in July 1847 at the quiet town of Los Angeles, eager to rejoin the families and friends from whom they had parted the previous year.
    Confusingly, however, they didn’t know where to go. They had last heard from the church leaders almost a year earlier and had only the vaguest idea where their fellow Saints’ flight into the wilderness had ended. All the same, with no means of supporting themselves at Los Angeles, they headed north, toward the more populated regions of California. There they hoped to encounter word from the new Mormon colony and receive further marching orders, this time from their own people.
    Some 150 set out from Los Angeles in late July, and after a hot, wearing journey along the same route Marshall had followed the previous spring, they reached the Sacramento. There they learned that the Council of Twelve had planted the church in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. With rising hearts they marched on to Sutter’s Fort, where they purchased provisions for the last leg of their journey, east over the mountains and desert to their new home.
    They ascended the western slope of the Sierras, crossing the divide by the same pass—although in the opposite direction—as the ill-fated Donner party, which several months earlier had succumbed to starvation and cannibalism amid the snows of winter. Evidence of the disaster was still visible. “Their bones were lying scattered over the