Word: sutter
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Washington, D.C., knew Sutter for years, enormously fat with age, gripping the Apocalypse in his pocket, supporting a parasitic swarm of lawyers until he had to shine shoes to support himself. It knew Carpenter Marshall of New Jersey, too, whose pickaxe pried loose Sutter's hellgate; Marshall escaped from his asylum once and dug filth from Washington's guttters, screaming, "There is gold everywhere, everywhere!" One June afternoon in 1880, old Sutter sat on the steps of the Capitol, pondering Justice. Malicious newboys ran up and told him that congress had just awarded him 100 millions of indemnity...
Years before, penniless, Johann August Sutter had abandoned his wife and children in Switzerland dreaming of empire. Only after far, vigorous roving, much crime and more misery had his colossal, visionary projects come to this. From New York-where Poe had frequented his Fordham bar-he had ridden to Oregon, sailed through the Pacific, out to Hawaii, up to Alaska, recruiting henchmen in every bar, trading famously, until he reached the mud huts of San Francisco and bargained for an empire with the Spanish padrés and governors. He had gained it by merely promising to guard the Sierra...
Sixty white oxen drew this country's first steam mill across the continent, to Sutter. Shiploads of firearms, seeds, implements, nails, clothing rounded the Horn annually, for Sutter. The world's soundest banks were pleased to extend credit to America's biggest landlord, Johann August Sutter...
While Mexico and the U. S. fought (1848), Sutter kept his realm neutral and intact; even increased it by a tract "24 hours square." California was ceded and he smoked in peaceful reverie, thinking at last of his wife, his children, his oldtime comrades.... He sent for her and them, begging forgiveness with letters of credit which were but footnotes of his prosperity. While waiting for them, he busied himself with a new sawmill up on Sutter's Creek...
When Madame Sutter arrived, Sutter's gold had wiped out New Helvetia. She died of heart failure on the spot, lucky woman. The world, quite mad, had overrun the Sacramento Valley, tearing open its hills for gold, silver, platinum. Sutter's men deserted to wash gravel. His herds died, unmilked. His barns fell. His crops wasted. All his fat lands were squatted on, his fort occupied, by hordes of gold-mad grabbers who had shouted his name from the Mediterranean, across Panama, up to the Golden Gate; from Siberia, Japan, Russia, Sweden, up to the Golden Gate. Gunboats...