Respected and honored by all, he was the great man
of the country."
Subsequently he was a member of the Constitutional Convention at
Monterey, and was appointed Major General of militia. Would that the
sketch of his life might end here; but, alas! there is a sad, sad
closing to the chapter. This can not be told more briefly and eloquently
than in the language of the writer already mentioned:
"As soon as the discovery of gold was known, he was immediately deserted
by all his mechanics and laborers, white, Kanaka, and Indian. The mills
were abandoned, and became a dead loss. Labor could not be hired to
plant, to mature the crops, or reap and gather the grain that ripened."
"At an early period subsequent to the discovery, an immense emigration
from overland poured into the Sacramento Valley, making Sutter's domains
their camping-ground, without the least regard for the rights of
property. They occupied his cultivated fields, and squatted all over his
available lands, saying these were the unappropriated domain of the
United States, to which they had as good a right as any one. They stole
and drove off his horses and mules, and exchanged or sold them in other
parts of the country; they butchered his cattle, sheep, and hogs, and
sold the meat. One party of five men, during the flood of 1849-50, when
the cattle were surrounded by water, near the Sacramento river, killed
and sold $60,000 worth of these - as it was estimated and left for the
States.
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