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January 24, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

“Some Kind of Mettle”

After a brief stay in the Islands, in 1839, John Augustus Sutter, a Swiss seeking his fortune in America, brought a small group of native Hawaiians with him to California.

They worked for him and eventually intermarried with local native American families. They settled in the area of Vernon, which is now called Verona, where the Feather River flows into the Sacramento River in South Sutter County. (co-sutter-ca-us)

At the time of Sutter’s arrival in California, the territory had a population of only 1,000 Europeans, in contrast with 30,000 Native Americans. At the time, it was part of Mexico and the governor, Juan Bautista Alvarado, granted him permission to settle.

In order to qualify for a land grant, Sutter became a Mexican citizen in 1840; the following year, he received title to about 49,000-acres and named his settlement New Helvetia, or “New Switzerland.” He called his compound Sutter’s Fort.

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, using a name then-common to describe Hawaiian workers, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas.”  They built the first settlers’ homes in Sacramento – hale pili (grass shacks) made with California willow and bamboo.

Sutter later ordered that a sawmill be built in the Coloma Valley on the South Fork of the American River, about 50-miles from the fort. In the process of deepening the millrace (the channel of water where the flow of current causes the mill wheel to turn,) James Marshall made an important discovery that changed things, a lot.

On January 24, 1848, a young Virginian named Henry William Bigler recorded in his diary: “This day some kind of mettle was found in the tail race that looks like gold first discovered by James Martial, the boss of the Mill.”  (csun)

Marshall and Sutter tried their best to keep the discovery of gold quiet until the construction of Sutter’s mill was completed; the news leaked out, and the stampede began.  Some 300,000-people came to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.

“Forty-Niner” has become the collective label for those who participated in the famous California Gold Rush. Quite a few people arrived in 1848, and many came after 1849; however, it was the year 1849 which witnessed the large wave of gold-seekers.  (Hinckley)

The first large group of Americans to arrive were several thousand Oregonians who came down the Siskiyou Trail.  News reached Hawaiʻi on June 24 on a boat that had departed San Francisco on May 24.

A large proportion of the Americans and Europeans residing in the Islands, along with many native Hawaiians, headed east; as many ships as were available were outfitted for the journey to the Pacific Coast.

When news of the Gold Rush reached Canton in 1848, thousands of young Chinese mortgaged their futures and boarded boats to “Gum Shan,” or “Gold Mountain,” as California became named.  (By 1852, 25,000 Chinese had reached Gold Mountain.)

New Zealanders received the news in November 1848 when an American whaler put into port with several newspapers from Hawaiʻi, and Australians learned about the discoveries a month later.

All of these groups predated Americans arriving from the US East Coast, who had to wait until trading ships from Asia who had stopped in San Francisco or Hawaiʻi either rounded the tip of South America or reached the Isthmus of Panama and crossed it with the news.

Kanaka colonies sprang up throughout the gold country, and California’s first “Good Humor” man, Charlie O’Kaaina, supposedly sold ice cream from his ice wagon in the Sierra foothills. (Magagnini)

Place names like Kanaka Creek in Sierra County and Kanaka Bar in Trinity County tell us of the growing presence of Hawaiians in gold country.  “Hawaiians also migrated to Yolo County, California to participate in the Gold Rush and created their own Kanaka Village.”

“There is evidence that Hawaiians settled across California in the late-1800s and even intermarried with Native Americans. Many scholars speculate that Hawaiians migrated to the mainland in order to gain more economic opportunity and to flee from the dramatic Westernization that was changing the face of Hawaiʻi.”  (pbs-org)

The California Gold Rush drawing Hawaiians to the continent was not its only effect on the Islands; the Hawaiian economy was affected in several ways – good and not-so-good.

Prior to the Gold Rush, supporting the Pacific whaling and trading fleets and trade between the West Coast and Hawaiʻi was the scale of the Hawaiʻi participation.  The scale of that significantly changed with the Gold Rush.

Hawaiʻi was only three to five weeks away, and with the growing population drawn to the gold fields, in addition to provisioning ships, Hawaiʻi farmers were feeding the gold seekers on the continent.

There were some down sides; this also brought a marked increase in the prices of consumer goods, especially food, caused by the great increase in agricultural exports to California, which offered very profitable new markets.  (Rawls)

Likewise, the exodus to the continent created a critical labor shortage in Hawaiʻi, where a sizeable number of sugar plantation workers migrated to the California gold fields.

The parting of workers from the plantations between 1848 and 1853 was so large, Hawaiʻi sugar producers began to seek Chinese immigrants to fill the gap.  (Rawls)

As the California Gold Rush demonstrates, the success of the Island’s economy was largely tied to events that occurred outside the Islands, especially on the continent. The American Civil War’s influence on Hawaiʻi’s fledgling sugar industry is another example of that, starting in 1861.

The Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai‘i to fill part of the void left by the absence of then-blockaded southern exports – at elevated prices.

Hawaiian-grown sugar soon replaced much of this southern sugar through the duration of the conflict.  By the end of the war, over thirty extremely prosperous plantations were in operation and expanded to new levels previously unheard of before the war’s commencement.

© 2025 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: General, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, James Marshall, John Sutter, Gold Rush

June 13, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sutter’s Hawaiians

Early California history is closely linked with Hawaii. (Kenn)

“[I]n December 1838, there arrived in Honolulu one of the most colorful soldiers of fortune to land on Hawaiian shores. This individual was Captain John Sutter, later to make his mark on California history, accompanied by a small party of followers.  The previous October, Sutter and his party had reached Fort Vancouver after an overland trek from Missouri.”

“He was welcomed at Fort Vancouver and treated generously. An excellent raconteur with an active imagination (his title of former Captain in the Swiss Guards serving France was entirely his own invention), a congenial guest, part visionary and part con man, Sutter’s presence enlivened this active but still relatively isolated post.” (Spoehr)

“It was in the latter part of 1838 that Captain John Sutter arrived in Honolulu from Oregon on his way to California where he hoped to make his fortune, and where he realized his ambition until gold was discovered on his land when he lost everything in the turmoil that followed.”

“Sutter was a citizen of the Principality of the Grand Dutchy of Baden, Germany, where he left his wife and four children to seek his fortune in America. After crossing two oceans and a continent, Sutter found himself in Honolulu where he remained for five months, eagerly awaiting passage to California.”

“He made friends with Honolulu merchants and participated in a few business ventures, one of which was to purchase the abandoned ship Clementine moored in the harbor. He served as supercargo, sailing first to Sitka, Alaska, then to Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, where he disembarked with some Sandwich Islanders.”

“There were contracted to serve him for three years at ten dollars each per month …. He was to pay their passage back to Hawaii after that time. The actual number of Hawaiians who accompanied Sutter is not definitely known. Sutter claimed there were ten, eight men and two women, while William Heath Davis numbered eight, four men and four women.” (Kenn)

“Sutter was very poor on names and referred to the Sandwich Islanders merely as ‘Canacas,’ though he observed that had it not been for his Canacas he would not have been able to succeed in his California venture.  They helped to build his fort [near present-day Sacramento] said to be patterned after Kekuanohu (the Honolulu fort)”. (Kenn)

“The task of [Sutter’s] Hawaiian workers was not only to assist with building the fort, but to ensure labor tranquility amongst the hundreds of California natives (including Nisenan, Miwok, and Yokut) who would eventually be laboring at New Helvetia by 1846. Some Americans would compare these Sacramento Valley natives to Pacific Islanders.”  (Farnham)

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas. They were always faithful and loyal to me.” (Sutter)

From 1839 to 1849, Sutter’s Fort was the economic center of the first permanent European colonial settlement in California’s Central Valley. During that time, the Fort catalyzed patterns of change across California. Then, the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

So, what happened to the Sutter Hawaiians and other Hawaiians on the continent?

“[B]y the mid-1800s, there were hundreds of Hawaiians in what is now Canada and California. In 1847, Hawaiians made up 10% of San Francisco’s tiny but growing population.”  (Terrell)

“In the aftermath of the gold rush, many Hawaiians stayed in California. And as they settled in California, a number of Hawaiian men married local indigenous women. Which, it turns out, was a common occurrence up and down the West Coast.: (Terrell)

“Both Hawaiians and Indians in the Oregon Territory were explicitly excluded from the dominant society. From the mid-1860s onward, neither they nor their offspring were legally permitted to marry into the dominant society.”  (Barman & Watson)

As a result, Hawaiians were absorbed into local Native American communities through intermarriage. These Hawaiians were less likely to return to the Islands and leave their Native American wives and children behind. (Farnham)

“Sutter’s Hawaiians were to play an important role in the development of Sacramento, and their descendants, many of whom are living in Sacramento and environs today, have contributed greatly to the economic progress and welfare of the region. They became gold miners, salmon fishermen, snag boat operators, river boatmen, farmers, trappers, levee builders, and entertainers.” (Kenn)

“In the summer of 1865 some Hawaiian fishermen and their ‘wahine,’ who had sailed the placid Pacific in search of new realms for their nomad spirits, arrived in San Francisco bay only to discover that the cool fogs bred dire distress in lungs used to none but the fervid breezes of a tropic sea …”

“… so on they kept until, after a day and night of clear weather, they reached Vernon, a busy farming community on the banks of the Feather river.”

“Housed in picturesque huts on the east bank of the Feather river, near the thriving little town of Vernon, and gaining a livelihood

as best they may, and according to the tenets of their native land, caring not for the morrow so long as they may live and enjoy the day…”

“… a hundred or more big brown men and women and numerous tots form a colony where, peace and content rule their world, and where the salubrious climate Is engendering in this languorous race …”

“… an aptitude for labor a foreign element in their home taro-patches and rice field, with the sun shining upon them ten months of the year, and with the brown rush of waters homing myriad finny tribes for their ever ready rods …”

“… these dusky exiles pass their days rowing and fishing and pitching their tents at night in the shaggy thickets that clothe the river reaches, where with their ukuleles and guitars they build harmonies and weave legends into their cloth of dreams.”  (Parkhurst)

“And living up there close to the touch of nature, they have kept all of their race identity. When one of their people visits them bringing pol, ti leaves, kukui and other choice tidbits from home, they have barbecues, chowders and hula-hulas, and all of the delights that comprise a luau or Hawaiian feast.”  (Parkhurst)

© 2023 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Prominent People, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, John Sutter, Hawaiians

May 26, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians

it started with one man named Johann Suter (later John Sutter) who came to California from Switzerland in 1839 and settled a large tract of land in Sacramento, which he called New Helvetia (New Switzerland). The goal was to bring other settlers to New Helvetia and build an agricultural and trade colony.

Sutter originally didn’t start in California; first, he left his family in Switzerland and travelled extensively through the Eastern US, Oregon and eventually to Hawaii where he met Russian traders who told him about Alto California where land and furs were abundant.

It was in Hawaii that he made the decision to head to California via Alaska. (Noren) After a brief stay in the Islands, in 1839, Sutter had a “crew consisted of the two German carpenters I had brought with me from the Islands, and a number of sailors and mechanics I had picked up at Yerba Buena.”

“I also had eight Kanakas, all experienced seamen, whom King Kamehameha had given me when I left the Sandwich Islands. I had undertaken to pay them ten dollars a month and to send them back to the Islands after three years at my own expense if they wished to leave me.”  (Sutter; Houston)

At the time of Sutter’s arrival in California, the territory had a population of only 1,000-Europeans, in contrast with 30,000-Native Americans. At the time, it was part of Mexico.

When they landed and set up New Helvetia (August 13, 1839,) “I selected the highest ground I could find. The Kanakas first erected two grass houses after the manner of the houses on the Sandwich Islands; the frames were made by white men and covered with grass by the Kanakas.” (Sutter)

Sutter employed Native Americans of the Miwok and Maidu tribes, Kanakas and Europeans at his compound, which he called Sutter’s Fort.

In the following years many Sandwich Islanders followed these few to California. John Sutter brought them there to work at Sutter’s Fort and at Hock Farm.”

“A colony of more than 100-native Hawaiians formed a colony in Sutter County called Verona, the first non-native American settlement in the Central California Valley.”

“These Hawaiians fished for bass, trout, and catfish and sold them at the Fort and in Sacramento. They learned to raise alfalfa and raised hogs and cattle. The Hawaiians rowed their boats, assembled their tents and played their Ukulele and Guitar. When a visiting Hawaiian brought poi, ti leaves, kukui and other items from home the Hawaiians held barbecues and luau and danced hula.” (Willcox)

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas. They were always faithful and loyal to me.” (Sutter)

From 1839 to 1849, Sutter’s Fort was the economic center of the first permanent European colonial settlement in California’s Central Valley. During that time, the Fort catalyzed patterns of change across California. Then, the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

“[B]y the mid-1800s, there were hundreds of Hawaiians in what is now Canada and California. In 1847, Hawaiians made up 10% of San Francisco’s tiny but growing population.”  (Terrell)

“In the aftermath of the gold rush, many Hawaiians stayed in California. And as they settled in California, a number of Hawaiian men married local indigenous women. Which, it turns out, was a common occurrence up and down the West Coast.” (Terrell)

“Both Hawaiians and Indians in the Oregon Territory were explicitly excluded from the dominant society. From the mid-1860s onward, neither they nor their offspring were legally permitted to marry into the dominant society.”  (Barman & Watson)

As a result, Hawaiians were absorbed into local Native American communities through intermarriage. These Hawaiians were less likely to return to the Islands and leave their Native American wives and children behind. (Farnham)

One such is the Shingle Springs Band.  “They were known as the lost tribe of kanakas.  They are not our Indians. They’re not local.” (Marilyn Ferguson; Terrell, Civil Beat)

Then in 1916, an agent with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs traveled to California looking for landless and destitute Indians.

The agent recorded a number of Miwok families living in the Placerville area and called those people the El Dorado Band.

Then he visited the group near Verona — about 50 miles away. According to letters from the time, the group at that point was mostly made up of extended family members. A few Hawaiian men and their wives — local Miwok and Maidu and one white woman.

The spit of land they lived on was small. It nearly disappeared when the river swelled from rain. They lived on fish and marsh birds. Bought meager food supplies from town by delivering fish to markets and individual houses nearby.

The agent dubbed this group of Indians the Sacramento-Verona Band of Homeless Indians and suggested buying land for them.

“They seemed open to banding together,” he wrote. And would be excellent candidates for the federal government’s plan to “colonize and civilize Indians” in California.  (Terrell; Civil Beat)

The Bureau of Indian Affairs relocated one of those communities to what is now the Shingle Springs Rancheria. Tribal members say they owe their survival to their Hawaiian ancestors and believe their relatives on the mainland deserve the same recognition as tribes in the US. (Ho-Chunk)

But the Sacramento-Verona tribe didn’t move to the 160-acre parcel. For decades the land sat fallow and unused.  Then in 1970, the BIA reached out to the descendants of the group dubbed the Sacramento-Verona tribe to see if they wanted to sell the uninhabited land that had been set aside for their families.

They opted to keep the land and came together as a tribe. Built homes on the land. A church. A community center. Negotiated with the state to get highway access to the land. They renamed themselves the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.

And they started making plans to open a casino. That’s when things got heated.  Not everyone wanted the Shingle Springs Band to open a casino in the area.

The Miwok families that the Bureau dubbed the El Dorado Tribe in 1916 lost their land decades ago. Now, some of their descendants say it’s unfair for the Shingle Springs Band to have taken Miwok as part of its name.  Unjust — and perhaps a misinterpretation of the law — for them to have tribal land in the area.

Most of the members of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians have Hawaiian roots. Tribal ancestors married Native Hawaiians who came to California during the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s and the groups formed Indian-Hawaiian communities around Sacramento.

However complicated their origins, the tribe’s sovereignty has been upheld repeatedly in court.  (Terrell; Civil Beat)

© 2023 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Place Names, Economy Tagged With: John Sutter, Shingle Springs, Miwok

April 9, 2020 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Hawaiians Leaving Home

We consistently hear of folks coming to Hawaiʻi, but often overlook that many were/are out-migrating from Hawaiʻi.

And, the increased scale of migration between Hawaiʻi and California and other parts of the continent may have started with us to them, rather than the reverse.

There is historical evidence suggesting that Hawaiians began moving to the US mainland as early as the late-1700s for economic survival.

As early as 1811, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) had already hired twelve Hawaiians on three year contracts to work for them in the Pacific Northwest. By 1824, HBC employed thirty-five Hawaiians west of the Rocky Mountains.

The number of Hawaiians working as contract laborers for the Hudson’s Bay Company steadily grew. The large number of Hawaiian workers in the village at Fort Vancouver led to the name “Kanaka Town” in the early 1850s – “Kanaka” is the word for “person” in the Native Hawaiian language.

Historians suggest “that young Hawaiian males left Hawai’i as workers on whaling ships and traveled to China, Europe, Mexico, and the U.S. mainland. In addition, many ventured into the Pacific Northwest territory, worked in the fur trade, and ended up settling in those areas.” (pbs-org)

In 1839, John Sutter brought a small group of native Hawaiians with him when he arrived in California. They worked for him and eventually intermarried with local Maidu families. They settled in the area of Vernon, which is now called Verona, where the Feather River flows into the Sacramento River in South Sutter County. (co-sutter-ca-us)

At the time of Sutter’s arrival in California, the territory had a population of only 1,000 Europeans, in contrast with 30,000 Native Americans. It was at that point a part of Mexico and the governor, Juan Bautista Alvarado, granted him permission to settle.

In order to qualify for a land grant, Sutter became a Mexican citizen on August 29, 1840 after a year in the provincial settlement; the following year, on June 18, he received title to 48,827 acres and named his settlement New Helvetia, or “New Switzerland.”

Sutter employed Native Americans of the Miwok and Maidu tribes, Kanakas and Europeans at his compound, which he called Sutter’s Fort.

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, using a name then common to describe Hawaiian workers, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas.” They also built the first settlers’ homes in Sacramento – grass shacks, or hale pili, made with California willow and bamboo.

“In the summer of 1865 some Hawaiian fishermen and their “wahine,” who had sailed the placid Pacific in search of new realms for their nomad spirits, arrived in San Francisco bay only to discover that the cool fogs bred dire distress in lungs …”

“… used to none but the fervid breezes of a tropic sea, so on they kept until, after a day and night of clear weather, they reached Vernon, a busy farming community on the banks of the Feather river.” (The San Francisco Call – March 26, 1911)

“It was here that San Mahalone and his companions built their huts and that today their children and grandchildren are peopling this colony this begun over 40-years ago, preserving their individuality and accumulating properties and competencies on the fertile lands of Sutter county.” (The San Francisco Call – March 26, 1911)

“Hawaiians also migrated to Yolo County, California to participate in the Gold Rush and created their own Kanaka Village. There is evidence that Hawaiians settled across California in the late-1800s and even intermarried with Native Americans.”

“Many scholars speculate that Hawaiians migrated to the mainland in order to gain more economic opportunity and to flee from the dramatic Westernization that was changing the face of Hawai’i.” (pbs-org)

In 1894, at Iosepa in Utah, “the colony of Hawaiians established in Skull Valley, Tooele county comes in with a splendid showing this year. This is all the more satisfactory when the difficulties which the colonists have had to contend with are considered.” (Deseret Evening News – December 22, 1894)

“Last spring a few members of the colony accepted the government invitation to return to the Sandwich Islands. Several of these have written back, expressing the wish that they were here, and declaring an intention to return to the colony as soon as practical.” (Deseret Evening News – December 22, 1894)

The Hawaiians’ legacy can be seen today in the places named with Hawaiian words. Theses include include Kanaka, Owyhee (an old Hawaiian name for Hawaii) and Kamai (named after the Hawaiian Kama Kamai): the Kanaka Glade in Mendocino County, California …

… Kanaka Creek in Sierra County, California; Kanaka Bars in Trinity County, California; Kanaka Flats in Jacksonville, Oregon; Kanaka Gulch, Oregon; Owyhee River in southeastern Oregon; and Kamai Point, British Columbia.

Of course, this summary only highlights some of the early outmigration of Hawaiians from Hawaiʻi. Recent decades has seen a flurry of movement of Hawaiians (and others) from Hawaiʻi to the continent. (Some areas on the continent show over 100% increases decade-by-decade in the number of Hawaiians living there.)

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Four versions of Kanaka Village layout, based on different historic maps
George Gibbs' illustration of Kanaka Village and stockade, 1851
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Iosepa Building A Sidewalk In Iosepa John E Board Archive Kennison and William Pukahi Sr c1910
Iosepa Hale built in 1889
Iosepa School, Imilani Square, John Mahoe and son Solomon in front
Iosepa Township Plat-filed_in_1908
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Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Population for the United States, Regions and States-2000_and_2010

Filed Under: Economy, General Tagged With: John Sutter, Hudson's Bay Company, Iosepa, Fort Vancouver, New Helvetia, Skull Valley, Hawaii

August 7, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Manuiki

After a brief stay in the Islands, in 1839, John Augustus Sutter, a Swiss seeking his fortune in America, had a “crew consisted of the two German carpenters I had brought with me from the Islands, and a number of sailors and mechanics I had picked up at Yerba Buena.”

“I also had eight Kanakas, all experienced seamen, whom King Kamehameha had given me when I left the Sandwich Islands. I had undertaken to pay them ten dollars a month and to send them back to the Islands after three years at my own expense if they wished to leave me.”

“These men were very glad to go with me, and at the expiration of their time, they showed no inclination to return to their people.” (Sutter) He also brought two Hawaiian women – one was Manuiki. (“It’s Kanaka. It means ‘little bird.” (Sutter; Houston))

Manuiki was Sutter’s favorite companion for several years, although she was not the only one. They had several children together. (Herrmann) He jealously guarded his exclusive relationship with her. (Hurtado)

“Manuiki keeps the garden here. The vegetables we eat have come from her garden, thogh I of course taught her to make the soup. Potatoes are not common fare among the kanakas in their native land.” (Sutter; Houston)

The Hawaiians worked for him and eventually intermarried with local native American families. They settled in the area of Vernon, which is now called Verona, where the Feather River flows into the Sacramento River in South Sutter County. (co-sutter-ca-us)

“They’re tattooed, they’re pierced, they’re half naked, they’re dark-complected, and they don’t look a whole lot different from the Indians in the Central Valley.”

That resemblance helped the Hawaiians on Sutter’s payroll convince 35-local Indian villagers to join Sutter, as paid workers, not slaves.

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas. They were always faithful and loyal to me.” (Sutter)

At the time of Sutter’s arrival in California, the territory had a population of only 1,000-Europeans, in contrast with 30,000-Native Americans. At the time, it was part of Mexico.

When they landed and set up New Helvetia (August 13, 1839,) “I selected the highest ground I could find. The Kanakas first erected two grass houses after the manner of the houses on the Sandwich Islands; the frames were made by white men and covered with grass by the Kanakas.” (Sutter)

In order to qualify for a land grant, Sutter became a Mexican citizen on August 29, 1840 after a year in the provincial settlement; the following year, on June 18, he received title to 48,827-acres and named his settlement New Helvetia, or “New Switzerland.”

“My hospitality attracted men to me whom I put in charge of various endeavors. The next year we built the fort with walls 18-feet high and three feet thick bought more cannons.”

“Built a large private residence for me within the fort and a room for Manuiki with a good strong lock on her door; I worried about her when I was away.” (Sutter; Fenimore)

Sutter employed Native Americans of the Miwok and Maidu tribes, Kanakas and Europeans at his compound, which he called Sutter’s Fort.

In the following years many Sandwich Islanders followed these few to California. John Sutter brought them there to work at Sutter’s Fort and at Hock Farm.”

“A colony of more than 100-native Hawaiians formed a colony in Sutter County called Verona, the first non-native American settlement in the Central California Valley.”

“These Hawaiians fished for bass, trout, and catfish and sold them at the Fort and in Sacramento. They learned to raise alfalfa and raised hogs and cattle. The Hawaiians rowed their boats, assembled their tents and played their Ukulele and Guitar. When a visiting Hawaiian brought poi, ti leaves, kukui and other items from home the Hawaiians held barbecues and luau and danced hula.” (Willcox)

Eventually Sutter allowed Manuiki to marry Kanaka Harry, another Hawaiian who came with him in 1839; Sutter set aside property for them on the American River, near the place where they first landed. (Hurtado)

On January 24, 1848, a young Virginian named Henry William Bigler recorded in his diary: “This day some kind of mettle was found in the tail race that looks like gold first discovered by James Martial, the boss of the Mill.” (csun)

Marshall and Sutter tried their best to keep the discovery of gold quiet until the construction of Sutter’s mill was completed; the news leaked out, and the stampede began. Some 300,000-people came to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.

“Forty-Niner” has become the collective label for those who participated in the famous California Gold Rush. Quite a few people arrived in 1848, and many came after 1849; however, it was the year 1849 which witnessed the large wave of gold-seekers. (Hinckley)

“What a great misfortune was this sudden gold discovery for me! It has just broken up and ruined my hard, restless, and industrious labors. … From my mill buildings I reaped no benefit whatever, the mill stones even have been stolen and sold.” (Sutter; SFMuseum)

Sutter fled California in 1870, after losing portions of his land title in a court decision. To avoid losing everything, Sutter deeded his remaining land to his son, John Augustus Sutter, Jr.

The younger Sutter, who had come from Switzerland and joined his father in September 1848, saw the commercial possibilities of the land and promptly started plans for building a new town he named Sacramento, after the Sacramento River. (harvard-edu)

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John_Augustus_Sutter_c1850
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John Sutter
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Kanaka Creek
John Augustus Sutter, Jr gravestone
John Augustus Sutter, Jr gravestone

Filed Under: Prominent People Tagged With: Hawaii, John Sutter, Manuiki

Images of Old Hawaiʻi

People, places, and events in Hawaiʻi’s past come alive through text and media in “Images of Old Hawaiʻi.” These posts are informal historic summaries presented for personal, non-commercial, and educational purposes.

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  • Posing for a Statue

Categories

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  • Economy
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  • Mayflower Summaries
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  • General
  • Ali'i / Chiefs / Governance
  • Buildings
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  • Hawaiian Traditions
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Hoʻokuleana LLC

Hoʻokuleana LLC is a Planning and Consulting firm assisting property owners with Land Use Planning efforts, including Environmental Review, Entitlement Process, Permitting, Community Outreach, etc. We are uniquely positioned to assist you in a variety of needs.

Info@Hookuleana.com

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