These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Foresthill Trails Alliance as a group. Sherri Osborn
The month of April was not yet gone; there were no evidences of any work having been done by white men; but while traveling, the little party had observed signs of Indians, and, deeming any they would meet would be hostile on account of their small number, a sharp lookout was kept. The remained near the falls a day or two, endeavoring to get to the bottom of a deep hole which was just below them, where the crude gold diggers imagined all of the large chunks should be, if there were any at all in the locality, but, not succeeding, they broke camp and started down the stream. Captain Merritt, who was an experienced frontiersman, took the lead. They had proceeded a short distance when they reached the head of a large bar situated upon the south side of the river; and below them, some distance down the bar, was a jutting point of rocks, beyond which they could not see. The Captain was a nervous, excitable man, and when excited stuttered badly. When a few yards down the bar, he suddenly stopped short, bringing the train to a halt, and exclaimed: "B-b-by G-g-god, he-he-r's wh-white ma-man's ha-ha-r! Ye-yes, a-and Injun's ha-har, too!" And sure enough, so it was; there upon the pebbly bar above high-water mark, among evidences of a plundered camp, was white man's hair, strewn around with that of the Indian -- silent evidence that the life of the superior race had not gone out to the great Unknown unavenged and without a struggle. No bodies were found, but an ash heap close by, in which there were calcined bones, told the story of the cremation of the white and red men together.
Upon this discovery, the point of rocks ahead became a barrier past beyond which the white men dared not go for fear of an ambuscade, and they accordingly retraced their steps to the opposite head of the bar. They unpacked and prepared for an attack. They remained in that position until the following morning, and, no Indians coming to molest them, nor none being seen, Captain Merritt armed the boy Peg, and sent him around the point of rocks to reconnoiter. He returned, and reported signs but no Indians in sight. Thereupon, all three, with arms in readiness in case of necessity, sallied forth for further exploration down the river. Scarcely had they passed the point before some sixty or seventy Indians appeared upon the bench, or higher bar, above them, yelling and gesticulating in a frightful manner, but as they were only armed with bows and arrows, dared not attack. Now that the enemy were in sight, all fear of ambush passed away, and with Rachael ( as Merritt called his old-fashioned rifle), poised for business, the white men watched the yelping savages until the latter apparently became convinced that they could do no harm to the former, and, in the course of a few hours, retreated up the mountain and disappeared from view.
Upon the river bar that the whites were thus left the masters of were fine groves of willows, some ash trees, and many smooth-barked, thrifty alders, and while there it occurred to Buckner that, as the bars along the South Fork and other streams to the southward were all designated with names, he would name the one they were then occupying. He accordingly took his pocket knife and cut upon the smooth and easily slipping bark of an alder tree "MURDERER'S BAR" by which the spot has ever since been known.
Who the men killed were has never been satisfactorily determined. They probably met their fate late in the fall of 1848; and Mr. Buckner is of the opinion that there were three of them, and that two, named Wood and Graham, came into the country with him in Captain Martin's company of Oregonians.
Buckner's Bar was shallow and paid well -- one of the men digging, Peg packing the dirt, and the other washing in a rocker dug out of a log and rigged with a rawhide riddle. Merritt, near the end of May, concluded to go down to the settlements, intending to return in a short time, leaving Peg with Buckner. Captain Merritt, like many another generous hearted, open-souled pioneer, when in the settlements after prolonged trips in the wilderness was much given to conviviality, and Buckner, knowing the weakness of his friend, exacted the promise from him at parting that he would touch the flowing bowl sparingly in his absence. But, alas, for the weakness of human nature enveloped in the casket of a mountaineer! Reaching the portals of civilization, he encountered the subtle tempter, and was engulfed. He died a few weeks after leaving the mines; and poor Peg, becoming disconsolate at the non return of his master, went to seek him, and Buckner was left alone upon the river.
Toward the latter part of June, however, Tom Buckner's heart was gladdened by the appearance of other men, not hostile, at his camp, in the person of J.B. Charbonnear, Jim Becksouth and Sam Myers, all noted mountaineers; and from that time onward came large crowds of gold-seekers, so that before the end of July, the river banks fairly swarmed with humanity above and below him for many miles.
With the influx of population came some of the luxuries of civilization, and many of the crude theories and plans of inexperienced gold-gatherers. When the water in the river had fallen to a low stage, a plan was formed to cut a canal from the head of Buckner's Bar to a point below the lower end of Murderer's Bar, and one of the rules governing the action of the company stated that, "Any shareholder getting drunk during the time he should be on duty, shall pay into the common treasury of the company a fine of one ounce of gold-dust, and shall also forfeit all dividends during such time." This was pretty binding, as the gold obtained during the day was divided among the shareholders every night, and, at the same time, the great Danite of the Mormon apostle, Porter Rockwell, was packing into camp whiskey by the mule load, which found ready sale. Upon arriving with his train, which he did once a week, at the top of the hill leading into the canon, Rockwell would sound a horn he carried with him, upon hearing which a partner on the bar, named Jack Smith, would fire off a gun -- a signal that "business" would soon begin, when the people would flock in from far up and down the stream for the purpose of getting gloriously drunk, and to have fun! So many of the shareholders in the canal thus becoming subject to fine and the forfeiture of dividends, soon caused grumbling and dissatisfaction; the scheme collapsed, and the ground was parceled out in small claims to the different individuals.
A "claim" was a spot of ground fifteen feet wide, which, when there was a bar on the opposite side of the river, only extended to the center of the stream; but otherwise -- when no bar -- clear across, running back into the hill to an indefinite distance.
As for food to feed these masses, occasionally a grizzly bear would wander near the camps and would be shot. The rest of the time the miners fed on deer which were abundant.
These resulted in a final agreement between five companies, whose united membership was over 400, to join flumes, covering a length of more than a mile of the river. These were named, respectively, Vermont, Buckner's Bar, Sailor Claim, Murderer's Bar, and New York Bar Companies. As there were no saw-mills in the country, this was certainly a vast undertaking under the circumstances; but from the cosmopolitan crowd arose the inventive genius necessary for the occasion. Stephen Tyler and a man named Lefingwell, members of the Murderer's Bar Company, proposed to their associates that, for the sum of $6.00 per linear foot, they would construct a flume twelve feet wide and three feet high, provided the company would grade and prepare the way for laying it. This proposal was accepted. Tyler and Lefingwell, immediately went down to Sacramento, where they obtained and ordinary horse-power, such as were in those days used upon threshing machines, a circular saw, and about 150 broncho horses, which, in a few days were all brought to the locality of the scene of this magnificent project.
A "saw-mill" was in time improvised, which for uniqueness, perhaps, was never surpassed. A log was placed upon the carriage way of the "mill;" an adjacent corral was levied upon for the "motor," and as many broncho horses secured to the levers of the machine as could find room, while yelling vaqueros, with formidable whips, urged the frightened animals to their utmost efforts of strength and speed. The horses thus used could not endure a long term of service, and as the exhausted ones were turned out to pick their subsistence upon the hillsides under the watchful eye of a herdsman, fresh relays were drawn from the corral. Some few thousand feet of lumber were sawed by this method; but it was rough and came slowly. The motive power which drove the machinery of the new-fangled mill daily became less effective, until, at length, the hills were covered with, starved, spiritless, sore-necked, crippled and generally bungled-up frames of the equine race, instead of a trim, active little beasts fresh from a California caballada of a few weeks before. The contractors finding that they could not accomplish the job in the manner begun, and the men who were building such high hopes of wealth to come from the river's bed, getting anxious as the advancing season brought them nearer and nearer to the time when high water might be expected, an agreement was made the Tyler and Lefingwell would rive out puncheon from the sugar pine, and lay a flume with that, while the company would get canvas, sew it together and line it -as the puncheon flooring alone would contain large cracks, through which the water would escape, which the canvas would entirely cover up.
Meanwhile the adjoining companies had been progressing in about the same ratio, some whip-sawing lumber, others splitting out puncheon, and some of them cutting poles to lay down as the flooring of the flume upon which to lay canvas lining. By this time a general conclusion had been arrived at that the entire length of the flume must be lined with canvas. As the distance was more than a mile, the flume, twelve feet wide, with sides three feet high, and canvas at that time not less than one dollar a yard, and all required sewing together, this involved a great expenditure as well as much labor. Sailors and all others who could or would use the "palm" were set at work at a half-ounce a day wages sewing the canvas flume lining.
While these things were progressing, other necessary work was going on, delegations from each company being assigned to the various duties. Generally the flume bed was upon ground above water, but there was one deep hole, varying from twelve to twenty-four feet in water, in which posts had to be set up and stringers placed upon which to receive the flume. Otis T. Nichols superintended that portion of the work, and his crew comprised of doctors, lawyers, devines, and all others unequal to the task of sewing canvas, had a difficult time in getting the posts in position. The dam by which the water was turned into the flume was at the falls. The construction of this was superintended by Major Harry Love, afterwards noted in connection with the capture of the bandit Joaquin.
At length, one bright Saturday in September, at 11 o'clock A.M. witnessed the completion of the structure, canvas-lined from head to foot, and the water flowing through it -- the realization of months of arduous toil and anxious hopes. The water would require a little time to drain off, and what more proper thing to do could there be than to wait until Monday morning before beginning general work? As high as $50 a pan had been obtained in digging a foundation to the bed-rock for some of the posts which held up the flume; two men owning interests had quietly slipped out of their blankets on Sunday morning, took a rocker and "prospected," returning before breakfast with nine pounds and a half of gold; and what could prevent the realization of the golden dreams of a fortune won, in which all the participants of the scheme indulged?
But a terrible disappointment was in store for them. Upon the mountain peaks to the eastward, where the river had its source, on Sunday evening gathered portentous clouds, and deluged the highlands with rain, all unknown to the hopeful men who were low down upon the stream.
The locality written of in the foregoing was not an exceptional place with regard to population and plans for garnering up the gold. Above, for many miles, were wing-dams, races through which the water of the river was directed by dams thrown clear across the stream, and obstructions of various sorts, one in succession above another. The copious rain-fall striking the bare granite slopes ran off with great rapidity and soon swelled the stream beyond the carrying capacity of some of the races high up on the river, and as the dams were not made to withstand great pressure, they soon gave way, not only letting down the resultant waters of the storm, but also that which had been held back. The carrying away of one precipitated upon the next below a mass of water and debris, which, in turn, added its own accumulations to the flood, which at length, as it swept on in its downward course, became irresistible.
All of the old miners who were upon the Middle Fork of the American in 1850 remember the September flood. This swollen torrent reached the dam at Murderer's Bar early on Monday morning when everybody were expecting to go to work in the bed of the river. The alarm was sounded and hundreds of men appeared on the scene. Rapidly rose the seething waters, the flume running full, until it reached the top of the dam. Higher and higher it piled back of the rocky barrier that obstructed it, until a greater level was reached, when it began to pour over the dam and slowly fill up the bed of the stream that had been drained. The water reached the floor of the flume, which the fast disappearing dam was lightening of its burden of water, but little water now flowing through it. In a few moments more additional rocks are swept away from the crest of the dam, and the water speedily deepens under the flume, which is not solidly spiked to its foundation. Another moment the whole structure floats, breaks from its mooring, and moves down the river out of sight, like an enormous serpent, wriggling and twisting along the sinuous stream, held together by its lining of canvas.
Thus, in an hour's time, was the labor of hundreds of men for months destroyed, their fond hopes dissipated, and their bright dreams of wealth and home rudely dispelled. Thousands of men witnessed the passage of the floating flume, which did not break up for several miles, and was the source for two or three years after whence miners along the river supplied themselves with canvas.