and sold important supplies to the new inflow of people traveling to California. His fort still lies on the present-day site of Sacramento. (Cal State Library, 1)
             Luckily for Sutter, he got the local Indians to work for him. In a book written by Donald Jackson, the Indians harvested his wheat and ate in animal troughs in the courtyard of his adobe fort. He had Mexican Vaqueros tending to vast herds that roamed the fort and its surroundings. He also grew vineyards that..."European-born vintners looked after" (8). All in all, Sutter was building what he though to be his future dream castle. (Jackson 7"
             After the war with Mexico, John Sutter was left with the spoils that had been left in the aftermath. The book Gold Dust states that about 150 Mormons who had been soldiers of the war had been ordered to stay in California by Mormon leaders in Utah. A messenger from Salt Lake had "told them to stay there through the winter due to the lack of food in Zion" (8). The 150 Mormons consisted of carpenters, tanners, wagonmakers, and mechanics. Sutter had badly wanted to build a flower mill and a sawmill. This gave him the opportunity to do so immediately. (Jackson 8, 9)
             The sawmill was "located forty-five miles up the American River in Coloma Valley" (8). To supervise the building of the sawmill he employed the services of James Marshall. Marshall was "a strange, sober man...who had wondered down from Oregon two years earlier" (8). Jackson states that Marshall believed that he could see visions of the future, which caused him to be labeled as "peculiar." (Jackson 8)
             It was January 24 when James Marshall noticed a few glimmers of something in the mud a few miles upstream from the mill. He and his crew had been working on widening a tailrace for Sutter's Mill. He only had a faint idea of the types of minerals in the area, yet seeing the glimmers of the mineral excite...