Weekly Trinity journal., 1876-12-30

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prospecting showed to be in their chan
nels.
Some time however, in the summer of
/ 1S49, party of four or five men penetra-
ted into Weaver Basin and struck the
mines which hrst made the county fa-
nous. Rich Gulch was the scene of
their first regular Inbors, aud though we
| have no figures showing the amounts
I they made, yet we can we'll believe them
to be fabulous. With that desire for Sc
crecy which so often made itself mani
fest in those days they took every precau-
tion to avoid discovery. One Of their
number was sent down to the mouth of
Weaver Creek, to ascertain at what time
the riley water produced by their wash
| ings reached the river, and their hours
of labor were regulated accordingly, they
sometimes failing to get to work until
late in the day. But it subsequently
proved that they rightly apprehended the
true source of danger of discovery, for
|
by this means. A stollng river miner
! happened to cross the creek and noticed
the appearance of the water. Rightly
concluding that il was caused by min
ers, and that they would not work unless
they were getting pay he, with his com
punions followed up the stream and sur
/ 4 IL -, a, :,l
the secret of the near rich diggings IN the
possession of so many it soon became no
secret at all and the rush Of miners be-
gan.
BY the organizing Acts Cf the Legis'a
ture dividing the State INTO counties,
Trinity county was attached to Shasta
county until 1851. In May of that year
a separate county government was order
ed established and the first election held.
The county was n large one, embracing
all the territory now included in the
counties of Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte
and Klamath. In the list of Candi-
dates offering at this first election we do
not find the names of any who are now
among our citizens, except in that por-
ton of the county since erected into the
county of Humboldt. This is not to be
wondered at when we consider the migra-
tory character of all CaliIornia's popula-
ton at the time, where men, when dis p
appointed in their expectations, mining
or otherwise, had little to attach them to
any particular spot and were as nomadic
in their habits as the Arabs. Hon. John
! T.. Burch was the first county clerk, chos-
en- that year, and he remained longer in
the county than any of the others. But a
the fame of other discoveries became
bruited abroad large aecessions to the
population came in and the towns began
to have more of n permanent appearance.
From 1850 to 1861, may be considered as
the best years of our history-the flood of
the last named year having inflicted a
blow upon the prosperity of the mining
interests every where from which they
never recovered.
We have alluded in the earlier numbers
of these papers to the Indian population
found here by Major Reading and his
associates. 1t is, of course, hard to form
an estimate of the numbers of this peo-
Pile, but there must have been thousands.
For neatly the whole length of the main
Trinity River they had their camps,
some spots being more tavoritc than 9TH
ers, and at times having two or three
hundred of them there. Kanaka Bar
and the bar opposite was one of these iav-
orte places, and has been SO up to the
present time. But the Indians of Trinity
have shared the fate oftheir race when
ever brought into contact with civiliza-
tion, and have melted away until but a
miserable remnant, probably not num-
bering Il hundred souls all told, is left.
Their power MS tribe was broken in the
battle, or rather massacre, at Bridge
Gulch in March 1852, and they soon after
came in and made peace with the whites.
For three or four years they stood the
contact with civilization pretty well, then
sort of lung disease broke out which,
though apparently not contagious became
universal, and was almost invariably ia
tai. The healihiest and strongest looking
were marked as victims, and, MS they
knew nothing of medicine ard refused
to allow themselves to be treated by their
white neighbors, not one in twenty re-
covered. Probably the great change in
diet had much to do with the fatality
which accompanied the attacks of dis
ease. From the food to which they had
always been accustomed, they turned, in
great measure to that of the whites =
The abandoned bedrock of the ea,ly
miners was closely cleaned by them, and
it was no uncommon thing to see a cam /
deserted, while all, big and little were
out with pans and iron scrapers, and the
amount of money they thus realized wa:
far greater than would be at first supposed
With the money thus gained it became
an easy matter to buy beef, -four, sugar
and fish, which were almost the only sta.
pile articles OF "yapitoo" diet for which
they seemed to care. Whether this sud
den and radical change of food was onC
of the causes which caused the great NOR
tality among them, we can only suppose
Bnt one thing is certain, that the Win
toons lost more than half their numbers
in two or three years. while of those tina
were spared there was not one but believ
ed the tribe doomed to speedy extinction
The country was not cursed much will
Chinese miners until 1854. Theie wer
few companies of these pests who mad
their way up here, but it was not unit
, that year that they made their appear