This time of day was just about the only part of life that James Marshall enjoyed: Seeing the West reflected into the East, changing the sky into a sky of molten gold.
James chuckled bitterly…molten gold… His own gold, now long gone, was only brass in his mind. His mind was filled with what-ifs about the past, when he found gold flakes which had ruined his life, ruined his life but good.
If only John Sutter had been just a smidgen parsimonious. Sutter spent money he did not have, borrowed money he could not repay, and lost his own fortune. Damn fool. Marshall spit tobacco onto what had once been a mecca for gold diggers.
Marshall clenched his misshapen hands when he thought about Sutter. All the work Marshall had done, breaking bones in his hands, and for nothing. No blessings showered on me then. Or now.
With all that could have been, Marshall could not gain any traction in keeping his sawmill running. His workers had dropped their tools and picked up pans, running to the American River. Penniless again.
He pleaded with the California State Legislature and they awarded him with a two-year pension. What he really desired was some investigative search into the theft of his future.
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Re-creation of James Marshall's homesteader cabin at the end of his life--
While on a field trip of middle-schoolers, I saw this. Pretty sparse. |
So here he sat, gazing at the dusky sky disappear, before he arose and went into his homestead shack. If only, if only…
Gold was discovered on January 24, 1848
The underlined words are from March 2015 Wednesday Words, donated by fellow blogger Delores, and has since been continued by other bloggers. These awesome writers, Elephant's Child, Mark Koopman, River can provide these interesting words.
When I was teaching middle school, we took 5th-8th students to Sacramento for two overnights. Visiting this site was part of our trip; I do not know if the students understood the impact of this part of history or not.
