John Sutter

John Augustus Sutter (February 23, 1803 – June 18, 1880), born Johann August Sutter and known in Spanish as Don Juan Sutter, was a Swiss immigrant who became a Mexican and later an American citizen, known for establishing Sutter's Fort in the area that would eventually become Sacramento, California, the state's capital. His employee James W. Marshall discovered gold, leading to the founding of the mill-making team at Sutter's Mill. Sutter, however, saw his own business ventures fail during the California gold rush, though those of his elder son, John Augustus Sutter Jr., were more successful.

Sutter was born on February 23, 1803, in Kandern, Baden in present-day Germany, to Johann Jakob Sutter, a foreman at a paper mill, and Christina Wilhelmine Sutter (née Stober). His father came from the nearby town of Rünenberg, in the canton of Basel in Switzerland, and his maternal grandfather was a pastor from Grenzach, on the Swiss-German border.

After attending school in Kandern, Sutter studied at Saint-Blaise from 1818 to 1819. He then worked as an apprentice at the Thurneysen printing and publishing house in Basel until 1823. From 1823 to 1828, he was employed as a clerk in clothing shops in Aarburg and Burgdorf. At age 21, Sutter married the daughter of a wealthy widow. He briefly operated a store but spent more time indulging his interests than managing the business. Facing mounting debts and legal charges that could lead to imprisonment, he fled to America to avoid trial, adopting the name Captain John Augustus Sutter.

In May 1834, he left his wife and five children behind in Burgdorf, Switzerland, and with a French passport, he boarded the ship Sully, which traveled from Le Havre, France, to New York City, where it arrived on July 14, 1834.

In North America, John Augustus Sutter (as he would call himself for the rest of his life) undertook extensive travels. Before he went to the United States, he had learned Spanish, English, and French. He and 35 Germans traveled from the St. Louis area to Santa Fe, New Mexico (then a province of Mexico), before eventually settling in Westport (modern-day Kansas City). On April 1, 1838, he joined a group of missionaries, led by the fur trapper Andrew Drips, and traveled the Oregon Trail to Fort Vancouver in Oregon Territory, which they reached in October. Sutter originally planned to cross the Siskiyou Mountains during the winter, but acting chief factor James Douglas convinced him that such an attempt would be perilous. Douglas charged Sutter £21 to arrange transportation on the British bark Columbia for himself and his eight followers.

The Columbia departed Fort Vancouver on November 11 and sailed to the Hawaiian Kingdom, reaching Honolulu on December 9. Sutter had missed the only ship outbound for Alta California, and had to remain in the kingdom for four months. Over the months, Sutter developed friendly relations with the European-American community, dining with Consuls of the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, John Coffin Jones and Richard Charlton, as well as merchants like American Faxon Atherton. The brig Clementine was eventually hired by Sutter to take freight provisions and general merchandise for New Archangel (now known as Sitka), the capital of the Russian-American Company colonies in Russian America. Joining the crew as unpaid supercargo, Sutter, 10 Native Hawaiian laborers, and several other followers embarked on April 20, 1839. Staying at New Archangel for a month, Sutter joined several balls hosted by Governor Kupreyanov, who likely gave help in determining the course of the Sacramento River. The Clementine then sailed for Alta California, arriving on July 1, 1839, at Yerba Buena (now San Francisco), which at that time was only a small seaport town.

At the time of Sutter's arrival, Alta California was a province of Mexico and had a population of Native Americans estimated at 100,000–700,000. Sutter had to go to the capital at Monterey to obtain permission from the governor, Juan Bautista Alvarado, to settle in the territory. Alvarado saw Sutter's plan of establishing a colony in Central Valley as useful in "buttressing the frontier which he was trying to maintain against Indians, Russians, Americans and British." Sutter persuaded Governor Alvarado to grant him 48,400 acres of land for the sake of curtailing American encroachment on the Mexican territory of California. This stretch of land was called New Helvetia and Sutter was given the right to "represent in the Establishment of New Helvetia all the laws of the country, to function as political authority and dispenser of justice, in order to prevent the robberies committed by adventurers from the United States, to stop the invasion of savage Indians, and the hunting and trading by companies from the Columbia (river)."

The governor required Sutter to meet certain conditions to qualify for land ownership. These included residing in the territory for one year and becoming a Mexican citizen, which Sutter fulfilled on August 29, 1840. After receiving the land grant and building his fort, Sutter did not strictly adhere on his initial agreement to deter European settlers. Instead, he actively supported the migrations of Europeans to California. Sutter later stated, "I gave passports to those entering the country… and this (Bautista) did not like it… I encouraged immigration, while they discouraged it. I sympathized with the Americans while they hated them."