Playing Chess with God BY VERNE R. ALBRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

A hundred and fifty miles northeast of San Francisco, in California's Sierra Nevada foothills, John Sutter's new sawmill was ready for its first test. Water—brought from the American River in a manmade ditch—briefly rotated the huge main wheel then backed up, unable to exit the mill fast enough. The tailrace canal needed to be wider and steeper. 

For the rest of the day, workmen dug and blasted the hard, rocky soil. That night, flood gates were opened to wash the channel clean. While inspecting their progress the next morning, Superintendent James Marshall found a shiny metal flake. Compared to a five dollar gold piece, its color was identical. 

For the rest of that week Marshall and his men found fragments and finally a nugget big enough to be bitten, hammered, boiled in lye, and melted on hot coals. These tests left no doubt. The perplexing yellow metal was gold. Workers searched the river and found plenty more. 

John Sutter feared a gold rush would threaten his fifty-thousand-acre agricultural empire, but it was too late to keep the news secret. First to take advantage were Mormons who had fled persecution and violence in Missouri and Illinois. Men from the Mexican War's Mormon Battalion left Sutter's Mill and his other businesses that employed them. More came from Mormon Island, bringing wives and children to work alongside them. 

"Soon there won't be anyone involved in any other activity," Marshall told Sutter when the latter complained his workers were deserting him."Not with gold being scooped up at the rate of two thousand dollars a man per day." 

But there were other ways to get rich during a gold rush. Back when San Francisco was called Yerba Buena, Sam Brannan had brought two hundred fellow Mormons to California. He now owned stores in the Sierra Nevada foothills and learned about the momentous discovery when customers began paying for purchases with gold.

 A natural-born promoter, Brannan hired local craftsmen to fill his stores with prospector's tools and supplies—then hurried to San Francisco. Running up and down the streets, he waved his hat with one hand and rattled a bottle of gold with the other. 

"Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" he shouted over and over.

Soon Brannan's stores were supplying four thousand '48ers, so-called because it was 1848. Most found so much gold they feared an oversupply would drive the price down to almost nothing. When there were no more nuggets to be picked up off the ground or plucked from creeks, men needed only a knife to pry more from rocks. Or a pick and shovel to dig sand, dirt, and gravel so gold could be washed from it.

 In the midst of this madness Portales, a Chilean schooner, put in at San Francisco to find the city deserted except for the aged and infirm, who eagerly passed along the momentous news. But their tale was suspect because of how easily they revealed information that could bring outsiders to compete with their friends in the Gold Country. Only two of Portales's crew jumped ship. The rest brought the questionable tale to Talcahuano, halfway down Chile's long coastline.