The commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the discovery of gold in January of 1848 at Sutter's mill, has been kicked off on PBS with a one-hour historical documentary. "The Gold Rush" portrays the great 19th-century quest for gold in frontier California. The gold-seekers were dubbed "49ers" because most left home in 1849. The story is intricately intertwined with the life of Johann August Sutter, who lost everything. Success stories of frontier California were Levi Strauss and John Studebaker.

In the last issue of American Heritage, Feb-Mar 1998 there is also an extensive story. Given here is a part of this article:

Save for the Civil War, what occurred after a carpenter glimpsed a flash of yellow 150 years ago was the biggest story of the Nineteenth century.Richard Reinhardt examines what we think we know (and don't) about the people who made it happen.

All That Glittered

It was 150 years ago this January that Jim Marshall, the boss carpenter of a crew of Maidu Indians and transient Mormon settlers who were building a sawmill in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, glimpsed a metallic twinkle in a freshly dug tailrace. Marshall too it to be the glint of gold, and he was right. From that moment--celebrated and debunked, distorted but unforgettable--Marshall's life and that of his patron, John Sutter, were effective ruined; the state of California was prematurely delivered; the current of American history, which had been trickling leisurely westward for a couple of hundred years, surged abruptly across the continent to the Pacific Coast; a hundred thousand ,men and women left home and went to California to seek a pocketful of gold; and the world was changed.

At the village of Coloma on the south fork of the American River, there are picnic grounds and a replica of John Sutter's mill to mark the spot where Marshall's exclamation (customarily rendered "boys, I believe I've found a gold mine!") set off the greatest of all gold rushes. Busloads of schoolchildren swarm the site. Teachers dredge up everything they know about that chilly afternoon in 1848 and retell the story in all its debatable details; how Marshall took his chips of gleaming yellow gravel to the cabin of his foreman, Peter Wimmer, where Wimmer's wife, Jane (or was here name Jennie?), boiled them in a pot of homemade soap to see if lye would dim their color; how Marshall carried his treasure in a knotted cloth to Sutter, an ambitious immigrant from Switzerland who had obtained a Mexican land grant and was building and fortifying a private empire he called New Helvetia; ... (pp 43-54.)

Who was Sutter? Those who went to school app. the time I did, may remember reading one of the Cultural Graded Readers by Goedsche and Glaettli Sutter Heinle & Heinle). "Johann August Sutter kommt aus Kandern in Süddeutschlnad. Im Jahre 1833 wohnt er mit seiner Frau und vier Kindern in einer kleinen Stadt in der Schweiz. Die Stadt heisst Burgdorf." This is how the story started.

We have been using the Sutter story very effectively in the classroom with an old black/white German movie "Kaiser von Kalifornien," produced by famed Luis Trenker, with him in the title role. He portrays the life story of Sutter, his trek to California, his rise to wealth and fame, his struggle to hang on to his land. The video is still available from the German Language Video Center in Indianapolis (317) 547-1257.

Ruth Reichmann

All four middle schools in Appleton use the book, as it dovetails so nicely with the 8th grade history curriculum. We end with a field trip in early May to New Glarus, WI, a Swiss settlement. Here we learn about our own Swiss immigrants, why they left Switzerland and what they did once they got here. Its a great trip!

Before beginning the book, we go over reading strategies and give them a pep talk. We take it slow in the beginning, with lots of help. Otherwise the kids are afraid of reading a "whole book" in German!

We have developed several activities for each chapter. We have a series of stickmen drawings, depicting the action for the chapters. Sometimes we write captions for the pictures in small groups, sometimes as a class. Sometimes we just talk about them. For some chapters, we have a summary, which the students have to put in order. Sometimes I write the sentences on large paper and the students have to rearrange their classmates. We have a world map, on which the kids keep track of Sutter's progress. We also have more traditional worksheets, with true/false questions, short answer and fill in the blank type exercises. (If the kids really read the fill in the blanks sentences, they will realize that they summarize the chapter.)

I have devised a vocabulary partner activitity, based on an idea I heard at a workshop. I have a sheet of vocab words for each partner, one in English and one in German. There are about 10 words in a list, and a list for each chapter. They begin with the first chapter. The one with the English list begins saying the words in German. The partner checks with the German list. As soon as he makes a mistake, they trade lists and the other one says the German. They always have to begin at the beginning of the list and can't move on until they can say a complete list perfectly. (Put the hardest words first, as they will say these over and over again.) We do this for about 5 minutes a day. I am amazed at how quickly they learn in this way! Vocab was always a problem before. At the end of the 5 minutes, I collect the list and then give someone a chance to say the list for the class, earning a piece of candy. They love this. Having them more familiar with the vocab has really helped with reading the book.

At the end of the book, they each select a chapter they felt they understood well, and make a poster, consisting of 4 to 6 pictures with captions to illustrate the action of the chapter. They also have to summarize it, about a page in length. We work on this for a while, as many of them don't seem to know how to summarize.

I also have slides of Sutters fort in Sacramento, which I show and talk about in German.

I would love to hear your ideas and activities for this book. I have often thought of doing a different story, but this fits into the interdisciplinary idea so well.

Marge Draheim
Wilson Middle School

The commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the discovery of gold in January of 1848 at Sutter's mill, has been kicked off on PBS with a one-hour historical documentary.

There is an excellent rendition of this event in Stefan Zweig's "Sternstunden der Menschheit" (S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt). The section dealing with Sutter and the discovery of gold is entitled "Die Entdeckung Eldorados". It's only 7 pages long, but it's fascinating and contains a wealth of information.

I took my group of German exchange students to Coloma last March. They actually panned for gold on the shore opposite the replica of Sutter's mill. Since we were on our way to Lake Tahoe, I had only planned to be in Coloma for an hour, but the kids were so involved in panning that I couldn't get them away from the river for two hours. No wonder, they were actually finding gold. Later we stopped at Twin Bridges for a lunch break. The next thing I knew they had their pans out again and were heading for the river. I really got a kick out of it. The word "Goldrausch" was no longer just a historical term for them. They had experienced it.

We also visited Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, and some of them bought a copy of Sutter's own sketch of the fort. All the terms for various parts of the settlement are in German.

Martin Williams
Wilhelm-Raabe-Schule
Hannover, Germany

Return to Famous German-Americans Page.