The Diary of Johann August Sutter

John Augustus (Johann August) Sutter (1803-1880) left Switzerland for America in 1834. By 1839, he had worked his way west to California, where he became a Mexican citizen and obtained an enormous land grant at the juncture of the Sacramento and American Rivers. Discovery of gold on Sutter's land in 1848 ruined him, and he spent his last years in bitter poverty. The diary of Johann August Sutter (1932) reprints a narrative written in 1856 by Sutter in the hope that it would bolster his legal claim to lands in California. The "diary" picks up the story of his life in 1838, when he journeyed west from Missouri to California. He describes his colony on the American River, unrest of 1845, American military occupation of 1847, and the discovery of gold and impact of emigrants and miners on the Sacramento Valley.