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Page: of 12
ef
AN UNNAMED gallant from
South among those who left
Juanita to her fate.
Downieville, capital of Sierra County, entered the hectic
picture of the Northern Mines in the wake of the melting snows of
the spring of 1850, And what an entry! Captain Downie, a Scotchman of the sea, had enlisted a few hardy spirits in exploiting
some fabulously rich placer discoveries at the confluence of the
North Fork of the Yuba andthe North Fork of the North Fork* of
the Yuba, Immigrants were arrving from acorss the summit and
a still greater flood, harkening to the magic word of “ounce
diggings" which had spread through the lower camps, swarmed
along the river forks or across the ridges. While the snow still
lingered, Downieville had from three to five thousand dwellers.
The fugitive ditty opening this sketch must have recited a universal
experience,. for Louis F. Taber, in his "California Gold Rush
Days," says:
Downieville was known as a tough town. Its gamblers were
the most hard-boiled of any in the Northern Mines, Even the
highwaymen who operated along the trails leading into Downieville were quicker on the trigger than anywhere else in the
gold country.
The miners usually went to town on Sunday to visit the two
large gambling saloons that stood about 150 feet apart,
where the eternal clink, clink of gold or chips rang in their
ears from morning till long after midnight. The stores were
open and full of miners buying supplies. On one side of the
street a noisy auctioneer would be selling allsorts of notions,
and in front of one of the gambling houses would be a minister
with a whiskey barrel for his pulpit, preaching to a good-sized
audience, Down the street was a large dancehall with blatant
music, The dancers were mostly men; the camp had very few
women in 1850,
R was apparently in Downieville that the wingdam, an
expedient of mining the name of which Bret Harte was fond of
injecting into his stories whether or not relevant, had its origin.
For those roistering miners could work as well as play. A large
group pooled their titles and labor to divert the current of the
stream away from their claims. Thus they were able to exploit
the river bed down to bedrock. And was it rich! The rule was that
a man was to quit work for the day when he had filled a tin cup with
dust and nuggets. Hence the name, Tin Cup Diggings.
Thus Downieville roared almost overnight from a camp into a
town, a town with its streets divided by the two converging
streams. By the Fourth of July of 1851 it was perhaps at its
peak, A celebration to excel all celebrations was planned. Taber
describes the scene in one paragraph:
to town the. most representative gathering
the town's history. It was presided over by William Walker,
known as the "Gray-eyed Man of Destiny" because of his
filibustering sallies in Mexico and Nicaragua, Among the
delegates were Stephen J. Jield, a young lawyer from Marysville, destined to wear the robes of a United States Supreme
THE PIONEER HOTEL at Beckwith marks eastern entry to Golden Fringe of Plumas.
Court justice; William M, Stewart, afterward a senatorfrom
the State of Nevada; Charles A, Felton who became a California Congressman; William Irwin, who was tobe inaugurated governor of California in 1875; and Charles S, Fairfax,
who, they said, was not at all “high hat" over the fact that
he was the last Lord Fairfax. Five or six thousand men and
a scant few women jammed the narrow streets and overflowed into the flats. Mingling were men wearing claystained hats and muddy overalls with others wearing immaculate stovepipes and with shawls or vividly dyed serapes
hanging from their shoulders.
Then came the tragedy of Juanita! Departing from the custom
of a succession of writers, I shall abstain from a recital of the
frightening details, There is no evidence that the Mexican senorita
was a common strumpet. But she was adealer in Jack Craycroft's
gambling palace, and she had her man, That she was also quick
to stiletto is evident from the incident adumbrated below.
Into the palace boomed Jock Cannon whose rich claim was
"yp the river." All hands to the bar. Jock spent more than the
ounce required to distinguis a sport from a heel, Then he made
a few passes at Juanita. She sprang up, livid, dirk in hand. Jock
backed away and the crowd laughed. Late that night he attempted
to force his way into Juanita's cabin. Again the stiletto flashed.
Jock Cannon died. Madness seized upon the immense crowd.
“Murder! Murder! Hang! 1" There was a form of trial, a
verdict of conviction, an hour's reprieve for prayer. Bravely
and defiantly, Juanita faced her executioners. She had put
on her gayest finery. A makeshift bridge across the Yuba
furnished the gallows. There the beautiful senorita was hanged!
During the passage of nearly a century of time sentiment
and sympathy have veered to the side of Juanita, She was
minding her own business, dubious business though it was.
Jock Cannon was the’ aggressor. Who shall decide whether the
honor of Juanita was worth tending to see nothing, hear noth*Prof, S, G, Morley of the faculty of the University of California, an authority on place names, states that the doubling of
the name of a stream on its tributaries is an exclusive peculiarity
of the gold rush country'of California. An extreme case would
be the North Fork of the South Fork of the North Fork. Such
nomenclature is attributed to the fact that stream explorations
were invariable from the mouth of some midway point up,
rather than from the source down, Lacking perspective, the
miner explorers had recourse to the “forks” designation,
(CONTINUED NEXT WEEK.)
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