Popular Culture Review Vol. 1, December 1989 | Page 64

staunch believers in Lady Luck. A grub stake was all they asked
for, and they would generously share half o f their claim for it. This
fit Americans especially well, for to them, gambling was as
American as homemade apple pie. Didn’t this country begin on a
gamble, breaking away from a powerful England? W asn’t gam
bling the hallmark of the capitalistic system of the nation? Could
America ever have produced Astors, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and
Gettys unless it believed in gambling? Gold was in the Americas
then and it got into the blood of these gamblers, almost put there as
a challenge and crucible to form the American character.
One man, who was not an American, but a German/Swiss by
birth in 1803, felt that same gambling urge and restlessness as he
grew up. His name was John Augustus Sutter and he fled the beauty
but regimentation of his native land. A would-be entrepreneur, he
also fled his many creditors there. At age 34, the spirit of the
American adventure got hold of him and, eventually, he was
attracted to the Sacramento Valley in central Mexican California,
where the only inhabitants were Indians. An affable man and a
great talker, some characterized Sutter as a “con man,” but if he
was, it was part of his nature. He talked the Mexican governor into
granting him fifty thousand acres, built a fort and called it New
Helvetia. O f course, he also needed tools and materials to build the
fort and this time he conned the Russians at Fort Ross to supply
them on credit. He never paid them.
In 1848, when California joined the United States, Sutter was
delighted and now became an American citizen. In an expansion
ist mood himself, Sutter saw that to progress, he would have