Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/62

 46 Fred Lockley edge of the rocks and crevices and soon filled his ounce bottle with little nuggets ranging in size from a grain of wheat to the size of a pea. "When we arrived at the fort, Captain Sutter made us heartily welcome. He told my father the fort would accommodate twelve families and the first twelve fami- lies joining his colony would be furnished quarters there. He furnished us quarters in the fort and also gave us plenty of fresh beef, potatoes, onions, coffee and sugar. The families who joined the colony received the regular rations in accordance with the number of children in the family. He gave work to all the men who cared to work. Some of the men helped break the wild Spanish cattle to plow. "The native method of farming was by means of crude plows drawn by two yoke of oxen. Instead of yokes, the cattle had poles lashed to their horns. They used raw- hides for chains and their method of plowing was to have one man lead the oxen and one man on each side with a long sharp stick to goad the oxen. Captain Sutter en- gaged my father to make ox yokes to replace the native rigging. Our men had a busy and strenuous job, break- ing the native cattle to plow. They would put one of our well-broken teams in front, then put a yoke of wild steers in the middle and a well-broken American yoke of oxen in the rear. In this way our men broke twenty yoke of oxen during the winter. "There was a large cookhouse at the fort, where we children liked to watch them doing the cooking. They cooked here for a large number of Indian laborers. In addition to the Indian workers, there were a lot of Indian boys who were being trained to work. Sutter had to keep getting new workers, as many of the Indians would die each winter of mountain fever. "These Indian boys were fed in a peculiar way. They ground barley for them, made it into a gruel, and emptied it into a long trough. When the big dinner bell rang the