Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/63

 Recollections of B. F. Bonney 47 Indian boys would go to the trough and with their fingers would scrape up the porridge and eat it. "In the middle of the fort was a big oven where the bread was baked. Near by was a well from which we all drank water. At the east end of the fort there was a pile of oak lumber. Here the Indians and other ser- vants were punished for any infraction of the rules. The man or boy to be punished would be strapped face down- ward to one of the oak logs and would then be flogged on the back with a five-tailed raw-hide. Out near the gate a large bell was hung. One of the servants rang this every hour so people would know what time it was. "So many emigrants were crowded into the fort that winter that as a result there was a good deal of sickness. In those days it was called mountain fever; now it is called typhoid fever. A large number of the natives died of this, as well as some of the emigrants, mainly children. Among those who died was Dr. Gildea. He was the one who was going back the next spring with my father to get rich picking up the gold nuggets at our old camping place. He died January 22, 1846, and as you know, two years later gold was discovered in the mill race at Sutter's Fort. My uncle, Truman Bonney, who had gone north to Oregon, remembered where we chil- dren had found the gold, so he and some others returned to our old camping place to stake out claims, but it had already been staked out, and proved to be very rich ground. "The fall we arrived at Sutter's Fort there was a good deal of trouble about the coming of Americans to California. A Mexican officer named Castro brought up the question of the legality of foreigners coming to California without passports. The authorities at Mexi- can City had issued instructions that the Americans from the Sandwich Islands could come to California even though their passports were not regular, but that the emigrants who came from Missouri or who came south