Key Quotations--John A. Sutter

• John A. Sutter [himself]
  
  • I think I have done just like a missionary to tame and civilize the wild Indians.
  • It was a great assistance to us that we could hire the Indians as laborers so very cheaply. They make slavery wholly unnecessary.
  • I was never a speculator, I stuck to the plow.
  • You see, the gold mine is a lottery. Among hundreds only one or two get rich. Most people prefer secure jobs. Agriculture is best.
  • The goldseekers came, and they bled me freely.
  • I was robbed and ruined by lawyers and politicians.
  • . . . this Gold Discovery produced through my industry and energy . . . for me it has turned out a folly, then without having discovered the Gold, I would have become the richest wealthiest man on the Pacific Shore. [sic]
• Author James Hutchings
  The men who shared most largely in his princely hospitality and possessions were the first to take advantage of it by stealing away his possessions. . . . May God forgive us Californians. (1857)
• Philosopher Josiah Royce
  A heroic figure he was not, although his romantic position as pioneer in the great valley made him seem so to many travelers and historians. . . . his fate was the ordinary one of the persistent and unteachable dreamer. (1866)
• Sutter's Friend I.S. Tichenor
  A more noble man never lived. (1880)
• California Historian Hubert H. Bancroft
  His energy was a phase of his visionary and reckless enthusiasm . . . Of principle, of honor, or respect for the rights of others, we find but slight trace in him. (1886)
• Indian Historian Albert Hurtado
  Sutter's Fort is about the Indian business. Without Indians, there would have been no fort . . . Whatever Sutter's successes and failures, Indians paid the price. (1990)
• Historian of the "New West" Patricia Limerick
  Keeping [Sutter] on a pedestal requires a constant struggle against the facts of his life. To let him off that pedestal and to restore him to full humanity, one simply has to cease to fight the facts . . . before gold ever appeared in the mill race at Coloma, Sutter had encountered frustration, disappointment and failure. (1990)
• Historian and Sutter Editor Ken Owens
  . . . the Sutter myth . . . well may have become his most enduring legacy. (1994)