Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
WELLS FARGO'S PIONEER MESSENGER
Pilsbury "Chips" Hodgkins
One spring evening in 1851, twenty-six-year-old "Chips" Hodgkins spurred his mule into the California gold-mining camp of Jacksonville. His appearance was much like that of any forty-niner: his dark, wavy hair set off by a full beard and covered by a slouch felt hat, finished off with a red miner's overshirt, canvas trousers, and knee-high boots. And his personality matched that of any other gold seeker: loud, funny, flamboyant, ever ready for a new adventure, but simultaneously kind and gentle. Like most men in the Mother Lode, he had not struck it rich. He gave up his miner's pick and gold pan to become an express rider, one of the first in the far west.
Jacksonville was like many towns in the Gold Rush: at least 98 percent male. Its 250 inhabitants lived in canvas tents and log cabins clustered in a deep canyon along the Tuolumne River. They were unwashed, were heavily whiskered, and longed for female company. Men would gather by the dozens, hats doffed in admiration and respect, just to catch sight of a woman. They would pay exorbitant prices to eat a meal prepared by anyone of the opposite sex. The miners spent their days in backbreaking work, digging along the river and shoveling sand and gravel into long wood sluice boxes in an effort to separate the tiny flakes of gold. Companies of miners exhausted themselves erecting dams and canals in efforts to change the Tuolumne River's course so that they could mine the dry streambed, but winter floods would inevitably wash away their labors. Far from their homes on the East Coast or in Europe, Australia, and South America, and starved for newspapers and letters from loved ones, they looked forward to the arrival of any mounted express messenger.
Chips's distinctive white mule, Polly, pulled up almost by habit at the town's sole restaurant. A small throng gathered as he hitched her to the front porch. His saddlebags held a fortune: two thousand troy ounces of gold nuggets, weighing about 137 pounds, plus something just as valuable: the latest newspapers from the East Coast. Dust-covered and exhausted after his long ride, Chips stepped inside for a hot meal. There he was the center of attention, for he was their link to the outside world. As was customary for an express rider, he had the camp's stagecoach hostler guard his horse and treasure. When he finished eating supper, he stepped outside and checked on his mount and his saddlebags. Two men — he later called them "notorious ruffians" — approached, and one said, "Hello, Chips. Where are you heading tonight?"
Hodgkins was too smart and too suspicious to fall for a ruse like that, so he replied, "Big Oak Flat." That was a remote mining camp atop nearby Priest Grade, which was, and still is, a steep, winding journey into the Sierra Nevada.
One of the outlaws remarked, "You have a big hill to climb."
"I guess I could do it," responded Chips. Then he mounted his horse and started on the trail that led to a ferry across the Tuolumne River to Priest Grade. As soon as he rounded the first bend, he spurred his animal up a side ravine and hid in the brush. A few minutes later, he heard the approaching clatter of horses' hooves, then the voices of the two men. One said, "Hurry on or we won't catch him before he crosses the river."
The second rider responded with an oath: "The odds are we'll catch him going up the hill."
The desperadoes rode on. Then Hodgkins mounted his horse and galloped to his actual destination, Sonora. An important mining center, the town got its name from the first Mexican gold hunters to settle there, and was widely known as the Queen of the Southern Mines. Chips later learned that the two highwaymen had ridden fifteen miles to Big Oak Flat, only to learn he was not there. Several days later, Chips ran into the pair in Sonora. They were with a group of men discussing business, mining, and travel. Hodgkins joined the discussion and at one point commented, "When I have any work to do I always start in and do the best I can."
At that, one of the would-be robbers grinned widely and said, "Yes, and you know your business too."
The career of Chips Hodgkins was the early history of Wells Fargo. During the initial years of the California Gold Rush, he worked for its predecessors, and when those small local express firms were absorbed by Wells Fargo, he served the new company faithfully for decades. For forty years, from 1851 to 1891, Chips was the best-known express messenger on the West Coast, transporting tens of millions of dollars in gold, first by horseback, then by stagecoach, and finally by steamship and railroad. He was so scrupulously honest that it was commonly said of him, "No man in the United States ever actually handled more money than he did, but not a nickel of it ever stuck to his fingers."
He was born Pilsbury Hodgkins in Nobleboro, Maine, on February 17, 1825. His parents died during his boyhood, and he was left in the charge of a tyrannical elder brother. At age sixteen, he ran away from home and became apprenticed to a Boston shipwright. Hodgkins was a rowdy youth, and he spent his spare time drinking, smoking, and carousing. One night, he had an epiphany, as he recalled: "I ... resolved never to use tobacco or intoxicating liquors again." He kept that vow for the rest of his life. In 1848, Hodgkins was swindled out of his life's savings, and that winter news reached Boston of the discovery of gold in California. He could not afford the passage, but in the spring of 1849, he found a company of gold seekers who had bought a sailing vessel and were in need of a ship's carpenter. He worked his passage around Cape Horn to the West Coast. Because carpenters were always referred to as "Chips," he acquired his lifelong nickname.
After a sea journey of five and a half months, his ship arrived in San Francisco on September 16, 1849. Chips spent his first two years in California digging for gold in what are now Tuolumne and Stanislaus counties, known as the Southern Mines. He lived in gold camps of log cabins and tents perched precariously on the steep slopes of ravines and rivers. Society was primitive and comforts few. Gold was the common currency; miners carried gold dust in small buckskin pouches called "pokes." Food and supplies were scarce and expensive. Women were even scarcer, and miners were forced, many for the first times in their lives, to perform all domestic chores for themselves — cooking, washing, sewing, and housekeeping. Even the names of the gold camps reflected the forty-niners' rough, masculine culture: Poker Flat, Drunkard's Bar, Whiskey Gulch, Hangtown, Murderer's Bar, Dead Shot Flat, Git Up and Git, Hell's Delight, Dead Man's Bar, Garrote, Robber's Roost, Wild Yankee, Rough and Ready, Brandy Flat, and, inevitably, Whorehouse Gulch.
Like most gold hunters, Chips never struck pay dirt and sought other work. On March 1, 1851, he started as a mounted messenger for Reynolds & Co. Express, which ran stagecoaches and express shipments throughout the Southern Mines. There was little or no U.S. mail delivery in the mining region, so private express companies sprang up to fill the void. Hodgkins made his headquarters in the company's office in the important mining camp of Sonora. Several times a month, the East Coast mail arrived, brought by river steamboat from San Francisco to Stockton, and then overland by stage to Sonora. Chips would stuff his saddlebags with letters, packages, and newspapers and ride out of town. His route, by horse or mule, took six to eight days, and passed through the rough mining camps of Calaveras, Tuolumne, Merced, and Mariposa counties. He delivered letters and papers to homesick gold diggers, and picked up packets of gold sent by the forty-niners to their families back home. Everything he and his rival messengers delivered was referred to as "express." Chips became extremely popular among the gold hunters, for he was their sole connection to their friends and families back in the civilized world. He became easily identified, for as he trotted into each gold camp on his mule, Polly, the miners would yell, "Here comes Chips!" They would rush forward and surround him, eager for mail and news from home.
During the first two years of the Gold Rush, crime was relatively rare. But as many miners failed to strike it rich, or found panning and shoveling too arduous, some of them turned to an easier way to make their fortune. Thus began a rapid rise of banditry and violence, which, during the 1850s, resulted in the highest recorded homicide rates in American history. But given the initial low crime rates of the Gold Rush, Chips, during his earliest months as a messenger, did not even bother to carry a gun. That changed one day in June 1851.
He was delivering express on horseback from Tuttletown to Soldier's Gulch in Tuolumne County when he spotted a Mexican step out of a miner's cabin and mount a fine horse. The man rode leisurely toward Hodgkins, but as soon as he passed by, he spurred his horse into a gallop and thundered out of sight. Highway robberies were becoming increasingly common, and Chips feared that the stranger might be a bandit. He dismounted, peered into the cabin, and found that it had been ransacked. He rode up the trail to a large open pit where a group of miners were digging and told them what he had seen. They exclaimed that it was their cabin, and they all rushed back and found that a pistol, pocket watch, and money had been stolen. Chips mounted up and raced toward Tuttletown. He soon spotted the Mexican on the road, far ahead of him. As Chips recalled years later, "I followed him and went to a store where I was acquainted and could see him sitting on his horse in front of a Mexican store. I tried to borrow a pistol or shotgun to go for him, but could not get anything. About that time the Mexican looked up and saw me and left suddenly. I followed but lost sight of him, and went on and finished my trip."
A few days later Chips, still unarmed, was riding with his express bags from Sonora to Calaveras County. He crossed the Stanislaus River at Robinson's Ferry and started up the steep grade to Carson Hill. Suddenly, he spotted the same Mexican approaching on a mule, with a small boy on the saddle behind him. As soon as the Mexican passed, Hodgkins rode toward a group of nearby miners and borrowed a revolver. He raced after the robber, who saw him coming and dropped the boy off the mule. The Mexican put spurs to his mule, but Chips's horse was faster. The bandit cut loose a bundle from his saddle, hoping that the messenger would stop to pick it up. Chips kept galloping after the man, who unloosed another bundle, this time to lighten his load. As Hodgkins passed close to a pine tree, the Mexican drew a pistol and fired, but he missed. The messenger was undeterred. "I kept gaining on him," he recalled, "and he saw that I was bound to overtake him, so he jumped off his mule and made his escape into the bushes. I took up his mule and a good lasso that was dragging. I think he tried to get it ready to lasso me, but it slipped out of his hand. ... I finished my trip, took my prize to Sonora about eleven o'clock that night. Up to this time I had never carried a pistol. A few days later the real owner of the mule came and proved his property."
Two weeks later, on July 7, 1851, Chips was in Sonora when the same Mexican was brought in on a charge of horse stealing. Sonora had a very active vigilance committee; previously they'd had a blacksmith prepare a brand marked "H.T." (horse thief) for marking miscreants. California then had no state prison, and such branding was used both for punishment and identification. The bandido was tried by a miner's court, found guilty, and sentenced to 150 lashes and to be branded "H.T." on his face. But after he confessed his guilt, the sentence was reduced to one hundred lashes and no branding. As Hodgkins watched, the desperado was stripped and tied to a tree. Chips recalled, "The whipping was done by a Frenchman named John B. Delahe, and every time he made a stroke with the rawhide whip, the fellow would try to hug that tree very close. When he had given him twenty-five strokes, the president of the vigilance committee thought it was a plenty, and put it to a vote of the witnesses whether he should have more. The vote was 'No more!' He was then taken down, washed with beef brine, dressed, and his friends ordered to take him out of the country."
Chips Hodgkins had learned his lesson about traveling in the mining region unarmed. Because there was precious little law enforcement in the early years of the Gold Rush, all men were responsible for their own protection. Chips bought a multiple-barrel pistol, known as a "pepperbox" revolver, which he always carried with him on his route. Years later, a friend recalled, "There were instances when the company's stages running from Sonora to Stockton carrying Reynolds & Co.'s express were threatened by robbers. In those days the miners were in the habit of sending home to their friends packages of gold dust and specimens which, together with the gold shipped for commercial purposes, made the shipments occurring on what was called 'steamer day' very large. On several occasions, we well remember, it became necessary to arm and equip a special convoy extraordinary, and among them 'Chips' always was to be found, with a gun [shotgun] and his pockets filled with Colt's revolvers and Bowie knives."
Reynolds & Co.'s biggest rival was Adams & Co. Express. One day in the summer of 1851, Hodgkins was at the steamboat landing in Stockton, on his way to San Francisco for a short holiday. Stockton was then one of California's most important towns, the principal port on the San Joaquin River and the gateway to the Southern Mines. While waiting to board the river steamer, Chips learned that Adams Express had just received a large shipment of the latest East Coast and foreign newspapers, and one of their messengers had left for Sonora on horseback with his saddlebags stuffed full. However, the newspapers for Reynolds & Co. had not yet arrived, for the rival steamer was delayed. The news-hungry miners placed great value on eastern periodicals. An issue that sold for two cents in New York went for between fifty cents and three dollars in the mines.
Chips forgot all about his holiday in San Francisco; he could not bear to see his employer bested by Adams. He stepped into the Reynolds express office and told the agent "that I could get the papers of Adams & Co., if he would furnish me a good horse, and [I] would beat that fellow into Sonora or lose a month's salary."
The agent replied, "All right. Go ahead and get the papers."
Hodgkins went into the Adams express office and told the agent he wanted to buy all the spare newspapers they had. The agent had no idea who Chips was, and he began stacking the papers on the counter. At that point, an Adams stagecoach driver walked into the office. Spotting Hodgkins, he said, "Hello, Chips. What are you doing here?"
Hearing their competitor's name, the agent snatched back all the newspapers, saying, "We have none to spare."
Hodgkins was unfazed. He got a friend to buy two hundred newspapers from the unsuspecting Adams agent. Loading them into his saddlebags, he mounted a fast horse, first tying a long coat around his waist, with the coattails covering the saddlebags. It was dusk when he thundered out of Stockton toward Sonora, sixty-five miles distant, in hot pursuit of the rival expressman. "I was well acquainted with the road," he recalled, "and between eleven and twelve at night overtook my man and saluted him with, 'Good evening, sir, you are traveling late.'"
The Adams messenger didn't know Chips. The two rode along together, the Adams man telling Chips that he was hurrying to Sonora to deliver the latest papers before Reynolds & Co. could do so. Chips said nothing about being a messenger himself, and because he had concealed his saddlebags, the rival didn't know his errand. Hodgkins told the Adams expressman that he liked to travel at night because the days were so hot. It was daybreak as they neared Jamestown, four miles from Sonora. As they reached a fork in the road, Chips bid his competitor good-bye and took a different route. As soon as the Adams rider was out of sight, he put spurs to his horse. "I knew all the short cuts and trails from there to Sonora. At Jamestown I got a fresh horse and went into Sonora, making good time." He then delivered all his newspapers, even sending a few to the Adams express office.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Shotguns and Stagecoaches"
by .
Copyright © 2018 John Boessenecker.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
