In the
history of the American frontier, John Sutter (1803–1880)
looms large. A Swiss expatriate who attempted to create a personal
empire in California’s Sacramento Valley, he founded New
Helvetia, a cosmopolitan settlement whose economy depended on Indian
slaves and free laborers. New Helvetia drew overland immigrants to
California in the 1840s and then — after gold was discovered
by Sutter’s employees — a flood of fortune seekers.
Sutter was poised to become one of the richest men in the West, but
rapacious settlers and his own poor business sense sent his dreams
crashing.
Albert L. Hurtado has written the definitive biography of Sutter,
mining a wealth of sources to create the first fully documented account
of the man and his times. John Sutter explores Sutter’s life
in the broader context of America’s rush for westward
expansion while plumbing the inner dynamics of this erstwhile
empire-builder.
Sutter was a quintessential outsider driven by anxiety over status
— a man of talent, vision, and heroic ambitions who
nevertheless became the victim of his own inadequacies as a businessman
and his inability to adjust to a rapidly changing frontier. Sutter was
full of contradictions. While building a reputation as a humanitarian
friend of destitute immigrants, he callously exploited Indians.
Nevertheless, this penniless dreamer became one of the most important
men in California and a major player in the American conquest of the
West. .
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John Sutter
A
Life on the North American Frontier
by Albert L. Hurtado
University
of Oklahoma Press, 2007.
Order
a copy
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