Jan...will have to do your requests in sections, they all seem to be long. Jackie in California [email protected] MOTHER LODE…The Story of California’s Gold Rush by Louis J. Stellman The Calaveras Guards, one of the first militia companies in the mining regions, saved Mokelumne Hill from another war which was afterward lampooned by a local theatrical group as "The Battle of Campo Seco, or the Fall of the Six Nations". Campo Seco was on the Calaveras River, near Mokelumne Hill. It was a busy and profitable location where a large number of miners had washed gold amiably enough until some dispute stirred the ever-smoldering racial animosity of its cosmopolitan population. To do the outlanders justice, it was usually the American miners, with their arrogant intolerance of all "furriners," who started the trouble. Perhaps it was a realization of this fact that caused the organization of Mokelumne Hill's militia company, eighty strong, captained by Sheriff Clark and drilled most assiduously by Sergeant Pollock, an ex-soldier. They had bright new uniforms, rifles, sidearms, and a silk flag of considerable size, so they must have made a brave and imposing appearance when called on by a county judge to preserve order in Campo Seco. That camp was agitated to the point of explosion. As in the case of the French Hill affair, each side had gathered unto itself large numbers of supporters. The battle was about to break, made up of Americans on the one side and a coalition army of Italians, Mexicans, Chileans, and Peruvians on the other. But before the first shot could be fired a music of fife and drums smote the air, accompanying the tread of marching feet, and presently the Calaveras Guards in all their glory burst upon the scene, very much like the chorus in a comic opera. So brave and dramatic was their entrance that both sides involuntarily cheered and, forgetting their differences, rushed forth to bid them welcome. Perhaps the foreigners were a trifle awed by the semblance of power which a uniform represents, even as the Frenchmen had been by an antique cannon. But it is likely that they, like the Americans, were even more beguiled by the parade. At any rate the battle of Campo Seco proved a bloodless one and another "casus belli" was forgotten. Not long afterward, however, a second "civil war" broke out in Campo Seco. This was not a race dispute nor strife of nations, but a difference of opinion concerning horse-stealing. A man named Hill, was adjudged guilty by the crowd which made a demand on the sheriff for the custody of his prisoner. The sheriff rallied around him a body of citizens who believed in legal procedure. The prisoner participated in the debates, boldly admitting his propensity to make off with the property of others but asserting with a loud show of virtue that he had never shed human blood. The oratory continued until it was discovered that the sheriff had taken advantage of it to spirit away his prisoner in a carriage. The lynch inclined mob of Campo Seco started in pursuit. The sheriff tried to protect his prisoner but was overpowered. The horsethief, whether he deserved it or no, was strung up in the nearest tree.