"W Lee Manly," frontispiece of Death Valley in '49, 1894. Larger.
Gold rush chroniclers have often praised the virtues of the forty-niners who came to California seeking fortune. Unhappily not everyone who came to camp was interested in making their money through honest labor.
In his account of life in the mines, William Lewis Manly describes the good-natured pranks and the lively sports that lent occasional variety to the life of the hard-working miners, just the sort of boys ready to be fleeced.
Footraces were a great Sunday sport. . . . A big "husky" who answered to the name of Cherokee Bob came our way and stopped awhile. He announced himself a footracer, and a contest was soon arranged with Soda Bill of Nevada City, and each went into a course of training at his own camp. Bob found some way to get the best time that Bill could make, and comparing it with his own, said he could beat that [time] in [a]race. So when it came off, our boys gathered up their money, and loaded down the stage, inside and out, departing with swinging hats and flying colors, and screaming in wild delight at the sure prospect of doubling their dust. In a few days they all came back after the style of half-drowned roosters.
Bob had thrown the race and skipped with his money before they could catch him. Had he been found, he would have been ungently hoisted to the first projecting limb, but he was never seen again. The boys were sad and silent for a day or two, but a look of cheerful resignation soon came upon their faces as they handled pick and shovel, and world rolled on as before.
Though Manly's book, Death Valley in '49 focuses on his experience of coming overland to California and facing death in a fearful, arid landscape, his descriptions of the life he found in the mines after his escape are no less compelling.
"Leaving Death Valley.—The Manly Party On The March After Leaving Their Wagons," illustration for Death Valley in '49, 1894. Larger.
In 1849, Vermont native William Lewis Manly set out for California determined to make a fortune in the gold fields. Optimistic to fault, Manly had no idea that he and his wagon-train companions would blunder into the forbidding terrain of Death Valley.
To save his fellow pioneers, Manly and his friend Rogers hiked out of the valley in search of help. They found their way to the old Mission San Fernando, where they re-provisioned before returning to their friends.
"Mission at San Fernando," photograph by William Henry Jackson, c. 1888. Larger.
One hundred yards now to the wagons and still no sign of life, no positive signs of death, though we looked carefully for both. We feared that perhaps there were Indians in ambush, and with nervous irregular breathing we counseled what to do. Finally Rogers suggested that he had two charges in his shotgun and I seven in the Colts rifle, and that I fire one of mine and await results. . . . I fired the shot. Still as death and not a move for the moment, and then, as if by magic, a man come out from under a wagon and stood up, looking all around, for he did not see us. Then he threw up his arms high over his head and shouted, "The boys have come. The boys have come!" And then other bare heads appeared. . . .
And Mrs. Bennett, through her tears, looked staringly at us, as she could hardly believe our coming back was a reality, and then exclaimed, "Good boys! Oh you have saved us all! God bless you forever! Such boys should never die!"
William Manly was able to lead his friends to safety, but the story of his Death Valley heroics had to wait forty-four years for publication. Death Valley in '49 is now recognized as one of the classic chronicles of western history.
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