Heinrich Lienhard

Heinrich Lienhard

Heinrich Lienhard (born January 19, 1822 in Bilten , Canton Glarus, † December 19, 1903 in Nauvoo , Illinois ) was a Swiss emigrant who first traveled to the United States in 1843 . He spent three years in Illinois and traveled to California in 1846 , where he stayed until 1850. After a stay of three and a half years in his old home, he and his family returned to the USA in 1854, where he lived in Nauvoo, Illinois, until his death. In the 1870s, he penned his memories of his youth and early years in America, a manuscript that is an important historical source for the California Trail , Johann August Sutter, and the California Gold Rush .

Life

Heinrich Lienhard was born on January 19, 1822 on the Ussbühl in Bilten , Canton Glarus. He grew up with three siblings on their parents' farm in modest circumstances. Since childhood he dreamed of emigrating to America , as several of his cousins ​​had done. This dream came true when the father finally agreed to his plans after long resistance. In 1843 Heinrich Lienhard traveled with a neighbor to Neu-Schweizerland, later Highland , in Illinois.

The next two and a half years were a time of gaining a foothold in the New World. Lienhard stayed mainly in Illinois, where he first worked as an assistant to various farmers in the Swiss settlement. He later drove up the Mississippi , made trips to Iowa and Wisconsin, and did odd jobs along the way, always hoping to find a better livelihood soon. When he was working in a store in St. Louis in the spring of 1846 , one day he happened to meet a few friends from Galena with whom he had talked a year earlier about a possible emigration to California . They had come to St. Louis to equip themselves for this very adventure, and Lienhard enthusiastically joined them.

The journey of the "Five German Boys", as the other emigrants called Heinrich Lienhard and his four comrades, lasted six months and led from Independence, Missouri , to New Helvetia , better known as " Sutter's Fort ", in California. In 1846 there was still no firmly established trail for emigrants with wagons into the Pacific area claimed by Mexico, which is why the second half of the route in particular often required the utmost in strength and skill from people and draft animals. In his memoirs, Heinrich Lienhard describes not only the exact route but also the varied everyday life on the trail : the changeable relationships between the emigrants, the impressive, slowly changing landscapes, encounters with the native Indians as well as the hardship and dangers of difficult sections of the route, such as crossing the large ones Salt desert and the Sierra Nevada .

In California , a recruiter from the United States Army awaited the immigrants before they even arrived at Sutters Fort. At the urging of a comrade to whom he owed a few dollars, Lienhard, like other penniless emigrants, signed up for a three-month voluntary service in the war against Mexico . The American troops were tasked with the annexation of all areas claimed by the United States north of the Rio Grande , a goal that the administration in Washington had pursued for decades. Already on the trip to the headquarters of Monterey , the then capital of California, Lienhard fell seriously ill, spent several weeks in the hospital and was then dispensed from work in the field as a convalescent.

After his return from Monterey in February 1847, Lienhard found employment with John A. Sutter . For the first half of the year he maintained his vegetable garden on the Yuba River about fifty miles north of the fort, from September he took over the position of overseer for several months. At the turn of the year 1847/48 he took a cargo of wheat to San Francisco as a cargo attendant on Sutter's schooner , but refused a permanent position in this function, however. Sutter, who knew that Lienhard enjoyed gardening, asked him to work in partnership to plant a large fruit and vegetable garden near the fort, a project that Lienhard devoted himself to with devotion over the following months.

In January 1848 gold was discovered on the southern arm of the American River , where Sutter had a sawmill ( Sutter's Mill ) built . Although all of Sutter's workers left the fort soon to try their luck in the river valleys, Lienhard stayed in the garden until summer and did not go into the mines until August, when Sutter asked him to do so. The latter provided him with Indian assistants, tools and food and in return received half of the washed gold from Lienhard, an agreement that Sutter also made with other men. When Sutter's eldest son John August arrived in California from Switzerland in September, Sutter asked Lienhard to loan him his own half of the washed gold so that he could present his son with the greatest possible yield of the precious metal. When Lienhard returned to the fort later, however, August Sutter, who had meanwhile taken over the business of his deeply indebted father, was no longer able to return his gold to Lienhard. After weeks of in vain waiting, he finally agreed to take over Sutter's flock of sheep in lieu of payment.

Lienhard spent the following winter of 1848/49 with a Swiss compatriot named Jakob Dürr on the sheep farm not far from the fort. In the spring, Dürr Lienhard bought half of the sheep, and in April they went to the mines together to trade. After several weeks Lienhard Dürr also sold his part of the herd and returned to the fort. There he accepted August Sutter's assignment to bring his mother and siblings from Switzerland to California. In June 1849 he left San Francisco, traveled via the isthmus from Panama to New York and from there via England and Germany to Switzerland. In late autumn he returned to San Francisco on the same route with a group of ten people - relatives and acquaintances of Ms. Sutter had joined them - where they arrived safely in January 1850.

Half a year later Lienhard decided to leave California for good. Farewell was not easy for him. He loved the country with its pleasant climate and rich flora and fauna; but he could no longer come to terms with the lawlessness and the rampant violence with which the locals were robbed of their land and life and which brutally sealed their fate. After another six-month journey and a pleasant end in Paris, on December 31, 1850, he walked back to his parents' house on the Ussbühl on the familiar footpath.

Heinrich Lienhard married Elsbeth Blumer von Bilten in the summer of 1851. He bought the rural property "Auf Brunnen" in Kilchberg near Zurich, where his two sons Kaspar Arnold (1852) and Johann Heinrich (1853) were born. But the attempt to settle down in his old home was unsuccessful: after two years, Lienhard sold the property in Kilchberg again and left Switzerland with his family in April 1854 for good. They first settled in Madison , Wisconsin, where their third son, John Jacob, was born. In 1856 they moved to Nauvoo , Illinois, a picturesque town on the Mississippi, which a large Mormon community had to leave ten years earlier and which has since attracted mainly German and French-speaking immigrants of European origin.

In Nauvoo, Heinrich Lienhard spent 47 years as a successful farmer and respected citizen in a splendid house with a garden and extensive land. Here Elsbeth Lienhard gave birth to six more children, but the family only remained complete for a few years. In 1878 they lost their eldest son Kaspar, a dentist, and in 1884 their nineteen-year-old daughter Dora, who was bleeding to death from inside the schoolyard as a result of an incident through no fault of her own. A few months later Lienhard's wife Elsbeth also died, and in 1892 he lost his youngest daughter, Barbara Adela, who was only sixteen. Heinrich Lienhard died on December 19, 1903 after a brief illness. He was buried in the family grave in the Presbyterian Cemetery at Nauvoo, which also houses the graves of his wife and seven of their children.

Heinrich Lienhard's manuscript

In the mid-1870s Heinrich Lienhard began to write down his memories of his childhood and youth in Switzerland until his return from California at the end of 1850, i.e. the first 29 years of his life. In the regular, swift style of old German cursive, he filled almost a thousand pages, a work to which he devoted himself for several years and with which he left a very special legacy to his descendants.

Wherever Heinrich Lienhard stayed during the years of his wandering, his unbroken attention was directed to nature in all its diversity: the landscape, the climatic conditions, the soil conditions, geological features as well as unknown plants and animals. An important place in his memories are the people who crossed his path on the way, friendships that lasted for years, as well as encounters that were short and yet unforgettable. With his portraits he created a monument to some friends and acquaintances who would have long been forgotten today, in which his own personality is always reflected. This is particularly evident in his relationship with John A. Sutter , the founder of New Helvetia, whom he got to know well in the course of his work at the fort.

Lienhard's power of observation was not limited to the appearance, rather it meant perceiving with eyes, heart and mind. This can be seen particularly impressively through his encounter with the Indians of California. Although he respected them as natives of the country, his remarks are not free from the typically ethnocentric way of seeing the whites. In view of the gold rush with its dramatic consequences for the Indians, however, a process of rethinking set in that ran counter to the zeitgeist of the time. His increasingly critical stance had its roots in Mimal, where he lived on the Yuba River for six months in 1847, secluded from other white settlers and soon came into contact with the Indians of the surrounding villages. Some of them met regularly at his house during his stay, where they followed his activities, bartered and occasionally helped him in the garden. They trained him to be a first-class archer, cared for him when he was sick, and sometimes took him to their village with them. So it came about that Lienhard also began to watch his neighbors in their daily activities. He marveled at her skill in making everyday objects of all kinds, at the sophistication of her tools, at her imagination and her sense of beauty when decorating her masterful wickerwork. He accompanied them on the hunt and fishing and describes with fascination the skill with which they proceeded, as well as the variety of their food procurement and preparation of various dishes.

By observing, Heinrich Lienhard began to understand that the locals had adapted their way of life extremely sensibly to their surroundings over many generations and knew how to use the rich resources of the Californian landscapes in the best possible and sustainable manner in the rhythm of the seasons. He understood that the foreign, although different, was not necessarily inferior and that the contempt with which the whites, especially the Californian Indians, was wrong and unjust. A nightly conversation of his guardian boys on the sheep farm, which he witnessed in the winter of 1848/49, remained unforgettable to him. They spoke of the times before the white settlers invaded their valleys and of the great changes that their lives and that of their parents had undergone since then. On Lienhard, who pretended to be asleep, her words made a deep impression: “I had become very thoughtful because of the low-pitched conversation between the Indians. In my mind I tried to put myself in the Indian position and wondered whether I would be satisfied if I were driven out of my and my ancestral home in the same way as the poor Indians did. I confess that I felt a very vindictive feeling that every time I came to the conclusion that I would take revenge on the outrageous, greedy intruders in every possible way. " But he knew from his own experience that for the Indians, whether they conformed, defended themselves or fled, contact with the whites could end in death at any time.

Lienhard's text thus allows for different perspectives. It is fascinating as a detailed and exciting description of events and people, landscapes, flora and fauna. Far more than an adventure report, however, his memories are a complex report on racial conquest. The overexploitation of nature and animals, the forced labor imposed on the Indians, the sexual exploitation of women, the expulsion and annihilation of the native population and the destruction of their millennia-old communities by the white occupiers all come to light with inexorable clarity. Heinrich Lienhard's text is therefore also a factual report on the Anglo-American conquest of the northern western hemisphere with its Janus face of environmental destruction and racial annihilation on the one hand and the development of a powerfully pulsating Anglo-American variant of western culture on the other.

Publications

Heinrich Lienhard's manuscript remained in the family's possession for a long time. In 1949, Lienhard's granddaughter sold it to the University of California's Bancroft Library in Berkeley , California, where it is now available in original and on microfilm. However, even during Lienhard's lifetime it had met with interest outside the family. The first to look at the text was Kaspar Leemann, a friend from the time Lienhard lived in Kilchberg (1851–1854). Leemann's adaptation appeared in 1898, and was reprinted two years later. Lienhard's text has been shortened and changed so much for this book that not much remains of the original text.

In the USA the first partial edition appeared in 1941 in an arrangement by Marguerite E. Wilbur under the title A Pioneer at Sutter's Fort, 1846-1850. The Adventures of Heinrich Lienhard . The book covers Lienhard's stay in California, with the editor particularly interested in Sutter and other well-known names of the time. Substantial omissions from Lienhard's personal experiences and interests as well as incorrect connecting texts falsify the text in many places. Transcription and translation errors as well as the shortened translation also rob it of its authenticity. Lienhard's manuscript received unfairly harsh criticism due to Wilbur's book in California, which can be checked and corrected today using the German-language edition (2010/2011).

In 1951, J. Roderic Korns and Dale L. Morgan West from Fort Bridger published an investigation into the so-called "Hastings Cutoff", a section of the California Trail . The authors relied on Lienhard's daily notes, which they translated true to the text and commented on in detail. They describe his description as the “record of the highest importance” and were the first to recognize and greatly appreciate Lienhard's precise and reliable reporting method. In 1961 Erwin G. and Elisabeth K. Gudde translated and edited the California Trail under the title From St. Louis to Sutter's Fort . In 1942, after the publication of Wilbur's book, Gudde cast a disparaging criticism of Lienhard's credibility into question, albeit without actually inspecting the manuscript. This may explain why, twenty years later, his translation of the trail follows Lienhard's text, but seems rather brittle and the Glarus humor remains misunderstood. In the foreword to his book, Gudde Lienhard's text describes it as "one of the three classic reports of the great migration to the west of 1846".

John C. Abbott edited the book New Worlds to Seek in 2000 . It includes the first part of the manuscript in English translation, namely Lienhard's youth, his first trip to America and his stay in Illinois. In 2010 Christa Landert edited almost half of Lienhard's manuscript in German under the title "If you absolutely want to go to America, go in God's name!" . It concerns the years 1846 to 1849, that is the California Trail and Lienhard's stay in California up to the first trip to Switzerland.

Two detailed newspaper articles by Heinrich Lienhard were published independently of his manuscript. The first appeared after Lienhard's stay in Switzerland in 1849. In it he reports on California, Sutters Fort, the gold discovery and the work in the mines as he knew them from his own experience. It also provides information on the cheapest travel route from Switzerland to California, which was undoubtedly of particular interest to many readers at the time. In the second article, which was published in the Daily Examiner in San Francisco in 1885 , Lienhard recalls, among other things, his work at Sutter, the events surrounding the gold discovery and the subsequent gold rush.

literature

• Literature by and about Heinrich Lienhard in the catalog of the German National Library
• Lienhard, Heinrich, 1822–1903. Memoirs of trip to California, life at Sutter's Fort and return to Switzerland: ms., 1846-1850. BANC MSS CD 5024. Bancroft Library, Berkeley.
• Lienhard, Heinrich. “Descriptions from California, the discovery of gold wealth and its consequences”, Glarner Zeitung 95–99, November 28, December 1, 5, 8 and 12, 1849.
• Lienhard, Heinrich. "The Early Days: Reminiscences of a Pioneer Settler of '46," The Daily Examiner (San Francisco), March 8, 1885, p. 1, cols. 1-4.
• John Paul von Grüningen: An early migration to New Helvetia. In: The Swiss in the United States , Madison 1940, pp. 71-87 in the Internet Archive
• Korns, J. Roderic [and Morgan, Dale L.], eds., West from Fort Bridger: The Pioneering of the Immigrant Trails Across Utah, 1846-1850. Original Diaries and Journals Edited and with Introductions. Salt Lake City: Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. XIX (1951). Revised and Updated by Will Bagley and Harold Schindler, Logan: Utah State University Press, ISBN 0-87421-178-6 , 1994.
• Gudde, Erwin G. and Elisabeth K., eds. and transl. From St. Louis to Sutter's Fort 1846, by Heinrich Lienhard. University of Oklahoma Press 1961.
• Landert, Christa. «Heinrich Lienhard von Bilten (1822–1903). A biographical sketch », Yearbook of the Historical Association of the Canton of Glarus , Issue 75 (Glarus: Kommissionsverlag Tschudi, 1995): 182–214. e-periodica ; English version of this article in: Yearbook of German-American Studies 25 (1990): 131–149.
• Abbott, John C., ed. New Worlds to Seek: Pioneer Heinrich Lienhard in Switzerland and America, 1824-1846. Foreword by John H. Lienhard IV. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8093-2233-1 pdf
• Lienhard, Heinrich. "If you absolutely want to go to America, go in God's name!", Memories of the California Trail, John A. Sutter and the Gold Rush, 1846–1849. Edited by Christa Landert, with a foreword by Leo Schelbert. Zurich, Limmat Verlag 2010, 2011. ISBN 978-3-85791-504-8 pdf
• Erenz, Benedict. "Karl May unplugged", Die Zeit , December 16, 2010. (Review)
• Pope, Manfred. "A young man from Glarus experienced the gold rush in America", NZZ am Sonntag , December 26, 2010, p. 62. (Review)
• Kossack, Uwe / Fischer, Pascal. SWR2 Forum Book of February 6, 2011, 5:05 p.m. (review) ( manuscript for the broadcast )
• Rachel Huber: "General Sutter", the obscure side of a Swiss hero story ; in: Swiss Journal for History (SZG) , Volume 69 No. 3, 2019, pp. 418–433 (R. Huber quoted in detail from the memoirs of Heinrich Lienhard).

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Lienhard, Heinrich, 1822–1903. Memoirs of trip to California, life at Sutter's Fort and return to Switzerland: ms., 1846-1850. BANC MSS CD 5024. Bancroft Library, Berkeley.
2. ↑ He had briefly worked in the lead mines of Galena , Illinois.
3. ↑ These were Heinrich Thomann and Jakob Rippstein from Switzerland and the two Germans Georg Zins and Valentin Diel.
4. ↑ In May 1846 the United States declared war on Mexico , which ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo . The regulations forced Mexico to cede the southwestern part of what is now the United States and California to the United States.
5. ↑ Jakob Dürr came from Pratteln , Canton Basel-Landschaft.
6. ↑ Anna Sutter-Dübeld and the children Anna Elise, Emil and Alphons Sutter.
7. ↑ MS 146 / 4-147 / 1.
8. ↑ Joh. Kaspar Leemann, ed., California immediately before and after the discovery of gold. Pictures from the life of Heinrich Lienhard von Bilten, Canton Glarus, in Nauvoo, North America. A contribution to the anniversary celebration of the gold discovery and to the cultural history of California. Zurich: Fäsi u. Beer, 1898 in the Internet Archive , 1900.
9. ^ Marguerite Eyer Wilbur, ed. And transl., A Pioneer at Sutter's Fort, 1846–1850: The Adventures of Heinrich Lienhard. No. 3 in the Calafía series. Los Angeles: The Calafía Society, 1941. Abridged version online
10. ↑ J. Roderic Korns [and Dale L. Morgan], eds., West from Fort Bridger: The Pioneering of the Immigrant Trails Across Utah, 1846-1850. Original Diaries and Journals Edited and with Introductions. Salt Lake City: Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. XIX (1951). Revised and Updated by Will Bagley and Harold Schindler, Logan: Utah State University Press, ISBN 0-87421-178-6 , 1994. - The "Hastings Cutoff" is the section of the trail between Fort, named after Lansford W. Hastings Bridger and the confluence of the Humboldt River with its southern arm. The emigrants of 1846 were the first to go to the Hastings Cutoff in covered wagons.
11. ^ Korns / Morgan, West from Fort Bridger , 116.
12. ↑ Erwin G. and Elisabeth K. Gudde, eds. and transl., From St. Louis to Sutter's Fort 1846, by Heinrich Lienhard. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1961.
13. ↑ The other two are according to Gudde Edwin Bryant's What I Saw in California and JQ Thorntons Oregon and California in 1848 . Gudde, From St. Louis to Sutter's Fort , ix.
14. ↑ John C. Abbott, ed., New Worlds to Seek. Pioneer Heinrich Lienhard in Switzerland and America 1824-1846. Foreword by John H. Lienhard IV, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, ISBN 0-8093-2233-1 , 2000. - The number 1824 is a misprint because Lienhard was born in 1822.
15. ↑ Heinrich Lienhard, "If you absolutely want to go to America, then go in the name of God!", Memories of the California Trail, John A. Sutter and the Gold Rush, 1846–1849. Edited by Christa Landert, with a foreword by Leo Schelbert. Zurich: Limmat Verlag, ISBN 978-3-85791-504-8 , 2010, 2011. - The title is a quote from Lienhard's father, who had long refused to give his son the desired blessing to travel.
16. ^ Heinrich Lienhard, "Descriptions from California, the discovery of gold wealth and its consequences", Glarner Zeitung 95-99, November 28, December 1, 5, 8 and 12, 1849. - Lienhard wrote the article at the request of Landammann Jenny from Ennenda and because so many people asked him for information about California and the journey there during his short stay at home that he was unable to answer every single one of them due to lack of time.
17. ^ Heinrich Lienhard, "The Early Days: Reminiscences of a Pioneer Settler of '46," The Daily Examiner , San Francisco, March 8, 1885.