Tragedy Spring
Located on Highway 88, just 3 miles west of Silver Lake, in
historic Amador County sits Tragedy Spring. This small spot set just a few
hundred feet back from the highway has a dark and somber history for which it
gained its name. Though there is a plaque honoring the men who were part of
this tragic event, most people do not know much about who they were, or what
led up to this event in the first place.
On June 22, 1848, three members of a scout group went ahead
of their company of Latter Day Saints clearing a path over Carson Pass, which
would come to be known as the Mormon Emigrant Trail. When the scouts were never
heard from again, the men in their company began to worry. Private Henderson Cox, from Warren County,
Indiana; Ezra Heela Allen, from Madrid, New York; and Sargeant Daniel Browett,
of Bishop’s Cleeve, England were the three men who disappeared.
Who were these missing men?
Ezra Heela Allen, was born on July 28, 1814 to parents
Samuel Russell Allen and Sarah Jane Powers of St. Lawrence County, New York. In
1837, Ezra married Sarah Fiske and the couple had four children. He had been
serving in the U.S. Army for period of time, and after his discharge he decided
to join the scouting group under the command of Sgt. Daniel Browett, who were
crossing over the pass while returning to Utah.
Private Henderson Cox, was born on November 6, 1829, to
parents Jehu Cox and Sarah Pyle. When
Private Cox was only seventeen, he joined the U.S. Army and went to fight in
the war with Mexico as part of the Mormon Battalion, under the command of
Captain Allen and Captain Hunt in Company A. After his discharge he met Captain
Browett in Coloma and started working at Sutter’s Mill. When asked to join
Browett on a scouting mission to travel over Carson Pass in June of 1848, Cox
jumped at the chance.
Sargeant Daniel Browett, was born on December 18, 1809 to
parents Thomas Browett and Martha Puller. He was a native of Bishop’s Cleeve,
Gloucestershire, England. At the age of
25, Browett started his apprenticeship in carpentry and later joined the United
Brethren Church. Besides working as a Carpenter, he also learned to be a joiner
and a cooper. Later, Browett would join
the Church of Latter Day Saints and become a Presiding Elder.
From 1846-1847, Browett was called to serve as a
commissioned Sargeant for Company E in the Mormon Battalion during the war with
Mexico. Once he was discharged in Los
Angeles at Fort Moore, Browett decided to head up north to offer his expertise
at Sutter’s Fort, where skilled Carpenters were scarce. He eventually headed
up-country further, to a place called Coloma to help build the sawmill for
Captain Sutter. Interesting to note, Browett was working under the direction of
James Marshall and six others when the first discovery of gold was found in the
American River in 1848. He was literally in Coloma when the gold rush began!
After his work was through in Coloma, Browett was sent to
inform Captain Sutter that the work was done on the mill and to gather the
wages for all workers as well as other furnishings and animals that were
promised. While there, he arranged to purchase two cannons from Sutter for the
LDS Church in Utah. Interestinly, these cannons are very similar to the one that
is infamously known as the “Sutter Gun”, though they are not the same. Although
Sutter purchased the “Sutter Gun” from the Russians when they abandoned Fort
Ross, the other two cannons purchased for the LDS Church, (a four-pounder and a
six-pounder), were said to be among other items Sutter obtained at the Fort at
the same time. As it turned out, the
four-pounder brass cannon was not Russian at all, but was in fact cast in Peru
in 1792 by the Spanish. Both cannons Browett purchased from Sutter for the LDS Church
were said to have been previously owned by Napoleon but had been left behind in
Russia before being brought to Fort Ross.
After obtaining the cannons, they were placed in the care of the company
that were going to be returning to Utah.
Before the Tragedy
It was then that these three men were sent on ahead to scout
the thick forest and rocky terrain ahead of the road crew who were planning on
clearing a trail from the Mormon Camp in Sly Park up through the Carson Pass. The three men left on June 22, 1848 and never
came back. By mid-July, a follow up road crew who had cleared a good 10 miles
on the path found a dead campfire and a pile of rocks that appeared to be a
shallow grave. The men returned to their main camp and told of their discovery,
to which more men came to investigate the site.
On July 19, 1848, they removed the pile of rocks to reveal the bodies of
their lost party members: Browett, Cox and Allen.
They were "promiscuously tossed in a shallow two foot grave, stripped of clothing, and maimed if not mutilated."-- Larry Cenotto, Amador County Historian.
Browett had been murdered with a hatchet, and shot in the
eye, while his other friends had been shot with arrows. It also appeared that
they had been beaten over the head with rocks, as the rocks buried with their
bodies were stained with blood and chunks of hair was stuck to them. All of their weapons, supplies, horses and
money was gone, all except a small pouch of gold that Allen would wear around
his neck. It contained $120 worth of gold dust, but it appeared the strap had
been severed and flung into a bush, possibly during the fatal struggle.
After the gruesome discovery was found, a member of their
party, James Sly mentioned that on his way back to camp they passed many
Indians and one of the natives was wearing a vest that looked familiar. It
later donned on him that vest belonged to one of his fallen friends who died at
Tragedy Spring. From the evidence of the arrows and the hatchet, and the native
wearing one of the victim’s vests, it wasn’t difficult for the group to put two
and two together and realize that Browett, Allen and Cox had been ambushed by
Indians.
Jonathan Harriman Holmes mentions this horrific memory within the pages of his journal, "Trail Journal of 1848." In fact, he physically viewed the bodies of the slain men at the site, where he mentions that Daniel Browett was like a father to him.
That night the party who discovered the ghastly site,
worried for their own safety as well, as journal entries noted in the book,
“Mormon Battalion: United States Army of the West, 1846-1848” mentions that
night the cattle they had with them were spooked and literally causing a
stampede. The party believed Indians were around and so they fired their cannon
once to scare them off. It mentions that the rest of the night was quiet and
they had guards posted, but the party members still had a hard time sleeping.
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| (Copyright: R. Boulware, 2017) |
Before moving onward, the corpses of the victims were
reburied in a more honorable way, and Wilford Hudson carved a beautiful epitaph
into the side of a large Fir tree nearby the graves. It read:
“To the Memory of
Daniel Browett, Ezrah H. Allen, Henderson Cox, Who was supposed to have Been
Murdered and Buried by Indians On the Night of the 27th June 1848”— And that was how the name Tragedy Spring came to be.
According to the research of the late, great Amador County Historian Larry Cenotto, he mentioned that several people over the years have tried to insinuate that it wasn't the natives who committed the atrocity, but instead "white ruffians" who were coveting gold that committed the murders. They also argued that the natives wouldn't have buried the dead in a grave. With all due respect, a hole barely two feet deep cannot be considered a grave. In reality, it was more of a shallow pit where they tried to hide the bodies, by piling rocks on top of them.
But then Larry brought up a good question: "Why would any white ruffian leave the mines to rob? They could get more gold in the diggings. And why would they leave the gold pouch?"
Another thought to ponder was that the location where Tragedy Spring is, which is near Kirkwood, is a remote area, especially back in 1848. There were no mines in that area, there were no stores, no stage stops nearby, this was the wilderness we're talking about here! Why on earth would some ne'er-do-wells be hanging out out in the middle of nowhere just randomly waiting to rob the group of men? They wouldn't. They were not waiting for a stage coach to come by, the men were traveling on a small trail, not a stage road. In all fairness, all the evidence points to the natives committing this act, whether others want to accept this or not. When we look at evidence in history, we must come to our conclusions based on documented facts, and those point towards the original conclusion.
As the years went by, the tree was later cut down, and the
part that contained the carved epitaph was sent to the museum at Marshall Gold
Discovery Park in Coloma to be put on display. Later the tree stump was treated
with a resin to harden the stump, in order to preserve it from decaying. In 1967, the International Society of Daughters
of Utah Pioneers who attached a bronze plaque on a large rock that had been
placed on top of the victims graves.
Today, you can take a trip up scenic Highway 88 and stop off
at the picnic grounds and pay your respects to these three men who died at the
spring in 1848. You can also visit the
Marshall Gold Discovery Park in Coloma and see the originally carved epitaph
for these three men.
(Copyright 2018 -- J'aime Rubio, www.jaimerubiowriter.com)
(Copyright 2018 -- J'aime Rubio, www.jaimerubiowriter.com)
A big THANK YOU to Shirleen Craig Farley for her allowing me to mention some of the information from her own research as well as her own family records that belonged to her grandmother.
SOURCES:
Logan's Alley - Amador County Yesterdays in Picture and Prose, by Larry Cenotto, 2003.
Mormon Battalion: United States Army of the West,
1846-1848 (Norma B Ricketts):
Tragedy
Springs and the Pouch of Gold"- Norma B. Ricketts (California State
Library in Sacramento)
Find-a-grave:
Shirleen
Craig Farley’s added research from Find-a-grave
Preston Nibley, "Faith
Promoting Stories" Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1943, Page 93
Green, "Road from El
Dorado", p. 17, 20.
Johnathan H. Holmes Journal, July
19, 1848, LDS Church Archives
Journal of Henry W. Bigler, January 24, 1848; Bigler, Henry W., Henelepikale, "Recollections
of the Past", Juvenile Instructor 21, No. 23 (1 Dec. 1886): p.
365-66.
