Sierra
County
Biographies
THE TRAGEDY IN HAMLIN’S CANYON
SAMUEL BERRY
On a certain day in June, 1867, a
man trudged his weary way over the Donner Summit of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, en route to any place that would assure him of work during the
ensuing summer and autumn.
Down the almost cliff like eastern
side of the Pass wound the road made by emigrants of the “forties” to Donner
Lake, and noted as the place where perished, by starvation, the major portion
of the celebrated Donner party, during the winter of ’46 and ’47, and
immortalized by C. F. McGlashen in his “History of the Donner Party,” past this
most beautiful of all lakes and on to the then bustling town of Truckee,
California.
Samuel Berry was a quiet man of
studious habits, and was seldom seen alone without a book, magazine or
newspaper in his hand. He was from the
north of Ireland, of Scottish parentage, and came to America in his early
youth. He was, at the time we are
introducing him, about thirty years of age.
While in the reading room of the
Truckee Hotel, he learned of the great Sierra Valley thirty miles to the north,
as the most likely locality for a farm hand to secure permanent
employment. The next evening found him
in the little town of Sierraville. The
day following, Abram D. Church of Church’s Corner (now Sattley), desiring a
helping hand, drove into town from his ranch four miles away.
He met our traveling friend and
secured his services for the summer and autumn’s labor.
Sam’s ability so commended itself to
Mr. Church, that, when the season’s work was over, he exacted a promise from
him to return the following spring. This
he did, and for several seasons faithfully served the three Church brothers in
their farming operations. During this
time, he formed the acquaintance of Joseph and Sanford Morrison and George
Pettingill, all farm-hands from the state of Maine.
Finally, Mr. Berry, or Sam, as we
shall now call him, became so enamored with the country, that he decided to
make Sierra Valley his future home. He located,
for a time, on what was afterward known as the Hapgood place between Sierra and
Mohawk valleys but soon gave up this location and rented the old Ewer place
near where Hamlin’s Canyon debouches into Sierra Valley, with the intention of
making it his future home.
There being, at this time, so many
small fur-bearing animals, pine marten (American sable), mink, otter, foxes,
coyotes and even lynxes in the many ramifications of this broad but deep and gloomy
canyon, it occurred to Sam to trap for these animals during the long dreary
winter months. This he did with good
results during his first winter’s stay in the new home.
Sometime during the next summer,
while grouse hunting in the canyon’s vastness, Sam suddenly came across the
fresh tracks of an immense grizzly bear.
Being armed only with a shotgun, he wisely decided to take the back
track. The tracks led back to a point
near an old log cabin where he found the carcass of a young heifer upon which
his bearship had been feeding. He
inspected the cabin, and found it to be poor protection against an infuriated
grizzly. However, he decided to secure a
rifle and lay in wait for the bear.
After nearly a week’s waiting, his vigil was at length rewarded, but the
bear was of such enormous size, the night so intensely dark and the cabin at
such a distance from the target, he dared not attempt a shot at this time. The bear failed to put in an appearance after
this.
For company’s sake, Sam shared his
home with Sanford Morrison during the winter of ’74 and ’75. Early in the morning of November 29, 1874,
Sam shouldered his skis and pole and entered the depths of Hamlin’s Canyon to
collect the trapped animals and to reset and rebait the traps. That afternoon he failed to return at the
usual hour. Morrison, at the time,
thought nothing of this, as snow to a depth of four or five feet had lately
fallen in the upper reaches of the canyon, necessitating very slow traveling
even on skis. But, as nine, ten, eleven
and finally twelve o’clock passed and still no welcome footstep, Sanford became
thoroughly alarmed. Early the next
morning, after a sleepless night, he entered the canyon in an attempt to solve
the puzzling absence. He was of the
opinion that Sam had become disabled by falling or by having been thrown from
his swiftly running skis. After a
fruitless, all day search through the deep snow, and with another storm
threatening, he hastened to the Corner and sounded the alarm. He was able, on the second day of the search,
to gather, at most, but about twelve or fourteen men. With six inches of new snow as an additional
hamper to their operations, these men searched as thoroughly as was possible
under the circumstances, but to no purpose.
The whole community being now thoroughly aroused, the third day of the
search found more than two hundred men floundering through the deep snow in
every part of the canyon. All were
armed, for the signal, if Berry was found, was to be three shots.
It happened, during the afternoon
that George Pettingill, Abram D. Church and Frank Rowland met far up in the
upper reaches of the canyon, and while resting, Pettingill mentioned the fact
that he had discovered what he believed to be bear tracks further down the
canyon, and that if they were bear tracks, he was a monster. Mr. Rowland suggested that they examine the
tracks, so the three retraced Pettingill’s steps down the canyon to the point
where he had made the discovery. After
clearing one of the deep depressions of its accumulated snow, the imprint of a
bear’s foot and claws was plainly to be seen.
The bear was evidently making his way down the canyon. A suspicion came into their minds that
perhaps the tracks might lead to a solving of the disappearance. Tired as they were, they decided to trace the
track back up the canyon. They met with
some difficulty in following the tracks, as, in many places, they were all but
obliterated by masses of snow falling from the windblown trees of the dense
pine forest that clothes this portion of the canyon. They were but a short distance away from and
within sight of what proved to be the death scene, when they saw Isaac S.
Church and H. F. Turner in the canyon above them.
By this time many had become
exhausted by the heavy traveling and had given up the search for the day and
were leaving the canyon, when, from far up in the dark recesses of the gloomy
canyon, came the boom, boom, boom, of a distant shotgun. Isaac S. Church and H. F. Turner, who had
been searching together during the day, in passing by an immense, dead and
burned out pine, stumbled over Sam’s skis and pole. They shouted to the party toiling up the
canyon and in a few moments Pettingill, having a shotgun, fired the signal that
the search was over.
They examined the tree and found
that it had been the winter home of a large grizzly bear. A few steps down the mountainside, blood began
to stain the snow. Fifty feet down the
canyon, in a grove of small fir trees, the body lay, torn and mangled beyond
recognition. Soon, grim visage
mountaineers began to assemble, and preparations for removing the body were
quickly made by lashing it to a small fir sapling. Four men, working in relays, then shouldered
the burden, and poor Sam was borne to the home he was destined never again to
enter alive.
Isaac S. Church, and others, in
commenting on what probably occurred at the time of the tragedy, believed that
the bear, when he sprang from his den, would have run away, had he not been
confronted by two large trees that had fallen across each other immediately in
front of his den. He sprang directly
into this V shaped trap and could go no further in this direction. He evidently saw Sam running and started in
pursuit. Sam ran too and leaped over one
of the fallen trees, and, as he did so, must have fallen, and before he could
again regain his feet, the bear was upon him, striking him first in the back,
tearing off his coat, vest, shirts and flesh from neck to waist, laying bare
the ribs. Then the one-sided struggle
began. In order to
protect his face, Sam, to all appearances, had attempted to ward off the fierce
onslaughts of the bear by using his bare hands, as the hands and fingers were
broken, mangled and torn to shreds.
After struggling into the grove of small fir saplings, Sam had grasped
one of them with his mangled hands, and then around and around the tree they
struggled until Sam sank, probably unconscious.
The bear had then clawed and torn him into an unrecognizable mass. So fierce and sudden had been the bear’s
onslaught, that Sam had no opportunity to draw a weapon, as his knife and
hatchet were still in their scabbards attached to his belt.
The next day Bill Gogle and Doc
Sargant, two hunters and trappers of those days, who lived in Sierraville, took
the bear’s track and followed it back to Weber Lake, but did not overtake
him. It was supposed to be the bear
called “Old Club-Foot.” Club-Foot was a
grizzly bear that had been caught in a steel trap, and lost two or three toes. He was killed in Shasta County some years
later, and weighed over sixteen hundred pounds, and of the men who were on the
hunt, Lafe Blatchley, of Sierraville, Henry Quigley of Downieville, Sierra County
Clerk, Alfred Garfield of Sattley and Levi Garfield of Golconda, Nevada, are at
this writing the only men living that took part in the hunt. At that time they were young men from sixteen
to eighteen years of age. C. G. Church,
of Loyalton, will vouch for every word of this being a true story, as he has
heard his father tell it many times and remembers the day it happened, being
eleven years of age. – (Written by Obadiah Sattley Church)
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
Wooldridge, J.W.Major History of Sacramento Valley
California, Vol. 3 Pages 308-311. Pioneer Historical
Publishing Co. Chicago 1931.
© 2010 Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's Sierra County Biographies