Indian Vengeance

V

"Those brave old bricks of forty-nine!
What lives they lived! What deaths they died!
Their ghosts are many. Let them keep
Their vast possessions. The Piute,
The tawny warrior, will dispute
No boundary with these . . . . . . . . .

- Joaquin Miller.



High water on the American came, usually, when the first warm rains
melted the snow on the mountains.

The placer miners toiled at furious pace all during the summer and fall.
The water, then not more than a rivulet, was deflected through flumes
from the river bed, so that all the sand of the bars could be put
through the sluices.

The men worked till the last possible moment in the narrow river bed,
only leaving in time to save their lives, and abandoning everything to
the sudden rush of the water. Their sluices, logs, flumes, water-wheels,
all their mining paraphernalia, sometimes even their living outfits,
were swept away in the floods.