Albert Schweitzer – Seminar #7

November 26, 2018 / Peter Klopp / 15 Comments

Die Geschichte von der Angst, ausgelacht zu werden

Früher haben die Kinder gerne mit einer Schlappschleuder geschossen. Man spannte einfach Gummibänder an eine kleine Zweiggabel, legte einen Stein oder eine Erbse in die Lusche, spannte und ließ den Stein fliegen. Man zielte auf einen Baumstamm oder eine Blechbüchse oder in die Luft. Doch war es verboten, auf Menschen oder Tiere zu schießen, denn man konnte sie damit verletzen oder sogar töten.

Auch Albert besaß eine solche Schleuder. Er kniff das linke Auge zusammen, schoss auf einen Ball und traf ihn auch. Da kam sein Freund Heinrich hinzu. Er schlug ihm vor, doch nicht auf einen Ball, sondern in den Wald zu gehen und auf Vögel zu schießen. Da könnte Albert zeigen, ob er wirklich ein guter Schütze ist. Aber Albert wollte nicht auf Tiere schießen, denn sie taten ihm leid. Ganz gleich, ob es Amseln oder Spatzen sind, sie alle wollen ja leben. Außerdem hatte er die zehn Gebote gelernt, in denen es heißt: Du sollst nicht töten!

Doch Albert traute sich nicht, „nein“ zu sagen. Er fürchtete, dass ihn sein Freund Heinrich auslachen und einen Angsthasen nennen würde. So antwortete er: „Ich komme mit!“

Beide Jungen liefen nun zum Wald, lasen kleine Steine auf und warteten hinter einem Baum darauf, dass Vögel kämen und sich auf die Zweige setzten. Da kam eine Schar Spatzen angeflattert. Sie ließen sich auf dem Baum nieder und zwitscherten fröhlich in die Morgenluft. „Die schießen wir runter“, flüsterte Heinrich leise. „Schieß, Albert!“, befahl er streng. Doch eine innere Stimme warnte ihn und sagte: “Schieß nicht. Albert!“ „Ich schieße daneben“, meinte Albert im Stillen. „Ich will doch keine Vögel töten!“

Albert spannte den Gummi der Schleuder und wollte gerade schießen, als vom Kirchturm in Günsbach die Glocken zu läuten begannen. Sie riefen zum Sonntagsgottesdienst. Albert erschien das Glockenläuten wie eine Mahnung: „Du sollst nicht töten, Albert!“ Albert sprang auf, warf die Schleuder weg und rannte nach Hause. Sein Herz klopfte stark, doch er war froh. Denn er hatte nicht etwas Böses getan, was ihm ein anderer befohlen hatte. Seine innere Stimme, sein Gewissen, war stärker als der Befehl des Freundes.

THE MINING ERA OF THE CANADIAN COLUMBIA by Bill Laux – Chapter 5

November 23, 2018 / Peter Klopp / 12 Comments

CHAPTER FIVE

GOLD ON THE COLUMBIA

The first report of a mineral occurrence in the Upper Columbia Basin was that of British naturalist, David Douglas. While accompanying an HBC trading party in 1825, he reached Kootenay Lake and either observed, or more likely was shown, the prominent outcrops of “chicamon rocks” by the local Indians. British Columbia historians have assumed that the Hudson’s Bay men had shown the local Indians how to break off chunks of the galena outcrop above the lake on the Riondel peninsula, and melt them in a fire to cast bullets for their muskets. It may have been that the Sinixt and Kootenay Indians had shown the HBC men. The fact that the Indians had mined galena from outcrops east of Northport, WA before they were “discovered” by American miners, suggests that it was the aboriginals, rather than the HBC men who began the mining of galena in a small way. All of these deposits of galena (lead sulfide), they called “Dead Medicine,” their term for musket balls.

The chief factor at Fort Colvile from 1833 – 1844 was the educated and energetic Archibald Mc Donald. Learning of the Kootenay Lake lead deposit from his men, he visited it personally in September, 1844 to determine its value. He drew a map of the location, collected a number of samples, and sent them down the river to Dr. John McLaughlin at Fort Vancouver to be forwarded to England for assay. In his letter to HBC Governor James Douglas, he describes the location.

“The ore is picked up on the 2nd eminence of the Presque-Isle at “A”, about 100 feet high. There is something of a crater at top, and ‘tis from the debris or heaving up of old, covering the land side of the conical hill that the ore is found in loose lumps among the earth…I cut my initial in a large tree along side…”

Chief Factor McLoughlin forwarded the samples to Archibald Barclay, the Secretary of the Company, in London with his observations in a letter of November 23, 1844.

“From a small portion of the metal tested here, a considerable quantity of very fine soft lead was obtained; but our mode of analysis was not sufficiently accurate to detect the traces of any more precious metal.

“It is not probable that mining operations could be carried on to advantage at Flat Bow (Kootenay) Lake, the distance being about 600 miles from the sea coast, and the water navigation so difficult and dangerous that the metal would have to be transported with pack horses more than half the distance by land. The mine is also on the south side of the Columbia River, and will therefore, in all probability, eventually fall within the limits of the United States Territory, and, if the reported mineral wealth of that part of the country becomes known to the Americans, it will raise its value, and may become an additional motive with their Government to make good their claims.”

Several things are clear from this letter. Mc Loughlin, if not Governor Simpson and the HBC, already accepted that the British would eventually have to cede the land south of the Columbia to the Americans. But as long as the status of dual sovereignty endured, it would be best to keep knowledge of any mineral deposits in the District of Columbia confidential, lest it arouse the cupidity of the Americans.

A source of lead for musket balls was a significant find in the Northwest. All HBC lead was coming from England by ship, and a local source would be a source of considerable profit for the company. But the letter also indicates the impracticability of exploiting the deposit since the Bonnington Falls and rapids of the Lower Kootenay River blocked the usual HBC transport by bateaux, and a portage of about 30 miles by pack animals would be required around these obstructions.

A discovery of lead might be kept confidential within the Company, but gold was a different matter. The news of the rich gold strikes in California was being discussed all over the Northwest in the 1850s. Dozens of HBC employees deserted to join the parties of men heading south for the California diggings. A few, still loyal to the company, or unwilling to leave their families and ranches in the Washington Territory, wondered. Was it worth heading south to join the rush, or might there be gold on the Columbia or its tributaries? The HBC posts in the Interior had been supplied with small sample of gold nuggets from the California diggings. These were shown to employees and Indians and the question asked: Had they ever seen anything like this? The possibility induced Fort Colvile teamster Joseph Morel, who was gathering driftwood on the shore of the Columbia in 1854, to experimentally wash out a few pans of gravel.

In the Northwest 1854 was one of those years when one era comes to a close and new one opens. In that year the fur trade in the Northwest was dwindling owing to a reduced demand for beaver pelts. The HBC was more and more turning to its farms, coal mines, and sawmills to try to develop a trade in flour, coal and lumber with the growing market of Americans to the south. Two events in the same month metaphorically signalled the change. On September 27, in Oregon City, that most intrepid of all the HBC fur traders, Peter Skene Ogden slowly slipped from life. In the same month, HBC teamster Joseph Morel and his fellows found placer gold in the gravel bars and rock crevices of the Columbia River near Ft. Colvile.

Placer gold consists of the particles and nuggets eroded out of the quartz ledges in the mountains by glacial and water erosion. They are carried downstream by any fast running current of water, but being heavier than sand or rock, are dropped to the bottom whenever the current slows down. What had been found in the California rivers in 1848 were the accumulated nuggets and grains of gold that had been caught in rock crevices on the bottoms of the river, and underneath gravel bars on the insweep of curves of the river where the water runs more slowly than on the outsweeps. This was what Morel and his fellow miners were looking for in the late summer of 1854 as they probed the rock crevices of the Columbia during low water and and dug into the gravel bars at the river bends.

The first few flakes of gold shining up from the HBC men’s pans were enormously and immediately consequential for the region. A gold strike could not be hidden, no matter what the HBC policy might be. Gold miners (the secretive Mexicans aside) cannot be silenced; they will pour out their take for the day on the saloon bar to impress their cronies. All that fall, excited men from Fort Colvile dug into the Columbia river bars, working slowly upstream. The treaty of 1846 had set the British – American boundary at the Forty-Ninth Parallel. Exactly where that line intersected the Columbia was a matter of guesswork. The crude instruments available to Colvile Chief Factor, Angus Mc Donald suggested that border would fall somewhere close to the confluence of the Pend Orielle and the Columbia, but a precise determination would have to await the arrival of the Boundary Commission surveyors. Meanwhile, a man named Walker, part Indian, found gold on the Pend Orielle, a large tributary of the Columbia. The swift running Pend Orielle, on joining the Columbia, slows down to the rate of the larger river, and drops its gold. Here the richest bars were found. Men digging these gravels were making $4 to $10 per day, better than a month’s wages for most. Two hundred ounces were taken from the Columbia that season. It was bought by Chief Factor Angus Mc Donald at Ft. Colvile for $12 per ounce. That autumn it was discreetly sent overland by pack train on the 1849 HBC trail to Ft. Hope, and on to Victoria the next year. As it turned out, the Pend Orielle diggings were a bare half mile inside British territory, and became the first mining entry into the Canadian portion of the Upper Columbia Basin. Just across the Columbia from these rich diggings and a quarter mile upstream, the HBC men began construction of a new post, Fort Shepherd, in 1856, on British soil, from which they hoped to control any commercial entry into the British Columbia.

The post was needed at once. The news was out: there was placer gold on the Upper Columbia. Men rushed north from Walla Walla and from the exhausted diggings in California, and in the spring of 1855 the first Colvile Gold Rush was underway. That year the Columbia, the Pend Orielle, and their tributaries were lined with men, almost all Americans, digging the gravels for the gold that lay along the bedrock. The mining era on the Upper Columbia had begun.

But this Columbia mining was being carried out by a largely American force, in an area chiefly served by American merchants whose merchandise came up the easy military wagon roads from Walla Walla and White Bluffs on the navigable Middle Columbia. The isolated HBC Fort Colvile (and after 1856, Ft. Shepherd), were linked to Victoria only by the old HBC Brigade trails over the rugged Cascades, one from Osoyoos Lake and the other from Kamloops. These were crude horse trails with no bridges, no easy switchback gradients, and dangerous in the extreme. The fur brigades and special expresses always took extra horses along; it was not uncommon to lose half their stock on the terrible mountain descents which were taken by the Indian packers straight down in a wild slide. Until some dependable, year round, link with the Coast could be established, the Columbia mines would remain largely an American operation.

The Pend Orielle diggings were located approximately where the boundary was believed to be located, as the river ran east from its mouth on the Columbia and no one possessed an instrument capable of accurately establishing latitude within a few hundred yards. However, in 1859, British Army Captain John Palliser’s “British North American Exploring Expedition” was making its way west into British Columbia with the intention of reuniting its scattered parties at HBC Fort Colvile. Captain Palliser himself came down the Kootenay River from Kootenay Lake to the Columbia. Traveling down river he stopped at Fort Shepherd where he was asked by the HBC men at the fort and the miners from the Pend Orielle to take an observation to determine definitively whether the Fort and the placer grounds were actually in British territory as supposed. Palliser took his observation and finding Fort Shepherd to be 3/4 of a mile ( 1.2 Km) within British Columbia, reported,

“While I was observing, a circle of Scotchmen, Americans, and Indians, surrounded me, anxiously awaiting my decision as to whether the diggings were in American territory or not; strange to say, the Americans were quite as much pleased at my pronouncing in favour of Her Majesty, as the Scotchmen, and the Indians began cheering for King George.”

George III had been dead thirty-nine years, but was still fixed in the Indian imagination as their protector against the “Bostons.” The Americans’ gratification had much to do with the fact that many of the Pend Orielle miners were deserters from the U.S. army. The long tradition of the Kootenays as a refuge for disaffected Americans begins with the Pend Orielle miners in 1859.

Natural Splendour of the Arrow Lakes

November 21, 2018 / Peter Klopp / 25 Comments

Wednesday’s Photo

Fall Poem

A couple of years ago I wrote a poem inspired by the splendour of fall just within our own yard, which represents a microcosmos of the wonderful world of the Arrow Lakes. I embedded the poem two lines at a time into the video that captured the autumnal mood. Enjoy.

The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Chapter XXIII

November 20, 2018 / Peter Klopp / 29 Comments

The Complexities of the Heart

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not. Blaise Pascal

Marburg Castle – Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

Biene and I had met twice in the early summer of 1964, each time for only a few hours, as I had a long train ride to get back to the barracks before midnight. Being completely incapable to feel happy for any length of time until then, I was amazed how my restless heart and mind could be in perfect harmony to permit that elusive sensation of happiness during those five wonderful hours I had spent with Biene along the shores of Lake Baldeney. This blissful feeling was further enhanced when Biene wrote that she now knew that I was no longer just a fantasy person, but a real human being she could love and be happy with.

Alas, barely two weeks later, while I was still deeply immersed in a state of euphoria, a letter from Biene arrived with an obscure message out of which I could make very little sense.

“Dear Peter,

You will probably ask yourself why I haven’t written to you sooner. Indeed, you may ask this question. It is strange with me; for I can’t get rid of my sadness. When everything outside looks so peaceful and when I think of you, it is getting even worse. I would rather crawl into my bed being so much in pain and cry. How beautiful it is outside! The sun is shining and the wheat fields have already turned completely yellow and the stalks are swaying in the wind and making a gentle sound. Normally wheat fields fill me with joy and let me dream many a beautiful dream. And now?

I would like to talk to you about everything that moves me. But it is not because of you that I cannot do it. I have a great longing to be with you. But I cannot tell you what I want to tell you. It would increase my sadness, because I would hurt you, and I would like you so much to be happy, if you think of me. Please forgive me that I write nothing that would cheer you up. Normally, I am not like that. Now even beautiful memories don’t comfort me. I don’t want to think about anything of the past …”

Uncle Günther and Peter

I reread this passage at least half a dozen times in an effort to penetrate the veil, with which Biene may have covered a secret of the past. With all the talk in the male-dominated army, where many a room buddy had made himself an expert on what made the girls tick, on how to deal with their capricious behaviour, on how to please them, what to do and what not to do, with all that half knowledge of the opposite gender floating around in the gossip mills, not one of the so-called specialists ever mentioned the devastating influence of the monthly period. I was completely ignorant about what most women had to put up with, their mood swings, feeling psychologically and physically down, often bordering on severe forms of depression. More likely than not, the topic was one of the few remaining taboos left in the otherwise rough and tumble world of the military environment. If only I had had an inkling of those terrible days, often labeled ‘the evil days’, then truly I would have worded my reply with greater understanding. But not knowing the true nature of her problem I merely encouraged her to unburden herself of her troubling past.

“Do you really believe, dear Biene, that I could be happy at your expense? I know that so much of your past has been left unexplained and remains shrouded in darkness. Now you write that the ‘before’ oppresses you or whatever else it might be. But you won’t say, because you don’t want to hurt me. How sweet of you! But you must understand me right. If you are not happy, I cannot be happy either. It makes no sense to shield me from your pain. On the contrary, the silence is more torturous. I start to dig in my memories and try to figure out what it is that bothers you. And someone, who contemplates, gets too many ideas. I’d rather be sad with you than to wander about in fateful darkness, where there is no room for true happiness. Does it have to do with Henk? Or haven’t I understood you yet? Are you afraid that I would some day be lost to you forever? A thousand questions that make me sick! Dear Biene, I ask you, be of good courage and write what oppresses you. Otherwise, I don’t feel happy any more …”

Then there was Biene’s question about my brother Adolf.

“Sometimes I think of your brother from Canada. I cannot understand that no girl would want to be his wife. If two love each other, it does not matter where the two are together, and if it were at the end of the world. Don’t you think so?”

It was obvious that Biene used the example of my brother Adolf to indirectly tell me that if I was going to Canada and stayed there, she would be willing to follow me and be my wife. However, dense as I was then with regard to her hypothetical questions, I failed to read between the lines – the very same ineptitude, of which I had often accused Biene in the past. Or was it that we both suffered from the same tendency to back off whenever we came dangerously close to making a commitment? So I lamely replied as if Adolf had truly been her main concern.

Family Gathering: Aunt Mieze, Eka (Lavana), Mother, Peter and Adolf

“You wonder, dear Biene, why Adolf can find no girl, who is willing to follow him to Canada. Have you ever put yourself into this position? Think about what a girl would have to give up: her parents, friends, dear acquaintances, her home country, etc. Girls cling much more to matters of the heart than boys. Adolf knows this …”

So we two continued to beat around the bush. We only indirectly described to each other our innermost desires and hopes and out of fear of appearing too bold, we foolishly held back and failed to openly state what really was important to us, our love for each other.

Biene’s Visit to her Birthplace in Gotha

and her Vacation on the Island of Majorca, Spain

In the meantime Biene traveled to Gotha, where her half-sister Elsbeth and husband Paul Werner with their two children Norbert and Christian lived. Biene grew up in Gotha, until her parents and family escaped to West Germany. After a lengthy ordeal at the refugee camp in Aurich her parents eventually succeeded in receiving a decent apartment in Velbert.

Castle Friedenstein, Gotha – Photo Credit: thueringerschloesser.de

Biene reported enthusiastically about her former home province Thuringia. They made many excursions into the surrounding area of Gotha, even visited the famous castle, the Warthburg, where Martin Luther within the safety of the massive walls translated the Bible into German. But what mattered most to Biene was that she and Elsbeth became close friends. They spent as much time as possible together.

Biene with her sister Elsbeth

While everyone was sound asleep, Elsbeth, twenty years her senior, would share her most precious memories with her. The two would often talk into the wee hours. Biene learned that Elsbeth loved to pen stories and even contemplated writing a book. After the wedding she was deeply saddened that her husband did not share her passion for writing. He was a very practical man with both feet on the ground and was focusing only on what had to be done to survive in the postwar communist society, where most basic consumer commodities were scarce. Paul ignored what was dearest to his young wife’s heart and treated with contempt what was in his eyes useless, sentimental tripe. He callously burned her entire portfolio of creative and much cherished writing leaving her nothing of her priceless collection except for a very few stories, which she managed to save from the senseless destruction. Overall, Biene had spent a wonderful time at her birthplace, that quaint house and apartment, where little had changed, since Biene and her family had escaped from the socialist ‘paradise’ in 1954.

The House in Gotha – Biene’s Birthplace

Within barely a week upon her return to Velbert she was getting ready to fly with her friend Gisela to the Spanish Isle of Majorca. There in the company of other young girls and boys she enjoyed two relaxing weeks at the sandy beaches of the Mediterranean Sea. This was the first time Biene was allowed to travel alone without parental supervision. Her mother had always kept a watchful eye on her stunningly beautiful and romantically inclined daughter, who had given her in the past much grief with her dangerous, almost fateful attraction she exerted on her male admirers. But as it turned out, Biene returned home safe and sound, tanned by the southern sun so dark she could have easily been mistaken for a Spanish senorita.

Biene on Vacation on Majorca Summer 1964

Apart from lounging at the beach and going swimming, Biene had once gone scuba diving in the crystal clear waters to explore the mysterious seascape, which gave her quite a thrill. However, as she soon discovered, diving and depending on the vital air supply from the oxygen tank on her back was not entirely without danger. While she took in the wonders of the strange world under the sea, the air supply suddenly dwindled forcing her to quickly surface. There was plenty of oxygen left in the tank. Perhaps Biene had put a kink into the connecting hose. Fortunately she had kept her cool and after being confronted with imminent danger did not panic. After this scary experience Biene decided that it was safer to stick with the more relaxing beach routine. Their flight back to Germany had been delayed by more than a day due to the loss of a plane, which the small tourist airline had suffered in a plane crash elsewhere. When they finally arrived in the dead of night at the Düsseldorf Airport, no busses were running any more to take them home. Biene and her friend were stranded. They were waiting at the dreary railroad station for the morning to come. Then a small miracle happened, which I let Biene describe in her own words.

Beach on Wild Coastline of Majorca – Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

“In the bungalow village was also a young girl who was teased by all, especially by the boys. She was strutting about in an extravagant attire entirely too dressed up. Nobody liked her. I had only once exchanged a few words with her. When Gisela and I were now waiting at the station for the morning and had gone outside to catch a little bit of fresh air, she suddenly walked up to us. She knew that our plane had landed late. When she learned that our bus would arrive only in the early morning, she took us without hesitation to her place not far from the station. She gave us each a couch, where we totally exhausted slept until she woke us with coffee and buns. You wouldn’t believe how lovingly she cared for us. I had never before noticed so prominently how much one lets outer appearance deceive oneself. I was really stunned by such kindliness.”

The Pain of Indecision

Romantic University City of Marburg, Hesse, Germany 1964

Love that is engulfed by fear is not perfect. It cannot grow in the darkness of uncertainty, where doubt enters the heart and where there is no commitment. In my excessive sensitivity towards Biene’s past distressing experiences of love coming too early and too suddenly, but also out of the horrid fear of rejection, I never found, as I should have, the courage to ask her point-blank to marry me. With a clear yes or no, we both would have been able to carry on with our lives and make plans for the future with or without being together. There is infinite wisdom in the convention to have a formal engagement when both partners gather with their families, relatives and friends, exchange rings, and promise before witnesses to marry each other. In as much this formal coming together was lacking, doubtfulness and its evil ally distrust cast a dark shadow on our relationship in spite of our declared love for each other. Until we met again in November, the pretence to be happy with a mere friendship on my part caused us both to sit on the fence. Frustrated with the regression to a mere amicable correspondence between two very good friends, I responded to Biene’s lamentation over the power of Fate, which was threatening to separate us,

“Leave Fate, dear Biene, out of the picture. Fate in our case is not a blind, impersonal power, to which we must submit. We all create it with our own desires and action. When you say that Fate will one day separate us; that we have to knuckle under; that we have to be happy with what we have given to each other, then you don’t mean Fate, but you yourself and your hidden wishes. What should separate us? Is it perhaps my voyage to Canada? This is not Fate’s power, but my own wish. My wish is also to return if necessary, and yours could be simply to follow me. Why am I harping on it so long? Because I remember all too well our agreement right from the beginning to be honest and truthful, even if it meant to hurt one another. Please don’t be angry with me that I am writing to you so openly… I do not stand terrified and inconsolable before this mysterious force called ‘Fate’. No tyrant, nor any distance, nor any ocean can separate us. We alone separate each other.”

Marburg, Germany on the Lahn River – Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

There is some truth in my reflections of some fifty years ago. People do indeed use this irrational force as a pretext to excuse their own lack of courage, inability to act when action is required, their self-doubt and uncertainty about that portion of their personal life that could be given direction and purpose if there was a will. However, truth becomes tarnished when mingled with disingenuous motives and intentions. Such was the case when I accepted the boundary that Biene had set for our love, although in reality I had always wanted to cross that boundary. Instead of giving a pedantic lecture on Fate, why didn’t I tell her that I loved her, asked her to marry me, and then, if she said yes, point out that we needed to make plans to turn our dreams into reality? With horror I look back and realize how much I had been willing to risk with my provocative letter, in which I had renounced my true intentions. But I was young and inexperienced, only a little over a year out of high school. I was groping in the dark. I had nobody to turn to for advice. I only had Biene’s responses and reactions, which were often just as bewildering and confusing to me as were my letters to her. The problem was that we were so much alike in our fear of the pain of permanent separation, which was looming more and more ominous with each passing month that we were erecting walls to protect ourselves, when we should have been busy building bridges of love and faithfulness. Thus, it is not surprising that Biene shrouded in darkness about my true feelings for her would not be writing very encouraging words to bolster our relationship.

“Alas, I also hope, as you do, that everything will work out nicely between the two of us, before you depart, although then the good-bye will be even harder. I thank you that you want to grant me my wish (respecting the boundary) and imagine, sometimes I even wish the opposite. Oh Peter, it is so confusing. Please forgive me! I don’t understand it myself. The more I want to free myself from you, the more my longing for you increases.”

Were these lines popping up sporadically in her letters not an urgent plea to me to make a move, to take the first step to reach out to her, to comfort her with a word of commitment? In the culture of traditional values and conventions of the mid-sixties Biene expected me to take the initiative and break the stalemate. But shy like a little schoolboy I kept beating around the bush. The word marriage was not part of my vocabulary. However, mindful of my good friend Dieter’s advice, I began to arrange another rendezvous with Biene. She was eager to prepare our meeting and combine it with a visit to the Wuppertal Opera House. We both were looking forward to it. We sincerely felt that seeing each other again would chase away those gloomy thoughts and ominous forebodings about our impending separation and potential break-up of our tenuous, yet so cherished relationship.

Albert Schweitzer – Seminar #6

November 19, 2018 / Peter Klopp / 11 Comments

Die Geschichte vom Ringkampf

In Alberts Schulklasse gab es einen Jungen, der hieß Georg. Er war der Größte und alle hielten ihn auch für den Stärksten. Viele hatten mit ihm schon gerungen und dabei verloren.

Georg war auch ein Angeber. Er protzte mit seiner Stärke und forderte die anderen Jungen auf, mit ihm zu kämpfen. Aber die meisten hatten Angst vor ihm. Da sprach er auch den Albert an: „Du Herrenbüble bist wohl zu fein mit mir zu kämpfen?“ Georg nannte den Albert Herrenbüble, weil er immer ordentlich angezogen war und weil sein Vater nicht Bauer oder Tischler, sondern Pfarrer war. Albert ärgerte sich über diese Verspottung als Herrenbüble, wollte aber trotzdem nicht mit ihm kämpfen, weil er keinen Spaß am Ringkampf hatte. Doch als der Georg ihn einen Feigling nannte, legte Albert seine Schiefertafel in das Gras und sagte: „Los. kämpfen wir!“

Die beiden Jungen rangen miteinander und keuchten vor Anstrengung. Die anderen Jungen und Mädchen standen um sie herum und feuerten die beiden Kampfhähne an. Da gelang es Albert, den Georg auf den Boden zu werfen und festzuhalten. Alle riefen: „Bravo, Albert!“ Sie freuten sich nämlich, dass Albert den Angeber besiegt hatte. Doch Georg wischte sich den Schweiß von der Stirn und brummte böse: „Wenn ich auch jede Woche eine Fleischsuppe essen könnte wie der Albert, wäre ich auch so stark!“

Darüber erschrak der Albert sehr. Er schämte sich, dass es ihm besser ging als den anderen Kindern von Eltern, die nicht so viel Geld hatten, um ihren Kindern eine Fleischsuppe zu kochen. Sie aßen immer nur Mehl- oder Brotsuppen, von denen man nicht so stark wurde wie von Fleischsuppe. Als die anderen Kinder dem Albert zu seinem Sieg gratulieren wollten, drehte er sich still um und ging nach Hause.

Zuhause gab es zufällig gerade Fleischsuppe. Die Schüssel stand auf dem Tisch und roch gut. Alle hatten Appetit und langten zu, Alberts Eltern, der Bruder und die Schwestern. Nur Albert mochte nicht essen. Die Eltern wunderten sich sehr. Sie schimpften mit ihm: „Albert, warum isst du die gute Suppe nicht? Die Mutter hat sie mit so viel Liebe gekocht! Deine Geschwister essen sie doch auch!“ Doch Albert aß einfach nichts, weil er immer an Georgs Worte und die anderen Kinder denken musste, die es nicht so gut hatten wie er. Ohne etwas gegessen zu haben, stand Albert vom Tisch auf und ging in sein Zimmer.

Albert nahm sich fest vor, nie mehr Fleischsuppe zu essen und sich auch nicht mehr gut anzuziehen, damit die anderen nicht wieder „Herrenbüble“ zu ihm sagen konnten. Aber er beschloss auch, nie mehr einen Ringkampf zu machen, denn er wollte nicht, dass andere wegen seiner Kraft verlieren. Er empfand es als ungerecht, dass er stärker war als die anderen Kinder.

THE MINING ERA OF THE CANADIAN COLUMBIA by Bill Laux – Chapter 4

November 16, 2018 / Peter Klopp / 5 Comments

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ORIGINS OF WESTERN MINING

Although a few of the Americans moving west in the 1840s had seen gold panning practiced along the the mountain streams of North Carolina and Georgia, it was the Mexicans who were the first miners in the west. A great silver rush began in Mexico in 1543, and in the next ten years more silver was produced than had been seized in the Spanish Conquest. Mexico had a school of mines from 1792, while up until 1849 the United States had not a single public assayer.

In the European monarchical tradition, gold and silver were “Royal Metals,” belonging to the Crown. Miners might be licensed to extract them, but the Crown would then take from them its “Royal Fifth.” This seizure was bitterly resented, and miners sought to evade it in whatever way they could. Within the settled parts of Mexico, a discovery of mineral had to be “denounced” to the local authorities, the equivalent of staking a claim. And from that moment the miners were subject to close supervision to ensure that the “Quinto,” or “Royal Fifth” did not escape the Crown. A wealthy or well connected mine owner might induce the authorities to look the other way by judicious bribery, but poor miners with no influence at the Vice Regal Court were subject to harassing exactions by local authorities as well as the forfeiture of the “Quinto.” They had but one recourse.

The Court of Spain had drawn the “Rim of Christendom” at the boundary of Arizona and New Mexico with Sonora and Chihuahua. The lands north of that line were declared to be “in partibus infidelorum,” the lands of the infidels. These lands were to be entered only with military escort to protect the traveler from hostile Aboriginals, and in the case of miners, to seize their “Quinto” for the Crown.

To evade these forfeitures, a system of clandestine mining in the frontier regions evolved.

Each spring, quiet groups of Mexican miners would set out from their wintering places at Sonora or Chihuahua City to slip over the “Rim of Christendom” without escort, and once in the Indian lands, would hire Apache Indians as guides and interpreters to secure peaceful passage through the Aboriginal lands. These clandestine Mexican miners moved surreptitiously, avoided contact with the American fur trappers, and mined in total secrecy, closing their workings at the end of each season, so that others would not find them. Old Spanish/Mexican workings have been found in all of the Southwest states as far north as Utah and Wyoming.

When the gold seekers of 1849 entered California they found the Mexicans already in place, washing the gold from the gravel bars of the Sierra. James Marshall is credited with the “discovery” of gold in California, but the clandestine Mexican miners had been quietly removing California gold for some time. The same was true in Colorado in the 1870s; the Mexican miners were already on the silver deposits when the Americans arrived, and were the only ones who knew how to extract silver bullion from its ores. The Americans learned their mining techniques from the Mexicans, but it was not in their nature to adopt the characteristic Mexican secrecy about their work. There was no “Quinto” in America; minerals found in the earth could be claimed in full by the man who dug them. In the absence of existing regulations, the California miners made their own “Miners Law,” establishing number and size of claims permitted each man, days of work — Sunday was sacrosanct — and the means whereby claims might be held, sold or leased.

When the California miners heard the news of a gold strike in British Columbia and headed north, they were to cross, at the 49th Parallel, another rim, the “Rim of Republican Institutions,” and enter into a British possession, where the Monarchical Doctrine still held: gold and silver were “Royal Metals,” and belonged absolutely to the Crown.

The tiny Colony of Vancouver Island was then ruled by “Old Squaretoes,” Chief Factor James Douglas, of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which operated the only stores Governor Douglas permitted to exist. As well, he was Agent Manager for the Puget Sound Agricultural Company which operated the HBC farms and ranches. Further, as Land Agent for the HBC, he was the sole seller of lands in the Colony. The Colonial Office had sent out Richard Blanshard as Colonial Governor, but poor Blanshard had found that there was no Governor’s house for him; he had to board and room at the HBC post. As he was not an employee of the HBC he had to pay the full 300% markup on any purchased. As well, Governor Blanshard found he had no servants, no police, no judge, nothing whatever with which to set up an administration. After an ineffectual year in which he was barely tolerated by the HBC, and without a private fortune, he acknowledged defeat and went back to England. James Douglas, “Old Squaretoes,” was then named Governor by default. Thus, with all the economic power in the colony absolutely in his hands, Chief Factor Douglas now had all political power delivered to him as well. He ruled with a legislative council he had appointed, consisting of himself, John Tod, former HBC Chief Trader at Fort Kamloops, and Captain James Cooper who had begun farming with some Kanaka labourers brought from Hawaii. There was also a single immigrant in the colony, Captain Grant, who began farming outside Victoria.

It was tight little company Colony, 3000 miles from Hong Kong, the nearest British base, and 2000 miles from Canada over a wilderness which had only foot trails and canoe routes for communication. San Francisco was its market for hides, dried fish, potatoes and livestock, and the Colony functioned as an economic satellite of California, only politically British.

There was scant immigration. Governor Douglas, and the Colonial Office, fearing American annexation, if U.S. settlers poured in to set up their own government as they had in Oregon, framed the immigration rules specifically to keep out Americans. To discourage them, the price of land was set at £1 (appx. $5) per acre, with a minimum purchase of 20 acres. For every hundred acres purchased, the settler must bring with him at his own expense “five single men or three married couples” to work the land. It was a Squire and Tenant society that the Governor Douglas sought to reproduce in his colony, a little England. But at the same time, any English freedman could step across the 49th parallel, become naturalized as an American, and select land in Oregon or Washington for 25¢ per acre. And this was what many HBC employees, having completed their term of service, chose to do. There was no profit in freedmen farming Vancouver Island; the HBC’s Puget Sound Agricultural Company was furnishing all the local market could absorb; an independent farmer had no market unless he exported his produce to the U.S. or Hawaii.

The HBC indentured labourers on the Company’s farms and mills earned £17 per year (about $85), while the going rate for free labor was £70 ($350) per year. As a result, many of them deserted to the American Territories. The Colony was loosing as many immigrants as it gained; the immigration policy was a failure. “Old Squaretoes” apparently liked it that way. He was absolutely in charge, and was determined his Colony should stay as it was: British, orderly, and respectful of its betters. Only one factor could change that, the Americans, and Governor Douglas feared and hated them.

GOLD

To the south, in California by 1850, were tens of thousands of restless miners whose claims were no longer yielding “an ounce a day,” the minimum deemed sufficient to support one man. They were beginning to filter north, seeking new gold fields. There had been reports of gold finds in the Queen Charlotte Islands, north of the Colony. On August 18, 1850, the unfortunate Governor Blanshard had written to Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey,

“I have seen a very rich specimen of gold ore, said to have been brought by the Indians of Queen Charlotte’s Islands.”

The HBC officers at Fort Simpson had got hold of some California nuggets and had asked the Indians if they had seen anything similar. The Indians said that they had, and some weeks later an old Indian woman came in with a 21 ounce specimen of gold in quartz. The next year, following the Haida Indians’ directions, the HBC men found at Mitchell Harbour on the west coast of Moresby Island, a vein, 6 inches wide in quartz, striking northwest, parallel with the coast. The HBC men had come prepared with powder and chisels and blasted out the vein. But the Haida Indians, quite naturally supposing themselves to be the owners of the mineral, would rush in after each blast, pick up all the gold they could, and carry it off with cries of triumph. They defended their right to do so with drawn knives, and harassed the HBC men at their work. The handful of company men felt this work was proving to be too hazardous, and after sone days work, fearing bloodshed, they withdrew.

However, the news of gold on the Queen Charlottes leaked out and in 1851 two ships set out from Puget sound with 60 American miners headed for the Queen Charlotte discovery.

The Queen Charlotte Islands were not part of the Vancouver Island Colony. They were claimed by the British and the HBC had the exclusive right to trade with the Haida who lived there, but beyond that, Douglas had no legal authority. The Puget Sound miners found small pockets of placer gold, but harassed by the warlike Haidas, and disappointed by their meagre takings, gave up.

The following year Governor Douglas learned that six ships had set sail from San Francisco with 500 men bound for the Queen Charlottes. He communicated his anxiety to the Colonial Secretary in London,

“These vessels are chartered by large bodies of American adventurers, who are proceeding thither for the purpose of digging gold; and if they succeed in that object, it is said to be their intention to colonize the island, and establish an independent government, until by force or fraud, they become annexed to the U.S.”

The six ships were real and bound for the Charlottes, but any plan to colonize the island was most probably Governor Douglas’ hostile fantasy. Placer gold miners have very seldom been colonists. The Californians’ object was to find gold, to dig it, and to take it back to San Francisco to spend in high living. The idea that they might try to colonize a wilderness of islands where there was not a thing to buy with their gold, was absurd. Governor Douglas obviously wanted to exclude all foreigners from the gold fields, and he was angling with the Colonial Office for authority to do so.

The Colonial Office, not wishing to anger the Americans by excluding them, but concerned that some authority be placed over these nomadic miners, made “Old Squaretoes” Lieutenant Governor of all the British lands west of the Rockies, but it specifically required him to treat all nationals equally with the British. With this new authority, Governor Douglas hastily imported a set of Australian mining regulations and proclaimed them for the Queen Charlotte Islands. The doctrine of the “Royal Fifth” had lapsed in England, but precious metals were still the property of the Crown and could be mined only by licence from the Queen’s representative.

The Australian regulations now proclaimed for the Colony, the islands, and the mainland, required a miner to pay the government $3.00 per month for a license to mine gold, and claims could be no greater than 12 ft. by 12 ft., one to a man.

To further discourage the Americans, Governor Douglas recruited HBC men to go north at once, establish themselves on the vein and face down the Haidas. When the U.S. ships arrived they found the one vein of gold taken over by the HBC men, and unable to find any other deposits, they sailed for home, not bothering to put in at Victoria to pay their licence fees. The danger past, Governor Douglas and his tight little colony lapsed back into the accustomed somnolence of English colonial gentlemen.

The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Family

Reflections on Life, Family and Community

Author: Peter Klopp

Albert Schweitzer – Seminar #7

Die Geschichte von der Angst, ausgelacht zu werden