His father came from the nearby town of Rünenberg, in the canton of Basel in Switzerland, and his maternal grandfather was a pastor from Grenzach, on the Swiss-German border.

Facing mounting debts and legal charges that could lead to imprisonment, he fled to America to avoid trial, adopting the name Captain John Augustus Sutter.

In May 1834, he left his wife and five children behind in Burgdorf, Switzerland, and with a French passport, he boarded the ship Sully, which traveled from Le Havre, France, to New York City, where it arrived on July 14, 1834.

Sutter originally planned to cross the Siskiyou Mountains during the winter, but acting chief factor James Douglas convinced him that such an attempt would be perilous.

[8] The brig Clementine was eventually hired by Sutter to take freight provisions and general merchandise for New Archangel (now known as Sitka), the capital of the Russian-American Company colonies in Russian America.

[9] Staying at New Archangel for a month, Sutter joined several balls hosted by Governor Kupreyanov, who likely gave help in determining the course of the Sacramento River.

[9] The Clementine then sailed for Alta California, arriving on July 1, 1839, at Yerba Buena (now San Francisco), which at that time was only a small seaport town.

Alvarado saw Sutter's plan of establishing a colony in Central Valley as useful in "buttressing the frontier which he was trying to maintain against Indians, Russians, Americans and British.

"[10] Sutter persuaded Governor Alvarado to grant him 48,400 acres of land for the sake of curtailing American encroachment on the Mexican territory of California.

[10] After receiving the land grant and building his fort, Sutter did not strictly adhere on his initial agreement to deter European settlers.

Sutter's Fort had a central building made of adobe bricks, surrounded by a high wall with protection on opposite corners to guard against attack.

Prior to the Gold Rush, it was the destination for most immigrants entering California via the high passes of the Sierra Nevada, including the ill-fated Donner Party of 1846, for whose rescue Sutter contributed supplies.

[citation needed] In order to build his fort and develop a large ranching/farming network in the area, Sutter relied on Indian labor.

Some Native Americans worked voluntarily for Sutter (e.g. Nisenans, Miwoks, Ochecames), but others were subjected to varying degrees of coercion that resembled slavery or serfdom.

Sutter's Native American "employees" slept on bare floors in locked rooms without sanitation, and ate from troughs made from hollowed tree trunks.

[16][17] Pierson Reading, Sutter's fort manager, wrote in a letter to a relative that “the Indians of California make as obedient and humble slaves as the Negro in the South".

"[21]Heinrich Lienhard, a Swiss immigrant that served as Sutter's majordomo, wrote of the treatment of the enslaved once captured: "As the room had neither beds nor straw, the inmates were forced to sleep on the bare floor.

Despite the procurement of fertile agriculture, Sutter fed his Native American work force in pig troughs, where they would eat gruel with their hands in the sun on their knees.

Waseurtz af Sandels, a Swedish explorer who visited California in 1842–1843, also wrote about Sutter's brutal treatment of Indian slaves in 1842: "I could not reconcile my feelings to see these fellows being driven, as it were, around some narrow troughs of hollow tree trunks, out of which, crouched on their haunches, they fed more like beasts than human beings, using their hands in hurried manner to convey to their mouths the thin porage [sic] which was served to them.

As the White settlers were ranching two million head of livestock, shooting wild game in enormous numbers, and replacing wilderness with wheat fields, available food for Indians in the region diminished.

In August 1846, an article in The Californian declared that in respect to California Indians, "The only effectual means of stopping inroads upon the property of the country, will be to attack them in their villages.

An 1851 legislative measure not only gave settlers the right to organize lynch mobs to kill Indians, but allowed them to submit their expenses to the government.

[29] In 1856, a San Francisco Bulletin editorial stated, "Extermination is the quickest and cheapest remedy, and effectually prevents all other difficulties when an outbreak [of Indian violence] occurs.

A Sacramento Daily Union article of the time accused high-pressure lobbyists interested in profiting off enslaved Indians of pushing the law through, gave examples of how wealthy individuals had abused the law to acquire Indian slaves from the reservations, and stated, "The Act authorizes as complete a system of slavery, without any of the checks and wholesome restraints of slavery, as ever was devised.

[35][36] Two years earlier, in 1842, Mexico had removed California Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado, and sent Brigadier General Manuel Micheltorena to replace him.

Sutter, in turn, recruited men, one of whom was John Marsh, a medical doctor and owner of the large Rancho los Meganos.

[46][47] In August 1846, Sutter formally transferred control of the fort to the United States after receiving a commission as a lieutenant under US Army Captain John C.

It started when Sutter hired Marshall, a New Jersey native who had served with John C. Frémont in the Bear Flag Revolt, to build a water-driven sawmill in Coloma, along the American River.

[49] Sutter's El Sobrante (Spanish for leftover) land grant was challenged by the Squatters' Association, and in 1858 the US Supreme Court denied its validity.

After prospectors had destroyed his crops and slaughtered cattle leaving him only his own gold, Sutter spent the rest of his life trying to get the government to pay him for his losses, without success.