Hysterical Journey to Historic Places

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CAPTAIN JONATHAN RUTLEDGE DAVIS

Jonathan was born in 1829 and raised in South Carolina. When the War with Mexico broke out he joined up with the Palmetto Guards. He fought with distinction at Churubusco but was wounded there. So many officers went down that day that he was promoted to lieutenant for his gallantry. By the end of the war he had made captain. When the war ended he made his way to the California gold fields.

On the morning of December 19, 1854 he was prospecting up Rock Creek Canyon above Placerville with two friends, James C. McDonald and Dr. Bolivar A. Sparks. They stumbled into an ambush set by a gang of 14sassy bandits who thought it would be amusing to murder them and steal their animals and provisions. McDonald was in the lead, got killed instantly and never got off a shot. Dr. Sparks got off two shots before taking a mortal wound. Captain Davis had emptied both of his revolvers and then began using guns dropped by his assailants. When all of the ammo ran out the knives came out. When the smoke and dust settled ten of the bandits lay dead and another had his nose and trigger finger sliced plumb off during the knife fight. Captain Davis suffered two minor flesh wounds, but his hat, jacket and shirt carried twenty eight bullet holes. Three of the bandits, for whatever reason, did not participate in the fight and scampered off into the brush. Perhaps they were injured in previous depredations. The survivor with the heavily bandaged nose claimed that the gang had murdered four Chinamen and three Americans in the days leading up to the attack on Davis.



After the fight Davis began attending to the wound suffered by Dr. Sparks. As he was doing so three hunters who had witnessed the fight appeared on the scene to help with the burials and the bandaging. Three of the wounded bandits did not bleed out until the next morning and were the last to be buried. Booty amounting $491in cash money, three gold watches and two silver watches was recovered from the dead and given to Davis. When Sparks died on Christmas Day, Davis gave the loot to the widow. McDonald was taken to Placerville for internment by his family. The bandit with the heavily bandaged nose was taken into custody by officers of the law. Davis and the three witnesses, who were most likely the same three bandits that escaped, gave statements about the fight that made it into the newspapers. The newspaper editors, of course, did not believe a word of the story but printed it anyway and it was later picked up and printed by newspapers in San Francisco and Sacramento. The doubts persisted and both Davis and the three witnesses offered to take the doubters to the scene of the fight and show them the graves. None of them cared to make the trip though. What is not to be believed about that fight? Captain Davis was a skilled fighting man and his assailants were not. By the way, only four of the bandits were Mexican.

Through the ensuing years Captain Davis faded into obscurity as a peaceful miner at various locations in California. His last appearance in the federal census shows him living in Napa in 1890. He never did strike it rich.

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Photos

ROCK CREEK CANYON
The canyon is steep and narrow right through here. It seems like a fine place for a bloody ambush. The unmarked graves would have long since disappeared due to hungry bears or spring floods.