In order to understand precisely how a failed, British South African Jewish businessman and itinerant man about town became the most shrewdly autocratic leader of the 19th century, idolized by Otto von Bismarck, and envied by US and CS presidents for half a century after, it is necessary, first, to accept the power of magic, and understand that the white man has almost never been privy to its secrets.
Joshua Norton, the London-born, South African entrepreneur arrived in North America in 1849, just after the rocky first year of the so-called Bear Flag Republic, which stretched from San Diego in the South to the Humboldt Redwoods in the North, and contained the great cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, the latter two rich from the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Norton's disastrous trade investments ate up his entire inheritance and bankrupted him, forcing him to wander the streets of San Francisco subsisting off of the charity of strangers, and spending his nights in a working class flophouse overlooking the East Bay.
From these first auspicious, then inauspicious circumstances, Norton eventually fled the city, wandering into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, cobbling together what little he had left in exchange for gold panning equipment, and a tiny plot of land near the Devil's Postpile. Despondent when his claim proved dry, Norton wandered into the wilderness near Mammoth Lakes, ostensibly mad or suicidal, and certain to never be seen again.
In late 1858, he returned to San Francisco, riding upon the back of a monstrous, ancient grizzly bear, larger even than the storied bears of Kodiak island. He had attained a feral look, his clothes filthy and patched with untanned animal skins. It is said that he rode his beast straight uptown to city hall where he demanded that the city immediately submit itself to his rule.
To the vast surprise of the people of Alto California, the bear Flag Senatorial Council agreed and then-Speaker Aeschylus Praiseworthy handed over the golden staff of rule to the bear-riding usurper. We may attribute some of this braggadocio and embellishment to frontiersman tall tales, but whatever the exact circumstances of the meeting, Norton announced on the first of January 1859 that he was Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
His rule might have been short, but for the increasing tension between Yankee and Southern American states on the opposite coast, boiling over into open war in January of 1861. Unable to fight a war on two fronts, the Lincoln presidency put the reclamation of the West on hold and, instead, fought against the Confederate states, a slow war of attrition that ended in Union defeat, some say because they lacked the resources that the California coast might have contributed if Presidents Buchanan or Lincoln had dealt with the Bear Flag Empire decisively.
By the time the Civil War was over and the newly formed Confederate States of American were drawing their borders with the Union, neither nation had the strength or the will to recapture the West and, where once had been one mighty American nation, now there were three. Norton had kept the California coast out of the war and, in doing so, had the resources to capture much of the American frontier during the chaotic years of American recovery, drawing the now-familiar boundaries of the Empire, which claimed all of Baja and Alto California, the Sonoran desert from Chihuahua to Sinaloa in the South, to the Rio Grande River and the Rocky Mountains in the East, to Vancouver Bay and Calgary in the North. By 1870 the Bear Flag Empire was the largest, if least populous of the American nations.
Norton's charisma was obvious, and his tactical genius a surprising perk, but much of Norton's continued hold over the once-lawless American West was preserved by dint of his terrifying strength as a practitioner of magic. Whatever had happened to him in the Sierras, he now showed all the hallmarks of what the ancient Brittons would have called a Bear-sarker, a sort of ursine shaman, given over to terrible fits of rage in battle, and having command over the great beasts that decorated his Imperial heraldry.
More than a source of personal power, Norton's status as Powhat Buyigan's chosen granted him a modicum of respect among the various tribes of Indians who had been systematically exiled, murdered and imprisoned by the American and Mexican states that previously held dominion. Norton re-enfranchised the Navajo, Zuni, and Shoshone tribes, granting them semi-autonomous states within the Empire, brought the Dwarven Hopi and Pueblo into his councils, and paid reparations to the Elven Chinook and Salish. In short, Norton was a fearsome object lesson in what happens when the power of Savage Magic was wedded to the keen mind of the White Man.
When he died on January 8th, 1880, sixty-three years of age, and twenty-one years into his Pax California, he was the closest thing the world had to the glories of old Rome. He was Caesar and Hannibal both. His funeral drew mourners from across the world, and nature itself seemed to bow her head, as a total eclipse of the sun blessed the last day he lay in state.
His rule might have been short, but for the increasing tension between Yankee and Southern American states on the opposite coast, boiling over into open war in January of 1861. Unable to fight a war on two fronts, the Lincoln presidency put the reclamation of the West on hold and, instead, fought against the Confederate states, a slow war of attrition that ended in Union defeat, some say because they lacked the resources that the California coast might have contributed if Presidents Buchanan or Lincoln had dealt with the Bear Flag Empire decisively.
By the time the Civil War was over and the newly formed Confederate States of American were drawing their borders with the Union, neither nation had the strength or the will to recapture the West and, where once had been one mighty American nation, now there were three. Norton had kept the California coast out of the war and, in doing so, had the resources to capture much of the American frontier during the chaotic years of American recovery, drawing the now-familiar boundaries of the Empire, which claimed all of Baja and Alto California, the Sonoran desert from Chihuahua to Sinaloa in the South, to the Rio Grande River and the Rocky Mountains in the East, to Vancouver Bay and Calgary in the North. By 1870 the Bear Flag Empire was the largest, if least populous of the American nations.
Norton's charisma was obvious, and his tactical genius a surprising perk, but much of Norton's continued hold over the once-lawless American West was preserved by dint of his terrifying strength as a practitioner of magic. Whatever had happened to him in the Sierras, he now showed all the hallmarks of what the ancient Brittons would have called a Bear-sarker, a sort of ursine shaman, given over to terrible fits of rage in battle, and having command over the great beasts that decorated his Imperial heraldry.
Many questioned the source of his power, and most seemed to settle on the intervention of the Woodsman God of the Americas. Known by a hundred different names among nearly every tribe on both American continents, the accepted nomenclature of the 19th century was the Alonquin honorific, Powhat Buyigan, or Paul Bunyan as the Quebeçois transliterated it. Alongside his monstrous companion, Babche, the great Hodag.*
More than a source of personal power, Norton's status as Powhat Buyigan's chosen granted him a modicum of respect among the various tribes of Indians who had been systematically exiled, murdered and imprisoned by the American and Mexican states that previously held dominion. Norton re-enfranchised the Navajo, Zuni, and Shoshone tribes, granting them semi-autonomous states within the Empire, brought the Dwarven Hopi and Pueblo into his councils, and paid reparations to the Elven Chinook and Salish. In short, Norton was a fearsome object lesson in what happens when the power of Savage Magic was wedded to the keen mind of the White Man.
When he died on January 8th, 1880, sixty-three years of age, and twenty-one years into his Pax California, he was the closest thing the world had to the glories of old Rome. He was Caesar and Hannibal both. His funeral drew mourners from across the world, and nature itself seemed to bow her head, as a total eclipse of the sun blessed the last day he lay in state.
*Though many legends painted Powhat Buyigan as a benevolent or, at least, indifferent deity, the destruction wrought by European settlers had given the God a darker aspect in more recent centuries. Alonquins spoke in hushed whispers of the Wendigo, a monstrous aspect that dined on human flesh and reveled in carnage and cannibalism. The Sierras seemed to be a particularly fruitful stalking ground for the spirit, accounting for both the Donner-Reed disaster in 1846 and the Fort Spencer Massacre the following year. One wonders if Norton was chosen by the good-natured woodsman, or the flesh-craving cannibal.
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