$Unique_ID{USH00245} $Pretitle{18} $Title{The Overland Migrations Chapter 2 The Start} $Subtitle{} $Author{US Department of the Interior} $Affiliation{National Park Service} $Subject{wagons river animals way south train another miles fort loose} $Volume{Handbook 105} $Date{1980} $Log{} Book: The Overland Migrations Author: US Department of the Interior Affiliation: National Park Service Volume: Handbook 105 Date: 1980 Chapter 2 The Start The spring of 1843 was wet and cold. Enough grass to support the livestock on which the migrants must depend was slow in appearing, and as the families waited under the wet trees and in the muddy fields outside of Independence and Westport, their nerves tightened. What if the late start meant that snow would be falling when they reached the mountains of Oregon? On top of that came another worry. A Missourian, Philip Edwards, who had been in Oregon with a missionary group, published a pamphlet in which he pointed out that no one had yet succeeded in getting wagons all the way to Oregon. His words went through the camps like a chill wind. Could enough pack stock for finishing the journey be rented at one of the fur trading posts along the way? And even if pack animals were available, could they carry plows and sheet-iron stoves? Could women and children ride horseback day after day in rough country? What if someone broke a leg or became too sick to ride? What then? For that matter, what did any of them know about the country they must cross? Fremont's account of his 1842 expedition was the most detailed guide available, but it reached only to South Pass in present day Wyoming, less than half way to the migrants' destination. And that last half was said to contain the deepest canyons and shaggiest mountains. In their uncertainty the migrants turned to men whose actions showed the stamp of leadership. Committees were formed to attack some of the problems. One group of seven was delegated to inspect the wagons for soundness. Another, appointed to find a guide, turned up John Gantt, a plainsman and Army officer with close to 15 years experience in the Indian country. Although Gantt planned to go to California, he agreed to act as pilot as far as Fort Hall in what is now southeastern Idaho for a charge of a dollar per person. But the big stroke of luck was the arrival of a stocky, powerful, optimistic medical missionary, Marcus Whitman. In 1836, Dr. Whitman, his 28-year-old wife Narcissa, and a few helpers had built an Indian mission about 26 miles up the Walla Walla River from its junction with the Columbia. In the fall of 1842 emergency affairs connected with the mission had caused Whitman to journey east. Now he was returning to his station. He said emphatically that there were enough men in the 1843 train to build whatever road the wagons would need. Although he was going to visit in Westport and at the nearby Shawnee Mission, he promised to catch up with the caravan somewhere along the Platte River and would be available to act as guide from Fort Hall to the Walla Walla. Both guide and doctor - that was a comfort, especially to the women. By then the grass was nearly 6 inches tall. Spirits rising with it, the movers took another tip from the Santa Fe traders. Word went from campfire to campfire that for the sake of a unified start, the caravan would assemble about 12 miles out of Independence at a place called Elm Grove. They would take off from there on May 22. After a shakedown trip of a hundred miles and after fording the difficult Kansas River near today's Topeka, they would elect officers and establish daily routines on the basis of what they had learned. The optimistic plans for a unified start immediately went awry, an occurrence repeated every succeeding year. Some impatient people always refused to wait. In 1843 one party, its wagons pulled by high-stepping mules, cut out ahead for fear that the oxen of the main group would be too slow for them. At the other end of the spectrum were the stragglers. Fremont, who reached Elm Grove May 31 on another expedition, said that trains of wagons were still winding their way toward the Kansas River, 9 days behind their predecessors. (One of the belated trains, incidentally, was made up of the only party to head for California that year - 30 persons and eight wagons led by Joseph Chiles. They would be welcomed enthusiastically on catching up with the main caravan, for Chiles had been to California before, in 1841, and could help Gantt with the piloting as far as the point where the trails separated in Idaho.) Because of the loose formation of the caravan and because of defection along the way - one small party swung south from Fort Laramie for New Mexico - it is impossible to say how many people, wagons, and animals crossed the plains that epochal year of 1843. Some commonly quoted figures are almost certainly wrong. For instance, it is often said that 875 people made the trip in approximately 120 wagons. This suggests a ratio of seven persons per wagon, which is far higher than the known average in other trains. So it seems likely that more than 120 wagons were involved that year. Another questionable figure is the one that says the emigrants of 1843 took 5,000 head of livestock with them. About 1,000 would be saddle horses and draft animals, which suggests that a herd of 4,000 loose animals were driven along behind the train. Such a huge and stubborn clot of hungry cattle, however, could not have been pushed across 2,000 miles of difficult terrain by the number of herders available. A more probable estimate says that the cattle owners among the migrants started with about 1,000 head of loose stock - roughly the same number as in the work herd - and reached Oregon's Willamette Valley, the general destination, with about 700. Even this smaller number caused friction in the train. Whatever the figures, the departure from Elm Grove produced a monstrous hubbub. No order of march had been drawn up, and as fast as the exuberant migrants had their wagons hitched, they crowded ahead for lead spots in the line, a procedure that turned out to be hard on their stock, vehicles, and tempers. At night there were quarrels, even fist fights, over camping spots. Dogs clamored incessantly, and at one point everyone who could do so streamed away from the wagons on foot or on horseback to the top of a hill called Blue Mound, just to see the view of the flower-spangled prairie stretching endlessly ahead. Digging ramps down the steep banks of swollen creeks and then doubling the teams for the pull up the opposite sides took the edge off some of that energy. Crossing the Kansas River absorbed more. The travelers had to build a raft by laying timbers crossways between two dugout canoes, wheel the wagons aboard one by one, and spend two days ferrying the train across with oars and ropes. The livestock had to swim, a chaotic operation that resulted in the loss of three or four horses and 20 cattle. After the party had assembled on the far bank, the candidates for office made their spiels. At a given signal the vote-seekers began marching off across the plains. Their supporters fell in behind them, prancing and shouting for others to follow, and the man who collected the longest line was declared winner. Peter Burnett, a future governor of California, became captain. Young James Nesmith, eventually a United States senator from Oregon, was chosen orderly sergeant. With the aid of an advisory council and the guides, these men laid down camp routines, assigned guard duties, and drew up the traveling platoons, their position changing from time to time, so that no one who stayed on his toes in the morning would have to eat dust the whole way to Oregon. It was only after these arrangements had been completed that the adventurers felt they were on their way at last. On the Move From the Kansas River the trail led northwest over rolling hills and through a profusion of wild flowers that brought to one poetic traveler "a wild and scarcely controllable ecstasy of admiration." But during wet years, and 1843 was one, the joy of those bright days could be shattered by crashing thunderstorms that turned the earth into a morass. If such deluges came at night, tents toppled and the loose livestock drifted with the wind. Guard duty was an ordeal then, and rounding up the animals the next morning consumed precious hours. Families with no stock other than work animals and cows for daily milking objected to the burden. After heated arguments, during which Burnett resigned his captaincy, the main caravan split into two groups of approximately the same size. One was composed of persons owning fewer than four extra animals and the other of those who had more. That dispute ended, daily routines flowed more smoothly. Late each afternoon, Gantt, traveling with the lead division, picked a suitable camping place and at his signal the wagons formed a circle about a hundred yards in diameter, tongues pointing outward. After unhitching, the drivers used the chains that during the day had served as an extension of the tongue to close the gaps between the wagons. The closed circle that resulted could have been used for fending off Indian attacks, but on the central route that most west-bound emigrants followed, it never was. The Indians, after all, were not stupid. Why risk high casualties charging at expert marksmen shooting from positions of strength? The booty the natives most wanted was livestock, and the safest way to get it was to slip into a herd at night and sneak off a few under the noses of the sleepy guards. This is not to say that travelers had no cause for worry. Lone individuals or small parties - stragglers, buffalo hunters, disgruntled persons cutting off on their own - were sometimes robbed of guns, animals, even of clothing. If the victims showed too much fear or, conversely, too much resistance, they might be killed and scalped. News of such rare happenings spread rapidly along the trail and frightened emigrants who had never before encountered Indians. As the miles passed, however, their nervousness faded. The "savages" who came into their camps, even war parties that had been fighting enemy tribes and carried scalps with them, wanted only to talk and beg for handouts of sugar, tobacco, and old clothes. The main use of the wagon circle was as a corral. Freed of saddles and harnesses, the mules and horses were allowed to graze loose during the evening, but then were picketed inside the corral until dawn. The people pitched their tents and did their cooking outside. Meanwhile, the oxen were allowed to crop the grass on the nearby prairie throughout the night, watched by relays of guards appointed by the sergeant. At 4 a.m. gunshots from the sentries brought the camp awake. While the women prepared breakfast, men and older boys saddled their horses and drove the oxen through an opening in the circle of wagons. Carrying one of the yokes that had been left leaning against his wagon for the night, each teamster searched out the off-ox of a pair, fastened the curving wooden frame onto its neck just behind the horns, and called its mate. The obedient creature generally stepped into place without trouble. Unless weather was bad, the hitching up of the caravan could be completed in half an hour. Tents tumbled down, dishes were scoured, all was packed, and before the sun was well up the train was moving again. The cow column achieved such efficiency that in spite of its loose animals it easily matched the pace of the leading division. The guide and half a dozen men equipped with picks and shovels struck out ahead to prepare a smooth course for the wagons. Mounted hunters swung off to the side in search of game. Except in rough country the wagons rarely stayed in line, but veered one way or another to escape dust or give themselves a little feeling of free choice. Because the pace was slow, women and children formed in small groups and walked much of the distance, the young ones romping while their elders gossiped and picked flowers. Each day was sufficient unto itself. Although quarrels often flared when elbows rubbed too close on the campgrounds, there was also a joyous feeling that this trip was an outing, far removed from the rasping irritations of life back home in cabins where nothing seemed to change. Anticipation fixed itself on a sequence of goals. First after the Kansas River came the Platte, wide, shallow and murky with sand, its twisting channels forming a braidwork among the many islands. As the train swung west along the southern bank, the air grew drier, axles screeched louder. Grass, though still nutritious, turned brown and short. Prickly pear cactus, thin-bladed yucca, and prairie-dog towns appeared in the sandy soil. Midday heat was intense. Women and children sought the shade of the canvas tops, the calls of the teamsters sank to mumbles, and the train seemed scarcely to move under the hard blue arch of the sky. Except for ruffs of trees on the islands, there was no timber in the broad valley, and cooks were brought face to face with using chunks of dried buffalo dung for fuel. To judge from the few surviving diaries kept by women, reactions were invariably squeamish - strangely so when one thinks of the people's own primitive sanitary arrangements: canvas-sheltered latrines on the campgrounds and nothing but a circle of acquaintances when the train was on the move. The men, moreover, seem to have deviled the cooks. One woman diarist in 1845 wrote snippily, "Many were the rude phrases uttered, far more humiliating to refined ears than any mention of the material used for fuel could have been." And just as universal as the embarrassment was the pleasure that came with the discovery that the despised chips, placed in shallow trenches over which the pots rested easily, produced a hot, clear, odorless flame. To avoid fording the main Platte, the columns continued up its south fork for several miles, then splashed across with difficulty and climbed a taxing hill to a high, dry plain. That behind them, and with their breath catching in their throats, they dropped with locked wheels down the Ash Hollow slope to the river's northern arm. As they plodded on, the valley rim to the south grew higher, its slopes eroded into fantastic shapes - the domes of Courthouse Rock, the high, thin stem of Chimney Rock, the colorful battlements of Scotts Bluff. Anticipation rose again. Fort Laramie, its adobe walls and honeycomb of rooms built around a central plaza, was near now. They could rest, wash clothes, repack wagons, buy a few supplies, treat the sore feet of the oxen, and celebrate with a dance. Six hundred and forty miles covered - and nearly 1,400 still to go! The wheel-jarring boulders and ravines of the Black Hills of the Laramie Mountains were a torment - and worse. One lad, standing on a wagon tongue, hands resting on the rumps of the oxen ahead - they all did that to break the monotony - was shaken unexpectedly loose, run over, and killed. In spite of that warning, another was badly hurt a little later by a similar mischance. The last fording of the North Platte was desperately hard, and the alkali water in the plains beyond gave cattle the scours, a farm term for diarrhea in animals. As grass became sparse and the hills pinched close, the train broke into still smaller sections. Clear, cold Sweetwater River was a blessed relief. Afoot they clambered up the turtle-shaped hump of Independence Rock and painted their names on its granite scales. They gaped at the 400-foot slit of Devils Gate, which fortunately they were able to avoid by crossing a small hill to the south. The snow-topped Wind River Mountains came into sight, running north farther than the eye could follow. The dryness! Eyes reddened. Chapped lips puffed and cracked until just licking them was a torture. More serious was the effect on wood. Wheels shrank; spokes and tires loosened. The need for repairs was constant. Their spirits sagging now, they left Sweetwater River for a sagebrush plain 20 miles wide. Ever so slightly that long gray carpet started to tip down, and suddenly they realized that this undramatic expanse was South Pass and that they had reached the Pacific Slope of the continent. Some whooped; some fired their guns. All in all, though, James Nesmith wrote in his diary, it was a poor sample of El Dorado. They even found they missed the buffalo dung. The animals rarely roamed this far west, and in order to provide fuel the men and boys had to wrench up hunks of knotted, pungent, quickly consumed sagebrush. There were still curiosities to see: ramshackle Fort Bridger with its stupendous view of the Uinta Mountains to the south; the puffing hot springs in the Bear River Valley; the sheer-walled gorge of the Snake River, thunderous with cataracts beside which friendly Indians caught fat salmon that they were willing to trade for odds and ends of clothing. But the road through the lava boulders was rougher than ever. The people were weary and worried. The British traders at Fort Hall, back where they had first sighted the Snake, had warned again that wagons could not get through. Whom to believe? Whitman still insisted the trip was possible. It would have helped if John Gantt and Joe Chiles had stayed with them. Those two experienced frontiersmen had been a steadying factor throughout, and when they split away with their people for California, lonesomeness seemed to lap around the segments of the train. To top that off, a message arrived saying that Whitman was needed at his mission. As he rode away, he left in his place a Christian Indian he had trained, a fellow named Stickus. Stickus was well qualified, the doctor said. But October was on them now, and the women couldn't help fretting as the evening sun slid beneath the horizon and they felt the chill in the mountain air. Whitman was right. Forty axmen going ahead of the wagons with Stickus did manage to chop a way through the forests of the Blue Mountains. A snowfall put their hearts in their mouths, but it soon melted, and except for the weariness of their animals they were in good shape as they rolled group by group up to the doctor's neat mission at Waiilatpu. They replenished their supplies as well as they could from his meager stores and continued west to the Columbia, eager to put its awesome gorge behind them before the winter rains arrived in earnest. At the mouth of the Walla Walla River, where the Hudson's Bay Company had another trading post, the train finished breaking apart. Men whose draft animals still had strength forced their wagons another 125 miles along the Columbia's south bank, among stark rocks, through sand, across precipitous side canyons. But even this hard road did not last. Just below the roaring cataract called the Dalles, where another mission stood, the Cascade Mountains closed in on the river. Ahead was a breakneck trail barely passable to loose cattle driven along it single file. Two years later pioneers led by Samuel Barlow would break out a wagon road across the high south shoulder of Mt. Hood, but in 1843 the only way for families to continue their trip was to go by water. The men chopped down enough trees to build huge rafts nearly 50 feet long. They crowded their wagons onto the flimsy craft and floated, sometimes ankle deep in river water, 40 miles to the next rapids. There they dismantled the wagons and portaged every item around the cataract while Indians used a network of ropes to line the rafts through the tumbling white water for the final run to the mouth of the Willamette. Other men, their work animals too exhausted for the last 125-mile pull along the south bank to the Dalles, either purchased one of the few 30-foot batteaux available at Fort Walla Walla or else whipsawed planks from driftwood and constructed their own rowboats. It was a harsh journey. Cold winds blew upstream. Portages were laborious, dangers ever-present. One man and two boys drowned when the craft they were in capsized, and there would be more such deaths during subsequent years. When the rains engulfed them and it seemed no strength remained, help came. Settlers already in Oregon sent supplies and boats upstream in anticipation of their arrival, and Dr. John McLoughlin, head of Fort Vancouver, the main depot of the Hudson's Bay Company west of the Rockies, provided more. Revived, the wayfarers of 1843 moved south up the Willamette Valley in search of homesites. Their coming doubled Oregon's American population. Although the wagon trains of later years would be larger, theirs pointed the way toward a boundary settlement, in 1846, with Great Britain. Because of that and not because of their numbers, their trip ever afterwards would be called the Great Migration. They were, as one of their members wrote proudly, men of destiny.