US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0024/00245.txt

Text File | 1990-12-23 | 22KB | 355 lines

$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.