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[Illustration: U. S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, March 3, 1849]
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Stewart L. Udall, _Secretary_
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Conrad L. Wirth, _Director_
_HISTORICAL HANDBOOK NUMBER TWENTY-EIGHT_
This publication is one of a series of handbooks describing the
historical and archeological areas in the National Park System
administered by the National Park Service of the United States
Department of the Interior. It is printed by the Government Printing
Office and may be purchased from the Superintendent of Documents,
Washington 25, D. C. Price 30 cents.
_Scotts Bluff_
NATIONAL MONUMENT
_Nebraska_
[Illustration: Covered wagon]
By Merrill J. Mattes
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HISTORICAL HANDBOOK SERIES NO. 28
Washington, D. C., 1958
(Reprint 1961)
_The National Park System, of which Scotts Bluff National Monument is a
unit, is dedicated to conserving the scenic, scientific, and historic
heritage of the United States for the benefit and enjoyment of its
people._
[Illustration: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR]
_Contents_
_Page_
EARLY EXPLORATION OF THE GREAT PLAINS 1
FIRST WHITE MEN AT SCOTTS BLUFF 3
REDISCOVERY OF THE CENTRAL OVERLAND ROUTE 4
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN FUR TRADE 6
THE TRAGEDY OF SCOTTS BLUFF 7
THE FIRST WAGONS 11
TRADERS, MISSIONARIES, AND ADVENTURERS 13
MIGRATION TO OREGON 16
YEARS OF DECISION, 1846-48 19
SCOTTS BLUFF AND THE FORTY-NINERS 20
OREGON-CALIFORNIA TRAIL GEOGRAPHY AT SCOTTS BLUFF 25
GOLD RUSH TRADING POSTS AT SCOTTS BLUFF 33
COMING OF THE BULLWHACKERS 38
SCOTTS BLUFF--THE ARTISTIC RECORD 41
PONY EXPRESS TO IRON HORSE, 1860-69 42
WARFARE ON THE PLAINS 46
HUNTERS, MINERS, COWBOYS, AND HOMESTEADERS 52
NATURAL HISTORY OF SCOTTS BLUFF 55
PREHISTORY OF THE SCOTTS BLUFF REGION 58
GUIDE TO THE AREA 60
RELATED AREAS 63
ADMINISTRATION 63
SUGGESTED READINGS 64
[Illustration: _Scotts Bluff Visitor Center._ Courtesy, Christian
Studio, Gering, Nebr.]
[Illustration: Ox yoke.]
SCOTTS BLUFF _was a celebrated landmark on the great North Platte Valley
trunkline of "the Oregon Trail," the traditional route of overland
migration to Oregon, California, and Utah. Today the massive castellated
bluff looks down upon concrete highways, railways, airports, irrigated
farms, and bustling communities of the mid-20th century; but it is the
same awe-inspiring sentinel which 100 years ago watched the passage of
countless trains of ox-drawn covered wagons, and the twinkling of many
campfires. Scotts Bluff National Monument keeps alive the epic story of
our ancestors who dared cross the wilderness of plains and mountains to
plant the western stars in the American flag._
Present Scotts Bluff is but a part of the historic "Scott's Bluffs"
named for Hiram Scott, an employee of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company,
whose skeleton was found in the vicinity in 1829. The first known
published reference is to be found in _The Adventures of Captain
Bonneville_, by Washington Irving, published in 1837. The first map to
show this landmark is in Robert Greenhow's _Memoir, Historical and
Political on the Northwest Coast of North America_, published in 1840.
It appeared next in the Fremont map of 1843, which became basic for
later emigrant guides.
_Early Exploration of the Great Plains_
In 1540 the Spaniard Coronado captained a treasure-hunting expedition
from Mexico across Arizona, New Mexico, and the Texas Panhandle. From
there he led a picked detachment of armored horsemen to mythical
_Quivira_, which proved to be only a squalid Indian village in central
Kansas. Contrary to long-held belief, Coronado never reached present
Nebraska. The first Spaniards known to have penetrated this state--an
exploring party of 1720 led by Pedro de Villasur--were massacred by
Pawnees at the forks of the Platte.
[Illustration: _Returning Astorians at Scotts Bluff Christmas Day,
1812._ Original sketch in Oregon Trail Museum.]
Following LaSalle's traverse of the Mississippi and the establishment of
French settlements along that river, several French explorers--notably
Bourgmont and Charlevois--penetrated the fringe of the Great Plains,
bringing back reports of strange shaggy beasts in numbers so vast that
they blackened the landscape. The Platte River was named by Frenchmen
who explored its lower reaches; for this is the French word for "flat,"
a literal translation of the Oto word, "Nebrathka." The Upper Platte was
not explored by Frenchmen until 1739 when the Mallet brothers lead a
small party from the mouth of the Niobrara across Nebraska, up the South
Platte, and thence to Santa Fe. The high tide of French exploration of
the Plains was marked in 1743 by the long journey, on foot, of the
Verendrye brothers from the Missouri River westward. How far west they
traveled has been a widely debated subject, but most scholars believe
that they reached the vicinity of the Black Hills of South Dakota.
The famous Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-6, dispatched by President
Jefferson to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, followed
the natural passageway of the upper Missouri and Columbia Rivers to
become the first Americans to cross the continent. While they
triumphantly returned to St. Louis, Lt. Zebulon Pike visited a Pawnee
village on the Upper Republican River, then proceeded southwestward up
the Arkansas. In the wake of these official explorers came the fur
trappers and traders, a strange breed of men who traced out and
rough-mapped the tributary streams of the western plains and mountains
in their search for beaver hides. The early history of Scotts Bluff is
closely linked with the history of the western American fur trade.
_First White Men at Scotts Bluff_
Fur traders were the first white men known to have seen Scotts Bluff.
They were the returning Astorians--a group of seven men under Robert
Stuart, traveling from their trading post at the mouth of the Columbia
River to St. Louis. On Christmas day, 1812, Stuart recorded in his
journal:
21 miles same course brought us to camp in the bare Prairie, but were
fortunate in finding enough of driftwood for our culinary purpose. The
Hills on the south have lately approached the river, are remarkably
rugged and Bluffy and possess a few Cedars. Buffaloe very few in
numbers and mostly Bulls.
The Astorian Expedition of 1811, so-called because it was an enterprise
of the wealthy fur trader, John Jacob Astor, comprised the second group
of Americans to span the continent. Led by Wilson Price Hunt, the
"Astorians" ascended the Missouri River until they were blocked by the
treacherous Arikara or "Ree" Indians near the mouth of Grand River. Then
they traveled overland, skirting the Black Hills and the Bighorn
Mountains, and reached their Columbia River headwaters via Jackson Hole.
Joining forces with another Astor group who had reached the mouth of the
Columbia by ship, they built Astoria, the first American trading post on
the Pacific slope. In 1812, Robert Stuart and his small band started
back overland to carry messages to Astor. By their successful mission
they performed one of the great feats of western exploration, for in
their perilous journey eastward they blazed the route via the Upper
Snake, Green, and North Platte Rivers which was destined to become the
Oregon Trail! (See map on pages 30, 31.)
Constantly imperiled by exposure, starvation, and Indians, they crossed
the Continental Divide near South Pass and descended the Sweetwater and
North Platte Rivers. After they had passed Scotts Bluff, the hostility
of the wintry Plains impelled them to retrace their steps to a point
near present Torrington, Wyo., where they camped for the winter and
built canoes. Early in the spring of 1813 they resumed their journey.
They were unable to navigate the shallow, braided, upper reaches of the
Platte River, and it was not until they reached Grand Island, that they
successfully launched their canoes.
_Rediscovery of the Central Overland Route_
Stuart's journal was not published until many years later, and the
tremendous import of his geographical discovery--a central route across
the continent--was lost amid preoccupation with the War of 1812 and the
seizure of Astoria by the British forces. For the next decade the fur
traders, operating out of St. Louis, concentrated on sending expeditions
up the Missouri River, persisting in their notion that this was the only
logical route westward. Manual Lisa, William Ashley, Andrew Henry, and
Joshua Pilcher were among the leaders of numerous invasions of the Upper
Missouri country. Beaver pelts were plentiful, but the Blackfoot, Ree,
Gros Ventre, and other Indian tribes were unfriendly. A series of
disastrous encounters with these Indians reached a crisis in 1823, when
a large fur brigade under William Ashley was treacherously attacked
above Grand River by the Rees, the same who had blocked the path of the
Astorians 11 years before. An appeal for military aid resulted in an
expedition from Fort Atkinson (above present Omaha) under Col. Henry
Leavenworth. The Indian villages were besieged but the results were
indecisive. Thereupon Ashley and his men abandoned their efforts on the
Upper Missouri, and struck out overland to the mountains. This decision
led to the discovery of the rich beaver valleys of the central Rockies,
and the rediscovery of South Pass and the Great Platte route. It ushered
in the historic Rocky Mountain fur trade, and opened a new chapter in
the history of Scotts Bluff.
Among the enterprising young men employed by Ashley, who received their
baptism of fire at the Ree villages, were several destined to achieve
great fame in the annals of the West. Conspicuous among them were Jim
Bridger and Etienne Provost, who soon discovered the Great Salt Lake;
Jedediah Smith, who led a band of trappers across the Black Hills and
the Bighorn Mountains to explore the headwaters of the Green and Snake
Rivers, and to become the first American to challenge the supremacy of
British fur traders in the Oregon country; William Sublette, who became
the founder of Fort William on the Laramie River; Thomas Fitzpatrick,
noted "mountain man," emigrant guide, and Indian agent; and Hiram Scott,
one of Ashley's clerks who would soon die tragically near the bluff
which now bears his name.
[Illustration: _Ree Indian attack on General Ashley's trappers._
Original sketch in Oregon Trail Museum.]
If any white men traveled by Scotts Bluff in the decade following the
downstream passage of the returning Astorians, they left no distinct
record. It is surmised that Canadian half-breeds roamed and trapped in
this region during this period since several geographic names of French
origin seem to have survived from the earliest days of the fur trade.
Laramie or "La Ramee" River and Goshen or "Goche's" Hole, both in nearby
Wyoming, tell of early trappers about whom there survive only the
haziest traditions. We can only say that the second group of white men
in the North Platte Valley who can be positively identified were four of
Ashley's trappers who, in the spring of 1824, attempted to bring their
beaver pelts down the Platte River. With this event, Scotts Bluff once
more emerges on the pages of history.
Following a successful harvest of beaver, Jedediah Smith delegated
Thomas Fitzpatrick, James Clyman, and two others to transport the pelts
to Fort Atkinson. This led directly to the rediscovery of the strategic
Platte route and the beginning of a half century during which Scotts
Bluff became one of the great landmarks of that historic route.
Fitzpatrick failed in his effort to transport the furs down the
Sweetwater by bullboat (Indian boat made from buffalo hides stretched
over a frame of green willow boughs) and, lacking horses, was compelled
to cache them near Independence Rock. He and his companions were
subsequently scattered by marauding Indians, but they all arrived safely
at Fort Atkinson. Fitzpatrick promptly took horses back to Independence
Rock to retrieve his furs, and so passed Scotts Bluff three times in
1824.
[Illustration: _Annual rendezvous of Rocky Mountain trappers._
Original sketch in Oregon Trail Museum.]
_The Rocky Mountain Fur Trade_
Ashley was impressed by Fitzpatrick's report on the success of his
employees in locating rich beaver territory. Late in the autumn of 1824,
he hurried westward up the Platte River, sending his brigades out to
trap while he personally led an exploration of the lower canyons of the
Green River. In 1825, reunited with his men at Henry's Fork of the
Green, he led them to the head of Wind River where they constructed
boats and floated their cargo to St. Louis via the Bighorn, Yellowstone,
and Missouri Rivers.
Ashley is credited with conceiving a new scheme of handling the mountain
fur trade which became known as the rendezvous system. Instead of
building expensive fixed trading posts in the wilderness, dependent upon
the Indian trade, the idea was to send white trappers to camp out all
winter, trapping while the beaver were in prime fur, then all to
foregather at some prearranged mountain valley where they would meet
traders bringing pack trains of equipment and trade goods from St.
Louis. Casks of whisky, standard trade items, insured that the annual
mountain carnival or rendezvous would see not only a rapid exchange of
trade goods for beaver pelts, but also carousing and roistering on a
scale suitable to compensate the trappers for their long lonely winter
vigils. For 15 years Scotts Bluff would witness traders' caravans, going
mountainward in early summer, and returning in the autumn laden with
their harvest of furs.
In the summer of 1826 the first of the colorful traders' caravans, led
by Ashley, Sublette, and Smith, and probably including young Hiram
Scott, passed the yet unnamed bluff en route to the first big
rendezvous, on the shores of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The swarthy,
colorfully garbed trappers escorted 300 pack-laden mules on this trip.
At Salt Lake there were two notable events. Ashley, who had now become
comfortably rich from skimming the cream of the beaver trade, sold his
interests to a partnership which became known as the Rocky Mountain Fur
Company, and Smith embarked on the first of his notable expeditions
across the Great Basin to California, becoming the first American to
reach that Mexican province by this route.
_The Tragedy of Scotts Bluff_
The year 1827 went much as those before, with another rendezvous at Salt
Lake where Smith reported his adventures. He then set off on another
California trip (followed by a side trip up the Pacific Coast to Oregon,
where most of his men were massacred by Indians on the Umpquah). Hiram
Scott was among the traders who returned that year to St. Louis. This we
know from a document dated October 16, 1827, preserved in the files of
the Missouri Historical Society, for Scott is there listed as an
employee of Ashley (who continued to operate the supply train), having
earned $280 in wages for his season's labor.
That Scott ranked high in the esteem of the fur trading fraternity is
attested not only by this document but also by the official records of
the Leavenworth Expedition of 1823, wherein Scott shares with Jedediah
Smith the distinction of being a "captain of volunteers" under General
Ashley. In another document, a letter of April 11, 1827, written by
Ashley at Lexington, Mo., Scott is described as "alive to our interest"
and "properly efficient." One other source implies that he was a trader
of high rank. These meager facts are all we know about Hiram Scott, who
was doomed to die mysteriously a year later, while returning with the
homeward-bound caravan of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
The facts concerning Hiram Scott's death are even scarcer than those
about his career. There is a wealth of tradition and legend, but these
cannot be accepted as established facts. Of the innumerable versions,
almost no two are identical.
The classic account of Scott's death, and the one first published (in
1837), is that given in Washington Irving's story of the adventures of
Capt. Benjamin Bonneville, on leave from the United States Army. Irving
relates that on June 21, 1832, the Bonneville party
... encamped amid high and beetling cliffs of indurated clay and
sandstone, bearing the semblance of towers, castles, churches and
fortified cities. At a distance it was scarcely possible to persuade
one's self that the works of art were not mingled with these fantastic
freaks of nature. They have received the name of Scott's Bluffs from a
melancholy circumstance. A number of years since, a party were
descending the upper part of the river in canoes, when their frail
barks were overturned and all their powder spoiled. Their rifles being
thus rendered useless, they were unable to procure food by hunting and
had to depend upon roots and wild fruits for subsistence. After
suffering extremely from hunger, they arrived at Laramie's Fork, a
small tributary of the north branch of the Nebraska, about sixty miles
above the cliffs just mentioned. Here one of the party, by the name of
Scott, was taken ill; and his companions came to a halt, until he
should recover health and strength sufficient to proceed. While they
were searching round in quest of edible roots they discovered a fresh
trail of white men, who had evidently but recently preceded them. What
was to be done? By a forced march they might overtake this party, and
thus be able to reach the settlements in safety. Should they linger
they might all perish of famine and exhaustion. Scott, however, was
incapable of moving; they were too feeble to aid him forward, and
dreaded that such a clog would prevent their coming up with the
advance party. They determined, therefore, to abandon him to his fate.
Accordingly, under pretence of seeking food, and such simples as might
be efficacious in his malady, they deserted him and hastened forward
upon the trail. They succeeded in overtaking the party of which they
were in quest, but concealed their faithless desertion of Scott;
alleging that he had died of disease.
On the ensuing summer, these very individuals visiting these parts in
company with others, came suddenly upon the bleached bones and
grinning skull of a human skeleton, which by certain signs they
recognized for the remains of Scott. This was sixty long miles from
the place where they had abandoned him; and it appeared that the
wretched man had crawled that immense distance before death put an end
to his miseries. The wild and picturesque bluffs in the neighborhood
of his lonely grave have ever since borne his name.
[Illustration: _Trappers skinning beaver._ Original sketch in Oregon
Trail Museum.]
A very touching and pathetic story, but it is quite different from the
version offered by Warren Ferris of the American Fur Company. In 1830,
he passed Scotts Bluff on the north side of the river 2 years ahead of
Captain Bonneville, and just 2 years after the event:
We encamped opposite to "Scott's Bluffs," so called in respect to the
memory of a young man who was left here alone to die a few years
previous. He was a clerk in a company returning from the mountains,
the leader of which found it necessary to leave him behind at a place
some distance above this point, in consequence of a severe illness
which rendered him unable to ride. He was consequently placed in a
bullhide boat, in charge of two men, who had orders to convey him by
water down to these bluffs, where the leader of the party promised to
await their coming. After a weary and hazardous voyage, they reached
the appointed rendezvous, and found to their surprise and bitter
disappointment, that the company had continued on down the river
without stopping for them to overtake and join it.
Left thus in the heart of a wide wilderness, hundreds of miles from
any point where assistance or succour could be obtained, and
surrounded by predatory bands of savages thirsting for blood and
plunder, could any condition be deemed more hopeless or deplorable?
They had, moreover, in descending the river, met with some accident,
either the loss of the means of procuring subsistence or defending
their lives in case of discovery and attack. This unhappy
circumstance, added to the fact that the river was filled with
innumerable shoals and sand-bars, by which its navigation was rendered
almost impracticable, determined them to forsake their charge and boat
together, and push on night and day until they should overtake the
company, which they did on the second or third day afterward.
The reason given by the leader of the company for not fulfilling his
promise, was that his men were starving, no game could be found, and
he was compelled to proceed in quest of buffalo.
Poor Scott! We will not attempt to picture what his thoughts must have
been after his cruel abandonment, nor harrow up the feelings of the
reader, by a recital of what agonies he must have suffered before
death put an end to his misery.
The bones of a human being were found the spring following, on the
opposite side of the river, which were supposed to be the remains of
Scott. It was conjectured that in the energy of despair, he had found
strength to carry him across the stream, and then had staggered about
the prairie, till God in pity took him to Himself.
Such are the sad chances to which the life of the Rocky Mountain
adventurer is exposed.
The Hiram Scott legend is mentioned by almost all early travelers who
have left record of a journey up the North Platte Valley, but it would
be fruitless to recite the many other varied, conflicting, and often
quaint versions of how he died. There are differences of opinion as to
the distance the poor fellow crawled, if any; whether the party traveled
on foot or by horseback, muleback, bullboat, raft, or canoe; whether he
was a victim of Indians, exposure, drowning, freezing, disease, or
starvation; the location of his skeleton; the identity and number of his
companions; whether their desertion was premeditated; whether it was
justified; how their treachery was exposed; and, finally, whether the
whole thing might not have been a grisly hoax!
[Illustration: _Dome Rock from summit of North Bluff._]
It was not a hoax. Though the legend has become hopelessly confused,
research has proved that there was a Hiram Scott prominent in the Rocky
Mountain fur trade from 1823 until 1827; and that he disappeared in 1828
and was never heard from thereafter, except through the faint echoes of
the legend. His companions remain unidentified, but research strongly
suggests that William Sublette was the leader of the 1828 caravan, who
issued instructions to these men to remain with him; and it was William
Sublette who led the springtime caravan of 1829 that discovered Scott's
skeleton, miles away from the spot where they reported he had died.
Rufus B. Sage, who passed the bluff in 1841, was particularly impressed
with the melancholy circumstances of Scott's death, and was moved to
impassioned poetry:
No willing grave received the corpse
of this poor lonely one;--
His bones, alas, were left to bleach
and moulder 'neath the sun!
The night-wolf howl'd his requiem,--
the rude winds danced his dirge;
And e'er anon, in mournful chime
sigh's forth the mellow surge!
The spring shall teach the rising grass
to twine for him a tomb;
And, o'er the spot where he doth lie,
shall bid the wild flowers bloom.
But, far from friends, and far from home,
ah, dismal thought, to die!
Ah, let me 'mid my friends expire,
and with my fathers lie.
The mountain men have engraved their names on the topography of the West
with such place names as Scotts Bluff, Jackson Hole, Colter Bay, Bridger
Pass, Sublette County, Provo, Ogden, and Carson City which forever
remind us of these colorful figures with seven-league boots who
spearheaded the invasion of the West.
_The First Wagons_
In 1827 Ashley had sent a wheeled cannon up the Platte route to impress
the Indians at Great Salt Lake. However, the first bona fide wagons on
the Oregon Trail were those of the Smith-Jackson-Sublette caravan of
1830, headed for the rendezvous scheduled in the Wind River Valley, near
present Lander. In a famous letter to Secretary of War Eaton, the
partners reported
a caravan of ten wagons, drawn by five mules each, and two dearborns,
drawn by one mule each ... eighty-one men in company, all mounted on
mules....
For our support, at leaving the Missouri settlements, until we should
get into the buffalo country, we drove twelve head of cattle, beside a
milk cow.... We began to fall in with the buffaloes on the Platte,
about three hundred and fifty miles from the white settlements; and
from that time lived on buffaloes, the quantity being infinitely
beyond what we needed.... The country being almost all open, level,
and prairie, the chief obstructions were ravines and creeks, the banks
of which required cutting down, and for this purpose a few pioneers
were generally kept ahead of the caravan. This is the first time that
wagons ever went to the Rocky mountains; and the ease and safety with
which it was done prove the facility of communicating over land with
the Pacific ocean.
At Wind River the parties sold their interest to another group of
seasoned trappers--Fitzpatrick, Bridger, Fraeb, Gervais, and Milton
Sublette. Thus far the Rocky Mountain Fur Company had a monopoly of the
choice beaver country, except for occasional brushes with the Hudson's
Bay Company in the Snake River country. Now an ominous rival presented
itself, Astor's powerful American Fur Company, which sought to regain
the trading empire lost during the War of 1812. In a brief time Astor's
company would outmaneuver the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, absorb its
leaders, and take over the monopoly. But first there would be fierce
competition. In the vanguard of this invasion came a pack train headed
by Joseph Robidoux and William Vanderburgh. They passed Scotts Bluff on
May 27, on the north side of the river, just a few days behind their
rivals. Robidoux and Vanderburgh's adventures have been chronicled by
Warren Ferris.
Hiram Scott was not the only casualty in this dangerous fur trading.
Jedediah Smith was slain by Comanches in 1831 on the Cimarron River, en
route to Santa Fe. Vanderburgh was soon killed by Blackfeet Indians near
the Three Forks of the Missouri. Kit Carson later killed a fellow
trapper in a duel over an Arapahoe maiden on the Upper Hoback River, and
Thomas Fitzpatrick suffered serious injuries from a near-fatal encounter
with the Gros Ventres. The mortality rate among the mountain men was
high, but the survivors continued their annual rendezvous. The decade of
the 1830's was the golden age of the fur trade.
Captain Bonneville, who launched the Hiram Scott legend, made history in
1832 by taking his loaded wagons across the Continental Divide at South
Pass, foreshadowing the mighty covered wagon migration that would begin
within a decade. While Bonneville built a fort on the Upper Green, the
rendezvous of 1832 was held in Pierre's Hole, on the west slope of the
Tetons, and here the assembled trappers had a famous pitched battle with
the Gros Ventres, which resulted in several fatalities.
[Illustration: _Smith-Jackson-Sublette Expedition of 1830._ William
H. Jackson sketch in Oregon Trail Museum.]
Among those in Sublette's train in 1833 was Sir William Drummond Stewart
of Scotland, a wealthy adventurer, the first of a series of notable
Britishers to travel through the West, recording their impressions. We
are indebted to him, as well as to Warren Ferris, Osborne Russell, and
Joe Meek for vivid pictures of the wild and colorful rendezvous scenes.
From 1833 until 1840, these rendezvous were held on the Upper Green,
near present Daniel, Wyo.
_Traders, Missionaries, and Adventurers_
The year 1834 was a lively one along the trappers' trail up the North
Platte. This was the year that Robert Campbell and William Sublette
halted their caravan at the mouth of Laramie's Fork, some 60 miles above
Scotts Bluff, to establish log-palisaded Fort William, the first of a
succession of trading posts, and later a military post, which became the
great way-station on the Oregon Trail, called Fort Laramie. A few days
behind Sublette, Nathaniel Wyeth led a caravan upriver to establish
rival Fort Hall in Idaho. With Wyeth were Thomas Nuttall and John
Townsend, the first men of scientific attainments to follow the trail,
and Jason and Daniel Lee, first Methodist missionaries to Oregon.
[Illustration: _The earliest known sketch of Scotts Bluff, drawn by
Alfred J. Miller in 1837._ Original in Walters Art Gallery,
Baltimore.]
In 1835, when the American Fur Company emerged as the dominant trading
concern, it took over Fort William on the Laramie and placed Lucien
Fontenelle in charge there. That year Presbyterian missionaries Samuel
Parker and Marcus Whitman accompanied Fontenelle and the traders'
caravan to the rendezvous on the Green River, then went on to scout the
Oregon country.
Impressed by what he saw, Marcus Whitman quickly returned to the States
to organize more missionaries. In 1836 he brought his wife, Narcissa,
and the Rev. Henry Spalding and his wife, Elizabeth, westward to Oregon.
These two white women, the first ever to see Scotts Bluff and the first
to reach Oregon, were well guarded on their journey by the veteran
Thomas Fitzpatrick and his swarthy crew.
At Scotts Bluff the Whitman party met company employees from Fort
Laramie, descending the Platte River in fur-laden bullboats. This was to
become a common method of transporting furs to St. Louis, although the
shallow Platte was poorly suited to navigation, and the boats often came
to grief on sandbars. The trips could only be made during the June rise
of the Platte. Since travelers from the States usually arrived at Scotts
Bluff by mid-June, the trappers' boats were often reported in this
vicinity.
It was in 1837 that Scotts Bluff, the martial sentinel of the North
Platte Valley, stood for its first portrait. The magnificent sketch, now
preserved in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, was the work of
Alfred J. Miller, a talented artist who accompanied Sir William Drummond
Stewart and William Sublette to the Green River rendezvous. Miller's
notes on Scotts Bluff reflect the same awe and imagination that inspired
countless later emigrants. He writes, "At a distance as we approached it
the appearance was that of an immense fortification with bastions,
towers, battlements, embrazures, scarps and counterscarps." He records
also that this neighborhood abounded in delicious "Rocky Mountain
pheasant," and in jack rabbits, antelope, and bighorn.
The supply train of 1838, led by Andrew Drips, was accompanied by
another missionary party, including the journalist Myra F. Eells, who
commented on the "grand scenery" of the bluffs, and the Swiss fortune
hunter, August Johann Sutter, on whose California ranch the discovery of
gold 10 years later would precipitate the most famous migration in
American history.
In 1839, Dr. Frederick Wislizenus from St. Louis, traveling to Fort
Laramie with the caravan led by Moses Harris, described the bluff:
... We traveled somewhat away from the river, toward the left, and
enjoyed a picturesque landscape. All about were rocks piled up by
Nature in merry mood, giving full scope to fancy in the variety of
their shapes. Some were perfect cones; others flat round tops; others,
owing to their crenulated projections, resembled fortresses; others
old castles, porticos, etc. Most of them were sparsely covered with
pine and cedar. The scenery has obvious resemblance to several places
in Saxon Switzerland.
The last of the traditional rendezvous was held in 1840 on the Green
River. This year's expedition was led by Andrew Drips, and it was made
notable by two parties who accompanied it. One was the Joel Walker
family, the first avowed Oregon emigrants; the others were Jesuit
priests headed by Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, who would become one of
the West's most prodigious travelers and reporters. Like many others, De
Smet, impressed by the scenery of the North Platte, wrote:
... In the neighborhood of this wonder [Chimney Rock], all the hills
present a singular aspect; some have the appearance of towers, castles
and fortified cities. From a little distance, one can hardly persuade
himself that art is not mingled in them with the fantasies of nature.
Bands of the _ashata_, an animal called also _grosse-corne_, or
bighorn, have their abode in the midst of these bad lands.... [Scotts
Bluff], with its castles and fantastic cities, forms the termination
of a high ridge, which runs from south to north. We found a narrow
passage through between two perpendicular cliffs 300 feet in height
[Mitchell Pass].
_Migration to Oregon_
The era of the transcontinental covered wagon migrations began in 1841,
for in that year came the initial band of 80 Oregon homeseekers, guided
by Thomas Fitzpatrick and accompanied by Father De Smet on his second
western journey. John Bidwell was the historian of this expedition.
Another traveler was Joseph Williams, an elderly but energetic Methodist
preacher, who described the building of Fort John (the second Fort
Laramie). Although the beaver trade had declined, a brisk trade with the
Indians for buffalo robes continued, and the American Fur Company would
occupy Laramie's Fork for eight more years.
Dr. Elijah White, the new agent for the Oregon Indians, lead a party of
112 westward in 1842. Among them was Medorem Crawford, who described
Scotts Bluff as "the most romantic scenery I ever saw." Lansford W.
Hastings, who was to write one of the first emigrant guidebooks, was
also of this party. Lt. John C. Fremont's first expedition to the Rocky
Mountains traveled up the Platte in 1842; his official report would
likewise become a standard reference. He described Scotts Bluff as "an
escarpment on the river of about 900 yards in length" which "forces the
road to make a considerable circuit over the uplands." He found the
plain between the bluffs and Chimney Rock almost entirely covered with
driftwood, testifying to a recent flood.
[Illustration: _Rut of the Oregon Trail at Scotts Bluff._]
In 1843 Scotts Bluff witnessed the first mass migration to Oregon; it
was promoted by Marcus Whitman. In May more than 1,000 persons,
including 130 women and 610 children, left Independence, Mo., for the
long trek overland. This well-organized expedition, with military rules
to ensure protection, an elected captain, and division into companies,
set the pattern for the hundreds of emigrant trains to follow. The
elected captain was Peter Burnett who was to become the first Governor
of California in 1850. The "Cow Column," the last and slowest of the
1843 companies, has achieved fame through the writings of Jesse
Applegate. Overton Johnson relates that the train reached camp "by a
fine Spring, at the foot of Scott's Bluffs" on July 9.
Close behind the emigrant families came an elaborate hunting party, led
by Sir William Stewart and William Sublette, making their farewell visit
to the mountains. Baptiste Charbonneau, the infant son who had been
carried by Sacajawea on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was hired as a
driver. William Clark Kennerly's reminiscences of this journey tells of
a frightening incident that occurred near Scotts Bluff:
Far out on the Platte one morning, while making preparations for our
daily hunt, we descried coming toward us a herd, which I can state
without any exageration must have numbered a million. The pounding of
their hooves on the hard prairie sounded like the roaring of a mighty
ocean, surging over the land and sweeping everything before it. Here
was more game than we bargained for, and the predicament in which we
now found ourselves gave us much cause for alarm. On they came, and as
we were directly in their path and on the bank of the river, there was
great danger of our being swept over. This danger was averted only by
our exerting every effort to turn them off in another direction; and
as it took the herd two entire days to pass, even at quite a rapid
gait, we were kept busy placing guards of shouting, gesticulating men
in the daytime and building huge bonfires at night.
In the summer of 1844 four emigrant trains passed Scotts Bluff bound for
Oregon. One of these was piloted by James Clyman, who had first seen the
bluff 20 years before on his long hike from Independence Rock to Fort
Atkinson. In his diary Clyman wrote:
... encamped in the midtst of Scotts blufs By a cool spring in a
romantic & picturisque vally surounded except to the E. by high &
allmost impassably steep clay cliffs of all immagenary shapes & forms
supped on a most dlecious piece of venison from the loin of a fat
Black taild Buck and I must not omit to mention that I took my rifle
and (and) walked out in the deep ravin to guard a Beautifull covey of
young Ladies & misses while they gathered wild currants & choke
chirries which grow in great perfusion in this region and of the
finerst kind.
The trek to Oregon in 1845 dwarfed all that had gone before. An informal
count at Fort Laramie revealed that 5,000 people and 500 ox-drawn wagons
were on the march. The charms of Scotts Bluff, and the tragic tale of
its namesake, were not lost on the many diarists, among them Joel
Palmer, who credits "Scott's Bluffs" with a good spring and an abundance
of wood and grass. Below the bluffs, says Palmer,
We met a company of mountaineers from Fort Laramie, who had started
for the settlements early in the season, with flat-boats loaded with
buffalo robes, and other articles of Indian traffic. The river became
so low, that they were obliged to lay by; part of the company had
returned to the fort for teams; others were at the boat landing, while
fifteen of the party were footing their way to the States. They were a
jolly set of fellows....
In this same big year the United States Government sent its first
military expedition up the Platte. Guided by Fitzpatrick, Col. S. W.
Kearny led five companies of the First Dragoons to South Pass. A few
days ahead of the Oregon Trek, on June 11 they encamped "below Scotts
Bluffs, and directly opposite a large village of Dacotah [Sioux]
Indians."
... that immense and celebrated pile, called "Scott's Bluffs,"
advances across the plain nearly to the water's edge. If one could
increase the size of the Alhambra of Grenada, or the Castle of
Heidelberg, which Professor Longfellow has so poetically and so
graphically described,--twenty fold in every way but in height,--he
could form some idea of the magnitude and splendor of this chef
d'oeuvre of Nature at Palace-Building.
[Illustration: _Emigrants fording the Platte._ Original sketch in
Oregon Trail Museum.]
_Years of Decision, 1846-48_
In 1846, the Oregon Territory, long in dispute with Great Britain, was
finally acquired by peaceful compromise. The emigrant families who had
passed Scotts Bluff had ensured this outcome by tipping the scales of
population! Meanwhile, in May 1846, the United States had declared war
on Mexico and, in the name of "manifest destiny," set about adding
California and the Southwest to its territory.
The emigration of 1846 was lighter than that of the preceding year. One
company, the Donner party, met appalling disaster in the early autumn
snows of the Sierra Nevadas. Edward Bryant, a future Governor of
California, and J. Quinn Thornton both wrote the most extravagant and
fanciful descriptions of Scotts Bluff and nearby hills. They imagined
"the ruins of some ancient vast city," complete with domes, towers,
temples, minarets, amphitheaters, frowning parapets, and even "a royal
bath," a fittingly picturesque backdrop for the lingering death of "the
unhappy trapper" who crawled here after being abandoned by "inhuman
companions."
In 1846 young historian Francis Parkman, whose journal, _The Oregon
Trail_, would become one of the classics of our literature, made his
famous trip to Fort Laramie. After camping "by the well-known spring on
Scott's Bluff" he rode out in the morning and "descending the western
side of the bluff," came upon "old Smoke's lodges." Here he launches
into his first exciting description of a Sioux encampment, with its
handsome lazy warriors, dusky maidens, and the "old withered crones" who
did all the work!
Also in 1846, after mob violence against their city of Nauvoo, Ill., the
Mormons began their great western trek. They encamped for the winter on
the Missouri at Kanesville (Council Bluffs) and Winter Quarters (Omaha),
where hundreds died of disease and exposure. In the spring of 1847 the
Mormon pioneers, 144 strong under Brigham Young, traveled to their
promised land, Great Salt Lake Valley in Utah. Avoiding the "gentiles"
who followed the Oregon Trail up the south bank of the Platte, the
Mormons remained on the north bank until they reached Fort Laramie,
using the old trappers' trail to Fort Atkinson. Probably no expedition
in history has been better chronicled. Among the many meticulous Mormon
journalists was William Clayton, who later wrote one of the better trail
guides. On May 27 he reported that the company "passed the meridian of
the northernmost peaks of Scott's Bluffs." The view toward these bluffs,
"resembling ancient ruins," was "majestic and sublime."
The Mormon emigration almost monopolized the trail in 1848. Some 4,000
of the faithful journeyed to Utah up the north bank, opposite the bluff,
while a comparative handful of emigrants followed the usual route to
Oregon. But this was the quiet before the storm. In 1848 James Marshall
discovered gold on Captain Sutter's ranch. The news traveled by fast
clipper ship around Cape Horn to New York City. The California gold rush
would soon burst in a torrent up the North Platte migration corridor.
_Scotts Bluff and The Forty-niners_
Early in the spring the Forty-niners converged by steamboat upon the
Missouri River towns of Independence, Westport, and St. Joseph;
assembled wagons, animals, and provisions; and organized into companies.
Eager to reach the new Eldorado, they were undismayed by the prospective
2,000-mile trek across hostile plains and mountains. On May 1, as soon
as the prairie grass was green, the great gold rush began. The Oregon
Trail became the California Road.
The trail from Independence, up the Kansas and Blue Rivers, joined the
trail from St. Joseph near present Marysville, Kans., then followed up
the Little Blue to its source to reach the "Coast of Nebraska," historic
Platte River. Just beyond was Fort Kearny, established in 1847, now
commanded by the same Captain Bonneville who first took wagons across
the Continental Divide 17 years before.
Onward from Fort Kearny the white-hooded prairie schooners crawled like
an army of gigantic ants along the south bank of the Platte. The
Forty-niners were awed by the vast emptiness of the treeless plains, the
endless horizon, the shimmering haze, and the sudden, drenching
thunderstorms. Pushing beyond the forks of the Platte, they followed the
margin of the South Platte to near the present town of Ogallala, Nebr.
Here, at what was called Lower California Crossing, they ferried or swam
the river amid scenes of shouting confusion, then headed for the North
Platte.
Hundreds of extant emigrant journals vividly describe the classic trunk
route of the Oregon-California Trail up the North Platte. From the
plateau the trail descended rather abruptly via steep Windlass Hill down
Ash Hollow (near Lewellyn) to the river. Hugging the south bank, the
trail passed many curious hills and formations which afforded welcome
relief from the monotonous scenery. Courthouse and Jail Rocks near
present Bridgeport, Chimney Rock near Bayard, and Scotts Bluff were
among the most notable of these landmarks, which so frequently aroused
poetic fancies and rapturous descriptions in emigrant journals.
At Scotts Bluff in 1849 the trail made a wide detour, south of the
present monument, up Gering Valley, and over Robidoux Pass, then
northwest to regain the Platte near the mouth of Horse Creek.
Sixty miles beyond the bluff the Forty-niners came to historic
adobe-walled Fort Laramie (Fort John of the American Fur Company), which
was in the very process of being purchased by the United States Army.
The Stars and Stripes were hauled up at the fort on June 26, and the
army immediately began the construction of new buildings. Pausing here
only briefly to rest and obtain provisions, the emigrants continued west
and north via the North Platte and the Sweetwater toward the Continental
Divide, guided by such landmarks as Laramie Peak, Red Butte,
Independence Rock, Devil's Gate, and Split Rock. Just beyond broad,
barren South Pass, flanked by the snow-covered Wind River Mountains, the
Forty-niners reached the edge of the Pacific drainage. They still had a
grueling journey over mountain and desert before they would reach the
end of their rainbow.
[Illustration: _Cavalcade of the Forty-niners._ Original sketch in
Oregon Trail Museum.]
The California gold rush of 1849 and ensuing years, in addition to being
on a much larger scale, was entirely different in character from the
earlier Oregon migration. Oregon travelers were families, seeking farms;
most of the California emigrants were young men, unmarried or
unaccompanied by wives, who were seeking a quick fortune. Young women
who did make the hazardous journey were besieged with suitors. There
were weddings and honeymoons on the trail. There are also records of
gold rush babies born in wagon beds.
After a rugged day on the trail, the evening campfire was often the
occasion for yarn-swapping and sentimental songs, like _Oh, Susanna!_ It
can be imagined that these campfire scenes were commonplace at Scotts
Bluff, and the tale of Hiram Scott's tragic death was doubtless repeated
with endless variations. The prevailing mood was not always gay. The
haunting mystery of Scotts Bluff struck a fittingly somber note for the
Forty-miners. Before the epic drama of the gold-rush was played out a
few years later, 20,000 of these adventurous emigrants had died and
lined the California Road with their graves.
Asiatic cholera was the greatest killer. Ships docking at New Orleans
brought infected people who carried the dread disease by steamboat up
the Mississippi to St. Louis. There, the disease spread by contagion to
people in the Missouri River outfitting towns. As the tired Argonauts
struggled across the unfamiliar Nebraska landscape, the disease raced
like wildfire among them, decimating their number. Children were
orphaned. The husband who buried his wife might himself be dead the next
day. Numerous diaries record inscriptions on the crude headboards of the
hastily dug shallow graves. Hundreds of burials took place in the North
Platte Valley between Ash Hollow and Fort Laramie. Several have been
identified at Scotts Bluff.
Many of those who escaped the cholera plague were confronted with other
killers--the rugged terrain, inexperience, carelessness, exhaustion.
Some dropped by the wayside from sheer fatigue. Others died of
pneumonia, or were drowned at the river crossings, or shot themselves
with unfamiliar firearms, got run over by the big lumbering wagon
wheels, or were gored by unruly oxen. Another menace was the buffalo,
which was hunted as a fine source of food. Unless approached gingerly,
big herds of these creatures would sometimes stampede, making the earth
tremble, trampling to death the unwary hunter. In the desert of the
Great Basin, more of the travelers were killed by the intense heat,
alkali dust, and parching thirst. The trek of the Forty-niners was not
for long a gay escapade; it became a grim survival of the fittest.