THE GRAVES OF PIONEERS.
Many an Eastern city has more dead people than living. Instead of the
West being young, the East is growing old. The antiquities of the
Eastern cemetery are often more interesting to the Westerner than the
life and energy of the living city. How the old names of Concurrence,
Patience, Charity, Eunice, Virtue, Experience, Prudence, Jerusha,
Electra, Thankful, Narcissa, Mercy, Wealthy, Joanna, Mehitable, on the
tombstones of the old Puritan grandmothers have been supplanted by the
new names of these modern times! And the old-time grandfathers--well,
their names suggest a scriptural chapter on genealogy. These old-time
names, with quaint and queer epitaphs, on less pretentious monuments
than the costly ones now erected, make an interesting study, for the
ancient dates and names show that the cemetery has a history from the
earliest settlement. The ancestral bones from the Mayflower down to the
present have been saved. It is true that the great Western cities now
have costly, beautiful, and often magnificent monuments for the dead,
for the modern cemetery is becoming aristocratic.
But for the reason it might be considered almost a sacrilege, the model
of a typical New England graveyard, with its odd names and quaint
epitaphs, would be an interesting historical study at the World's Fair.
In fact it would be as much of a curiosity to millions of people in the
West as Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show was in the East.
In all the cities of the West there are more live people than dead
ones, which is not always true of the East, where the cemetery
population is often larger. With the exception of some of the old
Spanish mission cemeteries, those of the West are all new, unless one
would wish to explore the ancient homes of the mound-builders and
cliff-dwellers. A white man's graveyard is a new thing for the West.
There are many thousands among the 17,000,000 people west of the
Mississippi River who can tell of the days when Kansas City, Omaha, St.
Paul, Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake, Galveston, Dallas, Helena, San
Francisco, Portland, and Seattle hardly had a cemetery. Even St. Louis
and New Orleans have been American cities less than a century.
But during all this time many millions have been added to the silent
cities of the dead in the East, and the older the cemetery the more
there is to it that is new to a Western tourist. One born in the West,
on making his first trip to the East, finds almost as much of interest
in a New England burial-ground, and often views it with as little
reverence as does the Bostonian in gazing upon the mummies and
antiquities of Egypt.
It is interesting to contrast the frontier funeral and burial-ground in
the West with that of the East. The cemetery, the necessary but last
adjunct to the organization of a civilized community, follows in the
wake of immigration and empire. No monuments mark the last resting-place
of those buried in the first five great cemeteries in the far West. They
are in the region of nameless and unknown graves.
Those five historic cemeteries, where thousands from the East and South
died and fill unknown graves, are the Missouri River, and the Santa Fé,
Oregon, California, and Pike's Peak trails. The trans-Alleghany, and
later the trans-Mississippi pioneers, followed, in the main, the
water-courses. There was no prairie-farming, and hence the term,
"backwoodsman." It was a kind of a Yankee trick in the West, in later
years, to leave the forests and begin plowing the prairies, and save the
time that had been hitherto used in log-rolling and clearing the
river-bottoms for agriculture. The early trappers, hunters, and fur
dealers followed up the Missouri River and its tributaries. Only with
great difficulty could a corpse be concealed from wolves and coyotes,
the latter animal always having been known as the hyena of the plains
country. Hence many an old hunter, when far from the borderland of
civilization, has buried his "pard" in the Missouri River! Landsmen and
plainsmen with a seaman's burial--a watery grave! The body wrapped in a
blanket--when the blanket could be spared--and tied to rocks and
boulders, was lowered from the drifting canoe into the "Big Muddy," as
that river is commonly known in the West. Many an old hunter and trapper
has been buried in the mighty rushing waters of the great Western river,
even as the faithful followers of De Soto lowered his remains into the
bosom of the Mississippi. When it was necessary or convenient to bury
the dead on land, the greatest precaution was taken to protect the body
from wolves and coyotes, which were especially dangerous and ravenous
when off of the trail of the buffalo. Rocks and large pieces of timber
were placed on the newly made grave, but often these hyenas of the
plains could be seen scratching and growling at this debris before the
comrades of the dead man were out of sight. With these facts so well
known, it is not strange that many in those early days preferred a
burial in the rivers to that of the land. It seems almost paradoxical to
thus find in the old trapper some of the instincts and traditions of the
sailor. Far out on the plains cactus was often put in the grave, just
over the corpse, as a protection against the wolves and coyotes.
The earlier expeditions starting from St. Louis went up the Mississippi
a few miles, to the mouth of the Missouri River, and then followed the
latter stream. For some time the old Boone's Lick country, now known as
Howard County, Mo., and Old Franklin, was the frontier commercial head.
The town of Old Franklin, where was the original terminus of the old
Santa Fé trail, when Kit Carson was only an apprentice to a saddler and
harness-maker, is now the bottom of the Missouri River, for there a
current of seven miles an hour has cut away the old town site.
But the pioneers became bolder. Instead of following the river they
began to venture out from St. Louis overland, about the time of the old
Boone's Lick settlement. It was considered a brave and hazardous journey
to start from St. Louis overland in those days, for it was a village
town, and all of the country to the west was a wilderness. It was about
the year 1808 that the Workman and Spencer party started from St. Louis,
and far out on the plains, before reaching the Rocky Mountains, one of
the party sickened and died.
The Indians rendered what assistance they could in bringing herbs and
such crude medicines as they used for fevers. The poor fellow died, and
they dug for him a grave, which was among the first, if not the first,
burial of a white man on the great plains of the West.
It was a novel sight for the Indians to see the hunters and trappers
wrap up their dead comrade in a blanket, and put the body into a deep
hole they had dug. They piled up brush and what heavy things they could
find, and placed on the grave, carved his name in rude letters, and went
on their way. But they had hardly resumed their journey before the
wolves began to dig at the grave.
Were it not foreign to the purpose of this article, it would be
interesting to relate at some length the fate of this expedition. The
most of the party were slain in battles with the Indians, and Workman
and Spencer are reported to have gone through the grand cañons of the
Colorado River to California in 1809, but that remarkable feat is
discredited by some, leaving honors easier with Major Powell, whose
expedition through these cañons was in more modern times.
This lonely and desolate grave dug by the Workman and Spencer party is
supposed to have been somewhere in what is now Kansas or Nebraska. It
was the beginning of making graves on the plains and in the mountains,
but time, wind, rain, and sand made them unknown.
Many thousands perished on the old-time trails to Santa Fé, the Rocky
Mountains, and the Pacific Coast. Exposure, sickness, thirst,
starvation, and massacre were the dangers the immigrants had to face.
Many of their graves were marked with slabs, but the inscription was
soon effaced. These graves are as unknown in the great ocean of plain,
prairie, and mountain as though the pioneer dead had been buried at sea.
The most fatal days was when the cholera raged on the Western trails.
Sometimes an entire train would be stricken and the captain would be
compelled to corral the wagons until aid could be obtained from other
caravans on the desert, then so called, or the teamsters recovered to
continue the journey. Women sometimes helped to dig the graves and
assisted in burying the dead, and have then taken the dead teamster's
place at the wagon, driving the oxen until men could be employed.
With the opening of the Western trails for wagons, a larger number were
buried in boxes made from rude pieces of lumber, or sometimes a part of
the sideboard of the wagon was utilized for that purpose. The earlier
expeditions were on horseback, and hence at that time the best that
could be done would be to roll the body in a blanket. Only those in the
East who have seen a burial at sea, although they may never have been
on the plains, can realize the sadness and desolation of those who left
their friends in the nameless graves of the old-time American desert.
Many of the babies lived that were born on the California and Oregon
trails, but the saddest of all was when the pioneer mother and babe were
added to the thousands of nameless graves. The death-couch was a pile of
straw and a few blankets in an old freight wagon. If the angels ever
hover over the dying, there never would have been a more appropriate
place for their ministrations. Nameless graves! Unknown! Only the
drifting sands and the ceaseless flow of the mighty Western rivers know
the place of their nameless dead. These are the famous cemeteries of the
far West. There are no granite shafts or beautiful emblems carved in
marble. Heroic men and women! They died unknown to fame and honor, but
they gave their lives that a new civilization and a new empire might be
born in the far West. The brave men, North and South, who fell in
battle, have their graves marked "unknown" when they could not be
identified, but no one knows where sleep the thousands who died on these
trails. Even a slab to the "unknown" could not be placed, for who knows
the grave? Farm-houses, fertile fields, cities and towns, and the
rushing railway car now mark the spot. The path of civilization and the
rapid building of empire in the West is their only living monument.
During the cholera days there was a heavy loss of life on the Western
steamboats. On the Missouri River some of the old boats had a burial
crew. At night-time, when the passengers were hardly aware of what was
going on, the boat would stop near a sand-bar. The bodies of those who
had died during the day were taken to the sand-bar, where they were
quickly buried. What would have been the use of putting up even a pine
board, for the rising waters would soon have washed it away?
But this is not simply Western history. It is a part of the history of
the North and the South, for those who came never to return were from
those sections. In many an Eastern and Southern home it is as unknown to
them as to the people of the West where sleep their dead on those old
trails of the Western empire.
The emigrants and gold-seekers were population in transit. Their
burial-places were as fleeting. With the building of new towns and
cities were established cemeteries, but there still continued to be the
thousands of unknown graves. A father, brother, husband, or son dies
away from home. His name may not have been known, or if it was, the
pencil-marks on the pine board soon lost their tracing in the
weather-beaten changes that time brings. How often in my own experience
in the mining camps I have seen men die far away from the tender and
loving care of mother, wife, and sister. How terrible then is the
struggle with death! The desire to live and to see the old home-faces
again becomes a passion. In their delirium the passion becomes a
reality. In their feverish dreams I have seen the dying miner in his
cabin fancy he was home again. He talks to his wife, and with words of
endearment tells her that he has found a fortune in the mines. I never
knew of a miner who, in the delirium of death, when he was talking of
the mines, but what he was rich. He had struck the precious metal. He
tells his people at home about it, and many a poor fellow has seemingly
died content, founded on the fancy that he had a mine and that his wife
and family would always have plenty. Out of many instances I will relate
but one.
A young man from Galena, Ill., eleven years ago, was taken sick and soon
the fever was upon him. He grew rapidly worse, but bravely fought the
pale reaper, for he wanted to see home again. But courage was not equal
to the task. The poor fellow had to die, and when the fever was at its
height, he imagined that he was with his wife and baby. How tenderly he
spoke to his young wife. He thought he had a rich mine, and told her
where it was located. Then he imagined that his pillow was his baby, and
that he was running his fingers through the child's curly hair, and
would fondle the child up to his bosom. As I gazed on the bronze and
weather-beaten faces of those present in the cabin, I saw tears come
into the eyes of some when the dying man was murmuring child-love talk
to the baby.
At the time of the great Leadville rush, many came who never returned.
Unknown, many of them sleep in their last resting place--in the gulches,
on the mountain sides, and under the shadows of the pine trees and
granite peaks. Exposure and not being prepared to guard against the
sudden changes of climate caused many to die of pneumonia and fevers.
The writer went through a hard attack of typhoid pneumonia in one of the
mining camps. After the worst was over and I was conscious again, one of
the boys said to me, "Hello, pard, when you were in the fever you
thought you had found enough gold mines to have bought out the Astors
and Vanderbilts."
The greatest number of deaths for a while seemed to come from what was
known as the "sawdust gang." In the wild excitement of a new mining camp
boom, people rush in by the hundreds and thousands. Many have only
enough money to get there, and are compelled to sleep on the sawdust
floor of the saloons. Thus they caught cold, which turning into
pneumonia often proved fatal. And the cowboys--how often on the long
Texas-Montana drives they have dug a hasty grave and with the lassos
lowered their dead pard into it.
The sporting and theatrical element always have a swell funeral in the
booming mining camps. The musicians from the dance-halls turn out, play
dirges, and with due pomp and ceremony the funeral is conducted. The
band returns from the new cemetery usually playing some lively air. The
deceased has had a fine funeral and a good sendoff, and now to business.
The dance-halls are crowded again, the music goes on, and men and women
gamble, dance, and drink, unmindful of what has occurred.
Those were days of death, hell, and the grave. But what will not men
undergo and dare for gold? They have braved anything for it in the past,
and will in the future. Friendships and home ties are broken, and in the
wild, mad rush for fortune, thousands of gold hunters have lost their
lives, and fill nameless and unknown graves in the far West. There is
something of romance in the death of a humble prospector searching for
wealth on the mountain side. Whether rich or poor the old gold hunter
often sees wealth ahead in his last hours. And, perchance, through the
fading light on the mountain peaks, may he not see a trail leading to a
city where the streets are golden? Who knows?
In 1849 and 1850, all along the trail of the overland freighters' route,
were scattered unknown graves, clear into California, my dear father
being one of the pioneers who died and filled an unknown grave. In the
fall of 1850, on the east bank of the San Joaquin River, he died of
cholera, and was buried, and his grave is unknown.
Another instance that I recall was of the death of one of the women of
the party. She was buried at the South Pass, and they built a pen of
cottonwood poles over the grave, placing her rocking chair to mark the
spot, and which had her name carved on it.