OVER THE MOUNTAINS INTO CALIFORNIA
While we were going down the Humbolt River, several days before we got
to the sink or desert, six of our men got tired going so slow, and went
on and left us. Uncle tried to get them to stay with us, but when they
would go, he offered them provisions to take along. Four of them were so
gritty that they would not take any. Two of them did. These four thought
they would come to what were called "trading posts," but they had all
gone back to California, as we afterwards found. The men had nearly
starved to death. They had to shoot birds and they used everything they
could find for food.
These "trading posts" were kept by men who had brought on pack mules,
provisions from California, to sell to emigrants and bought up weak
stock and herded them on the grass until they got strong enough to drive
across the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California.
Uncle thought we would soon come to one of these trading posts, where we
could get flour, but the traders had all gone back and ceased to trade.
We ran out of flour and sea biscuits when we crossed the desert into
Carson Valley. We had to live on beef and mutton for five or six hundred
miles. The first flour and bread we got to eat, was after we crossed the
summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
I thought I had seen mountains before, but these beat them all. When we
got to the headwaters of the Carson River, for it was up in the Sierra
Nevada Mountains, we went over what was called the Johnson Cut Off. When
we got to the foot of the mountain, I looked up its side and told Uncle
Joshua that we could never get up this mountain in this world, for it
looked as straight up as a wall could possibly be.
"O, yes, we can," he said. "We will get on the trail and go first one
way and then another, until we get up."
We were six days getting everything to the top of that mountain, and
when we got up, we rested one night. The first horse uncle lost was
getting up this mountain. He was a little weak, stumbled and fell off
the trail and that was the last we ever saw of him.
The next morning we yoked up the oxen and all got ready to start. Uncle
instructed me to lead out. Right on top of the mountain, it was pretty
level for some distance. I drove on ahead of the rest. I came to where I
saw I had to go down again. I stopped, locked both hind wheels of my
wagon, rough locked them by wrapping a chain twice around the felloe and
tire, so the tire would ride on the chain and make it drag hard on the
ground. I started down. I had not gone far until I found I was going
down the same kind of a mountain we had been six days coming up. A
little further down, the trail got very narrow. I was on the left side
of the oxen, for that was the side upon which we had always taken when
driving. That put me on the lower side, so that if I had been knocked
off, that would have been the last of me. I stopped and let the wagon
pass me, so that I could get on the upper side to drive. When I crossed
behind the wagon, the dust blew up in my face so thick that I could not
see my wagon, and that was the last I saw of those oxen until nearly sun
down.
I went down the mountain as fast as I could. I had no idea I would ever
see those oxen again, but when I got down on level ground at the foot of
the mountain, where I could see, off about one hundred yards, there
stood my oxen and wagon, right side up. There were three yoke of them,
six head of cattle, but my near ox, next to the wheel, died that night.
The first ones to come down following me, were uncle and aunt. They were
in a light one-seated top buggy, the one they had used all the way
across the plains. Uncle had his feet under the buggy, holding down the
hind axle tree, while aunt had the lines, driving. They drove a brown
mare, which I had taken from Indiana and a black horse they had fetched
from Wisconsin.
Aunt was saying, "O, Bailey, I will be killed, I will be killed."
"Hold on Susan, hold on, Susan," answered uncle.
The team was nearly setting down on their hind parts and just sliding.
They could not move their feet to step for rods at a time.
"How did you ever get down that mountain," uncle asked when he saw me.
"I will never tell, uncle," I said.
Nor did I tell, for I could not tell myself how those oxen got down that
mountain.
When we got started again on the trail, we met a man going across the
mountains, over the same route, with a pack train. He was packing
provisions across to the miners in Carson Valley. Uncle coaxed him out
of two fifty pound sacks of flour at thirty dollars a sack. This made
our first bread since crossing the desert.
Somebody stole the black horse which uncle and aunt drove down the
mountain, while we were camped there that night. This was the second
horse uncle lost on the trip, and the last one since starting from the
states.
We drove down the west slope toward the gold mine. The second night
after we left the summit, it commenced to snow on us, but not very fast.
Every day after that, it was snowing or raining until we came to the
gold mines. Some mornings the snow would be two or three inches deep,
but by night we would get to where it was raining.
One night we camped in what was called Pleasant Valley, near a stream
called Boland's Run. A man by the name of Thomas Boland, kept a trading
post here, with a stock of groceries, clothing, boots and shoes, and a
saloon in connection. A little further down, we helped uncle across the
McCosma River, to a place called Fair Play, where uncle said that he and
his family could get down to their future home alone. We then bade
farewell to uncle and family, and started on a prospecting tour.
This was now the last of November.
After we got to California, we found out that those bad Indians on the
Humbolt River, had taken two or three messes or camps, that year, and
one man escaped from one of the camps and two out of another, the rest
of the men, women and children being killed. These men, who got away
from among the Indians in some way or other, got to other camps. The
trains that were taken, were camped no great distance apart; far enough
so as to herd their stock and keep them separate. They said the Indians
holloed on one side and while the campers were looking in the direction
of the holloing, the first thing they knew, other Indians came right in
on them behind their backs.
These three remaining men said that the next morning they gathered the
white men from the camps up and down the river, and followed on the
trail of the marauders. The Indians had cut open sacks of flour and
scattered it along their trail. They had also cut open feather beds and
the feathers were blown over the prairie. When the white men came in
sight, the Indians broke and ran in every direction, and when they got
up to the captured oxen and wagons, which the Indians had taken from the
campers, it was found that the Indians had cooked and were eating an
unyoked ox, with the other ox still yoked with the dead one. They did
not know how to get the yoke off. The men took what oxen and stock they
could find, along with them, but had no time to stay to hunt for them.
This is the story of the men who escaped, and were then living in
California.
These campers must have driven until after dark, for it seemed they did
not have their oxen unyoked, for we always unyoked our oxen as soon as
we stopped.
I shall now try to give you a description of the country through which
we traveled. Starting in Nebraska, there was what I considered pretty
good land for two or three hundred miles, though I did not see very much
of the country outside the Platte River bottom. After we came to the
Rocky Mountains, I never saw very much of what I called good land laying
in one body. Sometimes we would come to some pretty fair rolling land,
but it was what I called poor and rough. At times we got so high up, we
were above timber line, but we always had grass where there was soil. We
passed through sage brush and sand, and all of that kind of country
looked desolate to me, but once in awhile, we would come to prairie
land. We found some pretty good, rich strips of land away out on the
other side of the Rocky Mountains. A good long ways out, we came to such
a strip of land, which was called Fur Grove, covered with what we called
balsam fir. I do not know in what state it is now, for the whole country
from the Missouri River to California was then known as Indian
Territory.
Sometimes we would be on the mountain tops, where we could look down and
see below where we saw a fog, or at least thought so, but the men said
it was raining down in the valley, but clear where we were.
We passed near Red Mountains and there were black mountains not very far
apart and which could be seen from one point of view. We crossed some
small rivers. I remember one in particular we had to cross on one of
those willow brush bridges. There had been so much travel on this
bridge, that a great hole was worn in it, but uncle said we did not have
time to stop to mend it, and we would have to risk it. We got the
horses, sheep, oxen and wagons across on the bridge, but the cattle we
had to swim the river. I don't believe I ever heard what the name of
that river was, if I did, I have forgotten it.
I did not see much of Iowa on this trip. Of all the country I saw from
Indiana, through, or after I got through, there was none suited me like
Central Illinois, and I have not changed my mind. There was government
land in Illinois to enter at that time.