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CROSSING THE PLAINS
DAYS OF '57
A NARRATIVE OF EARLY EMIGRANT TRAVEL
TO CALIFORNIA BY THE
OX-TEAM METHOD
BY
WM. AUDLEY MAXWELL
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
WM AUDLEY MAXWELL
SUNSET PUBLISHING HOUSE
SAN FRANCISCO MCMXV
[Illustration: "They started flight" (See page 119.)]
CONTENTS
PAGE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VI
FOREWORD VII
CHAPTER I. Forsaking the Old, in Quest of the New. First
Camp. Fording the Platte 1
CHAPTER II. Laramie Fashions and Sioux Etiquette. A Trophy.
Chimney Rock. A Solitary Emigrant. Jests and Jingles 13
CHAPTER III. Lost in the Black Hills. Devil's Gate. Why a
Mountain Sheep Did Not Wink. Green River Ferry 31
CHAPTER IV. Disquieting Rumors of Redmen. Consolidation for
Safety. The Poisonous Humboldt 49
CHAPTER V. The Holloway Massacre 62
CHAPTER VI. Origin of "Piker." Before the Era of Canned Good
and Kodaks. Morning Routine. Typical Bivouac.
Sociability Entrained. The Flooded Camp. Hope Sustains
Patience 76
CHAPTER VII. Tangled by a Tornado. Lost the Pace but Kept the
Cow. Human Oddities. Night Guards. Wolf Serenades.
Awe of the Wilderness. A Stampede 97
CHAPTER VIII. Disaster Overtakes the Wood Family 116
CHAPTER IX. Mysterious Visitors. Extra Sentinels. An Anxious
Night 123
CHAPTER X. Challenge to Battle 133
CHAPTER XI. Sagebrush Justice 144
CHAPTER XII. Night Travel. Arid Wastes to Limpid Waters 160
CHAPTER XIII. Into the Settlements. Halt 170
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"They started flight" Frontispiece
"Fording the Platte consumed one entire day" 11
"Wo-haw-Buck" 14
"From our coign of vantage we continued to shoot" 21
Chimney Rock 22
"One melody that he sang from the heart" 27
"Hauled the delinquent out" 30
"The wagons were lowered through the crevice" 38
Bone-writing 57
"With hand upraised in supplication, yielded to the impulse
to flee" 67
Jerry Bush, 1914 72
Nancy Holloway, 1857 74
The Author, twenty years after 100
A Coyote Serenade 109
"Van Diveer's advantage was slight but sufficient" 136
"A sip from the barrel cost fifty cents" 146
"'Stop,' shouted the Judge" 156
"'Melican man dig gold" 173
Pack-mule route to placer diggings 175
FOREWORD
Diligent inquiry has failed to disclose the existence of an authentic
and comprehensive narrative of a _pioneer_ journey across the plains.
With the exception of some improbable yarns and disconnected incidents
relating to the earlier experiences, the subject has been treated
mainly from the standpoint of people who traveled westward at a time
when the real hardships and perils of the trip were much less than
those encountered in the fifties.
A very large proportion of the people now residing in the Far West are
descendants of emigrants who came by the precarious means afforded by
ox-team conveyances. For some three-score years the younger
generations have heard from the lips of their ancestors enough of
that wonderful pilgrimage to create among them a widespread demand for
a complete and typical narrative.
This story consists of facts, with the real names of the actors in the
drama. The events, gay, grave and tragic, are according to indelible
recollections of eye-witnesses, including those of
THE AUTHOR.
W. A. M.,
_Ukiah, California, 1915._
CROSSING THE PLAINS
DAYS OF '57
CHAPTER I.
FORSAKING THE OLD IN QUEST OF THE NEW. FIRST CAMP. FORDING THE PLATTE.
We left the west bank of the Missouri River on May 17, 1857. Our
objective point was Sonoma County, California.
The company consisted of thirty-seven persons, including several
families, and some others; the individuals ranging in years from
middle age to babies: eleven men, ten women and sixteen minors; the
eldest of the party forty-nine, the most youthful, a boy two months
old the day we started. Most of these were persons who had resided for
a time at least not far from the starting point, but not all were
natives of that section, some having emigrated from Indiana, Kentucky,
Tennessee and Virginia.
We were outfitted with eight wagons, about thirty yoke of oxen, fifty
head of extra steers and cows, and ten or twelve saddle ponies and
mules.
The vehicles were light, well-built farm wagons, arranged and fitted
for economy of space and weight. Most of the wagons were without
brakes, seats or springs. The axles were of wood, which, in case of
their breaking, could be repaired en route. Chains were used for
deadlocking the wheels while moving down steep places.
No lines or halters of any kind were used on the oxen for guiding
them, these animals being managed entirely by use of the ox-whip and
the "ox-word." The whip was a braided leathern lash, six to eight feet
long, the most approved stock for which was a hickory sapling, as long
as the lash, and on the extremity of the lash was a strip of
buckskin, for a "cracker," which, when snapped by a practiced driver,
produced a sound like the report of a pistol. The purpose of the whip
was well understood by the trained oxen, and that implement enabled a
skillful driver to regulate the course of a wagon almost as accurately
as if the team were of horses, with the reins in the hands of an
expert jehu.
An emigrant wagon such as described, provided with an oval top cover
of white ducking, with "flaps" in front and a "puckering-string" at
the rear, came to be known in those days as a "prairie schooner;" and
a string of them, drawn out in single file in the daily travel, was a
"train." Trains following one another along the same new pathway were
sometimes strung out for hundreds of miles, with spaces of a few
hundred yards to several miles between, and were many weeks passing a
given point.
Our commissary wagon was supplied with flour, bacon, coffee, tea,
sugar, rice, salt, and so forth; rations estimated to last for five or
six months, if necessary; also medical supplies, and whatever else we
could carry to meet the probable necessities and the possible
casualties of the journey; with the view of traveling tediously but
patiently over a country of roadless plains and mountains, crossing
deserts and fording rivers; meanwhile cooking, eating and sleeping on
the ground as we should find it from day to day.
The culinary implements occupied a compartment of their own in a
wagon, consisting of such kettles, long-handled frying-pans and
sheet-iron coffee pots as could be used on a camp-fire, with table
articles almost all of tin. Those who attempted to carry the more
friable articles, owing to the thumps and falls to which these were
subjected, found themselves short in supply of utensils long before
the journey ended. I have seen a man and wife drinking coffee from
one small tin pan, their china and delftware having been left in
fragments to decorate the desert wayside.
We had some tents, but they were little used, after we learned how to
do without them, excepting in cases of inclement weather, of which
there was very little, especially in the latter part of the trip.
During the great rush of immigration into California subsequent to
1849, from soon after the discovery of gold until this time, the usual
date at which the annual emigrants started from the settlement borders
along the Missouri River was April 15th to May 1st. The Spring of 1857
was late, and we did not pull out until May 17th, when the prairie
grass was grown sufficiently to afford feed for the stock, and summer
weather was assured.
At that time the boundary line between the "States" and the "Plains"
was the Missouri River. We crossed that river at a point about
half-way between St. Joseph and Council Bluffs, where the village of
Brownville was the nucleus of a first settlement of white people on
the Nebraska side. There the river was a half-mile wide. The crossing
was effected by means of an old-fashioned ferryboat or scow, propelled
by a small, stern-wheeled steamer. Two days were consumed in
transporting our party and equipment across the stream; but one wagon
and a few of the people and animals being taken at each trip of the
ferryboat and steamer.
From the landing we passed up the west shore twenty miles, seeing
occasionally a rude cabin or a foundation of logs, indicating the
intention of pre-empters. This brought us to the town of Nebraska
City, then a beginning of a dozen or twenty houses, on the west bank.
Omaha was not yet on the map; although where that thriving city now
stands there existed then a settlement of something over one hundred
persons.
From Nebraska City we bore off northwesterly, separating ourselves
from civilization, and thereafter saw no more evidence of the white
man's purpose to occupy the country over which we traveled.
There was before us the sky-bound stretch of undulating prairie,
spreading far and wide, like a vast field of young, growing grain, its
monotony relieved only by occasional clumps of small trees, indicating
the presence of springs or small water-courses.
Other companies or trains, from many parts of the country, especially
the Middle States, were crossing the Missouri at various points
between St. Louis and Council Bluffs; most of them converging
eventually into one general route, as they got out on the journey.
It is perhaps impossible to convey a clear understanding of the
emotions experienced by one starting on such a trip; leaving friends
and the familiar surroundings of what had been home, to face a siege
of travel over thousands of miles of wilderness, so little known and
fraught with so much of hardship and peril.
The earlier emigrants, gold-hunters, men only--men of such stuff as
pioneers usually are made of--carried visions of picking up fortunes
in the California gold mines and soon returning to their former
haunts. But those who were going now felt that they were burning all
bridges behind them; that all they had was with them, and they were
going to stay.
Formerly we had heard that California was good only for its gold
mines; that it was a country of rocks, crags and deserts; where it
rained ceaselessly during half of the year and not at all in the other
half.[1] But later we had been told that in the valleys there was land
on which crops of wheat could be grown, and that cattle raising was
good, on the broad acres of wild oats everywhere in the "cow
counties." It was told us also that there were strips of redwood
forest along the coast, and these trees, a hundred to several hundred
feet in height, could be split into boards ten to twenty feet long,
for building purposes; and that this material was to be had by anybody
for the taking. Some said that the Spanish padres, at their missions
in several localities near the Pacific shore, had planted small
vineyards of what had come to be known as the "Mission" grape, which
produced enormous crops. Another report told us that other fruits,
including the orange and lemon varieties, so far as tried, gave
promise of being valuable products of the valley and foothill soils.
Such stories gave rise to a malady called "California fever." It was
contagious, and carried off many people.
Our first camp was on the open prairie, where grass grew about four
inches high, and a small spring furnished an ample supply of water.
Firewood we had brought with us for that night. The weather was very
fine, and all were joyous at the novelty of "camping out."
On or about the eighth day we came to the Platte River; broad, muddy
stream, at some points a mile or more in width; shallow, but running
rapidly, between low banks; its many small islands wholly covered by
growths of cottonwood trees and small willows. From these islands we
obtained from time to time the fuel needed for the camp, as we took
our course along the river's southerly shore; and occasionally added
to the contents of the "grub" wagon by capturing an elk or deer that
had sought covert in the cool shade of these island groves. Antelope
also were there, but too wary for our huntsmen.
[Illustration: "Fording the Platte consumed one entire day"]
We forded the Platte at a point something like one hundred and fifty
miles westward from its confluence with the Missouri. There was no
road leading into the river, nor any evidence of its having been
crossed by any one, at that place. We were informed that the bottom
was of quicksand, and fording, therefore, dangerous. We tested it, by
riding horses across. Contrary to our expectations, the bottom was
found to be a surface of smooth sand, packed hard enough to bear up
the wagons, when the movement was quick and continuous. A cut was made
in the bank, to form a runway for passage of the wagons to the water's
edge; and the whole train crossed the stream safely, with no further
mishap than the wetting of a driver and the dipping of a wagon into a
place deep enough to let water into the box. Fording the Platte
consumed one entire day. We camped that night on the north shore.
The train continued along the general course of the river about four
hundred miles, as far as Fort Laramie, through open country, in which
there was an abundance of feed for the animals, but where wood for
fuel was scarce.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] As late as March, 1850, Daniel Webster said in the United States
Senate: "California is Asiatic in formation and scenery; composed of
vast mountains of enormous height, with broken ridges and deep
valleys. The sides of these mountains are barren--entirely
barren--their tops capped by perennial snow."