The early Oregon pioneers not only gained the first secure foothold for
the American people on the Pacific Coast, but their movement opened the
way to American occupation and in itself counted as an occupation of
that realm for American civilization. They moved across the continent at
an auspicious time, and so were able to influence, if not to shape, the
course of great events touching the widening of the American dominion on
the Pacific. It was all done so quietly, so efficiently, at so
comparatively small cost and without any shock of harrowing disaster,
that the world has yet to connect the momentous results with a cause
seemingly so inadequate.
As the American people come to realize that their distinctively national
achievement so far, next to that of maintaining a national integrity,
has been that of preempting and subduing an adequate dominion and home
for a civilization they will revere the services of those who made the
transcontinental migrations in the thirties, forties and fifties. The
glory that belongs to the participants in those migrations is the
peculiar birthright of the patriotic Oregonian. The passage from the
Atlantic slope to the Pacific of these first American households bearing
the best embers of western civilization must ever stand as a momentous
event in the annals of time.
For twenty-eight years, now, surviving participants in this world event
have annually assembled to recount the incidents of their coming to
Oregon, to live over that trying but hallowed time, to rekindle old
flames of friendship and form new ties on the basis of their common
experiences. At these meetings of the Oregon pioneers there was always
an “occasional address” in which the reminiscences of the immigration of
some particular year were given. As the journal of the association puts
it, the object of the association “should be to collect reminiscences
relating to pioneers and the early history of the territory; to promote
social intercourse, and cultivate the life-enduring friendships that in
many instances had been formed while making the long, perilous journey
of the wide, wild plains, which separated the western boundary of
civilization thirty years ago from the land which they had resolved to
reclaim.” The biographical notices contained in the transactions of
their association all mark this coming to Oregon as a dividing event in
the lives of their subjects. That generation of Oregonians suffered
something like a transfiguration through this movement, which also
widened the nation’s outlook—in making it face a greater sea. These
transforming influences wrought their effects during the summer season
that each successive immigration spent on the Oregon trail, while
journeying in canvas-topped oxen-drawn wagons from the banks of the
Missouri to those of the Willamette. The greatest epochal expansion of
the nation was insured through these migrations at the same time that
the participants were translating their lives to a new sphere.
[Illustration:
1.—Near the site of Fort Kearney on the Platte. (Part of pontoon
bridge is used as road fence.)
]
For engaging and vivid detail of experiences in this movement, recourse
must be had to the transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association, and
to journals kept on the way across the plains. These will ever have an
interest for the heart of man as they show life under heroic impulse and
in trying conditions long sustained. The whole movement Oregonward has
an epic unity, and when its significance has become fully manifest will
challenge the powers of the national poet.
But the movement has not yet, even in its outward aspects, been viewed
as a whole. To mark off its limits in time, in routes taken, in numbers
and population elements involved; to note the main motives, the forms of
characteristic experiences; in a word to make, as it were, a composite
view with relation to national history as a background,—would seem to be
the first step for realizing the due appreciation of the significance of
the work of the Oregon pioneers. A sketch of the outlines of the
movement in its more salient features, then, is what is attempted here,
with the hope that such setting forth of the movement as a whole, with
outlines more or less closely defined, will lead to its being brought
fully into relation with the general course of events of American
history. Until the story of the Oregon movement is thus set forth, the
historians of our national life cannot weave it into its proper
conspicuous relations in their narratives. It has no doubt been largely
due to this lack if the story of this pioneer achievement in available
form that a somewhat undue estimate of Doctor Whitman’s services and the
acceptance of mythical accretions to them have come about. The Whitman
story was early available and was made to do service in accounting for a
larger outcome than facts warranted.
The Oregon migrations effected at one sweep a two thousand mile
extension of the Aryan movement westward in the occupation of the north
temperate zone—“a far-flung” outpost of occupation and settlement. To
appreciate the boldness, intrepidity and consummate effectiveness of
such pioneering we have but to note that no previous extension had
compassed one-fourth this distance. Nor were the conditions in this
instance easy. One continuous stretch of Indian country infested with
most formidable predatory tribes had to be passed through. Conditions
approximating those of a desert had to be faced during a large part of
the migration. There were swift rivers to ford or ferry, and three
mountain ranges to scale. Only one form of the usual difficulties of
pioneer road-making did not appear. There were no extensive forests to
penetrate except on the ridges of the Blue and the Cascade Mountains.
The settlements of the blue grass region of Kentucky, and the Nashville
district, in Western Tennessee, were, when first made, the most isolated
from the main body of the American people. Yet, these had less than a
four-hundred mile stretch between them and the settled region of the
Atlantic slope. No other outward movement of Aryan people ever covered
anything like the distance made by the Oregon pioneers on the Oregon
trail. Measured by the sea voyage, the Oregon settlements were a leap of
seventeen thousand miles.
[Illustration:
2.—“LONE OR COURT HOUSE ROCK.”
]
Though the Oregon pioneers traced the first trail across the continent,
adapting for sections of it the lines of travel of fur trading
expeditions; yet, were it not for the title of Francis Parkman’s
narrative (which, however, has only the slightest references to anything
pertaining to its title), I am not sure but that the very name would
have been lost to all except Oregonians. The meagerness of Parkman’s
presentation of the transcontinental movement is easily accounted for.
He did not take his trip of roughing it to Fort Laramie and the Black
Hills, in 1846, to see the Oregon pioneers. His plans to write the
history of the new France in America tended to narrow his interest
strictly to aspects of Indian life as they were with the Indian in his
original state. He was concerned solely during his life on the plains to
get that insight into Indian character and customs that he might
interpret the records of the relations of the French with them, and give
his narrative in his great life work truth, life, and color. Had he been
inclined to associate himself with the westward moving trains, and to
enter into their life and thought, his “Oregon Trail” would naturally
have been a final characterization of the migrations up to the stage
they had assumed at that time. There are, however, indications in some
of his references to the pioneers that their necessarily _deshabille_
condition while en route, and the astounding and almost reckless
character of their undertaking were by him set in contrast with the
steady comfortable ways of the New England folk from which he hailed and
the Oregonians correspondingly disparaged. In this he would be bringing
a pioneer phase of civilization into comparison with a more finished
form. The wayfaring pioneers were still marking out wider and more
natural limits for the national home, while the New Englanders were
advancing the arts of life on the original nucleus of national
territory. But who can say to which the nation in its destiny owes the
more?
Two years ago there appeared a book of five hundred and twenty-nine
pages written by Colonels Henry Inman and William F. Cody, bearing the
title, “The Great Salt Lake Trail.” In its preface there is to be
found the following comment on its title: “Over this historical
highway the Mormons made their lonely hegira. * * * Over this route,
also, were made those world renowned expeditions by Fremont,
Stansbury, Lander, and others of lesser fame, to the heart of the
Rocky Mountains, and beyond, to the blue shores of the Pacific Ocean.
Over the same trackless waste the pony express executed those
marvelous feats in annihilating distance, and the once famous overland
stage lumbered along through the seemingly interminable desert of sage
brush and alkali dust—_avant-courieres_ of the telegraph and the
railroad.”
The body of the book touches upon topics ranging in time from Jonathan
Carver’s explorations in 1766-’68 to the building of the Union Pacific
Railroad. Its map lays “The Old Salt Lake Trail” exactly on the route of
the Oregon trail as far as Fort Bridger, in Southwestern Wyoming. But
the Oregon migrations are not hinted at by a single word in the body of
the book. The authors’ account of them could not have been crowded out
by more weighty matters, as all the disjointed fragments of Indian
hunting and fighting and drunken carousal, whether happening on the line
of the trail or not, are crowded in. Either the story of the Oregon
movement during the thirties, forties and fifties was absolutely unknown
to Colonels Inman and Cody, or, if known, thought worthy of relegation
to oblivion by them.
In interviews last summer with people living along the line of the
trail, only those whose experiences extended back to the time of the
Oregon migrations recognized the trail as the Oregon trail. It was
always the “California trail” or the “Mormon trail.”
[Illustration:
3.—The North Fork of Platte—its sandy bottom exposed.
]
It is, of course, to be conceded that more people traveled this road to
California than to Oregon. But the Oregon movement was first in time. By
it the feasibility of the route was demonstrated, and people susceptible
to the western fever were accustomed to think of the trip across the
plains in a way that brought them when the cry of California gold was
raised, or when as Mormon converts they were longing for a refuge from
molestation. Then, too, the Oregon pioneers not only led the way; they
decided our destiny Pacificward. It is time that history was conferring
its award of justice to them. The highway they opened to the greater
sea, and which their march made glorious, should take its name from them
and thus help to commemorate unto coming generations the momentous
import of their achievement for all the future of mankind.
The transcontinental movement as a march of civilization to the west
shore of the continent was in its incipiency a missionary enterprise.
There is hardly any doubt, however, but that the home-seeking pioneer
would have been on the way just as soon without the initiative of the
missionary heroes and heroines. It is, nevertheless, the lasting glory
of the Presbyterian and Congregational denominations that under the
auspices of their missionary board the first American families
successfully made the passage that was to sweep such a marvelous
movement into its train. The Methodist Episcopal missionary enterprise
antedated all others and played a conspicuous role in the political
organization of the Oregon community, but it was not first in setting up
the American home. So long as it lacked that it could not bear an
American civilization, which was the crucial matter. It was Whitman who
demonstrated the possibility of taking households across the plains, and
this achievement, too, was a decisive initiative.
But how did the impulse to make this dangerous and arduous journey to
the then far-off wilderness of Oregon originate with the missionary and
the home-seeking pioneers? The inception of the Oregon movement in both
its missionary and its pioneering aspects is best understood when viewed
as outbursts of missionary zeal and energy and pioneer daring and
restlessness from vast stores of potential missionary and pioneer spirit
existing in this country in the thirties. Missionary activity in the
direction of Oregon was liberated by something like a spark, or, to
change the metaphor, by a “long-distance” “Macedonian cry.” A delegation
of four Nez Perces Indians from the upper waters of the Columbia arrived
in St. Louis in 1832 in search of “the white man’s Book of Heaven.” An
account of this singularly unique mission was published in the
newspapers of the time. The story was made all the more effective and
thrilling, with those of deep religious sensibilities, through its
including what purported to be a verbatim report of a most pathetic
farewell address made in General Clark’s office by one of the two
surviving members of this mission.
The closing passage of the speech, as it has been handed down, is as
follows:
“We are going back the long, sad trail to our people. When we tell them,
after one more snow, in the big council that we did not bring the Book,
no word will be spoken by our old men, nor by our young braves. One by
one they will rise up and go out in silence. Our people will die in
darkness, and they will go on the long path to other hunting grounds. No
white man will go with them, and no Book of Heaven to make the way
plain. We have no more words.”
The missionary boards of several Protestant denominations were already
establishing foreign missions in Africa, India, and among the western
North American Indians. Hall J. Kelley had been agitating the cause of
the Oregon Indians for half-a-generation. An appeal for missionary help
so pathetic, so unheard of, and withal shedding such luster on those
from whom it came, as was that of the Nez Perces delegation to St.
Louis, could not fail to bring forth a missionary movement towards
Oregon.
[Illustration:
4.—“CHIMNEY ROCK.”
]
The spirit that materialized in the Oregon pioneer movement was not
kindled by any special spark like that which called forth the missionary
enterprises. Nor was it aroused by anything like the cry of gold that
brought on the mad rush to California in ’49 and the early fifties. The
Oregon migrations were the outcome of cool, calm, reasoned
determination. This characterized the movement collectively as well as
individually.
In a sense, the Oregon movement was in preparation from the time when in
1636 Puritan congregations were led by Hooker and others from the
vicinity of Boston westward through the forests to the banks of the
Connecticut. This initial western movement was communicated along the
Atlantic coast settlements by the Scotch-Irish crossing the Blue Ridge
Mountains in Pennsylvania, and by the Virginians penetrating to the
Shenandoah Valley. Some would say that an instinct to move west has been
growing in strength among civilized peoples since about 1000 B. C., when
the Phœnicians moved west on the Mediterranean to found Carthage, and
the Greeks to plant colonies in southern Italy and at Marseilles.
So largely had pioneering been the mode of life of those who were living
in the western zone of settlement in the United States in 1840 that it
was almost a cult with them. The traditions of each family led through
the Cumberland Gap or west to Pittsburg and down the Ohio, or along the
line of the Great Lakes. Hon. W. Lair Hill, in his “Annual Address”
before the Pioneer Association in 1883, fitly characterizes the people
among whom the Oregon movement took its rise. “The greater number of
them were pioneers by nature and occupation, as their fathers had been
before them. In childhood the story of their ancestors’ migrations from
the east to the west, and then to the newer west was their handbook of
history. Homer or Virgil, of whom few of them had ever heard, could have
rehearsed no epic half so thrilling to their ears as the narratives of
daring adventure and hairbreadth escapes, which, half true and half
false, ever form the thread of frontier history. They knew nothing of
Hector and Achilles, but they knew of Daniel Boone, who, Lord Byron
said, ‘was happiest among mortals anywhere,’ whom civilization drove out
of Pennsylvania by destroying the red deer and black bear, and who,
after some years of solid comfort in his log cabin amid the wilds of
Kentucky, was again pursued and overtaken by the same relentless enemy
and compelled to retire into the Missouri wilderness, beyond the
Mississippi; and who, even in that distant retreat, was soon forced to
say to his friend and companion, according to current anecdote, ‘I was
compelled to leave Kentucky because people came and settled so close
around me I had no room to breathe. I thought when I came out here I
should be allowed to live in peace; but this is all over now. A man has
taken up a farm right over there, within twenty-five miles of my door.’
Of Boone, and such as Boone, most of them who founded the commonwealth
of Oregon, knew much more than of the great names of literature,
statesmanship, or arms, and their minds dwelt fondly on the exploits of
the frontiersman, whether in the contests with the savages or the chase.
More familiar with the log cabin than with the palace, with the rifle
than with the spindle and loom, with saddle than with the railway, they
felt cramped when the progress of empire in its westward way put
restraint upon those habits of life to which they were accustomed.”
[Illustration:
5.—“CASTLE AND STEAMBOAT ROCKS.”
]
Knowledge of a “new country” was sure to create in them an almost
irrepressible longing to move on. Such natures as these furnished the
best culture conditions in which to develop an Oregon movement with the
reports explorers and travelers brought from the far Pacific Coast
region. Such Oregon material had early been disseminated among these
susceptible people. The journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition was
published in 1814 and distributed far and wide as a government document.
Pioneers speak of reading it as boys and of becoming permanently
interested in the Oregon Country. The journal of Patrick Gass, a
sergeant in the company of Lewis and Clark, fell into the hands of
others and stirred their imaginations. From 1817 on until 1832 Hall J.
Kelley, a Boston schoolmaster, was compiling and distributing
information designed to awaken a desire to join in a movement to
establish a civilized community in Oregon. His society is said to have
had thirty-seven agents scattered through the union. An Oregon question
became a subject of negotiation between Great Britain and the United
States in 1818. These negotiations were renewed in 1824, 1827 and 1842.
The occupation of Oregon was proposed in congress in 1821. The subject
was kept before congress almost continuously until 1827, and again from
1837 on. The proposed legislation elicited exhaustive reports and warm
discussions, which were published in the newspapers of the land. The
bill of Dr. Lewis F. Linn, senator from Missouri, introduced in 1842,
with its provision for a grant of six hundred and forty acres of land to
every actual male settler, was naturally a most potent cause of
resolutions to go to Oregon. The fact that during all these years Great
Britain disputed our right to claim the whole of the Oregon Country only
added to the ardor of some who thought of going thither.
Soon sources of fresh information brought direct from Oregon became
available. St. Louis was the winter rendezvous of representatives of fur
companies and independent trappers who were operating in the Rocky
Mountains. These came in contact with officers and employees of the
Hudson’s Bay Company, and from them secured much information about
Oregon. Nathaniel J. Wyeth conducted two expeditions overland to the
Lower Columbia between 1832 and 1836. Mr. William N. Slacum, who had
been commissioned by President Jackson to visit the North Pacific Coast
to conduct explorations and investigations among the inhabitants of that
region, reported in 1837. Irving’s Astoria was brought out in 1836, and
his Adventures of Captain Bonneville in 1837. In 1838 Jason Lee, the
Methodist missionary, returned to the States, and talked Oregon wherever
he went. His lecture on Oregon in Peoria, Illinois, that year netted an
expedition of thirteen or fourteen persons for Oregon the next. The
leader of this party, Thomas J. Farnham, returned to the East, and in
1841 published a book of travels, which had a wide circulation. Dr.
Elijah White, for several years associated with the Methodist mission
enterprise, but who had returned to his home in New York, received an
appointment in 1842 as sub-Indian agent for Oregon. He immediately began
a canvass for immigrants to Oregon. His party, made up mainly of those
found on the Missouri border ready to start, added one hundred and
twenty-seven to the American population in Oregon. During this same year
Commodore Wilkes’ naval exploring expedition to Oregon returned and
reported. Early in this year, too, Fremont’s overland party was
organized, and was on the trail a short distance in the rear of Doctor
White’s pioneer party. On February 1, 1843, the Linn bill passed the
senate. All the missionaries were sending back letters giving glowing
accounts of the attractions of Oregon. The famous winter ride of Doctor
Whitman from Oregon to Missouri was made in the winter of 1842–3. He did
go to Washington and he urged the importance of American interests in
Oregon upon President Tyler and some of the members of his cabinet.
Returning west in the spring of 1843, he was at the Shawnee mission
school, near Westport, Missouri, while the great migration of 1843 was
forming and filing by. The sight reassured him that Oregon was to be
occupied by American citizens. His thought seemed no longer mainly
concerned with the pioneers getting to Oregon. There would be no trouble
about that. His plans reached forward to include the conditions of a
stable and progressive civilization there. His letters at this time,
after mentioning the number of emigrants, turn to matters that would
determine their condition as proposed settlers. He says: “A great many
cattle are going, but no sheep, from a mistake of what I said in
passing.” And again: “Sheep and cattle, but especially sheep, are
indispensable for Oregon. * * * I mean to impress the Secretary of War
that sheep are more to Oregon’s interests than soldiers.” Doctor
Whitman’s influence had probably not been decisive with many of the
pioneers, possibly not with any, in getting them started, but all the
leaders of that great immigration testify that his services as pilot and
counsellor were most valuable in getting them through.
[Illustration:
6.—“SCOTT’S BLUFF.”
]
The facts so far marshalled on the origin of the pioneer movement to
Oregon disclose the existence of a people in the Mississippi Valley
competent for the undertaking, and on general principles not disinclined
towards it, whose thought, moreover, had been arrested by some unique
advantages claimed for the Oregon country. But the Oregon movement, like
most migrations, has most light thrown on its origin and motive by an
inquiry into the conditions that made the old home undesirable, and in
some cases even unbearable.
Not a few came from Missouri, Kentucky and other border slave states
because they were not in sympathy with the institution of slavery. Their
aversion to slave owning placed them at a great disadvantage in those
states. Their families were not recognized as socially the equals of the
more influential portion of society. They were accustomed to labor, and
slavery brought a stigma upon labor. In the cultivation of tobacco and
hemp, the main articles of export, the owner of slave labor had a
decided advantage. The employer of free labor found it exceedingly
difficult to make ends meet. Snubbed in a social way, worsted in
industrial competition, in individual cases they were even mobbed when
they tried to express their anti-slavery sentiments at the polls. Some
of the more nervous of the slave-owning population, too, were impelled
to seek relief in the same movement from the constant dread of a negro
insurrection.
The “fever and ague” was a dread visitant to very many engaged in
turning over the virgin soil of the Mississippi Valley. In Oregon they
would be free from this curse, so the “fever and ague,” with not a few,
brought on the “Oregon fever.” The frequent recurrence of the awful
scourge of the cholera in the towns of the middle west in the late
forties and early fifties made many, in the hope of safety, more than
willing to brave the dangers and hardships of the journey to Oregon. The
warning signals of approaching old age no doubt were the deciding
influence with some who set out as modern Ponce de Leons in search of
fountains of renewed youth in Oregon.
[Illustration:
7.—“OLD BEDLAM”—SITE OF FORT LARAMIE.
]
Monetary disturbances had made business stagnant all over the country
from 1837 to 1841. Many had gone to the wall, and had been compelled to
see their homes turned over to others. The hard times were felt keenest
in the then farthest west. They were so far inland that commercial
intercourse with the rest of the world was almost totally cut off. What
traffic they had was carried on by slow, laborious and expensive
processes. Railroad building had not progressed so as to give a hope,
hardly even an intimation, of its wonderful solution of the problem of
maintaining a high civilization far inland. By going to Oregon they
would, as they thought of it, again be on the open shores of the greater
sea, within easy reach of the highway of the civilizations of the world.
Not often, perhaps, were their motives formulated. These were allowed to
rest in their minds in the most naive form of impulse. Col. Geo. B.
Currey, in his “Occasional Address” before the Pioneer Association, in
1887, endorses the following as the best reason he ever got. It was, as
he says, “from a genuine westerner,” who said he came “because the thing
wasn’t fenced in, and nobody dared to keep him out.”
The western border of Missouri was the natural jumping off place for the
plunge into the wilderness. The settlements there had extended out like
a plank beyond the line of the border elsewhere. The Ohio and the
Missouri, with a short stretch of the Mississippi, had furnished the
line of least resistance to the westward movement.
Each recurring spring tide from 1842 on witnessed the gathering of hosts
at points on the Missouri, from Independence, near the confluence of the
Kansas with the Missouri, north to what is now Council Bluffs. They were
enamored with one idea, that of making homes in far away Oregon. This
part of the border was also the starting line for the California and the
Mormon migrations. The California movement was only sporadic until 1849.
This was seven years after the Oregon movement had become regular. The
Mormons first struck across the continent in 1847.
Independence and Westport, just south of the Missouri’s great bend to
the east, were the gateway of the earliest regular travel and traffic
across the plains. These towns are now the suburbs of Kansas City. The
Oregon migrations of 1842 and 1843 were formed exclusively in this
vicinity. The old Santa Fe trail led by these settlements. From these
points, too, the fur trading companies conducted expeditions annually to
the upper waters of the Green River beyond the Rocky Mountains. The
route was up the south side of the Kansas River some fifty miles, then
turning to the right, the river was forded or ferried and a general
northwest course adhered to, more direct for Oregon.
Beginning in 1844 Saint Joseph, then a thriving border town, situated on
the river some fifty miles to the north of the first jumping off places,
became an important fitting out place. Those who took steamboat passage
to the border would naturally wish to make as much of the distance to
Oregon in that way as possible. The vicinity of Saint Joseph seemed to
furnish excellent facilities for securing the necessary ox teams and
other needs for the trip. The Saint Joseph route, too, was a more direct
one for those coming across the country from Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.
After 1850 the Council Bluffs’ route had the largest transcontinental
travel. Weston and old Fort Kearney, the present Nebraska City, both on
the Missouri, the former between Independence and Saint Joseph and the
latter between Saint Joseph and Council Bluffs were minor points of
departure. Smaller companies would cross the river wherever there was a
ferry.
[Illustration:
8.—The Trail leading down to bottom lands of the Sweetwater.
]
Steamboating on the treacherous Missouri during those spring seasons
while the tide of emigration was strongly westward set is given a lurid
hue in the journals of the emigrants. The river route was the natural
one for all coming from Ohio and the states to the east, also for many
coming from Indiana.
One entry made during this part of the trip in 1852 reads as follows:
“We have a bar on our boat, too, and that is visited about as often as
any other place I know of. A son of temperance is a strange animal on
this river, I can assure you. I think there are three or four sons on
the boat, and the rest, about five hundred people, like a dram as often
as I would like to drink a little water. * * * We get a little scared
sometimes, for we hear of so many boats blowing up. There was another
boat blown up at Lexington last Saturday and killed one hundred and
fifty persons, the most of which were emigrants for California and
Oregon. These things make us feel pretty squally, I can assure you, but
it is not the way to be scared beforehand. So we boost our spirits up
and push on. * * * Got to Lexington at 12 o’clock. There we found the
wrecks of the boat that blew up five days ago. There were about two
hundred people aboard, and the nearest we could learn about forty
persons escaped unhurt, about forty were wounded and the balance were
killed.”
The man who kept this journal fitted out with a company at Saint Joseph.
The company planned to drive up the east side of the Missouri and cross
at old Fort Kearney. But, finding the roads too bad on that route, they
made for a ferry ten miles north of Saint Joseph. I quote from his
account of their experiences in getting across the river: “Went up to
the ferry. Mr. H—‘s and Mr. S—’s wagons went over safe. Then Mr. S—’s
family wagon and five yoke of cattle and all of Mr. S—’s family except
two boys went on the ferry boat, and when they were about one-half way
across the boat began to sink. They tried to drive the cattle off, but
could not in time to save the boat from sinking. My family are still on
the east side and I—S— with his teams. We witnessed the scene and could
do nothing. Mrs. S— and the baby and next youngest were all under water,
but the men of the boat got into the river and took them out, and the
rest of the family got upon the wagon cover and saved themselves from
drowning. A Mr. R— jumped overboard and thought he could swim to shore,
but was drowned. He was one of Mr. S—’s hired hands. By the assistance
of one of the other boats the rest were saved, but we thought from where
we were that it was impossible that they could all be saved. Well, I
paid a man fifteen cents for taking my wife and little children across
in a skiff. They have no skiff at the ferry, but they have three good
ferryboats that they work by hand. But the people here are as near
heathens as they can be, and they go for shaving the emigrants, and then
they spend it for whiskey and get drunk and roll in it. But we are all
over on the west shore of the Missouri and in Indian territory.”
For those congregated hosts, encamped each early spring at different
points along the banks of the Missouri, and intent as soon as grass had
grown to be sufficient for their stock to sally forth on a two thousand
mile passage to the Valley of the Willamette, the natural features of
the continent pointed out just one general route to travel. This road,
so clearly marked out by the configuration of the country for all using
their mode of conveyance, lay up the Valley of the Platte; its
tributary, the Sweetwater; through South Pass; across to the Valley of
the Snake, the tributary of the Columbia; following down the course of
the Snake to its great bend to the north; across to the Columbia; down
the Columbia to their destination.
[Illustration:
9.—“INDEPENDENCE ROCK.”
]
Those sections of the trail which constitute connecting links, as it
were, to the grander portions, can be accounted for almost as clearly as
the main sections can. Forage and water must be regularly available to
those traveling with horses, mules or oxen. These must be found in great
abundance by those who are driving considerable droves over long
stretches of arid wastes. In summer months, on the unsettled parched
plains, these resources were insured only along river or creek bottoms.
So in striking out from Independence or Saint Joseph for the Valley of
the Platte to the north, to economize in the distance traveled to the
Oregon goal, and insure supplies of the prime requisites—good water and
grass—their course would be such as to bring them to nightly camps on
the banks of one of the numerous streams flowing into the Kansas.
Passing one they would make for a higher point on the next to the west
so as to keep in a more direct line for Oregon. Fuel, so necessary for
preparing their meals, was in that region found only on the banks of
these streams. Along the Platte, the North Fork, and the Sweetwater
“buffalo chips” sufficed fairly well the need of fuel, except the night
was wet. In moving from the South Pass to the basin of the Columbia,
mountainous country made a direct route impracticable. In the detour to
the southwest the valleys of the tributaries of the Upper Green were
utilized, and particularly the most convenient northwest course of the
Bear River. The details of the course in this detour were determined by
the stepping stones, as it were, of water, grass and wood. These were
found in that desert region, too, only in the river and creek bottoms.
On issuing from the South Pass, then, the valleys of the Little Sandy,
Big Sandy, and the Green itself, had to be followed, with such crossings
from one to the other as were feasible, and were in the interests of
economy in distance, until they struck a tributary coming in from the
west, up which a passage could be made and the divide crossed, bringing
them into the Valley of the Bear, a part of the Great Salt Lake Basin.
The Valley of the Bear has a general northwest direction of some
seventy-five miles from where they usually entered it. It was in every
way a natural road to them to the point where it makes its bend to the
south. At this bend was the first fork made in early times by the
California trail’s turning off to the south. The divide at this point
between the Basin of the Great Salt Lake and the Valley of the Snake was
comparatively easy. The Snake River Valley, with its barren wastes, deep
precipitous canyons, sharp lava rocks, made a trying portion of the
route. There were several optional routes. None so acceptable as the
Platte Valley had furnished. To follow the Snake in its long bend to the
north would have led them far out of their way, so they took the
available valleys of the Burnt and Powder rivers that led them farthest
on their way towards the westerly flowing Umatilla, a tributary of the
Columbia. They thus not only kept on in a comparatively direct line
towards the Valley of the Willamette, but were also afforded water,
grass and wood so necessary for further endurance of the now well fagged
transcontinental wayfarers. But the Blue Mountains lay across this short
cut and gave them their first real experience in climbing steep mountain
sides. From the crest of these mountains the way to their goal lay down
hill, except they chose a road across the Cascade Mountains. But whether
they took the Barlow Road or dared the dangers of the gorge of the
Columbia, the darkest, sternest trials were yet to be faced by the now
weak and famished pioneers. They were, however, veterans now, and if
succored with fresh supplies from settlers in the Willamette Valley and
the strength of their cattle sufficed, no difficulties, however
stupendous, could daunt them.
[Illustration:
10.—WEST END OF INDEPENDENCE ROCK.
]
On the whole, those home-seeking pioneers, as they lay encamped on the
banks of the Missouri, could congratulate themselves that no specially
stupendous natural obstacles had been interposed in that immense stretch
that lay between them and their destination. There was only the
interminableness of it, and the facts that it was to be entered upon
while the fierce pelting spring storms of wind, rain and hail were
liable to be of daily and nightly occurrence; that muddy sloughs would
cause breakdowns, and freshet-swollen streams would be fraught with
danger; that there would then be four months in which the fierce
burning, blistering sun would have them at its mercy, and a dense,
stifling dust would enhance their misery during the midday hours to the
point of wretchedness, and no bathroom in the evening in which to find
relief; that in the later and almost final days of the journey they
would probably be exposed in approximate nakedness to the searching
blasts of the oncoming winter, fortunate if they were not caught and
held fast in mountain snows. Withal, they knew it would be a lumbering
trudge with ox teams that would take them all summer and far into the
autumn.
Each recurring spring season family or neighborhood groups who had
determined to try their fortunes in Oregon would move out to one of the
points of departure on the Missouri border. They would soon find
themselves a part of a larger aggregation. Generally there was no more
prearrangement for this meeting than there is among birds that flock for
a migration. All who constituted the company from any one point had
simply selected the same jumping off place.
When the grass had grown abundant enough to furnish subsistence for
their stock and draft animals, those who were ready with their outfit
would begin to file out on the prairie trails converging upon the main
Oregon road. After having traveled a day or two a halt was called by
those in advance to await the coming up of others who proposed to
undertake the same trip with themselves. The American instinct for
organization would then assert itself, and there was occasion for its
activity. They were in an Indian country. It was not wise to tempt the
predatory propensities of the savages by too much straggling in their
traveling or by too much unwariness in guarding their cattle and horses.
In order to avoid molestation by prowling bands of Pawnees, Otoes,
Cheyennes and Sioux, through whose ranges the trail east of the Rockies
passed, it was necessary to travel in companies of some size and with
such discipline as to be able to establish an effective guard at night
and to make some demonstration of force when encountering considerable
bands of Indian warriors.
There was much economy, too, in bunching their several droves of loose
stock into a single herd, in having a single lookout for selecting
camping places, in the help that each would receive in case of accidents
that all were liable to. Very essential, too, were organization and
discipline when they came to a bank of a large stream across which their
trail led. With the earlier migrations before printed guide books were
available, organization was necessary to secure the services of a pilot.
[Illustration: