Showing dam for leading out an irrigating ditch.
]
The first large migrations—those of 1843 and 1844, and even of
1845—erred in attempting to go as one compact body. The difficulty of
securing adequate grazing was much enhanced as the company increased in
size. From this fact and the further fact that in case of a hitch or
accident of any kind in a large company, many would be delayed who could
be of no service in getting things fixed up for a fresh start, it
resulted that twenty or thirty wagons were the maximum limit to the size
of companies that did not chafe under their organization. In later years
six or eight wagons were a normal number for a company. Even in the
earlier migrations, when the Upper Sweetwater was reached and the danger
from the Indians was measurably past, the large companies would divide
up into sections. The earlier migrations, too, took precautions that no
person attached himself to the train unless he was furnished with such
resources as to rations and transportation that he would not likely
become a common burden.
The records of the migrations give ample corroboration to the truth of
the adage, “Uneasy lies the head, etc.,” and yet these privately penned
diaries disclose comparatively little bickering or unwholesome feeling,
notwithstanding the severe strain human nature was under in the
conditions of this four, five, and sometimes six months’ passage.
Whenever conditions developed making advisable a division of the body
into two or more, the division was made, and all was smooth again. The
documentary material printed in this number of the Quarterly throws
light on this phase of their experience and depicts the unique
proceedings of the pioneers of 1843 in effecting an organization.
The type of the transcontinental pioneer changed materially after the
gold-seeker was in the majority. From 1849 on the diarist’s account is
not devoid of the tragical. “These plains try and tell all the dark
spots in men,” says Rev. Jesse Moreland in his journal of the trip from
Tennessee to Oregon in 1852. He describes evidence of three executions
for murder by hanging. He says: “As they had nothing to make a gallows
out of, they took two wagon tongues, put them point to point and set a
chair in the middle, and the man stood on the chair till the rope was
tied, and then the chair was taken from under him. This is the third we
have heard of being hanged.”
Before 1849, while the Oregon movement still constituted the great part
of the transcontinental travel, and a fierce commercial spirit was not
yet dominant, the humanity of the pioneers seemed to stand remarkably
well the strain incident to the experiences on the plains. Their
journals do not reveal half the irritation and demoralization that the
accounts of Parkman and of Coke do in companies that had vastly better
outfits and were passing over the same routes.
The average company of immigrants in pulling through the miry sloughs of
the Missouri bottom lands in early spring, with only partly broken ox
teams, would break a wagon tongue, an axle tree, or a wheel, and suffer
more or less exasperating delay. The fierce spring storms of rain and
hail would play havoc with their tent coverings, and drench and pelt all
who must stand outside to prevent the teams and stock from stampeding.
These freshets would make impassable, for the time being, the numerous
streams of the Kansas and Nebraska prairies. With the feeling that they
must not over-exert their teams mere trifles even were allowed to delay
them during the first four or five hundred miles of the journey.
Except they had some one like a Doctor Whitman with them to persistently
urge them to “travel, travel,” as the only condition of getting through,
there would be too much loitering in the early stages of the journey.
Those who entered upon the trip in later years had more nearly an
adequate sense of the vastness of the distance they must cover, and
wasted no time in the initial stages.
[Illustration:
12.—Gap just south of Devil’s Gate—used for the Trail.
]
Especially the migration of 1849, and to some degree those of 1850 and
1852, were in deepest dismay over the presence among them of the
dreadful scourge of cholera. The trail was lined in places along the
south side of the Platte through the width of rods with mounds of
freshly made graves after these migrations had passed.
The Hon. F. A. Chenoweth, in his “Occasional Address” before the Oregon
Pioneer Association, in 1882, gives the following account of the ravages
of the cholera among the trains of 1849:
“But the incidents of hardship which I have noticed were the merest
trifles compared to the terrible calamity that marked with sadness and
trailed in deep desolation over that ill-fated emigration. Very soon
after the assembled throng took up its march over the plains the
terrible wave of cholera struck them in a way to carry utmost terror and
dismay into all parts of the moving mass.
The number of fatally stricken, after the smoke and dust were cleared
away, was not numerically so frightful as appeared to those who were in
the midst of it. But the name “cholera” in a multitude unorganized and
unnumbered is like a leak in the bottom of a ship whose decks are
thronged with passengers. The disturbed waters of the ocean, the angry
elements of nature, when aroused to fury, are but faint illustrations of
the terror-stricken mass of humanity, when in their midst are falling
with great rapidity their comrades—the strong, the young and the old—the
strength and vigor of youth melting away before an unseen foe. All this
filled our ranks with the utmost terror and gloom. This terrible malady
seemed to spend its most deadly force on the flat prairie east of and
about Fort Laramie.
One of the appalling effects of this disease was to cause the most
devoted friends to desert, in case of attack, the fallen one. Many a
stout and powerful man fought the last battle alone on the prairie. When
the rough hand of the cholera was laid upon families they rarely had
either the assistance or the sympathy of their neighbors or traveling
companions.
There was one feature mixed with all this terror that afforded some
degree of relief, and that was that there was no case of lingering
suffering. When attacked, a single day ordinarily ended the strife in
death or recovery. A vast amount of wagons, with beds and blankets, were
left by the roadside, which no man, not even an Indian, would approach
or touch through fear of the unknown, unseen destroyer.
While there were sad instances of comrades deserting comrades in this
hour of extreme trial, I can not pass this point of my story without
stating that there were many instances of heroic devotion to the sick,
when such attention was regarded as almost equivalent to the offering up
of the well and healthy for the mere hope of saving the sick and dying.”
Not a few who had purposed to go to California that year turned off on
the Oregon road to escape the contagion which the dense crowd seemed to
afford this disease. Excepting in these cholera years and in 1847 there
were only infrequent cases of mountain fever and forms of dysentery that
were developed in the alkali regions of the mountains.
[Illustration:
13.—“DEVIL’S GATE,” AS SEEN FROM ABOVE.
]
A train of pioneers with sensible outfit emerging into the valley of the
Platte in a season free from the cholera affliction could almost make it
for a time a grand pleasure excursion. The heat was not yet oppressive,
the roads good, the air exhilarating, the boundless expanse of green
undulating prairie under crystal skies filled them with a sense of
freedom. The exciting buffalo hunt was soon on and afforded them a
welcome addition to a diet exceedingly unvaried at best. After the usual
trudge during the day amid a panorama not yet monotonous the wagons
would be driven to form approximately a circle—the end of the tongue or
the front wheel of one lapping the hind wheel of the wagon in front,
according as a more or less spacious corral was desired. The oxen would
be unyoked and taken to water and then to the selected grazing spot.
Fires would be kindled alongside each wagon outside of the corral for
preparing the evening meal. After it was partaken of there would be an
hour or two before darkness settled down upon them. Then the cattle
would be brought within the corral, if there was the least apprehension
of danger, and all except the guards for the first watch and possibly
the matrons with multitudinous family cares would quickly surrender
themselves to sleep. But congenial groups of young people would
generally have a social hour or two. A blanket or extra wagon covering
was thrown on the ground beside the wagon, and, when rain threatened,
spread under the wagon. (Most were probably without tents other than the
canvas tops of their wagons.) This with something for a covering
sufficed for the beds of the young men and boys. In the morning at a
given signal all were astir—and, if the cattle had not strayed during
the night or been stampeded by Indians, breakfast over, everything was
soon in readiness for falling in, each in his appointed place, and
taking up the march that should bring them a day nearer to their Oregon
home. But this idyllic succession of days very soon developed a very
seamy side.
The sun’s rays became more and more scorching in their fierceness, the
plains assumed a dull, leaden grayish aspect. The sagebrush and cactus
took the place of the waving grass. The burning sand and stifling dust
became deeper. These the west wind would raise into a cloud continuous
from morning until night. This cloud of sand and dust particles beating
against them at a terrific velocity they had to face all day. Soon eyes
and lips were sore. To relieve the uncomfortable feeling that the
parching air gave the lips they would unwisely be moistened and the
soreness thus extended and deepened. Soon everything was obdurately
begrimed. Rags then were in evidence. Shoes worn so as to no longer
protect the feet. In the dry, scorching air the wagons would develop
loose joints and lose their tires.
The monotony was relieved by lying by a day now and then during which
the women would wash and mend the clothes and the men repair wagons and
hunt buffalo, the meat of which would be jerked to furnish a supply
after they had passed beyond the limits of the buffalo country. The
buffalo did not commonly range west of the Lower Sweetwater.
The experiences which the buffalo gave them were not limited to the fine
sport of hunting him and the delicious feasts his steaks afforded. His
presence seemed to kindle into life the old ancestral wildness of the ox
and the horse. Without the least warning some sedate member of a team
would raise his head and give the old racial snort of freedom. This
would kindle the same spark in every animal of the train, and away they
would stampede with wagons, inmates and all, and not to be stopped until
utterly exhausted. In these stampedes people would be run over, bones
would be broken, oxen dehorned, their legs broken, and things demolished
generally. The simple-minded pioneer with any tendency to personify
could not help but believe that the devil had gotten into his hitherto
always tractable animals. I quote a pioneer’s account of a stampede,
though he does not ascribe it to the presence or influence of the
buffalo, as is almost always done: “After passing Devil’s Gate, a
beautiful stretch of road lay before us. All at once the teams broke
into a run—something started them, no one seemed to know what. It was a
regular stampede as to our team. Father and mother were walking; I was
walking also, and some of the children were in the wagon. Away the team
went, the hardest and the wildest running I ever saw. When they stopped
and we caught up with them, we found the children were not hurt, but the
two wheelers were down and one of them dead. It took our team a long
time to get over the scare.”
[Illustration:
14.—“DEVIL’S GATE,” FROM SOME DISTANCE ABOVE.
]
There was still another condition in which the spirit of the buffalo
made the pioneer show deference to it. This happened when a great horde
of buffalo was on a stampede bearing down upon an emigrant train that
happened to be passing across its trail. The moment was almost enough to
bring dismay to the pioneer. Either the teams of the train were urged
into something of a stampede to get out of line of the horde’s advance,
or a corral was formed and volleys fired into the impending mass to
divide it so as to leave the corral a safe island between a destructive
flood rolling by on either hand.
Distressing accidents must almost of necessity befall them from their
carrying their loaded guns commingled with household goods on their
wagons. It is not strange that at least half of the journals should have
records of fatalities thus caused. Under the law of mathematical
probabilities, with the frequent occasion there was to remove gun or
blanket thus intermixed, while the members of the family were standing
around the wagon, accidents must occur. The small boy of the family
during this four or five months’ trip had very many occasions to clamber
out of and into the wagon while it was in motion. He, too, would come to
grief with a broken leg. Any ordinary fracture, however, even though
there were no surgeon at hand, would be attended to, so that no
deformity resulted. If the case was one seeming to require an amputation
“a butcher knife and an old dull hand saw” were improvised as surgical
instruments. But I have not found that a patient survived such an
operation and got well. The other great epochal events of family life,
marriages and births, were not infrequent on the trail, and seemed to
cause little distraction.
The experiences of the pioneers in crossing the rivers in the line of
the trail were very diverse. It is reported of one of the migrations
that they were not compelled to ferry until they reached the Des Chutes
in Oregon. But the migration of 1844 had a serious time even with the
Black Vermillion and Big Blue, tributaries of the Kansas. Where logs
were available they were hollowed out and catamaran rafts made so as to
fit the wheels of a wagon. Sometimes the best wagon boxes would be
selected and caulked and used as flatboats. Where buffalo skins were
plentiful they would be stretched around the wagon box to make it
water-tight. In later stages of the journey, after their teams were more
reliable, it was a common practice to raise the wagon beds several
inches above the bolsters, if the depth of the stream required it,
couple several teams into a train with the most reliable in front on a
lead-rope, and drivers along the down-stream side of the other teams.
They would then ford as trains. After the rush in 1849 ferries were
established at the more important crossings, whose owners reaped rich
harvests.
[Illustration:
15.—The deeply worn Trail along the Sweetwater.
]
Their route had no rich diversity of scenic grandeur. There are most
impressive natural features along the line of it, but with their slow
mode of travel one phase became exceedingly monotonous before another
was reached. There were the vastness and solitude of the prairies and
plains, the transparency of the atmosphere that gave magnificent sweep
of view. Along the North Fork of the Platte stood great sentinel rocks
with interesting sculptured proportions. Among these are the Lone or
Court House Rock, Chimney Rock, Castle Rock, Steamboat Rock, and Scott’s
Bluff. Farther along on their journey they come to Independence Rock and
Devil’s Gate on the Sweetwater, one a huge basaltic mound upon which
with tar or with iron chisels they would register their names; the other
a most unique breach in a granitic range with sides two hundred feet
high, through which the Sweetwater flows. A week or two later they would
have the exhilarating sense of standing on the backbone of the continent
in South Pass, with the towering Wind River Mountains to their right and
the Oregon buttes to their left. A few miles on they would drink from
the Pacific springs and know they were in what was then called Oregon.
Scenery most unique was still before them on their way. Some of it, like
the panorama from the divide between the Green and the Bear rivers and
the Soda Springs, they would enjoy. But their march from the South Pass
on was a retreat. Oxen would fall helpless in their yokes, wagons would
become rickety beyond repair. The trail was strewn with wreckage, and
the stench from the dead cattle was appalling. The watering places along
the Snake were contaminated by the stock that had perished. As soon as
they reached the Blue Mountains their stock was safe from starvation,
but the exertion required of their way-worn and weak oxen on the steep
grades now before them was the last straw often that these creatures now
could not bear. They could not let them recruit; the season was far
advanced towards winter; they must press on.
Data for determining the numbers that came across the plains to Oregon
during the successive years are as yet very unsatisfactory. The
estimates given below for 1842 and 1843 are well founded, but the
others, especially from 1847 on, are from no very tangible basis.
At the close of 1841 the Americans in Oregon numbered possibly four
hundred.
The immigration of 1842 estimated from 105 to 137
The immigration of 1843 estimated from 875 to 1,000
The immigration of 1844 estimated about 700
The immigration of 1845 estimated about 3,000
The immigration of 1846 estimated about 1,350
The above figures are taken quite closely from those given by Elwood
Evans in his address before the Pioneer Association in 1877. I make the
immigration of 1844, however, seven hundred, instead of four hundred and
seventy-five, as he gives it.
The immigration of 1847 between 4,000 and 5,000
The immigration of 1848 about 700
The immigration of 1849 about 400
The immigration of 1850 about 2,000
The immigration of 1851 about 1,500
The immigration of 1852 about 2,500
No doubt this one summer on the plains was an ordeal under which some
sensitive natures were strained and weakened for life. It may be, too,
that living for five or six months, as families, on the simplest, barest
necessities of life, fixed standards of living lower than they otherwise
would have been. The effect, however, on strong, resourceful natures of
these months on the plains could not have been other than salutary. The
pioneers, when they started, were most distinctively American in their
characteristics. As such they needed to be socialized. No better school
could have been devised than the organization and regimen of the trip
across the plains for socializing their natures.