During our detention among the upper settlements, before starting out, a
constant source of interest to us was the gathering of people bound to
Oregon. One Sunday morning, about the usual church hour in a larger
place, five or six wagons passed through the town of Westport, and one
old man with silver hair was with the party. Women and children were
walking, fathers and brothers were driving loose cattle or managing the
heavy teams, and keen-eyed youngsters, with their chins yet smooth and
rifles on their shoulders, kept in advance of the wagons with long
strides, looking as if they were already watching around the corners of
the streets for game. There was one striking feature about the party
which leads us to name it more particularly. Though traveling on the
Sabbath and through the little town that was all quiet and resting from
business in reverence of the day, there was that in the appearance of
the people that banished at once even the remotest idea of profanation.
They were all clean, and evidently appareled in their best Sunday gear.
Their countenances were sedate, and the women wore that mild composure
of visage—so pleasantly resigned, so eloquent of a calm spirit, so ready
to kindle up into smiles—that is seen more often among churchgoers,
perhaps, than in ballroom or boudoir. Some of the women carried books,
and the prettiest girl carried hers open before her as she stepped a
little coquettishly through the dust of the road. Whether she was
reading, or trying, or pretending to read, was hard to tell, but the
action had a naive effect, and as she passed she was, no doubt, much
astonished at a strange young gentleman who audibly addressed her with,
“Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered.”
Many other small bodies of these adventurous travelers crossed our
notice at Independence, Westport, and at encampments made in the
vicinity of these and other towns, but in their largest force we saw
them just after crossing the Kansas River about the first of June. The
Oregonians were assembled here to the number of six or eight hundred,
and when we passed their encampment they were engaged in the business of
electing officers to regulate and conduct their proceedings. It was a
curious and unaccountable spectacle to us as we approached. We saw a
large body of men wheeling and marching about the prairie, describing
evolutions neither recognizable as savage, civic or military. We soon
knew they were not Indians, and were not long in setting them down for
the emigrants, but what in the name of mystery they were about our best
guessing could not reduce to anything in the shape of a mathematical
probability.
On arriving among them, however, we found they were only going on with
their elections in a manner perhaps old enough, but very new and
quizzical to us. The candidates stood up in a row behind the
constituents, and at a given signal they wheeled about and marched off,
while the general mass broke after them “lick-a-ty-split”, each man
forming in behind his favorite so that every candidate flourished a sort
of a tail of his own, and the man with the longest tail was elected!
These proceedings were continued until a captain and a council of ten
were elected; and, indeed, if the scene can be conceived, it must appear
as a curious mingling of the whimsical with the wild. Here was a
congregation of rough, bold, and adventurous men, gathered from distant
and opposite points of the Union, just forming an acquaintance with each
other, to last, in all probability, through good or ill fortune, through
the rest of their days. Few of them expected, or thought, of ever
returning to the states again. They had with them their wives and
children, and aged, depending relatives. They were going with stout and
determined hearts to traverse a wild and desolate region, and take
possession of a far corner of their country destined to prove a new and
strong arm of a mighty nation. These men were running about the prairie,
in long strings; the leaders,—in sport and for the purpose of puzzling
the judges, doubling and winding in the drollest fashion; so that, the
all-important business of forming a government seemed very much like the
merry schoolboy game of “snapping the whip.” It was really very funny to
see the candidates for the solemn council of ten, run several hundred
yards away, to show off the length of their tails, and then cut a half
circle, so as to turn and admire their longitudinal popularity _in
extenso_ themselves. “Running for office” is certainly performed in more
literal fashion on the prairie than we see the same sort of business
performed in town. To change the order of a town election, though for
once, it might prove an edifying exhibition to see a mayor and aldermen
start from the town pump and run around the court house square, the
voters falling in behind and the rival ticket running the other way,
while a band in the middle might tune up for both parties, playing “O,
What a Long Tail Our Cat’s Got;” which we surmise some popular composer
may have arranged for such an occasion.
After passing them here, we never saw the Oregonians again. They elected
a young lawyer of some eminence as we were told, named Burnett, as their
captain, and engaged an old mountaineer, known as Captain Gant, as their
guide through the mountains to Fort Hall. Several enactments were made
and agreed to, one of which was called up to be rescinded, and something
of an excitement arose in regard to it. The law made was that no family
should drive along more than three head of loose stock for each member
composing it, and this bore hard on families that had brought with them
cattle in large numbers. The dispute resulted in a split of the large
body into two or three divisions; and so they moved on, making distinct
encampments all the way. Captain Gant was to receive $1.00 a head from
the company, numbering about a thousand souls, for his services as
guide. But a few more such expeditions following in the same trail will
soon imprint such a highway through the wilderness to Oregon that
emigrants may hereafter travel without such assistance.
We left them here about the last of May and encountered no sign of them
again until returning in September, when we struck their trail on the
Sweetwater, near the south pass of the mountains. They had followed in
our own trail as far as this point and had here turned off, our course
lying in another direction. From here, all the way to Fort Laramie, we
found the now deeply worn road strewn with indications of their recent
presence. Scaffolds for drying meat, broken utensils thrown away, chips
showing where wagons had been repaired, and remnants of children’s
shoes, frocks, etc., met our notice at every deserted encampment.
But one death seemed to have occurred among them, and this was far out
under the mountains. Here the loose riders of our moving camp gathered
one morning to examine a rude pyramid of stones by the roadside. The
stones had been planted firmly in the earth, and those on top were
substantially placed, so that the wolves, whose marks were evident about
the pile, had not been able to disinter the dead. On one stone, larger
than the rest, and with a flat side, was rudely engraved: