by Don Berry
Nuttall was no stranger to the West; he had been there twenty years earlier while Wyeth was still rolling hoops in the streets of Cambridge. He had accompanied Wilson Hunt's overland portion of the Astoria enterprise up the Missouri during Hunt’s epic flight from Manuel Lisa, and now he wanted to return. Townsend, twenty-five, was a capable ornithologist, some of whose research on this trip would later be incorporated by Audubon in his works.
Both the religious and scientific detachments were to meet Wyeth at St. Louis, just before jumping off for the mountains, and in the meantime he had enough to do to outfit the new party.
He repeatedly urged Milton to come to New York so they could work out together the merchandise for the trip. He was also concerned that Milton and his backers should get together, hoping to establish by personal contact between them the confidence that would be necessary if the business were to continue in the future: "beside I am desirous of a spree with
an old Mountaineer these folks here won’t do."
But Milton‘s delay in St. Louis was far from capricious. He was under daily care of a physician; the mysterious trouble with his leg was not getting any better.
It was early in January, 1834, before Milton was able to join Wyeth in Boston, and together they proceeded to purchase goods for RMF. This was not possible in any one place, and during the month of February they made the rounds of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
Wyeth had engaged for his second-in-command a Boston sea captain, Joseph Thing. While Milton and Wyeth were buying their goods, Captain Thing was busied making last-minute preparations in Boston. (It appears that one of the captain's most persuasive qualities was his ability to use a sextant. Wyeth covers several pages of his letter book with meticulous notes on taking latitude and longitude, with examples. Presumably he took a long hard look at this involved page, for a little later he wrote: "I have engaged Captain Thing who is well versed in taking observations.")
Thing had also to take care of Wyeth’s contemplative afterthoughts: "it has occurred to me that some medicines for the clap and pox may be wanted .. . unless there are some remedys the consequences are bad."
Bad consequences were not restricted to the clap and pox, and Wyeth knew it well. In the rush of his energy, one easily loses sight of the fact that he was profoundly aware he was teetering on the edge of chaos; that his plan was so finely balanced it could easily be upset. But only occasionally does his depression get the better of him in these days.
He knew he could not expect "adequate returns until the third year. In the mean time if those concerned fail in confidence or perseverance all is ruin."
And to his wife he admitted: "These things make me melancholy and I half believe I have got the Blues."
But expressions of discouragement are minor facets of Wyeth’s character. The single comment in his letter book that best defines the man is this: "If true satisfaction is to be found it must be I think in the success of ones plans against the current of the worlds opinions and the ridicule of fools."
It was with this spirit that Wyeth pushed through his preparations in the face of all the difficulties that arose to
plague him. True to his schedule, he was outfitted and at the final jumping-off place, Independence, by April l7, 1834.
There, of course, he found more trouble in the person of his nemesis, Bill Sublette.
III
St. Louis and Independence, the two great centers for departing brigades, were a riot of outfitting this spring of '34.
Hugh Campbell was putting it moderately when he observed that St. Louis had a
quite a bustling apparance. There are two or three parties preparing for Santa Fe. A party & outfit are
getting ready for Captn Bonneville’s Co. Another under Captn Wyeth for the R. M. F. Co.—our friend Mr. S[ublette] has still another,—and to crown all, the dragoons are filling up for either escort or some other purpose.3
(There was another that Hugh didn’t mention. The Company brigade was outfitting under Lucien—"we are always late"—Fontenelle; and was going to be late again by a few
days.)
It was a race to get off first, and if you could throw a log in front of the other runners, so much the better. There, at Independence, Bill made one last attempt to torpedo Wyeth, probably more on general principle than any real hope of stopping the energetic Yankee. It happened like this:
. . .last year Sublette & Campbell took out to the mountains Capt Stewart & Doct. Harrison and authorized Milton Sublettes Company [RMP] to credit them and draw for the amt. These drafts Sublette & Campbell refused to honor . . . as soon as they ascertained that we were to supply Milton Sublettes Company with goods unless Milton Sublette would remain at home. [Wyeth]
The amount in question was about $500: on Bill Sublette’s refusal to pay, Wyeth promptly advanced the money himself. Sublette's tactics were clear enough. Milton was now his most serious opposition in RMF; Little brother wasn’t sitting still for it any more, and if Bill could get him out of the way everything would go much more smoothly. Wyeth would thus be deprived of his principal ally. However, it isn’t likely Bill thought he could actually bring it off; he was probably making trouble simply as a matter of policy, on the principle that it didn’t do any harm and might possibly do some good.
All this was taking place, incidentally, against a background of events that cast long shadows into American history. Wyeth’s ornithologist passenger, Townsend, mentioned it in passing:
The little town of Independence has within a few .weeks been the scene of a brawl, which at one time threatened to be attended with serious consequences. . . . It had been for a considerable time the stronghold of a sect of fanatics, called Mormons, or Mormonites, who, as their numbers increased, and they obtained power, showed an inclination to lord it over the less assuming inhabitants of the town . . . accordingly the whole town rose, en masse, and the poor followers of the prophet were forcibly ejected from the community. They took refuge in the little town of Liberty, on the opposite side of the river, and the villagers here are now in a constant state of feverish alarm. Reports circulated that the Mormons are preparing to attack the town, and put the inhabitants to the sword, and they have therefore stationed sentries along the river for several miles, to prevent the landing of the enemy.
It would be thirteen years before the Mormons’ epic trek into the wilderness, but here are the seeds of it.
For Wyeth, of course, the unsettled condition at Independence was just one more in a series of minor annoyances. The higher prices were bad enough, but when Bill Sublette showed his hand Wyeth decided he was obliged "to purchase a more expensive kind of animals than I had at first intended in order to be first at the rendesvous which I consider very important."
These eventualities all cut down on his margin for possible error. Everything had to go like clockwork from here on out. There was too much at stake now. Jason Lee and his fellow missionaries had not yet arrived; they were preaching their way out to the jumping-off point:
"There are none of the Dignitaries with me as yet," Wyeth wrote, "and if they ‘preach’ much longer in the States they will loose their passage for I will not wait a minute for thern."
But when all the loose strings were gathered up, it was the relative newcomer Wyeth who was first out of the gate, several days ahead of his nearest competition.
John Townsend records their departure from Independence:
On the 28th of April, at 10 o’clock in the morning, our caravan, consisting of seventy men, and two hundred and fifty horses began its march; Captain Wyeth and Milton Sublette took the lead, Mr. N[uttall] and myself rode beside them; then the men in double file, each leading, with a line, two horses heavily laden, and Captain Thing (Captain W’s assistant) brought up the rear. The band of missionaries, with their horned cattle, rode along the flank.
I frequently sallied out from my station to look at and admire the appearance of the cavalcade, and as we rode out from the encampment, our horses p
rancing, and neighing, and pawing the ground; it was altogether so exciting that I could scarcely contain myself. Every man in the company seemed to feel a portion of the same kind of enthusiasm; uproarious bursts of merriment, and gay and lively songs, were constantly echoing along the line. We were certainly a most merry and happy company. What cared we for the future? We had reason to expect that ere long difficulties and dangers, in various shapes, would assail us, but no anticipation of reverses could check the happy exuberance of our spirits.
Ten days later this exuberance was sharply dimmed. While only Wyeth was aware of the exact significance—'disastrous significance" might be better—the mood of it caught the whole camp. Townsend:
8th [May] This morning Mr. [Milton] Sublette left us to return to the settlements. He has been suffering for a considerable time with a fungus in one of his legs, and it has become so much worse since we started . . . that he finds it impossible to proceed. His departure has thrown a gloom over the whole camp. We all admire him for his amiable qualities, and his kind and obliging disposition. For myself, I had become so much attached to him, that I feel quite melancholy.
This was on Thursday. The following Monday, the 12th of May, Wyeth’s plans—and RMF’s future—received their second serious blow. The camp had stopped for mending hobbles, intending to spend the day making the minor repairs always necessary, and resting horses and men. Jason Lee got a report that one of the mission cows was missing, and scrambled out to find her. While ranging about ahead of the camp the little search party came upon a fresh trail. Bill Sublette had passed them in the night. Bill was making forced marches, all the way across the prairie; and he was in better shape to do it. His party was less than a third the size of Wyeth’s (as he carried no merchandise) and the lack of bulk and awkwardness told. Townsend remarks the event, not without a certain naiveté:
They must have travelled very rapidly to overtake us so soon, and no doubt had men ahead watching our motions. It seems rather unfriendly, perhaps, to run by us in this furtive way, without even stopping to say good morning, but Sublette is attached to a rival company, and all strategems are deemed allowable when interest is concerned.
Wyeth immediately sent an express ahead to Fitzpatrick and RMF:
Wm Sublette having passed me here, I am induced to write to you .... You may expect me by the lst July at the rendesvous named in your letter to Milton which which you sent by Dr. Harrison who opened it and I presume told Wm Sublette of the place. I am not heavily loaded and shall travell as fast as possible and have a sufficient equipment of goods for you according to contract .... Milton left me a few days since on account of his leg which is very bad .... P.S. I have sent a vessell around the Horn with such goods as you want and would like to give you a supply for winter rendesvous or next year on such terms as I know would suit you.
So Wyeth put on speed, and even with his missionaries and scientists slowing him down managed to keep within two days of Sublette's party. In view of the comparative sizes of the two caravans—and Sublette’s unquestioned ability and experience with such brigades—Wyeth’s achievement is almost monumental. It was a stacked competition with one of the best.
The rest of the journey is documented as speed, pressure, and more speed. Jason Lee agreeably threw himself into all the camp activities: stood his guard, watched over his mess, kept his cattle and crew in order. Townsend had observed that Lee looked big enough td take well to the trail—and he did. Though he was inclined to attribute to God a rather special interest in the caravan, providing for them in the shape of buffalo and game in plenty. He writes:
Shot an Elk this A.M., which was very acceptable. . . . Elk is not considered good meat except very fat. Through the goodness and mercy of God we have had plenty. O that our gratitude may keep pace with his mercies. Bless the Lord I think I do feel thankful for his goodness to me. Glory to God in the highest he feeds me with both corporeal and spiritual food. Amen. Insted of taking a due west course as we should have done we followed the River. [and] lost our A.M. march.
But Lee was not a man wholly without humor. He, better than most of the missionaries who followed him, managed to adapt himself quite well to the mountain life. He was vigorous and curious and co-operative, taking the dirty jobs when he had to and entering into the trail procedure as best he could. Fairly early in the trip he and Townsend went out with a hunter named Richardson—"to learn to kill bufaloe," Lee says—and they had a long, hard chase of it. By the time they had brought their buffalo down, all the party was consumed with thirst.
Lee and Townsend, mangeurs de lard, wanted to ride back to the Platte at full speed for a little water, but Richardson just laughed. Drink aplenty right here, said he, and obligingly "invited (us) to partake .. . of what they called cider but I chose not to participate in their beverage. It consisted of the water drawn from the paunch of the bufalo.4 . . . but it was too thick with the excrement to please my fancy."
***
Lee told his diary only half the story. Richardson offered an alternative refreshment in the form of the fresh blood. While Townsend hadn’t been enthusiastic about the cider, his thirst finally overcame his squeamishness. The hunter amiably opened up the buffalo heart, and Townsend 'plunged my head into the reeking ventricles." He drank all he could hold, this happy greenhorn, and stood up and: I
turned my ensanguined countenance towards the missionary . . . but I saw no approval there: the good man was evidently attempting to control his risibility, and so I smiled to put him in countenance; the roar could no longer be restrained, and the missionary laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks. I did not think, until afterwards, of the horrible ghastliness which must have characterized my smile at that particular moment.
And so the pork-eaters were gradually shaken down into mountain shape, and it is to their credit that they did so rapidly and well. The crossing was made in extraordinarily fast time—as was Sublette’s,'of course—and by the lst of June they were already at the Laramie. Sublette was feeling the Yankee breath at his heels, for he’d left off thirteen men here., When Wyeth arrived, he camped beside the first cut logs of a post Sublette was establishing at the mouth of the Laramie. Bill called it Fort William—as with the Missouri fort—but it has come down in the texts as Fort Laramie. This group of Sublette’s trappers were in the process of planting a little corn; and unknowingly establishing one of the great landmarks of American history, the famous stop-off on the Oregon Trail.
Wyeth reached Independence Rock early on the 9th of June. That evening he sat down and sent off another express to RMF, saying he was only two days behind Sublette and "shall continue to come on at a good rate .... I wish that you would defer making any contract for carrying home any surplus furs . . . or for a further supply of goods until I come."
It was the sheerest optimism, and Wyeth probably knew it. By the time he reached Rendezvous 1834, Sublette had been there for two days.
RMF had no surplus of furs at all. They didn’t even have a company.\
IV
Rendezvous 1834, observer John Kirk Townsend:
22nd.`[June]—We are now lying at the rendezvous. W. Sublette, Captains Serre, Fitzpatrick, and the other leaders, with their companies, are encamped about a mile from us, on the same plain, and our own camp is crowded with a heterogeneous assemblage of visitors. The principal of these are Indians, of the Nez Perce, Banneck and Shoshone tribes, who come with the furs and peltries which they have been collecting at the risk of their lives during the past winter and spring, to trade for ammunition, ltrinkets, and "fire, water." There is, in addition to these, a great variety of personages among us; most of them calling themselves white men, French Canadians, ha1f-breeds, &c., their color nearly as dark, and their manners wholly as wild, as the Indians with whom they constantly associate. These people, with their obstreperous mirth, their whooping and howling and quarreling . . .their dashing into and through our camp, yelling like fiends, the barking and baying of savage wolf-dogs, and the insistent
crackling of rifles and carbines, render our camp a perfect bedlam .... I am confined closely to the tent with illness, and am compelled all day to listen to the hiccoughing jargon of drunken traders, the sacré and foutre of Frenchmen run wild, and the swearing and screaming of our own men, who are scarcely less savage than the rest, being heated by the detestable liquor which circulates freely among them.
Rendezvous 1834, observer the Rev. Jason Lee:
Some of the companies threatened that when we came they would give them Missionaries "hell" and Capt. W[yeth] informed us and advised us to be on our guard and give them no offense and if molested to show no symptoms of fear and if difficulty did arise we might depend upon his aid for he never forsook any one who had put himself under his protection.
I replied . . . I feared no man and apprehended no danger from them when sober and when drunk we would endeavor to [keep] out of their way .... anothér drunken crazy hooting quarreling fighting frolic .... My God My God is there nothing that will
have any effect on them?
Rendezvous 1834, observer Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth:
. . . much to my astonishment the goods which I had contracted to bring up to the Rocky Mountain fur Co. were refused by those honorable gentlemen. Latt.
4l°30’.
A figure of speech. Wyeth was not astonished; no more than any of us are astonished when our bleakest forebodings are realized.
From the rendezvous Wyeth wrote to Milton Sublette, informing him that Fitzpatrick had refused to abide by the contract:
I do not accuse you or him of any intention of injuring me in this manner when you made the contract but I think he has been bribed to sacrifice my interests by better offers from your brother. Now, Milton, business is closed between us, but you will find that you have only bound yourself over to receive your supplies at such price as may be inflicted and that all that you will ever make in the country will go to pay for your goods, you will be kept as you have been a mere slave to catch Beaver for others.