by H. W. Brands
Other breaks in the routine were based in patriotism rather than religion—although religion wasn’t entirely absent. July 4 fell on a Wednesday in 1849, and nearly all the trains observed the anniversary of American independence. “At twelve o’clock we formed a procession and walked to the stand [a makeshift of a table spread with a blanket] to the tune of ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ ” William Swain recorded. “The President of the day called the meeting to order. We listened to a prayer by Rev. Mr. Hobart, then remarks and the reading of the Declaration of Independence by Mr. Pratt, and then the address by Mr. Sexton. We then listened to ‘Hail Columbia.’ This celebration was very pleasing, especially the address, which was well delivered and good enough for any assembly at home.” A brief parade around the camp was followed by a banquet. “Dinner consisted of ham, beans boiled and baked, biscuits, john cake, apple pie, sweet cake, rice pudding, pickles, vinegar, pepper sauce and mustard, coffee, sugar, and milk. All enjoyed it well.”
Further festivities followed. “After dinner the toasting commenced. The boys had raked and scraped together all the brandy they could, and they toasted, hurrayed, and drank till reason was out and brandy was in. I stayed till the five regular toasts were drunk; and then, being disgusted with their conduct, I went to our tent, took my pen, and occupied the remainder of the day in writing to my wife, in which I enjoyed myself better than those who were drinking, carousing, and hallooing all around the camp.” The carousers doubtless would have differed, had they stopped to consider the matter, which they didn’t. “At night the boys danced by moonlight on the grass, or rather on the sand.”
ALL COULD AGREE that American independence ought to be celebrated, even if some disputed the role of drink in the celebration. Other issues elicited no such consensus. Slavery divided wagon trains just as it divided America as a whole. Hugh Heiskell’s company of Tennesseeans and Alabamians had added various persons from the South and beyond, including an English couple named Thomas. The Thomases’ distaste for slavery had been evident from the start, although it hadn’t prevented them from joining a group that included slave-owners and slaves. At one point, however, they could abide the issue no longer. “A flare up in camp today,” Heiskell wrote.
Mr. Thompson was whipping Wash [his slave]. Thomas, running in, said he should not whip him. Thompson said if he interfered he would whip him too, & seizing a hatchet seemed ready to execute this threat. At this stage Mrs. Thomas, rushing in, addressed Thompson, “If you kill my husband you shall not live.” Thomas, going back to his wagon, now came out with a pistol. Others now interfered with, telling Thomas he had no right to say anything to Thompson for whipping his Negro. “No!” says Mrs. Thomas [to her husband], “You are in the States, you are not in England.” “Well, but what’s the difference? Didn’t the Americans all come from England?” And so ended the battle.
Other differences in mores simmered below the surface. When Lewis Manly’s party had almost reached Fort Kearny, the members were surprised to see an unsaddled horse gallop into camp from the west and fall in with the party’s horses as they grazed among the willows in the river bottom. Next morning two soldiers from the fort arrived, inquiring after the stray. Charles Dallas, speaking for the company, said he hadn’t seen the beast, and the soldiers accepted his word. When the train approached the fort, Dallas tied the horse to his own, on the side away from the fort and any inquisitive eyes there. Then he dismounted and walked ahead, distracting the officers while the rest of the party drove on past. “I did not like this much,” Manly recalled, “for if we were discovered we might be roughly handled, and perhaps the property of the innocent even confiscated. Really my New England ideas of honesty were somewhat shocked.”
MANY ROADS LED FROM the emigrants’ starting places—in Tennessee for Hugh Heiskell, upstate New York for William Swain, Wisconsin for Lewis Manly, Iowa for Sarah Royce—but only one road led from the plains into the mountains. The Platte River wasn’t much to look at (“a mile wide and six inches deep,” according to one saw; “too thin to plow and too thick to drink,” by another), but it ran all summer in a region where many streams failed; its valley ascended in the right direction, namely west; and its ascent into the mountains was gradual enough for the most heavily laden wagons and teams. Whether the emigrants crossed the Missouri at Independence or St. Joseph or Council Bluffs, all reached the Platte at or before Fort Kearny (in the middle of what would become Nebraska). From Fort Kearny they followed the main stem of the river to its forks, then up the northern branch past Courthouse Rock, past Chimney Rock, past Scott’s Bluff, to Fort Laramie.
The North Platte remained roughly the route to its juncture with the Sweetwater, the ascent of which took the travelers to within a day’s drive of South Pass. For most emigrants, this was the best part of the journey. The scenery above Fort Laramie was breathtaking, with the Laramie Range to the south and the Wind River Range to the north. A mile above sea level, the air possessed a clarity unmatched at lower elevations. Days were warm; nights were cool; the grass was plentiful; the water was sweet (hence the name of the river); the emigrants and their livestock had gained strength from the exercise of the road and not yet begun to lose it to fatigue.
For most of the emigrants, South Pass was a disappointment. North America was a grand continent, and grandeur was anticipated in its continental divide. But anyone who had crossed the Appalachians had surmounted passes more impressive. In a region of high, open valleys, South Pass was simply the highest point in one such valley above the Sweetwater, distinguishable only (and barely) by the fact that the lay of land shifted almost imperceptibly from east to west. “Our Guide Book gave very elaborate directions by which we might be able to identify the highest point in the road, where we passed from the Atlantic to the Pacific Slope,” Sarah Royce wrote. “Otherwise we could not have noticed it, so gradual had been the ascent, and so slightly varied was the surface for a mile or two on all sides.”
After South Pass the trail diverged again, requiring the emigrants to make some basic decisions. Before 1849 most travelers in this region had been bound for Oregon; from South Pass they steered north toward Fort Hall on the Snake River, then down the Snake to the Columbia River and the Willamette Valley. A few emigrants of 1849 followed the Oregon Trail to Fort Hall and the Snake before turning south and picking up the road west to California. The route from South Pass to the Snake wasn’t easy, but it was familiar, with its camping sites and river crossings well marked on reliable maps. For those who liked to know where they were going, this northern branch of the trail had considerable merit.
Less familiar than the Oregon Trail, but still well known, was the Mormon Trail from South Pass to Salt Lake City. This was shorter than the Snake River route, trending more directly west. But because it had been blazed by those who intended to go no farther than the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, it had the signal disadvantage of depositing California-bound travelers on the eastern edge of the most forbidding desert in North America, the Great Salt Lake Desert. For nearly a hundred miles, the white salt shimmered in the brilliant sunlight—a stunning scene, but incredibly daunting and nearly impassable to any but the best prepared. The Mormon Trail had another drawback: the Mormons. The majority of orthodox Christians in the army of overlanders disliked and distrusted the heretical sect of Saints—for their heresy (including the strange and dangerous practice of polygamy), and for the desire for revenge the Mormons were presumed to harbor after their harsh treatment in Illinois and Missouri.
A third route was the one chosen by most Forty-Niners. After following the Oregon Trail for some distance, along what was called Sublette’s Cutoff, this route split the difference between the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail. Veering south of the Oregon Trail and the Snake River, it remained well north of the Great Salt Lake, finally delivering travelers to the headwaters of the Humboldt River west of the Salt Desert.
Hugh Heiskell and William Swain followed this third route, which, not surprisingly, was called the C
alifornia Trail. It encompassed the hardest going so far, largely because the river courses in the region ran north and south rather than east and west; as a result the wagons were constantly climbing out of one valley or descending into the next. A headlong pitch down to the Green River required the emigrants to lock their brakes and chain logs to the axles as land anchors against the descent. Moreover, because the rivers ran transverse to the route, for the first time the travelers were compelled to make waterless marches between streams. They were really in the mountains now, and the weather let them feel it. Days remained warm, but nights were sharply cold. The emigrants often awoke to frost on the ground and ice in the water buckets.
Yet the scenery was glorious. “The sun in magnificence rose above the mountain among the golden coloured clouds of dazzling brightness,” recorded Hugh Heiskell one typical morning. Hot springs bearing such names as Soda Springs, Beer Springs, and Steamboat Springs bubbled, gurgled, and geysered from the earth. “Going down, we found a basin underground in the rock in which the water was agitated as a violent boiling caldron,” Heiskell wrote. Describing the same spot, William Swain said the spring “presented the appearance of a pot of boiling water and made a noise like lard boiling violently.”
Hardly less fascinating than the geography were certain of the human inhabitants. Pegleg Smith was a mountain man about fifty years old who operated a trading post on the Bear River with his wife, an Indian girl of perhaps sixteen (“who he appears to love,” remarked Heiskell). Smith’s nickname derived from a feat that amazed the emigrants when they heard of it. Some twenty years earlier Smith had been trapping when a bullet from an Indian rifle shattered his leg below the knee. He realized that only amputation stood between him and death by gangrene. Hardly hesitating, he took out his sheath knife and performed the amputation himself. Eventually he carved a wooden leg, on which he now clattered about his trading post. A socket carved in his stirrup allowed him to ride.
Hugh Heiskell found Smith “a hospitable, honest mountaineer.” Even so, he had “peculiar ideas about some things, of course, owing to his habits from so long a residence among savages.” One of these habits was a readiness to resort to violence. “Yesterday evening White & Nelse came home & told us that Pegleg had cowhided a fellow for trying to steal one of his horses.” It seemed that one of the men from the train had grown drunk and quarrelsome, and when Smith ordered him away, he left in company with some of Smith’s horses. Smith alleged theft; the accused claimed a misunderstanding. Observers were divided: “Oll and Nelse, who were there all the time, believe him guilty. The rest of us think not.” But on the Bear River, Pegleg Smith’s word was law. “At any rate they brought him back and gave him a cowhiding.”
SARAH ROYCE SAW neither Pegleg Smith nor the hot springs that impressed Heiskell and Swain. The Royces had joined a company that was bound for Salt Lake City, and they decided to stay with it that far. Crossing the Wasatch Mountains west of Fort Bridger, they noted with concern the snow swirling about the ridgetops. It was mid-August, and the Sierras, which were higher than the Wasatch, were still months away. Yet the vista from Emigrant Pass (so named by the Mormons two years earlier) almost erased the foreboding.
It was near sunset on the 18th of August when we got our first view of the Great Salt Lake, with its back-ground of mountains; and in its foreground the well laid-out city, of snug dwellings and thrifty gardens. The suddenness with which we came upon the view was startling. From narrow mountain gorges and rough crooked turns, our road abruptly led us through an opening, almost like an immense doorway, unarched at the top. Here we were on a small plateau some hundreds of feet above the valley, with nothing to obstruct one’s view for many miles. It is impossible to describe how, in the transparent atmosphere, everything was brought out with a distinctness that almost ignored distance.
Despite the lateness of the season, the Royces spent ten days resting in Salt Lake City, allowing their oxen to regain strength and weight. Meanwhile Sarah and Josiah pondered what to do next. One veteran of the region claimed to know a route that led far south of the main emigrant road and would spare the travelers the Sierra snows. Yet he wouldn’t be leaving for several weeks, and this seemed to Sarah and Josiah too long to wait. The Mormon elders and their many wives, observing the presence of Sarah and little Mary, urged the Royces in the strongest terms to stay the winter. The heat of summer had scorched what little grass the Great Basin offered; the hordes ahead of them had devoured most of what survived the sun. The Royces would probably die before they reached the Sierras. But even assuming the desert spared them, they were so late that the snows of the mountains would almost certainly trap them. The grim fate of the Donner party should be an object lesson to them. Besides, everyone else had either hurried ahead or decided to winter in the city; if the Royces continued, they would be traveling alone.
The advice failed. “We heard it, we coolly talked it over, and yet, so perverse were we, that on the 30th day of August, a solitary wagon, drawn by three yoke of oxen, and in charge of only two men [Josiah and an elderly fellow the family picked up], left Salt Lake City, bearing, as its passengers, one woman and one little child, and for freight only so much provisions as might last us till we could scale the mighty Sierras and reach their western feet.”
ALTHOUGH LEWIS MANLY was even less eager than the Royces to winter with the Mormons, Charles Dallas had no such compunctions, and before his train reached South Pass, he informed Manly and the other drivers that he was going to halt for the season in Salt Lake City. They could stay or not, but he couldn’t afford to pay them during the idle winter months.
“This was bad news for me,” Manly recalled, “for I knew the history of the Mormons at Nauvoo and in Missouri, and the prospect of being thrown among them with no money to buy bread was a very sorry one.” The other drivers shared Manly’s fears, and the group called a council, to which they invited Dallas. Evidently they hoped to make him reconsider his decision, perhaps by threatening a strike, which would have left him in the middle of the wilderness with no drivers. He resented this attempt at pressure. “He became quite angry at us, and talked some and swore a great deal more, and the burden of his speech was: ‘This train belongs to me and I propose to do with it just as I have a mind to, and I don’t care a damn what you fellows do or say.’ ” He then stalked off, leaving the drivers to their grumbling.
For several days Manly and the others weighed their options. Going back east was ignominious and perhaps impossible, given their lack of supplies and money. Going forward to Salt Lake City was hardly more appealing, given what they assumed to be the Mormons’ animus against unbelievers. “We began to think that the only way to get along at all in Salt Lake would be to turn Mormons, and none of us had any belief or desire that way.” As gentiles, they might not even survive the winter among the Mormons. “If we were not very favored travelers”—and they would not be, given their unemployment and penury—“our lot might be cast among the sinners for all time.”
Crossing South Pass into the country where the rivers ran toward the Pacific, Manly started formulating a solution to his and the other drivers’ predicament. By the time they reached the Green River, the first sizable stream flowing west, he was quietly talking it over with them. “We put a great many ‘ifs’ together and they amounted about to this: If this stream were large enough; if we had a boat; if we knew the way; if there were no falls or bad places; if we had plenty of provisions; if we were bold enough to set out on such a trip, etc., we might come out at some point or other on the Pacific Ocean.”
As though in answer to Manly’s second question, a boat suddenly appeared. At one time someone had operated a ferry at this crossing of the Green River; all that remained was an abandoned boat—just large enough to hold a single wagon—filled with sand and lying on the bank. Manly and the others dug the boat out and employed it to float the Dallas train and a contingent of U.S. soldiers, their recent companions on the trail, across the Green. In the process Manly asked the
unit’s surgeon and the commanding officer about the river. Was it passable? Where did it go? Both men said its waters eventually reached the Pacific, and though it contained some cataracts, there were no waterfalls.
This made up Manly’s mind. He would try the river. Somewhat to his surprise, Dallas presented no objection—probably because they were close enough to Salt Lake City that he could get along without his full crew of drivers. Dallas offered to buy Manly’s horse for $60, and he agreed to sell Manly some flour and bacon, two ropes, and two axes.
Six others joined Manly in trading their whips for oars. Together they watched Dallas and the army party disappear to the west. “Each company wished the other good luck, we took a few long breaths, and then set to work in earnest to carry out our plans.”
The first days down the Green River caused Manly and the others to congratulate themselves on their boldness and perspicacity. The river was smooth and swift, and though its direction was south rather than west, their speed—estimated by Manly, who had been elected captain by the other six, at thirty miles a day—far outpaced the plodding to which they had grown accustomed on the trail. Besides, river travel was exhilarating. Whenever the sun grew hot overhead, a man had only to splash himself with the cold water to feel as though all was well in this beautiful world. By every indication, they had got the better of the bargain with Charles Dallas. “It looked as if we were taking the most sensible way to the Pacific,” Manly wrote, “and we wondered that everybody was so blind as not to see it as we did.”