More Than Cowboys

by Tim Slessor

  By now, the boom years of the fur trade were passing. Over-trapping was the problem. So Smith, together with his partner Sublette (they called themselves the American Fur Company), beavered on for one more year and then, in 1830, they withdrew to St. Louis. Once home, Smith and Sublette counted their considerable profits and looked around for some other venture in which they might invest. They decided to buy 20 large wagons and load them to the gunnels with half a million dollars’ worth of trade goods. They would enter the burgeoning trade south-west to Santa Fe; Jedediah would lead the caravan on its first journey. Four weeks into the trek, and somewhere on a dry stretch between the Arkansas and Cimarron rivers, he was riding ahead looking for water. A band of Comanche found him. His body was never recovered. He was just 31. If ever a man deserves a memorial, he does.

  By the late 1830s the Rocky Mountain beaver trade had seen its brightest days. Fashion was moving on - to silk. And anyway, there were ever fewer beaver. The last Rendezvous took place in the summer of 1840 in the valley of the Green River in the west of today’s Wyoming. Perhaps it was as wild a party as any of its predecessors, but one suspects that when the traders loaded the last bale of pelts and left for the long trek back to St. Louis without announcing the site of the next Rendezvous, most people knew that the glory days were over. Yet, in not much more than 20 years, the beaver trade had dissolved a nation’s apprehension that the jumble of the “shining mountains” might mark a boundary to westward expansion. Someone later said that the map of the Rocky Mountains, and indeed much of the West, “was first drawn on beaver skins”. He had it about right.

  The Overland Trail

  Our ignorance of the route was complete. We knew that California lay west and that was the extent of our knowledge.

  John Bidwell, in 1841, a leader of the first wagon train to California

  ***

  Perhaps, had they known what lay ahead, some might never have started. But ignorance, when blended with optimism and hope for a better life, has always made a powerful fuel for migration.

  Some, young families mostly, wanted to find new lives and new farms on the free and distant lands loosely known as Oregon. Some, optimistic young men (and some older ones too), reckoned to strike it rich on the goldfields of California’s distant El Dorado. Some, the Mormons, were trying to escape persecution by building their Earthly Kingdom in a remoteness where they would be left alone. A few, the missionaries, were looking to ensure their own salvation and, possibly, that of others by venturing out to preach The Word to the Indians and anyone else who would listen. Together, their journeys would become part of the largest and furthest migration since, some historians have suggested, the Crusades. In the 25 years up to 1867, when the railroad began to take some of the load, at least 350,000 people followed the 2,000-mile trail to California or to Oregon.

  ***

  The covered wagon was their symbol. Today, while there are still enough of them in museums, finding one that actually “works” is not easy. For the filming I was planning, I needed eight or nine of them and the mules to pull them. “Could be difficult,” I was told. But, as always out west, if you ask around long enough, you can find almost anything. People want to help. It probably took half a dozen phone calls before I got lucky. Someone thought there was an outfit in a place called Quinter, in the middle of Kansas, which might help. I found it on the map. I phoned. Yes, the man said, restoring old wagons was his hobby, and in the summer he and some friends sometimes took them out onto the nearby prairie to give city folk and school children a feeling for what it must have been like in the early days. I explained what I had in mind. No problem, it was all fixed in five minutes: eight wagons for an afternoon at $70 each, including the mules and drivers. “And that’s a 30% discount, as my wife’s folks came from Wales.” I did not question his generous non sequitur, and a few weeks later we got all our filming in a long afternoon. That was 35 years ago for a film I was making with Alistair Cooke about the story of the West. We sent the folk in Quinter a copy.

  ***

  It is reckoned that the first truly emigrant party came together in the spring of 1841 at a place called Sapling Grove, a few miles beyond the small Missouri town of Independence. John Bidwell, a 22-year-old New Yorker, seems to have provided the initial spark. He had already tried life in Pennsylvania and Ohio and now, with yet more miles behind him, he had come to temporary rest by the Missouri River. There, perhaps a little bored - he had tried farming, he had tried teaching - and now maybe wondering what to do next, he was tempted by the wondrous tales he had heard about far-away California. There, it seemed, January was as warm as June; the days were long and of perpetual sunshine, crops grew prodigiously, and no doubt the girls were beautiful beyond imagining. Young Bidwell soon found that there were other dreamers. They banded together and called themselves the Western Immigration Society. Everyone was required to be self-sufficient, to come with a wagon and team, a gun or two, and all supplies for a journey estimated at five months. In the event, early enthusiasms waned: some of those dreamers, when they thought about the distances and the hardships ahead, woke up with second thoughts. Others realized (rather late in the day) that California was not even part of the United States; it still belonged to Mexico. In the end just 68 people set out, including 5 women and 10 children.

  Years later, Bidwell wrote with beguiling honesty that, when they started, “Our ignorance of the route was complete. We knew that California lay west, and that was the extent of our knowledge.” In the event, they were lucky: when just about to depart they were joined by a small group of missionaries. This party had engaged, as its guide and mentor, the recently retired mountain man, Thomas Fitzpatrick. Like a few others, with the beaver business now almost played out, Fitzpatrick looked around to find himself a new livelihood; he was about to become the first trail guide. He probably knew as much about what lay ahead as any man alive.

  Over the first 1,000 miles, across the plains and then up to the mountains, this mixed party of greenhorn migrants and trust-in-God missionaries had its share of alarms. Spring rains swelled the river crossings (there were more than 30 of them); a tornado with hailstones as large as apples swept close, wagons broke down, draft animals went missing, there was sickness, and there were buffalo stampedes. Fitzpatrick was always there to advise and help, but he set a demanding pace. The convoy reached the remote trading post of Fort Laramie in exactly six weeks. They had come nearly 650 miles. That was a time seldom equaled by later migrations. Another three weeks and they were trekking across the high, open saddle of South Pass. Perhaps, once on the far side, their guide pointed out that all the streams now ran to the west. But one wonders if he added that there were still another 1,000 miles to the Pacific. They were only halfway.

  A week later, on the Green River, they met a party of trappers. These mountain men (they must have been among the last of the breed) were gloomy about the ability of the migrants to cope with the onward route to California. There was no recognized trail, and, worse, there was a stretch of 400 miles which, according to the few accounts that existed, would be across country that was only a little short of being a desert. Yes, the trappers probably knew that Jedediah Smith had managed the crossing 14 years before, and they might have heard of two or three others - experienced mountain men. But mostly it was rumors. And if that news was not disheartening enough, the migrants now learned that they were about to lose their guide. Fitzpatrick was contracted by the missionaries, but they were not going to California; they would be branching off for Oregon. Not surprisingly, thirty or so of the migrants - mostly families with children - quickly voted to take the safer option: they would go with Fitzpatrick. That left a party of 31 men, and an 18-year-old wife, Nancy Kelsey, with a baby. Led by young John Bidwell and an older man, John Bartleson, they were determined to push on to California, as had always been their intention. One of those missionaries, a Belgian émigré, Father de Smet, watched them depart. He late
r wrote admiringly, “They pursued their Enterprise with the Constancy that is characteristic of Americans.”

  In fact, for the next 700 miles, they would need much more than mere Constancy. As they toiled westward, mile after slow mile, theirs became an ever-more perilous journey. They were never sure of where they were, or how far they had still to go; they got lost in dead-end canyons; they plodded towards mirages; they gagged in dust storms, they found water so salty that it was undrinkable. “We could see nothing”, wrote Bidwell in his diary, “except extensive arid plains, glimmering with heat and salt.”

  Today, drive down Interstate 80 until 50 miles south-west of the town of Winnemucca (you’ll be in the Humboldt Sink); then try walking out into the sagebrush desert. In high summer - as it would have been for the Bidwell-Bartleson party - you will get some idea of what it must have been like. And if you don’t want your car to be an oven when you get back, best leave the engine and the air-con running. Yes sir, over the years, I have driven that stretch of I-80 three times; and there’s not too much traffic.

  One time I wanted to get an aerial shot of a Union Pacific freight train rumbling across this desolation, so we hired a small helicopter from Winnemucca. But it was very hot, and helicopters don’t like extreme heat; their performance suffers. So, to lessen the load, the pilot landed briefly and made me get out, so that just he and the cameraman could chase after the train. Before leaving me standing in the remoteness of the desert, the pilot insisted on giving me a mirror - to flash so that he could find me on his return. I spent a shadeless 30 minutes polishing that mirror.

  On the Overland Trail: a family takes a noon break by their wagons

  They suffered from thirst, from hunger, from heatstroke, from sheer exhaustion. They ate desert berries and snakes. Day after day, they were driven on by the fear that to give up or to turn back would be to die. Maybe they would die anyway. They abandoned their wagons one by one. Every few days they had to butcher one of their half-starved oxen for its meat and blood. Later, when there were no oxen left, they started to kill their mules. When, at last, they were across the desert, they had to find a way through a final range of mountains: the California Sierras. Now they abandoned their last wagon. But they were lucky: the snows were late that fall. Nancy Kelsey, carrying her baby and with her shoes worn out, walked the last two weeks with her feet wrapped in rags. But she, her husband and their companions - all 33 of them - made it through to California. From Sapling Grove, it had taken them nearly six months.

  In the years that followed, other migrants would follow, though at first they did so in only a trickle. It took time for the word to spread back to “the states” and, when it did, more wagons headed for Oregon than for California. (In those days, Oregon was the name applied to the whole of what today we call the Pacific North-west.) The land in those parts was said to be well-watered, fertile, and free for the taking. As for California, while it sounded at least as attractive as Oregon once one got there, the deterrent lay in getting there. The two difficulties were the trek across the Nevada desert and then, as if that were not problem enough, there was the final haul up over the high Sierras. Nevertheless, despite the hazards, a number of determined and well-organized migrant groups managed to make it. And, of course, some came the long way round, by sea round Cape Horn

  ***

  On that last, most difficult stretch, they had crossed the whole width of what would become, only 22 years later, the state of Nevada. Even today, once away from the string of sparkly gambling towns - Reno, Carson City and Las Vegas - which range north-south below the eastern slopes of those Sierras, Nevada is still a very empty place. So empty that, in late 2007, somewhere in its vastness, the famous pilot and world adventurer Steve Fossett, flying a single-engine aircraft, without having first filed a flight plan, simply disappeared. Scores of aircraft went looking for him. His body and the wreckage were not found for nearly a year.

  ***

  In 1843, two years after Fitzpatrick had led those missionaries and migrants to Oregon, nearly 1,000 people took to that same trail; among them were 130 women and as many children. They would have known, as they said goodbye to their mothers, father, brothers and sisters, that they would probably never see them again. They were setting out on a journey of at least six months and nearly 2,000 miles, about which they could have known almost nothing. So, why? One answer seems to over-arch all others: it lies in the faith and the curiosity that the Americans of those times, particularly those living near the frontier, had always had in the possibility of a Better Life Beyond. It was a stimulus that had already brought their pioneering parents and grandparents more than a third of the way across the continent. And, of course, it had earlier brought their parents and grandparents across the Atlantic. Even today, there still exists in America the often sardonic hope that if things don’t Pan Out in the Here ’n’ Now, one can always Pack-Up and Start-Over in Some-Place-Else. Old World skeptics interpret that as rootlessness; New World admirers see it as something rather normal. It is one of the traits that has made the nation what it is; it is in its DNA.

  More specifically (and less philosophically), the lands along the western borders of the states of Missouri and Iowa were disappointing. Before railroads reached that far west, the land was too far from markets for anyone to make any cash. And another thing: summer malaria was endemic along the low-lying country of the Missouri valley. Lastly, many frontier farmers regarded their land as a commodity to be worked for a few years and then to be sold or even abandoned. After all, there was always more land or other opportunities - further west.

  So if one had stood at, say, South Pass toward the end of July in 1845, one would have seen an almost continuous line of wagons going past for 3 or 4 weeks. That year more than 5,000 people made the crossing. If you had asked any of them where they were going, most would have told you that Oregon was their goal. The trail to California was certainly open, but mainly to the hardy few who knew (or quickly learned) what they were doing. They may have heard something about the fate, two years earlier, of the Donners.

  The Donner party (named after its leader) consisted of 87 men, women and children. They set off from the Missouri too late in the year. In the months that followed they compounded that first mistake with unnecessary and unthinking delays, and then by being conned into taking an ill-advised “cut-off” which, while shorter on a map, added weeks to their journey. Eventually, later than ever, they reached out into the Nevada desert. By now, the oxen that were not actually dying were exhausted. So, one by one, the wagons and the supplies they carried had to be abandoned. The party split into factions, tempers frayed, a man was knifed, and another was abandoned to die. By the time they straggled out of the desert and up into the Sierras it was early November. They were in tatters and half-starved. They began the climb, but they were caught in early and heavy snows. Over the next three months, some died of cold, some of starvation, some ate parts of the dead, some survived. By the time rescue arrived in the spring, 37 had perished. The notion of Manifest Destiny had not worked for the Donner party.

  Manifest Destiny has often been quoted as the stimulus, even the assertive justification, for the nation’s thrust across the west. The term was first used by an editor in 1845: “It is our Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent provided by Providence.” He seems to have interpreted something in the nation’s psyche as both an historical imperative and a God-given right. Today it would be called a “mission statement”. Nevertheless, back at South Pass, if anyone walking beside a wagon had been asked about their destiny (manifest or otherwise), he or she would have been totally perplexed. Both their ambitions and their concerns were infinitely more mundane, practical and immediate.

  Overlanding was not for the poor. Of course, a penniless young man might hitch a ride with a family in return for his labor on the heavier and more onerous tasks, but most of the migrants were people of some, if only moderate, means. They had
to be; accounts show that a family needed at least $700 to equip itself properly with a wagon (if it did not already have one), with mules or oxen, and with enough food and all the other necessary gear. So, at a time when the average working wage was less than $20 a month, getting ready for the trail could be an expensive business. Most likely, an emigrant family had “realized” what capital it could by selling its farm or business.

  It made sense to join a like-minded group - a Company or an Association. In the early years there might be 10 to 20 wagons traveling together; in later years there were up to 100. The Company would elect a committee which then drew up a set of rules and obligations. “We pledge ourselves to assist each other through all the misfortunes that may befall us on our long and dangerous journey.” The committee would publish a scale of supplies that each wagon or family should carry. A decision would be made about when the journey should start: if it set off too early, the spring grass might not have grown enough to sustain the oxen, mules and horses; if too late, the grass might already have been eaten out by earlier parties. Also, if too late, the whole party might be caught and stalled by early snows at later stages in the journey, as happened to the Donner party. Once on the trail, the group would organize a rota of night guards. It might depute the best shots to keep the wagon train supplied with meat, from buffaloes and antelope.