

# Out of the West

Colorful true tales of characters and

incidents that shaped the old west.

by

Dennis Goodwin

Cover photographs by Joan Goodwin

(Scott's Bluffs, Courthouse & Jailhouse Rocks,

Independence Rock, Chimney Rock)

Copyright 2013 by Dennis Goodwin

All rights reserved.

ezywriter47@hotmail.com

DEDICATION

To all the early Americans who suspended pieces of time

with their pens in diaries and journals.

The faded ink from those pens transports us to an age

when life was difficult, simple, horrible and beautiful.

To magazines like Wild West and True West

that help keep the spirit of the early west alive in the present

And to my brother-in-law, Tom Campos, for jump-starting me in

the e-book and print-on-demand field. As the endless computer hours racked

up and my eyes began to cross, I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy him a beer

or give him a kick in the butt.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

"Un-swayed" Will A Perilous 1845 Overland-trail Journey Tests the Will of 16-year-old Sarah Walden

Mountain Man University Mountain Man, James Clyman, enrolls in "Classes" Taught by Charging Grizzlies, Murderous Indians and Sub-zero Windstorms

The "Foot Soldiers of Zion" The Tragic But True Story of the Handcarts and Heartaches of the West's Greatest Emigrant Disaster

The Thunder Dreamer During a Thunderstorm, Black Elk's Sacred Grandfathers Give Him a Bow That Later Protects Him From a Flurry of Gunfire at Wounded Knee

Billion-dollar Beans An Eventual Billion Dollars in Silver, Gold and Copper Began With a Simmering Bowl of Beans

A Sad Saga of Sweetwater "Cattle Kate" Becomes the Most Famous Woman in Wyoming...After Her Hanging

"Complete" Ignorance John Bidwell and His Adventurous Friends Know Everything About California as They Head Out to the Glorious Land...Except How to Get There

Ten-penny Tales Deadwood Dick, Kit Carson Jr., Buffalo Bill and the Rest Gallop Across the Pages of Beadle & Adams' Dime Novels

The Queen of the Comstock Julia Bulette, the Beloved Soiled Dove of Virginia City, is Brutally Murdered and Universally Mourned

These Unknown Wilds The Tale of William Marshall Anderson's 1834 Trek Outside the United States...Past the Western Border of Missouri

The Borders of Civilization The Travels of Origen Thompson in 1852 as He Traded the Familiar Comforts of Home and Family for the Allurements and Adventures of the Untamed West

A St. Louis Secret" "Mountain Charley" Tracks Down a Murderer and Eventually Reveals a Fascinating Secret

Chisolm Trail Tales Baylis John Fletcher Begs and Pleads Permission From His Aunt to Join an 1879 Chisolm Trail Cattle Drive

Green Pilgrims A Raging Prairie Fire and a Host of Other Frontier Challenges Season First-time Traveler, John Collins, and His Fellow "Green Pilgrims"

"Everything But Our Lives" Mary Rockwell Powers Faces Prairie Storms, Thirst, Hunger and a Fanatical Husband on An 1856 Trek to Sacramento

"For the Setting Sun" James McCauley Lives Out the Cowboy Dream He Had Since He Rode Stick Horses Around His East Texas Home

"On Heathen Ground" Presbyterian Missionary, John Dunbar, Travels Light Years From His Sedate Eastern World to Live With the Pawnee in 1834

Briton on the Butterfield When English Quaker, William Tallack, Signed Up for a 23-Day Round-the-Clock Trip on the Butterfield Stage, He Bought a Window to the Wild West

Sheer Determination Johnny's Mother, Mary Ringo, Is Forced to Call Upon Every Ounce of Her Inner Strength During Her Terrible 1864 Westward Journey

A Blood-red Sky As Osborne Russell Watches the Northern Lights Fade to Reveal a Deep Red Spreading Over Half the Sky, He Doesn't Realize It Will Soon Be His Salvation

Wanderlust As Young James Pattie Watches the Frightened Mexican Woman and the "Still More Fear-stricken Men," He Has No Idea of the Danger and Adventure Awaiting Him and His Father

A Solitary Savior When President Buchanan Decides to Replace Brigham Young With a New Governor, He Nearly Ignites a Senseless Bloodbath. One Man, Thomas Kane, Almost Single-handedly Prevents Disaster

Other Books by the Author:

Ten-minute Tales

More Ten-minute Tales

Lives & Times

Brass Bands and Snake Oil Stands

Fate, Flukes, & Fame in

Country & Bluegrass Legends

The Activity Director's Bag of Tricks

**INTRODUCTION**

When mountain man, James Clyman sewed his partner's head back together after a fierce grizzly attack, he wasn't doing it so we could marvel at his rock-solid character over 190 years later. And when Thomas Kane almost single-handedly prevented a bloody confronta-tion between the United States government and Brigham Young's Nauvoo Legion in 1857, he didn't do it so we would later write about his incredible negotiating skills. No the rough-edged group of pioneers, cowboys and prospectors in this book were not concerned about being a "part of history." They were busy living it.

After all, it's not like they stopped to look at Chimney Rock or Devil's Gate and said, "Wow, that's really impressive, but isn't it strange to be living in the past like this." They lived, breathed, laughed and cried just like everyone we will meet today - and those who will march toward the open end of time, tomorrow. I've tried to portray their stories in a "non-boring" nonfiction style without sacrificing any accuracy. Truth, as they say, can often be stranger than fiction...and just as captivating. Please join me as we bring a colorful cast of one-of-a-kind characters and fascinating incidents into the present from out of the West.

Dennis Goodwin

March 12, 2013

# "UN-SWAYED WILL"

A Perilous 1845 Overland-trail Journey

Tests the Will of 16-year-old Sarah Walden

"Hitch up and roll out!" a stern voice commanded. Then a contradictory order rang out. "Form a corral with all haste!" The endangered emigrants, like their divergent leaders, scattered in disarray. "The entire company seemed almost wild with excitement," wrote a sixteen-year-old group member. That evening she made a notation in her diary of seeing "children crying, mothers screaming or praying, men running wildly, not knowing what to do."

The chaotic scene was their response to a previous warning cry of "Indians! Indians!" A group member had scouted a gathering war party of Sioux. As the gravity of their dilemma sank into the minds of the 1845 travelers, it looked as if the calmer thinkers might prevail. Rather than hitching up and fleeing, several men decided to arrange the wagons into a circular fortress and prepare to defend themselves against the expected onslaught. Eventually however, despite the pleas of the older and wiser travelers, the group's captain ordered the wagons to line up and prepare to move forward. This directive produced, as our young writer noted, "a medley of sounds and sights, a moving to and fro of frightened men, women and children. All was utter confusion and uproar."

Some of the more seasoned members tried to calm the others by reminding them that Indians didn't usually attack in the daylight. Then suddenly, the panic-stricken party of western emigrants saw the distant metallic flash of firearms. Despite their fatigue, the frightened settlers felt a surge of emotion. "You can imagine our unbounded joy in the surprise," the young diarist noted, "They were a regiment of U. S. soldiers..." The troops, lead by Captain Kearney and Lieutenant Fremont, had been dispatched by the government to escort emigrants across the plains. They had executed the type of last-minute rescue that would be reenacted in the cowboy movies of the next century. The feared Indian attack never materialized.

The soldiers remained with the settlers for about ten days as they worked their way along the Platte River toward the Rocky Mountains. While they traveled, Captain Kearney gave the emigrants tips for defending against an Indian attack. He told them to form a perfect circle by laying the tongue of one wagon right behind the rear wheels of the preceding one. He also directed them to build their campfire just outside the circle of wagons. This would make it more difficult for the Indians to observe their movements within the circle at night. If they were attacked, Kearney instructed, the women and children should climb into the wagons and remain on the floor. The men were to then shoulder their guns and prepare to fire. Although the immediate danger had passed, before their journey concluded, the emigrants would need to follow those instructions to the letter.

The group of travelers who made up this party had first banded together in St. Joseph, Missouri in the spring of 1845 several weeks before the Indian incident. Although none of the group knew the exact path, one of the members brought a copy of a Lewis and Clark report. Using that as a guideline, they decided to head north along the bank of the Missouri River. Their destination was the Willamette Valley in present-day Oregon where they had heard of the distribution of donation land-claims.

The teenage diary-writer was a young lady named Sarah Walden. Much later in her life, as Sarah Cummins, she transcribed her diary entries into a small book written primarily for her family. Like the other settlers who turned their joys and heartbreaks into lines of ink on paper, she captured a vivid piece of our country's history, forever suspended in time. The journey she would preserve was actually prompted by her family doctor. In February of 1845, Sarah, along with her father and brother, suffered an attack of "lung fever." They sent a messenger thirty miles to the nearest doctor for medicine. Old Doc Vellmon, however, would have nothing to do with simply sending the messenger back with packets of pills. He made the rigorous overnight trek himself and pulled them through the illness.

As he left their house, Doctor Vellmon gave Sarah's father a stern warning not to stay in Missouri for another winter. "Your lungs and the boy's and the girl's are not made for weather such as this," he cautioned. "Go to Oregon where there are pine and fir trees and grouse." Taking their doctor's advice to heart, Sarah's family sold their house and began making the preparations for their trip. As a young girl, Sarah had dreamed of studying in an eastern school to become a missionary and write children's books. "But my star of destiny," she reflected, "was to arise in the far West..."

Not only was Sarah embarking upon a new destiny, she had only recently begun another new life-style. Three weeks previously she had married a young man named Benjamin Walden. Despite the major changes in her life, Sarah kept her equilibrium and launched into the preparations with enthusiasm. Like the rest of her family, she didn't dwell on the dangers that might lie ahead. "It seems a special providence of God," she later observed, "that our hearts were kept strong and true to the task before us."

Once in St. Joseph, Sarah and her family joined a number of other groups who had previously arranged to make the journey together. While they waited for everyone to arrive, each gun was examined and put in perfect condition while charges of ammunition were safely stored away. The expanding party selected a captain who, as Sarah noted, "had been in mountainous countries and had clear ideas of the possible dangers that we were to encounter." She said they decided to elect a new captain every month to assure that "no one be too long burdened with the duties and cares of that office."

Although there would be plenty of "duties and cares" down the path, the journey started on a fascinating note. "Within a few hours time," Sarah remarked, "we began to sight vast herds of buffalo on their way to and from the plains..." The grand sight, however, soon took on an ominous tone. "One bright morning," she related, "several thousand of these horned beasts were seen coming directly toward our train." The captain shouted an order for the drivers to stop and veer sharply to the left. His quick thinking likely saved the party. The stampeding herd barely missed the wagons. For the next two hours, Sarah and the others watched the seething mass of buffalo flood by. She said the galloping motion of the individual animals gave the herd "the undulating movement of a great sea as it rises in regular billows and falls in gently undulating troughs." The terrified settlers knew all too well they could have easily been trampled beneath that "great sea."

Within a few days, their wagon train had reached the plains of the Platte River. The high winds, Sarah observed, would lift the treeless soil and heap it in huge drifts. One of the group members said it resembled the great Sahara desert he had witnessed in the wild region of Africa. Sarah let her imagination carry her there, saying the semblance seemed complete, "had we but camels to complete the 'panorama'..."

Despite the absence of camels, another fascinating animal soon caught their attention. The small creature raced across the plain one afternoon just after the party had stopped for dinner. "A little old man mounted a fleet horse and went in pursuit..." Sarah wrote. The small critter soon left the man and his "fleet horse" in its dust. After the defeated pursuer had returned and faced the group's laughter, he said the animal resembled one described in one of his natural history books. He had decided from its first jump that it must have been an antelope. "Chasing antelopes," Sarah added, "now became a favorite sport for the younger men..."

While the men were fooling around chasing antelope, the women were faced with a considerably less pleasant activity. In the sparse plains, they could find very little wood for the cooking fires. Many times, to their disgust, they had to substitute dried buffalo chips. Apparently they didn't all suffer in stoic pioneer resignation. "Many were the rude phrase uttered," Sarah noted, "far more humiliating to refined ears than any mention of the material used for fuel could have been."

The inconvenience of using the buffalo chips, however, soon faded from prominence. This was the time-period when Captain Kearney's men thwarted the feared Indian attack. After the incident, Kearney and Fremont trailed along with them for several days. Along the way they met with a Sioux chief and secured safe passage through his land for the wagon train. Sarah reported that once the soldiers left her party, they headed "to the foot of the Rocky Mountains and established Fort Kearney."

Following their Indian scare, the party welcomed the day-to-day sameness of the journey. As the emigrants persevered, the trek became, as Sarah observed, "a good place to study human nature." One wagon for instance, would pull out ahead of the others every morning. The lady of the family said their stock wouldn't have enough to eat if they remained with the group. Then in the evening, seeking the security of the group, she would ask that they be voted back into the train. "This was kept up so regularly," Sarah noted, "that at last some of the crowd would vote "no" just to annoy the lady..."

Fortunately, the strain of the trip brought out positive traits as well. Another woman had placed her soup kettle over a fire made from the slender branches available for fuel. The branches holding the pot burned in half and, as Sarah noted, "down went the kettle, soup and all." The struggling cook salvaged the soup bone, prepared the contents again, and placed it on another spot on the fire. Once more the branches broke and the kettle hit the ground. It wasn't until the fifth attempt that the kettle held up long enough for the soup to cook. Turning to those observing her ordeal, she said simply, "Well, I intended having that soup for supper after all."

As the days melted together, the lack of excitement gradually turned from comfort to tedium. "We continued our daily journeying," Sarah reported, "listening to the regular tramping of the poor four-footed beasts over the plain and through the dust..." She said a weary sameness and an expression of stern desperation gave the "look of similarity to the outline of each one with whom we came in contact." For the first couple months, they had stopped to observe Sunday as a day of rest. Now, however, they pushed forward every day. They were acutely aware of the hazards of traveling too late into the season.

When the landscape finally changed, it did so dramatically. With the Rocky Mountains as a backdrop, they approached the wonders of the Yellowstone area. As they traveled through the fascinating rock forms, her husband and father recognized pyrites of copper, silver and gold. "It was often remarked," she wrote, "that we were passing over more gold than we would ever possess in any new lands which we might conquer." No one considered stopping to prospect since, as Sarah noted, "the thought of snow falling in the mountains was a continual menace to any tendency to tardiness or delay."

Nature began to play tricks on them in the Yellowstone region. They camped one evening near a small marsh formed by spring water. When the tired animals stooped to lap up the refreshing treat, they suddenly lurched back. Like his bovine companions, a dog trotted over for a drink. But, as Sarah put it, "One lap of his tongue was quite enough to satisfy the good canine." The mystery was solved when one of the men filled a pail for drinking water. "Boys," he called out, "it's hot enough to cook eggs!"

As they left Yellowstone, their surroundings turned rugged and the animals often struggled to maintain their footing. "It became evident," Sarah observed, "that we were ascending the Rocky Mountains." The hazards of their environment, however, would soon pale next to the danger from the area's inhabitants. A small group of horsemen approached to issue a warning. The little party, led by a Doctor Whitman, included several friendly Nez Perce Indians. They had traveled overnight from the Snake River Mission near present-day Lewiston, Idaho. Doctor Whitman informed Sarah and the others that Indian spies had sighted their party and that large numbers of hostile Walla Walla Indians were advancing across the Blue Mountains to attack them. Captain Kearney's earlier warnings were about to transform from vivid mental images to cold reality.

Doctor Whitman and the Nez Perce remained with the party, guiding them along the Powder River toward the Grande Ronde valley. That evening, shortly after the group stopped to camp, several Nez Perce advance scouts returned at full speed. They reported that they had sighted the Walla Wallas approaching rapidly, and that they were prepared for immediate attack. When the Walla Wallas arrived, they did so, as Sarah reported, by "sauntering up in groups, on foot, and in roving bands mounted on ponies." They were shocked to see the settlers armed and prepared for their attack. Doctor Whitman assumed immediate control, approaching the Walla Walla chief and extending his hand in friendship. Sarah said the chief at first hesitated, then after conferring with his warriors, shook hands with the doctor "pretending great friendship for all his paleface brothers..."

After a tour of the camp, the chief instructed one of his warriors to fill a pipe with finely cut tobacco. Sitting inside a circle of twelve of his tribesmen, he took a puff of the pipe and passed it around the circle. Then the oldest white man was presented with the pipe and handed it on until everyone had smoked. At the end of this ceremony, the chief rose to leave. Convinced that the Walla Walla were still going to carry out the attack the Nez Perce had predicted, Doctor Whitman ordered the chief to stop in his tracks. "Most of our people were surprised," Sarah wrote, "but some others understood the situation and it was deemed our only hope of life to hold the chief prisoner." She said the wisdom of Dr. Whitman's move became apparent as night bands of warriors continued to approach. "We could hear their grunts of disappointment," she noted, "as they learned that their plans were interrupted." "It was a night of terror to all, " Sarah added, "not a breath of sleep except the younger children."

By morning, a band of Nez Perce had arrived to help protect the frightened settlers. The Nez Perce chief lectured the captive Walla Walla chief. "The Great Spirit watched the white man," he informed him, "and the Indians should know better than kill them." The Walla Walla chief refused to respond, but grudgingly accepted a cup of morning coffee and some breakfast. Sarah said he then "walked slowly to where his pony grazed, followed by his warriors."

Doctor Whitman's party and the Nez Perce chief and his band accompanied the emigrants through hazardous Indian Territory into present-day Oregon. On the fourteenth of September, 1845, two days before Sarah's seventeenth birthday, they reached The Dalles, Oregon. The little settlement consisted of a few missionaries who enjoyed a friendly relationship with the local Klickitat Indian tribe. The mission provided Sarah with a pleasant dose of civilization. The Hudson Bay Company maintained a trading post there and the missionary families had constructed a small church. Sarah and her friends re-stocked their supplies and attended the little church service. As they relaxed, with the Willamette Valley beyond the Cascade mountain range, it likely seemed the toughest struggles of their journey were behind them. Unfortunately, they were actually looming just ahead.

Even as they relaxed in the little mission, another segment of their party was encountering disaster. Before they had reached the Grande Ronde River, several members of their group split off after a bitter argument over directions. Rather than heading overland to the Grande Ronde, they decided to follow a stream toward the Snake River. Sarah said they "left us shouting good-byes and waving hats." Several days after Sarah and her group reached The Dalles, a lone man staggered into the mission. He had been one of the "hat wavers" who had veered off toward the Snake river. "He was scarcely able to walk," Sarah reported, "and had not tasted food for three days." He tragically related that his group was a day's journey up the Columbia river and that some had already died from starvation. Sarah's father and several others immediately packed a horse with provisions and headed toward them. "Of their sufferings and deaths," Sarah lamented, "the world will never know."

In fact, the world very nearly never knew of Sarah's story. In late September, several of the group members left The Dalles to search for a potential route across the Cascades. Sadly, upon their return, they judged it an impossibility for the wagons to cross. They said only loose cattle and people on foot could make it through. The wagons and other goods, they decided, would have to be taken apart and loaded on boats for the remainder of the group to transport down the Columbia River. Feeling the river trek would be safer than the mountain journey, Sarah's parents decided she should join them on the boat. But both her husband and brother had been selected for the group to drive the cattle over the mountain. That cemented her decision. She resolutely joined them. "To this there was a strong remonstrance," she reflected, "but my will was not to be swayed in that matter."

Sarah's "un-swayed will" would soon be tested to its limits. On the second day of their journey across the mountains, one of the group stayed behind to bring the pack horse while Sarah and the others rounded up the cattle. Within minutes, a straggling Indian band emerged, stole the pack horse and galloped out of sight. When Sarah and the rest returned with the cattle, she said they found the man riding dejectedly with "nothing to prevent us from starving." Since they were already two days on the trail, they decided to continue. After another day or so, they finally ran into a little luck. A party of five young men and an old trapper overtook them. Learning of the theft of their packhorse, the young men divided their supplies with them. The biscuits and bacon they provided would soon make the difference between life and death.

Sarah's party, although bitterly disappointed by the theft of the packhorse, hadn't panicked. After all, they were surrounded by cattle, so at least there would be plenty of meat. That life-saving contingency, however, vanished on the sixth day. They ran into such dense growths of Mountain Laurel that they had to turn back to the previous night's camping spot. Worse yet, the cattle had grazed freely on the toxic shrub. Sarah and the others suddenly realized the depth of their plight. "They were so poisoned," she asserted, "that we dared not eat the meat."

Hunger was soon joined by another complication - bitter cold. One morning they awoke to a blinding snowstorm. As the snow deepened, even the horses gave out and had to be led. "As night was coming on," Sarah noted, "it seemed we all must perish, but weak, faint and starving, we went on." Their hopes for a life-saving fire at the day's end was also diminishing. The packed snow on their clothing had melted enough during the day to drench them to the skin. Even if they found wood, they would need some dry cloth for kindling to start the fire. As they trudged into the late evening, Sarah became so weak that her husband, Benjamin, had to drag her much of the way, valiantly lifting her over obstructions along the frozen path. Benjamin and another man tried hoisting her onto one of the horses - but with no success. "Not one step would the poor beast take," Sarah reflected, "even though I weighed less than eighty pounds at that time."

Finally, in the midst of their struggles, a welcome sound materialized. "We have found wood," shouted a distant voice from the head of their frozen little group. But when Sarah and Benjamin finally worked their way forward, they found that "most of the men and all of the boys were shedding tears." None of them even had the strength left in their frozen fingers to pull the trigger of a gun to ignite a fire. Even if they could, there was not a stitch of dry clothing to use for kindling. "All were panic-stricken," Sarah declared, "and all hope seemed abandoned."

Somehow Benjamin still held onto a grain of that hope. He told everyone to take off their coats and search for any patch of dry cloth. In the inner lining of one of the coats, he located a small section of dry quilted material. Carefully placing the treasure in a handful of wood whittlings, he loaded a gun. "All realized," Sarah recorded, "that upon that charge depended our lives." Summoning the energy from within, Benjamin depressed the trigger and fired a bullet into the little pile. "A great shout of thanksgiving burst forth," Sarah wrote, as flames appeared. Within minutes, they were crowding around a roaring fire.

Despite the fire, Sarah had sunk into a state of total despondency and, as she put it, "was perfectly indifferent to the result." Benjamin carefully urged her near the fire. She wrote that as the warmth slowly penetrated her frozen body, she was "wild with pain and could not forebear the scream that rent the air on that wild mountain." With that scream, fortunately, Sarah's struggle with the environment was slowly turning her way. The group slept soundly beside the roaring fire and awoke to a cloudless sunny sky. But their ever-weakening bodies were still racked with hunger pangs. "My case," Sarah solemnly noted, "now developed the last stages of starvation."

Finally, the pitiful little group happened upon bushes loaded with huckleberries. The welcome delicacies gave them the energy to continue. They decided to head west, hoping to run into Oregon City. "The men were becoming desperate and had lost all fear of wild beasts," Sarah wrote, "so that even the sight of a grizzly bear would not have frightened us." Fortunately, they didn't run across one...but they did manage to shoot a bird, which they cooked and ate. The shared bird and the huckleberries, however, wouldn't stop the escalating effects of starvation. It was vital that their last desperate march toward the west lead them to some form of civilization. About two in the afternoon, eleven days after they wandered into the Cascades, that civilization finally materialized. They stumbled across an occupied cabin. As Sarah staggered toward the doorway, the lady of the cabin, Mrs. Hatch, caught her in her arms. Sarah's nightmare was finally over.

Once they regained their strength, Sarah and the others stayed in Oregon City over the winter and got word to the rest of their group that they would join them in the Willamette Valley in the springtime. As with all the other pioneer chronicles, their real-life joys and tears would eventually transform into lines of dried ink on yellowed paper. But as we read them, those lines once again spring to life. The rough-edged adventures they document remind us that those who carved out a future in the untamed wilderness definitely required an "un-swayed" will.

# MOUNTAIN MAN UNIVERSITY

Mountain Man, James Clyman, Enrolls in "Classes"

Taught by Charging Grizzlies, Murderous Indians

and Sub-zero Windstorms

The gleaming silver needle plunged beneath the crimson-coated skin, reappeared, then dived again into the dangling remains of Jedediah Smith's ear. The needle's steel-nerved operator, James Clyman, set his jaw and continued the grim task of stitching his captain's head back together with a needle and thread from his supply pack. There had been no time for second thoughts. He knew Smith wouldn't last long unless he could contain the flow of blood from the gaping wounds the marauding grizzly bear had inflicted.

Stitch by agonizing stitch, James Clyman pieced together the mangled portions of Smith's ravaged head. When Clyman had seen the grizzly's teeth clamp firmly on Jedediah's head, it looked like the end of the expedition for his friend and captain. But James Clyman was in the process of becoming a "mountain man." And in the mountains there was no room for the faint of heart. Because of his unfaltering response, his captain would live to tell about the near-death attack. Clyman's account of the harrowing incident in an 1823 entry in his journal was a classic piece of frontier understatement. "This gave us a lisson," he reflected with more spirit than spelling ability, "on the character of the grissly Baare which we did not forget."

This would be only one of many "lissons" the wilderness would teach him during the next few years. Before his term at "Mountain Man University" would end, his subjects would include not only the character of the grizzly bear, but classes in bloodthirsty Indians, blinding sub-zero blizzards and treacherous mountain passes. Clyman would enroll in this school of mountain life in 1823. During a visit to St. Louis, he heard stories about a daring expedition the previous year taken by William Henry Ashley and a band of explorers. Ashley had recruited a small crew by placing an advertisement in the St. Louis Missouri Gazette. The notice addressed "Enterprising Young Men" and stated that "The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred men to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two or three years." Unfortunately, the engagement was destined to last a considerably shorter amount of time. One of the trading barges sank not long after they left port, taking with it thousands of dollars of valuable equipment and Ashley's hopes for a successful first expedition.

Ashley knew that a successful explorer needed to have a rugged perseverance. He couldn't simply give up. After all, he had tossed away a distinguished life of culture to follow his mountain dreams. He had previously established himself in St. Louis society as a surveyor and real-estate speculator. In addition, Ashley had made his mark in the military. He had advanced to the position of brigadier general of the state militia. As Missouri organized into a state in 1821, he became lieutenant governor and the presiding officer of the legislature. His social and political success, however, could not compete with the prospects of making a fortune in the fur trade of the undeveloped West. Along with his real estate partner, Andrew Henry, he walked away from the cultivated life to become a mountain man.

When Ashley met James Clyman, he recognized he was a step above most of the potential trappers he had encountered. Clyman could cypher and enjoyed reading Shakespeare, Byron and the Bible. Ashley offered him a position for a dollar a day to help recruit men for his trapping brigade. He also agreed that Clyman would join the expedition. Ashley's offer came at an ideal time. Clyman's efforts at farming in Indiana and surveying in Illinois hadn't filled him with the excitement he was hungry for. Plows and survey tools simply weren't the things rough-cut frontier memories were made of. But ascending the Missouri through uncharted territory, hostile Indians and treacherous mountain passes - yes, those were definitely the ingredients for a colorful batch of mountain memories.

As Clyman set out on his recruiting task, he knew just where to find men tough enough to weather the hazards the mountains would dish out. He would write in his journal that he prowled around the "grog shops and other sinks of degradation." The crew he eventually assembled would, in his view, make Fallstaff's Battalion appear "gentile in comparison." By the spring of 1823, the new collection of future mountain men was prepared to make another expedition. It wouldn't be long before the rugged character of the motley crew would be put to the test. Ashley hoped this second expedition would get off to a smoother start. The trip began with a little frontier flourish. As the expedition departed in March of 1823, they fired a small canon called a swivel, which was answered by a shout from the shore.

Despite Ashley's hopes, the new expedition soon encountered disaster. In June, as they traveled through the Arikara Indian villages, they were viciously attacked. Before the brief but bloody massacre ended, a dozen of Ashley's men lay dead and eleven were wounded. Still more were missing. One of these was James Clyman. During the battle, he had escaped by leaping into the river.

He swam furiously toward the far bank and discarded his rifle and pistols to stay afloat. When he reached the shore, he turned to find three Indians swimming after him. Clyman would later write that he "concluded to take to the open Prairie and run for life." He ran for nearly an hour until he found a hiding place in a cluster of tall reeds. Once he was certain he had dodged his pursuers, he made his way toward a distant ridge. Before heading down river to join the remainder of the expedition, he stopped to exhibit his frontier spirit. He would write that he showed himself to the Indians and mockingly "made a low bow with both my hands."

Despite this show of bravery, Clyman privately had second thoughts about continuing the expedition. "Before meeting with this defeat," he would add to the day's journal entry, "I think few men had stronger ideas of their bravery and disregard of fear than I had..." But that incident had been more than he had contracted for. The attack, he admitted, had "...somewhat cooled my courage."

Clyman's courage apparently "warmed" again. He stayed with Ashley's group and continued to overcome one challenge after another. Ashley had decided to abandon the river route and try an overland path toward the mountains. In the fall of 1823, he split the group into two parties. They launched their expeditions from Fort Kiowa in present-day South Dakota. Andrew Henry and his men headed toward the Yellowstone outpost. Along the way, two of the men were killed by Mandan Indians. Once Henry's party reached the Yellowstone outpost, his luck didn't improve much. Most of their horses had been stolen and the Indians weren't bringing furs into the post as he had expected. Although Henry eventually came down the Missouri River with a relatively good catch, the bloodshed and hardship involved turn him away from the mountain life forever.

Jedediah Smith's group, including Clyman, headed west through the Black Hills and then northwest into the Powder River country. Their mission was to establish a trade alliance with the Crow Indians. Like Henry's group, they wouldn't have a smooth path ahead. According to Clyman's journal, they left Fort Kiowa on the last day of September, 1823. They headed toward the Sioux Villages at the edge of the Black Hills. On their way through the badlands, they nearly died of thirst. Despite the hardship, the little party eventually worked its way into the Black Hills, about a hundred miles east of the Wind River mountain range. Once there, fate didn't exactly favor them. That was scene of the harrowing grizzly-bear attack.

Clyman and the rest of the little group explored the Black Hills for ten days as Jedediah Smith recovered from his wounds. Unfortunately, that incident was not destined to be the last of their challenges. As they worked their way toward Wind River, they ran short of water again. They searched for days before finally locating the precious liquid. When they reached the Wind River range, they encountered another shortage - warmth. February of 1824 was bitterly cold in the mountain range. They tried to move up the river and cross over the mountains at Union Pass but the snow was too deep. At a Crow Indian village, they learned of a passage at the extreme south end of the mountain range. Although the pass would eventually lead them toward the beaver-rich Green River, reaching it would be no easy matter.

As the frozen little group tried to fight off the subzero temperatures with a warm campfire, it became exceedingly clear how Wind River had inherited its name. The gale-force winds regularly blew out the fire, scattering the embers in the snow. Clyman wrote about a hunting junket he and Milton Sublette made. After the wind had scattered their campfire, they lay under their buffalo robes throughout the night waiting for daybreak. When the winds finally slowed, they decided Clyman would rise and gather sagebrush for a new fire. Sublette remained under his buffalo robe, keeping his hands warm so he could strike a fire.

The second Sublette's hands hit the freezing air, they were too numb to hold the steel. As the desperate explorers tried to clutch the icy metal in their paralyzed hands, a glow caught Clyman's eye. A smoldering coal the size of a kernel of corn had somehow survived the frigid night. Tenderly transporting the tiny savior to a bed of kindling, he succeeded in igniting the pile of sagebrush. The sight of the roaring flames was likely the most beautiful scene either had witnessed in some time.

The little group finally worked their way southeast down the Wind River until it met the Sweetwater River. Moving east, they found shelter in a valley. There they waited out the blizzard. Finally, fate was kind to them. As they trudged west through the snowdrifts, they eventually ran across the pass the Crow Indians had described. A broad low ridge let them cut across the Rocky Mountains. This "South Pass" would later become the main crossing point of the Central Rockies. The pass, in the present-day southwestern tip of Wyoming, would eventually lead to the opening of the Oregon Trail.

Finally, it looked as if their luck was turning around. They had withstood a ferocious grizzly bear attack as well as a tedious trek without water. And they had survived the bitter cold and scaled the treacherous mountain range. Ahead was the promise of a prolific springtime season of fur-trapping. Fate, it appeared, was finally on their side. Appearances, however, can be deceiving.

The trapping went well. It was meeting after the trapping that presented the problem. When they had arrived in the Green River area, they split into smaller parties. They agreed to meet about the first of June at an appointed rendezvous on Sweetwater River, east of the South Pass. Clyman, Thomas Fitzpatric and two others split off and decided to build two skin canoes in an attempt to float their furs east down the Sweetwater.

As the others set about building the canoes, Clyman began to investigate the potential river path. In the process, he ran across an Indian war party on a summer hunt. He found safety, but as he continued to hide from the war party, Fitzpatrick and the others feared he had been killed by the Indians, and headed down river in the canoes. When Clyman was finally able to reach the campsite, he waited for twelve days hoping to find a sign of his little group or Jedediah Smith and the others. Eventually he gave up and decided to set out on foot for civilization.

Week after week, he trudged eastward. Along the grueling path he killed a buffalo and dried the meat. During the final days of his solitary journey, he nearly walked in his sleep, often stumbling off the trail in exhaustion. Finally, eighty days later, he came upon an American flag flying over a fort. He collapsed as he reached the entrance. Clyman had covered more than 600 miles from the Sweetwater River, across most of present-day Wyoming and all of Nebraska, to Fort Atkinson. His companions hadn't fared much better. Their canoes had capsized. Fitzpatrick and the others gathered as many furs as they could and also made the rigorous journey to Fort Atkinson. "They arrived," Clyman recorded in his journal, "in a more pitiable state if possible than myself."

James Clyman had lived more in his first year of exploring than most men do in a lifetime. Throughout the next few years, he continued to lead the rugged life of a mountain man. In the summer of 1825, he participated in the first annual fur-trapper's rendezvous on the Green River. During the next two years, he and William Sublette explored the great Salt Lake. Finally, in 1827, he was ready to leave the mountains. He piloted a return party to St. Louis, sold his catch, and bought a farm near Danville, Illinois. Within a few years, however, he became restless for a more action-packed life. In 1832, he volunteered to fight in the Black Hawk War. Then settling down again, he and a partner built a sawmill near present-day Milwaukee and he dabbled in land speculation.

But Western history was not yet through with James Clyman. In 1844, his eyes once again turned westward. He joined a group bound for Oregon. After wintering there, he led a party of immigrants southward over the Umpqua Trail to California. Clyman then joined a group led by Caleb Greenwood. They headed east over the Sierra Nevada range through the newly discovered Hastings Cutoff.

Although the Hastings Cutoff was a tempting shortcut, Clyman realized it was extremely dangerous and nearly impassable. He knew the delays it could cause a wagon train would greatly slow the progress of a westbound immigrant party. They might not be able to cross the Sierra Nevada range before the treacherous winter snows began. When he reached Fort Laramie, he stayed to warn travelers not to take the shortcut, but to stick instead to the longer but safer northern path through Fort Hall.

All the guides but one heeded his warnings. An impatient group leader named Frazier Reed felt the longer route would simply be a waste of time. Clyman would later recall that Reed told him, "it is of no use to take so much of a roundabout course." Despite repeated pleas, Clyman was not able to dissuade the stubborn guide. The headstrong Reed then marched off into Western history. Following him was his trusting group of anxious immigrants...the Donner party.

# "FOOT SOLDIERS OF ZION"

The Sad But True Story of the Handcarts and Heartaches

of the West's Greatest Emigrant Disaster

"Brethren and sisters, what I have said, I know to be true... " The lone voice of Levi Savage had just warned the hundreds of other Latter Day Saints about the hazards of continuing their journey during the summer and into the late fall. He had graphically described the dangers and suffering that would likely befall them. But as he surveyed his companions in the 1856 meeting, he knew his warning had been eclipsed by their burning religious fervor

The trail-wise Savage shared the enthusiasm of the others in Captain James Willie's party. But he realized that continuing the arduous trek on foot, so late in the season, could lead to disaster as they neared the snow-shrouded mountain regions. After all, it was already the eleventh of August and they had only reached the town of Florence in the territory of Nebraska. Most likely they wouldn't make Salt Lake City until late October. Savage knew they should over-winter in the Midwest and depart the next spring.

After issuing his warning and staunchly voting against setting out, he nevertheless allied himself with his friends. "I will go with you," he asserted, "will work with you, will rest with you, will suffer with you, and if necessary I will die with you." Fortunately, Levi Savage's destiny would not include dying along the Mormon trail. Sadly, that would not be the case for many of his companions.

The plan they followed was actually conceived several years previously in the mind of Mormon leader, Brigham Young. For years after the 1847 founding of Salt Lake City, thousands of converts had trekked across the Mormon Trail. A communal fund had been set aside for emigrant loans to cover their expenses. But in the summer of 1855, a grasshopper infestation wiped out many of Utah's crops. In addition, that year's unusually severe winter took its toll on many weakened farm animals. As a result, donations to the fund had plummeted.

Young was suddenly faced with a dilemma. Thousands of newly converted Latter Day Saints, primarily from England, were anxious to join his gathering. Yet there simply wasn't enough money to set them up with wagons and oxen. In response, Young rekindled an earlier idea. He had sent out a message to his followers in October of 1851, stating an opinion that would eventually become a reality. He determined that if gold seekers could walk to California with their belongings on their backs or in wheelbarrows, "then Saints seeking a higher god than gold ought to be able to do as well."

In October of 1855, in another message or "Epistle" to the Saints, Young turned the idea into a challenge. "Let them come on foot, with handcarts or wheelbarrows;" he proclaimed, "let them gird up their loins and walk through, and nothing shall hinder or stay them." Unfortunately, as the concept transformed from words on the paper into handcarts on the trail, there would be plenty to "hinder or stay them."

Those hindrances emerged during the very first stages of the project. Mormon missionaries had recently converted thousands of new Latter Day Saints in England. Despite the obvious difficulties involved in crossing hundreds of miles of wilderness without wagons, they swarmed to the docks in Liverpool to begin their journey to their "new Zion." But exceptionally stormy weather delayed the chartering and departure of their ships. By early June, when they should have been in Missouri setting out across the plains, two of their four ships were still thousands of miles away.

Their luck didn't improve when they reached America. According to plan, they boarded the Rock Island Line railroad in New York City and took the train to its termination point at Iowa City. When they arrived, however, they were shocked to find that hundreds of handcarts were yet to be built. Labor in Iowa City had been scarce and seasoned lumber was hard to find. They remained there for weeks as some of their own craftsmen helped build the carts.

During their delay, the curious emigrants inspected the handcarts they were expected to transport across the wilderness. Some were basically boxes on wheels, while other larger "family carts" sported hooped tops like covered wagons. Side rails extended in the front and were connected with a crossbar. The back rim of the cart was smooth so those behind could help push. They were originally intended to rest on iron axles and wheels. But due to sparse materials and time-pressures, many of the axles and wheels were crafted from unseasoned wood.

At last some of the anxious pilgrims were ready to begin their journey. They divided into smaller companies; each led by a returning missionary who was familiar with the trek. The first two groups, headed by Edmund Ellsworth and Daniel McArthur, pulled out during the second week of June. Despite the lateness of their start and the obvious rigors that awaited them, their spirits were high. In the evenings they sang and danced to the Birmingham Band, whose members had joined the emigration.

Their singing and dancing, however, would not continue throughout their excursion. As they tugged their carts across the arid prairie, the unseasoned wood began to warp. The sand slowly ground down the unprotected wooden wheels and axles leaving them wobbly and difficult to push. The already strenuous ordeal was becoming even more demanding.

Week by week, the exhausted pilgrims slogged past the well known landmarks of the Mormon Trail - the forks of the Platte River, Chimney Rock, Scott's Bluff and the rest. Like the oxen they had replaced, the emigrants numbly lowered their heads and pushed or pulled their burdens. Along the way, they sometimes had to stop to bury one of their members who would never make it to their new Zion.

Despite fatigue, short rations, the searing sun and rickety handcarts, the Ellsworth Company trudged into Salt Lake City on September 26th. The city's entire population swarmed to welcome those they dubbed the "foot soldiers of Zion." They sang and broke open melons to cool the traveler's parched lips. Before the celebration had completely faded, the McArthur company plodded in and the festivities were revived.

As Brother Brigham Young personally met them and Captain Pitt's Brass Band filled the air, many likely proclaimed the handcart concept a roaring success. When the third company, under Edward Bunker arrived a week later, the Saints again broke open the melons and fired up the brass band. Bunker's assistant, David Grant, had predicted that, "the Saints would be crossing with handcarts for years to come."

The arrival of the two remaining companies, under Captains James Willie and Edward Martin, would not elicit celebrations. Two grueling months later, as the surviving pilgrims were carried in, heartfelt tears and medical supplies replaced the melons and brass bands. Not only would the Saints not be using handcarts "for years to come," for them the very word "handcart" would forever be enshrouded in dark sorrow.

Captain Willie's company of 500 Saints finally left Iowa City on July fifteenth. The 576-strong Martin Company crept out on July twenty-sixth. Behind them trailed two smaller wagon trains under W. B. Hodgett and John Hunt containing an additional 385 emigrants. Despite their delayed start, the first few weeks were uneventful as they slowly advanced toward the Missouri River.

On August 11, the Willie Company camped near that river in Florence. This was the site of their fateful group meeting when Levi Savage voiced his fears about traveling into the late fall. Like the Willie party, those under Martin as well as the two smaller companies decided to move on toward Salt Lake City. The Willie Company left Florence on August 18, the Martin Company on August 25 and the last two wagon trains finally pulled out on September second.

Franklin Richards, the president of the Saints' European Mission, overtook them while returning from England. He visited with them for a while, then he and several other high-ranking Mormon elders passed them in route to Salt Lake City. He noted that he was confident they would arrive safely, "though they may experience some cold."

That prediction turned out to be perhaps the greatest understatement in Western history. As the exhausted pilgrims fought against the calendar, the inevitable hazards of late-fall travel lurked ahead of them. The unseasoned wood on their handcarts, as it had for the previous companies, began to warp and wobble. At Wood River, a herd of buffalo stampeded through the Willie Company's camp. No one was hurt, but most of their cattle bolted and vanished.

Soon after, another group of high-ranking returning Saints also overtook the struggling handcart companies. After greeting the wearied travelers of the Willie Company, one of them said he had heard about Levi Savage's opposition to their leaving this season. He reminded Savage that the handcart project had come from the mouth of Brother Brigham Young and was therefore "God's plan."

According to John Chislett of Willie's company, he then "rebuked him very severely in open meeting for his lack of faith in God." Before they left, the missionaries said they were short of beef. Despite their own shortage, Captain Willie killed their fattest calf for them. "I am ashamed for humanity's sake," an embittered John Chislett later wrote, "to say they took it."

As the Willie Company watched the elder's carriages vanish on the horizon, they were still seven hundred miles from their destination. By October 1, they finally reached Fort Laramie. Earlier in the season, the fort had been a source of fresh supplies. But by that late date they were completely out of flour and had only a couple barrels of crackers to offer. With a grim understanding of their predicament, captain Willie cut the company's flour rations.

Day by day their strength waned. The wobbly handcarts became life-sapping burdens. Finally, despite the daily drop in temperature, they threw away most of their belongings...including much of the heavy clothing and bedding. Nearing exhaustion, they trudged past Independence Rock then waded through the bone-chilling Sweetwater River. Some of the newly converted Saints began to seriously question whether Brigham Young's handcart scheme was indeed "God's Plan" as the icy water engulfed them. "The chill which it sent through our systems," John Chislett noted, "drove out of our minds all holy and devout aspirations, and left a void, a sadness..."

Throughout the next few weeks, that void would be filled to overflowing with the dangers and suffering that Levi Savage had predicted. As the temperature dropped, so did the emigrant's spirits. Chislett's recollections paint a grim picture of Captain Willie's group. The frigid weather, teamed with total exhaustion, began to take the life of one poor soul after another. "Life went out," Chislett wrote, "as smoothly as a lamp ceases to burn when the oil is gone."

In early October, Captain Willie issued the last rations of flour. "We traveled on," Chislett noted, "in misery and sorrow..." Mid-October brought additional torments - blinding flurries of sleet and snow. The dispirited emigrants sadly recalled the piles of warm clothing they had left behind to lighten their loads. The Martin Company was almost a hundred miles behind Willie's outfit. As their frozen members gazed dejectedly at the last crossing of the Platte River, they too reflected upon their decision to discard most of their protective clothing. Summoning their remaining strength, they bravely waded into the chest-deep icy water, pushing aside drifting chunks of slushy ice.

Patience Loader, one of the Martin company survivors, recalled the experience - with more anguish than spelling skills: "After we all got out of the water, we had to travle in our wett cloths untill we got to camp, and our clothing was frozen on us..." By late-October, total fatigue, sickness and severe frostbite had mutated God's plan into Satan's nightmare.

A few weeks previously, on October 4, Franklin Richards and his fellow missionaries had reached Salt Lake City. He informed Brigham Young that he had overtaken two large handcart companies as he left Florence. Young was astonished. He thought the year's emigration was over. Apparently the first three companies were not aware the Willie and Martin companies had even considered forging ahead on the late-season trip.

Richards tried to calm Young, saying he had every confidence they would arrive safely. Young, however, didn't share his confidence and called an emergency meeting that evening. "The object of my wanting the brethren here," he announced, " is to find out what we need to do tomorrow." He asked for donations of wagons and teams, clothing and food supplies. "If the teams are not voluntarily furnished," he pressured, "there are plenty of good ones in the street, and I shall call upon Brother J. C. Little, the marshal, to furnish them."

He didn't need to repeat his request. Volunteers marched toward the pulpit offering to drive their wagons and teams for the rescue mission. Upon Young's request for donated clothing, the sisters reportedly "stripped off their petticoats, stockings and everything they could spare, right there in the Tabernacle."

Although keenly aware that his plan had been the motivation behind the disaster, Young had never intended for the poor hand-carters to trudge through ice and snow. "A portion of our immigration is very late," he wrote a fellow Saint in England, "It was a great mistake to start them so late." The following morning he convened the general church conference. "Urgency," he informed them, was the "dictation of the Holy Ghost" to him.

By the time Young learned of the plight of the Willie and Martin companies, their nightmare had already begun. Fortunately his dictation of urgency could be carried out. The Latter Day Saints maintained Mormon militias trained to snap into action against the frequent Indian attacks. As the militias were mobilized, they were joined by both Mormon and non-Mormon volunteers who instinctively sensed the tragic state of the imperiled handcarters.

Throughout the day of October 7, only two days after Young's call for action, wagon after wagon headed east filled with anxious volunteers and needed supplies. Franklin Richards had estimated they would find the Willie Company about 130 miles east of Salt Lake City, near Green River. On October 15, George D. Grant, the relief team's co-leader, wrote, "Our hearts began to ache when we reached Green River and yet no word of them."

Grant sent a four-man express party with a light wagon and fast horses to hunt down the emigrants and tell them help was on the way. As Grant and the main group continued to backtrack the Mormon trail, their worse fears were materializing - not only was there no sign of the handcarters, but a severe snowstorm blasted through the wilderness. Grant left several men with wagons at the Sweetwater River to re-supply them on their return trip...hopefully accompanied by the emigrants.

On October 18, Grant halted his group at Willow Creek. He decided not to venture further through the blinding snowstorm until he knew of a specific destination. They moved off the trail into a nearby hollow for shelter. Had he known that the pitiful Willie Company was only a one-day drive further east, he would have forged ahead overnight.

By this time, Captain Willie and one companion, brother Elder, left their endangered group and headed west on mules. They hoped to come in contact with the rescue party they had been praying for. Willie knew that a rescue team would be their only hope for salvation. All of the animals in his camp had previously been slaughtered and eaten, and sixty-six Saints had already perished.

Apparently the four-man express team blindly crossed paths with Willie and Elder in the raging storm. In fact, if it weren't for Harvey Cluff, of Grant's party, Willie and his companion would have likely drifted right past them as well. After Grant had relocated his group to the hollow, they could not be seen from the main path. Cluff marched back through the snow flurries to post a direction sign. Fortunately, as Willie and Elder toiled through the blizzard, they noticed the marker.

When Willie and his companion slogged into the camp, waves of relief pulsed through Grant. Long before daylight, Grant ordered his men to break camp and head out through the storm. They drove nonstop for twenty-five miles until they saw Willie's company. The express team had already discovered them. But after informing them help was on the way and leaving a small amount of food, they struck out toward the lagging Martin Company.

The main rescue team had tried to prepare themselves for witnessing hungry and exhausted people. But they were shaken to the core as they surveyed the pitiful mass of frostbitten humanity. After their initial shock, they snapped into action and built fires with the wood they carried. As the trembling recipients felt the warmth of the flames and smelled the potatoes and onions their rescuers were cooking for them, tears streamed down their frozen faces.

Although those already near death would not survive, fate had at least seen fit to save most of the pathetic company. After furnishing the warmth and food, Grant and his team prepared to transport Willie's group back to Salt Lake City. The extremely sick were put into the wagons but many of the fatigued emigrants, now with help from the rescue team, once again lugged their handcarts westward through the deepening snow. They eventually ran across more wagons and supplies that had been stored along the path. After discarding their last handcart on November 2, they finally rolled into their new Zion on November ninth.

As the citizens of Salt Lake City shed tears of relief for the survivors of captain Willie's group, they were acutely aware that hundreds of freezing souls remained trapped in the snow-pelted wilderness. Once Grant's rescue team assisted Willie's party, he and a group of about eight wagons and fifteen volunteers had forged ahead to find brother Martin's troop. After observing the grim condition of Willie's company, their mission took on an increased urgency.

Grant sent out an express team to locate the Martin Company just as he had for Willie's troop. The three members of that team were instructed to travel as far as Devil's Gate and stop if they hadn't yet found them. Grant hoped the Martin Company had stopped there since it contained a log stockade and several cabins where they could find some shelter. His disappointment was profound as he arrived at Devil's Gate only to find the saddened express group waiting for him.

Grant again sent out an express party of three -Abel Garr, Daniel Jones and Joseph Young, one of Brigham's sons. Garr and Young had both been on the first team. This time they left with instructions not to return until they located the emigrants. Grant and the rest of the larger group waited at Devil's Gate. During their first two day's travel, the express party found only desolate snow-covered wilderness. The third day seemed much the same when suddenly, during mid-afternoon, Joseph Young spotted a shoe track in the road. "We put our animals at the utmost speed and soon came in sight of the camp," Young later reported.

As with the Willie camp, the condition of the Martin Company sent shock waves through their rescuers. They learned that fifty-five had already perished. Many of the survivors were suffering from traumatic shock and Young was told that several had succumbed to a "state of dementia." Despite their pathetic condition, several staggered forward to shake hands with the express team. Daniel Jones reported that, "Many declared we were angels from heaven."

The "angels" unfortunately brought no supplies, but informed the emigrants that ten wagons awaited them three days away. The frigid weather had been a greater enemy than hunger for the Martin group. There was still some flour and a few cattle left so Joseph Young instructed them to increase their rations to build up their stamina. The three then continued on to locate the two wagon trains that had followed behind the Martin Company. Those groups not only could use their wagons for shelter, but also had found the winter cabins of some old trappers and were in much better shape than the poor handcarters.

Partially energized by the increased food and the hope of survival, the Martin party, along with the wagon trains, once more headed west. The storm had diminished but the bitter cold continued. "As night came on," Daniel Jones reported, "the mud would freeze on their clothes and feet." Nevertheless, they made good time.

Joseph Young rode ahead to inform the main group back at Devil's Gate that they were coming. When Grant heard the good news, he left two men to prepare the stockade and cabins for the emigrants, then headed his troop east and met them. Unfortunately, Grant's company had nearly exhausted their own supplies so food still had to be rationed. But as they escorted the Martin party to Devil's Gate, the poor handcarters found the first shelter they had known for months.

Although the group briefly considered wintering at Devil's Gate, they decided they must head back to Salt Lake City. For one thing, many needed medical attention they could only receive there. They decided to move as soon as the storm broke. As fate would have it, another northern blizzard smashed into them dropping the temperature to eleven below zero and piling up deep snowdrifts.

When the weather finally improved and the huge assembly began lumbering west, Grant expected to run into reinforcements momentarily After all, they were only the lead rescue company. There were plenty more behind them. As soon as the other groups arrived, there would be enough wagons to carry the poor broken emigrants, who had already suffered so much. Each day he scanned the horizon for them. Each evening he was bitterly disappointed.

Sadly, the reinforcements Grant was desperately searching for had already turned back. Over seventy teams had traveled as far as Fort Bridger and holed up to weather the storm. Two volunteers, C. N. Spencer and John Van Cott ventured a day's drive further east then returned to the fort. Van Cott took it upon himself to conclude that the Martin Company had either camped safely somewhere early in their trip, or had all perished...likely along with Captain Grant's relief team. Incredibly, all of the other parties followed his lead and dejectedly headed back to Salt Lake City.

Fortunately, someone at Fort Bridger thought to send a courier to Salt Lake City to let Brigham Young know everyone had turned around. When Young received the message on November 11, two days after the pathetic Willie company had arrived, he was enraged. Mormons simply did not give up on each other. He immediately wrote a letter to Van Cott demanding he turn around and to instruct all the other teams to do the same. They were not to return until they found the Martin company, With this letter, Brigham Young, the originator of the plan that led to the hand-carter's disaster, also became their savior.

He dispatched an express team with his message. Once they reached Van Cott and the others, Young's order was emphatically delivered. The entire troop turned around and traveled day and night until they again reached Fort Bridger. This time the fort was not vacant. They met the two men Grant had left behind to prepare for the Martin Company. Then the entire caravan of wagons headed east to Devil's Gate. Finally, on the evening of November 18, they ran across Grant and the struggling rescuers and emigrants. The handcarts could at last be discarded and the surviving members of the Martin Company would finally ride in wagons to their destination.

At noon Sunday, November 30, 1856, as the Mormon Tabernacle congregation exited their morning services, they bore witness to a string of 104 wagons carrying the Martin company survivors. Within an hour, all of the handcarters had been "adopted" by various families and were sitting down to hearty meals or resting in the warmth of soft beds.

As the years progressed, the abandoned handcarts strewn along the trail slowly disintegrated. Their splintered skeletons bore testimony to future pioneers that potential tragedy lurked along the way. When the country matured and sprouted cities and roads along the old Mormon Trail, the vivid images of the sad incident began to fade into the history books. Those books recorded the sad facts and statistics of the ill-fated excursion. None of them, however, could fully portray the unthinkable sacrifices and the raw courage of the 1856 "foot soldiers of Zion."

#  THE THUNDER DREAMER

During a Thunderstorm, Black Elk's Sacred Grandfathers

Give Him a Bow That Will Protect Him From

a Flurry of Gunfire at Wounded Knee

"Hey-hey-hey! They have murdered them!" The voice seemed to come from the wind itself as the lone horseman galloped toward the small band of Lakotas. Suddenly he stopped, whirled around and raced away. As he dashed toward Wounded Knee Creek and the grim scene he had just witnessed, a small group fell in behind him. Among them was a young Sioux medicine man named Black Elk.

The small party soon stopped on a ridge and peered below into the dry gulch. While their senses took in the horror, their hearts told them to ride into the midst of the struggle. Cavalrymen were shooting into the gulch while helpless victims scurried desperately for shelter. Several women and children huddled under a clay bank while cavalrymen pointed guns at them. Without hesitation, Black Elk and the rest of the courageous little band bolted toward the soldiers. As they rode, they chanted in unison, "Take courage! It is time to fight!" Suddenly, the previously "daring" cavalrymen scrambled for safety as the thundercloud of Lakota Sioux spirit roared toward them.

As Black Elk led the charging party, his right arm reached defiantly toward the soldiers. Clasped in his hand, he carried a weapon he was convinced would protect him and empower his fellow warriors. His unwavering grasp held neither a gun nor a spear. It clutched instead, an unusable ceremonial "sacred bow."

"They all shot at me," Black Elk would later relate, "and I could hear the bullets all around me. Some soldiers across the gulch began shooting at me too, but 1 got back to the others and was not hurt at all."

Following his lead, many other Sioux gathered and charged the soldiers. Together, they were able to save the frightened little cluster of endangered women and children. As Black Elk later surveyed the scattered bodies of the innocent victims, his blood froze. "When I saw this," he would recall, "I wished that I had died too..."

Part of him did in fact die at Wounded Knee - the part that dreamed that the "sacred hoops" of white men and Indians would one day peacefully exist within the entire hoop of the world. When the white men, or Wasichus, talked to the Sioux, they spoke of sharing and coexistence. Their actions, however, too often spoke of repression and aggression. Black Elk's dream was not the only one to perish at Wounded Knee.

"1 can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch..." Black Elk solemnly recalled in his old age. "And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream."

Black Elk was very familiar with dreams. Much of his life was shaped by an intense "thunder dream" he had experienced during childhood. Being favored with such a dream by Wakinyan, the Thunder beings, set him apart from the other children on his reservation. His youthful vision foreshadowed the special powers he would develop later in life. Those powers would apparently let him ride unharmed through a barrage of bullets at Wounded Knee, shielded by only a symbolic sacred bow.

Black Elk was born in December of 1863 on the Little Powder River, likely within the borders of present-day Wyoming. As a member of Big Road's band, he became part of a group that camped and hunted in the western-most part of Lakota country past the Black Hills. Black Elk had come into the world with a strong tradition. Both his father and his grandfather had been well-respected medicine men. Young Black Elk had received notice of the coming of his thunder dream at the age of five. He was riding in the woods as a storm approached. During his trip, he ran across a kingbird perched quietly on a limb. The young hunter was about to shoot the bird with a bow his grandfather had made for him, when the bird suddenly began to speak. "The clouds all over are one-sided," the tiny creature declared. "Listen! A voice is calling you." As the awe-stricken young boy raised his gaze to the sky, he saw two men rushing toward him headfirst like speeding arrows. They sang a song to the drum-like rhythm of the thunder.

"Behold, a sacred voice is calling you," they chanted. "All over the sky a sacred voice is calling."

"I sat there and gazed at them..." Black Elk remembered. "But when they were very close to me, they wheeled about toward where the sun goes down and suddenly they were geese." Then the geese disappeared while a heavy rain and roaring wind swept across the land. Nothing remained of his rare vision but a memory - a memory he would enjoy recalling, but feared revealing to others.

During the next few years, Black Elk learned the skills of a Sioux warrior. He became proficient at riding horses, and learned to shoot prairie chickens and rabbits with his bow. At times, when he was alone, the voices from his vision would once again call to him. Since he didn't yet know what they wanted, he soon forgot about them and returned to his busy young life. Black Elk later remembered that as he grew to manhood, he would learn painful lessons about the Wasichus and "the yellow metal that they worship that makes them crazy.... They told us that they wanted only to use a little land - as much as a wagon would take between the wheels; but our people knew better."

But long before Black Elk would learn about the Wasichus and their lust for the yellow metal, he had a vision of the need for all races to live in harmony. At the age of nine, he was eating in a friend's tepee. During his meal, a voice interrupted him. "It is time," the strange voice declared. "Now they are calling you." Without hesitation, young Black Elk rose and left the tepee. When he stood, he was struck with pain in his legs so severe he nearly collapsed. The next morning as he was dismounting his pony, his legs crumpled beneath him. Soon most of his body was painfully swollen. Realizing he was severely ill, his parents put him to bed and sat with him. As he lay in the family tepee, he gazed out the opening toward the sky. Suddenly, he saw two men soaring down like arrows from the clouds. He immediately recognized them from his earlier vision. Each man carried a long spear with jagged sparks of lightning flashing from the points. This time the men didn't turn and fly away as geese. Instead, they landed on the ground a short distance from him and spoke. "Hurry! Come!" they ordered. "Your Grandfathers are calling you!"

When Black Elk rose, his legs no longer hurt. In fact, he felt extremely light. As he strode easily toward the men, a small cloud scooped them all up and carried them toward the sky. White clouds were piled ahead like mountains on a wide blue plain. "In them," he recalled, "thunder beings lived and leaped and flashed." Suddenly the two men spoke in unison. "Behold him, the being with four legs!"

As Black Elk followed their gaze, he saw a bay horse standing alone. The majestic horse began to speak. "Behold me," he said. "My life-history you shall see." Then, as he whirled toward the west, he spoke again. "Behold them. Their history you shall know." Ahead of the bay horse stood a row of twelve perfectly formed black horses. They stood proudly, wearing necklaces of bison hoofs. Their manes flashed with lightning, and thunder roared from their nostrils. The bay horse continued to circle and introduce, in turn, a dozen horses from each direction. In the north stood twelve stately white horses with manes flowing like blizzards. The eastern horses were sorrel, adorned with necklaces of elk's teeth. Those in the south were buckskin with horns on their heads and living manes that grew like trees and grasses.

After Black Elk had viewed all of the horses, the bay horse spoke again. "Your Grandfathers are having a council," he informed the boy. "These shall take you, so have courage." With that, all the horses went into formation, four abreast, and stood behind the bay.

According to his memories, when they reached their destination, a billowing cloud was transformed into a tepee. The open door formed a rainbow. Through it Black Elk could discern the figures of six old men sitting in a row. The six men, he recalled, represented the powers of the world. The first four were the powers of the west, north, east, and south. The remaining two were the powers of the sky and the earth.

The first Grandfather, the Power of the West, spoke. "Behold them yonder where the sun goes down, the thunder beings," he proclaimed. "You shall see, and have from them my power!" As the grandfather talked, a rainbow leaped and covered young Black Elk with multicolored flames. The old man then gave Black Elk a wooden cup filled with water. Within the water he could see the sky. "Take this," the grandfather offered. "It is the power to make live, and it is yours." Next he handed Black Elk a sacred bow. "Take this," he continued. "It is the power to destroy, and it is yours." That was the bow Black Elk would later duplicate from the vision and carry into battle at Wounded Knee.

Each grandfather, in turn, gave the young boy gifts. From the second he received an herb of power that would help him heal his nation. The third grandfather presented him with a peace pipe decorated with a spotted eagle stretched across the stem. The pipe, he explained, would make well whatever was sick. From the fourth grandfather, he received a bright red living stick. As Black Elk watched the stick, it sprouted and sent forth branches. From the stick would come the power for all things to grow. "It shall stand in the center of the nation's circle," the grandfather revealed, ".,.and by your powers you shall make it blossom."

The fifth Grandfather, the Spirit of the Sky, was the oldest of them all. "My boy," he said, "I have sent for you and you have come. My power you shall see!" With that, he stretched his arms and was immediately transformed into a spotted eagle. As he hovered above Black Elk, he spoke again. "Behold. All the wings of the air shall come to you. You shall go across the earth with my power."

Finally, Black Elk turned his attention toward the last Grandfather. The old man's eyes glowed dimly in his deeply wrinkled face. As Black Elk watched him, he felt that he somehow knew the old man. Black Elk continued to watch the Grandfather as he gradually transformed into a younger man and finally into a young boy. Suddenly he realized the Grandfather was actually himself. "I knew that he was myself," he reflected, "with all the years that would be mine at last."

When the figure was once again an old man, he addressed Black Elk. "My boy," he spoke, "have courage, for my power shall be yours, and you shall need it..." Then he issued a solemn warning, "for your nation on the earth will have great troubles..." As the great vision continued, young Black Elk witnessed a nation of people sick and dying. As he sadly circled the community, the previously sickly people sprang up with happy faces. "Behold," a voice boomed, "they have given you the center of the nation's hoop to make it live."

He carried the bright red living stick into the center of the nation's hoop and thrust it into the earth. Suddenly the trees had full leafy branches and the birds and animals mingled with the people like their relatives, making happy cries. During the vision, Black Elk also saw that the sacred hoop of his nation was only one of many hoops, that made a large circle. That circle was "wide as daylight and as starlight," Black Elk recalled. In the center of the great circle grew one mighty flowering holy tree. This was the part of the vision that made him feel that all nations, including both white men and Indian, would one day live together in peace.

After the great vision had ended, young Black Elk told no one. Just as before, when the kingbird had foreshadowed the vision, he enjoyed recalling his dream but felt others would not understand. It was seven years before he divulged his vision.

During his sixteenth year, Black Elk developed an obsessive fear of thunderstorms - frantically running and hiding when they occurred. His behavior eventually led his family to realize that he had once had a thunder dream. In the custom of the Lakota, a thunder dreamer was required to manifest the powers that such a dream had given him. When Black Elk was seventeen, he revealed his vision to Black Road, a wise elder and medicine man. Black Road helped him understand the will of the spirits and begin his own life as a medicine man.

If Black Elk had been born at an earlier time, he would likely have lived his life like his father and grandfather, as a revered medicine man of his nation. He was destined instead, to be cast into a period of intense and painful change for his people. Year by year, their precious land dwindled into scattered reservations. Their proud traditions of hunting and individual bravery deteriorated into farming sparse land and accepting government rations. Their once-strong spiritual convictions were diluted with a forced halfhearted acceptance of Christianity. The white man's disdain for the Sioux nation's spiritual beliefs would be forever engraved in the bloody mud of Wounded Knee.

As the Ghost Dance movement spread through his reservation, Black Elk was not immediately interested. Once he witnessed the event, however, he was overcome by the similarities of the Ghost Dance and his vision. In both, a hoop of his people circled a sacred tree. As he watched the dance, a spiritual awakening surged through his being. The dance, he decided, had been sent to him as a reminder to energize the powers from his vision. He should bring his nation back into the sacred hoop of their traditional ways so they could peacefully coexist with the hoops of other races.

The brutal suppression of the Sioux and the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee proved to Black Elk that his vision would not be realized. The hoops of the Sioux and the white men would never link. Like many in his ever-weakening nation, the remainder of his life would be spent in the grips of two divergent worlds, finding lasting spiritual fulfillment in neither.

Late in life he recorded many of his people's traditions and helped unite numerous younger Sioux with the beliefs and dreams of their forefathers. Overshadowing this accomplishment, however, was the constant awareness of an unfulfilled vision - a vision of the sacred hoops of the world's people peacefully existing around a great flowering tree. The kingbird, the bay horse, the Grandfathers and all the others have melted into history. The peace pipe, the bright red living stick and all the gifts from the Powers of the World now exist only on the yellowed pages of tattered books. Even the bloody mud of Wounded Knee has long-since dried and drifted away on the winds of time.

Now and then, however, when a spotted eagle passes overhead or a bay horse gallops past, those winds shift. Once again they turn and blow back across the fields of the once-great Sioux nation. When they do, they howl with the chants of a brave band of Lakota Sioux horsemen charging proudly into the midst of battle. In the lead, surrounded by a hailstorm of bullets and gripping a sacred bow, still rides Black Elk - the Thunder Dreamer.

# BILLION-DOLLAR BEANS

An Eventual Billion Dollars in Silver, Gold and Copper

Begins With a Simmering Bowl of Beans

The alchemists of ancient times would have surely flipped over in their graves. For hundreds of years, they unsuccessfully focused their magic formulas on nearly every material on earth - desperately striving to transform each one into precious metal. And now, in eastern Nevada's White Pine Mountains, some rough-cut prospectors had finally stumbled upon the secret ingredient...a simmering bowl of beans.

The enticing scent of those beans wafted through the icy mountain air in late winter of 1867. Three prospectors, Thomas Murphy, Eddie Merchand and A. J. Leathers ran a small silver mill on White Pine Mountain. While they worked, they left a pot of beans cooking on the cabin stove for their evening meal. As the tantalizing aroma blanketed the surrounding area, it found its way into the nose of a nearby Shoshone Indian named Jim.

Never one to turn his back on a prospective meal, Jim followed the trail of the intriguing fragrance. Once he had tracked down the scent's origin, the lure of the bubbling mixture overcame his rather limited social graces. Since there was no one in the cabin to ask him in for supper, he invited himself. Following his pilfered meal, however, Jim's conscience began to bother him. In order to right his wrong, Jim decided, he should bring the cabin's occupants a present in exchange for the food. His selection of that gift would not only soothe his conscience, it would ignite "White Pine fever" and eventually generate over a billion dollars in silver, gold and copper.

Several days after Jim's free meal, he showed up at the cabin with the gift - a chunk of nearly pure silver ore he had found. The prospectors quickly forgave the bean-burglar and, trying hard to stifle their excitement, casually inquired where Jim had found the silver. They were in luck. He didn't realize the potential value of his find and said he would be glad to show the site to the miners. The four of them later trekked over the 10,000-foot summit of the mountain to a ledge on the east side of Treasure Hill.

As the prospectors dug into the area, they found that their Indian guide's lump of rich silver ore had a lot of company. That site, later dubbed the Lost Treasure Mine, was permeated with nearly pure silver ore. Since napias was the Shoshone name for silver, Jim would inherit the name of "Napias Jim." As for inheriting anything else for his discovery, the miners were said to have given him a whopping "five-dollars and a saddle."

Despite the best efforts of the three prospectors to keep the discovery under their hats, rumors about the mine spread across Nevada like the scent of the bubbling beans had swept over the mountainside. The silver rush was on. During the early months of the White Pine silver stampede, many of the newcomers didn't even bother to build cabins. They simply found or dug holes in the side of the mountain. They had better things to do than carpentry - there was silver to mine!

Within a few months, however, enterprising builders got into the act. Even most of the rough-cut prospectors would prefer to live in a town rather than a cave, so a town named Treasure City was constructed on the mountainside at ten thousand feet above sea level. Later, three promoters planned a town-site at an altitude about two thousand feet lower. One of the three, W. H. Hamilton, honored himself by christening the new town "Hamilton." In true western fashion, Hamilton's very first structure was the King and McIver's Saloon. Churches and schools later joined the community but their numbers paled in comparison to the hundred-and-one saloons the town eventually sported.

A number of small communities began to spring up around the area but Hamilton was clearly becoming the queen of the White Pine mining towns. At the height of the rush, the Sacramento Union reported that the Pacific Railroad had sold over 10,000 tickets to the White Pine area in a single month. Six lines of daily stagecoaches to Hamilton dumped off more silver-hungry fortune seekers. Less affluent but equally hopeful prospectors trudged in on foot. The swirling cluster of newcomers pumped the new town full of an untamed energy that prompted the Reno Crescent to claim, "It's a faster camp than the Comstock."

Hamilton took shape with the lightning speed of the silver rush itself. Before long, an opera house, a newspaper and a courthouse graced the scene. The luxurious J. B. Withington Hotel was constructed of lumber hauled from Oregon and stones shipped from England. It was deemed the "most expensive structure built in Nevada." Hamilton was settling in for a long and prosperous life. Although excitement ran rampant in the new town, something else didn't - water. It was extremely valuable - so much so that several far-sighted miners abandoned their unproductive properties to file claims on nearby snow banks. Melting the snow and selling buckets of water seemed more of a sure thing than digging for silver. They eventually deserted their "snow mines" when the town built an elaborate water system that conveyed over a million gallons a day from nearby springs.

While Hamilton was in the process of becoming a rather sophisticated little burg, its loftier neighbor, Treasure City, retained its pioneer lifestyle. The "hill-toppers," as they were called, also had a water shortage but it didn't seem to bother them as much. The reason, according to most reports, was that the majority of them only used the water for cooking anyway, since for drinking purposes, "whiskey was cheaper."

The hill-toppers not only liked their whiskey, they loved to gamble. The daily mail delivery from Hamilton up the three-mile climb to Treasure City became quite a sporting event. As the mail stage rolled into Hamilton, a messenger eagerly awaited from both of Treasure City's two rival express companies – Wells Fargo and Pacific Union. The riders would each grab their mailbags from the stage driver and point their horses up the mountain.

Nell Murbarger, one of Treasure City's former residents, vividly remembered the races and the wagering. "As two dark specks rounded the distant shoulder of Treasure Hill," she reflected, "more gold pieces would make their appearance..." When the two riders and their snorting, foaming steeds neared the town's border, the shouts of encouragement, she recalled, would shake the mountain. Upon their arrival, two men would throw blankets over the horses and walk them up and down Main street to cool off. Meanwhile, a cluster of lucky gamblers hoisted the winning messenger over their heads and toted him to the nearest saloon for free drinks.

The hill-toppers may have been a carefree lot, but they took one thing very seriously - the Fourth of July. As the holiday approached in 1868, they teamed up with the Hamilton residents to officially recognize the occasion. Following a proper amount of head scratching, chin rubbing and whiskey drinking, the celebration organizers announced their plans.

Since at that time Treasure City was still the larger town, it would host the day's festivities and Hamilton would follow up with a ball in the evening. The grand event would be organized by the newly formed committee for the "Flag, Music and Ball of the Evening." The ball, the committee decided, would be held on a platform that had recently been built as a floor for a new frame house. For the music, they settled on a local fiddler named Pike. There was one concern though. Pike had a fondness for the bottle and it didn't take much to put him under. So a subcommittee was formed to keep him relatively sober that day. Yes, the dance plans were taking shape nicely. In fact, there were even a couple of women in the town, so the miners wouldn't have to spend the whole evening dancing with each other.

There was, however, one stumbling block that the Flag, Music and Ball of the Evening committee hadn't anticipated. After they had taken care of the music and the ball they suddenly realized there was no flag - anywhere in either town. They couldn't hold an Independence Day celebration without a flag! Once, again the committee members scratched their heads, rubbed their chins and drank. And again, they devised a solution. They would make one.

So the search was on for red, white and blue material. The white cloth was easy. A local store had white canvas they could use. The red material was a little tougher to find, until the committee members unearthed a quilt with a red calico lining on a fellow miner's bunk. The quilt was immediately commandeered for the common good.

But finding the blue cloth - that was a different story. It couldn't be located in either community. Once again, the event stood in dire jeopardy. Fortunately fate finally intervened to save the day. A Mormon family that had camped at the bottom of the hill, dug a blue veil out of their family trunk. Not only did they donate the cloth, they said their four daughters could attend the ball, except for one slight problem. The girls had no shoes and couldn't dance barefooted on the rough pine floor. No problem - another subcommittee was formed and eventually rounded up shoes to fit the girls.

When the big day came, the event was enough to make the local's hearts swell with pride. The morning began with a parade from Madison up to Treasure City. The homemade-flag bearer led the way. Behind him was, not exactly a professional band, but as close as the miners could come - two fellows who whistled Yankee Doodle. The Mormon family came next, followed by Pike the fiddler, his "bodyguard" and the rest of the Madison townsfolk. From the grand parade to the speeches made atop Treasure City's watering trough to the evening ball, the holiday was a roaring success.

The same untamed spirit that made that celebration successful, however, could also rage out of control. As silver and gold was discovered in other areas of the White Pine Mountains, small towns began to pop up like anthills. Unfortunately, law and order didn't always pop up along with them. South of Treasure City, the little town of Pioche was a vivid example. The secluded area bubbled with greed and violence. The construction cost for their modest little brick courthouse should have totaled about sixteen thousand dollars. When the final costs were calculated, the wide-eyed accountant peered down at a total of over half a million. Worse yet, during its wild days, Pioche was said to have let at least forty murderers go unpunished.

Fortunately, as the towns matured, the crooks and murderers were usually replaced by more sophisticated citizens. Their increased sophistication, however, didn't prevent them from being a colorful lot. Take for example, the folks at the Munro Mutual Mining and Tunnel Company. The director of their mining operations was a lady psychic. "Madame Munro," a New York clairvoyant, wired daily telegraphs to the miners directing them where to dig next. Unfortunately, Madame Munro's powers apparently didn't extend to Nevada. The outfit never found silver and the operation was eventually abandoned.

Another colorful personality of the White Pine boom era was often referred to by his descendants as "Old Gold-Pockets." Sporting a healthy distrust of banks, Thomas A. Rockhill preferred to slit the lining of his old frock coat and deposit gold coins in the hem. As he sauntered around the bustling mining towns, potential robbers had no inkling that between the gold coins in his sagging pockets and those in his coat lining, he was a walking Fort Knox.

Once, according to family memories, he decided to "put his money where his mouth was." On a whim, he arranged to have a set of solid-gold dentures made. Despite his 24-Karat smile, he soon found the ungainly contraptions were simply too heavy to use. As a young man in Indiana, Rockhill became engaged to be married. Like many others of the time, he headed out west to make money to support his future bride. Before he was prepared to return, however, fate dealt him a bitter blow. He received word that his fiancée had died. With no reason to return, he remained in the West.

Many years later, during a visit to Indiana, he was shocked to discover she had actually died while giving birth to their baby girl. Neither of them had realized she was pregnant when he left Indiana. And amazingly, no one had bothered to write him about his new daughter. Rockhill dutifully traced down his daughter, walked up to her family farm and announced that he was her father. Throughout his life, he took care of her and her family. One of his first fatherly duties was to provide his newfound daughter, Naomi Inman, with a set of dentures - not incidentally, of the solid-gold variety.

As colorful as the characters were and as rich as the silver ore was, the wild boom times of White Pine County, Nevada were destined to dissolve into history. Despite the lavish hotels, the costly water systems and all the rest, many of the bustling communities would eventually decay into ghost towns. Mother nature had played a cruel trick. The silver ore was extremely pure, it was true. And it showed up, along with some gold ore, all across the mountains. The problem was, as one mining company after another discovered, it ran very shallow. The jolting news came from all directions - Treasure City, Hamilton, Poiche and the rest - the precious commodity had simply run out.

As the residents learned of the tragic situation, some desperately grabbed whatever money they could and ran. Hamilton's mayor and the White Pine county treasurer each absconded with much of the town's and the county's cash. Obviously this didn't help the financial situation for the remaining citizens. As if this blow wasn't enough, Alexander Conn, the owner of Hamilton's cigar store, decided to set his store on fire to collect the insurance. In order to assure no one would salvage it, he secretly turned off the valves to the city's water supply.

His plan worked perfectly for his store - and unfortunately for nearly every other business in the town. After the inferno raged through the wooden buildings, all but two had burned to the ground. Cohn was arrested and imprisoned but that didn't bring back the already dying town. Hamilton, once the queen of the White Pine mining towns, was all but gone.

Years later, starting off with a total of seventy-five cents in their pockets, prospectors David Bartley and Edwin Gray would set off another boom - the White Pine copper industry. The copper, unlike the silver and gold, ran deep underground. The discovery of copper revitalized the area and by the 1960's had pushed the total made from the three metals - and the simmering bowl of beans - over the billion-dollar mark.

Somehow though, the new boom, with its modernized mining techniques and more sedate company towns just didn't have quite the same sparkle as its predecessor. After all, the residents didn't even bet on their delivery men, wash down their breakfast with whiskey or whistle Yankee Doodle in their parades. The Island Empire captured the essence of the death of Treasure City, Hamilton and the others with its simple headline, "Babylon has fallen!"

# A SAD SAGA OF SWEETWATER

"Cattle Kate" Becomes the Most Famous

Woman in Wyoming...After Her Hanging

The massive turtle-shaped limestone boulder had been baking in the Wyoming sun for as long as anyone could remember. Year after year, Independence Rock had dutifully kept a chiseled-in-stone record of the thousands of settlers who had carved their names into the landmark as they reached the Sweetwater River. The "great registry of the desert" preserved forever the hopeful moments when the proud scribers declared their intentions of stepping into Western history. That step could lead to a rugged but fulfilling life of treasured memories. It could also lead to a violent death at the end of a vigilante's noose.

Ella Watson knew life was a gamble in the newly settled West. She had no idea, however, of the tragic fate that would end her brief roll of the Wyoming dice. After all, she was merely a prostitute, and nobody seemed to mind that, especially the trail-worn cowboys. And she had definitely learned her trade well. She had apprenticed in Dodge City, Ogallala and Cheyenne. No, there was simply no logical reason for fate to turn on her near Independence Rock in the summer of 1888. Fate, unfortunately, doesn't always need a "logical reason."

Weighing in at a rather stout 170 pounds, Ella Watson was nevertheless quite attractive. In fact, when saloon-owner, Jim Averill, rode the fifty-some miles to Rawlins in December of 1887, he knew just who he wanted to spend a little time with. There were several brothels for his selection but only one of them housed Ella Watson, a free-spirit in her mid-twenties. He had previously partaken of her favors in Rawlins, and looked forward to a return engagement.

Averill could definitely stand a little diversion. He hadn't exactly been living a stress-free life the past few months. The previous year, he had homesteaded three miles east of Independence Rock and opened a grocery store and saloon, commonly known as a "road ranch." Although Jim was popular with the local cowboys, he wasn't exactly high on the list of the big ranch-owners - at least not on their good list. He had, it seems, more than a little trouble keeping his mouth shut.

He knew he was treading on some powerful toes when he sent his flaming letters to the Casper, Wyoming newspaper but he just couldn't help himself. Someone had to speak out about the overbearing practices of the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association. They had laid claim to all the good grazing land for miles around the Sweetwater River. It didn't matter to them that the law said the land was public domain. The association had become so powerful and crooked, it was the law.

To make matters worse, they also controlled the newspapers in towns all around them. The editors of the Cheyenne Sun, the Rock Springs Miner, and the Rocky Mountain Life had all buckled under to the association's pressure. The Casper Weekly Mail, however, printed Jim Averil's condemning letters word-for-word. In his letters, Jim called the association's members "range hogs" and "land-grabbers." He raged about their attempts to prevent settlers from locating along the Sweetwater River by using "threats of bodily harm and other forms of intimidation."

Needless to say, the members of the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association weren't delighted with the paper's exercise in free speech. Association member Albert Bothwell took the lead in targeting Averill for revenge. Not only was Averill a threat to the association, he had been a personal burr under Bothwell's saddle. Averill had built his road ranch on land he had claimed for his own. In addition, Bothwell was convinced that Averill had re-branded several of his yearlings. Not one to silently hold a grudge, Bothwell repeatedly told Jim to get out of the country while he still had his health.

But as Jim Averill looked at Ella Watson's smiling face, Bothwell and the rest of his troubles rolled off his mind like a tumbleweed in the warm Wyoming wind. It wasn't merely her "favors" that comforted him. There was something about her spirit that connected them. Apparently the connection ran both ways. By the time Averill decided to head back to his Sweetwater road ranch, he was accompanied by more than his memories of Ella Watson. He was also accompanied by Ella Watson.

Ella, however, was not the domestic type. Before long, she had built her own little homestead about a mile west of Averill's place. She soon settled into her former trade. As the word got out to the local cowboys, Ella's house became a regular stop on their trail. Unlike the city customers, they often had no available money. That wasn't a problem - they usually had calves with them. So Ella began, as one writer put it, "bartering her favors for beef on the hoof." With this practice, Ella Watson would become forever "branded" as Cattle Kate.

Although Ella's business was thriving, dark clouds were gathering on the horizon which would eventually propel her, unwillingly, into the Western history books. Albert Bothwell was becoming more and more disturbed about Averill's letters to the Casper paper. He decided something had to be done. It was time to take the matter up with the other members of the association.

On Saturday, July 19, 1888, Bothwell and five local association members, met to review the situation. George B. Henderson added his support to the meeting. He was the manager of the huge 71 Quarter Circle ranch at Three Crossings of the Sweetwater. To Bothwell's delight, everyone shared his opinion. They all felt the situation was intolerable and action must be taken. They agreed that Jim Averill and his strumpet friend, Cattle Kate, were to be presented with an ultimatum: Get out of the country or be forcibly ejected.

To justify their actions, the association members stressed the rumors of cattle rustling that Jim and Ella had undertaken. According to some observers, local cattlemen often spied their branded calves penned up in a corral next to Ella's bordello. The Cheyenne Mail Leader described her as a "dark devil in the saddle, handy with a six-shooter and a Winchester, and an expert with a branding iron." Since so many area newspapers were controlled by the association, it was becoming difficult to separate reality from the legend the papers were building. Ella claimed that all the calves in her corral were simply those fairly traded by her customers. Any calves Averill added to Ella's corral were said to be unbranded mavericks he had rounded up. The truth, however, may lie forever obscured by the dusty clouds of Western history.

Cattle rustlers or not, Ella and Jim had definitely become the target of some very powerful enemies. The ultimatum was delivered the next day. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Bothwell and three other association members hopped on a buckboard. Two others followed behind on horses. All six were armed with rifles. This time, Bothwell decided, the ultimatum would be one neither Ella nor Jim could refuse.

They stopped first at Ella's cabin. Shortly after they arrived, she came riding in with her hired hand, John DeCorey. One of the men told her to get into the wagon, that they were going to take her to Rawlins. According to later witnesses, she said she couldn't go until she put on a new print dress. Not in a mood to wait for her to get "presentable," one of the men threatened to rope and drag her if she didn't get in.

The scene at Jim Averill's house was similar. One of the men told him they had a warrant to take him in. When Jim asked to see it, he patted his rifle and said that was "warrant enough." With both Jim and Ella aboard the wagon, the mob headed, not for Rawlins as they had said, but toward Spring Creek Canyon.

The scene didn't go without witnesses. In addition to John DeCorey, a fourteen-year-old "range waif" named Gene Crowder saw the gang force Ella into the wagon. DeCorey tried to follow the gang but Bothwell pointed his rifle at him and threatened to shoot. DeCorey and Crowder then rode off and alerted Frank Buchanan, Averill's foreman. Buchanan followed the trail and boldly opened fire on the mob. "I unloaded my revolver twice," he would later testify at a coroner's inquest, "but had to run as they were shooting at me with Winchesters."

Bob Conner, one of the six vigilantes, later said they had no intention of killing the couple but only wanted to frighten them out of the country. Whatever the mob's original intention, the end result of their actions would be recorded in the Casper Weekly Mail's somber headline: JIM AVERILL, AN OLD RESIDENT OF SWEETWATER, HANGED TO A TREE. ELLA WATSON MEETS A SIMILAR FATE. CORONER'S JURY FINDS THAT PROMINENT LAND OWNERS OF SWEETWATER COMMIT THE ATROCIOUS DEED.

Not only was the deed "atrocious" but the judicial proceedings that followed would also seem to fit into that category. Since there were witnesses to the hanging, the six men were served with warrants. The legal process following their arrest, however, was not exactly a glowing example of "blind justice." The preliminary arraignment was held in a hotel room. Although a first-degree murder charge was not subject to bail, the association members were not only allowed to have bail posted, they were permitted to post each other's bail.

Then, just before the arraignment, an odd incident occurred - all of the potential witnesses suddenly disappeared. Rumors spread throughout the territory about their possible fates, but other than young Gene Crowder, they were simply never seen again. In Gene's case, he was taken in by area cattlemen. Suddenly he became quite ill and died in a matter of weeks from Bright's disease. The rumor, in his case, was that rather than contacting the disease, he had been the victim of a slow poisoning. Regardless of the reason for their inability to testify, one thing was certain, no witnesses - no trial.

There was, however, one small grain of justice buried deep within the corrupt incident. Ella Watson, previously a little-known Sweetwater strumpet, would soon become the most widely known woman in Wyoming. As the word spread from town to town that the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association had committed the appalling act of hanging a woman, resistance to its arrogant domination swelled.

The fuse of resentment continued to smolder until it helped to ignite the Johnson County cattle war. The small ranchers eventually banded together to fight the association's tyrannical monopoly. Their resistance was fueled by the memories of the association's despicable deeds - especially a sad saga at Sweetwater - the legend of "Cattle Kate."

#  "COMPLETE" IGNORANCE

John Bidwell and His Adventurous Friends Know

Everything About California as They Head Out to the

Glorious Land...Except How to Get There

The patchwork collection of enthusiastic young adventurers stood proud and strong on the brink of history. They were more than ready to take their place as the first overland emigrant party to enter California. As they set out in May of 1841 from Sapling Grove, Missouri, their heads were swimming with images of the glorious land. They knew California was a place of perennial spring and boundless fertility. They knew wild game roamed freely and luscious oranges hung for the picking. And they also knew that neither disease nor disputes among settlers had yet marred the virgin landscape.

Yes, they knew all they needed to know about the golden land. Well, they knew almost all they needed to know. Actually there was one little detail they hadn't quite worked out yet...how to get there. Many years later, their organizer, John Bidwell, would summarize their situation. "Our ignorance of the route," he noted, "was complete. We only knew that California lay west..."

Fortunately for their unbridled enthusiasm, the excited pioneers-to-be were also ignorant of the hardships that lurked ahead on their six-month excursion. Before they would see the free-roaming wild game or taste the luscious oranges, they would see near-starvation and have a potent taste of torturous desert days and frigid mountain nights. The seed of adventure that produced this rigorous journey began to germinate in John Bidwell's mind during his twentieth year. "I conceived a desire," he remembered, "to see the great prairies of the West...." In the spring of 1839, he set out on foot from western Ohio toward Cincinnati. He was fortunate enough to hitch a ride most of the way on a produce wagon. From Cincinnati, he made his way down the Ohio River by steamboat to the Mississippi.

Bidwell then struck out to the southwest and eventually arrived at the Platte Purchase settlement in Missouri. The area suited him perfectly. "The imagination could not conceive of a finer country," he recalled, "lovely, rolling, and fertile...peace and contentment reigned." This spot, he decided, would be his lifelong home. He began teaching school and settling in. Fate, however, had no intention of letting Bidwell settle in. While he was away on a trip to St. Louis to purchase supplies, a man jumped his claim and moved into the cabin he had built. Unfortunately, Bidwell had no legal power to oust the jumper. The law clearly stated that in order to stake claim to the land, a person had to be either a "man of family" or twenty-one years of age. He was neither. Disgusted, he resolved to head elsewhere when spring arrived.

Fate stepped in again, right on schedule. A Frenchman named Joseph Roubidoux told Bidwell he had been to California and had found it to be an ideal land. He described the countless herds of wild horses, the free-roaming game and the wide-open fertile valleys. Roubidoux also said there was hardly any sign of the fever that had spread across Missouri. He told Bidwell there had been only one man in California who had ever had a chill. "It was a matter of so much wonderment to the people of Monterey," he added, "that they went eighteen miles into the country to see him shake."

Bidwell rounded up potential emigrants and invited Roubidoux to speak to them. Roubidoux filled the gathering with dreams of the virgin country and endless opportunities, just as he had done with Bidwell. The group members decided to recruit others and meet on May 9th at Sapling Grove "armed and equipped to cross the Rocky Mountains to California."

During the next few months, the size of the group swelled as a positive article about California, written by a Doctor John Marsh, was printed in the area papers. Then it dwindled as another article appeared which told of scorching desert heat and unfriendly attitudes of the native Californians. That letter was gleefully reprinted in area papers by the Platte County merchants. From the beginning, they felt the emigrant movement was "the most unheard of, foolish, wild-goose chase that ever entered into the brain of man..."

When May 9th arrived, Bidwell and a few others excitedly headed for Sapling Grove. On arriving, they found only one wagon ahead of them. Throughout the next few days, one or two wagons pulled in each day. Five days after Bidwell's arrival, the party numbered sixty-nine. As the enthusiastic group members began to quiz each other, a startling realization fell over them - none of the sixty-nine knew which path to take.

Undaunted, the little party selected a captain. Although Bidwell would have been a logical choice, a man named John Bartleson was chosen. "He wasn't the best man for the job," Bidwell observed, "but we were given to understand that if he was not elected captain he would not go." Bartleson had seven or eight men with him and the group didn't want to lose them.

Once again, destiny played a winning card for them. One of the last members to arrive said he had passed a company of missionaries who had hired an experienced Rocky Mountaineer to guide them to the Flathead Indian nation. Their destination was Fort Hall in the present-day state of Idaho. The missionary's guide turned out to be the veteran mountain man, Captain Thomas "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick.

At last the Western Emigration Society was on the move. Fitzpatrick led the group past Westport, now called Kansas City. From there, they headed northwest over the prairie toward the Platte River. As they rolled along the yet-unnamed Oregon Trail, they realized how sensible they had been to wait for Fitzpatrick to lead them. All was going smoothly with their venture. Fitzpatrick's knowledge of the frontier likely saved their lives one night as they camped on the south fork of the Platte River. For days, they had traveled past immense buffalo herds heading toward the Platte for water. As they camped, the ground began to tremble from the buffalo's thundering onrush.

Fitzpatrick instructed them to set up fires a good distance from the wagons to turn the buffalo away from the campsite. The lead buffalo must have room to maneuver, he explained. If not, the pressure of the thousands of animals from behind would prevent them from veering around the wagons. Had they not diverted the herd, Bidwell judged "wagons, animals and emigrants would have been trodden under their feet."

The thundering buffalo herd was not the only taste of danger the Platte River served them. During one scorching afternoon, a heavy rainstorm suddenly broke the stillness. On the tail of the rain, hailstones "as large as a turkey's egg" hammered the wagons. Before the icy volley subsided, it had blanketed the prairie with hail four inches deep. The very next day, nature again turned on them. A menacing waterspout suddenly emerged, sucking water from the Platte. The society members were now becoming seasoned to frontier dangers. They quickly threw themselves against the sides of the wagons to prevent them from overturning. The swirling mass passed within a quarter of a mile. "Had it struck us," Bidwell solemnly recalled, "it would doubtless have demolished us."

As the Western Emigration Society rolled on, Fitzpatrick continued to skillfully guide them further and further west. They took the north fork of the Platte River across present-day Nebraska and Wyoming. The days mounted into weeks as they passed one after another of the landmarks which would become so familiar to thousands of later pioneers. The group members sighted Chimney Rock from almost fifty miles away. "It was nearly square," Bidwell recalled later in his life, "and I think it must have been fifty feet higher than now..." A large portion had apparently collapsed or weathered during the years following their journey. Scott's Bluffs, he wrote, were "washed and broken into all sorts of fantastic forms by the rains and storms of ages..."

The pioneers-in-training followed their trusted guide along the Sweetwater River past the Wind River mountain range. They crossed the Rocky Mountains at the South Pass. As they proceeded, a sobering realization must have penetrated their thoughts. Fitzpatrick, the veteran mountaineer who had led them safely through one hazard after another, would soon be turning northwest. After all, the missionaries had hired him to take them to Idaho, not California.

The point of separation was Soda Springs in present-day Idaho. As Bidwell and the others arrived, the wild beauty of the setting temporarily lulled their anxieties. Rolling hills blanketed with fir and cedar framed Bear River and the periodically gushing "Steamboat Springs." The tranquil effects of the scenery, however, would soon wear off. A decision had to be made by each group member. Would he or she continue in the safety of Fitzpatrick's group to Fort Hall or follow the original California dream. Thirty-two decided to stick to that dream.

This time, Bidwell and the remaining thirty-one were not the only ones unaware of the best route. Fitzpatrick himself was not much better informed. He had heard though, that some trappers had trekked west and northwest of Salt Lake looking for beaver. So he suggested that four of the party accompany him to Fort Hall to consult with anyone who might know a logical starting path. The remaining twenty-eight said their thankful goodbyes to Fitzpatrick and the missionaries. They then headed down the west side of Bear River into country that was, as Bidwell put it, "a veritable terra incognita."

The men who had ventured to Fort Hall caught up with the main party about ten days later. Although the directions they had obtained were far from specific, they at least provided general boundaries. The men learned they should strike out west from Salt Lake - which had already been given that name by area trappers. Veering too far south, they had been told, would lead them to a desolate country with no grass for the animals. If they swerved too far north, they would run into "broken country and steep canyons." The only landmark the pioneers at Fort Hall could provide was Mary's River, which flowed to the southwest. If the party could locate the river, they could probably follow it a long way toward California.

As the group continued, the ground was becoming so soft the animals could hardly plow through it. They persevered throughout the frigid night, unaware that they were actually heading directly toward Salt Lake. As the wagon wheels plowed through the salt flats, the night winds drove the crystals like snow across a frozen lake. Turning east in a desperate attempt to search for water, they arrived at Bear River shortly after daybreak. As the parched travelers tasted the precious water, they found it was nearly undrinkable. They were still too close to Salt Lake. "It would not quench thirst," Bidwell remembered, "but it did save life."

Leaving the area, the group headed northwest through miles of barren salt plains. After a blistering day and steaming night with no water, they discovered an antelope trail. Several of the veteran hunters knew that animal tracks would eventually lead them to fresh water. As they had predicted, the tracks ultimately steered them to an area abundant with fresh water and grass. Although the party was acutely aware that precious time was passing, they rested and let the animals graze. As they did, two men scouted ahead to find a route around Salt Lake. They returned to guide the party on a southwest course which finally eluded the huge salt-encrusted barrier.

They trudged on for two or three days - a full day and night of that without water. Suddenly, the landscape altered radically. Towering mountain crags ascended hundreds of feet overhead. At the foot of the mountains lie abundant grass and drinkable water. Again they rested while the animals ate their fill. Once more, scouts headed out to find a pass across the range. This time the news they brought was both good and bad. They felt they might have discovered a pass through the mountain range, but it would likely not accommodate the wagons. After considerable dissension in the ranks, the group eventually decided to leave the wagons behind and pack their supplies on the oxen, mules and horses.

The fatigued travelers ventured on through land that was becoming increasingly more barren. They recalled the simple directions the scouts had received at Fort Hall - if they strayed too far south they would find a wasted country without grass. Apparently they had done just that. The terrain prevented them from turning west, so they headed north across a range of mountains. Again the fortunate party found water. They camped near a small stream and followed it the next day into a canyon with towering walls several hundred feet high. As they proceeded, the canyon floor transformed into a maze of huge boulders. They trudged on wearily with no place for them or their animals to lie down and rest.

The canyon led the exhausted party directly north. The directions from Fort Hall again echoed through their minds - if they veered too far north they would find broken country and steep canyons where they could become hopelessly lost. They simply had to somehow turn west. Early one morning, several scouts scaled the canyon wall for a better view. This time the news they brought down was good. The country looked much better three or four miles ahead. Suddenly the weary travelers caught their second wind. "Even the animals seemed to take courage," Bidwell recalled. By one o'clock that afternoon they had not only located more hospitable territory but had found the only landmark the Fort Hall scouts had been able to give them - Mary's River.

Mary's River, nowadays called the Humboldt, would lead the weary party on a southwestern journey for days. As they traveled farther, they ran across numerous Indians. They also noticed a great many tule marshes. The top of the tule reed was coated with honeydew - which was usually covered with insects feasting on the sweet nectar. The friendly Indians offered Bidwell and the rest, pressed balls of the honeydew, which was apparently the local delicacy. "At first," Bidwell recorded, "we greatly relished this Indian food." Their appetites rapidly diminished, however, when they discovered the main ingredient in the tasty treat was not the honeydew, but the insects.

Their arduous journey was definitely not over, but the sight of the friendly Indians and the refreshing river refueled their spirits. As they made their way along the Humboldt River, they approached a mountain range. Aware they must be getting close to California, several of the party felt they should leave the animals behind and "rush on into California." Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed and they kept the animals for potential food. Their decision proved to be a life-saving one. "When we killed our last ox," Bidwell would later record, "we shot and ate crows or anything we could kill, and one man shot a wildcat."

Once more, good fortune stepped in. They eventually approached the edge of the San Joaquin Valley. "But we did not even know that we were in California," Bidwell remembered. They entered the valley in the evening, sleeping as night fell. The next morning, they arose to view rich timberland to the north. As they reached the wooded area, they found not only the fresh water of the Stanislaus River, but abundant game and wild grapes. None of the party, however, realized they had actually reached their promised land. "Some thought it was five hundred miles yet to California," Bidwell recalled.

After another day's travel, two advanced scouts encountered a lone Indian wearing a cloth jacket. He plainly spoke the name, "Marsh." The scouts realized he must know Doctor John Marsh, who had written the letter that had helped to encourage their efforts. One of the scouts followed him to Marsh's ranch while the other returned to guide the rest of the party there. Two days later, on November 4, 1841, the exhausted but proud little party of the Western Emigration Society stood in the first settlement in California. Despite their unfamiliarity with the path, they had become the first emigrant party to reach that state. Their courage, stamina and resolve, much like their previous ignorance of the route, had apparently been "complete."

#  TEN-PENNY TALES

Deadwood Dick, Kit Carson Jr., Buffalo Bill

and the Rest Gallop Across the Pages of

Beadle & Adams' Dime Novels

"I'd a blamed sight rather see the devil, horns, hoofs, and tail, anytime, than Will," Tom Clark tells his fellow Texas Ranger. Tom's concern is echoed by most Texans. Much of the time "Wild Will" is as sane as any other man - but let him get hold of a bottle of rum and one of his "mad fits" is bound to follow. He will surely set off on a rampage of terror and violence. Will, in his wild state, has charged into war-parties of Indians who "shrunk in horror from his insane, maddened eyes..." No one knows exactly what has caused his terrible insanity. Some believe a mysterious curse has transformed him into an omen of evil - the "Maniac of the Chaparrals."

"I ain't afeard o' nothin' human," Tom Clark informs his friend, "but there wasn't nothin' human about the look Will gi'n me as he went past, his horse's tail hissin' like a whip snake on the migrate."

Eventually though, human or not, Wild Will met his match, just like all the other sinister villains of the Beadle and Adams' dime novels. He didn't bow out of the story, however, until he had firmly raised rows of goose bumps on thousands of wide-eyed readers. Just like the villains who fought Deadwood Dick, Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack and all the rest of the novels' colorful heroes, poor old Wild Will was doomed from the start. He should have realized - a "bad guy" could never win in a dime novel, no matter how insane his "maddened eyes" were.

As he rode across the pages of "Kit Carson, Jr., the Crack Shot of the West" over a hundred years ago, Wild Will stirred up the same dust as the thousands of characters who rode before and after him. That dust was carried on the winds of the imagination of everyone from freckle-faced farm kids to battle-scarred Civil War soldiers. Those winds would start to blow the minute the reader's eager hands turned the first page of the latest Beadle and Adams' dime novel.

The driving force behind those classic mixtures of history and fiction, was Erastus Beadle. Early in his youth, Erastus discovered the power of printing. While he was working as an apprentice to a miller in Chautauqua County, New York, he devised a method to mark the grain sacks, using letters he cut out of hardwood blocks. His system worked so well that he soon left the mill and set out on a route, stamping mill bags, wagons and anything else the local farmers wanted to personalize. That route would eventually lead him into Western history. When Beadle reached Cooperstown, he was hired by an established printer named Elihu Phinney. Phinney's publishing plant was the ideal training ground for young Beadle. He learned the skills of typesetting, stereotyping, printing and bookbinding - the building blocks that would one day form the foundation of a towering word monument to Western history.

Before that monument would be constructed, two other characters would enter the scene - his brother Irwin and his later partner, Robert Adams. As with many great endeavors, the stepping stones leading to the creation of the famous Beadle and Adams' Dime Novels were not exactly laid out in a straight line. Erastus left Cooperstown for Buffalo in December of 1847 and secured a job with that city's oldest newspaper, the Commercial Advertiser. Irwin joined Erastus in Buffalo a couple years later. Before long, they joined forces to form Beadle & Brother's Buffalo Stereotype Foundry.

With the addition of Erastus's brother Irwin, the mixture that would eventually produce the famous dime novels was beginning to simmer. Although the stereotype foundry was profitable, Erastus wasn't satisfied with simply making the type. He yearned to publish the stories themselves. Teaming up with an engraver named VanDuzee, he began publishing a children's magazine. With this step, the simmering mixture of history-in-the-making, was slowly heating to a boil. Despite his interest in the printing field, Erastus once left it behind on a whim. The news had reached him that there were fortunes simply waiting to be made in the Nebraska and Kansas land booms. The enthusiastic Erastus set out for Nebraska with his dreams in high gear. Before he left, he sold his share of the business, which now published two magazines, to his newly acquired partner - a curly-haired young Irishman named Robert Adams. Robert had started in Beadle's little company as an apprentice stereotyper.

Fate, however, was simply not ready to let Beadle out of the publishing picture. He hit Nebraska a little too late. Just prior to his arrival, the great land boom suddenly collapsed. The over-inflated land shares transformed overnight into virtually worthless pieces of paper. Fortunately for millions of future dime-novel readers, Beadle, like many other would-be-millionaires, turned around and headed home. Both of the Beadle brothers, along with Adams, later moved to New York City. Erastus and Robert Adams continued to publish magazines, while Irwin tried something different - a small paperbound collection of popular music ballads that he sold for a dime. His Dime Song Book sold so well that Irwin began publishing dime books on other topics like cooking, baseball and etiquette.

By the end of 1859, the "cast of characters" again switched around. Robert Adams let Erastus handle the magazine production, and united with Irwin to publish the new dime books. Finally, the bubbling mixture had come to a full boil. Irwin decided to try publishing a series of small novels in the same format as his successful informational books. Short novels had been sold for a dime before, but never published in an established series. In the summer of 1860, the firm published Beadle's Dime Novels no. 1, "Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter."

Ironically, although Irwin was the originator, his would not be the primary name linked with the dime novel. Erastus soon stopped publishing the magazines and joined his brother and Robert Adams in the dime novel endeavor. Within a couple years, he and Adams bought out Irwin's share. Irwin would remain in the publishing field, but never again find the success of his earlier dime novels. His brother and former partner would ride the wave of popularity into the history books. Popularity was definitely the key word. "Malaeska," a little 128-page booklet, about four by six inches, was billed as "a dollar book for a dime." Apparently the readers of America agreed it was a bargain because they gobbled up nearly a third of a million copies. Suddenly, the "dime novel" was off and running.

The novel that launched the series that would eventually include hundreds of gritty frontier and Wild West tales, was far from a rough-edged adventure story. "Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter" had already been serialized in The Ladies Companion - hardly the expected breeding ground for a dime novel adventure. Many of the later novels in the series would be written by rugged individuals who had actually lived in the mountainous frontier or on the western prairie. Malaeska's author however, the cultured Mrs. Ann Sophia Winterbotham Stephens, was widely known for her romance novels and poetry. Nevertheless, Ann Stephens was the one chosen to pave the way for all the rough-cut characters who would march across the pages of the dime novels during the decades to follow.

Much like her own background, Ann's writing style was quite sophisticated. Rather than the bear-killing, bad man-shooting tales of many later dime novels, she painted a poignant word-picture of a beautiful young Indian woman who was married to a white hunter named William Danforth. Early in the story, Danforth is fatally wounded during a fight with an Indian war party. Even in describing the battle, Stephens presents the scene with a literary flair. "Heart to heart, and muzzle to muzzle, the white man and the red man battled in horrid strife."

Malaeska, Danforth's Indian wife, discovers him barely alive in the woods after the combat. As he lies dying in her arms, Danforth utters a last request. "To meet me in another world, Malaeska, you must learn to love the white man's God, and wait patiently till He shall send you to me. Go not back to your tribe when I am dead." Driven by her beloved husband's dying wish, she tries desperately to fit in to the white man's society. Sadly, she is not only rejected there but is also shunned when she eventually attempts to return to her Indian ways. During her ordeal, her son, William Jr., is raised by a white family. Unaware of his relationship to Malaeska, he thinks she is merely his nursemaid.

As the story nears its end, the two reunite near a river and Malaeska finally breaks the news to William that she is indeed his mother. Filled with bitter prejudice, he doesn't exactly welcome the information. "Woman, are you mad?" he cries out. "Dare you assert this to me?" "Great God," he shrieks, "I, an Indian? a half-blood? the grandson of my father's murderer?" Malaeska desperately wishes she had never told him, but is painfully aware she can not retrieve her words. As she sadly relates his heritage to him, her tormented son finally begins to believe her. Then he tells Malaeska that he has already proposed marriage to a white woman. Now, having learned he is half Indian, he feels he can't marry her. "I should have known this," William laments, "when I offered my hand to that lovely girl...Father of heaven, my heart will break - I am going mad!"

As the realization burns into William's tormented mind, he begs Malaeska to tell him her words were not the truth. "Oh, if you have mercy, contradict the wretched falsehood!" he pleads. But Malaeska's solemn agony convinces him the revelation was not false. As the waves of hatred and despair begin to subside, they are replaced by the realization that his mother spent her life in stoic resignation, never able to claim her true relationship to her beloved son. "I remember you were always meek and forgiving," he whispers, "you forgive me now, my poor mother?"

Through flowing tears, Malaeska sees William suddenly take on a child-like gentleness. "There is one who will feel this more deeply than either of us," he tells her, referring to his fiancée. "You will comfort her Mala...mother, will you not?" Her heart melts with the word "mother," but a cold shudder runs through her body as she surveys William's unnaturally calm demeanor.

"My son, why do you stand thus?" she asks. "Why gaze so fearfully upon the water?"

Then, in an instant, Malaeska's worst fear is realized. William draws her to him, gently kisses her forehead then turns and plunges into the rushing water below. Malaeska tries desperately but unsuccessfully to save him. As the heart-wrenching tale reaches its end, we find poor Sarah Jones, William's fiancée, sadly walking toward her lost lover's grave. In the filtered early morning light, she slowly discerns a still human form stretched out over the newly made grave. Drawing nearer, she discovers it is Malaeska, finally peaceful after literally grieving herself to death. Suddenly, Sarah understands the reason for her beloved's suicide.

In the final scene, many years later, Sarah painfully watches from the distance as William's old house is torn down. When the last wall falls, she turns and solemnly walks away. Symbolically, Sarah finally leaves the painful past to live the remainder of her life "without a murmur against the Providence that had made it so lonely."

In the summer of 1860, stacks of "Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter" were delivered to newsstands and dry goods stores. Thousands were loaded aboard trains for the magazine-and-candy sellers or "butchers" to peddle. When the new dime novels were quickly replaced by piles of dimes and urgent requests for more, the message was clear - dime novel # 1 would definitely be followed by further issues. The search was on for more writers. One after another, the succeeding issues reinforced the success of the new venture. People just couldn't seem to buy them fast enough. The first dime novel to feature a Wild West background - number 8 - particularly hit pay dirt. Edward Ellis's "Seth Jones, or The Captives of the Frontier" was published in the fall of 1860. The use of this kind of double-title was a hallmark of the early dime novels.

"Seth Jones" was preceded by a clever advertising campaign. Newspaper ads and posters across the country posed the question, "Who is Seth Jones?" A few days later, the novel was released to satisfy the public's curiosity. Apparently that curiosity had been intense, because "Seth Jones" sold over half a million copies. As Beadle and Adams cast their net to collect writers throughout the years, they often dragged in some pretty fascinating personalities. In addition to professional writers and poets, they pulled in many of the actual characters who had made the Wild West "wild." Buffalo Bill Cody - with the help of a ghost writer - added his tales to the mix. His stories, like "Deadly-Eye and The Prairie Rover," "The Dread Shot Four" and "My Pards of the Plains" gave plenty of day-dream fodder to bored farm boys longing for action-filled lives on the plains.

Since the stories were often written by those who had actually lived the life they wrote about, they were sometimes quite realistic. Often, they painted a more accurate picture of everyday life on the frontier or the plains than the history textbooks of the Eastern scholars. It was, however, common knowledge that the hair-raising tales could often stretch the outer boundaries of fiction. Kit Carson, for instance, in his later years was once shown an illustration of a Beadle and Adams dime novel written about his exploits. He donned his spectacles and surveyed the picture. The illustration depicted him clasping a fainting maiden in one hand while he slayed seven bloodthirsty Indians with the other. "That there may have happened," he quipped, "but I ain't got no recollection of it."

Not only did Buffalo Bill and Kit Carson stride across the pages of the dime novels, but so did many of Beadle's ancestors. The exploits of Erastus and Irwin's grandfather Benjamin, a Revolutionary War veteran, were thoroughly described, and of course - thoroughly embellished. In addition, several of Benjamin's children were transformed into dime novel heroes. There were plenty to choose from since Benjamin's three marriages produced twenty-three offspring. The roster of Beadle and Adams' heroes is packed full of colorful characters. As the decades rolled by, the various styles of Beadle and Adams' dime novels introduced the country to such luminaries as Billy Bowlegs, Mohawk Nat, Dick Darling, Big Foot Wallace and a nearly endless cast of one-of-a-kind characters.

One of most durable of these was "Deadwood Dick." Dick was the subject of a series of thirty-three novels. Apparently convinced that the reading public was tired of Dick's exploits, the author, Edward L. Wheeler, let him die in the thirty-third issue. Dick's popularity, however, didn't perish along with him. In response to complaints by fans, Beadle and Adams simply "resurrected" the character in the form of Deadwood Dick Jr., who ran for another ninety-seven issues.

Along his busy path, Deadwood Dick not only found western adventure, but unlike most cowboy heroes, he finally "got the girl." In "Deadwood Dick's Doom; or, Calamity Jane's Last Adventure," he ended his adventure by marrying Calamity Jane. As the two rode off into the sunset, Edward Wheeler spoke for his prospective reading audience. "Dick and the poor, sore-hearted but brave and true Calamity were married," Wheeler informed us, "and the author joins in the wishes of his readers that they may 'live long and prosper'..."

The heroes weren't the only things repeated throughout the years. In order to cut down on expenses, the cover illustrations sometimes served double-duty as well. Since there were hundreds of issues, the readers likely didn't recognize the same cover-picture with a little "touching up." For example, the illustration of Buffalo Bill in Dime Library # 1000, was originally that of a bearded stage driver in Dime Library # 361. To transform the stage driver's face into Buffalo Bill's, he was simply given a partial "shave."

Despite an occasional cost-cutting trick, the dime novels continued to give their readers a full measure of entertainment. From the Civil War soldiers who traded them back and forth until they disintegrated, to the hundreds of thousands of "armchair pioneers and cowboys," the readers remained avid disciples of their favorite dime novels. Those disciples came in varying degrees of loyalty. Likely none, however, carried their devotion to a loftier level than Senator Zachariah Chandler. He once expressed it publicly, regarding the 1862 Beadle and Adams' dime novel, "Oonomoo, the Huron" by Edward Ellis. "The man who does not enjoy 'Oonomoo, the Huron,' " Chandler stated flatly, "has no right to live."

# THE QUEEN OF THE COMSTOCK

Julia Bulette, the Beloved Soiled Dove of Virginia City,

is Brutally Murdered and Universally Mourned

The Virginia City miners not only had taken real soap-and-water baths and picked out their best shirts for the big event but also had cleaned and dressed up their Nevada town. As the red, white and blue bunting fluttered in the July wind and the spirited brass band warmed up, everyone was more than ready to celebrate Independence Day.

At the center of the festivities was a parade, and one of the most celebrated components of that parade was the freshly washed fire truck of Engine Company No. 1. Not only did the vehicle sparkle and shine but so too did the woman riding atop it - Miss Julia Bulette, one of the booming silver-mining town's most treasured citizens. The firemen had made the slim, dark-eyed beauty an honorary member of their company as well as the queen of the July Fourth parade. And when the horse-pulled fire truck rolled down the street, Julia sat pretty and proud, wearing a fireman's hat and embracing a brass fire trumpet filled with fresh-cut roses. The firemen marching behind her were equally proud.

That particular Independence Day parade might have occurred as early as 1861, though accounts vary as to the year, as well as to exactly when Julia Bulette first arrived in Virginia City. Everyone agrees, however, on the date of a much sadder occurrence in town - Julia's demise. In the early morning of January 19, 1867, somebody beat her and smothered her in bed and then made off with most of her furs, jewelry and fine clothes.

The news of Julia Bulette's death spread like a raging prairie fire after her body was discovered later that morning. Many of the hardened miners of Virginia City mourned her with free-flowing tears. Never again would they see their beloved "Queen of the Comstock" sitting high atop Engine Company No. 1's truck. The women in the largely male community also mourned her, or at the very least were disturbed by the brutality of her death. Julia, after all, was no valued schoolmarm or esteemed minister's wife; she was a prostitute by trade, and by all accounts, quite a popular one.

The Comstock Lode silver strike in 1859 gave birth to Virginia City and shortly after that, Julia Bulette drifted in from the west coast. Unlike most of the other soiled doves who fluttered into that rowdy place, Julia didn't have a hard-crust personality. She was warm, compassionate and even relatively well read and sophisticated. As she settled into Virginia City life, even the proper ladies of the town came to respect her kind-hearted manner and generosity to worthy causes.

First among those causes was the town's fire department. Julia donated freely to help the struggling department maintain state-of-the-art equipment. Her assistance apparently didn't stop with donations. At times she would work the brakes of the handcart engines as the firemen battled the flames. Since Virginia City was primarily made up of wooden buildings perched on a wind-swept mountainside, soaring sparks from wood-burning stoves kept the fire department - and Miss Julia - quite busy.

Virginia City was laid out in distinct sections. "A" and "B" streets were reserved for rich folks like the silver kings, bankers and mining engineers. "C" street housed the stores, gambling halls, saloons and eateries. And if a fellow had finished his meal and polished it off with an evening of drinking and gambling, he could always head down the backstairs to the less-respected "D" street, where the soiled doves nested.

In a wood-frame house at Number 4 north D Street, Julia Bulette plied her trade. Nestled in among the mahogany furniture, Brussels carpets and lace curtains, a customer could partake in his favorite alcoholic beverage as he enjoyed the company of his accommodating hostess. He would be her sole customer for the night and was expected to dig a little deeper into his pocket than with some of her other less-exclusive neighbors. But nobody seemed to mind - the "Queen of the Comstock" was worth it.

On the evening of July 19, 1867, Julia dressed to take in a performance at Piper's Opera House. Apparently her local respectability even had some limits. According to reports, she was told that although she had always been allowed to sit in the main section of the theater, a town ordinance had changed. She must now be seated in a special viewing box reserved for the red-light ladies of the town. The curtains of that section were kept tightly closed to keep them out of the view of the "proper ladies" of the town. When Julia refused, she was promptly escorted outside.

Shaking off her indignation, Julia decided to visit her neighbor and friend Gertrude Holmes for an evening meal and some pleasant conversation. Leaving Gertrude's company a little after 11 o'clock that evening, Julia told her she was going to meet a miner friend at her house. Those would be the last words her friends would ever hear from her.

At about 11:30 the next morning, Gertrude stopped by with breakfast for the two of them. To her horror, she discovered Julia had been brutally beaten and strangled. In addition, the killer seemed to have stolen many of her belongings. Soon Gertrude would be joined in her grief by most of Virginia City's citizenry. The mines, mills and even the saloons closed out of respect.

The next day, a cold snowy Monday, a crowd turned out for her funeral in the firehouse. Although the religious leaders held firm with a town regulation that no prostitute should be buried in their cemetery, her admirers found a peaceful spot on a nearby hill overlooking the town. They arranged for a formal Catholic funeral and placed Julia in a silver-handled casket carried by a black-plumed, glass-walled hearse. Some sixty firemen led the procession to her grave, followed by the Nevada Militia band. To the accompaniment of the band's funeral dirges, sixteen carriages, packed with mourners, rolled behind the hearse. Trailing after them, thousands of dejected miners and storekeepers trudged through the gusty snow to Julia's final resting place.

After several men solemnly put in place a wooden plank bearing the painted name "Julia," the procession shuffled back down the hill. The men of Engine Company No. 1 filled the frigid air with mournful song as they broke into a heart-rending version of "The Girl I Left Behind." The town they returned to was draped in black for the first time since President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Even the bars remained closed during the sorrowful day.

Authorities had no leads in the Bulette murder case for nearly three months. Then one of Julia's old friends, Martha Camp, reported to the police that she had been surprised in her sleep by a man with a weapon in his hand. When she screamed, the intruder had run from her room, but not before she saw his face. The police promptly arrested the man she saw - a French baker named John Millian.

While the suspect was in jail, a resident of nearby Gold Hill reported that she had recently purchased a dress from Millian that he told her he was selling for a widow whose husband had died in a mining accident. When the police showed the dress to Sam Rosener, a local dry goods merchant, he recognized it as one he had sold to the late Julia Bulette. The authorities then discovered a trunk that Millian had stored at the bakery. When they popped the lid open, they saw most of the rest of the Julia's belongings. That, of course, would soon signal the end of Millian at the end of a rope - as the saddened Virginia City citizens revenged their beloved Queen of the Comstock.

# "THESE UNKNOWN WILDS"

The Tale of William Marshall Anderson's 1834 Trek Outside the

United States...Past the Western Border of Missouri

The sun-bleached human skull slowly transformed into a living, breathing companion for Kentucky-born adventurer, William Marshall Anderson. The other members of his westbound group had simply passed it by. But the sensitive young Anderson picked it up and carried it with him for miles. "I could not help feeling saddened at the sight," he reflected in his journal. "I built it up as a living being...invested with flesh, vivified with spirit."

Anderson and his newfound "friend" rode steadily alongside the Platte River. As they did, an eerie communication transpired. "It told me," Anderson recalled, "that impelled by the love of adventure, he had, years gone by, bade adieu to his kin and country, and sought to behold the wonders of these unknown wilds." Anderson's youthful imagination continued in full-swing as he forged ahead. He decided that his body-less companion, like himself, had once witnessed "the glorious uprising and down-going of the sun in these plains, animated by immense herds of deer and buffalo..." Surrounded by this beauty, he surmised, the skull's original owner must have "fallen the victim of an unseen foe."

Eventually young Anderson abandoned his traveling companion. "Adieu, kind friend," he mentally addressed the skull. "I have no more time to moralize. The sun is hot, and I must on and take my chances." Those chances would lead him on a journey filled with visions, delights and fears he had previously only heard about. They would build the future-memories he would record in his "campfire notes" at the end of each day's journey and the journal he would later create from those notes. His campfire notes began in mid-March of 1834, several weeks before he came upon the skull. He left his Louisville, Kentucky home with the intent of joining the newly formed military group, the U. S. Dragoons, as they escorted traders to Santa Fe. Instead, on the advice of a relative, he accepted an invitation from the widely respected guide, William Sublette, to sign up with his Rocky Mountain expedition.

Pausing in Lexington to prepare for the journey, Sublette's group of thirty-seven men and ninety-five horses and mules was ready to pull out on April 30th. In that evening's entry, Anderson philosophized. "We are finally up and off for the West, the Far West." "I had always believed I had been born in the West," he mused, "but no, here we go in search of it, farther on, farther on." "I am now outside of the U.S. for the first time," Anderson recorded five days later. The party had already crossed the existing national border. That night they camped on the waters of a stream that emptied into the Kansas or Kaw River. The next evening marked Anderson's first surprise encounter with local wildlife - a wolf. The animal was just as startled as he was and tucked his tail between his legs and bolted off. "Had I been able," Anderson wrote, "I have no doubt I should have done the same thing, tail and all."

Despite a little wolf-scare, he enjoyed the area's other inhabitants - the Kansas Indians, or "Kawsies" as they called themselves. Anderson and William Sublette visited the Indians' nearby lodge. Although his notes described them as "dirty and lousy" in appearance, Anderson added they were kind and hospitable. He also liked the landscape. "I have thought that if our country should purchase it of the Indians, what a glorious state it would make." In mid-May, William Anderson began to witness, firsthand, the roaming wildlife of the prairie. He was struck by the awkward gait of the elk. "I can liken it to nothing but a lame shuffle, but they can get over the ground, nevertheless." The antelope, he noted, displayed anything but a lame shuffle. "They are the fleetest of the fleet," he observed.

At breakfast on May 16th, three Pawnee Indians visited the group, informing them that buffalo herds were two days further on. Later that morning, Anderson and the others sighted nearly a hundred Pawnee slowly approaching in full battle dress, armed with guns, spears and bows. "The uncertainty of their intentions," Anderson casually noted in that evening's entry, "produced an excitement by no means delightful." The Pawnees' intentions, fortunately, were simply to receive presents from Sublette's company. Four representatives approached for their expected gifts. Sublette stacked together a small pile of tobacco, paint, beads, gunpowder and other standard offerings. After nodding approval for the amount, the four Pawnees then split into two pairs and indicated they were from two separate villages. Sublette grudgingly duplicated the pile, muttering, "Damn the rascals."

As the group rode northwest into present-day Nebraska, they soon reached the Platte River. The Platte, Anderson complained, was a deceiving river. "In appearance, it is like the Mississippi, broad, boisterous and deep." But the Platte, in reality, was shallow and barely able to float a canoe. "This fussy, foaming, seething thing," Anderson continued, "is like some big bragging men I have seen, all blubber and belly."

It was on the next day that Anderson found the skull he carried as his temporary companion. Later that day, his party happened on another disturbing find - a large circle of blood-stained sticks, each topped with a lock of human hair. A local Indian explained through an interpreter, that there had recently been a battle in the area. The gruesome circle was the scene of a "scalp dance" celebrating the warriors' victories. Throughout the next few days, Anderson witnessed magnificent displays of free-roaming wildlife. A herd of buffalo spread out over ten or twelve miles. A few days later, he saw bands of wild horses "fenced in by the horizon only, and with no rider but the wind." Stirred by these vivid images, which he had previously witnessed only in his imagination, he marveled that now "I have them before me, hide and hair, flesh and bones."

One form of "wildlife" he could have done without, was the tiny Buffalo gnat. The swarming clouds of gnats which accompanied the roaming animals, descended on Anderson and the others with a relentless vigor. They left behind burning and blistered skin. "Some of our men," he recorded, "have become almost blind from their poisonous bites." To counteract the harassment of the gnats, the prairie offered fascinating vistas. Near the end of May, the party approached a landmark which would later inherit the name of "Courthouse Rock." The stark hill, in present-day western Nebraska, looked to Anderson, more like a castle than a courthouse.

As Sublette's group rode further west, they sighted "The Chimney" which was already a well-known landmark. The towering structure would later gain the name of "Chimney Rock." It impressed Anderson, but he preferred its castle-shaped neighbor. "It would seem," he had imagined as he approached it," as if some wealthy Scotch lord had fixed his aristocratic stronghold in the wilds of the new world."

Approaching the Black Hills, they encountered a violent storm that delayed their progress. The raging winds coated their faces with dust-masks during the day and blew down their tents at night. As the storm's fury continued, the exhausted group camped just below Scott's Bluff. Anderson commented on the origin of the landmark's name. "The man after whom this bluff was called," he explained, "was an old mountaineer who died here from sickness and starvation."

That mountaineer, Hiram Scott, had piloted a supply caravan sent out by William Ashley in 1827. According to legend, Scott had become delirious in the Black Hills. Two companions remained with him as long as possible but had to leave to catch up with the departing caravan. Hiram Scott was left behind by the caravan's greedy and impatient leader, James Bruffee. Scott wandered the hills, finally dying near the lofty bluff which would become his eternal monument.

After the storm subsided, Anderson shot his first buffalo...a task he had attempted previously without success. Basking in his glory, he placed his foot on his elusive trophy and looked around for witnesses to his crowning achievement. There was no one in sight - anywhere. Celebrating anyway, he wrote that he climbed on the beast and "danced upon his body, and made a fool of myself to my heart's content..."

On the last day of May, several members of the party laid the foundation for a fort at Laramee's Fork in present-day eastern Wyoming. A crew of men stayed behind to finish the project. Anderson and Sublette had become good friends during the adventure and Sublette decided that upon its completion, the structure would be christened Fort Anderson. Following a friendly dispute in which each said it should be named after the other, they decided that since they had the same first name, it would be called Fort William.

On June the first, Anderson declared, "I have at last reached the Black Hills. From the top of the highest eminence is distinctly visible the Rocky Mountains." The view deeply moved him. "Nothing could more nearly resemble the glories of sun-set clouds," he enthused, "than the metallic splendor of the mountains." He described the snow-capped peaks and liquid silver streaks of sunlight, then decided "'tis a scene neither for the pencil, pen or chisel, but far beyond the power of all to describe."

Before long, however, less enjoyable scenes intruded on Anderson's senses - Indian forts with narrow openings for surprise arrow attacks. As the group moved further west, they had entered Blackfoot territory. Unlike the friendly Kansas tribe or shrewd-bargaining Pawnee, the Blackfeet were known to be extremely dangerous. "The Indians are expected to pounce upon us every day and every minute," Anderson stressed. "If they are to come, I would that they come quickly. I dislike of all things, suspense."

Various group members scanned the horizon during the day and stood watch at night. "It would have been difficult to keep a better watch than I did last night," he wrote on the fifth of June. "No wolf trotted in the moonlight; no elk whistled on the hill that I did not see and hear." He said the group's motto was "watch and pray." "There is a great deal of the first done, I know," he wrote "and very little of the latter, I suspect."

There had apparently been an adequate amount of both. The feared attack never materialized. One less-perilous inconvenience did arise however - bitter cold mountain mornings. "These June mornings are so cold," Anderson wrote, "that I am compelled to ride, first upon one hand and then the other, to keep them warm." The party left the North Platte River to follow one of its tributaries, the Sweetwater River. Nearly halfway across present-day Wyoming, they came upon one of the West's most famous landmarks, " Independence Rock." In Anderson's time, however, the huge egg-shaped mass of granite was known as "The Rock Independence." The structure obtained its name, he explained, because "some years ago, a party of buffalo killers and beaver skinners celebrated here our national jubilee on the Fourth of July."

During the 1830's the huge edifice was used, as Anderson put it, as a kind of "trapper's post office." Passing mountaineers would stop and look for information of interest to them. He said the messages, written with gun powder and buffalo grease, "were read and reread with as much eagerness as if they were letters in detail from long-absent friends." A few days later, Sublette's group ran across fresh horse tracks. As they followed them, one of the party noticed a letter stuck on a twig. Sublette read it and announced it was from Louis Vasquez, a popular mountaineer who had nearly been given up for lost. A shout of joy arose and one member said, "Thank God he lives and I shall hear his merry laugh again."

Ironically, on that same evening two members of the group failed to return from a hunt and were feared lost. "I have ascended all the highest hills and eminences around, to look for them," Anderson noted. "Our guns have all been discharged, but no response, no sign." They were still in potentially hazardous Indian territory and upon retiring, Anderson wrote, "We laid down late at night, almost in despair, thinking of Blackfeet and bloodshed." Fortunately, the "bloodshed," like the previously dreaded Indian attack, didn't materialize. They found the two missing hunters the next morning, peacefully waiting twelve miles down the path. That evening the group's shattered nerves were calmed by the experience of passing, as Anderson described it, "from the Eastern to Western America." They stood near the continental divide, watching the waters flow opposite directions into "the two rival oceans of this continent."

Anderson's peace was short-lived. Early the next morning he was jerked awake by gunfire punctuated with raucous yells. He wrote that several men leapt for their guns and "awaited in breathless expectations the charge of a fearful foe." Then, as suddenly as the shots took the place of the silence, the gunfire was replaced by laughter and shouts of "Fourth of July, Fourth of July." Later, in mid-July, a large party of Snake Indians joined the group for an evening visit. Unlike the unkempt Kansas tribe, the members of the Snake band were, according to Anderson, "as graceful and dignified as a Roman Senator." "The dirtiest hunter, in his lousy robe," he asserted, "will display finer and nobler attitudes than the most accomplished actor."

By the end of July, the party had completed its westward journey. "We are now moving east," Anderson wrote. "Eastward let us go!" A group of about sixty was planning to leave in a few days, transporting furs from the American Fur Company to St. Louis. "I may go too," Anderson declared. "It remains to be seen - Ah capricious youth!" The pull of his homeland was apparently stronger than the "capriciousness" of his youthful spirit. He decided to join the East-bound party. "I think I shall look toward the sunrise," he wrote, "and turn not back 'till I see Kentucky."

The returning party made good time, often covering thirty to thirty-five miles a day. As they retraced much of the westward route, they once again avoided confrontations with the Blackfoot tribe. By mid-September they had reached the banks of the Missouri River. "To see men with boots and shoes on, and to dine at a table with knives and forks," Anderson wrote, "is a right pleasant thing." Watching the other diners may have been a pleasant experience for Anderson, but the feeling apparently wasn't always mutual. Later, following a canoe ride back to Lexington, Anderson's group sat down to eat at a tavern amidst, as he put it, "village philosophers, pedantic doctors and sage-looking lawyers." "Our dirty coats and greasy breeches," he noted, "seemed to offend their nice eyes and delicate noses - God help them!"

A few days later, on September 29th, Anderson arrived back in St. Louis. "I shall not stay to display my greasy carcass here," he decided. "Unwashed, uncombed I start for home..."

"Greasy carcass" or not, William Marshall Anderson could rest proudly. Using only his pen and pad, he had stopped time. He had cut away and saved forever, a rough-edged slice of the American frontier before highways, buildings and billboards sprawled across "these unknown wilds."

#  THE BORDERS OF CIVILIZATION

The Travels of Origen Thompson as He Trades

the Familiar Comforts of Home and Family for the

Allurements and Adventures of the Untamed West

"To the west, following the course of the trail, there was no object to obstruct the vision," wrote young Origen Thompson. He said that as far as his view extended, "wagon followed wagon until the foremost ones dwindled into insignificance." As his senses drank in the stirring frontier panorama, Origen perched, barefoot, on top of a ridge near the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains. "I was standing on the dividing ridge separating the east from the west," he recorded in his evening notes. "On the one side was home with all its endearments, on the other was hope with all its allurements..." Like so many other young adventurers in the mid-eighteen hundreds, Origen was pulled by both forces. "But hope," he asserted, "bade me view the scene on my left, showed me there a new home, new duties, new pleasures..." Plucking a flower that grew on the summit, Origen descended to his wagon train and once more turned his gaze resolutely toward the West.

The young Indiana adventurer had begun the voyage that led him to that summit, several months earlier, in the early spring of 1852. "From my boyhood," Origen later reflected, "I have had a preference for Oregon." Along with his sister, Camilla, and her husband, Zelik Donnell, Origen made plans to join a wagon train headed across the "Great American Desert" to Oregon. Their expedition numbered about a hundred, and included potential settlers from Indiana, Ohio and Illinois. Origen and Camilla's father traveled with them for the first day of the journey, then wished them well and returned home. "Although courage and enthusiasm was kept up," Camilla reflected, "deep down in our hearts was a load of sadness."

The sadness was offset by the lure of the Donation Land Claim Act that disbursed unoccupied western land to settlers. A man and his wife could obtain six hundred and forty acres, and a single man or an unmarried woman could have three hundred and twenty. This inducement, as Camilla put it, "caused many more home and gold seekers in the older states to turn their thoughts and inquiries toward the land of the setting sun." The wagon train Origen, Camilla and her husband Zelik would join was to depart from St. Joseph, Missouri and trek across the already-established Oregon Trail. As they worked their way from Indiana toward St. Joseph, they boarded a new boat, the Kate Sweeney, for her maiden voyage on the Missouri River.

During a stop at Boonville, Missouri, Origen said that a great many citizens visited the boat. "What most attracted my attention," he wrote, "was a company of very pretty girls." He said that they nearly induced him to stop at Boonville, then added, "But pshaw! could women have prevented me from going to Oregon, 1 would never have left Greensburg." Another feature on the Boonville stop was an Indian chief who dressed in the full costume and ornaments of his tribe. For a small fee, he was prompted to come aboard the boat and shake hands with the passengers. As the Kate Sweeney neared St. Joseph, however, they were approaching Indians who were not always so friendly. On Friday, March 26th, Origen wrote, "In the evening we passed the mouth of the Kansas and caught the first glimpse of the Indian Territory, and are now running on the borders of civilization."

Once they reached St. Joseph, they waited about a month for all the expedition members to assemble and prepare for the journey. During the interim, Origen and a friend, Southerland McCoy, decided they would try their hand at duck hunting. They hired a "waterman" to take them out in his boat. Origen said the waterman stopped off at his house and "took a supply of the 'oh-be-joyful' and was soon about 'three sheets to the wind.'" On their return from a largely unsuccessful hunting and fishing trip, the drunken guide took a pot shot at some ducks floating on the water. Using a heavy fowling piece, he shot broadside at the ducks, missing them but nearly tipping over the little boat. "We got home in the evening, tired and hungry," Origen reported, "completely cured of any propensity for hunting and fishing in those waters."

Finally, on Wednesday, April 28, 1852, everyone was packed and ready for the expedition. After an easy day's travel, the wagon train pulled into a lush grove with a flowing stream. As instructed, Origen and his group tied their cattle up. But he said they decided to let a "gentle yoke" roam free and nibble the grass overnight. As fate would have it, their inevitable troubles of the trail began early. The next morning they discovered that the "gentle yoke" had gently wandered away. For the next few days, Origen, Zelic and their friend, Southerland, took turns veering off the trail to look for them. After several days of unsuccessful searching, they offered one of the other group members twenty-five dollars if he could find the cattle and meet them further along the trail. Three days later, he caught up with them, accompanied by "Marsh and Duke," the missing cattle.

During one of his cattle-hunts, Origen had encountered an astronomical lecturer who carried his apparatus on a packhorse. As the lecturer plodded along, the horse he was riding suddenly became, as Origen put it, "quite frolicsome." That horse's antics caused the nearby pack horse to break away and gallop off, kicking his bundles loose along the way. "The last I saw of them," Origen wrote, "he was chasing his horses back and forth across the prairie."

By 1852, a few of the previous hardships along the Oregon Trail had been alleviated. Enterprising ferrymen now conveyed the settlers across some of the more formidable rivers. And several small trading posts had been established along the way. The fear of Indian attack, though, remained strong. As the wagon train trudged through present-day Nebraska, those on night watch were particularly alert. "I came on second watch," Origen noted on May 11th. "This was hardly arranged when we heard a loud hallooing around the camp." Fearful that an Indian attack was imminent, a couple of men stealthily departed camp to catch a glimpse of the enemy. Within a few minutes, they returned with the "Indians" - a couple of boys from the camp who had wandered off into the night and gotten lost.

Not every expedition that spring avoided the Indian hazard. "We hear a report today of a white man having been killed by Indians while hunting..." Origen noted. Later that day, they came upon an Indian lying in the bushes, shot through the head. "This caused no little uneasiness in camp," he asserted, "as many expected an attack at night, certain." The following day, a number of Indians showed up. "The fears of the camp were excited," Origen wrote, "as they would doubtless have discovered their dead comrade and the odium of his death fall upon us." Fortunately, they had not yet found his body. "They were only begging," Origen noted, "and rode off without making any discovery."

Although the frightened group managed to escape the wrath of Indians, they were not so fortunate with U. S. soldiers. Discovering a large pile of wood outside a small fort along the way, several of the men began to help themselves. "And thinking that as it belonged to Uncle Sam," Origen explained, "of course, any person might use it." The quartermaster who saw them, however, was of a different mind. He ordered them to bring back every piece, under penalty of the guard house. "As their appearance trotting it back can easily be imagined," Origen added, "I will not attempt to describe it."

Tragedy stuck the group a couple days later. Three buffalo appeared one evening and several young men hopped on their horses to hunt them. Later that night, they returned, tired, hungry and without buffalo meat. The next day Origen wrote that Swain, one of the hunters, "was taken violently sick today with diarrhea, and by three o'clock was a corpse." Young Swain had consumed a large amount of apparently contaminated water during the hunting expedition. "We buried him about dark by the roadside," Origen noted, "as he had a brother behind in Perry's train, who we wished to see it."

By early June, the group began to pass the already-famous landmarks of the trail. Court House Rock, Origen stated, reminded him more of Noah's Ark than a court house. Chimney Rock, he said, had the appearance of a circus pavilion "I inscribed my name on the Chimney about twenty feet high. Another person cut his name on a buffalo head, and then climbed as high as he could and stuck the head in a hole he cut for it."

As their wagon train slogged along the trail toward the Black Hills, they passed a picturesque canyon. Several girls and their male companions wandered into the canyon for a relaxed stroll. They fell behind the group, so a few men leading spare horses, headed back for them. Origen said the "termagants of the company" expressed dismay that the young ladies and gentlemen "should go in such places together without their pa's and ma's attending them."

Further along the trail, Origen, like the multitude of adventurers before and after him, wrote his name on Independence Rock. "It is pretty well covered with inscriptions," he said, "some in paint, others tar and others cut in solid rock. I noticed some as far back as '44." His favorite was a poem penciled on a small piece of paper and stuck into a crevice: "He is a poor devil, whose name, for want of tar, is lost to fame."

Stopping at another landmark, Devil's Gate, Origen was not satisfied with simply peering up at it. "It seemed that nothing but a fly could climb such a rock," he wrote, "but by dint of hard exertion I gained the top." As he usually did, he took off his shoes to get a better foothold. "I then walked to the summit and had the satisfaction of laying down on the overhanging rock and gazing on the rushing waters far beneath me."

A week later, on July 3rd, 1852, he once again took off his shoes for a climb. This time it was the hill near the South Pass where he stood to observe the stirring scene and reflect on the "endearments of home" and the "allurements of hope." Like the hundreds of thousands of others who carved out our early country, he chose hope. After all, he was already well into his dream, and far beyond "the borders of civilization."

#  A St. LOUIS SECRET

"Mountain Charley" Tracks Down a Murderer

and Eventually Reveals a Fascinating Secret

"My fingers immediately sought and closed about the butt of my revolver," Charley wrote, "and my thumb spasmodically forced the hammer upwards." The object of this deadly preparation was a traveling gambler named Jamieson. Fortunately for him, Charley decided that shooting an unsuspecting man at a poker table would be viewed as a cowardly act. This near-confrontation, however, would definitely not be the end of the matter. Charley had been waiting to meet the murderer for over four years.

A bullet seemed like a just way to deal with Jamieson. After all, in 1854, not every dispute was resolved by peaceful legal negotiations. And the villain had already escaped his rightful punishment through a technicality in his trial. Everyone connected with the event knew Charley's spouse was murdered by Jamieson, nearly five years ago, right here in St. Louis.

Eventually the opportunity to dispense his punishment emerged. At a little after midnight, Jamieson left his gambling friends and began walking home. Charley confronted him and reminded him of his murderous deed, then drew a gun with the intention of sending "his black soul to the devil who gave it!" Jamieson sprang backwards with the shot and fired back. Neither bullet hit its mark. Jamieson's second shot ripped through Charley's thigh. Charley returned fire, striking Jamieson's left arm. Finally the altercation ceased. Jamieson clutched his injured arm and lurched into the darkness.

"I had fallen," Charley wrote, "and dragged myself a short distance down an alley..." Within minutes, Charley lost consciousness. The next morning, an elderly lady named Mrs. Anderson, discovered the badly wounded gunshot victim near her house and summoned a doctor. Despite severe pain, Charley asked to talk to her before being treated by the doctor.

As Mrs. Anderson leaned closer, she heard a startling secret. "Charley," the young man who lay bleeding before her, was not exactly what the townsfolk thought he was. He was in fact, not even a he. The rough and tumble youngster who always dressed in boy's clothing and hung around with other men, was actually a young woman. The murder Charley was intent on avenging, was that of a young Mississippi riverboat pilot - her slain husband.

The events that led to this daring deception transpired several years before. Although she didn't provide her first or maiden name, even in her autobiography, a contemporary newspaper correspondent and other resources identified her as Elsa Jane Forest. Much like her later life, Elsa's early years were fraught with emotional turmoil. While very young, she lived with her serious-minded uncle in Baton Rouge and received occasional tearful visits from her Aunt. Much later in life, she discovered that her "aunt and uncle" were actually her mother and father. As with her own name, Elsa never divulged theirs in her writing. She said that when they were younger, they had pledged to marry upon his return from a business trip in Kentucky. But as weeks passed with no letters, his waiting fiancée concluded she had been abandoned.

Weakened from sorrow and anger, she accepted the marriage proposal of a nearby plantation overseer. She soon realized she had consigned herself to a life filled with drunken outbursts from her new husband. Fate then played another painful card. Her fiancé returned and swore he had indeed been writing letters during his absence. Years later, she would discover that her own sister had actually discarded them out of jealousy.

Just when the situation seemed at its lowest, she also realized she was pregnant with her previous fiancé's baby. When that infant, Elsa, was born, her true parents decided to play the roles of uncle and aunt. At the age of five, Elsa was sent to a boarding school in New Orleans. Despite letters from her "aunt," and occasional visits from her "uncle," she was basically on her own. "Being cast into a group of strangers bred a strong independence. "I had obtained a strength of character, a firmness, and self-reliance," she reflected, "that amounted to almost masculine force."

That assertive personality would serve her well in her later deception. Another childhood episode would also assist her. An asthmatic condition she had developed at the school left her with a slight raspy hoarseness in her voice. Piece by piece, the stage was being set for Elsa's eventual transformation into "Charley."

That transformation was triggered by tragedy. During Elsa's school days, she matured rapidly. "Upon reaching the age of twelve," she noted, "I was as much a woman in form, stature and appearance as most women at sixteen." A young man by the name of Forest began to visit Elsa at the school and apparently agreed with that assessment. After a brief clandestine courtship, he proposed marriage. Knowing the school would not approve because of her age, she decided to elope. One morning, she noted, the boarders at the school "numbered one less."

Despite her young age, Mrs. Elsa Jane Forest thoroughly enjoyed her new life. Her husband was a pilot on a Mississippi river boat and they settled in St. Louis. He traveled much of the time but was loving and loyal. Within three years, their little world also included a son and a daughter. "Life flowed on," Elsa reflected, "in a quiet, uninterrupted beauty." That beauty, unfortunately, would soon be forever interrupted.

The disruption came in 1850, with a knock on her door. She wrote later that when she opened it, a stranger stood there "with a countenance so full of evil tidings, that a shadow fell instantly upon my heart." Her apprehension was soon confirmed. The man hesitantly informed Elsa that her husband "had some difficulty with his mate, a man named Jamieson, about some old grudge." "Jamieson," he continued solemnly, "shot him, wounding him badly."

Despite the horror of the news she had received, Elsa harbored a dark fear that the worse had not yet been told. Finally, she worked up the nerve to inquire. "Are you sure he is only hurt?" she probed. "Is he not...dead?"

After a desolate stillness, the stranger sadly confirmed her dreaded speculation. "He is!"

"Then followed," Elsa remembered, "a dream-like succession of days and nights." When the parade of sorrowful events had finally passed and the initial numbness began to subside, her deep grief was joined by another emotion - fear. She learned that after her husband's affairs had been settled, there was no money left. "I was completely a beggar," she asserted. "Even the house I lived in must be sacrificed - there remained to me absolutely nothing."

Somehow this real-world concern helped take Elsa's mind off the overwhelming loss she had suffered. Her emotions slowly transformed from grief to rage. She began to dwell on the cause of her misfortune - Jamieson. "Each privation that I endured," she declared, "served to make Jamieson more prominent as its author..." She wasn't yet sure how, but she resolved to "visit a terrible reparation" on him.

First, however, she had to focus on supporting herself and her children. Unfortunately, she had learned no trade that would help her. Also, in the mid-1800's, most men were not exactly bubbling with enthusiasm for the concept of working women. "I knew how great the prejudices to be overcome by any young woman who seeks to earn an honest livelihood by her exertions," she lamented.

Elsa considered every avenue. She then came to a firm decision - but one that she fully realized seemed quite improbable. She wrote that she resolved to dress in male attire and "seek for a living in this disguise among the avenues which are so religiously closed against my sex." She felt this would also help her carry out her plan of one day finding and shooting Jamieson.

Elsa told her radical scheme to a friend of her late husband. Such a plan, he warned her, would lead only to exposure and disgrace. He flatly refused to help her carry it out. But little by little, Elsa wore down his defenses. It was, she insisted, "the only resort from starvation or worse..."

Eventually her friend relented and bought her a suit of boy's clothes. Elsa placed her children with the Sisters of Charity, and assumed her clandestine role. "Although not tall," she observed, "my general appearance did not differ materially from that of any boy of fifteen or sixteen years..." With the addition of a close-cropped haircut, her bizarre scheme was underway.

At first, Elsa ventured out only in the evening. To her surprise, no one seemed to notice anything unusual. Day by day, she became more confident. By the end of three weeks, she wrote, she went "anywhere and everywhere without the slightest fear of suspicion or detection." Soon she gained enough confidence to begin searching for employment.

Her inquiries were turned down, one after another. Though disappointing, these rejections merely strengthened her will. Soon she found she could approach strangers with ease, making her role as a carefree teenage boy seem even more believable. Day by day she was masking the feminine features of her character. "I buried my sex in my heart," she wrote, "and roughened the surface so that the grave would not be discovered..."

Her newly developed assertiveness eventually paid off. Elsa found work as a cabin boy on a steamer named the Alex Scott which shuttled between St, Louis and New Orleans. She settled into her new life and visited her children each month. She would accomplish this by stopping by her "co-conspirator" friend's house, changing into her feminine attire and then going to the Sisters of Charity to see them. Leaving them to step back into her new world was excruciating for Elsa. "My children would haunt my dreams and play about me in my waking hours..." she revealed. She was convinced, however, that this was the only way to keep them and her from a life of destitution.

Elsa worked aboard the Alex Scott and two other ships for nearly four years. "It is needless for me to deny," she reflected, "that during this time I heard and saw much entirely unfit for the eyes and ears of a woman..." But whenever she felt like giving up her charade, she recalled her purpose in maintaining it. She had to pay a weekly fee for the education of her children in addition to supporting herself. She noted that each time she considered resuming her role as a woman, "I was invariably met with the thought - what then?"

"Besides," she admitted, "I began to rather like the freedom of my new character." Being able to go when and where she wanted had a certain appeal, as did wearing the more comfortable clothing of a man. She also enjoyed the ability to put away a little money. By the time she left the river life, she had saved over a thousand dollars. It seemed that her peculiar decision to transform into "Charley" was working well financially. The other aim of the transformation, to find and shoot Jamieson, had not yet transpired.

That opportunity would arise before the end of the next year. Elsa left the riverboats and found a position as a brakeman on the Illinois Central Railroad. Here, she ran across the first person to penetrate her disguise. The conductor on the train was convinced "Charley" was actually a young woman. Along with a partner, he attempted to coerce Elsa into sharing sexual favors to avoid exposure. Fortunately, she managed to escape on a steamer bound for Detroit.

After spending a few days in Detroit and seeing the surrounding sites, she headed for St. Joseph, Missouri by way of St. Louis. In St. Louis, Elsa spent time with her children and stayed with the friend who had bought her the original boy's suit. "Each day," Elsa reveled, "I visited my children...mingling in their frolics, learning their childish secrets...admiring their development..." No other point in her life, she later reflected, was filled with more "pure equable, chastened happiness..." than the weeks she spent with them.

That "chastened happiness" was destined to abruptly end. Elsa continued to dress up at times in her male garb after her visits and stroll around the streets of St. Louis. During one of these leisurely walks, she overheard a man inviting another to join him in a game of draw poker. "Won't you come up, Jamieson...?" he inquired. The name surged through Elsa's consciousness. "The blood rushed through my veins," she declared, "as if propelled by electricity..."

"I easily recognized Jamieson," Elsa wrote. Although she had never seen him, she said she had inquired about his appearance, "'till each of his features was indelibly burned in to my mind." "His appearance," she continued, "was that of one who has for all his life yielded to the indulgence of fierce passions." This was the instant when her fingers closed around the butt of her revolver and then she had second thoughts about shooting an unsuspecting man at the poker table. "In another instant," she reflected, "I would have drawn it and sent a bullet into his murderous heart..."

Fate, however, had other plans. Following the gunfight and the later discovery by Mrs. Anderson of Charley's true gender, Elsa spent months at Mrs. Anderson's house recovering from a bone fracture in her leg. Elsa's children came to visit regularly during this period. But as soon as she was well enough, she once again donned her male garments and headed out to make a living, this time to California. If only she could make enough money, she reasoned, she would "retire into more private life, resume my proper dress, and thereafter in company with my children, enjoy life to the full extent..."

But Fate once again had different designs. Elsa would continue her disguise for another five years. From California, she returned to St. Louis and then headed off to Colorado. The end of her charade would finally be signaled by another confrontation with Jamieson in the spring of 1860 in Denver City, Colorado. This time he got the worst of the deal - three bullet wounds. None were fatal, and after recuperating, he left for New Orleans. Once there, however, he soon died of Yellow Fever.

Before he left, Jamieson told the local officials the story of Elsa's past, including her years as "Charley." He admitted shooting her husband, which cleared her from blame for his injuries. "The story soon got out," Elsa stated, "and I found myself famous..." The now-legendary Horace Greeley wrote about her for the New York Tribune. During this time, Elsa was running a saloon in Denver City under the nickname of "Mountain Charley."

Soon after the incident with Jamieson, she married one of her bartenders, H. L. Guerin, and they moved to the mountains to open a boarding house and mine for gold. Mrs. Elsa Jane Forest Guerin had finally gained the security and peace of mind she had sought for so many years. And at the same time, western history gained a colorful character, who for a turbulent decade as "Charley," kept her hidden identity a "St. Louis secret."

# CHISOLM TRAIL TALES

Baylis John Fletcher Begs and Pleads Permission From

His Aunt to Join an 1879 Chisolm Trail Cattle Drive

"Alligator!" cried Manual the Mexican cook. With the shrill alert, Joe Felder snapped out of his peaceful nap on the Guadalupe riverbank and leapt to his feet. As he did, his flailing limbs slipped on the mud and propelled him down the bank into the swirling water. He thrashed to the surface, rising within inches of the deadly beast.

His comrades heaved a rope his way as he screamed for help. Miraculously, the monster didn't turn on him as Joe tugged himself free and scurried away. Finally, after trotting a safe distance, he turned to view the hazardous scene. To his dismay, he was surrounded not by worried faces, but by his fellow trail-hands doubled up with laughter. When he eyed the vicious "gator," he saw instead, a large bobbing log.

Before he leaned back against the bank-side tree for a nap, Joe and the others had actually seen an alligator in the water. So Manual the cook, known for his practical joking, decided that tossing a log in the water by Joe and yelling "Alligator!" would be the ideal way to wake him. Joe apparently didn't share that viewpoint. "His disgust was profound," wrote one of his trail-mates, "when he discovered that he was escaping only from a rotten log."

Despite the "profound disgust," incidents like these helped break the tiring monotony of a trail ride. The young man who wrote about the gator attack, was nineteen at the time. Baylis John Fletcher would later recall his trail memories in a small book titled, Up The Trail in '79. Fortunately for us, he vividly retained the colorful images of his ride up the Chisholm Trail from Victoria, Texas.

Young Baylis couldn't wait to taste the Chisholm Trail's adventures. In the spring of 1879, he heard that his Liberty Hill, Texas neighbor, Tom Snyder, was recruiting cowpunchers. Filled with excitement, young Baylis ran to ask his aunt for permission. Aunt Ellen, however, had raised him after the death of his mother, and had no intention of letting him take such a dangerous journey. She related tales of Indian attacks, drownings and other trail hazards. He countered with the tools of the trade so readily accessible to teenagers of any era - begging and pleading. Eventually he got his wish.

That wish would lead him up the twelve-year-old Chisholm Trail with a handful of other cowpunchers and about two thousand head of cattle. "I was still a youth, but above fryin' size," Fletcher noted, "when I took the trail fever." Fryin' size or not, on March 10, 1879, Baylis saddled up and headed out - along with Thomas Snyder, a foreman, a cook and seven other cowpunchers. Their first stop was John Green's ranch on Coleto Creek, just south of Victoria, Texas.

Snyder had paid Green ten thousand dollars for all the cattle on the ranch with a V Fleur-de-lis L brand. The first job would be to round up those animals. On the way to the ranch, a local youth rode along with them for a while. Baylis decided the boy must have formed his vision of cowboys from reading dime novels. "He aired his lungs," he wrote, "by cussing everything from his cow pony to the minister we met in the road."

Thomas Snyder finally became disgusted with the young man's language. He told him he would have to leave if he couldn't control his swearing. The astonished youth trailed along in silence for several minutes. Finally he asked, "Mister, is you a Christian?" When Snyder replied that he was, the wide-eyed boy queried, "And a cow driver?" Amazed with Mr. Snyder's positive response to both questions, he galloped off, shouting, "That's awful damn strange!"

After the disillusioned youth left them, they continued toward Victoria, reaching John Green's ranch in a couple days. Snyder hired a guide who organized a Grand Roundup to sort the animals by brand. Two other outfits joined, each looking for different brands. Once they had assembled the range cattle, the combined herd held from eight to ten thousand animals.

Baylis joined the first shift of night-watch. As evening approached, he noticed a long line of thunderhead clouds. "We're going to have a wet norther," one of his seasoned comrades informed him. That prediction was soon played out by flashes of lightning mingled with distant rolls of thunder. "A cold north wind brought a blinding rain, mingled with hail," Baylis reported, "and swept furiously across the prairie."

Baylis called out to the nearest cowpuncher, asking if the nervous cattle would stampede. "No, not as long as the lightning flashes," he responded. The entire manpower of all three outfits joined the struggle to keep the frightened cattle from drifting too far. With all hands in the saddle throughout the night, they managed to contain them. As the sun rose, one of the men originally scheduled for the second shift, grinned and told the first-shift hands they were "relieved for the night."

Over the next few days, the three groups cut out most of the cattle with the brands they were seeking. Baylis and his companions were down to rounding up small clusters and individual animals. A resistive steer, Baylis noted, would need to be thrown and hog-tied until the rest of the herd could be brought to it. Then it could be safely released. "Even the wildest steer," he said, "will not fight in a drove of other animals."

Once their cattle were cut out of the main herd, Baylis and his comrades gave them a "road brand" to further mark them. Finally, on the tenth of April, they completed the roundup. That night they celebrated their upcoming departure with a "grand stag dance." Baylis said Mexican guitarists played while "festive cowboys danced waltzes in the warm embrace of another wearing spurs, leather leggings, and broad-brimmed sombreros."

Early the next morning, likely in a less "festive" mood, the cowboys rounded up the herd and headed north. Their first day on the trail was peaceful and uneventful. The second day was a reverse image. As they drove the cattle through the streets of Victoria, a lady feared that the animals might break through her picket fence and destroy the roses. As a precaution, she ran toward them, frantically waving them away with her bonnet. The lead cows spooked and charged back into the herd. Within seconds the peaceful traildrive mutated into a potential town-wrecking stampede. Baylis said their quick-thinking foreman, George Arnett, "galloped about, giving orders to save the City of Roses from a disaster."

Arnett shouted instructions to let the cattle have room and to give way to them at all street crossings. As the excited beasts ran freely through the streets, they spread out over a half-dozen blocks. Arnett's plan worked perfectly. They became tired and confused and gradually calmed down. Victoria, Texas had narrowly escaped a disaster. And Baylis Fletcher had just savored a rich slice of the adventure he had begged for.

That night brought another serving of trail excitement - a full-fledged midnight stampede. "All hands were called to the saddle," Baylis recalled, "and it was near dawn before we could return to our pallets for rest." Another dose of adventure arose a few days later on the Guadelupe Riverbank - at least for poor Joe Felder. That was site of the "alligator attack."

It was becoming clear that the tales of cattle-trail adventure that Baylis had heard as a boy were not always mere "tales." In fact, the trail soon had more in store for them. The very next night, Baylis was selected for second-shift watch duty. At about two in the morning, he and two others saddled up to monitor the herd. He and Sam Allen guarded the east end and built a small fire to keep them warm. At first one would stay by the fire while the other rode watch. Eventually, they both dismounted and calmly sat by the fire telling stories. "As the bright fire lit up the scene," Baylis reflected, "it was beautiful to behold. Two thousand cattle rested quietly, lying down and chewing their cuds."

Within seconds, that "beautiful scene" would turn to chaos. "Suddenly there was a loud and ominous roar," Baylis wrote, "while a cloud of dust obscured our vision." In a heartbeat, both he and Sam Allen sensed the cause of the roar - a full-blown stampede. Sam turned his horse loose and jumped behind an oak tree. Baylis joined him, hugging both Sam and the tree. "We were none too quick," he asserted, "for now the horns of the stampeding bovines were raking the bark from the opposite side of the oak as they rushed madly past us."

Miraculously untouched, Baylis mounted his horse, which also survived unscathed, and chased after the crazed animals. His partner, Sam Allen, wasn't able to help, since his horse had run off ahead of the stampede. Baylis managed to turn the lead cattle back around the side of the herd. "They milled in one great wheel," he recalled, "revolving with almost lightning velocity." Eventually, just as in the Victoria stampede, the cattle became tired and confused and slowly calmed down.

When the other trail hands found Sam Allen's horse running loose, they assumed Sam had fallen with his horse as he charged ahead of the cattle. They expressed their concern about his near-death episode. "We did not confess until long afterward," Baylis admitted, "that we had been caught off our horses by the stampede and that Allen had let his horse go." Such admissions, he explained, "were not expected on the trail."

About a hundred animals had escaped during the action. The mysterious cause of the night's sudden stampede came to light the next morning. Baylis wrote that as he and the rest were discussing methods of rounding up the strays, "four hard-looking citizens rode up and asked, 'Had a stampede last night, did you?'" They offered to recover any lost animals for a dollar a head. Tom Snyder countered with an offer of fifty-cents each and they readily agreed. "It seemed plain to us," Baylis revealed, "that these accommodating gentry had stampeded our herd for this revenue." Time was precious, however, so Snyder grudgingly paid for their assistance.

Not long after this incident, another hazard emerged. "The weather in the spring of 1879," Baylis explained, "was extremely dry." They were forced to fill their drinking barrel with water from small ponds they created by damming up ravines. Sickness soon spread through the camp from the contaminated water. "I had fever several days," Baylis reported, "but kept it secret from fear of being sent home."

As his fever raged, Baylis could no longer conceal his condition. On the twenty-first of April, he saw a doctor and had a prescription filled, but his fever continued to rise daily. To compound matters, a relentless icy rain drenched the camp. Mr. Snyder asked his attendant, Anderson Pickett, to take Baylis to a local farmhouse to recuperate. A young couple in a one-room cabin took them in. As young Baytis lay ravaged with fever and pain, he overheard the wife discussing his condition. "Oh goodness, John!" she lamented, "the boy can't live."

Fortunately her prognosis was wrong. Baylis's fever finally broke. After a couple days recuperation, he was back with his trail-mates. Once there, however, Tom Snyder informed him that he would have to return home on a sick discharge, since he hadn't yet fully recovered. Falling back on the artful pleading he had perfected with his aunt, he talked Snyder into letting him stay on with the stipulation that he would be discharged at Fort Worth if he were not yet well. "My health," Baylis asserted, "gave me no more trouble."

There would, however, be no shortage of other troubles. On May the fourth, a hailstorm buffeted them with icy bullets that left bruises on their heads and shoulders. For hours following the storm, they struggled to contain the herd. Despite their bruises, the next day they realized they had actually been fortunate. A few miles north, the hail had destroyed entire crops and killed birds, rabbits and other small animals.

Tom Snyder had returned home, turning over all responsibility to the foreman, George Arnett. Through early May, they continued north, past Waco and across the Brazos River into sparsely settled prairie country. Fort Worth was the last supply stop before the five hundred mile stretch of the Chisholm Trail. The large grocery stores from that town routinely sent out representatives on horseback to meet the cattle-driving outfits. They bore enticing gifts like bottles of whiskey and boxes of cigars in order to lure business.

Baylis's group decided to play a prank on them. When the sales representatives asked to see the boss, the other trail hands quietly pointed to "Shug" Pointer, one of the regular cowpunchers. Shug graciously accepted the bounty as Mr. Arnett, the true boss, rode along quietly. Finally one of the men rode up to Shug, informing him that the boss told him to get back to work. "It dawned upon the solicitors that they had been buncoed," Baylis noted, "and that they would need a new supply of gifts to corral the real boss when he was identified."

After they had purchased supplies at Fort Worth, they headed north, reaching the Red River Valley on about the first of June. On the opposite shore of the Red River lay the uncharted Indian Territory. "The prospect of entering an uninhabited wilderness," Baylis observed, "was a source of great joy to the cowboys." "Civilization," he observed, "did not mix well with cattle trailing."'

Despite the "great joy," crossing the Red River didn't go particularly well, especially for Manual the cook. He stopped his wagon in midstream to fill the water barrel. As he did, the wagon slowly sank to its axles in the soft river bottom. When Manual whipped the oxen to make them pull harder, they lurched to the side and ripped the tongue right off the wagon. With the help of steers from other outfits, the wagon was finally dislodged. But Baylis said the supplies kept in the stretched cowhide underneath the wagon, were lost, "drifting away upon the reddish waters of the river."

Once they crossed the river, they entered "the Nation," as the Indian Territory was often called. In the Nation, there were no laws regarding the carrying of firearms. Everybody who had a pistol, polished it up and strapped it on. "We marched on now," Baylis declared," armed to the teeth for savage foes and wild animals." To their dismay, they learned that the savvy game animals stayed clear of the Chisholm Trail and its regular bands of hopeful pistol-packers. After shooting at a handful of rodents and rattlesnakes, Baylis wrote, "we soon grew tired of such sport and returned our guns to the wagon."

They continued northward, passing the Washita River and Monument Ridge with its slabs and boulders of reddish sandstone. For years, cow-herders had carved their outfit's brand into the stones. Further north, a band of reservation Indians appeared and suddenly encircled them. They then rode in toward them in single file - all stopping except their leader. When he was within earshot, he asked for the trail outfit's "chief."

"Our thoughts turned immediately to Shug Pointer," Baylis noted. "If he was fond of posing as foreman, now was his time." Shug, however, didn't share their viewpoint. As the Indian approached him and addressed him as "Chief," Baylis said Shug "grew wild-eyed and escaped by dashing right through the herd." The Indian chief followed in close pursuit. "In the end," Baylis wrote, "it was necessary, of course, to direct the Indian to Mr. Arnett."

The leader informed Arnett that he was Spotted Wolf, a Navajo chief. He said that he and his group were hungry, and asked if they could have one of the cattle. When Mr. Arnett presented him with a small steer, the chief signaled for the rest of his party to join him. As they arrived, several warriors asked to borrow pistols to shoot the steer. After several unsuccessful attempts, they finally brought it to the ground.

Baylis said the Indians then returned the pistols and turned toward the steer with their hunting knives drawn. "The hide was no sooner peeled off the beef," he declared, "than they all began to eat the raw flesh..." "Salt, fire, and water," he added, "were not required." Within minutes, he noted, there was nothing left of the steer but hide and bones. "A pack of hungry wolves could not have cleaned the carcass more quickly."

No sooner had they finished off the steer than another group of warriors appeared. Their leader claimed that the previous "Spotted Wolf" was an impostor and that he, the real Spotted Wolf, should also be given an animal. Arnett grudgingly produced another small steer and like the first group, the starving band consumed it raw. "It began to appear..." Baylis observed, "that our entire herd would be devoured."

Then in another odd turn of events, several well-armed Indians arrived and announced they were Indian police. They explained that neither of the "chiefs" was legitimate and that the actual Spotted Wolf was back at Fort Reno. After some effort, they turned the two parties back toward the fort. "My ideal of the Indian," Baylis wrote, "had been formed from reading James Fenimore Cooper's tales and other romantic narratives. I was speedily disillusioned when I met the real thing."

Not long afterward, Mr. Arnett suffered a painful leg injury while roping a wild horse. The animal fell on Arnett's leg, which had already been injured in the Civil War. For about a week, he was laid up and unable to supervise the group. In the interim, Baylis observed, "each man tried to exercise the authority which no one possessed..." Fortunately, a horseman showed up soon after with a letter from Tom Snyder authorizing him to pilot them across the Cimarron River. Arnett readily gave the pilot, Bud Armstrong, full authority over the outfit.

Snyder's concern with the Cimarron was due to the strong saline deposits along its banks. At one crossing ahead of them, Armstrong warned, an outfit had recently lost over a hundred head of cattle by letting them drink the briny water. The original Chisholm Trail, which ended in Abilene, Kansas, had avoided this area. But by the time of Baylis's trip, many herders had begun to veer northwest across the Cimarron and head toward Dodge City.

The only way to prevent the cattle from drinking the hazardous water, Armstrong explained, was to stampede them across. Baylis said they accomplished this by "whooping at them...and whipping them with ropes until they were fully stampeded." Once they crossed the river, the thirsty cattle often tried to turn back to drink. But Baylis and the others managed to head them off, "The stench of the putrid bodies of more than a hundred cattle," he wrote, warned them of the danger of letting the animals return to the deadly waters.

As Baylis crossed the Cimarron, leaving the Chisholm Trail behind, he went on to complete a successful cattle drive. The outfit reached Cheyenne, Wyoming on August 15, 1879. Like the thousands of other cattle drives in the grand scheme of the Old West, it was simply another piece of business to move a product closer to the consumers. But to Baylis Fletcher - and all the other "begging and pleading teenagers" of the time, it was a juicy slice of adventure packed with vivid Chisholm Trail tales.

# "GREEN PILGRIMS"

A Raging Prairie Fire and a Host of Other Frontier Challenges

Season John Collins and His Fellow First-time Travelers

"The sight was grand and awful," John Collins reflected in his frontier journal. "It was a line of fire a mile long coming like a great wave, at times leaping fifty feet in the air." The flaming monster Collins described was a prairie fire he encountered in the Nebraska territory during mid-April of 1864. He said that as he nervously eyed the raging blaze, still about a mile away, he could already hear the roaring and cracking of the flames.

The fire advanced, he continued, "with the speed of a racehorse..." As it did, prairie dogs, rabbits and deer escaped the onrushing furnace and bolted past him. The cattle in his wagon train brayed like wild beasts. "We could feel the heat," he remembered. "It was almost stifling." The fiery monster seemed determined to devour everything in its path. Then suddenly, only a quarter of a mile away, the inferno halted.

Fortunately for John and the rest of the novice pioneers, they had elected Thomas Prowse as captain of their wagon train. Prowse understood the prairie. When he first noticed the smoke of the distant fire, he snapped into action. "If the wind changes and that fire comes this way," he informed them, "we must work fast or we are "goners.'" He directed the group toward a secluded area between a marsh and a small lake and gave orders for everyone to help back fire the ground. Giving each man a bucket of water and a grain sack, he told him to light a patch of the dry grass, let it burn a little, then put it out with the wet sack. They were to continue until all the ground between the lake and the marsh was blackened. Within an hour, they had burned off a safe space of several acres.

As Prowse had feared, the great wall of fire suddenly veered their way. When it reached the burned area, however, the fire swept around on both sides of the frightened group, leaving them unharmed. The tremendous cloud of smoke that accompanied it, though, surged directly past them. "The smoke was so blinding," Collins reflected," that we were compelled to throw ourselves flat on the ground until it passed over." Once the smoke had cleared, everyone assembled and the captain called out their names. Fortunately, there were no "goners." And every member of the wagon train was acutely aware that he had Captain Prowse to thank for his life.

As John Collins stood and brushed off the ashes, he likely had to remind himself exactly why he was risking his life out in the middle of the wilderness. After all, though only in his mid-twenties, he was already a successful leather merchant. He and his brother Gilbert had expanded their father Eli's saddle and leather-goods business by opening a branch store in Omaha in the spring of 1864.

But like so many other young men of his time, the pull of the West was too strong to resist. For John, that pull was spiced by the promise of adventure but its main ingredient was business. He knew that the ranchers, farmers and miners moving west in the 1860's would need leather goods. So in March of 1864, while his brother Gilbert traveled east to purchase supplies, John headed west to test the leather goods market in the new frontier.

On March 23rd, John joined a wagon train of about 150 men in Omaha, headed toward Virginia City, Montana. His adventures began right away. On their second day, as they camped along the Elkhorn River, Collins said "Pawnee Indians came down on us by the dozens..." They meant no harm, he observed, but often dropped in on pioneer camps to beg. Apparently they didn't always deem it necessary to wait for the emigrants to offer gifts. Collins said they "showed a fondness for our tin cups, pans, knives, and everything in this line they could pick up and conceal under their blankets."

The Pawnees weren't the only ones who added to their wealth at the travelers' expense. Several of the local ranches offered to board and feed the emigrant's animals for a fairly hefty fee. "If you did not patronize these ranches," John explained, "the alternative was to camp where you could and wake up in the morning to find one or two head of stock gone."

Continuing on, they approached the Loup Fork River where they discovered the ferryboat had sunk. The current was too swift and deep to ford, so they pitched in and helped the boatmen raise their ferry. Despite the assistance, the ferry owners charged them the usual rate. Apparently the neighborly pioneer spirit had already begun to yield to the hard-nosed affairs of commerce.

Once Collins' group reached Fort Kearney, their concern about Indians switched from the petty stealing by the Pawnees to a potential attack from the Sioux. "The Sioux were in an ugly mood," Collins noted. He said when they dropped in on the camp, he wasn't sure if it was to "look us over, expecting to return at daylight and attack us, or not." They heard stories about outfits ahead of them who had already been assaulted. "There was always great danger," Collins declared, "in the land of the Sioux."

As they traveled near Fort Kearney, they stopped at a point where they had the option of fording the Platte River and cutting nearly fifty miles off their trip. They sat on the bank and observed another outfit trying to cross. Collins said twelve yoke of oxen and five men waded into the current and were soon "floundering and wallowing in the shifting quicksand." Two hours later the exhausted men and animals stumbled out of the icy swirling river onto the other bank. "After witnessing this sight," Collins commented, "our party was not long in deciding..." They readily took the longer northern route.

As they traveled along that path, directly through the Sioux nation, they decided to organize their train by electing a captain. That's when they made the fortunate selection of Thomas Prowse. He was, as Collins put it, "a quiet, level-headed man, stern of disposition, sound of judgment, and with plenty of 'sand'." All of those attributes would soon be called upon when Prowse faced the roaring prairie fire.

The wagon train, at that point, was all male. This would change when a stout Irish girl named Jane rode up to Captain Prowse in a covered wagon. She asked him if she could join the train, saying she knew how to take care of herself. Prowse welcomed her and told her he could use a woman's touch to help mend torn clothes and bake bread. He marked "Jane" on her wagon cover with a lump of charcoal and asked her to ride near the middle of the train.

As they departed camp, Collins wrote, they took the "dim trail made by the emigrants going to California in '49." The trail was bordered on the east by sand hills and low bluffs where the buffalo ranged, and on the west by the North Platte River. Prowse informed them there would be no fuel except buffalo chips for two hundred miles. "It certainly was not a cheerful outlook," Collins related, "for a lot of 'green pilgrims'."

One of those "green pilgrims" answering to the nickname of Chance, headed to the fort to mail some letters. On his return, he was to wade the Platte and meet them that night, ten miles along the trail at Elm Creek. As night fell, Chance didn't show. The party waited for him throughout the next day and night. The following day, as they again remained at Elm Creek, Captain Prowse took Collins and four others on a buffalo hunt to increase their meat supply.

The five of them ascended a nearby bluff and peered over a low flat plain and spied their prey. Unfortunately, the buffalo grazed on the other side of a large herd of antelope. "It is not often," Collins noted, "that hunters are disgusted with the sight of an overabundance of game." But that was their situation. If the antelope spotted them they would scatter and spook the buffalo.

The hunters silently detoured about five miles around the grazing herd. They stayed out of sight except to occasionally glance over the top of the bluff and keep an eye on the buffalo. Once in range, they led their horses quietly to their selected firing line. "Now down on your knee," Prowse whispered, "hold fast to your horse; every man pick his buffalo and blaze away."

"I obeyed all the orders but one," Collins wrote. When the rifles fired, his horse jerked the rope out of his hands and headed straight toward the antelope, scattering them in all directions. While the others were gathering the three buffalo killed, John was busy racing after his pony. With help, he finally caught him and the weary hunters returned to camp. "Up to the present date," Collins later lamented, "I fail to realize any great pleasure or sport in my first buffalo hunt."

Although disgusted with the hunt, he was relieved to learn that Chance had found his way back to the train during their absence. As he returned from the fort, Chance had walked until dark, then lay flat on the ground for fear of Indians sighting him. The second day, thinking the wagon train had moved on, he overshot the camp and eventually had to retrace his steps. "He told a most pitiful story," Collins noted. During the two days, Chance had eaten only a rabbit and a prairie dog he had killed with rocks. Afraid to light a fire the Indians might see, he devoured the game raw.

Through the next few days, they made their way along the trail toward the middle of the Nebraska territory. Fortunately, they avoided the problems with the local Indians that some of the other trains had encountered. On April 14, Collins reported, "a lodge of Indians came to us, armed only with bows and arrows." They were "friendly and hungry," he continued, and left after supper. The next day wouldn't be so uneventful. That was the time when the prairie fire roared past them. Day by day, the "green pilgrims" were turning a little less green.

As they forged ahead through mid-April, the landscape turned more and more barren. While they trudged through sand bluffs past Chimney Rock, the wagon wheels often sank to the hubs. They had to hook up an extra team to pull them through. After a full day of this on April 19, the night didn't improve any. "Owing to the heavy rain and snow and the howling of wolves and coyotes," Collins noted, "our entire herd stampeded at night..." Three of the men jumped on nearby mules or horses and took off after them.

Eventually they herded the animals back and continued their journey, reaching Fort Laramie on April 26. Some of the troops at the fort were known as "galvanized" Confederate soldiers. They had been captured by the Federals and sent west for lack of prison room. Jim Bridger was also at Laramie, organizing a train to open up a new route to the gold fields through the Big Horn Mountains.

A number of Indians bartered at the fort for merchandise. Collins said they rarely used mazaska, their word for money. The Indian traders placed a great value on the skin of a buffalo that had a white hump and shoulders. They felt it was "great medicine," he reported, and when hunting would "abandon a herd and chase a white buffalo all day in preference."

At the Platte River crossing near the fort, they ran across a tent and a signboard painted in axle grease with the words, "Post Office." In front of the tent sat a barrel topped by a board with a small slit cut in it. The customers were to drop half dollars through the slit for each piece of mail they left to be delivered. Collins had heard about their "business" from a sergeant at the fort, and left no mail. Every now and then, he was told, for the benefit of the customers, a man would gallop up and ask for the mail. Once his partner handed him the mail sack, the sergeant told Collins, he would ride down to the Platte, out of sight, and dump the mail into the river. Later he would come back and "...wait for the arrival of the next train of pilgrims."

By early May, Collins's train had reached the middle of present-day Wyoming. They passed Independence Rock on May seventh. The nearby alkali or soda lakes were pure white with several inches of soda. "We used it in making bread," he noted, "and found it almost equal to baking powder."

On May 11 as they approached the Rocky Mountains, they learned of a less-than-honorable deed in the ongoing war. A detachment of soldiers from Fort Laramie was stationed there, at the fifth crossing of the Sweetwater River. Their mission was to watch out for possible deserters. But Collins was told that the day before he arrived, "all the soldiers, including the sergeant, deserted, taking horses, equipment, guns, ammunition, and blankets."

A few days later Collins and his party began their slow rise up South Pass. "The ascent to South Pass was so gradual," he commented, "that we scarcely knew when the summit was passed." As they came to the first fork of Green River, they found the current swift and deep. The call went out for a volunteer to test the water. Once again, Chance lived up to his name. "Give me your mustang," he replied, "and if I live through it, you fellows come on through with your wagons."

"At the first dash," Collins wrote, "Chance and his pony went out of sight, and came to the surface twenty feet below sputtering and spouting like a whale." With a nonchalant voice Chance simply stated, "It's deep down there; better come down easy." One by one, using ropes, a dozen men pulled each wagon across the river. As the panicky mules and horses plunged underwater, the men quickly pulled them to a sandbar on the other shore where they could regain their footing.

Once they forded the fork, they continued along Lander's Cut-off. Heavy snow slowed their progress as they dug through drifts several feet deep. On May 26, they came to an area where various parties had camped while they plowed their way through the snow. "It was a sight," Collins reported, "empty wagons, barrels, kegs, boxes, chairs, stoves and everything of weight...had been left on the ground and abandoned..."

Like the others, Collins' group shed boxes and sacks from the wagons to lighten the load, carrying many of them on their backs. "At times a heavy wagon would have forty head of horses and mules..." Collins noted. He said Jane was particularly anxious as they inched their way up the snow-clogged mountainside. But she had been told to sit in the wagon and they would see her through safely. "She was always good natured," Collins wrote, "and through all the difficulties sat in her wagon like a statue."

By the end of May they had plowed through the snow-laden mountain range. On May 30, they stopped at Blackfoot Creek at the junction of Soda Springs Road and Sublet Cut-off. Several Blackfoot lodges had camped there and were busy fishing in the creek. "For a tin cup of flour," Collins wrote, "they would exchange a string of trout a yard long." "Trout were so abundant," he added, "that the water was in a constant ripple."

On June 6, they stopped in what would become Idaho at the juncture of the old "forty-niner" wagon trail leading to either California or Salt Lake City. There, Collins reported, the area was "fairly bristling with pack animals, twenty-span California mule teams and wagons...." Collins explained that the twenty mules were driven by one man riding on the near "wheel mule." A single jerk-line running to the bit of the lead mule guided the entire team. "One jerk of the line was 'gee,'" he said, "two jerks 'haw'..."

A few hours later Collins' group crossed the Continental Divide for the second time, this time to the eastern slope. As they descended and passed through a rocky canyon, they happened upon a tollgate. It was manned, Collins stated, by a "western character, with...the regular 'six shooter' and belt of ammunition strapped upon him." He charged $1.50 per wagon. "With the exchange of a few choice western epithets between the man at the gate and the men driving stock," Collins noted, "the incident was closed."

Finally, on the morning of Sunday, June 12, 1864, eighty-two days after leaving the Missouri River, they camped in sight of Virginia City. The day was spent, Collins remembered, bathing in a nearby stream, washing their clothes and preparing to "enter the city in decent order the next day, where our train disbanded."

After they separated, John Collins stayed in the Montana area for a while and then headed back by stagecoach to rejoin his brother Gilbert in Omaha. Through the years they expanded their business across the west with branch stores in the Wyoming and Montana regions. President Grant later appointed them, both individually and as partners, to stock Fort Laramie with their high-quality leather goods. Yes, as John Collins looked back over his life, he could review a long string of successful events. No others, however, were as lively and colorful as his eighty-two day trip in the American wilderness with a hundred-and-fifty other "green pilgrims."

# "EVERYTHING BUT OUR LIVES"

Mary Rockwell Powers Faces Prairie Storms, Desperate Thirst

and a Fanatical Husband on An 1856 Trek to Sacramento

"The crashing of the thunder was deafening," the young wife wrote. "There came up such a hurricane accompanied with rain, and such lightning as I never saw before." Mary Powers' wagon pitched from side to side as the terrified horses lunged with each flash. "To keep the children from the storm of wind and rain," the brave young mother noted, "I had to hold down the lower corners of the blanket at the fore end of the wagon." As she did, the full force of the storm buffeted her.

Clad only in her nightclothes, Mary dived across their trunk and clasped the blanket with all her strength. She said that for two and a half hours, she sheltered her children from the rain with "hailstones beating upon my head as though they would crack my skull." When the volley finally subsided and the frozen mother inspected her children, she found them warm and dry. She reported that amazingly, "They did not wake at all."

"I expected to be down sick after it," Mary noted, "but was not." The next morning, stiff and sore, she awoke to find the ground strewn with thousands of hailstones. As she stood surveying the Wyoming Black Hills' landscape, she could feel herself transforming into a seasoned pioneer. Like so many other westbound emigrants, the delicate and refined young lady discovered she possessed a rock-solid inner strength. Before the completion of her 1856 trek across the Overland Trail, she would need to tap into every ounce of that strength. Not only did young Mary Rockwell Powers encounter the usual challenges of the trail, she carried an added burden. Her physician husband, Americus Powers, often sank into "sullen moods" and occasional spurts of irate "ranting." Mary would eventually record, "I felt as though myself and little ones were at the mercy of a mad man."

Her trip had begun several weeks before the hailstorm. In her journal of the excursion, she always referred formally to her husband as "the Doctor." In fact, it was only after extensive research by editor W. B. Thorsen, that the names of Mary and Americus Powers were uncovered. Like many of the pioneer diarists, Mary apparently had no idea anyone would later be interested in learning her story. Hopefully, she wouldn't have minded our snooping through her journal and letters to her mother, to share her fascinating adventure.

That 1856 adventure took Mary, Americus and their three small children from their Chicago-area home across the plains to Sacramento. Although Mary's husband had an established medical practice, the lure of California had worked its magic on him, as it had for so many others of the time. He spent most of their savings on a team of fine Canadian horses to pull their wagon across the plains. Since, according to Mary's journal, the cumbersome vehicle weighed almost 900 pounds empty, this uninformed decision would later prove disastrous.

Mary and the children left their home on the afternoon of April 17th. Arriving in Chicago early the next morning, they boarded the Rock Island Railroad. They were to take the train to its terminus in Iowa City. There they would wait for Americus to join them with the wagon and the newly purchased animals. As if to send a forecast for the rest of their trip, their ordeals surfaced early.

Several miles from Iowa City, Mary wrote, the train came upon a section of the track that was "completely drowned in mud for nearly half a mile." The passengers were instructed to get out, carry their baggage, and walk that distance. Mary and her children slogged through the mud alongside another poor lady lugging a heavy rifle, a basket and a carpetbag weighing almost fifty pounds. When they reached the cars on the other side of the sloppy lake, they had to squeeze back aboard the train through a milling crowd of other muddy passengers. "Such a perfect jam," Mary asserted, "I never saw before."

Once they finally reached Iowa City, Mary and the children stayed at the American House. Several days later, the doctor arrived and proudly exhibited the four horses he had procured for the journey. "One is a fine bay," Mary wrote, the other three were black, and one was considerably smaller than the others. That horse, Mary stated, "is the one I call mine; there is an elegance about him that I much admire."

They hitched up the regal creatures and set off on May 14th for Council Bluffs to begin their overland trek. But within a couple days' travel, the poor little black horse began to fail. It was becoming apparent to Mary that the doctor had made a faulty selection of animals. In fact, it seemed his choice in picking a hired hand had not been ideal either. "The young man the Doctor has with him," Mary alleged, "is about as good as a basswood man..." He had promised to help her with the cooking, she observed, but had not yet lifted a finger. "I think him a perfect shark."

Nonetheless, despite their "basswood" helper and the flagging horses, they were underway to begin their trek across the Great American Desert. By May 18th, the previously elegant little black horse was so stiff and sore he could hardly move. "How I pity him!" Mary lamented. "I very much fear we shall completely use up our team before we get to Council Bluffs."

That evening they stopped in a small public house near Des Moines. During supper, they were given knives without handles, and forks with broken tines. Mary innocently offered the landlady the loan of her own set of knives and forks for the evening. "She looked at me," Mary wrote, "mad as a tiger..." Not wanting to offend her, Mary used the broken utensils. But at breakfast she found a shiny new set of silverware laid out for her. The landlady mumbled something about having two good sets "somewhere around the house." "I said nothing," Mary noted, "but laughed in my sleeve."

The next day brought little laughter. The small black horse could hardly stand and had to lean against the bay for support as they traveled. Later that night he died from sheer exhaustion. Two days later, on the twenty-first of May, Mary recorded her fear about the remaining animals. "The two blacks that are left are both ailing," she stated, "I hope they will hold out for us to get through to the Bluffs but I am afraid they will not."

Fortunately her prognosis was wrong. The poor animals managed to lug the cumbersome wagon into Council Bluffs three days later. Mary had looked forward to visiting her Aunt Delia there. She was crushed to find that Delia and her family had recently moved sixty miles away. "I do not know as I was so greatly disappointed in my whole life before," she revealed. Mary's emotions, however, soon surged equally in the opposite direction. Delia, expecting Mary's arrival, traveled by coach to Council Bluffs for a surprise visit.

Finally, on the first of June - Mary, Americus, their three children and the partially rejuvenated horses set out across the plains. As before, an unfortunate incident seemed to foreshadow future hardships. Their little girl, Sarah, was gathering flowers that evening and fell off the wagon as she was climbing aboard. Fortunately, the horse hitched behind the wagon stepped over her. Her fall, however, had been hard and she was quite sick throughout the next day.

The next few days fell into more of a routine. In early June, Richard, the "basswood man," managed to raise his standings a little in Mary's eyes. As they were cleaning up after breakfast, a heavy rain and fierce wind raced across the plains. The gale hammered their tent and the stakes began to fly. "Richard caught the children," Mary wrote, "and I grabbed the blankets and ran for the wagon." Other than being totally drenched, they reached the security of the wagon unharmed

A few days later, however, Richard's status dropped back down a few notches. As they reached the Platte Hills, the Doctor handed him the reins and let him drive the wagon. "The road was too deeply gullied for a careless driver to succeed," Mary observed, "and we were upset." Fortunately, they had been traveling in the company of a "horse train." Soon, another wagon arrived with several young men aboard who jumped out and helped right the wagon.

Despite the problems, the prairie offered Mary and her family its captivating vista of wild animals. "Since we came on the Platte," Mary noted, "we have seen thousands of buffalo, also antelopes, wolves, deer, rabbits and different kinds of birds." In addition, of course, the stretches of endless prairie along the North Platte River offered its usual fare of muddy water for making coffee and nothing for fuel but buffalo chips.

As the straining horses hauled their heavy burden across the prairie toward Fort Laramie, it seemed their suffering might be nearly over. "The Doctor says he will trade off his horses at the Fort for an ox team," Mary rejoiced. Her hopes were high as they camped up river from the Fort and her husband went in to make a deal. While Americus was gone, Richard thoroughly validated his "basswood man" appraisal. He told Mary he wanted to reach California and didn't think they would be able to travel much further. After informing her that he had made no bargain to stay, he simply left her and the children alone on the prairie. "Then it was," Mary wrote, "that I felt like sitting down and crying."

Her anguish was only partly relieved when Americus finally returned. Without explanation, he simply said he wasn't able to make a trade for the horses and they would have to drive on. "What we are to do," Mary stated, "I know not. I felt my courage must fail me..." Their only hope lay in overtaking a large ox train that had passed them the day before. But with only faltering animals to carry them, that hope flickered very dimly.

Mary was acutely aware that the Black Hills looming ahead of them would sap the remaining strength from their fading horses. "We struggled along day after day, poor grass and sometimes without water," she recorded. The once-noble bay horse was pulling nearly all the load. He was so emaciated that Mary said "his bones stuck out so sharp it seemed as if the skin was glued to them."

They had long since given up hope of overtaking the ox train when they happened on a piece of luck. One of the wagons from the train had broken down and fallen behind. Once the stragglers had repaired their wagon, they all set out to rejoin the main train. When they eventually reached it, Mary said she felt like throwing her arms around the bay horse's neck and promising him freedom in the morning. "I felt," she wrote, "as though we had been rescued from a living death..."

After her first good night's sleep in a long while, Mary awoke early, anticipating Americus' arrangements with the members of the ox team to join them. Minute by minute, her excitement turned to anxiety as she watched him calmly eat his morning meal. She asked him if he was going to talk to them. "Yes," he answered, "after they have eaten their breakfast." As soon as they finished, however, they scurried around preparing to head out. When Americus finally approached them, he was told there was no time to talk and he would have to travel to their next camp.

Mary stoically prepared to leave, but wrote, "I...felt my very heart core bleed when the remnants of those faithful beasts were again hitched to the wagon." They crept their way along the trail and rejoined the ox team again late that night. The next morning the Doctor quietly harnessed the half-dead horses without murmuring a word to anyone.. That's when Mary confessed to her diary that she felt she and her children were in the company of a "mad man." The following morning, the same events occurred. "So the Doctor hitched up the poor old skeletons once more," Mary sadly noted, "and we started out..."

The next morning, Americus finally met with Mr. Hendricks, the ox team's leader. Mr. Hendricks hooked up three yoke of cattle to their wagon and let the worn-down horses trail along behind. Mary breathed her first relaxed breath in some time. Her relief, however, was short-lived. That evening saw the approach of the hailstorm that relentlessly battered her head for two and a half hours as she protected her children. Very likely, she would have preferred even that to facing the foreboding wilderness with three dying horses.

Mary realized as she watched the straining cattle tug the heavy wagon up steep hills, that their horses would never have been up to the task. "How sad I felt to see how the teamsters would whip those poor oxen," Mary reflected, "until their sides would be covered with gashes..." "If weeping would have done any good," she added, "it seemed as though I could have shed tears enough to have floated us from Chicago here."

With the sturdy oxen pulling the wagon, Mary and her family slowly worked their way through the Black Hills. The disaster that would surely have awaited them was soon vividly revealed. One of their three remaining horses had to be put to sleep because, even walking behind the wagon, he could no longer keep up with the team. The potential horrors of their traveling alone were obvious - to everyone that is, but Americus.

He suddenly sent Mary to Mr. Hendrick and his partner, Mr. Turner, to pay for the supplies they had consumed. Something had apparently upset Americus and he decided he could no longer travel in their company. Mr. Hendrick and his partner attempted to reason with him, but he said the decision was "his business" and began to rave. "You can hardly imagine how he did talk to them," Mary revealed. Mr. Hendricks told him he pitied Mary from the bottom of his heart because she had to "get along with such a fool and madman as he was." After leaving some supplies with them, the other members of the train said their goodbyes to Mary. "There is something peculiar in such a parting on the plains," Mary sadly reflected, "one there realizes what a goodbye is."

With their two frail horses and about twenty dollars, they once again faced the wilderness alone. They crept their way toward scattered Mormon settlements near Salt Lake City. Mary remembered being told that Brigham Young had decreed that no "gentile" or non-Mormon was to be sold any food that summer. The previous growing season had been severe and their community fund and supplies were low. Also, they were expecting a large influx of newly converted Saints. Those emigrants, in fact, would include the ill-fated handcart companies.

A couple days later, Mary sighted a mud-walled shanty with a few branches draped across the roof. Inside they met a woman and her three children. "She was a Mormon," Mary wrote, "or rather her husband was. She took it for granted that we were Mormons also..." Since they knew there was no chance of purchasing supplies otherwise, Mary wrote that neither she nor the Doctor "did anything to counteract the belief that we were good Mormons."

Thinking Mary was a young wife entering the Mormon society, the lady poured out her heart to her. She said she was the first wife of her husband and had worked side by side with him through the years as they built up their farm. "When they had just begun to live and get things comfortable," Mary noted in her journal, "he had taken to him a new and younger wife." When the first wife protested, Mary explained, the husband headed out into the wilderness and built that "hog pen." He then instructed his wife and children to stay there and hold the claim while he returned to the village with his new wife.

When the poor lady had finished her sad tale, she urged them to travel on to Brother Barnum's cabin where they could find shelter and supplies. Once there, Mary and Americus continued their guise as a Mormon family. Their pretense was successful and they were given hearty meals and allowed to buy fresh butter and salt beef. "They all expected we would come back to live there," Mary wrote.

Before they left, Mary received another stern warning. A visiting sister secretly informed her of the sorrows she would surely encounter in the Mormon settlement. She told of a recently married twelve-year-old girl who was unable to read, write or sew. "As soon as a child is weaned," she asserted, "it seems as through the vultures are eager for their prey."

As they traveled on, they stayed with other Mormon families. Mary, in fact, was invited to attend an evening service in the local tabernacle. The service, as she described it, was quite unusual. The presiding missionary sang several songs - including some comic numbers. "Others sang songs and made speeches and told stories," Mary continued. When the missionary sang "Do They Miss Me at Home," she wrote, "there was not a dry eye in the house, and they were sobbing all around me."

Finally during what Mary estimated to be mid-August, they said goodbye to their Mormon hosts and set out on the trail again. This time they ran across three sheepherders traveling with their flock. Mr. Curtis, their leader, soon noticed the poor condition of Mary's horses. He said that they had lost several of their own horses and had no extras. But as a favor, he traded horses with them, hooking up his stronger fresher animals to pull their cumbersome wagon.

His kindness was obviously a temporary measure and when they ran upon a small ox train, everyone expected Americus to make arrangements with them. The next morning, however, Mary said her husband hitched up the borrowed horses "and drove off as through he was lord of all he surveyed. I was never so astonished in all my life..." Needless to say, her astonishment was vividly shared by Mr. Curtis who was left with two nearly useless animals.

That evening, Mr. Curtis and a friend, Joseph, told Mary they had talked with a Mr. Whitesides, one of the ox train members. They said he had agreed to make an arrangement with her husband. The next morning Mary asked Americus if he was going to talk with the ox train men. He told her he would, but instead, Mary said, he "puttered and fussed about this thing and that..." When Curtis and Joseph approached the wagon, she couldn't hide her awareness of her husband's intentions to leave once again with their borrowed horses. "I guess my face was a book that time," she recorded, "and two madder men you never saw..."

Mr. Curtis asked Americus if he was "a madman or a confounded fool?" He told him he was going to trade back his horses and that Mr. Whitesides had told him he would make "almost any arrangement with him that he pleased..." The one choice he could not make, Mr. Curtis proclaimed, was to let his family fall behind the train because of the broken-down animals. He said they were in dangerous Indian country, and he and his friends would take Mary and the children from him if Americus lagged behind. Mary said Mr. Curtis warned him, "He might as well cut our throats at once, for we would all certainly get them cut sooner or later."

Mr. Curtis then led Americus over to Mr. White-sides and mediated a deal between the two. Mr. Whitesides, Mary gratefully wrote, "agreed to leave his wagon and put his things in our wagon." "You can hardly imagine how relieved I felt when the oxen were fairly hitched to our wagon once more,"

Soon the sheep train had to take a different route. After thanking Mr. Curtis and his friends profusely, Mary managed to leave them a little present. They had run out of soap, but despite her offer of a fresh bar, would accept only a small piece from her. Secretly, before they left, she deposited a whole bar in their wagon. "I thought it but a small return," she wrote, "for all they had done for me."

Drawn by the powerful oxen, the train moved steadily along the Humboldt River through the newly acquired state of Nevada, toward California. Despite their other trials, Mary and her family had managed to avoid the ever-present Indian threat. Then, as they left the Humboldt to cross the desert - their luck apparently changed. "We saw in the distance, Indians on horseback," Mary recorded, "in a little while 60 or 70 were distinctly counted." Anxiety spread through the train as rifles were distributed and two armed men rode ahead to scout. Upon their return, Mary wrote, the scouts were "laughing so loud they could hardly keep the saddle." The "Indians" who had evoked such alarm, she noted, "were nothing but a flock of buzzards."

Although the misleading visions of the desert brought laughter, little else did. Their water ran out and all they found were boiling springs with brackish water. Despite the taste, when it cooled, the men and the cattle drank as much as they could tolerate. "We made some coffee," Mary wrote, "but I have never liked coffee since." At length, they came upon a fresh spring. "Oh how the children and all did drink."

Mary not only found water at the site, but also saw her friends the sheepherders. "I was not long in walking over to the camp to see my friends," she wrote. This good news, as had so often been the case along their excursion, was offset by sadness. "St. Lawrence," their trustworthy bay horse, succumbed to the heat and the rigors of the trail. "Oh how the children cried," Mary sadly noted.

After leaving the horse and her sheep-herding friends, Mary wrote that she and the rest of the train headed out for fifteen days across "some of the worst country we ever saw." At the end of this ordeal, they came to the peaceful Honey Lake Valley and the Susan River. As they stood facing the formidable Sierra Nevada Mountain range, their good fortune was once more overshadowed by adversity. Mr. Whitesides told them that their agreement expired when they reached the Susan River, and he removed the oxen. One of the men gave Americus his donkey and he hitched him in with their only remaining horse. "I was very doubtful whether poor Blackey would ever be able to do the journey," Mary lamented, "and this new mate had never been harnessed; but it was this or nothing."

Miraculously, the bedraggled horse and untamed donkey staggered their way up the Sierra Nevadas. "No pen can describe the dangers and difficulties of these days of fatigue and suspense," Mary wrote. Eventually they caught up with the ox train again. The team members were soon witnesses to a near disaster for Mary. She was driving the wagon down a steep hill when the wheel lock gave way. "The men held their breath expecting to see me dashed to pieces..." she noted. One of the men told her "his clothes would be a world too large for him for a week to come, he shrunk so within himself."

Fortunately, the men from the ox team helped Americus and Mary cross the mountains despite the end of the agreement. "It took three men to the wheels of our wagon," Mary reported, "and one behind, and we could get but a few steps at a time." Step by step, however, they steadily traversed the mountain range. "And so we traveled on day after day over those dreadful hills," Mary wrote. "Finally on the eighth day of October, 1856, we came down the last slope of the Nevada Mountains into the valley of the Sacramento."

"We have seen hard times indeed," Mary reflected, "since we left our eastern friends." As her thoughts raced back across the months, the rigors of the trek settled heavily on her mind. She knew that behind the lush new visions of California, would forever lurk the icy panic of being left alone in the wilderness and the dying gasps of the stately animals sacrificed along the way. "Our journey across the plains was a long and hard one," she wearily recorded, "We lost everything but our lives."

# "FOR THE SETTING SUN"

James McCauley Lives Out the Cowboy Dream He Had

Since He Rode Stick Horses Around His East Texas Home

In the summer of 1895, Young James McCauley found himself in a very real version of what would decades later become a classic Western movie scene. He was searching for two runaway horses in Skeleton Canyon near the border of New Mexico and Arizona. "I rode very nearly halfway," he wrote, "when suddenly I saw a bunch of Apaches." These renegade Indians, he explained, were always on the warpath when they strayed off the reservation.

As soon as McCauley saw them, he tried to turn his horse around and escape. Before he could, one of the Apaches shot it out from under him. He grabbed his 30-30 rifle as he fell. After gaining his footing, he fired off two shots toward his assailants. Both bullets hit their marks, dislodging two of the Apaches from their mounts.

McCauley wasted no time in scrambling back through a winding section of the canyon where he managed to scale a small pinnacle. Knowing he was cut off on all sides with no escape route, he spent the day hiding flat on the sun-baked rocks. "I thought I would starve for water," he wrote, "But I love my life better than water."

When night finally came, McCauley said he pulled off his boots so he would not "make a fuss going over the rocks." He then eased himself off the pinnacle and crept northward through a gap in the canyon. Eventually he put his boots back on and picked up speed. Around midnight he wandered into another canyon that ran east. There he found fresh water and a trail leading through the foothills and into a valley.

Once in the valley, he followed a cow trail toward a windmill. Quenching his thirst again, he lay down to rest and soon fell asleep. "When I woke up," he wrote, "'twas sun-up. My feet was blistered from toe to heel!" Despite the pain, he marched on toward the ranch he had left several days earlier in search of the horses. He reached the main house by mid-morning and fixed himself a meal. "I done justice to everything I could get on the outside of," he asserted. Then he said he went to sleep "dreaming of Indians, of fine springs of water and of tables loaded with good things to eat."

Years before this adventure, McCauley's childhood dreams were filled with different visions - those of becoming a "wild and woolly cowboy." His first memory was that of riding a stick horse around his family's East Texas home near Palestine. As he tended his herd, he watched the real cowboys driving cattle west toward the prairie country. Unfortunately, his early dreams were just that - dreams. His father was a farmer, not a rancher. "To follow a scooter plow in stumps, barefooted all day," McCauley remembered, "didn't suit a would-be cowboy." Nevertheless, he wrote, "I was reared up to be a plowboy instead of a cowboy."

Eventually though, like the crops he helped plant, his dormant dreams grew and ripened. His entry into the cowboy life, however, was not the result of deliberate planning. When he was about fifteen, he got into a fight with a much larger boy over a girl they both liked. While the other boy was on top of him, pummeling him with his fists, a pocketknife slipped out of the bully's pocket. The blade was loose at the rivet, so McCauley easily opened it. Then he drove the knife into the boy's hip. "I want you to know," he later wrote, "I did not have to beg him to get off."

The bloody youngster shrieked that he had been knifed. The girl they had fought over was afraid McCauley had murdered him. Although the other boy had actually started the fight, young McCauley instinctively knew he was in big trouble. "So I bid my first love good-bye," he wrote, "and started for home, which I was not long in reaching." He explained the incident to his mother and told her he was afraid the boy's father would try to have him imprisoned. "After kissing her a fond farewell," he noted, "I started for the setting sun."

That "setting sun" finally lit the way for McCauley's cowboy dreams. Heading west on foot, he eventually ran across a cattle drive bound for the nearby Figure Eight ranch. The cowboys took him in and put him to work wrangling horses. That job, he explained in his autobiography, consisted of herding horses the other cowboys rode. Each rider had from six to ten horses and while they were out on the roundup, the wrangler would drive their loose horses from camp to camp. "I thought it was pretty good," McCauley reasoned, "It beat being in jail or being hung."

When the fall work was finished, McCauley stayed around the ranch doing odd jobs. He earned enough to buy a pony and saddle and in April set out to fulfill his cowboy ambitions. "I was determined to go up the trail to Montana," he declared. He made his way to the three million-acre X I T ranch in Channing, Texas. There, he found that five trail outfits were preparing to leave for Montana. "After looking the bosses over," McCauley noted, "I tackled one called Scanlous John." The choice of that boss, John McCanless, would propel McCauley closer to his life-long cowboy goal.

The two hit it off from the start and Scanlous John learned early on that McCauley had the potential of becoming a good cowboy. One night as they stood first watch together, a thunderstorm rolled in from the north. When the thunder roared and the sky lit up, the cattle spooked. "In less time than it takes to tell," McCauley noted, "they was gone."

The only light in the stormy sky came from the lightning itself. With each clap of thunder, the animals changed direction. The herd soon divided and McCauley's well-trained horse followed a bunch of about three hundred cattle. "After some two hours of storm," McCauley recorded, "the rain quit and soon it cleared off..." When the moon reappeared, he could see the cattle, but had no idea where John or the rest of the outfit was. "I thought I'd shoot my six-shooter," he reasoned, "and see if anybody would come or answer me." Unfortunately, he hadn't considered the effect the gun blast might have on his little herd. With the first shot, the cattle stampeded again. After an hour or so he managed to round them back up. I didn't shoot anymore," he reflected.

He watched the herd all night and by about ten o'clock the next morning, one of the men found him and directed him back to the camp. McCauley was ravenous when he rode in. "If beans and bacon ever tasted good," he wrote, "it was then." He learned that the others had originally joked to the boss that he had lost his tenderfoot. "But when they found out I had held a bunch all night," he said, "they didn't say 'tenderfoot' anymore."

Not long after this initiation into the outfit, he ran across some bad luck. When they reached the Arkansas River, the spring thaws had transformed it into a raging torrent. As McCauley crossed, his horse became entangled in a snag, plunged beneath the seething current and drowned. McCauley saved himself by clinging to the tail of a steer as it swam across the turbulent river. Although he had survived, he lost his saddle, bridle and most of his belongings. "What to do I didn't know," he disclosed, "but I kept my troubles to myself..."

His boss told him to ride on the chuck wagon until they reached a town where the outfit would buy him another saddle. Once he was set up again, McCauley helped drive the herd toward the headquarters ranch of the Montana-based X I T organization. They arrived there on August 27, 1889. He and John took in the sights of a nearby town but before long they were ready to head back to Texas. For one thing, they had experienced a light August snow. "Anyplace that it snows in the summer," McCauley declared, "don't suit a Texas cowpuncher..."

He and John took a train of beef cattle to St. Paul, Minnesota. '"Twas here that I first saw the great Mississippi River," he wrote. "I had seen so much water that it didn't charm me much," he added, "but the sight of the steamboats - that took my eye." He talked John into joining him for a round-trip journey to Minneapolis.

At a later stop in Chicago, they both bought new clothes, took a good bath and got a haircut which McCauley said "took off some five inches." They then headed to Kansas City. There, McCauley later wrote, "I had to bid my best friend among cowpunchers good-bye, and from that day to this I haven't seen him anymore." He bought a ticket home to see his family. When he returned, his mother told him that the boy he stabbed had recovered and the father was no longer after him. McCauley said that upon his arrival home, in addition to hugs, his mother gave him "preserves, jelly, jam, eggs, pies and so on until I began to think I was somebody."

When early March came, James McCauley once again headed west. This time he wound up at the Jumbo Ranch in Borden County. They offered him the job of breaking wild horses until the spring roundup began. "Well, breaking broncs was something new to me," he reflected, "but I was a long way from home and busted." His very first bronco was about as tough as they come. The frenzied animal pitched and bucked so high that McCauley's feet came out of the stirrups and he nearly flew off.

Finally, the horse paused to catch his breath. "And I got mine," McCauley said, "and was ready for him when he started again." This time he kept his feet in the stirrups until the exhausted bronco eventually gave in. "I was never so sore in all my days," McCauley declared. Before his bronco-breaking job was over, he would tame nearly forty horses. He said he tore his saddle up and ruined all his clothes, "but I had learned to be a bronco buster." Then he added, "When I was done with that bunch of broncos, I was full of that job."

At the end of the summer, McCauley once again headed back home for a visit with his mother. While he was there, he heard about a neighborhood dance and asked a local girl to join him. Much like his unpleasant experience with the other girl, another fellow had taken an interest in her. He warned her not to talk to McCauley. When he learned of this, McCauley decided they should leave to avoid trouble. Unfortunately, trouble followed them. The jealous suitor, well liquored from the party, overtook them and blocked their path with his horse. McCauley said he begged him to leave them alone.

Leaving them alone, however, was definitely not the drunk's intention and he began raving and cussing at both McCauley and the girl. As he did, McCauley slowly rode up by his side. "He was so boozy," he noted, "he didn't notice me until it was too late." He slammed the raving drunk on the head with his pistol, peeling off a strip of skin about five inches long. "I really hit him harder than I aimed to," McCauley acknowledged.

Once again, he knew he was in deep trouble. For one thing, it was illegal at that time to carry a pistol in Texas. He quickly accompanied the girl home, and then prepared to leave. "I didn't know but what I had killed him..." he wrote. As before, he explained the incident to his mother. "With tears in her eyes," he said, "I kissed her good-bye and turned my head toward the setting sun and on I rode."

He continued day and night until he reached the ranch where he had worked the previous summer. They hired him back and sent him south to a camp on the border of Texas and New Mexico. "I wanted to know how things had turned out at home," McCauley stated, "but I was afraid to write." He eventually learned from his mother that the young man he hit had survived. But McCauley also discovered that three grand jury indictments had been filed against him. He saved his money to pay off the fines attached to the indictments and headed home in November.

"I didn't get home hardly until I was arrested," he noted. McCauley eventually got off with a fine of $251.30, but had to spend three days in jail before he was given bond. "Being guarded like a convict kindly made my blood boil," he wrote. "I swore vengeance against that constable. I've still got it in for him," he revealed in his autobiography," and don't know but if I got a chance I'd put a spider in his dumpling."

After he paid his fine, the judge gave him a stern lecture and asked him when he was going to quit carrying a pistol. "When they quit making them," McCauley boldly asserted, "then I'll quit carrying them."

"Young man," the judge declared, "you had better not come in this court for carrying a gun."

McCauley had only saved $150 and had to borrow the rest from his father. He took a job with a nearby farmer for $15 a month in order to pay him back. All went well until one summer day when he visited the girl he had taken to the ill-fated dance. On his way back, a dog started barking and jumped up to bite him as he rode. McCauley took out his pistol and fired at the dog. As he did, his horse spooked and reared back so fast the gun flew out of his hand.

It was dark and McCauley searched for his pistol for over an hour. Finally, he enlisted the help of a neighborhood boy to bring a lantern. They soon discovered the pistol in a wagon track. Unfortunately, the judge who had warned him about carrying a gun somehow got wind of the incident. He summoned the boy to testify to a grand jury about McCauley's weapon. Luckily the boy was able to warn McCauley, who wrote that he once more "started for the setting sun."

He had just set out, McCauley said, "when a deputy sheriff from Fort Worth rode up to the house and he saw me." He said he had about a four hundred yard lead on the deputy, so he decided to try to escape. He pointed his horse toward a nearby creek. "We ran about an even race the first mile," he recalled, "and then he gained some and was in about two hundred yards..."

"When I came to the creek, the bluff was some ten feet high and the water almost that deep," he said. "I put spurs to my horse and over we went." Once he was safely on the other side, McCauley said he turned to look and "up rode Mr. Sheriff. I told him good-bye and I rode on."

During the next few years, McCauley continued to live out his childhood dreams as a cowboy working in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Along with the cattle herding and bronco riding, he stacked up a pile of western memories. In Arizona's San Simeon Valley, he recalled, he "met a Rocky Mountain bear, face-to-face." The animal had been frightened by the sound of another cowboy and headed full tilt toward McCauley.

"I jerked my six-shooter," he wrote, "and began to put the lead to him. He reared up at the first shot and then came at me in earnest." McCauley was in the saddle at the time, and his horse had no intention of hanging around for a bear fight. He bolted away at full speed. By the time McCauley convinced him to turn around and return, the bear had vanished.

Later, in Wilcox, Arizona, he witnessed the death of Dalton gang-member, Bill Trainer. Trainer entered a saloon, McCauley explained, and a man named Downing followed him in. "As Trainer raised his glass to drink," McCauley wrote, "Downing began to fire on him. He emptied his six-shooter into Trainer and he sunk to the floor a dead man."

Then in April of 1895, the outfit he was working for began running stray cattle across the Mexican border into the United States. They were posted near the junction of Arizona and New Mexico. Driving cattle across the Mexican border was actually illegal, McCauley pointed out, "but anyway we did, as there was no fence or line." However, he explained, tongue in cheek, they didn't really drive them across. When the animals were near the border, the cowboys simply fired their guns. "They was just skeered," he claimed, "and crossed on their own accord."

It was during this job that he lost the two horses he would look for in nearby Skeleton Canyon. After he had escaped from the Apache renegades and dreamed of the "fine springs of water" and "tables loaded with good things to eat," he went right back to work. After all, a real cowboy doesn't quit just because of a little Indian attack.

John McCauley would continue to live the cowboy life for several more years. Then shortly after the turn of the century, having fulfilled his childhood aspirations, he settled back into the more stable farm life. He married the girl he had taken to the dance, and raised a family. Fortunately, in addition to his "scooter plow," he also picked up a pencil and paper. Then, unaware we would share them more than a century later, he recorded his visions of the days when he would kiss his mother goodbye and head out for the setting sun.

# "ON HEATHEN GROUND"

Presbyterian Missionary, John Dunbar, Travels Light Years

From His Sedate Eastern World to Live With the Pawnee

"Though the day was very cold," John Dunbar recalled, "The shameless being went about through the village the whole of the forenoon as naked as he was born." "In his left hand," he continued, "he held a bow and two arrows, in his right a stick about two foot long." The pitiful member of the Arikaras tribe spent all morning begging at the Pawnee village while he sang at the top of his lungs and beat time on the bow with his stick.

As he entered a Pawnee lodge, Dunbar wrote, the man stood singing until they either gave him something or told him to leave. The inhabitants of the very first lodge he called upon had handed him a piece of cloth to cover himself with. "But the brutish wretch, instead of wearing it," Dunbar declared, "carried it about with him 'till he went away." "The Pawnees," he reported, "called him a dog and not a man."

Later in the spring of the same year, 1835, John Dunbar, a refined eastern college graduate, witnessed another distinctly unrefined scene. The Grand Pawnees held a "great festival" to celebrate the end of their winter hunt. As young Dunbar sat in the lodge among his newfound neighbors, he watched as one of the elders laid out the contents of a bundle of sacred objects. Carefully, the old man arranged the items - a buffalo robe, various furs, an ear of corn, rods of arrows taken from their enemies, the stuffed skins of sacred birds and...clusters of human scalps.

Following the exhibition of the bundle's contents, the elder placed the cranium of a bull in a place of honor. One of the others then mixed a red powder with tallow and handed it to the "master of the feast." Taking the paint bowl, the feast's host quickly set about painting his face, chest, arms and legs with the mixture. Every member of the group eventually followed suit. In fact, even the skull received its own coat of red paint.

"Five rods were now whittled and painted," Dunbar wrote in his evening's notes. "To these rods," he revealed, "pieces of scalps were attached..." Four of the five rods were taken outside the lodge and placed on all sides, representing the four points of the compass. The fifth was set directly in front of the bull's skull. Next came the ceremonial smoking of the pipe - first puffing the smoke up and down, then in all four directions and finally onto the sacred objects and the skull.

Four buffalo tongues and hearts were then burned as offerings to their deity, Ter-ah-wah. During these ceremonies, several of the elders made speeches and later a prayer was offered. Then came the feasting. The participants gorged themselves on boiled corn and massive helpings of buffalo meat. Not only did they feast, they set food in front of the bull's skull. "Though it was utterly senseless to place this for the dry bone to eat," Dunbar commented, "it was wiser, perhaps, than to place it before these stupid creatures, who had already eaten too much."

Despite his aversion to their gluttonous ceremony, John Dunbar had developed a fondness for the Pawnees in the lodge with him. His hope of changing their uncivilized behavior with his missionary efforts, however, was fading. He wrote that as he left the lodge, he was "perfectly disgusted" with their senseless ceremonies. "When shall these dark minds be enlightened by the bright beams of gospel light," he pleaded silently to his journal, "and serve God in sincerity and truth?"

Although his mission may not have brought the Pawnees "sincerity and truth," it provided John Dunbar with fascinating glimpses of the intimate lives of a culture bound for near extinction. Immediately after graduating from Williams College in 1832, he enrolled in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Auburn, New York. When he finished, he volunteered for an assignment with the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions.

He was selected for a mission assignment guided by established missionary, Samuel Parker. Dunbar and another novice, Samuel Allis, were to work with the Indians west of the Platte River if they could reach them during the traveling season. If not, they planned to stay with the Pawnees on the near side of the Platte. Due to delays in their journey, they soon decided that stopping in Pawnee territory would be more practical. Samuel Parker left Dunbar and Allis at the Indian agency in Council Bluffs and returned to guide more new missionaries the next season.

Several days after their arrival in early October, Dunbar wrote, the agent informed visiting Pawnee chiefs that "two white men had come, who were desirous to go out and live with them..." The chiefs were pleased, he reported, and the leader of the Pawnee Loups asked to have one of them live with his band. Although Dunbar and Allis had originally planned to stay together, Allis agreed to go with the Loups and Dunbar was asked to join the Grand Pawnee band. Following their separation, John Dunbar surveyed his newfound family, none of whom could speak the first word of English. "I was now alone," he would write in his October 19, 1834 journal entry, "with a strange people, in a strange land."

During the next few days, Dunbar and his hosts traveled south along the Missouri river toward the Grand Pawnee village. By about four in the afternoon, October 21, the weary little party arrived at their destination. As Dunbar looked around the village, he later wrote, "The sight of my eyes affected my heart. I felt solemn." The reality suddenly struck him that he had abandoned his familiar surroundings to enter a foreign world. "I now realized I was standing on heathen ground."

After a good night's rest, Dunbar awoke to encounter the first of many feasts. "Soon after I had risen,' he wrote, "the bowl of buffalo meat was set before me, and the other dishes came much sooner than I could have wished." Before noon, he was invited to six other lodges to eat. The inhabitants of the village were excited that a la-chik-oots or white man had joined them, and were intent on making him feel welcome. Dunbar, not wanting to offend anyone, dug into each meal with vigor. By noon, he said, he was "stuffed with their food and kindness."

As Dunbar settled into his new surroundings, he witnessed the first of many remarkable incidents. A man from the village had been severely burned in a recent fire. Early in the morning, two Pawnee medicine men called on him. First, Dunbar noted, they sat down to smoke. Then, one man puffed the smoke upward two or three times, then down for several more. He proceeded to blow puffs toward the east, west, north and south. When he was finished, he gave the pipe to his companion to do the same.

After they examined the injured man's burns, one of the men filled his mouth with water. Dunbar said he "groaned, grunted, beat his breast with his hands," and "crept backward and then forward on his hands and feet..." Then he picked up dust and rubbed it between his hands while he made many "horrible gestures." Finally, he spat the water out violently, then refilled his mouth and began the ritual again. He eventually began to blow small quantities of the water on the patient. At the end of the procedure, he sprinkled a brownish powder on the man's burns.

Unfortunately, although the two repeated their ritual twice daily, the man succumbed to his injuries after several days. Although Dunbar admired their concern, he was not particularly impressed with the medicine men's methods. "With all their fiend-like actions and unearthly noises," he asserted, "they appeared to be more like infernal spirits than human beings."

Shortly after this incident, the inhabitants of the village set out on their winter hunt. On the morning of October 27, they headed west to follow the Platte River. He said that traveling "Indian file," they stretched into a four-mile line. The women and boys led the horses while the men "straggled about everywhere." "They sometimes walk beside their wives, assisting them in managing the horses," Dunbar added, "but this is rare."

As soon as they reached their evening camp, the women were expected to unpack the horses, set up the tents and prepare the meal. Throughout his notes, he commented on the tremendous job duties heaped upon the Pawnee women - and the subsequent lack of work expected from the men. The only true "men's work," according to the Pawnee mandates, was that of hunting buffalo and making war. But Dunbar pointed out that they seldom fought anymore and despite the dangers involved in hunting, it was really considered more of a sport than a job. Speaking for the overburdened women, he stated, "I am inclined to think they perform more hard labor than any other women on this continent..."

As the procession trekked toward their winter hunting grounds, Dunbar slowly learned the rudiments of the Pawnee language. Near the end of November, an eclipse of the sun darkened the day. "Several Pawnees came into my lodge," he reported, "and said the sun was bad." They were distressed, and explained that many of their wives and children would die after the event and that the weather would turn extremely cold. Dunbar eased their fears a little by telling them the white man didn't believe this would happen. He then endeavored to explain the process of the eclipse to an old chief. "He listened very attentively, and I think understood something of what I told him," he reported, "for afterwards, I saw him show others what I had shown him."

On Christmas day, Dunbar witnessed his first Pawnee buffalo hunt. "The Indians get as near as they can," he noted, "without being seen by them. They then set off at full speed towards their prey..." Once they have caught up with the buffalo, he continued, the hunters "in the twinkling of an eye almost, shoot one, two, three or more arrows...into it." Sometimes, he reported, the buffalo was still alive and turned furiously on its pursuer. "It is a dangerous business," he wrote, "but the Pawnees are excellent horsemen, and often escape." To any other but an Indian, he observed, "there would appear but a forlorn hope."

Their survival skills were again called upon a few days later. Towering flames appeared on some of the high ridges near their camp as a raging fire swept across the prairie. "The old men passed back and forth through the village with haste," Dunbar wrote, "calling out at the top of their voices to the young men and boys..." They directed them to drive the horses into the camp and set backfires on the high grounds. Within an hour, they had accomplished their mission. As the fire advanced, the leading edge split neatly around the burned section, leaving the camp unharmed. "Our village was illuminated all night," Dunbar wrote, "by the various fires around it."

"I am compelled to undergo another feasting," Dunbar wrote a few weeks later. It seemed the buffalo were numerous and roamed further south than they had for nearly twenty years. His Pawnee hosts attributed this to the fact that Dunbar had joined them. They told him that the buffalo had been absent from that area for some time, but, "now a man has come to live with them who loves Te-rah-wah, and he has sent back the buffalo."

Dunbar many not have loved Te-rah-wah, but he was growing closer to his Pawnee hosts. This affection, however, didn't prevent him from commenting on their shortcomings. In March of 1835, the same period when the naked Arikaras begged in the village, he again mentioned the hardships of the Pawnee women. "They are much degraded," he noted. "They become as much slaves to their sons, when they arrive at manhood, as to their husbands."

This treatment, he concluded, influenced their behavior. "They are exceedingly loquacious," he observed. "Several of them often talk at the same time. He decided they must either possess the ability to talk and hear simultaneously or simply didn't care if anyone heard them. "They not only talk much," he added, "but often scold. Their ill treatment frequently renders them excessively ill-natured."

Despite his concerns with their culture, John Dunbar knew he had found his mission. He moved his fiancée, Esther, to the camp and they married and settled in among his Pawnee neighbors for twelve years. As they raised their four children and assisted with planting and building, they were accepted as valuable members of the community. Sadly, in the summer of 1846, during the Pawnee's summer hunt, warring Sioux burned their village and threatened to kill all white missionaries.

When the hunt was over, John Dunbar and his family reluctantly abandoned the mission. As he left, the images of his hosts painting themselves red, feeding dried skulls, chasing wild buffalo and all the rest flashed through his mind. Those images had taken him light years from his staid New England world. "We have hung around the Pawnees for a long time..." he wrote. "The idea of giving them up is painful to us; but their prospects are dark."

He had also long since realized that despite his acceptance into the Pawnee culture, he would never change their "heathen ways" with his missionary zeal. "When I have told them how the white men lived, they have said it was good," he noted, "but have never manifested any anxiety to change..." They simply love their lifestyle, he reported. Then prophetically, he added that they have no intention of abandoning it until "they are compelled to do so, either by force or a prospect of starvation."

#  BRITON ON THE BUTTERFIELD

When English Quaker, William Tallack, Signed Up for

a 23-Day Round-the-Clock Trip on the Butterfield Stage,

He Bought a Window to the Wild West

The passengers aboard the Butterfield mail stage were more than a little cramped as they completed the first half of their 1860 trek. During the first twelve days of their twenty-three day round-the-clock ride, they had assumed almost every feasible combination of positions. They had wedged themselves over, around and in between the huge mailbags - as well as each other. British passenger, William Tallack, said this included, "slinging our feet by loops from the top of the wagon, or letting them hang over the sides between the wheels..." As they contorted into the various poses, he added, they often dozed off together for hours at a time, "in attitudes grotesque and diverse."

Despite the usual geniality of the four passengers, day thirteen of the stage's journey ignited sparks. A rough-cut character who went only by the nickname of "Texas," had pushed a couple mail bags out of his way and into his seat-mate's area. His neighbor shoved them right back and - referring to his pistol, promised "trouble" unless they stayed there. Texas reached for his own six-shooter and stated he would "as leave have 'trouble' as anything else." His forceful response settled the argument. Tallack said Texas pushed the bags back and the other rider exercised "prudence as the better part of valor."

Just a few weeks earlier, William Tallack, a staid English Quaker, could hardly have imagined himself witnessing such a Wild West confrontation. He had arrived in San Francisco on an eastbound around-the-world tour to visit his fellow Quakers. At that time, the customary mode of travel from California to the eastern states was a steamship through Panama to New York City. But Tallack heard the ship's fare had recently doubled, so he set out to find an alternate form of transportation.

The two-year-old Butterfield mail-stage circuit, he learned, accepted four "through" passengers on its route. To avoid the Rocky mountains, it took a circuitous path from San Francisco down into New Mexico Territory, across Texas and up through Indian Territory to St. Louis. From there, he decided, he would take the train to New York City. Not only did the savings of the overland-stage interest him, but Tallack said he wanted to see a "thorough variety of American scenery."

There was however, one slight drawback - the passengers would have to put up with the huge mail sacks that also inhabited the stagecoach. Despite the inconvenience, William Tallack plunked down $150 for a seat. That fare would purchase not only a means of transportation but, as he had anticipated, a fascinating panorama of the American frontier.

In addition to the inconvenience of the mailbags, potential danger lurked on the path. Some of the Indians along the way had robbed and murdered travelers throughout the years. Although they had not yet turned their aggression toward the Butterfield stage-line, that remained a looming possibility. Another hazard involved the steep inclines they would encounter. Tallack would later note that a month following his trip, he heard that the Butterfield stage had overturned while descending a hill in Arkansas. "One passenger was killed on the spot," he reported, "and several others were seriously injured."

The stage would travel day and night during its twenty-three day trek, covering about 120-miles in each 24-hour period. It stopped at little stations along the way for fresh horses or mules. The stations were spaced from twelve to thirty-some miles apart and were manned by well-armed station-keepers. Both a conductor and a driver accompanied the vehicle - the conductors changing off after about five hundred miles and the drivers at shorter distances. Only during brief stretch-periods and meal-stops could the passengers escape their confines.

As the stage left San Francisco on June 15, 1860, it rolled southeast through San Jose, heading toward Gorden's Ferry - now known as Bakersfield. Three of the four through-passengers were aboard and the Butterfield picked up numerous short-distance "way-passengers" along the path. The stage they set out in was a large roomy coach. It had seats for three in front, three in back and three on a movable seat in the middle with a swinging leather strap for a back. Despite its roominess, the vehicle was soon packed with, in Tallack's words, "an indefinite number of passengers." Somehow, he observed, they all managed to fit in by means of "close sitting and tightly dovetailed knees."

At about midnight, the conductor roused the group with the shout of "All out here to cross a slew!" He knew the combined weight of the mailbags, luggage and riders could embed the coach into the muddy bottom of the stream. The passengers walked sleepily across a narrow log laid over the stream. As they did, the conductor warned them that if they slipped, they would sink into mud above their knees. Fortunately they accomplished the balancing act, re-boarded the stage and curled up once more in peaceful slumber. Within a few hours they were again rousted out. This time it was for a more enjoyable purpose - to eat a hot breakfast by a blazing fire at the station near the Pacheco Pass.

During the next couple days, the Butterfield traversed the sagebrush plains of the San Joaquin Valley. Along with the endless miles of sage, the riders encountered dense clouds of fine dust. The dust relentlessly coated them from head to toe. Tallack said they would jump out and shake off as much as possible when they reached the stations. "In a few minutes after each start," he lamented, "we were as brown as ever."

They had dropped off all the way-passengers by the third day and switched to a smaller coach known as a "mud wagon." At the little town of Visalia they took on their final through-passenger, "Texas." Sporting a long beard and shaggy hair, Texas had tried his hand in the California gold fields and was now returning to his native state. He planned to take up his previous trades of cattle-driving and horse-dealing, Tallack explained, "with the further prospect of 'marrying a widow' to whom he was engaged."

As they rolled along through the valley, herds of antelope bounded past them. When the Butterfield forded the numerous rocky streams along the way, it sometimes bounded along as well. "We often were unpleasantly and abruptly jerked down into streams," Tallack wrote, "with much splashing and narrow escapes from oversets." Since the passengers and mailbags were all crammed together, he said there was little room for each person to jerk around individually - only for the whole group to shake "in one piece."

Continuing to the southeast, they reached the San Fernando Pass. As Tallack and the rest were peacefully enjoying the view, their movement abruptly halted. "Here our vehicle stuck fast in a narrow gorge," he related. The combined efforts of the horses and the men couldn't budge the stage. Fortunately, another wagon came by, and with the assistance of the additional horses, the vehicle eventually escaped its rocky prison. This was the only time during the trip that the stage became lodged. It was also, Tallack pointed out, "the only time that we were traveling in company with another vehicle going in the same direction."

Later in the afternoon of the fourth day, they passed Ciudad de Los Angeles. "The picturesque plains and vineyards," Tallack observed, "were now spread before us, whilst in the foreground rose, in the light of sunset, the purple Sierras of San Gorgonio." From Los Angeles, the stage rolled down past the Laguna Grand salt lake and toward the desert area. As they descended the narrow gorge of San Felipe, Tallack said the stage lurched along over the loose stones in a "wild spasmodic" descent. As it did, three of the six horses panicked and broke out of their traces. Two were later rounded up and the Butterfield continued toward a small station at Carrizo. The little adobe building, Tallack reported, was "a solitary station in a scene of desolation not to be surpassed by the Arabian deserts..."

Midway through the desert, they stopped at another station that Tallack described as a "miserable abode." His description was likely accurate since he also said it had "black walls inside and clustering flies." Nevertheless, they all felt somewhat refreshed after drinking coffee there. As the Butterfield continued, the inhabitants again encountered the clouds of caking dust. The combination of the hot wind, dust and perspiration, he noted, coated them with a thin mud, "only removed to be speedily renewed as we proceeded."

On the seventh day, Tallack wrote, the travelers reached the banks of the Colorado River, "a rushing, whirling, and mud-coloured river about a thousand feet in breadth." Traveling along the river, they dipped down into the Mexican frontier and then crossed back into United States territory at Fort Yuma. After a brief stop and a "welcome offer of a hasty wash in a private bedroom..." they crossed the Colorado, entering Arizona in New Mexico Territory. Arizona had not yet been organized into a territory.

As they followed the south bank of the Gila River, their newly acquired team of mustangs suddenly reared up and plunged - breaking the pole-chain. As one of the animals rose upright, he lost his balance and fell beneath the wagon. The horse fortunately wasn't injured but Tallack said its kicking and jerking under the wagon "caused our speedy evacuation of the vehicle."

On the morning of the eighth day, they had a chance to take a very welcome bath in the Gila. Re-boarding, they passed a region of extinct volcanoes. As they traveled through a hollow formed by an early crater, they found a staked-off area containing the graves of seven members of the Oatman family. Tallack learned that they had been killed by the Apaches.

Shortly after that, he wrote, they ran across a German emigrant "with no other companion than his trusty horse." The lone traveler breathlessly informed them he had been chased by seven Indians who had followed him almost to the Overland station. Despite the danger, he said he planned to set out again soon. If the Apaches caught him, he vowed he would "fight to the last, hand to hand, and sell my life as dearly as I can."

Later in the afternoon, the Butterfield stopped at the Gila Bend station. Indians had destroyed the station four months previously, but luckily no one was injured. After the confrontation, Tallack learned, over a hundred arrows had been gathered from the surrounding area. Shortly after the stage left the station, they passed several Indians armed with bows and arrows. On entering the narrow gorge of the Pimo Pass, the conductor and the passengers readied their rifles and revolvers. The conductor said that not long back, one of the officials of the Overland Mail Company had been murdered there. "We felt easier," Tallack wrote, "when we were clear of the pass and re-emerged on a wide expanse, 'the forty-mile desert'."

During the next couple days, they passed no houses other than the little stage stations. Finally, they reached the village of Tucson, which Tallack described as a "small wretched town of adobe hovels..." Tucson's "indolent Mexican population," he remarked, was characterized by "robbery and assassination."

From Tuscon, they continued east to the San Pedro River. Near the river they ran into a camp of emigrants. One of them stepped forward to ask if they had a newspaper on board. "He was recognized," Tallack noted, "as being the notorious Judge Ned McGowan, a well-known character in the earliest days of San Francisco..." McGowan, characterized by an early writer as dealing in "professional scoundrelism," was described as a greasy haired character with piggish cheeks and sinister eyes. He had once narrowly escaped the wrath of a vigilante mob, following his alleged participation in the murder of the editor of The Bulletin newspaper. McGowan and his companions were headed toward the recently discovered gold deposits of the Sierra Mimbres.

The Butterfield rolled on again, stopping at a mountain station for a somewhat less-than-relaxing meal. Throughout their dinner-break, ten Apaches loitered around the station. Several of them sported painted daubs of vermilion and white, and appeared to be, in Tallack's opinion, "of a most vicious aspect, as if they would as willingly murder a stranger as look at him." Fortunately, the station-keepers were "armed to the teeth" with revolvers, Bowie knives and a stand of rifles. "Themselves and the Indians," Tallack observed, "were alike, a rough set."

Again the Butterfield moved on, rolling across the prairies of what would become eastern Arizona. The level ground made for quick travel. "Four mules," Tallack reported, "brought us from Cook's Springs to Goodside (fourteen miles) in sixty-one minutes." Although the travel was easy, life was apparently not. A German store-keeper joined them for a short distance and talked about the lawlessness of the area. "No one's life is safe here for two hours;" he disclosed, "everyone goes about with arms, and seven out of every eight men have at some time killed one or more persons."

During the next couple days, the Butterfield continued east, crossing into present-day New Mexico and on to the Rio Grande. By day twelve, they had entered Texas at El Paso. The next day brought the confrontation over the mailbags between Texas and his seatmate. That same evening, Texas had another encounter...this time with a snake. "Rattlesnake! Stop!" he yelled. After shooting the snake, he cut off the rattle for a keepsake. "Despite the poisonous fangs of this reptile," Tallack reasoned, "he has good traits, especially in giving a fair, distinct and preliminary warning to all who trespass on his haunts..." This fair warning, he added, made him "nobler than his Indian neighbors, the Comanche and Apaches...,

In the early mornin of the fifteenth day, the Butterfield passengers were treated to another chance for a quick bath. They paused at the Pecos River while the ferryboat operators prepared the stage for transport. Tallack was ready for these rare opportunities. He had packed away a sponge, a towel and several changes of linen. He said the linens were "separated and tightly wrapped up, so as to be reached without trouble at a minute's notice." "Many passengers," he commented, "go through the entire route without once changing their linen, and sometimes with the barest apology for washing."

After crossing the Pecos, they continued northeast to Fort Chadbourne, heading toward the Concho River. At the Fort Chadbourne station, Tallack noted, they again encountered "clustering flies." Unlike the fly-infested station in the desert, where they were at least refreshed by coffee, their breakfast was not exactly refreshing. The food was black with flies. The little pests, Tallack noted, even crowded into the tea and had to be "spooned out by wholesale."

They continued through northeastern Texas, fording the shallow headwaters of the Brazos. Further on, they entered Gainesville and later Sherman, the first real towns they had encountered for nearly eight hundred miles. At Sherman, Tallack wrote, "our backwoodsman companion, 'Texas,' took leave of us..." They also dropped off a way-passenger who had joined them at Fort Chadbourne. Unlike Texas, his presence was apparently not missed. Tallack described him as a "disagreeable fellow...with his similarly surly dog.

That evening, they ferried across the Red River and passed into Indian Territory. The area, Tallack pointed out, was a fertile section about five-hundred miles long by two-hundred miles wide. It was guaranteed by the government, he wrote, "to the remnant of the various tribes who once were lords of the whole territory from the Mississippi to the Atlantic."

The Indian Territory, Tallack stated, was "thinly peopled by surviving members of the Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Shawnees, Kickapoos, Seminoles, Pawnees, Wichitas and Delawares..." He said a total of about eighty thousand lived in the area. Overnight, the Butterfield took on two new passengers, an Indian agent and a teacher from a mission-school. "We found both of these to be gentlemen, and, in conversation and politeness," Tallack added, "a great improvement compared with the passengers who left us at Sherman."

The twentieth day of the journey fell on the Fourth of July. "Accordingly, at midnight," Tallack related, "the passengers (all being Americans except the writer) welcomed its advent with loud hurrahs." Yet it was interesting, he noted, that despite their enthusiasm for the upcoming patriotic holiday, many times during the journey the other riders had all freely expressed their deep discontent with the politics of their country, "especially deploring the hopeless corruption of their executive government."

As they traveled through the Indian Territory, Major Blain, the Indian agent, told them about the "poetic beauty" of many of the Indian expressions. The stars, for example, he said were called "God's eyes" by the Comanche. They named the moon the "night queen." Despite the poetry of their languages, he said he feared the Indian nations were "fearfully wasting away, through their degraded habits imitated from the worst of the whites."

On the afternoon of the Fourth of July, Tallack said the Butterfield crossed into "the frontier of Arkansas and civilization." The passengers later walked into Fort Smith since the horses had nearly given out from an exceptionally hot and dusty stretch. There, he said, they found everyone "holiday keeping," enjoying ice water and ice cream. Both treats, Tallack pointed out, were "universal requirements of loyal American citizens in summer."

That night, they crossed Boston Mountain, a spur of the Ozarks. "Hour after hour," Tallack reported, "we clambered literally upstairs." They had to get out and walk along the most rigorous sections to ease the burden on the horses. None of the passengers minded, since walking was far superior to bouncing around inside the coach. He said the ride was "a continuous succession of unmitigated jolts - knocking our faces, shoulders, knees and backs against the wagon, or one another." But he added that once inside again, the battered group eventually fell into a sound sleep, despite "the lively behavior of our vehicle."

Shortly after waking, they found themselves in the town of Fayetteville, which Tallack described as a "go-ahead place possessing its pillared court house, churches, and ladies' college." As they continued across the northwestern tip of Arkansas, the conversation of the passengers ranged across a wide variety of topics, as it had throughout the trip. One subject, however, was never discussed. "We have, by common consent, Tallack remarked, "avoided the slightest allusions to slavery..." Since the trip transpired less than a year prior to the eruption of the Civil War, this decision was likely wise. "Although some of us had our own decided opinions in favour of abolitionism," Tallack added, "we felt that for the present, silence was wisdom, as very mild expressions of an anti-slavery nature have repeatedly produced most unpleasant and even fatal results to the utterers."

On the twenty-second day, they entered Missouri. In Springfield, the mail agent decided to transfer the mailbags and remaining through-passengers to a lighter, faster coach. This was done in an attempt to reach the Syracuse railroad station in time to transport the mail to St. Louis. If they missed the train at Syracuse, there wouldn't be another for two days. As they raced along in the "characteristic wild style of Yankee drivers," Tallack wrote, they noticed a western-bound stage coming over the hill. Since there was usually only one relay of fresh horses available, they knew they had to reach the station ahead of the other stage. "We drew up at the station just a few minutes before the others came steaming in," Tallack declared. "The fresh horses were ours..." They continued their race against time throughout the night. Soon after they woke on the last day of the journey, he said they saw "the white breath of the "iron-horse' at the Syracuse station."

That "iron-horse" would carry William Tallack on to St. Louis in a cushioned seat with ample legroom. The Pacific Railroad train he would catch there similarly afforded much greater luxury than the stuffed interior of the stagecoaches. He would no longer need to wedge himself between huge mail sacks or sling his feet from hanging loops. And the smooth-riding train would whisk past mountains and over streams without jolting him against the other passengers. But the trains could never match the colorful American panorama that the dusty, bumpy stagecoaches painted in the memory of the Briton on the Butterfield.

#  SHEER DETERMINATION

Johnny's Mother, Mary Ringo Is Forced to Call Upon Every Ounce of

Her Inner Strength During Her Terrible 1864 Westward Journey

"We find posted on a tree, a notice that the Indians have killed six men near here," Mary Ringo noted in her journal. "I do hope and pray God that we may get through safely, it keeps me so uneasy and anxious." As the pioneer wife and mother wrote the July 27, 1864 entry in her diary, she had every reason to fear the future. Within three days, her world would collapse.

The tragedy would not come from the Indians she feared - at least not directly. As her wagon train moved further west, more incidents increased Mary's dread. On Thursday, July 28, she heard about an attack three miles away, in which men were killed and several women were taken prisoner. The following day, her wagon train came upon the body of a man who had been murdered and scalped.

Then came Saturday, July 30, 1864. "And now," Mary lamented, "Oh God, comes the saddest record of my life..." She revealed that her beloved husband, Martin Ringo, had accidentally shot and killed himself. According to a report from fellow traveler, William Davenport, Martin had stepped on the top of a wagon to search for Indians. As he did, his shotgun accidentally discharged, shooting him in the head. Davenport said the likable, soft-spoken man ".was buried near the place he was shot, in as decent a manner as possible, with the facilities on the plains."

Obviously devastated, Mary Ringo poured out her grief to her diary. She said that if it weren't for her children, she would gladly lie down and die alongside her husband. Only her religious faith kept her from crumbling. "Thank God 'tis only the body lying there," she asserted. She said she felt certain they would meet again in heaven "where there is no more death, but only life eternally."

".,.I pray for strength to raise our precious children," Mary continued. With the help of friends and her inner strength, she found the serenity to continue her role as a loving mother. But the shock of the tragedy and the subsequent lack of a father, seemed to leave a lifetime scar on one of her "precious children." her oldest son, fourteen at the time, would eventually sink into frequent bouts of severe depression, heavy drinking and rampant lawlessness. To his mother, he would become the family's "black sheep" she wished she could forget. To western history, he would become a colorful outlaw that nobody would forget...the infamous Johnny Ringo.

But years before he would write that page in history, Johnny was simply a teenage member of an emigrant wagon train. Their ill-fated journey began in mid-May of 1864 when Mary and her family left their Liberty, Missouri home. Like so many others, they answered the distant call of California. Mary's sister, Augusta, had invited them to join her in San Jose. Mary's original overland journal contained many typical pioneer misspellings. In this telling, the errors have been omitted to keep the focus on the story, not the spelling. Mary would have likely appreciated that.

During the first few days of their journey, nothing unusual occurred other than a couple of broken wagon wheels and a hard Kansas rainstorm. The first of June brought about a pleasant occasion. "The gentlemen went fishing and caught a great many fish," Mary noted. That evening, they enjoyed their bounty by the campfire, as several nearby campers brought over their violins.

Unfortunately, that serenity would not last. On June 7, Johnny injured his foot when a wagon wheel rolled over it. "It seems to be a day of accidents," Mary sadly noted, "a little boy was run over by a wagon and killed..." Still another incident marred the day. A wagon master named Hase, shot and killed one of his teamsters. "The murdered man," Mary recorded, "leaves a wife and children."

The wagon train rolled past the already well-known landmarks of the Overland Trail. On June 12, they passed Fort Kearney. About two miles from the fort stood the small town of Kearney City . "It is a right promising town," Mary wrote. She said she bought a dress there and found that goods were about as inexpensive as they were in the states. A few days later, they encountered an Indian body on a scaffold. The Indian's feet, Mary reported, were doubled up near his head and he was tied up in blankets. "It's a strange looking way to put away the dead." she remarked.

After several days travel, they passed through the small military post of Cotton Wood Springs. The soldiers there searched every wagon for United States goods or horses. Mary said she had expected them to take a horse that belonged to one of their party, since it bore a U. S. brand. But they left the horse, she speculated, because it was too old to be of much service. The next day, June 21, they forded Lake Fremont. The shallow water, in some places, just covered the cattle's back. "We had a laughable time driving them across the lake," she noted, "some of them would jump in and go under as though they enjoyed it very much."

Four days later, the enjoyment vanished for both the cattle and the emigrants. A violent rain and windstorm slammed against their wagons. Fortunately, the prairie storm wasn't quite as severe for them as it was for a wagon train three miles further west. It blew so hard there," Mary learned, "that it turned wagons over that were heavily loaded." As they continued along the trail, they forded, first the South Platte and then the North Platte Rivers using a raft they had purchased at a nearby camp.

On July 9, the same day they crossed the North Platte, Mary thoroughly enjoyed the countryside, picking mountain currants amidst the wild flowers. When she rejoined the train, she said the wagons were "on top of a very high hill and when we went down we had to lock the wagons..." The men of the train held back on the wheels as they slid into Ash Hollow.

Day-by-day, they rolled across the Overland Trail, scanning the horizon for the landmarks they had read about. "Well today," Mary noted on July 13, "we pass the great Courthouse Rock, and it's certainly a great curiosity." "Near the rock is another large rock called the Clerk's Office." That term was sometimes used, along with the more popular name of "Jail Rock." By mid-July, they encountered Chimney Rock. "You can see it for some 20-miles," Mary wrote. "It is 150-feet high, the chimney or cone being some 70-feet in height."

This pleasant sightseeing, however, was destined to end. By early afternoon of the next day, they reached a telegraph office. "Here they tell us," Mary noted, "that the Indians were committing depredations on the emigrants..." Two miles further down the trail, that warning transformed into cold reality. Two of the wagons had turned onto the wrong path. The rest of the wagon train kept them in view, knowing they would soon be able to cross back over open prairie and rejoin them. "While we were looking at them," Mary recorded, "we saw the Indians maneuvering around them..." Suddenly they shot arrows through the wagon sheets, just missing the drivers' heads.

When the wagon drivers shot back at their attackers, the Indians fled at full speed. Mary later learned they crossed the river and attacked another wagon train, killing one man and wounding another. Her company rapidly corralled the wagons and prepared for a fight. "I do not think I ever spent such a night," she wrote, "for I could not sleep a wink." Fortunately, the feared battle never materialized. "They will not fight," Mary speculated, "if they think you are prepared for them."

The next day, another train joined forces with Mary's, increasing their total to sixty-two wagons. Despite this, they remained vigilant. Crossing over what she referred to as "bad roads but grand scenery," they rolled past Scott's Bluff. "I could have enjoyed it very much," Mary reflected, "but I was so afraid the Indians would attack us..."

Many in the train shared Mary's concern about a potential attack. Three days later, they twice more corralled the wagons, preparing for an assault. The second time, one of them fired at an approaching Indian. Fortunately, the shot missed, because they soon realized he was from a friendly tribe. "We are fearful that it will cause us more trouble," Mary noted, "as the Indian has gone to the fort to inform against us." The next day, as expected, they were detained at Fort Laramie, regarding the incident. Mary said they compensated the Indian and his band with flour, bacon, sugar and coffee, and were glad to get off on those terms.

At Fort Laramie, the government offered to escort Mary and her family back to Missouri. She bravely declined, saying, "it wouldn't seem like home without father." Upon leaving the fort on July 22, they headed into the Black Hills. Mary wrote, "No one ever saw such bad roads as we have traveled, and this is only the beginning... I am very tired," she continued, "we only make a cup of coffee and go to bed." The alkali deposits and the rigors of the roads had taken their toll on the animals of all the trains that had passed. "The road is strewn with dead cattle," she reported.

The problems Mary was facing would, of course, pale when compared to the tragic loss of her husband. After the tragedy, time slowly set about healing her emotional wounds. Throughout the lonely weeks that followed, she and her children managed to hold on to each other - and their sanity, as the train pushed on. "We passed Independence Rock," she noted on August 8, "and it's a grand sight; many names are carved there, some few of them I knew." The next day, as they encountered Hell's Gate, she commented, "I do not think it an appropriate name for the grand and sublime scenery."

Following the trail forged by scores of previous adventure-seekers, the train rolled through the South Pass toward Green River. When they arrived, Mary was once again too tired to eat supper. The next day, though, she recuperated and admired the scenery. "This is the most beautiful river I ever saw," she proclaimed, "'tis very rapid and the water looks green and is very clear."

Once they crossed Green River, most of their train headed northwest along the remainder of the Oregon Trail. Only Mary's wagon and six others veered southwest toward California. After emotional farewells to those who had helped her through the death of her husband, Mary turned her thoughts toward the future. "We have only seven wagons in all and I am afraid to travel with so few," she revealed, "but no one seems to apprehend any danger but me."

The next day, they set out toward Salt Lake City. Within three days, they arrived at Fort Bridger. Mary said she mailed a letter there, but found none to pick up. She was told that due to recent Indian attacks, no mail stages had run for a while. On September 6, the little wagon train pulled into Salt Lake City. There she received two letters. "No tongue can tell how sad I feel," Mary expressed, "each letter was written to my dear husband, for they know not that he is dead."

The next morning, she walked around Salt Lake City. "The city is handsomely laid out," she noted, "every house has an acre of ground ornamented with trees and flowers..." "But I would not live there," she declared, "if the whole city belonged to me..." Mary said she hadn't seen a "handsomely dressed lady" since she arrived. She also noted that there were "more dirty children running around begging than a few." She managed to buy some nice peaches, but added, "I tell you, you have to pay high for everything you get here."

Mary's original plan was to sell her wagon and mules in Salt Lake City to pay for stagecoach tickets to California. Unfortunately, she found out they were not worth enough to cover the cost of the tickets. Instead, she hired a driver, and decided to make it through with her wagon. Despite her fears about more Indian trouble, Mary and her family headed safely west across the desert. On October 7, 1864, twenty-four days before Nevada achieved statehood, they reached Austin in the Nevada Territory.

In Austin, according to later recollections by one of her daughters, Mattie Bell, Mary encountered more sadness. She gave birth to a stillborn child. Amazingly, Mary had not even considered her pregnancy enough of an inconvenience to mention it anywhere in her journal. After resting for a week or so, she and her family completed the trip to San Jose. There, as her daughter noted, "with her sheer determination, she raised her family unaided."

Mary surely tried to instill in her children, the same strength of character that had helped her cross the nation. But her oldest son, Johnny, must not have paid much attention. Some who knew him during his late teenage years said Johnny Ringo had already become an adolescent drunk and a juvenile delinquent.

The legend of Johnny Ringo is historically cloudy,like many other western legends. He apparently, however, didn't inherit the nickname of "Tombstone's Deadliest Gun-fighter" for nothing. In 1875, he became involved the Mason Country War in Texas. In fact, he was indicted for the murder of one of the main participants, but the charges were dismissed. According to the Mason County District Court's records, this was because "no witnesses were willing to come forward to testify against John Ringo."

From Texas, he drifted into Arizona Territory. In December of 1879, the Arizona Daily Star reported that he shot a man named Louis Hancock. "It appears Ringo wanted Hancock to take a drink of whiskey," the reporter noted, "and he refused, saying he would prefer beer." Johnny struck him over the head with his gun and fired at him, hitting his left ear and the side of his neck. "Half inch more in the neck," the article continued, "would have killed him."

Many theories about Johnny Ringo still swirl around in an endless cloud of speculation. Among them are allegations of his roles in a New Mexico bar-fight killing, several murders during the Mason County War and possibly even the shooting death of Wyatt Earp's brother, Morgan. These theories may never be proven or dispelled. But one fact is certain. This was clearly not the life-style that his long-suffering pioneer mother had in mind for her "precious child." How Johnny Ringo's future would have turned out if the tragic accident hadn't occurred, will also swirl endlessly in that cloud of speculation.

#  A BLOOD-RED SKY

As Osborne Russell Watches the Northern Lights Fade

to Reveal a Deep Red Spreading Over Half the Sky,

He Doesn't Realize It Will Soon Be His Salvation

"The northern lights commenced streaming up, darting, flashing, rushing to and fro," Osborne Russell wrote in his frontier journal. "At length, the shooting and flashing died away," he continued, "and gradually turned to a deep blood red spreading over one half of the sky." As the seasoned trapper took in the vivid scene, he was unaware that it would soon save his life.

Russell watched the spectacle from an encampment in the Yellowstone Valley in late February of 1837. He and his fellow trappers had recently clashed with a nearby band of Blackfoot and Russell was standing the first guard of the night. At midnight he was relieved from duty and slept soundly until sunrise. Throughout the morning, Russell and the others piled logs and brush around their campsite as a fortification against the expected Blackfoot attack.

Several group members scouted out the enemy. They returned and reported spotting the Blackfoot camp about three miles away. The night passed without incident until sunrise, when a shot rang out from a cluster of nearby trees. A concealed warrior fired at the cook gathering wood outside the camp. The fusee ball from his smooth-bored Fusil flintlock pistol missed its mark. The Blackfoot's flintlocks, ironically, had likely been obtained through trades with earlier trappers. A second Indian surprised a lookout on top of a bluff. As the startled trapper plunged down a fifty-foot snow bank to escape, the Indian fired off a shot, wounding him in the heel.

Russell and the rest hastily prepared for the upcoming onslaught. For a nervous half hour, nothing stirred. Then suddenly the Blackfoot party of about a thousand warriors, materialized from the bend of the Yellowstone River. As the trappers readied their guns for the attack, the Indians veered abruptly to their right, then halted. "The chief," Russell observed, "came forward a few steps and gave us the signal that he should not fight, but return to his village." With that, he led his group northwest across the plains.

After "numerous conjectures" Russell reported, he and his friends came to the conclusion that the blood-red sky must have been their savior. The chief, they decided, had interpreted the scene as a bad omen. Russell conjectured that the Blackfoot had "started from their village with the determination of rubbing us from the face of the earth, but that the Great Spirit had shown them that their side of the heavens was bloody, whilst ours was clear and serene."

Osborne Russell's side of the heavens may have been "clear and serene" that day, but that was not always the case. The path he had traveled in the years leading up to this incident had often been as rocky as the mountains he roamed. Hungry for adventure, Russell left his quiet Maine village at sixteen for a life at sea. He soon decided the ocean was not his calling, and joined a trading and trapping company operating in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Years later, on April 4, 1834, he signed up in Independence, Missouri for an expedition sponsored by the Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company. The company planned to send out two parties, both headed for the Columbia River. One would travel by river on a two-hundred-ton brig. The other was an overland party under the direction of Nathaniel J. Wyeth.

Still preferring land to water, Russell joined Wyeth's group. On April 28, 1834, he noted in his journal that "about forty men leading two horses each were marched out in double file, with joyous hearts enlivened by anticipated prospects." The remainder of the party, under the direction of Captain Joseph Thing, trailed behind, leading extra horses and cattle.

Russell kept a journal throughout his mountain adventure. His writing, like that of many other pioneers, contained little punctuation and numerous misspellings. In this telling, these have been amended to focus attention on the story rather than the mistakes, but no wording has been changed.

On May 10, 1834, Russell's group reached the Platte River. After fording the south fork, they followed the North Platte to Laramie's fork. Making good time, the party trekked along the Sweetwater River, arriving at the South Pass on June 15. Four days later, they entered prime trapping country along the Green River. There they learned from hunters, that a rendezvous of whites and Indians was taking place about twenty miles southwest. Heading in that direction, they reached the site the next day. The original Grand Rendezvous had been initiated nine years earlier by William Ashley and the succeeding events continued to draw hundreds of trappers and merchants.

Once there, they met with two companies of trappers and traders numbering about six hundred men. "One is a branch of the 'American Fur Company,' under the direction of Messrs. Dripps and Fontanelle," Russell noted. "The other is called the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. The names of the partners are Thomas Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublett and James Bridger." The two companies, Russell observed, included "men engaged in the service; white, half-breed and Indian fur trappers." Mr. Wyeth sold part of his furs to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and moved his group out on July second, to continue their trek toward the Columbia River.

In mid-July, they reached the valley of the Snake River in present-day Idaho. "Here, Mr. Wyeth concluded to stop," Russell noted, "build a fort and deposit the remainder of his merchandise..." That structure would eventually play a vital role in the forthcoming western migration. The fort was completed on the fourth of August 1834. The next day, Russell wrote, "the Stars and Stripes were unfurled to the breeze at sunrise in the center of a savage and uncivilized country, over an American trading post." The post was named Fort Hall, Nathaniel Wyeth would later write, "in honor of the oldest partner of our concern..."

A couple weeks after the inauguration of the fort, Russell's frontier adventure nearly came to a violent end. He was hunting with another man when they flushed out a grizzly bear. His partner fired off a hurried shot, striking the animal's shoulder. The wounded bear lurched into a nearby thicket, and Russell's excitement momentarily overpowered his common sense. He talked his partner into following him into the thicket to finish the job.

The bear, however, had a different plan - finishing off the hunters. With "enormous jaws extended and eyes flashing fire..." Russell wrote, the wounded animal suddenly vaulted toward them. Neither man had time to fire a shot. They bolted away as the beast chased first one, then the other. Russell's partner fired a quick shot that completely missed its mark. Frightened by the rifle's blast, the grizzly whirled back toward Russell. "I could go no further," he noted, "without jumping into a large quagmire which hemmed me in on both sides."

Russell said the enraged grizzly came within ten paces and "raised his ponderous body erect, his mouth wide open, gazing at me with a beastly laugh." He managed to raise his rifle and fire. The bullet drove straight toward its target, piercing the bear's heart. With a final death-growl, the towering animal collapsed.

"I trembled as if I had an ague fit, for half an hour after," Russell admitted. He and his equally flustered hunting partner finally stopped shaking and butchered the animal. Russell said they then returned to the fort, proudly bearing "the trophies of our bravery." "But I secretly determined," he revealed to his diary, "never to molest another wounded grizzly bear in a marsh or thicket."

After that episode, Russell was glad to be back in the comfort of the fort. Throughout the next few weeks, however, that comfort slowly turned to boredom. He was one of twelve men Mr. Wyeth had assigned to stay behind and guard Fort Hall while the rest set out on a hunting and trapping excursion. "This is the most lonely and dreary place I think I ever saw," he complained to his journal, "not a human face to be seen, excepting the men about the fort."

The hunters finally returned on the first of October. They informed Russell and the others that they had discovered an Indian village on Blackfoot Creek about twenty-five miles east of the fort. "They had rode greenhorn-like into the village," Russell commented, "without any ceremony or knowledge of the friendly or hostile disposition of the Indians..." Fortunately, the inhabitants turned out to be Snake Indians, also known as Shoshone, who were friendly to whites.

In fact, their chief, Pahdaherwakunday, or "The Hiding Bear," was delighted the whites had built a trading post nearby. Within a few days, he moved his entire village near the fort. Russell visited the village regularly, and began to learn the Snake language. In a short time, he was relatively fluent. During the next year, Russell and his companions fully experienced the rugged country they had entered. In the early summer of 1835, a party of forty-eight men, including Russell, set out for the Yellowstone Lake area. Trouble materialized early in the trip. On the morning of June 28, they were roused by a yell of "Indians."

"We ran to our horses," Russell wrote, "all was confusion." About sixty Indians soon appeared, "all being completely naked," he noted, "armed with fusees, bows, arrows, etc." For about twenty minutes, the warriors galloped back and forth, yelling and flaunting their weapons. Some bore strips of scarlet cloth that trailed behind them as they rode. Others displayed scalps suspended on small poles.

Russell said he raised his gun, but simply gazed at the novelty of the scene for several minutes, unconscious of the danger. His mental state then changed abruptly. "The whistling of balls about my ears," he wrote, "gave me to understand that these were something more than mere pictures of imagination..."

The first shot had come from the trappers, and served as a signal for both sides that the battle had begun. Russell said he stationed himself behind a nearby tree and placed his hat on some twigs near the base of the tree. Then he would kick the twigs, causing the hat to move so the Indians would shoot at it, bringing them momentarily into the open. "I soon found this sport was no joke for the poor horses behind me," he noted, "who were killed and wounded by the balls intended for me."

Russell said the fight ended after about two hours, when the warriors "retreated through the brush with a dismal lamentation." Although Russell and his group were victorious, two of their men were wounded - one shot by three balls in the right leg and one in the left. Fortunately, none of his bones were broken. After a couple days, he was placed on a pallet pulled by the smoothest-gaited horse available. The trappers then headed east across the Tetons to the large valley called Jackson Hole. William Sublette, had named the valley six years previously for his friend David E. Jackson, who was especially fond of the area.

On July fourth, 1835, several of Russell's party attempted to cross Lewis' fork with a bull-skin boat they had made. Crossing the river was no problem. But on the return trip, sharp reeds pierced the skin and the boat quickly filled with water and sank. "We now commenced making a raft of logs that had drifted on the island," Russell reported. When it was completed, they loaded the remainder of their supplies aboard and set out. This craft also ran into difficulty. "We no sooner reached the rapid current," Russell noted, "than our raft...became unmanageable." Fearing the rapids that were drawing them closer, they abandoned the raft and all the supplies aboard.

To add to their misery, the rain poured incessantly. Fortunately, a fire still burned that they had previously started. As Russell hunched over the little flame with his companions, he reflected on their pitiful situation. "I thought of those who were perhaps at this moment, celebrating the anniversary of our independence," he wrote, "seated around tables loaded with the richest dainties..." Instead, he noted, "here presented a group of human beings crouched 'round a fire which the rain was fast diminishing, meditating on their deplorable condition, not knowing at what moment we might be aroused by the shrill war cry of the hostile savages..."

Fortunately, the rain finally stopped and the shrill war cry never occurred. The next morning, they headed down the bank hoping to find some of their supplies that might have washed ashore. After walking less than a mile, they were delighted to discover the raft lodged against a gravel bar - with everything still intact. The river was also shallower at that point and they were able to ford it on horseback.

Once these struggles subsided, however, another concern arose. The leader of their group, Joseph Gale, was known for his strong stubborn streak. When the party reached a stream that several of the trappers recognized as a branch of the Wind River, he swore it was part of the Yellowstone River. Gale stubbornly held to his erroneous opinion and led them astray. After they wandered aimlessly in the wilderness, Russell noted, "he gave it up and openly declared he could form no distinct idea what part of the country we were in." As it turned out, the stream was the Du Noir River, which was, indeed, a branch of the Wind River.

Gale then issued orders for Russell and another man to ascend a nearby mountain on mules to scout out a possible passage through the range. As they followed their leader's instructions, the climb became so steep they were forced to dismount and lead the mules. Further up, they encountered snow banks nearly ten feet deep, yet so hard they had to cut out steps with their knives. "Our mules," Russell stated, "followed in the same tracks." Finally reaching what they presumed to be the summit, their hopes shriveled. Ahead of them stood yet another peak, completely shrouded with snow.

After resting for a while, they left the mules behind and climbed the next summit. Once more, they found no passageway. "On the west and north of us," Russell wrote, "was one vast pile of huge mountains crowned with snow..." Returning to the spot where they had left the mules, they descended part way to a grassy area where the animals could graze.

The next morning, Russell kindled a fire and filled his pipe for a peaceful smoke. Peering down the slope, he discovered two Indians headed toward him. He grabbed his gun and woke his companion. "They quickly accosted us in the Snake tongue," he noted, "saying they were Shoshones and friends to the whites." Familiar with the language from his time in the Snake village, Russell invited them for meat and tobacco.

After the four had eaten breakfast and smoked together, the Shoshones expressed amazement that they had been able to ascend the mountain at that spot...especially with the mules. They said they only knew of one place where passage was possible, and that was northeast of them. With this newfound information, Russell and his partner returned to their party. They found the passage that the Shoshones had mentioned, and wound their way into familiar country back toward Fort Hall.

Indians attacks, runaway rafts and wandering lost in the wilderness would have cured the "mountain man" wanderlust for most people. But for young Osborne Russell, they just added more images to his mental scrapbook of mountain memories. Even the near-tragedy of the "blood-red sky" Blackfoot episode a couple years later, wouldn't dampen his enthusiasm for the mountain life.

He would wander the mountains for nearly nine years. Finally, in September of 1842, he left to settle in the Willamette Valley region. Shortly before he departed, he said he scaled a nearby peak for a "farewell view of a country over which I had traveled so often, under such a variety of circumstances." The rugged beauty of that view was mingled with memories - like those of the thermal wonders of the Yellowstone area and the majestic splendor of the Grant Tetons. Of course his mountain memory collection also included the "fire-flashing" eyes of a crazed grizzly, the whistling of close-sailing "fusee" balls and his savior, the blood-red sky.

# WANDERLUST

As Young James Pattie Watches the Frightened Mexican Women

and the "Still More Fear-stricken Men," He Has No Idea of

the Adventure Awaiting Him and His Father

"The drum and fife and French horn began to sound in a manner," James Pattie wrote, "that soon awakened and alarmed the whole town..." He said the "frightened women, and the still more fear-stricken men" joined in a chorus of screams and cries. Moments before, an express rider from the Rio Pecus had galloped into town and reported that a large body of Comanche had attacked several nearby families. Five women had been abducted, he disclosed, including Jacova, the daughter of a former governor of the Spanish province of New Mexico.

When fur-trapper and adventurer, James Ohio Pattie, and his companions heard the news, he sensed they would soon be involved. By sunrise, his expectations were confirmed. Bartolome Baca, the existing governor of the New Mexico province, asked them if they would assist in recapturing the prisoners. "We complied readily with his request," James reported in his frontier memoir, "as we were desirous of gaining the good will of the people."

James Pattie and his friends had been trying to obtain a beaver-trapping license from governor Baca. The little town near Santa Fe where they met him seemed to be surrounded by the furry creatures. Helping to recover his predecessor's daughter, James reasoned, would surely win the governor's favor. Within minutes, they joined over four hundred mounted men to help track down the Indians...and hopefully, their still-surviving prisoners.

Five days later, on November 15, 1824, they sighted the Comanche trekking toward a gap in a mountain range. James Pattie's father, Sylvester, devised a plan of attack. The Spanish, he decided, should stay behind the Indians and keep out of sight. Meanwhile, he and his friends would ride around the Comanche, screened by a rise which paralleled their path. Once in place, they would hide and wait for the Indians to reach them. At the first gunshot, the elder Pattie instructed, the Spanish were to close in from the rear to prevent a retreat. The commander of the Spanish troops readily agreed to the plan.

Sylvester Pattie and the rest successfully bypassed the Comanche and hid behind rocks and trees, forming a semicircle facing the Indians. Sylvester decided that the right flank of their line should shoot first. The other half was then to provide a running fire to allow the first group time to reload. The Indians near the prisoners would be the first targets, to prevent them from killing their helpless hostages.

As the Comanche party neared, the trappers could distinguish the prisoners in front, stripped of their clothing and forced to drive a large herd of sheep and horses. Sylvester soon gave the order for the right flank to shoot. When they did, the women immediately grasped the situation and ran toward their saviors. Sadly, three of the five were speared from behind and fell. "The cry among us," James Pattie wrote, "was 'save the women!"' He and another man lunged toward the remaining two to rescue them. Only James reached the hostages, his companion falling victim to a Comanche weapon.

James rushed the women behind cover where he and his friends draped them with blankets. He pulled off his leather hunting shirt and gave it to one of them. "The Indians stood the second fire," he reported, "and then retreated." James then expected to hear the steady discharge of muskets from the four hundred Spanish troops. "But the Spaniards," he lamented, "after one discharge from their firearms, fled."

The Comanche, now realizing they far outnumbered the trappers, turned to attack with an unearthly battle cry. "From their yells," James wrote, "one would have thought that the infernal regions were open before them and that they were about to be plunged in headlong." After ten minutes of raging combat, the Comanche retreated. During all of this, James Pattie recalled, the Spaniards took "especial care not to come near enough to the Indians to hurt them or receive any injury themselves."

When he surveyed the bloody scene, James found that in addition to numerous fallen Comanche, ten of their own men had been killed. The view was, in his words, "sufficiently painful to anyone who had a heart." Then, as they solemnly prepared to bury their slain comrades, the Spanish commander suddenly approached Sylvester Pattie and demanded that he turn over the two rescued hostages to him.

The elder Pattie, astonished at the request, reminded the commander of his cowardice in battle. The enraged Spanish leader said he had tried to rally his men to fight, but they had refused. Besides, he informed Pattie, he didn't consider the captives any safer now than in the hands of the Comanche. Laughing off his insult, Sylvester said that if the women wanted to leave rather than wait until his men buried the "brave comrades who fell in their defense..." they were free to do so.

Jacova, the youngest, and the daughter of the previous governor, understood the conversation. She declared that nothing could induce her to leave her deliverers and that when they were ready to go, she would accompany them. Her companion stood firmly by her. With this, the still-irate Spanish officer whirled around and led his troops back to Santa Fe.

Later that afternoon, Jacova asked who had dashed through the enemy spears and ushered her to safety. "I cannot describe the gratitude and loveliness that appeared in her countenance," James Pattie wrote," as she looked on me when I was pointed out to her." James said he had simply considered the act to be his duty and didn't feel it should receive any extra merit. "I did not know how to meet her acknowledgments," he added, "and was embarrassed."

But Jacova saw much more than mere "duty" behind James Pattie's brave action. She perceived a strong spirit that had thrust him past danger to save her and her friend. That same spirit, in fact, had propelled him into that adventure in the first place. Several months previously, in the spring of 1824, Pattie's mother had died from tuberculosis, or "consumption" as it was then called. His father, Sylvester, was inconsolable. Knowing that Sylvester had always possessed an adventurous spirit, his friends urged him to set off on a journey, in order to ease his grief. At that time, news was spreading about successful fur-trapping excursions both up the Missouri River and down into the Spanish province of New Mexico. Sylvester's oldest son, James, was twenty at the time and shared his father's wanderlust.

He begged to be included in the adventure and eventually his pleading prevailed. As his brothers and sisters were placed in the care of relatives, James prepared to join his father for the adventure. Later, in 1831, James would record that adventure for the Cincinnati Western Monthly Review. The original telling contained a few typical frontier misspellings and punctuation errors. These have been corrected to focus the reader's attention on the story rather than the errors.

Their excursion began on June 20, 1824. They bought supplies in St. Louis, and along with ten horses and three companions, followed the bank of the Missouri River northwest. By July 28, they reached Council Bluffs and encountered the first of many challenges. The commanding officer informed them they could travel no further without a license to trade with the Indians. The Patties and their friends knew nothing about the license. "This dilemma," James noted, "brought our onward progress to a dead stand."

Earlier in the day, they had run across a large party headed by Sylvester Pratte. Pratte told them he was planning a trek down into the New Mexico province. Blocked from further northern exploration, the elder Pattie decided to change his route and join Pratte's company. On July 30, the combined group headed southwest toward the Platte River.

Adventure began early for the travelers. Two days later, as they prepared to leave their campsite, a large band of Pawnee Indians galloped toward them. "We made signs that they must halt," James Pattie wrote, "or that we should fire upon them." Pausing, the Indians slowly approached and talked with one of the trappers who spoke their language. One of the Pawnees invited them to visit their nearby village.

Once there, both of the Patties and their friends crowded into the chief's lodge. The elder chief lit a pipe while the next chief held the pipe's bowl. "He filled his mouth with smoke," James reported, "then puffed it on our bosoms, then on his own, and then upward...toward the Great Spirit." He wished the trappers many fat buffalo and all of the support they might need on their journey.

Next, the elder chief informed Sylvester Pattie that two of his Republican Pawnee war parties were out in the field. "He gave us a stick curiously painted with characters," James wrote, "I suppose something like hieroglyphics..." If they showed his warriors the stick, the chief explained, they would know the trappers were friends of the chief and should be treated kindly.

Traveling further along the Platte River in early August, they came upon a village of Pawnee Loups. Like the Republican Pawnees, the Loups were friendly and welcomed the Patties and their friends. The chief talked about his recent trip to Washington D C. "He informed us," James noted, "that before he had taken the journey, he had supposed that the white people were a small tribe, like his own..." During his excursion, however, the chief said he discovered they were "as numerous as the spires of grass on his prairies."

During the trapper's five-day stay at the village, a Pawnee war party returned from battle against a hostile tribe. They proudly brought with them the scalps of four victims they had slain. Later, the warriors painted themselves and donned wild animal skins for a victory dance. They hoisted the four scalps atop a pole in the center of the circle. As they began their ritual, James wrote, "it seemed to us, that a recruit of fiends from the infernal regions could hardly have transcended them in genuine diabolical display. They kept up this infernal din three days."

Throughout this "infernal din," the trappers sadly observed a tightly bound young boy the warriors had taken from the enemy tribe. "They could not account for bringing in this child," James observed, "as their warfare is an indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children." When the dance finally ceased, their purpose became appallingly clear, as they made preparations to burn him.

"Alike affected with pity and horror," James stated, "our party appealed, as one man, to the presiding chief, to spare the child." The chief resolutely refused. "He gravely asked us," Pattie reported, "if we, seeing a young rattlesnake in our path, would allow it to move off uninjured, merely because it was too small and feeble to bite?" The trappers dismissed the comparison and suggested that the Pawnees could raise the child as their own. The chief again refused, pointing out that if the eggs of one bird are raised by another, the resulting hatchling will eventually show his true nature.

Realizing that arguing was futile, Sylvester and the others decided to purchase the child. The chief showed interest in this idea, but said the ten yards of red cloth they offered was not enough. Disgusted at his inhumane bartering, the trappers decided to give him the ten yards of cloth and simply take the boy. James Pattie said the old chief seemed astonished. "Do you think you are strong enough to keep the child by force?" he asked his father. "We will do it," Sylvester declared, "or every man of us die in the attempt..."

The elder Pattie also pointed out to the chief that when his countrymen discovered their bodies, they would "gather up our bones, and avenge our death, by destroying your nation." At this point, the chief likely reflected upon his recent revelation that the whites were as numerous as the "spires of grass on his prairie." He said that if they would add a piece of vermilion paper to the red cloth, they had a deal. The trappers were glad to honor his face-saving offer, and took possession of the pitiful child.

Later, as they and the rescued child left the camp, the old chief followed them. "He eagerly asked my father," James wrote, "if he had thought that he would fight his friends, the white people, for that little child?" Sylvester told him that they merely wanted to be ready, just in case. With that, the smiling chief reached out and shook his hand, saying, "Save your powder and lead to kill buffaloes and your enemies."

Later that day, August 11, 1824, the trappers encountered another large body of Indians approaching at full speed. As before, they stopped when signaled to halt. "Surveying us for a moment and discovering us to be whites," James wrote, "one of them came toward us." Thinking they might be one of the Republican Pawnee war parties, the trappers showed him the painted stick the old chief had given them. "He seemed at once to comprehend all that it conveyed," James noted, "and we were informed that this was a band of the Republican Pawnee warriors." As the old chief had predicted, the war party let the trappers pass without incident.

As the Patties and their companions moved along their path toward the New Mexico province, they encountered the wrath of the both the Arikara and the Crow Indians. In mid-August, one of their group was wounded during an Arikara attack but later recovered fully. Later in the month, they were not as fortunate. Following an attack by a band of Crow, one of the trappers was wounded and soon died from his wounds.

In early September, they stopped for the evening near a small camp of Indians who had shown themselves to be friendly. As usual, the little boy the trappers-had saved was running and playing amongst them. "Suddenly our attention was arrested by loud screams or cries," James wrote, "and looking up, we saw our little boy in the arms of an Indian..." The man, he noted, was kissing him and crying at the same time, and "falling on his knees, made us a long speech, which we understood only through his signs." It didn't take the trappers long to realize he was the boy's father.

Through sign language, the Indian, from a tribe James Pattie never identified, informed them his child had been carried off by enemies. James said they talked and signed as well as they could to explain how they had obtained the boy. "Upon hearing the name Pawnee," James observed, "he sprang upon his feet and rushed into the tent." When he came out, he carried two scalps and made signs to explain they were taken from the Pawnees who had killed his wife and stolen his son. Laying the scalps a short distance away, he shot arrows through them to demonstrate his hatred. "He then presented my father a pair of leggins and a pipe," James noted, "both neatly decorated with porcupine quills." Accompanied by his son, the contented father withdrew into his tent for the night.

Later in September, James Pattie had a much less pleasant encounter. After shooting a buffalo, he decided to catch its calf. He expected he would have to run the little creature down. Instead he said, "it turned around and ran upon me, butting me like a ram until I was knocked flat on my back." Each time James attempted to get up, the calf knocked him down again. Finally he caught it by one of its legs and took his knife to it before it butted him to death. "I made up my mind that I would never attempt to catch another buffalo calf alive," he asserted, "and also, that 1 would not tell my companions what a capsizing I had..."

As young James Ohio Pattie rose and dusted himself off, he returned to his camp and to the roving life he and his father had chosen. That life would lead them down to the New Mexico province where two months later, in November of 1824, he would rescue the Spanish hostages from the Comanche - then continue on into the annals of western history. Before his journey was over, James Pattie would spend another six years roaming the new frontier.

His trek would eventually stretch out north to the Yellowstone area and as far west as the Spanish settlements of California's Pacific coast. During the excursion, both James and his father were imprisoned for months in San Diego for not having a passport to travel there. Sadly, Sylvester died in his cell. Fatigued and dispirited from his father's death, in the summer of 1830, James returned to Kentucky. But during his years of roaming, James Pattie's "wanderlust" had created an adventure story more action-packed than most western fiction writers could dream up.

#  A SOLITARY SAVIOR

When James Buchanan Decides to Replace Brigham

Young With a New Governor, He Nearly Ignites a

Senseless Bloodbath. One Man, Thomas Kane, Almost

Single-handedly Prevents Disaster

"Destruction stares us in the face whichever way we turn," the Mormon soldier wrote. "They that have not the Holy Ghost the comforter in them, are beginning to tremble." As John Pulsipher scribed these words in his 1857 journal, he foresaw the potential extermination of his friends and family. He knew the bullets of federal soldiers outnumbered those of his Mormon comrades. But as he listened to his leader's speech, he realized that although Brigham Young was aware of the danger, he seemed ready and willing to face it.

Young had been adamant in his condemnation. "It is all I can do to hold back from killing those infernal scoundrels out yonder at Bridger," he had declared, "sent by Government to destroy this people." "President Buchanan has violated his oath of office in sending that army against us, as peaceable citizens as are in the union. ...I need a breeching as strong as that of Dutch harness to enable me to hold back from killing every devil of that army..."

The journal of twenty-nine year old John Pulsipher would provide one of the best accounts of a very strange incident in our nation's early history. As Pulsipher digested the words of his revered leader, he took comfort from Young's confidence in the strength of their resistance. The month before, Pulsipher and his fellow Latter-day Saints had received some disturbing news. Two Mormon messengers returned from the States with the mail and an ominous warning. "They say the people are terribly wicked," Pulsipher noted, "have no peace there and are determined to make war on us."

The roots of this perceived assault were tangled in a mass of misunderstanding and justified paranoia. It was true that Mormon hatred still simmered in the States. The public's aversion toward their practice of polygamy and the group's adoption of the title, "The Chosen People," helped to fuel the anti-Mormon sentiment. But the federal troops heading toward Salt Lake City in the summer of 1857 were not planning to exterminate the Latter-day Saints. Nevertheless, the Mormon's mistaken perception of their motive very nearly touched off a war that would have surely painted the Utah desert red with blood.

The spark that ignited this explosive drama was struck in the spring of 1857. Federal officials complained that Utah Territory's current governor, Brigham Young, was too dictatorial. Rumors had also spread that he was intent on turning the territory into an independent state. In response, newly elected president, James Buchanan, decided to install Georgia Governor, Alfred Cumming, as the territory's new governor. Buchanan felt that Cumming, along with several other new civil officers, would provide more federal control there.

Not only did Buchanan fail to inform the adjourned congress of this plan, he made no attempt to tell Brigham Young that he would be replaced. He hoped to implement his scheme before the Mormons were fully aware of what was happening. To back up the authority of his new appointees, Buchanan ordered a military escort of twenty-five hundred troops. When the word arrived in Salt Lake City that a massive federal force was headed in their direction, the sect's members naturally reflected upon their troubled history.

Almost from the beginning, the Latter-day Saints had faced hatred from their neighbors. Originating in 1830 in Fayette, New York, the unwelcome sect had tried and failed to settle in New York, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. As they sought refuge, persecution followed them. Their homesteads were often burned, and their members were tarred-and-feathered, whipped or even murdered. Their stay in Missouri had been particularly dispiriting, with mob violence erupting from both sides in 1838. Six years later, in Nauvoo, Illinois, an angry mob killed their leader, John Smith. And now, after fleeing to the barren western desert, it seemed they were still being stalked. This new assault, they concluded, would be the government's final act of hatred - their total annihilation.

Unfortunately, the actions of the approaching army did nothing to rectify their faulty assumption. As the newly appointed territorial officials and their supporting troops headed west in mid-July, their purpose remained shrouded in secrecy. When news of their march reached Brigham Young on July 24, he immediately activated his militia - still known as the "Nauvoo Legion" from their stay in Nauvoo, Illinois.

On August 1, 1857, Mormon General, Daniel Wells sent an order to all the leaders of the Nauvoo Legion. He said that "tolerably well authenticated" reports indicated that an army from the Eastern States was on its way to invade Utah Territory. Despite the Mormon's strict adherence to the laws of the government, Wells reasoned, they retained the right to defend themselves against anarchy and tyranny. "For successive years," he asserted, "they had witnessed the desolation of their homes; the barbarous wrath of mobs poured upon their unoffending brethren and sisters; their leaders incarcerated and slain..." "They are not willing," he declared, "to endure longer these unceasing outrages..." The mixture of the federal government's secrecy and the Mormon's paranoia had set the stage for a bloody confrontation.

Fortunately, along with his implementation of the Nauvoo Legion, Young made another move. He sent a message to Thomas Kane, an old friend from Philadelphia. Kane, a lawyer and humanitarian, empathized with the sect's struggle against their relentless persecution. When he had learned about their previous difficulties in Nauvoo, Kane took it upon himself to visit them.

He later spoke at the Pennsylvania Historical Society, highlighting the positive traits of the members of the controversial religion. His speech was then circulated in book form, and seemed to help calm some of the fear and hatred of the Mormons. Young hoped that his old friend might again help bridge the widening chasm between the Latter-day Saints and the federal government.

When Thomas Kane received Young's message, he enthusiastically accepted the challenge. Well known in high places, Kane's first stop was President Buchanan's office. The president welcomed Kane's intervention but said he would not be able to officially sponsor his trip. In a follow-up letter to Kane, he wrote, "Your only reward must be a consciousness that you are doing your duty." Buchanan, in fact, didn't even realize the gravity of the situation. "You express a strong conviction, in which however, I do not participate," he noted in the letter, "that a large portion of the Mormons labor under a mistake as to the intentions of the federal government towards them."

Over time, that "mistake" transformed into a burning resolve by the Nauvoo Legion to repel the federal invaders at all costs. By early October, the federal army had reached the Green River Valley, heading toward the Mormon outpost of Fort Bridger. Hundreds of members of the Nauvoo Legion had fortified themselves along Echo Canyon, west of Fort Bridger about 65-miles east of Salt Lake City. They had even burned Bridger to prevent the federal army from using it as a fortress.

The leaders of the Nauvoo Legion were aware that unconventional tactics would have to be employed to repel the powerful federal army. Small groups of Legion members began to raid the federal troops, stampeding stock, blocking roads and destroying fords - then escaping through the mountains they were so familiar with.

In addition, General Wells decided to send men to ambush their supply wagon trains. The soldier he selected to coordinate these covert activities was Major Lot Smith. Originally from New York, Smith had served in the Mormon Battalion of the Mexican War as well as in several campaigns against the Indians. "General Wells," Lot would later write, "looking at me as straight as possible, asked if I could take a few men and turn back the trains that were on the road or burn them. 1 replied that I thought I could do just what he told me to."

Without hesitation, Smith set about his clandestine mission. On October 3, Lot and a small band of men headed east on the trail until they came across a federal supply wagon train. Confronting the train's captain, Smith ordered him to turn around and head east. Mr. Rankin, the captain, inquired on what authority Smith presumed to issue such an order. "I replied, pointing to my men, that there was part of it," Smith wrote, "and the remainder was a little further on concealed in the brush."

There was, in fact, no "remainder," but the bluff worked perfectly. "He swore pretty strongly," Smith noted, "however, he faced about and started to go east..." But as soon as Rankin thought he was out of sight, he turned the wagons around and headed back. Smith and his group confronted him again and confiscated the supplies.

The next two wagon trains Smith and his band came across, met a tougher fate - they were burned. Smith was careful to first evacuate everyone from the wagons. General Wells had given explicit orders not to hurt anyone except in self-defense. But dislodging the wagon-master from the second train proved difficult. The train's captain attempted to wake him up, calling loudly for Bill. "'Bill seemed considerably dazed," Smith observed, "and grumbled at being called up so early." As the wagon-master grunted and rolled back over to sleep, the captain increased his efforts. He informed him that if he didn't get up, he would be burned to a cinder in five minutes. "Bill," Smith noted, "suddenly displayed remarkable activity."

Sadly, not all the confrontations during this period were nonviolent. In early September, a wagon train of over 120 California-bound emigrants stopped at Salt Lake City for supplies. Unaware of the brooding tensions, they were shocked by the cold reception they received. Their shock soon transformed into anger. Determined to find provisions, they stopped at several nearby Mormon settlements.

When the wagon train's Captain, Charles Fancher, received further rejections, he was furious. Reports say he pledged to return with a small army after he completed his scouting mission. Needless to say, this was not the ideal time for such a threat. In addition, several Missourians in his party reportedly bragged about having taken part in that state's massacre of Mormons twenty years previously.

Satisfied at having spoken their piece, the emigrant party camped at Mountain Meadows, about fifty miles west of Cedar City. At sunrise on September 7, marauding Indians stormed their camp, killing about twenty. The surviving members appealed to the Mormons for help. Elder, John D. Lee, his Nauvoo Legion regiment and a number of Indian auxiliaries, escorted them to Cedar City.

On September 11, Elder Lee reportedly offered safe passage through Indian country as long as the emigrants gave up their weapons during that stretch of the trip. Doing as they were instructed, the settlers prepared to renew their California trek. Suddenly, without warning, the militia and their Indian allies savagely attacked them. At the end of the massacre, only seventeen young children remained alive from the emigrant train.

Just as more bloodshed was primed to erupt, a fierce mid-October blizzard raged through the valley. Snow and sleet blasted the countryside as temperatures dropped to 16° below zero. Although many of the federal soldiers were eager to press on, their senior officer, Colonel Alexander, decided they would over-winter near the burned-out ruins of Fort Bridger. Young relayed a message that they would not be molested there. This timely delay in the confrontation would give Thomas Kane a chance to work his diplomatic wonders. That chance, however, seemed exceedingly slim.

Kane left New York on January 5, 1858 for his improbable mission. Since the Overland Trail was impassable in the winter, he traveled by steamship to Panama where he boarded the railroad across the isthmus. He continued by sea to Los Angeles. From there he traveled on horseback with a Mormon escort, to Salt Lake City. The exhausted Kane finally reached his destination on February twenty-fifth.

In a written message to Brigham Young, Kane informed him that he was "fully prepared and authorized to lay before you, most fully and definitely, the feelings and views of the citizens of our common country..." As Kane discussed those feelings and views, Young and his followers finally learned about Buchanan's plan to install the new governor and the civil officers. During their discussions, Kane eventually convinced Young to allow peaceful entry into the city for Cumming.- without the army. With this obstacle behind him, he headed toward Fort Bridger to somehow mediate a peace between two parties perched directly on the threshold of all-out war.

His next step would be even more of a challenge. Under Mormon escort most of the way, Kane rode to the Federals' Camp Scott, near Fort Bridger, to meet with Cumming. A letter from Captain Jesse Grove of the federal army, records his entry at the camp. "About retreat," he noted, "a man with a pack mule came in from Salt Lake direction..." "Says he has dispatches for Gov. Cumming. My men want to hang him. Say he is a Mormon." Fortunately, Captain Grove didn't act on the sentiments of his men.

Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston had assumed command of the federal troops several months previously. Kane brought messages from Brigham Young to both Johnston and Cumming. Knowing that the federal troops were running short of food, Young had offered to send them supplies. Johnston's response was not exactly cordial. "Whatever might be the need of the army," he responded in writing, "we would neither ask, nor receive from President Young and his confederates, any supplies while they continue to be enemies of the government." "Having the question of peace or war under his own control," Johnston continued, "President Young would, should he choose the latter, be responsible for all the consequences." Although these weren't exactly friendly negotiations, Kane had at least established some dialogue between the two enemy camps.

Kane's conversation with Cumming was more profitable. Cumming seemed willing to consider a meeting in Salt Lake City with Brigham Young. The soldiers around him, however, did not share his understanding attitude. Kane left for Salt Lake City to relay the progress of his negotiations to Young on Wednesday, March seventeenth. On his return to Camp Scott that evening, he lost his way and fired shots in the air so the soldiers would locate him and escort him to camp.

As Captain Grove's log reports, this move almost cost Kane his life. "A patrol of the guard was sent out immediately," he wrote, "and one of my men shot at Mr. Kane and just missed him." They then brought the astonished Kane back to camp, saying they hadn't recognized him. But as Captain Grove noted, that was likely not the case. "McCarty shot at him," he revealed, "and we all think he did it on purpose." The Captain was not exactly upset over his soldier's action. "I would have given $500 to have had a fight," he asserted, "The military authorities think him a spy and there is no doubt about it, and the sooner he gets out of our reach the better."

Governor Cumming, unlike his military companions, began to realize that Kane was the key to a possible peace. "The storm, so long impending," he wrote on March 22, "is now ready to burst upon the deluded inhabitants of this Territory," Aware that he had a duty to enforce the laws of the states, Cumming nevertheless said, "I would gladly temper justice with mercy and prevent the unnecessary effusion of blood." Luckily, in the midst of suspicion and hatred, Kane had found a calm voice. He knew he had to talk Cumming into traveling with him to Salt Lake City.

Kane recorded his progress in his journal. "Monday & Tuesday (March 29 and 30) have been devoted to tasks connected with striking the tents for a removal from camp," he noted, "and running conversation with the Governor (protracted to 12 last night)." When they arrived at Salt Lake City, the new governor was welcomed peacefully. "I have been everywhere recognized as the Governor of Utah," Cumming wrote to Colonel Johnston." "In passing through the settlements," he continued, "I have been universally greeted with such respectful attentions as are due to the representative of the Executive authority of the U. S. in the territory."

Despite earlier rumors that important documents had been destroyed, Cumming found everything in its place and in perfect condition. Although Young accepted the new governor, thousands of Latter-day Saints had already left the city and surrounding communities, headed south to avoid conflict. Governor Cumming followed their emigration with a small escort, trying to convince them to return. An article in Council Bluffs, Iowa's Crescent City Oracle reported his efforts, "although the Mormons everywhere treated them kindly, they were firm, kept their own secrets, and moved on..." Eventually, though, most filtered back home.

The same newspaper covered Cumming and Kane's return to Camp Scott to inform General Johnston of the accepting response of the citizens. "General Johnston seemed in bad humor towards the Governor," the paper noted, "and mankind generally, at the peaceful indications being made..." Despite his disgruntlement, Johnston soon dismissed his troops, thanking them for their "attention and watchfulness." The peace came at an opportune time for the federal troops, the paper reported. They had "but ten days short rations in store, and soldiers very much dissatisfied, and many deserting."

On June 19, Kane arrived in Washington with dispatches from Governor Cumming for President Buchanan. Finally, the encounter was officially over. Philadelphia's Germantown Telegraph would call Kane's mission, "one of the most romantic, dangerous and successful expeditions on record." Brigham Young wrote him, saying he was, "daily and hourly remembered by us all in our supplications to the throne of power, and in the domestic circle."

Although Kane would not be that well remembered by history, his energy and persistence had snuffed out a fast-burning fuse. Without his intervention, the volatile mixture of the bubbling hatred of the federal soldiers and the desperate paranoia of the Later-day Saints would have exploded and surged across the Utah desert. The death of thousands who faced, as John Pulsipher put it, "destruction...whichever way we turn," had been prevented by Thomas Kane, a solitary savior.

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