USA > California > A history of California: the American period > Part 12
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The real value of Wilkes' exploration, however, lay not so much in his personal impressions of California, of what- ever nature these might be, as in the fund of information gathered by the expedition and afterwards embodied in its report. The material relating to California was of many kinds. None, however, was later of such value to the gov- ernment at Washington as that dealing with the political conditions in the province, its military inefficiency, and the advantages of San Francisco Bay to the naval and com- mercial interests of the United States.
There is no official record to show that such information was obtained for the purpose of enabling this government to acquire the territory at a later date. On the other hand, one may well question whether the report, current among American residents of California, that Wilkes' visit was directly connected with a program of annexation, lacked entirely a sound foundation.
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On June 10, 1842, after completing their long and mem- orable voyage, the vessels under Wilkes' command dropped anchor in New York harbor, thus bringing to an end one of the most successful scientific expeditions ever sent out by the United States. By a singular coincidence, the same day that witnessed the return of this naval expedition, also saw a small party of western frontiersmen, likewise acting under government authority, start from the last outpost of American settlement on a long overland journey of discov- ery and observation to the Pacific Coast. The company, though organized on a very insignificant scale compared to the Wilkes' expedition, was destined to acquire lasting fame in western annals. It was the first exploring expedition of John C. Frémont.
A detailed description of this particular undertaking does not properly belong in a history of California, since the expe- dition did not itself enter Mexican territory. Inasmuch, however, as it marked the beginning of Frémont's career as an explorer and became the starting point for his subsequent activities in California, a brief account of the enterprise becomes necessary. The party, composed chiefly of Creole and Canadian voyageurs, was organized as a military com- mand and sent out under the direction of Colonel J. J. Abert, chief of the Corps of Topographical Engineers of the United States Army. In this branch of the service Frémont held a commission as second lieutenant. His right hand men in the undertaking were Charles Preuss, a well trained scientist of German birth; a professional hun- ter named Maxwell; and the noted guide and Indian scout, Kit Carson.
The expedition outfitted at St. Louis late in May and traveled by steamer four hundred miles up the Missouri to a point near the mouth of the Kansas River known as Chou- teau's Landing. From a trading post of the same name, some twelve miles farther on, the overland march began. The incidents of the journey, which lasted four months, absorbing and interesting as many of them were, cannot be narrated here. From a geographical standpoint, the expe-
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dition was important chiefly because of the careful surveys Frémont made of the route through the South Pass and the detailed knowledge he secured of the Rocky Mountains. From a historical standpoint, the chief significance of the undertaking lay in the stimulus it gave to Oregon and Cali- fornia emigration, and to the training it afforded Frémont and his men for their later and much more difficult explora- tions in Oregon and California.
Some eight months after the close of his first western ven- ture, Frémont organized a second expedition to explore the far west. This, too, like its predecessor, was sent out under the authority of Colonel Abert of the Topographical En- gineers. It was accordingly an official expedition, whose expenses were borne by the United States government and whose commander was an officer in the United States Army. The object of the expedition was to connect Fre- mont's explorations of the previous year (1842), with those made by Lieutenant Wilkes along the Pacific Coast in 1841.
With thirty-nine men, among whom were Preuss, Max- well, and several others who had been in the party of 1842, Frémont left the junction of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers on May 29, 1843, having as guide the famous trapper, Thomas Fitzpatrick. The members of the party were well equipped and exceptionally well armed. As something of an innovation they carried with them a twelve pound moun- tain howitzer from the United States arsenal at St. Louis. As it turned out, the War Department disapproved of this feature of the expedition, and Frémont was able to retain the howitzer only through the independence and ready wit of his remarkable wife, Jesse Benton Frémont, the daughter of Senator Benton of Missouri.
Instead of taking his route of the previous year, which lay up the Platte River to the South Pass, Frémont followed the general course of the Kansas River, ultimately expecting to strike the headwaters of the Arkansas and possibly cross the mountains through some unexplored pass in that region. During the first part of the journey, when the party fol- lowed the regular overland trail which ran from Missouri
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to the Rocky Mountains, they overtook numerous emi- grant companies bound for Oregon and California. For already, as has been shown in a previous chapter, the ad- vance guard of American settlers was pushing irresistibly forward to the Pacific.
Where the regular emigrant road crossed the Kansas River, the explorers abandoned it for a more direct course to the Rocky Mountains. Careful observations were made of the entire route, for one of the primary purposes of the expedition was the discovery of a more practical emigrant road to the Pacific. On July 23, after sundry adventures but without serious misfortune, Frémont reached St. Vrain's Fort, a famous trading center of pioneer days, situated on the South Platte some distance north of the old Spanish settlement of Taos, New Mexico.
At this post Frémont was joined by two very valuable men-Kit Carson and Alexander Godey. He then proceeded northward over a very difficult route until he came to the South Pass, about 300 miles from St. Vrain's. At this point the company again took the well travelled road to Oregon, which they had left several months before at the crossing of the Kansas. In Bear Valley they came upon a large emi- grant company bound for the Columbia; and a little while afterward, turning aside from the direct road to Fort Hall, they arrived at the Great Salt Lake.
After exploring one of the islands of the lake, which the leader and a few of his companions reached at considerable risk in a frail rubber boat, Frémont made his way to Fort Hall. Here the company was divided. Part of the men returned to the Missouri settlements, while the remainder set their faces westward to the Pacific. Not far from Fort Hall, this latter party came upon the fresh wagon tracks of a very considerable band of emigrants. This proved to be the main division of the Chiles company, which, under the leadership of Joseph Walker, had abandoned the regular Oregon trial at Salt Lake to take the hazardous and little known southern route to California, by way of Mono Lake and Walker Pass.
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After the usual difficulties of western travel, but otherwise without noteworthy incident, Frémont and a small advance party reached the Whitman settlement on the Walla Walla, toward the latter part of October. From this outpost of civilization, the company travelled on down the Columbia to the Dalles. Here Frémont left the greater part of his men under Carson's command to prepare for the homeward journey, while he, with a few companions, went on to Fort Vancouver by canoe.
At Fort Vancouver the Hudson's Bay officials received the Americans with marked cordiality and rendered them every possible assistance in their preparations for the return journey. Consequently, when Frémont left for his camp at the Dalles, he carried with him not only badly needed supplies for his expedition back to the United States, but also warm admiration for the courteous British commander, Dr. McLoughlin.
The formal object of Frémont's expedition, namely, the connection of his first explorations with Wilkes' survey, had now been realized; but the most important results of the undertaking were yet to be accomplished. Instead of re- turning over the route by which he had come, Frémont mapped out a new course for the homeward journey. This involved a long swing to the south and an exploration of the territory known as the Great Basin, which lay between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierras. Thence the return was to be made to the head waters of the Arkansas.
The choice of this new route not only allowed a general survey of a very vast and little known area, but also afforded an opportunity to investigate three specific objects. The first of these was Klamath Lake, from which the Sacramento River was supposed to flow; the second was Mary's Lake, lying between the Great Salt Lake and the Sierras; and the third was the Buenaventura River, a mythical stream ap- pearing on many authoritative maps of the period, which flowed from the Rocky Mountains into the Bay of San Francisco.
The return journey was begun on the morning of Novem-
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ber 25, 1843. At this time there were twenty-five men in the party. Riding and pack animals numbered more than a hundred, and several head of cattle were driven along for food. The mountain howitzer likewise still remained part of the equipment. From the latter part of November until January 18 the party followed the general course outlined by Frémont before leaving the Dalles. From Klamath Lake onward, however, travel became increasingly difficult. Mary's Lake was not to be found, nor the eagerly looked for Buenaventura. Food grew scarce; horses and mules became exhausted, or were so badly lamed by the rough going as to be of little service. Even the men lost spirit in the face of hardship and uncertainty.
In this dilemma, Frémont decided to abandon the route previously chosen through the Great Basin and turn west- ward across the Sierras to the Sacramento. While this change of itinerary was probably born of necessity, there is every reason to believe the American commander welcomed it with enthusiasm, since it gave him a legitimate excuse to visit California-a region which had already aroused keen interest and perhaps shadowy ambitions in the eager mind of the explorer.
The passage of the mountains, begun as it was in the very dead of winter, was accompanied not only by the greatest of difficulties but also involved the gravest risks. On the eastern side, the Sierras rise much more abruptly from the plains than on the west; consequently the little company, after only a few days of travel, found itself struggling through heavy snow drifts and shut in on every hand by lofty ranges. The howitzer, which had been so much an object of concern to the War Department when the expedi- tion left St. Louis, at last had to be abandoned. Progress in the ordinary fashion became impossible. Rudely con- structed snow shoes and sheds were next resorted to, and in this way the baggage was carried forward a few laborious miles each day. On the path thus made the enfeebled animals next followed as best they could. Some of the men became snow-blind; and all were greatly reduced in
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strength because of lack of food and the strenuous exer- tions they were called upon to make. Except for a few hours near midday, the cold was severe. The snow fields grew deeper and more impassable with each day's march, and at times a way had to be beaten through the drifts with mauls to enable the animals to travel. Had the spirit of the men been less resolute, or the leadership at all wavering, disaster must have overtaken the entire party.
At length, however, on the 20th of February, 1844, the company reached the Pacific side of the Sierras, having crossed the mountains at an elevation of more than 9,000 feet. But the end of difficulties was not even yet in sight. The descent to the Sacramento was extremely arduous, especially as men and horses were in no condition for further travel. Mule meat was the only food. Two men, one of whom never recovered, lost their reason from weakness and starvation. A third became separated from his companions and was not heard of again for several days.
At last, however, a small advance guard, with Frémont himself at its head, succeeded in reaching Sutter's Fort on March 6, after more than a month of struggle in the moun- tains. Two or three days later the remainder of the com- pany, weak, emaciated, and scarce able to travel, came to the junction of the American and Sacramento Rivers. Here they were met by a relief party from Sutter's with provisions and fresh horses.
The exploring party enjoyed the hospitality of Sutter's Fort for about two weeks. With only one exception, the men quickly regained both strength and spirit, as men of their type were wont to do with rest and food, no matter what experiences they had undergone. In preparation for the journey home, provisions were collected and fresh ani- mals purchased to take the place of those (more than half the entire number!) which had been lost, or eaten in the mountains.
Leaving behind several of their companions who wished to remain in California, the rest of the expedition bade Sutter good-bye on March 24 and set out on the long return
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journey to St. Louis. To avoid a second crossing of the Sierras, still deep in snow, as well as to acquaint himself further with the resources of California and open a new overland route from the Salt Lake, Frémont led his men several hundred miles south through the great valley of the San Joaquin, which Jedediah Smith had first traversed nearly seventeen years before.
It was Frémont's good fortune to find the valley at its best. The beauty of spring was everywhere. Great oaks bordered the rivers and were scattered here and there over the plain in large groves. On every hand, green grass, variegated blossoms, and singing birds furnished a welcome contrast to the grim starving time and the cold so recently experienced in the Sierras. Bands of elk, antelope, and wild horses were constantly met with, and innumerable herds of deer broke from the thickets as the party advanced.
"One might travel the world over," Frémont later wrote in his report of this stage of the journey, "without finding a valley more fresh and verdant, more floral and sylvan, more alive with birds and animals, more bounteously watered, than we had left in the San Joaquin."
At the lower end of the valley Frémont intended to cross the Sierras through Walker Pass. This lies on the eastern side of the San Joaquin, slightly north of the latitude of the present city of Bakersfield. Instead of reaching this pass, however, the Americans fell in with a Christian Indian from the San Fernando Mission, who led them either through the Tejon or the Tehachapi Pass, both of which lie much fur- ther south and somewhat west of Walker Pass.
Once out of the San Joaquin, Frémont directed his course so as to intercept the old Spanish trail where it emerged from the Sierra Madre Mountains. In carrying out this design he followed, in the opposite direction, the general course of the route over which Jedediah Smith had led his men from the Cajon Pass into the San Joaquin on his first expedition.
At the season of the year when Fremont traversed it, the
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route was exceptionally beautiful. On his right the Sierra Madre Mountains rose rather sharply from the floor of the desert to altitudes varying from 5,000 to 10,000 feet. The tops of the higher peaks were covered with snow (for it was still early spring) and many of the ridges were heavily wooded with pine trees. Occasional streams, such as Big Rock and Little Rock Creeks, flowing down the interlacing cañons, also added their attractiveness to the scene. To the left of the explorer's trail lay the vast, uneven expanse of the Mojave Desert, possessed of a peculiar, indescribable fascination, thickly set with grotesque clumps of cactus and the weird shapes of Joshua trees, and still gloriously beauti- ful with a carpet of myriads of spring flowers.
The party struck the Santa Fé trail some fifteen miles from the Mojave River and turned eastward toward the Colorado. As the annual trading caravan from Los Angeles had not yet passed over the trail, there was an abundance of grass for the horses. But the Indians were very numer- ous and hostile; and in spite of unusual vigilance one man's life was sacrificed to their attacks.
Leaving the Santa Fe trail near the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, the explorers pushed northeast along the base of that range, crossed Sevier River, and came by way of Spanish Fork to the Salt Lake. From this point to St. Louis the route was already well defined and the company traversed it without much difficulty. With the fate not unusual to explorers, however, Frémont had the misfor- tune to lose most of his perishable collections by a sudden rise of water, when almost at his journey's end.
The company reached St. Louis on August 6, 1844, after an absence of fourteen months. Much of the country through which its route lay had already been traversed by adventurous fur traders and emigrants. Frémont was therefore not a pathfinder in the same sense that Jedediah Smith, the Patties, and Joseph Walker merit such a title. Yet his work was no less significant than theirs. If they were the more genuine explorers, he was much more the scientist; and his descriptions and observations, whether of routes,
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topography, Indian tribes, or flora and fauna, were much more systematic and valuable than theirs.
In addition to his scientific training, which so admirably fitted him for collecting and systematizing all sorts of infor- mation relative to the country through which he passed, Frémont had two other valuable assets for an explorer- an eye for beauty, and a rare command of the English language. The account of his expedition, which was first published in 1845 under government direction, testified to his ability along both of these lines. The report met with instant popularity and quickly ran through four editions. No part of it was so eagerly sought after as that which dealt with the routes to California and described so vividly the attractions of the province. Of all the literature of the period, one may safely say, no publication was more effec- tive in influencing the popular imagination and turning the restless tide of emigration westward, than the fascinating, adventurous, and highly scholarly narrative of John C. Frémont, California enthusiast and government explorer.
This chapter is based largely upon the following:
Wilkes, Charles, Narrative of the United States exploring expedi- tion during the years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842. Philadelphia, 1845. (Vols. IV and V relate to California.)
Frémont, John Charles, Report of the exploring expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon and north California in the years 1843-44. Washington, 1845.
CHAPTER XI
JACKSON, TYLER, AND CALIFORNIA
IN previous chapters an effort has been made to show how the people of the United States became interested in California; how year after year the hide and tallow ships sailed from New England ports to ply up and down five hundred miles of California coast; how the fur traders, coming and going with the seasons, opened up the overland approaches to the Pacific and brought back tales of a richly endowed, ample, but undeveloped land; how, on horseback, in ox-wagon, or on foot, the western pioneer, with wife and children, forced his slow way across the continent, until he found a permanent home beside the western sea.
It is now necessary to go back and take up the awakening interest of the United States government in California, and the various attempts made to purchase the province in the decade prior to the Mexican War. Although the Russian advance caused the American government grave concern over the fate of the Oregon territory and California, no other official interest appears to have been taken in the affairs of the latter province until twelve years after the announce- ment of the Monroe Doctrine. In the meantime, Andrew Jackson had come to the presidency and placed Anthony Butler in charge of the American legation in Mexico. The appointment of Butler to this position was one of those unfortunate mistakes for which American diplomacy has acquired an unenviable reputation. For Butler's character and qualifications eminently unfitted him for carrying out any commission of trust or responsibility; and the devious course of his career in Mexico constitutes a curious and unsavory episode in the history of American-Mexican rela- tions.
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The chief object with which Butler concerned himself while in Mexico was the acquisition of Texas. From the outset, his communications to the State Department began to hint at bribery as the best means of accomplishing his purpose, and soon he was urgently writing the Secretary of State to resort to "bribery and corruption," or "presents if the term is more appropriate," to bring the negotiations to a successful close.
When Jackson refused to sanction Butler's unethical proposals, the latter obtained permission to return to the United States to lay before the President a more extensive plan for the acquisition of Mexican territory. This, in brief, centered around the possibility of obtaining Santa Anna's consent to the proposed cession by the secret use of a large sum of money. As intermediary in the transaction, a priest named Hernández, who stood very close to the Mexican dictator, had already been selected. Hernández, according to Butler, had agreed to bring about the desired results if $500,000 were placed at his disposal "to be judi- ciously applied."
In urging this project upon Forsyth, who was then Secretary of State, Butler asserted that the plan offered an assured method of extending the sovereignty of the United States,
" not only over Texas, but also over the whole of that tract of territory known as New Mexico, and higher and lower Cali- fornia, an empire in itself, a paradise in climate . . . rich in min- erals and affording a water route to the Pacific through the Ar- kansas and Colorado rivers."
Though Butler's geography and his diplomatic methods were alike unreliable; and though Jackson refused to coun- tenance his scheme of bribery, the President unfortunately did allow him to return to Mexico to continue his futile negotiations and bring further discredit upon himself and his government in the eyes of the Mexican people.
Meanwhile, however, Jackson himself had become imbued with the idea which Butler had suggested, of acquiring
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"Higher California" as part of the Texas program. His interest in the territory was further stimulated by a letter received from William A. Slacum, a purser in the United States Navy, whose praise of California was credited by John Quincy Adams with having kindled "the passion of Andrew Jackson for the thirty-seventh line of latitude from the river Arkansas to the South Sea, to include the river and bay of San Francisco."
At any rate, from whatever source the impulse came, Jackson instructed Butler when he returned to Mexico to open negotiations for California, as well as for Texas, thus ushering in more than a decade of diplomatic maneuvering on the part of the United States to gain possession of the province by peaceful means. Butler's instructions, if care- fully read, reveal the true nature of Jackson's interest in California. This did not arise, as some historians once charged, out of a desire to secure a new field for the expan- sion of slavery; but was primarily born of a desire to further the expansion of American commerce.
The boundaries proposed did not include territory south of the well established line of the Missouri Compromise; but embraced only the region north of the 37th parallel. The great object was the Bay of San Francisco, which had been
"represented to the President" as "a most desirable place of re- sort for our numerous whaling vessels engaged in the whaling business in the Pacific, far superior to any to which they now have access."
The mastery of the Pacific was thus in fact Jackson's aim, not "a bigger pen to cram with slaves."
The price which the United States would be willing to pay for the desired region was not specified in Butler's instructions, but rumor later fixed it at $500,000. For various reasons the bargain was never consummated, if indeed, it was ever brought to the attention of the Mexican government. Butler was soon recalled and a better man sent to take his place.
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