A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume I, Part 25

Author: Connelley, William Elsey, 1855-1930. cn
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis
Number of Pages: 668

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Fremont returned in the fall of 1842, descending the Platte. He began immediately to prepare for a second exploration, and this he accomplished, starting in the spring of 1843.

On the 17th of May, 1843, Fremont landed at Kansas, known also as Kansas Landing, and sometimes as Chouteau's Landing. It is now Kan- sas ('ity, Missouri. Ile stopped at the residence of Major Richard W. Cummins, Indian Agent for the tribes of that region, and who lived then at the Landing. Before his plans were perfected he received a letter from his wife urging him to depart at onee and complete his arrangements at Fort Bent. Pursuant to this message he set out on the 29th of May, taking with him a brass howitzer obtained from General S. W. Kearny at St. Louis. Thomas Fitzpatrick was employed as guide, and Kit Carson was found later on. It afterwards developed that. Fremont had been sum- moned to Washington to explain why he was taking that brass eannon on a scientific expedition. Mrs. Fremont did not forward the notice of the summons, but sent her order for him to get under way at once.

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The men of the second expedition were Creoles, Canadian-French, and Americans, numbering all told thirty-nine men. They were armed with HIall's earbines and the twelve-pound howitzer which came so near stop- ping the exploration. William Gilpin joined the party on the 31st at Elm Grove, and he continued into Oregon. At Elm Grove were a number of emigrant wagons, among them that of J. B. Childs, of Jackson County, Missouri, who was in command of the emigrant party, which was bound for California. They were carrying furniture and household goods, farm- ing implements, and the machinery for a mill designed to be ereeted in some branch of the Saeramento. The ronte taken was the Oregon Trail to the crossing of the Kansas River at Uniontown, where Fremont had crossed the previous year. Trains of emigrant wagons were always in sight of Fremont, and many were at the ford or erossing. Settlers were even then pouring over the Oregon Trail for the Paeifie Coast.

Fremont did not cross the Kansas at the ford with the emigrant trains, but eontinned his way on the south side of the river to the junetion of the Republican and the Smoky Hill. There he crossed his expedition over the Smoky Hill on a raft, and on the 11th of June set out up the Republican. This stream was followed approximately to its source, the expedition coming out on the Sonth Platte on the 30th of June. It visited the Pacific Coast, and returned the following year, deseending the Arkan- sas, erossing to the Smoky IIill, and then turning to the Santa Fe Trail, arriving at Kansas Landing July 31, 1844.

The third expedition of Fremont was organized on the frontier of Missouri, as he says, but no speeifie location is given. It was certainly near Kansas City. The details of the organization are indefinitely given. Some one had chosen twelve Delaware Indians to go with him, and these ineluded Sagundai, who later carried back dispatches from California. and Swanok, who had destroyed the Republican Pawnee town. Fremont says that, as his expedition had for its object the exploration of the Rocky Mountains and the country beyond, no examination of the Great Plains country was made. Fog envelopes the movements of the party until its departure from Bent's Fort, on the 16th of Angust, 1845. It is not known that any part of the expedition passed over any portion of the Oregon Trail.

There was another Fremont expedition, in 1848. This went up the Smoky Hill.

In 1853, Fremont crossed the Great Plains for the last time. He fol- lowed his trail of 1843 elosely, stopping a few days at Uniontown, or that vicinity. To Uniontown he had followed the Oregon Trail.

CAPTAIN HOWARD STANSBURY

In 1849, Captain Howard Stansbury was sent out to make an explora- tion and survey of the Great Salt Lake. The initial point of his expedi- tion was Fort Leavenworth. He left the fort on the 31st of May, 1849. with eighteen men, five wagons, and forty-six horses and mules. A Mr. Sackett joined the party. He had one wagon, one carriage, and fifteen "animals." There were five persons with Mr. Saekett, possibly his fam-

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ily. Lieutenant Gunnison being ill, was put on a bed in the spring wagon used to transport the instruments.

Captain Stansbury followed what he terms the Emigration Road, which was only that branch of the Oregon Trail, starting from Fort Leavenworth. He says of it-"already broad and well beaten as any turnpike in our country." And he further says :

The cholera had for a considerable time been raging on the Missouri ; and as we passed up, fearful rumours of its prevalence and fatality among the emigrants on the route daily reached us from the plains. On the day we left Fort Leavenworth, one member of our little party was carried to the hospital in a state of collapse, where he died in twenty-four hours. The only officer attached to my command had been ill for several weeks, with severe attacks of intermittent fever, which now merged into chronic dysentery, and he was, in consequence, unable to sit on his horse, or to do duty of any kind. These were rather dis- couraging circumstances for an outset; but, at length, on the 31st day of May, our preparations being completed, we commenced our journey, my own party consisting in all of eighteen men, five wagons, and forty-six horses and mules; while that of Mr. Sackett, our fellow-traveller, con- tained six persons, one wagon, one travelling carriage, and fifteen ani- mals. Lieutenant Gunnison, being too ill to travel in any other manner, was carried on his bed, in a large spring wagon, which had been procured for the transportation of the instruments. The weather, in the morning, had been dark and lowering, with occasional showers, but it cleared off about noon ; the camp broke up; the wagons were packed, and we pre- pared to exchange, for a season, the comforts and refinements of civilized life, for the somewhat wild and roving habits of the hunter and savage. My party consisted principally of experienced voyageurs, who had spent the best part of their lives among the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, and to whom this manner of life had become endeared by old associations. We followed the "emigrant road" (already broad and well beaten as any turnpike in our country ) over a rolling prairie, fringed on the south with trees. The hills consisted principally of carboniferous limestone, in apparently horizontal strata, which in places formed quite prominent escarpments. Our first day's journey was only six miles; but we were now fairly embarked, and things gradually assumed the appearance of order and regularity.

Although the route taken by the party had been travelled by thou- sands of people, both before and sinee we passed over it, I have thought that some brief extracts from the daily journals of the expedition might not be without interest, for, although nothing very new may perhaps be elieited, still it is not improbable that they will convey, to such as peruse them, a more correct idea of what the thousands have had to encounter who have braved this long journey in search either of a new home in Oregon, or of that more alluring object-the glittering treasure of California.

On the first of June Stansbury passed the train of a Mr. Allen. It had about twenty-five ox-teams, and was bound for California. Chol- era had killed one of the party, and two more were down with it. Four men of the party had been frightened by the disease into returning to the settlements. On this day Stansbury first witnessed the formation of a camp corral, which he describes :

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In the course of the afternoon we passed the travelling-train of a Mr. Allen, consisting of about twenty-five ox-teams, bound for the land of gold. They had been on the spot several days, detained by sickness. One of the party had died but the day before of cholera, and two more were then down with the same disease. In the morning, early, we met four men from the same camp, returning on foot, with their effects on their baeks, frightened at the danger and disgusted already with the trip. It was here that we first saw a train "corralled." The wagons were drawn up in the form of a cirele and chained together, leaving a small opening at but one place, through which the cattle were driven into the enelosed space at night, and guarded. The arrangement is an exeel- lent one, and rendered impossible what is ealled, in Western phrase, a "stampede," a mode of assault practised by Indians for the purpose of carrying off cattle or horses, in which, if possible, they set loose some of the animals, and so frighten the rest as to prodnee a general and confused flight of the whole. To a few determined men, wagons thus arranged form a breastwork exceedingly difficult to be carried by any force of undisciplined savages.

Captain Stansbury came, on the fifth of June, into the main Emigra- tion Road through Kansas-the Oregon Trail. The point of union was at the place so well known on the waters of the Big Blue for the next twenty years. On the seventh of June a French trader from Fort Lara- mie was encountered. He reported that he met not fewer than four thousand wagons-four persons to the wagon-bound for California. They seemed to be getting on badly, having had no experience on the plains. Almost daily small parties were seen returning, having become discouraged or disgusted. Graves of emigrants who had recently died lined the way. Here is one case encountered on the twelfth of June. It serves to show the madness engendered by the California Gold-fever:

Tuesday, June 12-Bar., 28.64; Ther., 63º. Breakfast at four. In ten and a half miles crossed the west branch of Turkey Creek and halted to noon on the bank of Wyeth's Creek six miles beyond. The erossing here is bad and rocky, and the grass poor, having been caten elose by the trains which had preceded us. The afternoon was oppressively hot and elose, the wind being from the eastward, with every appearance of rain. We have been in company with multitudes of emigrants the whole day. The road has been lined to a long extent with their wagons, whose white covers, glittering in the sunlight, resembled, at a distance, ships upon the ocean. We passed a company from Boston, consisting of seventy persons, one hundred and forty pack and riding mules, a number of riding horses, and a drove of cattle for beef. The expedition, as might be expected, and as is too generally the ease, was badly conducted; the mules were overloaded, and the manner of securing and arranging the packs elicited many a sarcastie eriticism from our party, most of whom were old and experienced mountain-men, with whom the making up of a paek and the loading of a mule amounted to a seienee. We passed also an old Dutchman, with an immense wagon drawn by six yoke of eattle, and loaded with household furniture. Behind, followed a covered cart containing the wife, driving herself, and a host of babies- the whole bound to the land of promise, of the distance to which, how- ever, they seemed to have not the most remote idea. To the tail of the eart was attached a large chicken-coop, full of fowls; two milch-eows followed, and next eame an old mare, upon the back of which was perched a little, brown-faced, barefooted girl, not more than seven years old,

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while a small sucking colt brought up the rear. We had occasion to see this old gentleman and his caravan frequently afterwards, as we passed and repassed each other, from time to time, on the road. The last we saw of him was on the Sweetwater, engaged in sawing his wagon into two parts, for the purpose of converting it into two carts, and in disposing of everything he could sell or give away, to lighten his load.

In after years the trail was strewn with furniture of every descrip- tion, the bones of oxen, horses, mules, buffaloes and sometimes men. In their madness to get on the emigrants had cast away the effects they had hauled hundreds of miles. It was like the wreckage cast upon the shores of the wasting sea.

PETER H. BURNETT

In 1843, Peter H. Burnett, living then in Clay County. Missouri, determined to move to Oregon. He was indneed to do this by the Con- gressional report of Senator Appleton on that country. Senator Linn, of Missouri, had introduced into Congress a bill granting a settler six hundred and forty acres of land for himself and one hundred and sixty acres for each of his children. Under that act, should it pass, he would be entitled to sixteen hundred acres of land.

Dr. Whitman, the missionary, was then on the western border of Missonri. Burnett and others forming the company were in communi- cation with him. On the 18th of May the emigrants held a meeting to perfect arrangements for the journey and to see Dr. Whitman. This meeting appointed a committee of seven to make an inspection of the wagons intended for the trip. A committee of five was selected to for- mulate rules for the journey. Dr. Whitman was also present at a meet- ing held on the 20th of May, when the rules were adopted. John Grant was hired to act as guide as far as Fort Hall. The rendezvous was about fifteen miles east of Elm Grove, which was reached on the 22d of May- the day of the starting. Two elm trees and some dogwood brush consti- tuted the grove. The larger elm had been stripped of its branches for wood by previous caravans. The party crossed the Wakarusa on the 24th, letting the wagons down the steep banks by ropes. It is not known just where the Kansas River, reached on the 26th, was crossed, but it was probably at the Uniontown Ford, but possibly at the mouth of the Big Blue. It required until the 31st to complete the crossing for all the party. There were met Fathers De Smet and De Vos, com- ing from missionary labors among the Flathead Indians. The next day the organization of the company was completed by the election of Burnett as Captain and J. W. Nesmith as Orderly Sergeant; also the selection of a council of nine members. A war party of Kansas and Osage Indians was encountered on the 6th of June. This party had gone out against the Pawnees, and had taken one scalp, which was exhibited, showing the ears with the wampum still in them. The party followed up the Big Blue more closely than did later caravans, making

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its last encampment on that stream on the 17th-already beyond the boundary of what was to become Kansas.

FRANCIS PARKMAN

In the Spring of 1846, Franeis Parkman made a "tour of curios- ity and amusement to the Roekey Mountains" by way of the Oregon Trail. It is much to be regretted that Mr. Parkman was not actuated by more serious motives, for the record he left of his tour, while always popular, has no great historieal value. His party was formed at Westport, and on his way he passed the Shawnee Mission. There Parkman saw Joseph Parks, a Shawnee chief, and notes that this savage ruler had a trading establishment at Westport, conducted an extensive farm, and owned "a considerable number of slaves." The Kansas River was first seen at the Lower Delaware Crossing, where the party passed over it on rafts, after eamping a night on the south bank. This was the crossing of the old Military Road from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Scott and Fort Gibson.

Parkman made a brief stop at Fort Leavenworth, and on the 23d of May set forth on the branch of the trail leading from that fort to Fort Laramie. No date is given to show when he reached the Big Blue River, but a detailed description of its erossing is set down. The book containing the account of the tour is very loosely and carelessly written. The date of May 23d is given as the time of leaving Fort Leavenworth, also as the time of coming into the "St. Joseph Trail"- something which never did exist-after having crossed the Big Blue.

Parkman's observations on the conditions along the Oregon Trail at that day are sometimes of value. He notes that Illinois and Mis- souri furnished by far the greater number of emigrants of that period. They were numerous, and some were bound for Oregon and some for California. At Independence, Missouri, they had heard that several parties of Mormons were about to start from St. Joseph. This eaused uneasiness, for the people of both Missouri and Illinois were on bad terms with the Mormons. But these rumors proved to be unfounded.

Few partienlars of the country and the Oregon Trail are given by Parkman, but many of his own experiences are recorded-in which the people of this day are little interested.

J. Q. THORNTON

On the 18th of April, 1846, J. Q. Thornton and his wife left Quiney, Illinois, to go to Oregon. They went first to Independence, Missouri, the ontfitting point. They purchased wagons and teams, and on the 12th of May left Independence over the Oregon Trail. On the 15th they came up with the party of Ex-Governor Boggs, of Missouri, and W. H. Russell, eamped to await other expected companies of emigrants. Thornton and his wife were invited to attach themselves to this party, which they promptly did. The Boggs caravan consisted of sixty-

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three wagons. The whole company crossed the Wakarusa on the 15th. Others must have joined the party on that day, for an exami- nation made that night revealed seventy-two wagons, one hundred and thirty men, sixty-five women, one hundred and twenty-five chil- dren, sixty-nine thousand pounds of breadstuff, forty thousand pounds of bacon, eleven hundred pounds of powder, twenty-six hundred pounds of lead, one hundred and fifty-five guns, one hundred and four pistols, and seven hundred and ten cattle. Some were bound for Oregon and some for California. The emigrants were moved by different motives. Some desired land in a new country. Some were fleeing debts incurred, some had been stripped by creditors, some were in pursuit of health, some were in search of adventure, and others knew not why they were on the road.

The ferry on the Kansas River was reached on the 17th of May. This was the Papan Ferry, at the present Topeka. The crossing was effected by six o'clock. Mrs. Thornton gave the ferryman's wife some tracts. Indians were numerous in what is now North Topeka, some bedecked in savage splendor, but most of them filthy and covered with vermin. On the 19th additions to the party were made, increasing the number of wagons to ninety-eight. Twin boys had been born to a Mrs. Hall on the night of the 18th. The camp was made on Soldier Creek on the 19th.

This emigrant caravan followed almost exactly the route of the Oregon Trail. The Big Blue River, called in the record the Great Blue-Earth River, was sighted on the 26th of May, and camp was made on its left bank. Rains had swollen the river so that no crossing could be safely attempted for a day or two. A boat called the "Blue River Rover" was built on the 28th. It was constructed by joining two cottonwood canoes twenty-five feet long, and proved an ample convey- ance when the crossing was made on the 30th and 31st. On the 2d of June the party separated, those going to Oregon-twenty wagons- going on in advance. This division of the caravan occurred near the north line of Kansas beyond which point we can not follow the com- pany.

THE MORMONS

The Mormons in their migration to the Great Salt-Lake country, passed over all the branches of the Oregon Trail. Their pilgrimage continued overland from 1847 to the opening of the Union Pacific Rail- road-and even yet continues.

The Mormons avoided the real trails in the early days of their settlement in Utah. They established parallel trails, desiring to keep their own company, preserve their own secrets, and avoid the quarrels and troubles often arising when traveling with gentiles. When there were enormous trains, they kept sometimes to the main trails, for they could then protect themselves. They were also avoided by other emi- grants, and were rarely associated with by gentiles on the road. The

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Mormon Trail up the Platte lay on the north side of the river. One route in Kansas followed the Santa Fe Trail to One-Hundred-and-Ten- mile Creek, when it turned northward directly to Fort Riley, crossing the Kansas River at Whiskey Point. From Fort Riley the trail led nearly north to the Oregon Trail in the Platte Valley, passing through the present counties of Riley and Washington, in Kansas. No other emigrants are known to have used this trail. Of the eastern branches of the Oregon Trail, the Mormons used most that beginning at St. Joseph, Missouri. Many Mormon trains started from Fort Leavenworth. One large train started from Westport on the 24th of August, 1852, and reached Salt Lake City on the 26th of October.

A peculiar feature of the Mormon migration was the establishment of temporary settlements to serve as stations on the ronte to the New Zion. So far as is certainly known but one such settlement of conse- quence was set up in Kansas. It was in Atchison County, just east of the village of Shannon. It was the intention of the church to send many saints by that station to Utah. The station was enclosed by trenches and stockades, and an extensive tract of land was planted to corn, potatoes, and other crops. The products were held for the migrat- ing saints who should be sent that way. At this point cholera broke out in 1849, and many Mormons died of it. The early settlers of that country called the place Mormon Grove, and it is still so spoken of.

THE ARGONAUTS

The discovery of gold in California very nearly upset the world. No event of a like nature ever created such excitement. From every state parties and individuals set out for the gold fields on the other side of North America. Very nearly every man in Missouri who could do so started to California in 1849. Many of the companies were led by the men who had served under Colonel Doniphan in the War with Mexico. These gold hunters passed over all the branches of the Oregon Trail. Many thousands of them came up the branch which crossed at Topeka or Uniontown.

Major William Gilpin addressed one party of five thousand at the point where Lawrence was later founded. The branches from Leaven- worth and St. Joseph were choked with the Forty-niners. They started from Couneil Bluffs and from Bellevue, now Nebraska City. Many "cut offs" were made by the Argonauts along all branches of the trail. Men were mad. Women and children were sometimes abandoned ou the plains after being robbed of their property-of which one Forty- niner told the author of two instances. From the high land between Lodge Pole Creek and the North Platte this same Argonaut saw teams, often four abreast, as far as the eye could carry in both directions. He himself had started with a complete sawmill to be set up on the Sacramento, hut was prevailed upon to sell it to the Government at Fort Kearny for four times as much as it had cost him together with expenses of transportation. IIe sold out against his judgment, and Vol. 1-11

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regretted to the day of his death that he had not taken it through, saying that it would have made his fortune in one season in the gold- fields.

No such movement of people as followed this gold discovery has occurred before or since in all history. California had population enough for a State before she could begin to realize what was the mat- ter "baek East." Men in the golden valleys sang "Joe Bowers" and "put in their biggest lieks."

The emigration caused by the discovery of gold continued for several years. In a way it was duplicated in Kansas in 1858, when gold was discovered in the streams about Pike's Peak. "Pike's Peak or Bust" was the slogan. It developed that the gold there was insufficient in quantity, and the thousands who erowded the Oregon Trail on the journey outward choked that historie highway on their return with this inscription rudely lettered on their worn and weather-beaten wagon- covers : "Pike's Peak and Busted."

On the discovery of gold in California, Major Gilpin said in an address at Independence as follows :

On July 4th, 1849, speaking by their invitation to the California emigrants about to depart from the Missouri River I used this language :

Up to the year 1840, the progress whereby twenty-six States and four Territories have been established and peopled, has amounted to a solid strip, resened from the wilderness, 24 miles in depth, added annually along the western face of the Union, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

This occupation of wild territory, accumulating outward like the annual rings of our forest trees, proceeds with all the solemnity of a providential ordinance. It is at this moment sweeping onward to the Pacific with accelerated activity and force, like a deluge of men, rising unabatedly, and daily pushed onward by the hand of God.

Fronting the Union. on every side, is a vast army of pioneers. This active host, numbering 500,000, at least, has the movements and obeys the discipline of a perfectly organized military force. It is momentarily recruited by single individuals, by families; and in some instances by whole communities; from every village, county, city, and State of the Union, and by immigrants from other nations.

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A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume I, Part 25

Author: Connelley, William Elsey, 1855-1930. cn Publication date: 1918 Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Number of Pages: 668

Author: Connelley, William Elsey, 1855-1930. cn
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis
Number of Pages: 668