USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 55
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13 ' Far off on the other side of the Platte was a green meadow, where we could see the white tents and wagons of an emigrant camp; and just opposite to us we could discern a group of men and animals at the water's edge. Four
555
THORNTON AND HIS WRITINGS.
J. Quinn Thornton 14 dealt with the opening of the southern route to the Willamette Valley in a partic-
or 5 horsemen soon entered the river, and in 10 minutes had waded across and clambered up the loose sand-bank. They were ill-looking fellows, thin and swarthy, with care-worn, anxious faces, and lips rigidly compressed. They had good cause for anxiety; it was 3 days since they first encamped here, and on the night of their arrival they had lost 123 of their best cattle, driven off by the wolves, through the neglect of the man on guard. This discouraging and alarming calamity was not the first that had overtaken them. Since leaving the settlements they had met with nothing but mis- fortune. Some of their party had died; one man had been killed by the Pawnees; and about a week before, they had been plundered by the Dakotahs of all their best horses. . . The emigrants recrossed the river, and we prepared to follow. First the heavy ox-wagons plunged down the bank, and dragged slowly over the sand-beds; sometimes the hoofs of the oxen were scarcely wetted by the thin sheet of water; and the next moment the river would be boiling against their sides, and eddying fiercely around the wheels. Inch by inch they receded from the shore, dwindling every moment until at length they seemed to be floating far out in the very middle of the river. .. As we gained the other bank, a rough group of men surrounded us. They were not robust nor large of frame, yet they had an aspect of hardy endurance. Finding at home no scope for their fiery energies, they had betaken themselves to the prairie; and in them seemed to be revived, with redoubled force, that fierce spirit which impelled their ancestors, scarce more lawless than themselves, from the German forests, to inundate Europe, and break to pieces the Roman empire. A fortnight afterwards this unfortunate party passed Fort Laramie while we were there. Not one of their inissing oxen had been recovered, though they had encamped a week in search of them; and they had been compelled to abandon a great part of their baggage and provisions, and yoke cows and heifers to their wagons to carry thein forward upon their journey, the most toilsome and hazardous part of which lay still before them.'
It is worth noticing, that on the Platte one may sometimes see the shattered wrecks of ancient claw-footed tables, well waxed and rubbed, or massive bureaus of carved oak. These, many of them no doubt the relies of ancestral prosperity in the colonial time, must have encountered strange vicissitudes. Imported, perhaps, originally from England; then, with the declining fortunes of their owners, borne across the Alleghanies to the remote wilderness of Ohio or Kentucky; then to Illinois or Missouri; and now at last fondly stowed away in the family wagon for the interminable journey to Oregon. But the stern privations of the way are little anticipated. The cherished relic is soon flung to scorch and crack upon the hot prairie. Park- man's Cal. and Or. Trail, 105-8.
14 Oregon and California in 1848, by J. Quinn Thornton, etc., in two vol- umes, with illustrations and a map, New York, 1849. Mr Thornton's book was written after one year's residence in Oregon, his account of its political history and the description of California being drawn from the writings of Hall J. Kelley, whose acquaintance he formed in 1848. To this is added a sketch of the early settlement of the country by missionaries and others; a sketch of the establishment of the provisional government, with an account of his late participation in its affairs; an account of the general features, geol- ogy, mineralogy, forests, rivers, farming lands, and institutions of Oregon; all of which, considering the date of publication, is useful and interesting and in the main correctly given, establishing the author's ability to produce literary matter of rather unusual merit. But these two volumes could well have been contained in one by the omission of the author's narrative of the incidents of the immigration, which reveal a narrowness of judgment and bitterness of spirit seldom associated with those mental endowments of which Mr Thorn- ton gives evidence in his writings.
556
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1846.
ular and detailed manner, which makes him the prin- cipal authority upon the incidents attending it. It is there stated that Thornton and his wife left Quincy, Illinois, on the 18th of April, and went to Indepen- dence to join the Oregon and California emigrants. He left that place May 12th, and soon overtook the California Company under W. H. Russell. The train with which Thornton travelled together with Rus- sell's made a caravan of 72 wagons, 130 men, 65 women, and 125 children. The ill-fated Donner party subsequently joined them, and all travelled together, or not far apart, to Fort Bridger, where about 80 persons were persuaded to take the newly discovered route to the Humboldt Valley by the way of Weber Cañon and Salt Lake, which Hastings, who had come to Fort Bridger to meet the immigrants, recommended
J. Quinn Thornton was born August 24, 1810, near Point Pleasant, Mason County, West Virginia. From his manuscript Autobiography, it appears his ancestors arrived in eastern Virginia in 1633 from England, and that the Thornton family are now widely scattered over the southern and western states. In his infancy Thornton removed with his parents to Champaign County, Ohio, and grew up a studious boy, reading all the books that came in his way, among others Sully's Memoirs, from which he drew his favorite nom de plume of 'Achilles De Harley,' used in later years as a signature to certain political articles in the New York Tribune. His mother desired him to study for the ministry; but he chose law as a profession, and went to England to study, remaining nearly three years in London, living in retirement and learning little of the great world about him. At the end of that time he returned to Virginia, and studied law under John Howe Peyton, of Staunton in that state, being admitted to the bar in May 1833. Thornton says that during the period of his studies he became interested in trying to discover the nature of gravitation; being of the belief that the word 'attraction,' as applied to gravitation, is a misnomer, and that the force is external to rather than inherent in matter; and claims that the identity of that force was discovered by him in August 1832. The results of his investigations on this subject, being committed to manuscript, were twice destroyed by fire, since which no further effort has been made to place his discovery before the world. After being admitted to the bar, Thornton attended law lectures at the University of Virginia under Prof. John A. G. Davis. Having had all this preparation, he opened a law office in Palmyra, Missouri, in 1835, and in 1836 edited a political paper in that place, in the interest of Martin Van Buren during the presidential campaign. On the 8th of Feb., 1838, he married Mrs Nancy M. Logue of Hannibal in that state; and in 1841 removed to Quincy, Illinois. The Oregon Question being popularly discussed by all ranks of society about this time, led him, as it did thousands of others, to think of adding his indi- vidual weight to the American claim, and in 1846 he resolved to emigrate. I am indebted to Mr Thornton for many favors. When in Salem, in 1878, he not only gave me a valuable dictation, but placed me in possession of many important documents collected by him during an eventful life.
557
THE APPLEGATE ROUTE.
to them15 with so much urgency. The remainder of the California company kept to the old route turning off west of Fort Hall.
When Applegate's party were at that post, they met and conversed with many persons on the subject of routes, among whom was a company led by William Kirquendall, to which belonged Thornton and Boggs, and which determined to take the southern route, piloted by the explorers. Without question Apple- gate represented, as he believed, that the southern route was superior in many respects to that along the Snake and Columbia rivers. The grass, except on the alkali desert, which he expected in returning to avoid for the most part, was better than in the Snake country; there were no mountains to cross before coming to the Cascade Range, and the pass through it was greatly superior to the Mount Hood pass; while in the Klamath, Rogue River, and Umpqua valleys grass and water were of the greatest excellence and abundance. The distance he judged to be shorter than by the old route, though in this he was mis- taken. Influenced by the misrepresentation of Has-
15 The narration of the misfortunes which attended the emigrants on Has- tings' cut-off does not belong to this division of this history, but will be found in Hist. Cal., this series; also in McGlashan's Hist. of the Donner Party, and in Thornton's Or. and Cal., ii. 95-246. Thornton became well acquainted with Boggs of Missouri, and several of the most prominent persons in the Cali- fornia emigration, including the Donner party, and has recorded many facts concerning them. Hastings undoubtedly exaggerated in persuading the Don- ner company to take his route, and in trying to influence the Oregon immi- grants to go to California, thereby producing the effect spoken of in the letter already quoted from Niles' Register. On the other hand, the Oregon com- mittee sent out to counteract his influence, by showing the depositions of the last year's emigrants to California, added to the feeling of uncertainty. The travellers knew not which statement to believe, and chose at random which route to take. According to Hastings, the 800 miles between Fort Hall and the Pacific was a ' succession of high mountains, cliffs, deep cañons, and small valleys,' with a scarcity of fuel along the Snake and Columbia rivers. Mc- Glashan in the Hist. Donner Party, 22, says that Bridger and Vazquez, who had charge of Fort Bridger, earnestly advised the California emigration to take Hastings' cut-off, because they wanted to sell supples to the trains which would otherwise refit at Fort Hall. He also says that Hastings was a famous hunter and trapper, and employed to pilot the emigration: which departure from facts clouds the credibility of the previous assertion. Time confirmed the merits of the Hastings cut-off as a road to California; and it is certain that to dissensions among themselves, and unwise delays, was to be attributed the tragedy of Donner Lake.
558
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1846,
tings as to the northern route, and hoping to escape its eight hundred miles of mountains, ravines, and precipices by taking the southern one, a caravan of ninety or a hundred wagons, including Kirquendall's company, left Fort Hall on the 9th of August, ar- riving at the rendezvous of the exploring party at Thousand Springs on the 12th, where David Goff and Levi Scott assumed the duty of guiding them to the Willamette, while the Applegates and the re- mainder of the company pushed forward to mark out or cut out the road, as the case might demand, accom- panied by a volunteer party of young men from the immigration. 16
On arriving at the tributary of the Humboldt, they proceeded up the stream to the spring before discov- ered, which they called Diamond, but which is now known as Antelope spring, and which they enlarged by digging. Thence they took a north-west course to Rabbit-hole Mountains, where they enlarged the Rabbit-hole spring. They found no way of avoiding the Black Rock desert of alkali and mud lakes be- tween there and the Granite Mountains, the same course being followed in locating the road west of Black cañon that was pursued on the first explora- tion. The real labor of road-making began when the company reached the Cascade Mountains, and was repeated in the chain to the north of the Rogue River Valley, and in the Umpqua cañon. On ar- riving in the Umpqua Valley, at the north end of the cañon, feeling that they had removed the greatest obstacles to travel with wagons, and being reduced to the necessity of hunting to supply themselves with provisions, the passage through the Calapooya Moun- tains was left to be opened by the immigrants them- selves, and the company hastened to their homes, from which they had been absent fifteen weeks.
16 These were Thomas Powers, Alfred Stewart, Charles Putnam, who married a daughter of Jesse Applegate, Burgess, Shaw, Carnahan, and others. William Kirquendall and J. M. Wair also joined the road company.
559
SCARCITY OF GRASS AND WATER.
Before the Applegates left the caravan at Thousand Springs to smooth as far as possible the road which the wagons were to follow, they instructed the immi- grants to be careful in passing through the country occupied by savages, no companies of less than twenty wagons being considered safe; that diligence should be used in travelling, and that in making the long drives over the desert portions of the road certain precautions should be observed. With these explicit directions, and two reliable men as guides, they appre- hended no difficulty for those who were to follow.17
The first companies to take the road after the ex- plorers were those led by Harrison Linville, and a Mr Vanderpool; and although upon them fell the severer toil of breaking the track, and reopening the road over the Cascade Mountains made by Apple- gate's company, which a fire had filled in places with fallen timber, they arrived in the Rogue River Valley on the 9th of October; 18 while the rear companies, disregarding the instructions of the guides, loitered by the way, some, indeed, from circumstances over which they had no control,19 but many from dilatori- ness and a desire to evade sharing in the labor of road- making. These detained the main companies, some of whom were compelled to wait for them at the parting of the California and Oregon roads on the Humboldt, because Goff, their guide, was compelled to do so, lest they should mistake the turning-off point.20
17 Or. Spectator, April 15, 1847; L. Applegate's Klamath Lake Road, in Ashland Tidings, Oct. 1877 to July 1878; Zabriske, in U. S. Surveyor-general's Report, 1868, 1042; Burnett's Recollections, 229-30.
18 D. Goff, in Or. Spectator, April 29, 1847.
19 On the 13th of August a young man named Roby who had long lingered in a consumption died. On the 21st a Mr Burns died, leaving a wife and three children; a few others were ill.
20 Thornton says that Applegate affirmed that the distance from Fort Hall to the Willamette Valley by way of the Dalles was from 800 to 850 miles; that the distance by the southern route was 200 miles less; that the whole dis- tance was better supplied with grass and water than the old road; and that the road was generally smooth, and the dry drive only 30 miles long. 'If the total absence of all truth in each of these affirmations affords any means by which to judge of the principles of the man making them, he may unhesitatingly
560
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1846.
According to Thornton's journal, the scarcity of grass, water, and fuel was no greater than it had been from the South Pass to Fort Hall, nor indeed so great; and the travellers by this route were relieved of the clouds of dust which accompanied the caravans on the Snake River route. But of the sufferings of those who travelled that route he could not then be aware, and was intent only on his own supreme wretchedness. Every ox that died upon the way was spoken of as a sacrifice to the misrepresentations of the explorers of the road, though oxen had died before reaching Fort Bridger; and every caravan that crossed the plains had its course marked out by the whitening bones of cattle that had fallen exhausted by the way.21
be said to be parthis mendacior.' He also says that he all the time held the opinion that Applegate was attempting to deceive him from motives purely selfish, and that he intended to profit by the misfortunes of the emigrants. He excuses himself for following such a man by saying that he was influenced by Gov. Boggs, who confided in the statements of Applegate. In considering Thornton's statements, I have taken into account, first, the unpractical mind of the man as set forth in his autobiography, where we discover that with opportunities seldom enjoyed by American young men for acquiring a profes- sion, and with admitted talents of a certain kind, he achieved less than thou- sands who studied the law in the office of a country attorney; secondly, that he was at the time in question in bad health; and thirdly, that he was unused to physical labor. Add to those that he possessed an irritable temper and suspicious disposition, and we have the man who could pen such a record as that contained in the first volume of his Or. and Cal. Rabbison, in his Growth of Towns, MS., 3, mentions that Thornton had a quarrel with a man named Good, who furnished him a part of his outfit, and that on the Platte Good undertook to reclaim his property, but the Oregon emigrants decided as Thornton had a family he was not to be entirely dispossessed, but took the wagon out of the California train and cut it in two to make carts, also dividing the oxen-in which manner they proceeded; but Thornton gives a different version, and says that he conquered in the quarrel by an exhibition of spirit and fire-arms. Or. and Cal., i. 123-5. I do not know which account is correct, nor is it of any consequence. At Green River, Thornton began to take care of his own team for the first time, and experiencing much difficulty from not knowing how to yoke or drive oxen, only succeeded by the assistance of the charitable Mr Kirquendall and others, who pitied his infirmities. From information obtained from his own journal, it is evident that he loitered by the way; and from comparing his estimates of distances with others, that he has nearly doubled the length of the worst portions of the road. See R. B. Marcy's Hand-book of Overland Expeditions, published in 1859, in which this route is described; or any railroad guide of the present day giving distances in the Humboldt Valley. The whole distance to Oregon City was really 950 miles from Fort Hall, whereas Thornton makes it 1,280. Or. and Cal., i. 175; Frémont's Cal. Guide Book, 124; Bancroft's Guide, 87-8; Hastings' Or. and Cal., 137.
21 An emigrant who travelled the Dalles route in 1848, and who wields a pen not less trenchant than Thornton's, treats these incidents of early emigra-
561
ANNOYANCES FROM THE NATIVES.
There is no question as to the hardship endured both by explorers and emigrants. The natives along the Humboldt annoyed the small straggling companies, of which Thronton's was one. They concealed them- selves behind rocks and shot their poisoned arrows at men and animals, and often stole cattle from the herds while grazing. In return for these depredations, a Humboldt Indian was shot in the camp of the emi- grants.22 One of the foremost companies had a skir- mish with a band of Indians who were lying in ambush among some willows, in which two white men were wounded, one of whom died,23 and a number of the attacking party were killed. A greater degree of caution might have avoided these encounters; but it was not possible for the guides to be with every train, or to compel the wagons to keep together in numbers sufficient to intimidate the savages.
Notwithstanding the length of the road, which should have warned the travellers not to lose time, a week was wasted in unnecessary delay before com- mencing the crossing of the Cascade Mountains. The sour of this chain up which the road was first located
tion in a different spirit. 'Our cattle stampeded when they were yoked up, and were being watched by herdsmen. Many ran off in the yoke that we never saw again. They often stampeded in the night, and once over 400 head were overtaken the next day nearly 40 miles from camp, having travelled this whole distance through an alkali plain, without grass or water. We lost so many cattle this way, that many wagons were left in the wilderness. We cut other wagon-boxes down to 8 feet in length, and threw away such articles as we could spare in order to lighten our loads, now too heavy for the weak and jaded cattle we had left. Some men's hearts died within them, and some of our women sat down by the roadside, a thousand miles from settlements, and cried, saying they had abandoned all hopes of ever reaching the promised land. I saw women with babes but a week old, toiling up mountains in the burning sun, on foot, because our jaded teams were not able to haul them. We went down mountains so steep that we had to let our wagons down with ropes. My wife and I carried our children up muddy mountains in the Cascades, half a mile high, and then carried the loading of our wagons up on our backs by piecemeal, as our cattle were so reduced that they were hardly able to haul up the empty wagon.' Adams' Or. and Pac. Coast, 33-4.
22 The Indian was killed by Jesse Boone, a great-grandson of Daniel Boone: of Kentucky, and a Mr Lovelin, both of whom shot at him. Thornton's Or. and Cal., i. 171.
23 Whately and Sallee were shot with arrows, and Sallee died. Daniel Tanner of Iowa also died from wounds received in the skirmish, and a Mr Lippincott of New York City was seriously wounded. Or. Spectator, Nov. 26, 1846.
HIST. OR., VOL. I. 36
562
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1846.
is steep,24 and teams had to be doubled until eighteen or twenty yokes 25 were put to a wagon to drag it up the sharp acclivity. But even this was better than having to carry the loads up steep hills while the oxen drew the empty wagons, as sometimes occurred on the north road.
Two months from the time the southern immigra- tion left Thousand Springs, the last companies entered the Rogue River Valley, where according to Thorn- ton they were met by Jones of the exploring party with some fat cattle for the relief of those whose pro- visions were consumed. 26 Being extremely weary, and their teams wellnigh exhausted, the last of the fam- ilies unfortunately lingered too long in this beauti- ful country, at a season of the year when one day of rain might be productive of disaster by raising the streams, and chilling fatally the thin blood of the worn- out oxen.27 And alas! they tarried in the valley until
24 The road was subsequently changed so as to avoid going round the south end of Lower Klamath Lake, and proceeded by the eastern shore of the lake to Link River a little below the present town of Linkville, from which point the ascent of the mountains is gradual.
25 Such is Thornton's statement.
26 The Spectator of the 29th of October speaks of relief parties already sent out to assist the southern immigration; but they were behind that sent by the exploring party.
27 There is a great effort apparent in this portion of Thornton's narrative to make it appear that his misfortunes, and the sufferings of other belated travellers, were owing to the misrepresentations of the explorers, whom he classes with the 'outlaws and banditti who during many years infested the Florida reefs, where they often contrived so to mislead vessels as to wreck them, when without scruple or ceremony, they, under various pretences, would commence their work of pillage.' As this was written after he had been a year in Oregon, and learned the high character of the men who com- posed the expedition, besides seeing a considerable immigration arrive in the Willamette Valley by the southern route the year following his passage over it, in the month of September, in good health and condition, the vituperative censure indulged in by Mr Thronton is, to say the least, in bad taste. Certain inaccuracies also in his statement, into which he is led by his desire to cast opprobrium upon the men who opened the road, are calculated to bring him into discredit. For instance, he professes to account for not giving the itiner- ary of the journey after leaving the California road, by saying that the third volume of his journal was stolen by a person who took charge of some of his property left in the Umpqua Mountains, to prevent the true character of the road being made known. Page 170, vol. i. On page 190 he says: ' A very bad Umpqua Indian having, upon a subsequent part of the road, relieved me of my third volume of journal notes of this part of the road, I write from mem- ory only.' It may be asked, what interest had the Umpqua Indian in sup- pressing the journal? and why was one of this untamed tribe sent to take charge of his property?
563
THE SUFFERINGS ENDURED.
the rains began,28 and were subjected to a thousand discomforts before they came to the pass through the Canon Mountains, which in its best condition would have been bad, the road party not having a force suffi- cient to make a smooth road, but which was now, in its narrowest part, filled with water for a distance of three miles, the stream being cold and swift, and from cne to four feet in depth.29
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