The wagons travel an uneven hillsideLaramie Peak from the Black Hills.
Laramie Peak from the Black Hills.
It did produce upon one a disturbing sensation; that knowledge, I mean, of how often the eyes ofambushed Indians might be fixed upon one. And the wild animals, too! From the distance they watched. Herds of buffalo, perhaps, or of deer, looked upon our moving train from the plateau tops. Beyond the flaming yellow sun-flowers, amid the bright red of the rocky hills, the Sioux was often concealed. His face was painted of the same gaudy colors, and he looked with blood lust upon us. We knew not when this might be; yet that it was always possible gave a sort of aspect of menace to the bluffs and hills along the way.
Many a time had Captain Holladay with his natural caution gained from experience; his sagacity and knowledge, given a timely warning. The girls must not be led too far by their passion for the gathering of flowers. How often had the desire to possess some especially beautiful or brilliant, some alluring bunch of desert bloom tempted them beyond the lines of safety. Especially true was this among the Black Hills and the mountain ranges, too, beyond them. There was danger, also, in the going for water, the dippingplaces were often at quite a distance from the camp. How terrible an example was that which occurred in one of the trains which crossed the Hills the year before our own. It was on the banks of the La Bonte River. A band of five Sioux suddenly dashed out from amid a clump of trees on the river bank, and carried away, beyond all hope of rescue, one of two girls who had rashly gone too far down the stream. The train remained at the river for a period of three days, the Indians were pursued for many miles, but it was all in vain. The young husband never saw his young wife again. One of the young women was slightly in advance of the other, and those few steps made this difference, that one was lost, the other saved. And the young woman who escaped was the writer’s sister.
Something of all the passions; something of all the passions—joy, love, hope, fear, and the others, too, must have been recorded in the pages of that diary. Or, rather, there should have been had the youthful writer of those pages put down upon them what he once actually looked upon,as now he recalls them mentally. They must have told, too, how a foe even stronger than the Sioux, one not to be gainsaid, took away a sister at last. We took the oaken wagon seats to make her little coffin. Did it tell how we laid her away to rest; after those days of suffering, when she was carried by turns in our arms, to save her what pain we could; did it tell, then, how she was laid beneath the cottonwoods, where ripple the waters of the Laramie, and how the soil was hardly replaced in the grave ere we must depart? Did it tell of the wild night of storm and darkness, through which later we passed? The remainder of “The Journey” was for us, darkened by that ever-remembered tragedy.
Love, upon “The Journey”—O it was sure to come! Where will not love follow, where is it not to be found? Coquettishly the sun-bonnet may be worn; coquettishly the sun-flower may be placed at the waist, or the cactus bloom amid the dark-brown hair. By what strange and circuitous routes are lovers brought to meet! Through what strange and unforseen circumstances doeslove begin! In our Company were there not those maidens who could still walk coquettishly and with grace, although it was their truthful boast that their feet had measured each mile of the lengthened way? Were there not those in whose red cheeks the prairie sun kissed English blood? The man from the west, why should he not learn to love that beauty from Albion’s Isle?
How delightful when danger did not lie in ambush, to walk, arm locked in arm, far ahead of the leading wagon; how delightful to sit amid the flowers and to feel the solitude of the boundless prairie! Yet love is a danger that lurks everywhere. To linger, ever so short a distance behind the train was a grave offense. Each member of the Company knew this rule, they knew it was a rule that must not be broken. Of course one need not make a capture as did that savage brave; one need not, whirling by upon his desert horse, stoop sideways and lift to his side a screaming and unwilling bride. Nor did one care to imitate that enamored chieftain of the Cheyennes. Should one make an offer of ahundred ponies? Yet, if the Captain, upon his steed, like a Knight of old, should be found with a pretty girl riding beside him, what an example for others to follow! One there was in our Company, a youth, who had returned from the west, passing over the road again to find his father’s grave. He had come, too, to meet his mother and sister by the Missouri’s banks. Fate had willed, however, that the father’s grave should not be found; two years had elapsed since it had been made, and nature, with storm and floods had hidden it away, and so the one who slept there, sleeps there still, and the mountain winds, the thunder, and the voice of the passing stream, still make his requiem. On that eastward trip our Captain had learned to love this youth. And on the westward trip he learned to love even more the sister. For she it was who later became our Captain’s wife. But why repeat the romance?
Life, Romance, Death—indeed they were busy in our little world! The space between the two semi-circles of wagons made a wide division; it was like the two sides of a street, each wagon adwelling. One could hardly believe that in such a company, isolated from all the rest of mankind, such a separation could exist. Yet such a separation existed between “the wings.” At times the members of the one side hardly knew what was happening among those of the other. But there were certain events, of course, that would form the link. As we proceed upon our way what changes come! I mean into the lives and hearts of many. But come there new joy, or come there new sorrow, the Pioneer must live the pioneer’s life. There were always the labor, the privations, a certain kind of pleasure. There was left but little time in which to brood. Except, it may be, in the silent watches of the night. There was something remarkable, too, about the manner in which the cattle became imbued with the spirit of their driver. What individuality, for instance, there was among the cattle themselves, our own four yoke, I mean, it was modified by the driver. Tex and Mex, Spot and Jeff, how easy to distinguish their characters from that of either Tom and Jerry, or Lep and Dick. And yet as a bodyhow quickly they reflected the mental condition of the one who drove them. Be he calm, be he dejected or peevish, and the cattle knew it at once.
Here is a suggestion of a sometimes unpleasant duty—“The Night-Guard.” His was a trust in which anxiety and danger were often combined. The picket on duty at the front of war is scarcely more important to the safety of the troops than was the Night-Guard to our Company. In those days of lawlessness in red man and white, constant vigil had to be kept. On the faithful performance of the Night-Guard’s duty our safety depended. If we were not attacked, then the cattle might be driven away, and we might be left stranded, as it were, in the wilderness. Alone with his thoughts, this important one at his post, had ample opportunity for careful reflection. The youth of the writer released him from the duty of guard, and his father suffered from an accident—a foot partly crushed by one of the oxen—but as owners of cattle, as “Independents,” we must do a share and a double task fell to the lot of anolder brother. We had seen the disaster which came upon the Company preceding ours, and at Deer Creek we had also seen heaps of red and yet smoking embers, all that remained of the station there, and of the surrounding cabins. We knew that the Indians who had done both the acts of driving away the cattle and applying the torch, were, in all likelihood, watching upon the road for us. Our Captain never allowed an inexperienced man to occupy too important a post, but the “tenderfoot” could serve as aid.
We, like ships that pass on the sea, sometimes spoke a returned. No gloomy recital of disappointment could turn us back. The Golden West was our goal, and those who returned were but, to us, the too timid ones. In truth, has not the dream of the Pioneer been fully realized? Those men and women who endured so much? Did they not gain, enmass, the victory? And those who fell by the way—they were as those who perish in battle, but who leave the fruits of their devotion and success to others. Those young men who put their shoulders to the wheels, whenour wagon might have otherwise become fast in the quicksands of the Platte, and those older men and women, too, that I looked upon as they trudged toward the West with the dogged determination of age, all made possible the future commonwealth. They ate of the fruit that was raised from the soil, their sons and daughters inherited the land.
Wagons wait as other catch up and cross the fordFord of the Green River.
Ford of the Green River.
Men who now count their wealth by hundreds of thousands, some by the millions of dollars, can remember their vain strivings when poor and on night-guard to look into the future; to see some faint glimpses of what Providence held in store for them in the Westward, Ho!
Three subjects that follow are by the Sweetwater River. In one the Rattlesnake Hills are shown dim in the summer haze; in the second is the Rock Independence, and in the third is the noted “Devil’s Gate,” with its reflection in a pool of the stream. What a real blessing, though perhaps in disguise, is often enforced attention; enforced activity! Upon “The Journey” such it was. O, it was a balm to many an aching heart!A blessing the swiftly-changing scenes, the labor, the unavoidable routine of camp-life! Those whose trials were so great; those whose grief was so intense; those who were so quickly compelled to leave the new-made graves of their dead; yes, even these must take their part. There was no escape. It was a fiat—“thou shalt.” The very aged, the sick would lift themselves up in their beds to look upon some famous place. The Rock Independence, The Devil’s Gate—was not the writer propped up with pillows to look out, through the opening of the covers at the wagon front, upon them? Those places we had thought of, spoken of, for three months past—there they were. Many looked at them through tear-dimmed, or sick-weary eyes. The apathy that sometimes comes upon the traveller when he has reached some famous or hoped-for place, is well understood. But sometimes these climaxes are too strong even for that to conquer. The burial-tree of the Sioux; the first band of Indian braves; the buckskin dressed, the beaded, the dusky beauty of the wild, they made a claim. Yes, as Isaid, even the heart-stricken must look around, must take an interest, even if languid or disliking, in the passing world. There was perhaps a cruel kindness in this fact. All were compelled to hear the music, the singing, the laughing, the dancing, that followed, be the Company never so weary, after many a long day’s travel. This all could hear as well as the hymn, the prayer. A sudden shout—“antelope!” “buffalo!” would rouse the most dejected. Weariness, grief, found many a strange yet wholesome tonic.
These questions occur to me while I write: Had the emigrants remained at home, would more of them have lived, would more of them have died? I mean, would they have longer lived, have later died? Ah, where comes not life’s tragedy? Come or go, remain—the end is still the same!
“An Exhausted Ox.” This was a sight that was not infrequent. When, upon the road, the strength of an ox gave out, when it could go no further, and tottered or fell, wearied beyond endurance, beside its mate, it was a matter of nosmall import. It meant, perhaps, the loss of the yoke, of their use, I mean, for it was hard to remate an ox upon the road. Yet, at times, it must be done. A plug of tobacco, bound between two slices of bacon, such was the medicine that was administered to the ailing ox. It was a kill or a cure; sometimes it was the one, sometimes it was the other. Lep and Dick, the “wheelers” to our leading wagon, were the largest cattle in the entire train. And Dick, especially, was big, and he, at our very last camping-ground, laid down and died. But it was from the eating of wild parsley. But, in few cases, there was hardship, distress inflicted upon the emigrant by the loss of cattle. I have already instanced one case, that of the unfortunate man, whose wife died at night upon the slopes of the Black Hills.
I am here reminded to mention another fact. It was really quite a disclosure to see the changing appearance of the train. Not alone as it changed from week to week, becoming more and more travel marked, but also as it changed in appearance, in order, I mean, from hour to hour,as we moved upon the road. In making the daily start—morn or noonday—the wagons would take their place in the line with an almost mathematical accuracy. The noses of each leading yoke of cattle would nearly touch the end-board of the wagon preceding them. But soon this order was broken. Such an incident as that related in the former paragraph, or if not the actual happening, then the weakened pulling force caused by some happening of the day or week before, was the cause. And, of course, this became the more pronounced amid the mountains than upon the plains. To keep this train compact under the circumstances was one of the chief labors of the Captain and his aids.
Here is a wide gap in the locale of the sketches.
It is the result of a mountain fever. What a gloriously majestic outline the peaks of the Wind River Mountains make, and especially from that spot, the High Springs, in the South Pass! Delightsome days were ours as we moved slowly forward through that broad and famous highway, with that towering range of mountains all thewhile seeming to gaze down upon us! Joyfully we burst into song:
“All hail ye snow-capped mountains!Golden sunbeams smile.”
“All hail ye snow-capped mountains!Golden sunbeams smile.”
“All hail ye snow-capped mountains!Golden sunbeams smile.”
We made there, in the South Pass, if I count correctly, our two hundredth camp-fire. There, indeed, with our view, were the mountains; there, among those gray and storm-worn boulders of granite, welled forth the waters—those that flowed not to be lost in the Atlantic, but in the Pacific. That dividing line, that mighty ridge was the “Backbone of the Continent.” Indeed, with our first descent, and we were with the West. Pacific Creek would be our next camping spot, and westward its waters would run. From either of these great peaks, the Snowy or Fremont’s, how near we might see to the place of our destination. From these summits might we not discern other summits; mountains farther to the west; the ranges whose bases were near to the Inland Sea? Afar away it was over theheights and vales, and yet it brought a message—“You are near the place of rest.”
“A Buffalo Herd.” This sketch could well have preceded several, instead of following, the one that it does. By the Sweetwater and along the reaches of the Platte, there we sighted buffalo. And in Ash Hollow, too, and by La Foche, or the East Boise River, we had seen the shaggy creatures. Here, across a wind-swept level, between two mountain slopes, the buffalo were changing pasture, moving leisurely toward the south. They knew when would come the storms; they knew where better they should be met. Each eye-witness has told, verbally or in print, how a distant herd of buffalo appears. They resemble a grove of low, thick-set trees or bushes. On a distant plain or along a hillside, their rounded forms might be easily mistaken, were it not for the moving, for clustered, sun-browned shrub-oak. Ash Hollow was once a familiar resort for the now rare animal. A traveller once saw there a herd which could scarcely have numbered less than fifty to sixty thousand. So vast were oncethe herds in the Valley of the Upper Platte, that it would sometimes take several days for one of them to pass a given point. Woe to the small party of emigrants that happened to be in their track—I mean a herd of frightened buffaloes. Annihilation was their fate. The herd that we now looked upon was not so great, yet it was large enough to resemble a moving wood. Slow at first, then with a headlong rush, and then, thank heaven! the herd dashed in another direction than ours.
Helter skelter, maddened by fear, with nostrils distended, with set and glaring eyes, blind as their wild fellows, scarcely less dangerous, was a stampede of cattle. No longer the patient, submissive creatures, whose pace seemed ever too slow to our eager desires, but stupid beasts, full of fury, dashing, they knew, they cared not, where. A stampede of yoked and hitched cattle was one of the most thrilling episodes of our Journey. What was the cause of the stampede I cannot recall, but its terror I will not forget. What a screaming came from my younger brothers,huddled in the wagon, and I may add with truth, the delighted laughter of a baby sister. What a moment was that in which the racing cattle headed towards a steep, overhanging bank of the Platte! It was the climax to many a nightmare for many a year thereafter.
The wagons descend the hillside leading to the valleyFirst Glimpse of the Valley.
First Glimpse of the Valley.
And while, through this misplaced subject—“The Buffalo Herd”—I go backward, as it were, on our journey, I might refer to a sketch that is partly torn away from the book. From what remains of the leaf I gather that the drawing which once covered it when entire, was “The Passing of the Mail-Coach.” On the slopes of Long Bluff there lay a wreck. It was the skeleton, as one might call it, what remained of a coach, that had been stopped by the Sioux. The leather was cut from its sides, by the Indians who had killed the driver and driven away the horses; and the ribs of wood and iron stuck up from the sand and gravel that had been washed around it. But this one in the sketch was not a coach that told of a tragedy, but one that went speeding by our camp, leaving a cloud of dust. In our heartswere regrets that we could not speed as fast. “The Man on the Box” was important in his day. He was an autocrat of the plains. When he brought the coach to its destination, that was if he happened to be on what was called “the last drive,” he would draw on his tight-fitting, high-heeled boots; he would wear his richly-embroidered gloves; he would be the hero at “the Hall,” the swell at “The Dance.”
For us was it not tantalizing to know how quickly, compared with our slow progress, that coach would reach “The End?” Somewhere, probably ere we reached the mountains, we would meet that coach returning. The Jehu who drove it would come to recognize our Company as he passed us by. The guard of soldiers would know us, and he and they would pass, repass the train before us, and also the one that followed. Yes, we followed the original trail of the Pioneers but, of course, there had been changes. The Pony Express was a thing of the past, and soon the stage-coach would be. But this latter change was not yet. There wererumors, too, surveyors had been seen near the Missouri’s banks. Anon, and the iron-steed would course the plains; it would find a path through the mighty hills. But this, too, was not yet. O, we were in a wilderness, true! No need for us to see the wreck of the mail-coach, the burned station, or the dead Pony Express, arrow-slain, the pouches gone, the letters that would be so long waited for, scattered to the many winds. No need of this, for us to know the dangers we had passed, or to make us rejoice that we had arrived in safety thus far.
Who would blame us for our times of merriment? Who shall wonder at the time of rejoicing that followed on our arrival at Pacific Creek? Of whether our biggest jubilation was at Chimney Rock, or whether it was there, our first camping place on the Western Slope, I fail to be sure. But this I know, whether it were at the one or at the other, the facts about it are the same. Blankets were stretched between two wagons, a sheet was hung, there was a shadow pantomime, declamations were given, songs were sung. O, itwas indeed a time of gaiety! When the evening meal was over and the call of the sweet-toned clarinet assembled all in the open corral, then what times! Men and women, the young, and the old ones, too, danced the hours away. Who would have thought there had been such a hard day’s journey? Forgotten were the fatigues that had been; and those that were to come. It was such hours as these that atoned for those that had been wearisome, for those that were sad.
That clarinet—what an important part it held! It voiced the general feeling of the train. Be the company sad or merry, like a voice it spoke. Merrily, on the banks of the Missouri it sounded at the moment of starting, mournfully it spoke as each one who fell by the wayside was laid to his rest.
Music notationListen to midior[audio/mpeg]
Listen to midior[audio/mpeg]
I seem to hear it once more as when it awoke us, too, for the last start near the Journey’s end.Its remembered strains bring back the scent of prairie flowers and the mountain sage.
Here is the “Ford of the Green River.” This reviewing has been lengthy, but we near its close. This ford of the river is not where the railway crosses it at the present time, but farther up the stream, where in the distance, to the north-east, the jagged summit of the Wind River Mountains were again in view, and where on the river banks are groups of cottonwood trees and thickets of wild raspberry and rose, and the air is aromatic with the exhalations of wild thyme. It is a stirring scene, for the water was both deep and swift and the fording not accomplished without considerable labor and risk. A half-day’s rest on the banks of the Green River, as well as the attractiveness of the place itself, makes the scene of that sketch remembered with pleasure.
Small need to tell how expectancy grew upon us as the number of miles ahead became less and less. Even those who had at last apparently grown apathetic and walked silently along, or sat questionless in the wagons, began to again manifestthe same eager interest which had marked the days of our starting out. Wake up! wake up! wake up! Fun and frolic must sometimes take the place of sentiment and sobriety, and so one who was ever brimming over with both, could not wait the poetic summons of the clarionet. Beating together two old tin pans he frisked around the corral, rousing with the unseemly noise all laggards and slug-a-beds.
“Cliffs of Echo Canon.” This brings us within the borders of Utah. We had climbed from Green River to Cache Cave, we looked upon the one range of hills, the one only, that divided us from our destination. Clear shone the September sun, as our long train moved slowly under the conglomerate cliffs; slowly, for half of the cattle were footsore, and all very weary. Several hours were consumed in passing through the wild defile, and night was falling ere the mouth of the canon was reached. Later, as the camp-fires were blazing, the full moon illuminated the fantastic scene.
Who of all those who traversed Echo Canon inan ox-train will forget the shouting, the cracking of whips, the wild halloes, and the pistol-shots that resounded along the line, or the echoes, all confused by the multitude of sounds, and passing through each other like the concentric rings on a still pond when we throw in a handful of pebbles, flying from cliff to cliff, and away up in the shaggy ravine and seeming to come back at last from the sky.
“O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,And thinner, clearer, farther going!Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.”
“O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,And thinner, clearer, farther going!Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.”
“O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,And thinner, clearer, farther going!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.”
No wonder the place recalls Tennyson’s song, but, it must be told, there were none of “the horns of Elfland faintly blowing” about the wild hilarity of sounds which were sent back from the cliffs that day.
The last sketch in the book is “A Glimpse ofthe Valley.” Not one in our company but what felt the heart swell with joy as the sight of fields and orchards, in the latter of which hung ripened fruit, burst upon our sight. Danger and fatigues were all forgotten. The stubborn, interminable miles were conquered, “The Journey” was at an end.
Transcriber's NoteA Table of Contents has been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader.Variations in spelling are preserved as printed, e.g. unforseen, traveler, traveller, enmass, canon.Hyphenation has been made consistent.Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.The following amendments have been made:Page50—sushine amended to sunshine—... having taken “the winds and sunshine into our veins,” ...Page73included the phrase 'Of whether our higgest jubilation.' This is likely a printer error for either biggest or highest. On the assumption that a b/h typesetting error would be more likely, higgest has been amended to biggest.Illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph.
Transcriber's Note
A Table of Contents has been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader.
Variations in spelling are preserved as printed, e.g. unforseen, traveler, traveller, enmass, canon.
Hyphenation has been made consistent.
Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.
The following amendments have been made:
Page50—sushine amended to sunshine—... having taken “the winds and sunshine into our veins,” ...Page73included the phrase 'Of whether our higgest jubilation.' This is likely a printer error for either biggest or highest. On the assumption that a b/h typesetting error would be more likely, higgest has been amended to biggest.
Page50—sushine amended to sunshine—... having taken “the winds and sunshine into our veins,” ...
Page73included the phrase 'Of whether our higgest jubilation.' This is likely a printer error for either biggest or highest. On the assumption that a b/h typesetting error would be more likely, higgest has been amended to biggest.
Illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph.