THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
Oregon Historical Society.
Volume 1
      DECEMBER, 1900     
Number 4
OREGON TRAIL NUMBER.

CONTENTS.

F. G. Young—The Oregon Trail	339
Jesse Applegate—A Day With The Cow Column in 1843	371
Col. George L. Currey’s Tribute to the Ox Whip	384
Sam L. Simpson—The Camp Fires of the Pioneers	385
Joaquin Miller—Pilgrims of the Plains	395
Joaquin Miller—Pioneers of the Pacific	397
Documents—The Oregon Emigrants, 1843	398

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The early Oregon pioneers not only gained the first secure foothold for the American people on the Pacific Coast, but their movement opened the way to American occupation and in itself counted as an occupation of that realm for American civilization. They moved across the continent at an auspicious time, and so were able to influence, if not to shape, the course of great events touching the widening of the American dominion on the Pacific. It was all done so quietly, so efficiently, at so comparatively small cost and without any shock of harrowing disaster, that the world has yet to connect the momentous results with a cause seemingly so inadequate.

As the American people come to realize that their distinctively national achievement so far, next to that of maintaining a national integrity, has been that of preempting and subduing an adequate dominion and home for a civilization they will revere the services of those 340who made the transcontinental migrations in the thirties, forties and fifties. The glory that belongs to the participants in those migrations is the peculiar birthright of the patriotic Oregonian. The passage from the Atlantic slope to the Pacific of these first American households bearing the best embers of western civilization must ever stand as a momentous event in the annals of time.

For twenty-eight years, now, surviving participants in this world event have annually assembled to recount the incidents of their coming to Oregon, to live over that trying but hallowed time, to rekindle old flames of friendship and form new ties on the basis of their common experiences. At these meetings of the Oregon pioneers there was always an “occasional address” in which the reminiscences of the immigration of some particular year were given. As the journal of the association puts it, the object of the association “should be to collect reminiscences relating to pioneers and the early history of the territory; to promote social intercourse, and cultivate the life-enduring friendships that in many instances had been formed while making the long, perilous journey of the wide, wild plains, which separated the western boundary of civilization thirty years ago from the land which they had resolved to reclaim.” The biographical notices contained in the transactions of their association all mark this coming to Oregon as a dividing event in the lives of their subjects. That generation of Oregonians suffered something like a transfiguration through this movement, which also widened the nation’s outlook—in making it face a greater sea. These transforming influences wrought their effects during the summer season that each successive immigration spent on the Oregon trail, while journeying in canvas-topped oxen-drawn wagons from the banks of the Missouri to those of the Willamette. The greatest epochal expansion of the nation was insured through these migrations at the same time that the participants were translating their lives to a new sphere.

1.—Near the site of Fort Kearney on the Platte. (Part of pontoon bridge is used as road fence.)

341For engaging and vivid detail of experiences in this movement, recourse must be had to the transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association, and to journals kept on the way across the plains. These will ever have an interest for the heart of man as they show life under heroic impulse and in trying conditions long sustained. The whole movement Oregonward has an epic unity, and when its significance has become fully manifest will challenge the powers of the national poet.

But the movement has not yet, even in its outward aspects, been viewed as a whole. To mark off its limits in time, in routes taken, in numbers and population elements involved; to note the main motives, the forms of characteristic experiences; in a word to make, as it were, a composite view with relation to national history as a background,—would seem to be the first step for realizing the due appreciation of the significance of the work of the Oregon pioneers. A sketch of the outlines of the movement in its more salient features, then, is what is attempted here, with the hope that such setting forth of the movement as a whole, with outlines more or less closely defined, will lead to its being brought fully into relation with the general course of events of American history. Until the story of the Oregon movement is thus set forth, the historians of our national life cannot weave it into its proper conspicuous relations in their narratives. It has no doubt been largely due to this lack if the story of this pioneer achievement in available form that a somewhat undue estimate of Doctor Whitman’s services and the acceptance of mythical accretions to them have come about. The Whitman story was early available and was made to do service in accounting for a larger outcome than facts warranted.

342The Oregon migrations effected at one sweep a two thousand mile extension of the Aryan movement westward in the occupation of the north temperate zone—“a far-flung” outpost of occupation and settlement. To appreciate the boldness, intrepidity and consummate effectiveness of such pioneering we have but to note that no previous extension had compassed one-fourth this distance. Nor were the conditions in this instance easy. One continuous stretch of Indian country infested with most formidable predatory tribes had to be passed through. Conditions approximating those of a desert had to be faced during a large part of the migration. There were swift rivers to ford or ferry, and three mountain ranges to scale. Only one form of the usual difficulties of pioneer road-making did not appear. There were no extensive forests to penetrate except on the ridges of the Blue and the Cascade Mountains.

The settlements of the blue grass region of Kentucky, and the Nashville district, in Western Tennessee, were, when first made, the most isolated from the main body of the American people. Yet, these had less than a four-hundred mile stretch between them and the settled region of the Atlantic slope. No other outward movement of Aryan people ever covered anything like the distance made by the Oregon pioneers on the Oregon trail. Measured by the sea voyage, the Oregon settlements were a leap of seventeen thousand miles.

2.—“LONE OR COURT HOUSE ROCK.”

Though the Oregon pioneers traced the first trail across the continent, adapting for sections of it the lines of travel of fur trading expeditions; yet, were it not for the title of Francis Parkman’s narrative (which, however, has only the slightest references to anything pertaining to its title), I am not sure but that the very name would have been lost to all except Oregonians. The meagerness of Parkman’s presentation of the transcontinental 343movement is easily accounted for. He did not take his trip of roughing it to Fort Laramie and the Black Hills, in 1846, to see the Oregon pioneers. His plans to write the history of the new France in America tended to narrow his interest strictly to aspects of Indian life as they were with the Indian in his original state. He was concerned solely during his life on the plains to get that insight into Indian character and customs that he might interpret the records of the relations of the French with them, and give his narrative in his great life work truth, life, and color. Had he been inclined to associate himself with the westward moving trains, and to enter into their life and thought, his “Oregon Trail” would naturally have been a final characterization of the migrations up to the stage they had assumed at that time. There are, however, indications in some of his references to the pioneers that their necessarily deshabille condition while en route, and the astounding and almost reckless character of their undertaking were by him set in contrast with the steady comfortable ways of the New England folk from which he hailed and the Oregonians correspondingly disparaged. In this he would be bringing a pioneer phase of civilization into comparison with a more finished form. The wayfaring pioneers were still marking out wider and more natural limits for the national home, while the New Englanders were advancing the arts of life on the original nucleus of national territory. But who can say to which the nation in its destiny owes the more?

Two years ago there appeared a book of five hundred and twenty-nine pages written by Colonels Henry Inman and William F. Cody, bearing the title, “The Great Salt Lake Trail.” In its preface there is to be found the following comment on its title: “Over this historical highway the Mormons made their lonely hegira. * * * 344Over this route, also, were made those world renowned expeditions by Fremont, Stansbury, Lander, and others of lesser fame, to the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and beyond, to the blue shores of the Pacific Ocean. Over the same trackless waste the pony express executed those marvelous feats in annihilating distance, and the once famous overland stage lumbered along through the seemingly interminable desert of sage brush and alkali dust—avant-courieres of the telegraph and the railroad.”

The body of the book touches upon topics ranging in time from Jonathan Carver’s explorations in 1766-’68 to the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Its map lays “The Old Salt Lake Trail” exactly on the route of the Oregon trail as far as Fort Bridger, in Southwestern Wyoming. But the Oregon migrations are not hinted at by a single word in the body of the book. The authors’ account of them could not have been crowded out by more weighty matters, as all the disjointed fragments of Indian hunting and fighting and drunken carousal, whether happening on the line of the trail or not, are crowded in. Either the story of the Oregon movement during the thirties, forties and fifties was absolutely unknown to Colonels Inman and Cody, or, if known, thought worthy of relegation to oblivion by them.

In interviews last summer with people living along the line of the trail, only those whose experiences extended back to the time of the Oregon migrations recognized the trail as the Oregon trail. It was always the “California trail” or the “Mormon trail.”

3.—The North Fork of Platte—its sandy bottom exposed.

It is, of course, to be conceded that more people traveled this road to California than to Oregon. But the Oregon movement was first in time. By it the feasibility of the route was demonstrated, and people susceptible to the western fever were accustomed to think of 345the trip across the plains in a way that brought them when the cry of California gold was raised, or when as Mormon converts they were longing for a refuge from molestation. Then, too, the Oregon pioneers not only led the way; they decided our destiny Pacificward. It is time that history was conferring its award of justice to them. The highway they opened to the greater sea, and which their march made glorious, should take its name from them and thus help to commemorate unto coming generations the momentous import of their achievement for all the future of mankind.

The transcontinental movement as a march of civilization to the west shore of the continent was in its incipiency a missionary enterprise. There is hardly any doubt, however, but that the home-seeking pioneer would have been on the way just as soon without the initiative of the missionary heroes and heroines. It is, nevertheless, the lasting glory of the Presbyterian and Congregational denominations that under the auspices of their missionary board the first American families successfully made the passage that was to sweep such a marvelous movement into its train. The Methodist Episcopal missionary enterprise antedated all others and played a conspicuous role in the political organization of the Oregon community, but it was not first in setting up the American home. So long as it lacked that it could not bear an American civilization, which was the crucial matter. It was Whitman who demonstrated the possibility of taking households across the plains, and this achievement, too, was a decisive initiative.

But how did the impulse to make this dangerous and arduous journey to the then far-off wilderness of Oregon originate with the missionary and the home-seeking pioneers? The inception of the Oregon movement 346in both its missionary and its pioneering aspects is best understood when viewed as outbursts of missionary zeal and energy and pioneer daring and restlessness from vast stores of potential missionary and pioneer spirit existing in this country in the thirties. Missionary activity in the direction of Oregon was liberated by something like a spark, or, to change the metaphor, by a “long-distance” “Macedonian cry.” A delegation of four Nez Perces Indians from the upper waters of the Columbia arrived in St. Louis in 1832 in search of “the white man’s Book of Heaven.” An account of this singularly unique mission was published in the newspapers of the time. The story was made all the more effective and thrilling, with those of deep religious sensibilities, through its including what purported to be a verbatim report of a most pathetic farewell address made in General Clark’s office by one of the two surviving members of this mission.

The closing passage of the speech, as it has been handed down, is as follows:

“We are going back the long, sad trail to our people. When we tell them, after one more snow, in the big council that we did not bring the Book, no word will be spoken by our old men, nor by our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. Our people will die in darkness, and they will go on the long path to other hunting grounds. No white man will go with them, and no Book of Heaven to make the way plain. We have no more words.”

The missionary boards of several Protestant denominations were already establishing foreign missions in Africa, India, and among the western North American Indians. Hall J. Kelley had been agitating the cause of the Oregon Indians for half-a-generation. An appeal for missionary help so pathetic, so unheard of, and withal shedding such luster on those from whom it came, as was that of the Nez Perces delegation to St. Louis, could not fail to bring forth a missionary movement towards Oregon.

4.—“CHIMNEY ROCK.”

347The spirit that materialized in the Oregon pioneer movement was not kindled by any special spark like that which called forth the missionary enterprises. Nor was it aroused by anything like the cry of gold that brought on the mad rush to California in ’49 and the early fifties. The Oregon migrations were the outcome of cool, calm, reasoned determination. This characterized the movement collectively as well as individually.

In a sense, the Oregon movement was in preparation from the time when in 1636 Puritan congregations were led by Hooker and others from the vicinity of Boston westward through the forests to the banks of the Connecticut. This initial western movement was communicated along the Atlantic coast settlements by the Scotch-Irish crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains in Pennsylvania, and by the Virginians penetrating to the Shenandoah Valley. Some would say that an instinct to move west has been growing in strength among civilized peoples since about 1000 B. C., when the Phœnicians moved west on the Mediterranean to found Carthage, and the Greeks to plant colonies in southern Italy and at Marseilles.

So largely had pioneering been the mode of life of those who were living in the western zone of settlement in the United States in 1840 that it was almost a cult with them. The traditions of each family led through the Cumberland Gap or west to Pittsburg and down the Ohio, or along the line of the Great Lakes. Hon. W. Lair Hill, in his “Annual Address” before the Pioneer Association in 1883, fitly characterizes the people among whom the Oregon movement took its rise. “The 348greater number of them were pioneers by nature and occupation, as their fathers had been before them. In childhood the story of their ancestors’ migrations from the east to the west, and then to the newer west was their handbook of history. Homer or Virgil, of whom few of them had ever heard, could have rehearsed no epic half so thrilling to their ears as the narratives of daring adventure and hairbreadth escapes, which, half true and half false, ever form the thread of frontier history. They knew nothing of Hector and Achilles, but they knew of Daniel Boone, who, Lord Byron said, ‘was happiest among mortals anywhere,’ whom civilization drove out of Pennsylvania by destroying the red deer and black bear, and who, after some years of solid comfort in his log cabin amid the wilds of Kentucky, was again pursued and overtaken by the same relentless enemy and compelled to retire into the Missouri wilderness, beyond the Mississippi; and who, even in that distant retreat, was soon forced to say to his friend and companion, according to current anecdote, ‘I was compelled to leave Kentucky because people came and settled so close around me I had no room to breathe. I thought when I came out here I should be allowed to live in peace; but this is all over now. A man has taken up a farm right over there, within twenty-five miles of my door.’ Of Boone, and such as Boone, most of them who founded the commonwealth of Oregon, knew much more than of the great names of literature, statesmanship, or arms, and their minds dwelt fondly on the exploits of the frontiersman, whether in the contests with the savages or the chase. More familiar with the log cabin than with the palace, with the rifle than with the spindle and loom, with saddle than with the railway, they felt cramped when the progress of empire in its westward way put restraint upon those habits of life to which they were accustomed.”

5.—“CASTLE AND STEAMBOAT ROCKS.”

349Knowledge of a “new country” was sure to create in them an almost irrepressible longing to move on. Such natures as these furnished the best culture conditions in which to develop an Oregon movement with the reports explorers and travelers brought from the far Pacific Coast region. Such Oregon material had early been disseminated among these susceptible people. The journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition was published in 1814 and distributed far and wide as a government document. Pioneers speak of reading it as boys and of becoming permanently interested in the Oregon Country. The journal of Patrick Gass, a sergeant in the company of Lewis and Clark, fell into the hands of others and stirred their imaginations. From 1817 on until 1832 Hall J. Kelley, a Boston schoolmaster, was compiling and distributing information designed to awaken a desire to join in a movement to establish a civilized community in Oregon. His society is said to have had thirty-seven agents scattered through the union. An Oregon question became a subject of negotiation between Great Britain and the United States in 1818. These negotiations were renewed in 1824, 1827 and 1842. The occupation of Oregon was proposed in congress in 1821. The subject was kept before congress almost continuously until 1827, and again from 1837 on. The proposed legislation elicited exhaustive reports and warm discussions, which were published in the newspapers of the land. The bill of Dr. Lewis F. Linn, senator from Missouri, introduced in 1842, with its provision for a grant of six hundred and forty acres of land to every actual male settler, was naturally a most potent cause of resolutions to go to Oregon. The fact that during all these years Great Britain disputed our 350right to claim the whole of the Oregon Country only added to the ardor of some who thought of going thither.

Soon sources of fresh information brought direct from Oregon became available. St. Louis was the winter rendezvous of representatives of fur companies and independent trappers who were operating in the Rocky Mountains. These came in contact with officers and employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and from them secured much information about Oregon. Nathaniel J. Wyeth conducted two expeditions overland to the Lower Columbia between 1832 and 1836. Mr. William N. Slacum, who had been commissioned by President Jackson to visit the North Pacific Coast to conduct explorations and investigations among the inhabitants of that region, reported in 1837. Irving’s Astoria was brought out in 1836, and his Adventures of Captain Bonneville in 1837. In 1838 Jason Lee, the Methodist missionary, returned to the States, and talked Oregon wherever he went. His lecture on Oregon in Peoria, Illinois, that year netted an expedition of thirteen or fourteen persons for Oregon the next. The leader of this party, Thomas J. Farnham, returned to the East, and in 1841 published a book of travels, which had a wide circulation. Dr. Elijah White, for several years associated with the Methodist mission enterprise, but who had returned to his home in New York, received an appointment in 1842 as sub-Indian agent for Oregon. He immediately began a canvass for immigrants to Oregon. His party, made up mainly of those found on the Missouri border ready to start, added one hundred and twenty-seven to the American population in Oregon. During this same year Commodore Wilkes’ naval exploring expedition to Oregon returned and reported. Early in this year, too, Fremont’s overland party was organized, and was on the trail a short distance in the rear of Doctor White’s pioneer party. On February 1, 1843, the Linn bill passed the senate. All the missionaries were sending back letters giving glowing accounts of the attractions of Oregon. The famous winter ride of Doctor Whitman from Oregon to Missouri was made in the winter of 1842–3. He did go to Washington and he urged the importance of American interests in Oregon upon President Tyler and some of the members of his cabinet. Returning west in the spring of 1843, he was at the Shawnee mission school, near Westport, Missouri, while the great migration of 1843 was forming and filing by. The sight reassured him that Oregon was to be occupied by American citizens. His thought seemed no longer mainly concerned with the pioneers getting to Oregon. There would be no trouble about that. His plans reached forward to include the conditions of a stable and progressive civilization there. His letters at this time, after mentioning the number of emigrants, turn to matters that would determine their condition as proposed settlers. He says: “A great many cattle are going, but no sheep, from a mistake of what I said in passing.” And again: “Sheep and cattle, but especially sheep, are indispensable for Oregon. * * * I mean to impress the Secretary of War that sheep are more to Oregon’s interests than soldiers.” Doctor Whitman’s influence had probably not been decisive with many of the pioneers, possibly not with any, in getting them started, but all the leaders of that great immigration testify that his services as pilot and counsellor were most valuable in getting them through.

6.—“SCOTT’S BLUFF.”

351The facts so far marshalled on the origin of the pioneer movement to Oregon disclose the existence of a people in the Mississippi Valley competent for the undertaking, and on general principles not disinclined towards it, whose thought, moreover, had been arrested by some 352unique advantages claimed for the Oregon country. But the Oregon movement, like most migrations, has most light thrown on its origin and motive by an inquiry into the conditions that made the old home undesirable, and in some cases even unbearable.

Not a few came from Missouri, Kentucky and other border slave states because they were not in sympathy with the institution of slavery. Their aversion to slave owning placed them at a great disadvantage in those states. Their families were not recognized as socially the equals of the more influential portion of society. They were accustomed to labor, and slavery brought a stigma upon labor. In the cultivation of tobacco and hemp, the main articles of export, the owner of slave labor had a decided advantage. The employer of free labor found it exceedingly difficult to make ends meet. Snubbed in a social way, worsted in industrial competition, in individual cases they were even mobbed when they tried to express their anti-slavery sentiments at the polls. Some of the more nervous of the slave-owning population, too, were impelled to seek relief in the same movement from the constant dread of a negro insurrection.

The “fever and ague” was a dread visitant to very many engaged in turning over the virgin soil of the Mississippi Valley. In Oregon they would be free from this curse, so the “fever and ague,” with not a few, brought on the “Oregon fever.” The frequent recurrence of the awful scourge of the cholera in the towns of the middle west in the late forties and early fifties made many, in the hope of safety, more than willing to brave the dangers and hardships of the journey to Oregon. The warning signals of approaching old age no doubt were the deciding influence with some who set out as modern Ponce de Leons in search of fountains of renewed youth in Oregon.

7.—“OLD BEDLAM”—SITE OF FORT LARAMIE.

353Monetary disturbances had made business stagnant all over the country from 1837 to 1841. Many had gone to the wall, and had been compelled to see their homes turned over to others. The hard times were felt keenest in the then farthest west. They were so far inland that commercial intercourse with the rest of the world was almost totally cut off. What traffic they had was carried on by slow, laborious and expensive processes. Railroad building had not progressed so as to give a hope, hardly even an intimation, of its wonderful solution of the problem of maintaining a high civilization far inland. By going to Oregon they would, as they thought of it, again be on the open shores of the greater sea, within easy reach of the highway of the civilizations of the world. Not often, perhaps, were their motives formulated. These were allowed to rest in their minds in the most naive form of impulse. Col. Geo. B. Currey, in his “Occasional Address” before the Pioneer Association, in 1887, endorses the following as the best reason he ever got. It was, as he says, “from a genuine westerner,” who said he came “because the thing wasn’t fenced in, and nobody dared to keep him out.”

The western border of Missouri was the natural jumping off place for the plunge into the wilderness. The settlements there had extended out like a plank beyond the line of the border elsewhere. The Ohio and the Missouri, with a short stretch of the Mississippi, had furnished the line of least resistance to the westward movement.

Each recurring spring tide from 1842 on witnessed the gathering of hosts at points on the Missouri, from Independence, near the confluence of the Kansas with the Missouri, north to what is now Council Bluffs. They 354were enamored with one idea, that of making homes in far away Oregon. This part of the border was also the starting line for the California and the Mormon migrations. The California movement was only sporadic until 1849. This was seven years after the Oregon movement had become regular. The Mormons first struck across the continent in 1847.

Independence and Westport, just south of the Missouri’s great bend to the east, were the gateway of the earliest regular travel and traffic across the plains. These towns are now the suburbs of Kansas City. The Oregon migrations of 1842 and 1843 were formed exclusively in this vicinity. The old Santa Fe trail led by these settlements. From these points, too, the fur trading companies conducted expeditions annually to the upper waters of the Green River beyond the Rocky Mountains. The route was up the south side of the Kansas River some fifty miles, then turning to the right, the river was forded or ferried and a general northwest course adhered to, more direct for Oregon.

Beginning in 1844 Saint Joseph, then a thriving border town, situated on the river some fifty miles to the north of the first jumping off places, became an important fitting out place. Those who took steamboat passage to the border would naturally wish to make as much of the distance to Oregon in that way as possible. The vicinity of Saint Joseph seemed to furnish excellent facilities for securing the necessary ox teams and other needs for the trip. The Saint Joseph route, too, was a more direct one for those coming across the country from Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. After 1850 the Council Bluffs’ route had the largest transcontinental travel. Weston and old Fort Kearney, the present Nebraska City, both on the Missouri, the former between Independence and Saint Joseph and the latter between Saint Joseph and Council Bluffs were minor points of departure. Smaller companies would cross the river wherever there was a ferry.

8.—The Trail leading down to bottom lands of the Sweetwater.

355Steamboating on the treacherous Missouri during those spring seasons while the tide of emigration was strongly westward set is given a lurid hue in the journals of the emigrants. The river route was the natural one for all coming from Ohio and the states to the east, also for many coming from Indiana.

One entry made during this part of the trip in 1852 reads as follows: “We have a bar on our boat, too, and that is visited about as often as any other place I know of. A son of temperance is a strange animal on this river, I can assure you. I think there are three or four sons on the boat, and the rest, about five hundred people, like a dram as often as I would like to drink a little water. * * * We get a little scared sometimes, for we hear of so many boats blowing up. There was another boat blown up at Lexington last Saturday and killed one hundred and fifty persons, the most of which were emigrants for California and Oregon. These things make us feel pretty squally, I can assure you, but it is not the way to be scared beforehand. So we boost our spirits up and push on. * * * Got to Lexington at 12 o’clock. There we found the wrecks of the boat that blew up five days ago. There were about two hundred people aboard, and the nearest we could learn about forty persons escaped unhurt, about forty were wounded and the balance were killed.”

The man who kept this journal fitted out with a company at Saint Joseph. The company planned to drive up the east side of the Missouri and cross at old Fort Kearney. But, finding the roads too bad on that route, they made for a ferry ten miles north of Saint Joseph. 356I quote from his account of their experiences in getting across the river: “Went up to the ferry. Mr. H—‘s and Mr. S—’s wagons went over safe. Then Mr. S—’s family wagon and five yoke of cattle and all of Mr. S—’s family except two boys went on the ferry boat, and when they were about one-half way across the boat began to sink. They tried to drive the cattle off, but could not in time to save the boat from sinking. My family are still on the east side and I—S— with his teams. We witnessed the scene and could do nothing. Mrs. S— and the baby and next youngest were all under water, but the men of the boat got into the river and took them out, and the rest of the family got upon the wagon cover and saved themselves from drowning. A Mr. R— jumped overboard and thought he could swim to shore, but was drowned. He was one of Mr. S—’s hired hands. By the assistance of one of the other boats the rest were saved, but we thought from where we were that it was impossible that they could all be saved. Well, I paid a man fifteen cents for taking my wife and little children across in a skiff. They have no skiff at the ferry, but they have three good ferryboats that they work by hand. But the people here are as near heathens as they can be, and they go for shaving the emigrants, and then they spend it for whiskey and get drunk and roll in it. But we are all over on the west shore of the Missouri and in Indian territory.”

For those congregated hosts, encamped each early spring at different points along the banks of the Missouri, and intent as soon as grass had grown to be sufficient for their stock to sally forth on a two thousand mile passage to the Valley of the Willamette, the natural features of the continent pointed out just one general route to travel. This road, so clearly marked out by the configuration of the country for all using their mode of conveyance, lay up the Valley of the Platte; its tributary, the Sweetwater; through South Pass; across to the Valley of the Snake, the tributary of the Columbia; following down the course of the Snake to its great bend to the north; across to the Columbia; down the Columbia to their destination.

9.—“INDEPENDENCE ROCK.”

357Those sections of the trail which constitute connecting links, as it were, to the grander portions, can be accounted for almost as clearly as the main sections can. Forage and water must be regularly available to those traveling with horses, mules or oxen. These must be found in great abundance by those who are driving considerable droves over long stretches of arid wastes. In summer months, on the unsettled parched plains, these resources were insured only along river or creek bottoms. So in striking out from Independence or Saint Joseph for the Valley of the Platte to the north, to economize in the distance traveled to the Oregon goal, and insure supplies of the prime requisites—good water and grass—their course would be such as to bring them to nightly camps on the banks of one of the numerous streams flowing into the Kansas. Passing one they would make for a higher point on the next to the west so as to keep in a more direct line for Oregon. Fuel, so necessary for preparing their meals, was in that region found only on the banks of these streams. Along the Platte, the North Fork, and the Sweetwater “buffalo chips” sufficed fairly well the need of fuel, except the night was wet. In moving from the South Pass to the basin of the Columbia, mountainous country made a direct route impracticable. In the detour to the southwest the valleys of the tributaries of the Upper Green were utilized, and particularly the most convenient northwest course of the Bear River. The details of the course in this detour were determined by the stepping stones, as it were, of water, grass and wood. These were found in that desert 358region, too, only in the river and creek bottoms. On issuing from the South Pass, then, the valleys of the Little Sandy, Big Sandy, and the Green itself, had to be followed, with such crossings from one to the other as were feasible, and were in the interests of economy in distance, until they struck a tributary coming in from the west, up which a passage could be made and the divide crossed, bringing them into the Valley of the Bear, a part of the Great Salt Lake Basin. The Valley of the Bear has a general northwest direction of some seventy-five miles from where they usually entered it. It was in every way a natural road to them to the point where it makes its bend to the south. At this bend was the first fork made in early times by the California trail’s turning off to the south. The divide at this point between the Basin of the Great Salt Lake and the Valley of the Snake was comparatively easy. The Snake River Valley, with its barren wastes, deep precipitous canyons, sharp lava rocks, made a trying portion of the route. There were several optional routes. None so acceptable as the Platte Valley had furnished. To follow the Snake in its long bend to the north would have led them far out of their way, so they took the available valleys of the Burnt and Powder rivers that led them farthest on their way towards the westerly flowing Umatilla, a tributary of the Columbia. They thus not only kept on in a comparatively direct line towards the Valley of the Willamette, but were also afforded water, grass and wood so necessary for further endurance of the now well fagged transcontinental wayfarers. But the Blue Mountains lay across this short cut and gave them their first real experience in climbing steep mountain sides. From the crest of these mountains the way to their goal lay down hill, except they chose a road across the Cascade Mountains. But whether they took the Barlow Road or dared the dangers of the gorge of the Columbia, the darkest, sternest trials were yet to be faced by the now weak and famished pioneers. They were, however, veterans now, and if succored with fresh supplies from settlers in the Willamette Valley and the strength of their cattle sufficed, no difficulties, however stupendous, could daunt them.

10.—WEST END OF INDEPENDENCE ROCK.

359On the whole, those home-seeking pioneers, as they lay encamped on the banks of the Missouri, could congratulate themselves that no specially stupendous natural obstacles had been interposed in that immense stretch that lay between them and their destination. There was only the interminableness of it, and the facts that it was to be entered upon while the fierce pelting spring storms of wind, rain and hail were liable to be of daily and nightly occurrence; that muddy sloughs would cause breakdowns, and freshet-swollen streams would be fraught with danger; that there would then be four months in which the fierce burning, blistering sun would have them at its mercy, and a dense, stifling dust would enhance their misery during the midday hours to the point of wretchedness, and no bathroom in the evening in which to find relief; that in the later and almost final days of the journey they would probably be exposed in approximate nakedness to the searching blasts of the oncoming winter, fortunate if they were not caught and held fast in mountain snows. Withal, they knew it would be a lumbering trudge with ox teams that would take them all summer and far into the autumn.

Each recurring spring season family or neighborhood groups who had determined to try their fortunes in Oregon would move out to one of the points of departure on the Missouri border. They would soon find themselves a part of a larger aggregation. Generally there was no more prearrangement for this meeting than there is 360among birds that flock for a migration. All who constituted the company from any one point had simply selected the same jumping off place.

When the grass had grown abundant enough to furnish subsistence for their stock and draft animals, those who were ready with their outfit would begin to file out on the prairie trails converging upon the main Oregon road. After having traveled a day or two a halt was called by those in advance to await the coming up of others who proposed to undertake the same trip with themselves. The American instinct for organization would then assert itself, and there was occasion for its activity. They were in an Indian country. It was not wise to tempt the predatory propensities of the savages by too much straggling in their traveling or by too much unwariness in guarding their cattle and horses. In order to avoid molestation by prowling bands of Pawnees, Otoes, Cheyennes and Sioux, through whose ranges the trail east of the Rockies passed, it was necessary to travel in companies of some size and with such discipline as to be able to establish an effective guard at night and to make some demonstration of force when encountering considerable bands of Indian warriors.

There was much economy, too, in bunching their several droves of loose stock into a single herd, in having a single lookout for selecting camping places, in the help that each would receive in case of accidents that all were liable to. Very essential, too, were organization and discipline when they came to a bank of a large stream across which their trail led. With the earlier migrations before printed guide books were available, organization was necessary to secure the services of a pilot.

11.—“DEVIL’S GATE,”

Showing dam for leading out an irrigating ditch.

The first large migrations—those of 1843 and 1844, and even of 1845—erred in attempting to go as one compact body. The difficulty of securing adequate 361grazing was much enhanced as the company increased in size. From this fact and the further fact that in case of a hitch or accident of any kind in a large company, many would be delayed who could be of no service in getting things fixed up for a fresh start, it resulted that twenty or thirty wagons were the maximum limit to the size of companies that did not chafe under their organization. In later years six or eight wagons were a normal number for a company. Even in the earlier migrations, when the Upper Sweetwater was reached and the danger from the Indians was measurably past, the large companies would divide up into sections. The earlier migrations, too, took precautions that no person attached himself to the train unless he was furnished with such resources as to rations and transportation that he would not likely become a common burden.

The records of the migrations give ample corroboration to the truth of the adage, “Uneasy lies the head, etc.,” and yet these privately penned diaries disclose comparatively little bickering or unwholesome feeling, notwithstanding the severe strain human nature was under in the conditions of this four, five, and sometimes six months’ passage. Whenever conditions developed making advisable a division of the body into two or more, the division was made, and all was smooth again. The documentary material printed in this number of the Quarterly throws light on this phase of their experience and depicts the unique proceedings of the pioneers of 1843 in effecting an organization.

The type of the transcontinental pioneer changed materially after the gold-seeker was in the majority. From 1849 on the diarist’s account is not devoid of the tragical. “These plains try and tell all the dark spots in men,” says Rev. Jesse Moreland in his journal of the trip from Tennessee to Oregon in 1852. He describes 362evidence of three executions for murder by hanging. He says: “As they had nothing to make a gallows out of, they took two wagon tongues, put them point to point and set a chair in the middle, and the man stood on the chair till the rope was tied, and then the chair was taken from under him. This is the third we have heard of being hanged.”

Before 1849, while the Oregon movement still constituted the great part of the transcontinental travel, and a fierce commercial spirit was not yet dominant, the humanity of the pioneers seemed to stand remarkably well the strain incident to the experiences on the plains. Their journals do not reveal half the irritation and demoralization that the accounts of Parkman and of Coke do in companies that had vastly better outfits and were passing over the same routes.

The average company of immigrants in pulling through the miry sloughs of the Missouri bottom lands in early spring, with only partly broken ox teams, would break a wagon tongue, an axle tree, or a wheel, and suffer more or less exasperating delay. The fierce spring storms of rain and hail would play havoc with their tent coverings, and drench and pelt all who must stand outside to prevent the teams and stock from stampeding. These freshets would make impassable, for the time being, the numerous streams of the Kansas and Nebraska prairies. With the feeling that they must not over-exert their teams mere trifles even were allowed to delay them during the first four or five hundred miles of the journey.

Except they had some one like a Doctor Whitman with them to persistently urge them to “travel, travel,” as the only condition of getting through, there would be too much loitering in the early stages of the journey. Those who entered upon the trip in later years had more nearly an adequate sense of the vastness of the distance they must cover, and wasted no time in the initial stages.

12.—Gap just south of Devil’s Gate—used for the Trail.

363Especially the migration of 1849, and to some degree those of 1850 and 1852, were in deepest dismay over the presence among them of the dreadful scourge of cholera. The trail was lined in places along the south side of the Platte through the width of rods with mounds of freshly made graves after these migrations had passed.

The Hon. F. A. Chenoweth, in his “Occasional Address” before the Oregon Pioneer Association, in 1882, gives the following account of the ravages of the cholera among the trains of 1849:

“But the incidents of hardship which I have noticed were the merest trifles compared to the terrible calamity that marked with sadness and trailed in deep desolation over that ill-fated emigration. Very soon after the assembled throng took up its march over the plains the terrible wave of cholera struck them in a way to carry utmost terror and dismay into all parts of the moving mass.

The number of fatally stricken, after the smoke and dust were cleared away, was not numerically so frightful as appeared to those who were in the midst of it. But the name “cholera” in a multitude unorganized and unnumbered is like a leak in the bottom of a ship whose decks are thronged with passengers. The disturbed waters of the ocean, the angry elements of nature, when aroused to fury, are but faint illustrations of the terror-stricken mass of humanity, when in their midst are falling with great rapidity their comrades—the strong, the young and the old—the strength and vigor of youth melting away before an unseen foe. All this filled our ranks with the utmost terror and gloom. This terrible malady seemed to spend its most deadly force on the flat prairie east of and about Fort Laramie.

One of the appalling effects of this disease was to 364cause the most devoted friends to desert, in case of attack, the fallen one. Many a stout and powerful man fought the last battle alone on the prairie. When the rough hand of the cholera was laid upon families they rarely had either the assistance or the sympathy of their neighbors or traveling companions.

There was one feature mixed with all this terror that afforded some degree of relief, and that was that there was no case of lingering suffering. When attacked, a single day ordinarily ended the strife in death or recovery. A vast amount of wagons, with beds and blankets, were left by the roadside, which no man, not even an Indian, would approach or touch through fear of the unknown, unseen destroyer.

While there were sad instances of comrades deserting comrades in this hour of extreme trial, I can not pass this point of my story without stating that there were many instances of heroic devotion to the sick, when such attention was regarded as almost equivalent to the offering up of the well and healthy for the mere hope of saving the sick and dying.”

Not a few who had purposed to go to California that year turned off on the Oregon road to escape the contagion which the dense crowd seemed to afford this disease. Excepting in these cholera years and in 1847 there were only infrequent cases of mountain fever and forms of dysentery that were developed in the alkali regions of the mountains.

13.—“DEVIL’S GATE,” AS SEEN FROM ABOVE.

A train of pioneers with sensible outfit emerging into the valley of the Platte in a season free from the cholera affliction could almost make it for a time a grand pleasure excursion. The heat was not yet oppressive, the roads good, the air exhilarating, the boundless expanse of green undulating prairie under crystal skies filled them with a sense of freedom. The exciting buffalo hunt was soon 365on and afforded them a welcome addition to a diet exceedingly unvaried at best. After the usual trudge during the day amid a panorama not yet monotonous the wagons would be driven to form approximately a circle—the end of the tongue or the front wheel of one lapping the hind wheel of the wagon in front, according as a more or less spacious corral was desired. The oxen would be unyoked and taken to water and then to the selected grazing spot. Fires would be kindled alongside each wagon outside of the corral for preparing the evening meal. After it was partaken of there would be an hour or two before darkness settled down upon them. Then the cattle would be brought within the corral, if there was the least apprehension of danger, and all except the guards for the first watch and possibly the matrons with multitudinous family cares would quickly surrender themselves to sleep. But congenial groups of young people would generally have a social hour or two. A blanket or extra wagon covering was thrown on the ground beside the wagon, and, when rain threatened, spread under the wagon. (Most were probably without tents other than the canvas tops of their wagons.) This with something for a covering sufficed for the beds of the young men and boys. In the morning at a given signal all were astir—and, if the cattle had not strayed during the night or been stampeded by Indians, breakfast over, everything was soon in readiness for falling in, each in his appointed place, and taking up the march that should bring them a day nearer to their Oregon home. But this idyllic succession of days very soon developed a very seamy side.

The sun’s rays became more and more scorching in their fierceness, the plains assumed a dull, leaden grayish aspect. The sagebrush and cactus took the place of the waving grass. The burning sand and stifling dust became deeper. These the west wind would raise into 366a cloud continuous from morning until night. This cloud of sand and dust particles beating against them at a terrific velocity they had to face all day. Soon eyes and lips were sore. To relieve the uncomfortable feeling that the parching air gave the lips they would unwisely be moistened and the soreness thus extended and deepened. Soon everything was obdurately begrimed. Rags then were in evidence. Shoes worn so as to no longer protect the feet. In the dry, scorching air the wagons would develop loose joints and lose their tires.

The monotony was relieved by lying by a day now and then during which the women would wash and mend the clothes and the men repair wagons and hunt buffalo, the meat of which would be jerked to furnish a supply after they had passed beyond the limits of the buffalo country. The buffalo did not commonly range west of the Lower Sweetwater.

The experiences which the buffalo gave them were not limited to the fine sport of hunting him and the delicious feasts his steaks afforded. His presence seemed to kindle into life the old ancestral wildness of the ox and the horse. Without the least warning some sedate member of a team would raise his head and give the old racial snort of freedom. This would kindle the same spark in every animal of the train, and away they would stampede with wagons, inmates and all, and not to be stopped until utterly exhausted. In these stampedes people would be run over, bones would be broken, oxen dehorned, their legs broken, and things demolished generally. The simple-minded pioneer with any tendency to personify could not help but believe that the devil had gotten into his hitherto always tractable animals. I quote a pioneer’s account of a stampede, though he does not ascribe it to the presence or influence of the buffalo, as is almost always done: “After passing Devil’s Gate, a beautiful stretch of road lay before us. All at once the teams broke into a run—something started them, no one seemed to know what. It was a regular stampede as to our team. Father and mother were walking; I was walking also, and some of the children were in the wagon. Away the team went, the hardest and the wildest running I ever saw. When they stopped and we caught up with them, we found the children were not hurt, but the two wheelers were down and one of them dead. It took our team a long time to get over the scare.”

14.—“DEVIL’S GATE,” FROM SOME DISTANCE ABOVE.

367There was still another condition in which the spirit of the buffalo made the pioneer show deference to it. This happened when a great horde of buffalo was on a stampede bearing down upon an emigrant train that happened to be passing across its trail. The moment was almost enough to bring dismay to the pioneer. Either the teams of the train were urged into something of a stampede to get out of line of the horde’s advance, or a corral was formed and volleys fired into the impending mass to divide it so as to leave the corral a safe island between a destructive flood rolling by on either hand.

Distressing accidents must almost of necessity befall them from their carrying their loaded guns commingled with household goods on their wagons. It is not strange that at least half of the journals should have records of fatalities thus caused. Under the law of mathematical probabilities, with the frequent occasion there was to remove gun or blanket thus intermixed, while the members of the family were standing around the wagon, accidents must occur. The small boy of the family during this four or five months’ trip had very many occasions to clamber out of and into the wagon while it was in motion. He, too, would come to grief 368with a broken leg. Any ordinary fracture, however, even though there were no surgeon at hand, would be attended to, so that no deformity resulted. If the case was one seeming to require an amputation “a butcher knife and an old dull hand saw” were improvised as surgical instruments. But I have not found that a patient survived such an operation and got well. The other great epochal events of family life, marriages and births, were not infrequent on the trail, and seemed to cause little distraction.

The experiences of the pioneers in crossing the rivers in the line of the trail were very diverse. It is reported of one of the migrations that they were not compelled to ferry until they reached the Des Chutes in Oregon. But the migration of 1844 had a serious time even with the Black Vermillion and Big Blue, tributaries of the Kansas. Where logs were available they were hollowed out and catamaran rafts made so as to fit the wheels of a wagon. Sometimes the best wagon boxes would be selected and caulked and used as flatboats. Where buffalo skins were plentiful they would be stretched around the wagon box to make it water-tight. In later stages of the journey, after their teams were more reliable, it was a common practice to raise the wagon beds several inches above the bolsters, if the depth of the stream required it, couple several teams into a train with the most reliable in front on a lead-rope, and drivers along the down-stream side of the other teams. They would then ford as trains. After the rush in 1849 ferries were established at the more important crossings, whose owners reaped rich harvests.

15.—The deeply worn Trail along the Sweetwater.

Their route had no rich diversity of scenic grandeur. There are most impressive natural features along the line of it, but with their slow mode of travel one phase became exceedingly monotonous before another was 369reached. There were the vastness and solitude of the prairies and plains, the transparency of the atmosphere that gave magnificent sweep of view. Along the North Fork of the Platte stood great sentinel rocks with interesting sculptured proportions. Among these are the Lone or Court House Rock, Chimney Rock, Castle Rock, Steamboat Rock, and Scott’s Bluff. Farther along on their journey they come to Independence Rock and Devil’s Gate on the Sweetwater, one a huge basaltic mound upon which with tar or with iron chisels they would register their names; the other a most unique breach in a granitic range with sides two hundred feet high, through which the Sweetwater flows. A week or two later they would have the exhilarating sense of standing on the backbone of the continent in South Pass, with the towering Wind River Mountains to their right and the Oregon buttes to their left. A few miles on they would drink from the Pacific springs and know they were in what was then called Oregon. Scenery most unique was still before them on their way. Some of it, like the panorama from the divide between the Green and the Bear rivers and the Soda Springs, they would enjoy. But their march from the South Pass on was a retreat. Oxen would fall helpless in their yokes, wagons would become rickety beyond repair. The trail was strewn with wreckage, and the stench from the dead cattle was appalling. The watering places along the Snake were contaminated by the stock that had perished. As soon as they reached the Blue Mountains their stock was safe from starvation, but the exertion required of their way-worn and weak oxen on the steep grades now before them was the last straw often that these creatures now could not bear. They could not let them recruit; the season was far advanced towards winter; they must press on.

370Data for determining the numbers that came across the plains to Oregon during the successive years are as yet very unsatisfactory. The estimates given below for 1842 and 1843 are well founded, but the others, especially from 1847 on, are from no very tangible basis.

At the close of 1841 the Americans in Oregon numbered possibly four hundred.

The above figures are taken quite closely from those given by Elwood Evans in his address before the Pioneer Association in 1877. I make the immigration of 1844, however, seven hundred, instead of four hundred and seventy-five, as he gives it.

No doubt this one summer on the plains was an ordeal under which some sensitive natures were strained and weakened for life. It may be, too, that living for five or six months, as families, on the simplest, barest necessities of life, fixed standards of living lower than they otherwise would have been. The effect, however, on strong, resourceful natures of these months on the plains could not have been other than salutary. The pioneers, when they started, were most distinctively American in their characteristics. As such they needed to be socialized. No better school could have been devised than the organization and regimen of the trip across the plains for socializing their natures.

16.—The “Three Crossings” of the Sweetwater.

The migration of a large body of men, women and children across the continent to Oregon was, in the year 1843, strictly an experiment; not only in respect to the members, but to the outfit of the migrating party. Before that date, two or three missionaries had performed the journey on horseback, driving a few cows with them, three or four wagons drawn by oxen had reached Fort Hall, on Snake River, but it was the honest opinion of the most of those who had traveled the route down Snake River, that no large number of cattle could be subsisted on its scanty pasturage, or wagons taken over a country so rugged and mountainous.

The emigrants were also assured that the Sioux would be much opposed to the passage of so large a body through their country, and would probably resist it on account of the emigrants’ destroying and frightening away the buffaloes, which were then diminishing in numbers.

The migrating body numbered over one thousand souls, with about one hundred and twenty wagons, drawn by six-ox teams, averaging about six yokes to the team, and several thousand loose horses and cattle.

The emigrants first organized and attempted to travel in one body, but it was soon found that no progress could be made with a body so cumbrous, and as yet so 372averse to all discipline. And at the crossing of the “Big Blue” it divided into two columns, which traveled in supporting distance of each other as far as Independence Rock on the Sweetwater.

From this point, all danger from Indians being over, the emigrants separated into small parties better suited to the narrow mountain paths and small pastures in their front.

Before the division on the Blue River there was some just cause for discontent in respect to loose cattle. Some of the emigrants had only their teams, while others had large herds in addition, which must share the pasture and be guarded and driven by the whole body. This discontent had its effect in the division on the Blue. Those not encumbered with or having but few loose cattle attached themselves to the light column; those having more than four or five cows had of necessity to join the heavy or cow column. Hence the cow column, being much larger than the other and much encumbered with its large herds, had to use greater exertion and observe a more rigid discipline to keep pace with the more agile consort. It is with the cow column that I propose to journey with the reader for a single day.

It is four o’clock A. M.; the sentinels on duty have discharged their rifles—the signal that the hours of sleep are over—and every wagon and tent is pouring forth its night tenants, and slow-kindling smokes begin largely to rise and float away in the morning air. Sixty men start from the corral, spreading as they make through the vast herd of cattle and horses that make a semicircle around the encampment, the most distant perhaps two miles away.

17.—“Oregon Buttes,”—taken from South Pass.

The herders pass to the extreme verge and carefully examine for trails beyond, to see that none of the animals have strayed or been stolen during the night. This 373morning no trails led beyond the outside animals in sight, and by 5 o’clock the herders begin to contract the great, moving circle, and the well-trained animals move slowly towards camp, clipping here and there a thistle or a tempting bunch of grass on the way. In about an hour five thousand animals are close up to the encampment, and the teamsters are busy selecting their teams and driving them inside the corral to be yoked. The corral is a circle one hundred yards deep, formed with wagons connected strongly with each other; the wagon in the rear being connected with the wagon in front by its tongue and ox chains. It is a strong barrier that the most vicious ox cannot break, and in case of an attack of the Sioux would be no contemptible intrenchment.

From 6 to 7 o’clock is a busy time; breakfast is to be eaten, the tents struck, the wagons loaded and the teams yoked and brought up in readiness to be attached to their respective wagons. All know when, at 7 o’clock, the signal to march sounds, that those not ready to take their proper places in the line of march must fall into the dusty rear for the day.

There are sixty wagons. They have been divided into fifteen divisions or platoons of four wagons each, and each platoon is entitled to lead in its turn. The leading platoon today will be the rear one tomorrow, and will bring up the rear unless some teamster, through indolence or negligence, has lost his place in the line, and is condemned to that uncomfortable post. It is within ten minutes of seven; the corral but now a strong barricade is everywhere broken, the teams being attached to the wagons. The women and children have taken their places in them. The pilot (a borderer who has passed his life on the verge of civilization and has been chosen to the post of leader from his knowledge of the savage and his experience in travel through roadless wastes), 374stands ready, in the midst of his pioneers and aids, to mount and lead the way. Ten or fifteen young men, not today on duty, form another cluster. They are ready to start on a buffalo hunt, are well mounted and well armed, as they need be, for the unfriendly Sioux have driven the buffalo out of the Platte, and the hunters must ride fifteen or twenty miles to reach them. The cow drivers are hastening, as they get ready, to the rear of their charge, to collect and prepare them for the day’s march.

It is on the stroke of seven; the rush to and fro, the cracking of whips, the loud command to oxen, and what seemed to be the inextricable confusion of the last ten minutes has ceased. Fortunately every one has been found and every teamster is at his post. The clear notes of a trumpet sound in the front; the pilot and his guards mount their horses; the leading divisions of the wagons move out of the encampment, and take up the line of march; the rest fall into their places with the precision of clock work, until the spot so lately full of life sinks back into that solitude that seems to reign over the broad plain and rushing river as the caravan draws its lazy length towards the distant El Dorado. It is with the hunters we shall briskly canter towards the bold but smooth and grassy bluffs that bound the broad valley, for we are not yet in sight of the grander but less beautiful scenery (of Chimney Rock, Court House and other bluffs, so nearly resembling giant castles and palaces), made by the passage of the Platte through the highlands near Laramie. We have been traveling briskly for more than an hour. We have reached the top of the bluff, and now have turned to view the wonderful panorama spread before us. To those who have not been on the Platte, my powers of description are wholly inadequate to convey an idea of the vast extent and grandeur of the picture, and the rare beauty and distinctness of the detail. No haze or fog obscures objects in the pure and transparent atmosphere of this lofty region. To those accustomed only to the murky air of the seaboard, no correct judgment of distance can be formed by sight, and objects which they think they can reach in a two hours’ walk may be a day’s travel away; and though the evening air is a better conductor of sound, on the high plain during the day the report of the loudest rifle sounds little louder than the bursting of a cap; and while the report can be heard but a few hundred yards, the smoke of the discharge may be seen for miles. So extended is the view from the bluff on which the hunters stand, that the broad river glowing under the morning sun like a sheet of silver, and the broader emerald valley that borders it, stretch away in the distance until they narrow at almost two points in the horizon, and when first seen, the vast pile of the Wind River Mountains though hundreds of miles away, looks clear and distinct as a white cottage on the plain.

18.—“STEAMBOAT SPRING” ON THE BANKS OF THE BEAR RIVER.

375We are full six miles away from the line of march; though everything is dwarfed by distance, it is seen distinctly. The caravan has been about two hours in motion and is now as widely extended as a prudent regard for safety will permit. First, near the bank of the shining river is a company of horsemen; they seem to have found an obstruction, for the main body has halted while three or four ride rapidly along the bank of the creek or slough. They are hunting a favorable crossing for the wagons; while we look they have succeeded; it has apparently required no work to make it passable, for all but one of the party have passed on, and he has raised a flag, no doubt a signal to the wagons to steer their course to where he stands. The leading teamster sees him, though he is yet two miles off, and steers his course directly towards him, all the wagons following in his 376track. They (the wagons) form a line three-quarters of a mile in length; some of the teamsters ride upon the front of their wagons, some march beside their teams; scattered along the line companies of women are taking exercise on foot; they gather bouquets of rare and beautiful flowers that line the way; near them stalks a stately greyhound, or an Irish wolf dog, apparently proud of keeping watch and ward over his master’s wife and children. Next comes a band of horses; two or three men or boys follow them, the docile and sagacious animals scarce needing this attention, for they have learned to follow in the rear of the wagons, and know that at noon they will be allowed to graze and rest. Their knowledge of time seems as accurate as of the place they are to occupy in the line, and even a full-blown thistle will scarce tempt them to straggle or halt until the dinner hour has arrived. Not so with the large herd of horned beasts that bring up the rear; lazy, selfish and unsocial, it has been a task to get them in motion, the strong always ready to domineer over the weak, halt in the front and forbid the weak to pass them. They seem to move only in the fear of the driver’s whip; though in the morning, full to repletion, they have not been driven an hour before their hunger and thirst seem to indicate a fast of days’ duration. Through all the long day their greed is never satisfied, nor their thirst quenched, nor is there a moment of relaxation of the tedious and vexatious labors of their drivers, although to all others the march furnishes some season of relaxation or enjoyment. For the cow drivers there is none.

But from the standpoint of the hunters, the vexations are not apparent; the crack of whips and loud objurgation are lost in the distance. Nothing of the moving panorama, smooth and orderly as it appears, has more attractions for the eye than that vast square column in which all colors are mingled, moving here slowly and there briskly, as impelled by horsemen riding furiously in front and rear.

19.—“AMERICAN FALLS.”

Railroad bridge of the “Oregon Short Line.”

377But the picture in its grandeur, its wonderful mingling of colors and distinctness of detail, is forgotten in contemplation of the singular people who give it life and animation. No other race of men with the means at their command would undertake so great a journey, none save these could successfully perform it, with no previous preparation, relying only on the fertility of their own invention to devise the means to overcome each danger and difficulty as it arose. They have undertaken to perform with slow-moving oxen a journey of two thousand miles. The way lies over trackless wastes, wide and deep rivers, ragged and lofty mountains, and is beset with hostile savages. Yet, whether it were a deep river with no tree upon its banks, a rugged defile where even a loose horse could not pass, a hill too steep for him to climb, or a threatened attack of an enemy, they are always found ready and equal to the occasion, and always conquerors. May we not call them men of destiny? They are people changed in no essential particulars from their ancestors, who have followed closely on the footsteps of the receding savage, from the Atlantic seaboard to the great Valley of the Mississippi.

But while we have been gazing at the picture in the valley, the hunters have been examining the high plain in the other direction. Some dark moving objects have been discovered in the distance, and all are closely watching them to discover what they are, for in the atmosphere of the plains a flock of crows marching miles away, or a band of buffaloes or Indians at ten times the distance look alike, and many ludicrous mistakes occur. But these are buffaloes, for two have struck their heads together 378and are, alternately, pushing each other back. The hunters mount and away in pursuit, and I, a poor cow-driver, must hurry back to my daily toil, and take a scolding from my fellow herders for so long playing truant.

The pilot, by measuring the ground and timing the speed of the wagons and the walk of his horses, has determined the rate of each, so as to enable him to select the nooning place, as nearly as the requisite grass and water can be had at the end of five hours’ travel of the wagons. Today, the ground being favorable, little time has been lost in preparing the road, so that he and his pioneers are at the nooning place an hour in advance of the wagons, which time is spent in preparing convenient watering places for the animals, and digging little wells near the bank of the Platte, as the teams are not unyoked, but simply turned loose from the wagons, a corral is not formed at noon, but the wagons are drawn up in columns, four abreast, the leading wagon of each platoon on the left, the platoons being formed with that in view. This brings friends together at noon as well as at night.

20.—Near summit of Blue Mountains—Meacham Station of O. R. & N. R. R. on the Trail, and site of “Lee Encampment.”

Today an extra session of the council is being held, to settle a dispute that does not admit of delay, between a proprietor and a young man who has undertaken to do a man’s service on the journey for bed and board. Many such engagements exist, and much interest is taken in the manner in which this high court, from which there is no appeal, will define the rights of each party in such engagements. The council was a high court in the most exalted sense. It was a senate composed of the ablest and most respected fathers of the emigration. It exercised both legislative and judicial powers, and its laws and decisions proved it equal and worthy of the high trust reposed in it. Its sessions were usually held on days when the caravan was not moving. It first took the 379state of the little commonwealth into consideration; revised or repealed rules defective or obsolete, and enacted such others as the exigencies seemed to require. The common weal being cared for, it next resolved itself into a court to hear and settle private disputes and grievances. The offender and the aggrieved appeared before it; witnesses were examined, and the parties were heard by themselves and sometimes by counsel. The judges being thus made fully acquainted with the case, and being in no way influenced or cramped by technicalities, decided all cases according to their merits. There was but little use for lawyers before this court, for no plea was entertained which was calculated to hinder or defeat the ends of justice. Many of these judges have since won honors in higher spheres. They have aided to establish on the broad basis of right and universal liberty two pillars of our great Republic in the Occident. Some of the young men who appeared before them as advocates have themselves sat upon the highest judicial tribunals, commanded armies, been governors of states and taken high position in the senate of the nation.

It is now one o’clock; the bugle has sounded and the caravan has resumed its westward journey. It is in the same order, but the evening is far less animated than the morning march; a drowsiness has fallen apparently on man and beast; teamsters drop asleep on their perches and even when walking by their teams, and the words of command are now addressed to the slowly creeping oxen in the soft tenor of women or the piping treble of children, while the snores of the teamsters make a droning accompaniment. But a little incident breaks the monotony of the march. An emigrant’s wife, whose state of health has caused Doctor Whitman to travel near the wagon for the day, is now taken with violent illness. The Doctor has had the wagon driven 380out of the line, a tent pitched and a fire kindled. Many conjectures are hazarded in regard to this mysterious proceeding, and as to why this lone wagon is to be left behind. And we too must leave it, hasten to the front and note the proceedings, for the sun is now getting low in the west and at length the painstaking pilot is standing ready to conduct the train in the circle which he has previously measured and marked out, which is to form the invariable fortification for the night. The leading wagons follow him so nearly around the circle that but a wagon length separates them. Each wagon follows in its track, the rear closing on the front, until its tongue and ox chains will perfectly reach from one to the other, and so accurate the measure and perfect the practice, that the hindmost wagon of the train always precisely closes the gateway, as each wagon is brought into position. It is dropped from its team (the teams being inside the circle), the team unyoked and the yokes and chains are used to connect the wagon strongly with that in its front. Within ten minutes from the time the leading wagon halted, the barricade is formed, the teams unyoked and driven out to pasture. Every one is busy preparing fires of buffalo chips to cook the evening meal, pitching tents and otherwise preparing for the night. There are anxious watchers for the absent wagon, for there are many matrons who may be afflicted like its inmate before the journey is over; and they fear the strange and startling practice of this Oregon doctor will be dangerous. But as the sun goes down the absent wagon rolls into camp, the bright, speaking face and cheery look of the doctor, who rides in advance, declare without words that all is well, and both mother and child are comfortable. I would fain now and here pay a passing tribute to that noble and devoted man, Doctor Whitman. I will obtrude no other name upon the reader, nor would I his were he of our party or even living, but his stay with us was transient, though the good he did was permanent, and he has long since died at his post.

21.—Falls of the Willamette—the objective point of the pioneers.

381From the time he joined us on the Platte until he left us at Fort Hall, his great experience and indomitable energy were of priceless value to the migrating column. His constant advice, which we knew was based upon a knowledge of the road before us, was, “Travel, travel, TRAVEL; nothing else will take you to the end of your journey; nothing is wise that does not help you along; nothing is good for you that causes a moment’s delay.” His great authority as a physician and complete success in the case above referred to, saved us many prolonged and perhaps ruinous delays from similar causes, and it is no disparagement to others to say that to no other individual are the emigrants of 1843 so much indebted for the successful conclusion of their journey as to Dr. Marcus Whitman.

All able to bear arms in the party have been formed into three companies, and each of these into four watches; every third night it is the duty of one of these companies to keep watch and ward over the camp, and it is so arranged that each watch takes its turn of guard duty through the different watches of the night. Those forming the first watch tonight will be second on duty, then third and fourth, which brings them through all the watches of the night. They begin at 8 o’clock P. M., and end at 4 o’clock A. M.

It is not yet 8 o’clock when the first watch is to be set; the evening meal is just over, and the corral now free from the intrusion of cattle or horses, groups of children are scattered over it. The larger are taking a game of romps; “the wee toddling things” are being taught that great achievement that distinguishes man 382from the lower animals. Before a tent near the river a violin makes lively music, and some youths and maidens have improvised a dance upon the green; in another quarter a flute gives its mellow and melancholy notes to the still night air, which, as they float away over the quiet river, seem a lament for the past rather than a hope for the future. It has been a prosperous day; more than twenty miles have been accomplished of the great journey. The encampment is a good one; one of the causes that threatened much future delay has just been removed by the skill and energy of that “good angel” of the emigrants, Doctor Whitman, and it has lifted a load from the hearts of the elders. Many of these are assembled around the good doctor at the tent of the pilot (which is his home for the time being), and are giving grave attention to his wise and energetic counsel. The care-worn pilot sits aloof, quietly smoking his pipe, for he knows the brave doctor is “strengthening his hands.”

22.—The Union Pacific Building, Omaha,—site of one of the “jumping off” points for Oregon.

But time passes; the watch is set for the night; the council of old men has been broken up, and each has returned to his own quarter; the flute has whispered its last lament to the deepening night; the violin is silent, and the dancers have dispersed; enamored youth have whispered a tender “good night” in the ear of blushing maidens, or stolen a kiss from the lips of some future bride—for Cupid here, as elsewhere, has been busy bringing together congenial hearts, and among these simple people he alone is consulted in forming the marriage tie. Even the doctor and the pilot have finished their confidential interview and have separated for the night. All is hushed and repose from the fatigues of the day, save the vigilant guard and the wakeful leader, who still has cares upon his mind that forbid sleep. He hears the 10 o’clock relief taking post and the “all well” report of the 383returned guard; the night deepens, yet he seeks not the needed repose. At length a sentinel hurries to him with the welcome report that a party is approaching—as yet too far away for its character to be determined, and he instantly hurries out in the direction in which it was seen. This he does both from inclination and duty, for in times past the camp had been unnecessarily alarmed by timid or inexperienced sentinels, causing much confusion and fright amongst women and children, and it had been a rule that all extraordinary incidents of the night should be reported directly to the pilot, who alone had the authority to call out the military strength of the column, or of so much of it as was in his judgment necessary to prevent a stampede or repel an enemy. Tonight he is at no loss to determine that the approaching party are our missing hunters, and that they have met with success, and he only waits until by some further signal he can know that no ill has happened to them. This is not long wanting. He does not even await their arrival, but the last care of the day being removed, and the last duty performed, he too seeks the rest that will enable him to go through the same routine tomorrow. But here I leave him, for my task is also done, and unlike his, it is to be repeated no more.

Note—A Correction—Col. George B. Currey was the author of “The Tribute to the Ox Whip,” not Col. George L. Curry, as printed in this number.

My task is to call from dust and dark forgetfulness that advance banner of Americanism and progress—the ox whip. Its crack was the command “Forward to the nation.” Its sharp, keen accent proclaimed that obstacles to prayers must be overcome. It waved aloft on the prairies of the “Old West,” and pointing to the new, a vast throng took up the westward march, which, keeping step to the music of destiny, dashed across the broad Missouri, rolled a living tide up the grassy slope of the Platte, scaled the imperial heights of the Rocky Mountains, and with “the tread of a giant and shout of a conquerer” defied the heat, dust, thirst and hunger, the desert heart of the continent, leaped the Blue Mountains, paused but quailed not on the banks of the deep, wide Columbia, where again the potential crack is heard and the mighty, “rock-ribbed” walls of the Cascades are stormed, and as the line rolls bravely over the giddy summit the exultant driver gives a grand triumphant crack into the stolid face of grand old Hood, the storm-clad sentinel of the mountain fastness. The people have reached their goal. The spell is broken. The errand has lost its magic, its mission has been accomplished. A state, with freedom’s diadem effulgent on its brow salutes the eye, and dipping its young hand in the Pacific completes the baptism of human liberty and proclaims an “ocean-bound republic.” All hail and honor to the ox whip, the symbol of the grand, achieving force of its age.

23.—Street, Oregon City,—about where the pioneers broke ranks.

VINCERE EST VIVERE!

The following is one of a set of documents giving contemporary evidence on a most important epoch of Oregon history. It was secured by Principal J. R. Wilson.

PRAIRIE AND MOUNTAIN LIFE—THE OREGON EMIGRANTS.

During our detention among the upper settlements, before starting out, a constant source of interest to us was the gathering of people bound to Oregon. One Sunday morning, about the usual church hour in a larger place, five or six wagons passed through the town of Westport, and one old man with silver hair was with the party. Women and children were walking, fathers and brothers were driving loose cattle or managing the heavy teams, and keen-eyed youngsters, with their chins yet smooth and rifles on their shoulders, kept in advance of the wagons with long strides, looking as if they were already watching around the corners of the streets for game. There was one striking feature about the party which leads us to name it more particularly. Though traveling on the Sabbath and through the little town that was all quiet and resting from business in reverence of the day, there was that in the appearance of the people that banished at once even the remotest idea of profanation. They were all clean, and evidently appareled in their best Sunday gear. Their countenances were sedate, and the women wore that mild composure of visage—so pleasantly resigned, so eloquent of a calm spirit, so ready to kindle up into smiles—that is seen more often among churchgoers, perhaps, than in ballroom or boudoir. Some of the women carried books, 399and the prettiest girl carried hers open before her as she stepped a little coquettishly through the dust of the road. Whether she was reading, or trying, or pretending to read, was hard to tell, but the action had a naive effect, and as she passed she was, no doubt, much astonished at a strange young gentleman who audibly addressed her with, “Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered.”

Many other small bodies of these adventurous travelers crossed our notice at Independence, Westport, and at encampments made in the vicinity of these and other towns, but in their largest force we saw them just after crossing the Kansas River about the first of June. The Oregonians were assembled here to the number of six or eight hundred, and when we passed their encampment they were engaged in the business of electing officers to regulate and conduct their proceedings. It was a curious and unaccountable spectacle to us as we approached. We saw a large body of men wheeling and marching about the prairie, describing evolutions neither recognizable as savage, civic or military. We soon knew they were not Indians, and were not long in setting them down for the emigrants, but what in the name of mystery they were about our best guessing could not reduce to anything in the shape of a mathematical probability.

On arriving among them, however, we found they were only going on with their elections in a manner perhaps old enough, but very new and quizzical to us. The candidates stood up in a row behind the constituents, and at a given signal they wheeled about and marched off, while the general mass broke after them “lick-a-ty-split”, each man forming in behind his favorite so that every candidate flourished a sort of a tail of his own, and the man with the longest tail was elected! These proceedings were continued until a captain and a council 400of ten were elected; and, indeed, if the scene can be conceived, it must appear as a curious mingling of the whimsical with the wild. Here was a congregation of rough, bold, and adventurous men, gathered from distant and opposite points of the Union, just forming an acquaintance with each other, to last, in all probability, through good or ill fortune, through the rest of their days. Few of them expected, or thought, of ever returning to the states again. They had with them their wives and children, and aged, depending relatives. They were going with stout and determined hearts to traverse a wild and desolate region, and take possession of a far corner of their country destined to prove a new and strong arm of a mighty nation. These men were running about the prairie, in long strings; the leaders,—in sport and for the purpose of puzzling the judges, doubling and winding in the drollest fashion; so that, the all-important business of forming a government seemed very much like the merry schoolboy game of “snapping the whip.” It was really very funny to see the candidates for the solemn council of ten, run several hundred yards away, to show off the length of their tails, and then cut a half circle, so as to turn and admire their longitudinal popularity in extenso themselves. “Running for office” is certainly performed in more literal fashion on the prairie than we see the same sort of business performed in town. To change the order of a town election, though for once, it might prove an edifying exhibition to see a mayor and aldermen start from the town pump and run around the court house square, the voters falling in behind and the rival ticket running the other way, while a band in the middle might tune up for both parties, playing “O, What a Long Tail Our Cat’s Got;” which we surmise some popular composer may have arranged for such an occasion.

401After passing them here, we never saw the Oregonians again. They elected a young lawyer of some eminence as we were told, named Burnett, as their captain, and engaged an old mountaineer, known as Captain Gant, as their guide through the mountains to Fort Hall. Several enactments were made and agreed to, one of which was called up to be rescinded, and something of an excitement arose in regard to it. The law made was that no family should drive along more than three head of loose stock for each member composing it, and this bore hard on families that had brought with them cattle in large numbers. The dispute resulted in a split of the large body into two or three divisions; and so they moved on, making distinct encampments all the way. Captain Gant was to receive $1.00 a head from the company, numbering about a thousand souls, for his services as guide. But a few more such expeditions following in the same trail will soon imprint such a highway through the wilderness to Oregon that emigrants may hereafter travel without such assistance.

We left them here about the last of May and encountered no sign of them again until returning in September, when we struck their trail on the Sweetwater, near the south pass of the mountains. They had followed in our own trail as far as this point and had here turned off, our course lying in another direction. From here, all the way to Fort Laramie, we found the now deeply worn road strewn with indications of their recent presence. Scaffolds for drying meat, broken utensils thrown away, chips showing where wagons had been repaired, and remnants of children’s shoes, frocks, etc., met our notice at every deserted encampment.

But one death seemed to have occurred among them, and this was far out under the mountains. Here the loose riders of our moving camp gathered one morning 402to examine a rude pyramid of stones by the roadside. The stones had been planted firmly in the earth, and those on top were substantially placed, so that the wolves, whose marks were evident about the pile, had not been able to disinter the dead. On one stone, larger than the rest, and with a flat side, was rudely engraved:

And we place it here as perhaps the only memento those who knew him in the States may ever receive of him. How he died, we of course cannot surmise, but there he sleeps among the rocks of the West as soundly as if chiseled marble was built above his bones.

On returning to Rock Independence, a point about nine hundred miles from the settlements, we were astonished at finding that the Oregonians had reached and passed it only four days behind us. We had confidently supposed them four weeks in our rear, and their rapid progress augurs well for the success of their enterprise. On the rock we found printed:

At Fort Laramie we were told that they were still well provisioned when passing there, and could even afford to trade away flour, coffee, etc., for necessaries of other kinds. But it was droll to hear how the Sioux stared at the great caravans. Some of them on seeing the great number of wagons, and particularly white women and children, for the first time, began to think of coming down here, having seen, as they supposed, “the whole white village” move up the mountains.

• ADAMS—
  • Proposals on the Oregon Question, 220
• ASTORIA—
  • Settlement of, 10
  • Restitution of, to U. S., 214
• BAYLIES—
  • Speeches of, on Oregon, 21
• BENTON—
  • Oregon policy of, 13, 16, 50, 52
• CALHOUN—
  • Opposition of, to Oregon bill, 235
• CALIFORNIA—
  • Contract labor in mines of, 281
• CARVER—
  • Use of word Oregon by, 112, 166
• CHAMPOEG—
  • Origin of name, 88
  • Early life in, 88, 89
  • Early settlement near, 173
  • Early manners of, 172, 176
• CHOLERA—
  • Ravages of, among immigrants to Oregon, 363
• CLAY—
  • On the Oregon Question, 221
• COLUMBIA RIVER—
  • Discovery of, 113
  • Proposed as boundary, 215
• DOUGLAS—
  • Interest in Oregon Question, 40
• ENGLAND—
  • Rivalry of, in Oregon Country, 6
• EDUCATION—
  • Appropriation of public land for in Oregon, 148
• FLOYD—
  • Oregon policy of, 13–17, 218
• FREMONT—
  • Work of, in Oregon, 330
• GOVERNMENT—
  • Lack of in early Oregon, 9, 10
  • First exercise of, 10, 11
• 406GOLD—
  • Effect of early discoveries of, 103
• GRAY—
  • Explorations of, 113
• INDIANS—
  • Customs of, 77
  • Behavior toward white women, 82
  • Matthieu’s recollections of, 99
  • Religious customs of, 179
  • Legends of the, 183
  • Request of, for missionaries, 225, 346
  • First estimate of, in Oregon Country, 296
  • Position of women among the Oregon, 296
  • Funeral customs of, 300
  • Poor food supply of, 302
  • Estimate and census of Oregon Indians, 314
  • Language, peculiarities of, 317
• JACKSON—
  • Effort of, to acquire San Francisco Bay, 228
• KELLEY, HALL J.—
  • Visit to Oregon in 1834, 195
  • Work in Oregon, 224
  • Work of, 349
• LEE—
  • Petition of, to Congress, 28, 29
• LINN—
  • Oregon policy of, 26, 230, 235
• LANDS—
  • Cession of state claims to western, 136
• LANE—
  • Arrival in Oregon, 52
• LEDYARD—
  • Plan of, for exploring Oregon, 115
• LEWIS AND CLARK—
  • Plan for the expedition of, 120
  • Grant of land to, 144
• LOUISIANA—
  • Purchase of, by U. S., 147
• McLOUGHLIN—
  • Influence of, 11, 12
  • Notes on, 95, 96
  • Treatment of American settlers, 105
  • Domestic life of, 158
  • Trouble with American immigrants, 201
  • Hospital work of, 308
• MISSIONARIES—
  • Early settlements of, in Oregon, 194, 196, 225
• MONEY IN EARLY OREGON, 102
• 407NOOTKA—
  • Convention of, 125
• OREGON—
  • Original extent of, 4, 111
  • Primitive isolation of, 6
  • Territorial admission of, 52
  • Motives for statehood in, 53
  • Opposition to statehood in, 54
  • Constitutional Convention of, 55
  • Admission of, as a state, 58
  • Dangers of pioneer travel to, 61, 62
  • Characters of pioneers in, 63, 64
  • First use of the name, 112, 166
  • Spanish claims to, 122
  • Southern boundary of, fixed, 127
  • Russian claims to, 128
  • Northern boundary of, fixed, 127
  • School lands of, 154
  • Early American visitors to, 193
  • Early immigration to, 198
  • Dispute over northern boundary of, 215
  • Discussion over occupation of, 218
  • Character of early settlement in, 224
  • Fifty-four deg. 40 min. boundary of, 243
  • Settlement of northern boundary of, 251
  • Estimate and census of Indians in, 314
  • Condition of, in 1842, 327
  • Fur trade in, 329, 335
  • Motives for movement to, 352
  • Summary of negotiations for, 349
  • Difficulties of route to, 359
  • Estimate of immigrations to, 370
  • Character of immigrants to, 398
• PARKMAN—
  • Estimate of work of, on Oregon Trail, 342
• POLK—
  • Inaugural address on Oregon, 46
  • Message of, 1845 on Oregon, 47
  • Message of, 1847, 49
• POPULATION MOVEMENT—
  • Effect on Oregon, 8
• PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT—
  • Notices for, 32, 33
  • First steps toward, 33
  • Objections to, 34, 35
  • Plan of, 36
  • Changes in, 37, 38
  • Effectiveness of, 39
  • Indian attitude toward, 40
  • Lane’s verdict on, 52
  • Notes on organization of, 91
• SAUVIE’S ISLAND—
  • Indian population of, 310
• 408SLACUM—
  • Visit of, to Oregon Country, 228
• SLAVERY—
  • Influence of, on admission of Oregon Territory, 48, 50, 51, 147
  • In Constitutional Convention, 56
  • In early Oregon, 101
• SOVEREIGNTY—
  • Occupation the test of, 123
• TEXAS—
  • Influence of, on Oregon Question, 288
• TYLER—
  • Message of, 1842 on Oregon, 41, 234
  • Message of, 1843, 44
  • Message of, 1844, 45
• WASHINGTON—
  • Territorial formation of, 53
• WEBSTER—
  • Opinion of, on Oregon Question, 239
• WHITE—
  • Appointment of, as sub-Indian agent, 31
  • Settlement of, in Oregon, 241
• WHITMAN—
  • Character and aims of, 41, 42
  • Work of, 42, 241
  • Character of, 61
  • Matthieu’s estimate of, 85
  • Views of, on Oregon’s needs, 351
  • Influence of, 381
• WILKES—
  • Work of, in Oregon, 333
• WYETH—
  • Visits of, to Oregon, 194
  • Settlement in Oregon, 223

SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF OREGON

Number 1.—Journal of Medorem Crawford—An Account of His Trip Across the Plains in 1842. Price, 25 Cents.

Number 2.—The Indian Council at Walla Walla, May and June, 1855, by Col. Lawrence Kip—A Journal. Price, 25 Cents.

Numbers 3 to 6 Inclusive.—The Correspondence and Journals of Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, 1831–6.—A Record of Two Expeditions, for the Occupation of the Oregon Country, with Maps, Introduction and Index. Price, $1.10.

The Proceedings of the Oregon Historical Society for 1898–9, Including Paper by Silas B. Smith, on “Beginnings in Oregon,” 97 Pages. Price, 25 Cents.

The Proceedings of the Oregon Historical Society for 1899–1900. Including Two Historical Papers, 120 Pages. Price, 25 Cents.

QUARTERLY OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL confers the degrees of Master of Arts, (and in prospect, of Doctor of Philosophy,) Civil and Sanitary Engineer (C. E.), Electrical Engineer (E. E.), Chemical Engineer (Ch.E.), and Mining Engineer (Min. E.)

THE COLLEGE OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS confers the degree of Bachelor of Arts on graduates from the following groups: (1) General Classical; (2) General Literary; (3) General Scientific; (4) Civic-Historical. It offers Collegiate Courses not leading to a degree as follows: (1) Preparatory to Law or Journalism; (2) Course for Teachers.

THE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING.—

A.—The School of Applied Science confers the degree of Bachelor of Science on graduates from the following groups; (1) General Science; (2) Chemistry; (3) Physics; (4) Biology; (5) Geology and Mineralogy. It offers a Course Preparatory to Medicine.

B.—The School of Engineering: (1) Civil and Sanitary; (2) Electrical; (3) Chemical.