Extraordinary Inducements: Why the East Went West — Elizabeth Stewart Clark

Extraordinary Inducements: Why the East Went West

Human geography, and the logical and emotional reasons we establish ourselves where we establish ourselves, and extend and alter our environments, is one aspect of anthropology that, in my opinion, holds boundless resources for living history interpretation and the connections we hope to help ourselves and others make.

The mid-19th century is fascinating; in just a few short decades, our country changed in extraordinary ways. Never more mobile, the people of this era crossed, zig-zagged, and circumnavi- gated the continent in waves great and small. Multiple waves of emigration changed and chal- lenged our ideas of what it is to be American.

Many of the changes can be explored through the lens of migration, and particularly through the settlement of the West. We’ll take a look at some specifics, but first, some basic patterns in human settlement, and the inducements that draw those patterns; knowing the general pathways can help us see where the 19th century experience confirms or strays from those norms.

The Inducement of New Horizons: Exploration

This foundational motivation for change is one that connects for most people. Historically, the urge to see what’s over the horizon can only be satisfied by exploration.

 Initial Populations: Solitary or small group explorers, usually male; native populations.

 Initial Lifestyle Focus: Survival, often adopting native patterns Exploration as needed; some retention of originating culture and ideals. Little to great conflict with native populations.

 Second-wave Settlement: Return and expanded exploration.

 Third-wave Settlement: Natural resource trades (timber, trap- ping, hunting), missions.

 Residual Effects: Initial impact ranges from negligible to catastrophic (introduced epidemics). Second and third waves begin to have cultural and resource impacts, as well as increased risk of catastrophic disease impact.

The Inducement of Expanded Bounty: Resource Trades

The natural resources available in new territories has always spurred migration. Generally, that dynamic looks something like this:

 Initial Populations: Solitary or small group explorers, usually male, hired hunters or resource processors; native populations. Natural Resource Trades  Initial Lifestyle Focus: Survival, often adopting native patterns

as needed; some retention of originating culture and ideals. Little to great conflict with native populations.

 Second-wave Settlement: Usually discouraged by individuals and organized commercial backers, as settlement introduces compe- tition for resources and trade, as well as overall resource drains.

 Third-wave Settlement: Mission and permanent settlement follow, in most cases.

 Residual Effects: Resource exploitation can decimate natural resources in some cases. Until additional settlement happens, and barring catastrophic disease introduction, the effects on native populations will sometimes be relatively small. Fur company men, for instance, are more likely to marry into native tribes, and be comfort- able in both worlds, without pushing too many “settled” notions on the settled cultures already in place.

The Inducements of God: Missions

Religious expansion has driven many epochs of human settlement; the West is no exception. In general, the patterns follow:

 Initial Populations: Ministerial appointees typically combine another specialty (education, medicine, agriculture) with religious duties; if married, wives are expected to contribute heavily to both religious and domestic accomplishments.

 Initial Lifestyle Focus: Survival, with quick moves toward con- version and education of native populations. Rare to see adoption of Missions native patterns, particular for religious men with non-native wives present.

 Second-wave Settlement: Often “reinforcements” of like- minded coreligionists; mission settlement opens doors for trade and commerce development to support the work of the mission and it’s community needs.

 Third-wave Settlement: Permanent settlement related or unre- lated to the original mission goals, as well as additional trade and commerce.

 Residual Effects: Mission settlement involves a host of unique cultural tensions, and often brings along epidemic concerns as well. Missions tend to expect native assimilation, and some of the methods used seem less than humane to modern minds, but most often, mission settlers see themselves and their methods as compassionate and “for the best.” Residual effects are largely cultural and emotional, once health issues are removed.

Willamette and Walla Walla, Bitterroot Range valleys, Protestant (Methodists) Catholic Jesuits (1834-1855) Pierre-Jean DeSmet (1841-1846)

Religious Settlement Utah, Sacramento, San in the West Bernardino LDS (Mormons) 1598-1857 (1847-1857) In many parts of the west, religious mission expansion created stable community foundations.

Catholic Missions territories Largely Spanish, quite a few Franciscans (1598-1820)

The Inducements of Fast Fortune: Mineral Booms

Gold and the promise of it has spurred migration through most of history!

 Initial Population: Single men, though often in mass waves.

 Initial Lifestyle Focus: Survival, with a focus on taking advan- tage of the boom above all else. Home comforts are appreciated, and bring a high price. Mineral Booms  Second-Wave Settlement: Those who provide lifestyle comfort & necessities to the miners, including merchants, prostitutes, enter- tainers, food and alcohol vendors, etc. Exploitation and profit from the boom is largely through sales to miners, rather than direct mining.

 Third-Wave Settlement: Some mineral booms last long enough for permanent settlement to develop; in others, a quick boom/bust cycle leaves some infrastructure largely intact, ready to be picked up by permanent settlers.

 Residual Effects: Environmental effects can be devastating and long-lasting, with marks still very visible today in land disturbance and toxic contamination. Boom/Bust cycles carried an emotional and physical toll along with the obvious financial impact.

The Inducements of “Free”: Permanent Settlement

Many governments open land expansion by granting “free” land to settlers who are willing to improve the territory on behalf of the government; in the Americas, this is a continuation and evolution of the ruler/fealty strategies of European monarchs.

Much of this continent was settled through a series of large land grants (with subdivided grants at the whim and will of the major Permanent grant-holder, such as in the Eastern colonies), family-sized grants Settlement (such as the various homesteading acts that pushed the boundaries of the US to the Pacific coast), and even commercial grants (such as in the numerous rail and telegraph schemes of the 1800s).

 Initial Population: Advance parties of men, or entire families

 Initial Lifestyle Focus: Subsistence gives way as quickly as possible to trade, agriculture, industry, education.

 Second-Wave Settlement: Additional family members, or relo- cating the original emigrants within the same territory, or another, in search of better opportunities; commerce and trade move in as quickly as possible.

 Third-Wave Settlement: Those looking to re-settle with mini- mal personal effort can join third-wave settlement and take advan- tage of an established, if young, society and infrastructure.

 Residual Effects: Conflict with native populations and early resource exploiters over land boundaries, use of the land, and the dif- ferences between early frontier society habits and “civilized” society lead to tension. Voluntary or forced removal of native and early settlement populations often results.

The Exceptional Inducement: Religious Exodus

As noted, these migrations are less common, but show up a number of time with US history in particular, and many instances of exodus in North America have ties to Europe, as well.

The Palatinate Exodus from the Netherlands to England in the late Religious Exodus 1600s (with some groups moving to the Colonies in the very early 1700s); Puritan migration to New England; Shaker community establishment; German and Dutch migration to the States in the 1820s through 1850s; various Christian “community” establishments, and the LDS exodus to the intermountain west are included among the major “exodus” points in our brief history.

 Initial Population: Entire religious populations; most notably in the US, the Latter-day Saints (Mormons) to the Great Salt Lake Val- ley in the intermountain west.

 Initial Lifestyle Focus: Peculiar willingness to subsume individual goals in favor of the group goals; communal resource sharing is typical. Subsistence living, plus active development of individual, contributory economic efforts. Most early economy within the group is heavily barter-oriented.

 Second-Wave Settlement: Additional coreligionists, converts; some incursion by extra- religious commerce or trade.

 Third-Wave Settlement: Rarely does a society live separate for long; mineral, permanent settlement, or commercial enterprises intrude fairly soon.

 Residual Effects: Given even a few years of relative isolation, the religion will often create a tightly cohesive society, nearly impenetrable to outsiders at first glance. Religious standards and organization can stand in for more typical secular government arrangements. Insular pride at self-reliance (particularly in being “God’s Chosen & Persecuted People”) can lead to the development of and focus on “domestic” industry and provision, to the exclusion of “importation.”

The diagram on page six shows a quick visual summary; for that summary to be truly accurate, however, we would need to connect every pattern of settlement with every other pattern, in a large and interlocked web; human geography is never truly distinct or tidy.

That lack of tidiness extends to being able to calculate exactly how many people went West. The Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA), drawing on Merrill Mattes estimates, gives at least an approximate sense of the sudden and dramatic changes in population moving westward, but even these rough estimates are complicated by several factors, including:

 The non-registered nature of emigration; no one was taking a headcount at the Mis- sissippi River’s edge!

 Multiple overland and sea routes to choose from.

 Migration from foreign countries (Europe, Asia, Australia).

 Continuous migration, with individuals and households being counted in more than one estimate, or missed entirely.

 The numbers also do not account for those who return East (or home).

 The numbers may double-count those who go out, return, and re-emigrate alone or with friends and family at a later date.

With those factors remaining outside the scope of the numbers, somewhere on the order of 500,000 people relocated from the East to the West between 1813 and the end of the Civil War, with the bulk of those emigrants arriving following the January 1848 discovery of gold in the American River at Sutter’s Mill. The chart on page 7 illustrates the ups and downs of the esti- mated population movement.

Let’s take a look at some extraordinary variations of the common inducements that drew people to the West. You may find that one or another set of experiences draws you particularly; con- sider further exploration of those experiences for use in deepening your understanding of mid- 19th century society, and an individual’s place in it.

The different patterns in settlement are often interwoven and Common Patterns in overlapped; any one element can spark the other patterns, Human Settlement and rarely do things happen in tidy ways that lend themselves to orderly progressions.

Exploration

Natural Resource Trades Missions

Permanent Settlement

Mineral Booms

Wholesale religious exodus is a less-common form of human settlement, but does happen periodically, when religious tensions in one area grow too bur- densome to be tolerated.

It is rare for a religious community to be left entirely alone for very long. Mineral and natural resource exploitation, expanding settlement, expanding commerce, and the mission work of other faiths encroach up on the once- Religious Exodus refugee population.

Emigration 70K Estimates 65K, 5K Cholera deaths 1830-1865 40K First year of the CA Rush +40K, mostly to MT gold strikes 35K 20K, about 10K to CA, UTheavy traffic Roughly20K; increased cultural conflict About 20K; strikes in MT, east OR Steady about20K About 20K, many to CO UTand 5K SLC; 10K OR; 2K CA About 12K, about 8K to CA <10K Cholera response About 7K, mostly to Utah About 7500 <10K 80K, 60K to the CO strikes About 6K, 4K to bankCA; panic in States 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 - 1830

The Inducement of Possibility: American Romanticism

It might seem odd to say that American society at mid-century was “romantic”; I mean it not in a lovey-dovey sort of way, but rather in an exuberant, enthusiastic view of the world with high emphasis on sometimes-unrealistic ideals. There seems to be quite a contrast in emotion toward, for instance, a dirty child in an inner city (filthy street refuse, probably up to no good) and a dirty child on a rural farm (wholesome, “clean” dirt, probably doing helpful things for the family, or is at least engaged in harmless childhood fun). How dreary to be a bank clerk in Boston; how exciting and wild to be a rugged bank clerk in San Francisco, or set up one’s own bank in the gold fields of far-off Montana! With tapped out land in the East, the virgin fields and forests of the West are endless panoramas of romantic possibility!

This sort of American romanticism does not spring up everywhere independently. A singular and unifying force for creating and transmitting the romanticized pull of the West is found in serialized, cheap popular fiction.

By the 1850s, the United States boasted one of the most widely-literate white populations in the world; coupled with technological advancements in printing and publishing, this booming liter- acy made even more popular the serialized novel, and sparked the development of the “penny dreadful” and “dime novel,” many of which, among their themes of overarching melodrama, pa- thos, and adventure, contained a distinctly romantic view of the world, in which orphan boys made good in the world, true love struggled but was rewarded, the pastoral home ideal was re- vered, and Pioneer Zeal was celebrated. Many of those same themes carried through in stories published in foreign-language magazines and papers in the US during the same time.

Harper’s Monthly Magazine, with an initial publication run of 7500 copies in 1850, had a sub- scription base of 50,000 within six months, and by the opening of the Civil War, boasted a sub-

© Elizabeth Stewart Clark 2014. All rights reserved. Do not re-host or republish without permission. 7 Extraordinary Inducements: Why the East Went West — Elizabeth Stewart Clark scriber pool of over 200,000. Godey’s marked 150,000 subscribers in the same period (and re- member, Godey’s also encourage group subscriptions, with one copy being passed around entire neighborhoods.) These are just two of the approximately 700 magazines carrying serialized fiction by the 1860s.

Concurrent with the serialized stories in magazines, the dime novel rapidly developed additional archetypes and themes that captivated the American imagination and steered societal interest westward. The North American Review noted in 1864 that over five million Beadle and Adams “dime novels” were in circulation. Serialized stories allow a society to rapidly explore a huge range of themes; the adventures in each story let individuals “try on” possible scenarios for themselves, and the wide circulation coupled with subscriber and reader feedback allows writers to focus on the themes that most often captivate their audiences. To see repeated themes of “adventure in the West,” “opportunity in the West,” and “success in the West” both created and reinforced the American attitudes toward social mobility and the potential of new places and new adventures.

(Sensationalized accounts of emigrant encounters with First Nations groups seem to have contributed significantly to emigrant expectations, though the actual experiences of aggression and hostility are far less common than the travelers generally anticipated, given their own words in letters and journal entries before, during, and after their migration experiences.)

The huge upswing in publishing in general (including newspapers; newspaper offices often served as general “periodical depots”, carrying a range of inexpensive publications), plus the in- creasingly rapid transportation of mail, magazines, and papers along improved rails, steamships, and roads, also contributed to the sustained and sometimes fevered development of the uniquely-American “romantic” stories of western life, adventure, and settlement. In his book “A Fictive People,” Zboray writes: The same text could go everywhere and at any time and encourage (but not decree) a common reading experience. In their eminent transportability, the books, periodicals, and ephemera of the period differed little from other goods produced by the economic upsurge. If Michigan wheat, Troy stoves, Danbury hats, Lacakwanna iron, Lowell ging- ham, and Black Belt cotton found their way into homes across the nation, so could Bos- ton books, Philadelphia fiction, and the New York “Knickerbocker.” In mid-September 1858, the Pacific Mail Butterfield Overland route opened between St Louis and San Francisco; mail and newspaper packets that previously took three or more months to travel from East to West could now be delivered in 25 days. The short-lived Pony Express (opening in 1860) brought mail delivery from the Mississippi to the Pacific in 11 days (with ad- mittedly small volume and high rates.) Advances in transportation supported the rapid dissemi- nation of new cultural themes to all corners of the nation, settled and new.

Did the romantic idealism of the rapidly-expanding and mobile population fuel the creation of the story themes that sparked this grand communal experience? Or did the expansion of publication unknowingly hit on the right chord to reach a population ready to embrace the unifying romantic ideal? Whichever angle you choose, the energetic, romantic notions that quickly marked so many aspects of life at mid-century make for fascinating contemplation, and extraordinary inducements for individuals to leave their known and settled life, and strike out for the adventures and success their reading advertised as waiting for them.

The Inducement of the Dollar: Commerce and Success in the West

Closely tied with the romantic idealism of the culture was the idea of being able to start fresh and make good in a new territory. Particularly given the cyclical economic panics that plagued the young nation through the entire 19th century, the desire to carve wealth from new land is un- derstandable.

Economic success could start early in the journey west, as noted by Lucretia Epperson, who traveled overland in 1864. Three days into her journey (and still in a settled portion of Illinois), she wrote:

April 3. Rained all day, roads very muddy, we plodded on our way until we entered a narrow lane. Here we became fast in a mud-hole that was almost impassable. Sitting on a fence near by was a gentleman who seemed to be proprietor of said mud-hole, as he told us we could not get our wagon through without the help of another team. He had three yoke of oxen with him, seemed to be ready for business, and demanded five dollars for his services. Mr. Epperson and Reed could not see things in that light, and they of- fered him two dollars to open his fence and let them drive around, otherwise, they assured him they would go through by force. He finally concluded to accept the money, and we went on our way rejoicing.

During the initial burst of the California gold rush, most people were intent on getting to the gold, making a fortune, and heading home in triumph. Ship captains found themselves stuck in the bay, as crews deserted to the gold fields. The push for easy gold, and stories of success shared by the early returning miners, spurred thoughts of emigration. Mary Jane Hayden re- counts her household’s motivations: In 1849 there was great excitement about the discovery of gold in California and nearly everybody had what was called the “gold fever”, my husband with the rest, and I soon discovered by their evening chat as we sat about the fire, that he was making plans to go to California.

I listened to their plans which they had gotten pretty well formulated, when I thought it was time for me to take some interest in affairs, and so put the question, “what do you propose to do with me?” “Send you to your mother until I return,” was his answer, which did not meet with my approval, but I made no answer at that time.

I was very fond of my husband and was nearly broken-hearted at the thought of the separation.

I said, “We were married to live together, and I am willing to go with you to any part of God’s Foot Stool where you think you can do the best, and under these circumstances you have no right to go where I cannot, and if you do, you need never return for I shall look upon you as dead.”

It was… December 1849, two young men returning from California bringing each about a thousand dollars in gold, which was wealth in those days, and which set the whole country agog. It was not so much the money they had as the glowing accounts of how easy it was to get the gold, one could pick it out of the rocks with a pocket knife. Is it any wonder we had a return of the fever…

Wages for non-mining labor spiked sharply, as much as 500% above wages for the same posi- tions in the East. By the mid-50s, the rates were leveling out somewhat, but wages still remained higher in the West, which served as a wonderful inducement for emigration.

Jerusha Merrill, her husband, and three children rushed from Connecticut to California, arriving in March 1849 and immediately determining that the best money to be made was from the miners, not in the mines. Writing home, she shared,

People are daily arriving from all parts by the hundreds. Many land with not one penny to help themselves with. Imagine for one moment what their situation must be. Board at $18 per week, not one half can get accommodations at that rate or any other rate. A room just large enough to turn around in rents for only $20 or $30 per month.

You may imagine me in a house with eleven rooms on the first floor, nine on the second, in the midst of sixty boarders, transient ones not mentioned, with hourly applica- tions for more. You can then have only a faint idea of my situation. Sometimes I have seven servants, at others but one or two; with my family it is quite an item to be placed in this situation.

Our terms are board for $18 per week including lodging; without, $14. Provisions are very high. For instance, beef 25 cents per pound, ham $1. Flour varies from $10 to $20 (per hundredweight). Butter $1.25, cheese $1, milk 50 cents per quart, potatoes $8 per bushel, other vegetables not to be obtained. Eggs $4 per dozen, at the mines $1 a piece. All provisions in the same proportions.

Never was there a better field for making money than now presents itself in this place at this time. Anything that is business will succeed. Labour of all kinds being very high.

Fellow “hospitality” business woman Luzena Stanley noted some distinct challenges in setting up business in the new mining territories that same year, after her first establishment was de- stroyed in the Sacramento flooding:

We were not rich enough to indulge in the luxury of a canvas home; so a few pine boughs and branches of the undergrowth were cut and thrown into a rude shelter for the present, and my husband hurried away up the mountain to begin to split out "shakes" for a house. Since our experience of rain in Sacramento, we were inclined to think that rain was one of the daily or at least weekly occurrences of a California spring, and the fist precaution was to secure a water-tight shelter.

Our bedding was placed inside the little brush house, my cook stove set up near it under the shade of a great pine tree, and I was established, without further preparation, in my new home. When I was left alone in the afternoon - it was noon when we arrived - I cast my thoughts about me for some plan to assist in the recuperation of the family finances. As always occurs to the mind of a woman, I thought of taking boarders. There was already a thriving establishment of the kind just down the road, under the shelter of a canvas roof, as was set forth by its sign in lamp-black on a piece of cloth: "Wamac's Hotel. Meals $1.00".

I determined to set up a rival hotel.

So I bought two boards from a precious pile belonging to a man who was building the second wooden house in town. With my own hands I chopped stakes, drove them into the

ground, and set up my table. I bought provisions at a neighboring store, and when my husband came back at night he found, mid the weird light of the pine torches, twenty miners eating at my table. Each man as he rose put a dollar in my hand and said I might count him as a permanent customer. I called my hotel "El Dorado".

An 1856 ad for the California Emigration Society, published from their Boston, Massachusetts offices, promises wages (taken from papers direct from California, we are assured, and available for examination at the Society’s offices) that greatly exceed the average working wages for 1856-1860 in the West (less than $1/day for unskilled labor, $1.76 a day for skilled labor, and about $56 a month for “white collar” work):

 Female nurses, $25 per week plus  Female servants, $30 to $50 per board month plus board

 School teachers, $100 per month  Washing, $3 per dozen

 Gardeners, $60 per month plus board  Masons, $6 per day

 Laborers, $4-$5 per day  Carpenters, $5 per day

 Farmers, $5 per day  Engineers, $100 per month (and noted as very scarce)  Shoemakers, $4 per day  Blacksmiths, $90-$100 per month  Male and female cooks, $40 to $60 plus board per month plus board

 Miners, $3-$12 per day

As shipping traffic normalized and more merchants entered the territory to meet the needs of the miners, the cost of living stabilized somewhat, but even then, wages remained about 300% higher than in the East, a strong inducement to emigrate and find new financial opportunities. To be renewed on expiration of Term. of renewed expiration on be To FOREIGN MINER’S LICENSE. No…………. No……… ……………………………………..County. ……………… County, ………………………… 18……… ……………………………………… 18….. THIS CERTIFIES that …………………...……….. Has ……………………………………………… This day paid the Tax-Collector of …………………………. Has paid four dollars, Mining License, County four dollars, which entitles him to work in the mines which entitles him to work in the mines one of this state one month from date. month. ………………………………….. Controller of State,

………………………..Collector.

Facsimile license from The General Laws of the State of California, from 1850 to 1864. “Foreign” miners referred to anyone not a citizen of California or the United States. Notably, Chinese miners did not pay the $4 monthly license fee; theirs cost $20 a month.

Rather than heeding the siren call of gold, many others were more interested in the economic opportunities present in new land, free for the claiming (and proving!) Henderson Luelling was an orchardist in his home state of Iowa, but relocated to the Oregon Territory in 1847, taking his wife, their eight children (and spouses where applicable), and an unusual addition to the ox- drawn wagon train: specially-fitted wagons pulled by three-yoke teams, filled with 700 saplings packed in a mix of earth and charcoal. Included were 50 to 60 varieties of apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, quince, black walnut and hickory nut trees, gooseberry and currant bushes, and grapevines.

He and his son-in-law, William Meek, planted the “traveling orchard” in the Milwaukie, Oregon area, and began grafting trees. By 1850, he advertised having 100,000 trees and bushes for sale, for between $1 and $1.50 each. His work in grafting saw far more success than other orchardists were having with from-seed stock, and the grafted trees he sold populated orchards all across the Oregon and Washington territories.

His brother Seth, another nurseryman and horticulturist, joined the family in 1850. Henderson relocated to California (the Oakland area) to establish nurseries there in 1854, and Seth continued on with the family business independently. He is responsible for developing several varieties of fruit we still use today, including Bing, Black Republican, Lincoln, and Willamette cherries, as well as the Lewelling grape, Golden prune, Sweet Alice apple and Lewelling almond.

Lewelling trees were already producing fruit at the time of the California rush. Taking bushels of apples down to the gold fields by steamship, these forward-thinking orchardists could antici- pate selling at $1.50 for each apple. Some six thousand apples shipped from the burgeoning Ore- gon orchards (the Luelling’s among them) in 1849. Oregon orchards were regularly shipping out 20,000 bushels by 1856.

Similar rewards could be found in other agricultural endeavors; grain bought from Oregon farmers at 62 cents per bushel could be resold in San Francisco for $9 a bushel.

Even if a family did not undertake a full land claim, farming on shares (working the land for an absentee owner for a share of the profits) and even renting farm property, allowed individuals to reap agricultural profits unheard of in the East, without the high freighting costs burdening East- ern shippers. It made sense to come West to make a farming fortune.

(Farming on shares didn’t always work out. Mrs Van Court’s account of her family’s struggles to make a profit in agriculture in California are detailed in chapter 4 of So Much to Be Done (see the sources section), and provide a sharp contrast to others’ successes.)

The Inducement of Faith: A Call to the West

The settlement of the American west open a field of work in a perhaps unexpected place: ministry. We will gloss a bit over the early mission settlement (largely by Spanish Catholics; see the map on page 3), and start with a quick look at the Methodist settlement of the Oregon Territory, and the important foundations they laid for the entire region.

A quote from one mid-century missionary minister shows both the a glimpse of the realities that often faced settlers (in sharp contrast to the romantic ideals they anticipated), as well as the extraordinary inducement of the ministering heart to extend religious faith into the new territories. In an address delivered at the Home Mission Society’s anniversary (and republished in The Home Missionary in 1861), Reverend Jesse Guernsey of Iowa said,

The work of this Society is chiefly that of planting the standard of the Cross in the communities that have sprung up, and are still springing up, as if by magic, in the newer portions of the country. No sooner does the wagon of the immigrant make its appearance on one of our Western prairies, looking, in the distance, like a mere speck of canvas lying against the eastern sky, than some missionary of yours, sir, if missionary you have there, goes forth with words of welcome on his lips to meet it.

Scarcely is the humble dwelling of the settler seen standing naken and alone, a mere dot, amid the desolate yet beauteous waste that stretches away on every side of it, ere that same missionary hastens to bow with its inmates around their newly-laid hearthstone and invoke the blessing of Heaven upon the household life that is there commenced.

And when some paper town, or city whose ample public sqaure and imposting streets have been admired, perhaps, in Eastern counting-rooms, and whose matchless corner lots have invited the investment of Eastern capital, becomes the site of half a dozen rude cabins, and boasts its store and post-office, and its one-story tavern with the sign of the “Astor House” or the “Metropolitan Hotel,” then the Home Missionary recognizes it as a place to which he has a call. The call is without salary, to be sure, or parsonage or pulpit, and it may be also without even a waiting welcome; but, nevertheless, incomprehensible as the fact may be in certain quarters, it is to him a loud call. The grass has not stopped growing in the streets ere he is there selecting the lot upon which the future meeting-house is to stand, finding out by personal visitation and inquiry the religious character and history of the people, and persuading as many of them as he can to assemble on the Sabbath and hear from his lips the words of eternal life.

He preaches to them in whatever place is at his disposal;in the school-house if there be one, in the store, in the room which serves some family as parlor, sitting-room, dining- room, bed-room and kitchen, or, as in one instance with which I was acquainted, in the bar-room of the public house, with the customary business of drinking and card-playing going on at one end of the room, while words of truth and soberness fall from his lips at the other.

It has often been said that ministers who are not good enough for the East, will not do for the West. No truer word was ever uttered. The earnest, independent, muscular thought, developed by the exigencies of life in a new land, can never be directed and molded by pulpit dullards and drones. If the scanty support, which is all they can hope for at best, becomes suddenly more scanty, they can come astonishingly near to living upon faith..

But, let’s back-track a bit more than a quarter century, to 1834, when Methodist minister Jason Lee, very new to the ministry, headed overland to the Oregon Territory in response to four Flat- head and Nez Perce men who, in 1832, had traveled to St Louis, Missouri to request information about Christianity for their people. Lee’s settlement in the Willamette Valley near the Kalapuya was about 400 miles further west, and with an entirely different culture than had requested him, but he settled in to minister with all his might.

While Lee’s ministry efforts among the First Nations people were ultimately unsuccessful, he was instrumental in setting up American Protestant society in the Pacific Northwest. At Lee’s request, the missions board sent out the “First Reinforcement” in July 1836. These reinforcements were meant to provide for the needs of white settlement in the area, and included a doctor and blacksmith with their wives and children (five among them), an unmarried carpenter, and

© Elizabeth Stewart Clark 2014. All rights reserved. Do not re-host or republish without permission. 13 Extraordinary Inducements: Why the East Went West — Elizabeth Stewart Clark three unmarried women (one already affianced to one of Lee’s companions, and one selected with the hopes that Lee would like her and marry her—which he did.) This group came by sea, not overland. The trip took ten months; they arrived in May 1837. A second group arrived in September, and by March 1838, Lee was able to travel back to the States to muster additional support for the mission work in the Willamette. He also carried a petition signed by 35 white men (75% of all the white men in the territory!), asking for US annexation of the Oregon Terri- tory.

Gathering 51 new pioneers during his travels in the East, he sailed back to Oregon, arriving in May 1840. His efforts in the States paid off: in 1839, a bill allowing every white male settler to claim 1000 acres in the Oregon Territory, and asserting US ownership of the region, sparked a push of other Protestant settlers to the region.

In 1836, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, Henry and Eliza Spalding, and William Gray, headed overland to establish missions among the Cayuse (Waiilatpu) and Nez Perce (Lapwai). Narcissa and Eliza were the first white women to enter the Oregon Territory overland. (One interesting note: Spalding had once courted Narcissa, but she rejected his marriage proposal, and married Whitman instead.) In 1842, the mission board attempted to dissolve these two mission outposts, but Whitman traveled east to defend the work, argued successfully that the mission at Waiilatpu could be a vital way-station for incoming white Christian settlers, and returned West leading a caravan of 1000 new settlers in 1843.

He continued to try to teach and convert Cayuse people (having a bit more success with sharing agricultural practices than spiritual ones), but increased Cayuse exposure to diseases like mea- sles and smallpox with each new wave of white emigrants led to the November 29, 1847 inci- dent in which a small group of Cayuse attacked the mission house, killing Whitman, his wife, and twelve other men and children.

Mission settlement was a hard life. Those who lacked a firm resolution in their call to the West gave up and returned East. Most missionaries found far more success as the welcoming party for white emigrants than in actually converting First Nations people (the many tribes of the Wil- lamette, central Oregon and Washington, and eastern Oregon and Washington would be deci- mated, rather than converted and assimilated). However, without the strong motivations of es- tablishing Christian society in that far corner of the world, settlement may have taken a very different route.

Lee, the Whitmans, the Spaldings, and other early mission settlers in the Oregon Territory proved several things:

 Loaded wagons could be taken over the Rockies

 Women and children could make the trip overland

 Missions as emigrant way-stations would be extremely useful

 Farm animals could make the trip overland.

All four elements established a solid foundation for white settlement in the new territory; thousands of square miles of “free” land was simply an extra inducement for those already determined to carry Christian society into the Pacific Northwest.

The Inducement of Refuge: Religious Exodus

The peculiar united stance of the early Latter-day Saints on nearly any topic set them apart from “mainstream” religious groups in the 1830s, and tended to act as a lightning rod for non-LDS aggravation. Certainly, the new faith had an odd blend of isolationist tendencies, and missionary zeal that made it difficult for people already occupying a new “Mormon homeland” to enjoy their new neighbors. Mormons tended to settle in large clusters, throwing off voting demograph- ics in short order, and many feared their growing strength would lead to a virtual theocracy against the wishes of non-LDS people already there.

These many tensions came to a head with Missouri Governor Bogg’s “Extermination Or- der” (Executive Order 44) in 1838. Faced with a choice between forced expulsion, or threat of government-sanctioned killing of all Mormons (there are no documented cases of actual execu- tion under this order), LDS people evacuated Missouri and moved to a swamp in Illinois, which they promptly set about draining, renamed Nauvoo, and began repeating the same tensions and conflicts with their new neighbors.

Following the murder of Joseph Smith in 1844, and facing increasing mob violence from 1844 to 1846, Brigham Young and the rest of the Latter-day Saints seized upon one very extraordinary inducement: to preserve the liberty of their religion, they would need to leave the United States entirely, and seek refuge somewhere beyond the nation’s borders.

As Brigham Young described it, “ We went west willingly, because we had to.” The emigration began in earnest in 1847, with the first expedition party of 147 men, women, and children reaching the Salt Lake Valley on July 21. Within two days, the first expanse of sod was broken for planting and irrigation ditches were going in. On July 28, Young laid out the survey for the new site of a temple, and presented his plan for the layout of the city. In August, Young returned East with several other elders, and brought out the first waves of Mormon emigrants. By December 1847, 2000 Mormons were settling into the valley.

Mormon missionaries continued to travel to Europe throughout the entire “persecution” period; converts were urged to “Gather to Zion” (wherever the main body of LDS were settled). The desire to unite with their coreligionists, and withstand the persecutions they saw as a test of faith sent by God, created a sustained push for emigration, and strong emotional connections with the Biblical stories of Israel’s exodus and trials in the deserts before entering their Promised Land. For the LDS, the valleys surrounding the Great Salt Lake basin held all the promise needed.

Mary Elizabeth Lightner came west in 1863, having been separated from the main body of Lat- ter-day Saints for many years. Meeting up with hundreds of fellow Mormons headed west to their refuge in the Rockies, she described the scene of a June night at their “jumping off” point at Florence (near Omaha) with language that emphasizes the connection the LDS emigrants felt with Biblical exodus:

On Saturday seven hundred persons from England arrived here enroute for Salt Lake. This is the gathering place for those who intend crossing the plains. Today, saints from Africa and Denmark arrived here. Their tents were scattered over the hills, and when the camp fires were lit up at night the scene was beautiful to behold. It makes me think how the children of Israel must have looked in the days of Moses, when journeying in the wilderness.

Moreso than other emigrant groups, the LDS had a social cohesiveness that shaped their settlement pattern in very different ways from other emigrant communities (even the highly organized

Protestants.) Strong religious leadership stood in place of formal civic government, and operated with quite fair success for many years. Willing subjugation of individual profit in favor of community success typified LDS life; individuals and households not only filled the niches church leaders thought they should fill, they also packed up and decamped to outlying settlements at the direction of church elders, regardless of their own preferences. Such resettlement was “God’s work”, and was generally undertaken with firm resolve.

The new Mormon territory of “Deseret” drew populations from the United States, Canada, and abroad. Some came overland from the East, some came up to St Louis and then west; others through Texas and west; still others by sea to California, and then east overland to Salt Lake. Brigham Young encouraged the new settlers to bring their technical trade knowledge, schemat- ics for industrial machines, and their skill; with entire communities behind commercial plan- ning, knowledge became small industry, with an eye toward as much self-sufficiency as possible. Scottish stonemasons and English engineers joined forces to create refined and sophisticated architecture in a “barren” frontier. Freighting routes were developed with the support of private business and Church backing, to bring out additional LDS emigrants and tons of “imported” goods and materials from the States.

Though the early isolation of the LDS lasted only a few years, and tensions with California and Oregon emigrants passing through LDS territories would lead to a good amount of conflict in the 1850s and 60s (including one brief war with the US government in 1857-58), the patterns set out in the settling of Salt Lake would be repeated successfully all through the last half of the 19th century.

Summing Up

The 19th century migration of Eastern populations toward the newly opened lands in the West followed historical precedents to a large degree. However, there were also unique and “extraordinary” inducements to settlement for the mid-19th century citizens that led to a singu- larly “American” pattern, marked by romantic idealism, commercial hopes, and religious zeal. Rapidly improving technologies and transportation created a more cohesive popular culture than had ever been known before.

Within the stories of western settlement, we can find thousands of interesting points to help modern audiences connect to our shared national history. Because the development of the West continued through the years of the Civil War, we can draw on the hopes, motivations, and inducements popular with people from every corner of the States to inform our portrayals of 1860s citizens.

The specifics presented here are only the most light scratching of the surface. Even if your nor- mal living history endeavors are located in the East, please take some time to acquaint yourself with the same information about the West that citizens of the time had available to them, and explore the many possibilities your historical counterpart may have contemplated themselves.

Sources

One of my favorite books for helping to break out of a Hollywood mythos regarding the West is The Forgotten Founders, by Stewart L Udall, published by Island Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55963- 893-1. Udall tends to be a little cranky about the “history” largely invented in the 20th century about the 19th century, but his information about the actual events of history is great, and you’ll come away with an excellent overview of the region. If you have time for only one book about why the East went West, this is the one to read.

My observations on the patterns of human settlement are drawn from about 25 years of interest in the topic, so there’s no singular source to recommend; I’d encourage anyone to start taking note of motivations and themes for movement as they read in any era, and see how far they agree or disagree.

Platte River Road Narratives, by Merrill Mattes, published by University of Illinois Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0252013425.

The Oregon-California Trails Association is full of people interested in the history of western migration and the people who settled the West. They have some great resources at their website. Find them on-line at www.octa-trails.org.

Transnationalism and American Serial Fiction, by Patricia Okker, published by Routledge, 2011. ISBN 0415888867 Contains some great information on both English and non-English serial stories, and the way they shape national identity. See also Okker’s Social Stories: The Magazine Novel in Nineteenth-Century America (2003, ISBN 0813922402).

A Fictive People, by Ronald Zboray, published by Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 978- 0195075823. See also Zboray’s Everyday Ideas: Socioliterary Experience Antebellum New Englanders, published by University of Tennessee Press, 2006.

The Cambridge History of the American Novel, edited by Leonard Cassuto, published by Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820-1860, by Robert A Margo, published by University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Covered Wagon Women, a series of journal and letter accounts of overland migration, edited by Kenneth Holmes. Mrs Epperson’s account is in volume 8 of the series, as is Mary Elizabeth Lightner’s.

Mary Jane Hayden’s observations on why her household went West can be found in So Much to Be Done, edited by Ruth Moynihan, published by University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Je- rusha Merrill’s notes on 1849 economics are found there, as well as Mrs VanCourt’s share- farming experiences.

Further notes on Luzena Stanley Wilson’s experience in running a hotel in 1849 are found at www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/three/luzena.htm

There are some excellent historical resources at the Economic History Association’s website: eh.net/book-reviews/library/. For some notes on gold rush wages in particular, see www. eh.net/encyclopedia/california-gold-rush/.

A fascinating look at agriculture in California, and its effects on the gold rush economy, is found in Gold Rush Origins of California’s Wheat, by Jim Gerber, 2010. It is available in a free PDF download at http://www.academia.edu/3526628/ The_Gold_Rush_origins_of_Californias_wheat_economy

Advertisements for emigration companies and wage information can be found on-line in many places; one of my favorite spots to look is the Paper & Ephemera collection at the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov

Information on the Luellings and their orcharding adventures can be found in many Oregon history resources, including Henderson Luelling, Seth Luelling, and the Birth of the Pacific Coast Fruit Industry, by Thomas McClintock, published in the Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 60, no. 2 (June 1967); and

Pioneer Days of Oregon History, Volume 2, by Samuel Asahel Clarke, published by JK Gill Company, 1905, available as a free e-book at Google books.

Additionally, there’s a lovely children’s book on the topic: Apples to Oregon: Being the (Slightly) True Narrative of How a Brave Pioneer Father Brought Apples, Peaches, Pears, Plums, Grapes, and Cherries (and Children) Across the Plains, by Deborah Hopkinson and Nancy Carpenter, available in hardcover or paperback. The story is lightly fictionalized, and the illustrations are charming.

We’ll All Go home In the Spring, by Robert A Bennett, published by Pioneer Press Books, 1984, contains dozens of accounts of economic motivations, successes, and failures of emigrants to the West.

The Home Missionary, 1861, part of a series of magazines published by the Home Missionary Society, a group of Protestant churches devoted to carrying out missionary work here in the United States. A number of the magazines are available on-line through Google Books.

Two good on-line overviews of Jason Lee (both of which include the “warts” of his ministry efforts) can be found at www.salemhistory.net/people/jason_lee.htm and www. willametteheritage.org/LaRC/bios_histories/Jason_Lee.pdf.

Washington State University maintains a full archive of Narcissa and Marcus Whitman’s papers and letters; these are not available on-line at this time, however.

An older, but still quite good, book on Eliza Spalding and Narcissa Whitman is Clifford Drury’s 1963 Where Wagons Could Go, re-published by University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

An 1883 book, Marcus Whitman, MD: Proofs of His Work In Saving Oregon to the United States, by Myron Eells, is available as a free e-book through Google books, and gives some interesting “next generation” views on Whitman’s role in aiding white settlement.

Narcissa Prentiss Whitman’s letters and papers can be found in multiple sources, including the New Perspectives on the West archive for PBS, www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/ two/whitman0.htm

Read Brigham Young’s own words about the Mormon Exodus in the LDS publication The Teachings of Brigham Young, 1998; available on-line at www.lds.org/manual/teachings- brigham-young/chapter-15?lang=eng

PBS aired an excellent documentary about the Mormon migration. Trail of Hope is available on DVD, and has a companion book of the same title.

Brigham Young University maintains an archive of related materials on-line at http:// overlandtrails.lib.byu.edu/

Daughters of the Utah Pioneers (www.dupinternational.org) and Sons of the Utah Pioneers both keep extensive emigrant histories and artifacts; some of their resources are available on-line, but many more may be explored in person at the various small museums scattered around the Salt Lake Valley and surrounding territories.

Tangent Topics

For information about 19th century novels and serial novels in Australia for this same time period (there are very interesting connections and similarities!), look for Reading by the Num- bers: Recalibrating the Literary Field, by Katherine Bode, Anthem Press, 2012. ISBN 9857284541

Novels on the Installment Plan: American Authorship in the Age of Serial Publication, from Stowe to Hemingway, by Rachel Ihara, published by ProQuest, 2007. Much of the text is available through Google books.

For a very thought-provoking look at the history of fertilizer and its role in the Civil War, read Larding the Lean Earth, by Steven Stoll, published by Hill and Wang, 2003; ISBN 0809064308.