The Road to Oregon, a Chronicle of the Great Emigrant Trail
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1 (F n^ THE ROAD TO OREGON The Santa Fe Trail being first established, a signboard was later set up to show where the Oregon Trail branched off. It bore the simple legend "Road to Oregon." . Surely so unostentatious a sign never bejore nor since announced so long a journey. — H. M. Chittenden: The American Fur Trade oj the Far West LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 5 J FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK ill EAST 20TH STREET, CHICAGO TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON a 10 VICTORIA STREET, TORONTO LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. Ltd. 39 paternoster row, e c 4, london 53 nicol road, bombay 6 old court house street, calcutta 167 mount road, madras <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< THE ROAD TO OREGON >r >' A Chronicle of the Great >(' Emigrant Trail >r >(- A i; W. J. GHENT S5 - ^; 'A ^ ^ ^//A 32 illust'oiions and a map \ \ >r . j< J< J< J< J< J< J< J< J< J< J< J< J< J\. J< J< J< J< J\. J\ J< J< LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. T<-^Dr.xT-rri -^ ;; LONDON •. NEW YORKY0°"' • TORONTO :: y< 1929 >>>>>>>>»>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>»>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> GHENT THE ROAD TO OREGON COPYRIGHT • 1929 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. First Edition April 1929 Reprinted April 1929 PKINTED IH THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ?7^vy ^7^/ . • < << <<<< <<<<<<< < < <<< < <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< <<< << To TUNY MOFFAT just turned tweti^e \ :^- K << <<<<<<<<<<< << <<<<<<< <<<<<<<< <<<<<<< <<<<<<<<<< < INTRODUCTION IT is singular that no comprehensive historical treat- ment of the Oregon Trail has until now been attempted. The subject is of wide interest; the material is abundant, and it has long been available ; for of the great wealth of recently discovered material that compels the rewrit- ing of much of the history of the Far West, little has been added to the early documentation of the Trail. Histori- cal essays, such as Professor F. G. Young's *' The Oregon Trail," Mr. W. E. Connelley's " National As- pects of the Old Oregon Trail " and H. M. Chittenden's brief and compact sketch in The American Fur Trade of the Far West, have outlined the subject; and more recently has appeared the excellent study of some of its phases, Opening a Highway to the Pacific, 1838- 1846, by Mr. James Christy Bell, Jr.; but the writing of an extended history with the Trail as its central theme has somehow been neglected. In 1848 Francis Parkman pubhshed The Oregon and Califoriiia Trail. It is a book that has had its hundreds of thousands of readers, and doubtless will always be popular. To students, however, it is disap- pointing by reason of what it omits. Of the Trail itself the book gives little information. Parkman was ill; he was young, and he had not yet developed that first essential of a historian — the spirit of inquiry. On vii ; viii INTRODUCTION matters that especially interested him he writes with an engaging charm; on all other matters he seems to show the incuriousness of an Indian. He disliked and shunned the emigrants; that constantly renewing com- pany of pioneers that included such men as Bidwell, Burnett, the Applegates, Nesmith, Belden, and hun- dreds of others that could be named, he found uncouth, intrusive, dour, and unfriendly; and those who invaded Fort Laramie, shortly after his arrival, " totally devoid of any sense of delicacy or propriety." He seems, more- over, not to have had the slightest notion of the sig- nificance of the emigration movement. He talks with a trader whom, most ineptly, he calls " old Vaskiss," apparently not knowing that the man is Colonel Louis Vasquez, noted mountain man and part- ner of James Bridger. Of Bridger he seems not to have heard, and of the famous fort he knows only that it is " a remote post in the mountains." A little inquiry might have disclosed to him that it was not remote except in the sense that it was four hundred miles from Fort Laramie, since it was on the main line of the Trail and that it was not " in the mountains," but in a pleasant dell in the great Green Valley. He repeats a story of James P. Beckwourth's daredevil storming of a Black- foot fort, not knowing that the story was identical with one that had been told of Edward Rose years before Beckwourth saw the frontier ; and he gives an ill char- acter to Beckwourth that is quite without warrant. He talks and rides with Paul Dorion, son of the in- terpreter of Hunt's Astoria expedition of 1811. One would think that at the sound of the name Dorion his imagination had taken fire. For this Paul was one of : INTRODUCTION ix the two living sons of that Sioux girl-mother who ac- companied the expedition all the way from St. Louis to Astoria; who shared uncomplainingly every hardship that befell that ill-starred company, and who was later, with her two infants, the heroine of a thrilling escape quite unmatched in the annals of the western frontier. Wih-munke Wakan (Holy Rainbow) was her name, as Mr. Doane Robinson gives it, and she holds a place among women of the western tribes second only to that of Sacagawea, the Bird Woman of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Parkman had read all about her in Astoria. What questions he might have asked concerning her! Was she beautiful, after the Sioux fashion? Was she tall? Did she bear herself, as Dr. Elijah White attests, with a noble dignity? Did she, as some say, live out her days in far-away Oregon, or, as others say, contrive to return to her people? But the nascent historian ap- parently asked no questions ; he was not interested. In 1897 Major Henry Inman and Colonel WilHam r. Cody published The Great Salt Lake Trail. What they meant by the term was, for the greater part of its length, the Oregon Trail. They were, however, ap- parently unaware that this Trail was ever used by emi- grants on the way to Oregon. Of this remarkable work Professor F. G. Young has written The body of the book touches upon topics ranging in time from Jonathan Carver's explorations in 1766—'68 to the build- ing 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 INTRODUCTION have been crowded out by more weighty matters, as all the dis- jointed 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.* It is obvious that neither of these books can be con- sidered as a serious historical treatment of the Oregon Trail. The sources for the present work are largely the journals and travel-books of the trapper era (which over a period of many years has been a favorite field of the author's) and the diaries and reminiscences of the emigrants published in the Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association, the Quarterly of the Oregon His- torical Society, the Washington Historical Quarterly and various California publications. In the treatment of the stage-coach and mail services Professor LeRoy R. Hafen's The Overland Mail and Messrs. F. A. Root and W. E. Connelley's The Overland Stage to Cali- fornia have been freely drawn upon — the former for its exact data and the latter for its lively depiction of the times and the people. The tracing of the Trail follows mainly the authority of Professor Archer Butler Hul- bert, of the Stewart Commission on Western History, whose four volumes on the central trails in the Crown Collection of Maps have proved invaluable. Reports of Indian Commissioners and the files of the Indian, the Engineers' and the Adjutant General's Offices have * "The Oregon Trail," Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. I, No. 4 (December 1900). INTRODUCTION xi been consulted. Of many secondary sources found help- ful special mention should be made of the work by James Christy Bell, Jr., already referred to; Joseph R. Wilson's resume of the diplomatic negotiations re- garding Oregon, in the Quarterly of the Oregon His- torical Society for June and September 1900; Frederic L. Paxson's The Last American Frontier; J. Cecil Alter's James Bridger; Cardinal Goodwin's The Trans- Mississippi West; Professor Joseph Schafer's History of the Pacific Northwest; Professor Grace Raymond Hebard and Mr. E. A. Brininstool's The Bozeman Trail (not always accurate in detail, but containing much original matter of great value), and the Rev. Mjrron Eells' Marcus Whitman, Pathfinder and Pa- triot, a book that has been somewhat roughly handled by the anti-Whitmanites, but that is, though unskilfully and sometimes blunderingly written, an honest attempt to outline a period and to portray a great character. It is sometimes asserted that the main business of a historical writer is interpretation. In the view of the author the main business is accuracy. He has sought to be exact; and he here echoes the prayer of the con- scientious Elliot Coues that every error committed, " whether in ignorance or by inadvertence, may be ex- posed and corrected." Grateful acknowledgments for information or criti- cism received are due to Professor Allan Nevins; to Mr. W. E. Connelley, secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society; to Miss Stella M. Drumm, librarian of the Missouri Historical Society; to Mrs.